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Because if there's one thing we know about smart people it's that they constantly tell everyone how really super duper smart they are.

Basically, what author John Scalzi calls McKean's Inversion

Dunno if this helps you : http://www.scalzi.com/whatever...

EVERYONE has the same 'odds' and obstacles to overcome.

No, they don't.

The only cliques were the puppies. the 2500 no-awards were not organized

Nope, Scalzi had his very own voting slate that the SF clique used. And he was the one running the show. And that SF clique, followed his slate.

Really? Those being called out as SJWs are the ones I see marginalizing other's viewpoints. The whole thing about GG and anti-GG was the anti-GG people trying to shut down the other group rather than even discussing what they were saying. In this thing, you have the same thing, those who have subverted the voting system in order to shut down another person's viewpoint. These are the SJWs, the ones preferring to vote no award because they don't like the politics of those that were nominated. Hell, many of them didn't even read the entries and were bragging about it. How can you vote in a best of award without even reading the material?

http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

Yes, there was an organized "vote no award" block.

And yet again I ask, if that is the case, why did things turn out exactly as Scalzi had planned?

Maybe he's just really, really in touch with the average sci-fi reader?

I have no idea why this is so hard to understand or why so many people feel the need to invoke "SJWs" to explain the outcome.

Maybe because what Scalzi was trying to get organised turned out to be exactly what happened?

Less than six thousand people actually voted and this makes for interesting reading: http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

As I posted above, only 5950 people voted. For contrast 8363 people voted on the last slashdot poll, so we aren't talking about a whole lot of fans, making it an easy balance to swing either way with relatively small numbers of voters. Meanwhile here's Scalzi telling his fellow travellers how to vote, and more details on the exact votes here.

had no idea there were special shirts just for cyclists
And yet you went for the snarky comment. Some reading: The failure mode of clever .

There's really only one thing to eat while reading a story like this (other than Moar Chocolate, for Research Purposes.) It's Scalzi's Schadenfreude Pie. Dark, bitter, sticky, chocolately.

And make no mistake, being a white male in this society is like playing the game of life on the easiest setting:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

This misconception gets thrown around a lot. "Life is easier when you're a man" ... depends on what you mean by "easier". Life is certainly more privileged if you're a woman... like, for example:

Women live longer than men (82.2 vs 79.8) ,
work fewer hours than men (7.7 vs 8.4),
are safer in society than men are (23% of homicide victims, vs 77% for men),
have around 1/10th the incarceration rates as men do (126 vs 1352),
do less dangerous jobs (7% occupational fatalities vs 93% for men),
Receive more from a broken relationship than men (Number so low for men that it is not even significant),
are more qualified than men,
and are healthier.

So, other than living shorter, unhealthier lives, facing more violence, possessing less education while working more hours at 13 times the risk of death, *and* financially hurting more than women after a divorce, men are more privileged than women? Western women are objectively the most well-off demographic in human history. Subjectively, well, that's another story - opinions in the stead of facts don't mean anything anyway and it's pointless to debate subjective statements.

Oh, and the rape-rate for college age women? Roughly 7 per 1000, not 1 in 5 or 1 in 4. So much for "rape-culture"...

PS - I feel like I should post this in response to all the "male-privilege" comments, although I'm sure you'll (sooner or later) once again post about how male-privilege blah blah blah.... so I'm pretty sure I'll get another opportunity to post this.

No, it wouldn't.

Of course it would. Think Jackie Robinson. Just to break into the majors, the first negro-league ballplayers had to be way over-qualified, even when it didn't show up on paper (because they'd been playing in a limited league). Go down the list of the first few classes of black and black/latin ballplayers, and you find numbers that are just ridiculous. When Minnie Minoso broke both the color barrier and the Latin barrier, he performed at a level that puts him in the category with all-time all-timers, like Gehrig and Mantle. And still it took him several ballots to make it to the hall of fame. If you measure the on-base percentages and OBP and other advanced stats, there is a case for Minnie Minoso as one of the best all-around ballplayers in history.

If I'm interviewing two candidates, one who showed up on the red carpet and one who had to crawl over broken glass to get here, I'm taking the latter every time. I don't really give a shit about feminists or feminism, but goddamn, people who got there the hard way have been proven by fire.

If you're picking a team for eSports, you want the one who wins on the easiest difficulty setting or one who wins on the hardest? And make no mistake, being a white male in this society is like playing the game of life on the easiest setting:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

Scalzi has stopped doing it in recent years, but it was a custom of his at one point. Here's his from 2008: http://whatever.scalzi.com/200...

I follow Scalzi's Whatever. This is his most recent post on the topic: http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

He's leading the drive to vote NO AWARD against the conservatives who dominated the slate this year/ Even though he doesn't come out and say it explicitly, it's blindingly obvious what he's talking about. He did something similar last year when this stupid "controversy" emerged.

I don't recall him ever saying "VOTE FOR X", but the implied message is very clear.

"Largely unsuccessful" is a bit of an understatement. Those who follow such things have been rejoicing that the "Sad Puppy Slate" ended up last in all the author categories, and that the novella by Vox Day, the guy with very... questionable political and personal views, actually ended up below "No Award". I think it's interesting that despite the outcries and rage and threats about "No Awarding" the entire slate, the only nominee to actually meet such a fate was the one that almost everyone agreed was literarily a piece of garbage.

One does have to wonder how the "Sad Puppy Slate" would have done if it hadn't weighed itself down with a nominee that was simultaneously so objectionable and so poorly written.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...
http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

"Largely unsuccessful" is a bit of an understatement. Those who follow such things have been rejoicing that the "Sad Puppy Slate" ended up last in all the author categories, and that the novella by Vox Day, the guy with very... questionable political and personal views, actually ended up below "No Award". I think it's interesting that despite the outcries and rage and threats about "No Awarding" the entire slate, the only nominee to actually meet such a fate was the one that almost everyone agreed was literarily a piece of garbage.

One does have to wonder how the "Sad Puppy Slate" would have done if it hadn't weighed itself down with a nominee that was simultaneously so objectionable and so poorly written.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...
http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

First off, the higher priced ebooks are not meant to be competitive with paperbacks, but with hardcover releases. Generally, the hardcover and the ebook will come out at about the same time with the ebook being cheaper. I would also note (anecdotally) that most ebooks seem to come down in price in sync with the release of a paperback edition.

Second, according to a commenter on Scalzi's website who claims to have experience in the industry (going by the nym --E), it costs about one to two bucks to print and ship a paperback. Given that mass market paperbacks tend to run about $6-10, a price point of $4-9 would be in keeping with the notion of not paying the cost of printing and shipping a physical book. Oddly enough, a lot of ebooks seem to get sold in that range of prices. If your entire justification for not buying an ebook for more than $2 is that this represents the cost of a paperback minus the cost of paper, then you might want to reassess what you are willing to pay for an ebook.

I would call white males receiving preferential treatment in society ever since the US was created, "when". They still do, to a certain extent, though it is better than it was.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

I'm not privileged, I'm single and live in a one room apartment and make $32000!

What you are doing is called "Denial of privilege", sure you may not be donald trump, but:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

I know your average slashdotter geek doesn't realize it, but you're privileged. You don't think so and that word bugs you, but you are. The fact that you don't know you are is sad, but privileged folks tend to be blissfully unaware of it in general.

To you maybe, but you didn't earn your score fairly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

Please explain. "Leveling the playing field" and "unearned privilege" are cliches that are essentially meaningless.

They may be cliches to you, but they're not, don't you read books, newspapers, or magazines. These concepts have been discussed for decades now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

John Scalzi, you know the guy, wrote for EGM, science fiction writer, has discussed race/class/gender privilege many many times.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

They are brandished almost entirely by completely ignorant people that think insulting anyone that disagrees with them and saying "fuck" a lot are valid forms of discussion.

Look, I get a little bit ticked off at the general overprivileged semi-libertarian overly selfish mood of Slashdot sometimes. Especially when people go out of their way to try not to admit that class or race privilege exists. Even more so when said people are obviously trying to get out of admitting they have it or that they have any responsibility to the future to get rid of it.

And I don't know why you called me on using fuck when plenty of conservatives/libertarians use it on Slashdot all the time.

Ignoring gender/ethnicity doesn't get you a level playing field; it gets you a world biased toward white males due to institutionalized biases. See Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is.

Sorry your white male upbringing was so rough. Mine wasn't. But at least we weren't black or women or gay (maybe you're gay, I don't know) or anything else that makes life more difficult. Understanding that doesn't make one a "radical" anything, it just makes one a decent human being.

I'm a bit at a loss as to what the first one is responding to, but the second is blatant rape denialism: it claims the number of committed rapes is lower than claimed by citing the number of reported rapes when the discrepancy between the two numbers is a large part of what the whole rape culture awareness thing is about.

I'll accept that not everyone claiming the banner of feminism is perfect, if you think supporting equal rights for women is something to make fun of someone for, you might want to reflect a bit about your life.

I think it is just the chapters hooked together - though I can't say that for sure as I never read them separately.

Yeah - I wasn't big on the codas either.

The Old Man's War books are all good. Android's Dream is pretty much awesome and might be my favorite of his. Agent to the Stars is pretty good too. I didn't totally buy the end but I really enjoyed the ride. I think you can read that for free. At least you could before when I read it. Yeah - here it is - Agent to the Stars.

I think he has an immense amount of talent and I'm glad he's writing in my favorite genre.

Come on. Isn't this rather old news, even for SlashDot?

We've had him listed as the 2012 Grand Master winner for several months already and Scalzi blogged about it in mid December.

Part of the problem with this whole thing lies in the power dynamic. As white males (well, at least I am - and I suspect a large number of others here are too), we are rarely put in situations where we are not in power.

I'm a white male and am in situations where I am not in power all the time. The way the corporate world works puts engineers at the bottom of the org chart.

Read John Scalzi's "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is"; I think it makes the point that the GP was trying to get across.

Please note that actual professionals, and not just ranting pseudonymous Slashdotters with no better arguments than repeating the PR party line, agree with my point.

All you have brought to the table is "you're stupid for not paying 5 bucks to unbreak Windows 8". Arguing by repeated assertion does not win you points.

And as for civility? You have shown none, you will get none. You're a moron deeply in need of therapy to get rid of your codependence on Microsoft.

Thanks for the link. This will take you to the specific blog entry: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/02/06/space-marines-and-the-battle-of-tradem-ark/

What it really seems to come down to — and I don’t think there’s a nicer way of putting it — is whether you’re using your computer as a work tool or a toy. If you’re using it as a toy, and as an entertainment machine, then with Win8 Start Screen and apps are probably cool and fun. If you’re using your computer as a tool, they’re just in the way. And now I have them out of my way, so I can do my work.

Here's what happens when an enthusiastic adopter of new technology tries to use Windows 8.

Basically: The new interface sucks. So people are avoiding it. Makes sense to me.

You need to read this:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/10/02/when-the-yogurt-took-over-a-short-story/

I think part of the issue stems from the fact that what you'd call racism or sexism would merely be called "prejudice" by many scholars and experts on the subject. To a lot of people whose business it is to study these things, racism and sexism are specific cases of prejudice with the added component of institutionalized privilege or power. In such a context, the average American white male could indeed be the victim of prejudice, but not racism or sexism because it's still white males who are the dominant group in America (the "lowest difficulty setting", if you will).

YMMV of course; you may not agree with the definitions as they're used or commonly understood (and there are compelling arguments for and against defining them this way). But it may help you frame future discussions of this nature--I doubt parent is trying to say that men/whites are never victims of prejudice (and this is a problem), but it is a fundamentally different kind of problem.

John Scalzi said something similar a few months before that, though not quite as extreme.

His name was one of the first I learned to recognize as a young beginner sci-fi-aficionado (ohh, maybe 10 years old?). I really liked the Steel Rat books, both others as well.

Here is a comment by John Scalzi (who is actually surprisingly similiar in style - I recommend).

Also helpful to print out and hand to that guy in your group before going to a con, John Scalzi's Incomplete Guide to Not Creeping

Thanks! His books are providing a perspective that stands out and the only comparable author with a similar perspective is Murray Leinster.

Other authors that I feel are under-appreciated:
Øyvind Myhre
Bertil Mårtensson
Mike Resnick
Iain M Banks
Richard Morgan
Piers Anthony
Jack Vance
Christopher Anvil
Björn Kurtén
Leigh Brackett
Karel Capek
Roald Dahl
Steven Gould
John M Harrison
A.A. Attanasio
Franz Kafka (If you have the stamina, no wonder that people refer to him when describing public services)
Henry Kuttner
Keith Laumer
Fritz Leiber
Ken MacLeod
Jack McDevitt
John Scalzi (See Whatever
Timothy Zahn

And John Scalzi has an interesting piece about this.

Adam Smith basically said the same, by the way.

John Scalzi's editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, wrote a comment on one of Scalzi's blog posts explaining this in the context of ebooks:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/06/13/patrick-nielsen-hayden-explains-ebook-territorial-rights-for-you/

If I remember phn's description correctly, in AC's example I'm not so sure B selling a copy of the work in Asia would be copyright infringement. I think it would be a violation of the contract between A and B.

Does this mean it’s easier for someone to violate my copyright? It does. But most people don’t want to violate my copyright. Most people just want to own their damn books. Now they will. I support that. And I believe that most readers who like my work will support me. They get that if I don’t get paid, they won’t get books — and more than that I really do believe most people who can support the artists whose work they like will support them. So personally I don’t think ditching DRM will mean people will stop buying what I and Tor have to sell.

--John Scalzi,
Tor/Forge To Go DRM Free by July

When Tor first got their site going a few years ago, they put all these eBooks for free. I downloaded a bunch of them, got introduced to some cool authors and got back into buying books, both e and hardcopy.

Same goes for movies and films. Sure, I can easily find any film or song out there but I purchase my stuff from Amazon and iTunes. All my friends (40-60 year olds) are the same way. Maybe I'm too old to be cool and scrape the web?

John Scalzi has a good run down on this, with a letter from CEO of Macmillan regarding this issue. I good place to start on what's going on here.

I am not sure how the buying cars part follows. You really lost me there. I don't understand how increased gasoline consumption would benefit anyone except people who sell oil and gasoline.

I didn't say Americans were immoral. (Well - not any more immoral than anyone else).

What I'm talking about is a lot like what John Scalzi describes in his post Not being able to scrape by with 200k is usually your own fault. The guy he talks about is well within his rights to the life he has - but to complain about it just doesn't generate a lot of sympathy with most others. In many it may even bring out feelings of resentment.

That's how it is when Americans get on the world wide web and gripe about stuff that is worse just about everywhere else. A lot of Americans don't realize this because they aren't exposed to what it is like to live in the rest of the world. So I think it is worth pointing it out. Maybe it will help some people get a bigger picture in their head of what's going on.

I am not claiming moral superiority. I'm not saying it's immoral to want cheaper gas. I'm saying it is stupid to get on a global soap box and gripe about your cheapest gas getting slightly more expensive even while it is still crazy cheap. That's all.

Look, it's probably not possible to convince you, but let's try: look at those comments on the page you linked. Look at your comments. Count the number of loaded words.

Let me help you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_word

Consider why people are using words that provoke an emotional reaction rather than reasoning, why they assume the Other is out to get them.

As to what I said about conservatives and their clannishness? It's a true fact. Psychologically speaking, conservatives tend more towards people who are of the tribe, to authority, to those like themselves, to policies that benefit people like themselves. It's part of what makes them what they are.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2002/03/22/i-hate-your-politics/

The trouble is, they both believe fundamentally different things about what it means to have a Good UI.

If my idea of a good dessert is brownies, and yours is lemon meringue pie, it's really hard to combine the two (or compromise) and yeild something that doesn't suck. I'll look at pies you make and say, "This dessert lacks sufficient chewiness" or "This crust makes a fundamentally problematic dessert interface", and you'll look at my brownie-like concoctions and want more crust, less chocolate, more lemon (!?), and some creamy bits. Sometimes, two very different and competing ideas work well by servicing different niches.

(Though, perhaps Schadenfreude pie would be a good compromise between pie and brownies, so my example may be flawed.)

I highly recommend reading this article: http://scalzi.com/whatever/002675.html

It's very apt.

I still get most of my reading suggestions from friends and John Scalzi's blog; Whatever. He not only reviews several books a month, he posts essays from authors on how and why they developed a book. Is cool having some background info and knowing where the writer's coming from with their work.

This is a preemptive reply to the ten million people who are about to post variations on the following theme
"e-books should only cost a few dollars because they don't have the cost of printing/shipping/storing a book"

This is wrong.

This is wrong because actually printing a book is the smallest cost involved in making one. When you look at the price of, say, a $35 hardcover book perhaps $4 is physical costs. Almost all of the cost of a book is the cost of paying the author/editor/proofreader plus the retail markup. These costs remain the same regardless of format.

And you will note that I have not mentioned publisher's profit. That's because there basically isn't one. Publishing is notorious for having no profit margin. Always has been. It was famous for not making money a century ago, famous for it fifty years ago and still a great way to get well known while losing money today. Publishing is not the music industry and it is not the movie industry. Almost all the profit is spent in up-front costs before the product even hits the streets.

Because of this, publishing has always had a very sane pricing policy. First they publish the hardcover for a high price point. Everyone who can't wait to read it buys it. Then if it is popular enough to pay off the costs six months or a year later they produce a softcover for $10 to pick up everyone who didn't want it enough to pay the hardcover costs.

Now, this doesn't mesh very well with the electronic music or video markets which is why Amazon tries to run with a fixed price point. But that's a nuts way of doing things when you are talking about books. Doesn't work because it doesn't pay off the fixed costs involved in paying the people who produce the books.

So, really, a fair e-book price is about $5 less than whatever it is selling for on the shelf. When a book first comes out that means $30-$40. A year or so later $6 is pretty likely. If you can't stand waiting don't bitch about the higher price.

For a real understanding, check out this post from John Scalzi (author) that is really fantastic
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/01/30/a-quick-note-on-ebook-pricing/

(I work for Macmillan, so I am not a disinterested party)

Macmillan's president held our annual company meeting just the other day (before the Amazon dispute) and he explained that the pricing for e-books was probably about to get a little rough. Apple had been courting the publishers for several weeks. Apple carries a lot of clout, and was offering terms that were very attractive to publishers, as it lets them set their own prices, within a flexible window. Amazon, on the other hand, was pushing publishers to sell books at a flat rate: $9.99.

Amazon has been angling to set themselves up as the "Wal-Mart of the web", and with that comes a lot of what Wal-Mart is know for: good and bad. Steep discounts are good for the customer, but generally, not so good for the manufacturer. Now, as someone who writes software to help ensure the quality of our books, I am a bit biased, but books are not the same things as widgets. You can't just churn them out. Even good, reputable authors give you something that needs a lot of polishing. We publish textbooks in my division, so this means that in addition to the standard copy-editing, you also need to do fact-checking, course integration, and lots of design work. It is a labor-intensive process, and each book requires the attention of dozens of people, and tens of thousands of man-hours. Often, these books also come with software. I don't think I need to explain to people here how hard it is to write good software.

Amazon is hard to say no to, because they move a lot of books. But they are cutting profit margins dangerously low for us. At what point do you say no? People like to do their work, but they also like to be paid. Macmillan, so far, has balked at Amazon's price-fixing, and (if I understand correctly) Amazon has been selling e-book versions of Macmillan titles at a loss. Amazon, however, sees the iPad terms as very dangerous, because publishers can sell some books higher, but more importantly, they can sell some lower. Apple can do this, because they're not taking as big a cut as Amazon does. Unlike Amazon, Apple's goal is to sell the platform; Amazon wants to sell the books. So Amazon makes a ton on books, but loses a little on hardware. Apple makes money on hardware, but not much else.

I don't know exactly how it will shake out, but it looks like the Macmillan deal will probably be a turning point for e-books. Amazon is now a sub-licensor of those books, and that means that the quality and success of those books is going to be important to them. We'll see how this turns out. For more on this, I recommend this and this.

I hear that Amazon's customers are "boycotting" books priced higher than $9.99. Ok, I hate "teh big bad corp" as much as anyone else, but come on-- it's not like we find these things laying around and just dust them off and hand them to you. There's no magic. Get real. We have to make these things, and that takes time and money, and hey, we like to get paid, too. I suspect the "$9.99 boycott" is Amazon astroturfing.

FWIW, Macmillan is a privately-held company, so that's why you see them taking a stand, and not one of our competitors. I'm fortunate to work for a private company, because we can actually focus on doing a good job. From my perspective, working here has been far from being a cog in some evil empire.