There must be many ways of dealing with this. Otherwise subscription sites wouldn't exist. No reason it has to be all-you-can-eat. A simple approach would simply meter the number of queries and bill accordingly. Or tiered monthly maximum queries. I'm sure you could come up with a number of workable approaches if you were asked to.
I don't know about you, but I would certainly pony up 10 bucks a month if Google switched to a subscription model. For me, it is the most useful site on the Web. I sure hope the new corporate overlords don't screw it up.
I tried it at around 2:30 PST. The speed was OK, but I was not terribly impressed with either the categories or their contents. I tried searching on Mozart, hoping that it would provide separate categories for biography, opera, symphonic works, sheet music, commentary, recordings, etc. It came back with 10 top level categories and a number of sub-categories. But they were mostly useless for my purposes. Adding additional terms to the query (Mozart opera) helped some, but again the clustering did not correspond to what I would expect.
I think it would be great if someone figured out how to do this, but I recognize that it is a difficult problem to solve. Perhaps a good first step would be to come up with an algorithm that would reliably separate commercial offerings from knowledge resources. I would enter "Mozart -commerce" and the results would exclude any page that is trying to sell me something. If I were interested in buying, I could use +commerce instead.
I may be talking through my hat here, but I am sure someone will gladly point that out if I am wrong. I thought that GPS navigation requires signals from more than one source to calculate position. I think this would be a lot harder to spoof than a Die Hard flick would suggest.
Dell was the first to use the Web as its main sales channel. It used just-in-time manufacturing practices to minimize inventory. By keeping its costs below that of the competition it was able to gain a large installed base. It leveraged its competitive advantage to provide even lower prices. It provided good enough support that it maintains customer loyalty. Its products are generally well made.
You are correct that none of these is unique, but when you put them all altogether you get a very successful company.
Has it occured to anyone that our Government (and any other industrialized nation) has "plans" on the books for just about every imaginable scenario? And should?
So France has plans for invading Cuba. Finland has a contingency for occupying Panama. Australia has thought about war with Canada.
Gimme a break. If all the industrialized nations are considering all possible scenarios, they are wasting a great deal of time and money. I don't believe this is the case. Self interest must be rational if it is to have any value.
That's not to say that the US didn't consider taking the Saudi oil fields (and isn't still thinking about it). But it is unfair to most of the rest of the industrialized world to claim that "everybody's doing it." No, they are probably not, even if the US is.
I do laugh. I am not into hip hop and probably would not understand 90% of the lyrics. But bling bling is onomatopoeic. I can just hear the bracelets jingling. It is expressive.
Calling terms like "metrosexual" or "bling bling" irritating is silly. Language is a living, evolving thing. Lexicographers develop dictionaries by accumulating samples of speech in the real world. Words come and go. Sure, one could say "fop," but it would sound archaic to most of us.
I would agree except that I really doubt that the VeriChip is going to catch on. Outside of prisons anyway. It's just too creepy for people to tolerate. On the other hand, electronic voting seems to have a degree of credibility among the technically unsophisticated. They do not understand the risks, which makes it more likely that the technology will spread.
Fortune Magazine agrees. It named paperless voting the worst technology of 2003. Runner up was a skin-implantable RFID chip from Applied Digital Solutions.
I suppose so, mostly. There still remain vestiges of hereditary peerage in the House of Lords, or at least there did the last time I paid any attention. Granted, they don't mean much in the day to day governance. And the monarchy survives, for reasons that escape me. So while feudalism is gone, there are still remnants. Like granting knighthood. Of course, the modern requirement seems to mostly be making lots of money, which Americans can easily relate to. TBL is a happy exception to the rule.
Songwriters would certainly need to be paid. And I suppose that the providing site would need to make sure that it has the right to distribute the works that it is hosting. As your George Harrison example makes clear, this is not foolproof online or off.
I don't mean to trivialize the issues in constructing an alternative music distribution mechanism. It won't be free, and whoever does it will be entitled to a fair profit. Servers, software, bandwidth and people will be needed and must be paid for. Still it is hard to imagine that all this wouldn't be cheaper than manufacturing plants, warehouses, freight charges, retail costs and markup on all the preceeding.
If the artists want a better cut, they need to establish a better model.
Yes, that is precisely my point. A new model is possible, but the current offering of online stores does not even begin to implement it. You are correct that it is up to the artists to take the initiative here. No other existing part of the music food chain could be reasonably expected to.
Woe is me. "Won't you please think of the artists?" No, I won't.
So perhaps KaZaa would be better for you. Or are you in the record industry yourself?
Let the buyer beware. As far as I can see, all of the existing online stores only lower prices to the consumer to the extent that one can buy a single track of an otherwise uninteresting CD. Now, that is better than nothing. But it is a far cry from the potential that online music sales offers.
From what I have read, about 45% of the final sales price of a CD is based on retail, manufacturing and distribution costs. If that is so, then the current online offerings actually raise the profit margin to record labels and the RIAA without benefiting the artists at all. Should I be grateful? I think not.
There is tremendous potential here for artists to go directly to consumers. The costs of setting up a digital recording studio are no longer prohibitive, though they are not trivial. It is reasonable to expect that sites will spring up soon enough to provide the infrastructure that independent artists need to distribute their music and collect on the sales with a reasonable overhead. The current online stores seem to be a last ditch attempt to maintain control by the music industry. Nothing surprising there, but we should think very hard about whether we want to support a timid change when the potential for radical change exists.
Well, at least one other person here likes McEwan, so you're not all alone. Slashdotters seem to be more serious about technology than fiction. Ooops, flamebait...shame on me.
Yes, you are right, of course. I waited for the paperback. Still, since LOTR was originally published before most Slashdotters were even born (1954/55), maybe you could cut me some slack here.
LOL. Yeah, I had the same reaction. I didn't really get into reading fiction until after I got out of school and didn't have to worry about that crap. I guess that's why I read a lot but avoid book clubs.
Another person pointed out some marketing blather about how the book will make you believe in God. Well, it didn't, but I am glad that I didn't let that nonsense stop me from reading it in the first place.
If I recall correctly, the final report of the Japanese ultimately accepted the tiger version. It certainly was the better story. I think the point was that given the choice, why not believe the better story?
I just pulled out my copy of the book. Here is what I think is a key passage during the investigation. Pi: "Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?"
You may well have a different take on it, but that's what great writing is all about.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm broke now. I'd still pay.
There must be many ways of dealing with this. Otherwise subscription sites wouldn't exist. No reason it has to be all-you-can-eat. A simple approach would simply meter the number of queries and bill accordingly. Or tiered monthly maximum queries. I'm sure you could come up with a number of workable approaches if you were asked to.
I don't know about you, but I would certainly pony up 10 bucks a month if Google switched to a subscription model. For me, it is the most useful site on the Web. I sure hope the new corporate overlords don't screw it up.
I think it would be great if someone figured out how to do this, but I recognize that it is a difficult problem to solve. Perhaps a good first step would be to come up with an algorithm that would reliably separate commercial offerings from knowledge resources. I would enter "Mozart -commerce" and the results would exclude any page that is trying to sell me something. If I were interested in buying, I could use +commerce instead.
IANARS, but I would bet that the bandwidth for transmitting data is the main constraint, not the cost of the navcams.
I may be talking through my hat here, but I am sure someone will gladly point that out if I am wrong. I thought that GPS navigation requires signals from more than one source to calculate position. I think this would be a lot harder to spoof than a Die Hard flick would suggest.
Regardless of politics, posting this here is nothing more than spam. Some of us are lefties, but all of us hate spam.
You are correct that none of these is unique, but when you put them all altogether you get a very successful company.
So France has plans for invading Cuba. Finland has a contingency for occupying Panama. Australia has thought about war with Canada.
Gimme a break. If all the industrialized nations are considering all possible scenarios, they are wasting a great deal of time and money. I don't believe this is the case. Self interest must be rational if it is to have any value.
That's not to say that the US didn't consider taking the Saudi oil fields (and isn't still thinking about it). But it is unfair to most of the rest of the industrialized world to claim that "everybody's doing it." No, they are probably not, even if the US is.
Lighten up.
Calling terms like "metrosexual" or "bling bling" irritating is silly. Language is a living, evolving thing. Lexicographers develop dictionaries by accumulating samples of speech in the real world. Words come and go. Sure, one could say "fop," but it would sound archaic to most of us.
I would agree except that I really doubt that the VeriChip is going to catch on. Outside of prisons anyway. It's just too creepy for people to tolerate. On the other hand, electronic voting seems to have a degree of credibility among the technically unsophisticated. They do not understand the risks, which makes it more likely that the technology will spread.
Fortune Magazine agrees. It named paperless voting the worst technology of 2003. Runner up was a skin-implantable RFID chip from Applied Digital Solutions.
I suppose so, mostly. There still remain vestiges of hereditary peerage in the House of Lords, or at least there did the last time I paid any attention. Granted, they don't mean much in the day to day governance. And the monarchy survives, for reasons that escape me. So while feudalism is gone, there are still remnants. Like granting knighthood. Of course, the modern requirement seems to mostly be making lots of money, which Americans can easily relate to. TBL is a happy exception to the rule.
So, the next time England goes to war are Elton John, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger going to be leading the charge?
Yeah. I've been unemployed for a while. If you want to search for jobs you need to remember to include -blow in your query.
Probably not. On the other hand, you will only have to pay twice as much for the 10x memory that all the new products will require ;)
Slashdotters are not the same as their companies. I have found the reports of what the companies are doing rather interesting.
I don't mean to trivialize the issues in constructing an alternative music distribution mechanism. It won't be free, and whoever does it will be entitled to a fair profit. Servers, software, bandwidth and people will be needed and must be paid for. Still it is hard to imagine that all this wouldn't be cheaper than manufacturing plants, warehouses, freight charges, retail costs and markup on all the preceeding.
Yes, that is precisely my point. A new model is possible, but the current offering of online stores does not even begin to implement it. You are correct that it is up to the artists to take the initiative here. No other existing part of the music food chain could be reasonably expected to.
Woe is me. "Won't you please think of the artists?" No, I won't.
So perhaps KaZaa would be better for you. Or are you in the record industry yourself?
From what I have read, about 45% of the final sales price of a CD is based on retail, manufacturing and distribution costs. If that is so, then the current online offerings actually raise the profit margin to record labels and the RIAA without benefiting the artists at all. Should I be grateful? I think not.
There is tremendous potential here for artists to go directly to consumers. The costs of setting up a digital recording studio are no longer prohibitive, though they are not trivial. It is reasonable to expect that sites will spring up soon enough to provide the infrastructure that independent artists need to distribute their music and collect on the sales with a reasonable overhead. The current online stores seem to be a last ditch attempt to maintain control by the music industry. Nothing surprising there, but we should think very hard about whether we want to support a timid change when the potential for radical change exists.
Well, at least one other person here likes McEwan, so you're not all alone. Slashdotters seem to be more serious about technology than fiction. Ooops, flamebait...shame on me.
Yes, you are right, of course. I waited for the paperback. Still, since LOTR was originally published before most Slashdotters were even born (1954/55), maybe you could cut me some slack here.
Another person pointed out some marketing blather about how the book will make you believe in God. Well, it didn't, but I am glad that I didn't let that nonsense stop me from reading it in the first place.
I just pulled out my copy of the book. Here is what I think is a key passage during the investigation. Pi: "Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?"
You may well have a different take on it, but that's what great writing is all about.