So some guy that used to work for the World Bank wants to make a market more efficient. Surprised?
Of course, as whirled bank types are wont to do, they might actually distort reality to make their models fit onto it.
He recognizes early on that the labels are expected to "take on the risk of talent search, artist development, and distribution costs, in exchange for profits", but then only focuses on talent search.
Downloading files from Kazaa is not doing the work of a talent scout: it is about getting stuff for free. Pretending it's about being a talent scout is laughable.
Also, who's doing the work of artist development and music production (those mp3 are usually recorded in studios...)? The problem is, the labels are often shirking those responsibilities too.
I recognize that downloading copyrighted music is illegal. I also think it served a good purpose: CD prices have gone down - at least in Canada - and we are getting better legal ways of buying music.
While his description of the problem stinks, this is a case of "moral hazard" if that's what you want to call it.
His solution has some merit in that it might encourage labels to try developping unconventional artists (assuming most of the people that hear the songs decide to not ask their money back, and that this type of contract makes them more likely to try new things).
OR - You could of course just provide free music- radio is after all one way to do that, and all the label types know that radio play sells albums.
We don't need new contracts so much as new business models. Keep providing free music, since that works. Also take advantage of new distribution (bye bye music stores with underpaid staff, hello iTunes).
And use all this to promote live music. Since it's easy to keep track of what people buy, you can tell them when their favorite bands are playing near them. Is this so complicated?
Of course, this type of arrangement might be the death knell for large labels... in a market like this, you could arrange to have smaller regional players.
Umair Haque's proposal seems custom-designed to evade most of the issues, and keep the big labels alive. I'm not so interested: they've proven to be companies that don't care about art or artists, and are willing to gouge consumers. Enough!
I'm getting so much junk in Google results these days... if I could get a seach engine that gave results for several different semantic domains (am I using that word properly? sigh), that would be a lot more use to me, and I would probably switch.
1- Which Bible? Do you include revelations? 2- What version? 3- What language? 4- From what language?
It's easy to find predictions that were realized. But some of the arguments you use are flawed. Of course it's unlike any other book. Every book is different. This also reminds me of arguments made by Muslims about the beauty and scientific accuracy of what's in the Qu'ran.
And note, there ARE contradictions. There are statements that can't possibly be seen as true by any reasonnable person. The flood, the earth on four pillars... come on! And of course, the classic "earth is 4000 years old". If you go around saying/writing such silly things as this apparent contradiction being due to my inability to understand them, you must think I'm a moron.
(Nota Bene: The earth is not 4k years old, it is only 5 minutes old. We have been actually created with all memories of what we did together, just like that 5 minutes ago by my very powerful God. Seems unsatisfying a cosmology? Yeah, I thought so. But why?)
What's worse is that Jesus was a master at using allegories, and all his followers want to interpret his second-hand, second-language records literally.
Repeat after me: "We are all individuals"
(PS: I have a lot of admiration for what Jesus actually did and taugth)
They are already cheering on Israel to accelerate the second coming. (clarification: I think both Israel and Palestine have bloody hands in this conflict, and I support groups that would allow both to exist peacefully). Such a violent attitude only makes it more likely that those RFID tags will be used for big-brother type surveillance.
With idiots that can believe a book with literal contradictions can be absolutely and literally true running around trying to promote policy, you know the execution is going to be fubar. The best we can hope for is that they are NOT at all involved with RFID tags.
As others mentionned, this sounds a lot like the Open Code Market idea that has been discussed here previously.
For $25k, Novell just bought amazing publicity. Perhaps an Open Code Market could attract such financing?
Big companies could even offer matching funds to any/certain types of OS software, letting users direct where the money goes. This would not only help finance and promote projects, but publicize the company and the Open Code Market.
And since I'm giving away business advice... it seems to me trade associations would also be a good funder for many targetted projects (I imagine that would be a good way to get funding for things like accounting systems, specialized database packages, etc...)
Someone please try those ideas out. I'd much rather make a living selling code that will be open:)
How optimistic are you about the world's energy supply holding out for a generation?
Fairly optimistic, actually...
In 30 years of energy market predictions, the expert with the best track-record has been Amory Lovins. Even if you think the guy's a kook, at least we have to admit he accurately predicted today's energy consumption to within 2% - something no one else even came close to.
His new book,
Natural Capital is available online for free. It lays out a number of real-world examples where people have made very high returns on investment on energy efficiency.
The Worldwatch institute also has some interesting stats on sustainable energy generation: it's growing by 30%+/year, and prices are going down steadily.
We're starting to see some nice economies of scale, and with new materials (think roof-top PVs at a fraction of the cost as have been featured here on/.) prices should fall precipitously.
Growing demand, falling prices... it's a self-reinforcing loop.
Given the nature of feedback loops and exponential growth, I think we can confidently predict that if renewable energies keep growing at 30%/year for the next 20 years as they have for the past 20, they will entirely clobber the oil/coal/nuclear/fusion industry. Seeing how prices typically fall when you mass produce items, this seems quite reasonnable.
I don't see how this will buy us time... if anything, spending money now on R&D for this technology is money that could be better spent on a renewable future.
India and China are playing technological catch-up, partly to show they're developed, party to not be so damn dependent on us when they want to send a satelite up.
The US has also made clear they wanted "full-spectrum dominance", including in space. If I were China, with the US's track-record of spying and bombing my embassy, spying near my borders, I would try to refuse that dominance by being in space too. (btw, I'm not trolling here, if you want references to those events, I can provide them; this is just how they likely see the US).
So there are many other reasons besides space mining and energy for these companies to have huge space programs, and they are far more compelling culturally, economically and militarily.
When it comes to energy, it is also much cheaper to "leap-frog" our technology. Just like many third-world countries have more cell phones than land-lines, it's easier to develop right away with energy efficient, low-cost technology. The reason? much lower capital outlays... the same reason will force many to go to hybrid cars, passive solar, and energy-efficiency + renewable combos.
Actually, there will likely be a better market for you if you know how to apply proven, boring technology that can save the company major $$$. Word does get around!
OTOH, try to keep up with all the new toys and your chances of having a lot of bankrupt companies on your resume go up dramatically
This is not just silly or amusing. It's about 4 orders of magnitude more economically stupid than reviving nuclear energy. Seriously, just because something is possible doesn't mean it's financially advantageous.
US Steel is not just being put out of business by cheaper foreign mills. It's also squeezed for market share by smaller, energy efficient recyclers.
It's cheaper to recycle old steel than extract more - even when only transporting it on earth.
What's more, advanced composite materials might make steel a thing of the past in many industries. Cars currently use about 10% of the steel market (and a similar chunk of aluminium): as new hybrid models and fuel-efficient cars are made of more carbon-composites and plastics, the steel industry will be squeezed further.
So even if you ignore "foreign" (think space) sources, it's cheaper to
recycle
reduce
What's more, as new materials become cheaper to produce, they will also fall in price, starting to compete for steel's market share in other applications.
The economics of energy are almost as straight-forward, with industrial energy intensiveness dropping 2% a year for years now (and with ROI of 40% on energy retrofits). The debacle of the steel and aluminium industries is only going to accelerate this trend.
With those trends, no company in their right mind would invest 10's of billions to develop this type of technology - even if it was economically feasible by today's market prices, these will fall.
The sector with the largest decrease in jobs was electronics manufacturing, accounting for more than half of all tech jobs lost between 2001 and 2002. For the first time in the seven years of publishing Cyberstates, the software sector recorded a loss of nearly 150,000 jobs last year. Indeed, the once-thriving software sector posted large increases in employment in all previous editions of Cyberstates.
What? We only started losing software jobs last year? We gained even through the dot-bomb? Now *that* is news to me.
In the private sector, many Brazilian businesses are already either using or testing Linux in some capacity, Curiati said. IBM last year helped one of Brazil's largest fast food chains, Habib's, install a Linux system that lets customers order by phone for home delivery within 28 minutes.
1- That's really neat. Groceries that would be delivered as fast as pizza- this could actually work here too (without spending millions on high-tech warehouses or massive advertising).
2- It's rather annoying that some Linux boosters use this example for showing how good their OS is, while ignoring the fact it had 98% to do with such customer-friendly policies. Granted it shows that it can be used in big projects... but is that anything new?
Just tonight I had a chat with a childhood friend now working as a civil servant in France. He tells me they've already switched to a lot of open source. How many countries have made or are making the shift? And will it be inevitable that MS will lose serious market share? If I were a MS shareholder, I would be thinking of selling just about now.
1- I'd rather make half that starting my own business 2- "entrupreneurial" er... they can't spell an ad, they can't be good to work for 3- "hockey stick" growth -- only in Canada...
On top of that, it's programming M$, and requires you to know sysadmin, db admin, front-end and server-side coding. I'm surprised they don't mention graphic design!
If they really were interested in " e-commerce done right" they wouldn't ask one person to do it all.
To all you good coders out there: damned those PHBs; if you have an "entrupreneurial" spirit, team up with people and start your own business.
FYI, I don't even agree with the Kyoto protocol. I didn't bring up my political views, but another group's lie that made it into the article as a rationale for this type of development.
To be clear: computers do not consume 10% of electricity. This was parroted in the article, even though the source of that assumption distorted statistics to suit their political ends.
The distinction is subtle.
On another note, you have repeatedly called me an asshole while I haven't. However if you persist in doing so, I will be forced to conclude you are one.
Something like this that ran in the background would be great. Anytime you created a file/dir, it would do so in CVS, just as when you re-save a file, it automatically versions it. And for GUI-using weenies like me, a right-click should give me a "View file history" option.
That's a canard perpetrated by companies that don't want the US government to sign on to Kyoto- "if you force us to reduce consumption, we could lose our high-tech edge".
Besides, there are many things that are making our computers far more efficient. Hibernation mode, better screens, etc...
There is already significant economic incentive to produce energy efficient CPUs for laptop makers, since this could boost effective battery life. Hopefully one day, we'll have digital ink displays that only consume a fraction of what they do now. With efficient chips (which also require less ventilation), we should have laptop batteries that can last more than a day:)
I don't know much about all this reversible computing stuff... but anything that's sold as a solution to a non-existent problem, however elegant the technology, is intrinsically bad.
Just my $.02
First, for those who believe a magazine has the right to pull what they want from their archives... GET A F&*#$%G GRIP. Sure, not archiving it would be ok. But removing it from the table of contents? And only removing one article from the free public archives, one that goes against the political climate of the day? Smells like a 1984 fish.
As to keeping corporations honest. Easy: make it more profitable.
Or, put another way: make it really expensive to be dishonest.
A slashdotting of the issue hopefully means a lot of us are less likely to buy Time. I would also encourage those with a subscription to ask for a cancellation and refund.
Markets can be pretty effective mechanism. Right now the markets reward unethical behaviour. If we change the inventive structure, we will get different results. Make a point of buying from sources that give more information, boycott those that don't, tell your friends.
By 2050, approximately 10 billion people will live on Earth demanding ~5 times the power now available.
How is increasing population by 50% necessarily going to increase power consumption 5 fold?
We are capable of making almost any appliance 10 times more energy efficient than they were 50 years ago, and chances are good we can probably increase our energy efficiency by that much once more.
Unlike that hare-brained idea, this would not only be cheap, it would probably be economically advantageous (unless of course, you're a Bush or a Saudi prince).
There are plenty of issues with e-voting (privacy, security, etc..).
But there is at least one thing it could do better than - at least cheaper than - paper voting. I'm thinking of schemes like Condorcet voting, which would eliminate first past the post absurdities. People routinely get a seat with only 40% of expressed vote (55% turnout...), with the remaining 60% of votes being split by the other two parties. Oh, and the Marijuana party, Rhino party knock-offs, Marxist-Leninist...
E-voting for the same old system is not quite as interesting. Perhaps if people thought we could make votes more meaningful, more than 55% of us would bother to vote.
Commercial gateways in Canada usually charge a transaction fee around CAD$0.2-0.35, and a monthly fee ranging from CAD$38 and up. Set-up fees are pretty hefty, and discount fees usually start around 3.5%-5%, going down slightly with large volumes.
For a band wanting to sell songs online, BitPass makes the most sense, though they could also offer the whole album via credit card - the transaction fees alone would make BitPass a better deal on most sales.
Slashdot Mirror
So some guy that used to work for the World Bank wants to make a market more efficient. Surprised?
Of course, as whirled bank types are wont to do, they might actually distort reality to make their models fit onto it.
He recognizes early on that the labels are expected to "take on the risk of talent search, artist development, and distribution costs, in exchange for profits", but then only focuses on talent search.
Downloading files from Kazaa is not doing the work of a talent scout: it is about getting stuff for free. Pretending it's about being a talent scout is laughable.
Also, who's doing the work of artist development and music production (those mp3 are usually recorded in studios...)? The problem is, the labels are often shirking those responsibilities too.
I recognize that downloading copyrighted music is illegal. I also think it served a good purpose: CD prices have gone down - at least in Canada - and we are getting better legal ways of buying music.
While his description of the problem stinks, this is a case of "moral hazard" if that's what you want to call it.
His solution has some merit in that it might encourage labels to try developping unconventional artists (assuming most of the people that hear the songs decide to not ask their money back, and that this type of contract makes them more likely to try new things).
OR - You could of course just provide free music- radio is after all one way to do that, and all the label types know that radio play sells albums.
We don't need new contracts so much as new business models. Keep providing free music, since that works. Also take advantage of new distribution (bye bye music stores with underpaid staff, hello iTunes).
And use all this to promote live music. Since it's easy to keep track of what people buy, you can tell them when their favorite bands are playing near them. Is this so complicated?
Of course, this type of arrangement might be the death knell for large labels... in a market like this, you could arrange to have smaller regional players.
Umair Haque's proposal seems custom-designed to evade most of the issues, and keep the big labels alive. I'm not so interested: they've proven to be companies that don't care about art or artists, and are willing to gouge consumers. Enough!
I'm getting so much junk in Google results these days... if I could get a seach engine that gave results for several different semantic domains (am I using that word properly? sigh), that would be a lot more use to me, and I would probably switch.
1- Which Bible? Do you include revelations?
2- What version?
3- What language?
4- From what language?
It's easy to find predictions that were realized. But some of the arguments you use are flawed. Of course it's unlike any other book. Every book is different. This also reminds me of arguments made by Muslims about the beauty and scientific accuracy of what's in the Qu'ran.
And note, there ARE contradictions. There are statements that can't possibly be seen as true by any reasonnable person. The flood, the earth on four pillars... come on! And of course, the classic "earth is 4000 years old". If you go around saying/writing such silly things as this apparent contradiction being due to my inability to understand them, you must think I'm a moron.
(Nota Bene: The earth is not 4k years old, it is only 5 minutes old. We have been actually created with all memories of what we did together, just like that 5 minutes ago by my very powerful God. Seems unsatisfying a cosmology? Yeah, I thought so. But why?)
What's worse is that Jesus was a master at using allegories, and all his followers want to interpret his second-hand, second-language records literally.
Repeat after me: "We are all individuals"
(PS: I have a lot of admiration for what Jesus actually did and taugth)
They are already cheering on Israel to accelerate the second coming. (clarification: I think both Israel and Palestine have bloody hands in this conflict, and I support groups that would allow both to exist peacefully). Such a violent attitude only makes it more likely that those RFID tags will be used for big-brother type surveillance.
With idiots that can believe a book with literal contradictions can be absolutely and literally true running around trying to promote policy, you know the execution is going to be fubar. The best we can hope for is that they are NOT at all involved with RFID tags.
oh, right, the gamers are on windows anyway :)
As others mentionned, this sounds a lot like the Open Code Market idea that has been discussed here previously.
:)
For $25k, Novell just bought amazing publicity. Perhaps an Open Code Market could attract such financing?
Big companies could even offer matching funds to any/certain types of OS software, letting users direct where the money goes. This would not only help finance and promote projects, but publicize the company and the Open Code Market.
And since I'm giving away business advice... it seems to me trade associations would also be a good funder for many targetted projects (I imagine that would be a good way to get funding for things like accounting systems, specialized database packages, etc...)
Someone please try those ideas out. I'd much rather make a living selling code that will be open
How optimistic are you about the world's energy supply holding out for a generation?
Fairly optimistic, actually...
In 30 years of energy market predictions, the expert with the best track-record has been Amory Lovins. Even if you think the guy's a kook, at least we have to admit he accurately predicted today's energy consumption to within 2% - something no one else even came close to.
His new book, Natural Capital is available online for free. It lays out a number of real-world examples where people have made very high returns on investment on energy efficiency.
The Worldwatch institute also has some interesting stats on sustainable energy generation: it's growing by 30%+/year, and prices are going down steadily.
We're starting to see some nice economies of scale, and with new materials (think roof-top PVs at a fraction of the cost as have been featured here on /.) prices should fall precipitously.
Growing demand, falling prices... it's a self-reinforcing loop.
Given the nature of feedback loops and exponential growth, I think we can confidently predict that if renewable energies keep growing at 30%/year for the next 20 years as they have for the past 20, they will entirely clobber the oil/coal/nuclear/fusion industry. Seeing how prices typically fall when you mass produce items, this seems quite reasonnable.
I don't see how this will buy us time... if anything, spending money now on R&D for this technology is money that could be better spent on a renewable future.
Isn't this the second time this week alwayson has been /.'ed?
:)
Are the editors doing this on purpose?
India and China are playing technological catch-up, partly to show they're developed, party to not be so damn dependent on us when they want to send a satelite up.
The US has also made clear they wanted "full-spectrum dominance", including in space. If I were China, with the US's track-record of spying and bombing my embassy, spying near my borders, I would try to refuse that dominance by being in space too. (btw, I'm not trolling here, if you want references to those events, I can provide them; this is just how they likely see the US).
So there are many other reasons besides space mining and energy for these companies to have huge space programs, and they are far more compelling culturally, economically and militarily.
When it comes to energy, it is also much cheaper to "leap-frog" our technology. Just like many third-world countries have more cell phones than land-lines, it's easier to develop right away with energy efficient, low-cost technology. The reason? much lower capital outlays... the same reason will force many to go to hybrid cars, passive solar, and energy-efficiency + renewable combos.
Actually, there will likely be a better market for you if you know how to apply proven, boring technology that can save the company major $$$. Word does get around!
OTOH, try to keep up with all the new toys and your chances of having a lot of bankrupt companies on your resume go up dramatically
This is not just silly or amusing. It's about 4 orders of magnitude more economically stupid than reviving nuclear energy. Seriously, just because something is possible doesn't mean it's financially advantageous.
US Steel is not just being put out of business by cheaper foreign mills. It's also squeezed for market share by smaller, energy efficient recyclers.
It's cheaper to recycle old steel than extract more - even when only transporting it on earth.
What's more, advanced composite materials might make steel a thing of the past in many industries. Cars currently use about 10% of the steel market (and a similar chunk of aluminium): as new hybrid models and fuel-efficient cars are made of more carbon-composites and plastics, the steel industry will be squeezed further.
So even if you ignore "foreign" (think space) sources, it's cheaper to
What's more, as new materials become cheaper to produce, they will also fall in price, starting to compete for steel's market share in other applications.
The economics of energy are almost as straight-forward, with industrial energy intensiveness dropping 2% a year for years now (and with ROI of 40% on energy retrofits). The debacle of the steel and aluminium industries is only going to accelerate this trend.
With those trends, no company in their right mind would invest 10's of billions to develop this type of technology - even if it was economically feasible by today's market prices, these will fall.
1- That's really neat. Groceries that would be delivered as fast as pizza- this could actually work here too (without spending millions on high-tech warehouses or massive advertising).
2- It's rather annoying that some Linux boosters use this example for showing how good their OS is, while ignoring the fact it had 98% to do with such customer-friendly policies. Granted it shows that it can be used in big projects... but is that anything new?
Just tonight I had a chat with a childhood friend now working as a civil servant in France. He tells me they've already switched to a lot of open source. How many countries have made or are making the shift? And will it be inevitable that MS will lose serious market share? If I were a MS shareholder, I would be thinking of selling just about now.
1- I'd rather make half that starting my own business
2- "entrupreneurial" er... they can't spell an ad, they can't be good to work for
3- "hockey stick" growth -- only in Canada...
On top of that, it's programming M$, and requires you to know sysadmin, db admin, front-end and server-side coding. I'm surprised they don't mention graphic design!
If they really were interested in " e-commerce done right" they wouldn't ask one person to do it all.
To all you good coders out there: damned those PHBs; if you have an "entrupreneurial" spirit, team up with people and start your own business.
FYI, I don't even agree with the Kyoto protocol. I didn't bring up my political views, but another group's lie that made it into the article as a rationale for this type of development.
To be clear: computers do not consume 10% of electricity. This was parroted in the article, even though the source of that assumption distorted statistics to suit their political ends.
The distinction is subtle.
On another note, you have repeatedly called me an asshole while I haven't. However if you persist in doing so, I will be forced to conclude you are one.
So I guess reading the article makes me an asshole on /., eh? D'oh!
Something like this that ran in the background would be great. Anytime you created a file/dir, it would do so in CVS, just as when you re-save a file, it automatically versions it. And for GUI-using weenies like me, a right-click should give me a "View file history" option.
That's only primary energy efficiency: how well the engine extracts energy from fuel and turns it into mechanical energy.
If you consider how much of the initial energy is actually used to move the passengers, it drops to about 1% - pretty dismal.
That's a canard perpetrated by companies that don't want the US government to sign on to Kyoto- "if you force us to reduce consumption, we could lose our high-tech edge". Besides, there are many things that are making our computers far more efficient. Hibernation mode, better screens, etc... There is already significant economic incentive to produce energy efficient CPUs for laptop makers, since this could boost effective battery life. Hopefully one day, we'll have digital ink displays that only consume a fraction of what they do now. With efficient chips (which also require less ventilation), we should have laptop batteries that can last more than a day :)
I don't know much about all this reversible computing stuff... but anything that's sold as a solution to a non-existent problem, however elegant the technology, is intrinsically bad.
Just my $.02
How's that for twisted? The default search is "Articles since 1985". :)
First, for those who believe a magazine has the right to pull what they want from their archives... GET A F&*#$%G GRIP. Sure, not archiving it would be ok. But removing it from the table of contents? And only removing one article from the free public archives, one that goes against the political climate of the day? Smells like a 1984 fish.
As to keeping corporations honest. Easy: make it more profitable.
Or, put another way: make it really expensive to be dishonest.
A slashdotting of the issue hopefully means a lot of us are less likely to buy Time. I would also encourage those with a subscription to ask for a cancellation and refund.
Markets can be pretty effective mechanism. Right now the markets reward unethical behaviour. If we change the inventive structure, we will get different results. Make a point of buying from sources that give more information, boycott those that don't, tell your friends.
How is increasing population by 50% necessarily going to increase power consumption 5 fold?
We are capable of making almost any appliance 10 times more energy efficient than they were 50 years ago, and chances are good we can probably increase our energy efficiency by that much once more.
Unlike that hare-brained idea, this would not only be cheap, it would probably be economically advantageous (unless of course, you're a Bush or a Saudi prince).
There are plenty of issues with e-voting (privacy, security, etc..).
But there is at least one thing it could do better than - at least cheaper than - paper voting. I'm thinking of schemes like Condorcet voting, which would eliminate first past the post absurdities. People routinely get a seat with only 40% of expressed vote (55% turnout...), with the remaining 60% of votes being split by the other two parties. Oh, and the Marijuana party, Rhino party knock-offs, Marxist-Leninist...
E-voting for the same old system is not quite as interesting. Perhaps if people thought we could make votes more meaningful, more than 55% of us would bother to vote.
Commercial gateways in Canada usually charge a transaction fee around CAD$0.2-0.35, and a monthly fee ranging from CAD$38 and up. Set-up fees are pretty hefty, and discount fees usually start around 3.5%-5%, going down slightly with large volumes.
For a band wanting to sell songs online, BitPass makes the most sense, though they could also offer the whole album via credit card - the transaction fees alone would make BitPass a better deal on most sales.
I too was convinced after reading Shirky's essay. Then I read Scott McCloud's rebuttal, and I have to say it is quite convincing.