It’s a god-awful small affair
To the guy with odd facial hair
But hisco-hosts are yelling “No”
And his comrade has told him to go
But again he’s nowhere to be seen
Now he walks through his sunken dream
To the mic with the clearest view
And predicts for 2014
Making money from open source
Is it truly a hopeless cause?
He could spit in the eyes of fools
As he asks you to focus on
Hulick writing for the game team
Oh man! Look at those four guys go
It’s the freakiest show
Take a look at the tall man
Beating up the short guy
Oh man! Wonder if they’ll ever know
They’re in BV’s seventh show Is there life on Mars?
(With apologies to David Bowie. Sorry for stealing your song, Dave. Tune in to hear us talk to magnificent musician Sam Hulick, argue about 2014, sorrow over indie open-source developer prospects, and laugh at Mars One. Download the show now!)
Selling open source software is hard because it is expected to be free as most of it is free. It is a known issue. Once something is free, even paying $0,01 seems a lot.
I think that’s reasonable, but that requires that when someone says “open source is great!” then you need to say to them “as long as you’re not an indie developer, because if you are then you can’t make money at it and need to find some other way to make money which funds your open source pursuits”. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say, but open source advocates are very reluctant to say it.
Nice one Buzz Aldrin! I concede that that’s fairly impressive. On the other hand, jury-rigging a fix with a ballpoint pen seems much more in keeping with the overall Mars One vibe than it does with NASA’s buttoned-down squeaky-clean clipboard way of doing things
The idea of living on mars is hugely complex as I’m sure everyone knows… Here are a few reasons I know of, and I’m certain there are many more that I don’t know:
Mars doesn’t have a moon in the same way earth does. In short, with out a moon like ours, the planets weather is extremely unstable and inconsistent, and the axial rotation gets very out of wack. (the “moons” of mars to scale lol: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/79/Mars_Moons_Orbit_distance.jpeg)
Mars lacks a magnetosphere. This is because it doesn’t have a molten iron core. Without a magnetosphere, the planets atmosphere gets destroyed by solar forces, and creates a problem with solar radiation.
Low gravity. Lower gravity on mars can cause serious health problems to humans.
I’d personally move to mars only if there was an option to move back, and it had been well tested (doesn’t sound like my lifetime). And I certainly wouldn’t be doing via some indy campain! I think the only group that has a chance of actually making it a reality is SpaceX. The SpaceX guys are collecting a lot of great talent and may have the brains to actually make it work. (Show idea: Interview someone from SpaceX!)
Not overly worried about weather or atmosphere, since I am assuming that anyone living on Mars will do so inside some kind of big protective dome full of air. The points about solar radiation and gravity aren’t necessarily fixable with a dome, though…?
Oh yeah certainly. I don’t think anyone is talking about living on mars without a dome of some sort, but the question then becomes how sustainable is a dome and also people would still need to venture outside the dome for both scientific exploration and repairs. Also, someone or something would need to build the whole dome in the first place. And I’m not certain about how they plan on protecting people against solar radiation… I know spaceships can be protected against solar radiation, so I’m certain some similar technology would be used in a dome environment. I’m not sure what they would plan on doing about gravity though. I think after a couple months of living on mars, our bones would become so weak and brittle, that it would be impossible for us to live again on earth. Some sort of artificial gravity system would be required for counteracting that.
Outside of scientific exploration, life on mars sounds pretty shitty to me. It is miles away from home, there is no beautiful beaches and sunshine, and if Total Recall is to be believed, your eyes pop out of your sockets sometimes.
Hah! Fair question. Personally, the only way I’d be willing to is if I could come back in one piece! I’d want to be part of some scientific exploration team, or something of the sort, like you said. I don’t really see the use in a regular every day Joe living it out on Mars, which sounds like a recipe for disaster…
I would also imagine the reasons for people wanting to are the same or similar reasons our ancestors explored the earth, hundreds and thousands of years ago. Government, economic, militaristic, social and culture all play a role. Also, thinking about a very big picture, we know that the survival of the human race will one day require living it out on the final frontier in some form or fashion. Certainly the stakes and risk seem much higher when talking about space scale exploration and settling, but I’m certain that it will happen eventually.
There was worry about bone degradation for space travellers, and no matter how weak the gravity on Mars is, it’s not as weak as no gravity at all which is what there is on the International Space Station, and no-one’s had their bones crumble to dust yet there. See http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/2011/12/05/osteoporosis-drugs-reduce-bone-density-loss-micro-gravity/ for how calcium loss in microgravity is treatable with drugs.
Also, it is clear that is Everest had not been climbed and we needed someone to do it, the person to call would not have been @jonobacon. Where’s your sense of adventure, man? You’d be living on another planet! Besides, you could say all the same things about the ISS and that’s closer to England than California is
What People from the USA often forget in Europe Creditcards are not so popular and I personally don’t use PayPal.
Even if I would like to pay lets say 20 Euro every Month its just hard for me.
I think one Problem is that payment should be easier. Something like on the Mobile Stores. Click on Buy -> Enter your Password -> Be happy
And no the Ubuntu Store is a mess!
BTW: I got every book Bryan Published on Amazon(.de) because i could buy it in a easy way.
Interesting. How should payments be done, if not by credit card and not by Paypal? If you’re on a mobile device then you can charge to the mobile device bill, but that hasn’t taken off (although I think it’s a good idea), and it doesn’t work as smoothly as that on your laptop…
Credit Cards are not save and i don’t really understand why the are so popular.
I just don’t like PayPal as PayPal the company.
We are going the right way with bitcoins but they are to unstable. Today 1 bitcoins is woth 1200 $ the next day it is 1.2 $.
Another good model are Giftcards. There should be a Service where I can buy a Giftcard in a Store and then i could spend that money on something. This would work great for Micro Transactions. Here in Germany you can get Steam, Google, Itunes Giftcards and they are very popular.
For Bigger Transactions there should be a System like PayPal but not PayPal Inc.
Giftcards are fine if you’re doing one specific thing – buying an iTunes gift card and then spending it on iTunes. But that’s no good for my business, or @bryanlunduke’s; he’s not going to get Lunduke gift cards into every Target store in America. And a “gift card” which you can spend on anything… pretty much is a credit card. There are single-use credit cards, limited-money credit cards, and they’re not a bad idea. Similarly, I’m not sure what “a system like Paypal but not Paypal Inc” would be, since pretty much anyone who gets as big as Paypal is going to act like Paypal. Stripe are doing a good job of being better than Paypal from a code development perspective, but they’re just a credit card processor, not a bank-a-like.
Not Bryan or any other developer/studio/etc should do giftcards. Stripe could do that for Bryan or a new Service provider. Now you have Nintendo,apple.google.steam and many more giftcards and this is stupid.
A Giftcard is Anonymous i dont have to give any Company my Adress just to pay Bryan. I can give my Adress to Bryan because i trust him more then a big Inc.
I don’t have to go the Bank or do it through the internet to get money on my limited money credit cards.
I never saw a Single use Credit Card here in Germany.
So basically: I wan’t to go to place near by and buy something( a code, a card) then go to my computer login to my Anonymous account and type in my code and then pay over that service on bryans site and only give bryan my contact info.
