Still a financial model comment, but I just noticed that option to disable advertising? Apparently it's something I said?
So let me say a few words about our sponsors' advertising: Desperate. Bullshit. BAD company.
Can't recall the last time I saw an exception. Ads are worthless tripe for a simple reason. It's quite expensive to produce a truly superior product, but it's relatively vastly cheaper to produce ads.
Actually, the situation is even worse than that. If you did produce a truly superior product, the marginal cost of those last increments of quality are so expensive that your competitors can grab big profits by splitting the difference from good enough--especially with the support of advertising.
Off topic there, but as it applies to slashdot, ads do NOT add value and I normally see all ads as red flags to AVOID shopping with that company. The MORE ads they throw at me, the LESS likely the product is worth buying. That's become a big part of what's wrong with the Internet, but inverting the model is probably too big a project for slashdot to tackle...
Still... Perhaps you want a hint?
(But I warn you that I'm so clueless I couldn't catch a clue if I was dipped in clue musk and dropped in a field of desperate clues in the middle of clue mating season.)
They could probably raise some money by auctioning off the low numbers that have been unused long enough. That would be fake prestige, but I bet some people would be desperate enough to buy it.
Hmm... Better idea. Offer the low numbers to celebrities as an incentive to join slashdot. Famous computer scientists or programmers? (However that reminds me of the need for a good celebrity email system... Kind of the dual of the spam problem...)
Oh, I hate typos. Another feature I'd be willing to donate towards would be a grammar checker. Or at least a time window for editing, notwithstanding the preview...
In general, I agree with you because there is too much abuse of anonymity, but one of the features I want and would prefer to donate towards would be a maturity filter. If an account is too young, then I don't want to see it at all. My setting would probably be at least two or three months, but I'd like to see the statistics on the average lifespans of sock puppets.
The broader question of moderation is messy... What sort of project would I be willing to put money on? Tough question...
Theoretically? I think there should be a number of orthogonal dimensions, and each dimension should be logarithmic rather than linear. Some characteristics of posts and posters should be based on a combination of traits. For example, I think there should be a "sincerity" dimension, and one of the traits of a true troll would be an average sincerity on the negative side... However to keep it simpler for the newbies, I think the default dimensionality should be low, perhaps 3 or 5 dimensions (with funny as one of the defaults), though people can turn on additional dimensions if they are interested in them...
In addition, I think that posters should earn multidimensional karma from their posts (but still on a logarithmic basis). To top it off, people who have acquired a positive average in some dimension should get double mod points in that dimension. And remember the mod points could go positive or negative...
So much for theory. Now in practice, let the flame wars commence!
So Mr Abbott, what can you say about the financial models you are considering here? Do you have any concrete plans to improve slashdot?
(Insofar as I see the financial models as driving the way things go, I think those are really the same question, but no one as implemented a real charity share brokerage, as far as I can tell...)
Basically ditto on sourceforge regarding my comment (below) about the financial models that have not worked for slashdot. I long ago concluded that sourceforge was most often the place that good ideas go to die. Full of orphaned or half-finished products. In most cases the programmers lost interest or decided they weren't going to strike it rich after all, but I think the cases involving competent programmers usually died simply because they found better things to do with their time.
With my proposed charity-shares project-based approach, the project proposal should include ALL of the necessary resources, which includes the people who are willing to work on the project for the amount that is budgeted for their work, and the schedule and testing won't be ignored because the potential donors can see up front what the plan is, at least roughly.
However, to my way of thinking, the most important aspect is the success criteria that should be included in the project proposal. Not so much for the current project, because once enough donors have agreed and the money is released, then there's not much you can do. For the FUTURE projects, especially projects involving members of that first project...
Well, my main reaction is "What? Again?" Been following slashdot off and on for some years, and mostly impressed by the LOST potential. Could do so much better, but obviously the financial models don't work that way.
Say.... What if you could buy a $10 charity share to implement a new feature or support a server for the next year? If enough people chip in, then the feature gets funded or the server keeps running. If not, maybe you'll see something else you want to support--or they can rewrite the project until it is persuasive enough to get the donors. I think most people are basically nice folks, and if you make it easier to do nice things, then they will do so.
Point to the opposite extreme. Microsoft has terrible service, but their financial model works great. Ditto a number of other highly offensive but profitable companies, usually distinguished by their mediocre software and services. Slashdot (and open source) could do better?
Can you improve the search capabilities of the Discussions to make them less write-only? It would be especially good if while writing a new comment, the student's keywords and sentiments towards the keywords could be evaluated in a high-dimensional space so that 'nearby' (cosine distance metric?) comments and threads would be brought to the student's attention. Pie-in-the-sky to support smoothly merging new comments into existing discussions... Perhaps deferring unrelated parts or helping to make those parts into bridging comments to other threads?
Could a professor invert the presentation using EdX? Ask questions first, and use the wrong answers to guide students to study only the parts they need to study? Then when the student had worked all the way through the course, the student would already have faced the exam questions and be ready to answer them successfully, while also spending the minimal necessary time studying the material. For students like me, the most effective teaching videos would be fairly short, with the professor explaining and discussing the material one-on-one with a student who shares my specific points of ignorance.
As a financial model, have you considered rigorously proctored exams? The price of the exam would be set to cover the costs of administering the proctored exam, plus a percentage to EdX to support the development of course material and the operation of the website...
Those are my top 3 suggestions, and if you don't like them, I have others (plus apologies to Groucho). Over the last few years I've taken quite a number of courses from EdX, but it mostly signifies having too much time on my hands, and most of the courses were on a scale from entertaining to shallow. I definitely feel that the weakest part of EdX is the Discussions, however. Lots of teaching talent, but the EdX tools strike me as weak or immature.
My reaction (sent to Mozilla) to the inclusion of the Amazon plug-in:
[Firefox has made me] very, VERY sad indeed. Amazon? Why don't you just shoot my privacy in the head? It would be a kinder solution. More to the point, sucking up to Amazon is NOT going to fix your terrible financial model. Amazon does NOT share any of Mozilla's laudable goals, but "partnering" with those vicious privacy-destroying monsters will destroy you, too. How can ANYONE possibly trust an Amazon partner? Amazon will share a few pennies with you--but Amazon will laugh when you go bankrupt anyway.
Now I've suggested an alternative business model of project-oriented charity shares. I'm already getting blue in the face from repeating that solution, but you are ABSOLUTELY NOT offering a better alternative. Amazon is EVIL, and now I regard Firefox as EVIL, too. My chief regret is that there are no alternatives that are significantly less evil--and it always comes back to stupid financial models.
Glad to hear this news and I think his prison time should be calibrated against the amount of other people's time he wasted. He should be sentenced to RESPOND to each of the spams he sent. If he works 16 hours a day and can respond to each spam in one second, then it would take him a year to "pay off" his first 20 million spams. Even better if his clicking finger falls off first.
Anyway, I want to help do something to help SOLVE the ancient spam problem. I want to BREAK the spammers' business models. I am NOT suggesting that the spammers can become decent human beings. I'm just suggesting that the lack of money would drive them away from spamming and move them under less visible rocks.
The key number is NOT the low marginal cost of email. The important number is the SMALL ratio of suckers to the LARGE number of people who hate spam. If we had better anti-spam tools, just a small percentage of the spam-haters could cut the spammers off in their most sensitive organs: their wallets. If we got in the middle of the spamemrs' business models, if we could disrupt ALL of the spammers' infrastructure and pursue ALL of the spammers' accomplices, then their money would dry up. We could even help the spammers' victims, saving the fools from themselves and help corporations protect their reputations and customers (even though I think most of those corporations could do it themselves if they actually cared about the customers who are foolish enough to trust them).
Imagine an iterative spam-fighting tool that would cycle between automatic analysis and human confirmation, with reputation taken into account. The spam could be analyzed quite accurately, especially using the humans' privileged information, and the countermeasures could be targeted much more aggressively. How can the spammers continue to display their criminal intentions WITH contact information for the victims?
I'd forgotten what my sig was, but I'll say that my current amusement and replacement website is mostly Ello. Already becoming concerned about their lack of any apparently viable financial model... I'm sure you've all been invited already, right?
Not sure I can really claim to be a non-coder, since I was a professional database programmer for some years, but I can definitely say that I would like to contribute to Open Source and the reason I mostly don't is basically the same as why I dropped off of/. some years ago: Bad financial models. (Today's visit is too long a story.)
Let me try to clarify the problem. Microsoft produces gawdawful software. Apple is against freedom of choice. Google is blossoming as an EVIL tyrant under the new motto "All your attentions is belonging to us." However, they all have viable financial models and they are kicking the hiney of little OSS.
Constructive suggestion for you to ignore (of course): Charity share brokerage (AKA reverse auction charity shares). Sort of like Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, but with project management and clear SUCCESS criteria. If the slashdot people wanted to act as the charity brokerage, the donors would trust them to hold the money and provide lists of possible OSS projects to be implemented. If enough donors buy the shares to fund a project, then the funds would be released. (By the way, the same basic mechanism could be used for funding solution projects for problems that don't call for software solutions.)
The broker would earn a percentage mostly by making sure the project proposals are clear and complete. How many people are required and how much will they be paid? How much testing will be adequate? How will non-core contributors be rewarded? What is the schedule? What are the most likely problems and how can they be dealt with? That's to help potential donors assess the real risks. And, to my way of thinking, most important: What will success look like?
The donors (possibly even including yours truly) would basically get nothing but recognition for their donations on a project funder page. However, as minor doggie treats they should be the first people invited to use the completed software and their reviews might receive extra weight in evaluating the success (or even failure) of the project.
I was a teenager when they reached the moon, but it makes me feel so old to think back to those days. I'm beginning to feel like we're getting dumber all the time, and I'm pressed to imagine how they conceived of such an approach.
Now all of this high-tech stuff has led to Facebook? Give me a break. Please. If we don't give Facebook to the Chinese, they'll be building the first lunar colony, the way things are going nowadays...
Oh yeah. I forgot one more obvious thing that may not be obvious enough. The obvious mirror technology would just be large wire loops with thin coated plastic films stretched across them. You want them very light so that they will be responsive to the rotating gyroscopes (located at the center of mass of each mirror), and of course you want them to be cheap since you'll need a lot of them. Actually, I think you would only have one gyroscope per mirror, but it has to be on gimbals so you can rotate in arbitrary directions.
You caught me on the reference to "terraforming". Looks like we need to start by terraforming our own planet to sustain its suitability for human life. Not so funny.
My suggestion along these lines would be a network of large controllable mirrors in orbit. The individual sections could be aimed, essentially by rotating them with gyroscopes. Some region is too hot? Adjust more mirrors to give it more shade and reduce its temperature. Another area is too cold? Add the appropriate amount of reflected sunlight and warm it right up. Might as well send some extra sunlight to the polar regions and cultivate crops there, too. Surplus light for electricity generation on the side.
Expensive? Yes, but basically within the capabilities of existing technologies. I actually think the largest technical hurdle would be sufficiently accurate weather modeling. We'd essentially need to micromanage the weather all over the world. I don't think the launch capacity would be unsolvable. The early launches would focus on the power generation, and the power would be used to crack sea water for the hydrogen that would be used to boost more mirror satellites into orbit.
Okay, so it would also be potentially dangerous, but I'm hoping that the security problems could be solved, and all technology is morally neutral. Any power to do good is also a power to do harm. (Unfortunately, this is not a balanced relationship. There are some powers that can do nothing but harm... But that's getting off the focus--which can be risky with such large mirrors.)
Anyway, it was down from Japan for quite a while. Then it came part way up, and eventually it seemed to be working again. I was actually composing some email most of the time, and didn't lose anything. (Pretty sure, anyway.)
In contrast to/., which tosses its cookies pretty often.
You ask why the parent was modded funny? See my sig--and karma.
Actually, I did see something funny on/. a few days ago. Oh wait. It was just a link to somewhere else. Doesn't count on the/. credit side.
Maybe/. could have gotten indirect credit, except the moderators were not competent enough to mod the linking post as funny. Sorry, you moron moderators, but I only found it because the poster described it as a funny link.
So you say you read/. for the timely technical news, not the pictures? For this story, you might as well be reading such innovative leaders as the Washington Post, a truly old MSM horse. In tribute to the old meme with the goat, I should post a link to a close up of a gift horse's mouth--but/. isn't worth that much research time.
Nomad said the Enterprise was flawed but could be repaired. Unfortunately/. is clearly beyond the miraculous curative powers of Nomad. I'm sure he'd just pull the plug.
Either it's a zen art or I'm pandering to the Microsoft fan boys with mod points. Cf. sig. In a sense, given the artificial scarcity of mod points, encouraging their waste is just par for the course.
On the other hand, were you were just trying to beat another dead meme?
In conclusion, perhaps your configuration settings are such that you're seeing a different/. than I see. The one I see is not very interesting, constructive, informative, or (heaven forbid) useful these years.
I think my main motivation for dropping by/. lately is when my back is hurting. "So my back is hurting again, eh? Isn't that a better fate than befell/.?"
Long, long ago, my motivations were to find witty technical humor or new information. However, from this topic, you can see that I've obviously adapted to the times.
On the topic at hand, I'm afraid the discussion has already thrilled me past caring.
You think you can fool Microsoft so easily? Perhaps you can disguise your mouse and your IP address--but as soon as you switch your spelling dictionary to American English, they'll nail you.
Microsoft is like seawater. Everywhere, but poisonous.
Actually, what I want is REAL choice = REAL freedom.
In our current episode, Microsoft is playing games with the European regulators in hopes of appeasing them. In our last episode, Microsoft wanted to dictate Vista or DEATH! Wait, Microsoft didn't mean it. Now you can choose Windows 7 with only 35% of the awful and unneeded features of Vista! And at a special price, too. Such a deal!
Microsoft has become way to big to fail, which means too big to exist. Sooner or later they are going to fail. Whoops. Who am I kidding? Microsoft is constantly failing. What I mean is sooner or later they are going to fail so big and so hard that the economic consequences will be astronomical. This is TOO big.
Actually, I think the part that most annoys me is that Microsoft has actually become such a powerful a brake on progress. No software innovation is safe if Microsoft wants to kill it. My personal least favorite is what Microsoft did to Palm. Is it somehow supposed to be better because the entire thing was insincere? Now they've apparently decided to abandon that turkey?
From the 'positive' perspective, why would Microsoft want to innovate when they're already getting the lion's share? New versions? That's a decision for marketing! What year will be convenient for the next marketing campaign? That's the WRONG basis for improvements.
Suggestion: Cut Microsoft into 5 companies. Call them Microsoft A to E with a time limit before they need to pick new names. Give each of them a copy of the source code and 1/5 of the people and facilities and assets. Require them to compete. Windows can remain the standard OS, but they have to compete on the basis of the standard, and all changes and improvements to the standard must be discussed in public and agreed to, or the changes will be proprietary to that branch of the company.
Result? Real choice = freedom.
Side effect? As the code bases evolve over time, the single points of failure will be eliminated. Instead of 80% of the world's computers being at risk from one programming mistake, the risk will be greatly reduced.
Don't think of it as a penalty for success. It's an inducement to reproduce your company when you are successful enough. A new form of corporate evolution that increases our freedom while also creating more pressure for creative innovations and progress. (If you succeed again up to about 40% of the market, then your company should reproduce again, just to note the obvious.)
I have to say "REAL alternatives" every time? How about if you consider what I actually said rather than trivia it suits you to address.
For the record, I primarily use Ubuntu WHEN I actually do have a choice. At home that means about 95% of the time, though it's a little hard to estimate. Two machines are multi-boots that normally run Ubuntu, and one of those machines has my attention most of the time. One ancient clunker is pure Windows, but only gets used about 10 minutes a day, and the 'muscle machine' runs Windows because of licensing restrictions, but has virtual machines for Ubuntu, a RedHat variant (with a special corporate configuration), Solaris, and so-help-me DOS.
At work I have much less choice. Though I've configured a number of machines as multi-boots, I'm basically constrained to run Windows almost all of the time. I had a scratch monkey that was usually in Ubuntu, but it died a while back and I'm not sure if I can replace it...
Apple? When I was teaching at the university I actually was in a Mac environment. The more I learned about Macs the less I liked teaching on them. At this point, my basic feeling is that Apple is mostly the source for Microsoft's worst ideas or twisted implementations of what were formerly good ideas before Microsoft mangled them. Apple not-so-secretly wants to be Microsoft, but they've accepted that they can't be that, so they are basically exploiting their high-margin fan boys. Perhaps I'm too harsh on Apple, but I don't regard Apple as a real choice for me.
Sun? I have quite a bit of experience, but I regard them as a small desert island these days. Not a choice I like.
We're back in the Microsoft ocean, with nary a drop to drink. (Shall I regard Ubuntu as my handy dandy solar still.)
Microsoft is like seawater. Everywhere, but poisonous.
Actually, what I want is REAL choice = REAL freedom.
Microsoft wants to dictate Vista or DEATH! Wait, we didn't mean it. Now you can choose Windows 7 with only 35% of the awful and unneeded features of Vista!
Microsoft has become way to big to fail, which means too big to exist. Sooner or later they are going to fail. Who am I kidding? Microsoft is constantly failing. What I mean is sooner or later they are going to fail so big and so hard that the economic consequences will be astronomical. This is TOO big.
In addition, Microsoft has actually become a brake on progress. Why innovate when you're already getting the lion's share? New versions? That's a decision for marketing to decide! What year will be convenient for our next marketing campaign? That's the WRONG basis for improvements.
Suggestion: Cut Microsoft into 5 companies. Call them Microsoft A to E with a time limit before they need to pick new names. Give each of them a copy of the source code and 1/5 of the people and facilities and assets. Require them to compete. Windows can remain the standard OS, but they have to compete in conforming to the standard, and all changes and improvements to the standard must be discussed in public and agreed to, or the changes will be proprietary to that branch of the company.
Result? Real choice = freedom.
Side effect? As the code bases evolve over time, the single points of failure will be eliminated. Instead of 80% of the world's computers being at risk from one programming mistake, the risk will be greatly reduced.
Don't think of it as a penalty for success. It's an inducement to reproduce your company when you are successful enough. A new form of corporate evolution that increases our freedom while also creating more pressure for creative innovations and progress. (If you succeed again up to about 40% of the market, then your company should reproduce again, just to note the obvious.)
No, I can't say because I'm in a food chain for one of your 'hero' companies and I want to keep eating. It would not be amusing to say too much in a place like this.
However, if you do believe there are any businesses with profit margins like that, then I'd love to meet you about a bridge. I'm sure this is JUST the opportunity you've been waiting to invest in.
Actually, I'm basically certain that you've mismatched figures from different columns or that you've mislabeled your numbers. Why you don't want to go check your sources and fix the error is a mystery. However, I'm even more sure that I'm NOT going to invest in Redhat on the basis of your report.
Slashdot Mirror
Still a financial model comment, but I just noticed that option to disable advertising? Apparently it's something I said?
So let me say a few words about our sponsors' advertising: Desperate. Bullshit. BAD company.
Can't recall the last time I saw an exception. Ads are worthless tripe for a simple reason. It's quite expensive to produce a truly superior product, but it's relatively vastly cheaper to produce ads.
Actually, the situation is even worse than that. If you did produce a truly superior product, the marginal cost of those last increments of quality are so expensive that your competitors can grab big profits by splitting the difference from good enough--especially with the support of advertising.
Off topic there, but as it applies to slashdot, ads do NOT add value and I normally see all ads as red flags to AVOID shopping with that company. The MORE ads they throw at me, the LESS likely the product is worth buying. That's become a big part of what's wrong with the Internet, but inverting the model is probably too big a project for slashdot to tackle...
Still... Perhaps you want a hint?
(But I warn you that I'm so clueless I couldn't catch a clue if I was dipped in clue musk and dropped in a field of desperate clues in the middle of clue mating season.)
They could probably raise some money by auctioning off the low numbers that have been unused long enough. That would be fake prestige, but I bet some people would be desperate enough to buy it.
Hmm... Better idea. Offer the low numbers to celebrities as an incentive to join slashdot. Famous computer scientists or programmers? (However that reminds me of the need for a good celebrity email system... Kind of the dual of the spam problem...)
Oh, I hate typos. Another feature I'd be willing to donate towards would be a grammar checker. Or at least a time window for editing, notwithstanding the preview...
s/no one as implemented/no one has implemented/
In general, I agree with you because there is too much abuse of anonymity, but one of the features I want and would prefer to donate towards would be a maturity filter. If an account is too young, then I don't want to see it at all. My setting would probably be at least two or three months, but I'd like to see the statistics on the average lifespans of sock puppets.
The broader question of moderation is messy... What sort of project would I be willing to put money on? Tough question...
Theoretically? I think there should be a number of orthogonal dimensions, and each dimension should be logarithmic rather than linear. Some characteristics of posts and posters should be based on a combination of traits. For example, I think there should be a "sincerity" dimension, and one of the traits of a true troll would be an average sincerity on the negative side... However to keep it simpler for the newbies, I think the default dimensionality should be low, perhaps 3 or 5 dimensions (with funny as one of the defaults), though people can turn on additional dimensions if they are interested in them...
In addition, I think that posters should earn multidimensional karma from their posts (but still on a logarithmic basis). To top it off, people who have acquired a positive average in some dimension should get double mod points in that dimension. And remember the mod points could go positive or negative...
So much for theory. Now in practice, let the flame wars commence!
So Mr Abbott, what can you say about the financial models you are considering here? Do you have any concrete plans to improve slashdot?
(Insofar as I see the financial models as driving the way things go, I think those are really the same question, but no one as implemented a real charity share brokerage, as far as I can tell...)
Basically ditto on sourceforge regarding my comment (below) about the financial models that have not worked for slashdot. I long ago concluded that sourceforge was most often the place that good ideas go to die. Full of orphaned or half-finished products. In most cases the programmers lost interest or decided they weren't going to strike it rich after all, but I think the cases involving competent programmers usually died simply because they found better things to do with their time.
With my proposed charity-shares project-based approach, the project proposal should include ALL of the necessary resources, which includes the people who are willing to work on the project for the amount that is budgeted for their work, and the schedule and testing won't be ignored because the potential donors can see up front what the plan is, at least roughly.
However, to my way of thinking, the most important aspect is the success criteria that should be included in the project proposal. Not so much for the current project, because once enough donors have agreed and the money is released, then there's not much you can do. For the FUTURE projects, especially projects involving members of that first project...
Well, my main reaction is "What? Again?" Been following slashdot off and on for some years, and mostly impressed by the LOST potential. Could do so much better, but obviously the financial models don't work that way.
Say.... What if you could buy a $10 charity share to implement a new feature or support a server for the next year? If enough people chip in, then the feature gets funded or the server keeps running. If not, maybe you'll see something else you want to support--or they can rewrite the project until it is persuasive enough to get the donors. I think most people are basically nice folks, and if you make it easier to do nice things, then they will do so.
Point to the opposite extreme. Microsoft has terrible service, but their financial model works great. Ditto a number of other highly offensive but profitable companies, usually distinguished by their mediocre software and services. Slashdot (and open source) could do better?
I'll word them in the form of questions?
Can you improve the search capabilities of the Discussions to make them less write-only? It would be especially good if while writing a new comment, the student's keywords and sentiments towards the keywords could be evaluated in a high-dimensional space so that 'nearby' (cosine distance metric?) comments and threads would be brought to the student's attention. Pie-in-the-sky to support smoothly merging new comments into existing discussions... Perhaps deferring unrelated parts or helping to make those parts into bridging comments to other threads?
Could a professor invert the presentation using EdX? Ask questions first, and use the wrong answers to guide students to study only the parts they need to study? Then when the student had worked all the way through the course, the student would already have faced the exam questions and be ready to answer them successfully, while also spending the minimal necessary time studying the material. For students like me, the most effective teaching videos would be fairly short, with the professor explaining and discussing the material one-on-one with a student who shares my specific points of ignorance.
As a financial model, have you considered rigorously proctored exams? The price of the exam would be set to cover the costs of administering the proctored exam, plus a percentage to EdX to support the development of course material and the operation of the website...
Those are my top 3 suggestions, and if you don't like them, I have others (plus apologies to Groucho). Over the last few years I've taken quite a number of courses from EdX, but it mostly signifies having too much time on my hands, and most of the courses were on a scale from entertaining to shallow. I definitely feel that the weakest part of EdX is the Discussions, however. Lots of teaching talent, but the EdX tools strike me as weak or immature.
Where can I borrow a cup of mod points? This post deserves more on several dimensions...
My reaction (sent to Mozilla) to the inclusion of the Amazon plug-in:
[Firefox has made me] very, VERY sad indeed. Amazon? Why don't you just shoot my privacy in the head? It would be a kinder solution. More to the point, sucking up to Amazon is NOT going to fix your terrible financial model. Amazon does NOT share any of Mozilla's laudable goals, but "partnering" with those vicious privacy-destroying monsters will destroy you, too. How can ANYONE possibly trust an Amazon partner? Amazon will share a few pennies with you--but Amazon will laugh when you go bankrupt anyway.
Now I've suggested an alternative business model of project-oriented charity shares. I'm already getting blue in the face from repeating that solution, but you are ABSOLUTELY NOT offering a better alternative. Amazon is EVIL, and now I regard Firefox as EVIL, too. My chief regret is that there are no alternatives that are significantly less evil--and it always comes back to stupid financial models.
Longer version with more about the alternative financial model I favor: https://ello.co/shanen0/post/8...
Glad to hear this news and I think his prison time should be calibrated against the amount of other people's time he wasted. He should be sentenced to RESPOND to each of the spams he sent. If he works 16 hours a day and can respond to each spam in one second, then it would take him a year to "pay off" his first 20 million spams. Even better if his clicking finger falls off first.
Anyway, I want to help do something to help SOLVE the ancient spam problem. I want to BREAK the spammers' business models. I am NOT suggesting that the spammers can become decent human beings. I'm just suggesting that the lack of money would drive them away from spamming and move them under less visible rocks.
The key number is NOT the low marginal cost of email. The important number is the SMALL ratio of suckers to the LARGE number of people who hate spam. If we had better anti-spam tools, just a small percentage of the spam-haters could cut the spammers off in their most sensitive organs: their wallets. If we got in the middle of the spamemrs' business models, if we could disrupt ALL of the spammers' infrastructure and pursue ALL of the spammers' accomplices, then their money would dry up. We could even help the spammers' victims, saving the fools from themselves and help corporations protect their reputations and customers (even though I think most of those corporations could do it themselves if they actually cared about the customers who are foolish enough to trust them).
Imagine an iterative spam-fighting tool that would cycle between automatic analysis and human confirmation, with reputation taken into account. The spam could be analyzed quite accurately, especially using the humans' privileged information, and the countermeasures could be targeted much more aggressively. How can the spammers continue to display their criminal intentions WITH contact information for the victims?
I'd forgotten what my sig was, but I'll say that my current amusement and replacement website is mostly Ello. Already becoming concerned about their lack of any apparently viable financial model... I'm sure you've all been invited already, right?
Not sure I can really claim to be a non-coder, since I was a professional database programmer for some years, but I can definitely say that I would like to contribute to Open Source and the reason I mostly don't is basically the same as why I dropped off of /. some years ago: Bad financial models. (Today's visit is too long a story.)
Let me try to clarify the problem. Microsoft produces gawdawful software. Apple is against freedom of choice. Google is blossoming as an EVIL tyrant under the new motto "All your attentions is belonging to us." However, they all have viable financial models and they are kicking the hiney of little OSS.
Constructive suggestion for you to ignore (of course): Charity share brokerage (AKA reverse auction charity shares). Sort of like Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, but with project management and clear SUCCESS criteria. If the slashdot people wanted to act as the charity brokerage, the donors would trust them to hold the money and provide lists of possible OSS projects to be implemented. If enough donors buy the shares to fund a project, then the funds would be released. (By the way, the same basic mechanism could be used for funding solution projects for problems that don't call for software solutions.)
The broker would earn a percentage mostly by making sure the project proposals are clear and complete. How many people are required and how much will they be paid? How much testing will be adequate? How will non-core contributors be rewarded? What is the schedule? What are the most likely problems and how can they be dealt with? That's to help potential donors assess the real risks. And, to my way of thinking, most important: What will success look like?
The donors (possibly even including yours truly) would basically get nothing but recognition for their donations on a project funder page. However, as minor doggie treats they should be the first people invited to use the completed software and their reviews might receive extra weight in evaluating the success (or even failure) of the project.
I was a teenager when they reached the moon, but it makes me feel so old to think back to those days. I'm beginning to feel like we're getting dumber all the time, and I'm pressed to imagine how they conceived of such an approach.
Now all of this high-tech stuff has led to Facebook? Give me a break. Please. If we don't give Facebook to the Chinese, they'll be building the first lunar colony, the way things are going nowadays...
Oh yeah. I forgot one more obvious thing that may not be obvious enough. The obvious mirror technology would just be large wire loops with thin coated plastic films stretched across them. You want them very light so that they will be responsive to the rotating gyroscopes (located at the center of mass of each mirror), and of course you want them to be cheap since you'll need a lot of them. Actually, I think you would only have one gyroscope per mirror, but it has to be on gimbals so you can rotate in arbitrary directions.
You caught me on the reference to "terraforming". Looks like we need to start by terraforming our own planet to sustain its suitability for human life. Not so funny.
My suggestion along these lines would be a network of large controllable mirrors in orbit. The individual sections could be aimed, essentially by rotating them with gyroscopes. Some region is too hot? Adjust more mirrors to give it more shade and reduce its temperature. Another area is too cold? Add the appropriate amount of reflected sunlight and warm it right up. Might as well send some extra sunlight to the polar regions and cultivate crops there, too. Surplus light for electricity generation on the side.
Expensive? Yes, but basically within the capabilities of existing technologies. I actually think the largest technical hurdle would be sufficiently accurate weather modeling. We'd essentially need to micromanage the weather all over the world. I don't think the launch capacity would be unsolvable. The early launches would focus on the power generation, and the power would be used to crack sea water for the hydrogen that would be used to boost more mirror satellites into orbit.
Okay, so it would also be potentially dangerous, but I'm hoping that the security problems could be solved, and all technology is morally neutral. Any power to do good is also a power to do harm. (Unfortunately, this is not a balanced relationship. There are some powers that can do nothing but harm... But that's getting off the focus--which can be risky with such large mirrors.)
Off topic? Typical incompetent moderation, eh?
Anyway, it was down from Japan for quite a while. Then it came part way up, and eventually it seemed to be working again. I was actually composing some email most of the time, and didn't lose anything. (Pretty sure, anyway.)
In contrast to /., which tosses its cookies pretty often.
You ask why the parent was modded funny? See my sig--and karma.
Actually, I did see something funny on /. a few days ago. Oh wait. It was just a link to somewhere else. Doesn't count on the /. credit side.
Maybe /. could have gotten indirect credit, except the moderators were not competent enough to mod the linking post as funny. Sorry, you moron moderators, but I only found it because the poster described it as a funny link.
So you say you read /. for the timely technical news, not the pictures? For this story, you might as well be reading such innovative leaders as the Washington Post, a truly old MSM horse. In tribute to the old meme with the goat, I should post a link to a close up of a gift horse's mouth--but /. isn't worth that much research time.
Nomad said the Enterprise was flawed but could be repaired. Unfortunately /. is clearly beyond the miraculous curative powers of Nomad. I'm sure he'd just pull the plug.
"Flawed. Imperfect. Must sterilize. Sterilize..."
Okay, have it your way. No shortage of mod points. Just a surplus of censorious morons with mod points.
Either it's a zen art or I'm pandering to the Microsoft fan boys with mod points. Cf. sig. In a sense, given the artificial scarcity of mod points, encouraging their waste is just par for the course.
On the other hand, were you were just trying to beat another dead meme?
In conclusion, perhaps your configuration settings are such that you're seeing a different /. than I see. The one I see is not very interesting, constructive, informative, or (heaven forbid) useful these years.
I think my main motivation for dropping by /. lately is when my back is hurting. "So my back is hurting again, eh? Isn't that a better fate than befell /.?"
Long, long ago, my motivations were to find witty technical humor or new information. However, from this topic, you can see that I've obviously adapted to the times.
On the topic at hand, I'm afraid the discussion has already thrilled me past caring.
You think you can fool Microsoft so easily? Perhaps you can disguise your mouse and your IP address--but as soon as you switch your spelling dictionary to American English, they'll nail you.
Microsoft is like seawater. Everywhere, but poisonous.
Actually, what I want is REAL choice = REAL freedom.
In our current episode, Microsoft is playing games with the European regulators in hopes of appeasing them. In our last episode, Microsoft wanted to dictate Vista or DEATH! Wait, Microsoft didn't mean it. Now you can choose Windows 7 with only 35% of the awful and unneeded features of Vista! And at a special price, too. Such a deal!
Microsoft has become way to big to fail, which means too big to exist. Sooner or later they are going to fail. Whoops. Who am I kidding? Microsoft is constantly failing. What I mean is sooner or later they are going to fail so big and so hard that the economic consequences will be astronomical. This is TOO big.
Actually, I think the part that most annoys me is that Microsoft has actually become such a powerful a brake on progress. No software innovation is safe if Microsoft wants to kill it. My personal least favorite is what Microsoft did to Palm. Is it somehow supposed to be better because the entire thing was insincere? Now they've apparently decided to abandon that turkey?
From the 'positive' perspective, why would Microsoft want to innovate when they're already getting the lion's share? New versions? That's a decision for marketing! What year will be convenient for the next marketing campaign? That's the WRONG basis for improvements.
Suggestion: Cut Microsoft into 5 companies. Call them Microsoft A to E with a time limit before they need to pick new names. Give each of them a copy of the source code and 1/5 of the people and facilities and assets. Require them to compete. Windows can remain the standard OS, but they have to compete on the basis of the standard, and all changes and improvements to the standard must be discussed in public and agreed to, or the changes will be proprietary to that branch of the company.
Result? Real choice = freedom.
Side effect? As the code bases evolve over time, the single points of failure will be eliminated. Instead of 80% of the world's computers being at risk from one programming mistake, the risk will be greatly reduced.
Don't think of it as a penalty for success. It's an inducement to reproduce your company when you are successful enough. A new form of corporate evolution that increases our freedom while also creating more pressure for creative innovations and progress. (If you succeed again up to about 40% of the market, then your company should reproduce again, just to note the obvious.)
To the Microsoft fan boy who modded it off topic:
Thanks for proving my point about how shitty moderation is destroying /. (as if more proof were needed).
I have to say "REAL alternatives" every time? How about if you consider what I actually said rather than trivia it suits you to address.
For the record, I primarily use Ubuntu WHEN I actually do have a choice. At home that means about 95% of the time, though it's a little hard to estimate. Two machines are multi-boots that normally run Ubuntu, and one of those machines has my attention most of the time. One ancient clunker is pure Windows, but only gets used about 10 minutes a day, and the 'muscle machine' runs Windows because of licensing restrictions, but has virtual machines for Ubuntu, a RedHat variant (with a special corporate configuration), Solaris, and so-help-me DOS.
At work I have much less choice. Though I've configured a number of machines as multi-boots, I'm basically constrained to run Windows almost all of the time. I had a scratch monkey that was usually in Ubuntu, but it died a while back and I'm not sure if I can replace it...
Apple? When I was teaching at the university I actually was in a Mac environment. The more I learned about Macs the less I liked teaching on them. At this point, my basic feeling is that Apple is mostly the source for Microsoft's worst ideas or twisted implementations of what were formerly good ideas before Microsoft mangled them. Apple not-so-secretly wants to be Microsoft, but they've accepted that they can't be that, so they are basically exploiting their high-margin fan boys. Perhaps I'm too harsh on Apple, but I don't regard Apple as a real choice for me.
Sun? I have quite a bit of experience, but I regard them as a small desert island these days. Not a choice I like.
We're back in the Microsoft ocean, with nary a drop to drink. (Shall I regard Ubuntu as my handy dandy solar still.)
Microsoft is like seawater. Everywhere, but poisonous.
Actually, what I want is REAL choice = REAL freedom.
Microsoft wants to dictate Vista or DEATH! Wait, we didn't mean it. Now you can choose Windows 7 with only 35% of the awful and unneeded features of Vista!
Microsoft has become way to big to fail, which means too big to exist. Sooner or later they are going to fail. Who am I kidding? Microsoft is constantly failing. What I mean is sooner or later they are going to fail so big and so hard that the economic consequences will be astronomical. This is TOO big.
In addition, Microsoft has actually become a brake on progress. Why innovate when you're already getting the lion's share? New versions? That's a decision for marketing to decide! What year will be convenient for our next marketing campaign? That's the WRONG basis for improvements.
Suggestion: Cut Microsoft into 5 companies. Call them Microsoft A to E with a time limit before they need to pick new names. Give each of them a copy of the source code and 1/5 of the people and facilities and assets. Require them to compete. Windows can remain the standard OS, but they have to compete in conforming to the standard, and all changes and improvements to the standard must be discussed in public and agreed to, or the changes will be proprietary to that branch of the company.
Result? Real choice = freedom.
Side effect? As the code bases evolve over time, the single points of failure will be eliminated. Instead of 80% of the world's computers being at risk from one programming mistake, the risk will be greatly reduced.
Don't think of it as a penalty for success. It's an inducement to reproduce your company when you are successful enough. A new form of corporate evolution that increases our freedom while also creating more pressure for creative innovations and progress. (If you succeed again up to about 40% of the market, then your company should reproduce again, just to note the obvious.)
No, I can't say because I'm in a food chain for one of your 'hero' companies and I want to keep eating. It would not be amusing to say too much in a place like this.
However, if you do believe there are any businesses with profit margins like that, then I'd love to meet you about a bridge. I'm sure this is JUST the opportunity you've been waiting to invest in.
Actually, I'm basically certain that you've mismatched figures from different columns or that you've mislabeled your numbers. Why you don't want to go check your sources and fix the error is a mystery. However, I'm even more sure that I'm NOT going to invest in Redhat on the basis of your report.