Thanks for the explanation of the lala sales model above!
From what I see, lala has three money making models: (a) DRM-free download store (like iTunes), (b) ad supported network listening (like Pandora), and (c) pay network listening (like SiriusXM).
This doesn't sound as evil as it's being made to be.
Have car at my disposal for errands or to go to hockey after work
Often, bringing a large hockey bag onto the subway is considered rude to other passengers. And renting a locker at his local rink (if they even make this option available) would further add to the cost.
No sir, public transportation is not as convenient as cars. When your trunk serves as a personal storage locker... it make carrying stuff that doesn't fit in a small backpack more attractive to have a car.
[Microsoft Office] just makes it easier to hurt yourself
This feature you're talking about... you say that OpenOffice can implement it if they integrate with VBA functionality?
The fact that you've isolated the world to (a) home use, (b) school use, and (c) financial institution use shows you're blissful ignorance of the situation. Furthermore, the fact that your participation in (c) seeks to leverage technologies that are like a square peg in a round hole provides even more evidence.
I recall an era before computers when accountants uses notebooks called "ledgers" to manage their money. Things were certainly slower than they are today... but maybe that was a good thing, because if you try using broken tools to build a house, don't be surprised when the house falls down. The lesson to financial companies is don't use Microsoft Office to manage money. Personally... I think you're exaggerating the situation because my impression is that most of the big financial companies have large software staffs to develop proprietary in-house applications and I doubt they'd be wasting their time with unmaintainable Visual Basic apps... but feel free to argue that point if you want if I'm wrong.
I'm sorry... but not including support for Visual Basic Applications makes it unprofessional? I don't believe I've ever seen anything that puts the terms "Professional" and "Visual Basic" in the same sentence. VB is a toy for high schoolers. Anybody developing VB beyond the 12th grade level had better be doing it to supplement a skillset unrelated to computer programming (for example: GUI design).
All else being equal, I'd rather see $40 electronic textbooks that can't be sold back
This is the most insightful reason to buy a Kindle I've ever seen. Unfortunately, I doubt publishers are going to see it this way and they'll continue to charge $200 for an electronic version that can't be re-sold to your younger friends.
There's quite a bit of interesting wheat (in there with the chaff, of course) flipping through that large middle block of digital channels.
I went for a year without cable or internet. My television watching was composed mainly of over-the-air NBC. I find the absence of choice to be therapeutic compared to the glut of crap and commercial ass-fuckery offered by the 60+ cable channels I get now.
I'd go back to that situation in an instant, however it seems "not having cable and internet" makes me significantly less attractive to the prospect of maintain a long term girlfriend, and I quite frankly value the sex more than the irritation of dealing with having television cables that I'd never consider watching.
I have binary figures. Each finger can either be up or down. Therefore, I can count to 2^5 on each hand or 2^10 if I combine them. Dividing with the number 6 shouldn't be a problem, however representing the number "4" becomes somewhat of an issue when I'm holding up my hand at the ice cream store telling the clerk that I want four scoops on my cone.
Jeez, are we going to get to the point where it's not safe to go to the bathroom because the toilet can execute Javascript?
Woah now! Don't let the cat out of the bag too early. Considering how far toilets have come over the century, you'll be happy with a little Javascript injection turning your toilet into a Spam Zombie.
Let's review:
Toilet 0.0: A bush. Possible attack vectors include bee stings and bear claws.
Toilet 1.0: A hole in the ground. Insects and burrowing creatures stung and bit you when you dug your hole to close to them.
Toilet 2.0: The community toilet. Walls give you privacy, but god awful smells make it painful to use.
Toilet 3.0: The Flush Toilet. Don't put too much in or it overflows.
Toilet 4.0: The Autoflush Toilet. Same as previous, but multiple flushes each time you try to wipe yourself.
Toilet 5.0: (coming soon) Internet Integrated Diagnostics Toilet. Javascript vulnerabilities and toxic Chinese workmanship.
The fact of the matter is that internet service is quickly becoming a necessary utility just as telephone and electric power services are today.
Your post was well-written and I agreed with all your points, but I'd like to add the emphasis on the above quote to highlight that internet service is still more comparable to Cable Television than Electricity or the Telephone. Consider, it took over 100 year between the invention of the Telephone (1876) and the deregulation of AT&T in 1984.
A significant portion of the population still doesn't need Cable Television. And the vast majority of this group can probably get along just fine without Internet. Thus, while I agree that taking away monopoly rights from internet and cable companies is in order (via regulation, like you argued), I don't think it should come in the form of making Internet a utility.
It may be a way for Government price manipulation, but then that's not letting the market determine price.
Letting the corporation determine the price ain't so hot either.
Market price normalization only really comes into effect when there are a ton of competition and practical barriers of entry into the industry. First prices start really high... then they get really low when a flood of companies launch themselves into the industry... and then they balance out at the normalized rate when the inferior companies get squeaked out of the market because their prices were either too low or too high.
We had a "Level playing field" for Dial-up internet service in the AOL era, and I believe you've probably heard of a company called NetZero. These are examples of "high/low" pricing companies that don't exist anymore. I believe dial-up has normalized at about $4.99/month. Meanwhile, broadband internet remains at 2000 levels between $30 to $100 per month.
Secondly, since it is started and run by the Government, wouldn't this be considered a public service instead?
As for making "Communications" an utility... as soon as local emergency notification systems can surpass radios/telephones/TV with their ability to deliver information when it's needed the most, I'd say go for it. Until that point, it's not prudent to obsolete the old reliable standards ahead of their time.
Based on your argument, Windows XP should be a public domain OS. Do you know how much havoc that would play to Microsoft's ability to charge $100 each time their customers want to "downgrade" to the better OS? It would be terrible.
Furthermore... it could be argued that if copyright only lasted 5 years then Microsoft and Apple would both get out of the software business and we'd have to rely on Linux (owned by nobody) and Solaris (owned by Sun/Oracle) to run our desktops. This could arguably create a disincentive for people to develop these assets because of the lack of competition from Redmond and Cupertino.
The fact of the matter is there is no silver bullet. 5 years is actually a devilishly short time... even for software.
In some respects, the book could have been far better than the final product. It gets off to a weak start with a non-chapter, and then in several sections spends pages discussing the history of various technologies, but then fails to go into enough detail so the reader could use the current state of those technologies to implement what is promised in the book.
With a glowing review like that? I'd bet they're paying TOP DOLLAR.
Is the proprietary application free? No, but it does increase my efficiency 10x over. Would I get that kind of increase by hiring the programmers? Not after you take it to account all of the overhead I have with that plan.
I think RMS's point is that you've got to compete with competitors who CAN hire developers who have the capability of increasing efficiency 100x over at 10% of the cost of buying proprietary software. This might not be the reality today... but unless I'm mistaken RMS is looking 20-30 years down the line.
With respect to cloud computing... there are certainly opportunities to stop individual corporations from controlling Terabytes of information and that's the point of this article.
motivated mainly by a payoff in enjoyment and respect among their peers.
For the summary-writer who drew the "respect amongst peers" conclusion from TFA, there's direct evidence that this is a failed belief included at the end of the summary.
"People seem to like most of what I say online, and I like doing it."
Doing something to be respected suggests that the contributor has some ulterior motive that he or she hopes to attain and this suggests some type of selfish gain (kinda like when Microsoft 'donates' millions of copies of Windows to schools throughout the developing world). On the other hand, doing something because it's enjoyable fits with a sense of fulfillment that is it's own goal. If somebody gets genuine joy answering Verizon customer support questions in their retirement... power to them.
But the key here, I think, is distinguishing the fact that this gentleman is financially well-supported and thus making any personal monetary gain from his activity is trivial. Most people don't have this luxury... and if more did than THIS sort of "benevelent behavior" would be the status quo and wouldn't be worthy of an article of the front page.
Verizon has a director named Mark Studness and they've got people doing their customer support for free? There's gotta be a catch. I can't take this story at face value.
I did not read the graphic novels or any of that stuff and instead watched it without any previous knowledge or experience. There was quite a curve to overcome with regards to character development and the background stories.
While reading the graphic novel... it takes a long time to truly figure out who the characters are and what their motivations are. The story benefits by keeping you guessing while they investigate and dig deeper into the crime. I imagine introducing Rorsach as the "just-the-fact idealistic investigator" and Dr. Manhattan as the "emotionless super genius" would have taken something away from the story.
Caveat emptor... I read the novel and still haven't seen the movie.
The Mozilla organization is going to sponsor a program to automatically identify dupes? Don't they realize what this could mean for the future of the entire internet AS WE KNOW IT? Think of the disaster it would cause... not being able to re-read the same flamewars over-and-over again.
No... Las Vegas is not planned to be incorporated into the high-speed train system. Core Cities are Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Miami, Orlando, Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte, Richmond, Washington D.C., Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York City, Buffalo, Boston, and Montreal.
They want to build 19,500 houses and create 20,000 jobs?
Playing with numbers for a second... assuming there are 2.5 people living in each home and the community is equally spread across all age groups with an average life expectancy of 75 years then the school systems will have 650 kids in every grade level and they'll need to have enough space for 8,500 k-12 students. At a seemingly reasonable ratio 12 students per teacher, this is ~700 teachers who (if paid $35k/yr) will draw $25M in salaries, which will cost each of the 19,500 homeowners a cost of $1300/yr.
I don't really know how this compares to other places... but this seems sort of reasonable. I just wonder if the kids growing up here will go off to college and get a shock from all the bricks and "20th Century" living.
Regardless, this is progress and that is a good thing! Hooray.
one of the Node 3 components will bear the honor: the second ISS treadmill, which will be installed in Node 3, will be named the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill.
You better watch your back Article Summary writer. Colbert doesn't take kindly to your type of folk who honor bears.
My school actually had a "Humanities Requirement" to compliment our core engineering courses. I mostly got around this by taking Economics and Management courses (which were admittedly cake compared to Signal & Systems or Differential Equation), but in retrospect two of the most enjoyable courses I took were Introduction to Psychology and African Drumming... and the reason they were so good is that the people who taught them did excellent work.
But anyway... I second the opinion that taking as many unrelated courses as possible will be more worthwhile than sticking to higher and higher level courses within your discipline. Also, schools that don't encourage at least 1 non-curriculum course per semester are just plain silly.
But having said that, the most important thing a college can offer is 1 or 2 courses per year that give students a goal to "design something on their own or in a team". Those types of courses are what you talk about when you're going for a job. Nobody gives a shit if you aced you Differential Equations final exam, if you failed to turn in a final report for your self-motivated design course.
I think the major flaw of their plan to charge customers based on usage is the $75 base payment at the beginning of each month. I'd be more willing to consider it if they were actually selling a Gigabyte of service for $1 starting at the very first Gigabyte. There are months that I'd be surprised if I download more than 10 GB... and yet on my current minimum plan I'm looking at charges of $26 per month for mediocre 700kbps download speeds from Comcast.
And if I wanted to upgrade to speeds that allow steaming video to come in at HD rates I'd be looking at paying twice as much as I am now... which wouldn't be worth it to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the explanation of the lala sales model above!
From what I see, lala has three money making models: (a) DRM-free download store (like iTunes), (b) ad supported network listening (like Pandora), and (c) pay network listening (like SiriusXM).
This doesn't sound as evil as it's being made to be.
The GP has a unique requirement:
Have car at my disposal for errands or to go to hockey after work
Often, bringing a large hockey bag onto the subway is considered rude to other passengers. And renting a locker at his local rink (if they even make this option available) would further add to the cost.
No sir, public transportation is not as convenient as cars. When your trunk serves as a personal storage locker... it make carrying stuff that doesn't fit in a small backpack more attractive to have a car.
I could believe 1000 dollars per year once stuff like [...] batteries and lubricants are added to the calculation.
Wow. Batteries and lubrication? You must have one of those "bicycles meant for two".
[Microsoft Office] just makes it easier to hurt yourself
This feature you're talking about... you say that OpenOffice can implement it if they integrate with VBA functionality?
The fact that you've isolated the world to (a) home use, (b) school use, and (c) financial institution use shows you're blissful ignorance of the situation. Furthermore, the fact that your participation in (c) seeks to leverage technologies that are like a square peg in a round hole provides even more evidence.
I recall an era before computers when accountants uses notebooks called "ledgers" to manage their money. Things were certainly slower than they are today... but maybe that was a good thing, because if you try using broken tools to build a house, don't be surprised when the house falls down. The lesson to financial companies is don't use Microsoft Office to manage money. Personally... I think you're exaggerating the situation because my impression is that most of the big financial companies have large software staffs to develop proprietary in-house applications and I doubt they'd be wasting their time with unmaintainable Visual Basic apps... but feel free to argue that point if you want if I'm wrong.
I'm sorry... but not including support for Visual Basic Applications makes it unprofessional? I don't believe I've ever seen anything that puts the terms "Professional" and "Visual Basic" in the same sentence. VB is a toy for high schoolers. Anybody developing VB beyond the 12th grade level had better be doing it to supplement a skillset unrelated to computer programming (for example: GUI design).
All else being equal, I'd rather see $40 electronic textbooks that can't be sold back
This is the most insightful reason to buy a Kindle I've ever seen. Unfortunately, I doubt publishers are going to see it this way and they'll continue to charge $200 for an electronic version that can't be re-sold to your younger friends.
There's quite a bit of interesting wheat (in there with the chaff, of course) flipping through that large middle block of digital channels.
I went for a year without cable or internet. My television watching was composed mainly of over-the-air NBC. I find the absence of choice to be therapeutic compared to the glut of crap and commercial ass-fuckery offered by the 60+ cable channels I get now.
I'd go back to that situation in an instant, however it seems "not having cable and internet" makes me significantly less attractive to the prospect of maintain a long term girlfriend, and I quite frankly value the sex more than the irritation of dealing with having television cables that I'd never consider watching.
I have binary figures. Each finger can either be up or down. Therefore, I can count to 2^5 on each hand or 2^10 if I combine them. Dividing with the number 6 shouldn't be a problem, however representing the number "4" becomes somewhat of an issue when I'm holding up my hand at the ice cream store telling the clerk that I want four scoops on my cone.
Jeez, are we going to get to the point where it's not safe to go to the bathroom because the toilet can execute Javascript?
Woah now! Don't let the cat out of the bag too early. Considering how far toilets have come over the century, you'll be happy with a little Javascript injection turning your toilet into a Spam Zombie.
Let's review:
Quite so... I didn't even realize that PDF's could run Java scripts...
But now I've got a new hoop to jump through when I update a new computer:
Simple as that!
The fact of the matter is that internet service is quickly becoming a necessary utility just as telephone and electric power services are today.
Your post was well-written and I agreed with all your points, but I'd like to add the emphasis on the above quote to highlight that internet service is still more comparable to Cable Television than Electricity or the Telephone. Consider, it took over 100 year between the invention of the Telephone (1876) and the deregulation of AT&T in 1984.
A significant portion of the population still doesn't need Cable Television. And the vast majority of this group can probably get along just fine without Internet. Thus, while I agree that taking away monopoly rights from internet and cable companies is in order (via regulation, like you argued), I don't think it should come in the form of making Internet a utility.
It may be a way for Government price manipulation, but then that's not letting the market determine price.
Letting the corporation determine the price ain't so hot either.
Market price normalization only really comes into effect when there are a ton of competition and practical barriers of entry into the industry. First prices start really high... then they get really low when a flood of companies launch themselves into the industry... and then they balance out at the normalized rate when the inferior companies get squeaked out of the market because their prices were either too low or too high.
We had a "Level playing field" for Dial-up internet service in the AOL era, and I believe you've probably heard of a company called NetZero. These are examples of "high/low" pricing companies that don't exist anymore. I believe dial-up has normalized at about $4.99/month. Meanwhile, broadband internet remains at 2000 levels between $30 to $100 per month.
Secondly, since it is started and run by the Government, wouldn't this be considered a public service instead?
As for making "Communications" an utility... as soon as local emergency notification systems can surpass radios/telephones/TV with their ability to deliver information when it's needed the most, I'd say go for it. Until that point, it's not prudent to obsolete the old reliable standards ahead of their time.
Based on your argument, Windows XP should be a public domain OS. Do you know how much havoc that would play to Microsoft's ability to charge $100 each time their customers want to "downgrade" to the better OS? It would be terrible.
Furthermore... it could be argued that if copyright only lasted 5 years then Microsoft and Apple would both get out of the software business and we'd have to rely on Linux (owned by nobody) and Solaris (owned by Sun/Oracle) to run our desktops. This could arguably create a disincentive for people to develop these assets because of the lack of competition from Redmond and Cupertino.
The fact of the matter is there is no silver bullet. 5 years is actually a devilishly short time... even for software.
In some respects, the book could have been far better than the final product. It gets off to a weak start with a non-chapter, and then in several sections spends pages discussing the history of various technologies, but then fails to go into enough detail so the reader could use the current state of those technologies to implement what is promised in the book.
With a glowing review like that? I'd bet they're paying TOP DOLLAR.
Is the proprietary application free? No, but it does increase my efficiency 10x over. Would I get that kind of increase by hiring the programmers? Not after you take it to account all of the overhead I have with that plan.
I think RMS's point is that you've got to compete with competitors who CAN hire developers who have the capability of increasing efficiency 100x over at 10% of the cost of buying proprietary software. This might not be the reality today... but unless I'm mistaken RMS is looking 20-30 years down the line.
With respect to cloud computing... there are certainly opportunities to stop individual corporations from controlling Terabytes of information and that's the point of this article.
motivated mainly by a payoff in enjoyment and respect among their peers.
For the summary-writer who drew the "respect amongst peers" conclusion from TFA, there's direct evidence that this is a failed belief included at the end of the summary.
"People seem to like most of what I say online, and I like doing it."
Doing something to be respected suggests that the contributor has some ulterior motive that he or she hopes to attain and this suggests some type of selfish gain (kinda like when Microsoft 'donates' millions of copies of Windows to schools throughout the developing world). On the other hand, doing something because it's enjoyable fits with a sense of fulfillment that is it's own goal. If somebody gets genuine joy answering Verizon customer support questions in their retirement... power to them.
But the key here, I think, is distinguishing the fact that this gentleman is financially well-supported and thus making any personal monetary gain from his activity is trivial. Most people don't have this luxury... and if more did than THIS sort of "benevelent behavior" would be the status quo and wouldn't be worthy of an article of the front page.
Verizon has a director named Mark Studness and they've got people doing their customer support for free? There's gotta be a catch. I can't take this story at face value.
I did not read the graphic novels or any of that stuff and instead watched it without any previous knowledge or experience. There was quite a curve to overcome with regards to character development and the background stories.
While reading the graphic novel... it takes a long time to truly figure out who the characters are and what their motivations are. The story benefits by keeping you guessing while they investigate and dig deeper into the crime. I imagine introducing Rorsach as the "just-the-fact idealistic investigator" and Dr. Manhattan as the "emotionless super genius" would have taken something away from the story.
Caveat emptor... I read the novel and still haven't seen the movie.
The Mozilla organization is going to sponsor a program to automatically identify dupes? Don't they realize what this could mean for the future of the entire internet AS WE KNOW IT? Think of the disaster it would cause... not being able to re-read the same flamewars over-and-over again.
No... Las Vegas is not planned to be incorporated into the high-speed train system. Core Cities are Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Miami, Orlando, Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte, Richmond, Washington D.C., Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York City, Buffalo, Boston, and Montreal.
See the map at the bottom of this page.
They want to build 19,500 houses and create 20,000 jobs?
Playing with numbers for a second... assuming there are 2.5 people living in each home and the community is equally spread across all age groups with an average life expectancy of 75 years then the school systems will have 650 kids in every grade level and they'll need to have enough space for 8,500 k-12 students. At a seemingly reasonable ratio 12 students per teacher, this is ~700 teachers who (if paid $35k/yr) will draw $25M in salaries, which will cost each of the 19,500 homeowners a cost of $1300/yr.
I don't really know how this compares to other places... but this seems sort of reasonable. I just wonder if the kids growing up here will go off to college and get a shock from all the bricks and "20th Century" living.
Regardless, this is progress and that is a good thing! Hooray.
sig:// Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
You're walking a fine line, Mr. MarkGriz. Phonetically I'm not sure that would fly.
one of the Node 3 components will bear the honor: the second ISS treadmill, which will be installed in Node 3, will be named the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill.
You better watch your back Article Summary writer. Colbert doesn't take kindly to your type of folk who honor bears.
My school actually had a "Humanities Requirement" to compliment our core engineering courses. I mostly got around this by taking Economics and Management courses (which were admittedly cake compared to Signal & Systems or Differential Equation), but in retrospect two of the most enjoyable courses I took were Introduction to Psychology and African Drumming... and the reason they were so good is that the people who taught them did excellent work.
But anyway... I second the opinion that taking as many unrelated courses as possible will be more worthwhile than sticking to higher and higher level courses within your discipline. Also, schools that don't encourage at least 1 non-curriculum course per semester are just plain silly.
But having said that, the most important thing a college can offer is 1 or 2 courses per year that give students a goal to "design something on their own or in a team". Those types of courses are what you talk about when you're going for a job. Nobody gives a shit if you aced you Differential Equations final exam, if you failed to turn in a final report for your self-motivated design course.
I think the major flaw of their plan to charge customers based on usage is the $75 base payment at the beginning of each month. I'd be more willing to consider it if they were actually selling a Gigabyte of service for $1 starting at the very first Gigabyte. There are months that I'd be surprised if I download more than 10 GB... and yet on my current minimum plan I'm looking at charges of $26 per month for mediocre 700kbps download speeds from Comcast.
And if I wanted to upgrade to speeds that allow steaming video to come in at HD rates I'd be looking at paying twice as much as I am now... which wouldn't be worth it to me.