If I write a book and do not require your editing, marketing or printing services why exactly do you expect to keep 75% of the sale price? [...] Cheers for these Authors!
This is why Amazon.com offers authors the chance to sell their books for a 70% profit (I think that's *after* the cost of printing is factored in). It's been a long time since I've looked at their BookSurge service, but the economics strongly favor authors.
That said, my book has been sitting in the "review process" for the last two years. This stuff takes a lot of time that can't necessarily be dedicated by authors who need to feed themselves while their labors of love wait to turn into hard profits.
Ultimately, though, when my book is well-edited I'll be publishing with Amazon.com because I'm not a career-writer who's concerned about signing with a major publishing house for the long term benefits (exposure, marketing, advertising, and the like) and shopping my one manuscript to the traditional houses doesn't really suit my fancy for the small advance that I'd get.
They have next to no costs associated with the make/move/sell aspect of digital distribution.
Devil's Advocate here. Publishers are entrenched in the front lines of the multi-Billion dollar literature industry. They pay graphical artists to come up with book covers that reflect the nature of the book. This is a cost that does not go away when transitioning to electronic distribution. They pay copy editors to refine the style and grammar of a manuscript. Authors actually make many mistakes while writing their stories... and it would be a shame to sell thousands of copies where the word "teh" pops up three or four times. Marketing and advertising costs... whether through new or traditional media are significant. Though, even using new media, Facebook pages don't create and maintain themselves. It take one or two full time staff to properly drive eyeballs to the advertisements so that sales can be made.
I'm not arguing that publishers aren't charging too much. I'm just pointing out that their role is not completely diminished because of a shift from print to digital.
Where's the definition for max_int? All it takes is one PFY setting it to 300,000,000 thinking "It'll be big enough" to cause a 10-year kill switch for the users of the pace-maker.
I love using Google Navigation on my Android Phone, but it's short-sighted to say that just because I'm not paying extra for "Navigation" that the cost of this service is completely free. It's all part of the relatively expensive "Google Smart Phone" bundle.
We all remember the crappy legroom, shitty entertainment options, and bad food, even if the search engine doesn't show it.
I fly once every two or three years. I don't really remember what's good or not. I recall a hard landing during the only time I flew on an Airbus plane. It'd be nice if there was some industry watchdog that kept track of common anti-passenger airline practices. Since others have suggested that Southwest is the most customer friendly choice, maybe they could do the legwork and put together a website that lists "real pricing" for travel costs and which airlines actually include what "luxuries" like bag-checking and a small meal while you fly.
On the other hand, my next flight is coming up in August and I'll be traveling light so having an option that doesn't automatically bundle bag-checking into the cost of my ticket (a service that I don't need for this particular itinerary) is a good thing for me.
It's time to dump this discredited, outdated religion for a 21st century pragmatic approach that actually makes life better for those who work, rich scum squealing notwithstanding.
I like your moxie, but dumping the outdated religion that's driven by the rich scum squealing is going to be a tough sell.
They make the washing machine out of metal so they can charge you extra for protection against failure due to a termite invasion. Otherwise they'd just sell you a standard wooden washing machine and call it a day.
The use of open source software in a consumer device does not require the handset running such software to be open for re-flashing
So they can sell hardware that can't be re-flashed because it isn't forbidden by the open source software license? This seems to violate Freedom #1 of the GNU Philosophy which is "The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this."
I understand that Tivo-ization (distributing software on a proprietary box without making the source code of that software available) that was implemented within GPLv3 wouldn't cover this, but distributing locked-down hardware that relies on running open source software seems like an obvious violation of the spirit of open source.
Maybe we ought to take notice of this Moto-ization of open source licenses for next time a revision is needed to the core licenses.
Maybe they are estimating badly. Encasing a command module in square plates of titanium, however, would require 6 of those plates (envision a six-sided die). 6*18kg = 108kg. Using your math, 6*45kg = 270kg. The summary estimates 200kg which falls somewhere in between the two back of the envelope calculations.
So my guess is that 200kg refers to the total enclosure that's being created from 6 different components that are estimated in the summary to each weigh 18kg.
It'd be nice if people who submit articles "measured twice and cut once" for the maths they include in their submissions, since this is that place where discussion of the incorrect math will dominate an otherwise interesting conversation about Jupiter exploration.
Apple is about freedom. Freedom from porn. Freedom from criticism. Freedom from competition. Freedom from objective discussions. Freedom from the truth.
Apple little world is looking more like 1984 every day.
WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
The problem with this entire scheme is that there seems to be no way to say "I've paid the required fees not let me use the dang song". This kills even legal use of music. Not to mention that there is also no talk about "I'm the author dammit" option.
Perhaps Google wants to push YouTube content creators towards Creative Commons avenues? A few years ago I was able to pull a number of really good songs into the soundtrack of a documentary film that I uploaded to my Google Video account. Certainly any content filters wouldn't have any problems with audio that comes from the "Attribution/Share-Alike" world.
Along those same lines, it'd be *really* awesome if Google could automatically detect music that's Creative Commons "Non-commercial" licensed and make those videos so advertisements never accompanied the pages with the videos.
I know the paper industry has an expensive certification process that allows paper mill's to source their pulp from "sustainable forests" and this gives them the right to slap a certification on their products (and charge more for the overhead that comes with the certification). Now... I wouldn't want it to get the the point where I look for food with the "No Monsanto" label... but I *would* pay an extra dollar of two for "No Monsanto" lettuce or tomatoes it all else is equal at the supermarket.
Maybe agriculture companies can band together and create the opposite of the "GM label" and start labeling their products "No Monsanto".
I think it'd be fairly simple for them to implement a system that can give you a partial refund and cancel your e-ticket (so that it won't work *if* you still managed to show up for the show).
Heck... it should be fairly trivial for them to track whether they're able to resell your seat and credit you with a full refund.
But why would they ever want to do something fair to customers like that? It's not like there is much fair competition in the event ticket industry.
Once the statement is made, "I have a boy," it eliminates the two girl set, leaving only 750 sets of siblings evenly divided into thirds.
That analysis is definitely flawed because gender is an independent variable. And age of the children is not part of the question. And this analysis completely ignores the prompt that "one boy was born on Tuesday". Normally, I'd say that giving unnecessary information is part of good problems, but the summary states, "Believe it or not, the Tuesday thing is relevant." So I need to refute ANY answer that doesn't consider day of the week in it's analysis (which is the majority in this discussion).
"I have two children, one of whom is a boy born on a Tuesday. What's the probability that my other child is a boy?"
I have a boy, there is 1/3 probability that the other is also a boy.
I question your logic.
The other can be: Girl born on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.
Or: Boy born on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.
7+6 possibilities... 6 which have the other child being a boy. So the math should be 6/13 (46%) chance that the other kid is a boy.... not 13/27 (48%) (which is listed several times in the previous threaded discussions.
The Yankees spend LOTS of money and win on average every 4-5 years. The Mets spend slightly less money and have won 3 or 4 times since they joined the league in 1962. Not to say you're wrong... but the Mets throw LOTS of money down to drain to produce negligible results. I think you're trying to make the point that NASA doesn't have the budget to put up "Yankees" numbers in the "Championships Won" department.
Maybe you meant to compare NASA to the Pittsburgh Pirates who spend about 20% of what the elite teams do to field their 0.333 team?
Google's ranking algorithm now includes a penalty for sites that load too slowly.
Do we really live in a world where 'Speed=Good' so completely that we need to penalize those who don't run fast enough?
I, for one, like the idea that sites without dozens of scripts, bloated images, and advertising cruft will get higher ranks. This will give my own personal site a small boost in the Google rankings. And I feel it's well-deserved. Power to the people who aren't out there trying to make money from page views.
The pony in the famous movie you are referencing was a prized possession of the person's whose bed it showed up in. And it was a threat so that this man would hire a chosen person as the lead role in a movie he was producing. Something tells me leaving a random horse head in some person's bed wouldn't have the same effect.
I used to use a "free" webhost that inexplicably blocked all pages with links embedded in them that sent the user to Amazon.com. This was particularly annoying to diagnose because it was hard to find a correlation between an Error Page that says a perfectly good URL doesn't exist and the content of said page.
Needless to say, I don't use that host anymore. If Twitter wants to make themselves irrelevant, then blocking Facebook, Yahoo, and MySpace sounds like a great idea.
When a small personal site that I administer got hacked by the Chinese (thanks to a Blogger security hole), Google and Firefox both flagged it as "dangerous" and took appropriate actions to warn people that visiting my site was a huge security risk. For sites that have been compromised by malware, it's absolutely necessary to inform visitors that they're exposing their computers to risk by visiting.
Thus, having an "access blacklist" isn't always a bad thing. Something tells me Twitter isn't about to start censoring sites with information about the Freedom of Tibet or the Genocide in Darfur.
the two-year agreement with Google is a temporary solution while the agency seeks a contractor to build a database that would allow the public to access such information in electronic machine-readable bulk form
And what role is Google serving if they spend two years hosting the patents in their database while the USPTO spends 24 months looking for a contractor who will presumably charge money to do the same thing?
Why not have Google spend two-years building the interface with a plan to turn control of it over to USPTO employees in 2012? It seems like by then the USPTO could have gained the technical skills necessary to administer their database instead of turning to keys over to some different 3rd party contractor.
Okay, you win the point. Zuckerberg is a thief and not a philosopher. Like I said... I was playing Devil's Advocate, so I'm not particularly bent out of shape for losing.
I think the parallel is that because of Zuckerberg's actions, poor people are able to reconnect with slightly less poor people who they used to go to high school with and derive some pleasure from that relationship that makes it worth it. Or, alternatively, that somebody ends up meeting a person who later becomes their husband or wife because of Zuckerberg's social network. I'm willing to allow that giving up a few bits of personal privacy would be a small price to pay for finding a loving partner.
That said, I still think Zuckerberg is a scumbag. And certainly Zuckerberg isn't seeking to provide any direct benefit to the "poor" the way Robin Hood did. But even if the end result is a pleasant side-effect of the main goal of being a self-righteous asshole, isn't that still a good thing?
That being said, wouldn't being a thief preclude the label of 'philosopher'?
I think Zuckerberg is a scumbag, as well. But I'm going to attempt to play Devil's Advocate. People associate the character Robin Hood, who is a common thief, as a great hero. Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor. More generally, the effect Robin Hood has is that the poor gain more than they lose from his actions. Thus, we can conclude that the assertion that thievery and philosophy are mutually exclusive is false.
Now we examine Zuckerberg to see if his thieving brings a net benefit to the poor. Certainly, no money changes hands (for the vast majority of Facebook users), so it's hard to assess this financially. The question becomes, I think, whether "losing privacy" causes meaningful contacts to be established. Or does having your information out there leave you in the same place you'd be if you hadn't turned over your privacy?
I suspect that for most users there is minimal net benefit for being on Facebook, but for others there's a significant benefit. Somebody, please chime in if you've ever established a meaningful relationship due to Facebook existing.
I hope this side-thought doesn't ruin the otherwise productive Zuckerberg bashing that's going on. Thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
If I write a book and do not require your editing, marketing or printing services why exactly do you expect to keep 75% of the sale price? [...] Cheers for these Authors!
This is why Amazon.com offers authors the chance to sell their books for a 70% profit (I think that's *after* the cost of printing is factored in). It's been a long time since I've looked at their BookSurge service, but the economics strongly favor authors.
That said, my book has been sitting in the "review process" for the last two years. This stuff takes a lot of time that can't necessarily be dedicated by authors who need to feed themselves while their labors of love wait to turn into hard profits.
Ultimately, though, when my book is well-edited I'll be publishing with Amazon.com because I'm not a career-writer who's concerned about signing with a major publishing house for the long term benefits (exposure, marketing, advertising, and the like) and shopping my one manuscript to the traditional houses doesn't really suit my fancy for the small advance that I'd get.
They have next to no costs associated with the make/move/sell aspect of digital distribution.
Devil's Advocate here. Publishers are entrenched in the front lines of the multi-Billion dollar literature industry. They pay graphical artists to come up with book covers that reflect the nature of the book. This is a cost that does not go away when transitioning to electronic distribution. They pay copy editors to refine the style and grammar of a manuscript. Authors actually make many mistakes while writing their stories... and it would be a shame to sell thousands of copies where the word "teh" pops up three or four times. Marketing and advertising costs... whether through new or traditional media are significant. Though, even using new media, Facebook pages don't create and maintain themselves. It take one or two full time staff to properly drive eyeballs to the advertisements so that sales can be made.
I'm not arguing that publishers aren't charging too much. I'm just pointing out that their role is not completely diminished because of a shift from print to digital.
Where's the definition for max_int? All it takes is one PFY setting it to 300,000,000 thinking "It'll be big enough" to cause a 10-year kill switch for the users of the pace-maker.
You should rewrite it as a while(1) loop.
I love using Google Navigation on my Android Phone, but it's short-sighted to say that just because I'm not paying extra for "Navigation" that the cost of this service is completely free. It's all part of the relatively expensive "Google Smart Phone" bundle.
We all remember the crappy legroom, shitty entertainment options, and bad food, even if the search engine doesn't show it.
I fly once every two or three years. I don't really remember what's good or not. I recall a hard landing during the only time I flew on an Airbus plane. It'd be nice if there was some industry watchdog that kept track of common anti-passenger airline practices. Since others have suggested that Southwest is the most customer friendly choice, maybe they could do the legwork and put together a website that lists "real pricing" for travel costs and which airlines actually include what "luxuries" like bag-checking and a small meal while you fly.
On the other hand, my next flight is coming up in August and I'll be traveling light so having an option that doesn't automatically bundle bag-checking into the cost of my ticket (a service that I don't need for this particular itinerary) is a good thing for me.
I've had my share of [...] bed experiences with different airlines
I've gotten fucked by the airlines, too.
It's time to dump this discredited, outdated religion for a 21st century pragmatic approach that actually makes life better for those who work, rich scum squealing notwithstanding.
I like your moxie, but dumping the outdated religion that's driven by the rich scum squealing is going to be a tough sell.
Termite? Methinks maybe thermite?
They make the washing machine out of metal so they can charge you extra for protection against failure due to a termite invasion. Otherwise they'd just sell you a standard wooden washing machine and call it a day.
The use of open source software in a consumer device does not require the handset running such software to be open for re-flashing
So they can sell hardware that can't be re-flashed because it isn't forbidden by the open source software license? This seems to violate Freedom #1 of the GNU Philosophy which is "The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this."
I understand that Tivo-ization (distributing software on a proprietary box without making the source code of that software available) that was implemented within GPLv3 wouldn't cover this, but distributing locked-down hardware that relies on running open source software seems like an obvious violation of the spirit of open source.
Maybe we ought to take notice of this Moto-ization of open source licenses for next time a revision is needed to the core licenses.
Maybe they are estimating badly. Encasing a command module in square plates of titanium, however, would require 6 of those plates (envision a six-sided die). 6*18kg = 108kg. Using your math, 6*45kg = 270kg. The summary estimates 200kg which falls somewhere in between the two back of the envelope calculations.
So my guess is that 200kg refers to the total enclosure that's being created from 6 different components that are estimated in the summary to each weigh 18kg.
It'd be nice if people who submit articles "measured twice and cut once" for the maths they include in their submissions, since this is that place where discussion of the incorrect math will dominate an otherwise interesting conversation about Jupiter exploration.
Apple is about freedom. Freedom from porn. Freedom from criticism. Freedom from competition. Freedom from objective discussions. Freedom from the truth.
Apple little world is looking more like 1984 every day.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
The problem with this entire scheme is that there seems to be no way to say "I've paid the required fees not let me use the dang song". This kills even legal use of music. Not to mention that there is also no talk about "I'm the author dammit" option.
Perhaps Google wants to push YouTube content creators towards Creative Commons avenues? A few years ago I was able to pull a number of really good songs into the soundtrack of a documentary film that I uploaded to my Google Video account. Certainly any content filters wouldn't have any problems with audio that comes from the "Attribution/Share-Alike" world.
Along those same lines, it'd be *really* awesome if Google could automatically detect music that's Creative Commons "Non-commercial" licensed and make those videos so advertisements never accompanied the pages with the videos.
I know the paper industry has an expensive certification process that allows paper mill's to source their pulp from "sustainable forests" and this gives them the right to slap a certification on their products (and charge more for the overhead that comes with the certification). Now... I wouldn't want it to get the the point where I look for food with the "No Monsanto" label... but I *would* pay an extra dollar of two for "No Monsanto" lettuce or tomatoes it all else is equal at the supermarket.
Maybe agriculture companies can band together and create the opposite of the "GM label" and start labeling their products "No Monsanto".
I think it'd be fairly simple for them to implement a system that can give you a partial refund and cancel your e-ticket (so that it won't work *if* you still managed to show up for the show).
Heck... it should be fairly trivial for them to track whether they're able to resell your seat and credit you with a full refund.
But why would they ever want to do something fair to customers like that? It's not like there is much fair competition in the event ticket industry.
Once the statement is made, "I have a boy," it eliminates the two girl set, leaving only 750 sets of siblings evenly divided into thirds.
That analysis is definitely flawed because gender is an independent variable. And age of the children is not part of the question. And this analysis completely ignores the prompt that "one boy was born on Tuesday". Normally, I'd say that giving unnecessary information is part of good problems, but the summary states, "Believe it or not, the Tuesday thing is relevant." So I need to refute ANY answer that doesn't consider day of the week in it's analysis (which is the majority in this discussion).
"I have two children, one of whom is a boy born on a Tuesday. What's the probability that my other child is a boy?"
I have a boy, there is 1/3 probability that the other is also a boy.
I question your logic.
The other can be: Girl born on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.
Or: Boy born on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.
7+6 possibilities... 6 which have the other child being a boy. So the math should be 6/13 (46%) chance that the other kid is a boy.... not 13/27 (48%) (which is listed several times in the previous threaded discussions.
The Yankees spend LOTS of money and win on average every 4-5 years. The Mets spend slightly less money and have won 3 or 4 times since they joined the league in 1962. Not to say you're wrong... but the Mets throw LOTS of money down to drain to produce negligible results. I think you're trying to make the point that NASA doesn't have the budget to put up "Yankees" numbers in the "Championships Won" department.
Maybe you meant to compare NASA to the Pittsburgh Pirates who spend about 20% of what the elite teams do to field their 0.333 team?
Google's ranking algorithm now includes a penalty for sites that load too slowly.
Do we really live in a world where 'Speed=Good' so completely that we need to penalize those who don't run fast enough?
I, for one, like the idea that sites without dozens of scripts, bloated images, and advertising cruft will get higher ranks. This will give my own personal site a small boost in the Google rankings. And I feel it's well-deserved. Power to the people who aren't out there trying to make money from page views.
The pony in the famous movie you are referencing was a prized possession of the person's whose bed it showed up in. And it was a threat so that this man would hire a chosen person as the lead role in a movie he was producing. Something tells me leaving a random horse head in some person's bed wouldn't have the same effect.
I used to use a "free" webhost that inexplicably blocked all pages with links embedded in them that sent the user to Amazon.com. This was particularly annoying to diagnose because it was hard to find a correlation between an Error Page that says a perfectly good URL doesn't exist and the content of said page.
Needless to say, I don't use that host anymore. If Twitter wants to make themselves irrelevant, then blocking Facebook, Yahoo, and MySpace sounds like a great idea.
When a small personal site that I administer got hacked by the Chinese (thanks to a Blogger security hole), Google and Firefox both flagged it as "dangerous" and took appropriate actions to warn people that visiting my site was a huge security risk. For sites that have been compromised by malware, it's absolutely necessary to inform visitors that they're exposing their computers to risk by visiting.
Thus, having an "access blacklist" isn't always a bad thing. Something tells me Twitter isn't about to start censoring sites with information about the Freedom of Tibet or the Genocide in Darfur.
the two-year agreement with Google is a temporary solution while the agency seeks a contractor to build a database that would allow the public to access such information in electronic machine-readable bulk form
And what role is Google serving if they spend two years hosting the patents in their database while the USPTO spends 24 months looking for a contractor who will presumably charge money to do the same thing?
Why not have Google spend two-years building the interface with a plan to turn control of it over to USPTO employees in 2012? It seems like by then the USPTO could have gained the technical skills necessary to administer their database instead of turning to keys over to some different 3rd party contractor.
No?
Okay, you win the point. Zuckerberg is a thief and not a philosopher. Like I said... I was playing Devil's Advocate, so I'm not particularly bent out of shape for losing.
I think the parallel is that because of Zuckerberg's actions, poor people are able to reconnect with slightly less poor people who they used to go to high school with and derive some pleasure from that relationship that makes it worth it. Or, alternatively, that somebody ends up meeting a person who later becomes their husband or wife because of Zuckerberg's social network. I'm willing to allow that giving up a few bits of personal privacy would be a small price to pay for finding a loving partner.
That said, I still think Zuckerberg is a scumbag. And certainly Zuckerberg isn't seeking to provide any direct benefit to the "poor" the way Robin Hood did. But even if the end result is a pleasant side-effect of the main goal of being a self-righteous asshole, isn't that still a good thing?
That being said, wouldn't being a thief preclude the label of 'philosopher'?
I think Zuckerberg is a scumbag, as well. But I'm going to attempt to play Devil's Advocate. People associate the character Robin Hood, who is a common thief, as a great hero. Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor. More generally, the effect Robin Hood has is that the poor gain more than they lose from his actions. Thus, we can conclude that the assertion that thievery and philosophy are mutually exclusive is false.
Now we examine Zuckerberg to see if his thieving brings a net benefit to the poor. Certainly, no money changes hands (for the vast majority of Facebook users), so it's hard to assess this financially. The question becomes, I think, whether "losing privacy" causes meaningful contacts to be established. Or does having your information out there leave you in the same place you'd be if you hadn't turned over your privacy?
I suspect that for most users there is minimal net benefit for being on Facebook, but for others there's a significant benefit. Somebody, please chime in if you've ever established a meaningful relationship due to Facebook existing.
I hope this side-thought doesn't ruin the otherwise productive Zuckerberg bashing that's going on. Thanks.