Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Whats the cost to be free of ads? (Score 2) 142

Let's look at the numbers (US Dollars):
2019 Revenue - $70.7 Billion
2019 Active Users - 2.7 Billion

If every single user stayed and paid an equal subscription price, you'd be on the hook for about $26/year. Of course, some percentage of those accounts are bots and a large number of real users will not stick around if they have to pay. And splitting the collection into ad supported and paid subscriptions won't work at this scale because the more people opt out of ads, the less value the remaining pool has, causing the subscription price to increase, which in turn will drive more users away from the platform. Vicious cycle...
For a sense of how it will play out, look at the struggle for newspapers trying to move online. Those that move to a subscription model see sharp drops in readership as users flee to another platform.
The bottom line is that we like to whine about privacy but in the end, "free" stuff wins.

Submission + - Techdirt asks judge to throw out suit over "Inventor of E-mail" (arstechnica.com)

walterbyrd writes: Michael Masnick, who founded the popular Techdirt blog, filed a motion today asking for a defamation lawsuit against him to be thrown out. Masnick was sued last month by Shiva Ayyadurai, a scientist and entrepreneur who claims to have invented e-mail in 1978 at a medical college in New Jersey.

In his motion, Masnick claims that Ayyadurai "is seeking to use the muzzle of a defamation action to silence those who question his claim to historical fame."

Submission + - SAP "named-user" license fees are due even for indirect users, court says (networkworld.com)

ahbond writes: Beverage firm Diageo could be on the hook for an additional £55 million in license fees because it gave Salesforce users access to data held in an SAP system. SAP's named-user licensing fees apply even to related applications that only offer users indirect visibility of SAP data, a U.K. judge ruled Thursday in a case pitting SAP against Diageo, the alcoholic beverage giant behind Smirnoff vodka and Guinness beer.

The consequences could be far-reaching for businesses that have integrated their customer-facing systems with an SAP database, potentially leaving them liable for license fees for every customer that accesses their online store.

"Business are signing up to an open-ended direct debit which they can't withdraw from. It's really not surprising that many are now choosing the certainty and low cost of Google and Amazon Web Services"

Comment Re:Due Diligence... anyone, anyone, Bueller? (Score 2) 215

Everyone was just too willing to accept the idea that the existing companies involved in blood testing are crooks (Spoiler alert: they are), that they were all too willing to jump on board with "disruptive" technology that will "change the game" and "beat the system."

Slashdot Top Deals

We don't really understand it, so we'll give it to the programmers.

Working...