The Need For Speed Underground 2 had an awesome advertising scheme. They used real advertisements in the game like you'd see in real life. Star bucks on the corners, Best Buys with huge parking lots, bill boards for major companies, you couldn't help but see it while driving arround. If that's the kind of embedded advertising that we are moving towards, I'm all for it. It's not excessivly intrusive, it's easy to read, and if anything it could use an easy way to link back to the real world.
Wouldn't it be cool to pull into the Best Buy parking lot in the game and have a browser window open up (at your command) to Best Buy's home page? All from within the game. Or like the Pizza ordering system in EQ2. I think other companies will start to realize the impact of online games and systems more an more.
10 years ago you NEEDED to have a yellow pages listing
5 years ago you NEEDED to have a website
Now you need to have a direct purchase point on your web site
Next you'll need not just embedded advertising, but imbedded sales.
Who's said to stick the burner in the Cray 2? the Cray 2 already has some form of output, and if it's only output is to tape, then get an old tape reader that has COM/Par out, plug that into a cheap dell special with a burner.
Intern + DVD Burner + 50 DVDs (not sure how much data is on those old tapes) = $500 + $15k/year.
NASA is mothoballing their comp, so pick it up and swap, get an intern to switch tapes and disks, a low end PC with solitare, mine sweeper, and DVD burning software, and viola!
Take $50k for management, organization, and design of the process and a year later you have the whole thing on DVDs and an intern who can beat the large board of mine sweeper in 45 seconds.
Closed Source:
Company A spends $.5mill developing an application (Wages, benefits, office, hardware, software, etc over a year and a half of development)
Company B buys software from Company A
Company B buys support license from Company A
Company A spends $.25mil on new version
Company B buys upgrade from Company A
Open Source:
Company A spends $.5mill developing an application. Releases app and source.
Company B downloads/builds source
Company B buys support contract from Company C
Joe Smoe makes improvements to application
company B downloads/builds Joe's source.
The problem here is that Company A never recoups their costs. Company A will stop making new software. Which could be fine if the Joe Smoes of the world unit and make a solid community development team. Company C gets rich however off of the support.
This CAN work however, if Company A owns Company C, or if Company C invests in Company A (ie: IBM donating to OSS causes). The writer of the article makes the assumption that Support = Future Development. It doesn't.
So it will work well for large companies that can dominate the support marked (and Asian phone support companies). But I don't see OSS being benefitial in the small business environment, where tight staff limits supporting ability and with out the initial income from sales it'll be hard to recoup the initial investments.
True, but myself and a number of good ol' southern boys would still rather push a Chevy(Windows) then drive a Ford(Apple), and if the Chevy ain't worth pushing, it's okay to take a ride in a Dodge(Linux).
And if that Dodge has a hemi... You don't have to go back to your S10.
-Rick
Nothing will rile up a bunch of linux users like a mention of Microsoft and Windows. But nothing riles up Windows users like mentioning Apple.
Linux still has a long way to go in usability polishing, but it's getting there. As a recent Ubuntu convert myself I keep running into situations where I miss the polish pro of XP. Another year or so, and I think we'll be closer.
Someone's E-pen was threatened, so he's moding all funny post's as overrated. Incase said 'overrated moder' reads this post, please mod it 'Troll', or if you must, Troll and Overrated.
Batch files come to mind. if all you are doing is moving files and automating the launch of different apps. If you need to macro out processes in the apps, there are macro tools out there for windows.
-Rick
Greg actually got a job with TDS. Owen had his internship at school for a while, but he was struggling, and I haven't seen him in any of the night classes. Steve (another one of the 4) might know if he's still arround since he got the job at Corporate. Mike, last I heard was at UW Oshkosh err some other practically Canadian university.
The one chicka who made it through the Assoc disappeared, no idea what happened to her. And I can't remeber who the last person was.
I'm sorry that you implied and 'suck it up' attitude from my post, I assure you it was not intentional. I have been in the same long hour crunches in my carreer, things like "If these invoices don't print correctly and mail on friday, the company will lose $50,000." Well, Wednesday afternoon looks mighty busy.
But I've never worked for a company (since leaving the Marine Corps) that asked for more then a 60hour week, and never more then 2-3weeks in a row. There will be crunch times, but study after study is showing that pushing programmers specificly, over 40 hr/week is significantly more detramental.
In my experience, companies asking for huge overtime are the exception. The norm is a much more relaxed 40-50 hour work week.
The sheer number of people in CS 1xxx was startling, but not as startling as the drastically lower number of people in the 3xxx series classes.
My CS1xx classes had about 35 students. At the End of the Assoc there were 8. Starting the Bach I know 3 of us stayed here, the 2 transfered to the UW system, and the remaining 3 dropped out. There were 4 of us through out the Assoc program that worked together. We were refered to as 'Team Depricated' and we were all the guys who Loved to program. The 5th guy who stuck with the classes doesn't have the love for coding, but he enjoys it enough to stick with it, and he managed to get a job somewhat in the feild. The other 3 struggled like hell, one of them picked up an internship, but I heard he lost it (He was kinda a moron), and the other 2 I haven't heard from.
Loving it won't make you successful, but it'll make you more likely to succed.
Ever hear of the "at" command? It is cross platform and will let you spend those late nights at home with the wife (scratch that - this is Slashdot) home Linux server.
Actually, the process is cross platform. Half of it is a series of cron scripts, saftey checks, and backups, the other half is Sybase command and a custom 3rd party windows app that we can't redesign.
1) Four years of one of the most time intensive majors in colleges
I actually thought my CS classes were the easy ones. It was that damn Lit class that gave me hell.
2) Going through Microsoft's dehumanizing interview process
There are (e-gahds!) other companies to work for you know. You don't HAVE to be evil.
3) Getting free soda in exchange for 80 hour work weeks at minimum wage
I don't get free soda, and I only put in 5 hours of overtime a week to run nightly processes. I get paid a good deal more then minimum wage.
4) Getting fired at age 28 for being too old
I'm only 26, so I can't say for sure, but my Boss (a former mainframe coder) is in his 50s, my team lead is in his late 30s and another developer on the team is in his mid 40s.
Just wanted to shed some light on the ACTUAL life.
I think the co-op satelite would be a good idea, if you can clear it with the signal provider. Direct TV is going to want their $50 from each of you.
And experience with Satelite varies. I house sat a few times for a friend with Direct TV. I hated it. Only once was it during inclimate weather, and although there was some static, the signal was watchable. But the interface sucked. And I saw no sign of video on demand other then sporting events.
Charter offers Charter On Demand, which IMO just rocks. Infact, couple it with a DRM, ownership and Ubiquitous access and I would be estatic about it. As it is now I can 'rent' for free any movie on the premeir channels. Or pay a small fee to rent movies from their library. I also get pausing, fastforward, rewind, and a 24 hour window.
And my full cable bill is under $100, including 3meg down speed ISP and modem rental. A friend of mine on the dish gave up and got onto a local Wifi tower because the latency off the dish was so horrendous he couldn't play even slow games over the net.
So maybe the dish is a good decision for some people, but it is no cure-all for Cable users.
Why should I sell you a digitally delivered movie for $5.00 when I can make you rent it at $1.50 a shot?
Because how many times am I going to rent "Hot Shots, Part Dues"? Once, maybe twice? You make $3 off a twice rented product, versus the $5 for a sale. The $5 sale also makes your customer more likely to stay with you and your delivery system. The $5 sale can be coupled with an anywere-on-demand delivery system that would be highly benefitial to the customer(Also aiding in customer attraction and retention).
Not that you'll ever get a digitally delivered movie for $5.00 - you'll pay as much as you would for a DVD for it.
Charter On Demand does. True their system is a 'rental' system, but a large amount of content (anything showing on movie channels) is available for free. And while the rental system is nice and cheap, I would likely buy atleast some of the movies if I could always access them from anywheres instead of renting them for a day.
Remember that in our current IP system, there is one and only one source for any given piece of media - the copyright holder.
Kinda, right now I can get a song from a CD store, the radio, a friend, an online store (iTunes) from file sharing, etc. As long as the copywrite holder gets their royalties, the situation is acceptable.
Renting digital property rather than selling it is incredibly more profitable than renting physical equipment, because your duplication cost is zero, and there's no maintenance.
Renting was profitable in the physical media market because of the low re-use by consumers and high costs of delivery. Think about it, if 50 people in an area wanted to watch Snow White, with a purchase system, you would have to send out 50 copies, and each consumer would have to pay $20 for a copy. By introducing a Rental model, you could send 3 copies, and let each of the 50 people rent one copy at a time at $1.50. Over time, the rental model will pay off it's initial investment and continue to be profitable. Where as after the 50 sales of the DVDs, you wont make any more money.
You can still rent movies digitally at $1.50, but you no longer have a shared medium. The customer doesn't want to have to give it back. And they are not likely to rent any given movie more then twice. So you'll either have to charge them $2.50 a movie rental, and invest more in advertising, or charge them $5.00 for a purchase, and use the benefit of ownership as your advertisement.
Thats why software providers who make the most money make it off of licensing, not sales, why Microsoft pushes recurrent licensing schemes rather than sales at every opportunity,
Microsoft pushes recurrent licenses because they have a trapped market. If you buy a 1 year SQL Server license, next year you will either have to redevelop your data solution, or renew your license. Renewing the license, while expencive is cheaper then the manhours require to redevelop an new solution. A digital movie house could use the same model IF they had a customer who HAD to see the same movie EVERY day and would LOSE MONEY if they did not see that movie.
How often do you go out and rent the same movie time and time again? Renting is only more profitable when it comes to physically distributed mediums. When you have a physical medium (CD/DVD) you have to pay for production and shipping. By renting it, you make your $1.50 each rental. Because only one customer can have it at a given point in time. Time shifting is prevented by the laws of physics in this case.
With a digitally distributed You can have multi customer using the same medium at the same time. There is no added bonus of renting because there is going to be little repeat business on any single item. Any repeat business profits would be heavily outweighed by the advertising and marketing advantage of allowing users to access content they own at any point in time. Why rent a digitally delivered movie for $1.50 and watch it once when I can buy a digitally delivered movie for $5 and watch it at any time, at my house, at my friends house, etc, with out needing to drag along a DVD?
Most standard audio CD's go for $15 or less at best buy. 8-9 to 10-15 over a period of 20+ years, CD's are probrably cheaper now then they were then once inflation is put in.
Slashdot Mirror
The Need For Speed Underground 2 had an awesome advertising scheme. They used real advertisements in the game like you'd see in real life. Star bucks on the corners, Best Buys with huge parking lots, bill boards for major companies, you couldn't help but see it while driving arround. If that's the kind of embedded advertising that we are moving towards, I'm all for it. It's not excessivly intrusive, it's easy to read, and if anything it could use an easy way to link back to the real world. Wouldn't it be cool to pull into the Best Buy parking lot in the game and have a browser window open up (at your command) to Best Buy's home page? All from within the game. Or like the Pizza ordering system in EQ2. I think other companies will start to realize the impact of online games and systems more an more.
10 years ago you NEEDED to have a yellow pages listing
5 years ago you NEEDED to have a website
Now you need to have a direct purchase point on your web site
Next you'll need not just embedded advertising, but imbedded sales.
-Rick -Rick
Who's said to stick the burner in the Cray 2? the Cray 2 already has some form of output, and if it's only output is to tape, then get an old tape reader that has COM/Par out, plug that into a cheap dell special with a burner.
-Rick
Intern + DVD Burner + 50 DVDs (not sure how much data is on those old tapes) = $500 + $15k/year.
NASA is mothoballing their comp, so pick it up and swap, get an intern to switch tapes and disks, a low end PC with solitare, mine sweeper, and DVD burning software, and viola!
Take $50k for management, organization, and design of the process and a year later you have the whole thing on DVDs and an intern who can beat the large board of mine sweeper in 45 seconds.
-Rick
Closed Source:
Company A spends $.5mill developing an application (Wages, benefits, office, hardware, software, etc over a year and a half of development) Company B buys software from Company A
Company B buys support license from Company A
Company A spends $.25mil on new version
Company B buys upgrade from Company A
Open Source: Company A spends $.5mill developing an application. Releases app and source.
Company B downloads/builds source
Company B buys support contract from Company C
Joe Smoe makes improvements to application
company B downloads/builds Joe's source.
The problem here is that Company A never recoups their costs. Company A will stop making new software. Which could be fine if the Joe Smoes of the world unit and make a solid community development team. Company C gets rich however off of the support.
This CAN work however, if Company A owns Company C, or if Company C invests in Company A (ie: IBM donating to OSS causes). The writer of the article makes the assumption that Support = Future Development. It doesn't.
So it will work well for large companies that can dominate the support marked (and Asian phone support companies). But I don't see OSS being benefitial in the small business environment, where tight staff limits supporting ability and with out the initial income from sales it'll be hard to recoup the initial investments.
-Rick
Woops, there is an inside joke about a guy called 'Steeve' but I was not intending to use it. Just me being fat fingered.
-Rick
True, but myself and a number of good ol' southern boys would still rather push a Chevy(Windows) then drive a Ford(Apple), and if the Chevy ain't worth pushing, it's okay to take a ride in a Dodge(Linux). And if that Dodge has a hemi... You don't have to go back to your S10. -Rick
Nothing will rile up a bunch of linux users like a mention of Microsoft and Windows. But nothing riles up Windows users like mentioning Apple.
Linux still has a long way to go in usability polishing, but it's getting there. As a recent Ubuntu convert myself I keep running into situations where I miss the polish pro of XP. Another year or so, and I think we'll be closer.
-Rick
Someone's E-pen was threatened, so he's moding all funny post's as overrated. Incase said 'overrated moder' reads this post, please mod it 'Troll', or if you must, Troll and Overrated.
-Eixk
http://aimfight.com/getFight.php?name1=BillGates&n ame2=SteeveJobs
No wonder why MS > Apple, Steeve's got no friends!
-Rick
This aught to be good for a laugh.
-Rick
Non-compete clauses stand up in court about as well as subpoenaed slash dot testimony.
-Rick
No matter who hires Alan Kay, we're still screwed.
-Rick
Batch files come to mind. if all you are doing is moving files and automating the launch of different apps. If you need to macro out processes in the apps, there are macro tools out there for windows. -Rick
You miss-spelled "Teh". -Rick
Greg actually got a job with TDS. Owen had his internship at school for a while, but he was struggling, and I haven't seen him in any of the night classes. Steve (another one of the 4) might know if he's still arround since he got the job at Corporate. Mike, last I heard was at UW Oshkosh err some other practically Canadian university.
The one chicka who made it through the Assoc disappeared, no idea what happened to her. And I can't remeber who the last person was.
-Rick
I'm sorry that you implied and 'suck it up' attitude from my post, I assure you it was not intentional. I have been in the same long hour crunches in my carreer, things like "If these invoices don't print correctly and mail on friday, the company will lose $50,000." Well, Wednesday afternoon looks mighty busy.
But I've never worked for a company (since leaving the Marine Corps) that asked for more then a 60hour week, and never more then 2-3weeks in a row. There will be crunch times, but study after study is showing that pushing programmers specificly, over 40 hr/week is significantly more detramental.
In my experience, companies asking for huge overtime are the exception. The norm is a much more relaxed 40-50 hour work week.
-Rick
The sheer number of people in CS 1xxx was startling, but not as startling as the drastically lower number of people in the 3xxx series classes.
My CS1xx classes had about 35 students. At the End of the Assoc there were 8. Starting the Bach I know 3 of us stayed here, the 2 transfered to the UW system, and the remaining 3 dropped out. There were 4 of us through out the Assoc program that worked together. We were refered to as 'Team Depricated' and we were all the guys who Loved to program. The 5th guy who stuck with the classes doesn't have the love for coding, but he enjoys it enough to stick with it, and he managed to get a job somewhat in the feild. The other 3 struggled like hell, one of them picked up an internship, but I heard he lost it (He was kinda a moron), and the other 2 I haven't heard from.
Loving it won't make you successful, but it'll make you more likely to succed.
-Rick
Ever hear of the "at" command? It is cross platform and will let you spend those late nights at home with the wife (scratch that - this is Slashdot) home Linux server.
Actually, the process is cross platform. Half of it is a series of cron scripts, saftey checks, and backups, the other half is Sybase command and a custom 3rd party windows app that we can't redesign.
-Rick
1) Four years of one of the most time intensive majors in colleges
I actually thought my CS classes were the easy ones. It was that damn Lit class that gave me hell.
2) Going through Microsoft's dehumanizing interview process
There are (e-gahds!) other companies to work for you know. You don't HAVE to be evil.
3) Getting free soda in exchange for 80 hour work weeks at minimum wage I don't get free soda, and I only put in 5 hours of overtime a week to run nightly processes. I get paid a good deal more then minimum wage.
4) Getting fired at age 28 for being too old
I'm only 26, so I can't say for sure, but my Boss (a former mainframe coder) is in his 50s, my team lead is in his late 30s and another developer on the team is in his mid 40s.
Just wanted to shed some light on the ACTUAL life.
-Rick
I think the co-op satelite would be a good idea, if you can clear it with the signal provider. Direct TV is going to want their $50 from each of you.
And experience with Satelite varies. I house sat a few times for a friend with Direct TV. I hated it. Only once was it during inclimate weather, and although there was some static, the signal was watchable. But the interface sucked. And I saw no sign of video on demand other then sporting events.
Charter offers Charter On Demand, which IMO just rocks. Infact, couple it with a DRM, ownership and Ubiquitous access and I would be estatic about it. As it is now I can 'rent' for free any movie on the premeir channels. Or pay a small fee to rent movies from their library. I also get pausing, fastforward, rewind, and a 24 hour window.
And my full cable bill is under $100, including 3meg down speed ISP and modem rental. A friend of mine on the dish gave up and got onto a local Wifi tower because the latency off the dish was so horrendous he couldn't play even slow games over the net.
So maybe the dish is a good decision for some people, but it is no cure-all for Cable users.
-Rick
WSJ: Have your friends just stopped swearing around you?
Martin: (laughing) No, no, my friends are still the same.
No Way! Martin has friends!?!?!
-Rick
And the sun goes down, yet his furry rump missed it again.
-Rick
Why should I sell you a digitally delivered movie for $5.00 when I can make you rent it at $1.50 a shot?
Because how many times am I going to rent "Hot Shots, Part Dues"? Once, maybe twice? You make $3 off a twice rented product, versus the $5 for a sale. The $5 sale also makes your customer more likely to stay with you and your delivery system. The $5 sale can be coupled with an anywere-on-demand delivery system that would be highly benefitial to the customer(Also aiding in customer attraction and retention).
Not that you'll ever get a digitally delivered movie for $5.00 - you'll pay as much as you would for a DVD for it.
Charter On Demand does. True their system is a 'rental' system, but a large amount of content (anything showing on movie channels) is available for free. And while the rental system is nice and cheap, I would likely buy atleast some of the movies if I could always access them from anywheres instead of renting them for a day.
Remember that in our current IP system, there is one and only one source for any given piece of media - the copyright holder.
Kinda, right now I can get a song from a CD store, the radio, a friend, an online store (iTunes) from file sharing, etc. As long as the copywrite holder gets their royalties, the situation is acceptable.
Renting digital property rather than selling it is incredibly more profitable than renting physical equipment, because your duplication cost is zero, and there's no maintenance.
Renting was profitable in the physical media market because of the low re-use by consumers and high costs of delivery. Think about it, if 50 people in an area wanted to watch Snow White, with a purchase system, you would have to send out 50 copies, and each consumer would have to pay $20 for a copy. By introducing a Rental model, you could send 3 copies, and let each of the 50 people rent one copy at a time at $1.50. Over time, the rental model will pay off it's initial investment and continue to be profitable. Where as after the 50 sales of the DVDs, you wont make any more money.
You can still rent movies digitally at $1.50, but you no longer have a shared medium. The customer doesn't want to have to give it back. And they are not likely to rent any given movie more then twice. So you'll either have to charge them $2.50 a movie rental, and invest more in advertising, or charge them $5.00 for a purchase, and use the benefit of ownership as your advertisement.
Thats why software providers who make the most money make it off of licensing, not sales, why Microsoft pushes recurrent licensing schemes rather than sales at every opportunity,
Microsoft pushes recurrent licenses because they have a trapped market. If you buy a 1 year SQL Server license, next year you will either have to redevelop your data solution, or renew your license. Renewing the license, while expencive is cheaper then the manhours require to redevelop an new solution. A digital movie house could use the same model IF they had a customer who HAD to see the same movie EVERY day and would LOSE MONEY if they did not see that movie.
-Rick
How often do you go out and rent the same movie time and time again? Renting is only more profitable when it comes to physically distributed mediums. When you have a physical medium (CD/DVD) you have to pay for production and shipping. By renting it, you make your $1.50 each rental. Because only one customer can have it at a given point in time. Time shifting is prevented by the laws of physics in this case.
With a digitally distributed You can have multi customer using the same medium at the same time. There is no added bonus of renting because there is going to be little repeat business on any single item. Any repeat business profits would be heavily outweighed by the advertising and marketing advantage of allowing users to access content they own at any point in time. Why rent a digitally delivered movie for $1.50 and watch it once when I can buy a digitally delivered movie for $5 and watch it at any time, at my house, at my friends house, etc, with out needing to drag along a DVD?
-Rick
Most standard audio CD's go for $15 or less at best buy. 8-9 to 10-15 over a period of 20+ years, CD's are probrably cheaper now then they were then once inflation is put in.
-Rick