Re:If it's not free it must be.... EVIL MUHAHAHAHA
on
War Car Offers Wi-Fi
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· Score: 2
So, by your very admission, the current broadband model doesn't work
No, it works fine for people who don't abuse it. If your bandwidth needs are different, then get a different service.
What's wrong with taking the total bandwidth available to the ISP and dividing that up by the number of users wanting bandwidth at the moment?
That's basically how it works -- within reason. But "users" is based on one user. When you have pigs at the trough how try and pack 100 users into their one allotment (at the price of a single user), then you have a problem. Hell, why even sign up with the cable company? Why not just have one person for the whole neighborhood sign (for $75/month) and let the whole neighborhood feed off that?
This may come as a surprise to you, but the bandwidth costs money. The maintenance of the lines costs money. Support personnel, routers, etc, costs money.
Why are you so unwilling to actually PAY for a service that you use? Why do you think that everyone else should foot the bill for YOUR services?
Re:If it's not free it must be.... EVIL MUHAHAHAHA
on
War Car Offers Wi-Fi
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· Score: 2
But those nasty DSL/Cable ToS's prevent you from doing that.
They would have no problem with it at all... if you were paying for all the bandwidth you're using. If these people want to provide the service, then let them buy a commercial Internet line like every other ISP. Why the hell should I (and the other "home" subscribers) subsidize these idiots so they can "share" their free Internet access?
Funny how if you explain something like this to them, they'll say something like "But... But.. that's expensive!" Well, duh.
Forget DRM, let market forces dictate the business model for business. the consumers is happy, and the business that can adapt are happy.
Forget the police, let the criminals decide whether to steal or not. The criminals are happy, and the citizens that can adapt are happy. The rest will die.
On behalf of the people that actually create things of value in society, rather than people like you who just want to take the work of others, let me say: screw you.
Go to a restaurant in Europe, and the portions are about a third of what they would be in America.
That's because the food is so expensive. When I've travelled to Europe, I was appalled at how expensive everything was. Drinks were particularly expensive. In one place, it was like $8 for a small glass of coke! I would say that food on the average was twice as expensive as the US, and in some places (Switzerland) it was three times.
obesity is so rare as to be statistically insignificant and would attract as many stares as a guy with two heads.
What the hell are you talking about? Clearly you've never been to Germany or Italy. Maybe France, where the portions are so small that you're forced to look like a death-camp victim.
Well, while the answer was a bit abrupt, but I think it was like a physicist trying to answer: "Why is it I can hold a hot steel ball that is 2000 degrees without getting burned?" The answer is "You can't".
In other words, the problem isn't with the laws of physics, the problem is with the questioner's data. Obviously the internal temperature of his make-shift oven isn't 2000 degrees.
...because if all the tin-foil hats that this story will draw were in one physical place, it would draw a lightning strike so huge that it would wipe everyone out in one fell swoop.
I leave it as an exercise to the reader as to what percentage of Slashdot readership would be left.
The last decade of legislation proves that congress doesn't give a rat's ass about sticking to the constitution.
There are always people who are going to try and push past the limits of what they should. The difference is that when it comes to social limits, we have built-in protections in the constitution. You'll note there is no prayer in public schools, and no danger of that EVER happening (if anything, we go overboard on the opposite side). On the other hand, we have absolutely no limits on economic oppression except those imposed by our representatives in congress.
automatically side with big business even in those cases where the business has reduced overall freedom (MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, etc).
While I'm against laws like the DMCA, I think the average Slashdotter REALLY needs to get some perspective on these things. The freedom losses from these issues are TINY compared the great issues of the day. Who cares if you rights to move around music limited? It's just not that important.
And in PARTICULAR, Microsoft is just not that big an issue. If Microsoft was an actual gatekeeper against other software, it would be more significant, but there is loads of competition in the operating system space. People run Microsoft free every day. They have a dominant market share, but they simply aren't a monopoly on the scale of a Standard Oil. That's why so many people, particularly Libertarians (I'm not one, by the way) don't care about the issue -- Microsoft simply isn't that powerful. They could be GONE tomorrow if there was a decent competitor. Microsoft is successful as much by incompetent competition as they are through their own actions.
And for me, the issue of being allowed to think how I want is more important than being allowed to spend how I want.
To be honest, I think you should rethink that philosophy. As a wise man once said, "without economic freedom, all other freedoms are just an intellectual exercise."
Example: The government goes crazy and passes a law requiring prayer in schools. If you don't like it, and have no money, you suffer. If I have money, I send my kids to private school and am able to insulate them from the government.
The government in far more able to control you through high taxation and keeping you poor than by passing laws legislating how you think. As a practical matter, it's much more likely in the United States that you will be economically opprossed than socially oppressed, because we have constitionally laws against social oppression. We have none against economic oppression.
I think you're pretty far off in your understanding of the parties.
These are anti-capitalistic, since capital is a lever of ability, not a measure of it.
Exactly what does measure versus lever have to do with ANYTHING. Libertarians believe in Capitalism, because Capitalism is one of the expressions of freedom (i.e., private ownership, etc). And by the way, a true Libertarian does NOT believe in complete "hands off" of Capitalism, if you think that.
Greens (and Democrats) are socially liberal but economically centrist
GAH!! Greens are NOT "economically centrist". They are usually far-left socialists. Democrats are usually left-to-far-left on economic issues, "left" being defined as more government control, high taxes to support social development and regulation. To be fair, some Democrats are "centrist" in their beliefs, but that's somewhat rare in my experience (in particular, the party is definitely well left).
Republicans are socially conservative or even authoritarian
"Authoritarian"?? You can probably find some authoritarian Republicans, just like you can find authoritarian Democrats, but it's unfair to shed light on the fringe Republicans unless you're also going to include the Democrats. However, it is true that the religious wing of the Republican party is socially conservative, defined as wanting certain elements of morality put into law. I do not include abortion in that, by the way, because abortion is a human rights legal issue, not a social issue (gay marriages are a social issue).
Republicans promote the status quo, are anti-progressive, [...] and pro-monopolistic
That's just flat-out wrong and bigoted. Sorry. Perhaps you would like to rephrase that into non-pejorative terms and we can discuss it rationally.
[Republicans are] pro-capitalistic
That is true, and in-line with Libertarians, although Libertarians are farther along the capitalism axis.
I venture to say that most Libertarians are far more likely to vote for a Republican due to economic issues that to vote for a Green or a Democrat for social issues. Most Libertarians realize that economic freedom is the most important freedom.
I don't know; call me crazy but I care about what my representatives actually believe rather than just wanting "anyone but a Democrat or a Republican". The perfect example of this would be people voting for Ralph Nader. I would be willing to bet that 95% of the people who like Nader have no idea what he believes beyond "he doesn't like corporations" (hint: What he believes is very, very frightening)*.
*And no, Naderites, I don't feel like getting into a debate about Nader. Go learn on your own how brain damaged he is, I'd rather just let him slip into obscurity.
I like the Greens and the Libertarians, I work with those folks on issues, but I don't think that my promoting their individual parties should take precedence over my achieving actual change.
Do you realize that the Greens and Libertarians (as well as the Libertarians and the Democrats) are diametrically opposed in their beliefs in many ways? Greens and Democrats are very pro-government control over the economy (many Greens in particular are socialist), whereas Libertarians are very anti-government control over the economy. As for social issues, there is some minor overlap in certain places, but there is still a lot of differences.
Libertarians are FAR closer to Republicans than they are to Greens or Democrats.
I suggest you actually learn the differences between the parties before considering running for congress.
Re:3500 year old technology
on
Awari Solved
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· Score: 2
Sheesh, the didn't solve the game 3500 years ago. What's so mathematically astounding about it? A game has three possible outcomes: draw, first player to move always win, second player to move always win. None of the outcomes are more "pure" than any of the others./p:
Why do you think anything HAS to have meaning? To be honest, I gave up on the idea of anything anyone does having any intrinsic "meaning" a long time ago. The only reason anything matters at all is because we are genetically programmed to assign meaning to thing in order to maximize our survivability through a stable society.
But hell, isn't that enough? Can't we take pleasure in the "grand machine" that is the universe, and the random chance (through the process of evolution) that produced us? Why do we need a "clockmaker" behind the curtain?
Could Wrox pay professional programming rates? We could not - we would go out of business.
Thank you for that "publisher's view".
I guess I'm not necessarily advocating "programming rates" of $100+/hour or something, but the numbers just don't seem to add up for me.
If the average book is 15 chapters, then you're spending $15,000-$30,000 on writing costs. Let's say it takes a few months of time for an editor to put it all together, and that's another, say, $15K. Typesetting, indexing, another $7K. So rounding up we have a $50K production cost. Books cost about $40-$60 on the average. Let's use $40. Printing, distribution, wholesale, etc, let's say you keep $15. Minus 10% royalty = $11. So based on this, you have to sell around 4500 copies to break even.
I could be wrong, but even so, it can't be that far off. I would imagine that you sell a lot more than 4500 copies of the average book. I would be curious to know how many copies you usually sell of the typical book.
By the way, I'm not trying to take you to task about wanting to make a profit. More power to you, I say, and you seem sincere about wanting everyone to be happy in the transaction. I'm just saying that the rates seem awfully low, at least the rates that were offered to me, and when I figure the numbers, it seems like there is a lot more money there.
You're woefully inadequate at disproving God's existence.
I made no claims about the existence of God. In fact, that was Larry's first premise. I was testing his second premise.
But since you bring it up, it's impossible to prove that God does not exist. However, Occam's Razor would indicate that the probability of God is very low.
You're trying to test a different premise: God is good -- here on this earth in material ways we can detect -- to people who really look for him. Jesus said not to expect that.
That was seemingly Larry's premise: That God is "good" to people in the here and now. If it's not in a material way, then that contradicts Larry's premise, unless you're going to count "peace of mind at not having to think about the issue of God's existence anymore" as God being good to someone.
The Bible never promised riches to those who were faithful.
The point is not riches or whatever, the point is that statistically it's never been shown that religious people have ANY difference in life over non-religious people. If God is really "good to the believers" in SOME way, it should measurable in SOME way.
I actually take offense at that comment but, since you are working from nothing more than conjecture, I'll overlook it.
Sorry, I didn't mean of that personally.
It cannot be considered exploitation if both sides agree to the terms.
Obviously there can be more than financial benefits to this, but the point is that the money they were offering (me, at least) was utterly insulting. The chapter they wanted me to write (I believe it was "Perl in web applications" or something like that) was at least 100 hours for mediocre job, and probably 200 hours for a quality job. $1000/$2000 works out to $10/$20 an hour (or $5/$10). I'm sorry, but that IS slave wage. Now, maybe your deal was better, and it's obviously better if you participate in the royalties.
Having that book on my resume lends a treemendous amount of credence to my abililties and makes my job a lot easier as my clients and co-workers are less likely to second-guess my suggestions.
Honestly, I can appreciate that motivation beyond the financial one. I wrote an article for the C/C++ Users Journal one time, mostly for the experience. I worked my ass off for that article, and it took way more hours than I probably should have spent on it (mostly running timing tests). I got $200 for the article, but I was happy because I wanted the experience.
But after that first experience, like BB King said, "The thrill is gone, baby". Writing a book, even a chapter, is a lot of work, and those wages just aren't going to cut it.
Like you say, it's not exploitive if everyone agrees to it. But would it really cut into Wrox's profits that much to pay professionals something close to a professional rate, rather than counting on the non-monetary rewards?
Oh, and lest I forget, the 10% royalty rate is pretty standard, especially for first-time (unproven) authors.
Well, like you said: few authors get rich being authors. But that doesn't mean they should work for McDonalds wages either.
This is actually a premise we can test, and it's simply false. Many studies have been done comparing religious and non-religious people, and it's never been found that religious people end up with "better luck" (better health, better livelyhood, better children, etc) that non-religious people.
Now, you could argue that perhaps these studies aren't correcting properly for whether someone is "really" looking for God, but at the very least we can assume that if God is "good" to those people, then the effect is pretty subtle.
I think you're off somewhere... Let's try working the math a different, simpler way.
In the inner track, we have 4 inches * PI = about 12 inches. 33 1/3 RPM = 0.5 RPS, or about 6 inches of record per second. 20,000 cycles per second frequency = 20,000 grooves every 6 inches of record or around 3,000 grooves per inch. Based on that, it's still beyond a 1200 dpi scanner, but it's not the insane tolerances you're speaking of, either.
Now, that's for 20,000 Hz. The question is whether a 1200 dpi scanner could pick up enough data to get a very low quality signal.
Well, I think the difference is that we're talking about normally well-paid professionals. It's hard to argue that people of that class are "exploited" when it's their own ego that causes them to be exploited.
Wrox, my love....you helped me realize a life-long dream and for that I am ever thankful. But like my first real girlfriend, you may have popped my cherry, but you're not the one that I'm going to be spending the rest of my life with.
Indeed. That's what they're counting on. To carry the analogy further, it's not unlike a girl who knows you are so desperate to get laid that you'll spend any amount of money to get into her pants. So you wine, dine and travel only to get a modiocre payoff (if anything).
I get the feeling that Wrox trolls the Internet looking for poor, unrecognized saps that they can talk into doing a helluva lot of work for next-to-no money just for the privilege of "being a published author". In my case, I wouldn't mind doing a book, but I'll be damned if I'm going to accept slave wages for it.
Unfortunately, there are probably a LOT of people they can talk into doing it. Oh well; I guess I can't fault them for finding a niche and exploiting it.
If this isn't unusual, then maybe it isn't surprising that most computer books are complete crap. I don't think you are going to get highly qualified people with great writing skills who are going to spend the time necessary to write and debug good in-depth examples for two grand.
I would be interested to know what O'Reilly pays authors, since those books are pretty consistently good.
Slashdot Mirror
So, by your very admission, the current broadband model doesn't work
No, it works fine for people who don't abuse it. If your bandwidth needs are different, then get a different service.
What's wrong with taking the total bandwidth available to the ISP and dividing that up by the number of users wanting bandwidth at the moment?
That's basically how it works -- within reason. But "users" is based on one user. When you have pigs at the trough how try and pack 100 users into their one allotment (at the price of a single user), then you have a problem. Hell, why even sign up with the cable company? Why not just have one person for the whole neighborhood sign (for $75/month) and let the whole neighborhood feed off that?
This may come as a surprise to you, but the bandwidth costs money. The maintenance of the lines costs money. Support personnel, routers, etc, costs money.
Why are you so unwilling to actually PAY for a service that you use? Why do you think that everyone else should foot the bill for YOUR services?
But those nasty DSL/Cable ToS's prevent you from doing that.
They would have no problem with it at all... if you were paying for all the bandwidth you're using. If these people want to provide the service, then let them buy a commercial Internet line like every other ISP. Why the hell should I (and the other "home" subscribers) subsidize these idiots so they can "share" their free Internet access?
Funny how if you explain something like this to them, they'll say something like "But... But.. that's expensive!" Well, duh.
How about what didn't make it to the front page: Robot To Explore Mysterious Pyramid Passage.
They should turn in their geek license for relegating that story off the front page.
Note that there is live TV coverage of the exploration! (Monday/Fox/8pm)
According to the web site, it's going to be on TV 9/16, 8pm (eastern/pacific) on Fox. Pretty cool...
Forget DRM, let market forces dictate the business model for business. the consumers is happy, and the business that can adapt are happy.
Forget the police, let the criminals decide whether to steal or not. The criminals are happy, and the citizens that can adapt are happy. The rest will die.
On behalf of the people that actually create things of value in society, rather than people like you who just want to take the work of others, let me say: screw you.
Go to a restaurant in Europe, and the portions are about a third of what they would be in America.
That's because the food is so expensive. When I've travelled to Europe, I was appalled at how expensive everything was. Drinks were particularly expensive. In one place, it was like $8 for a small glass of coke! I would say that food on the average was twice as expensive as the US, and in some places (Switzerland) it was three times.
obesity is so rare as to be statistically insignificant and would attract as many stares as a guy with two heads.
What the hell are you talking about? Clearly you've never been to Germany or Italy. Maybe France, where the portions are so small that you're forced to look like a death-camp victim.
Well, while the answer was a bit abrupt, but I think it was like a physicist trying to answer: "Why is it I can hold a hot steel ball that is 2000 degrees without getting burned?" The answer is "You can't".
In other words, the problem isn't with the laws of physics, the problem is with the questioner's data. Obviously the internal temperature of his make-shift oven isn't 2000 degrees.
...because if all the tin-foil hats that this story will draw were in one physical place, it would draw a lightning strike so huge that it would wipe everyone out in one fell swoop.
I leave it as an exercise to the reader as to what percentage of Slashdot readership would be left.
The last decade of legislation proves that congress doesn't give a rat's ass about sticking to the constitution.
There are always people who are going to try and push past the limits of what they should. The difference is that when it comes to social limits, we have built-in protections in the constitution. You'll note there is no prayer in public schools, and no danger of that EVER happening (if anything, we go overboard on the opposite side). On the other hand, we have absolutely no limits on economic oppression except those imposed by our representatives in congress.
automatically side with big business even in those cases where the business has reduced overall freedom (MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, etc).
While I'm against laws like the DMCA, I think the average Slashdotter REALLY needs to get some perspective on these things. The freedom losses from these issues are TINY compared the great issues of the day. Who cares if you rights to move around music limited? It's just not that important.
And in PARTICULAR, Microsoft is just not that big an issue. If Microsoft was an actual gatekeeper against other software, it would be more significant, but there is loads of competition in the operating system space. People run Microsoft free every day. They have a dominant market share, but they simply aren't a monopoly on the scale of a Standard Oil. That's why so many people, particularly Libertarians (I'm not one, by the way) don't care about the issue -- Microsoft simply isn't that powerful. They could be GONE tomorrow if there was a decent competitor. Microsoft is successful as much by incompetent competition as they are through their own actions.
And for me, the issue of being allowed to think how I want is more important than being allowed to spend how I want.
To be honest, I think you should rethink that philosophy. As a wise man once said, "without economic freedom, all other freedoms are just an intellectual exercise."
Example: The government goes crazy and passes a law requiring prayer in schools. If you don't like it, and have no money, you suffer. If I have money, I send my kids to private school and am able to insulate them from the government.
The government in far more able to control you through high taxation and keeping you poor than by passing laws legislating how you think. As a practical matter, it's much more likely in the United States that you will be economically opprossed than socially oppressed, because we have constitionally laws against social oppression. We have none against economic oppression.
I think you're pretty far off in your understanding of the parties.
These are anti-capitalistic, since capital is a lever of ability, not a measure of it.
Exactly what does measure versus lever have to do with ANYTHING. Libertarians believe in Capitalism, because Capitalism is one of the expressions of freedom (i.e., private ownership, etc). And by the way, a true Libertarian does NOT believe in complete "hands off" of Capitalism, if you think that.
Greens (and Democrats) are socially liberal but economically centrist
GAH!! Greens are NOT "economically centrist". They are usually far-left socialists. Democrats are usually left-to-far-left on economic issues, "left" being defined as more government control, high taxes to support social development and regulation. To be fair, some Democrats are "centrist" in their beliefs, but that's somewhat rare in my experience (in particular, the party is definitely well left).
Republicans are socially conservative or even authoritarian
"Authoritarian"?? You can probably find some authoritarian Republicans, just like you can find authoritarian Democrats, but it's unfair to shed light on the fringe Republicans unless you're also going to include the Democrats. However, it is true that the religious wing of the Republican party is socially conservative, defined as wanting certain elements of morality put into law. I do not include abortion in that, by the way, because abortion is a human rights legal issue, not a social issue (gay marriages are a social issue).
Republicans promote the status quo, are anti-progressive, [...] and pro-monopolistic
That's just flat-out wrong and bigoted. Sorry. Perhaps you would like to rephrase that into non-pejorative terms and we can discuss it rationally.
[Republicans are] pro-capitalistic
That is true, and in-line with Libertarians, although Libertarians are farther along the capitalism axis.
I venture to say that most Libertarians are far more likely to vote for a Republican due to economic issues that to vote for a Green or a Democrat for social issues. Most Libertarians realize that economic freedom is the most important freedom.
I don't know; call me crazy but I care about what my representatives actually believe rather than just wanting "anyone but a Democrat or a Republican". The perfect example of this would be people voting for Ralph Nader. I would be willing to bet that 95% of the people who like Nader have no idea what he believes beyond "he doesn't like corporations" (hint: What he believes is very, very frightening)*.
*And no, Naderites, I don't feel like getting into a debate about Nader. Go learn on your own how brain damaged he is, I'd rather just let him slip into obscurity.
I like the Greens and the Libertarians, I work with those folks on issues, but I don't think that my promoting their individual parties should take precedence over my achieving actual change.
Do you realize that the Greens and Libertarians (as well as the Libertarians and the Democrats) are diametrically opposed in their beliefs in many ways? Greens and Democrats are very pro-government control over the economy (many Greens in particular are socialist), whereas Libertarians are very anti-government control over the economy. As for social issues, there is some minor overlap in certain places, but there is still a lot of differences.
Libertarians are FAR closer to Republicans than they are to Greens or Democrats.
I suggest you actually learn the differences between the parties before considering running for congress.
Sheesh, the didn't solve the game 3500 years ago. What's so mathematically astounding about it? A game has three possible outcomes: draw, first player to move always win, second player to move always win. None of the outcomes are more "pure" than any of the others./p:
Without God, NOTHING has meaning.
Why do you think anything HAS to have meaning? To be honest, I gave up on the idea of anything anyone does having any intrinsic "meaning" a long time ago. The only reason anything matters at all is because we are genetically programmed to assign meaning to thing in order to maximize our survivability through a stable society.
But hell, isn't that enough? Can't we take pleasure in the "grand machine" that is the universe, and the random chance (through the process of evolution) that produced us? Why do we need a "clockmaker" behind the curtain?
Could Wrox pay professional programming rates? We could not - we would go out of business.
Thank you for that "publisher's view".
I guess I'm not necessarily advocating "programming rates" of $100+/hour or something, but the numbers just don't seem to add up for me.
If the average book is 15 chapters, then you're spending $15,000-$30,000 on writing costs. Let's say it takes a few months of time for an editor to put it all together, and that's another, say, $15K. Typesetting, indexing, another $7K. So rounding up we have a $50K production cost. Books cost about $40-$60 on the average. Let's use $40. Printing, distribution, wholesale, etc, let's say you keep $15. Minus 10% royalty = $11. So based on this, you have to sell around 4500 copies to break even.
I could be wrong, but even so, it can't be that far off. I would imagine that you sell a lot more than 4500 copies of the average book. I would be curious to know how many copies you usually sell of the typical book.
By the way, I'm not trying to take you to task about wanting to make a profit. More power to you, I say, and you seem sincere about wanting everyone to be happy in the transaction. I'm just saying that the rates seem awfully low, at least the rates that were offered to me, and when I figure the numbers, it seems like there is a lot more money there.
You're woefully inadequate at disproving God's existence.
I made no claims about the existence of God. In fact, that was Larry's first premise. I was testing his second premise.
But since you bring it up, it's impossible to prove that God does not exist. However, Occam's Razor would indicate that the probability of God is very low.
You're trying to test a different premise: God is good -- here on this earth in material ways we can detect -- to people who really look for him. Jesus said not to expect that.
That was seemingly Larry's premise: That God is "good" to people in the here and now. If it's not in a material way, then that contradicts Larry's premise, unless you're going to count "peace of mind at not having to think about the issue of God's existence anymore" as God being good to someone.
The Bible never promised riches to those who were faithful.
The point is not riches or whatever, the point is that statistically it's never been shown that religious people have ANY difference in life over non-religious people. If God is really "good to the believers" in SOME way, it should measurable in SOME way.
I actually take offense at that comment but, since you are working from nothing more than conjecture, I'll overlook it.
Sorry, I didn't mean of that personally.
It cannot be considered exploitation if both sides agree to the terms.
Obviously there can be more than financial benefits to this, but the point is that the money they were offering (me, at least) was utterly insulting. The chapter they wanted me to write (I believe it was "Perl in web applications" or something like that) was at least 100 hours for mediocre job, and probably 200 hours for a quality job. $1000/$2000 works out to $10/$20 an hour (or $5/$10). I'm sorry, but that IS slave wage. Now, maybe your deal was better, and it's obviously better if you participate in the royalties.
Having that book on my resume lends a treemendous amount of credence to my abililties and makes my job a lot easier as my clients and co-workers are less likely to second-guess my suggestions.
Honestly, I can appreciate that motivation beyond the financial one. I wrote an article for the C/C++ Users Journal one time, mostly for the experience. I worked my ass off for that article, and it took way more hours than I probably should have spent on it (mostly running timing tests). I got $200 for the article, but I was happy because I wanted the experience.
But after that first experience, like BB King said, "The thrill is gone, baby". Writing a book, even a chapter, is a lot of work, and those wages just aren't going to cut it.
Like you say, it's not exploitive if everyone agrees to it. But would it really cut into Wrox's profits that much to pay professionals something close to a professional rate, rather than counting on the non-monetary rewards?
Oh, and lest I forget, the 10% royalty rate is pretty standard, especially for first-time (unproven) authors.
Well, like you said: few authors get rich being authors. But that doesn't mean they should work for McDonalds wages either.
God is good to people who really look for him.
This is actually a premise we can test, and it's simply false. Many studies have been done comparing religious and non-religious people, and it's never been found that religious people end up with "better luck" (better health, better livelyhood, better children, etc) that non-religious people.
Now, you could argue that perhaps these studies aren't correcting properly for whether someone is "really" looking for God, but at the very least we can assume that if God is "good" to those people, then the effect is pretty subtle.
I think you're off somewhere... Let's try working the math a different, simpler way.
In the inner track, we have 4 inches * PI = about 12 inches. 33 1/3 RPM = 0.5 RPS, or about 6 inches of record per second. 20,000 cycles per second frequency = 20,000 grooves every 6 inches of record or around 3,000 grooves per inch. Based on that, it's still beyond a 1200 dpi scanner, but it's not the insane tolerances you're speaking of, either.
Now, that's for 20,000 Hz. The question is whether a 1200 dpi scanner could pick up enough data to get a very low quality signal.
Well, I think the difference is that we're talking about normally well-paid professionals. It's hard to argue that people of that class are "exploited" when it's their own ego that causes them to be exploited.
Wrox, my love....you helped me realize a life-long dream and for that I am ever thankful. But like my first real girlfriend, you may have popped my cherry, but you're not the one that I'm going to be spending the rest of my life with.
Indeed. That's what they're counting on. To carry the analogy further, it's not unlike a girl who knows you are so desperate to get laid that you'll spend any amount of money to get into her pants. So you wine, dine and travel only to get a modiocre payoff (if anything).
I get the feeling that Wrox trolls the Internet looking for poor, unrecognized saps that they can talk into doing a helluva lot of work for next-to-no money just for the privilege of "being a published author". In my case, I wouldn't mind doing a book, but I'll be damned if I'm going to accept slave wages for it.
Unfortunately, there are probably a LOT of people they can talk into doing it. Oh well; I guess I can't fault them for finding a niche and exploiting it.
If this isn't unusual, then maybe it isn't surprising that most computer books are complete crap. I don't think you are going to get highly qualified people with great writing skills who are going to spend the time necessary to write and debug good in-depth examples for two grand.
I would be interested to know what O'Reilly pays authors, since those books are pretty consistently good.