To make it worse, he has no excuse. The music industry does, they were the first to miss the boat on digital content. The movie industry should have caught on, but somehow didn't. The publishers should really have been able to figure it out; they had fair warning and opportunity and, seemingly, just couldn't connect the dots.
Big Content screwed up and is on the way out no matter how much they complain. Books are absolutely here to stay, but the profit model is shifting. Hopefully the huge economies of scale afforded by e-Books will allow the authors to profit more than under the current model. In any case, Amazon is sure to come out on top for the near future.
I don't quite agree with the analogy with music. People were downloading music files en masse and the recording industry was still refusing to budge their business model from the good ol' CD days. We had ipods in Australia before we had any real ability to buy music online (legally). With books, the situation is different - how many people download books compared with how many people buy them? This is not consumer-driven - it is a reaction of the publishers who can see the writing on the wall with the ever-improving technology of ebook readers.
My other issue with the book/music comparison is that bands can use give-away (or sold very cheaply) music to promote the other things that make money for them (tours, merchandise etc). Writers (and I'm thinking here of literary writers) don't have the capacity to do that.
Agreed. There are books you read for information (textbooks etc) and light entertainment (I only read garbage on trains and planes for some reason). But then there are books that ebooks will never replace for us bibliophiles (I have a collection of harkback first editions and childrens books, for example, and know someone who has a huge collection of very beautiful art books).
Sure these types of books may go up in price, but they will also go up in value.
My concern is for the authors - they are going to get screwed. And while being independent and going through the net might work for musicians, I can't see self-publishing as anything other than an opportunity for people to have to wade though mountains of crap and misinformation to get something good to read.
More I can only hope that -all- PVS patients get such a scan before anything is disconnected, and if there is a brain left they then get an active MRI scan to see if they are actually thinking. While it may not have saved Terri I'm pretty sure it will save some others.
Saving is one thing - quality of life is another. After studing neuropsyche and seeing survivors of head injuries, hypoxia etc I makes me think that medicine has advanced a little bit too far in saving people.
Look on the bright side - if Microsoft say using the internet should be licienced like driving a car, then we could sue them like we can sue a defective car manufacturer.
I agree - I have on occassion partially replicated previous research and failed to find anything significant. In psychology, at least, this is needed because so many people claim significant results on relatively small correlations (i.e. many psychs are bad at stats).
Repeating the study on a different population and failing to find a significant result can also show that the results don't generalise to that population.
CDs aren't really a going concern anymore amongst certain cross-sections of society. Books, however, are still mostly distributed in bookshops and libraries.
If there was a device on the market that was cheap and highly readable (i.e. the equivilant of what MP3 players were to music files) then online distribution would become a big deal.
Untill then, I think the comparison with music is a little bit overdrawn.
Moderation is a terrible system for Music, because musical tastes vary so much. Something that sounds like moose singing to me might sound wonderful to you. The *ONLY* way to know good music is to listen to it yourself, which is why Radio's have been very popular marketing tools for so many years.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to entrust the selection of my music to anyone but myself.
"Good" versus "Bad" comes down to personal taste in the end for creative products (music, art, fiction etc).
But when it comes to books with technical and scientific content, publishers play a big role in ensuring some degree of credibility. This has always been true of peer-reviewed journals and texbooks.
Imagine you have just been diagnosed with an illness. If you wanted additional credible information (apart from what a doctor told you),and had exhausted the "factsheets" on the internet, you would be wise to check a book published by a credible publisher over a self-published book.
Anyone can decide on what artistic products they want - but with expert information, you need a trustworthy source to tell you what's good or bad.
In Australia they are also vehicles (not pedestrians). Of course, they do tend to obey the road rules 50% of the time, but then whisk up on to the footpaths at will.
They are great for inner-city transportation, but I wouldn't like to ride along busy suburban main roads on one.
Writing in a conversational tone means that you don't need to be too pedantic about your grammar. So "I try to write like I'm having a conversation" is fine by me.
I would contend that, in the sentence "I try to write as if I'm having a conversation", the present tense ("I'm") is wrong. The verb should take the hypothetical tense: "I try to write as if I were having a conversation." Or, even better: "I try to write as though I were having a conversation".
I think we should protect the gullible, the stupid, the young, the uneducated, people with marginal mental health, old people who are starting to show signs of cognitive impairment and so on from cons. Even the mearly greedy should be protected.
True, evey predator needs a victim - but blaming victims for being ripped off is just mean in my book.
I asked the guy sitting next to me at work who is one of the smartest people I know, who is very well educated and well read (although not in science) and he didn't know. I think that there's plenty like him.
Also, with the ammount of ludicrous claims made by science journalists talking up very minimal results into major technological breakthroughs, I'm not surprised at peoples gullibility.
In Queensland, Australia, a journalist (Phil Dickie) sparked a 2-year inquiry (the Fitzgerald Inquiry) into Queensland Police corruption. The Premier resigned and the Police Commissioner was jailed and stripped of his knighthood.
I think that the best thing that people in developed countries can do is donate money to reputable charities which help build up a communities capacity to be self-sustaining.
Counselling and IT work are not really the sort of skills that can be usefully be deployed in a week. Why not donate these skills a small amount of time throughout the year (e.g. one Sunday a month)to some charitable organisation in your home country that does overseas work.
You say you wouldn't mind doing manual labour, but money for a charity to provide tools or training in building skills is worth more than you carrying bricks for a week.
I can't help but think that "empathy" is the cry of the loser having lost out in their social wager. Almost everybody cares about their own needs--claiming to care for others is just an individuals way of trying to establish the reinforcement of their personal safety net in event of failure.
Empathy is an instinct that, like many other human characteristics, is normally distributed. (sociopaths are outliers on this curve).
So, there are two possiblities: you have drawn the conclusion you have because your empathy levels fall below the mean, and since you cannot experience empathy you have come up with a very odd definition (much like someone who cannot see trying to define "red").
On the other hand, you may experience normal levels of empathy (e.g. you see someone fall over and you automatically wince) but are for some reason coming up with some rational sounding explanation which confuses empathy with some abstract cognition.
I am imagining that libraires would be a huge source of sales for publishers, particularly academic and school libraries.
I'm not sure that an individual copy of a book would be lent out "several hunderd time" either. I don't think books are quite that robust. So, particularly with childrens books or best-seller types paperbacks, libraries would be buying multiple copies over time. Libraries constantly weed.
Slashdot Mirror
Can someone tell me what the ebook thinggy in the picture that goes with the article is? It looks quite good - is it a kindle?
To make it worse, he has no excuse. The music industry does, they were the first to miss the boat on digital content. The movie industry should have caught on, but somehow didn't. The publishers should really have been able to figure it out; they had fair warning and opportunity and, seemingly, just couldn't connect the dots.
Big Content screwed up and is on the way out no matter how much they complain. Books are absolutely here to stay, but the profit model is shifting. Hopefully the huge economies of scale afforded by e-Books will allow the authors to profit more than under the current model. In any case, Amazon is sure to come out on top for the near future.
I don't quite agree with the analogy with music. People were downloading music files en masse and the recording industry was still refusing to budge their business model from the good ol' CD days. We had ipods in Australia before we had any real ability to buy music online (legally). With books, the situation is different - how many people download books compared with how many people buy them? This is not consumer-driven - it is a reaction of the publishers who can see the writing on the wall with the ever-improving technology of ebook readers.
My other issue with the book/music comparison is that bands can use give-away (or sold very cheaply) music to promote the other things that make money for them (tours, merchandise etc). Writers (and I'm thinking here of literary writers) don't have the capacity to do that.
Sure these types of books may go up in price, but they will also go up in value.
My concern is for the authors - they are going to get screwed. And while being independent and going through the net might work for musicians, I can't see self-publishing as anything other than an opportunity for people to have to wade though mountains of crap and misinformation to get something good to read.
http://www.traditioninaction.org/History/A_005_Myths1500s.shtml
(Sorry couldn't find a link to the original hoax email).
More I can only hope that -all- PVS patients get such a scan before anything is disconnected, and if there is a brain left they then get an active MRI scan to see if they are actually thinking. While it may not have saved Terri I'm pretty sure it will save some others.
Saving is one thing - quality of life is another. After studing neuropsyche and seeing survivors of head injuries, hypoxia etc I makes me think that medicine has advanced a little bit too far in saving people.
Look on the bright side - if Microsoft say using the internet should be licienced like driving a car, then we could sue them like we can sue a defective car manufacturer.
Repeating the study on a different population and failing to find a significant result can also show that the results don't generalise to that population.
If there was a device on the market that was cheap and highly readable (i.e. the equivilant of what MP3 players were to music files) then online distribution would become a big deal.
Untill then, I think the comparison with music is a little bit overdrawn.
Moderation is a terrible system for Music, because musical tastes vary so much. Something that sounds like moose singing to me might sound wonderful to you. The *ONLY* way to know good music is to listen to it yourself, which is why Radio's have been very popular marketing tools for so many years.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to entrust the selection of my music to anyone but myself.
"Good" versus "Bad" comes down to personal taste in the end for creative products (music, art, fiction etc).
But when it comes to books with technical and scientific content, publishers play a big role in ensuring some degree of credibility. This has always been true of peer-reviewed journals and texbooks.
Imagine you have just been diagnosed with an illness. If you wanted additional credible information (apart from what a doctor told you),and had exhausted the "factsheets" on the internet, you would be wise to check a book published by a credible publisher over a self-published book.
Anyone can decide on what artistic products they want - but with expert information, you need a trustworthy source to tell you what's good or bad.
They are great for inner-city transportation, but I wouldn't like to ride along busy suburban main roads on one.
If you drank a bottle of wine and had a night of wild sex, you would change your mind about that.
I would contend that, in the sentence "I try to write as if I'm having a conversation", the present tense ("I'm") is wrong. The verb should take the hypothetical tense: "I try to write as if I were having a conversation." Or, even better: "I try to write as though I were having a conversation".
True, evey predator needs a victim - but blaming victims for being ripped off is just mean in my book.
I asked the guy sitting next to me at work who is one of the smartest people I know, who is very well educated and well read (although not in science) and he didn't know. I think that there's plenty like him. Also, with the ammount of ludicrous claims made by science journalists talking up very minimal results into major technological breakthroughs, I'm not surprised at peoples gullibility.
I would agree if everyone had access to a reasonable degree of education, literacy levels were much higher than they are now.
Terrorism is causing the threat of harm in order to get what you want.
Your definition of terrorism is too broad. A bank robber who wields a gun is a terrorist by that definition.
In Queensland, Australia, a journalist (Phil Dickie) sparked a 2-year inquiry (the Fitzgerald Inquiry) into Queensland Police corruption. The Premier resigned and the Police Commissioner was jailed and stripped of his knighthood.
How many others there were I don't know.
Thanks - that was an interesting read.
Either way, stuff 'em.
Counselling and IT work are not really the sort of skills that can be usefully be deployed in a week. Why not donate these skills a small amount of time throughout the year (e.g. one Sunday a month)to some charitable organisation in your home country that does overseas work.
You say you wouldn't mind doing manual labour, but money for a charity to provide tools or training in building skills is worth more than you carrying bricks for a week.
I can't help but think that "empathy" is the cry of the loser having lost out in their social wager. Almost everybody cares about their own needs--claiming to care for others is just an individuals way of trying to establish the reinforcement of their personal safety net in event of failure.
Empathy is an instinct that, like many other human characteristics, is normally distributed. (sociopaths are outliers on this curve).
So, there are two possiblities: you have drawn the conclusion you have because your empathy levels fall below the mean, and since you cannot experience empathy you have come up with a very odd definition (much like someone who cannot see trying to define "red").
On the other hand, you may experience normal levels of empathy (e.g. you see someone fall over and you automatically wince) but are for some reason coming up with some rational sounding explanation which confuses empathy with some abstract cognition.
Chicken.
I'm not sure that an individual copy of a book would be lent out "several hunderd time" either. I don't think books are quite that robust. So, particularly with childrens books or best-seller types paperbacks, libraries would be buying multiple copies over time. Libraries constantly weed.
Personally, I'm finding it hard to believe that he's serious. But people are saying he is ...