tired fools

a few years ago, in an idle moment, i thought back to the 1980s (the aftermath of the oil shocks) and found myself wondering whatever happened to oil running out. it wasn’t something i’d heard in the last decade. strangely it seemed to be off the agenda. the more i dug into this (i think i’ve blogged this before), the more bizarre it seemed that there was nothing in the media. from my reading it seemed like there was less than 30 years of oil, much less of projected demand (think China, India). some months later there appeared large price increases and peak oil was back on the agenda (odd concept, peak oil - doesn’t work for me). and then the price fell again and we return to silence. any mention of replacing oil, nowadays, is about climate change alone.

gm, ford start failing. i (you even) could have told them 20 years ago to invest in more efficient or alternative fuel engines, we really could. but they didn’t. (”they don’t launch the lifeboats until the ship is sinking”). and it always struck me that the oil companies were badly incentivised. it takes a pretty solumn board to eschew the fat profits and consequential personal remuneration that exploiting a finite supply and static regulation can bring. even in my personal experience, i’ve heard board members talk of 20 years ahead as being past the decision threshold (who cares, none of us will be here).

5 minute ramble prompted by this.

most evening i sit and work while listening to bbc radio 3’s late junction on the iplayer. currently listening to this one, which is typically good. shame you can’t listen if you’re out of the uk.

* just recovered my password to this blog after linux upgrade
* linux upgrade went badly and had to start from scratch. a pain but 9.04 is nice.
* it’s been 25c in london and that is good.
* getting to the end of “the amber spyglass” with zac. highly recommend his dark materials trilogy to all
* freakery with solid potato salad
* ita has been away for the first performance of her own piece of theatre and movement at the grotowski symposium. i saw a preview and it was excellent.
* the more time i spend looking after my kids the more i like it.
* the kids and i came up with a great plot for a book. i like the way they think.
* days need to be 28 hours long
* bbc iplayer is fantastic, towit (enjoyed today) the museum of curiosities, late junction with verity sharp
* potential. don’t touch it.
* finished niall ferguson’s the ascent of money. interesting, but
* britain seems to have convinced itself that the recession is over. it isn’t.
* iran. now that is interesting

Last.fm is down:

We’re really sorry, but due to datacenter temperature issues beyond our control Last.fm is currently offline. Please bear with us as we scramble to catch overheating DC/AC inverters… stay tuned, we’ll be restoring regular service as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience.
In the meantime, check out our twitter account for updates on the situation.

and it’s worth checking the twitter account. Just before the tweet announcing that the data centre is cooked is this:

The server with the longest uptime at Last.fm: 1244 days (3.4 years!) Can anyone beat that?

i’ve had a proper week off. no work, no other work, no other other work, nothing. it feels good. i say it again about the hay-on-wye festival, it’s good, it’s very good. i saw just one thing on my own (niall ferguson- excellent), and a bunch of stuff with the kids. a great experience. in fact the kids were so excited about some authors that they voluntarily queued up an hour before a talk to get a front row seat. bethan loved jonathan stroud, zoe - jacqueline wilson, zac - michio kaku. and the weather was good in one of the most beautiful places i know. recommended.

this evening i was cooking and zoe was tapping away at the mac in the kitchen.

zoe: what’s a night stand?

me: well, it’s like a small table that goes next to the bed to put a glass a water on, or a clock.

zoe: why is facebook asking me if i think sofia jones has ever had a one night stand, then?

My favourite TV show when i was growing up was Whickers World. I loved the guy in the suit pontificating on the world outside. This was back in the day when no one but the very rich traveled anywhere, when it took days to travel to Japan, for instance. Once a week he would report on the weirdness of abroad. He collected many awards and was the founder of the ’signed documentary’, which is all too common now. In his eighties now, Alan Whicker recently had a short series on the BBC looking back over his reports and revisiting the places and people he had reported on. I particularly enjoyed revisiting Nauru, a small island 2,500km from anywhere. It’s like something from a Kurt Vonnegut novel. An island whose economy rests on bird shit. At one time the highest per capita income in the world. It’s inhabitants opt to spend spend spend. The bird shit runs out, times are hard. In a last desperate attempt to make some money they put their last £2 million into a London west end musical, Leonardo. it fails after review night. they are now destitute.

the swine flu map looks a lot busier than it did yesterday.

it’s great to have kids. we had an hours session of q & a this evening. it turns out that the Zs have both been learning about the black death. zac asked if he was going to die of flu. unlikely, i said. but the wonderful thing is, that at 11, he knows he is immortal.

software is free (open-source). software comes shrink-wrapped for a fixed price (is resold) or is downloaded for a fixed price. it’s given away free, except for commercial use; free, but there’s a charge for support. or you can use a basic version for free, but the extra whistles cost something (premium product). or you can rent it (SaaS). I currently use software purchased in each of these ways.

my least favourite isn’t up there. this is software for a price determined by who’s buying it. this is, perhaps, the most common enterprise model. it sucks and i actively try to avoid it. it makes perfect sense, of course, let’s suck up that consumer surplus (difference between what someone is prepared to pay, and what the price is set at). but when you phrase it as “how much can i get away with” it doesn’t sound so impressive.

but you’ve got to make a living.

any vendor has to look at how many users they think they’re worth. if there’s only going to be a handful, then the price is going to be high. if you’re going to cover the planet, then that’s different. of course, there will be competitors.

idly thinking about this i came up with two alternative pricing models, the first of which is ridiculous. that being to charge:

total amount the software is worth / total users in a set time period

the user get’s billed at the end of the end of the period. i see a “current price” ticking down with every download / take up. let’s see those early adopters pay.

the second is time-step pricing. there’s a $10 charge now, next month it’s $9. In a year it will be 10c. jump in when you feel it’s worth it.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking a one off charge or rental (SaaS), the same principle would apply.

this is a nice story. (and further evidence of the spread of gladwellism). it also accords with something i’ve always believed. that trainers are evil devices designed to remove all sense of ground. they do. give me a flat leather sole anyday. so it seems as though running with bare feet is faster and leads to fewer injuries. i smile thinking of some woman, on an escalator going down into the tube, reading this story in the daily mail, feet at 45 degrees in 3 inch heels.