If you want to sell your book on Amazon (Kindle) like the person of the original article is, you can't take the 70% rate from Amazon. You have to choose their 35% rate instead, so instead of making 70% of $2.99 (their lowest rate), you end up making 35% of $0.99. Not a lot of profit. Granted, the author probably makes a lot more because of the volume of sales, but if you don't sell a lot and have good marketing to boot, you're going to get taken big time.
I think they're pretty close to being right, even if their motives might be somewhat suspect. Personally, I've recently been under the impression that we're an Oligarchistic Republic, or whatever governmental entity that requires bad spelling like I just used..
While I still love my gmail account, I also know of so many stories of people close to me who have lost their gmail accounts due to some weird glitch or choice made by Google. Yet, I'm still a fan of the service and maintain mine. I just don't use it as my main account because I realize that any one time I can probably lose it. Whenever you rely on a service that requires trust in an entity that might not be there tomorrow, or has a tendency to do really weird things without first informing customers, you really have to be careful with what you're doing. That doesn't mean I have to hate gmail, but at the same time it means I'm a lot more careful when dealing with it.
In some cases I agree with you, but consumers are becoming more savvy and investigating purchases before they make them. I know that once I got screwed by a manufacturer, I never bought from that manufacturer again. Instead, I spend a great deal of time online, checking the opinions of other people who have purchased products, and I buy those. At one point, big stores tried to let quality go down and push extended warranties on us. People got smart and started buying better products and laughing at the clerk who pushed the extended warranty. The stuff I buy these days lasts longer than they have in years, mainly because I spend a bit more money and get something of quality that lasts longer.
I still do buy computers more often than other people, but that's just because I am a fan of the latest computer (but draw the line there). I do know that I hold off on buying a computer a little longer than I used to, however, as the increase in capability hasn't been as fast as it used to be.
So they issued a takedown notice. If we want to change these draconian procedures, now is the time for the organization to challenge it in court. That's really the only way it's going to change and takedown notices will cease. Otherwise, if they cave in like so many other people and organizations, then the "Tolkien" people will continue to issue takedown notices.
Unfortunately, to fight it, the person has to have the money, the will and the desire to overturn what, in my opinion, is wrong. But my opinion means nothing as long as the people who have actual cause back down every time there's a challenge. Not that I blame them, but until some legal challenging authority steps in, like an ACLU, this sort of thing is going to continue to happen because they're using their clout of wealth and prestige to push their unilateral control of whatever they deem to be the law.
I so miss the original sci fi channel when it was actually sci fi. It became almost the only channel I was watching on television at one point. When I moved to a new apartment and had to subscribe to cable, I even chose the cable company based on which one offered the Sci Fi Channel. And then Sci Fi turned into what it is now. It kept getting worse, to the point where I don't think the same people own the company any more and someone decided they could profit more by showing cheap crap instead.
There was a 200th episode show of Stargate SG1 that had a mock-up of its own show where they pretended to recreate Stargate SG1 with a more hip, young crowd (the punch line where one of the characters reveals she's pregnant). When Stargate Universe aired, all I could think was they took the joke of that one episode and made it real. They even did the joke from the show where they pretended to shorten the intro of the show to just showing the title, a one note of theme music and then go to commerical, which they did with SG1. Turns out, that's exactly what they did with Stargate Universe as well. It's almost as if they made a joke and then someone saw it and realized, hey that might just work. And of course, it didn't.
What bugs me about this is that there are those of us who use Craigslist a lot for actually buying and selling legitimate things. When I moved to Grand Rapids, I managed to furnish my home with stuff from Craigslist at a fraction of the price it would have cost to buy stuff elsewhere. Unfortunately, when you shut down a service like that, you make it that much harder for the rest of us to connect in order to business with each other. Instead, we end up having to rely on crappy newspaper services where we have no idea what an item looks like because it costs so much more to put a picture with an ad, whereas with Craigslist it's an expectation that you see a picture of the table you're hoping to buy.
Granted, there was a lot of adult stuff on Craigslist that makes it difficult to use a lot of their other services (like trying to start dating, or something like that), but that kind of stuff can easily be ignored. Also, the job ads are quite often scams, which is unfortunate, but fortunately at least parts of Craigslist are legitimate and useful (as long as you remain careful, especially when selling something because you have to avoid the scammers who are attempting to steal your items instead of buy them).
The link in the article, "how you can safeguard your smartphone" actually has zero information about how to safeguard your smartphone. It's all about explaining why you should, not how.
I used to finish games some years back when there was an actual story that you were completing. Fallout 1 and 2 actually had a story that you were going through as part of the game, so finishing it was important. One of the earliest games I ever played was called Starflight, and you literally had to play through to the end to understand why the universe was collapsing upon itself. Knights of the Old Republic had a great story that was worth completing. However, right about the second one came out (Kotor 2), story started to really suffer. The end of that story was atrocious, and I was so disappointed.
I've discovered there aren't a whole lot of games these days that actually have enough of a story invested that I want to find out what happens after. Many games are repetetive, and you just keep killing things over and over again for no reason whatsoever. That gets boring after awhile, so you just stop playing.
The first Mass Effect was like that to me. While I enjoyed the story when it started out, I remember coming almost to the very end and deciding it just wasn't worth completing because I was getting tired of doing the same cookie cutter missions over and over again, in the exact same building but with different nuances to the building's architecture. And Mass Effect was a good game.
I got through about 2/3s of Dragon Age before giving up because the adventure just got too stereotypical, and when I kept finding myself in situations where they wanted me to buy downloadable content to play out adventures, I was too annoyed to continue playing.
I live in one of those areas where we've been stuck with low levels of Internet ability. My housing complex subscribes to Suite Solutions, which has been one of the worst Internet services I've ever had, at prices that are comparable to really good Internet provider services. It rarely works, and on weekends, it just goes out from Friday until some time on Sunday more times than not.
My alternative that the housing complex recommended was AT&T. Yeah, I know, but all commentary aside, it was what I was left with as an option. They signed me up for the medium tier of service, which was supposed to be 1.5 MB for speed but has never been faster than 500 kb ever. Turns out, they weren't able to set up the medium service, but just never bothered to let me know. So I've been stuck at 500 kb for the last year.
A few days ago, Clear moved into our area, and now I'm able to get 5.5 MB as a constant, and it's advertised at 6, so it's not that bad of a claim versus result.
But each one of the crappy services claimed to offer so much more than they delivered, and they have zero remorse for what they do. And they never will.
The problem is that a lot of people don't perceive email or social networking sites to be all that important, yet EVERYONE wants you to create a password for practically everything you do. I don't need a password to sign onto a site to look at stereo equipment, yet they force you to create one on some of those sites. On gaming sites where all I do is talk about games, I don't need 50,000 passwords for the different ones cause I don't care if someone steals my password there.
I don't care that I don't have all that much concern for facebook's password. If someone takes my account, it would be unfortunate, but is it really the end of the world?
Places where it might cause me economic misfortunate, well, those I care about, but everyone out there thinks that their site is so important for passwords.
I'm not an Apple fan, so this isn't one of those responses. However, I do understand that the iPad is a very niche product that has appealed to a segment of the population that is willing to buy yet another Apple product. That same demographic isn't really waiting with baited breath for another brand of tablet. They either bought the Apple one, or they're not going to buy one. Right now, a tablet really doesn't do anything that anyone else needs or desires. If you didn't buy an iPad, chances are pretty good that you're not going to buy someone else's tablet computer because you probably already have your needs met with a laptop. Sure, a few people will buy them as vanity products, but unless they make them so that they do something so awesome, there's really no need. An ereader can be found in anyone of the ones already available, and tablets are already out with the iPad. I almost bought one until I realized I didn't really need one and then bought a new laptop instead.
As an iphone owner, I want to apologize for bringing down the average, because I don't have any partners right now. Either that, or some iPhone owner needs to thank me because he's getting 20 partners to make up for my lack of any partners. So either I'm part of the problem or someone is benefiting at my loss. Either way, I'm not feeling as happy about this report as I should be.
Using the logic of this case, I want to know if I can sue Jessica Alba for divorce. I mean she MIGHT marry me one day and then we MIGHT get divorced. The way I see it is that she can challenge the divorce, and thus, we would have to remain married as a result.
And as a result, I intend to claim my husbandly privileges that go with what is necessary for the consumation of that marriage. If not, I think I have grounds for divorce, and then she owes me some money.
All negatives aside, it sounds like he learned a very expensive lesson. Or at least here's HOPING he learned a very expensive lesson.
I once got scammed in Ultima Online in a way that I never saw it coming. Learned an important lesson that I never allowed to repeat itself. Almost quit the game that day, but then realized it was just a game, people can be crappy, and you just have to move on or let it consume you to death.
At first, I thought the "pirate" attack in this story was piracy, as in someone using code to steal his stuff, but this was just a part of the game, so can't say I have a lot of compassion for the lesson that should be learned here.
As one of those very few people who purchases every game he plays, I know I don't answer for everyone who does this, but I do want to say that there are certain things that matter to me when it comes to my purchases.
First, the game has to be good. I used to buy practically every game that was released. And then games started to get really cheezy and selective. They started catering towards an audience to which I do not belong. And this is the rub. I think it started to cater to an audience that selectively likes to pirate games. Think about that for a moment. A lot of this tends to be RTS and FPS types of crowds, which on a simple psychological profile leads one to believe that if people are competitive with each other, then perhaps there's something to be said for those same people attempting to "game" the system. Now, this wouldn't translate to everyone, but having worked in the gaming industry, I used to see a lot of game designers and game staff who fit this mold, and there was a lot of stealing of games within the industry itself. But it rarely happened in other parts of the community, like the turn based strategy crowd or even the rpg crowd.
What I think has happened is that the big wigs that make games have heard the most chatter from the people who tend to be more prone to pirating games, and they continued to make games for that crowd, thinking that somehow they would be able to get those guys to actually pay money when they normally would not.
The gaming industry has changed a lot, and I think the more that it continues to go down the path it has is going to lead to more and more piracy because we're selling to people who don't normally buy.
Meanwhile, the rpg and turn-based strategy crowds seem to be dying off because no one makes games for them, or the few that do get made or either knock offs of previous games (Civilization XIX, or whatever number), but very little strong innovation, other than an occasional title here and there, like Dragon Age or Mass Effect, which will both start becoming continuous sequels.
The strange thing, to me, is that the people who do buy games are rarely communicated with and cast off as outsiders, yet the loudest, nonpaying crowd gets the most attention. A PR person would have a stroke if he had to deal with that environment, but for some reason that's the entire industry.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to sell your book on Amazon (Kindle) like the person of the original article is, you can't take the 70% rate from Amazon. You have to choose their 35% rate instead, so instead of making 70% of $2.99 (their lowest rate), you end up making 35% of $0.99. Not a lot of profit. Granted, the author probably makes a lot more because of the volume of sales, but if you don't sell a lot and have good marketing to boot, you're going to get taken big time.
I think they're pretty close to being right, even if their motives might be somewhat suspect. Personally, I've recently been under the impression that we're an Oligarchistic Republic, or whatever governmental entity that requires bad spelling like I just used..
While I still love my gmail account, I also know of so many stories of people close to me who have lost their gmail accounts due to some weird glitch or choice made by Google. Yet, I'm still a fan of the service and maintain mine. I just don't use it as my main account because I realize that any one time I can probably lose it. Whenever you rely on a service that requires trust in an entity that might not be there tomorrow, or has a tendency to do really weird things without first informing customers, you really have to be careful with what you're doing. That doesn't mean I have to hate gmail, but at the same time it means I'm a lot more careful when dealing with it.
In some cases I agree with you, but consumers are becoming more savvy and investigating purchases before they make them. I know that once I got screwed by a manufacturer, I never bought from that manufacturer again. Instead, I spend a great deal of time online, checking the opinions of other people who have purchased products, and I buy those. At one point, big stores tried to let quality go down and push extended warranties on us. People got smart and started buying better products and laughing at the clerk who pushed the extended warranty. The stuff I buy these days lasts longer than they have in years, mainly because I spend a bit more money and get something of quality that lasts longer. I still do buy computers more often than other people, but that's just because I am a fan of the latest computer (but draw the line there). I do know that I hold off on buying a computer a little longer than I used to, however, as the increase in capability hasn't been as fast as it used to be.
So they issued a takedown notice. If we want to change these draconian procedures, now is the time for the organization to challenge it in court. That's really the only way it's going to change and takedown notices will cease. Otherwise, if they cave in like so many other people and organizations, then the "Tolkien" people will continue to issue takedown notices. Unfortunately, to fight it, the person has to have the money, the will and the desire to overturn what, in my opinion, is wrong. But my opinion means nothing as long as the people who have actual cause back down every time there's a challenge. Not that I blame them, but until some legal challenging authority steps in, like an ACLU, this sort of thing is going to continue to happen because they're using their clout of wealth and prestige to push their unilateral control of whatever they deem to be the law.
I so miss the original sci fi channel when it was actually sci fi. It became almost the only channel I was watching on television at one point. When I moved to a new apartment and had to subscribe to cable, I even chose the cable company based on which one offered the Sci Fi Channel. And then Sci Fi turned into what it is now. It kept getting worse, to the point where I don't think the same people own the company any more and someone decided they could profit more by showing cheap crap instead.
There was a 200th episode show of Stargate SG1 that had a mock-up of its own show where they pretended to recreate Stargate SG1 with a more hip, young crowd (the punch line where one of the characters reveals she's pregnant). When Stargate Universe aired, all I could think was they took the joke of that one episode and made it real. They even did the joke from the show where they pretended to shorten the intro of the show to just showing the title, a one note of theme music and then go to commerical, which they did with SG1. Turns out, that's exactly what they did with Stargate Universe as well. It's almost as if they made a joke and then someone saw it and realized, hey that might just work. And of course, it didn't.
What bugs me about this is that there are those of us who use Craigslist a lot for actually buying and selling legitimate things. When I moved to Grand Rapids, I managed to furnish my home with stuff from Craigslist at a fraction of the price it would have cost to buy stuff elsewhere. Unfortunately, when you shut down a service like that, you make it that much harder for the rest of us to connect in order to business with each other. Instead, we end up having to rely on crappy newspaper services where we have no idea what an item looks like because it costs so much more to put a picture with an ad, whereas with Craigslist it's an expectation that you see a picture of the table you're hoping to buy. Granted, there was a lot of adult stuff on Craigslist that makes it difficult to use a lot of their other services (like trying to start dating, or something like that), but that kind of stuff can easily be ignored. Also, the job ads are quite often scams, which is unfortunate, but fortunately at least parts of Craigslist are legitimate and useful (as long as you remain careful, especially when selling something because you have to avoid the scammers who are attempting to steal your items instead of buy them).
The link in the article, "how you can safeguard your smartphone" actually has zero information about how to safeguard your smartphone. It's all about explaining why you should, not how.
I used to finish games some years back when there was an actual story that you were completing. Fallout 1 and 2 actually had a story that you were going through as part of the game, so finishing it was important. One of the earliest games I ever played was called Starflight, and you literally had to play through to the end to understand why the universe was collapsing upon itself. Knights of the Old Republic had a great story that was worth completing. However, right about the second one came out (Kotor 2), story started to really suffer. The end of that story was atrocious, and I was so disappointed. I've discovered there aren't a whole lot of games these days that actually have enough of a story invested that I want to find out what happens after. Many games are repetetive, and you just keep killing things over and over again for no reason whatsoever. That gets boring after awhile, so you just stop playing. The first Mass Effect was like that to me. While I enjoyed the story when it started out, I remember coming almost to the very end and deciding it just wasn't worth completing because I was getting tired of doing the same cookie cutter missions over and over again, in the exact same building but with different nuances to the building's architecture. And Mass Effect was a good game. I got through about 2/3s of Dragon Age before giving up because the adventure just got too stereotypical, and when I kept finding myself in situations where they wanted me to buy downloadable content to play out adventures, I was too annoyed to continue playing.
My alternative that the housing complex recommended was AT&T. Yeah, I know, but all commentary aside, it was what I was left with as an option. They signed me up for the medium tier of service, which was supposed to be 1.5 MB for speed but has never been faster than 500 kb ever. Turns out, they weren't able to set up the medium service, but just never bothered to let me know. So I've been stuck at 500 kb for the last year.
A few days ago, Clear moved into our area, and now I'm able to get 5.5 MB as a constant, and it's advertised at 6, so it's not that bad of a claim versus result.
But each one of the crappy services claimed to offer so much more than they delivered, and they have zero remorse for what they do. And they never will.
I don't care that I don't have all that much concern for facebook's password. If someone takes my account, it would be unfortunate, but is it really the end of the world?
Places where it might cause me economic misfortunate, well, those I care about, but everyone out there thinks that their site is so important for passwords.
Some places, it's important. Others, not so much.
I'm not an Apple fan, so this isn't one of those responses. However, I do understand that the iPad is a very niche product that has appealed to a segment of the population that is willing to buy yet another Apple product. That same demographic isn't really waiting with baited breath for another brand of tablet. They either bought the Apple one, or they're not going to buy one. Right now, a tablet really doesn't do anything that anyone else needs or desires. If you didn't buy an iPad, chances are pretty good that you're not going to buy someone else's tablet computer because you probably already have your needs met with a laptop. Sure, a few people will buy them as vanity products, but unless they make them so that they do something so awesome, there's really no need. An ereader can be found in anyone of the ones already available, and tablets are already out with the iPad. I almost bought one until I realized I didn't really need one and then bought a new laptop instead.
As an iphone owner, I want to apologize for bringing down the average, because I don't have any partners right now. Either that, or some iPhone owner needs to thank me because he's getting 20 partners to make up for my lack of any partners. So either I'm part of the problem or someone is benefiting at my loss. Either way, I'm not feeling as happy about this report as I should be.
Using the logic of this case, I want to know if I can sue Jessica Alba for divorce. I mean she MIGHT marry me one day and then we MIGHT get divorced. The way I see it is that she can challenge the divorce, and thus, we would have to remain married as a result. And as a result, I intend to claim my husbandly privileges that go with what is necessary for the consumation of that marriage. If not, I think I have grounds for divorce, and then she owes me some money.
All negatives aside, it sounds like he learned a very expensive lesson. Or at least here's HOPING he learned a very expensive lesson. I once got scammed in Ultima Online in a way that I never saw it coming. Learned an important lesson that I never allowed to repeat itself. Almost quit the game that day, but then realized it was just a game, people can be crappy, and you just have to move on or let it consume you to death. At first, I thought the "pirate" attack in this story was piracy, as in someone using code to steal his stuff, but this was just a part of the game, so can't say I have a lot of compassion for the lesson that should be learned here.
lol
Og is smart. Only bad thing happen to Og if leave cave. Grok know this cause Grok leave cave and now wife no give back the remote to the TV.
Unfortunately, we really need to get our shit together on this planet before we start thinking about colonizing others.
As one of those very few people who purchases every game he plays, I know I don't answer for everyone who does this, but I do want to say that there are certain things that matter to me when it comes to my purchases. First, the game has to be good. I used to buy practically every game that was released. And then games started to get really cheezy and selective. They started catering towards an audience to which I do not belong. And this is the rub. I think it started to cater to an audience that selectively likes to pirate games. Think about that for a moment. A lot of this tends to be RTS and FPS types of crowds, which on a simple psychological profile leads one to believe that if people are competitive with each other, then perhaps there's something to be said for those same people attempting to "game" the system. Now, this wouldn't translate to everyone, but having worked in the gaming industry, I used to see a lot of game designers and game staff who fit this mold, and there was a lot of stealing of games within the industry itself. But it rarely happened in other parts of the community, like the turn based strategy crowd or even the rpg crowd. What I think has happened is that the big wigs that make games have heard the most chatter from the people who tend to be more prone to pirating games, and they continued to make games for that crowd, thinking that somehow they would be able to get those guys to actually pay money when they normally would not. The gaming industry has changed a lot, and I think the more that it continues to go down the path it has is going to lead to more and more piracy because we're selling to people who don't normally buy. Meanwhile, the rpg and turn-based strategy crowds seem to be dying off because no one makes games for them, or the few that do get made or either knock offs of previous games (Civilization XIX, or whatever number), but very little strong innovation, other than an occasional title here and there, like Dragon Age or Mass Effect, which will both start becoming continuous sequels. The strange thing, to me, is that the people who do buy games are rarely communicated with and cast off as outsiders, yet the loudest, nonpaying crowd gets the most attention. A PR person would have a stroke if he had to deal with that environment, but for some reason that's the entire industry.