Think of it on a smaller context. Do you want to look at pictures of the Grand Canyon, or do you want to be there?
No, think of it like this: Do you want a person to take pictures of the Grand Canyon or do you want a robot to do it. You going to the Grand Canyon isn't really an option. I'm sure all of NASA's astronauts are in favor of a Mars mission. Since I'm not one, your argument isn't very compelling.
As the post was about alien hunting, consider this. We make first contact with an intelligent alien species. Should that first contact be a robot claw reproducing the sound of our voice, or a human in a suit.
This post is really about Mars. We won't be sending humans to Europa or other distant points. There's no life on Mars that is going to care one way or the other. I'm not sure even intelligent life would know the difference unless it was sufficiently technologically advanced and there is no evidence that any life like that is in our solar system.
...there is a very good chance that it will happen eventually.
Once the technology and economic incentives are in place for human space travel doing this type of research will be relatively trivial.
But we're talking about the present. Now, we should be sending robots. They are relatively cheap, expendable, and more adapted to hostile environments since we design them that way. They only lack imagination, but we augment that remotely using humans on Earth.
Government is not the answer. NASA has neither the will nor the ability to build stations on the moon or even to reach Mars. Now if China were to land a man on the moon...
Put your money where your mouth is and donate to or invest in a private organization that shares your goals. They are not only more likely to succeed, but more likely to spend that money wisely and in a way that reflects your interests. Bonus: you might see profits someday.
They are representatives. They are supposed to represent their constituency - not just the ones who voted them in, but ALL of the constitutency. Their "views" shouldn't matter, because the view they should be pushing for is the view of the people they represent - even if that view is fickle and contradictory*. What they should be campaigning on is their fitness to hold office.
Now, where did I leave my unicorn?
*Of course, in practice they are villified by everyone if they listen to the proles^W polls.
As if there weren't enough reasons to not watch G4 they added a black band with "SJ" over their logo.
I'm tired of the pretense. He was a man. He had admirable qualities. He had some not so admirable qualities. He's dead now. You didn't know him. You probably never even met him. He's been dead for days. The time for you to use his death to make yourself look good to others is over. (This is not directed at the parent - I mean the general 'you'.)
The troll moderation does not mean "I disagree" or "You're a fucking idiot." Judging from the guy's posting history, he's just a fucking idiot. Maybe he's trolling, but I don't agree that's necessarily the case.
Likewise, the informative moderation doesn't mean "I agree", but just because someone used it in that capacity doesn't make them a shill or brainwashed. I'll leave it to the reader to decide what saying so makes you.
The insightful moderation also doesn't mean "I agree" and there is nothing insightful in your post. Inciteful, maybe.
They're kind of in-between, actually, and you'll probably find people who will claim the Nook Color isn't an ereader at all, but the Nook Color was specifically designed to be a reader not a general purpose device. B&N can even get a little touchy about it when asked why Nook Color doesn't do "X".:) The Kindle Fire seems to be taking it a step further away from ereader into a general media consumption device. It should be interesting to see which way the Nook Color 2 jumps. My money is on sticking to the reading focus.
By way of car analogy, calling the iPad an ereader is like calling a car a motorcycle. They may have overlapping features, but a motorcycle is a specialized device.
How would that be inconsistent with their goal of having B&N making any book available anywhere, anytime? They never said they wanted Amazon to be able to do that...
I've been waiting for Marvel and DC to get off their asses and offer current content on iPad or Nook Color. I'd subscribe tomorrow to probably dozens of comics if they were available that way. I haven't collected physical comics since sometime in the 90's.
My guess is DC is going by market share of the Kindle and was offered a pretty sweet deal by Amazon who want early, marketable content for their Kindle Fire. It's too bad. I love Batman.
There seem to be two definitions of ereader in general use. To some, myself included, and obviously the GP as well, the term 'ereader' means a dedicated device, not just "any device on which you can read an ebook." Despite Apple's best marketing efforts, the iPad is not a Nook or Kindle competitor.
The problem with reference books on an ereader is that navigation can be so cumbersome. Sure, finding what you want can be quick, but going back and forth between pages (or between books) is tedious compared with a physical book. So yeah, those computer books you can get in ebook format are great, but I prefer to have them in addition to the physical books, not in place of them.
The thing is, I usually buy those physical books in the store, rather than the website, because if I want one, I want it right now. The only one I can even remember ordering online any time recently was a pre-order for a new edition of a book I already had.
...any book I see on the shelf at their stores is one that I can buy for my Nook, or really any other device that supports epubs.
This is not true. B&N does have a vast ebook library and seem committed to expanding it as much as possible. But it's not even close to their full library. Many books are completely unavailable as ebooks from anywhere. Most new fiction is available in ebook format, but older titles (such as the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson) are not. Non-fiction titles seem even less likely to be available as ebooks. (And when you watch individual titles, the pace of ebook adoption is painfully slow. Dune took forever.)
I don't agree. Even when I was collecting comics, I usually bought the odd graphic novel at book stores because I got a better discount there and because the selection was usually better. A reason for this might be a comic store wants you to buy old copies of the comics themselves, not reprints in GN form, because the prices and margins are way better for them. And your typical GN is not a collector's item since it is essentially a reprint. (I realize there are exceptions to this, but B&N doesn't really carry the other kind.)
In any case, B&N could have gotten rid of this stuff a long time ago and if no one was buying, no one would have noticed.
No, B&N wants the attention here. DC probably doesn't matter to them at all. This was a message to other publishers being courted by Amazon.
Every commercial author* I've ever met wants millions, would be okay with comfortable, would settle for livable and abhors penniless. They are entrepreneurs. They take risk and want reward.
Programmers do not take those types of risks.** They seek steady employment. Just like, say, a technical writer. Any programmer who expects to make millions working for someone else is delusional unless he plans on making those millions by investing that steady income and spending wisely.
I haven't met too many people who think they are *entitled* to those millions. Those folks that do tend to be abject failures because the fault lies with the system and not with them. They have no incentive to improve. They don't even seem to love the art. <snobbery>One hesitates to even call them authors.</snobbery>
*People who seek to make money through selling published works. **I'm not talking about entrepreneurs who use their programming skills.
I don't agree. Your exceptions to the rule are good at self-publishing. Certainly being a good writer makes that easier, but it's an additional skill set.
It's a truism that a publisher will publish you if they know they can make money off you. Your exceptions are successful self-publishers. They are money machines in the eyes of the publishers.
What about the equally excellent writers that aren't also good self-publishers? Publishers have zero incentive to pick up those writers. Not only are the writers using a business model with publishers find threatening, but the writers are showing that their work is not in demand (even though it might be with publisher's marketing behind it).
Aspiring authors can:
1. Take the chance at being successful on their own. 2. Go with the big guys.
There is no option of trying on your own, failing (or even doing moderately well), and then going with the big guys.
And, to me at least, this seems like a no brainer:
In the first scenario, you are betting your career on your ability to write and publish, taking all the risks, and earning less per book. In the second scenario, you are putting all the risks on the publisher, not risking your career (at least, as not quickly), and if you are successful you'll be earning more per book with less effort on your part.
The only real question is whether the volume of a lower price point will outweigh the enhanced marketing of a publisher. I think your three examples answer that question.
When it's a CEO the perception is he is a platypus (they don't do much). A CEO making 35% of a company's profit? Street riots. When it is an author, he is somehow being cheated (even though as you say he agreed to the contract).
As an aspiring author, I will be seeking out a publisher. I don't mind having to pay the folks who print my books, the folks who ship them, who shelve them, who tell me they are crap and to fix them, who market them, or the CEO/shareholders, etc. of the place that does all this for me. Why? Because even if I write the Great American Novel, the only way to make money off of it and to get it in the hands of millions is to have those folks on my side. Sure, I *might* be able to do it myself, but that's an additional risk, and as an author, I think just writing is risk enough. Marketing is also a hell of a lot of work. I'd rather leave it to the pros.
I agree. The best horror novel ever written may be sitting on Amazon as an ebook for $0.99 right now. I'll never know, though, because it's a lot easier to just buy the next King book.
This is exactly why the big publishing houses still hold value for both the commercial writer and the reader. For the writer, it's the marketing, patronage (read: advances), and other benefits. For the reader, it's the filtering. Because someone has to actually take a chance on the work other than the author, there is a much better signal-to-noise ratio. And since there is a bigger audience word-of-mouth works better, there are more reviews, and etc.
Also, and this is a bit off topic but it should be said: anyone serious about making money off their work should probably stay away from self-publishing. Not only do you have all the disadvantages talked about above, but if you self-published the big publishing houses will not touch you.
The new generation is the generation that cares least about privacy. Yes, I've seen the privacy protests, but they are posers. They protest about privacy issues when it is popular. (And I have seen several cases where their privacy wasn't even being threatened but the posers were out in force anyway.) The rest of the time, they are generally busy posting things on facebook that people of my generation (at least the smart ones) wouldn't even share in a conversation.
They don't want privacy. They want what *all* young people (and a lot of older ones) want: freedom from the consequences of their actions.
Wheel of Time wasn't that bad on time deliver until Jordan got sick. CoT was a little late, but not terrible. Now you want to talk long wait... How about King's The Dark Tower series.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Think of it on a smaller context. Do you want to look at pictures of the Grand Canyon, or do you want to be there?
No, think of it like this: Do you want a person to take pictures of the Grand Canyon or do you want a robot to do it. You going to the Grand Canyon isn't really an option. I'm sure all of NASA's astronauts are in favor of a Mars mission. Since I'm not one, your argument isn't very compelling.
As the post was about alien hunting, consider this. We make first contact with an intelligent alien species. Should that first contact be a robot claw reproducing the sound of our voice, or a human in a suit.
This post is really about Mars. We won't be sending humans to Europa or other distant points. There's no life on Mars that is going to care one way or the other. I'm not sure even intelligent life would know the difference unless it was sufficiently technologically advanced and there is no evidence that any life like that is in our solar system.
Once the technology and economic incentives are in place for human space travel doing this type of research will be relatively trivial.
But we're talking about the present. Now, we should be sending robots. They are relatively cheap, expendable, and more adapted to hostile environments since we design them that way. They only lack imagination, but we augment that remotely using humans on Earth.
Government is not the answer. NASA has neither the will nor the ability to build stations on the moon or even to reach Mars. Now if China were to land a man on the moon...
Put your money where your mouth is and donate to or invest in a private organization that shares your goals. They are not only more likely to succeed, but more likely to spend that money wisely and in a way that reflects your interests. Bonus: you might see profits someday.
What integrity?
They are representatives. They are supposed to represent their constituency - not just the ones who voted them in, but ALL of the constitutency. Their "views" shouldn't matter, because the view they should be pushing for is the view of the people they represent - even if that view is fickle and contradictory*. What they should be campaigning on is their fitness to hold office.
Now, where did I leave my unicorn?
*Of course, in practice they are villified by everyone if they listen to the proles^W polls.
The default is to not even have an account, genius.
Why not be an anonymous coward? You're the one dealing in logical fallacies.
You mean an intellectual defense like the implication that someone posting as AC is automatically wrong or being disingenuous?
As if there weren't enough reasons to not watch G4 they added a black band with "SJ" over their logo.
I'm tired of the pretense. He was a man. He had admirable qualities. He had some not so admirable qualities. He's dead now. You didn't know him. You probably never even met him. He's been dead for days. The time for you to use his death to make yourself look good to others is over. (This is not directed at the parent - I mean the general 'you'.)
Let him rest. Let his family mourn in peace.
You're very clever, young man, very clever. But it's conspiracies all the way down!
Why does that matter? You're both just as anonymous to me.
No, three out of four moderators got it wrong.
The troll moderation does not mean "I disagree" or "You're a fucking idiot." Judging from the guy's posting history, he's just a fucking idiot. Maybe he's trolling, but I don't agree that's necessarily the case.
Likewise, the informative moderation doesn't mean "I agree", but just because someone used it in that capacity doesn't make them a shill or brainwashed. I'll leave it to the reader to decide what saying so makes you.
The insightful moderation also doesn't mean "I agree" and there is nothing insightful in your post. Inciteful, maybe.
They're kind of in-between, actually, and you'll probably find people who will claim the Nook Color isn't an ereader at all, but the Nook Color was specifically designed to be a reader not a general purpose device. B&N can even get a little touchy about it when asked why Nook Color doesn't do "X". :) The Kindle Fire seems to be taking it a step further away from ereader into a general media consumption device. It should be interesting to see which way the Nook Color 2 jumps. My money is on sticking to the reading focus.
By way of car analogy, calling the iPad an ereader is like calling a car a motorcycle. They may have overlapping features, but a motorcycle is a specialized device.
How would that be inconsistent with their goal of having B&N making any book available anywhere, anytime? They never said they wanted Amazon to be able to do that...
I've been waiting for Marvel and DC to get off their asses and offer current content on iPad or Nook Color. I'd subscribe tomorrow to probably dozens of comics if they were available that way. I haven't collected physical comics since sometime in the 90's.
My guess is DC is going by market share of the Kindle and was offered a pretty sweet deal by Amazon who want early, marketable content for their Kindle Fire. It's too bad. I love Batman.
There seem to be two definitions of ereader in general use. To some, myself included, and obviously the GP as well, the term 'ereader' means a dedicated device, not just "any device on which you can read an ebook." Despite Apple's best marketing efforts, the iPad is not a Nook or Kindle competitor.
The problem with reference books on an ereader is that navigation can be so cumbersome. Sure, finding what you want can be quick, but going back and forth between pages (or between books) is tedious compared with a physical book. So yeah, those computer books you can get in ebook format are great, but I prefer to have them in addition to the physical books, not in place of them.
The thing is, I usually buy those physical books in the store, rather than the website, because if I want one, I want it right now. The only one I can even remember ordering online any time recently was a pre-order for a new edition of a book I already had.
...any book I see on the shelf at their stores is one that I can buy for my Nook, or really any other device that supports epubs.
This is not true. B&N does have a vast ebook library and seem committed to expanding it as much as possible. But it's not even close to their full library. Many books are completely unavailable as ebooks from anywhere. Most new fiction is available in ebook format, but older titles (such as the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson) are not. Non-fiction titles seem even less likely to be available as ebooks. (And when you watch individual titles, the pace of ebook adoption is painfully slow. Dune took forever.)
I don't agree. Even when I was collecting comics, I usually bought the odd graphic novel at book stores because I got a better discount there and because the selection was usually better. A reason for this might be a comic store wants you to buy old copies of the comics themselves, not reprints in GN form, because the prices and margins are way better for them. And your typical GN is not a collector's item since it is essentially a reprint. (I realize there are exceptions to this, but B&N doesn't really carry the other kind.)
In any case, B&N could have gotten rid of this stuff a long time ago and if no one was buying, no one would have noticed.
No, B&N wants the attention here. DC probably doesn't matter to them at all. This was a message to other publishers being courted by Amazon.
Go back to sleep. GP is just new here.
You should be more disturbed about the American obsession with feudalism.
Every commercial author* I've ever met wants millions, would be okay with comfortable, would settle for livable and abhors penniless. They are entrepreneurs. They take risk and want reward.
Programmers do not take those types of risks.** They seek steady employment. Just like, say, a technical writer. Any programmer who expects to make millions working for someone else is delusional unless he plans on making those millions by investing that steady income and spending wisely.
I haven't met too many people who think they are *entitled* to those millions. Those folks that do tend to be abject failures because the fault lies with the system and not with them. They have no incentive to improve. They don't even seem to love the art. <snobbery>One hesitates to even call them authors.</snobbery>
*People who seek to make money through selling published works.
**I'm not talking about entrepreneurs who use their programming skills.
I don't agree. Your exceptions to the rule are good at self-publishing. Certainly being a good writer makes that easier, but it's an additional skill set.
It's a truism that a publisher will publish you if they know they can make money off you. Your exceptions are successful self-publishers. They are money machines in the eyes of the publishers.
What about the equally excellent writers that aren't also good self-publishers? Publishers have zero incentive to pick up those writers. Not only are the writers using a business model with publishers find threatening, but the writers are showing that their work is not in demand (even though it might be with publisher's marketing behind it).
Aspiring authors can:
1. Take the chance at being successful on their own.
2. Go with the big guys.
There is no option of trying on your own, failing (or even doing moderately well), and then going with the big guys.
And, to me at least, this seems like a no brainer:
In the first scenario, you are betting your career on your ability to write and publish, taking all the risks, and earning less per book.
In the second scenario, you are putting all the risks on the publisher, not risking your career (at least, as not quickly), and if you are successful you'll be earning more per book with less effort on your part.
The only real question is whether the volume of a lower price point will outweigh the enhanced marketing of a publisher. I think your three examples answer that question.
When it's a CEO the perception is he is a platypus (they don't do much). A CEO making 35% of a company's profit? Street riots. When it is an author, he is somehow being cheated (even though as you say he agreed to the contract).
As an aspiring author, I will be seeking out a publisher. I don't mind having to pay the folks who print my books, the folks who ship them, who shelve them, who tell me they are crap and to fix them, who market them, or the CEO/shareholders, etc. of the place that does all this for me. Why? Because even if I write the Great American Novel, the only way to make money off of it and to get it in the hands of millions is to have those folks on my side. Sure, I *might* be able to do it myself, but that's an additional risk, and as an author, I think just writing is risk enough. Marketing is also a hell of a lot of work. I'd rather leave it to the pros.
I agree. The best horror novel ever written may be sitting on Amazon as an ebook for $0.99 right now. I'll never know, though, because it's a lot easier to just buy the next King book.
This is exactly why the big publishing houses still hold value for both the commercial writer and the reader. For the writer, it's the marketing, patronage (read: advances), and other benefits. For the reader, it's the filtering. Because someone has to actually take a chance on the work other than the author, there is a much better signal-to-noise ratio. And since there is a bigger audience word-of-mouth works better, there are more reviews, and etc.
Also, and this is a bit off topic but it should be said: anyone serious about making money off their work should probably stay away from self-publishing. Not only do you have all the disadvantages talked about above, but if you self-published the big publishing houses will not touch you.
Bullshit.
The new generation is the generation that cares least about privacy. Yes, I've seen the privacy protests, but they are posers. They protest about privacy issues when it is popular. (And I have seen several cases where their privacy wasn't even being threatened but the posers were out in force anyway.) The rest of the time, they are generally busy posting things on facebook that people of my generation (at least the smart ones) wouldn't even share in a conversation.
They don't want privacy. They want what *all* young people (and a lot of older ones) want: freedom from the consequences of their actions.
You, young sir, are an anomaly, not the norm.
Wheel of Time wasn't that bad on time deliver until Jordan got sick. CoT was a little late, but not terrible. Now you want to talk long wait... How about King's The Dark Tower series. :)