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Comment Re:Do Not Track != Do Not Advertise (Score 4, Insightful) 362

> that loss of revenue means that marginally some sites will close, some will stop offering advanced features, and fewer such new features will be offered?

Guess what? That's called "capitalism". Can't make money or compete in the market? Out you go. Don't try to use the government or the legal system to force people to allow your marginal and failing revenue model to continue to be profitable.

Comment no ops (Score 1) 288

As a developer, the last thing I want to deal with in ops issues. Here, I give you the install script, does it fail? Fine, let's fix it. Do I want to be on call at all hours because your monkeys can't run 'make install' properly? Fuck no. Half-assed attempts by ops staff and craptastic server clusterfucks that result are not my problem, and trying to install my software on a mis-provisioned system with a single-core 128MB instance when the system requirements clearly state a 4-core system with 4GB should result in immediate termination.

Comment bring money (Score 1) 455

Congratulations, you've illustrated perfectly one of the major problems with the DMCA. Written by corporations for corporations, the law implicitly equates a rights owner with a person or institution that has substantial resources to pursue and litigate violations. Nowhere in the law is there relief for the individual creator or small business whose works are appropriated by another party that has money and lawyers.

Comment everything old is new again (Score 2) 297

In the days before the personal computer revolution, all software* was by subscription. Companies and universities bought hardware form the IBMs, Honeywells, DECs, and Amdahls of the world, but then paid a subscription fee for support in the form of maintenance and upgrades.

Then the microcomputer came along, and there was no software for it at first, so people wrote what they needed. Some of it was good enough that people were willing to buy it, at retail, just like milk or bread. Some software vendors would support purchased software with upgrades, either free for a time or for small fees, but it wasn't subscription-based.

Microsoft was one of the biggest forces in the world of boxed retail software. Remember the Windows 95 midnight release?

A couple of decades or more later, and now Microsoft decides that the "pay forever" model of the giants it supplanted is the right path. While it is something of a regression to old ways, it's also an outgrowth of the absurd situation we've come to in copyright and licensing laws.

What other models are there now? Apple sells you the hardware (computer or phone) and you get the patches and minor updates for free, but they push you to upgrade your hardware relatively frequently -- iPhone 6 anyone? Ubuntu gives you the OS, but they have deals with corporate partners and will probably be pushing ads into the os soon. A number of vendors give you the software, upgrades, and source, but charge you for the kind of "call up somebody and get this fixed now" support that management likes.

The situation Microsoft is in may be unique, however, because they can no longer convince consumers -- or most corporations -- to get on the upgrade treadmill, thus they've lost their steady income stream. MS can't get their customers to cough up more money on a regular basis for the next version. Who can blame the customers when the difference between Office 2010 and Office 2013 is, well, what exactly is different, other than Metro? Why should anyone upgrade?

This inability to keep pumping their customers for additional money to upgrade is the main driving force behind the subscription model. With a copyright regime which increasingly says the user only "rents" the software, and declining revenue from the Office cash cow, Microsoft really has only once way out: charging you a monthly fee for the privilege of editing your letters and calculating your spreadsheets.

*footnote: except software you (the company, the university) wrote yourself.

Comment Re:Now with Arf IV engines! (Score 1) 33

Silly answer: It's a Terrier Malemute with an improve Malemute upper stage.

Serious answer: it's a sounding rocket based on the US Navy RIM-2 Terrier surface-to-air missile from the 1950s as the first stage, with a Thiokol Malemute upper stage. The Terrier is used as a first stage for a variety of small rockets.

A recent launch of note that used Terrier-Malemute variants was ATREX.

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