I cannot speak to British universities but as a former employee of a couple of American universities, my first thought goes to administrative overhead. I was on the university budget committee of a State university and administrative overhead was well ~ 60% of its entire budget. That is to say that the cost of a professor, classroom, and supporting equipment comprised about 40% of the total expenditure. The other ~60% of the budget covered management, IT support, groundskeeping, etc.

By weight of comparison, my experience in the private sector saw companies with 14-15% administrative overhead struggle to compete, and the stronger businesses ran at 4-5%.

I wouldn't suggest that universities could or should operate at those lowest levels, but 60+% is unreasonable to the point of incompetence.

Again, these are multiple US experiences, but I can't help but wonder if it is uniquely American.

It's fixed everything else in my life. Why not the weather?


...and then there was one.

We have decades of experience managing platforms and content.

As a billboard owner, I rent space to advertisers. They create the content, but I am responsible for what goes up because the billboards are mine. So, I have a process. Advertisers have to submit their content to me before I will have my people put it up. Simple, effective, legal.

I suppose that I could simply allow anyone to put their own content on my billboards as long as they pay me. It would save a step in my process. I could make more money because I could eliminate the review process. However, if they decide put up pornographic images or messages threatening the life of the President, I would and should get in trouble. It's my property after all and I allowed it to happen. I didn't know they were going to buy space on my property and espouse criminal activity" isn't and never has been an excuse.

Ditto for my newspaper, my TV station, radio station, and every other platform for advertising and communication that has ever existed.

That is until the Internet came along.

Computers make it so easy to automate every aspect of buying space, listing, and monetizing. So easy, in fact, that I designed my business process around allowing people to post up whatever content they want and paying me without even having to communicate with me, much less share their content or intent.

It's easy. Don't ask me why the Internet based communication is different. It just is. As the owner of a (Facebook/Google/Twitter/you name it) I don't have to care about how my platform is used. I'm protected. Mostly because lawyers and judges are some of the biggest Luddites in America and have no understanding of technology and can't see that my online platform is just that, a platform, exactly like my billboards, newspaper, TV and radio stations.

Better yet, they are so divorced from business operations that they don't understand the concept of process management. That's why when I tell them "I couldn't possibly monitor all of the content posted on my online platform", it's because I designed the process to not be able to monitor all of the content.

It's amazing to me that I can tell a judge "I cannot monitor all of the content posted on my platform because I designed the process in such a way that I wouldn't have to monitor all of the content posted on my platform."

Sure, I could redesign my process to eliminate unwanted content, but that would cost money and negatively impact the bottom line. People like Zuckerberg and Musk would be relegated to meager profits more in line with physical platforms.

I don't know how long I'm going to keep the legal system fooled, though. It seems that Netflix and HBO, and all of the other streaming content providers have to watch what they air. Of course that's probably because the streamers content appears on the television and lawyers and judges understand TV.

Unless you have evidence, this is just your rationalization crossed with suspicion. I can give explanations for their cash on hand without resorting to data sales. It’s on YOU to provide evidence. If you can’t, then don’t say it.

This has nothing to do with Apple. It doesn’t matter who you are talking about, without evidence you’re just talking crap.

Let’s stick to the facts.

Did any Slashdot reader think it was a good idea to connect their smart home to the cloud, much less as connect it as a dependency?

I'm not anti cloud, but some things just don't go together...ever!

If yes, I guess you missed this one:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...

Developing world? How, exactly, is this different from America?

If you read the referenced article, it references another article which seems to pretty clearly indicate that this is designed for the Enterprise. As a manager of a large number of corporate desktops, this actually sounds like a good idea. Keeping users updated and running is a pain and requires expensive tools and expertise. You are welcome to it, Microsoft.

This is not for your personal PC. Let's face it, Microsoft isn't completely stupid. They aren't going to put themselves on the hook for managing and supporting hundreds of millions of desktop computers used by people like your mother.

Not going to happen. The masses will turn to Apple before they go OSS. So will the gamers. Not because it is better, but because at least some of their games will work on MacOS rather than a very few that are "SteamOS + Linux". Well, that or console.

Don't get me wrong, I love building my own PC for gaming and I have tried linux, but all of the games I play run on Windows. Some run on MacOS. Few run on Linux.

Right now I do my work on a Mac and play on Windows and consoles. Linux is my server. If Windows charges me a monthly fee, I'll drop it and have the Mac and consoles pick up the slack.

Ok, it was a mess. Bugs, poor performance, but to this day I am still looking for a mail client that will let me create projects the way it did and let me link documents and create folders, route, provide custom calendar views.

It performed terribly, but I can't find anything to replace it.

Trump might support it if he were told that they were East German.

Not to mention, despite their commercials, their coverage just isn't that good. Things like this may net more profit than investing in their infrastructure.

I get the indignity of the percentages, the cut from revenue and not profit, the general disgust for the music industry, but what about the government? Why does the government need to be involved at all? Since when does the government negotiate contract rates and business deals? This seems wrong in all kinds of ways.

Ask them what operating system said computer is running and if they answer: Internet Explorer, then ban them from political office.

I sympathize with many of you who are concerned about free market manipulation and the relative unimportant nature of toy sales. Your not wrong. When it comes to toys for children, we can solve this "problem" with a little wisdom and self control.

However, let's look at this like technology people (slashdot, right?). Toys today could be something else tomorrow?

Those mandatory for school TI calculators?
Chemicals necessary to produce certain kinds of 3D print material used in every household?
Important drugs that are hard to produce?
Preparation H?!? (Hey,when you need it and it is not there, then you will understand)

I'm not sure if this is possible today, but when I think about how the market has changed over the past 10 or 20 years and imagine how it might change over the next 10 or 20, I'm not sure this "abuse" is going to be limited to rich people and their spoiled children's toy fetishes. When I combine a little imagination with the history of technology and its evolution, this practice makes me a little nervous.

I don't know if Schumer has thought about this or even cares, but shouldn't we give it a little more thought before discounting this out of hand?

How could bots disrupt the free market and legitimately hurt people by limiting access to stuff?

The issue is not hate speech or racism. It is on yet another horrible example of why the DMCA is bad.

How do you deal with hate speech? Don't listen.

How do you deal with the DMCA? Good question. I wish I knew.

I remember seeing a slashdot post where the music industry suggested that over 100 million Americans pirated music. That is more than all of the people who voted for Trump and Hillary combined. So why do we still have it? Is it because America is no longer a representative democracy? Do we no longer have power over our own government?

If you have a solution, I am all ears.