Free software types are not opposed to for-pay software, at all. The two concepts are not related.
This distinction was somewhat valid when one had to order software on tapes and disks.
But in an era when the cost of distribution is just about zero, it's very difficult to charge for copyleft software.
What are the options to earn income from software that's entirely copyleft?
Panhandling: But most won't pay if the only new thing they're getting is a warm feeling. It turns programmers into beggars and servants.
Selling support: But many users don't need it, or can't afford it, and they need it less the higher the quality of the software.
Embedded Advertisng: Users find this very valuable.
Sell Documentation: Now we're introducing a proprietary component again, preventing open community involvement in its development.
Access to the source and build systems, and the ability to distribute modified versions, are the real strengths of open software. By removing the freedom-to-run requirement it becomes easier to charge for software that still gives users all the freedoms that motivated Richard Stallman to start GNU and the FSF.
I agree that analysis is fine, as long as it covers all perspectives, not just the one that fits a thesis — the "story" — that's being constructed. That's comment, which is also fine, as long as it's separated from news.
That's the big trouble I have with journalistic prose, which makes it differ from scientific and judicial prose, and makes it more like a legal brief from one side of a court case: The need to have an angle so that the story is more entertaining to both read and write.
Around here it's almost all post-pay the attendant, because they want you to buy stuff in their store. Few pumps have card swipes, and only in selected poor or rough areas do they require pre-payment, sometimes only when the price has spiked.
possibly comes only from self-interest (lots of small-time App store developers)
This is probably true. Although there's a lot of small-time web-publishers of information, online apps, and downloadable native apps, go-getters have been attracted to the new mobile apps and its strongly-commercial culture. Developers with FLOSS mentality are turned off by the restrictions imposed, plus the need to buy devices and development kits.
Blocking ads in an ad-supported app (on any platform) is not at all different from blocking ads in a web site. The latter has been described numerous times on Slashdot, and while there were always some voices in support of "ad blocking is stealing!" POV, they were always few and far between (and quickly downmodded), and the mainstream opinion was always strongly "it's my box, and I can read websites the way I like on it, including suppressing ads".
And yet, in this thread, there is a huge number of responses that basically equate ad blocking on iPhone to stealing...
Yes, good point.
I think the difference is that:
There's a greater resistance for paying for information (mainly websites) than tools (mainly apps), probably because tools are more consistently useful.
There are more sources of information on a topic than apps for a task, so a subscription to a particular site is hard to sell.
Apps can be bought outright, but web-based information and cloud apps usually require regular payments.
Subscriptions to web apps and information are usually more expensive than mobile apps.
Buying a mobile app for a particular device is an easy and consistent process, as opposed to the anarchy of the web.
For people who do not want ads, the no-ad paid option is more often available for mobile apps than for websites. (Though in their iPad apps newspapers are trying to continue the tradition of having ads even in subscription publications.)
So blocking ads on the web is only likely to become regarded as morally questionable when either a mature web-based micropayment system is in place, or some alternative way of getting paid for providing information is commonly available.
From my experience, adjusting the pitch of the audio by +4% (without altering its duration) is enough to fool Google's algorithm without being noticeable/distracting, unless you're playing the original song and the altered song side-by-side.
Yes, 4% faster is already what 24fps material becomes when played on 25/50fps TV systems. Only people with perfect pitch can easily detect the difference, and the TV stations love it because they can fit in 4% more ads. Perhaps Google can detect a simple speed-up, but not when the audio is DSPed to shift the pitch but not the duration like you suggest.
Also, I have seen a music video on YouTube from an unofficial source that reversed the picture left-right. This, perhaps in combination with a pitch shift, may be what has allowed it to survive deletion.
Thanks to the story here about Bigpond's file library decision, in the process of further reading I found out about their discount offer, which they probably only want new customers to hear about. As an existing customer, I wasn't notified, though to avoid complaints of discrimination, is also available to existing customers.
Their file library decision has now saved me (cost them) $180/yr — plus I get enough extra allowance to download a Linux distro a week. Thank you Slashdot and the anonymous story poster.
(I know there are better plans from other vendors, but being so far from an exchange, I need to stick with cable to get decent speeds.)
Yes, ominously the article states that it will be running a "self-aware OS".
I'm of the view that there's a good chance that current or near-future supercomputers would be able to simulate a human brain in real-time. This is because there's an awful lot of computational redundancy in real brains, given what they're made from, and given their need to self-construct.
All that's needed is to reverse-engineer the algorithms used by each part of the brain, and to properly connect them up.
Advertising or paywalls aren't the only alternatives for professional media. Publishers should be able to earn income directly from the help they give their users. Slashdot already does this though Amazon affiliate links.
But just more and more are finding advertising useless because it pushes agendas in an increasingly annoying way, affiliate links still push a single vendor. Slashdot should be able get paid for hosting a helpful review, no matter where the book was bought, or even if a bad review helped someone choose a different book.
This is my vision for a 3rd revenue source for publishers, which can subsidise non-product-related journalism, just as classifieds once paid for foreign and investigative journalism.
Well I do have to restart Firefox every day or two to clear memory leaks or fragmentation, which begin to make it unusably slow. But I once had to do this much more frequently, so the problems are getting gradually fixed. It takes a long time to quit after being used for a while, which makes me think it's got an awful lot swapped-out.
If you're not experiencing this, perhaps the leaks are in one of the extensions I use.
As for Flock, it appears its business model is the same as Firefox: search engine product placement. This was with Yahoo, but it'd be interesting if it stays that way, considering it's now based on a Google browser.
Ads which are shown for the brief period it takes to activate Reader are less exposed than those that appear on a page while it is read, and so must eventually pay less
Hello, I only said it's not ad free. The FACT is that the user DOES SEE ADS. It might be less than they would otherwise but it is not ad free. You are just being pedantic.
Publishers will earn less revenue, which is what all this is about.
Some iApps are newspapers, which compete with the websites of these papers. Reader is a Safari feature that can only tamper with websites.
Which is my main point. I guess you didn't realize that Instapaper specifically goes to great lengths to try and INCLUDE ads in the articles it scrapes for later reading? Or that, again, you have to actually VISIT THE SITE and thus SEE THE ADS in order to USE instapaper?
Name something else if you were thinking of another product, but I'm 99% sure you were going off what you imagined Instapaper did rather than reality.
I hadn't heard of Instapaper. I was thinking about the iPad apps of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Times, and The Australian.
Ads on the web are vulnerable and competitive, while those on Apps give Apple a tamper-free monopoly.
Complete And Utter Bullshit, because a developer can use any other ad framework they like. It's not like none existed before iAds.
The monopoly to which I was referring was the App Store. Other than the new restrictions on analytics data, iAd is not currently a monopoly.
I suppose iAds could be blocked using a proxy if on Wi-Fi, but how could it be done on 3G?
The final straw, you are complaining about Reader only letting you see ads briefly, and then seeking to block them altogether - and finding you can't, thus in fact proving my point that iAds and web advertising have zero in common.
Again, there is no reason at all to be "suspicious" of Apple introducing iAds and reader at the same time, because they are totally unrelated.
Sorry, I can't work out what you're saying here.
Reader is probably not an Apple conspiracy, but it does have the effect of making their mobile offerings more attractive to publishers, particularly if it spreads to other browsers.
I'll let you have the last word because I know you'll be forced to defend your position, no matter how untenable - I'll let the reader make up their minds as to which is more logical.
Reader affects sites people view on the web. Furthermore, it only lets you read content ad-free AFTER ads have loaded and you have looked at them at least once (on the first page).
Ads which are shown for the brief period it takes to activate Reader are less exposed than those that appear on a page while it is read, and so must eventually pay less. As well, ads that would have appeared on second and subsequent pages are never displayed.
Now over to iAds. It's a component of the iPhone SDK that allows you to more easily embed ads in an APPLICATION. It's not targeting the web, at all. But even if it were - it would still be dropped by Reader the same way all other ads are! iAds is simply a way to drop an HTML5 container in your application which is then fed ads according to criteria you specify.
Some iApps are newspapers, which compete with the websites of these papers. Reader is a Safari feature that can only tamper with websites.
Ads on the web are mature, which is why Apple has no interest in moving into that market. Ad frameworks on mobile devices were pretty rough, and Apple saw how they could improve on them so they did.
Ads on the web are vulnerable and competitive, while those on Apps give Apple a tamper-free monopoly.
I suppose iAds could be blocked using a proxy if on Wi-Fi, but how could it be done on 3G?
Proper research methodology involves absorbing as much knowledge as possible, then synthesising something new. In this world of information overload, skimming and sharing (including social media) help find all the pearls, which are studied more deeply. You then find a quiet place to think.
Many will suffer ad-supported versions, and learn to hate the companies that are annoying them. Or is it true that all publicity is good publicity?
But as we get wealthier, I do see more being willing to avoid ads by buying things outright. Many will however cling to the certainty, promiscuity, and convenience of free.
First official ad-blocking and auto-paging browser
on
Safari 5 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Yes, this seems to be the first time ad-blocking and auto-paging have been built into the standard release of a browser.
Perhaps it's an Apple ploy to push publishers to iPad and iPhone apps, where their content cannot be altered.
When bandwidth is a limited resource, the use of pricing tiers based on data limits allow ISPs to extract the
most money from each user, and also effectively allows them to automatically raise prices as normal Internet usage pushes people into higher tiers.
But this only works outside the US, or where there is a monopoly. If the supply of bandwidth is much less limited, competition should ensure that only "outrageous" usage gets clipped, which looks to be what has happened.
Re:"targeted advertising" is NOT a benefit to ME
on
Privacy Machiavellis
·
· Score: 1
You can cut all that out by just giving me cash directly to watch their ads. Some cable channels cost money per hour (per month anyway). I don't see why some couldn't pay you. Same concept with micropayments, all this focus on me sending big corporation a few pennies, but I don't see why it couldn't work in reverse.
Most ads already effectively pay you by providing some discount or other offer.
Re:"targeted advertising" is NOT a benefit to ME
on
Privacy Machiavellis
·
· Score: 1
consumer reports has its information online for subscribers. subscription is a small monthly fee.
there are similar services for specialty interests, for example Cooks Illustrated has a simply amazing amount of in-depth and pretty objective information about utensils and food available again for a small monthly fee. for example, they found that real vanilla extract isn't any better in baked goods, than the 20 times cheaper synthetic vanillin (it is however a lot better in custards and ice cream and that sort of thing).
the only question is doing it for "free". for most general consumer items, amazon works. for specialist items, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a periodical with web access, like Cooks Illustrated.
Because they only use it occasionally, it's hard to get people to subscribe to product review information. A publication like Consumer Reports is most attractive because it looks at commonly-bought products, but conversely is not a total solution because, as you say, it only covers a small fraction of products.
It's also hard to get people to pay upfront for individual sources of information when they can't be confident that it's going to help them.
The Amazon situation has several problems:
It's too much work to wade though many reviews to get a fair assessment, and so far Amazon hasn't found it worthwhile to summarize the range of opinion in any more detail than an average rating. And while end-user feedback is very valuable, so is the testing, comparison, and advice that professionals do best.
Second, Amazon (and the reviewers themselves) don't get rewarded for the help they provide when someone uses that information to make a purchase elsewhere.
Third, Amazon, as a vendor, isn't exactly an unbiased party -- they want you to buy one of the things they sell, preferably the most expensive. (But sure, not as bad as getting car advice from a dealer for a particular make.)
Finally, a helper (like Slashdot!) who makes some of their income from Amazon affiliate payments isn't giving their users an easy choice of vendors, and also doesn't get paid for their help if the user does indeed decide to buy elsewhere.
finally i know some smart people from various backgrounds who are working on micropayment systems. it's hard for me to imagine that taking off, but then again there's a certain charm in the idea of paying like $0.05 to read a vetted review about an item on a smartphone while I'm shopping.
"vetted review", is that reviews of reviews?
I'm involved with an alternative solution where consumer helpers are instead paid out of both manufacturer cashback payments and incentives that manufacturers offer those who provide pre-sales help to their customers and prospects. This reduces the need for both pay-walls and pan-handling. It also works for purchases at both online and bricks & mortar stores.
Re:"targeted advertising" is NOT a benefit to ME
on
Privacy Machiavellis
·
· Score: 1
A system like you suggest is already operating: just browse the websites of vacuum makers.
However both these sites and advertising provide far from objective information. Wouldn't you rather read some well-researched editorial, and use a question-based recommendation system?
Yes you may say, but how should we compensate these helpers? At the moment it's mainly via ads that many block because of the original problem with non-objective information. The affiliate link alternative turns helpers into salespeople, and doesn't reward them if you buy your vacuum offline.
Slashdot Mirror
Free software types are not opposed to for-pay software, at all. The two concepts are not related.
This distinction was somewhat valid when one had to order software on tapes and disks. But in an era when the cost of distribution is just about zero, it's very difficult to charge for copyleft software.
What are the options to earn income from software that's entirely copyleft?
Access to the source and build systems, and the ability to distribute modified versions, are the real strengths of open software. By removing the freedom-to-run requirement it becomes easier to charge for software that still gives users all the freedoms that motivated Richard Stallman to start GNU and the FSF.
I agree that analysis is fine, as long as it covers all perspectives, not just the one that fits a thesis — the "story" — that's being constructed. That's comment, which is also fine, as long as it's separated from news.
That's the big trouble I have with journalistic prose, which makes it differ from scientific and judicial prose, and makes it more like a legal brief from one side of a court case: The need to have an angle so that the story is more entertaining to both read and write.
So I am one of the very few who got past the registration page.
Were there ads? If so, static or animated?
Around here it's almost all post-pay the attendant, because they want you to buy stuff in their store. Few pumps have card swipes, and only in selected poor or rough areas do they require pre-payment, sometimes only when the price has spiked.
possibly comes only from self-interest (lots of small-time App store developers)
This is probably true. Although there's a lot of small-time web-publishers of information, online apps, and downloadable native apps, go-getters have been attracted to the new mobile apps and its strongly-commercial culture. Developers with FLOSS mentality are turned off by the restrictions imposed, plus the need to buy devices and development kits.
Blocking ads in an ad-supported app (on any platform) is not at all different from blocking ads in a web site. The latter has been described numerous times on Slashdot, and while there were always some voices in support of "ad blocking is stealing!" POV, they were always few and far between (and quickly downmodded), and the mainstream opinion was always strongly "it's my box, and I can read websites the way I like on it, including suppressing ads".
And yet, in this thread, there is a huge number of responses that basically equate ad blocking on iPhone to stealing...
Yes, good point.
I think the difference is that:
So blocking ads on the web is only likely to become regarded as morally questionable when either a mature web-based micropayment system is in place, or some alternative way of getting paid for providing information is commonly available.
"How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?"
Many sites publish such material as a "white paper", and display links to it like any other ad. Ad-blockers don't often match on these.
From my experience, adjusting the pitch of the audio by +4% (without altering its duration) is enough to fool Google's algorithm without being noticeable/distracting, unless you're playing the original song and the altered song side-by-side.
Yes, 4% faster is already what 24fps material becomes when played on 25/50fps TV systems. Only people with perfect pitch can easily detect the difference, and the TV stations love it because they can fit in 4% more ads. Perhaps Google can detect a simple speed-up, but not when the audio is DSPed to shift the pitch but not the duration like you suggest.
Also, I have seen a music video on YouTube from an unofficial source that reversed the picture left-right. This, perhaps in combination with a pitch shift, may be what has allowed it to survive deletion.
OK, thanks. This means the levy will become increasingly irrelevant as mechanical media is used less and less.
But up in Canada you already pay for the privilege of pirating content. What exactly do you think that surcharge on blank media is for?
Is the Canadian surcharge applied to hard disks and flash drives, or just optical media?
Thanks to the story here about Bigpond's file library decision, in the process of further reading I found out about their discount offer, which they probably only want new customers to hear about. As an existing customer, I wasn't notified, though to avoid complaints of discrimination, is also available to existing customers.
Their file library decision has now saved me (cost them) $180/yr — plus I get enough extra allowance to download a Linux distro a week. Thank you Slashdot and the anonymous story poster.
(I know there are better plans from other vendors, but being so far from an exchange, I need to stick with cable to get decent speeds.)
Yes, ominously the article states that it will be running a "self-aware OS".
I'm of the view that there's a good chance that current or near-future supercomputers would be able to simulate a human brain in real-time. This is because there's an awful lot of computational redundancy in real brains, given what they're made from, and given their need to self-construct.
All that's needed is to reverse-engineer the algorithms used by each part of the brain, and to properly connect them up.
>Slashdot already does this though Amazon affiliate links.
The what? Didn't know they had those. I see the ads every day though.
Yes, you can see one at the bottom of this story from today.
Advertising or paywalls aren't the only alternatives for professional media. Publishers should be able to earn income directly from the help they give their users. Slashdot already does this though Amazon affiliate links.
But just more and more are finding advertising useless because it pushes agendas in an increasingly annoying way, affiliate links still push a single vendor. Slashdot should be able get paid for hosting a helpful review, no matter where the book was bought, or even if a bad review helped someone choose a different book.
This is my vision for a 3rd revenue source for publishers, which can subsidise non-product-related journalism, just as classifieds once paid for foreign and investigative journalism.
Well I do have to restart Firefox every day or two to clear memory leaks or fragmentation, which begin to make it unusably slow. But I once had to do this much more frequently, so the problems are getting gradually fixed. It takes a long time to quit after being used for a while, which makes me think it's got an awful lot swapped-out.
If you're not experiencing this, perhaps the leaks are in one of the extensions I use.
As for Flock, it appears its business model is the same as Firefox: search engine product placement. This was with Yahoo, but it'd be interesting if it stays that way, considering it's now based on a Google browser.
Ads which are shown for the brief period it takes to activate Reader are less exposed than those that appear on a page while it is read, and so must eventually pay less
Hello, I only said it's not ad free. The FACT is that the user DOES SEE ADS. It might be less than they would otherwise but it is not ad free. You are just being pedantic.
Publishers will earn less revenue, which is what all this is about.
Some iApps are newspapers, which compete with the websites of these papers. Reader is a Safari feature that can only tamper with websites.
Which is my main point. I guess you didn't realize that Instapaper specifically goes to great lengths to try and INCLUDE ads in the articles it scrapes for later reading? Or that, again, you have to actually VISIT THE SITE and thus SEE THE ADS in order to USE instapaper?
Name something else if you were thinking of another product, but I'm 99% sure you were going off what you imagined Instapaper did rather than reality.
I hadn't heard of Instapaper. I was thinking about the iPad apps of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Times, and The Australian.
Ads on the web are vulnerable and competitive, while those on Apps give Apple a tamper-free monopoly.
Complete And Utter Bullshit, because a developer can use any other ad framework they like. It's not like none existed before iAds.
The monopoly to which I was referring was the App Store. Other than the new restrictions on analytics data, iAd is not currently a monopoly.
I suppose iAds could be blocked using a proxy if on Wi-Fi, but how could it be done on 3G?
The final straw, you are complaining about Reader only letting you see ads briefly, and then seeking to block them altogether - and finding you can't, thus in fact proving my point that iAds and web advertising have zero in common.
Again, there is no reason at all to be "suspicious" of Apple introducing iAds and reader at the same time, because they are totally unrelated.
Sorry, I can't work out what you're saying here.
Reader is probably not an Apple conspiracy, but it does have the effect of making their mobile offerings more attractive to publishers, particularly if it spreads to other browsers.
I'll let you have the last word because I know you'll be forced to defend your position, no matter how untenable - I'll let the reader make up their minds as to which is more logical.
Calm down.
Reader affects sites people view on the web. Furthermore, it only lets you read content ad-free AFTER ads have loaded and you have looked at them at least once (on the first page).
Ads which are shown for the brief period it takes to activate Reader are less exposed than those that appear on a page while it is read, and so must eventually pay less. As well, ads that would have appeared on second and subsequent pages are never displayed.
Now over to iAds. It's a component of the iPhone SDK that allows you to more easily embed ads in an APPLICATION. It's not targeting the web, at all. But even if it were - it would still be dropped by Reader the same way all other ads are! iAds is simply a way to drop an HTML5 container in your application which is then fed ads according to criteria you specify.
Some iApps are newspapers, which compete with the websites of these papers. Reader is a Safari feature that can only tamper with websites.
Ads on the web are mature, which is why Apple has no interest in moving into that market. Ad frameworks on mobile devices were pretty rough, and Apple saw how they could improve on them so they did.
Ads on the web are vulnerable and competitive, while those on Apps give Apple a tamper-free monopoly.
I suppose iAds could be blocked using a proxy if on Wi-Fi, but how could it be done on 3G?
Proper research methodology involves absorbing as much knowledge as possible, then synthesising something new. In this world of information overload, skimming and sharing (including social media) help find all the pearls, which are studied more deeply. You then find a quiet place to think.
Many will suffer ad-supported versions, and learn to hate the companies that are annoying them. Or is it true that all publicity is good publicity?
But as we get wealthier, I do see more being willing to avoid ads by buying things outright. Many will however cling to the certainty, promiscuity, and convenience of free.
Yes, this seems to be the first time ad-blocking and auto-paging have been built into the standard release of a browser.
Perhaps it's an Apple ploy to push publishers to iPad and iPhone apps, where their content cannot be altered.
When bandwidth is a limited resource, the use of pricing tiers based on data limits allow ISPs to extract the most money from each user, and also effectively allows them to automatically raise prices as normal Internet usage pushes people into higher tiers.
But this only works outside the US, or where there is a monopoly. If the supply of bandwidth is much less limited, competition should ensure that only "outrageous" usage gets clipped, which looks to be what has happened.
You can cut all that out by just giving me cash directly to watch their ads. Some cable channels cost money per hour (per month anyway). I don't see why some couldn't pay you. Same concept with micropayments, all this focus on me sending big corporation a few pennies, but I don't see why it couldn't work in reverse.
Most ads already effectively pay you by providing some discount or other offer.
consumer reports has its information online for subscribers. subscription is a small monthly fee.
there are similar services for specialty interests, for example Cooks Illustrated has a simply amazing amount of in-depth and pretty objective information about utensils and food available again for a small monthly fee. for example, they found that real vanilla extract isn't any better in baked goods, than the 20 times cheaper synthetic vanillin (it is however a lot better in custards and ice cream and that sort of thing).
the only question is doing it for "free". for most general consumer items, amazon works. for specialist items, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a periodical with web access, like Cooks Illustrated.
Because they only use it occasionally, it's hard to get people to subscribe to product review information. A publication like Consumer Reports is most attractive because it looks at commonly-bought products, but conversely is not a total solution because, as you say, it only covers a small fraction of products.
It's also hard to get people to pay upfront for individual sources of information when they can't be confident that it's going to help them.
The Amazon situation has several problems:
It's too much work to wade though many reviews to get a fair assessment, and so far Amazon hasn't found it worthwhile to summarize the range of opinion in any more detail than an average rating. And while end-user feedback is very valuable, so is the testing, comparison, and advice that professionals do best.
Second, Amazon (and the reviewers themselves) don't get rewarded for the help they provide when someone uses that information to make a purchase elsewhere.
Third, Amazon, as a vendor, isn't exactly an unbiased party -- they want you to buy one of the things they sell, preferably the most expensive. (But sure, not as bad as getting car advice from a dealer for a particular make.)
Finally, a helper (like Slashdot!) who makes some of their income from Amazon affiliate payments isn't giving their users an easy choice of vendors, and also doesn't get paid for their help if the user does indeed decide to buy elsewhere.
finally i know some smart people from various backgrounds who are working on micropayment systems. it's hard for me to imagine that taking off, but then again there's a certain charm in the idea of paying like $0.05 to read a vetted review about an item on a smartphone while I'm shopping.
"vetted review", is that reviews of reviews?
I'm involved with an alternative solution where consumer helpers are instead paid out of both manufacturer cashback payments and incentives that manufacturers offer those who provide pre-sales help to their customers and prospects. This reduces the need for both pay-walls and pan-handling. It also works for purchases at both online and bricks & mortar stores.
A system like you suggest is already operating: just browse the websites of vacuum makers.
However both these sites and advertising provide far from objective information. Wouldn't you rather read some well-researched editorial, and use a question-based recommendation system?
Yes you may say, but how should we compensate these helpers? At the moment it's mainly via ads that many block because of the original problem with non-objective information. The affiliate link alternative turns helpers into salespeople, and doesn't reward them if you buy your vacuum offline.
That's your fault for being on the shit-receiving end. You should have gotten your comp sci degree and become a (proper, non-Web) developer.
What makes you look down your nose at web developers?