Malcolm Gladwell Challenges the Idea of "Free" 206
An anonymous reader brings us another bump on the bumpy road of Chris Anderson's new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, which we discussed a week ago. Now the Times (UK) is reporting on a dustup between Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. Recently Gladwell reviewed, or rather deconstructed, Anderson's book in the New Yorker. Anderson has responded with a blog post that addresses some, but by no means all, of Gladwell's criticisms, and The Times is inclined to award the match to Gladwell on points. Although their reviewer didn't notice that Gladwell, in setting up the idea of "Free" as a straw man, omitted a critical half of Stewart Brand's seminal quote.
Re:1 headline + 1 paragraph = nonsense (Score:3, Funny)
Glad to see we have editors who can't re-write a summary so that it actually means something to 99% of the people out there.
To be fair (Score:4, Funny)
Information doesn't want to be free... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The New York Times (Score:0, Funny)
Here's the thing, I worked hard in school, went to a great college, and now I earn more than 95% of the population. I can live wherever I want, and I have lots of disposable income that I can afford to spend less-than-wisely. If the price I have to pay for medical insurance, useless gadgets, and getting to fuck vapid but beautiful trust fund whores, is an online tongue-lashing from some red-state moron(who's feeling like a badass because Comcast finally strung some fiberoptics underneath his cornfield), then I'll just have to drown my sorrows with the $15 drinks at my favorite overpriced bar ;)
p.s. Reading The New York Times would make you a laughingstock among the social circles I run in.
Please, not Malcom Gladwell (Score:3, Funny)
FACT: Chuck Norris is the only one who can read Malcom Gladwell without losing brain cells.
But even he loses one.
Re:Summary?! (Score:1, Funny)
kdawson challenges the idea of "Summaries"
Re:Summary?! (Score:5, Funny)
or my mother's / sister's definition:
summary (also summery), adj.: of or relating to the summer, esp. with clothes, e.g. yellow cotton dresses.
Throwing your computer off the roof (Score:5, Funny)
Throwing your computer off the roof - Because your time isn't free
There are other reasons for throwing your computer off the roof. In the early days of Apple we had a little commercial system based on Apple Pascal that ran on a ][+. It was a true blivit in the classical sense, something sort of written that ran a part of the business until it couldn't anymore.
When we took it to the roof of the building and threw it into the parking lot, someone remarked "That's the longest it's ever gone without a crash". We used 11/70's from that point until they couldn't do the job either, but they were too big to conveniently throw off the roof.
Malcom Gladwell is apparently a giant midget (Score:2, Funny)
wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]
1000 times taller than the average human and still classed as a midget?
Re:The New York Times (Score:4, Funny)
Sing it with me now!!
"'Cause I've got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases my blues away
And I'll be okay
I'm not big on social graces
Think I'll slip on down to the oasis
Oh, I've got friends in low places
Re:In the spirit of the article... (Score:3, Funny)
If you happen to happen to favor Windows, fine, so be it. Just don't assume that Linux is as hard for everyone else as it is for you.
FWIW, I just spent a chunk of this past weekend working on a friend's Win XP box, removing viruses and trojans, editing useless, orphaned crap out of the registry, minimizing the amount of crap launched at system startup, and various other tuning and tweaking. Say what you will about the time to run a Linux box, but I've never had to devote that much time to getting any kind of *nix system un-fubarred, and I've worked on more than a few.
Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report (Score:0, Funny)
Re:Extended Summary (Score:2, Funny)
I hope you live in china, or some other economy that actually has factories. Because if not, you just doomed your entire generation to depression-style unemployment.
the USA is more dependent on IP than anywhere else on earth. I'm surprised to seeso many college educated US slashdot readers act so aggressively to devalue the one thing their economic future really does depend upon.
Re:The biggest point, in my opinion (Score:2, Funny)
This is very true. Check out the web game 'civony' (now evony) it is advertised absolutely everywhere nd by all accounts has a huge numebr of people playing. the game is
FREE FOREVER!
Unless you actually want to 'get anywhere' in which case you need to pay to get this item, or pay for that ability, or pay for this feature, or pay for that feature...
By the time you are done you might as well just have bought CIV IV or have signed up to play World of Warcraft.
People are suckered in by 'free', but it never works. It's like that 'free financial advice' everyone got in the 80s. 'Free' because it was based on commission to financial services companies to push their products regardless of suitability.
You get what you pay for.
Re:The biggest point, in my opinion (Score:2, Funny)
you think google are happy to bin $300 million a year for a lesson on how to optimise bandwidth?
google already have a shitload of user data and bandwidth stats.
This just seems a crazy way to rationalise a huge money sink that has no long term profitability plan.
Re:YouTube does not have to make money (Score:1, Funny)
Chrome is a deliberate attempt to make a popular browser with no ad-block support. Because ad-block is bad news for google.
Thats the business case I'd make for it. Not that it was necessary for there to be another browser to encourage people to surf. We already have lots of browsers.
Re:Hack vs. the Void (Score:2, Funny)
Well I and millions of others who have bought all his books find him an entertaining and informative writer.
You don't sell millions and millions of books by not being able to write. Especially if you have no celebrity background and are known purely as a writer.
It sounds like he doesn't write to your tastes. JK Rowling doesn't write to mine, but I know she is an excellent author. It's not mass random stupidity that makes people buy these books, their tastes are just not the same as yours.
Re:Summary?! (Score:3, Funny)
This seemed like a riddle, but I think I can make this happen even outside of Kentucky...
Father - Jim
Mother - Martha
Sister - Sally
Brother - You
A) Jim and Martha divorce.
B) Martha marries a new man - Joe.
C) Martha passes away.
D) Joe marries Sally.
Re:The biggest point, in my opinion (Score:2, Funny)
their biggest competitors are also online. I'm sure microsoft are glad of all these people who are so impressed by youtube they buy a new laptop pre-installed with vista.
And its good news for Yahoo too. people can chat about youtube videos using yahoo messenger.