I am wondering who "owns" Creative Computing now, that they got permission from. The reason is because of the books that CC published, Basic Computer Games, and More Basic Computer Games, I think some of those games would be interesting to update to modern BASIC, convert to other languages, etc.
From the CNN story: "The decision eliminates the establishment of a technical committee to assess Microsoft's compliance with the agreement. In its place, a corporate compliance committee -- consisting of Microsoft board members -- will make sure Microsoft lives up to the deal, the judge said."
iUniverse, another POD publisher, was looking into making books available at Kinko's. That is, they would put the big giant printer/binder machine they use to make paperbacks in each Kinko's. You would go down and order one, or order it on the web ahead of time, and 20 minutes later it would be waiting for you.
I have heard that printing a POD books costs maybe $5 and an offet run (how paperbacks normally are done) is about $2. However POD books usually cost more than $3 more than the same-size paperback. I think partly this is the business people saying well a book should cost X * [our costs], instead of thinking Y + [our costs]. So if the book costs twice as much to make, they want to charge twice as much. Which is pretty lame, especially since they won't have to worry about eating returned books.
agents and publishers sign authors, not books
on
Reflecting Fires
·
· Score: 2
This is the key fact to understanding the publishing industry. They are interested in the author, not the book. Slightly less true for fiction, but basically people buy books for the author, so that is what they look for. They want someone marketable, or with a track record, that will sound good on Oprah or CNBC. And as you mention, agents these days basically have the same standards as publishers.
The best way to get published is to work your way up the chain, first get some stuff published anywhere, then some small articles/poems/stories, then longer ones, then you may build some name recognition and get an agent interested in a book.
- adam
consignment and amazon advantage
on
Reflecting Fires
·
· Score: 5, Informative
You can't sell a print-on-demand book through Amazon Advantage. They require that you obtain the ISBN yourself, while a POD publisher will do that for you (obtaining an ISBN is not hard, but you have to publish the book yourself).
A lot of bricks and mortar bookstores won't carry your book unless it is available through Ingram, the big distributor. Ingram had (or used to have) a program similar to Amazon Advantage, where they would warehouse a few copies as long as you are willing to take returns (just like for Amazon Advantage). The big issue with bookstores carrying print-on-demand books is that most print-on-demand publishers don't take returns (Amazon, to its credit, will take returns on a print-on-demand book, although I'm not sure what they do with them except hang on to them and hope someone else buys them).
Incidentally there is at least one print-on-demand place that will allow returns in some case:
Superior Books. After all print-on-demand and "no standards" don't need to be synonymous.
- adam
print-on-demand page within that
on
Reflecting Fires
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Self-publishing and POD are not exactly the same thing (although POD is a subset of self-publishing). The SFWA page there has a
page specifically about print-on-demand.
...I read when I was a kid, although I doubt it was the same one since I don't this story would get a Nebula. It's about a robotic cop who is missing the "feel" that a real policeman has. So he lets someone go who is acting suspicious because they have not broken any laws (then later they commit a serious crime), and busts someone for a minor offence like jaywalking (when they were actually doing it for a good reason).
I don't think it is necessary or fair to try to tie this back to alleged stories like ensuring that each release of DOS wouldn't run Lotus 1-2-3. We're not talking about an open environment where anyone could write apps, like on DOS/WIndows. Xbox is a closed system, Microsoft retains complete control over which games are certified for the platform. I'm sure all existing games for the platform will keep running, it's just the mod chips etc. which won't run. So as the poster above said I don't see any reason to think this wasn't done to foil hackers -- but I also don't think they have any right to complain. The new system will get hacked eventually, and the battle will continue.
I was just steaming over to post a complaint about this also...although I don't think the ice worked into a joint. The seals were supposed to "seat" into a gap in the edge of the rocket, but did not because they were too cold. The engineers at Morton-Thiokol were very worried about the launch (the temperature was below freezing overnight, and examination of previous solid rocket boosters launched below 60 degrees or so had all exhibited some signs of the O-rings failing to seat). Unfortunately they did not do a great job of explaining this to NASA...plus the pressure to get Christa McAuliffe up in the air...
Edward Tufte has an interesting discussion of this case (how the scientists could have presented the evidence better) in
Visual Explanations.
If you read the book, he seems to be laying most of the fault at the feet of the engineers who prepared such an unconvincing presentation for NASA. In a class I took with him, however, he talked about how people making a serious decision have an obligation to make sure they are getting the information they need -- that NASA should have pressed for more information. The questions he feels the recipients of a presentation should ask are, "Show me causality," "Show me all relevant data," and "What do I really need to know?"
I asked him about this apparent shift afterwards and he said, well, there was certainly enough blame to go around. [NOTE: previous two paragraphs lifted from a comment I made on another site].
I plan to buy a copy (and have planned to do so for a while, honest), but I was curious which got more $$$ into the author's hands, buying by paypal or by check. I assume paypal takes a cut, but maybe you are using a check-guaranteeing service that also takes a cut? Thanks.
Saying Microsoft killed Java because it released a version that allowed an applet to be tied directly to Windows is like saying that Microsoft killed the C stdio library when they released Windows API libraries for C. Well, maybe, but is that really so terrible? Why can't Java exist just as a language without commingling it with the portable execution environment and the "we hate Microsoft" religion?
Look, the notion that middleware is going to magically let you write an app once and run anywhere, results in apps that can only support a lowest-common-denominator of the APIs available on the various platforms. Sure Sun hyped it to the moon, no surprise there, but that doesn't mean it was going to happen. Middleware has *always* had this problem and always will. What happens when Windows comes out with some new feature (USB support say) and then Java doesn't get around to supporting it for a year....all the Java coders are supposed to simply wait a year while native Windows apps use the feature right away? Yeah surrrrre.
I don't know if you've talked to politicians about this...I talked to some Washington State legislators about my idea and got
mixed results; unfortunately, the Democrat, who I know personally and might actually consider the idea, has been redistricted and now represents the district with Microsoft in it, instead of just an adjacent district. So sponsoring such a bill might be political suicide.
Didn't mean to accuse you of stealing anything...someday I hope to get off my rear and make the Open Data Format Initiative into a website, links to relevant articles, new discussions, membership, etc. Basically what you've done with Sincere Choice. It's impressive you can whip up a new organization like that.
The article on sfgate implies that the way a format is defined as "open" is if the source code that read/writes it is available (although a quick scan of the Sincere Choice website doesn't say that)...I don't like this because a) it gets into a murky area of releasing source, which will make some companies resist it, and for no reason, because b) having a real doc is better than source code anyway, since the source code may not be compilable on its own, may be obscure, etc.
Also, Bruce Perens is not the first person to write about using government buying power to require open file formats...I'm probably
not the first either however (although my article was
discussed on LinuxToday...where're you getting your ideas from Bruce?!?)
That's not my logic. I started with 3) [Microsoft prefers to hire Waterloo students] as an empirically observed fact when I worked at Microsoft. Microsoft does hire a lot of Waterloo people and hiring managers drool over them. 3) implies 1), in the case of Waterloo at least (but likely more generally true also), since you can't get hired if you don't interview well. And 2) is a fact that nobody disputes.
My logic is more like
1) Microsoft hires a disproportionate number of Waterloo students.
2) Incoming Waterloo students are not superior to other schools Microsoft hires at.
3) Waterloo does not do anything particularly unusual with students beyond the co-op jobs.
4) Working as a co-op has no effect on your long-term potential at Microsoft, which is what Microsoft is theoretically hiring for.
5) Therefore there is likely something in the way Microsoft interviews that makes it overvalue Waterloo co-op students.
I tried to find that reference...there was an MIT vs. Waterloo discussion in this thread about the
ACM programming contest, but a quick scan didn't reveal anything about admission averages.
I don't think US vs. Canada is comparable though. Canada uses uncurved percentages for its grades (aka marks) (except in Quebec AFAIK where the government manages to curve percentage numbers, neat trick that), the US uses curved GPA for its grades. Some people try to convert saying 90 is an A or whatever, but it's not like that. Often it's just the top X percent get an A, the next get B, etc (college is usually like that). So if someone gets an A in the US, that could be a 99 in Canada, or a 90, or an 83.
Plus of course you have this huge difference in how grades are applied. For example my brother and I went to different high schools in Quebec. The top average in my high school was about 87 or so, at my brother's it was about 95. Same school board, similar kids (in fact he went to his because mine closed, so a lot of the same families were at both). So I don't think it was smarter kids, just different degrees of grade inflation. Then you imagine how grades can vary all across Canada. That's why the SAT gained the importance it did, because US high school grades varied so much.
I'm curious what was insulting in the previous message! I said Canadian engineers liked to party, isn't that a compliment?!? I always thought engineers were proud of their reputation.
Maybe in the US the BA students like to party and partying is the "cool" thing to do...meanwhile in Canada the BA students are grinds and partying is considered bad...once again engineers get the short end of the stick!
Focussing on the top people misses the point. There are great people at any university. I'm sure many Waterloo students could go to top US schools. Admissions sets a floor on student quality, not a ceiling. Especially being the top school in a certain country, will automatically keep some top students who just don't want to go to school in another country (or can't for financial reasons).
But Microsoft has accorded Waterloo this special status, like its graduates are better than top US schools. So you have to talk more about the 75+ percentile student. So questions like:
1) Is the average Waterloo student coming in better than the average at a top US school.
2) Does Waterloo do a better job with those students than a top US school.
I think the answers are 1) almost certainly not and 2) maybe, which put together doesn't make a Waterloo grad anything unusually special.
I have absolutely no doubt that the entrance requirements are stricter at the Ivies than at Waterloo. I don't have firm data, but I went to an Ivy League school, and several friends from high school went to Waterloo. The stricter requirements are the assessment of all of us.
The Ivies recruit (well they don't "recruit" per se, more like "harvest") from the top high school all over the US.
Well, I knew several Waterloo students, and have hoisted a few beers at that big club place they have (the name "Fed Hall" springs to mind, but I could be wrong). I would say that the engineering students at Waterloo are at least as likely to party as those at Ivy League schools. In fact in Canadian schools, the engineers are generally considered the degenerate party types, and the arts people are the geeks -- in the Ivy League it is the other way around.
And at an Ivy League school you work real hard also, and you come out with the same work hard all the time attitude.
OK, just have to weigh in with my opinion on the exalted status of Waterloo within Microsoft. What explains Microsoft's fascination with Waterloo graduates? Read on (hint: it has to do with the interaction between how Waterloo does it co-op program, and how Microsoft does its interviews).
"Waterloo is considered the premier engineering school in Canada, and is most famous for its co-op program, in which students alternate school trimesters with work trimesters for five years. By the time they graduate, students have accumulated six different four-month work assignments. Some students wind up spending three or four of these co-op terms as Microsoft interns and then hire on full-time when they graduate. "Co-op"
and "intern" mean the same thing in this case--one is the Waterloo term and one is the Microsoft term--but because of how the Waterloo schedule works, Waterloo co-ops will show up for Microsoft internships not only during the summer, but also from January to April and September to December.
Waterloo students have a reputation at Microsoft for being the crème de la crème among interns. In fact, for a while Waterloo interns were given special email addresses. While interns from all other schools had email addresses that started with "t-" (to visually distinguish them from full-time employees), Waterloo interns were given the unique prefix "w-". In the world of Microsoft that was high status indeed. Having grown up in Canada and knowing many people who went to Waterloo, I will state that there is nothing particularly magical about Waterloo students. Waterloo certainly does attract some of the best engineering students from all across Canada, but the admission standards are unquestionably lower than at the Ivy League universities, MIT and other top U.S. schools. Waterloo does a fine job of educating its students, but the curriculum is the same standard engineering courses offered elsewhere.
Despite this, Microsoft will happily turn down honors graduates from top U.S. schools, while drooling over Waterloo students. Why is this? It is because of the co-op program. But what is it about the co-op program? First of all, let's separate the students who did co-op terms at Microsoft, and lump them together with students from other universities who did internships at Microsoft. Those students are treated differently from others interviewing--Microsoft does recognize previous work experience at Microsoft as a valid input to the hiring process. One of the main goals of the whole internship program is to conduct extended, real-world evaluations for future full-time employment. If you have worked as an intern at Microsoft in the past and gotten good reviews from your boss, that is considered prima facie evidence that you will do well as a full-time employee and will factor into your interview after college. In fact it may become harder and harder for others to get full-time jobs at Microsoft, because hiring former interns carries so much less uncertainty.
But what about the students who have not interned at Microsoft before? Microsoft interviewers love to hear about specific tasks that were worked on by the candidate, with clear goals and results. Waterloo co-op jobs are great for this, so they give the students much more to talk about during interviews. This gives the Waterloo students a huge advantage over those from other schools, without indicating that they are likely to do any better once they are hired. The real ability they have is the ability to interview well at Microsoft.
I once asked a former Microsoft recruiter what she thought about Waterloo. Her first instinctive reaction was "a top school for technical candidates." But after thinking about it for a bit, she commented, "Outside of Microsoft, I've never heard of Waterloo."
Microsoft used to have a very bad attitude towards universities in general, viewing them merely as (imperfect) training grounds for students. Graduate degrees, with the exception of MBAs, were viewed as a waste of time. One senior manager, discussing recruiting students who were considering graduate school instead of Microsoft, once said, "We fully know how bogus [graduate school] is." This has improved recently (Microsoft now gives grants to schools without trying to dictate exactly what the money will be used for), but the bias against theoretical work and in favor of applied work still remains. Trying to figure out the relevance of a school project during an interview is hard--it is too dissimilar from the work done at Microsoft. Much easier to discuss co-op terms with a Waterloo candidate, and much less risk to recommend "hire" on one. So the myth of Waterloo persists."
Mezrich wrote an article for the Boston Globe called "YOU'RE GOING TO BE HUGE: THE UPS, DOWNS, AND SHEER ABSURDITIES OF THE WRITING LIFE" which may or may not detail why he switched to non-fiction. However I don't know since you have to pay to read it.
Slashdot Mirror
- adam
Sorry Stephen Satchell, looks like you got no job.
As for the "corporate compliance committee"...BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
- adam
I have heard that printing a POD books costs maybe $5 and an offet run (how paperbacks normally are done) is about $2. However POD books usually cost more than $3 more than the same-size paperback. I think partly this is the business people saying well a book should cost X * [our costs], instead of thinking Y + [our costs]. So if the book costs twice as much to make, they want to charge twice as much. Which is pretty lame, especially since they won't have to worry about eating returned books.
- adam
- adam
- adam
The best way to get published is to work your way up the chain, first get some stuff published anywhere, then some small articles/poems/stories, then longer ones, then you may build some name recognition and get an agent interested in a book.
- adam
A lot of bricks and mortar bookstores won't carry your book unless it is available through Ingram, the big distributor. Ingram had (or used to have) a program similar to Amazon Advantage, where they would warehouse a few copies as long as you are willing to take returns (just like for Amazon Advantage). The big issue with bookstores carrying print-on-demand books is that most print-on-demand publishers don't take returns (Amazon, to its credit, will take returns on a print-on-demand book, although I'm not sure what they do with them except hang on to them and hope someone else buys them).
Incidentally there is at least one print-on-demand place that will allow returns in some case: Superior Books. After all print-on-demand and "no standards" don't need to be synonymous.
- adam
- adam
Can't remember the name of the story though.
- adam
- adam
- adam
Edward Tufte has an interesting discussion of this case (how the scientists could have presented the evidence better) in Visual Explanations .
If you read the book, he seems to be laying most of the fault at the feet of the engineers who prepared such an unconvincing presentation for NASA. In a class I took with him, however, he talked about how people making a serious decision have an obligation to make sure they are getting the information they need -- that NASA should have pressed for more information. The questions he feels the recipients of a presentation should ask are, "Show me causality," "Show me all relevant data," and "What do I really need to know?"
I asked him about this apparent shift afterwards and he said, well, there was certainly enough blame to go around. [NOTE: previous two paragraphs lifted from a comment I made on another site].
- adam
- adam
Look, the notion that middleware is going to magically let you write an app once and run anywhere, results in apps that can only support a lowest-common-denominator of the APIs available on the various platforms. Sure Sun hyped it to the moon, no surprise there, but that doesn't mean it was going to happen. Middleware has *always* had this problem and always will. What happens when Windows comes out with some new feature (USB support say) and then Java doesn't get around to supporting it for a year....all the Java coders are supposed to simply wait a year while native Windows apps use the feature right away? Yeah surrrrre.
- adam
- adam
- adam
Also, Bruce Perens is not the first person to write about using government buying power to require open file formats...I'm probably not the first either however (although my article was discussed on LinuxToday...where're you getting your ideas from Bruce?!?)
- adam
My logic is more like
1) Microsoft hires a disproportionate number of Waterloo students.
2) Incoming Waterloo students are not superior to other schools Microsoft hires at.
3) Waterloo does not do anything particularly unusual with students beyond the co-op jobs.
4) Working as a co-op has no effect on your long-term potential at Microsoft, which is what Microsoft is theoretically hiring for.
5) Therefore there is likely something in the way Microsoft interviews that makes it overvalue Waterloo co-op students.
- adam
I don't think US vs. Canada is comparable though. Canada uses uncurved percentages for its grades (aka marks) (except in Quebec AFAIK where the government manages to curve percentage numbers, neat trick that), the US uses curved GPA for its grades. Some people try to convert saying 90 is an A or whatever, but it's not like that. Often it's just the top X percent get an A, the next get B, etc (college is usually like that). So if someone gets an A in the US, that could be a 99 in Canada, or a 90, or an 83.
Plus of course you have this huge difference in how grades are applied. For example my brother and I went to different high schools in Quebec. The top average in my high school was about 87 or so, at my brother's it was about 95. Same school board, similar kids (in fact he went to his because mine closed, so a lot of the same families were at both). So I don't think it was smarter kids, just different degrees of grade inflation. Then you imagine how grades can vary all across Canada. That's why the SAT gained the importance it did, because US high school grades varied so much.
- adam - adam
Maybe in the US the BA students like to party and partying is the "cool" thing to do...meanwhile in Canada the BA students are grinds and partying is considered bad...once again engineers get the short end of the stick!
- adam
But Microsoft has accorded Waterloo this special status, like its graduates are better than top US schools. So you have to talk more about the 75+ percentile student. So questions like:
1) Is the average Waterloo student coming in better than the average at a top US school.
2) Does Waterloo do a better job with those students than a top US school.
I think the answers are 1) almost certainly not and 2) maybe, which put together doesn't make a Waterloo grad anything unusually special.
- adam
The Ivies recruit (well they don't "recruit" per se, more like "harvest") from the top high school all over the US.
- adam
And at an Ivy League school you work real hard also, and you come out with the same work hard all the time attitude.
- adam
[This is an excerpt from chapter 2 of my book.]
- adam- adam