I'm pretty sure the resources it takes to build and maintain, say, 50 smaller "distributed" centers are probably two or three times than it takes to do what they're doing. Factor in buildings, parking, backup systems, trunk line tie-in's. staffing and "hands" support, monitoring, security and so on, and I think you begin to see that there's more to it than a couple of racks.
Which, in all such arguments, ignores the very real costs in terms of time, people, and capital it took to create that value. And which still need to be amortized among those that would consume it. Not to mention the fact that the creative types it takes to create that value are in very short supply, a "finite resource" of their own.
"Lowering the barrier to entry for new participants is the long-standing job of marketing organizations, venture investors, and other entities..."
Who still have to get paid. In more than "reputation". Otherwise they're not going to do it either.
Sounds to me like you were advocating that we scrap the current system and do away with money altogether. Hardly seems "evolutionary".
Either way, anyone can advocate anything, regardless of whether or not it's practical or workable or scalable. As has been said, the devil is in the details, and I simply pointed how such utopian schemes, created by people with the best of intentions, have failed in the past.
BTW, if you're interesting in societies based on alternative value systems, and where everything is "free", then you should read James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear.
As has been pointed out many times, this provides a high barrier to entry for new authors, musicians, directors, etc.. Further, I suspect that the "contract" system would fall down in many cases for movies, which have prohibitive price tags.
How may people are going to risk giving a "contract" to someone for $100 million dollars? How much information would you require before doing so? Enough to spoil the surprise? (Sixth Sense, Matrix).
Finally, I have enough things to do without continually looking for new works to commission.
I know, let me delegate that job to someone else. And hey, maybe he'll believe in a new writer or director enough do the whole thing on spec. And then, maybe, after hearing my friends talk about it then I'll agree that it sounds like it's worth it to me, and I'll buy a copy or pay for a ticket.
We already have an amazing system of "micro-payments", where you and I spend a tiny fraction of the amount of money it took to create a given work. Why screw it up?
"... right now you can get practically any piece of music for free via ad supported sites..."
I love it. Go back and look at nearly any Slashdot article regarding advertising and ad blockers or Tivo and all of the people who post that it's their "right" to block or skip ads. Some people don't want to pay ANYTHING for the content they enjoy. Not money. Not attention. Nothing.
Bingo. Further, the current systems funds a large number of people who work "on spec" in the hope that they'll make enough money to eat. Or pay the rent. Or send their kids to college. Which in turn gives me a larger selection of products to buy. Then if and when I decide something has value to me, I pay for it.
Besides, there's a huge difference between "art" and "entertainment". Some people may value "art", but most people pay simply to be entertained.
"Personally, I think the ideal solution was how things were back in the middle ages."
Yeah, like I want my favorite artists and writers and musicians and directors spending all of their time running around looking for commissions and patrons. Sorry, but I prefer it when they're working on new music and books and movies.
Ah, the quintessential communal system. Of course, one only has to go back to the sixties to see how many of those utopian societies survived.
And if barter systems worked so well, we wouldn't have evolved money way back in the day. Communication doesn't help, as small villages already had excellent word-of-mouth communication systems.
Everyone knows that Jim is a parasite who doesn't want to do any work. Now what? Let him starve? Jane does "favors" for the men. Is that work? Is that enough work? What if you don't need or want her favors and she needs one of your cabinets? And as mentioned above, some skill sets are more valuable. Many people can make cabinets, but the only brain surgeon around is Mike, who spent years learning to do what he does. And because of that Mike already has all of the cabinets he needs. Now what do you do? Run around trying to arrange a trade with someone else? Could be hard to do when you need surgery.
"But the thing is, when you can get a copy of any manufactured good you want dirt cheap, what good is money?"
IF you can get a copy of ANY manufactured good you want dirt cheap, then your argument may some hold water. But even "dirt cheap" isn't free.
It's also why donation systems, support your favorite artist drives, and other such alternative "models" don't scale. There are too many parasites, or too many people who simply assume that someone else is picking up the slack. And people also become annoyed when they're perceptually being nagged to "give". Or, as you say, they no longer want to be the "sucker".
But don't worry, because of people like you there's an entire army of people out there dedicated to making things as difficult and risky as you can possible imagine.
C/R works well for personal mail, sent from one individual to another. It completely blows for mailing lists, confirmation emails, and other automated systems. (How many people would Amazon need to "confirm" every invoice they send out?)
Further, C/R, by itself, can be broken by spoofed email. Once you've agreed to let your bank send you mail, then anyone pretending to be your bank (spoofing IP's, etc.) can send you mail. A virus-infected friend's computer can send also you mail (botnet).
Finally, it's annoying.
All in all, the best you can say about C/R is that it's a solution, and not a particularly good one at that.
OS X Leopard's release was originally scheduled for the end of 2006 or early 2007. A year later, this was amended to "Spring 2007". And as of March 23rd, Leopard was still supposedly on track for a spring release. Then on April 12, just 20 days later, Apple announced that Leopard would be delayed. The reason? Apple needed to "borrow some key software engineering and QA resources" and put them to work on the iPhone in order to meet that product's promised June release.
But the revised release date for Leopard was October 26th, 119 days after the day the iPhone would ship and those "borrowed" developers could return to work on 10.5. Four months put back into the timeline, not two. And in actuality the postponement gave Apple over six more months of Leopard development time, counted from the announcement on April 12th to the revised ship date on October 26th.
Apple had only borrowed a few key people, remember? Presumably the rest weren't just sitting around waiting for the others to get back to work.
Even with the extra time, Apple didn't have enough time to fix all of the problems. So as the October release date loomed, Apple rushed one more final candidate past developers, patched and polished a few last-minute issues, determined that it was "good enough", and shipped OS X 10.5 Leopard to the public.
So short was the time frame that few outside of Apple saw the gold master. Even major software development firms like Adobe received their final copies at nearly the same time as everyone else.
Is that the profile of a company that isn't rushing a product to market? Nope, 10.5.2 is what Leopard should have been.
'So the major metropolitan areas of 38 states is now a small amount? 80% of all Americans live in or near a city."
In or NEAR. Most of their coverage can be likened to Manhattan being supported but none of the surrounding boroughs. Denver has 800,000 people in Denver, but 2 million in the Denver metro area.
"The six month lead on the original iPhone was an aberration. "
A 3G phone with new transmitters will still need FCC approval and certification, the process still has leaks, and Apple will want to do a major press event to announce a new iPhone.
Ergo, there's still going to be a three-to-four month lag between announcement and release.
Same here, but for me it's mostly email, movie showtimes, and the occasional argument-settling Google/Wikipedia search.
And if I'm going to use Google maps for directions I tend to do the search at home first when I'm still connected to WiFi. I kind of like to know where I'm going BEFORE I leave.
As I wrote back just two months ago, just 38 states have some form of 3G support, and in most of those access is limited to just a handful of major metropolitan areas (read one or two city centers at most).
So the real question isn't whether or not a 3G iPhone is coming, but is one coming, and will you be able to use it? If your town or area isn't going to be covered until late '08 or even '09 or '10, then who cares?
Besides, it isn't even public yet, so if they DO announce it in late February we still have to wait another three or four months for FCC certification and testing. Could easily be yet another June "anniversary" launch date.
You'll still have to switch, since the iPhone and AT&T are GSM-based devices and networks, while Verizon is CDMA. Different frequencies, technologies, everything. Sprint's also CDMA, while T-Mobile is GSM, making TM your only other option in the US.
"Why Apple would deliberately lock themselves out of a HUGE customer base of other carriers is beyond me..."
Since T-Mobile is about a tenth the size of AT&T in the US, I'm not sure I'd call that customer base "huge".
So you're saying the real future of navigational interfaces for the masses lies in developing multi-buttoned mice that bear a marked resemblance to an F-16 fighter pilot's control stick?
"Let's see, does this button turn on the MP3 player or drop the thermonuclear weapon?"
Some people care about design and user interface and experience. Others don't. It's not good, or bad, or us vs. them. It's just the way it is. Let him enjoy his checklist.
Sorry, but I have to disagree. I've had nearly a dozen cell phones, nearly all with hidden "who knows what's where?" navigation systems going nine levels deep. I've tried texting on phones where you needed to stab the same button four times to get a single letter. And "music integration" meant spending $4.99 on a "custom" polymorphic ringtone. I've used Palms and iPaqs and "crackberrys".
And none of them have interfaces with the same attention to detail, and that get out of the way like the iPhone does in order for me to do what I need to get done.
But if you don't care for it then I think you're going to have problems, as more and more phones and media devices and notebooks are going to be playing copycat. And as for Apple, we haven't even begun to see what they're going to do with it.
The iPhone is about the design and the user interface and the experience. It's also about convergence, combining a phone and an Apple video iPod and an internet access device (email/web/messaging) into a single piece of hardware.
That said, if all you care about is a feature-for-feature checklist so you can buy the phone with the most boxes checked off (and most of them being things you'll never use anyway), then it's probably not for you.
Adn if you don't use a Mac, don't own an iPod, don't use iTunes, and don't use iPhoto, then it's definitely not for you.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm still a bit concerned about what happens when a container gets crushed (severe impact event)..."
If enough force gets through the frame to crush the container, then in that situation I suspect that any other concerns might be... irrelevant.
I'm pretty sure the resources it takes to build and maintain, say, 50 smaller "distributed" centers are probably two or three times than it takes to do what they're doing. Factor in buildings, parking, backup systems, trunk line tie-in's. staffing and "hands" support, monitoring, security and so on, and I think you begin to see that there's more to it than a couple of racks.
"... zero manufacturing costs..."
Which, in all such arguments, ignores the very real costs in terms of time, people, and capital it took to create that value. And which still need to be amortized among those that would consume it. Not to mention the fact that the creative types it takes to create that value are in very short supply, a "finite resource" of their own.
"Lowering the barrier to entry for new participants is the long-standing job of marketing organizations, venture investors, and other entities..."
Who still have to get paid. In more than "reputation". Otherwise they're not going to do it either.
"I advocate an Evolution..."
Sounds to me like you were advocating that we scrap the current system and do away with money altogether. Hardly seems "evolutionary".
Either way, anyone can advocate anything, regardless of whether or not it's practical or workable or scalable. As has been said, the devil is in the details, and I simply pointed how such utopian schemes, created by people with the best of intentions, have failed in the past.
BTW, if you're interesting in societies based on alternative value systems, and where everything is "free", then you should read James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear.
As has been pointed out many times, this provides a high barrier to entry for new authors, musicians, directors, etc.. Further, I suspect that the "contract" system would fall down in many cases for movies, which have prohibitive price tags.
How may people are going to risk giving a "contract" to someone for $100 million dollars? How much information would you require before doing so? Enough to spoil the surprise? (Sixth Sense, Matrix).
Finally, I have enough things to do without continually looking for new works to commission.
I know, let me delegate that job to someone else. And hey, maybe he'll believe in a new writer or director enough do the whole thing on spec. And then, maybe, after hearing my friends talk about it then I'll agree that it sounds like it's worth it to me, and I'll buy a copy or pay for a ticket.
We already have an amazing system of "micro-payments", where you and I spend a tiny fraction of the amount of money it took to create a given work. Why screw it up?
"... right now you can get practically any piece of music for free via ad supported sites..."
I love it. Go back and look at nearly any Slashdot article regarding advertising and ad blockers or Tivo and all of the people who post that it's their "right" to block or skip ads. Some people don't want to pay ANYTHING for the content they enjoy. Not money. Not attention. Nothing.
"Now granted there will be a lot less of them..."
Bingo. Further, the current systems funds a large number of people who work "on spec" in the hope that they'll make enough money to eat. Or pay the rent. Or send their kids to college. Which in turn gives me a larger selection of products to buy. Then if and when I decide something has value to me, I pay for it.
Besides, there's a huge difference between "art" and "entertainment". Some people may value "art", but most people pay simply to be entertained.
"Personally, I think the ideal solution was how things were back in the middle ages."
Yeah, like I want my favorite artists and writers and musicians and directors spending all of their time running around looking for commissions and patrons. Sorry, but I prefer it when they're working on new music and books and movies.
Ah, the quintessential communal system. Of course, one only has to go back to the sixties to see how many of those utopian societies survived.
And if barter systems worked so well, we wouldn't have evolved money way back in the day. Communication doesn't help, as small villages already had excellent word-of-mouth communication systems.
Everyone knows that Jim is a parasite who doesn't want to do any work. Now what? Let him starve? Jane does "favors" for the men. Is that work? Is that enough work? What if you don't need or want her favors and she needs one of your cabinets? And as mentioned above, some skill sets are more valuable. Many people can make cabinets, but the only brain surgeon around is Mike, who spent years learning to do what he does. And because of that Mike already has all of the cabinets he needs. Now what do you do? Run around trying to arrange a trade with someone else? Could be hard to do when you need surgery.
"But the thing is, when you can get a copy of any manufactured good you want dirt cheap, what good is money?"
IF you can get a copy of ANY manufactured good you want dirt cheap, then your argument may some hold water. But even "dirt cheap" isn't free.
The very essence of the Free Rider problem.
It's also why donation systems, support your favorite artist drives, and other such alternative "models" don't scale. There are too many parasites, or too many people who simply assume that someone else is picking up the slack. And people also become annoyed when they're perceptually being nagged to "give". Or, as you say, they no longer want to be the "sucker".
But don't worry, because of people like you there's an entire army of people out there dedicated to making things as difficult and risky as you can possible imagine.
Enjoy the ride.
C/R works well for personal mail, sent from one individual to another. It completely blows for mailing lists, confirmation emails, and other automated systems. (How many people would Amazon need to "confirm" every invoice they send out?)
Further, C/R, by itself, can be broken by spoofed email. Once you've agreed to let your bank send you mail, then anyone pretending to be your bank (spoofing IP's, etc.) can send you mail. A virus-infected friend's computer can send also you mail (botnet).
Finally, it's annoying.
All in all, the best you can say about C/R is that it's a solution, and not a particularly good one at that.
OS X Leopard's release was originally scheduled for the end of 2006 or early 2007. A year later, this was amended to "Spring 2007". And as of March 23rd, Leopard was still supposedly on track for a spring release. Then on April 12, just 20 days later, Apple announced that Leopard would be delayed. The reason? Apple needed to "borrow some key software engineering and QA resources" and put them to work on the iPhone in order to meet that product's promised June release.
But the revised release date for Leopard was October 26th, 119 days after the day the iPhone would ship and those "borrowed" developers could return to work on 10.5. Four months put back into the timeline, not two. And in actuality the postponement gave Apple over six more months of Leopard development time, counted from the announcement on April 12th to the revised ship date on October 26th.
Apple had only borrowed a few key people, remember? Presumably the rest weren't just sitting around waiting for the others to get back to work.
Even with the extra time, Apple didn't have enough time to fix all of the problems. So as the October release date loomed, Apple rushed one more final candidate past developers, patched and polished a few last-minute issues, determined that it was "good enough", and shipped OS X 10.5 Leopard to the public.
So short was the time frame that few outside of Apple saw the gold master. Even major software development firms like Adobe received their final copies at nearly the same time as everyone else.
Is that the profile of a company that isn't rushing a product to market? Nope, 10.5.2 is what Leopard should have been.
'So the major metropolitan areas of 38 states is now a small amount? 80% of all Americans live in or near a city."
In or NEAR. Most of their coverage can be likened to Manhattan being supported but none of the surrounding boroughs. Denver has 800,000 people in Denver, but 2 million in the Denver metro area.
Yeah, and APPLE'S CEO said a 3G iPhone was coming later next year ('08). In September.
"The six month lead on the original iPhone was an aberration. "
A 3G phone with new transmitters will still need FCC approval and certification, the process still has leaks, and Apple will want to do a major press event to announce a new iPhone.
Ergo, there's still going to be a three-to-four month lag between announcement and release.
Sort of makes the false assumption that you need to upgrade on the very day an upgrade becomes available.
Same here, but for me it's mostly email, movie showtimes, and the occasional argument-settling Google/Wikipedia search.
And if I'm going to use Google maps for directions I tend to do the search at home first when I'm still connected to WiFi. I kind of like to know where I'm going BEFORE I leave.
As I wrote back just two months ago, just 38 states have some form of 3G support, and in most of those access is limited to just a handful of major metropolitan areas (read one or two city centers at most).
So the real question isn't whether or not a 3G iPhone is coming, but is one coming, and will you be able to use it? If your town or area isn't going to be covered until late '08 or even '09 or '10, then who cares?
Besides, it isn't even public yet, so if they DO announce it in late February we still have to wait another three or four months for FCC certification and testing. Could easily be yet another June "anniversary" launch date.
You'll still have to switch, since the iPhone and AT&T are GSM-based devices and networks, while Verizon is CDMA. Different frequencies, technologies, everything. Sprint's also CDMA, while T-Mobile is GSM, making TM your only other option in the US.
"Why Apple would deliberately lock themselves out of a HUGE customer base of other carriers is beyond me..."
Since T-Mobile is about a tenth the size of AT&T in the US, I'm not sure I'd call that customer base "huge".
Some music bought from the iTunes store is DRM laden, some is not.
So you're saying the real future of navigational interfaces for the masses lies in developing multi-buttoned mice that bear a marked resemblance to an F-16 fighter pilot's control stick?
"Let's see, does this button turn on the MP3 player or drop the thermonuclear weapon?"
"Oops."
Some people care about design and user interface and experience. Others don't. It's not good, or bad, or us vs. them. It's just the way it is. Let him enjoy his checklist.
"... more entertaining and fun..."
;)
And what's wrong with entertaining and fun?
"... than it is a real usability improvement."
Sorry, but I have to disagree. I've had nearly a dozen cell phones, nearly all with hidden "who knows what's where?" navigation systems going nine levels deep. I've tried texting on phones where you needed to stab the same button four times to get a single letter. And "music integration" meant spending $4.99 on a "custom" polymorphic ringtone. I've used Palms and iPaqs and "crackberrys".
And none of them have interfaces with the same attention to detail, and that get out of the way like the iPhone does in order for me to do what I need to get done.
But if you don't care for it then I think you're going to have problems, as more and more phones and media devices and notebooks are going to be playing copycat. And as for Apple, we haven't even begun to see what they're going to do with it.
And how many of the nine+ mouse buttons and scroll/tilt-wheels does your notebook have when its on your lap?
"... iPhone is not really a usability improvement over its competitors."
Wow. You can really say that with a straight face? Add one more to the "doesn't get it" crowd.
The iPhone is about the design and the user interface and the experience. It's also about convergence, combining a phone and an Apple video iPod and an internet access device (email/web/messaging) into a single piece of hardware.
That said, if all you care about is a feature-for-feature checklist so you can buy the phone with the most boxes checked off (and most of them being things you'll never use anyway), then it's probably not for you.
Adn if you don't use a Mac, don't own an iPod, don't use iTunes, and don't use iPhoto, then it's definitely not for you.