Amen. A few days ago I loaded some pragprog books onto an iPod Touch, and Apple never saw a cent.
iOS/Android/Kindle publishers: You don't write books. You probably don't edit books. You don't print books. As rarely as I see ads for your eBooks, you don't seem to promote them very well either. With the App Store/Kindle Store/Marketplace you don't need to distribute books. With in-app billing you don't even need to handle payment for books.
About the only thing you actually do is wrap somebody else's book in DRM and force people to download a proprietary app to read it. If you can't make fat wads of cash performing that service, boo-fucking-hoo.
you have to make a profit for each sale including the coupon.
That's rather difficult, considering that Groupon expects you to slash your price by at least 50%, and then they typically take 50% of the remainder as their commission.
So unless you can turn a profit while charging <=25% of your normal rates/prices, it's best to think of Groupon as an advertising expense—not a business method.
And here is the actual text, for those of you trying to avoid irony in your diet.
Update 2, 2:15pm EST:
Record traffic, plus a rush of people to make password changes is more than we can currently handle.
We're switching tactics -- if you've made the password change already we'll handle you normally.
If you haven't the vast majority of you will be logged in using 'offline' mode so you can still use LastPass like normal and get back to your day, only syncing of new password should suffer (and you'll see the bar).
As load lowers we'll increase the percentage of people being sent through email validation / password changing.
For people experience problems please email us at support@lastpass.com -- we have seen a few reports of bogus data post change, we think this is due to you downloading a stale copy and if you go to LastPass Icon -> Clear Local Cache and try again it should work.
Intel decided to move optical interconnects to the cables themselves. Short Thunderbolt cables will be entirely copper; long cables will have an optical transceiver built into each end.
What? Incredible! This changes everything!...Oh, wait, it's just a poor sod who either doesn't know what "delivery" means or is unclear how adjectives work.
A third of the apps are free, so figure an average of $8600/paid app. Free apps tend to be subsidized with ads, &c., which aren't included in the $2B figure.
Then take out the shovelware, the apps that got thrown together in a week or less by throwing a few appkit controls together, making a glorified web page, and/or duplicating the same app 50 times with slightly different content. Not many people buy these apps, but they take so little time to produce that developers can earn a decent living on them. I'd say these account for at least half the App Store; some would guess closer to 90%.
Then take out the apps that are too specific to really catch on; even if they were well written, there just aren't that many people who need to diagnose a token ring network in Esperanto or reproduce the call of Cerorhinca monocerata. Often these apps were written to benefit a specific party (probably the developer) and later polished up and stuck in the App Store to try and make a bit of extra cash.
And now you're left with the small percentage of apps that are well designed and appeal to a broad audience, and a large percentage of that $2B revenue figure. Granted, not everything will be a hit, but that's true of every industry. And with the market growing tremendously every year you'd be crazy not to get your feet wet.
The anti-nuke brigade is apparently in full force, since the scenario I described was actually predicted by scientists (and debunked by those with a better understanding of nuclear physics).
Well, Japanese companies seem to spend their time producing things that are small and efficient and good enough for day-to-day activities.
While in the US, everybody expects the world to turn into a Mad Max movie next Tuesday—so we spend our time making everything as overpowered and heavy-duty as we can get away with.
Still, it's nice that the products of our trillion-dollar defense budgets do benefit someone once in a while.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow ... I wonder when this patent was filed
Yeah, it's like a page right out of history.
"Hey, are you headed to the Internet cafe? Could you send this for me? I'd love to go myself, but you know, the $25000000 bounty..."
"You ALWAYS use that excuse! 'I'd love to go to the grocery store, but my bounty...I'd love to go to the laundromat, but my bounty...'"
"Oh, and could you print out the latest Digg articles?"
"...fuck it, I'm calling the Americans."
I dunno; when you go to Cisco.com and click on Enterprise, you're presented with the line:
"Break down barriers to reach people and information wherever and whenever you need them."
Sounds like they understand it perfectly.
Rule of Aquisition #76: Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.
Also, they completely missed the part about how "Using Windows was like living in a town of terror—it was like a terror town".
And once the aerial tour is complete, hurry back to the metro station to catch the intercontinental vactrain home.
Well, someone has to operate the Manual Inflation Nozzle from time to time.
Amen. A few days ago I loaded some pragprog books onto an iPod Touch, and Apple never saw a cent.
iOS/Android/Kindle publishers: You don't write books. You probably don't edit books. You don't print books. As rarely as I see ads for your eBooks, you don't seem to promote them very well either. With the App Store/Kindle Store/Marketplace you don't need to distribute books. With in-app billing you don't even need to handle payment for books.
About the only thing you actually do is wrap somebody else's book in DRM and force people to download a proprietary app to read it. If you can't make fat wads of cash performing that service, boo-fucking-hoo.
you have to make a profit for each sale including the coupon.
That's rather difficult, considering that Groupon expects you to slash your price by at least 50%, and then they typically take 50% of the remainder as their commission.
So unless you can turn a profit while charging <=25% of your normal rates/prices, it's best to think of Groupon as an advertising expense—not a business method.
And here is the actual text, for those of you trying to avoid irony in your diet.
Intel decided to move optical interconnects to the cables themselves. Short Thunderbolt cables will be entirely copper; long cables will have an optical transceiver built into each end.
Sure enough, he had a third grandparent.
You can't copyright facts, so if a scientific paper is copyrightable...I have no reason to read it.
What?
"...Tests Online Grocery Delivery"
"...into online grocery delivery"
What? Incredible! This changes everything! ...Oh, wait, it's just a poor sod who either doesn't know what "delivery" means or is unclear how adjectives work.
Of course, I hope we don't have to glue the plane together from A4 sized pieces of "paper".
Well, I hope you never travel in a Boeing 787.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_(fiber)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fiber_reinforced_plastic#Composite
Note that this only refers to tensile strength.
A third of the apps are free, so figure an average of $8600/paid app. Free apps tend to be subsidized with ads, &c., which aren't included in the $2B figure.
Then take out the shovelware, the apps that got thrown together in a week or less by throwing a few appkit controls together, making a glorified web page, and/or duplicating the same app 50 times with slightly different content. Not many people buy these apps, but they take so little time to produce that developers can earn a decent living on them. I'd say these account for at least half the App Store; some would guess closer to 90%.
Then take out the apps that are too specific to really catch on; even if they were well written, there just aren't that many people who need to diagnose a token ring network in Esperanto or reproduce the call of Cerorhinca monocerata. Often these apps were written to benefit a specific party (probably the developer) and later polished up and stuck in the App Store to try and make a bit of extra cash.
And now you're left with the small percentage of apps that are well designed and appeal to a broad audience, and a large percentage of that $2B revenue figure. Granted, not everything will be a hit, but that's true of every industry. And with the market growing tremendously every year you'd be crazy not to get your feet wet.
Is a $200 graphics card a must-have?
Are hiking boots a must-have?
Is a baby stroller a must-have?
Is 4WD a must-have?
The answers to these questions and many more: It depends, you idiot!
The anti-nuke brigade is apparently in full force, since the scenario I described was actually predicted by scientists (and debunked by those with a better understanding of nuclear physics).
Aren't they concerned that the N2 will start fusing into silicon, starting a chain reaction that incinerates the entire atmosphere?
After all, this is nuclear energy we're talking about; common sense has no place in this discussion.
Ah, yes:
Backwards Chile,
backwards Indonesia,
backwards Alaska.
Nope, no civilization there.
Well, Japanese companies seem to spend their time producing things that are small and efficient and good enough for day-to-day activities.
While in the US, everybody expects the world to turn into a Mad Max movie next Tuesday—so we spend our time making everything as overpowered and heavy-duty as we can get away with.
Still, it's nice that the products of our trillion-dollar defense budgets do benefit someone once in a while.
The 9.0 earthquake is now said to have been the largest ever recorded to have hit a civilized area.
Because as we all know, Chile, Indonesia and Anchorage, Alaska are composed entirely of backwards tribal villages.
And considering services like Mozy, Carbonite and DropBox already do versioning (preserving overwritten or deleted files), this isn't really a story.
No, in the US they would be called one twentieth and one fifth, respectively.