5 ms·
> propped up by Wall Street's expectation that they will jack those prices way, way up once all the competition has been flattened and customers have nowhere el
by maratd 12y ago
> propped up by Wall Street's expectation that they will jack those prices way, way up once all the competition has been flattened and customers have nowhere else to go
Wall Street will be disappointed. Prices for digital goods always have and will continue to be controlled by piracy.
> If you and the person on the other end both use the same software out of dozens of options. "Let's see, Jane is on Skype, but Mike uses Google Hangouts..."
In real life, Jane and Mike are both on Skype.
> If you happen to be among the very few people who live anywhere else, your mileage may vary.
If you live in the middle of nowhere, chances are you have a PO Box at the local post office. Not as convenient, but works just as well.
> email is a remnant of a more civilized age rather than a product of our current one.
There are plenty of open standards being pumped out. Nobody is using them.
Would it be nice to have everything open and universal? Sure.
But given the choice between sparse and open ... and rich and closed, I'll take rich and closed. Virtually everything has an API now. How awesome is that?
> Whose quality is determined entirely by which obsessive-compulsive editor has the most free time on their hands.
How was this not true of the old encyclopedias? At least now, you can do your own digging pretty easily to verify any claims. On top of that, Wikipedia keeps a history of who wrote what and when, which is specifically useful for determining if the editor has an axe to grind.
- williamcotton 12y agoWall Street will be disappointed. Prices for digital goods always have and will continue to be controlled by piracy. But given the choice between sparse and open ... and rich and closed If you've ever wondered why people with no speculative asset interests are so excited about Bitcoin it is because the technology has the potential to monetize digital goods. It also commoditizes identity and creates a rich and singular (yet decentralized and equal access) stream of digitally signed transactions and associated data. A public datastore. Rich and open. It spells out the death of privatized social media over the next decade. My theory is that once our communication mediums are again as rich and open as standing on the street corner and selling newsprint that our intellectual property industries will rebound and thrive yet again. Right now our dominant forums for discussion are privately owned. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and the rest aren't optimized for quality discussions. They can only quantify and measure in an attempt to subsidize the communication of the people who use their services. We need true public venues for a vibrant intellectual community!
- nl 12y agoMy theory is that once our communication mediums are again as rich and open as standing on the street corner and selling newsprint that our intellectual property industries will rebound and thrive yet again. It's never been cheaper to self publish, either by a blog (self hosted if you choose) or in an ebook. How is selling newsprint on a corner more rich and open that that? You had to own a printing press to have a voice!
- williamcotton 12y agoI'm not talking about price. I'm talking about the fact that it was a public venue. Your self-hosted blog is basically like standing in your own private living room and selling your newspaper. Facebook is like a private indoor shopping mall with no guarantees for free speech. The only way to be heard on the Internet is to go over to someone's private property and hope that they'll let you inside to talk. A consensus database that is replicated completely across all nodes acts more like a public square than anything we've seen before on the Internet.
- maratd 12y ago> A consensus database that is replicated completely across all nodes acts more like a public square than anything we've seen before on the Internet. Gnutella. 15 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella
- williamcotton 12y agoBut Gnutella, Bittorrent, and Freenet are all ephemeral. Data stored with these service cannot be reliable retrieved.
- maratd 12y ago> But Gnutella, Bittorrent, and Freenet are all ephemeral. and > A consensus database ... Yup. If the database isn't ephemeral, it can't be a consensus database. If it's the consensus that certain data should disappear, then it should disappear. If you force retention, it's no longer a consensus database.