Luckily they haven't yet learnt to calculate the net present value.
Though, in all fairness, NPV can be quite subjective, and modeling it for any reasonable period of time makes it extremely sensitive to the estimated variables. Most of which when estimated, have really low correlation coefficients.
Though it's not quite that bad, and certain degrees are worse than others.
However the GP's main problem, I all but guarantee, is due to he doesn't see what "people do these days" as work. I've heard the same thing over and over again from luddites, who want to force us back to an agrarian society. It's fucking insane.
Yeah, actually, you've got a point. I always gave them the benefit of the doubt, and I know that when I used to drive a really old 1981 extremely underpowered car, I was always able to get up to speed. If someone slowed down in front of me though, I'd struggle to get back up to speed.
A friend of mine recently got an extremely small 2 door Toyota, with a smaller engine than my motorbike, and even he says he never struggles to get up to speed, he just has to put his foot down with confidence. And as you said, that's likely where they're going wrong. They hear the engine revving high, and are afraid of it, or similar, and don't push it like it needs to be pushed to get up to those speeds.
A friend of mine lived next door (literally within 5 meters, though more like 50 meters by wire) to an geek ISP's test facility, running the latest equipment, latest setup, just before being pushed into wider production. Even he only got (from memory, so it might be a bit higher than this) 18Mbps for a full ADSL2+ connection.
Which is awesome compared to most people, but still, a far cry from 24mbit.
On the other hand, it infuriated me seeing them create that rolling roadblock and force all of the people behind them to drive at whatever speed they decided the group should go
LOL Yeah, though the point of the exercise was that "this is the legal speed limit and it's too low". They were complaining that the speed limit doesn't reflect reality, and that the speed limit is randomly enforced, meaning everyone needs to go faster, but you run the risk of being penalized. At the time it came out, it was a big thing. At the very least, they were going the speed limit.
In Australia and the UK, it's somewhat common for protests to do a "slow down" where they effectively create a rolling road block on all the major choke points. It sucks when they're doing 10kph, when everyone's trying to get to work, along specific sections of road that everyone needs to get into the city.
Oh, and for the record, whoever did the editing on that video should have their fingers removed with a bolt cutter so they may never edit another video, ever.
LOL Yeah, a lot of comments on the video say the same thing. I didn't actually watch it, as I remembered it form a while ago.
I've been driving for over 10 years, have had no at-fault accidents, and only 1 accident where I was a passenger. I do a mix of city driving and long range highway driving. I spend a majority of the time driving in the right lane (I live in a country where we drive on the left) and I'm often over the speed limit. On the freeway I'm way over the speed limit, if circumstances permit.
I can assure you that I ALWAYS encounter people in the "fast lane" going beneath the speed limit, due to congestion, impatience, underpowered cars, nervous uncertain drivers, old people, and similar.
It's a regular occourence for me, to come across a truck, over taking another truck, whom is sometimes also being overtaken by another truck, blocking all 3 lanes, up a steep hill, where the one in the left hand lane is 40kmph under the speed limit, the one in the middle is 35kmph under, and the one on the right is 30kmph under. Effectively creating a giant rolling road block for the next x kmph, that it takes for all of them to overtake each other.
What I can tell you, however, is that no matter how "fast" I am going in the "fast lane" (60mph, 70mph, 80mph, even 90mph at times)--there is always at least *someone* that wants to go faster, this is why I'm a good drive, and ensure I stick left (in your country, stick right), as to not impede other drivers, force errors, and generally annoy people.
So the GP's claims of "people going 1 under" in the "fast" lane are well founded, and you are actually an idiot, who likely doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, or speaking in overly simple generalities, as if his experiences, no matter how accurate, somehow can be correlated to the experiences of everyone.
Oh also, just to show how much fucking bullshit you're spewing, here's a video, of people, in your country, on one of your highways creating a dangerous situation, and effectively a rolling road block by... GOING THE SPEED LIMIT.
So, effectively every car behind them, especially the ones trying to get around them, would be going over the speed limit, meaning anyone going under would be a law abider, but dangerous as they haven't grasped the social norms. Especially if they're an arrogant arsehole like you, and are sitting in the "fast lane" because "I live in a state where we don't have a keep right law".
Here's a tip for you: shut the fuck up.
Wow, I really escalated this by the end. Seriously started writing and replying line by line to yours, was fine, calm headed, but by the end of yours and the end of writing this, I just wanted to stab you in the heart with a trident.
But on a more serious note. What if the devices function was central to the motors operation. You know a lot of your motor is computer controlled these days.
Additionally, if they become ubiquitous and are seen as a "flawless device which is on the whole tamper proof", regardless of the reality, if your device is faulty, that may be entered into evidence in a trial against you, as evidence of your guilt. This might satisfy mens rea, instantly, and might even be secondary evidence (forget the proper name) of actus rea. Though, traffic violations in many countries already immediately satisfies mens rea, and so it wouldn't help much there.
I don't like where it's going. Especially with regards to Tom Tom, iPhone GPS, and similar data, also being used, while shows like CSI lead people to believe that this data is perfect evidence which can't be faked.
This is not good news. Though, it would make a nice black market for older cars, which don't or couldn't have them installed.
I don't want to do anything that goes past allowing us to talk to them, because if it's security related and I mess something up, or they don't understand what I've done, I could have created more of a problem for them. So I stay strictly to my mandate, and just comment on other things I find (these go ignored).
Because of the above mentioned security and IT problems, we don't trust them with anything valuable. I've seen this amongst many businesses, where Asian businesses aren't trusted to do any serious work, they just do the grunt work.
Usually they've just got integration problems (email, sftp, etc), as that's all that's needed for us, is the ability to tell them what to do. So, if someone breaks into their business and fucks their shit up, it doesn't really affect us, unless they also fucked up the hands of the workers on the floor, and the basic printed plans they have. Our IP, isn't really worth stealing, we're not Apple/Google/etc, so that wouldn't matter either.
LOL Yeah, I'm pretty sure that legally, I would have been liable, still. Even if they had of told me to wipe their drive, I'd probably still be liable, at least vicariously.
I work in Australia for a company that does a lot of business throughout Asia, I've been on the internets for ages, and have a background in programming and finance, so I've got a weird diverse IT/Business background. So, I sometimes get assigned to figure out weird problems which the other guys can't figure out, despite the fact that I don't do that job.
Anyhow, every now and then I get given a job of "Somethings wrong with x system, when working with our y asian supplier/partner/customer/etc". These suppliers/partners/customers/etc, aren't small little back offices either, they're usually handling at least a several hundred thousand dollar piece of business, and at most they're handling a several million dollar piece.
The first one I got, I put a lot of effort in, and spent heaps of time looking at our side, getting as much information as possible, resolving that nothing was wrong on our side, and realizing what was happening on their side, then sending it to everyone concerned, which included their sides IT department. To the extent that I'd even figure out what software their running, find the manual, and find the section which dealt with this problem.
This inevitably resulted in them coming back to me with "No, it your side". It was literally that small and simple a response. I took them seriously, went off, tried to see if I could resolve it, and... nope. Still definitely their side.
So, I got in contact with them, and tried to explain what was happening. At which point I noticed "Holy shit, these guys really don't know anything, I'm going to have to walk them through this".
A couple of days later, they still couldn't get it done, so instead they just gave me remote root/Administrator access to their entire network, with absolutely no oversight, so I can go through and make changes to their system, so it was setup correctly.
I shit you not. Sometimes this would mean changing their ssh setup, their sales/orders processing setup, their email server, their domain, everything and anything.
We use many suppliers, and when something changes with our products/services/internally, we often have to change suppliers. So, I've now done this about 5 times, for 5 different companies, throughout Asia. After the first time, I now don't hesitate to ask for root access, and I always get it. Without so much as a small amount of verification, sometimes they hadn't even been told internally of the problem. Although know is "There's this Australian guy, who's confident, and adamant that we've got a problem, and needs access to our systems".
It never ceases to amaze me.
I've thought about this a fair bit over the years, and I think it's apart of the honour/pride culture, where they don't want to have to admit to their managers that they did something wrong, so instead of admitting it, then working to fix it themselves (even with my guidance), they'd rather give a relative stranger complete access. From what I read, this is the sort of cultural problem that was seen at Fukishima, an inability to admit when they were wrong, such that only dodgy patches are undertaken, or possible problems are covered up, to save face.
I know one time when I did this, it got back to us through our customer, that "their IT department had worked with us to resolve issues on our end", which cracked us up. For the sake of getting the job done, we don't care if we take the blame, we just want it up and running smoothly.
While there are 10-20 students in my maths classes at university, there are about 500 of us in the program, and all 500 of us sit the exams at the same time, in the same building, with approximately 2,500 others at exactly the same time, in exactly the same location.
Each proctor is in charge of monitoring about 100 students, which isn't hard since they keep their heads down, and there's a space of just under a meter in between each person to the next closest person.
So, while you think your time is bad, imagine the time it would take at my uni!
Well, while I wouldn't think they'd be "space ships" in the classical sense.
I do wonder, would this not be a viable method of extremely long term, interstellar travel?
Find a "free-floater" (terrible name), build a perhaps subterranean civilization, somewhat colonize this planet, impart an impulse, and go for a ride for millions of years. Given we're advanced enough to even make it to one, we might even be able to attach "weak" but sustainable engines to it, such that we can slightly control it. It wouldn't be a terraformed planet, or similar, more like a moon, which we can live on, sustainably, regardless of the vacuum of space, and lack of sun. This would then essentially be a giant, "space ship".
1a) Go re-read your proposals and see that they don't apply. 1b) No one said anything about that. 2) You would pay more, relative to expectations. However, this was intended as an example of how the incentive structure might. 2a) I'm not going to provide examples for every outcome. 3a) I have to appeal to authority, because to carry on the argument of why "how to measure fun" is a useless task, I'd have to write a huge paper on it, and depending on your education, I might need to teach you mathematics (with a focus on statistics) and economics. Either way, it's far out of the scope of Slashdot. 3b) If you understood 3a, you'd understand why I'm so flippant. 4) Many people consider Gabe Newell to have applied rigorous analysis to this, and so they're arguing for his idea, however reading it, it didn't sound like it was something he's thought about much. Just a passing comment in an article. 4a) I'm sure when they sat down to really go over it, they'd come across these same problems.
Oh, lemme break it down for you then. In response to your points:
1) What you're talking about, isn't price discrimination. 2) I didn't say anything about that, not sure why you'd assume I'd even think that. 3) I do work in this area, I try to measure these sorts of things, and this is useless. 3 part 2) It was considered, it will likely be considered further, the very fact that I commented, was my consideration.
There we go, even you should be able to manage to read that.
It's an interesting system. One I don't particularly like. The whole "being required to provide financial information" really doesn't sit well with me. I'm okay with Universities asking for it, but I'm not okay with government handing them the keys to knowing how much they can charge. I'm sure this measure was done as part of some government funding requirement, to attempt to help them discern who can pay and who can't.
The problem being that creates a whole lot of power for them, and I'd be surprised if it didn't explain a large amount of the growth in university costs.
The more I hear about the US's education system, the more I'm amazed at how insane it is. For instance it was just the other day that I learnt that "legacy" students (students whose parents went to that university) are offered preferential placement, and either much lower standards of entry, or have no required standard for entry (beyond being able to afford it). To me this sounds insane. It's shooting yourself in the foot, by decreasing the quality of your education. Perhaps not in the short term, but in the long term. I was most amazed to hear that this practice often happens a lot at your more famous institutions (Harvard, Yale, etc).
I didn't research this last bit, but had a brief search, and it seems it's less prevalent, and almost only with the old institutions. Very odd.
Take this, and add in what I saw in Waiting for Superman, and the US seems crazy with its education system. Hopefully you earn enough to not have it affect you, or are gifted enough.
I didn't realize that having made "correct" decisions before, means you will make correct decisions into the distant future.
Also, a quick google for things he got wrong/failed at...
Prospero, the game that we never shipped.
The TF2 that was built up until 2000
The second TF2 (the current one, is the third try at it)
Our first stab at Blobulator was a failure
Invasion was a failure.
There’s a few failed starts to build Left 4 Dead, too.
Well, there was the flying fairy game
banning people in Call of Duty. That was way, way bigger an issue for us than piracy
PS3, so far. The way we’ve dealt with those customers so far, and the product that they have, and the lack of updates on the 360 for TF2 is also a total failure
Seems he's got a lot of failures. I'd be surprised if they were the only ones too, you tend to not get things right, without a fuckload of failures, you just hope that the ones you get right, can keep you solvent.
Also, I didn't realize that to critically analyse an idea, that I needed to have succeeded more than the person I was criticizing. Seems slashdot has really tough requirements to comment these days.
I don't come from a country with that model, ours is a merit based system, where everyone pays the same (though some programs/courses cost more), and people are divided by their entry method(s) score. Though local students (defined as being from that country) pay a discounted amount, and receive government funding, where as international students pay the full price.
Having a quick read over this, I'd suggest it's nowhere near perfect price discrimination, unless each (or at least, relatively small groups) of students receives a different price. From the sounds of it, there are a few different groups, and they each receive their own price. There's the people who can afford it, the people who can't but merit learning this, and the people in between. This is fine, and is nowhere near perfect price discrimination.
However, if they do discriminate per person, and you're legally required to hand this information over, I'd be surprised if you don't have a case under your countries competition laws.
Sorry. I made the fatal mistake of RTFA, and just Re-RTFA just in case I missed it, and I still don't see it. Nowhere is he talking about micro-payments for extra content or eye candy. Also, this isn't "a lot of payment strategies" your examples are "different products". There is a HUGE difference.
I have no problem with these different products, such as paying for eye candy (like more hats in TF2!), or paying for DLC. No problem there, and this isn't what he's talking about. Also, this isn't price discrimination. You could loosely apply third degree price discrimination, but this would be more like "You bought a more expensive variant of the game and it comes with a golden hat, which can't be purchased later".
What he's talking about, is proper price discrimination, and he offers these two examples:
"charging customers based on how much fun they are to play with"
" how much people want to pay for items. Some people are happy paying a dollar. They’ll pay a dollar over and over and over again, others want to be different, others want to run servers and create mods. Each one of these people should represent a different monetisation scheme for the community as a whole."
While the latter is a possibility and they're already doing this (such as "free to play this weekend", "DLC", "WoW pricing model", etc), the former, is what everyone is discussing.
Okay, so your per game rating means they can't apply discounts beforehand, additionally it's open to the biggest weakness of "how do we rate 'fun'". Do you know an easy way to calculate this? A way which isn't open to gaming? A way where you don't give the trolls a very nice weapon? A way where the administration overhead doesn't increase disproportionately? A way which allows you to trust servers that you don't run?
Quite frankly, you're saying I have an "inability to see it implemented", where as you've got what I like to call entrepreneurs myopia, it's like marketing myopia but it's where you don't think through the entire solution, systematically, and instead jump to simplistic solutions which don't necessarily reflect reality. We all get it, especially entrepreneurial types (Read: ADD/Bipolar types).
Also, this sort of analysis is what I do. Implementing different revenue models, is extremely difficult, and requires looking at each stakeholder (particularly the ones which are customers or associated in that way), then considering how they make their buying decision, considering what all the incentives produced are, what sort of proportions these would be produced in, and what the sum of these two would be. You're bound to get a lot of this wrong, because incentives aren't obvious, until a lot later. The dotcom boom was a perfect example of this, many different revenue models which on the surface seemed good, but underneath was a house of cards. Though hopefully we likely wouldn't make the valuation feedback mistake again (Well, at least as obviously).
"Brainstorming" I've found to be useless, you just get a pile of ideas (which are never in shortage), instead of rigorous analysis. Which is what's actually required!
Anyway, I sort of went off on a few tangents here, it's hard to stay on track when discussing such complicated ideas, in essentially an open forum (and they are complicated ideas, when you look at them in full).
Slashdot Mirror
Luckily they haven't yet learnt to calculate the net present value.
Though, in all fairness, NPV can be quite subjective, and modeling it for any reasonable period of time makes it extremely sensitive to the estimated variables. Most of which when estimated, have really low correlation coefficients.
Though it's not quite that bad, and certain degrees are worse than others.
However the GP's main problem, I all but guarantee, is due to he doesn't see what "people do these days" as work. I've heard the same thing over and over again from luddites, who want to force us back to an agrarian society. It's fucking insane.
Yeah, actually, you've got a point. I always gave them the benefit of the doubt, and I know that when I used to drive a really old 1981 extremely underpowered car, I was always able to get up to speed. If someone slowed down in front of me though, I'd struggle to get back up to speed.
A friend of mine recently got an extremely small 2 door Toyota, with a smaller engine than my motorbike, and even he says he never struggles to get up to speed, he just has to put his foot down with confidence. And as you said, that's likely where they're going wrong. They hear the engine revving high, and are afraid of it, or similar, and don't push it like it needs to be pushed to get up to those speeds.
I need to stop giving them that excuse.
LOL Yeah, except the ISP isn't about to let you just plugin via that, and they want to see your speeds as well as the others.
Probably were interested in his speeds a lot since he was a leecher and would drill the connection (until he reached his cap of course).
A friend of mine lived next door (literally within 5 meters, though more like 50 meters by wire) to an geek ISP's test facility, running the latest equipment, latest setup, just before being pushed into wider production. Even he only got (from memory, so it might be a bit higher than this) 18Mbps for a full ADSL2+ connection.
Which is awesome compared to most people, but still, a far cry from 24mbit.
Then, for those speeds, you're mistaken.
LOL Yeah, did get a little worked up by the end.
Never fear, Citizen, all good now.
On the other hand, it infuriated me seeing them create that rolling roadblock and force all of the people behind them to drive at whatever speed they decided the group should go
LOL Yeah, though the point of the exercise was that "this is the legal speed limit and it's too low". They were complaining that the speed limit doesn't reflect reality, and that the speed limit is randomly enforced, meaning everyone needs to go faster, but you run the risk of being penalized. At the time it came out, it was a big thing. At the very least, they were going the speed limit.
In Australia and the UK, it's somewhat common for protests to do a "slow down" where they effectively create a rolling road block on all the major choke points. It sucks when they're doing 10kph, when everyone's trying to get to work, along specific sections of road that everyone needs to get into the city.
Oh, and for the record, whoever did the editing on that video should have their fingers removed with a bolt cutter so they may never edit another video, ever.
LOL Yeah, a lot of comments on the video say the same thing. I didn't actually watch it, as I remembered it form a while ago.
As long as the use is limited to investigate accidents ONLY, and they retain only about 15-30 minutes of data, it would be OK.
They shouldnt be used for general law enforcement like speeding,etc..
LOL You're cute. With your naive innocence. Get out of here ya lil' scamp.
Thanks for your anecdotal evidence.
Here's mine:
I've been driving for over 10 years, have had no at-fault accidents, and only 1 accident where I was a passenger. I do a mix of city driving and long range highway driving. I spend a majority of the time driving in the right lane (I live in a country where we drive on the left) and I'm often over the speed limit. On the freeway I'm way over the speed limit, if circumstances permit.
I can assure you that I ALWAYS encounter people in the "fast lane" going beneath the speed limit, due to congestion, impatience, underpowered cars, nervous uncertain drivers, old people, and similar.
It's a regular occourence for me, to come across a truck, over taking another truck, whom is sometimes also being overtaken by another truck, blocking all 3 lanes, up a steep hill, where the one in the left hand lane is 40kmph under the speed limit, the one in the middle is 35kmph under, and the one on the right is 30kmph under. Effectively creating a giant rolling road block for the next x kmph, that it takes for all of them to overtake each other.
What I can tell you, however, is that no matter how "fast" I am going in the "fast lane" (60mph, 70mph, 80mph, even 90mph at times)--there is always at least *someone* that wants to go faster, this is why I'm a good drive, and ensure I stick left (in your country, stick right), as to not impede other drivers, force errors, and generally annoy people.
So the GP's claims of "people going 1 under" in the "fast" lane are well founded, and you are actually an idiot, who likely doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, or speaking in overly simple generalities, as if his experiences, no matter how accurate, somehow can be correlated to the experiences of everyone.
Oh also, just to show how much fucking bullshit you're spewing, here's a video, of people, in your country, on one of your highways creating a dangerous situation, and effectively a rolling road block by... GOING THE SPEED LIMIT.
55: A Meditation on the Speed Limit (Extended Cut)
So, effectively every car behind them, especially the ones trying to get around them, would be going over the speed limit, meaning anyone going under would be a law abider, but dangerous as they haven't grasped the social norms. Especially if they're an arrogant arsehole like you, and are sitting in the "fast lane" because "I live in a state where we don't have a keep right law".
Here's a tip for you: shut the fuck up.
Wow, I really escalated this by the end. Seriously started writing and replying line by line to yours, was fine, calm headed, but by the end of yours and the end of writing this, I just wanted to stab you in the heart with a trident.
I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that.
But on a more serious note. What if the devices function was central to the motors operation. You know a lot of your motor is computer controlled these days.
Additionally, if they become ubiquitous and are seen as a "flawless device which is on the whole tamper proof", regardless of the reality, if your device is faulty, that may be entered into evidence in a trial against you, as evidence of your guilt. This might satisfy mens rea, instantly, and might even be secondary evidence (forget the proper name) of actus rea. Though, traffic violations in many countries already immediately satisfies mens rea, and so it wouldn't help much there.
I don't like where it's going. Especially with regards to Tom Tom, iPhone GPS, and similar data, also being used, while shows like CSI lead people to believe that this data is perfect evidence which can't be faked.
This is not good news. Though, it would make a nice black market for older cars, which don't or couldn't have them installed.
I don't want to do anything that goes past allowing us to talk to them, because if it's security related and I mess something up, or they don't understand what I've done, I could have created more of a problem for them. So I stay strictly to my mandate, and just comment on other things I find (these go ignored).
Because of the above mentioned security and IT problems, we don't trust them with anything valuable. I've seen this amongst many businesses, where Asian businesses aren't trusted to do any serious work, they just do the grunt work.
Usually they've just got integration problems (email, sftp, etc), as that's all that's needed for us, is the ability to tell them what to do. So, if someone breaks into their business and fucks their shit up, it doesn't really affect us, unless they also fucked up the hands of the workers on the floor, and the basic printed plans they have. Our IP, isn't really worth stealing, we're not Apple/Google/etc, so that wouldn't matter either.
LOL Yeah, I'm pretty sure that legally, I would have been liable, still. Even if they had of told me to wipe their drive, I'd probably still be liable, at least vicariously.
You've got a point.
I work in Australia for a company that does a lot of business throughout Asia, I've been on the internets for ages, and have a background in programming and finance, so I've got a weird diverse IT/Business background. So, I sometimes get assigned to figure out weird problems which the other guys can't figure out, despite the fact that I don't do that job.
Anyhow, every now and then I get given a job of "Somethings wrong with x system, when working with our y asian supplier/partner/customer/etc". These suppliers/partners/customers/etc, aren't small little back offices either, they're usually handling at least a several hundred thousand dollar piece of business, and at most they're handling a several million dollar piece.
The first one I got, I put a lot of effort in, and spent heaps of time looking at our side, getting as much information as possible, resolving that nothing was wrong on our side, and realizing what was happening on their side, then sending it to everyone concerned, which included their sides IT department. To the extent that I'd even figure out what software their running, find the manual, and find the section which dealt with this problem.
This inevitably resulted in them coming back to me with "No, it your side". It was literally that small and simple a response. I took them seriously, went off, tried to see if I could resolve it, and ... nope. Still definitely their side.
So, I got in contact with them, and tried to explain what was happening. At which point I noticed "Holy shit, these guys really don't know anything, I'm going to have to walk them through this".
A couple of days later, they still couldn't get it done, so instead they just gave me remote root/Administrator access to their entire network, with absolutely no oversight, so I can go through and make changes to their system, so it was setup correctly.
I shit you not. Sometimes this would mean changing their ssh setup, their sales/orders processing setup, their email server, their domain, everything and anything.
We use many suppliers, and when something changes with our products/services/internally, we often have to change suppliers. So, I've now done this about 5 times, for 5 different companies, throughout Asia. After the first time, I now don't hesitate to ask for root access, and I always get it. Without so much as a small amount of verification, sometimes they hadn't even been told internally of the problem. Although know is "There's this Australian guy, who's confident, and adamant that we've got a problem, and needs access to our systems".
It never ceases to amaze me.
I've thought about this a fair bit over the years, and I think it's apart of the honour/pride culture, where they don't want to have to admit to their managers that they did something wrong, so instead of admitting it, then working to fix it themselves (even with my guidance), they'd rather give a relative stranger complete access. From what I read, this is the sort of cultural problem that was seen at Fukishima, an inability to admit when they were wrong, such that only dodgy patches are undertaken, or possible problems are covered up, to save face.
I know one time when I did this, it got back to us through our customer, that "their IT department had worked with us to resolve issues on our end", which cracked us up. For the sake of getting the job done, we don't care if we take the blame, we just want it up and running smoothly.
LOL!
While there are 10-20 students in my maths classes at university, there are about 500 of us in the program, and all 500 of us sit the exams at the same time, in the same building, with approximately 2,500 others at exactly the same time, in exactly the same location.
Each proctor is in charge of monitoring about 100 students, which isn't hard since they keep their heads down, and there's a space of just under a meter in between each person to the next closest person.
So, while you think your time is bad, imagine the time it would take at my uni!
If there are "the homeless" on the planet, might I suggest Soylent Green?
Well, while I wouldn't think they'd be "space ships" in the classical sense.
I do wonder, would this not be a viable method of extremely long term, interstellar travel?
Find a "free-floater" (terrible name), build a perhaps subterranean civilization, somewhat colonize this planet, impart an impulse, and go for a ride for millions of years. Given we're advanced enough to even make it to one, we might even be able to attach "weak" but sustainable engines to it, such that we can slightly control it. It wouldn't be a terraformed planet, or similar, more like a moon, which we can live on, sustainably, regardless of the vacuum of space, and lack of sun. This would then essentially be a giant, "space ship".
Interesting idea.
1a) Go re-read your proposals and see that they don't apply.
1b) No one said anything about that.
2) You would pay more, relative to expectations. However, this was intended as an example of how the incentive structure might.
2a) I'm not going to provide examples for every outcome.
3a) I have to appeal to authority, because to carry on the argument of why "how to measure fun" is a useless task, I'd have to write a huge paper on it, and depending on your education, I might need to teach you mathematics (with a focus on statistics) and economics. Either way, it's far out of the scope of Slashdot.
3b) If you understood 3a, you'd understand why I'm so flippant.
4) Many people consider Gabe Newell to have applied rigorous analysis to this, and so they're arguing for his idea, however reading it, it didn't sound like it was something he's thought about much. Just a passing comment in an article.
4a) I'm sure when they sat down to really go over it, they'd come across these same problems.
Oh, lemme break it down for you then. In response to your points:
1) What you're talking about, isn't price discrimination.
2) I didn't say anything about that, not sure why you'd assume I'd even think that.
3) I do work in this area, I try to measure these sorts of things, and this is useless.
3 part 2) It was considered, it will likely be considered further, the very fact that I commented, was my consideration.
There we go, even you should be able to manage to read that.
It's an interesting system. One I don't particularly like. The whole "being required to provide financial information" really doesn't sit well with me. I'm okay with Universities asking for it, but I'm not okay with government handing them the keys to knowing how much they can charge. I'm sure this measure was done as part of some government funding requirement, to attempt to help them discern who can pay and who can't.
The problem being that creates a whole lot of power for them, and I'd be surprised if it didn't explain a large amount of the growth in university costs.
The more I hear about the US's education system, the more I'm amazed at how insane it is. For instance it was just the other day that I learnt that "legacy" students (students whose parents went to that university) are offered preferential placement, and either much lower standards of entry, or have no required standard for entry (beyond being able to afford it). To me this sounds insane. It's shooting yourself in the foot, by decreasing the quality of your education. Perhaps not in the short term, but in the long term. I was most amazed to hear that this practice often happens a lot at your more famous institutions (Harvard, Yale, etc).
I didn't research this last bit, but had a brief search, and it seems it's less prevalent, and almost only with the old institutions. Very odd.
Take this, and add in what I saw in Waiting for Superman, and the US seems crazy with its education system. Hopefully you earn enough to not have it affect you, or are gifted enough.
I didn't realize that having made "correct" decisions before, means you will make correct decisions into the distant future.
Also, a quick google for things he got wrong/failed at...
Seems he's got a lot of failures. I'd be surprised if they were the only ones too, you tend to not get things right, without a fuckload of failures, you just hope that the ones you get right, can keep you solvent.
Also, I didn't realize that to critically analyse an idea, that I needed to have succeeded more than the person I was criticizing. Seems slashdot has really tough requirements to comment these days.
I don't come from a country with that model, ours is a merit based system, where everyone pays the same (though some programs/courses cost more), and people are divided by their entry method(s) score. Though local students (defined as being from that country) pay a discounted amount, and receive government funding, where as international students pay the full price.
Having a quick read over this, I'd suggest it's nowhere near perfect price discrimination, unless each (or at least, relatively small groups) of students receives a different price. From the sounds of it, there are a few different groups, and they each receive their own price. There's the people who can afford it, the people who can't but merit learning this, and the people in between. This is fine, and is nowhere near perfect price discrimination.
However, if they do discriminate per person, and you're legally required to hand this information over, I'd be surprised if you don't have a case under your countries competition laws.
Sorry. I made the fatal mistake of RTFA, and just Re-RTFA just in case I missed it, and I still don't see it. Nowhere is he talking about micro-payments for extra content or eye candy. Also, this isn't "a lot of payment strategies" your examples are "different products". There is a HUGE difference.
I have no problem with these different products, such as paying for eye candy (like more hats in TF2!), or paying for DLC. No problem there, and this isn't what he's talking about. Also, this isn't price discrimination. You could loosely apply third degree price discrimination, but this would be more like "You bought a more expensive variant of the game and it comes with a golden hat, which can't be purchased later".
What he's talking about, is proper price discrimination, and he offers these two examples:
While the latter is a possibility and they're already doing this (such as "free to play this weekend", "DLC", "WoW pricing model", etc), the former, is what everyone is discussing.
Okay, so your per game rating means they can't apply discounts beforehand, additionally it's open to the biggest weakness of "how do we rate 'fun'". Do you know an easy way to calculate this? A way which isn't open to gaming? A way where you don't give the trolls a very nice weapon? A way where the administration overhead doesn't increase disproportionately? A way which allows you to trust servers that you don't run?
Quite frankly, you're saying I have an "inability to see it implemented", where as you've got what I like to call entrepreneurs myopia, it's like marketing myopia but it's where you don't think through the entire solution, systematically, and instead jump to simplistic solutions which don't necessarily reflect reality. We all get it, especially entrepreneurial types (Read: ADD/Bipolar types).
Also, this sort of analysis is what I do. Implementing different revenue models, is extremely difficult, and requires looking at each stakeholder (particularly the ones which are customers or associated in that way), then considering how they make their buying decision, considering what all the incentives produced are, what sort of proportions these would be produced in, and what the sum of these two would be. You're bound to get a lot of this wrong, because incentives aren't obvious, until a lot later. The dotcom boom was a perfect example of this, many different revenue models which on the surface seemed good, but underneath was a house of cards. Though hopefully we likely wouldn't make the valuation feedback mistake again (Well, at least as obviously).
"Brainstorming" I've found to be useless, you just get a pile of ideas (which are never in shortage), instead of rigorous analysis. Which is what's actually required!
Anyway, I sort of went off on a few tangents here, it's hard to stay on track when discussing such complicated ideas, in essentially an open forum (and they are complicated ideas, when you look at them in full).
It seems you didn't read the other people, who responded with essentially the same idea, which was the shot down by the obvious problems with this.
But you know, thanks for trying.
Exactly.