Don't even go there. Adobe and a host of other font designers, both big and small, went to court against "shovelware" CD pirates that did exactly just that. These shovelware pirates were the old-school equivalent of spammers today in that they were shamelessly slimy. These guys used the copyrighted font files as a source for a "jiggler" program, that randomly changed a few things, and then remarketed the files as their own, often selling thousands of fonts worth thousands of dollars, for $20.
I don't remember what the outcome of the case was, but shortly after the trial ended, the shovelware pirates disappeared. I'd take that as a nay against your approach.
Besides, even if fonts are not copyrightable in the US (they are in Europe) you'd still be violating a designer's moral rights in his or her work.
I bring these point up because, from the sound of it, you want to create a program not just to modify your own fonts but other people's work, and then redistribute them (otherwise you wouldn't have mentioned changing the name to avoid infringing of trademarks.) Don't go there. I'm serious - don't go there.
Notice that this is one font company suing another font company (even if he is just one guy) for releasing a tool to enable other users to produce fonts. That you can fiddle with someone else's property is just a side effect of the tool capabilities, in the same way that a VCR can be used to edit your own stuff, or to create the next Phantom Edit.
I'd call this use of the DMCA anti-competitive, and just plain rude to boot.
He graduated from UCLA Film school a number of years ago (doing Animation?) I thought I'd slip in an a reference to my alma mater:)
Re:The trend of PDA's
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PDAs For Kids
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· Score: 2, Insightful
After a while I found all I was using my Clie for was to play Bejeweled instead of paying attention in my courses. I ended up selling it on eBay and picking up a little Dayrunner thing for much cheaper. It's a little more bulky, but it's ten times more convenient.
Ahh, and what happens when you put your entire life into your Dayrunner and you lose it? I used to be a Dayrunner user, but after a close call (someone found it and returned it), I lived in mortal fear of losing my Dayrunner again. Being able to backup your data and sync it to a replacement unit (I have a spare in my desk, used Palms are cheap), was the key selling point for me when I bought my Pilot 5000. Besides, you can always load it with a couple of e-texts for when you're on the bus, and it doubles as a calculator.
Check your history books. Your fascist example, Hitler, was democratically elected by the people of Wiemar Germany. Whether a leader was elected by a majority of the people or not has little or no bearing on whether that government or leader is considered fascist. Instead, consider the actions and the policies of that government.
As far as I'm concerned, with the exception of environmental and science issues, the current government is better than life under Clinton. Having to deal with the likes of Boxer and Feinsten in the Senate is enough - no need to give them free access to the White House!
I have just been informed that Lt. Leary is a Drake book, not a Weber book. Goddamn it, these authors need to get different first names! Too much semantic overlap!
If you only have one or two "master works" that earn you your daily bread, and someone chops off consumer demand by supplying cheap (or even free) copies, you'd probably be pissed too. On the other hand, if you have a lot of work, and make your money on the fresh release of a new work, more buzz about you is good.
Actually, this is the one piece of Flint's rant I disagreed with, and I disagree with it coming from you, as well. Used books REALLY DO detract from new book sales, unless they are out of print. When I go to pick up a book, I look for it used first, and then get it new if I cannot locate it that way - For simple reasons of economics.
You could carry this argument even further and say that public libraries detract from sales of new books. After all, if you can get it for free, when it first comes out in hardcover, and have it delivered to your local branch, why go to all the trouble of waiting until used copies, hardcover, mass market or otherwise, are available?
Eric Flint's point is that more exposure is better, irregardless of how it occurs. As such, used book sales do not detract from new book sales because, and I'm paraphrasing, the majority of sales come during the first 3 months of release. My interpretation of this is that is the sales come from fans who MUST have the book, and from people who are interested enough to pick up a copy due to publisher/bookseller promotion.
Since these fans will likely be interested in buying books at some point in the future, it becomes in the author's best interest to grow this fan base. Used books, while they may displace some new book sales in the short term, encourage new book sales in the future, as readers replace damaged copies, buy sequels, or buy reprints of hard-to-get items.
Of course, if you can't afford new books, then the author hasn't lost any sales at all, if you've chosen instead to buy a used copy (or borrowed one from the library or a friend.)
For items like books, where the alternative (aside from the library and used copies) is a digital copy (which give me eye-aches on my palmpilot), these arguments ring true to me. For you, since you prefer e-books, this may not be true. In that case, you might subscribe to the electronic version, if you absolutely had to read the book. If not, then again, the author would likely not have had you for a customer anyways, and as such, there is no sale lost.
Music and movies are in sort of a middle ground. Many buy used copies of DVDs and CDs. Most people would buy them cheaply in a digital delivery format if they could, for convenience (how many times do you really need to watch a movie, and avoiding late fees on rentals.) That piracy is a problem is not due to the consumer being a thief, it's simply a matter of supply and demand - there's a demand, and rippers (instead of the studios) are supplying it!
For items such as fonts or software, I'd take the opposite tack, since many consumers have gotten so used to "free" software, that even when they can afford to, and would be inclined to buy a product, they just copy. Since software really is nothing more than bits, and stuff like fonts really don't have upgrades that users might buy at a future date, a pirated copy can sometimes be a lost sale. But even then, the goal for the seller is not to encumber the customer with all sorts of restrictive licensing agreements, and copy protection code (like dongles, etc.), but to make it easier and more desirable to buy a legit copy, than to search for and download a pirated copy.
Going back to books, let me provide an illustration on building a fan base. After reading the first Slashdot story on Eric Flint's essay, I went to the Baen site, and found a book by a guy named David Weber. I'd never read his stuff before, and had him mentally classed with David Drake, who I don't like. However, one of his books (Lt. Leary, Commanding) which I had read about in a SF Book Club flyer, sounded interesting, so I picked out one of the selections from the Baen Free Library, Mutineer's Moon, and put it on my palmpilot.
I couldn't put it down. It was great!
Following that, I put the sequels, The Armageddon Inheritance, and Heirs of Empire, on hold at the local library. Because I couldn't wait while the books were being delivered from the main branch, I went to the bookstore and devoured the second book (a trade paperback) in one sitting. If the bookstore had closed on me, halfway through the book, I would probably have walked out with a new copy, even at $7.00 a pop (it's happend to me before, even with $20+ hardcovers.) The last book I read as a library edition.
Now here's a situation where I've read 3 of David Weber's books for free. One on my Palmpilot, another one while sitting in the bookstore, and another that I'd borrowed from the library. So what does David Weber get? A dedicated fan, who's going to recommend these books, who'd probably gonna order some book club editions of his stuff (like Lt. Leary), and if I can find them, the books about the Fifth Imperium (see above). And if he ever comes out with another book in that series, you can be sure that I'll have my eye out for a cheap, quality copy.
Besides, regarding used books - if nobody bought them, then no used bookstore would buy them (or nobody would sell them via Amazon.) If nobody sold them, then they wouldn't get any money, which they'd probably would spend on new books, perhaps by different authors. Thus, a used book might rob an author of a sale to this second party, but it might provide funds to the first pary for another purchase, possibly from that same author. In fact, you might argue that the resale value of a used book counts as part of the price you pay for a new book, in much the same way as a used car holds part of the value of your original purchase price.
They're working with Ballard Power (fuel cells, like in that Coleman generator) to explore ways of incorporating a safe hydrogen storage device into future products. The problem is that the biggest market, automobiles, is making glacial steps towards actually deploying fuel-cell vehicles.
Right now, fuel-cell is still at the vapor-ware, great for feel-good marketing, tax-breaks, and getting the government off our backs while we run business as usual stage. As a consequence, Millenium Cell has pretty much NO business, same as Ovonics (NiMH batteries).
Keep in mind that the big 3 US auto makers were going to kill off alternative auto development - the EV1 upgrade from lead-acid to nicad had been scrapped, despite an established base of 1st generation vehicles, they had succesfully bribed and bitched their way past the California 10%/0% mandate of 2001 (10% of the cars sold were supposed to have been 0 emissions vehiles, essentially electrics). It was only when Toyota shocked the industry by not only announcing, but SHIPPING a hybrid vehicle - the Prius, that all the other manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon, mostly for PR purposes, and to hedge their bets.
Unfortunately, the Prius is the only good example of the hybrid on the market right now. The Honda Insight, the only other hybrid, is the poster boy of compromise engineering (super-light 2 seater), and just feeds the big-3 FUD that links efficency with lack of safety (ie, lighter is not safer.) The FUD regarding fuel efficency not being a top priority, and being less safe, of course, is merely justification to keep making big margins on the heavy, fuel inefficent SUVs. Even worse, the big-3 auto idea of a hybrid is an electric assist - no more than an overgrown starter motor, meaning that fuel savings will be minimal as the gas motor will be on pretty much ALL the time. Compare that against the Prius, which gets great performance off the onboard batteries for short trips (ie, to the market, video store, cleaners), and during traffic.
Be careful that you don't swallow all the bullshit that they're feeding the public. After all, GM said, when asked why they were cancelling the EV1 program, "They weren't selling well." What the spokesman neglected to mention, was that they were NEVER SOLD AT ALL - only leased, and that the waiting list for leasing had been quite long...
Don't spread FUD until you know whether or not this decision will actually affect Kagi (or Digital River, or Sharereg, or all the OTHER shareware payment processors.)
And even if it does, what of it? They stop taking MasterCard, and continue taking Visa, Discover, and AmEx. In the meantime Citibank (which force switched all of its Visa cardholders to MasterCard), will stand to lose a lot of online revenue, as will many other MC-dependent banks.
Next thing you know, there will be an anti-trust investigation of MasterCard, and they'll go the way of Arthur Andersen:)
On a lark, I was browsing the Baen free library. I picked out one of the more interesting-looking titles and installed it on my PalmPilot. (tip to Baen librarians - a back cover synopsis helps to sell a book... think about adding some.) After wrangling with the PC install software for Mobipocket, extracting the PRC files, and installing them on my Pilot 5000, I started reading.
Half a day later (with a minor bit of eyestrain) I'm now searching out the sequels to the book (Mutineer's Moon.) I'd never read David Weber's stuff before, because it seemed to be dry military stuff from the cover and the descriptions, although I wanted to take a look at Lt. Leary Commanding (which was one of the reasons I downloaded Mutineer's Moon.) I was pleasantly surprised to find a much more classical pulp science-fiction feel (galactic empires, etc.)
Chalk up another bit of anecdotal evidence that more exposure is good. Next time I'm a bookstore, I'm more likely to take a look at David Weber's stuff, and that much more likely to walk out with a mass market paperback. Prior to today, the chances of that were totally nil.
Hmmm. If the students aren't buying the books, then who is? From the article:
At the conference-at least in the public sessions-my remarks were basically greeted with pained silence. But, in private, several publisher representatives told me that they agreed with me-but also told me that trying to get the publishing industry to give up encryption would be impossible. Why? Basically because the corporate bean-counters who now run most of the publishing industry just can't bear the thought of-gasp-GIVING something away for free. Even if it benefits them in the long run.
There was one exception. A gentleman from a publishing house which primarily produces textbooks rose in support of my point. He stated that, much to their own surprise, his company had found that those textbooks which they made available for free online ALSO had the best sales.
Well, it doesn't help the sale of paperbacks at $25 when you get used to seeing discounted hardbacks a year or two later after publication selling at $7 per book. Hell, some bestsellers are sold at 40% off cover when they come out, and places like Costco move books at a discount like crazy.
When I was younger, I could only afford paperbacks and book-club books. Now that I have money, I'd rather shell out $16 for good quality hardback, than $7 for a piece of garbage mass market paperback.
Publishers/booksellers are undercutting themselves by conditioning the consumer to bargain buys. Why buy an inferior product at $25 when you can buy a superior product at $7-16?
Oftentimes, remaindered books are in NO WAY different than the original. Other times, publishers will put a remainder mark (a line drawn in black marker) on the bottom of the book to indicate it is a remainder.
Thank you for this explaination! Now I know what those black marks are on the discount books at the local Waldenbooks mean. Imagine, a major bookseller, selling remaindered books!:)
You can always disable downloads in your browser prefs, scripting, etc.
As much as I hate Microsoft and Explorer, you can't say that they don't give you the tools to avoid this garbage. Of course, you can use Navigator (I use 4.08 w/ Javascript disabled.)
With Javascript off, I don't get any pop-ups/pop-unders when I surf, and sites that force the use of Javascript (and probably have pop-ups/pop-unders), I just avoid.
Witness the fiasco surrounding video camera sales in Europe. Because there is a tax/import duty on items that can record (a VCR tax), manufacturers sell cameras with the external inputs disabled. Thus, you can record your vacation to Paris, but once you edit it on your spiffy Firewire-enabled computer, you can't record it back to your video camera.
A thriving industry has grown around "enabling" the input ports, since manufacturers don't want to have a separate assembly line to make these neutered cameras, and just disable them in the flash portion of the camera firmware.
Meanwhile, everyone else gets their cameras for cheaper, with the ability to record their edited footage back to tape for storage (I'd rather mail a 4-ounce tape, than a 2-lb hard drive, the tape's a hell of a lot cheaper too.) If this legislation passes, we'll have an equally stupid restriction on our equipment here in the states. This will be a death-blow to Firewire, and related industries like network storage. I'm surprised that nobody in the popular media has brought up how broad this legislation will be - it will literally cover every single consumer device under the sun, since everything (or nearly everything) is digital these days.
And I'll bet that there will be import duties in order to cover the costs of implementing and policing this bill too - the politicians like laws that can fund themselves. Even if there aren't import duties, we'll eventually have to pay taxes (on top of higher prices) to fund the enforcement of this bill's provisions...
Modern MR and CT scanner archive data to... guess what: Recordable CDs (they used to use recordable optical discs, which would also probably fall under restriction by the CBDTPA.)
These machines are also built around off-the-shelf workstations running stuff like NT (ug), Solaris, and Irix. Since they're essentially the same thing as a regular workstation, except that they're hooked up to million-dollar pieces of equipment, and run specialized software for medical imaging, it means that they share the same "evil" file-copying capabilities (duh).
Let's assume that they pass the CBDTPA. Does this mean that it will be illegal to sell, transport, or manufacture advanced medical imaging equipment in the US? GE (which makes both CT and MR scanners) would be very pissed to hear about that.
Let's assume that they "fix" the new equipment to comply with the CBDTPA. How will the old scanners and the new scanners interchange data? Even worse, what kind of equipment will we have to buy to read this new data? How will we archive this very important, critical, patient data, so we can move it around AT WILL, review it at a future date, and share it using our installed base of older equipment (including regular desktop computers), in which we've already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in?
It's bad enough that we're paying the RIAA for CD blanks that hold patient data, will we have to feed the music and entertainment cartel in order to practice medicine too?
In the interests of maintaining "closer ties to the community" (ie getting reelected), many Senators and Representatives have local offices in their home districts/states.
How hard really is it for you to look up their number/address, and pay them a phone call/visit? When you call up, ask questions about the bill, is: "I have certain reservations about this bill", or "could you clarify what exactly this clause means, as the way I read it, it could inadvertently affect the sale of software by small businesses."
The staffer will generally be clueless, relying on public statements by the senator/representative to phrase a reply. If no statement exists, this means you have an opening to shape that future statement, by having them take down some of your concerns to be addressed by your congresscritter.
For example, I called an office of one of the CBDTPA co-sponsors, asked for clarification on the bill, and failing that, asked them to take down a few concerns I had. I intend to follow up on this later, maybe with another phone call, or a personal visit to the local staffer's office.
Calling/faxing/mailing, just before a vote is pretty much useless, since they know it's a spur of the moment, inflamed by pseudo-grassroots thing - it doesn't matter for squat. However, if we get involved in the actual debate, and make our presence known then, it will be much easier to get staffers and representatives on our side, informed on the issues that we want addressed. The best way to get involved is to touch base with them, in an interactive manner, before they get swamped and start blowing people off.
I think this situation is becoming analogous to the dilemma of shareware presented a few weeks ago. In my post I commented that customers are lazy beasts, and will take the past of least resistance to getting what they want. If the easier course is to buy, they will buy. If the easier course is to pirate, then they will pirate. If Universal is stupid enough to lock out part of their audience (ie, no Macs can play this CD), then someone WILL translate the CD into a form that audience can listen to (ie, MP3s), and everyone will then DL the MP3 now that it's available...
If I've learned anything about selling digital works, it's that you have to cover as many bases as possible so that there are no market niches left to be exploited by non-authorized parties. If you don't, you will lose control over those translations that you have not authorized.
If the RIAA was at all intelligent, they'd pre-rip a CD and have the MP3s available on the CD itself with little id3-based advertising tags embedded in them (ie: to buy this CD, go ). That way they'd avoid the umpteen versions of the same tracks floating around, pretty much ALL without any copyright info (and some lacking artist/album info too), and would get both exposure and buying traffic when the tracks are streamed.
Of course, since the RIAA are idiots, they're trying to restrict their audience, by locking down the CDs and killing free exposure via internet radio...
Am I missing something, or isn't one way around the excessive fee structure imposed by the industry is for individual artists and labels to release CDs and other MP3s with license terms that specifically EXCLUDE payment to the RIAA collection agency?
IE:
This music is released under the fair play broadcast license. Under this license, internet radio broadcast fees will be paid at the same rate as regular broadcast fees, with the exception that fees must be paid to the artist via (insert some non-profit group). This license specifically excludes (insert RIAA collection agency) as an agent of collection for royalty paments.
Now, after specifying these license terms, these artists and albums then register their music on (insert non-profit group website) so that internet broadcasters can have a searchable index of music to pick from and promote. Note that this is different from the Open Source Music license - it just tells the RIAA goons to get lost, no other rights are modified or given up. Thus, each copyright holder can specify a license overrules the RIAA mandated rates, with the end result that the broadcast law then CEASES TO MATTER, except to the labels who don't get played 'cause they're too damn greedy.
On that note, does anyone know if Shoutcast is going to support "buy" links in their streaming server software? It would really help if we could click a "buy" link on someone's shoutcast server when we hear something we like, that links us to a online MP3 store, or an online CD link.
I dunno. Blizzard has maintained the bnet servers for years (yes, complaints about slow service not withstanding) without charging existing users lame-ass subscription fees. I think Valve could get away with it if they could use the opportunity to cut out all the overhead expenses associated with feeding the deadwood between them and the consumer.
Now, if only we could get rid of those MPAA and RIAA middlemen and their hired guns using Steam as well...
Pricing lower only works if pricing is an issue. For some users, any price is too much. For other users, you can charge quite a bit. From what I've seen, piracy is mainly an issue for popular software, where people who fall into the first camp publish kracks/keys, which are then used by the second group...
That's where the real revenue hits come in - when downloading the key/krack is easier than registering, and users who would have paid, if they had been forced to, take the easy way out.
BTW, there was a brief experiment done by a shareware author (Colin Messitt), who inserted code that would cripple his app for half the users, and have full functionality for the other half. Who would get which version activated was totally at random. One of the observations from this experiment was that the crippled version had a MUCH higher rate of registration/payment than the non-crippled version. The price for the utility was $25. A copy of the article is here (google version).
Mind you, if you release "true" shareware (no restrictions), you essentially provide the "krack", and can fall victim to users just being too lazy to register (or falling victim to the perception that since they can use the software for free, that's all its worth.)
This isn't true of all users, of course. But the grim truth is that there aren't enough scrupulously honest users out there that value your software enough for you to build a thriving business without some protections in place (at the very least, some sort of nag.) Most of the shareware authors I know would agree with me on this point.
According to the article, the tourist-shuttle will take 3 crew (1 pilot, 2 passengers) and suspend them for 3 minutes. If you added a pair of boosters, stripped out the crew compartment and associated life-support, would it be possible to boost light cargo into orbit? I mean, hell, at $100k, even LEO would be good.
That brings up the other question, why the hell doesn't NASA fund the Buran program instead of the shuttle program? No crew compartment = more cargo capacity, less cost/turnaround time (since we don't have to certify the craft for human occupants.) Not to mention Russian scientists/technicians are cheap these days.
Given that he accessed everything through his wearable, and that his HUD was quarter VGA (240x180?), he probably designed his site for that medium, which explains the big text and scarcity of graphics. Add that to the fact that he probably wrote the code for his site on his wearable, and this is what you get.
Try using lynx to visit the site, and tell us if it still seems confusing.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't even go there. Adobe and a host of other font designers, both big and small, went to court against "shovelware" CD pirates that did exactly just that. These shovelware pirates were the old-school equivalent of spammers today in that they were shamelessly slimy. These guys used the copyrighted font files as a source for a "jiggler" program, that randomly changed a few things, and then remarketed the files as their own, often selling thousands of fonts worth thousands of dollars, for $20.
I don't remember what the outcome of the case was, but shortly after the trial ended, the shovelware pirates disappeared. I'd take that as a nay against your approach.
Besides, even if fonts are not copyrightable in the US (they are in Europe) you'd still be violating a designer's moral rights in his or her work.
I bring these point up because, from the sound of it, you want to create a program not just to modify your own fonts but other people's work, and then redistribute them (otherwise you wouldn't have mentioned changing the name to avoid infringing of trademarks.) Don't go there. I'm serious - don't go there.
Notice that this is one font company suing another font company (even if he is just one guy) for releasing a tool to enable other users to produce fonts. That you can fiddle with someone else's property is just a side effect of the tool capabilities, in the same way that a VCR can be used to edit your own stuff, or to create the next Phantom Edit.
I'd call this use of the DMCA anti-competitive, and just plain rude to boot.
He graduated from UCLA Film school a number of years ago (doing Animation?) I thought I'd slip in an a reference to my alma mater :)
Check your history books. Your fascist example, Hitler, was democratically elected by the people of Wiemar Germany. Whether a leader was elected by a majority of the people or not has little or no bearing on whether that government or leader is considered fascist. Instead, consider the actions and the policies of that government.
As far as I'm concerned, with the exception of environmental and science issues, the current government is better than life under Clinton. Having to deal with the likes of Boxer and Feinsten in the Senate is enough - no need to give them free access to the White House!
I have just been informed that Lt. Leary is a Drake book, not a Weber book. Goddamn it, these authors need to get different first names! Too much semantic overlap!
DOH!
Just my 2 cents.
If you only have one or two "master works" that earn you your daily bread, and someone chops off consumer demand by supplying cheap (or even free) copies, you'd probably be pissed too. On the other hand, if you have a lot of work, and make your money on the fresh release of a new work, more buzz about you is good.
You could carry this argument even further and say that public libraries detract from sales of new books. After all, if you can get it for free, when it first comes out in hardcover, and have it delivered to your local branch, why go to all the trouble of waiting until used copies, hardcover, mass market or otherwise, are available?
Eric Flint's point is that more exposure is better, irregardless of how it occurs. As such, used book sales do not detract from new book sales because, and I'm paraphrasing, the majority of sales come during the first 3 months of release. My interpretation of this is that is the sales come from fans who MUST have the book, and from people who are interested enough to pick up a copy due to publisher/bookseller promotion.
Since these fans will likely be interested in buying books at some point in the future, it becomes in the author's best interest to grow this fan base. Used books, while they may displace some new book sales in the short term, encourage new book sales in the future, as readers replace damaged copies, buy sequels, or buy reprints of hard-to-get items.
Of course, if you can't afford new books, then the author hasn't lost any sales at all, if you've chosen instead to buy a used copy (or borrowed one from the library or a friend.)
For items like books, where the alternative (aside from the library and used copies) is a digital copy (which give me eye-aches on my palmpilot), these arguments ring true to me. For you, since you prefer e-books, this may not be true. In that case, you might subscribe to the electronic version, if you absolutely had to read the book. If not, then again, the author would likely not have had you for a customer anyways, and as such, there is no sale lost.
Music and movies are in sort of a middle ground. Many buy used copies of DVDs and CDs. Most people would buy them cheaply in a digital delivery format if they could, for convenience (how many times do you really need to watch a movie, and avoiding late fees on rentals.) That piracy is a problem is not due to the consumer being a thief, it's simply a matter of supply and demand - there's a demand, and rippers (instead of the studios) are supplying it!
For items such as fonts or software, I'd take the opposite tack, since many consumers have gotten so used to "free" software, that even when they can afford to, and would be inclined to buy a product, they just copy. Since software really is nothing more than bits, and stuff like fonts really don't have upgrades that users might buy at a future date, a pirated copy can sometimes be a lost sale. But even then, the goal for the seller is not to encumber the customer with all sorts of restrictive licensing agreements, and copy protection code (like dongles, etc.), but to make it easier and more desirable to buy a legit copy, than to search for and download a pirated copy.
Going back to books, let me provide an illustration on building a fan base. After reading the first Slashdot story on Eric Flint's essay, I went to the Baen site, and found a book by a guy named David Weber. I'd never read his stuff before, and had him mentally classed with David Drake, who I don't like. However, one of his books (Lt. Leary, Commanding) which I had read about in a SF Book Club flyer, sounded interesting, so I picked out one of the selections from the Baen Free Library, Mutineer's Moon, and put it on my palmpilot.
I couldn't put it down. It was great!
Following that, I put the sequels, The Armageddon Inheritance, and Heirs of Empire, on hold at the local library. Because I couldn't wait while the books were being delivered from the main branch, I went to the bookstore and devoured the second book (a trade paperback) in one sitting. If the bookstore had closed on me, halfway through the book, I would probably have walked out with a new copy, even at $7.00 a pop (it's happend to me before, even with $20+ hardcovers.) The last book I read as a library edition.
Now here's a situation where I've read 3 of David Weber's books for free. One on my Palmpilot, another one while sitting in the bookstore, and another that I'd borrowed from the library. So what does David Weber get? A dedicated fan, who's going to recommend these books, who'd probably gonna order some book club editions of his stuff (like Lt. Leary), and if I can find them, the books about the Fifth Imperium (see above). And if he ever comes out with another book in that series, you can be sure that I'll have my eye out for a cheap, quality copy.
Besides, regarding used books - if nobody bought them, then no used bookstore would buy them (or nobody would sell them via Amazon.) If nobody sold them, then they wouldn't get any money, which they'd probably would spend on new books, perhaps by different authors. Thus, a used book might rob an author of a sale to this second party, but it might provide funds to the first pary for another purchase, possibly from that same author. In fact, you might argue that the resale value of a used book counts as part of the price you pay for a new book, in much the same way as a used car holds part of the value of your original purchase price.
They're working with Ballard Power (fuel cells, like in that Coleman generator) to explore ways of incorporating a safe hydrogen storage device into future products. The problem is that the biggest market, automobiles, is making glacial steps towards actually deploying fuel-cell vehicles.
Right now, fuel-cell is still at the vapor-ware, great for feel-good marketing, tax-breaks, and getting the government off our backs while we run business as usual stage. As a consequence, Millenium Cell has pretty much NO business, same as Ovonics (NiMH batteries).
Keep in mind that the big 3 US auto makers were going to kill off alternative auto development - the EV1 upgrade from lead-acid to nicad had been scrapped, despite an established base of 1st generation vehicles, they had succesfully bribed and bitched their way past the California 10%/0% mandate of 2001 (10% of the cars sold were supposed to have been 0 emissions vehiles, essentially electrics). It was only when Toyota shocked the industry by not only announcing, but SHIPPING a hybrid vehicle - the Prius, that all the other manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon, mostly for PR purposes, and to hedge their bets.
Unfortunately, the Prius is the only good example of the hybrid on the market right now. The Honda Insight, the only other hybrid, is the poster boy of compromise engineering (super-light 2 seater), and just feeds the big-3 FUD that links efficency with lack of safety (ie, lighter is not safer.) The FUD regarding fuel efficency not being a top priority, and being less safe, of course, is merely justification to keep making big margins on the heavy, fuel inefficent SUVs. Even worse, the big-3 auto idea of a hybrid is an electric assist - no more than an overgrown starter motor, meaning that fuel savings will be minimal as the gas motor will be on pretty much ALL the time. Compare that against the Prius, which gets great performance off the onboard batteries for short trips (ie, to the market, video store, cleaners), and during traffic.
Be careful that you don't swallow all the bullshit that they're feeding the public. After all, GM said, when asked why they were cancelling the EV1 program, "They weren't selling well." What the spokesman neglected to mention, was that they were NEVER SOLD AT ALL - only leased, and that the waiting list for leasing had been quite long...
Ahhh, but who's seen the original Mad Max, where he gets issued that V-8 interceptor? (The Road Warrior is actually the second movie in the series)
They've finally released a US version on DVD with the original Australian dialogue (no more cheesy US english dub, yay!)
Don't spread FUD until you know whether or not this decision will actually affect Kagi (or Digital River, or Sharereg, or all the OTHER shareware payment processors.)
:)
And even if it does, what of it? They stop taking MasterCard, and continue taking Visa, Discover, and AmEx. In the meantime Citibank (which force switched all of its Visa cardholders to MasterCard), will stand to lose a lot of online revenue, as will many other MC-dependent banks.
Next thing you know, there will be an anti-trust investigation of MasterCard, and they'll go the way of Arthur Andersen
On a lark, I was browsing the Baen free library. I picked out one of the more interesting-looking titles and installed it on my PalmPilot. (tip to Baen librarians - a back cover synopsis helps to sell a book... think about adding some.) After wrangling with the PC install software for Mobipocket, extracting the PRC files, and installing them on my Pilot 5000, I started reading.
Half a day later (with a minor bit of eyestrain) I'm now searching out the sequels to the book (Mutineer's Moon.) I'd never read David Weber's stuff before, because it seemed to be dry military stuff from the cover and the descriptions, although I wanted to take a look at Lt. Leary Commanding (which was one of the reasons I downloaded Mutineer's Moon.) I was pleasantly surprised to find a much more classical pulp science-fiction feel (galactic empires, etc.)
Chalk up another bit of anecdotal evidence that more exposure is good. Next time I'm a bookstore, I'm more likely to take a look at David Weber's stuff, and that much more likely to walk out with a mass market paperback. Prior to today, the chances of that were totally nil.
Well, it doesn't help the sale of paperbacks at $25 when you get used to seeing discounted hardbacks a year or two later after publication selling at $7 per book. Hell, some bestsellers are sold at 40% off cover when they come out, and places like Costco move books at a discount like crazy.
When I was younger, I could only afford paperbacks and book-club books. Now that I have money, I'd rather shell out $16 for good quality hardback, than $7 for a piece of garbage mass market paperback.
Publishers/booksellers are undercutting themselves by conditioning the consumer to bargain buys. Why buy an inferior product at $25 when you can buy a superior product at $7-16?
You can always disable downloads in your browser prefs, scripting, etc.
As much as I hate Microsoft and Explorer, you can't say that they don't give you the tools to avoid this garbage. Of course, you can use Navigator (I use 4.08 w/ Javascript disabled.)
With Javascript off, I don't get any pop-ups/pop-unders when I surf, and sites that force the use of Javascript (and probably have pop-ups/pop-unders), I just avoid.
> an enforcement burden and legal quagmire
Witness the fiasco surrounding video camera sales in Europe. Because there is a tax/import duty on items that can record (a VCR tax), manufacturers sell cameras with the external inputs disabled. Thus, you can record your vacation to Paris, but once you edit it on your spiffy Firewire-enabled computer, you can't record it back to your video camera.
A thriving industry has grown around "enabling" the input ports, since manufacturers don't want to have a separate assembly line to make these neutered cameras, and just disable them in the flash portion of the camera firmware.
Meanwhile, everyone else gets their cameras for cheaper, with the ability to record their edited footage back to tape for storage (I'd rather mail a 4-ounce tape, than a 2-lb hard drive, the tape's a hell of a lot cheaper too.) If this legislation passes, we'll have an equally stupid restriction on our equipment here in the states. This will be a death-blow to Firewire, and related industries like network storage. I'm surprised that nobody in the popular media has brought up how broad this legislation will be - it will literally cover every single consumer device under the sun, since everything (or nearly everything) is digital these days.
And I'll bet that there will be import duties in order to cover the costs of implementing and policing this bill too - the politicians like laws that can fund themselves. Even if there aren't import duties, we'll eventually have to pay taxes (on top of higher prices) to fund the enforcement of this bill's provisions...
Modern MR and CT scanner archive data to... guess what: Recordable CDs (they used to use recordable optical discs, which would also probably fall under restriction by the CBDTPA.)
These machines are also built around off-the-shelf workstations running stuff like NT (ug), Solaris, and Irix. Since they're essentially the same thing as a regular workstation, except that they're hooked up to million-dollar pieces of equipment, and run specialized software for medical imaging, it means that they share the same "evil" file-copying capabilities (duh).
Let's assume that they pass the CBDTPA. Does this mean that it will be illegal to sell, transport, or manufacture advanced medical imaging equipment in the US? GE (which makes both CT and MR scanners) would be very pissed to hear about that.
Let's assume that they "fix" the new equipment to comply with the CBDTPA. How will the old scanners and the new scanners interchange data? Even worse, what kind of equipment will we have to buy to read this new data? How will we archive this very important, critical, patient data, so we can move it around AT WILL, review it at a future date, and share it using our installed base of older equipment (including regular desktop computers), in which we've already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in?
It's bad enough that we're paying the RIAA for CD blanks that hold patient data, will we have to feed the music and entertainment cartel in order to practice medicine too?
In the interests of maintaining "closer ties to the community" (ie getting reelected), many Senators and Representatives have local offices in their home districts/states.
How hard really is it for you to look up their number/address, and pay them a phone call/visit? When you call up, ask questions about the bill, is: "I have certain reservations about this bill", or "could you clarify what exactly this clause means, as the way I read it, it could inadvertently affect the sale of software by small businesses."
The staffer will generally be clueless, relying on public statements by the senator/representative to phrase a reply. If no statement exists, this means you have an opening to shape that future statement, by having them take down some of your concerns to be addressed by your congresscritter.
For example, I called an office of one of the CBDTPA co-sponsors, asked for clarification on the bill, and failing that, asked them to take down a few concerns I had. I intend to follow up on this later, maybe with another phone call, or a personal visit to the local staffer's office.
Calling/faxing/mailing, just before a vote is pretty much useless, since they know it's a spur of the moment, inflamed by pseudo-grassroots thing - it doesn't matter for squat. However, if we get involved in the actual debate, and make our presence known then, it will be much easier to get staffers and representatives on our side, informed on the issues that we want addressed. The best way to get involved is to touch base with them, in an interactive manner, before they get swamped and start blowing people off.
I think this situation is becoming analogous to the dilemma of shareware presented a few weeks ago. In my post I commented that customers are lazy beasts, and will take the past of least resistance to getting what they want. If the easier course is to buy, they will buy. If the easier course is to pirate, then they will pirate. If Universal is stupid enough to lock out part of their audience (ie, no Macs can play this CD), then someone WILL translate the CD into a form that audience can listen to (ie, MP3s), and everyone will then DL the MP3 now that it's available...
If I've learned anything about selling digital works, it's that you have to cover as many bases as possible so that there are no market niches left to be exploited by non-authorized parties. If you don't, you will lose control over those translations that you have not authorized.
If the RIAA was at all intelligent, they'd pre-rip a CD and have the MP3s available on the CD itself with little id3-based advertising tags embedded in them (ie: to buy this CD, go ). That way they'd avoid the umpteen versions of the same tracks floating around, pretty much ALL without any copyright info (and some lacking artist/album info too), and would get both exposure and buying traffic when the tracks are streamed.
Of course, since the RIAA are idiots, they're trying to restrict their audience, by locking down the CDs and killing free exposure via internet radio...
IE:
Now, after specifying these license terms, these artists and albums then register their music on (insert non-profit group website) so that internet broadcasters can have a searchable index of music to pick from and promote. Note that this is different from the Open Source Music license - it just tells the RIAA goons to get lost, no other rights are modified or given up. Thus, each copyright holder can specify a license overrules the RIAA mandated rates, with the end result that the broadcast law then CEASES TO MATTER, except to the labels who don't get played 'cause they're too damn greedy.
On that note, does anyone know if Shoutcast is going to support "buy" links in their streaming server software? It would really help if we could click a "buy" link on someone's shoutcast server when we hear something we like, that links us to a online MP3 store, or an online CD link.
I dunno. Blizzard has maintained the bnet servers for years (yes, complaints about slow service not withstanding) without charging existing users lame-ass subscription fees. I think Valve could get away with it if they could use the opportunity to cut out all the overhead expenses associated with feeding the deadwood between them and the consumer.
Now, if only we could get rid of those MPAA and RIAA middlemen and their hired guns using Steam as well...
Pricing lower only works if pricing is an issue. For some users, any price is too much. For other users, you can charge quite a bit. From what I've seen, piracy is mainly an issue for popular software, where people who fall into the first camp publish kracks/keys, which are then used by the second group...
That's where the real revenue hits come in - when downloading the key/krack is easier than registering, and users who would have paid, if they had been forced to, take the easy way out.
BTW, there was a brief experiment done by a shareware author (Colin Messitt), who inserted code that would cripple his app for half the users, and have full functionality for the other half. Who would get which version activated was totally at random. One of the observations from this experiment was that the crippled version had a MUCH higher rate of registration/payment than the non-crippled version. The price for the utility was $25. A copy of the article is here (google version).
Mind you, if you release "true" shareware (no restrictions), you essentially provide the "krack", and can fall victim to users just being too lazy to register (or falling victim to the perception that since they can use the software for free, that's all its worth.)
This isn't true of all users, of course. But the grim truth is that there aren't enough scrupulously honest users out there that value your software enough for you to build a thriving business without some protections in place (at the very least, some sort of nag.) Most of the shareware authors I know would agree with me on this point.
According to the article, the tourist-shuttle will take 3 crew (1 pilot, 2 passengers) and suspend them for 3 minutes. If you added a pair of boosters, stripped out the crew compartment and associated life-support, would it be possible to boost light cargo into orbit? I mean, hell, at $100k, even LEO would be good.
That brings up the other question, why the hell doesn't NASA fund the Buran program instead of the shuttle program? No crew compartment = more cargo capacity, less cost/turnaround time (since we don't have to certify the craft for human occupants.) Not to mention Russian scientists/technicians are cheap these days.
Given that he accessed everything through his wearable, and that his HUD was quarter VGA (240x180?), he probably designed his site for that medium, which explains the big text and scarcity of graphics. Add that to the fact that he probably wrote the code for his site on his wearable, and this is what you get.
Try using lynx to visit the site, and tell us if it still seems confusing.