The big problems with getting science fiction onto bestseller lists, except for top names like Crichton, is that publishers don't print enough to actually make a dent on the lists. According to Robert J. Sawyer, his initial harcover runs are still only a few thousand for North America (this includes Canada as well), while best sellers usually sell this many just in the first week at least just in the USA. Sawyer's won awards in four countries and is constantly active in science fiction with clinics and book tours, as well as being a former president of the SFWA, but because he's not only Canadian, but a science fiction author, he doesn't get the sales of anything that, say, Grisham or King would get.
And until there's a demonstration that books such as his are marketable in the same lists as King or Grisham books, they won't be printed in the numbers needed to get on those lists.
I used to use CuteFTP, still have the box from the retail version, but when I had to reregister it after a format, I had to email them THREE times to finally get a response to get the proper registry file in order to have it become fullware instead of shareware.
I got tired of CuteFTP's crud, and moved on to a free Windows FTP client that is a little better than CuteFTP. It's called SmartFTP, at http://www.smartftp.com/
Check it out, well worth the look, and completely free.
Nope, sorry, as far as I'm aware, the only real OEM license out there *IS* microsoft's, and if they say that the original OS that comes with a system is legally required to transfer when the system is donated, they're talking about Microsoft.
Actually, some of us did read the article, did you?
To quote:
If you feel it is in the best interest of your school to accept the donated PCs, make sure that the hardware donation includes the original operating system software. Keeping the operating system with the PC is not just a great benefit - it is a legal requirement.
And you don't see this as MS saying it's illegal to accept the PC without its proper OS? *coughs* Never mentions whether the donation is OS/2, or Linux, or BSD, or BeOS... Just assumes it'll be MS, and makes a blanket statement based on that.
Yes, but what about those people like me who build homebrew systems? Hell, I own outright a copy of Windows 98 SE for PCs without Windows, and a copy of Windows 2000 Professional full install. Does that mean the computers I have them on, if donated, must also carry over the software I installed on them?
FUD from Microsoft, assuming automatically stuff that isn't involved. As much as I'd like to keep using MS products for business purposes, it's becoming more and more of a problem for me to want to keep going down that route. Thank goodness I've also got a Mandrake box and a Red Hat server now.
But if you can BS your way over the phone with XP installs with Microsoft, you can get your "new PC" to be accepted as your "old PC" when you upgrade your hardware.
Publishers sometimes pay an up front payment, and that's all the author receives for the sales of the book. If it sells 7,000 or 7,000,000, the author earns the same. These are reserved more for larger talents, of course, like Stephen King and John Grisham.
Imagine, then, if you propose that authors should receive additional money from sales of books that are used, when they normally would not receive money from sales of new books. Publishers are trying to recuperate their payments by pushing sales of the book.
Of course, I've never really liked that business strategy, but I doubt many publishers would rid themselves of it, banking on the hopes that they'd come out ahead.
Publishing houses are to writing as the MPAA's charter members are to movie making.
Publishers screw over just as many people as the MPAA, but since their media isn't as wide-spread in piracy, and they don't really make that much money off books and other publications, you don't really hear that much from them.
But I've seen some contracts where the author would give up all rights to the book, which some he should reserve, for the life of the copyright itself, whether or not the publisher decided to publish the book. It's insane contracts like that which are becoming more frequent (mostly by lesser known houses, but hey, someday Tor or Random House may have them), which make publishers just as untrustworthy as media conglomerates these days.
Listen to what authors have to say about their books, just as you would listen to directors and producers have to say about their movies. Go to the source, not the people trying to amass as much money off others' work as possible.
Loki's not a good example of a company to support, seeing as how they ripped off their employees and ran off with an unknown amount of money. Hell, the couple who was running it even put themselves down as people owed money in the bankruptcy, when they're the ones who ran it into the ground in the first place.
I'd prefer to have Linux companies, or multiple-platform companies, who aren't in it to rob, but in it to do software and want to be around for years to come.
You state that if someone rips off a recipe, it's fair game. True, because ingrediant lists and methods can't be protected, only their presentation in a creative sense.
However, if someone makes music, you're stating that people can take the end result and copy it as they please, that this is similar to the recipe argument.
It isn't. The analogous statement would be that people can copy the style you play your music, or the way you sing your songs. They can then make their own music with it.
To make the proper argument for stealing of the end result of music, would be that you would take the pitcher of lemonade, or the actual products made by the recipe, and hand them out yourself.
No, no one is entitled to be compensated for works, but then, no one is entitled to get those works without compensating the owner/author/creator the way he wishes. If you don't like that a CD costs $20, don't get a copy, whether or not you got it legally.
Yes, unfortunately, anyone who shops at AnimeNation, for example, are set to expose not only their credit card information, but their billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers, and other such personal information, on just getting a DVD or two. Another reason not to shop at places which don't use their own in-house services. Who's to say what that third party will do with the information they gather for their first-parties?
Really? And how's their support? Come with a few free OS upgrades? Will they be around tomorrow to honor that warrenty or are they one of the struggling?
That's funny, I remember MacOS 7 to 8 cost money, and MacOS 8 to 9 cost money, and MacOS 9 to X cost money... Where's this majestic free OS upgrade from Macs?
And yes, Accubyte will be around, since they're pretty large and pretty reliable. Good customer service.
Close how? there's an Indigo iMac listed on Apple's web-page that's $800.
How is a 500MHz 128 MB SDRAM 20 GB UATA HD 16MB vid card machine comparable to a 2.0GHZ 256MB DDR 40GB UATA HD 32MB vid card PC? That's a HUGE difference in today's world, especially if you do games or graphics.
Some website selling a boatload of seconds from Korea isn't Apple's market.
Wow, nice Mac fanatic, claiming anything cheaper than a Mac must be using cheap hardware from third worlds. Couldn't be that Apple is saving its business from failure for OVERPRICING hardware, could it?
At Accubyte, on March 25, 2002, they had the following deal:
http://www.accubyte.com/applications/search/item de tails.asp?sku=SYSP2066C
$899.95 ($89.95 to get three year warranty parts and labor) for a 2.0 GHz P-4 with everything but LAN card and Monitor. Nothing in Apple's consumer lineup on its site is close (dual 1 GHzs are 2K$+).
For the price of an inexpensive iMac, there you go, a full powered PC. And with 17" monitors reaching under $150 now, cheap grades a little less, well, Macs are still way more expensive.
I'd love to see Macs just give in and use PC hardware completely, just market the OSX and its graphics capabilities, and try to corner the professional sector.
Because the developers of the systems are almost always losing money, or just barely making a profit, on the game systems. They make their money by the licensees developing games for their systems, and by having people want to buy their systems to get those games.
To be clearer, if you have system A, and have company B develop games only for your system, and those games are popular sequels or highly sought after, all the people can do is buy system A to play these games. By buying system A, more developers will want to license to develop games for your system, since that will probably mean a higher yield of sales.
Now, if suddenly people can play system A games on, say, systems D, G, L and P, then exclusive contracts are pretty much useless, and as such, there's no real push to buy any single system. Most people will go with the cheapest system.
I don't see how any of the game system manufacturers would approve of this.
Beware also any part-time work you do for chains or other works.
Places like Blockbuster, Radio Shack, Best Buy, etc., have strange clauses as well.
I remember Radio Shack's clearly when I worked there for a short time, something regarding that any patents or intellectual property you file during the course of your employment there, up to one full year after you've left there, becomes property of Tandy/Radio Shack, regardless of what it is, or whether you did it on your own time.
Even if you work there only four hours a week, they'll still claim all your patents if you work for a bigger company, and filed the patents for your other work.
Companies like this really only want to extort their employees, not cover their butts.
Re:there's always a deal to be found...
on
Low-end Laptops?
·
· Score: 2
Although I went to a Staples here where three police cars were parked at the entrance, and cops being led to the computer section when I was entering. Seems like some Staples prefer the hostile environment by having many uniformed officers in plain sight, rather than keeping undercover/off-duty ones or security guards around.
Still, no matter how much is stolen, three cars is way too many.
But unlike closed projects, you don't have source to start from.
With projects such as Apache, which has gone from, what, 1.1 to 1.3, in only five years, you can catch up in a few weeks, or just a couple months', time, by reading the update/release notes, or just simply looking at the new code and seeing what's differed.
But since they're building it from the original, the GPL and the laws of copyright don't matter, since the version they have is expired. There, a corporation earning money off the hard work of others, because "copyrights were too evil".
Yes, but how far has Linux gone in five years? Apache? Five years is still a short, short time. It wouldn't take a corporation long to take a version five years old, read up on the updates, and release a current version, change the name, and keep it propietary, and the GPL be damned.
Copyright protects the little guys as well as corporations. Can't have one without the other. If you destroy corporation protection, you'll see a real drop in individuals releasing creative works as well.
Just something to think about whenever slashdot posters rant and rave how copyrights are evil.
What sickens me is how hypocritical some posters seem to be regarding EULAs and Copyrights on slashdot. If you want copyright laws to be only 5 years, well, guess what, Linux, Apache, etc., are all in the public domain, which means that people can freely use them WITHOUT the use of the GPL and other free-mod licenses.
When it's in public domain, no one can own it, which means no one can impose licenses to use the copyrighted material.
Don't forget, Copyright law protects open source projects from abuse and misuse as well. It's not an evil, and making it as short as possible would allow big corps. to win with software as well.
Some methods in place
on
iWarez
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I needed to buy a replacement Lexmark printer, because they're cheap and I do a lot of printing in b/w format, and did some shopping at Best Buy and CompUSA for price comparisons.
At one Best Buy, they had a Z52 as a store display, as Z53s had just come out. There were no more Z52s left, and they had yet to receive the Z53s for their stock.
Asking a manager, I got the price reduced to almost half the retail, and still got their crappy service plan thrown in for a year. When they opened it up to check for any products inside in case I was trying to smuggle them out, the cashier removed the ink cartridges and ran them across their demagnetizer.
Why? Because they put anti-theft tags on the cartridges. People actually walk into stores and try to swipe open inkjet cartridges which have been used quite a bit as demonstration products, and are already open.
So they're aware that people try to steal innards, but as to how far they can go, who knows? RAM may not be protectable in these methods, but other items could be.
If you check the official Chuck Jones website, right-click has been "disabled" with a javascript warning that his site is protected by copyrights.
Never quite figured why people do this. First, a local copy is saved of everything you view on the page, so you can just go into your temporary internet folder and grab them. Second, this can get you the information you need about the files.
You can't really say that Chuck didn't know about this on his site. He may have even asked for it to be there, or seen it and asked it to remain.
Maybe they're aware. First Universal buys mp3.com after being a part of suing them, and then the suit STILL CONTINUES. They're still defending against that suit. Then they go after Blockbuster, the largest video rental chain, who could, out of the blue, just go to DVD rentals, which there is no payola back to movie studios per rental as there were for VHS, and lower release-date prices. Now they're saying that people who use alternative methods to play their games with each other are probably pirates and are trying to paint this as "protecting" these users and their rights.
I think the stockholders are really seeing Vivendi for who they are: Full of $hit.
Funny, I remember we elected Gore, but the Supreme Court made it so that Gore lost to Bush. Then again, that whole Electoral College thing, which was instituted when there would be a low voter turnout in the few states we had anyways, is very much outdated and should be revoked.
Power of the people, not power of the states with the high populations.
Slashdot Mirror
The big problems with getting science fiction onto bestseller lists, except for top names like Crichton, is that publishers don't print enough to actually make a dent on the lists. According to Robert J. Sawyer, his initial harcover runs are still only a few thousand for North America (this includes Canada as well), while best sellers usually sell this many just in the first week at least just in the USA. Sawyer's won awards in four countries and is constantly active in science fiction with clinics and book tours, as well as being a former president of the SFWA, but because he's not only Canadian, but a science fiction author, he doesn't get the sales of anything that, say, Grisham or King would get.
And until there's a demonstration that books such as his are marketable in the same lists as King or Grisham books, they won't be printed in the numbers needed to get on those lists.
The Sims runs on Wine, thanks to Mandrake Linux, the Wine team, and a few others.
I used to use CuteFTP, still have the box from the retail version, but when I had to reregister it after a format, I had to email them THREE times to finally get a response to get the proper registry file in order to have it become fullware instead of shareware.
I got tired of CuteFTP's crud, and moved on to a free Windows FTP client that is a little better than CuteFTP. It's called SmartFTP, at http://www.smartftp.com/
Check it out, well worth the look, and completely free.
Nope, sorry, as far as I'm aware, the only real OEM license out there *IS* microsoft's, and if they say that the original OS that comes with a system is legally required to transfer when the system is donated, they're talking about Microsoft.
Actually, some of us did read the article, did you?
To quote:
If you feel it is in the best interest of your school to accept the donated PCs, make sure that the hardware donation includes the original operating system software. Keeping the operating system with the PC is not just a great benefit - it is a legal requirement.
And you don't see this as MS saying it's illegal to accept the PC without its proper OS? *coughs* Never mentions whether the donation is OS/2, or Linux, or BSD, or BeOS... Just assumes it'll be MS, and makes a blanket statement based on that.
Some of us did read it. Thanks.
Yes, but what about those people like me who build homebrew systems? Hell, I own outright a copy of Windows 98 SE for PCs without Windows, and a copy of Windows 2000 Professional full install. Does that mean the computers I have them on, if donated, must also carry over the software I installed on them?
FUD from Microsoft, assuming automatically stuff that isn't involved. As much as I'd like to keep using MS products for business purposes, it's becoming more and more of a problem for me to want to keep going down that route. Thank goodness I've also got a Mandrake box and a Red Hat server now.
But if you can BS your way over the phone with XP installs with Microsoft, you can get your "new PC" to be accepted as your "old PC" when you upgrade your hardware.
* yawns *
Publishers sometimes pay an up front payment, and that's all the author receives for the sales of the book. If it sells 7,000 or 7,000,000, the author earns the same. These are reserved more for larger talents, of course, like Stephen King and John Grisham.
Imagine, then, if you propose that authors should receive additional money from sales of books that are used, when they normally would not receive money from sales of new books. Publishers are trying to recuperate their payments by pushing sales of the book.
Of course, I've never really liked that business strategy, but I doubt many publishers would rid themselves of it, banking on the hopes that they'd come out ahead.
Publishing houses are to writing as the MPAA's charter members are to movie making.
Publishers screw over just as many people as the MPAA, but since their media isn't as wide-spread in piracy, and they don't really make that much money off books and other publications, you don't really hear that much from them.
But I've seen some contracts where the author would give up all rights to the book, which some he should reserve, for the life of the copyright itself, whether or not the publisher decided to publish the book. It's insane contracts like that which are becoming more frequent (mostly by lesser known houses, but hey, someday Tor or Random House may have them), which make publishers just as untrustworthy as media conglomerates these days.
Listen to what authors have to say about their books, just as you would listen to directors and producers have to say about their movies. Go to the source, not the people trying to amass as much money off others' work as possible.
Loki's not a good example of a company to support, seeing as how they ripped off their employees and ran off with an unknown amount of money. Hell, the couple who was running it even put themselves down as people owed money in the bankruptcy, when they're the ones who ran it into the ground in the first place.
I'd prefer to have Linux companies, or multiple-platform companies, who aren't in it to rob, but in it to do software and want to be around for years to come.
There's a flaw in your logic:
You state that if someone rips off a recipe, it's fair game. True, because ingrediant lists and methods can't be protected, only their presentation in a creative sense.
However, if someone makes music, you're stating that people can take the end result and copy it as they please, that this is similar to the recipe argument.
It isn't. The analogous statement would be that people can copy the style you play your music, or the way you sing your songs. They can then make their own music with it.
To make the proper argument for stealing of the end result of music, would be that you would take the pitcher of lemonade, or the actual products made by the recipe, and hand them out yourself.
No, no one is entitled to be compensated for works, but then, no one is entitled to get those works without compensating the owner/author/creator the way he wishes. If you don't like that a CD costs $20, don't get a copy, whether or not you got it legally.
Yes, unfortunately, anyone who shops at AnimeNation, for example, are set to expose not only their credit card information, but their billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers, and other such personal information, on just getting a DVD or two. Another reason not to shop at places which don't use their own in-house services. Who's to say what that third party will do with the information they gather for their first-parties?
Really? And how's their support? Come with a few free OS upgrades? Will they be around tomorrow to honor that warrenty or are they one of the struggling?
That's funny, I remember MacOS 7 to 8 cost money, and MacOS 8 to 9 cost money, and MacOS 9 to X cost money... Where's this majestic free OS upgrade from Macs?
And yes, Accubyte will be around, since they're pretty large and pretty reliable. Good customer service.
Close how? there's an Indigo iMac listed on Apple's web-page that's $800.
500MHz, PowerPC G3, 256K L2 cache @ 500 MHz, 128MB SDRAM, 20GB Ultra ATA drive, CD-ROM Drive, RAGE 128 Ultra w/16MB, 10/100BASE-T Ethernet, 56K fax modem, 15-inch display, (13.8-inch VIS), Harman Kardon Speakers, VGA Video Mirroring, 2 USB & 2 FireWire ports, AirPort Ready.
How is a 500MHz 128 MB SDRAM 20 GB UATA HD 16MB vid card machine comparable to a 2.0GHZ 256MB DDR 40GB UATA HD 32MB vid card PC? That's a HUGE difference in today's world, especially if you do games or graphics.
Some website selling a boatload of seconds from Korea isn't Apple's market.
Wow, nice Mac fanatic, claiming anything cheaper than a Mac must be using cheap hardware from third worlds. Couldn't be that Apple is saving its business from failure for OVERPRICING hardware, could it?
If you look, you'll find good deals on PCs.
m de tails.asp?sku=SYSP2066C
At Accubyte, on March 25, 2002, they had the following deal:
http://www.accubyte.com/applications/search/ite
$899.95 ($89.95 to get three year warranty parts and labor) for a 2.0 GHz P-4 with everything but LAN card and Monitor. Nothing in Apple's consumer lineup on its site is close (dual 1 GHzs are 2K$+).
For the price of an inexpensive iMac, there you go, a full powered PC. And with 17" monitors reaching under $150 now, cheap grades a little less, well, Macs are still way more expensive.
I'd love to see Macs just give in and use PC hardware completely, just market the OSX and its graphics capabilities, and try to corner the professional sector.
Because the developers of the systems are almost always losing money, or just barely making a profit, on the game systems. They make their money by the licensees developing games for their systems, and by having people want to buy their systems to get those games.
To be clearer, if you have system A, and have company B develop games only for your system, and those games are popular sequels or highly sought after, all the people can do is buy system A to play these games. By buying system A, more developers will want to license to develop games for your system, since that will probably mean a higher yield of sales.
Now, if suddenly people can play system A games on, say, systems D, G, L and P, then exclusive contracts are pretty much useless, and as such, there's no real push to buy any single system. Most people will go with the cheapest system.
I don't see how any of the game system manufacturers would approve of this.
Beware also any part-time work you do for chains or other works.
Places like Blockbuster, Radio Shack, Best Buy, etc., have strange clauses as well.
I remember Radio Shack's clearly when I worked there for a short time, something regarding that any patents or intellectual property you file during the course of your employment there, up to one full year after you've left there, becomes property of Tandy/Radio Shack, regardless of what it is, or whether you did it on your own time.
Even if you work there only four hours a week, they'll still claim all your patents if you work for a bigger company, and filed the patents for your other work.
Companies like this really only want to extort their employees, not cover their butts.
Although I went to a Staples here where three police cars were parked at the entrance, and cops being led to the computer section when I was entering. Seems like some Staples prefer the hostile environment by having many uniformed officers in plain sight, rather than keeping undercover/off-duty ones or security guards around.
Still, no matter how much is stolen, three cars is way too many.
But unlike closed projects, you don't have source to start from.
With projects such as Apache, which has gone from, what, 1.1 to 1.3, in only five years, you can catch up in a few weeks, or just a couple months', time, by reading the update/release notes, or just simply looking at the new code and seeing what's differed.
But since they're building it from the original, the GPL and the laws of copyright don't matter, since the version they have is expired. There, a corporation earning money off the hard work of others, because "copyrights were too evil".
Yes, but how far has Linux gone in five years? Apache? Five years is still a short, short time. It wouldn't take a corporation long to take a version five years old, read up on the updates, and release a current version, change the name, and keep it propietary, and the GPL be damned.
Copyright protects the little guys as well as corporations. Can't have one without the other. If you destroy corporation protection, you'll see a real drop in individuals releasing creative works as well.
Just something to think about whenever slashdot posters rant and rave how copyrights are evil.
What sickens me is how hypocritical some posters seem to be regarding EULAs and Copyrights on slashdot.
If you want copyright laws to be only 5 years, well, guess what, Linux, Apache, etc., are all in the public domain, which means that people can freely use them WITHOUT the use of the GPL and other free-mod licenses.
When it's in public domain, no one can own it, which means no one can impose licenses to use the copyrighted material.
Don't forget, Copyright law protects open source projects from abuse and misuse as well. It's not an evil, and making it as short as possible would allow big corps. to win with software as well.
I needed to buy a replacement Lexmark printer, because they're cheap and I do a lot of printing in b/w format, and did some shopping at Best Buy and CompUSA for price comparisons.
At one Best Buy, they had a Z52 as a store display, as Z53s had just come out. There were no more Z52s left, and they had yet to receive the Z53s for their stock.
Asking a manager, I got the price reduced to almost half the retail, and still got their crappy service plan thrown in for a year. When they opened it up to check for any products inside in case I was trying to smuggle them out, the cashier removed the ink cartridges and ran them across their demagnetizer.
Why? Because they put anti-theft tags on the cartridges. People actually walk into stores and try to swipe open inkjet cartridges which have been used quite a bit as demonstration products, and are already open.
So they're aware that people try to steal innards, but as to how far they can go, who knows? RAM may not be protectable in these methods, but other items could be.
If you check the official Chuck Jones website, right-click has been "disabled" with a javascript warning that his site is protected by copyrights.
Never quite figured why people do this. First, a local copy is saved of everything you view on the page, so you can just go into your temporary internet folder and grab them. Second, this can get you the information you need about the files.
You can't really say that Chuck didn't know about this on his site. He may have even asked for it to be there, or seen it and asked it to remain.
But alas, rest in peace Chuck.
Maybe they're aware. First Universal buys mp3.com after being a part of suing them, and then the suit STILL CONTINUES. They're still defending against that suit. Then they go after Blockbuster, the largest video rental chain, who could, out of the blue, just go to DVD rentals, which there is no payola back to movie studios per rental as there were for VHS, and lower release-date prices. Now they're saying that people who use alternative methods to play their games with each other are probably pirates and are trying to paint this as "protecting" these users and their rights.
I think the stockholders are really seeing Vivendi for who they are: Full of $hit.
I looked up Vivendi's quote today on the NYSE, and here's the link: http://www.nyse.com/marketinfo/marketinfo.html?sym =V
For those who just want a quick reference, here's the 52-week spread:
HIGH
69.23
(4/27/01)
LOW
35.65
(TODAY)
And it's still going down.
Good move, Vivendi. No wonder you're trying to get as much cash as possible.
Remember people, elections have consequences.
Funny, I remember we elected Gore, but the Supreme Court made it so that Gore lost to Bush. Then again, that whole Electoral College thing, which was instituted when there would be a low voter turnout in the few states we had anyways, is very much outdated and should be revoked.
Power of the people, not power of the states with the high populations.