I think a good compromise plan would be to establish a projected required operating budget (maybe $10M / year, growing at 10% per year until reaching $100M / year), and put up the display ads, rake in the cash far faster than they need it [...]
Stop there. Why raise it faster than necessary? Surely Wikipedia could display ads on only a percentage of page views, tweaking the number as needed to maintain a neutral revenue.
I think a simple: "Why?" is in order... If you've got a cash generating machine and the ability to set up your own perpetual endowment, why would you throttle your income and risk financial hardship in the future?
"Zunesday" article hit the Reuters feed next to the MSFT stock quote over 30 minutes ago, looks like it has had -zero- impact on the share price, MSFT continues to track IBM and the S&P 500 percentage changes through the day.
Hey, I've got $14 in my brokerage account, I wonder how many MSFT PUT options I can buy....
Other names you might hear/read in a similar vein (which may or may not reflect my personal opinion) include Burger Thing, Qwost, Stop and Rob, Tragic Markup, Circuit Shitty, etc.
There are times when M$ is appropriate, such as describing their software pricing, I agree Zune doesn't de$erve thi$, hey, what'$ happening here, I can't $top my$elf!!$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
I actually choose not to watch TV because I can't find quality programming that isn't infested with advertising.
At least with DVD rental there are still ways to circumvent most of the embedded ads.
Ads in a print / page medium like newspapers or Wikipedia are far less intrusive, you can evaluate the ad at a glance and move on when not interested - in streaming media like video, the ads hold you captive for a prescribed amount of time (usually thousands of times longer than I pay attention to print ads.)
I don't see how putting a little Google display ad at the top of every Wikipedia page would make the site in any way influenced by Google or anyone else. Yeah, it would be nice if there was an alternative to Google, and maybe the ads could be split (1/3 of pages get a Google ad, the other 2/3s split amongst the next 3 or 4 largest suppliers of display ads).
What I do see as a problem is that if Wikipedia stopped running on a shoestring and started having $100M per year in revenue, it would change the controlling culture drastically, and that could be a big problem. Volunteers are there for the sharing of information, paid staffers are there for the paycheck, and (modern American) executives are there for the massive perks.
I think a good compromise plan would be to establish a projected required operating budget (maybe $10M / year, growing at 10% per year until reaching $100M / year), and put up the display ads, rake in the cash far faster than they need it, set the excess aside in an endowment (hopefully invested wisely, whatever that means), and when the endowment can fund future operations from interest alone, kill the display ads.
The big unknown in such a plan is whether the administrators could really be trusted to respect the terms of the endowment disbursement.
I've had one die in a ceiling fan (granted, some vibration, but not much), and another in a normal recessed light fixture - that's 2 / 10 in use within less than 2 years. If this trend keeps up, (one dead per year), I'll be coming up with a 5 year average life span, which isn't much different from incandescents in my house, maybe 2x longer life.
Saves energy: yes. Lasts longer: jury is out, I doubt they will once mass production and cost reductions kick in.
It's getting hard(er) to tell them apart anymore, they all are singing each other's songs. I'd rate the outgoing US administration as the types more likely to want a tracking chip inserted everywhere possible.
Some South American countries use the tire tax, so everyone drives around on "superlast, hard as rocks" tires to beat the tax rate - can't be good for safety.
I think that taxing each gallon of fuel is the right way to go, if 0.24 isn't enough, make it 0.48 - we just demonstrated that the world doesn't end when gas passes $3 a gallon.
Taxing fuel:
Collects the tax in small, easy to handle increments
Rewards fuel efficient vehicles (which tend to be light and easy on the pavement)
Still taxes based on roadway usage
Doesn't require any potential invasions of privacy
Isn't open to potential tampering (beyond bootleg fuel)
I think the governor is just talking to get himself heard, drivers of big gas hog vehicles (likely the majority of his constituency) will love the idea, but lawmakers would have to have several screws loose to think this is a good or practical idea.
Yep, mine is on its left side (discs go in vertically), and the right side is perhaps a little too close to the shelf above, maybe 1.5cm of clearance - it definitely gets warm up there. The shelf is too shallow to comfortably sit the unit on it's bottom, so, unless I move the (screwed and painted to the wall) shelving a bit, I'm stuck.
I already went to the trouble of putting in a wired ethernet connection because the wireless was a little too puny to stream video, at some point you have to ask "is it worth it?"
A GPS-based system kept track of the in-state mileage driven by the volunteers. When they bought fuel, a device in their vehicles was read, and they paid 1.2 cents a mile and got a refund of the state gas tax of 24 cents a gallon.
So, this only benefits people who get less than 20mpg - since my car gets about 24mpg on average, I think I'd rather save the money _and_ keep my privacy intact.
the government is trying more and more technological means to tax us--a lot of the more left democrats here are probably quite comfortable with that, though--and two, the privacy concerns are pretty obvious (although, again, make take a back seat for us to "progress" as a society so wonderful social programs can be implemented).
I would think the left would be strongly opposed to the technology simply on privacy concerns. I know if they forced this on me, my black box would wear a tinfoil hat at every opportunity.
Because the odometer doesn't give you Orwellian powers over your people. There's also the technical snag of what happens when you drive out of state. And, for that matter, there's a bigger snag when Oregon allows out of state registered vehicles to drive on their roads.
the overlap of SACD listeners and game players is probably me.
I feel the same way about how they are treating the media player features - I could do with a little more choice in the music player eye candy, and support for Web Radio streaming, and definitely a more support for selection of photos for the slideshows (like, why can't we get everything in a selected sub-folder?!?)
PS3 is cool for what it is, but I'm thinking that something like an eeeBox is eventually going to take over the primary HDMI input on our TV. I'm not ready to spend the money on hardware yet, but if Sony's media software support doesn't continue to improve, they're definitely on the way out from my living room.
I bought it as a BluRay player, and now I have about $100 worth of download titles in it, so I guess Sony will break even on me, eventually. If they ever release Afrika for English speakers, they might even get into profit territory.
I have the original 60GB, and I wish I had the new 65nm cell chip - the fan in my PS3 is louder than anything else in the house, we have to crank up the volume to hear movie dialogue over it.
Now, assuming that I did plump out another $400 just to get a quieter box, how much of a pain in the a$$ would it be to transfer all of my downloaded games onto the new unit?
It seems that it has taken us about 150 years post-Darwin to stand up and say that the human brain is not the center of intelligence on Earth.
"Center of intelligence on Earth" doesn't even make sense.
Of course it doesn't, but to read early (circa 1950-1980) textbook definitions of intelligence - such as "makes tools, uses communicative language, etc." - the writers of then current dogma clearly believed that there was something special about the "species with a soul" that "animals" just didn't have.
If an enlightened few knew "the truth" back whenever, that doesn't change the fact that the bulk of homo sapiens has acted based on the principle of "we are intelligent and the animals are not" basically throughout recorded history.
What I wonder is if I will live to see whales, dolphin and scrub-jay enjoy some sort of appropriate respect as opposed to the black and white "dumb animal" or "protected species" labels they enjoy today.
Oh, and as for post-high school science education - I are an engineer, we weren't required to take any of that biology stuff after 10th grade, grammar neither.
Living in the Bible Belt, I consider myself fortunate to have attended a church school that taught some form of evolution as "probably what really happened" and creationisim as "another explanation."
Back before the "intertubes" liberated information, it didn't matter what some pot-head hippie out in California (devil worshiping land) thought, there was no reason to confuse the children with crazy stuff like that.
Slashdot Mirror
Yepper, though I had hopes that the potential liability might be far greater than the potential profits.
please don't confuse Republicans or religious nut jobs with Conservatives.
That's the problem, isn't it? There is no "Conservative" party on the political stage anymore.
Vote Yoder in 2012!
Oh, I forgot: Home Despot.
I think a good compromise plan would be to establish a projected required operating budget (maybe $10M / year, growing at 10% per year until reaching $100M / year), and put up the display ads, rake in the cash far faster than they need it [...]
Stop there. Why raise it faster than necessary? Surely Wikipedia could display ads on only a percentage of page views, tweaking the number as needed to maintain a neutral revenue.
I think a simple: "Why?" is in order... If you've got a cash generating machine and the ability to set up your own perpetual endowment, why would you throttle your income and risk financial hardship in the future?
"Zunesday" article hit the Reuters feed next to the MSFT stock quote over 30 minutes ago, looks like it has had -zero- impact on the share price, MSFT continues to track IBM and the S&P 500 percentage changes through the day.
Hey, I've got $14 in my brokerage account, I wonder how many MSFT PUT options I can buy....
Other names you might hear/read in a similar vein (which may or may not reflect my personal opinion) include Burger Thing, Qwost, Stop and Rob, Tragic Markup, Circuit Shitty, etc.
There are times when M$ is appropriate, such as describing their software pricing, I agree Zune doesn't de$erve thi$, hey, what'$ happening here, I can't $top my$elf!!$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
I actually choose not to watch TV because I can't find quality programming that isn't infested with advertising.
At least with DVD rental there are still ways to circumvent most of the embedded ads.
Ads in a print / page medium like newspapers or Wikipedia are far less intrusive, you can evaluate the ad at a glance and move on when not interested - in streaming media like video, the ads hold you captive for a prescribed amount of time (usually thousands of times longer than I pay attention to print ads.)
I don't see how putting a little Google display ad at the top of every Wikipedia page would make the site in any way influenced by Google or anyone else. Yeah, it would be nice if there was an alternative to Google, and maybe the ads could be split (1/3 of pages get a Google ad, the other 2/3s split amongst the next 3 or 4 largest suppliers of display ads).
What I do see as a problem is that if Wikipedia stopped running on a shoestring and started having $100M per year in revenue, it would change the controlling culture drastically, and that could be a big problem. Volunteers are there for the sharing of information, paid staffers are there for the paycheck, and (modern American) executives are there for the massive perks.
I think a good compromise plan would be to establish a projected required operating budget (maybe $10M / year, growing at 10% per year until reaching $100M / year), and put up the display ads, rake in the cash far faster than they need it, set the excess aside in an endowment (hopefully invested wisely, whatever that means), and when the endowment can fund future operations from interest alone, kill the display ads.
The big unknown in such a plan is whether the administrators could really be trusted to respect the terms of the endowment disbursement.
I've had one die in a ceiling fan (granted, some vibration, but not much), and another in a normal recessed light fixture - that's 2 / 10 in use within less than 2 years. If this trend keeps up, (one dead per year), I'll be coming up with a 5 year average life span, which isn't much different from incandescents in my house, maybe 2x longer life.
Saves energy: yes. Lasts longer: jury is out, I doubt they will once mass production and cost reductions kick in.
It's getting hard(er) to tell them apart anymore, they all are singing each other's songs. I'd rate the outgoing US administration as the types more likely to want a tracking chip inserted everywhere possible.
Some South American countries use the tire tax, so everyone drives around on "superlast, hard as rocks" tires to beat the tax rate - can't be good for safety.
I think that taxing each gallon of fuel is the right way to go, if 0.24 isn't enough, make it 0.48 - we just demonstrated that the world doesn't end when gas passes $3 a gallon.
Taxing fuel:
I think the governor is just talking to get himself heard, drivers of big gas hog vehicles (likely the majority of his constituency) will love the idea, but lawmakers would have to have several screws loose to think this is a good or practical idea.
If you're really asking, all you have to do is sign in to the new PS3 with your PSN id and then go to the store and download the games.
Cool, that's how it should be. I was concerned that they'd have the licenses keyed to some sort of serial number in the device itself.
Yep, mine is on its left side (discs go in vertically), and the right side is perhaps a little too close to the shelf above, maybe 1.5cm of clearance - it definitely gets warm up there. The shelf is too shallow to comfortably sit the unit on it's bottom, so, unless I move the (screwed and painted to the wall) shelving a bit, I'm stuck.
I already went to the trouble of putting in a wired ethernet connection because the wireless was a little too puny to stream video, at some point you have to ask "is it worth it?"
A GPS-based system kept track of the in-state mileage driven by the volunteers. When they bought fuel, a device in their vehicles was read, and they paid 1.2 cents a mile and got a refund of the state gas tax of 24 cents a gallon.
So, this only benefits people who get less than 20mpg - since my car gets about 24mpg on average, I think I'd rather save the money _and_ keep my privacy intact.
the government is trying more and more technological means to tax us--a lot of the more left democrats here are probably quite comfortable with that, though--and two, the privacy concerns are pretty obvious (although, again, make take a back seat for us to "progress" as a society so wonderful social programs can be implemented).
I would think the left would be strongly opposed to the technology simply on privacy concerns. I know if they forced this on me, my black box would wear a tinfoil hat at every opportunity.
Or they could just... increase the gas tax. I know. Its a maverick idea.
With the added benefit of taxing gas-hogs proportionally higher - works for me.
Because the odometer doesn't give you Orwellian powers over your people. There's also the technical snag of what happens when you drive out of state. And, for that matter, there's a bigger snag when Oregon allows out of state registered vehicles to drive on their roads.
the overlap of SACD listeners and game players is probably me.
I feel the same way about how they are treating the media player features - I could do with a little more choice in the music player eye candy, and support for Web Radio streaming, and definitely a more support for selection of photos for the slideshows (like, why can't we get everything in a selected sub-folder?!?)
PS3 is cool for what it is, but I'm thinking that something like an eeeBox is eventually going to take over the primary HDMI input on our TV. I'm not ready to spend the money on hardware yet, but if Sony's media software support doesn't continue to improve, they're definitely on the way out from my living room.
I bought it as a BluRay player, and now I have about $100 worth of download titles in it, so I guess Sony will break even on me, eventually. If they ever release Afrika for English speakers, they might even get into profit territory.
I have the original 60GB, and I wish I had the new 65nm cell chip - the fan in my PS3 is louder than anything else in the house, we have to crank up the volume to hear movie dialogue over it.
Now, assuming that I did plump out another $400 just to get a quieter box, how much of a pain in the a$$ would it be to transfer all of my downloaded games onto the new unit?
Galileo was one of the first to take a real stand for what he "saw" not just theorize about what he wanted to see.
"Center of intelligence on Earth" doesn't even make sense.
Of course it doesn't, but to read early (circa 1950-1980) textbook definitions of intelligence - such as "makes tools, uses communicative language, etc." - the writers of then current dogma clearly believed that there was something special about the "species with a soul" that "animals" just didn't have.
If an enlightened few knew "the truth" back whenever, that doesn't change the fact that the bulk of homo sapiens has acted based on the principle of "we are intelligent and the animals are not" basically throughout recorded history.
What I wonder is if I will live to see whales, dolphin and scrub-jay enjoy some sort of appropriate respect as opposed to the black and white "dumb animal" or "protected species" labels they enjoy today.
Oh, and as for post-high school science education - I are an engineer, we weren't required to take any of that biology stuff after 10th grade, grammar neither.
Living in the Bible Belt, I consider myself fortunate to have attended a church school that taught some form of evolution as "probably what really happened" and creationisim as "another explanation."
Back before the "intertubes" liberated information, it didn't matter what some pot-head hippie out in California (devil worshiping land) thought, there was no reason to confuse the children with crazy stuff like that.