A successful open source business model, which MySQL seem to enjoy, is to make many users (as mentioned in reply to the first question in Guy Kawasaki's blog) of whom only a small number pay for extra features, service etc.
What proportion of active MySQL users pay for service, and what is the average income per user?
At least this was accidental and they are trying to recover the messages.
Hotmail, on the other hand, purposely deleted the contents of everybody's sent mail folders a few years back, and I do not recall any apology or attempt to recover data....
Hopefully Halo on Earth, not Halo inside spaceship
on
IGN Claims Halo 3 At E3
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Hopefully Halo will be "Halo on Earth", rather than "Halo in twisty mazes inside space ships and buildings".
I played Halo 2 first and found the environments all a bit^H^H^Hlot samey.
Then I played Halo (1) and loved the way it alternated interior with exterior levels.
I guessed that they tried to save money on Halo 2 because outdoor environments are more demanding on the machine and time-consuming to develop.
Here's hoping - lots of luscious outdoors environments, please!
Some people who follow sports like football are insane.
They are the people who will buy the next version of Madden http://www.easports.com/games/madden2005/, because it has some new guy who is playing halfback for their team, because they made a subtle change to the colour or shape of the ball (for example making it round), or because they started requiring that the ball actually be struck with the foot.
What they are really saying is that their new work will be disruptive by:
making games which are good as opposed to crappy
making games which do not follow the same tired old gameplay mechanics
I was explaining to someone (who does not play games) the other day what computer games are about, and since I like FPSs so much, I was explaining FPSs to her. But I felt kind of embarrased because I don't approve of or particularly like shooting things. Shooting things = tired gameplay mechanic. Violence = tired gameplay mechanic.
Compare two different concepts for Nintendogs: 1. raise and train cute puppies, 2. shoot lots of cute puppies. I rest my case, QFD.
A collaborative reviewing system like Slashdot's would probably work better than the status quo in the academic world. Especially 'metamoderation'. (Have you megamoderated today?) In the academic status quo, there is some, but not enough, payback for poor reviewers.
Reviewers are very variable in quality.
Reviewing papers is, however, usually a pretty thankless task, so don't knock reviewers too much.
It is clear that academic papers should be freely available on the net as long as the researchers' employers are agreeable to that. I don't think journals should get a say.
Sometimes nasty things come up out of your past and bite you. Those embarassing messages you posted 15 years ago to alt.sex.bdsm, for example. Or the terrible songs you used to listen to 15 years ago while posting to alt.sex.bdsm, for some reason put onto your ipod, and which pop up in random shuffle only when you are having really hoopy froods to tea.
There is an awful song by Kate Bush (lyrics here) about socially challenged geeks spending late nights with their computers. Now, of course, everybody spends late nights with their computers, logged on to chat rooms and sending email.
Likewise, the socially challenged geeks used to be the only ones who watched scifi. And now everyone does.
There are many reasons why Google is top in search:
As above - quality. They do not release buggy crap. Microsoft do and people are sick of it.
Economic model - AdSense gives them a really GREAT way to make tons of money from their core business. Microsoft also have a good way to make money (closed OS and applications), but people and the courts are getting sick of it.
Innovation - Google recognizes that to beat the encumbants they need to deliver revolutionary solutions, so innovation is at the core of how Google runs its business. When did Microsoft last innovate? (Maybe some Xbox stuff.)
I do not think Microsoft can beat Google with their current way of doing things. Unless Microsoft changes fast, it won't be here in 10 years.
> Is there a GoogleOS in our future?
Effectively, yes. The internet and associated protocols, data structures etc are becoming more and more important, and the underlying OS less and less important - you can do a lot now (email, edit notes, images etc, dispatch compute jobs etc) with a web browser without caring about the underlying OS.
Web browsers currently are limiting. Many user interface aspects of web browsers suck, therefore so do any applications which rely on the browser for user interface.
But gradually standards are emerging which provide software infrastructure for web applications, e.g. the Google Maps thing. I guess Java is too slow to be the infrastructure, and the standard Java interface libraries are also a but weak for GUIs. Google are producing some of this infrastructure, which might end up as a kind of middleware OS. Some of it might end up in the browser itself; there was a rumor a while ago that Google were writing their own browser - I think that is likely.
Good point. This seems necessary for Mars orbit insertion and I'm sure useful for good ol' Earth too. It hasn't been tried with a winged or manned vehicle yet, though.
"Onega" booster, but they seem to have settled on a Zenit.
Kerosene-fueled which is good. I do not like the fact that the shuttle-derived launch vehicle uses solid rocket boosters. I do like the fact it uses shuttle main engines for the upper stage though.
On point 5, the main reason for having a winged vehicle is that is the only way to get a capability to bring significant mass down from orbit ("downmass" capability). Personally, I am sceptical about reusability for space vehicles even though NASA's specifications for the CEV include it.
But winged vehicles are much more cute than capsules.
This press release doesn't say anything about the launch vehicle. Any information?
I guess big business (and others) would prefer if global warming was all the fault of the sun. It might even be possible to prove that by correlating climate change on Earth with that on Mars. But we'd have to get better data about Mars climate change... maybe send some robotic probes to take cores at the poles. It would be expensive but it could perceived to be worth it for any number of megacorporations, especially the oil and coal industries. How about it?
NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate is already funding space elevator research - John Mankins who was formerly a big cheese at ESMD is a space elevator advocate.
One of NASA's Centennial Challenges is to directly foster space elevator work.
A Space Elevator is at the moment an idea. Building a space elevator with current technology and expertise may be even less practical than sending humans to Mars with current technology and expertise - much further work is needed but for space elevators the unanswered questions are arguably more fundamental.
People love to criticize NASA and point out how company X, Y or Z already has capability A without considering that there are fundamental reasons e.g. to do with energy, systems scaling etc which mean that going to Mars is vastly more difficult than say a suborbital hop. Companies working on prototype space systems and tackling problems in innovative ways should be encouraged by they do not yet provide a certain path towards desired goals like putting people back on the Moon.
Since they decided to make the Shuttle reusable, and land like a plane, it has a very heavy heat shield, wings and airframe - a lot more mass to carry up than for Saturn V. It would be hard to get enough thrust to lift all that with liquid hydrogen/oxygen engines. 80% of the thrust on launch comes from the SRBs -
the three main engines together give about 1 million pounds of thrust, whereas the two SRBs together give about 5 million pounds of thrust (equivalent to the thrust from 15 main engines).
Good point. But the Shuttle has lots of exposed surfaces which are needed during reentry and which we don't want damaged by bits of hamster - Saturn V didn't have that problem.
Slashdot Mirror
What proportion of active MySQL users pay for service, and what is the average income per user?
Hotmail, on the other hand, purposely deleted the contents of everybody's sent mail folders a few years back, and I do not recall any apology or attempt to recover data....
I played Halo 2 first and found the environments all a bit^H^H^Hlot samey.
Then I played Halo (1) and loved the way it alternated interior with exterior levels.
I guessed that they tried to save money on Halo 2 because outdoor environments are more demanding on the machine and time-consuming to develop.
Here's hoping - lots of luscious outdoors environments, please!
They are the people who will buy the next version of Madden http://www.easports.com/games/madden2005/, because it has some new guy who is playing halfback for their team, because they made a subtle change to the colour or shape of the ball (for example making it round), or because they started requiring that the ball actually be struck with the foot.
I was explaining to someone (who does not play games) the other day what computer games are about, and since I like FPSs so much, I was explaining FPSs to her. But I felt kind of embarrased because I don't approve of or particularly like shooting things. Shooting things = tired gameplay mechanic. Violence = tired gameplay mechanic.
Compare two different concepts for Nintendogs: 1. raise and train cute puppies, 2. shoot lots of cute puppies. I rest my case, QFD.
Julian
I'd like to see how they sell this technology... if it turns out the donor cells have to be extracted from boogers... :-)
A collaborative reviewing system like Slashdot's would probably work better than the status quo in the academic world. Especially 'metamoderation'. (Have you megamoderated today?) In the academic status quo, there is some, but not enough, payback for poor reviewers.
It is clear that academic papers should be freely available on the net as long as the researchers' employers are agreeable to that. I don't think journals should get a say.
There is an awful song by Kate Bush (lyrics here) about socially challenged geeks spending late nights with their computers. Now, of course, everybody spends late nights with their computers, logged on to chat rooms and sending email.
Likewise, the socially challenged geeks used to be the only ones who watched scifi. And now everyone does.
What next...?
- As above - quality. They do not release buggy crap. Microsoft do and people are sick of it.
- Economic model - AdSense gives them a really GREAT way to make tons of money from their core business. Microsoft also have a good way to make money (closed OS and applications), but people and the courts are getting sick of it.
- Innovation - Google recognizes that to beat the encumbants they need to deliver revolutionary solutions, so innovation is at the core of how Google runs its business. When did Microsoft last innovate? (Maybe some Xbox stuff.)
I do not think Microsoft can beat Google with their current way of doing things. Unless Microsoft changes fast, it won't be here in 10 years.Effectively, yes. The internet and associated protocols, data structures etc are becoming more and more important, and the underlying OS less and less important - you can do a lot now (email, edit notes, images etc, dispatch compute jobs etc) with a web browser without caring about the underlying OS.
Web browsers currently are limiting. Many user interface aspects of web browsers suck, therefore so do any applications which rely on the browser for user interface.
But gradually standards are emerging which provide software infrastructure for web applications, e.g. the Google Maps thing. I guess Java is too slow to be the infrastructure, and the standard Java interface libraries are also a but weak for GUIs. Google are producing some of this infrastructure, which might end up as a kind of middleware OS. Some of it might end up in the browser itself; there was a rumor a while ago that Google were writing their own browser - I think that is likely.
Good point. This seems necessary for Mars orbit insertion and I'm sure useful for good ol' Earth too. It hasn't been tried with a winged or manned vehicle yet, though.
"Onega" booster, but they seem to have settled on a Zenit.
Kerosene-fueled which is good. I do not like the fact that the shuttle-derived launch vehicle uses solid rocket boosters. I do like the fact it uses shuttle main engines for the upper stage though.
On point 5, the main reason for having a winged vehicle is that is the only way to get a capability to bring significant mass down from orbit ("downmass" capability). Personally, I am sceptical about reusability for space vehicles even though NASA's specifications for the CEV include it. But winged vehicles are much more cute than capsules. This press release doesn't say anything about the launch vehicle. Any information?
I guess big business (and others) would prefer if global warming was all the fault of the sun. It might even be possible to prove that by correlating climate change on Earth with that on Mars. But we'd have to get better data about Mars climate change... maybe send some robotic probes to take cores at the poles. It would be expensive but it could perceived to be worth it for any number of megacorporations, especially the oil and coal industries. How about it?
NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate is already funding space elevator research - John Mankins who was formerly a big cheese at ESMD is a space elevator advocate. One of NASA's Centennial Challenges is to directly foster space elevator work. A Space Elevator is at the moment an idea. Building a space elevator with current technology and expertise may be even less practical than sending humans to Mars with current technology and expertise - much further work is needed but for space elevators the unanswered questions are arguably more fundamental. People love to criticize NASA and point out how company X, Y or Z already has capability A without considering that there are fundamental reasons e.g. to do with energy, systems scaling etc which mean that going to Mars is vastly more difficult than say a suborbital hop. Companies working on prototype space systems and tackling problems in innovative ways should be encouraged by they do not yet provide a certain path towards desired goals like putting people back on the Moon.
Since they decided to make the Shuttle reusable, and land like a plane, it has a very heavy heat shield, wings and airframe - a lot more mass to carry up than for Saturn V. It would be hard to get enough thrust to lift all that with liquid hydrogen/oxygen engines. 80% of the thrust on launch comes from the SRBs - the three main engines together give about 1 million pounds of thrust, whereas the two SRBs together give about 5 million pounds of thrust (equivalent to the thrust from 15 main engines).
Good point. But the Shuttle has lots of exposed surfaces which are needed during reentry and which we don't want damaged by bits of hamster - Saturn V didn't have that problem.