If you dig deep enough, it might have a 'Ford' label on it, but there's a lot of parts commanility even between makes.
Personally, I'd have allowed it to account for Iphone purchasers/users who have to keep up with android news - perhaps because they have to support others who use it?
I'm DoD and I've seen 'some' of this with cisco switches and dell servers. Of course, there it became a matter of 'this is what we know; we're also one a first name basis with the dealers and support reps'.
We're well aware that IBM isn't what it used to be.
And then of course the buyers will be paying the scalper price right up front. Or will they?
Don't forget opportunity cost and risk. Scalpers exist on the margin that roughly 10% of the population is willing to pay 10X the price on the face of the ticket to attend that concert; when they mistake the demand they can lose their ass.
That's why they earlier mentioned 'dutch auction' - that way a block of seats goes for the maximum bid it takes to fill them all. There's still the chance for arbitrage in the form of selling tickets to those that forgot or are unexpectedly able to pay more after the auction ended, but the question becomes one of is there enough who missed the auction, who are willing to pay THAT much more for tickets?
. Ticketmaster in particular is happy to screw us any way they can. All the rest ditto.
I've heard that one of the biggest scalping operations for ticketmaster tickets is a subsidiary of ticketmaster.
The problem is that "investors" and fix-and-flip types could, and would, swoop in and snatch these houses up before people who would actually live in them could.
I'm willing to bet that you see a lot fewer of these types anymore; many, if not most, lost their butts during the crash, and even now home prices aren't appreciating enough to justify the opportunity costs. I just bought a house(as in I haven't even got my furniture yet), and I saw a number of houses 'fix and flip' types could have made some real money on, but they were nowhere to be seen.
I will agree on the dubious quality of the 'upgrades'. All shine, no substance.
Channelized DSL? No, it's called 'the phone company charges as much for phone + DSL as they do for phone alone'.
As for being listed, I don't particularly want to be, but I will be anyways because they want that $2/month fee to NOT be listed. Too bad I can't just say 'no' on the month they're finalizing the listing to send to the printers.
The boosters I've looked at are much cheaper, but don't do frequency shifting; you need a certain minimum Db difference between the indoor antenna and the outdoor one otherwise you can get feedback.
frequency shifting would indeed be a reason to get the techs involved; sounds like you were essentially installing a cell tower in the building.
How many non-businesses (aka non-yellow page fodder) still have landlines?
LOTS of people, apparently, going by how thick the white pages still are.
For example, my parents ended up getting one because it's essentially free with their internet and their house is a cell dead zone. I'm getting one because they didn't want to disclose that a dry line is possible for DSL.
however, if a cell site is propagating signal just fine, but some joe is extending its signal five miles beyond its expected range, and another joe is pulling from him another two miles away
That is unlikely. These boosters are two antenna jobs - normally a directional mounted outside pointed at the closest tower, and a small omni inside (or a plate type on an appropriate wall). The gain on the inside is such that only really close phones will pick it up. The setup I was looking at would have gotten my house, and maybe a bit of the yard - when the next closest tower was ~30 miles away.
I can see requiring FCC certification and some electronics to make sure the booster plays nice by providing automatic gain control and such, so the booster isn't blasting numerous towers with it's max 4 watts of power if it isn't necessary.
As far as I know, what AT&T and Verizon are selling are 'microcells', basically miniature cell towers that convert your phone's signal to VOIP to get to their network; it uses your home's internet connection.
These are a bit distinct from cell phone boosters, which still has you using your phone company's towers by taking your phone's (likely).25 watt max power signal and amplifying it to the maximum legal power of 2-4 watts*, often using a directional antenna mounted somewhere outside - like the roof.
This would be fine and dandy at my old place which was like 30 miles from the closest tower. Not so good at my parents, who are in some sort of 'signal depression' such that they have even less signal inside, but lots on the roof, the antenna is only about a mile away. Still, most have automatic gain control, so while one on my house might use the full strength(it's got a lot of distance to cover), even with a directional antenna to give me 4-5 bars, my parents might 'whisper', only needing to avoid the interference that the house adds combined with a better line of sight with the added height of the roof.
I did quite a bit of research on boosters because, well, I had lousy signal in my old(rural) place, but balked at the $500 to do a proper job of it, and it was before microcells started becoming available. Then I found out my job was moving me, and it became academic.
*Actual level dependent upon frequency, country, and other factors.
You'd be surprised. Phone books are heavy items, the USPS would charge a hefty fee for them.
They're printed in such quantity and they're paid by the book delivered, it's quicker and cheaper to just use the trucks.
Heck, in many of my areas phone book delivery is done by *VOLUNTEERS*. (scratches head).
Now, that's something that'd likely go away if the white pages does, because with the white pages you can argue that you're delivering useful information to said elders and luddites. Well, at least useful, non-commercial information - you can argue that the ad-ridden yellow pages can pay for it's own delivery.
I'm surprised fewer people haven't tried to tap this power source.
It's because the number of amps you can draw this way is rather pathetic; even less than a PoE hookup. Try to draw too much and the system thinks there's a short and shuts your line off.
There was an advertisement for an adapter that showed somebody powering a vacuum off the phone line circulating a few years back(done in a 60's style), but I'm not sure if it was a 60's hoax or a more modern one.
Oh, and I once had a cordless phone that had a spare battery charger in the base - the neat thing was that the base would use that battery in a power outage to keep working.
As others have stated - the trees for this are purpose grown for it. Fewer trees used for phone books = fewer trees grown.
Personally, I view it as he's doing his part for carbon sequestriation.;)
We don't have recycling centers in my area; pretty much the best you get is incinerators designed to deliver heat and/or power. It'd actually waste resources taking them somewhere to be recycled otherwise.
Not everyone has a computer, not everyone has one with a CD(today). I'm still waiting on internet service at home; the phonebook has been a lifesaver at the moment.
I picked a couple up at the local telephone company store, they just have a bin of them, a lot like how JCPenny and Sears would have a stack of catalogs.
Perhaps we can keep them, but do we need to print them every year anymore? Oh, and I'd say that since cell phone users have unlisted numbers by default, their usefullness is declining. Many younger people don't have home phones today, and that age is rising. Taxes on it are insane.
I'll 'have' residential phone service because it came bundled with my internet*(any day now!). Still, there's no phone hooked up to it, so when it gets listed it'll just ring and ring. Maybe give direct them to the default mailbox that I won't monitor. Worse than useless, but I'll be in the whitepages because it'd cost $2/month for me NOT to be in there. Once I get more settled, I'm going to start calling to see if I can get the phone itself shut off - even if it only saves me the taxes, that'd likely be $12/month or so.
*Better deal than cable, with which they'd effectively require me to buy cable, and the local cable has caps that the average slashdotter would bust without trying.
On this topic, wasn't it just last week that we had a article about the lawsuit "yellow pages" brought against Seattle because they created an opt-out list? They claimed it was 'freedom of speech' to toss one on every doorstop?
- Personally, I still use the whitepages AND yellowpages occasionally. Especially when I'm new to a city(happens to me more than most).
if takin pictures of my junk through my pants is so important why are they not at every airport
They're expensive, specialized pieces of equipment. It's a bit like asking that every police car be replaced in the next 12 months - it's just not going to happen. Instead, they deploy them into 'target' areas first, using them in random screenings as they get more off the assembly line to deploy to more areas and to increase numbers until, theoretically, they can screen everybody.
Personally, I'm for taking the opposite direction - I first proposed it years ago - 'NRA Airlines - 10% discount for open carry!'. Load from the tarmac(can't use common terminals, obviously). Get some guys with names like Hans and Franz to help the disabled on board. Have some retired(but still with good noses) bomb dogs to check the people and baggage. Issue glasers to everybody if necessary, armor the cockpit door/wall. Let the stewardesses carry what they want, with a preference towards select fire PDW(P-90, for example). Expert shot is a hiring requirement. Pay them good.
I was thinking 'in the commercial world' - English majors are mostly an 'internal product' of the teaching world. You generally don't become an english major if you're looking for work outside the teaching environment. Which would make for some distortions, since most works in english aren't written by, or even reviewed by, english majors.
That's not to say that I don't value their education and teachings, but that I honestly see more personal value in a technical writing course than I do most literary appreciation type courses. Because I'm NOT going to be the one to write the next great novel - I'm more likely to be trying to write regulations, personal evaluations*, reports, documentation.
*One line bullet statements; it's not real english.
Thing is, by the time you figure in the cost of a shuttle servicing, we could have sent up another hubble every 2 servicings or so. Especially once you started 'mass producing' them. At which point we'd have multiple hubbles, even if some are degraded, for about the same resource cost.
It'd be a different matter if we could service satellites from the ISS using some sort of pure space craft, just using the shuttle or Russian cargo pod to deliver parts and such.
This, as with many other space and military projects tend to be hammered with cost overruns, both in part due to it being technology development- you're nearly always going to run into unexpected problems, and a failure to fund them sufficiently. It costs money to idle a project, and that 'idle' cost can be in the millions for something like a satellite. Controlled storage, parts degrading over time and needing to be replaced because they no longer have the operational lifespan to do the mission because the satellite has been sitting on the ground for an extra decade or so. By which time you need to redesign parts because it's no longer 'state of the art'.
Not just that, they'll point out every little spot where employees failed to follow policy in anything related to the incident - some listed such as NOT using the engineered solution. That smacks of 'middle management looking to meet it's goals' to me. They'll hang the local boss out to dry, insulating the top executives who were going to go with the 'properly engineered solution' over the alternative the local team decided to use instead when they thought the delivered parts were incorrect.
except, maybe, to take measures to insulate themselves from repercussions
Thing is, how do you insulate yourself from these sorts of repercussions? In the case of an oil company, it's that you do pretty much whatever is necessary to prevent a well blowout like this from happening again.
Why? It's bad publicity, it costs money to clean up, you're not making money from the oil from that well, etc...
The cost of having to deal with even a rare blowout, compared to the cost of safety equipment, is such that it's nearly always better to spend the money on the safety equipment, studies, and engineering solutions than to screw up and have a major leak.
Even if the executives are moustache twirling evil, they're still driven by profit. Oil dumped in the ocean is oil that they can't sell, which costs them money. They don't want that.
I'd rather see money go directly to the publishers than to some place like Gamestop that gouges their customers for 200-500% markups on used games.
I'd be careful here; 200% markup might actually be REASONABLE once you figure that normal markup is often 100% for NEW merchandise from the distributer, which ends up having a 5-10% profit margin once you include all the retail costs. Costs such as labor, insurance, lease, theft, utilities, taxes, bookkeeping, loans, etc...
A used goods* store is also going to have to perform quality control checks(more labor), provide missing parts like cases if the seller didn't keep them, finance any guarantees themselves. Heck, any defective products that are returned come out of their pocket; not the manufacturer/distributer's.
Unless you also bought the pavement outside of your property,
In many jurisdictions, the sidewalk ouside a building is part of the plot and the maintenance of it is the responsability of the owner of said plot. There's just a permanent easement/requirement attached to the land.
Besides, his store might have a 'walk up' path due to minimum setback requirements(in case they need to widen the road).
In either case, 'immediately outside the door' would indeed be areas that he could legitimately ask somebody to 'move along'.
Things like craigslist is good for relatively common items, but the store has the advantage of allowing you to KNOW that you can sell them something RIGHT NOW, same with buying. You also get at least some guarantee.
Still, for the 'informed consumer' who is willing to wait a week or more and perhaps drive somewhere else to pick it up to get a better price, it's the better option.
Just beware of scams. Not that used game stores aren't scammey, but they don't get as bad as some of the ebay/craigslist scams I've heard about.
I wouldn't be surprised if that 10-30% is HALF of the cost of the original distribution model; there it'd be like 30% store, 20% distributer, plus you have to pay production costs to make physical copies of the game. They've gotten a lot cheaper these days, but you're still looking at 5-10% of the price of the game for printing a DVD, case, manual*, and box.
What I think is really crazy is only 'discounting' e-books like 10% over the HARDCOVER price. I know their expenses for those are a lot less, plus you can kill the resale market, etc...
Plus, I can get most hardcovers/books for at least 30-50% off by waiting for a sale, which makes them still cheaper than an ebook. Get a clue. There's a reason I've dumped like $600 into Baen ebooks(I have like a thousand of them), vs $30 for the other publishers(around 6 books right now). Some people might not like Baen's niche, but I like many of them well enough, and I want to encourage their publishing model as much as possible. Anybody think it's weird that the company that basically specializes in 'right wing/libertarian scifi' is the one offering cheap, DRM free ebooks with an extensive free book selection?
*Yes, even the little pamplets that they call 'manuals' these days.
Oh very true, but it sounds like they finished negotiations on the way to the door...
FTGP:
and the two of them left the store happy
As long as they didn't give enough information for a lifetime ban, even then, the bad rap they could get by being excessively hostile could far outweigh the lost profit.
Though trying to sell your goods just outside might be a bit crass and get them to try something.
Then again - that something might be 'more money for your games' - it might be cheaper to pay you double what they'd normally pay just to get rid of you.
Slashdot Mirror
Ford Cars use only Ford Engines and Parts
If you dig deep enough, it might have a 'Ford' label on it, but there's a lot of parts commanility even between makes.
Personally, I'd have allowed it to account for Iphone purchasers/users who have to keep up with android news - perhaps because they have to support others who use it?
I'm DoD and I've seen 'some' of this with cisco switches and dell servers. Of course, there it became a matter of 'this is what we know; we're also one a first name basis with the dealers and support reps'.
We're well aware that IBM isn't what it used to be.
And then of course the buyers will be paying the scalper price right up front. Or will they?
Don't forget opportunity cost and risk. Scalpers exist on the margin that roughly 10% of the population is willing to pay 10X the price on the face of the ticket to attend that concert; when they mistake the demand they can lose their ass.
That's why they earlier mentioned 'dutch auction' - that way a block of seats goes for the maximum bid it takes to fill them all. There's still the chance for arbitrage in the form of selling tickets to those that forgot or are unexpectedly able to pay more after the auction ended, but the question becomes one of is there enough who missed the auction, who are willing to pay THAT much more for tickets?
. Ticketmaster in particular is happy to screw us any way they can. All the rest ditto.
I've heard that one of the biggest scalping operations for ticketmaster tickets is a subsidiary of ticketmaster.
The problem is that "investors" and fix-and-flip types could, and would, swoop in and snatch these houses up before people who would actually live in them could.
I'm willing to bet that you see a lot fewer of these types anymore; many, if not most, lost their butts during the crash, and even now home prices aren't appreciating enough to justify the opportunity costs. I just bought a house(as in I haven't even got my furniture yet), and I saw a number of houses 'fix and flip' types could have made some real money on, but they were nowhere to be seen.
I will agree on the dubious quality of the 'upgrades'. All shine, no substance.
Channelized DSL? No, it's called 'the phone company charges as much for phone + DSL as they do for phone alone'.
As for being listed, I don't particularly want to be, but I will be anyways because they want that $2/month fee to NOT be listed. Too bad I can't just say 'no' on the month they're finalizing the listing to send to the printers.
The boosters I've looked at are much cheaper, but don't do frequency shifting; you need a certain minimum Db difference between the indoor antenna and the outdoor one otherwise you can get feedback.
frequency shifting would indeed be a reason to get the techs involved; sounds like you were essentially installing a cell tower in the building.
How many non-businesses (aka non-yellow page fodder) still have landlines?
LOTS of people, apparently, going by how thick the white pages still are.
For example, my parents ended up getting one because it's essentially free with their internet and their house is a cell dead zone. I'm getting one because they didn't want to disclose that a dry line is possible for DSL.
however, if a cell site is propagating signal just fine, but some joe is extending its signal five miles beyond its expected range, and another joe is pulling from him another two miles away
That is unlikely. These boosters are two antenna jobs - normally a directional mounted outside pointed at the closest tower, and a small omni inside (or a plate type on an appropriate wall). The gain on the inside is such that only really close phones will pick it up. The setup I was looking at would have gotten my house, and maybe a bit of the yard - when the next closest tower was ~30 miles away.
I can see requiring FCC certification and some electronics to make sure the booster plays nice by providing automatic gain control and such, so the booster isn't blasting numerous towers with it's max 4 watts of power if it isn't necessary.
As far as I know, what AT&T and Verizon are selling are 'microcells', basically miniature cell towers that convert your phone's signal to VOIP to get to their network; it uses your home's internet connection.
These are a bit distinct from cell phone boosters, which still has you using your phone company's towers by taking your phone's (likely) .25 watt max power signal and amplifying it to the maximum legal power of 2-4 watts*, often using a directional antenna mounted somewhere outside - like the roof.
This would be fine and dandy at my old place which was like 30 miles from the closest tower. Not so good at my parents, who are in some sort of 'signal depression' such that they have even less signal inside, but lots on the roof, the antenna is only about a mile away. Still, most have automatic gain control, so while one on my house might use the full strength(it's got a lot of distance to cover), even with a directional antenna to give me 4-5 bars, my parents might 'whisper', only needing to avoid the interference that the house adds combined with a better line of sight with the added height of the roof.
I did quite a bit of research on boosters because, well, I had lousy signal in my old(rural) place, but balked at the $500 to do a proper job of it, and it was before microcells started becoming available. Then I found out my job was moving me, and it became academic.
*Actual level dependent upon frequency, country, and other factors.
I'm waiting for it to happen. This issue has been brought up before, both in the context of airports and elsewhere.
You'd be surprised. Phone books are heavy items, the USPS would charge a hefty fee for them.
They're printed in such quantity and they're paid by the book delivered, it's quicker and cheaper to just use the trucks.
Heck, in many of my areas phone book delivery is done by *VOLUNTEERS*. (scratches head).
Now, that's something that'd likely go away if the white pages does, because with the white pages you can argue that you're delivering useful information to said elders and luddites. Well, at least useful, non-commercial information - you can argue that the ad-ridden yellow pages can pay for it's own delivery.
I'm surprised fewer people haven't tried to tap this power source.
It's because the number of amps you can draw this way is rather pathetic; even less than a PoE hookup. Try to draw too much and the system thinks there's a short and shuts your line off.
There was an advertisement for an adapter that showed somebody powering a vacuum off the phone line circulating a few years back(done in a 60's style), but I'm not sure if it was a 60's hoax or a more modern one.
Oh, and I once had a cordless phone that had a spare battery charger in the base - the neat thing was that the base would use that battery in a power outage to keep working.
As others have stated - the trees for this are purpose grown for it. Fewer trees used for phone books = fewer trees grown.
Personally, I view it as he's doing his part for carbon sequestriation. ;)
We don't have recycling centers in my area; pretty much the best you get is incinerators designed to deliver heat and/or power. It'd actually waste resources taking them somewhere to be recycled otherwise.
Not everyone has a computer, not everyone has one with a CD(today). I'm still waiting on internet service at home; the phonebook has been a lifesaver at the moment.
I picked a couple up at the local telephone company store, they just have a bin of them, a lot like how JCPenny and Sears would have a stack of catalogs.
Perhaps we can keep them, but do we need to print them every year anymore? Oh, and I'd say that since cell phone users have unlisted numbers by default, their usefullness is declining. Many younger people don't have home phones today, and that age is rising. Taxes on it are insane.
I'll 'have' residential phone service because it came bundled with my internet*(any day now!). Still, there's no phone hooked up to it, so when it gets listed it'll just ring and ring. Maybe give direct them to the default mailbox that I won't monitor. Worse than useless, but I'll be in the whitepages because it'd cost $2/month for me NOT to be in there. Once I get more settled, I'm going to start calling to see if I can get the phone itself shut off - even if it only saves me the taxes, that'd likely be $12/month or so.
*Better deal than cable, with which they'd effectively require me to buy cable, and the local cable has caps that the average slashdotter would bust without trying.
On this topic, wasn't it just last week that we had a article about the lawsuit "yellow pages" brought against Seattle because they created an opt-out list? They claimed it was 'freedom of speech' to toss one on every doorstop?
- Personally, I still use the whitepages AND yellowpages occasionally. Especially when I'm new to a city(happens to me more than most).
if takin pictures of my junk through my pants is so important why are they not at every airport
They're expensive, specialized pieces of equipment. It's a bit like asking that every police car be replaced in the next 12 months - it's just not going to happen. Instead, they deploy them into 'target' areas first, using them in random screenings as they get more off the assembly line to deploy to more areas and to increase numbers until, theoretically, they can screen everybody.
Personally, I'm for taking the opposite direction - I first proposed it years ago - 'NRA Airlines - 10% discount for open carry!'. Load from the tarmac(can't use common terminals, obviously). Get some guys with names like Hans and Franz to help the disabled on board. Have some retired(but still with good noses) bomb dogs to check the people and baggage. Issue glasers to everybody if necessary, armor the cockpit door/wall. Let the stewardesses carry what they want, with a preference towards select fire PDW(P-90, for example). Expert shot is a hiring requirement. Pay them good.
I was thinking 'in the commercial world' - English majors are mostly an 'internal product' of the teaching world. You generally don't become an english major if you're looking for work outside the teaching environment. Which would make for some distortions, since most works in english aren't written by, or even reviewed by, english majors.
That's not to say that I don't value their education and teachings, but that I honestly see more personal value in a technical writing course than I do most literary appreciation type courses. Because I'm NOT going to be the one to write the next great novel - I'm more likely to be trying to write regulations, personal evaluations*, reports, documentation.
*One line bullet statements; it's not real english.
Thing is, by the time you figure in the cost of a shuttle servicing, we could have sent up another hubble every 2 servicings or so. Especially once you started 'mass producing' them. At which point we'd have multiple hubbles, even if some are degraded, for about the same resource cost.
It'd be a different matter if we could service satellites from the ISS using some sort of pure space craft, just using the shuttle or Russian cargo pod to deliver parts and such.
This, as with many other space and military projects tend to be hammered with cost overruns, both in part due to it being technology development- you're nearly always going to run into unexpected problems, and a failure to fund them sufficiently. It costs money to idle a project, and that 'idle' cost can be in the millions for something like a satellite. Controlled storage, parts degrading over time and needing to be replaced because they no longer have the operational lifespan to do the mission because the satellite has been sitting on the ground for an extra decade or so. By which time you need to redesign parts because it's no longer 'state of the art'.
Not just that, they'll point out every little spot where employees failed to follow policy in anything related to the incident - some listed such as NOT using the engineered solution. That smacks of 'middle management looking to meet it's goals' to me. They'll hang the local boss out to dry, insulating the top executives who were going to go with the 'properly engineered solution' over the alternative the local team decided to use instead when they thought the delivered parts were incorrect.
except, maybe, to take measures to insulate themselves from repercussions
Thing is, how do you insulate yourself from these sorts of repercussions? In the case of an oil company, it's that you do pretty much whatever is necessary to prevent a well blowout like this from happening again.
Why? It's bad publicity, it costs money to clean up, you're not making money from the oil from that well, etc...
The cost of having to deal with even a rare blowout, compared to the cost of safety equipment, is such that it's nearly always better to spend the money on the safety equipment, studies, and engineering solutions than to screw up and have a major leak.
Even if the executives are moustache twirling evil, they're still driven by profit. Oil dumped in the ocean is oil that they can't sell, which costs them money. They don't want that.
I'd rather see money go directly to the publishers than to some place like Gamestop that gouges their customers for 200-500% markups on used games.
I'd be careful here; 200% markup might actually be REASONABLE once you figure that normal markup is often 100% for NEW merchandise from the distributer, which ends up having a 5-10% profit margin once you include all the retail costs. Costs such as labor, insurance, lease, theft, utilities, taxes, bookkeeping, loans, etc...
A used goods* store is also going to have to perform quality control checks(more labor), provide missing parts like cases if the seller didn't keep them, finance any guarantees themselves. Heck, any defective products that are returned come out of their pocket; not the manufacturer/distributer's.
*Because this isn't restricted to games.
Unless you also bought the pavement outside of your property,
In many jurisdictions, the sidewalk ouside a building is part of the plot and the maintenance of it is the responsability of the owner of said plot. There's just a permanent easement/requirement attached to the land.
Besides, his store might have a 'walk up' path due to minimum setback requirements(in case they need to widen the road).
In either case, 'immediately outside the door' would indeed be areas that he could legitimately ask somebody to 'move along'.
He did specify selling MULTIPLE games though.
Things like craigslist is good for relatively common items, but the store has the advantage of allowing you to KNOW that you can sell them something RIGHT NOW, same with buying. You also get at least some guarantee.
Still, for the 'informed consumer' who is willing to wait a week or more and perhaps drive somewhere else to pick it up to get a better price, it's the better option.
Just beware of scams. Not that used game stores aren't scammey, but they don't get as bad as some of the ebay/craigslist scams I've heard about.
I wouldn't be surprised if that 10-30% is HALF of the cost of the original distribution model; there it'd be like 30% store, 20% distributer, plus you have to pay production costs to make physical copies of the game. They've gotten a lot cheaper these days, but you're still looking at 5-10% of the price of the game for printing a DVD, case, manual*, and box.
What I think is really crazy is only 'discounting' e-books like 10% over the HARDCOVER price. I know their expenses for those are a lot less, plus you can kill the resale market, etc...
Plus, I can get most hardcovers/books for at least 30-50% off by waiting for a sale, which makes them still cheaper than an ebook. Get a clue. There's a reason I've dumped like $600 into Baen ebooks(I have like a thousand of them), vs $30 for the other publishers(around 6 books right now). Some people might not like Baen's niche, but I like many of them well enough, and I want to encourage their publishing model as much as possible. Anybody think it's weird that the company that basically specializes in 'right wing/libertarian scifi' is the one offering cheap, DRM free ebooks with an extensive free book selection?
*Yes, even the little pamplets that they call 'manuals' these days.
Oh very true, but it sounds like they finished negotiations on the way to the door...
FTGP:
and the two of them left the store happy
As long as they didn't give enough information for a lifetime ban, even then, the bad rap they could get by being excessively hostile could far outweigh the lost profit.
Though trying to sell your goods just outside might be a bit crass and get them to try something.
Then again - that something might be 'more money for your games' - it might be cheaper to pay you double what they'd normally pay just to get rid of you.