Music is doing well with unfragmented subscriptions. Is video different because the media are longer, and replay demand lower?
À la carte to me is buying individual clips, not buying subscriptions to a selection of cable channels or streaming services. Is such À la carte overpriced when a single movie costs around the same as a month's subscription, even though it allows you to specifically pick and choose?
32 hours a week averaged over the year could work better for both employers and staff. It would allow for periods of intense work balanced by periods of extra time off (preferably each with good notice), without having the intense periods charged at overtime premiums.
The whole idea of "selling software" is nonsensical. Software as a good itself has natural market value of 0 since it can be copied with nearly no effort.
All goods have a natural market value of zero, because they can be stolen. Locks and fences and guns and police raise this.
Such enforcement is also possible in software. Though physical and legal protections are usually bypassed, there are moral, reputational, safety, and quid-pro-quo protections which work well on businesses.
Most Open Source is still made today by people who don't care if they make money or not. They are making it in a cost center to do something necessary for their business, not to sell it, or sell services for it.
Yes, most Free Software development is dependent on something proprietary. Often this is proprietary software, and the Free Software coders either work for them or release code as a resume-item because they want to work for them. This is Free Software's dirty secret.
It's got potential if it could be a bit more serious.
Yes, or at least less uncomfortable mixing of drama and comedy. A good number of substantially comedic episodes would be fine, as long as they're actually funny.
Agreed (though so far I've only watched the first half of the first season).
Hopefully the first season, of which 8 out of 12 were written by Seth MacFarlane, was just him setting up the characters and the tone, and top SF writers will be brought in to improve the plots in later series. This would mirror TNG, but be the reverse of TOS, where early use of top SF writers saw it peak early.
Seth was obviously a frustrated trek captain and writer, who got enough clout to "make it so".
Its comedy element sometimes works as a way of humanizing the characters, but it does sometimes interfere with the suspension of disbelief. Sort of like the humour in the Trek movies.
It's very easy for people to get lazy and for code to just get worse and worse if people are not called out over letting standards slide.
True, but such calling out needs to be done in stages of escalation, starting diplomatically. What Linus has realised is that he hasn't helped matters by going straight to Defcon 1.
Yes, when there's perfect competition, easy money is eliminated. But that almost never happens. Capitalists make killings all the time with things like patents, consumer ignorance, consumer inertia, competitor inertia, and marketing spin.
1. Capitalism doesn't charge for effort. It charges what the market will bear. For software there is often an especially big disconnect between development cost and revenue. Free software shouldn't be forced into cost-plus pricing. If you developed Minecraft in six months work, would you forgo billions as an unfair payment?
2. It wouldn't be feasible to have intrusive per seat, core, or cycle pricing, but developers would be free to vary the cost by the (self-reported but accountable) type and size of the customer and their intended deployment.
3 There would be a clear cost schedule rather than individual deals to milk each customer as much as possible. These cost schedules would all be in the licensing website, which would also automatically calculate revenue distributions. Quite manageable complexity, well worth it for the cash injection it would bring to open software.
4. Because everything is open, there can't be any hard enforcement of payment. Only an honour system, where bypassing a production licence is trival yet an explicit act. Possibly aided by a public register of those who have paid. Companies worry about their reputation, and won't pirate if the software makes them money and there's a chance that they'll be caught. (Anonymous) Individuals less so.
Dual-licensed free software, where companies pay to embed the free software in their proprietary software, while allowing free use by others, is no general solution.
This is not a feasible commercialization path for most software packages. It also again makes proprietary software free software's saviour. The FSF explains in your linked article that this is why they don't sell such exceptions themselves. I want open software to stand on its own feet.
The problem here isn't capitalism, but instead software licences that make it very hard to charge for your work. New licences are needed that keep the most important feature of open software (the freedom to inspect, modify, and re-release), but don't allow the software to be run in production without payment.
Cryptocurrency's anonymity attracted criminals from the get go. So I'm not surprised that cryptocurrency markets turned out to be even more a den of snakes.
It'd be interesting if Epic returned a third of their extra Android revenue to users by discounting in-app purchases by 10% on the Android version. I don't think this would lead to a general reduction in the Apple Tax, but it could lead to a special deal between Eplc and Apple for a 20% rather than a 30% App Store cut.
Are you only against "ambush" advertising that intrudes itself into the environment you're living in, the devices you're using, and the media you're consuming? Or do you also find useless other forms of advertising like point-of-sale, classified sections, highly-targeted direct mail, and websites? Yes, the latter still spin, but at least they're pretty much opt-in.
Where do you get the desire to buy something, and how do you choose which products to buy and the vendors to buy from?
As a game developer talking to a fan, she was the one in the relative position of power and she uses this to belittle someone.
Yes, strange from someone whose Tweets show her to be left-leaning, which should mean empathy for the relatively powerless. I guess her feminism trumped this.
Products (and ads for products) targeted at children have always been the most lucrative, because they and their developing brains are more able to be manipulated, are more susceptible to addiction and peer pressure, are less jaded and so more open and promiscuous, and have a large amount of leisure time. And their parents (and grandparents) like to dote and defuse pestering. Games, movies, books, toys, clothes.
Even better would be if mobile apps and websites could ask for a list of essential and optional permissions. No installation or access if an essential permission is refused, but proceed with limited functionality if an optional permission is refused. At the moment app permissions are all take-it-or-leave-it.
You make like this particular privacy feature in every instance, but others may want to give certain websites permission, making possible some website features that they find useful. At the moment it's a hidden blanket ban.
Just charge for a licence to use the software in a production context, while still allowing anyone to release a fork and charge a premium, the remainder flowing back to the root of the fork tree. This retains the most important benefits of open source, while compensating the value adders.
Mozilla have to watch that they don't make Firefox's default privacy settings so restrictive that they weaken the power of the open Web relative to apps that can ask users permission to do just about anything. Apps are taking over enough already to tie the hands of website developers to do complex things, without any easy way for users to indicate that they trust a site to do certain things.
With today's communications technology, are legislative chambers obsolete? Are the minds of any politicians changed on chamber floors, or should we instead film and publish records of where decisions are actually made (meetings in offices), and where productive, open, and non-partisan information exposure still occurs (committee hearings)? Are chambers still needed for some nation-binding rhetorical shows, such as those relating to crises and commemoration?
While a strong case can be made that short patent terms help progress, the case is weaker for the copyright of artworks, which can be used as inspiration without infringement, plus some remixing when fair use and compulsory licencing is also law.
I agree that there is a cut-off time when society has more right to ownership than distant descendants, but what about when copyright is owned by immortal corporations?
Are you arguing against the legitimacy of passive investment income like intellectual property and interest income, or only against long copyright terms? What term would you consider optimal?
The Constitution of the Soviet Union didn't contain the socialist declaration "to each according to his needs" but instead "to each according to his work", associating reward with effort. Are you arguing along these lines, or are you more inclined to the capitalist "to each according to his deployment assets", where a government should protect the (inheritable) asset of intellectual property against confiscation for a long period.
Don't get indignant, I'm just being a devil's advocate.
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Music is doing well with unfragmented subscriptions. Is video different because the media are longer, and replay demand lower?
À la carte to me is buying individual clips, not buying subscriptions to a selection of cable channels or streaming services. Is such À la carte overpriced when a single movie costs around the same as a month's subscription, even though it allows you to specifically pick and choose?
32 hours a week averaged over the year could work better for both employers and staff. It would allow for periods of intense work balanced by periods of extra time off (preferably each with good notice), without having the intense periods charged at overtime premiums.
The whole idea of "selling software" is nonsensical. Software as a good itself has natural market value of 0 since it can be copied with nearly no effort.
All goods have a natural market value of zero, because they can be stolen. Locks and fences and guns and police raise this.
Such enforcement is also possible in software. Though physical and legal protections are usually bypassed, there are moral, reputational, safety, and quid-pro-quo protections which work well on businesses.
Most Open Source is still made today by people who don't care if they make money or not. They are making it in a cost center to do something necessary for their business, not to sell it, or sell services for it.
Yes, most Free Software development is dependent on something proprietary. Often this is proprietary software, and the Free Software coders either work for them or release code as a resume-item because they want to work for them. This is Free Software's dirty secret.
'Money is truth, truth money' - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
It's got potential if it could be a bit more serious.
Yes, or at least less uncomfortable mixing of drama and comedy. A good number of substantially comedic episodes would be fine, as long as they're actually funny.
Agreed (though so far I've only watched the first half of the first season).
Hopefully the first season, of which 8 out of 12 were written by Seth MacFarlane, was just him setting up the characters and the tone, and top SF writers will be brought in to improve the plots in later series. This would mirror TNG, but be the reverse of TOS, where early use of top SF writers saw it peak early.
Seth was obviously a frustrated trek captain and writer, who got enough clout to "make it so".
Its comedy element sometimes works as a way of humanizing the characters, but it does sometimes interfere with the suspension of disbelief. Sort of like the humour in the Trek movies.
It's very easy for people to get lazy and for code to just get worse and worse if people are not called out over letting standards slide.
True, but such calling out needs to be done in stages of escalation, starting diplomatically. What Linus has realised is that he hasn't helped matters by going straight to Defcon 1.
Yes, when there's perfect competition, easy money is eliminated. But that almost never happens. Capitalists make killings all the time with things like patents, consumer ignorance, consumer inertia, competitor inertia, and marketing spin.
Interesting points. My responses:
1. Capitalism doesn't charge for effort. It charges what the market will bear. For software there is often an especially big disconnect between development cost and revenue. Free software shouldn't be forced into cost-plus pricing. If you developed Minecraft in six months work, would you forgo billions as an unfair payment?
2. It wouldn't be feasible to have intrusive per seat, core, or cycle pricing, but developers would be free to vary the cost by the (self-reported but accountable) type and size of the customer and their intended deployment.
3 There would be a clear cost schedule rather than individual deals to milk each customer as much as possible. These cost schedules would all be in the licensing website, which would also automatically calculate revenue distributions. Quite manageable complexity, well worth it for the cash injection it would bring to open software.
4. Because everything is open, there can't be any hard enforcement of payment. Only an honour system, where bypassing a production licence is trival yet an explicit act. Possibly aided by a public register of those who have paid. Companies worry about their reputation, and won't pirate if the software makes them money and there's a chance that they'll be caught. (Anonymous) Individuals less so.
Dual-licensed free software, where companies pay to embed the free software in their proprietary software, while allowing free use by others, is no general solution.
This is not a feasible commercialization path for most software packages. It also again makes proprietary software free software's saviour. The FSF explains in your linked article that this is why they don't sell such exceptions themselves. I want open software to stand on its own feet.
The problem here isn't capitalism, but instead software licences that make it very hard to charge for your work. New licences are needed that keep the most important feature of open software (the freedom to inspect, modify, and re-release), but don't allow the software to be run in production without payment.
Cryptocurrency's anonymity attracted criminals from the get go. So I'm not surprised that cryptocurrency markets turned out to be even more a den of snakes.
It'd be interesting if Epic returned a third of their extra Android revenue to users by discounting in-app purchases by 10% on the Android version. I don't think this would lead to a general reduction in the Apple Tax, but it could lead to a special deal between Eplc and Apple for a 20% rather than a 30% App Store cut.
Are you only against "ambush" advertising that intrudes itself into the environment you're living in, the devices you're using, and the media you're consuming? Or do you also find useless other forms of advertising like point-of-sale, classified sections, highly-targeted direct mail, and websites? Yes, the latter still spin, but at least they're pretty much opt-in.
Where do you get the desire to buy something, and how do you choose which products to buy and the vendors to buy from?
I regularly see %FEMALENAME in spam Subject and From lines. Obviously a better lure than %MALENAME. So it's possibly an edit of a spam template.
As a game developer talking to a fan, she was the one in the relative position of power and she uses this to belittle someone.
Yes, strange from someone whose Tweets show her to be left-leaning, which should mean empathy for the relatively powerless. I guess her feminism trumped this.
Products (and ads for products) targeted at children have always been the most lucrative, because they and their developing brains are more able to be manipulated, are more susceptible to addiction and peer pressure, are less jaded and so more open and promiscuous, and have a large amount of leisure time. And their parents (and grandparents) like to dote and defuse pestering. Games, movies, books, toys, clothes.
I don't have a problem with opt-in permissions.
Even better would be if mobile apps and websites could ask for a list of essential and optional permissions. No installation or access if an essential permission is refused, but proceed with limited functionality if an optional permission is refused. At the moment app permissions are all take-it-or-leave-it.
You make like this particular privacy feature in every instance, but others may want to give certain websites permission, making possible some website features that they find useful. At the moment it's a hidden blanket ban.
Just charge for a licence to use the software in a production context, while still allowing anyone to release a fork and charge a premium, the remainder flowing back to the root of the fork tree. This retains the most important benefits of open source, while compensating the value adders.
Mozilla have to watch that they don't make Firefox's default privacy settings so restrictive that they weaken the power of the open Web relative to apps that can ask users permission to do just about anything. Apps are taking over enough already to tie the hands of website developers to do complex things, without any easy way for users to indicate that they trust a site to do certain things.
With today's communications technology, are legislative chambers obsolete? Are the minds of any politicians changed on chamber floors, or should we instead film and publish records of where decisions are actually made (meetings in offices), and where productive, open, and non-partisan information exposure still occurs (committee hearings)? Are chambers still needed for some nation-binding rhetorical shows, such as those relating to crises and commemoration?
While a strong case can be made that short patent terms help progress, the case is weaker for the copyright of artworks, which can be used as inspiration without infringement, plus some remixing when fair use and compulsory licencing is also law.
I agree that there is a cut-off time when society has more right to ownership than distant descendants, but what about when copyright is owned by immortal corporations?
Are you arguing against the legitimacy of passive investment income like intellectual property and interest income, or only against long copyright terms? What term would you consider optimal?
The Constitution of the Soviet Union didn't contain the socialist declaration "to each according to his needs" but instead "to each according to his work", associating reward with effort. Are you arguing along these lines, or are you more inclined to the capitalist "to each according to his deployment assets", where a government should protect the (inheritable) asset of intellectual property against confiscation for a long period.
Don't get indignant, I'm just being a devil's advocate.