You make a grand assumption that most people have some creative contribution to add to this world. Sorry, but most don't. Creative types have a hard time believing this could be true, but it is. Many people have functional contributions that cannot be subsidized by the whims of the internet's paying customers. In fact, it is the case for the vast majority of people. I wish it weren't true, but *that* is the reality of the world, not the one you describe for your talented girlfriend. I wish her well but your scenario doesn't work for the general population.
We're not talking about most people. We're talking about professional creators. If you don't have a creative contribution to add to this world, you sure as hell shouldn't be getting paid to sit around all day publishing.
Interesting theory. Please, let me know when you develop a means to pay the bills with your lofty ideals, it sounds much more fulfilling than selling out the way everyone else does.
You mean like when my girlfriend releases digital copies under creative commons, allows book publishers, music publishers and event promoters to use her images free with attribution, and then sells the original works of acrylic painted on canvas in higher volume and for higher prices? Works real well... gets a lot of commissioned pieces for murals, does live paintings of performers at raves and spoken word events and festivals, the list goes on.
It's called dealing with the realities of the world. Sell what is naturally scarce and share what is naturally plentiful as wide and far as you can, and people will come knock on your door. Now, contrast that with a business model whose entire existence relies on the continuation of wildly unpopular and wasteful legal structures that treat bits on a wire as though they were carrots dug out of your garden. Who is the idealist here?
How would you feel if someone hot-linked your content, consumed your bandwidth, and gave you no advertising revenue in exchange?
Attracting my attention to your particular little problem is the product. The content is the advertisement for the product. The bandwidth is justified because reaching into someone elses mind and affecting it with what you create and publish is the reward.
If reaching other people with your creation is not your goal, if you consider that aspect of the exchange meaningless, if the only reason you publish is so you can bait a hook and sell influence to a third party, then you should get the hell out of the business. You're an antisocial bastard who doesn't deserve a dime, and you don't deserve to have people pay the slightest bit of attention to the crap you're peddling.
Personally, I think taking money for advertising is tantamount to fraud and people who do it should be systematically punished.
Sperm cells and egg cells are demonstrably alive and demonstrably human -- they contain human DNA (although they're short half their chromosomes).
A woman kills a potential future baby with every period. A man kills millions of them with every wet dream, to say nothing of, uh, other activities. In fact, a man kills millions of them even when he DOES make a baby with one of them.
These protesters really are pathetic. How much energy do they put into stopping the mass murder of actual, real, not potential, human beings in Darfur or the Congo, I'd like to know?
They're concerned with humanity, not individual humans. There is a difference. Modern day human rights activists defend the cancer cells at the expense of the person. The sterile old people who need the medical treatment that stem cells promise to bring are cancer cells on the face of humanity.
Personally, I don't think "modern sensibilities" are unique to the modern age. I think such sensibilities been killing off human civilizations for thousands of generations, just as they will kill off this one.
Well I'm a crazy [insert whatever] who wants to know why the hell we're giving handouts for TV for anybody! Nobody will die without American Idol.
They're doing it because they want the ability to revoke playback of recordings. It's necessary for the proper functioning of the Ministry of Truth.
Did you see the news the other night? Army kicking in peoples doors and stuff... that can't be real. That newscaster looked a bit freaked out when it was aired. Scared even. You didn't see it? Check it out, I recorded it.
That's weird... it won't play. Hold on... there's someone at the door...
All I see are people being kept estranged from that which keeps them alive, and specialized to the point where they are useless to themselves, suitable only to be a cog in the machine, pets to entertain the oligarchy. It's not the things you learn, it's the things you never do learn. These institutions create estrangement and a lack of self-determination, not wisdom or knowledge.
I have solutions, and far too intricate to post on slashdot while I'm supposed to be working. I've outlined them repeatedly in part though my time posting here. Slashdot for me is a petri dish, where I can experiment with people who are reasonably educated and informed and see how they react to my concepts and ideas, so I can polish those ideas and my delivery of them. It's also a place to espouse ideas that I don't actually believe so I can see how people react to them and gain understanding of peoples motives and concerns.
I intend to take over the world eventually. I believe the trick is to get everyone standing on my shoulders at once, after which it should be relatively academic. If I can manage to keep holding them there after I'm dead, I'll be a great man.
Wearing a berka sounds like a good idea, don't you think?
You make a good point.
This "school"... it has high-tech security, guards, biometrics, no one learns much there and they call it an "institution".
What makes it different from a prison?
You know there's a huge push on to try to get kids into elderly care? They'll throw money at em, pay for their school, pay em a salary to go, and yet, the kids don't want to have anything to do with it. It's a real crisis, cause there's not enough kids to wipe all the elderly assholes' assholes, so to speak. Final result of all this womb-poison being shoved down peoples throats, I guess.
I told my folks and their friends this was going to happen when I was 17, and that it was inevitable that we would abandon our parents generation to die without care because there weren't enough of my generation. Man you want to see some pissed off people with a sense of entitlement.
But I'm starting to think maybe I was wrong. With shit like this being done to children by their own parents in their own nation, abandonment seems a little too turn-the-other-cheek to be realistic. The way things are going, demand for retribution and revenge seems inevitable...
So that's you're great solution? Go back to trading in sheep and blacksmithing? Really?
Seriously though, is that the best you can come up with as an alternative way to co-ordinate your affairs with your fellow man? Barter? With all the education you must have had just to be in front of a computer and posting on this site in the first place, and that's all you can think of?
Forget I said anything. Just go drink your Brawndo and wait for the end, ok?
Abandon the organizational model that is based around money. Do not trade in it, do not do work for it. Find more intelligent things to do with your time than find a boss with chits of paper, and find more intelligent ways to co-ordinate with your fellows.
Or you could just keep bitching and moaning, and when the lights go out and the grocery stores are empty, you can tell your loved ones it wasn't your fault, it was George and Obama that let them down...
What is it about about your iPhone, Wii, BlackBerry or power locks on your car that aren't trivial?
Welcome to the economy where triviality is worth trillions of dollars a year.
My what?
Sorry, don't own any of that junk. Power locks... that's funny, I haven't locked a door in years.
How to kill your neighbours off without making war on them:
1) Give them all they need, and encourage them to take this for granted and not learn how to do things for themselves
2) Wait 40 years
3) Stop giving away food.
4) Wait 2 years
5) Build settlements
What sort of support do you need? Illusions and entertainment to keep them idle.
They're attempting to secure the economic systems and the critical infrastructure around that so they can maintain and increase the inequality between the rich and the poor without losing control of the citizenry.
We need a meltdown, and the only reason he's there is to prevent it.
Amazon's servers allow you to scale vertically and horizontally. They have images that are preconfigured to do load balancing and they have LAMP setups.
Amazon have too much hardware. If a bunch of suckers don't rent it from them at 1000x it's value, they will sell some of it.
You can set up a cluster of 8 refurbished home theater PCs for 5 grand, and there's enough redundancy in that budget that you can drive a hammer through every third machine and your application fail.
Why the hell would you want to set yourself with another large monthly tax before you're even off the ground?
Most companies want somebody else to solve the problem for them and then pay big money for the product. They line up for outsourcing opportunities for this reason - even if with proper focus they could do the same job cheaper in-house. The key word is "proper focus" - if IT is considered just a distraction then it won't get the leadership needed to be successful - you just need to buy stuff.
So, while I agree that what you suggest could work in theory, it won't work in practice. Companies would rather spend $100M buying products than $10M trying to do it themselves.
You're operating from the "what we have works, your idea sounds interesting, but not as reliable as what we have" position. You've clearly been arguing from that position for a long time, you sound very polished.
You haven't digested the "what we have does not work, and an interesting idea that might fail is better than what we have now, which is already failing or failed" realities of the situation yet.
Don't feel bad... you're not alone. This whole system is going to crumble to ashes and dust, and a new social order is going to take its place, and most people aren't ready to stop pretending things are ok just yet...
If you make something that is significant, people will always find a way to support you, even if the mechanisms by which they generally give that support are lacking.
If you've already writing OSS, and you've got the capacity to build something significant, are you going to skip it and go work on a dirt farm for a few dollars a day?
Maybe, but I expect the author of that article will be on the dirt farm first.
The thing you're missing is that they're not selling software. They're selling software as a service. They're trying to be more like Google.
Google has a massive farm of computers that they leverage. Microsoft wants one too.
The difference is, Google was stupid... they went out and bought the hardware. Microsoft is smarter. They're just going to seize control of yours. In the business world, they call that "externalizing costs".
Re:Parents choose their baby's name
on
Designer Babies
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Trade is a very apt word since these traditions hark back to the days when kids/wives/concubines were considered one's property.
Kind of like marriage in the west. Wow. Small world!
Doesn't it kind of remind you of that "endangered species" article yesterday, which suggested that by placing a dollar value on members of endangered species and allowing individuals to control them a motive would be created to protect them?
Personally, I'm saving money to pay for a surrogate so I can have another child, and since I already have a daughter, I'll probably have them screen for a son.
Slashdot Mirror
You make a grand assumption that most people have some creative contribution to add to this world. Sorry, but most don't. Creative types have a hard time believing this could be true, but it is. Many people have functional contributions that cannot be subsidized by the whims of the internet's paying customers. In fact, it is the case for the vast majority of people. I wish it weren't true, but *that* is the reality of the world, not the one you describe for your talented girlfriend. I wish her well but your scenario doesn't work for the general population.
We're not talking about most people. We're talking about professional creators. If you don't have a creative contribution to add to this world, you sure as hell shouldn't be getting paid to sit around all day publishing.
Interesting theory. Please, let me know when you develop a means to pay the bills with your lofty ideals, it sounds much more fulfilling than selling out the way everyone else does.
You mean like when my girlfriend releases digital copies under creative commons, allows book publishers, music publishers and event promoters to use her images free with attribution, and then sells the original works of acrylic painted on canvas in higher volume and for higher prices? Works real well... gets a lot of commissioned pieces for murals, does live paintings of performers at raves and spoken word events and festivals, the list goes on.
It's called dealing with the realities of the world. Sell what is naturally scarce and share what is naturally plentiful as wide and far as you can, and people will come knock on your door. Now, contrast that with a business model whose entire existence relies on the continuation of wildly unpopular and wasteful legal structures that treat bits on a wire as though they were carrots dug out of your garden. Who is the idealist here?
How would you feel if someone hot-linked your content, consumed your bandwidth, and gave you no advertising revenue in exchange?
Attracting my attention to your particular little problem is the product. The content is the advertisement for the product. The bandwidth is justified because reaching into someone elses mind and affecting it with what you create and publish is the reward.
If reaching other people with your creation is not your goal, if you consider that aspect of the exchange meaningless, if the only reason you publish is so you can bait a hook and sell influence to a third party, then you should get the hell out of the business. You're an antisocial bastard who doesn't deserve a dime, and you don't deserve to have people pay the slightest bit of attention to the crap you're peddling.
Personally, I think taking money for advertising is tantamount to fraud and people who do it should be systematically punished.
Sperm cells and egg cells are demonstrably alive and demonstrably human -- they contain human DNA (although they're short half their chromosomes). A woman kills a potential future baby with every period. A man kills millions of them with every wet dream, to say nothing of, uh, other activities. In fact, a man kills millions of them even when he DOES make a baby with one of them. These protesters really are pathetic. How much energy do they put into stopping the mass murder of actual, real, not potential, human beings in Darfur or the Congo, I'd like to know?
They're concerned with humanity, not individual humans. There is a difference. Modern day human rights activists defend the cancer cells at the expense of the person. The sterile old people who need the medical treatment that stem cells promise to bring are cancer cells on the face of humanity.
Personally, I don't think "modern sensibilities" are unique to the modern age. I think such sensibilities been killing off human civilizations for thousands of generations, just as they will kill off this one.
This is great news. It's like watching the devil cut off his own nuts.
Clean up your fucking country already. If you don't, eventually, inevitably, the rest of us will do it for you, and you won't fucking like it.
Well I'm a crazy [insert whatever] who wants to know why the hell we're giving handouts for TV for anybody! Nobody will die without American Idol.
They're doing it because they want the ability to revoke playback of recordings. It's necessary for the proper functioning of the Ministry of Truth.
Did you see the news the other night? Army kicking in peoples doors and stuff... that can't be real. That newscaster looked a bit freaked out when it was aired. Scared even. You didn't see it? Check it out, I recorded it.
That's weird... it won't play. Hold on... there's someone at the door...
If you think the MVC pattern belongs in a web application, maybe it's you who should stick to mockups.
This isn't 1995. They're not desktop applications.
All I see are people being kept estranged from that which keeps them alive, and specialized to the point where they are useless to themselves, suitable only to be a cog in the machine, pets to entertain the oligarchy. It's not the things you learn, it's the things you never do learn. These institutions create estrangement and a lack of self-determination, not wisdom or knowledge.
I have solutions, and far too intricate to post on slashdot while I'm supposed to be working. I've outlined them repeatedly in part though my time posting here. Slashdot for me is a petri dish, where I can experiment with people who are reasonably educated and informed and see how they react to my concepts and ideas, so I can polish those ideas and my delivery of them. It's also a place to espouse ideas that I don't actually believe so I can see how people react to them and gain understanding of peoples motives and concerns.
I intend to take over the world eventually. I believe the trick is to get everyone standing on my shoulders at once, after which it should be relatively academic. If I can manage to keep holding them there after I'm dead, I'll be a great man.
Wearing a berka sounds like a good idea, don't you think?
You make a good point.
This "school"... it has high-tech security, guards, biometrics, no one learns much there and they call it an "institution".
What makes it different from a prison?
You know there's a huge push on to try to get kids into elderly care? They'll throw money at em, pay for their school, pay em a salary to go, and yet, the kids don't want to have anything to do with it. It's a real crisis, cause there's not enough kids to wipe all the elderly assholes' assholes, so to speak. Final result of all this womb-poison being shoved down peoples throats, I guess.
I told my folks and their friends this was going to happen when I was 17, and that it was inevitable that we would abandon our parents generation to die without care because there weren't enough of my generation. Man you want to see some pissed off people with a sense of entitlement.
But I'm starting to think maybe I was wrong. With shit like this being done to children by their own parents in their own nation, abandonment seems a little too turn-the-other-cheek to be realistic. The way things are going, demand for retribution and revenge seems inevitable...
So that's you're great solution? Go back to trading in sheep and blacksmithing? Really?
Seriously though, is that the best you can come up with as an alternative way to co-ordinate your affairs with your fellow man? Barter? With all the education you must have had just to be in front of a computer and posting on this site in the first place, and that's all you can think of?
Forget I said anything. Just go drink your Brawndo and wait for the end, ok?
Abandon the organizational model that is based around money. Do not trade in it, do not do work for it. Find more intelligent things to do with your time than find a boss with chits of paper, and find more intelligent ways to co-ordinate with your fellows.
Or you could just keep bitching and moaning, and when the lights go out and the grocery stores are empty, you can tell your loved ones it wasn't your fault, it was George and Obama that let them down...
What is it about about your iPhone, Wii, BlackBerry or power locks on your car that aren't trivial? Welcome to the economy where triviality is worth trillions of dollars a year.
My what?
Sorry, don't own any of that junk. Power locks... that's funny, I haven't locked a door in years.
Tweeter or Shiver or whatever the hell that inane "Now I'm on the bus and it's raining" service is called...
So much money for something to trivial and useless...
Makes me feel kind of sick...
How to kill your neighbours off without making war on them:
1) Give them all they need, and encourage them to take this for granted and not learn how to do things for themselves
2) Wait 40 years
3) Stop giving away food.
4) Wait 2 years
5) Build settlements
What sort of support do you need? Illusions and entertainment to keep them idle.
They're attempting to secure the economic systems and the critical infrastructure around that so they can maintain and increase the inequality between the rich and the poor without losing control of the citizenry.
We need a meltdown, and the only reason he's there is to prevent it.
Amazon's servers allow you to scale vertically and horizontally. They have images that are preconfigured to do load balancing and they have LAMP setups.
Amazon have too much hardware. If a bunch of suckers don't rent it from them at 1000x it's value, they will sell some of it.
You can set up a cluster of 8 refurbished home theater PCs for 5 grand, and there's enough redundancy in that budget that you can drive a hammer through every third machine and your application fail.
Why the hell would you want to set yourself with another large monthly tax before you're even off the ground?
What exactly did everyone think "Don't be Evil" would mean once the company went public, grew up and grew larger?
A better public relations strategy than Microsoft?
I just clicked the "try our new beta index" link, and now I can't figure out how to revert back to the index that doesn't suck... anyone know how?
Most companies want somebody else to solve the problem for them and then pay big money for the product. They line up for outsourcing opportunities for this reason - even if with proper focus they could do the same job cheaper in-house. The key word is "proper focus" - if IT is considered just a distraction then it won't get the leadership needed to be successful - you just need to buy stuff.
So, while I agree that what you suggest could work in theory, it won't work in practice. Companies would rather spend $100M buying products than $10M trying to do it themselves.
You're operating from the "what we have works, your idea sounds interesting, but not as reliable as what we have" position. You've clearly been arguing from that position for a long time, you sound very polished.
You haven't digested the "what we have does not work, and an interesting idea that might fail is better than what we have now, which is already failing or failed" realities of the situation yet.
Don't feel bad... you're not alone. This whole system is going to crumble to ashes and dust, and a new social order is going to take its place, and most people aren't ready to stop pretending things are ok just yet...
If you make something that is significant, people will always find a way to support you, even if the mechanisms by which they generally give that support are lacking.
If you've already writing OSS, and you've got the capacity to build something significant, are you going to skip it and go work on a dirt farm for a few dollars a day?
Maybe, but I expect the author of that article will be on the dirt farm first.
The thing you're missing is that they're not selling software. They're selling software as a service. They're trying to be more like Google.
Google has a massive farm of computers that they leverage. Microsoft wants one too.
The difference is, Google was stupid... they went out and bought the hardware. Microsoft is smarter. They're just going to seize control of yours. In the business world, they call that "externalizing costs".
Trade is a very apt word since these traditions hark back to the days when kids/wives/concubines were considered one's property.
Kind of like marriage in the west. Wow. Small world!
Doesn't it kind of remind you of that "endangered species" article yesterday, which suggested that by placing a dollar value on members of endangered species and allowing individuals to control them a motive would be created to protect them?
Personally, I'm saving money to pay for a surrogate so I can have another child, and since I already have a daughter, I'll probably have them screen for a son.