How good is Amazon's suggestion engine? Does it include self-published ebooks? I've seen enough recommendations for mass-market products based on recent purchases and the page I'm looking at, but I've never seen them recommend anything that didn't seem like a traditionally published work.
The few authors I've talked to about this idea (admittedly small selection) seemed pretty appalled at the idea of sharing profits with editors, rather than paying a flat fee. The few editors I've talked to also don't seem thrilled about the idea of doing what might be entirely free work.
I struggled with that for a long time, and eventually gave in to the system. Much later on, in college physics, it became handy to be in the habit of writing things down, once it became complicated enough that I couldn't do it all in my head. What really got me to appreciate the demand is when I spent a year grading homework. If someone went wrong and they showed their work, I could point out the (possibly minor) mistake and still give them 4/5 for the problem, whereas if it was just one answer, out of the blue, and it was wrong I didn't have anything to work with.
Now that doesn't excuse someone demanding that you write out every step of the order of operations in ((2 + 4) / 2 ) *3 = X rather than just jumping to x = 9 and calling it good. Depends a lot on the level of work involved.
Subjecting a prodigy to school just to teach him interpersonal skills sounds like a real waste. 8 hours a day of having things like fractions explained would be horrible.
Entirely true. Most of school isn't interacting, it's just sitting there listening to the teacher. It's a terrible waste of time going over something you already know inside and out. I'm no prodigy but managed to get ahead in math at one point, doing a little algebra in 5th grade when it was normally a 7th grade subject. Stuck in the classroom that was reiterating stuff I didn't need, thankfully the teacher was nice enough to let me just read through all of 5th and 6th grade math. Was a waste of class time, but far more entertaining than being forced to listen.
I believe he meant: "Forsooth I couldst moderate thee with highest regard, yet nay! I shall reply upon the nonce instead. The accuracy of thine statement is nearly divine. Henceforth shall I shout to the heavens! Yea, thy words shall become mine, engraved forevermore upon the book of faces. A thousand pardons if my actions doth offend thee."
No kidding. A couple of months ago I would have said Netflix was untouchable in its market. But two or three more asinine announcements like they've had lately, and I'd start to think there's plenty of room for non-crazy competition.
I've got to think this is the best option. You get the increased salary, the shorter commute (which is probably a far greater improvement on the quality of life), and you still get to have some connection and good terms with your old company and the people there you consider friends. I've left places on good terms in the past and continued to do work with them, and it's generally gone well. As long as you're honest with your old employer about the reasons for leaving, I don't imagine they're going to hold it against you.
"You wouldn't want to skip the movie previews we've carefully chosen for you.."
I REALLY hate the DVDs where the previews are basically forced on you and it doesn't let you skip them. (Also, DVDs where they've set the "menu" to be at the beginning of the previews instead of the real menu.)
That particular issue is at least 50% because of the hardware. It seems like it would be easy enough to make a DVD player which simply ignored the "skipping isn't allowed" option. I would throw away my perfectly functional player and buy a replacement today, based on that feature alone. Do they exist? Anybody want to start a company that makes them?
I think there's a setting in preferences where you can set the number of comments you get with the 'get more' button. I know when I'm logged in 'get more' gets all comments, and when I'm not logged in it's always in 50-comment chunks, so I must have changed that somehow. It's not a perfect solution, but it does make things better.
However, get more doesn't bump me back to the top, so I'm going to the bottom, getting more, and then having to move myself back to the top (using end/home buttons rather than scrolling to speed up the process, though).
You forgot the part where early Apple computers sold for $666. I'm pretty sure that was an intentional reference on Steve's part. Now whether making mention of 666 is really teaching sin is another matter entirely.
True. It's still lousy, but it's slightly less lousy than the default. I also have a particular loathing for the tendency of the control panel to show you most of the icons, wait until you're just about to click on the one you want, and then realize there are a few more add-ons that it overlooked, causing it to refresh the display and shift the item you want to someplace you've got to find all over again. I'd much rather it just load once and load everything, even with the delay, than have to find something twice.
Ditto with the control panel - rather than one big screen with 100+ tiny icons on it, they reworded a few things ("Display" becaome "Personalization", and there are 2-3 different UIs rather than the tabs on the old-fashioned XP display.cpl) and made them all look like web-apps.
Set the control panel to show small icons or large icons instead of category, and you can have the old functionality back.
I'm not really one of the progressives you're asking the question of, but I think a likely answer is there's no real magic number because it's a complicated equation. In an ideal world income would match expenses (yeah, right, I know) and if expenses go up then they either cut other expenses or bump income, i.e. taxes. If I were in charge and desperately needed to raise taxes for more money, I'd be inclined to pick a scheme where the 15% bracket gets bumped up to 15.5%, the 25% bracket gets bumped up to 26%, and the 38% bracket gets bumped up to 40%, or something like that. Then again I'd probably run the numbers on the extra.5% on the 15's and realize it's completely inconsequential, and then the only point of keeping it would be because it's perceived as more fair if there's a little more suffering all around.
In good times with excess income I'd be inclined to drop the numbers in the same proportion, of course. But there's a pretty big hole to dig out of before we can even think about that.
Slashdot Mirror
How good is Amazon's suggestion engine? Does it include self-published ebooks? I've seen enough recommendations for mass-market products based on recent purchases and the page I'm looking at, but I've never seen them recommend anything that didn't seem like a traditionally published work.
The few authors I've talked to about this idea (admittedly small selection) seemed pretty appalled at the idea of sharing profits with editors, rather than paying a flat fee. The few editors I've talked to also don't seem thrilled about the idea of doing what might be entirely free work.
Where have you heard this? I've only seen it suggested one other time (also here on slashdot), and it was refuted in that instance.
But you have more generations living at once, which means the events are larger. I think that was what was meant.
So do games. Not computer games, of course, but games definitely do.
I struggled with that for a long time, and eventually gave in to the system. Much later on, in college physics, it became handy to be in the habit of writing things down, once it became complicated enough that I couldn't do it all in my head. What really got me to appreciate the demand is when I spent a year grading homework. If someone went wrong and they showed their work, I could point out the (possibly minor) mistake and still give them 4/5 for the problem, whereas if it was just one answer, out of the blue, and it was wrong I didn't have anything to work with.
Now that doesn't excuse someone demanding that you write out every step of the order of operations in ((2 + 4) / 2 ) *3 = X rather than just jumping to x = 9 and calling it good. Depends a lot on the level of work involved.
Subjecting a prodigy to school just to teach him interpersonal skills sounds like a real waste. 8 hours a day of having things like fractions explained would be horrible.
Entirely true. Most of school isn't interacting, it's just sitting there listening to the teacher. It's a terrible waste of time going over something you already know inside and out. I'm no prodigy but managed to get ahead in math at one point, doing a little algebra in 5th grade when it was normally a 7th grade subject. Stuck in the classroom that was reiterating stuff I didn't need, thankfully the teacher was nice enough to let me just read through all of 5th and 6th grade math. Was a waste of class time, but far more entertaining than being forced to listen.
Yeah, at least board games don't glow. And some of them are square instead of rectangle?
I believe he meant: "Forsooth I couldst moderate thee with highest regard, yet nay! I shall reply upon the nonce instead. The accuracy of thine statement is nearly divine. Henceforth shall I shout to the heavens! Yea, thy words shall become mine, engraved forevermore upon the book of faces. A thousand pardons if my actions doth offend thee."
No kidding. A couple of months ago I would have said Netflix was untouchable in its market. But two or three more asinine announcements like they've had lately, and I'd start to think there's plenty of room for non-crazy competition.
Please read the book, "Why Are Artists Poor" from Amazon.
Paperback price: $32.58
Kindle Edition: $29.32
Assuming that book sells much, there's one artist who certainly isn't poor. Or maybe that author is a "researcher" and not an artist.
I've got to think this is the best option. You get the increased salary, the shorter commute (which is probably a far greater improvement on the quality of life), and you still get to have some connection and good terms with your old company and the people there you consider friends. I've left places on good terms in the past and continued to do work with them, and it's generally gone well. As long as you're honest with your old employer about the reasons for leaving, I don't imagine they're going to hold it against you.
Also, your address book.
"You wouldn't want to skip the movie previews we've carefully chosen for you.."
I REALLY hate the DVDs where the previews are basically forced on you and it doesn't let you skip them. (Also, DVDs where they've set the "menu" to be at the beginning of the previews instead of the real menu.)
That particular issue is at least 50% because of the hardware. It seems like it would be easy enough to make a DVD player which simply ignored the "skipping isn't allowed" option. I would throw away my perfectly functional player and buy a replacement today, based on that feature alone. Do they exist? Anybody want to start a company that makes them?
I think there's a setting in preferences where you can set the number of comments you get with the 'get more' button. I know when I'm logged in 'get more' gets all comments, and when I'm not logged in it's always in 50-comment chunks, so I must have changed that somehow. It's not a perfect solution, but it does make things better.
However, get more doesn't bump me back to the top, so I'm going to the bottom, getting more, and then having to move myself back to the top (using end/home buttons rather than scrolling to speed up the process, though).
I've never figured out how to meta moderate, or exactly what it is. It's applying mods to other people's mods, to rate them good or bad modders?
You forgot the part where early Apple computers sold for $666. I'm pretty sure that was an intentional reference on Steve's part. Now whether making mention of 666 is really teaching sin is another matter entirely.
True. It's still lousy, but it's slightly less lousy than the default. I also have a particular loathing for the tendency of the control panel to show you most of the icons, wait until you're just about to click on the one you want, and then realize there are a few more add-ons that it overlooked, causing it to refresh the display and shift the item you want to someplace you've got to find all over again. I'd much rather it just load once and load everything, even with the delay, than have to find something twice.
Ditto with the control panel - rather than one big screen with 100+ tiny icons on it, they reworded a few things ("Display" becaome "Personalization", and there are 2-3 different UIs rather than the tabs on the old-fashioned XP display.cpl) and made them all look like web-apps.
Set the control panel to show small icons or large icons instead of category, and you can have the old functionality back.
Did any of your users run into the "I didn't realize a cable has two ends" problem when checking if it was plugged in? I've hit that one before.
I'm not really one of the progressives you're asking the question of, but I think a likely answer is there's no real magic number because it's a complicated equation. In an ideal world income would match expenses (yeah, right, I know) and if expenses go up then they either cut other expenses or bump income, i.e. taxes. If I were in charge and desperately needed to raise taxes for more money, I'd be inclined to pick a scheme where the 15% bracket gets bumped up to 15.5%, the 25% bracket gets bumped up to 26%, and the 38% bracket gets bumped up to 40%, or something like that. Then again I'd probably run the numbers on the extra .5% on the 15's and realize it's completely inconsequential, and then the only point of keeping it would be because it's perceived as more fair if there's a little more suffering all around.
In good times with excess income I'd be inclined to drop the numbers in the same proportion, of course. But there's a pretty big hole to dig out of before we can even think about that.
I'm pretty sure the expression is "there can be only one."
Maybe they meant per year? It certainly adds up.
Yeah, but at least the murphy bed takes care of itself.
They call them fingers, but I never see them fing. Oh, wait, there they go ...