Why is now not, as you and other suggest, "a particularly good time to IPO"?
If a company has solid fundamentals, is increasing revenues and moving towards profitability while sustaining healthy growth, now is as good or better a time to go public than two years ago.
People who make this complaint seem to assume that the best time to go public is when everyone else is, when there is exuberance in the market and stock charts zooming all over the place. At such a time when public retail trader demand (and private institutional demand) for new IPOs was at an incredible high, you saw supply rise to meet the demand by pumping out one crappy IPO after another. Eventually, people started to realize that investing in companies with no fundamentals, no differentiation, no stable growth, no profits, etc.... was investing in (ahem) bad companies and they stopped doing it (public traders and private financiers).
I think it is more reasonable for quality companies, dotcom or no, to go public when the market itself is stable. There isn't the incredible demand that there used to be, sure- and there is even less supply. But when good companies good public, smart people (public and private) know they might be worth investing in. I think Google will probably fare rather well. By saying that, I mean that they'll close above their offer price- and by the end of the year- probably still be above that price. No, that isn't a VA Linux $350 2nd day closing price- but I bet Google won't drift down to $3.00 within 18 months, either, if they've become profitable.
Even those here who steadfastly continue to trivialize the potential for videogames to permanently damage the psyche of impressionable children (yeah, YOU Katz) must be forced to reckon with the spectre of one of the most inarguably traumatic experiences of all our childhoods.
He could not be placated... Only postponed....
He could not be killed... Only delayed...
His power was greater than all foes combined...
The only way to win was not to play.
...Steve Jobs would have to be forced to kiss a bronzed casting of Jef Raskin's arse every morning before he sat down to work at Apple.
I'm sure Jobs has by this point convinced himself that Macintosh was ultimately his baby, conveniently forgetting that his REAL baby (figuratively, and I guess literally) was LISA- the $10,000, 50lb. landfill-fodder version of Raskin's stripped down, lighter-weight and affordable Macintosh.
Of all the faces deserving to be celebrated in Apple's "Think Different" campaign of a couple years back, Raskin should've been tops. (Jobs' idea of thinking different is paying himself $1 in annual salary while taking hundreds of millions in stock options and a $90M GulfStream Jet as compensation... Trés different!) If Raskin hadn't convinced Jobs to "Think Different" about Apple's computers, Bill Gates' would have ended up dictating the future of computing, interfaces, and standards...
(wait a minute...)
Screw that. While it would be tempting to end this post with a sardonic quip, I just can't let myself.
It kills me every bloody time I have to see Steve Jobs in the lotus position, levitating across the covers of Fortune or Forbes, letting reporters and historians heap-big-praise on his vain, lucky ass as they mismember history and misinform the population at large about the history of computing. Surely when Jobs dies, those in charge of his estate will have hundreds of millions of dollars they can appropriate to the ongoing perpetuation of false history- while Raskin will end up downgraded, trivialized and ultimately consigned to Tesla's fate of historical irrelevance.
It has to be this way of course, because that is the way that things work- history is written by the winners...
Although they've had it coming for some time, and I can't think of any other dotcom outfit that deserves to bite it as spectacularly as DC, I have to admit that I'm going to miss those crazy bastards.
I really thought if anyone had a shot at revolutionizing the way that advertisers and media exploit consumer data, it was DigitalConvergence.
What continues to amaze me about DigitalConvergence is the sheer enormity of it. The scale of the undertaking, the breadth and scope of it all, it dwarfs some of the larger dotbombs of record. If/when it actually completely explodes, it seems like it would signal the definitive end-of-the-dotbomb-era....(who else at this scale has yet to bite it?)
DC is the archetypical dotbomb. A privately held company valued most recently at well over $500,000,000.00, which reported revenues in 1999 of only $1,500,000 (and a loss of $4,000,000).
A company which continues to incur enormous costs in the manufacturing and distribution of their devices (what might 10,000,000+ CueCats cost to build and ship to retailers? who can imagine?) and seems to have no hope of profitability, ever...
A management team populated by players from Time Warner, AT&T, GE, Disney, Barings, etc.
A CEO (who owns 50% of the company) who seems pathologically given to making unfathomably exaggerated marketing claims, including, "We think we're the fourth evolution of computing. A cat can do everything a mouse can't!" , and "It's a torrid love affair I'm having with the power to mold not only an industry, but also the mind-set of America's consumers..."(As an aside, this man should be forced to eat his every press release and media clipping as punishment for this sort of hubris...).
In his prior career hosting a tv show called "NetTalkLive", he claimed, "Our show reaches into 802,000,000 million homes each week..." - Yes, roughly 1/6th of the world population is tuning in to watch an informercial (although conveniently, the Nielsen ratings system didn't track shows like NetTalkLive that run during the dead-zone of infomercial hours on d-grade & public television channels...)
Other gestures of indulgence include spending a ton of money in decorating the offices of DigitalConvergence to be "feng-shui"
compliant("...the building should face in a direction that is positive for the company's owner or chief executive...", plants and water are added to the environs because "....plants represent growth and water represents money..."(well I guess they've been smoking the plants and lighting the water on fire...).
I look forward to the case studies on this corporation. I suspect that we'll see lots of people conclude, "It probably doesn't make good business sense to entrust hundreds of millions of dollars to people who claim to be marketing-geniuses, and yet somehow fail to focus on that most basic of marketing fundamentals, determining the needs of the consumer."
Other interesting reading material, for those concerned....
I can imagine the kind of patter you'll be hearing on the dance floor...
"Yeah- its got a good beat, you can catalyze to it. I give it a 9."
"I just wish they'd have considered adding a RNA polymerase, you know? Its missing something. You ain't gonna be synthesizing mRNA if you can't transcribe the nucleotide sequence."
"The notion that words and images and ideas can cause harm to young minds has become such an article of faith that it's hard not to feel a sense of futility when you point out that there is not a shred, not an iota, not an atom of proof that exposure to images or descriptions of sex and violence does children any harm..."
I like this paragraph from Salon's article so much I'm going to repeat it. I'd like you all to read it again, too...
"The notion that words and images and ideas can cause harm to young minds has become such an article of faith that it's hard not to feel a sense of futility when you point out that there is not a shred, not an iota, not an atom of proof that exposure to images or descriptions of sex and violence does children any harm..."
Listen, I know the libertarian spirit is at the heart of so much that is dear to the OpenSource community in general and the Slashdot set in particular. But come on. This is an intellectual community as well as a zealously independent one. Without digressing into discussions about censorships, without exploding into self-righteous rage about Columbine, videogames, Marilyn Manson, and the whole bloody first amendment, does anyone here accept the statement above as being absolutely, inarguably honest and true?
The article is written by a FILM CRITIC, employed by one of the most left-leaning publications currently in existence on the Internet.
People interested in studies that correlate attitudes towards sex and violence to exposure will find that there are countless studies on the subject ("oh, here is one of them!), written by social scientists, media theorists, and other sorts who've a little more going for them than the sheer force of their own bias. I have yet to see a credible study that concludes as Mr. Taylor concludes.
That Slashdot would reference the Salon article in the laudatory manner that it does is an embarrassment.
For the record kids (and those of you who are intellectually immature), the problem isn't simply one of children seeing sex & violence on television. The problem is the context in which the behaviors they witness are portrayed. The problem is exacerbated by parents who set their children down in front of the tube for hours on end and relinquish their own parental responsibility to love their children, teach their children, discipline their children and foster their children's intellectual development.
You want a study, Mr. Taylor, from someone other than a religious whacko? Get your ass to Amazon, pick up a copy of Neil Postman's "The End of Childhood". See what an agnostic social theorist, one of the greatest cultural critics alive, has to say about the matter. You'll learn, among other things, that childhood as we all know it didn't exist 300 years ago, it is a social construct, created in America, as a by-product of our education system. Our country committed itself to the education of children for the express purpose of producing an intellectually sophisticated citizenry. The schooling system that was created was in part created to allow for a "progressive revelation", exposing children to information which built upon an increasingly complex set of rules (which assumed a prior set of rules had already been taught). As much as anything, information restriction served to protect much of the social construct of childhood. They were protected from, yes PROTECTED FROM information. It was revealed to them in stages such that they were prepared to receive it. All the while, they received not only information but knowledge (from parents and authorities) and also wisdom. As terrifying as it sounds, they were taught to distinguish right from wrong. STOP THE PRESSES! HOW BLOODY PURITANICAL! LITERALLY! TAUGHT RIGHT FROM WRONG! BUT WHO IS TO DETERMINE WHAT IS RIGHT AND WHAT IS WRONG! WHY, NO ONE CAN DO THAT!
Actually, some one can (and should) do that. Parents are supposed to do that. And if parents did a better job of it these days, we wouldn't be in the societal mess we're in.
I'm not here to advocate censorship. If anyone starts babbling about that, I pity you. I'm advocating parental responsibility. Teach your children how to contextualize what they see. Teach them how to process the information they are exposed to. If you abdicate the education of your children to the media, for pete's sake, DON'T COMPLAIN WHEN YOUR KID WATCHES JACKASS AND SETS HIMSELF ON FIRE. And please, teach them how to reject laughably biased nonsense like the Salon.com paragraph above, so they don't end up thinking its genius and including it in SLASHDOT post as if God himself had etched it in the stone on Mt. Sinai.
TANGENTIAL RANT
What is also truly sad, what is also truly pitiable, is to see the injustice that our own education system perpetuates through continually lowered standards and so-called progressive learning techniques. Does the fact that our education system is pumping out illiterate boneheads by the thousands, teaching them that there aren't really right-or-wrong-answers to questions ("what is important is how-you-feel!") bother anyone? That self-declared film critics can write paragraphs like the one above, and be LAUDED by others instead of derided?
Well, if these things don't bother you now, wait until your seventy, and you're sitting there asking yourself how come your grandchildren are drooling idiots who can't wipe their own arses. See if you're laughing when you find it out it was because they didn't get a Ph.D in Anal Hygienics, and no-one else in the country knows how to do it anymore.
...too much variation in POV leads to dialogue that is itself uncompelling to most. It helps, when people are discussing a particular subject, if they speak the same basic language. If they don't even share a language with which they can have the discussion, then it can border on incoherent. I think sometimes that diversity itself causes incoherence in conversation. This can be flavorful, but certainly is as likely to be exhausting.
It is the difference in some respects to watching "Politically Incorrect" on television, versus the "Capital Gang" or "MacLaughlin Group".
On "Politically Incorrect", the subject matter covers a broader range of material (encompassing art, politics, entertainment, media, etc.). The participants come from those same categories- a rock star here, a political reporter there, a talk show host here, a special interest group lackey there. - The dialogue doesn't really pretend to be a dialogue- it is normally a race to see who can produce the funniest joke before the commercial break, with the (ahem) moderator competing against all of the participants. It is often entertaining or infuriating, and almost never substantive. Who watches it? Late night channel surfers who are just looking for something to provide a nominal amount of entertainment.
With "Capital Gang" or "MacLaughlin Group", you have a much more narrow range of participant-diversity. They are political journalists or politicians themselves. They discuss political news, all speaking generally with the same degree of sophistication on political subjects- with the variety coming in their actual political loyalties (some conservative, some liberal, some moderates, some special interest, etc.) - Since they are all political junkies, they tend to be able to move very quickly because they (and their audience) are better informed about the issues, the proponents, the critics, etc.
The audience, rather than being a channel-surfing couch potato, leans more towards an educated, literate, politically-interested sort. The product itself tends to be higher-resolution, and in some respects this would be very offputting to the average viewer of "Politically Incorrect".
I think this is somewhat akin to the difference between a Plastic.com thread and a Slashdot.org thread. Plastic.com subjects cover an enormous range of interests, with discussions themselves mostly being shallow. Slashdot.org stays narrow, and threads have the potential to dig deeper within the narrow range. Which is, IMO, more interesting to read and participate in.
But just IMO.
Re:The Net content players- some winners, some los
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Trés insightful. On Plastic.com, you'd have been moderated up to 5: GENIUS for an off-the-cuff cheapshot like that.
Which would be a more efficient way of proving some of my prior arguments about the readership / POV are true.
If there was such a thing as true there.
Re:The Net content players- some winners, some los
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I didn't mean to imply that Suck's content was in any way subpar. In fact, I don't think I said anything whatsoever about Suck with respect to the quality of their content. I would agree that they were putting together a very compelling site, more compelling than many sites.
The Net content players- some winners, some losers
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On a prior thread, the subject of plastic.com came up. In my prior and current opinion, plastic.com doesn't have a long-term future as a viable community. It seems, at least to me, that the operating assumptions regarding the generation of meaningful, tangible value- are inherently flawed.
Plastic.com has mistakenly assumed it could replicate the success of Slashdot simply by repurposing the Slashdot message board system for the purposes of broad-minded subjects mostly related to pop culture, pop technology and pop politics. They have failed to realize that Slashdot's success has come through its specialization. The broader the subject matter, the less compelling the appeal to a broader base of people. The narrower the subject matter, the stronger the potential appeal to a smaller base of people. They are failing because they thought if they focused on broad subjects, that all your base would belong to them. But they ain't CATS. They are on their way to destruction. They have no chance to survive, make their time.
Seriously, though- I think most people who read and participate in Slashdot would agree that there is something of a Slashdot POV that is reinforced through the editorials, through the article selection, through much of the posting activity, etc. While you see a lot of variation in the worldviews of participants (agnostics, christians, atheists, relativists, absolutists, humorists, nihilists, etc.)- the community still has several hundred thousand participants who fit the profile one-way-or-another (in short, they understand at some level the Slashdot narrative, and want to participate in and contribute to it).
What is the Plastic.com POV? There isn't one, really. It isn't created BY a certain specialized community FOR a specialized community. It is a created by a conglomerate of differently-minded interests, lacking in a coherent POV, and it feels like it. Oh sure, it has a sort of ironic, detached postmodern perspective- that is reflected in the cheeky commentary here-and-there, but come on- isn't that the standard TONE of almost web-based content sites these days? Salon, Slate, Wired News, etc.? So how original is that?
Now, Plastic.com will have two less sources funnelling a readership towards its community board. No Feed readers, no Suck readers. Who will it continue to receive readers from? Modern Humorist? (who jokingly noted in a recent press release that they were almost out of the seven-figures in venture capital they raised only a year ago, and could be in trouble?) Netslaves? (who repeatedly asks on their own site if they should discontinue the site itself since their purpose has been satisfied and frankly, Netslaves isn't exactly making anyone richer OR happier?) Inside.com? (who at their PEAK had less than 2000 paying subscribers, as noted by Poynter.org a week ago?)
I don't bear Plastic any ill-will, that isn't why I'm bringing this up. I think the concept is flawed and in time, this will be manifest. But I'd be happy to I was wrong about that.
But, backing up, it begs the question- who in the Internet content business is going to survive?
Jim Romenesko's Media News had a link today to a story in which Slate publisher Scott Moore "was kind of funny, drolly knocking down anybody's ideas about what might make a dollar online... He didn't seem to think any known model will sustain a Web-media company. Because his publication is paid for by Bill Gates, he can afford to be pessimistic."
Truth be told, Moore is wrong. We see that at least The Onion has been able to make a ton of money ($2,000,000 in ad revenues alone last year, for their website only). They also have print advertising in their print publication, and several best-selling books they've released, plus "The Onion" radio news (syndicated for indy & college radio stations, mostly), and have made money optioning articles to Miramax for film development (two to date that I know of).
So, there is a hybrid new media / old media company that is making serious money in content. And, most would agree, they are the best at what they do.
Another content company making money online is Fu----company.com. Founder Pud runs the thing pretty much by himself. He's got a book deal with Simon & Schuster, he's got at least $60,000 a month in subscriber revenues to his unedited gossip / rumours database, he's got some banner advertising (prolly not too special revenue wise), and he's got f'dcompany-branded products he sells on his site (I think I read this may bring in over $100,000 this year, but I'd need to double check).
There are other Internet content players who are surviving, generating revenues and even profits. I don't know of ANY that have done so after raising venture capital. Ironically, the sites that raised capital to fund content are the ones who are dying here, there and all over the shop.
I wish I could think of some more Internet content "pureplays" that seem likely to survive, but I can't off the top of my head.
Where was I going with all this? I don't know. But now that I'm here, I think I'll rest and pretend this was where I was intending to head.
Good luck to the content players still out there, still trying to make something work while remaining independent. I feel obligated to say that after reading that 4 corporate players control over HALF of the public's internet browsing needs or some such nonsense.
All of this speculating has got me depressed. Think I'll go read some old USENET articles and think of a simpler time. A time when it looked like Netscape was going to change the world, when it looked like Microsoft had finally been bested, when Amazon was just selling books and it seemed like the people starting companies left-and-right were doing it because they wanted to make a change in something other than their personal worth.
...by building gigantic Lego casinoes on their reservations in New Zealand which only the Maori are allowed to own and operate.
In seriousness, however, one wonders whether the motivation for "protecting their culture" derives from a sense that to merchandize the Maori traditions / icons / language / etc. actually cheapens the traditions (et al), or that only they, the Maori, should be allowed to merchandise and profit from their culture?
I suspect it is the latter. I visited New Zealand for my honeymoon, and certainly saw a lot of signs that they were comfortable profiting from the "curiousity trade" around their culture. I don't say this cynically or dismissively- they were quite gracious to tourists and more than hospitable. One is left to assume that at this point, their culture itself is one of the only things with which they are able to generate an economic return. They can choose to remain a part of the Maori tribal community, and generate decent livings by simply preserving their culture and allowing tourists to 1) pay to be a part of a giant Maori banquet 2) buy various handmade Maori crafts 3) etc... OR they can leave and join the New Zealand community (which many do) and get jobs in the service sector (cab drivers, hotel workers, retail, etc...)
Whatever the case, there may be a bright side to this whole thing. It would seem that perhaps there is a chance that this might ultimately result in a ban on Styx's 1978 album "Pieces of Eight", which featured the stone-faces of Easter Island prominently on the cover, and included a hokey-mystical-pseudo-prog-rock instrumental called "Aku Aku" at the end. In any case, it gratuitiously uses Maori symbols and words, to no coherent end. I find great joy in the hope that perhaps this Maori legal wrangling might ultimately result in the removal of this album from circulation, most particularly because it contains Dennis DeYoung's cornball classic of self-affirmation "I'm Okay". THAT deserves to be banned.
Then again, maybe banning that album wouldn't be such a good idea, since it might result in an INCREASE in the sales for "Kilroy Was Here", a concept album about a future in which albums are banned and rockers forced underground.
Clearly, there is a lot riding on the outcome of this issue. Don't let it end. I'm begging you. Don't let it end this way-hey-hayyyyyyy.
...maybe the better way for the LINUX community to support Mandrake is to petition those very few OpenSource-minded individuals made obscenely wealthy by the recent boom (ESR, I'm talkin' about you!) to become benefactors of Mandrake.
I mean, come on Eric, do you really need another Soviet-issue RPG-7G or M-72 light anti-tank weapon at this point? You've got enough to win most arguments you could get into.
I'm being semi-serious here. I'm not optimistic about Mandrake's survival if they intend to pass-the-plate around the linux community and hope that they get enough in tithes to stay alive. The sports franchise examples offered by Mr. Bryar assumes that the high regard for Mandrake of the linux-loving population somehow equates to the profound devotion and civic-pride one has for a local sports team, and for attending local sporting events. Regardless of the enthusiasm of the community for Mandrake, I'm not optimistic that this would work.
Maybe the best option is to have big Linux companies create their own sports franchises, with something geeky-fun like Internet televised BattleBots or laser-tag tournaments featuring executives/programmers at the various companies (officiated by Geeks In Space,:-p), and then have competitions between the corporations that sell a bunch of merchandise to make money....
I know that Slashdot doesn't employ reporters, like CNN and AP. Nevertheless, in claiming to be "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters", and considering the respect Slashdot has earned as a source of editorialized news filtering, doesn't it seem about time for Slashdot to be a source of direct dissemination of this sort of news concerning technological breakthroughs?
Right now, Slashdot in some ways resembles The Drudge Report. Drudge himself is hardly even a hack in the news space. He is, at best, a right-leaning news filtration system, with a taste for lurid sensationalism (hence his willingness to constantly link to stories which many in the right-wing would call immoral, perverse, and/or otherwise not worth calling news...). He is, at worst, a launderer of political gossip for extreme wings of either political party, most especially the right. (Again, his love of the lurid will often lead him to be used as a tool for spreading gossip for the left-wing, normally against political opponents on the right... But such is the lot of a tool and slave of scandal and gossip.)
Point being: Drudge barely participates in traditional journalism (and thank the heavens for that, considering his absolutely cringe-inducing grandstanding). His existence is truly parasitical. He depends solely on real journalists working for other news organizations, magazines, etc. to create his own brand of "news".
Slashdot differs from Drudge Report in many ways obvious to any reader of this message board. The very fact that there is a "community" component to Slashdot, with peer-review of comments, and further reviews of those reviews, is substantially more engaging to the news reader than Drudge's gossip post. Yet the two news sites share a common trait- namely, that they fashion their own "source" of news that is itself simply a filtered bias towards other news, administered dutifully every day by human decision-makers who understand the values / interests / worldviews of the demographic they are serving.
Now, fast-forward to my point about "Pixie Dust", so I can tie this sprawling mess into one universal point and walk to my fridge and grab myself a Bawls or two...
It seems to me that there would be an incentive for companies like IBM to cultivate a direct relationship with top-tier tech-news outlets like Slashdot, so that they could break news of their own breakthroughs even faster than they currently do. (Just as political operatives have incentives to break news on DrudgeReport, for instant penetration of the radars of the community...) It seems a marginal effort would be required to get releases about such breakthroughs DIRECTLY to slashdot, so that we would be able to see it here FIRST, rather than see it first on CNN, then a couple of other sites, and FINALLY breaking on Slashdot (the "news for nerds, stuff that matters" network) after it is already soon to be pulled from front page rotation on CNN, etc. I'd prefer that my specialized news sources, like Slashdot, were breaking stories about their field of specialty (technogeek news, in this case) rather than rehashing the geek ephemera that generalized news powerhouses like CNN are producing.
I want to see Slashdot evolve so that it doesn't continue to subsist in the purely parasitical manner that Drudge does.
I want to see whatever clout you've created as a news brand parlayed into better access to breaking news, right from the source.
I want to see some evidence that the successes you've had are leading to growth not only in awareness about you but in your power and sophistication as a news site.
Most importantly, after saying all this, please consider my last request as carefully as anything else you've seen in this entreaty, should the fates smile on me and moderate me upward into your scrutiny.
As you grow more and more like a news organization, gaining in power and might, for the love of all that is good to us your readers, please oh please don't put another Jon Katz on your payroll.
"Freaks and Geeks" was truly one of the greatest hour-long shows of the past decade.
If they make DVDs available (currently rumored to be coming through A&E), I hope ThinkGeek would step up and add them to a DVD section on their site. It seems like such a perfect fit. (I was glad to see a lament of the series cancellation in the Demotivators 2001 calendar Thinkgeek is selling...)
"Freaks and Geeks" should be mandatory viewing for slashdot folk, since it was so bloody dead-on about the formulative years of geekdom...
D&D episodes... Atari episodes... Model rocketry episodes... And the band STYX in constant rotation! My life flashed before my eyes, and then got cancelled by some bonehead and replaced with a who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire-knockoff...
"Production values are even more important on the Web. Consumers will not buy from an amateurish Web site..."
"Of course there is no direct connection between the quality of your site and the quality of your company. A company could have a brilliant graphic designer and lousy products. But usually there is a connection, and that is what visitors to your site will assume. If your company is unable to put up a good Web site, then it seems natural to assume that your company cannot deliver good products or services..."
Maybe Museumcompany.com or Despair.com could offer Mr. Graham some design tips on getting the most out of his own store-building application.
Of course, with millions in the bank, he probably doesn't give a rat's ass whether he sells any LISP books or not. So I guess I answered my own question. Nevermind.
These individuals could get their own merchant accounts from a PROVIDER and use open-source ecommerce software to automatically receive and process their own credit card payments. Paying only standard card commission fees. What if they don't own their own hardware, bandwidth, staff and capital pixies?If they didn't have their own server, they could use someone virtual server outfit with merchant services support built in, there are hundreds out there, including one from Yahoo Store.
My criticism isn't of the struggling content provider. I recognize their plights. You can bet that what Amazon current charges 15% for, someone else is going to offer for a lot less, and steal away whatever business Amazon does have by telling the various content players that they will process online donations for a fraction of the 15% that Amazon charges. Leaving Amazon yet again to search for a model that makes actual fiscal sense, before they run out of money.
My own business ran credit cards inhouse on a $900 PC running IC Verify with a dialup account ($19.95/a month). It could be run on a $400 PC today.
Amazon has made enough in commissions on Andrew Sullivan alone to pay for that PC and software and the dialup account. for a year. So the rest is gravy.
Religion sells because people don't know they are buying something, they feel good about themselves while they fork over their money, they WANT to pay. They use sex, drugs and rock and roll to sell their goods. The use all kinds of fear to generate their income, it's a brilliant business.
Oh how controversial! A comment lambasting religion as a greedy, get-rich quick scheme robbing from the dumb and giving to the corrupt. Selling empty comfort to the foolish. Where did you read that? On the lyrics to some old Metallica album?
You want to know where most of the money given to churches actually goes, even if it renders your clichéd comment irrelevant?
Feeding the poor. Healing the sick. Housing the homeless. Yeah, I know it sucks to have someone distort the picture with facts, but such is life. The money raised by churches isn't going to put another layer of gold-paint on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, nimrod. Who do you think started "The Red Cross" and "Doctors Without Borders"? Linux Torvalds?
Here is a statement I'd like to see you contest. You're average devout Christian is giving a lot more of his or her income to charitable causes than your average Slashdot reader (no, buying clothing from ThinkGeek doesn't count as a charitable contribution, nerds). Hmmm. They must be doing it because their pastors tell them if they don't, they'll go to Hell, right?
Amazon, for those who don't know, has offered to function like a crooked church elder, passing the offering plate around for various content sites like Andrew Sullivan's, ModernHumorist and other content sites. If you want to make a credit card based donation to these sites, you can do so using Amazon's "Tip Jar" system.
Why is it a scam, why are they crooked for doing so?
Amazon charges a 15% fee to give YOUR MONEY to a site you want to support financially. So while passing the plate around to the Internet community, they are taking 15% of your offerings as a fee. In the spirit of, uh, supporting independent content sites? Sorry, that is much too high a fee to be anything but a scam.
If you want to support these sites, like Andrew Sullivan or Modern Humorist, do yourself a favor and mail them a check or money order. Don't enrich Amazon and some credit card companies in the process of supporting content you enjoy, it just ain't right.
Amazon.com- The Relentless Pursuit of a Business Model.
"VC funding?"..."THAT IS INCORRECT! THE CORRECT SPELLING OF 'PROFITABILITY' IS..."
Methinks you've been overmoderated. BigTime!
Don't tell Yahoo that Banner Ads are the way to go. They're still attempting to find an alternative business model that isn't so completely, utterly, dangerously cyclical and may actually lose money for the first time in several years.
Co-Branding isn't going to work, either. The collective powers of several money-losing BANNER AD driven websites don't amount to much, if anything. Have you visited Plastic lately? No. And neither has anyone else. It has at least two very dire problems.
1) It has mistakenly assumed it could replicate the success of Slashdot simply by repurposing the Slashdot message board system for the purposes of broad-minded subjects mostly related to pop culture, pop technology and pop politics. They have failed to realize that Slashdot's success has come through its specialization. The broader the subject matter, the less compelling the appeal to a broader base of people. The narrower the subject matter, the stronger the potential appeal to a smaller base of people. They are failing because they thought if they focused on broad subjects, that all your base would belong to them. But they ain't CATS. They are on their way to destruction. They have no chance to survive, make their time. HA HA HA HA.
2) It assumes it can create value through the aggregation of the readerships of several specific content sites into one single site. YET MANY OF THE CONTENT SITES CONTRIBUTING PARTICIPANTS ARE LOSING MONEY, SOME AT ASTONISHING RATES. If you're a fan of Poynter, which you should be, you'd already have read articles chronicling the plights of Inside.com, Feed, ModernHumorist, and others participating in Plastic. - It prolly aint gonna be with us much longer.
VC Funding - yeah, that used to be considered a business model, until somebody realized that, well, it just doesn't make sense to loan money to businesses with holes in every pocket of their proverbial pants, at least not if you want to get any money BACK.
VCs got stupid for a while, and wrote some big ass checks to dumb ass people. But those days are over, mate. And if you really want to make a VC pissed, I recommend you approach one and say, "I'd like to borrow $10,000,000. I have an idea for a business. It will make money combining ad banner revenue with co-branding, a la Plastic". You'll be lucky if you escape with your life.
"Okay Mr. Smartypants Smirkleton, then what DOES make money on the net?"
Well, I'll tell you one thing. I'm very surprised to see no mention of ThinkGeek in this discourse. I've heard those guys move a boatload of products, a ton, and I'd believe it. What model is that, then? Well, it is specialty retail, targeting the various geek needs of the same community that Slashdot serves to inform (well). (A community that is extremely specialized, hence the obscure subjects considered newsworthy to the readership and authors.)
Yes, I know ThinkGeek is actually owned by VA Linux. But it seems to remain an independent business unit, from outward appearances. I suspect ThinkGeek's financials are one of the few bright spots in the VA Linux annual report. Sadly, they probably aren't broken out from other revenue streams for the public to see, because then we'd know how much more money VA Linux was losing on their core product lines.
...about bible-believing Christians actually more plentiful on Slashdot than references to "All Your Base..."? Sadly, AYB-gags are a passing fad, while the Christian-bashing is more of a/. pasttime for some.
Hint: If you want them to stop running, stop shooting.
Slashdot Mirror
just really hilarious. i'm just saying.
...ThinkGeek created a hybrid of this shirt and that one that says "First ALL YOUR BASE Post!" ?
Clearly, there would be a market for it.
If I were Compaq, I'd get the hell outta the PC business, too.
Bill Gurley has an interesting editorial on the subject in his Above the Crowd column at News.com.
Why is now not, as you and other suggest, "a particularly good time to IPO"?
If a company has solid fundamentals, is increasing revenues and moving towards profitability while sustaining healthy growth, now is as good or better a time to go public than two years ago.
People who make this complaint seem to assume that the best time to go public is when everyone else is, when there is exuberance in the market and stock charts zooming all over the place. At such a time when public retail trader demand (and private institutional demand) for new IPOs was at an incredible high, you saw supply rise to meet the demand by pumping out one crappy IPO after another. Eventually, people started to realize that investing in companies with no fundamentals, no differentiation, no stable growth, no profits, etc.... was investing in (ahem) bad companies and they stopped doing it (public traders and private financiers).
I think it is more reasonable for quality companies, dotcom or no, to go public when the market itself is stable. There isn't the incredible demand that there used to be, sure- and there is even less supply. But when good companies good public, smart people (public and private) know they might be worth investing in. I think Google will probably fare rather well. By saying that, I mean that they'll close above their offer price- and by the end of the year- probably still be above that price. No, that isn't a VA Linux $350 2nd day closing price- but I bet Google won't drift down to $3.00 within 18 months, either, if they've become profitable.
Even those here who steadfastly continue to trivialize the potential for videogames to permanently damage the psyche of impressionable children (yeah, YOU Katz) must be forced to reckon with the spectre of one of the most inarguably traumatic experiences of all our childhoods.
Many games amused and inspired me, some even frightened and frazzled me.
But Midway / Williams was responsible, nay, dare I say irresponsible for bringing to life one game that had the power to terrify through barbaric taunts and satanic jeers.
How many thousands of children were permanently scarred by the memory of this quarter-eating tormentor?
How many millions of nightmares were spawned in response to this evil whose name we dare not speak?
How many more nights will I awake to my own pitiable screams, as I hear that demonic bellow again and again?
He could not be placated... Only postponed....
He could not be killed... Only delayed...
His power was greater than all foes combined...
The only way to win was not to play.
...Steve Jobs would have to be forced to kiss a bronzed casting of Jef Raskin's arse every morning before he sat down to work at Apple.
I'm sure Jobs has by this point convinced himself that Macintosh was ultimately his baby, conveniently forgetting that his REAL baby (figuratively, and I guess literally) was LISA- the $10,000, 50lb. landfill-fodder version of Raskin's stripped down, lighter-weight and affordable Macintosh.
Forgetting that Raskin was the one who convinced him, post PARC visit, that the Graphical User Interface was the key to making computers easy for the layperson to use.
Of all the faces deserving to be celebrated in Apple's "Think Different" campaign of a couple years back, Raskin should've been tops. (Jobs' idea of thinking different is paying himself $1 in annual salary while taking hundreds of millions in stock options and a $90M GulfStream Jet as compensation... Trés different!) If Raskin hadn't convinced Jobs to "Think Different" about Apple's computers, Bill Gates' would have ended up dictating the future of computing, interfaces, and standards...
(wait a minute...)
Screw that. While it would be tempting to end this post with a sardonic quip, I just can't let myself.
It kills me every bloody time I have to see Steve Jobs in the lotus position, levitating across the covers of Fortune or Forbes, letting reporters and historians heap-big-praise on his vain, lucky ass as they mismember history and misinform the population at large about the history of computing. Surely when Jobs dies, those in charge of his estate will have hundreds of millions of dollars they can appropriate to the ongoing perpetuation of false history- while Raskin will end up downgraded, trivialized and ultimately consigned to Tesla's fate of historical irrelevance.
It has to be this way of course, because that is the way that things work- history is written by the winners...
But The Truth Is Out There. Read it.
EOM
Although they've had it coming for some time, and I can't think of any other dotcom outfit that deserves to bite it as spectacularly as DC, I have to admit that I'm going to miss those crazy bastards.
.(who else at this scale has yet to bite it?)
DC is the archetypical dotbomb. A privately held company valued most recently at well over $500,000,000.00, which reported revenues in 1999 of only $1,500,000 (and a loss of $4,000,000).
I really thought if anyone had a shot at revolutionizing the way that advertisers and media exploit consumer data, it was DigitalConvergence.
What continues to amaze me about DigitalConvergence is the sheer enormity of it. The scale of the undertaking, the breadth and scope of it all, it dwarfs some of the larger dotbombs of record. If/when it actually completely explodes, it seems like it would signal the definitive end-of-the-dotbomb-era...
A company which continues to incur enormous costs in the manufacturing and distribution of their devices (what might 10,000,000+ CueCats cost to build and ship to retailers? who can imagine?) and seems to have no hope of profitability, ever...
A management team populated by players from Time Warner, AT&T, GE, Disney, Barings, etc.
A CEO (who owns 50% of the company) who seems pathologically given to making unfathomably exaggerated marketing claims, including, "We think we're the fourth evolution of computing. A cat can do everything a mouse can't!" , and "It's a torrid love affair I'm having with the power to mold not only an industry, but also the mind-set of America's consumers..." (As an aside, this man should be forced to eat his every press release and media clipping as punishment for this sort of hubris...).
In his prior career hosting a tv show called "NetTalkLive", he claimed, "Our show reaches into 802,000,000 million homes each week..." - Yes, roughly 1/6th of the world population is tuning in to watch an informercial (although conveniently, the Nielsen ratings system didn't track shows like NetTalkLive that run during the dead-zone of infomercial hours on d-grade & public television channels...)
Other gestures of indulgence include spending a ton of money in decorating the offices of DigitalConvergence to be "feng-shui" compliant ("...the building should face in a direction that is positive for the company's owner or chief executive...", plants and water are added to the environs because "....plants represent growth and water represents money..." (well I guess they've been smoking the plants and lighting the water on fire...).
I look forward to the case studies on this corporation. I suspect that we'll see lots of people conclude, "It probably doesn't make good business sense to entrust hundreds of millions of dollars to people who claim to be marketing-geniuses, and yet somehow fail to focus on that most basic of marketing fundamentals, determining the needs of the consumer."
Other interesting reading material, for those concerned....
a funny "Dallas Observer" article and a not quite as funny but still very interesting article from "Editor and Publisher" online.
"If you build it, they will laugh."
...opening night at the DNA Lounge.
I can imagine the kind of patter you'll be hearing on the dance floor...
"Yeah- its got a good beat, you can catalyze to it. I give it a 9."
"I just wish they'd have considered adding a RNA polymerase, you know? Its missing something. You ain't gonna be synthesizing mRNA if you can't transcribe the nucleotide sequence."
"True. True..."
I like this paragraph from Salon's article so much I'm going to repeat it. I'd like you all to read it again, too...
Listen, I know the libertarian spirit is at the heart of so much that is dear to the OpenSource community in general and the Slashdot set in particular. But come on. This is an intellectual community as well as a zealously independent one. Without digressing into discussions about censorships, without exploding into self-righteous rage about Columbine, videogames, Marilyn Manson, and the whole bloody first amendment, does anyone here accept the statement above as being absolutely, inarguably honest and true?
The article is written by a FILM CRITIC, employed by one of the most left-leaning publications currently in existence on the Internet.
People interested in studies that correlate attitudes towards sex and violence to exposure will find that there are countless studies on the subject ("oh, here is one of them!), written by social scientists, media theorists, and other sorts who've a little more going for them than the sheer force of their own bias. I have yet to see a credible study that concludes as Mr. Taylor concludes.
That Slashdot would reference the Salon article in the laudatory manner that it does is an embarrassment.
For the record kids (and those of you who are intellectually immature), the problem isn't simply one of children seeing sex & violence on television. The problem is the context in which the behaviors they witness are portrayed. The problem is exacerbated by parents who set their children down in front of the tube for hours on end and relinquish their own parental responsibility to love their children, teach their children, discipline their children and foster their children's intellectual development.
You want a study, Mr. Taylor, from someone other than a religious whacko? Get your ass to Amazon, pick up a copy of Neil Postman's "The End of Childhood". See what an agnostic social theorist, one of the greatest cultural critics alive, has to say about the matter. You'll learn, among other things, that childhood as we all know it didn't exist 300 years ago, it is a social construct, created in America, as a by-product of our education system. Our country committed itself to the education of children for the express purpose of producing an intellectually sophisticated citizenry. The schooling system that was created was in part created to allow for a "progressive revelation", exposing children to information which built upon an increasingly complex set of rules (which assumed a prior set of rules had already been taught). As much as anything, information restriction served to protect much of the social construct of childhood. They were protected from, yes PROTECTED FROM information. It was revealed to them in stages such that they were prepared to receive it. All the while, they received not only information but knowledge (from parents and authorities) and also wisdom. As terrifying as it sounds, they were taught to distinguish right from wrong. STOP THE PRESSES! HOW BLOODY PURITANICAL! LITERALLY! TAUGHT RIGHT FROM WRONG! BUT WHO IS TO DETERMINE WHAT IS RIGHT AND WHAT IS WRONG! WHY, NO ONE CAN DO THAT!
Actually, some one can (and should) do that. Parents are supposed to do that. And if parents did a better job of it these days, we wouldn't be in the societal mess we're in.
I'm not here to advocate censorship. If anyone starts babbling about that, I pity you. I'm advocating parental responsibility. Teach your children how to contextualize what they see. Teach them how to process the information they are exposed to. If you abdicate the education of your children to the media, for pete's sake, DON'T COMPLAIN WHEN YOUR KID WATCHES JACKASS AND SETS HIMSELF ON FIRE. And please, teach them how to reject laughably biased nonsense like the Salon.com paragraph above, so they don't end up thinking its genius and including it in SLASHDOT post as if God himself had etched it in the stone on Mt. Sinai.
TANGENTIAL RANT
What is also truly sad, what is also truly pitiable, is to see the injustice that our own education system perpetuates through continually lowered standards and so-called progressive learning techniques. Does the fact that our education system is pumping out illiterate boneheads by the thousands, teaching them that there aren't really right-or-wrong-answers to questions ("what is important is how-you-feel!") bother anyone? That self-declared film critics can write paragraphs like the one above, and be LAUDED by others instead of derided? Well, if these things don't bother you now, wait until your seventy, and you're sitting there asking yourself how come your grandchildren are drooling idiots who can't wipe their own arses. See if you're laughing when you find it out it was because they didn't get a Ph.D in Anal Hygienics, and no-one else in the country knows how to do it anymore.
...too much variation in POV leads to dialogue that is itself uncompelling to most. It helps, when people are discussing a particular subject, if they speak the same basic language. If they don't even share a language with which they can have the discussion, then it can border on incoherent. I think sometimes that diversity itself causes incoherence in conversation. This can be flavorful, but certainly is as likely to be exhausting.
It is the difference in some respects to watching "Politically Incorrect" on television, versus the "Capital Gang" or "MacLaughlin Group".
On "Politically Incorrect", the subject matter covers a broader range of material (encompassing art, politics, entertainment, media, etc.). The participants come from those same categories- a rock star here, a political reporter there, a talk show host here, a special interest group lackey there. - The dialogue doesn't really pretend to be a dialogue- it is normally a race to see who can produce the funniest joke before the commercial break, with the (ahem) moderator competing against all of the participants. It is often entertaining or infuriating, and almost never substantive. Who watches it? Late night channel surfers who are just looking for something to provide a nominal amount of entertainment.
With "Capital Gang" or "MacLaughlin Group", you have a much more narrow range of participant-diversity. They are political journalists or politicians themselves. They discuss political news, all speaking generally with the same degree of sophistication on political subjects- with the variety coming in their actual political loyalties (some conservative, some liberal, some moderates, some special interest, etc.) - Since they are all political junkies, they tend to be able to move very quickly because they (and their audience) are better informed about the issues, the proponents, the critics, etc.
The audience, rather than being a channel-surfing couch potato, leans more towards an educated, literate, politically-interested sort. The product itself tends to be higher-resolution, and in some respects this would be very offputting to the average viewer of "Politically Incorrect".
I think this is somewhat akin to the difference between a Plastic.com thread and a Slashdot.org thread. Plastic.com subjects cover an enormous range of interests, with discussions themselves mostly being shallow. Slashdot.org stays narrow, and threads have the potential to dig deeper within the narrow range. Which is, IMO, more interesting to read and participate in.
But just IMO.
Trés insightful. On Plastic.com, you'd have been moderated up to 5: GENIUS for an off-the-cuff cheapshot like that.
Which would be a more efficient way of proving some of my prior arguments about the readership / POV are true.
If there was such a thing as true there.
I didn't mean to imply that Suck's content was in any way subpar. In fact, I don't think I said anything whatsoever about Suck with respect to the quality of their content. I would agree that they were putting together a very compelling site, more compelling than many sites.
On a prior thread, the subject of plastic.com came up. In my prior and current opinion, plastic.com doesn't have a long-term future as a viable community. It seems, at least to me, that the operating assumptions regarding the generation of meaningful, tangible value- are inherently flawed.
Plastic.com has mistakenly assumed it could replicate the success of Slashdot simply by repurposing the Slashdot message board system for the purposes of broad-minded subjects mostly related to pop culture, pop technology and pop politics. They have failed to realize that Slashdot's success has come through its specialization. The broader the subject matter, the less compelling the appeal to a broader base of people. The narrower the subject matter, the stronger the potential appeal to a smaller base of people. They are failing because they thought if they focused on broad subjects, that all your base would belong to them. But they ain't CATS. They are on their way to destruction. They have no chance to survive, make their time.
Seriously, though- I think most people who read and participate in Slashdot would agree that there is something of a Slashdot POV that is reinforced through the editorials, through the article selection, through much of the posting activity, etc. While you see a lot of variation in the worldviews of participants (agnostics, christians, atheists, relativists, absolutists, humorists, nihilists, etc.)- the community still has several hundred thousand participants who fit the profile one-way-or-another (in short, they understand at some level the Slashdot narrative, and want to participate in and contribute to it).
What is the Plastic.com POV? There isn't one, really. It isn't created BY a certain specialized community FOR a specialized community. It is a created by a conglomerate of differently-minded interests, lacking in a coherent POV, and it feels like it. Oh sure, it has a sort of ironic, detached postmodern perspective- that is reflected in the cheeky commentary here-and-there, but come on- isn't that the standard TONE of almost web-based content sites these days? Salon, Slate, Wired News, etc.? So how original is that?
Now, Plastic.com will have two less sources funnelling a readership towards its community board. No Feed readers, no Suck readers. Who will it continue to receive readers from? Modern Humorist? (who jokingly noted in a recent press release that they were almost out of the seven-figures in venture capital they raised only a year ago, and could be in trouble?) Netslaves? (who repeatedly asks on their own site if they should discontinue the site itself since their purpose has been satisfied and frankly, Netslaves isn't exactly making anyone richer OR happier?) Inside.com? (who at their PEAK had less than 2000 paying subscribers, as noted by Poynter.org a week ago?)
I don't bear Plastic any ill-will, that isn't why I'm bringing this up. I think the concept is flawed and in time, this will be manifest. But I'd be happy to I was wrong about that.
But, backing up, it begs the question- who in the Internet content business is going to survive?
Jim Romenesko's Media News had a link today to a story in which Slate publisher Scott Moore "was kind of funny, drolly knocking down anybody's ideas about what might make a dollar online... He didn't seem to think any known model will sustain a Web-media company. Because his publication is paid for by Bill Gates, he can afford to be pessimistic."
Truth be told, Moore is wrong. We see that at least The Onion has been able to make a ton of money ($2,000,000 in ad revenues alone last year, for their website only). They also have print advertising in their print publication, and several best-selling books they've released, plus "The Onion" radio news (syndicated for indy & college radio stations, mostly), and have made money optioning articles to Miramax for film development (two to date that I know of).
So, there is a hybrid new media / old media company that is making serious money in content. And, most would agree, they are the best at what they do.
Another content company making money online is Fu----company.com. Founder Pud runs the thing pretty much by himself. He's got a book deal with Simon & Schuster, he's got at least $60,000 a month in subscriber revenues to his unedited gossip / rumours database, he's got some banner advertising (prolly not too special revenue wise), and he's got f'dcompany-branded products he sells on his site (I think I read this may bring in over $100,000 this year, but I'd need to double check).
There are other Internet content players who are surviving, generating revenues and even profits. I don't know of ANY that have done so after raising venture capital. Ironically, the sites that raised capital to fund content are the ones who are dying here, there and all over the shop.
I wish I could think of some more Internet content "pureplays" that seem likely to survive, but I can't off the top of my head.
Where was I going with all this? I don't know. But now that I'm here, I think I'll rest and pretend this was where I was intending to head.
Good luck to the content players still out there, still trying to make something work while remaining independent. I feel obligated to say that after reading that 4 corporate players control over HALF of the public's internet browsing needs or some such nonsense.
All of this speculating has got me depressed. Think I'll go read some old USENET articles and think of a simpler time. A time when it looked like Netscape was going to change the world, when it looked like Microsoft had finally been bested, when Amazon was just selling books and it seemed like the people starting companies left-and-right were doing it because they wanted to make a change in something other than their personal worth.
...by building gigantic Lego casinoes on their reservations in New Zealand which only the Maori are allowed to own and operate.
In seriousness, however, one wonders whether the motivation for "protecting their culture" derives from a sense that to merchandize the Maori traditions / icons / language / etc. actually cheapens the traditions (et al), or that only they, the Maori, should be allowed to merchandise and profit from their culture?
I suspect it is the latter. I visited New Zealand for my honeymoon, and certainly saw a lot of signs that they were comfortable profiting from the "curiousity trade" around their culture. I don't say this cynically or dismissively- they were quite gracious to tourists and more than hospitable. One is left to assume that at this point, their culture itself is one of the only things with which they are able to generate an economic return. They can choose to remain a part of the Maori tribal community, and generate decent livings by simply preserving their culture and allowing tourists to 1) pay to be a part of a giant Maori banquet 2) buy various handmade Maori crafts 3) etc... OR they can leave and join the New Zealand community (which many do) and get jobs in the service sector (cab drivers, hotel workers, retail, etc...)
Whatever the case, there may be a bright side to this whole thing. It would seem that perhaps there is a chance that this might ultimately result in a ban on Styx's 1978 album "Pieces of Eight", which featured the stone-faces of Easter Island prominently on the cover, and included a hokey-mystical-pseudo-prog-rock instrumental called "Aku Aku" at the end. In any case, it gratuitiously uses Maori symbols and words, to no coherent end. I find great joy in the hope that perhaps this Maori legal wrangling might ultimately result in the removal of this album from circulation, most particularly because it contains Dennis DeYoung's cornball classic of self-affirmation "I'm Okay". THAT deserves to be banned.
Then again, maybe banning that album wouldn't be such a good idea, since it might result in an INCREASE in the sales for "Kilroy Was Here", a concept album about a future in which albums are banned and rockers forced underground.
Clearly, there is a lot riding on the outcome of this issue. Don't let it end. I'm begging you. Don't let it end this way-hey-hayyyyyyy.
...maybe the better way for the LINUX community to support Mandrake is to petition those very few OpenSource-minded individuals made obscenely wealthy by the recent boom (ESR, I'm talkin' about you!) to become benefactors of Mandrake.
:-p), and then have competitions between the corporations that sell a bunch of merchandise to make money....
I mean, come on Eric, do you really need another Soviet-issue RPG-7G or M-72 light anti-tank weapon at this point? You've got enough to win most arguments you could get into.
I'm being semi-serious here. I'm not optimistic about Mandrake's survival if they intend to pass-the-plate around the linux community and hope that they get enough in tithes to stay alive. The sports franchise examples offered by Mr. Bryar assumes that the high regard for Mandrake of the linux-loving population somehow equates to the profound devotion and civic-pride one has for a local sports team, and for attending local sporting events. Regardless of the enthusiasm of the community for Mandrake, I'm not optimistic that this would work.
Maybe the best option is to have big Linux companies create their own sports franchises, with something geeky-fun like Internet televised BattleBots or laser-tag tournaments featuring executives/programmers at the various companies (officiated by Geeks In Space,
I know that Slashdot doesn't employ reporters, like CNN and AP. Nevertheless, in claiming to be "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters", and considering the respect Slashdot has earned as a source of editorialized news filtering, doesn't it seem about time for Slashdot to be a source of direct dissemination of this sort of news concerning technological breakthroughs?
Right now, Slashdot in some ways resembles The Drudge Report. Drudge himself is hardly even a hack in the news space. He is, at best, a right-leaning news filtration system, with a taste for lurid sensationalism (hence his willingness to constantly link to stories which many in the right-wing would call immoral, perverse, and/or otherwise not worth calling news...). He is, at worst, a launderer of political gossip for extreme wings of either political party, most especially the right. (Again, his love of the lurid will often lead him to be used as a tool for spreading gossip for the left-wing, normally against political opponents on the right... But such is the lot of a tool and slave of scandal and gossip.)
Point being: Drudge barely participates in traditional journalism (and thank the heavens for that, considering his absolutely cringe-inducing grandstanding). His existence is truly parasitical. He depends solely on real journalists working for other news organizations, magazines, etc. to create his own brand of "news".
Slashdot differs from Drudge Report in many ways obvious to any reader of this message board. The very fact that there is a "community" component to Slashdot, with peer-review of comments, and further reviews of those reviews, is substantially more engaging to the news reader than Drudge's gossip post. Yet the two news sites share a common trait- namely, that they fashion their own "source" of news that is itself simply a filtered bias towards other news, administered dutifully every day by human decision-makers who understand the values / interests / worldviews of the demographic they are serving.
Now, fast-forward to my point about "Pixie Dust", so I can tie this sprawling mess into one universal point and walk to my fridge and grab myself a Bawls or two...
It seems to me that there would be an incentive for companies like IBM to cultivate a direct relationship with top-tier tech-news outlets like Slashdot, so that they could break news of their own breakthroughs even faster than they currently do. (Just as political operatives have incentives to break news on DrudgeReport, for instant penetration of the radars of the community...) It seems a marginal effort would be required to get releases about such breakthroughs DIRECTLY to slashdot, so that we would be able to see it here FIRST, rather than see it first on CNN, then a couple of other sites, and FINALLY breaking on Slashdot (the "news for nerds, stuff that matters" network) after it is already soon to be pulled from front page rotation on CNN, etc. I'd prefer that my specialized news sources, like Slashdot, were breaking stories about their field of specialty (technogeek news, in this case) rather than rehashing the geek ephemera that generalized news powerhouses like CNN are producing.
I want to see Slashdot evolve so that it doesn't continue to subsist in the purely parasitical manner that Drudge does.
I want to see whatever clout you've created as a news brand parlayed into better access to breaking news, right from the source.
I want to see some evidence that the successes you've had are leading to growth not only in awareness about you but in your power and sophistication as a news site.
Most importantly, after saying all this, please consider my last request as carefully as anything else you've seen in this entreaty, should the fates smile on me and moderate me upward into your scrutiny.
As you grow more and more like a news organization, gaining in power and might, for the love of all that is good to us your readers, please oh please don't put another Jon Katz on your payroll.
That is all.
"Freaks and Geeks" was truly one of the greatest hour-long shows of the past decade.
If they make DVDs available (currently rumored to be coming through A&E), I hope ThinkGeek would step up and add them to a DVD section on their site. It seems like such a perfect fit. (I was glad to see a lament of the series cancellation in the Demotivators 2001 calendar Thinkgeek is selling...)
"Freaks and Geeks" should be mandatory viewing for slashdot folk, since it was so bloody dead-on about the formulative years of geekdom...
D&D episodes... Atari episodes... Model rocketry episodes... And the band STYX in constant rotation! My life flashed before my eyes, and then got cancelled by some bonehead and replaced with a who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire-knockoff...
(sigh)
It looks like his web store was BUILT in 1995!
(from the Yahoo Stores online tutorial...)
Maybe Museumcompany.com or Despair.com could offer Mr. Graham some design tips on getting the most out of his own store-building application.
Of course, with millions in the bank, he probably doesn't give a rat's ass whether he sells any LISP books or not. So I guess I answered my own question. Nevermind.
Here's the scoop, beetsie.
It is called a merchant account.
These individuals could get their own merchant accounts from a PROVIDER and use open-source ecommerce software to automatically receive and process their own credit card payments. Paying only standard card commission fees. What if they don't own their own hardware, bandwidth, staff and capital pixies?If they didn't have their own server, they could use someone virtual server outfit with merchant services support built in, there are hundreds out there, including one from Yahoo Store.
My criticism isn't of the struggling content provider. I recognize their plights. You can bet that what Amazon current charges 15% for, someone else is going to offer for a lot less, and steal away whatever business Amazon does have by telling the various content players that they will process online donations for a fraction of the 15% that Amazon charges. Leaving Amazon yet again to search for a model that makes actual fiscal sense, before they run out of money.
My own business ran credit cards inhouse on a $900 PC running IC Verify with a dialup account ($19.95/a month). It could be run on a $400 PC today.
Amazon has made enough in commissions on Andrew Sullivan alone to pay for that PC and software and the dialup account. for a year. So the rest is gravy.
You want to know where most of the money given to churches actually goes, even if it renders your clichéd comment irrelevant?
Feeding the poor. Healing the sick. Housing the homeless. Yeah, I know it sucks to have someone distort the picture with facts, but such is life. The money raised by churches isn't going to put another layer of gold-paint on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, nimrod. Who do you think started "The Red Cross" and "Doctors Without Borders"? Linux Torvalds?
Here is a statement I'd like to see you contest. You're average devout Christian is giving a lot more of his or her income to charitable causes than your average Slashdot reader (no, buying clothing from ThinkGeek doesn't count as a charitable contribution, nerds). Hmmm. They must be doing it because their pastors tell them if they don't, they'll go to Hell, right?
Amazon, for those who don't know, has offered to function like a crooked church elder, passing the offering plate around for various content sites like Andrew Sullivan's, ModernHumorist and other content sites. If you want to make a credit card based donation to these sites, you can do so using Amazon's "Tip Jar" system.
Why is it a scam, why are they crooked for doing so?
Amazon charges a 15% fee to give YOUR MONEY to a site you want to support financially. So while passing the plate around to the Internet community, they are taking 15% of your offerings as a fee. In the spirit of, uh, supporting independent content sites? Sorry, that is much too high a fee to be anything but a scam.
If you want to support these sites, like Andrew Sullivan or Modern Humorist, do yourself a favor and mail them a check or money order. Don't enrich Amazon and some credit card companies in the process of supporting content you enjoy, it just ain't right.
Amazon.com- The Relentless Pursuit of a Business Model.
"Co-branding a la Plastic?"..."WRONG! TRY AGAIN!"
"VC funding?"..."THAT IS INCORRECT! THE CORRECT SPELLING OF 'PROFITABILITY' IS..."
Methinks you've been overmoderated. BigTime! Don't tell Yahoo that Banner Ads are the way to go. They're still attempting to find an alternative business model that isn't so completely, utterly, dangerously cyclical and may actually lose money for the first time in several years.
Co-Branding isn't going to work, either. The collective powers of several money-losing BANNER AD driven websites don't amount to much, if anything. Have you visited Plastic lately? No. And neither has anyone else. It has at least two very dire problems.
VC Funding - yeah, that used to be considered a business model, until somebody realized that, well, it just doesn't make sense to loan money to businesses with holes in every pocket of their proverbial pants, at least not if you want to get any money BACK.
VCs got stupid for a while, and wrote some big ass checks to dumb ass people. But those days are over, mate. And if you really want to make a VC pissed, I recommend you approach one and say, "I'd like to borrow $10,000,000. I have an idea for a business. It will make money combining ad banner revenue with co-branding, a la Plastic". You'll be lucky if you escape with your life.
"Okay Mr. Smartypants Smirkleton, then what DOES make money on the net?" Well, I'll tell you one thing. I'm very surprised to see no mention of ThinkGeek in this discourse. I've heard those guys move a boatload of products, a ton, and I'd believe it. What model is that, then? Well, it is specialty retail, targeting the various geek needs of the same community that Slashdot serves to inform (well). (A community that is extremely specialized, hence the obscure subjects considered newsworthy to the readership and authors.)
Yes, I know ThinkGeek is actually owned by VA Linux. But it seems to remain an independent business unit, from outward appearances. I suspect ThinkGeek's financials are one of the few bright spots in the VA Linux annual report. Sadly, they probably aren't broken out from other revenue streams for the public to see, because then we'd know how much more money VA Linux was losing on their core product lines.
Read this recent BusinessWeek story on MiniDots. You'll see that SPECIALIZATION is where it is at.
And no, after all that, I'm not going to also correct your sig file. You'll just have to do that for yourself.
It really sucks when the nature of your online business enterprise is to run in direct opposition to Divine Favour.
The religious sites at least have the additional avenue of prayer to explore when the money starts running tight.
...about bible-believing Christians actually more plentiful on Slashdot than references to "All Your Base..."? Sadly, AYB-gags are a passing fad, while the Christian-bashing is more of a /. pasttime for some.
Hint: If you want them to stop running, stop shooting.