I have an even better business idea... if you use it, send me a cheque after the IPO.
Its kinda simple.... give away free radios and television sets?
How do you make money?? Well this is where it gets interesting. Instead of playing the radio stations adverts, I have software that automatically filters them out, and plays my adverts instead.
Ditto for the TV!
I get to sell adverts, and not have to pay for the generation of the content, or the 'bandwidth'.
The enduser does not know any better, because they would have seen ads anyway! What my software can do is study your listening/viewing patterns and only play adverts that I think you would like...
btw. The feature can be disabled by buying a #1 screwdriver, removing the screws at the back, soldering three wires together, and leaving the case off the radio/tv!
This is a licence to print money!
Scary stuff huh?? do you still think these SmartTags are so smart??
I am from the third world, and I am surprised at some of the comments people make about the third world.
The lower you bring down the price of computing, the better. A lot of people are still running 386, 486 and P1 machines, even in businesses.
The reason is because it is just too expensive to upgrade... In the west, you junk a 10 yr old car... in the 3rd world, a lot of people rely on 20+ year old vehicles as their main mode of transportation. Only when there is no hope for it is it 'retired'. Even then it is cannibalised in order to patch up another one!
Necessity does maketh an environmentally friendly man!
The buy-trash-buy-trash-buy cycle is not as short as it is in the west.
I for one am a believer that linux companies should target the third world both as a market , and a source of relatively cheap hardworking talent.
I am working on a project to have companies donate PCs to schools, and colleges in southern Africa. (contact me if you want to help).
Cheap PCs + free software will equal opportunities for many youngsters whose alternative is crime/sweatshops/agriculture.
I have seen the screen shots and I must admit that it is pretty nice.The demo wouldn't work, but I digress.
To bring linux onto the desktop requires making things simple for first time users, but also giving power users the ability to "get funky".
I haven't used eazel, but as long as it will provide a useable (read visually appealing and easy) default, and still allow power users to use the power of linux, it will be a winner.
Think of the most popular/successful games:
Monopoly
Chess
Simcity
Most card games.
The rules are simple enough to get you started after a few minutes, but if you really want to get into it, the possibilities are endless.
Think of the command line.... dir will work, but dir *.exe/w/p allows you to do so much more!
This is where linux will win over windows. At the moment, the possibilities with linux are endless, but the learning curve to get you to where you can really do stuff is steep.
If you can click on the NEXT button, you can do a pretty decent windows default install. Not much you can do with it afterwards, but.....
I sometimes think that I do not take life seriously enough. I agree totally with Rogerborg that it is a sad state of affairs when we're surprised that a court comes down on the side of of common sense!
I have never figured out why the law is just not rewritten, in a normal, simplistic fashion that everyone understands.
A major requirement for a free and fair justice system is the availability of said system to everyone. I find that the only winners nowadays in the legal system are the lawyers.
Maybe someone should take up the challenge, and advocate for a total rewrite of the laws of the land..... What happened to though shall not steal. If you do we will chuck you in prison for 5 years per £100000 in the value of whatever you have stolen.
That is more my idea of the law. simple, blind, and impartial. That the number/quality of lawyers that you have determines the outcome of a case suggests a serious flaw in the justice system.
How does this relate you ask... the threat of litigation from amazon/priceline over stupid patents will surely hold back many enterprising folk. Even if they do go to court, the complicated justice system means that their eyes are taken off the ball (competition in the marketplace) and the only people who win are the lawyers (on both sides).
When mobile phones and pagers first came out, they were used for business, primarily... doctors etc. Later, as prices fell, a lot more people got them, and a network effect later, a lot of us cannot live without our mobiles.
Having information at hand will be a requirement will be a must for the businessman of the future. A CEO addressing a group of stock analysts will want to know 1 minute b4 he speaks how his stock is doing.
A salesman will want to be able to confirm delivery date to the customer by checking available factory capacity, and also book/reserve this capacity by placing an order in realtime.
The possibilities go on.
While these devices will span an entire entertainment category, do not discount their business / work usefulness!
Some of us live in the third world where the cost of closed software is prohibitively high.
Even the cost of a Win98 licence is more than the minimum monthly wage.
The existence of open source and free products like Mason, Zope etc will go a long way to ensure that disseminating information is not constrained by the cost of the tools.
The problem is that a lot of us are new to web programming, and may want to learn a new language, perl, tcl, php, python etc. It does help to know which is the "best" one in general, and avoid having to learn dozens of languages. just my £0.02 worth
Everyone seems to be missing the point. The goal posts have shifted. Go to the following article on Forbes digital..... http://www.forbes.com/tool/html/99/aug/0809/mu11.h tm
It tells of how at the last hour, Gateway decided not to ship K7 based machines, for "purely commercial reasons"....... read Intel offered us a good price or first in line for the Merced if we ditched AMD. Where is the FTC when you need them.
When people buy computers these days, more often than not, they buy the box, ie Dell, IBM, HP etc etc, largely because that is where the buck stops, and the after sales support begins.
Only the geeks actually care about what is in the box..... when I told my mom I could build a better system together for less than she was quoted by Dell, she said that she had read that Dell computers were the best, so she was going to get one..
Getting support from the big players is like getting endorsement in the sports equipment business, and Intel is trying to sign up exclusive aggreements with as many stars as possible to lock out AMD.
Intel knows this, Linux proponents know this, which is why it is important to get the big players in the box market to support/provide boxes with your products in them.
In the past, AMD shot itself in the foot, by not being able to meet demand for chips... Now that they have that, the quality and the speed problems sorted out, INTEl is shooting them....... if there are no motherboards, or not too many motherboard choices, there is likely to be less support for the K7 ( I agree, athlon is a silly name).
Slashdot Mirror
I have an even better business idea... if you use it, send me a cheque after the IPO.
Its kinda simple.... give away free radios and television sets?
How do you make money?? Well this is where it gets interesting. Instead of playing the radio stations adverts, I have software that automatically filters them out, and plays my adverts instead.
Ditto for the TV!
I get to sell adverts, and not have to pay for the generation of the content, or the 'bandwidth'.
The enduser does not know any better, because they would have seen ads anyway! What my software can do is study your listening/viewing patterns and only play adverts that I think you would like...
btw. The feature can be disabled by buying a #1 screwdriver, removing the screws at the back, soldering three wires together, and leaving the case off the radio/tv!
This is a licence to print money!
Scary stuff huh?? do you still think these SmartTags are so smart??
I am working on a scheme to get such hardware to schools in southern Africa, especially Zimbabwe.
If you would like to get involved, drop me an email.
Somebody please mod this up.
The other site is getting slashdotted.
Maybe I missing the plot, but who wants to live forever.
I think more emphasis should be placed on the quality of life, not on the quantity.
Most of these measure we take to preserve life just mean a few more years in the retirement home.... again am I missing the plot???
When you think about it, you are dead for so long, that in the grander scheme of things, a couple of years will not make a difference.
Also, most of us cannot find stuff to keep us entertained when we are on holiday, yet we want to live forever.
Here's to la dolce vita.... the sweet life, or as the Chinese would say, may you live in interesting times.
I am from the third world, and I am surprised at some of the comments people make about the third world.
The lower you bring down the price of computing, the better. A lot of people are still running 386, 486 and P1 machines, even in businesses.
The reason is because it is just too expensive to upgrade... In the west, you junk a 10 yr old car... in the 3rd world, a lot of people rely on 20+ year old vehicles as their main mode of transportation. Only when there is no hope for it is it 'retired'. Even then it is cannibalised in order to patch up another one!
Necessity does maketh an environmentally friendly man!
The buy-trash-buy-trash-buy cycle is not as short as it is in the west.
I for one am a believer that linux companies should target the third world both as a market , and a source of relatively cheap hardworking talent.
I am working on a project to have companies donate PCs to schools, and colleges in southern Africa. (contact me if you want to help).
Cheap PCs + free software will equal opportunities for many youngsters whose alternative is crime/sweatshops/agriculture.
I worry.
This is the start of what??
Man's conquest of the air also began with weather/observation balloons, and just look where we are now.
How long before star wars really become star wars.
If history is anything to go by, then you should be worried... really worried.
It could happen... .. have you seen enemy of the state. With that kind of power, they could count the number of hairs on your head!
Other than the obvious financial constraints, is there a law preventing you from putting your own 'scope in the sky??
The possibilities are endless...... talk about the ultimate webcam.
The thought of big brother keeping an eye on my every movement 24/7 does scare the shit out of me though.
The different toolkits I am looking at are
zope vs mason vs arsdigita/openacs vs phpnuke vs jetspeed
This is not a flamebait, but does this choice boil down to
python vs perl vs tcl vs php vs java??
Of these toolkits, which one would be the easiest to get up and going, and still allow you to get funky?
Does anyone know when this baby will be available in the UK, and what the pricing will be??
Its a beautiful day !!! yeah
To bring linux onto the desktop requires making things simple for first time users, but also giving power users the ability to "get funky".
I haven't used eazel, but as long as it will provide a useable (read visually appealing and easy) default, and still allow power users to use the power of linux, it will be a winner.
Think of the most popular/successful games:
Monopoly
Chess
Simcity
Most card games.
The rules are simple enough to get you started after a few minutes, but if you really want to get into it, the possibilities are endless.
Think of the command line.... dir will work, but dir *.exe
This is where linux will win over windows. At the moment, the possibilities with linux are endless, but the learning curve to get you to where you can really do stuff is steep.
If you can click on the NEXT button, you can do a pretty decent windows default install. Not much you can do with it afterwards, but
I have never figured out why the law is just not rewritten, in a normal, simplistic fashion that everyone understands.
A major requirement for a free and fair justice system is the availability of said system to everyone. I find that the only winners nowadays in the legal system are the lawyers.
Maybe someone should take up the challenge, and advocate for a total rewrite of the laws of the land..... What happened to though shall not steal. If you do we will chuck you in prison for 5 years per £100000 in the value of whatever you have stolen.
That is more my idea of the law. simple, blind, and impartial. That the number/quality of lawyers that you have determines the outcome of a case suggests a serious flaw in the justice system.
How does this relate you ask... the threat of litigation from amazon/priceline over stupid patents will surely hold back many enterprising folk. Even if they do go to court, the complicated justice system means that their eyes are taken off the ball (competition in the marketplace) and the only people who win are the lawyers (on both sides).
sigh....
In the same breadth, openness will always find a way!
Now where do I get that t-shirt?
When mobile phones and pagers first came out, they were used for business, primarily ... doctors etc. Later, as prices fell, a lot more people got them, and a network effect later, a lot of us cannot live without our mobiles.
Having information at hand will be a requirement will be a must for the businessman of the future. A CEO addressing a group of stock analysts will want to know 1 minute b4 he speaks how his stock is doing.
A salesman will want to be able to confirm delivery date to the customer by checking available factory capacity, and also book/reserve this capacity by placing an order in realtime.
The possibilities go on.
While these devices will span an entire entertainment category, do not discount their business / work usefulness!
Even the cost of a Win98 licence is more than the minimum monthly wage.
The existence of open source and free products like Mason, Zope etc will go a long way to ensure that disseminating information is not constrained by the cost of the tools.
Well done to the Mason group.
But then agin why buy a car that can do 150mph when the speed limit is closer to 80????
The problem is that a lot of us are new to web programming, and may want to learn a new language, perl, tcl, php, python etc. It does help to know which is the "best" one in general, and avoid having to learn dozens of languages. just my £0.02 worth
Everyone seems to be missing the point. The goal posts have shifted. ... http://www.forbes.com/tool/html/99/aug/0809/mu11.h tm
... read Intel offered us a good price or first in line for the Merced if we ditched AMD. Where is the FTC when you need them.
.. when I told my mom I could build a better system together for less than she was quoted by Dell, she said that she had read that Dell computers were the best, so she was going to get one..
... if there are no motherboards, or not too many motherboard choices, there is likely to be less support for the K7 ( I agree, athlon is a silly name).
Go to the following article on Forbes digital..
It tells of how at the last hour, Gateway decided not to ship K7 based machines, for "purely commercial reasons"....
When people buy computers these days, more often than not, they buy the box, ie Dell, IBM, HP etc etc, largely because that is where the buck stops, and the after sales support begins.
Only the geeks actually care about what is in the box...
Getting support from the big players is like getting endorsement in the sports equipment business, and Intel is trying to sign up exclusive aggreements with as many stars as possible to lock out AMD.
Intel knows this, Linux proponents know this, which is why it is important to get the big players in the box market to support/provide boxes with your products in them.
In the past, AMD shot itself in the foot, by not being able to meet demand for chips... Now that they have that, the quality and the speed problems sorted out, INTEl is shooting them....