Take it up with the publisher...they're the ones who're licensing the books in that particular way.
At any rate, the whole thing is so ludicrous. I can't understand why there's such total hostility toward the idea that anyone should dare to be able to make money from his creative works. Is it perhaps a bit of "sour grapes" that nobody's paying you (plural, generic "you"--not necessarily skinfitz) for your creativity? Is it a Dire Straits "That ain't workin', that's the way you do it" thing, where you think, "Hey, putting words on paper? Anyone can do that"? Sure, people can create great works of art and give them away. But people can build their own houses, too (and in fact, the congregation of my parents' church is putting up a new church building with almost no outside help), and yet without a paid construction industry, somehow I think fewer and poorer buildings would manage to get made.
If someone does labor, he deserves the ability to profit from it. I'm not saying he deserves a profit itself--in a perfect world, that should depend upon the quality of the product--but he at least deserves a fair shot at making one.
Agreed with you all the way. As I read the story and got to the last link, I found myself wishing fervently that I could moderate part of the story as -1, troll.
It's what I call the "Slashdot mentality"--any time someone puts any kind of a limit on their product, a limit that they have every right to impose, a limit that's perfectly understandable given the situation, a limit that doesn't even take away any abilities people already had...it's all nasty and evil and next thing you know, the secret police will be knocking on your door in the dead of night. Bleah. Slashdot editors, kindly present your stories in a neutral fashion, and save the editorializing for comments.
The point of a library is to provide books for people to read. It's not to provide books, even electronic ones, that people can keep forever for free. If you want to keep it longer than a couple of weeks, you can go out and buy your own damn copy.
Libraries do have to pay for each copy of a book they buy...and that includes each virtual copy. That's part of how publishers make money. Besides, it's not like simultaneous-user-limit licensing is new; they've been doing that with computer software for years.
And see this quote from Jim Baen, on the Baen Bar:
Baen has experienced a mysterious 50% increase in gross dollar sales in the previous year. Also, our "sellthrough" (percentage of books placed in the market that sell to end-point customers) has improved from the rather startling 63% to the truly stunning 74%. I'm tentatively blamiing this on my wacko e-net proclivities. (Insert a Crazy Eddie ad pastiche here)
There's every sign that having the books available for free or cheap on-line has done nothing but good for the sale of print books by Baen. It might do the same for you.
You're right. The acting ranged from "sort of almost decent. Almost." to "oh my God WHERE ARE JOEL AND THE BOTS IN THIS, MY HOUR OF NEED!!!". I'm still trying to figure out why the Andorians stole Chekhov's accent...
When I got to SMSU in '91, half of Cheek Lab was those PS/2s. I think there were 32 of them. The rest was the amber terminals by which we students accessed our accounts on the CMS box.
There's a local surplus computer salvage shop in my town that had, like a whole bunch of IBM PS/2 keyboards. Ones that use the modern miniature-sized connector, no less. And they were selling them for just a couple of bucks each. (I rather suspect that they got them from SMSU, because I happen to recall their computer labs used to use these old PS/2s, with PS/2 keyboards, back in the WordPerfect 5.1 days when I first arrived.) I'm on my second now, and I have a spare for when this one wears out.
I haven't read the article yet (it's slashdotted) but I think there's a world of difference between law-enforcement agencies going through your garbage and newspaper reporters going through your garbage. After all, police are, for good or ill, given legal authority to investigate. Reporters...are not.
I can't say about the specifics of using your viewing history to predict it, but the method they use to predict based on those--collaborative filtering--is old hat, and you can find prior art for it all over the place: for example, Alexandria Digital Litarature, an e-book vendor that also sports the best reading-recommender I've ever seen. (You tell it what books you loved, liked, disliked, and hated, and it compares your list to those of a zillion other Alexlit users and predicts new titles you might enjoy.) It's not steered me wrong so far.
True enough. But what I was doing was exaggerating for the sake of making a joke. Since, to someone who doesn't know very much about anime, all you'd have to do would be to add "that have many naked boobs and many heads exploding in showers of gore" to that statement to encompass everything he thinks anime is...
"titles that imagine what our near or far future will be like, investigate the relationship between humans and machines, dream of what alien civilizations could be like, and more."
I would submit this as its own story, but it'd probably just get rejected, so I might as well interject it here while it's timely. According to this EFF press release, the film studios that the ReplayTV users have been suing for clarification of their fair use rights tried to get the EFF disqualified from providing the ReplayTV users' lawyers--claiming that the EFF's stance on copyright made them a competitor to Hollywood! Fortunately, this attempt has been rebuffed, twice.
I am so tired of all this Disney conspiracy theory bashing. Take a look at this New York Daily News article, specifically the parts that say
While defending the studio's arthouse strategy, [Richard W. Cook, chairman of Walt Disney Studios] elaborated on the studio's original long-range plan, which was to roll the movie out slowly and end up in about 1,000 theaters. The money to market a 1,000-theater run was budgeted and is still available. All that's missing is a good reason to send it back out.
"If we get on a lot of critics' [top 10] lists and get [Oscar] nominations, we'll have a reason to go out bigger," Cook explained.
[...]
In any case, Cook says that Disney's marketing department will spend exactly the same amount of time and money promoting "Spirited Away" for Academy Awards as it does for the studio's other 2002 animated films: "Lilo & Stitch" and the upcoming "Treasure Planet."
The film business is a lot more complicated and intricate than most of us know, and we really shouldn't let our feelings of frustration lead us into thinking that Disney is "out to get us."
You might be interested to know that sightings of the Laputa trailer with "coming soon to VHS and DVD" have been seen on Disney's "Spiderman: Revenge of the Green Goblin" cartoon VHS tape, which has just been released. It looks very much like they're going to use the momentum of Spirited Away to bring out the others soon, now that they have a bit more kid-friendly movie to say "from the creator of".
Of course they got around to releasing it...in Japan. That's why they bought the movies in the first place: because Miyazaki's stuff is as popular in Japan as Disney's is over here; perhaps more so. And thus, getting the rights to distribute the Ghibli stuff in Japan was a lucrative, profit-making proposition.
Disney hasn't been "sitting on" the American release of Miyazaki's stuff--not in the way that most people claim, that makes Disney out to be some kind of mustachio-twirling villain from a melodrama who cackles evilly while making sure he faces no competition. Disney just plain hasn't cared about America until now. There was no percentage in it for them. Now, with Spirited Away at least getting some publicity (and a possible Oscar nod), it becomes worth their time at least to consider.
If you'd like to see some real examples of frivolous lawsuits, a debunkment of various frivolous-lawsuit urban myths that have been floating around the net, and the true facts of the McDonald's case, check out the This is True Stella Awards.
Actually, at least before DVDs came out, movie rental made studios a lot of money--because before VHSes came out priced for sale, they came out priced for rental, at $100 or so a pop...priced so high because they knew rental chains would buy them by the thousands. Thus, right at the start of the video release period, they made made at least a few hundred grand right up front.
Though with DVDs, they seem to have fallen out of that practice by and large...at least in the USA. They tried to shove it through in Australia with a software licensing issue, but the Australian courts put a stop to that.
Okay...so which character were you that gloriously died? In which book?
Re:OK, what's with Sluggy Freelance and Baen???
on
War of Honor
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· Score: 2
Just that Ringo happens to be a fan...so he featured the comic prominently in his book, and made converts of other Baen authors and fans who happened to read his stuff. Subsequently, Pete Abrams (grateful for the publicity, I assume) reciprocated.
Re:hmm, free copying...
on
War of Honor
·
· Score: 2
Technically, there could be. According to the CD, it's perfectly legit to copy and share it. I know that it's been posted to USENET, so it's definitely floating around out there somewhere. Maybe you can get someone to burn you a copy.
I started with a Palm IIIe, moved to a Visor Deluxe, and now use a Clie 415. I use it constantly...
To take notes in class/keep track of important syllabus dates/keep track of professorial contact information (no more rummaging through a folder full of syllabi when I want to find out what my prof's office hours are!) when I was in school.
To keep track of my work schedule, when I was working.
To play games, or read the news (via AvantGo) or ebooks when I'm bored or selling plasma. (Thank God for Blackmask.com!)
To balance my checkbook. (In fact, with the QuickMoney/MicroMoney software I use, it is my checkbook, or at least my check register.)
When I was working as a delivery driver, I had an Excel spreadsheet in DocsToGo which I used to calculate flawlessly how much money I was making in tips and how much I owed at the end of the night.
To keep track of phone numbers/addresses...comes in handy when I'm doing a Christmas card list!
To keep track of important dates--now I remember my parents' birthdays/anniversary!
To scribble down grocery list/notes/reminders that I don't want to forget
To control TV sets/DVD players/VCRs wherever I go. (For this purpose, I bought a universal remote when I was in college--to control the bigscreen sets located in dormitory lounges--but if I'd had the Clie with its built-in universal remote software, I could have foregone that.) Often startles people when I'm able to adjust their sets without ever getting up.:)
I honestly don't know how I got along without this thing.
Actually, it has been thought of before, in the form of the Street Performer Protocol. Granted, the SPP as written assumes that it's going to be applied to textual works, but it doesn't seem like a great leap to apply it to the programming world.
Dude, there's no call for that. I never said I hadn't taken action, too. I'm too far from any of the cities that have been having rallies to participate in them, but at least I've written some letters and made some phone calls myself.
Slashdot Mirror
Take it up with the publisher...they're the ones who're licensing the books in that particular way.
At any rate, the whole thing is so ludicrous. I can't understand why there's such total hostility toward the idea that anyone should dare to be able to make money from his creative works. Is it perhaps a bit of "sour grapes" that nobody's paying you (plural, generic "you"--not necessarily skinfitz) for your creativity? Is it a Dire Straits "That ain't workin', that's the way you do it" thing, where you think, "Hey, putting words on paper? Anyone can do that"? Sure, people can create great works of art and give them away. But people can build their own houses, too (and in fact, the congregation of my parents' church is putting up a new church building with almost no outside help), and yet without a paid construction industry, somehow I think fewer and poorer buildings would manage to get made.
If someone does labor, he deserves the ability to profit from it. I'm not saying he deserves a profit itself--in a perfect world, that should depend upon the quality of the product--but he at least deserves a fair shot at making one.
Agreed with you all the way. As I read the story and got to the last link, I found myself wishing fervently that I could moderate part of the story as -1, troll.
It's what I call the "Slashdot mentality"--any time someone puts any kind of a limit on their product, a limit that they have every right to impose, a limit that's perfectly understandable given the situation, a limit that doesn't even take away any abilities people already had...it's all nasty and evil and next thing you know, the secret police will be knocking on your door in the dead of night. Bleah. Slashdot editors, kindly present your stories in a neutral fashion, and save the editorializing for comments.
The point of a library is to provide books for people to read. It's not to provide books, even electronic ones, that people can keep forever for free. If you want to keep it longer than a couple of weeks, you can go out and buy your own damn copy.
Libraries do have to pay for each copy of a book they buy...and that includes each virtual copy. That's part of how publishers make money. Besides, it's not like simultaneous-user-limit licensing is new; they've been doing that with computer software for years.
And see this quote from Jim Baen, on the Baen Bar:There's every sign that having the books available for free or cheap on-line has done nothing but good for the sale of print books by Baen. It might do the same for you.
You're right. The acting ranged from "sort of almost decent. Almost." to "oh my God WHERE ARE JOEL AND THE BOTS IN THIS, MY HOUR OF NEED!!!". I'm still trying to figure out why the Andorians stole Chekhov's accent...
When I got to SMSU in '91, half of Cheek Lab was those PS/2s. I think there were 32 of them. The rest was the amber terminals by which we students accessed our accounts on the CMS box.
There's a local surplus computer salvage shop in my town that had, like a whole bunch of IBM PS/2 keyboards. Ones that use the modern miniature-sized connector, no less. And they were selling them for just a couple of bucks each. (I rather suspect that they got them from SMSU, because I happen to recall their computer labs used to use these old PS/2s, with PS/2 keyboards, back in the WordPerfect 5.1 days when I first arrived.) I'm on my second now, and I have a spare for when this one wears out.
;)
And I don't miss the windows keys either.
I haven't read the article yet (it's slashdotted) but I think there's a world of difference between law-enforcement agencies going through your garbage and newspaper reporters going through your garbage. After all, police are, for good or ill, given legal authority to investigate. Reporters...are not.
I can't say about the specifics of using your viewing history to predict it, but the method they use to predict based on those--collaborative filtering--is old hat, and you can find prior art for it all over the place: for example, Alexandria Digital Litarature, an e-book vendor that also sports the best reading-recommender I've ever seen. (You tell it what books you loved, liked, disliked, and hated, and it compares your list to those of a zillion other Alexlit users and predicts new titles you might enjoy.) It's not steered me wrong so far.
True enough. But what I was doing was exaggerating for the sake of making a joke. Since, to someone who doesn't know very much about anime, all you'd have to do would be to add "that have many naked boobs and many heads exploding in showers of gore" to that statement to encompass everything he thinks anime is...
I would submit this as its own story, but it'd probably just get rejected, so I might as well interject it here while it's timely. According to this EFF press release, the film studios that the ReplayTV users have been suing for clarification of their fair use rights tried to get the EFF disqualified from providing the ReplayTV users' lawyers--claiming that the EFF's stance on copyright made them a competitor to Hollywood! Fortunately, this attempt has been rebuffed, twice.
You might be interested to know that sightings of the Laputa trailer with "coming soon to VHS and DVD" have been seen on Disney's "Spiderman: Revenge of the Green Goblin" cartoon VHS tape, which has just been released. It looks very much like they're going to use the momentum of Spirited Away to bring out the others soon, now that they have a bit more kid-friendly movie to say "from the creator of".
Of course they got around to releasing it...in Japan. That's why they bought the movies in the first place: because Miyazaki's stuff is as popular in Japan as Disney's is over here; perhaps more so. And thus, getting the rights to distribute the Ghibli stuff in Japan was a lucrative, profit-making proposition.
Disney hasn't been "sitting on" the American release of Miyazaki's stuff--not in the way that most people claim, that makes Disney out to be some kind of mustachio-twirling villain from a melodrama who cackles evilly while making sure he faces no competition. Disney just plain hasn't cared about America until now. There was no percentage in it for them. Now, with Spirited Away at least getting some publicity (and a possible Oscar nod), it becomes worth their time at least to consider.
If you'd like to see some real examples of frivolous lawsuits, a debunkment of various frivolous-lawsuit urban myths that have been floating around the net, and the true facts of the McDonald's case, check out the This is True Stella Awards.
Probably more like:
"Hi."
"Hi."
"So, how you doing?"
"Uh...I dunno, how are you doing?"
"I'm okay...hey, this isn't collect, is it?"
Actually, at least before DVDs came out, movie rental made studios a lot of money--because before VHSes came out priced for sale, they came out priced for rental, at $100 or so a pop...priced so high because they knew rental chains would buy them by the thousands. Thus, right at the start of the video release period, they made made at least a few hundred grand right up front.
Though with DVDs, they seem to have fallen out of that practice by and large...at least in the USA. They tried to shove it through in Australia with a software licensing issue, but the Australian courts put a stop to that.
Okay...so which character were you that gloriously died? In which book?
Just that Ringo happens to be a fan...so he featured the comic prominently in his book, and made converts of other Baen authors and fans who happened to read his stuff. Subsequently, Pete Abrams (grateful for the publicity, I assume) reciprocated.
Technically, there could be. According to the CD, it's perfectly legit to copy and share it. I know that it's been posted to USENET, so it's definitely floating around out there somewhere. Maybe you can get someone to burn you a copy.
I've heard that someone was doing a Honorverse mod of the realtime strategy game Homeworld but I think they never finished it.
To take notes in class/keep track of important syllabus dates/keep track of professorial contact information (no more rummaging through a folder full of syllabi when I want to find out what my prof's office hours are!) when I was in school.
To keep track of my work schedule, when I was working.
To play games, or read the news (via AvantGo) or ebooks when I'm bored or selling plasma. (Thank God for Blackmask.com!)
To balance my checkbook. (In fact, with the QuickMoney/MicroMoney software I use, it is my checkbook, or at least my check register.)
When I was working as a delivery driver, I had an Excel spreadsheet in DocsToGo which I used to calculate flawlessly how much money I was making in tips and how much I owed at the end of the night.
To keep track of phone numbers/addresses...comes in handy when I'm doing a Christmas card list!
To keep track of important dates--now I remember my parents' birthdays/anniversary!
To scribble down grocery list/notes/reminders that I don't want to forget
To control TV sets/DVD players/VCRs wherever I go. (For this purpose, I bought a universal remote when I was in college--to control the bigscreen sets located in dormitory lounges--but if I'd had the Clie with its built-in universal remote software, I could have foregone that.) Often startles people when I'm able to adjust their sets without ever getting up. :)
I honestly don't know how I got along without this thing.
Actually, it has been thought of before, in the form of the Street Performer Protocol. Granted, the SPP as written assumes that it's going to be applied to textual works, but it doesn't seem like a great leap to apply it to the programming world.
Dude, there's no call for that. I never said I hadn't taken action, too. I'm too far from any of the cities that have been having rallies to participate in them, but at least I've written some letters and made some phone calls myself.