Actually it's entirely inline with MOBILE platform distributors. Android takes 30%. Some, like Handango, can take 40, 50 or even 60 percent for "marketing, distribution and credit card processing costs." Go check, I'll wait.
Don't want a distributor? Fine. So go setup your own website with your own shopping cart software and your own merchant account. Pay for your own SSL certificates. Oh, and pay for Google ads and whatnot to drive customers to a site that no one visits, knows, or probably even cares about. Now let's compare costs.
30% is MORE than reasonable for a marketing, distribution, and payment platform.
"...and then I have to have Apple tell me how much I am allowed to make?"
Have you heard the story about the developer who wrote a little game called Trism? Spent a month or so on it, part time? And had made, last time I checked, about $250,000 from it? That's one quarter of one million dollars. For some part time work.
You sir, couldn't see an opportunity even if one knocked on the front door, barged in, and plopped down in the middle of your living room.
What "serious callers only" said, plus you seem to imply that they would NEVER test on an iPhone. The point being that you could develop and test on cheaper devices with no contract AND on an iPhone or two.
Secondarily, the Touch opens up the market to people that might find that application useful, but are locked into contracts with other carriers like Verizon, or who like their crackberry, or whatever.
Heck, I looked into getting a Touch simply to run the multitouch trackpad applications on an iMac.
That and the fact that many mortgage-backed securities got their AAA ratings by being insured by the commercial insurance companies.
"This security is backed by a pool of actual mortgages AND it's insured by AIG. You CAN'T lose! In fact, they're so bullet-proof you should even leverage yourself to the max to buy as many of them as you can!"
"It's simply invasive, untrusting, and unnecessary for adults..."
Unfortunately, most of the participants in file "sharing" act more like greedy self-absorbed two-year-olds than adults. Adults at least tend to have at least some perception of the consequences of their actions. Children simply demand they be given MORE! MORE! MORE!
"Period. So he *is* entitled to it, even if he has to wait some period of time."
So your statement should then read, "He's entitled to it AFTER it becomes public domain. He is not entitled to it beforehand." Just because you WILL buy that house on the corner doesn't mean you own it, or are in any way entitled to it now.
Besides, both you and I know that even if the copyright period was, say, the same 17-year period invoked for patents it wouldn't matter in the least. People pirate music and movies and software from the SECOND it's released. Hell, half the time someone manages to steal it BEFORE it's released.
"I'll tell you what's unethical: It would cost me around a million dollars to fill up an iPod, if I bought all my music from the iTMS."
Well, there's **cough** movies, you know. At 1.5GB a pop it would only cost a little over $200 to "fill up" a 32GB Touch.
But that's a pretty stupid rationalization, even for rationalizations. You might as well complain about the bazillion dollars it would take for you to "fill up" a terabyte HD with commercial software and games.
Yeah, but the number of people with the ability to do that would be greatly diminished. It's like when MacroVision protection was added to VHS tapes. You could buy a $200 box that would allow you to copy tapes, but the vast majority of people simply didn't bother. How many kids in their parents basement are going to buy, say, a $1,000 HD DVD r/w drive and install it into their PC JUST so they can copy games?
When you put it that way, I'd say what MS needs to do is KEEP the HD DVD player in the XBOX, and only publish games in that format. That way they'd have a locked-in format that essentially couldn't be copied.
"However, the simple answer is that you're not entitled to other people's money."
And you're not entitled to the game. See how easy that was? But the simple answer is that he's not entitled to your money, and you're not entitled to his work.
He created a product and set a price for it. You get to determine if that product has sufficient value to you and, if so, to pay the price. Quid pro quo. If, however, you DON'T think it has value, then you're free not to pay, and he is not "magically entitled" to anything. He invested his time and money, rolled the dice, and lost.
"...setting a specific price is not respective of people's perception of value."
Actually it is. As said, you're free to make the judgement call on your own.
"What you think is worth 500$ and maybe is to one or two people, might be worth 0$ to the rest of the world."
Again, don't pay. If enough people fail to do so, maybe he'll adjust his price accordingly. Or maybe he's happy with one or two $500 sales. His creation, his choice.
The problem with letting you decide what, if anything, you're willing to pay is that it always devolves into people not paying their share, or what game theorists call the "free rider" problem.
"The difference is those games (wow,warhammer, any pay or subscription mmo) are subsidizing their users to pay for the privilege to play an inevitable grind at the cost of the company's bandwidth."
Bandwidth? Yeah, you're paying for bandwidth. I mean, it's not like they created the client software, the server software, the game, the characters, the entire world, or like they pay for servers, hosting, and the BANDWIDTH.
Except that you had to buy the recorders. And buy the tapes you wanted to share. And then spend your own time making copies. All of which combined to effectively limit the number of cassettes or VHS tapes people would share, and the number of friends with whom they'd share them, and as such, the amount of "damage" they could do.
P2P effectively removes the time element, and the cost element, and the "friends" element. Which in turn raises the stakes by several orders of magnitude.
All of which is yet another reason to avoid having thousands of P2P programs trashing the network. Don't want them preventing you from doing your research, now do we?
What the OP is missing is that any money they might be saving by not chasing after P2P users would now be spent on bandwidth and on trying to upgrade the infrastructure faster than the hogs can use it.
"These things can all take up a lot of bandwidth."
Entirely true. Which is yet another reason to not have thousands of P2P programs trashing the network.
What the OP is missing is that any money they might be saving by not chasing after P2P users would now be spent on bandwidth and on trying upgrade the infrastructure faster than the hogs can use it.
"...but as long as people keep buying locked phones..."
'Course, this also means that you're going to have to shell out $400, $500, or more up front for a smartphone, as the primary reason phones are locked is that they're subsidized under the carrier's 2-year contract. Which in turn argues that as long as the average consumer prefers "free" or highly subsidized phones the teclos will continue doing just what they're doing.
"I said I'd made several high speed (and low speed, for that matter) emergency manoeuvres."
No, you said, and I quote, "As someone who's made many high speed emergency manoeuvres while talking on my cell phone."
"The problem comes in when a driver does something completely erratic..."
Which rarely happens. Such behavior almost always has a precursor: subtle shift in vehicle direction, sudden head movement, glancing in mirrors, etc.. Not to mention that you can almost always tell by the way a vehicle moves --If you're paying attention-- when someone is on their cell phone and/or otherwise distracted.
In which case you keep an extra eye or two on that vehicle. If --once again-- you have the attention to spare for it and if you yourself are not splitting your own attention between the road and your cell conversation.
Nothing to continue here. Like I said, you're firmly convinced that the problem lies with all of the other bad drivers, that you're good enough to compensate, and that you can afford to focus an often significant portion of your attention on things other than driving tons of glass and steel down a highway.
Problem is, most everyone else believes the same thing.
"As someone who's made many high speed emergency manoeuvres while talking on my cell phone..."
One would think that needing to have made "many" high speed emergency maneuvers might have been, oh, like a clue.
Dare I suggest that, had more of your attention been focused on the road and the developing situation, that many of those high speed "emergency" maneuvers might not have been necessary in the first place? But no. I'm sure you're firmly convinced that the problem lies with all of those "other" bad and inconsistent drivers.
Just like a friend I have who complains about how rude the "other" drivers are to her, "Always honking at me!" Can't be HER driving. No way.
To reiterate, "And some people (the same set, actually) only think they can."
Slashdot Mirror
No, he designed the money. The Dutch mint will actually MAKE the money.
BTW, this just reinforces the fact the F/OSS people can't design. That coin, especially the back, has to be one of the ugliest things I've ever seen.
Yeah, I followed some of some of the links and it appears that he won the contest, not that he made any money in doing so.
"Only 30%? Your freaking kidding right?"
Actually it's entirely inline with MOBILE platform distributors. Android takes 30%. Some, like Handango, can take 40, 50 or even 60 percent for "marketing, distribution and credit card processing costs." Go check, I'll wait.
Don't want a distributor? Fine. So go setup your own website with your own shopping cart software and your own merchant account. Pay for your own SSL certificates. Oh, and pay for Google ads and whatnot to drive customers to a site that no one visits, knows, or probably even cares about. Now let's compare costs.
30% is MORE than reasonable for a marketing, distribution, and payment platform.
"...and then I have to have Apple tell me how much I am allowed to make?"
Have you heard the story about the developer who wrote a little game called Trism? Spent a month or so on it, part time? And had made, last time I checked, about $250,000 from it? That's one quarter of one million dollars. For some part time work.
You sir, couldn't see an opportunity even if one knocked on the front door, barged in, and plopped down in the middle of your living room.
The ad-hoc distribution system can't be used to bypass the App Store. It's solely for development and/or internal distribution.
Thus the statement "And limits you to a max of 100 customers" is a non sequitur. There are no "customers".
What "serious callers only" said, plus you seem to imply that they would NEVER test on an iPhone. The point being that you could develop and test on cheaper devices with no contract AND on an iPhone or two.
Secondarily, the Touch opens up the market to people that might find that application useful, but are locked into contracts with other carriers like Verizon, or who like their crackberry, or whatever.
Heck, I looked into getting a Touch simply to run the multitouch trackpad applications on an iMac.
"... and it's probably trivial to port between them."
Hah. Says it all right there. Never developed for J2ME, have you?
Well, you know, you could actually make music, take photos, and create your own videos.
(You could make your own pr0n too, but that's probably a bit much to ask of a geek.)
That and the fact that many mortgage-backed securities got their AAA ratings by being insured by the commercial insurance companies.
"This security is backed by a pool of actual mortgages AND it's insured by AIG. You CAN'T lose! In fact, they're so bullet-proof you should even leverage yourself to the max to buy as many of them as you can!"
"It's simply invasive, untrusting, and unnecessary for adults..."
Unfortunately, most of the participants in file "sharing" act more like greedy self-absorbed two-year-olds than adults. Adults at least tend to have at least some perception of the consequences of their actions. Children simply demand they be given MORE! MORE! MORE!
"Period. So he *is* entitled to it, even if he has to wait some period of time."
So your statement should then read, "He's entitled to it AFTER it becomes public domain. He is not entitled to it beforehand." Just because you WILL buy that house on the corner doesn't mean you own it, or are in any way entitled to it now.
Besides, both you and I know that even if the copyright period was, say, the same 17-year period invoked for patents it wouldn't matter in the least. People pirate music and movies and software from the SECOND it's released. Hell, half the time someone manages to steal it BEFORE it's released.
"I'll tell you what's unethical: It would cost me around a million dollars to fill up an iPod, if I bought all my music from the iTMS."
Well, there's **cough** movies, you know. At 1.5GB a pop it would only cost a little over $200 to "fill up" a 32GB Touch.
But that's a pretty stupid rationalization, even for rationalizations. You might as well complain about the bazillion dollars it would take for you to "fill up" a terabyte HD with commercial software and games.
Yeah, but the number of people with the ability to do that would be greatly diminished. It's like when MacroVision protection was added to VHS tapes. You could buy a $200 box that would allow you to copy tapes, but the vast majority of people simply didn't bother. How many kids in their parents basement are going to buy, say, a $1,000 HD DVD r/w drive and install it into their PC JUST so they can copy games?
When you put it that way, I'd say what MS needs to do is KEEP the HD DVD player in the XBOX, and only publish games in that format. That way they'd have a locked-in format that essentially couldn't be copied.
"However, the simple answer is that you're not entitled to other people's money."
And you're not entitled to the game. See how easy that was? But the simple answer is that he's not entitled to your money, and you're not entitled to his work.
He created a product and set a price for it. You get to determine if that product has sufficient value to you and, if so, to pay the price. Quid pro quo. If, however, you DON'T think it has value, then you're free not to pay, and he is not "magically entitled" to anything. He invested his time and money, rolled the dice, and lost.
"...setting a specific price is not respective of people's perception of value."
Actually it is. As said, you're free to make the judgement call on your own.
"What you think is worth 500$ and maybe is to one or two people, might be worth 0$ to the rest of the world."
Again, don't pay. If enough people fail to do so, maybe he'll adjust his price accordingly. Or maybe he's happy with one or two $500 sales. His creation, his choice.
The problem with letting you decide what, if anything, you're willing to pay is that it always devolves into people not paying their share, or what game theorists call the "free rider" problem.
Me, I just call 'em parasites.
"The difference is those games (wow,warhammer, any pay or subscription mmo) are subsidizing their users to pay for the privilege to play an inevitable grind at the cost of the company's bandwidth."
Bandwidth? Yeah, you're paying for bandwidth. I mean, it's not like they created the client software, the server software, the game, the characters, the entire world, or like they pay for servers, hosting, and the BANDWIDTH.
Sheesh.
Except that you had to buy the recorders. And buy the tapes you wanted to share. And then spend your own time making copies. All of which combined to effectively limit the number of cassettes or VHS tapes people would share, and the number of friends with whom they'd share them, and as such, the amount of "damage" they could do.
P2P effectively removes the time element, and the cost element, and the "friends" element. Which in turn raises the stakes by several orders of magnitude.
All of which is yet another reason to avoid having thousands of P2P programs trashing the network. Don't want them preventing you from doing your research, now do we?
What the OP is missing is that any money they might be saving by not chasing after P2P users would now be spent on bandwidth and on trying to upgrade the infrastructure faster than the hogs can use it.
"These things can all take up a lot of bandwidth."
Entirely true. Which is yet another reason to not have thousands of P2P programs trashing the network.
What the OP is missing is that any money they might be saving by not chasing after P2P users would now be spent on bandwidth and on trying upgrade the infrastructure faster than the hogs can use it.
"...but as long as people keep buying locked phones..."
'Course, this also means that you're going to have to shell out $400, $500, or more up front for a smartphone, as the primary reason phones are locked is that they're subsidized under the carrier's 2-year contract. Which in turn argues that as long as the average consumer prefers "free" or highly subsidized phones the teclos will continue doing just what they're doing.
TANSTAAFL.
Can you say "massive rationalization" boys and girls? I knew that you could...
Apple should at least offer an official FW/USB converter/cable or mini-hub, much as they do with the various DisplayPort converters.
"I said I'd made several high speed (and low speed, for that matter) emergency manoeuvres."
No, you said, and I quote, "As someone who's made many high speed emergency manoeuvres while talking on my cell phone."
"The problem comes in when a driver does something completely erratic..."
Which rarely happens. Such behavior almost always has a precursor: subtle shift in vehicle direction, sudden head movement, glancing in mirrors, etc.. Not to mention that you can almost always tell by the way a vehicle moves --If you're paying attention-- when someone is on their cell phone and/or otherwise distracted.
In which case you keep an extra eye or two on that vehicle. If --once again-- you have the attention to spare for it and if you yourself are not splitting your own attention between the road and your cell conversation.
Nothing to continue here. Like I said, you're firmly convinced that the problem lies with all of the other bad drivers, that you're good enough to compensate, and that you can afford to focus an often significant portion of your attention on things other than driving tons of glass and steel down a highway.
Problem is, most everyone else believes the same thing.
"Google still does not have an application approval system or take a cut from the developers."
Yet. And I suspect that T-Mobile may have a thing or two to say about what applications run on their newtwork as well.
BTW, it takes a certain amount of chutzpa to label something a "marketplace" when nothing can be bought and sold there...
"Next year, they'll want to plant RFID into every person."
Actually, that's Phase III of the PLAN.
"As someone who's made many high speed emergency manoeuvres while talking on my cell phone..."
One would think that needing to have made "many" high speed emergency maneuvers might have been, oh, like a clue.
Dare I suggest that, had more of your attention been focused on the road and the developing situation, that many of those high speed "emergency" maneuvers might not have been necessary in the first place? But no. I'm sure you're firmly convinced that the problem lies with all of those "other" bad and inconsistent drivers.
Just like a friend I have who complains about how rude the "other" drivers are to her, "Always honking at me!" Can't be HER driving. No way.
To reiterate, "And some people (the same set, actually) only think they can."