Re: Micropayments are Crap

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

it seems to me many of mr. Bugaj's complaints refer to the
deficiencies of a capitalist market, such as scams, greedy
companies, etc. he seems to think micropayments may exacerabate
this problem. in any case I agree there are problems with
capitalism, but I think micropayments may have the effect
of ameliorating some of the deficiencies. 

today we have payment systems that are "blocky" or have
"large granularity". many companies function as billing
services. in other words, they sell some product, and would
rather not get into the payment collection business, but the
economics of scale forces them to. the phone company is
forced to send out mail and have a zillion clerks to handle
the returned bills. the country is awash in checks and 
paperwork. I can easily make a good case that micropayments
may have a significant dent in this paradigm such that
companies can focus more on providing services than collecting
cash. the dividends would be obvious and enormous.


I'll skip most responses and focus on a few in particular..

>>somewhat. mainframes aren't totally the mark of the devil. don't you pay
>>your internet provider per hour? how many people do? isn't a Sun pretty
>>
>No, I don't.  I use it too much, so I found an ISP that does not charge metered
>rates.  A lot of people pay by the hour for their ISP, but it may or may not
>be a wise idea for them.  If it's part of their work and they're online all the
>time, they should consider another payment system.  Same thing with charging
>micropayments for using software.  If Adobe started charging me $5/hr to use
>Photoshop instead of $500 for the package, I'd stop using photoshop.  In two
>weeks I'd have already exceeded the price of the whole package.

again, you are making arbitrary assumptions. the figures you cite
are "straw men". OF COURSE micrompayments make no sense if you end
up spending more money. I totally agree with you there, who could
argue? all the micropayment proponents are starting from the
assumption that services you now pay for could be cheaper given
the micropayment model. you seem to think that micropayments mean,
"companies have more opportunity to shaft you". but equally perhaps,
it is more opportunity for the consumer to exercise control with
less at stake.

>
>>much equivalent/similar in processing power & capability to old mainframes?
>>you raise all kinds of objections that make no sense to me.
>>
>Sure it's the same power as an old mainframe.  Big deal.  What exactly does
>that
>do to stregnthen your argument?  It's certainly not as costly to build, costly
>to maintain, or rare as old mainframes...

alright, your mainframe idea is way off for several reasons. first, the
mainframe is not dead, it has just been transformed into Sun and Unix
boxes all over the planet. so even if a system was "like a mainframe",
I wouldn't consider that the mark of the beast as you suggest. furthermore,
mainframes are about CENTRALIZATION. imagine a single computer like
Prodigy that was the bottleneck through which you got all your software
over the net. ok, that would be horrible. it would also be like the
mainframe concept you are criticizing.

but micropayments are not about centralization, they are about 
DISTRIBUTION. imagine a zillion software providers all over the planet.
each can meter you out software at a tiny fee per time. this is 
clearly not like a centralized mainframe situation at all, assuming you can get
similar software from a zillion different places.  it *is* similar
in that you are grabbing cpu cycles from outside your computer, but
this is arguable just a network. mainframes used networks too. does
that make networks evil? no, I don't think so!! surely you are in
favor of networks!!

>>uh huh. what if over your lifetime it cost far less than you pay for
>>a shinkwrapped package?
>>
>If that happened, I'd be very suprised.

that's the kind of savings people who promote micropayments are betting
on. again, I agree that if the consumer ends up paying more in some
way with micropayments, they're doomed to never get off the ground.

>That is a good advantage, you are correct in this.  But there are a number of
>instances in which I'd still want software running on a real workstation.  If
>people make software only available through micropayments, then that would be
>limiting to both the user and the vendor.

as I wrote, I don't believe micropayments are going to be the only
form of transaction in the future. surely nobody else is advocating this
either.

>In some ways.  But those of use who use certain packages heavily would get
>shafted for our loyal support of a vendor if they decided to pander to the
>skittish masses and charge a rate that was psychologically more appealing
>to
>those who wouldn't otherwise use it.  I only hope that vendors who choose to
>use micropayments (since they're inevitable) take the small but loyal power
>user segment into consideration when making the decision about whether or not
>to stop selling full packages altogether.

I imagine that people will have a wide variety of ways to use the software
they want to use. every company that sells software has a lot of plans
right now. I'm sure that micropayments would only be one other way
for the consumer to pay for what he uses. they may become preferrable
in some cases where both the company and consumer agree they are 
benefitting. but companies that shaft their customers, which you seem
to be preoccupied with, imho ultimately go the way of the dodo bird.

>The best model is not the mainframe model promoted by the idea of the "internet
>computer" (aka. Mutant X-Terminal), but a truly distributed system.
>Workstations and PCs can contribute their substantial processing power to a
>distributed system.  The other problem I have with the mainframe model and
>centralized resources is storage.  It's bad enough to have to wait in line for
>a CPU, but the idea of having no direct access to my work is unappealing,
>and for a number of industries impossible.  I doubt designers, for example,
>would
>be willing to leave client work on the big Illustrator server cluster at Adobe.
>Fat pipes connecting fast PCs to even faster servers is the best route.

notice that if you have a zillion mainframes all over the planet, each
one that can serve you, the idea of a mainframe is not all that bad.
what you are really opposing is *bottlenecks*, such as a zillion
people needing one mainframe. I agree the system
must be carefully designed to avoid them.

>>
>I was looking at this from a vendor viewpoint in this particular instance.  The
>TV old guard may not be willing to give up all that big, fat (and reliable) ad
>revenue to the whim of John and Jane Q. Tvwatcher.

neither was the catholic church willing to give up their monopoly
on bible interpretation when the printing press was invented. my
comment is, "yeah, so what?" or perhaps "now you GET IT!! hee, hee"

>Yeah, but the old tends to cling on for dear life.  Welcome to the concept
>of people and institutions that are unwilling to change and do their best to
>postpone those changes.

it will happen, I agree. that's why reality can be so entertaining.
once certain people recognize what micropayments really imply, they
will be aghast like the scientologists are right now. really, I
predict that when you combine all the following:

1. micropayments
2. web technology
3. distributed computing

in a fully seamless and refined way, you are going to have an
entirely new economic system. it will come close to the realization
of Toffler's 3rd wave "information economy". I mean literally, our
economy will be tied in and tightly coupled with cyberspace. when
you put all this together it will make the current web revolution
look like bland corn flakes in comparison.

>That's not infeasable.  I didn't say anything was infeasable, I just think
>some of the current models of how things might work are bad ideas and encourage
>debate.  Both consumers and resistant old-school vendors will have issues to
>address, and ramming change down people's throats because it's inevitable or
>'the market dictates it' is a crappy attitude which I don't encourage. 

an oxymoron. by my definition, "ramming something down someone's throat"
implies the market is opposing it, or at least not openly encouraging it.
I'm all for not ramming anything down anyone's throat. I've been
advocating consumer choice. it won't catch on unless it really is better
than what we have now. it won't solve all problems, but it will
solve some.

your message contains a lot of FUD that is associated with any new
technology. once people play with it, they don't get so upset. there
was a lot of anxiety about the "information superhighway" for a long
time among people I knew. but then they discovered they could surf
the whole internet by just clicking a mouse. wheeeee!! if the
insanely neurotic "cathy" in the comic strips can handle the internet,
then *anyone* can. <g>