Article says for many Gen Xers peak earning years are over. Ok, for the 50 people who earned 200k as a DotCom CTO now tending bar in the Valley, maybe. However, the oldest Gen Xer (going from '66) would now be 36. My understanding of peak earning years was that they always began at age 40-ish, continuing on to retirement.
It might be different in the go-go-go IT industry (where you hear about a lot of coders burning out by then), but nowhere else does this apply.
I certainly do know a number of folks my age (just turned 30, ick) who are in hock with credit card debt, etc.--but our problems are nothing compared to the 50-somethings down the street who've refinanced their houses twice to cover debts and nice cars, etc. I'm guessing Fortune has an older readership, and they're trying to make those folks feel better about themselves.
One neat thing about the article is it does at least admit there won't be Social Security. Would this be a good place to rant about how I'd like the opportunity to invest my quarterly Self-Employment tax payments in government-run, low-fee index funds instead of, you know, somebody in Florida on the premise that that the same will be done for me?
(Disclaimer: own house in one of the last reasonably priced areas of DC metro--bubble's hitting this market as we speak--no debt besides mortgage, drive 1997 Nissan Sentra, run own business after three years of developing it part-time have 401k, ROTH IRA, and SEP IRA currently, just made another contribution to SEP, tend to hang out with Asian immigrants so my savings are comparatively paltry).
As a guy whose website derives 80% of its revenues between Paypal and eBay I'm a little concerned about this merger. One great thing about the soon-to-be-defunct Billpoint service was that you could send an invoice for a "non-auction" item (overseas customers who didn't want to sign up for paypal but still hoped to pay by credit card), a feature I use a couple times a week.
The merchant account thing is getting a little better, though it's still a PITB to set up ("picture of my inventory? I sell digital goods..."), probably bank of america has the best deal currently.
I guess there can only be one Internet money though.
I dunno what'll happen. Scalia's on their side, hence the focus on harm to the public in Larry's final briefs. You will find many who share your viewpoint, of course.
But it was while surfing sites like LawMeme, GrepLaw, and Copyfight, among others that I thought about what might be the worst development to come out of this, from a copyright holder's standpoint.
You've got a whole generation of law students following along, rooting for Larry, and sharing his belief that copyright as currently constructed, only benefitting the holders, is wrong (Michael Hart's too-easily dismissed manifestoes, as the reporter condescendingly put it, echo this view).
And that same generation of law students may very well find a lot of other ways to beat up on the publishing industry (hint here: the industry's biggest market is schools, while prices are set rather high by a few players). It's quite possible that industry types will win the Eldred battle but lose the war.
I'm right there with you. I have this fantasy of making a 10k volume ebook library full-text searchable, so the promise of added memory one the hammer, plus the performance, makes me salivate.
Previously, I'd have had to shell out for serious hardware (and charge a subscriber fee), but the possiblity of DP Hammer servers, leasing for less than $2k a month (I lease, but I majored in English lit., and my ISP doesn't charge extra for bandwidth), makes it just barely possible.
For years, before I found a solid revenue stream for my site, I gutted it out with a little cash from advertising, and a Cobalt RAQ with a 300 or 450mhz AMD K6-2 (revolutionized webhosting for dumbasses like myself).
I hope AMD takes the time to get it right, and I also hope AMD can hold up well in the meanwhile...
(Also agree with your point about the PIVs, my server now is dual PIII-933s, as is any other server I'd consider, wouldn't touch a PIV for a thing that needs to be up 24-7, and can't really afford Alpha...)
OK, sounds good, and I didn't catch that one. However, per google's adwords, maybe 150,000 searches on "free book/books" each month, as compared with 550,000 combined for "ebook/ebooks"
Also, if you visit Ibiblio, you'll notice that every new text added to Gutenberg over the last 6 months or so has been a "Project Gutenberg Ebook of"
Then there's still the issue of individual gutenberg titles (most people search, you know, Guy+Boothby+Ebook), where Gtberg never, ever comes up in the top 20.
It was good to know about "free books," though, as I hadn't caught that one.
There are a few flaws with google's rankings...
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: 1
mostly due to exploitation of the system by a few, you know...
For example, if you were to search for "ebook"--you wouldn't find Project Gutenberg on the first, second, third, or fifth pages of results (sad, since they've been at it, what? 32 years now).
There are a lot of companies playing the linking-to-self game, mostly in a bid to force PG off and try to convince the uninitiated would-be ebook consumer that they need to pay inflated prices for etext versions of titles in the public domain.
I believe, in google's defense, they did somehow deny the worst offender--but if you were to search for a title or author that PG has, you'll almost never get it on the first page of google's rankings.
Of course, if I think PG might have the book, I'll search for it by, you know, "War+of+the+Worlds+Gutenberg," but for the newbie seeking information...
I know PG is a special case, and the distributed nature of that group effort doesn't really help, but, they ought to be just about first for ebook, library, etc.... since they have been... all along.
Other initiatives to dilute the bad by raising the concentration of the good have also begun. Project Gutenberg, an arduous effort conducted largely by volunteers, has put more than 400 books online
Err, he's taking time off to prepare his arguments in the Eldred case (begins Oct. 9) before the Supreme Court... apparently stepping away from Greplaw as well.
I'm excited at the possibilities for this archive. I tend to share the beliefs of those who argue that the death of print was over-hyped.
However, if you want a tale of digital overkill: the gang at the Library of Congress (folks who jacked up the cost on Internet radio among other lovely inventions), decided to render pulps from the late teens-'30s into microfilm.
The LOC did the entire collection of Amazing Stories, Weird Tales and something called Black Mask (why I'd be really, really, really interested), but they're not too good about sharing (of course), and who knows how long before the microfilm begins to degrade?
Sometimes I wonder if I should start contributing to a Republican like Lynn Cheney just to access the works. Then I realize the system is flawed. Then I sigh, rub the dog's belly, and go have a cigarette.
Hope Calgary does a better job with this bit 'a wealth.
Hello, anybody ever thought about doing a forms-based thing like this?
You know, simple HTML/javascript, asks for a person's name and zipcode, then automatically generates a printable form letter? Sounds stupid, but you just enter your info, print the thing out, mail it the Senator/Representative listed on the left.
Dumb letters like this work wonders for the NRA. I'm thinking a place like EFF could host/update it. (Your first draft would be what we'd use).
I'm parroting a wimpy line here from Eric Eldred--a guy who has "extracted" public domain texts on his website from culled from Barnes & Noble ebooks in Microsoft's Reader format, but of course doesn't know a thing about Tripod's Techodude, and his posted method for pulling.txt from.lit.
Mr. Eldred said to me that he would have let his method be known, but, with the Supreme Court case and all...
Personally, I have too many readers now to get shut down over nothing, ulp, but am I allowed partial credit for convincing Gutenberg to go down under and take advantage of the copyright laws there that say Gatsby and 1984 are public domain?
When Murakami was young, he read a lot of pulp authors (Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, etc.), even translating the works into Japanese.
My two favorites by him are Wild Sheep Chase and Pinball, 1973 (translated into English by Kodansha, but not sold in the states, maybe Bookfinder...)
Both those books have a touch of magical realism working, but could be seen as modern takes on noir.
It is strange, as Murakami's biggest hit in Japan was Norwegian Wood, a title that, due to culture as much as anything, really captured the imagination of Japanese men and made him a superstar--but it's hard for an outside like myself to get into quite the same way.
Maybe the biggest secret to Murakami Haruki is the way pretty much all his characters are outsiders, loners, and the women they meet the same, coming as he does from a country, Japan, where the biggest focus is on the group.
Definitely recommend Wild Sheep Chase, Pinball, 1973 uses the same characters and serves as a kind of prequel.
I'm an Ebay power seller (tm), handling 150+ sales a month (dutch), get a lot of newbies for my product, so I accept Paypal, Billpoint, Checks/mo's--and often receive cash via certified mail from Europeans.
I mean, from the get-go, just receiving a billpoint payment notification from a buyer, and then you can't just reply and get the buyer, you have to forward it to them (most of my emailing is done through Putty; haven't bothered to add neomail to my server). It's a freaking pain!
Lack of insight into basic customer needs is what killed billpoint (and the freaking deposit fees... who you kidding?), as well as the way it took ebay over a year to bring this thing to market (from the time of Paypal's inception.)
Of course, as soon as I heard about this, I did finally bite the bullet and sign up for a merchant account with Bank of America (expect cheaper rates from folks like that soon, as nobody, ever, wants to be that beholden to one company for their livelihood.)
Hope paypal keeps up with the innovations (like IPN, a ready-made pay-for-download solution if you're expecting to sell five ebooks), but I'm not all that pleased with this./rant.
(And the joke is: Rosetta's this like consortium of agents and stuff who wants to push
ebooks--and have the rights to them; just beat Random House in a court case--
so they're selling Brave New World, even though it's available all over the web for free--
might even be legal, as Huxley renewed the copyright too early... though Gutenberg
won't take it).
(In my case, an AMD Duron, 800 mhz, 512 megs PC100 RAM),
W2k (scanners crash 98 and my software sucks on NT),
and a bit of software called Abbyy FineReader, (at http://www.abbyyusa.com)
you could scan a 200-page paperback book decently in about 3 hours--two pages
at a time--then proof it for another hour or two, and it'd be close to good.
For an example, visit The Hand of Fu Manchu--pick your format--a 200 page paperback book I scanned in in about three hours (while playing Civilization). Note, I didn't proofread this particular text, as my 9-pound Chinese-American dog was looking at me askance whenever I did the spell check.
A huge, huge portion of Adobe's revs comes from licensing their
software on the Macintosh platform for Desktop Publishing, web design
and that sort of thing.
Way to nail ADBE is: hold your nose and port over that neato
killustrator suite to Darwin... lemme tell ya, people will buy Macs and,
since it's more expensive than the PC, save the bucks by not shelling
out for Adobe Design site licenses, etc.
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Article says for many Gen Xers peak earning years are over. Ok, for the 50 people who earned 200k as a DotCom CTO now tending bar in the Valley, maybe. However, the oldest Gen Xer (going from '66) would now be 36. My understanding of peak earning years was that they always began at age 40-ish, continuing on to retirement.
It might be different in the go-go-go IT industry (where you hear about a lot of coders burning out by then), but nowhere else does this apply.
I certainly do know a number of folks my age (just turned 30, ick) who are in hock with credit card debt, etc.--but our problems are nothing compared to the 50-somethings down the street who've refinanced their houses twice to cover debts and nice cars, etc. I'm guessing Fortune has an older readership, and they're trying to make those folks feel better about themselves.
One neat thing about the article is it does at least admit there won't be Social Security. Would this be a good place to rant about how I'd like the opportunity to invest my quarterly Self-Employment tax payments in government-run, low-fee index funds instead of, you know, somebody in Florida on the premise that that the same will be done for me?
(Disclaimer: own house in one of the last reasonably priced areas of DC metro--bubble's hitting this market as we speak--no debt besides mortgage, drive 1997 Nissan Sentra, run own business after three years of developing it part-time have 401k, ROTH IRA, and SEP IRA currently, just made another contribution to SEP, tend to hang out with Asian immigrants so my savings are comparatively paltry).
As a guy whose website derives 80% of its revenues between Paypal and eBay I'm a little concerned about this merger. One great thing about the soon-to-be-defunct Billpoint service was that you could send an invoice for a "non-auction" item (overseas customers who didn't want to sign up for paypal but still hoped to pay by credit card), a feature I use a couple times a week.
The merchant account thing is getting a little better, though it's still a PITB to set up ("picture of my inventory? I sell digital goods..."), probably bank of america has the best deal currently.
I guess there can only be one Internet money though.
They actually got a book deal out of it. Given this sales rank (2,356,490th), I'd have to say that something got jumped there.
I dunno what'll happen. Scalia's on their side, hence the focus on harm to the public in Larry's final briefs. You will find many who share your viewpoint, of course.
But it was while surfing sites like LawMeme, GrepLaw, and Copyfight, among others that I thought about what might be the worst development to come out of this, from a copyright holder's standpoint.
You've got a whole generation of law students following along, rooting for Larry, and sharing his belief that copyright as currently constructed, only benefitting the holders, is wrong (Michael Hart's too-easily dismissed manifestoes, as the reporter condescendingly put it, echo this view).
And that same generation of law students may very well find a lot of other ways to beat up on the publishing industry (hint here: the industry's biggest market is schools, while prices are set rather high by a few players). It's quite possible that industry types will win the Eldred battle but lose the war.
We'll know soon enough.
Go get 'em, Larry.
When I grow up, I want to be a Karma Whore.
I'm right there with you. I have this fantasy of making a 10k volume ebook library full-text searchable, so the promise of added memory one the hammer, plus the performance, makes me salivate.
Previously, I'd have had to shell out for serious hardware (and charge a subscriber fee), but the possiblity of DP Hammer servers, leasing for less than $2k a month (I lease, but I majored in English lit., and my ISP doesn't charge extra for bandwidth), makes it just barely possible.
For years, before I found a solid revenue stream for my site, I gutted it out with a little cash from advertising, and a Cobalt RAQ with a 300 or 450mhz AMD K6-2 (revolutionized webhosting for dumbasses like myself).
I hope AMD takes the time to get it right, and I also hope AMD can hold up well in the meanwhile...
(Also agree with your point about the PIVs, my server now is dual PIII-933s, as is any other server I'd consider, wouldn't touch a PIV for a thing that needs to be up 24-7, and can't really afford Alpha...)
Also, if you visit Ibiblio, you'll notice that every new text added to Gutenberg over the last 6 months or so has been a "Project Gutenberg Ebook of"
Then there's still the issue of individual gutenberg titles (most people search, you know, Guy+Boothby+Ebook), where Gtberg never, ever comes up in the top 20.
It was good to know about "free books," though, as I hadn't caught that one.
For example, if you were to search for "ebook"--you wouldn't find Project Gutenberg on the first, second, third, or fifth pages of results (sad, since they've been at it, what? 32 years now).
There are a lot of companies playing the linking-to-self game, mostly in a bid to force PG off and try to convince the uninitiated would-be ebook consumer that they need to pay inflated prices for etext versions of titles in the public domain.
I believe, in google's defense, they did somehow deny the worst offender--but if you were to search for a title or author that PG has, you'll almost never get it on the first page of google's rankings.
Of course, if I think PG might have the book, I'll search for it by, you know, "War+of+the+Worlds+Gutenberg," but for the newbie seeking information...
I know PG is a special case, and the distributed nature of that group effort doesn't really help, but, they ought to be just about first for ebook, library, etc.... since they have been... all along.
My $.02
Oh, so it was kind of that "one, two, three many" counting the cavemen used.
:)
Well never mind then
Try 5,750!
Not that the author wasn't doing their homework or anything.
Err, he's taking time off to prepare his arguments in the Eldred case (begins Oct. 9) before the Supreme Court... apparently stepping away from Greplaw as well.
Some links.
http://eldred.cc/legal/supremecourt.html#oppose
http://www.corante.com/copyfight/
When I grow up, I want to be a karma whore.
I'm excited at the possibilities for this archive. I tend to share the beliefs of those who argue that the death of print was over-hyped.
However, if you want a tale of digital overkill: the gang at the Library of Congress (folks who jacked up the cost on Internet radio among other lovely inventions), decided to render pulps from the late teens-'30s into microfilm.
The LOC did the entire collection of Amazing Stories, Weird Tales and something called Black Mask (why I'd be really, really, really interested), but they're not too good about sharing (of course), and who knows how long before the microfilm begins to degrade?
Sometimes I wonder if I should start contributing to a Republican like Lynn Cheney just to access the works. Then I realize the system is flawed. Then I sigh, rub the dog's belly, and go have a cigarette.
Hope Calgary does a better job with this bit 'a wealth.
Hello, anybody ever thought about doing a forms-based thing like this?
You know, simple HTML/javascript, asks for a person's name and zipcode, then automatically generates a printable form letter? Sounds stupid, but you just enter your info, print the thing out, mail it the Senator/Representative listed on the left.
Dumb letters like this work wonders for the NRA. I'm thinking a place like EFF could host/update it. (Your first draft would be what we'd use).
Somebody had to be the hero...
.txt from .lit.
I'm parroting a wimpy line here from Eric Eldred--a guy who has "extracted" public domain texts on his website from culled from Barnes & Noble ebooks in Microsoft's Reader format, but of course doesn't know a thing about Tripod's Techodude, and his posted method for pulling
Mr. Eldred said to me that he would have let his method be known, but, with the Supreme Court case and all...
Personally, I have too many readers now to get shut down over nothing, ulp, but am I allowed partial credit for convincing Gutenberg to go down under and take advantage of the copyright laws there that say Gatsby and 1984 are public domain?
Nah, I'm just a wuss.
Go get 'em, Bruce!
I scanned it in for my own site about a month ago.--scroll down a little, it's maybe the seventh book.
Text is public domain/not renewed, but Gutenberg didn't like the version I used (and doesn't like not renewed in general), so they wouldn't add it.
Interesting read--was written by Lang's girlfriend of the time, Thea von Harbou.
When Murakami was young, he read a lot of pulp authors (Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, etc.), even translating the works into Japanese.
My two favorites by him are Wild Sheep Chase and Pinball, 1973 (translated into English by Kodansha, but not sold in the states, maybe Bookfinder...)
Both those books have a touch of magical realism working, but could be seen as modern takes on noir.
It is strange, as Murakami's biggest hit in Japan was Norwegian Wood, a title that, due to culture as much as anything, really captured the imagination of Japanese men and made him a superstar--but it's hard for an outside like myself to get into quite the same way.
Maybe the biggest secret to Murakami Haruki is the way pretty much all his characters are outsiders, loners, and the women they meet the same, coming as he does from a country, Japan, where the biggest focus is on the group.
Definitely recommend Wild Sheep Chase, Pinball, 1973 uses the same characters and serves as a kind of prequel.
Billpoint sucked--sucked, sucked, sucked!
/rant.
I'm an Ebay power seller (tm), handling 150+ sales a month (dutch), get a lot of newbies for my product, so I accept Paypal, Billpoint, Checks/mo's--and often receive cash via certified mail from Europeans.
I mean, from the get-go, just receiving a billpoint payment notification from a buyer, and then you can't just reply and get the buyer, you have to forward it to them (most of my emailing is done through Putty; haven't bothered to add neomail to my server). It's a freaking pain!
Lack of insight into basic customer needs is what killed billpoint (and the freaking deposit fees... who you kidding?), as well as the way it took ebay over a year to bring this thing to market (from the time of Paypal's inception.)
Of course, as soon as I heard about this, I did finally bite the bullet and sign up for a merchant account with Bank of America (expect cheaper rates from folks like that soon, as nobody, ever, wants to be that beholden to one company for their livelihood.)
Hope paypal keeps up with the innovations (like IPN, a ready-made pay-for-download solution if you're expecting to sell five ebooks), but I'm not all that pleased with this.
LOL!
(And the joke is: Rosetta's this like consortium of agents and stuff who wants to push
ebooks--and have the rights to them; just beat Random House in a court case--
so they're selling Brave New World, even though it's available all over the web for free--
might even be legal, as Huxley renewed the copyright too early... though Gutenberg
won't take it).
Still, so funny.
(In my case, an AMD Duron, 800 mhz, 512 megs PC100 RAM), W2k (scanners crash 98 and my software sucks on NT), and a bit of software called Abbyy FineReader, (at http://www.abbyyusa.com)
you could scan a 200-page paperback book decently in about 3 hours--two pages at a time--then proof it for another hour or two, and it'd be close to good.
For an example, visit The Hand of Fu Manchu--pick your format--a 200 page paperback book I scanned in in about three hours (while playing Civilization). Note, I didn't proofread this particular text, as my 9-pound Chinese-American dog was looking at me askance whenever I did the spell check.
They're going to have to ban paperback books.
Hurt Adobe in the pocketbook.
A huge, huge portion of Adobe's revs comes from licensing their
software on the Macintosh platform for Desktop Publishing, web design
and that sort of thing.
Way to nail ADBE is: hold your nose and port over that neato
killustrator suite to Darwin... lemme tell ya, people will buy Macs and,
since it's more expensive than the PC, save the bucks by not shelling
out for Adobe Design site licenses, etc.
Also, make up fonts and give them away.
Just a thought.