The problem isn't with the intent, per se, the problem is with the RIAA's methods - a bunch of ex-cops in RIAA jackets go up to a guy selling stuff on the street raid-style, scare the shit outta him, make him sign a "They didn't do anything illegal, honest, my goods were given over voluntarily" document and confiscate their discs. They have no right to do this. They're not police or an authority designated by the government, they're pinkertons hired by the RIAA to enforce their rules. This is wholeheartedly illegal (impersonating a police officer, etc.)
I'm all for the taking down of the major bootleggers, but this is utterly criminal. These people have zero authority to enforce any laws, anywhere. It's a PR blitz that will hopefully backfire.
I thought the article was going to be about some wacked out church claiming to have scientific proof that you don't get to go to heaven if you die in an airbag-equipped car.
If you don't care about the bookselling business stop reading now.:)
kinda like publishers who put out the hardcover for the the $30 crowd and then eight months later release a paperback for the $7 folks.
That analogy is absolutely correct and I applaud you for making it. However the specifics are a bit dated as to how the book market now functions.
It's true, that was the way the publishing industry worked a little over a decade ago, but things are slightly different now.
There used to be two different kinds of books - hardcovers (designed to take a beating) and mass markets (designed to be thrown away). Mass markets were approx. 1/3 the price of hardcovers.
But the publishers started to realize that there was another category of book buyer out there - people who wanted books to last but didn't want to pay hardcover prices. So the Trade Paperback was invented. Trades cost about half the price of a hardcover and are more sturdily constructed than mass markets.
Current books rarely hit the $7 price point you mentioned unless they're niche markets (sci fi, horror and romance in particular), they're INSANELY popular (Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler and the like) or they're classics (ie, in the public domain).
This isn't really a problem except that in the last few years book quality (the physical object, not the writing - that's a completely different rant) has decreased dramatically, so people are buying trade paper because of the illusion of permanence (and because they're less weight to tote around. Books are still primarily a portable medium). This feels kinda cheap to me.
Like I said, you weren't wrong by any means and the analogy still holds. Just being...well, a booknerd.:)
Avoiding the sci-fi -tech journal swing of this thread, here's a list of extremely good stuff that practically no one's heard of:
James Frey: A Million Little Pieces
A memoir dealing with the author's time in rehab. Very, very raw. Extremely inventive writing style.
Colin Dexter: Train
Set in the 50's, Dexter weaves the lives of a cop, the wife of a murder victim, a black caddy and his friend in a decidedly creepy way. Bagger Vance this ain't.
Paul Auster: Oracle Night
When a book takes over your life. This modern-day fairy tale shows off auster's flair for the...well, the odd. Auster use footnotes to tell two stories at a time...it's kinda hard to describe, but it works.
I'm sure there are more, but I've gotta head to work.
The DaVinci is...well, it's clever, but that's about it. It's a cute idea, sure, but the characters are one dimentional and wooden, the writing leaves absolutely no room for interpretation. It's a solid read, sure, but Best Books of 2003? Meh. Not for me. YMMV, of course.
Jack Hitt did a story on Diebold for This American Life a few weeks back. It's a good listen and neatly sums up all the problems with untrusted computerized voting. I know WE know what the issues are, but it's refreshing to see this out in the public eye.
A description of the show and a realaudio stream (yeah yeah, I know) is available here.
the one thing apple does diffrent then the rest of the it world is that they sellan experience, not a machine, not a os but an experience...
There are only two ways to sell a product: by what it does or by how it makes the target feel.
Before 1950 or so, a car was a machine, nothing more. If it broke, you fixed it. If the paint was chipping, the bumpers dented, the windows permanently stuck closed and the antenna bent (or something), it didn't matter. What couldn't be fixed was tolerated because it still did what it was designed to do - it got you from one place to another.
But the problem with that business model is that it doesn't make all that much money for the car manufacturers - when one bought a car, the didn't buy another one for a long, long time. A change was needed to make a car (an incredibly expensive machine by all rights) a commodity.
So the the car manufacturers started talking about how a car made the drivers feel. They eroticized a tool, changed a car into a status symbol.
the point being that Apple's 'selling of an experience' isn't by any means a revolution in marketing. They're just extremely good at it.
I don't think it's unreasonable that those who "do the crime" should be subject to increased public scrutiny for at least 10 years, until they've proven that they're not likely to be repeat offenders.
NO.
Should they be looked after? Sure. Weekly meetings with a psychologist, random house calls from a social worker/psychopathologist, a phone call now and again from the local law enforcement agency. But there is absolutely no reason for this information to be available to the public. The offender has served their time according to the law and should be given as much privacy within reason as is deemed safe. Putting this information into the hands of the public is a lynch mob waiting to happen.
You want to know what an area is like? Read the goddamn papers for awhile before you buy a house, it'll give you a much better picture of what the place is like than a list. I'm all for governmental accountability/transparency, but this is WAY over the line.
mostly because 1. I don't live alone (yet) and my roommate needed the phone and 2. my cell reception is miserable in my apartment. AT&T Wireless + pre-war tenement = suck.
I had broadband. I cancelled it a few months ago. Last week, I got it back and killed my landline instead and it's all because of money.
Dialup requirements:
Local phone service - $20/month plus 10c per call is approx. $35
Long Distance - approx. $15 at 5c a minute
ISP - $15/month
TOTAL: $65
Broadband:
Cable internet access: $41/month
And that's it. I couldn't believe I was actually paying more for dialup when I did the math. Now I use my cell for calls. I have fewer bills to pay and don't now feel like I'm getting hosed.
Those little digital tourguides are the most annoying and grating objects I've ever seen in a museum. The speakers are either open air or cheap headphones, neither of which does a particularly good job of shielding the rest of us from the noise, particularly when you're surrounded by two dozen of them and they all have the volume cranked up to fucking 15. You walk through the museum perpetually surrounded by this high-pitched buzz.
I go to a museum to see the art, not be annoyed by loud, stupid people. I go to a show to hear the music, not be annoyed by flashing PDAs and stupid people.
Do you have any idea how freaky it is to be looking at all this stuff when you stumble across this picture, and realize it was taken outside your fucking job? You almost gave me a heart attack.;)
For historical books I understand this stuff completely, but I'm still trying to figure out why we don't print new books on plastic yet.
It's not like it's not possible - there's a book of water-related erotica (called Aqua erotica, I think) that's completely waterproof and not in a kid's floating bath-book sense. It's printed completely on plastic and it's not all that much more expensive than a normal trade paper novel. The pages almost feel like paper, too.
Ever try to get a minimum wage job when you have a BS degree?
Have you tried working at a bookstore? They crave people like that because they're smart and desperate. Sounds like a joke; it's not - I used to work with a guy at Shakespeare and Company who had a masters in english lit and was making 6.25 an hour like the rest of us.:)
...so what happens when you switch from a mouse to a trackball? I can't imagine the physical actions are that similar and must throw off the measurements somewhere.
Watch the "running down the street to punch each other" scene. Notice they're running, running...suddenly they're standing still for the slow motion shot? Messy.
No dude, it's just a trailer. How many times have you seen the best 30 seconds of a movie strung together in a reasonably coherent fashion for an ad? It's the same thing here. Yes, it was a bad cut, but it was a bad cut in the trailer, not the movie. I'll bet you those two shots don't even come concurrently in the actual film.
hit the comic section of the local Barnes and Noble and you will see what is newly available...
Your local Barnes and Noble has a comics section? I'm envious. Here in NYC, B&N considered comics to be too high-risk for theft and removed them. There's a "Graphic Novels" section, but it's like the bastard child of the store - when I worked there nobody knew where to put the damn thing. The guidelines said they should go in art, but people tended to look for them in Fiction. In the end, graphic novels were split up based on content; Maus went in Judaica, etc.
You'd get better service at a comicbookstore anyway.:P
I won't join the ACLU because they seem rather keen on taking away my freedoms, such as the freedoms of my children to practice their religion in public places.
You got proof that the ACLU has tried to do that? I'd like to see it. We ARE talking about the same ACLU that stood up for a website the federal government claims incited a murder, right? The same ACLU that defended the KKK? I can believe they campaigned against kids being LED in prayer in public schools, but I highly doubt they tried to ban how they choose to express their faith.
amen to that. Friends of mine at college came home one night with a HUGE glass-topped dinner table. The glass was easily 3/4" thick and must've weighed 40 pounds, let alone the base. The amazing thing is they managed to steal if off of someone's PORCH.
No, I take that back; the amazing thing was that none of them knew where it had come from when they woke up the following afternoon.
I was a part of one of these, and let me tell you it was a riot. One of the rules was you couldn't initiate conversation with anyone and that answers to questions were scripted. We stayed together for 5 minutes and dispersed, no one having said a word. It was surreal but wonderful, especially the looks on the normal people's faces, trying to figure out exactly what was going on.
Slashdot Mirror
You're missing the point, I think.
The problem isn't with the intent, per se, the problem is with the RIAA's methods - a bunch of ex-cops in RIAA jackets go up to a guy selling stuff on the street raid-style, scare the shit outta him, make him sign a "They didn't do anything illegal, honest, my goods were given over voluntarily" document and confiscate their discs. They have no right to do this. They're not police or an authority designated by the government, they're pinkertons hired by the RIAA to enforce their rules. This is wholeheartedly illegal (impersonating a police officer, etc.)
I'm all for the taking down of the major bootleggers, but this is utterly criminal. These people have zero authority to enforce any laws, anywhere. It's a PR blitz that will hopefully backfire.
Triv
I thought the article was going to be about some wacked out church claiming to have scientific proof that you don't get to go to heaven if you die in an airbag-equipped car.
Crummy mars robot spoiling my fun.
Triv
The page is in Korean, but most of the product descriptions in the pictures are in English.
Funny, looks like smoke signals from over here.
If you don't care about the bookselling business stop reading now. :)
kinda like publishers who put out the hardcover for the the $30 crowd and then eight months later release a paperback for the $7 folks.
That analogy is absolutely correct and I applaud you for making it. However the specifics are a bit dated as to how the book market now functions.
It's true, that was the way the publishing industry worked a little over a decade ago, but things are slightly different now.
There used to be two different kinds of books - hardcovers (designed to take a beating) and mass markets (designed to be thrown away). Mass markets were approx. 1/3 the price of hardcovers.
But the publishers started to realize that there was another category of book buyer out there - people who wanted books to last but didn't want to pay hardcover prices. So the Trade Paperback was invented. Trades cost about half the price of a hardcover and are more sturdily constructed than mass markets.
Current books rarely hit the $7 price point you mentioned unless they're niche markets (sci fi, horror and romance in particular), they're INSANELY popular (Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler and the like) or they're classics (ie, in the public domain).
This isn't really a problem except that in the last few years book quality (the physical object, not the writing - that's a completely different rant) has decreased dramatically, so people are buying trade paper because of the illusion of permanence (and because they're less weight to tote around. Books are still primarily a portable medium). This feels kinda cheap to me.
Like I said, you weren't wrong by any means and the analogy still holds. Just being...well, a booknerd. :)
Triv
James Frey: A Million Little Pieces
A memoir dealing with the author's time in rehab. Very, very raw. Extremely inventive writing style.
Colin Dexter: Train
Set in the 50's, Dexter weaves the lives of a cop, the wife of a murder victim, a black caddy and his friend in a decidedly creepy way. Bagger Vance this ain't.
Paul Auster: Oracle Night
When a book takes over your life. This modern-day fairy tale shows off auster's flair for the...well, the odd. Auster use footnotes to tell two stories at a time...it's kinda hard to describe, but it works.
I'm sure there are more, but I've gotta head to work.
Triv
The DaVinci is...well, it's clever, but that's about it. It's a cute idea, sure, but the characters are one dimentional and wooden, the writing leaves absolutely no room for interpretation. It's a solid read, sure, but Best Books of 2003? Meh. Not for me. YMMV, of course.
Triv
Jack Hitt did a story on Diebold for This American Life a few weeks back. It's a good listen and neatly sums up all the problems with untrusted computerized voting. I know WE know what the issues are, but it's refreshing to see this out in the public eye.
A description of the show and a realaudio stream (yeah yeah, I know) is available here.
Triv
the one thing apple does diffrent then the rest of the it world is that they sellan experience, not a machine, not a os but an experience...
There are only two ways to sell a product: by what it does or by how it makes the target feel.
Before 1950 or so, a car was a machine, nothing more. If it broke, you fixed it. If the paint was chipping, the bumpers dented, the windows permanently stuck closed and the antenna bent (or something), it didn't matter. What couldn't be fixed was tolerated because it still did what it was designed to do - it got you from one place to another.
But the problem with that business model is that it doesn't make all that much money for the car manufacturers - when one bought a car, the didn't buy another one for a long, long time. A change was needed to make a car (an incredibly expensive machine by all rights) a commodity.
So the the car manufacturers started talking about how a car made the drivers feel. They eroticized a tool, changed a car into a status symbol.
the point being that Apple's 'selling of an experience' isn't by any means a revolution in marketing. They're just extremely good at it.
Triv
I don't think it's unreasonable that those who "do the crime" should be subject to increased public scrutiny for at least 10 years, until they've proven that they're not likely to be repeat offenders.
NO.
Should they be looked after? Sure. Weekly meetings with a psychologist, random house calls from a social worker/psychopathologist, a phone call now and again from the local law enforcement agency. But there is absolutely no reason for this information to be available to the public. The offender has served their time according to the law and should be given as much privacy within reason as is deemed safe. Putting this information into the hands of the public is a lynch mob waiting to happen.
You want to know what an area is like? Read the goddamn papers for awhile before you buy a house, it'll give you a much better picture of what the place is like than a list. I'm all for governmental accountability/transparency, but this is WAY over the line.
Triv
Triv
Triv
I had broadband. I cancelled it a few months ago. Last week, I got it back and killed my landline instead and it's all because of money.
Dialup requirements:
Local phone service - $20/month plus 10c per call is approx. $35
Long Distance - approx. $15 at 5c a minute
ISP - $15/month TOTAL: $65
Broadband:
Cable internet access: $41/month
And that's it. I couldn't believe I was actually paying more for dialup when I did the math. Now I use my cell for calls. I have fewer bills to pay and don't now feel like I'm getting hosed.
Triv
I go to a museum to see the art, not be annoyed by loud, stupid people. I go to a show to hear the music, not be annoyed by flashing PDAs and stupid people.
Do you have any idea how freaky it is to be looking at all this stuff when you stumble across this picture, and realize it was taken outside your fucking job? You almost gave me a heart attack. ;)
Triv
It's not like it's not possible - there's a book of water-related erotica (called Aqua erotica, I think) that's completely waterproof and not in a kid's floating bath-book sense. It's printed completely on plastic and it's not all that much more expensive than a normal trade paper novel. The pages almost feel like paper, too.
Just something to thing about.
Triv
Ever try to get a minimum wage job when you have a BS degree?
Have you tried working at a bookstore? They crave people like that because they're smart and desperate. Sounds like a joke; it's not - I used to work with a guy at Shakespeare and Company who had a masters in english lit and was making 6.25 an hour like the rest of us. :)
Triv
...so what happens when you switch from a mouse to a trackball? I can't imagine the physical actions are that similar and must throw off the measurements somewhere.
Triv
Upon reading this, I pulled the old ST:TNG Technical Manual from the shelf, which dates back to 1991 (I wonder if this has any collector value).
Considering it's still in print, I would hazard a guess and say Not A Shot. :)
Triv
Watch the "running down the street to punch each other" scene. Notice they're running, running...suddenly they're standing still for the slow motion shot? Messy.
No dude, it's just a trailer. How many times have you seen the best 30 seconds of a movie strung together in a reasonably coherent fashion for an ad? It's the same thing here. Yes, it was a bad cut, but it was a bad cut in the trailer, not the movie. I'll bet you those two shots don't even come concurrently in the actual film.
Triv
hit the comic section of the local Barnes and Noble and you will see what is newly available...
Your local Barnes and Noble has a comics section? I'm envious. Here in NYC, B&N considered comics to be too high-risk for theft and removed them. There's a "Graphic Novels" section, but it's like the bastard child of the store - when I worked there nobody knew where to put the damn thing. The guidelines said they should go in art, but people tended to look for them in Fiction. In the end, graphic novels were split up based on content; Maus went in Judaica, etc.
You'd get better service at a comicbookstore anyway. :P
Triv
I won't join the ACLU because they seem rather keen on taking away my freedoms, such as the freedoms of my children to practice their religion in public places.
You got proof that the ACLU has tried to do that? I'd like to see it. We ARE talking about the same ACLU that stood up for a website the federal government claims incited a murder, right? The same ACLU that defended the KKK? I can believe they campaigned against kids being LED in prayer in public schools, but I highly doubt they tried to ban how they choose to express their faith.
Triv
"But what are the lawyers going to do with $48 million dollars worth of retail coupons towards a Linux distribution purchase?"
That's the point. The lawyers would never think of accepting vouchers for their plaintiffs if they were being paid the same way.
ooh! someone could hack a griffin powermate to be the world's slickest morse tapper!
Triv
amen to that. Friends of mine at college came home one night with a HUGE glass-topped dinner table. The glass was easily 3/4" thick and must've weighed 40 pounds, let alone the base. The amazing thing is they managed to steal if off of someone's PORCH.
No, I take that back; the amazing thing was that none of them knew where it had come from when they woke up the following afternoon.
Triv
I was a part of one of these, and let me tell you it was a riot. One of the rules was you couldn't initiate conversation with anyone and that answers to questions were scripted. We stayed together for 5 minutes and dispersed, no one having said a word. It was surreal but wonderful, especially the looks on the normal people's faces, trying to figure out exactly what was going on.
Triv