Economics -- a pricing failure
on
Have eBooks Peaked?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
With paperbacks, my typical behavior is to buy the book, read it, and then donate it to charity (at a retail used-book valuation) for a tax write-off. Given my marginal tax rate (state and federal combined), the net cost of the book is about 65% of face-value.
With E-books, I can't do that "donate to charity", so the face-value is the net cost, which seems to be about 10% under the paperback price.
E-book prices need to come down by at least 25% in order to become economically competitive for me.
"Dearer than paperbacks" means they are priced far too high. With a paperback I can donate it to charity when I finish. Valuing it at used-book prices, I still get a 60% tax writeoff. Given a marginal tax rate of 50%, the book then costs me a net 70% of its face value.
I can't donate e-books, so for me to break even the price needs to be no more than 70% of the paperback face value.
As a software developer myself (software engineering for environmental modeling; high performance computing), the one thing I do wish for is more "devel" and "static-devel" library packages.
Which is one of the bones I have to pick with RedHat, by the way: it feels as though they've gone out of their way to make cross-distro software development difficult.
Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to an absence of copyright law? A German historian argues that the massive proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the country's industrial might...
...an incomparable mass of reading material was being produced in Germany...
There is an economic analysis out there (sorry, don't have the URL at my fingertips) that compares book authorship/publishing/reading in strict-copyright 19th century England with no-copyright 19th century Germany.
German authors, publishers, and readers were all far better off than English ones. The article explains the reason for this seemingly-paradoxical result.
And the reasons hold, I'm sure, for current DRM. FWIW.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivens .
Basically, in cases of denial of Constitutional rights,
the doctrine of sovereign immunity does not apply,
and the individual bureaucrats can be held individually
responsible. You might think of it as the "Nuremberg
War Crimes" clause in US law...
He ought to sue those persons responsible,
as individuals. Going all the way
to the top. IMNHO, there is more than cause for
him to do so. And he certainly has standing...
A few multi-million-dollar judgements against
individual TSA agents and managers would do
a lot pour encourager les autres.
And put in correct support for all the KDE-bugs associated with xrandr --panning !!
I'm not running "old hardware" and all these KDE bugs, due to developers making
incorrect X assumptions instead of actually knowing what they're doing,
are the last thing keeping me from running KDE4.
Measure the amount of travelers time that TSA costs in waking lifetimes, and then tell me which is more deadly: the terrorists or the TSA. Run the numbers and you'll see that the TSA is the most deadly terrorist organization on the planet.
At least some nVidia drivers do not play well with legacy Motif/X apps (using lesstif or OpenMotif); RedHat does not
play well with OpenMotif, for that matter.
And at the time, they promised us that 16:10 aspect ratio was the long-term compromise
between the 4:3 that computer people wanted and the 16:9 the media people wanted. It shows that the
media people are liars! (but we knew that already...)
Did you ever compare the output between 300DPI vs 600DPI vs 1200DPI laser printers (or 4800DPI Linotype)?
It's definitely there -- and printer resolution is *way* beyond the resolutions we are discussing for monitors.
It's my experience that the only repeatability you have with
printing from MS Office is on the same computer with
the same fonts (no new font-installs). If you're lucky.
Change computers, and repeatability just will not happen.
That Assistant Attorney General -- and his co-conspirators -- who made that threat should have been arrested for extortion under color of office, for that is exactly what he did -- and not that as such his extortion is an offense properly under state jurisdiction. Since he traveled to Texas to make that threat, he was in fact available for such an arrest. And writs of extradition should have been filed for the rest of them.
In Bivens versus six unnamed agents (1971), the US Supreme Court said that sovereign immunity does not apply for violations of Constitutional rights; moreover, liability goes all the way to the top, to the official which sets the policy. And the 7th Circuit recently said that Donald Rumsfeld gets to enjoy that lack of immunity, for what happened at Gitmo.
She should follow the lead of Aaron Tobey http://m.reason.com/26819/show/3fe6fddb77a895bbc137549ae0bff688&t=179ecfc42749c8364dcc4ef8ef6095a6: not to be raped is certainly a Fourth-Amendment Constitutional right, and in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents (1971), the Supreme Court ruling in Bivens says you can seek monetary damages for the violation of your constitutional rights -- all the way to the top of the responsible agency; sovereign immunity does not apply for violation of Constitutional rights . Following this precedent, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said that Rumsfeld is not immune for violations at Gitmo.
Tobey is suing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole; she should, too.\
I've used Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, CentOS, etc, and all of them have relatively poor repos compared to Mandriva and I had to hunt around...they are still pumping out an excellent distro.
I have to work with a variety of distros (RHEL, SuSE, Fedora, CentOS, ubunto) on the servers
at my office, as well as running Mandriva on desktops and at home, and agree it is far the easiest
to deal with in terms of available repos, etc. (Just try building the latest GRASS on SuSE!)
French people + documentation apparently = disastrous mess
Agreed. When I was studying computability theory, one of the texts was by a native
French-speaker, the other native-Greek. I had to understand the proofs in order
to be able to figure out what the words in the theorem-statements meant!
As a mathematician I claim to be professionally expert in the meaning of the word "limited". Working with limits is my profession.
In my nonhumble amd expert opinion, the Eldred decision took as fanciful a definition of "limited" as Bill Clinton did with his "It all depends upon what the meaning of 'is' is.".
Frankly, in Eldred the Supreme Court broke the Law of the Land.
Slashdot Mirror
With paperbacks, my typical behavior is to buy the book, read it, and then donate it to charity (at a retail used-book valuation) for a tax write-off. Given my marginal tax rate (state and federal combined), the net cost of the book is about 65% of face-value.
With E-books, I can't do that "donate to charity", so the face-value is the net cost, which seems to be about 10% under the paperback price.
E-book prices need to come down by at least 25% in order to become economically competitive for me.
I can't donate e-books, so for me to break even the price needs to be no more than 70% of the paperback face value.
As a software developer myself (software engineering for environmental modeling; high performance computing), the one thing I do wish for is more "devel" and "static-devel" library packages.
Which is one of the bones I have to pick with RedHat, by the way: it feels as though they've gone out of their way to make cross-distro software development difficult.
German authors, publishers, and readers were all far better off than English ones. The article explains the reason for this seemingly-paradoxical result.
And the reasons hold, I'm sure, for current DRM. FWIW.
He ought to sue those persons responsible, as individuals. Going all the way to the top. IMNHO, there is more than cause for him to do so. And he certainly has standing...
A few multi-million-dollar judgements against individual TSA agents and managers would do a lot pour encourager les autres.
See He ought to sue the persons responsible, as individualspour encourager les autres.
I'm not running "old hardware" and all these KDE bugs, due to developers making incorrect X assumptions instead of actually knowing what they're doing, are the last thing keeping me from running KDE4.
FWIW.
...and is hard to build on non-*buntu systems.
I agree -- and I like the unified environment. That's why I use seamonkey.
Measure the amount of travelers time that TSA costs in waking lifetimes, and then tell me which is more deadly: the terrorists or the TSA. Run the numbers and you'll see that the TSA is the most deadly terrorist organization on the planet.
At least some nVidia drivers do not play well with legacy Motif/X apps (using lesstif or OpenMotif); RedHat does not play well with OpenMotif, for that matter.
And at the time, they promised us that 16:10 aspect ratio was the long-term compromise between the 4:3 that computer people wanted and the 16:9 the media people wanted. It shows that the media people are liars! (but we knew that already...)
FWIW.
Otherwise, print-repeatability is out the window.
You were saying...?
Pour encourager les autres.
FWIW.
In Bivens versus six unnamed agents (1971), the US Supreme Court said that sovereign immunity does not apply for violations of Constitutional rights; moreover, liability goes all the way to the top, to the official which sets the policy. And the 7th Circuit recently said that Donald Rumsfeld gets to enjoy that lack of immunity, for what happened at Gitmo.
Tobey is suing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole; she should, too.\
I have to work with a variety of distros (RHEL, SuSE, Fedora, CentOS, ubunto) on the servers at my office, as well as running Mandriva on desktops and at home, and agree it is far the easiest to deal with in terms of available repos, etc. (Just try building the latest GRASS on SuSE!)
Agreed. When I was studying computability theory, one of the texts was by a native French-speaker, the other native-Greek. I had to understand the proofs in order to be able to figure out what the words in the theorem-statements meant!
Interestingly enough, the two Justices who got the Eldred decision right were Breyer on the left and Thomas on the right...
As a mathematician I claim to be professionally expert in the meaning of the word "limited". Working with limits is my profession.
In my nonhumble amd expert opinion, the Eldred decision took as fanciful a definition of "limited" as Bill Clinton did with his "It all depends upon what the meaning of 'is' is.".
Frankly, in Eldred the Supreme Court broke the Law of the Land.
I strongly doubt he does this :-)
IANAL, but...
Two good examples: real estate transfers and copyright transfers, both of which require specific written language.
The dentist's contract is inconsistent with the copyright law's requirements for copyright transfer (and hence is null and void, as a matter of law).
It is extortion for the doctor or dentist to use his position of authority so to attempt to coerce the patient in a manner contrary to law.