Value of something is based on perception of value, not on cost of business.
As we've been short of car analogies on/. lately:
If I own an old but in very good condition classic car, that car is worth more now due to people's perception of it's value, than it was when it was new.
So like it or not, products are going to be priced based on what people are willing to pay - and that includes digital products.
You've just reiterated my point. The cost to the consumer must take production cost into account, anything above that is perception of value. This is exactly why you see a 200 page hardbound story book sell for $35, while the 200 page hardbound art book for Capcom goes for $60. Piggybacking on your car analogy, look at some book that's out of print, such as the original japanese prints of Akira... those are now collectors items. Though we are still talking about physical objects.
Once you make the jump to digital, you have no production cost and rarity is never an issue. Therefore you will likely never see some eBay sale of "ULTRA-RARE eBook!". Sure, prices are going to be set on what publishers believe people are willing to pay, and that depends on the content and creator of the media. I'd expect to pay a little more for a known author like Stephen King versus some no-namers first book. What publishers haven't realized is that they can widen their customer base by chopping a few dollars off the price. Why would I spend $60 to bring the family to a movie theater when we can rent a movie to watch at home for $5?
Where is the government? The government is busy churning out regulation after regulation that prevents any possible competition that would drive the costs down. Most of these deals are driven by Comcast, etc, lobbying to keep everyone else out.
Close! They're too busy fighting about which toilet that Bruce Jenner or Chaz Bono get to use. It's not enough that there was already laws against lewd behavior (e.g. recording a girl in a changing room), now we've got to carry our birth certificates so we can show proof to use the can.
The obvious answer to this problem is to provide easy, inexpensive access to the content that people want. It's possible to make money through quantity when the cost to reproduce something is negligible.
If it cost $0.10 for the CD, plus $0.15 for shipping, plus $4 for design/print/publish... I would expect the CD to cost over $4 just for that small portion of profit that goes to the artist.
With digital distribution, there's no "shipping", no "printing", and no physical media to account for. Make the e-book some set fraction of the paper price. Hardback is $50? PDF is 10 (or less). I don't think any artist or author would complain about "What do you mean my stuff was bought by 3 million people?" instead of "10,000 copies sold!"
The only rationale I can see for keeping e-book prices equivalent to paper is to either keep printing presses operational, or (more likely) to milk as much money from the consumer as they think they can get away with.
I am constantly more and more happy with my decision to tell this company to eff off and refuse to use their products at any level.
Except you probably still do. There have been numerous reports of any page with a like button creating an 'anonymous' user hash for the sole purpose of tracking people that are not signed in to facebook (or don't have the login cookie). Once you create an account or sign in, that user hash is then associated with your account.
Basically, Facebook knows a lot about you even without your expressed consent by signing in.
Comcast and their ilk can legally advertise their ~4Mbps download speed as "Up to 100 Mbps" without providing an estimated lower bound. Lets see how these claims hold up in court.
I'm picturing two new people stupidly excited about the grand opening of the patent office. The ribbon is cut (assuming anyone else gave a damn) and then it's a foot race to get their idea stamped.
Then the patent official is confused because they have no idea what a "flux capacitor" is, or how any vehicle can reach 88 mph.
I've been waiting to upgrade my MBP for a year now. It is a 2012 and feeling long in the tooth. Been waiting for a "redesign" - but Q4? Lord.
I think you mean the 2012-2017 model. You've still got a decade before you're 2 revisions behind. Just put that $2k into high risk stocks, then maybe you'll be able to afford the next version of the MBP, due in 2025.
I'll hop on this "if I ran Apple" bandwagon... if only for a small, short-lived, digital soapbox.
I would argue Apples big claim to fame is not just the iPhone, but it's integration into one Apple ecosystem. The idea of Apple components playing nicely together without the need for endless tinkering is huge in the realm of people that don't have the desire/capability to cobble together everything their house needs. If anything, Apple hasn't invested enough in the desktop PC/video game market. If the Apple TV were a bit more powerful (and they removed that Apple remote requirement), they could handle some streaming akin to the nVidia shield. Instead, they've got Macs running 3 year old hardware, with crappy video drivers (or so I've read), with next to no support for games.
i fail to see how Apple, as a hardware company, is really going to lose by not having Googles capability to integrate web searches with advertising.
...says that Apple's strong stand on privacy is keeping it from being the frontrunner in the advanced AI, a category which has seen large investments from Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon in the recent years. He adds that privacy cannot be an excuse, as Apple could utilize public data like the web, mapping databases, and business directories...
So Apples competitors are investing in AI, and Apple is going to lose because it too is spending in AI?
Sounds to me like she doesn't understand what operating costs are, either. And, they are a business, so they are out to make money, too.
By this logic we can say that I am allowed to use any media you produce and redistribute it without my needing to compensate you in any way.
The problem is that there are hundreds/thousands of people that upload assorted performances/concerts/albums/music videos with no real attribution to the source.
Go ahead, look up the next song you hear on the radio on YouTube, look at the publisher to random uploader ratio. Look at the number of views for different videos and guess where the ad revenue is generated... then guess where that same revenue goes.
Sure DMCA is ham-handed in the takedown notices... but for each one takedown, some larger number come up. I'd argue the real problem is that the distributors need to update their business model. Make their stuff accessible, high quality, and inexpensive. They can make money on quantity, instead of complaining about "lost sales, piracy, nobody wants to pay $20 for a CD". How much does the Apple Music store make these days? How many sales in Amazon MP3's?
I'm not so sure it puts Google drivers in danger. After all, Google's street view cars drive around with cameras in all directions gathering much more data... and arguable more license plates/locations. Throw in Google Maps/Waze and they've got gps data on those same people.
I'm all for keeping law enforcement in line as "enforcement" not "data-collection-to-use-against-you-later", but I'm a bit more paranoid about what Google can do with the data.
Why investigate Facebook for keeping with the low standards of everyone else?
Because millions of people don't sign into the websites of those news agencies each day to be fed the agenda of those organizations.
Advertising works. The message being sent to millions of people worldwide is curated by a handful of people under one organization that isn't the gov't. This is them saying "Bullshit! that's our job!"
It's not as simple as lowering corporate tax, since that would cause us to go deeper into debt. Instead we need to make up that revenue elsewhere. The problem isn't just that our corporate taxes are high, it's that our personal taxes our low too. U.S. taxes are catered toward individual wealth instead of "public wealth".
We tax corporations heavily while taxing the populace (comparatively) lightly. To add some perspective, one thing taught to me early on is "you work one week a month for uncle sam" implying a roughly 25% effective tax rate... that's light compared to a large part of the world.
Sorry folks, we can't just lower corporate tax... We'll need to start taxing individuals a hell of a lot more. I say we start with the 1% and work our way down.
Having just recently bought an iPhone after my 1+ kept randomly restarting, I was forced into the dark world of iTunes. At one time they had the split view so you could quickly select by genre, album artist, artist, whatever... Now not only are my 10,000 songs in one big pile, but iTunes doesn't even have the decency to split up albums by disk number... So what I get for some multi-disk compilations is each disk stumbling over one another.
Fortunately, Mediamonkey is completely able to do all the things I care about... while doing it in a sane way. I still have to have iTunes installed for the assorted phone drivers (wtf apple...) but otherwise I'm completely happy to keep things going in MM.
On one hand, as a researcher you want to explore and document new and interesting/amazing things while being able to share those things with the world. On the other, you want to be seen as reputable so you look to publish your paper with a "known good" journal in your field, while avoiding those "crap science printing press" publications that are known for just throwing anything through the printer.
It seems to me that sharing the knowledge as widely as possible is much like just pushing it through the crap science press, the opposite of getting into an established journal. Is the problem that those established journals are just greedy bastards? Or is the problem that there is no other way to separate the wheat from the chaff?
It looks like I was right to simply turn off Cortana and internet-enabled searching from that bar as the first thing I did after installing Windows 10. What makes you think this is going to entice me to ever turn it back on? Maybe arrange a little "accident" for my registry settings on the next update, I suppose?
Sincerely,
-A Windows User / Developer
That's not enough. No really, it isn't.
Simply flipping the switch doesn't actually turn off Cortana, just check your task manager. Win10 will still connect to the MS servers for all sorts of stuff. I use OpenDNS and set it up to block all of the MS telemetry servers. Ever since I did that, Win10 tries, and fails, to pull up assorted ads, news/weather (which you can only hide it seems), and "protection" from third-party applications (it can't hash and compare with MS's known software list). It is still able to update, but the amount of in-your-face nonsense is greatly reduced.
To further test, I disabled the Cortana application directly by adding explicit deny permissions to the app. What happened? The start menu stopped working. Entirely. No windows key to bring it up. No desktop search for applications. I had to use explorer to open stuff directly.
Like many others, if it weren't for the games, MS would be a distant memory
Slashdot Mirror
Value of something is based on perception of value, not on cost of business.
As we've been short of car analogies on /. lately:
If I own an old but in very good condition classic car, that car is worth more now due to people's perception of it's value, than it was when it was new.
So like it or not, products are going to be priced based on what people are willing to pay - and that includes digital products.
You've just reiterated my point. The cost to the consumer must take production cost into account, anything above that is perception of value. This is exactly why you see a 200 page hardbound story book sell for $35, while the 200 page hardbound art book for Capcom goes for $60. Piggybacking on your car analogy, look at some book that's out of print, such as the original japanese prints of Akira... those are now collectors items. Though we are still talking about physical objects.
Once you make the jump to digital, you have no production cost and rarity is never an issue. Therefore you will likely never see some eBay sale of "ULTRA-RARE eBook!". Sure, prices are going to be set on what publishers believe people are willing to pay, and that depends on the content and creator of the media. I'd expect to pay a little more for a known author like Stephen King versus some no-namers first book. What publishers haven't realized is that they can widen their customer base by chopping a few dollars off the price. Why would I spend $60 to bring the family to a movie theater when we can rent a movie to watch at home for $5?
Where is the government? The government is busy churning out regulation after regulation that prevents any possible competition that would drive the costs down. Most of these deals are driven by Comcast, etc, lobbying to keep everyone else out.
Close! They're too busy fighting about which toilet that Bruce Jenner or Chaz Bono get to use. It's not enough that there was already laws against lewd behavior (e.g. recording a girl in a changing room), now we've got to carry our birth certificates so we can show proof to use the can.
The obvious answer to this problem is to provide easy, inexpensive access to the content that people want. It's possible to make money through quantity when the cost to reproduce something is negligible.
If it cost $0.10 for the CD, plus $0.15 for shipping, plus $4 for design/print/publish... I would expect the CD to cost over $4 just for that small portion of profit that goes to the artist.
With digital distribution, there's no "shipping", no "printing", and no physical media to account for. Make the e-book some set fraction of the paper price. Hardback is $50? PDF is 10 (or less). I don't think any artist or author would complain about "What do you mean my stuff was bought by 3 million people?" instead of "10,000 copies sold!"
The only rationale I can see for keeping e-book prices equivalent to paper is to either keep printing presses operational, or (more likely) to milk as much money from the consumer as they think they can get away with.
crap... that 1 should have been a 0. Right there, in the 285592347725th bit.
I am constantly more and more happy with my decision to tell this company to eff off and refuse to use their products at any level.
Except you probably still do. There have been numerous reports of any page with a like button creating an 'anonymous' user hash for the sole purpose of tracking people that are not signed in to facebook (or don't have the login cookie). Once you create an account or sign in, that user hash is then associated with your account.
Basically, Facebook knows a lot about you even without your expressed consent by signing in.
Comcast and their ilk can legally advertise their ~4Mbps download speed as "Up to 100 Mbps" without providing an estimated lower bound. Lets see how these claims hold up in court.
(grabs Soda, popcorn and a big box of candy)
I'm a little more concerned that it was 4 of them, in a confined space, with all of them moving over and around one another.
I don't know what ghost "leavings" smell like, but I bet it's a new level of wrong. No wonder Pacman runs away from them.
I'm picturing two new people stupidly excited about the grand opening of the patent office. The ribbon is cut (assuming anyone else gave a damn) and then it's a foot race to get their idea stamped.
Then the patent official is confused because they have no idea what a "flux capacitor" is, or how any vehicle can reach 88 mph.
I've been waiting to upgrade my MBP for a year now. It is a 2012 and feeling long in the tooth. Been waiting for a "redesign" - but Q4? Lord.
I think you mean the 2012-2017 model. You've still got a decade before you're 2 revisions behind. Just put that $2k into high risk stocks, then maybe you'll be able to afford the next version of the MBP, due in 2025.
I'll hop on this "if I ran Apple" bandwagon... if only for a small, short-lived, digital soapbox.
I would argue Apples big claim to fame is not just the iPhone, but it's integration into one Apple ecosystem. The idea of Apple components playing nicely together without the need for endless tinkering is huge in the realm of people that don't have the desire/capability to cobble together everything their house needs. If anything, Apple hasn't invested enough in the desktop PC/video game market. If the Apple TV were a bit more powerful (and they removed that Apple remote requirement), they could handle some streaming akin to the nVidia shield. Instead, they've got Macs running 3 year old hardware, with crappy video drivers (or so I've read), with next to no support for games.
i fail to see how Apple, as a hardware company, is really going to lose by not having Googles capability to integrate web searches with advertising.
So Apples competitors are investing in AI, and Apple is going to lose because it too is spending in AI?
What if the pedestrian shifts prior to actually becoming stuck?
I'm picturing the case where the car keeps moving, but there is some part of the poor sap being dragged over asphalt.
Now my life can be just like dubbed Godzilla movies!
Sounds to me like she doesn't understand what operating costs are, either. And, they are a business, so they are out to make money, too.
By this logic we can say that I am allowed to use any media you produce and redistribute it without my needing to compensate you in any way.
The problem is that there are hundreds/thousands of people that upload assorted performances/concerts/albums/music videos with no real attribution to the source. Go ahead, look up the next song you hear on the radio on YouTube, look at the publisher to random uploader ratio. Look at the number of views for different videos and guess where the ad revenue is generated... then guess where that same revenue goes.
Sure DMCA is ham-handed in the takedown notices... but for each one takedown, some larger number come up. I'd argue the real problem is that the distributors need to update their business model. Make their stuff accessible, high quality, and inexpensive. They can make money on quantity, instead of complaining about "lost sales, piracy, nobody wants to pay $20 for a CD". How much does the Apple Music store make these days? How many sales in Amazon MP3's?
I'm not so sure it puts Google drivers in danger. After all, Google's street view cars drive around with cameras in all directions gathering much more data... and arguable more license plates/locations. Throw in Google Maps/Waze and they've got gps data on those same people.
I'm all for keeping law enforcement in line as "enforcement" not "data-collection-to-use-against-you-later", but I'm a bit more paranoid about what Google can do with the data.
I now have to change my wifi password, you insensitive clod.
Why investigate Facebook for keeping with the low standards of everyone else?
Because millions of people don't sign into the websites of those news agencies each day to be fed the agenda of those organizations.
Advertising works. The message being sent to millions of people worldwide is curated by a handful of people under one organization that isn't the gov't. This is them saying "Bullshit! that's our job!"
It's not as simple as lowering corporate tax, since that would cause us to go deeper into debt. Instead we need to make up that revenue elsewhere. The problem isn't just that our corporate taxes are high, it's that our personal taxes our low too. U.S. taxes are catered toward individual wealth instead of "public wealth".
We tax corporations heavily while taxing the populace (comparatively) lightly. To add some perspective, one thing taught to me early on is "you work one week a month for uncle sam" implying a roughly 25% effective tax rate... that's light compared to a large part of the world.
Sorry folks, we can't just lower corporate tax... We'll need to start taxing individuals a hell of a lot more. I say we start with the 1% and work our way down.
Click the little (npr.org) link in the title.
One daemon to rule them all. One daemon to find them. One daemon to bring them all and in the darkness, bind them.
Is systemd the one daemon to rule them all?
It was probably the opposite of this. (Yes, its safe for work)
"She's got the body of Daisy Ridley, and the face of Luise Rainer."
Brings a whole new meaning to the term "butterface". 20-something body, 100+ head.
Having just recently bought an iPhone after my 1+ kept randomly restarting, I was forced into the dark world of iTunes. At one time they had the split view so you could quickly select by genre, album artist, artist, whatever... Now not only are my 10,000 songs in one big pile, but iTunes doesn't even have the decency to split up albums by disk number... So what I get for some multi-disk compilations is each disk stumbling over one another.
Fortunately, Mediamonkey is completely able to do all the things I care about... while doing it in a sane way. I still have to have iTunes installed for the assorted phone drivers (wtf apple...) but otherwise I'm completely happy to keep things going in MM.
On one hand, as a researcher you want to explore and document new and interesting/amazing things while being able to share those things with the world. On the other, you want to be seen as reputable so you look to publish your paper with a "known good" journal in your field, while avoiding those "crap science printing press" publications that are known for just throwing anything through the printer.
It seems to me that sharing the knowledge as widely as possible is much like just pushing it through the crap science press, the opposite of getting into an established journal. Is the problem that those established journals are just greedy bastards? Or is the problem that there is no other way to separate the wheat from the chaff?
It looks like I was right to simply turn off Cortana and internet-enabled searching from that bar as the first thing I did after installing Windows 10. What makes you think this is going to entice me to ever turn it back on? Maybe arrange a little "accident" for my registry settings on the next update, I suppose?
Sincerely, -A Windows User / Developer
That's not enough. No really, it isn't.
Simply flipping the switch doesn't actually turn off Cortana, just check your task manager. Win10 will still connect to the MS servers for all sorts of stuff. I use OpenDNS and set it up to block all of the MS telemetry servers. Ever since I did that, Win10 tries, and fails, to pull up assorted ads, news/weather (which you can only hide it seems), and "protection" from third-party applications (it can't hash and compare with MS's known software list). It is still able to update, but the amount of in-your-face nonsense is greatly reduced.
To further test, I disabled the Cortana application directly by adding explicit deny permissions to the app. What happened? The start menu stopped working. Entirely. No windows key to bring it up. No desktop search for applications. I had to use explorer to open stuff directly.
Like many others, if it weren't for the games, MS would be a distant memory