Those issues don't scare me. I've been self employed and have skills that can't be taken away from me. If I need medical care I can pay cash if need be. What scares me is the idea of the government arresting me without cause because my DNA sample was found at the scene of some crime.
My son was born with a thyroid problem, without the required state testing he probably wouldn't have been diagnosed until after he started having developmental issues. Because of the screening he was immediately put on Synthroid and leads a normal healthy life.
Other than using the DNA to later in life convict him of a crime, I have no other problems with any entity having access to DNA. The only thing that scares me is being put in jail for petty crimes because you're linked to a crime by your DNA. As long as that can't happen I don't care what they do with the DNA.
Property laws and Copyright laws are mutually exclusive. We could completely nullify all copyrights without having any effect on property laws whatsoever.
There is no need for intellectual property anymore. Information is moving and changing to fast. If you lock something up in a patent or have it copyrighted derivative works are set back half a generation or more. Intellectual property laws need a full overhaul to address the change in technology and how information is spread. Personally I don't believe we need any intellectual property restrictions at all; I believe they do more harm than good. I believe that people could fully share all knowledge with each other and that there would still be a market for using that knowledge as a service or to produce a good. I think we should still cite the original creators of the knowledge, but that it should be free to all. We should give credit to the authors of knowledge, but at the same time they shouldn't be able to horde and monopolize knowledge.
Thats all we consumers ask. We don't want to pay the 30% for physically printing the books and the 40% to the retail location. So e-books should only cost 30% of what a print book costs. So if you're selling the print book for $10 the e-book should be $3. Its just that simple. Anything more and the consumer feels like bohica.
Another example. You form a band and make a fantastic song. At one of your little bar shows a guy records the song. He is a music scout.. he has the cash to really get your song out there... but he doesn't need you. So he takes your lyrics, your song, and gets it out on the radio and selling it on CDs in walmart. You get nothing and can't stop him. If that doesn't make sense i'll try another.. and on topic this time.
This is what the Internet does best! This is no longer an issue, the Internet fixed it. If someone steals someones work now, the Internet shames the thief. Fans of the original artist get the word out and the thief looses credibility with their fans. The Streisand effect is the best form of copyright yet invented.
You write a book (you're a full time writer) about some random sci-fi scenerio you've been thinking about since a kid. You want to sell it and make money. So you print like 1,000 and bind them with your own equipment. One of the people who bought it really loved it.. but they have the connections and money to really push the book so they take it (not illegal) and republish it minus your name (not illegal anymore). They stole your book and there is nothing you can do about it.. they did not commit any crime.
The same goes for this book scenario as well. If you're the original publisher of the content the Internet remembers. If the thief's book becomes more popular the word will get out that they stole it. This is the democratization of information. Wikipedia and the like will name the original author and the hordes of Internet fans will shame the thief. Before the Internet the person with the larger microphone would just steal the spotlight, the internet has removed the spotlight and has provided the perfect form of copyright protection without the courts.
Don't believe me? Look up the cases of auto dealerships selling cars on e-bay motors for a below market prices and getting shamed into honoring their agreements.
Yes, that is what we do now. That is what we have been trained to do, but that isn't what we have to do. The Internet changed things. This is one of those things. Information is something that doesn't have to be paid for anymore. We just continue to pay for it because that is what we've always done.
The information providers can still earn a very comfortable living without hording their information. If a professor writes a text book, a university will still need him to teach it. If a mechanic writes a manual for an engine, someone will still pay him to do the work for them. Physical goods and services aren't going away. This primitive idea of hording information is holding back humanity from reaching even greater heights. Information is being lost because people horde it. If instead of hording information all information was free we could continue to grow our knowledge base. Instead everyone is so scared they will loose their wellbeing that they won't freely share their information. The problem is that people are still going to need to produce goods and service the things we build. The knowledge base is no so specialized that even the the information may be available not everyone is going to take the time to learn the material. Learning the material gives you new skills that you can market.
why do you assume that volume will increase just because a book's being sold in ebook format?
I didn't. If you read my first post I made the exact same point. My second post referenced consumer frustration, not an increase in sales.
If people don't like the current price of books, they can just get them from the library. Price is not the limiting factor in sales for this market; actual demand is.
However, checking the book out at the library is also a lost sale. If you are going to make the effort to go to the library to read a book instead of buying it, I bet you'd be willing to spend some money for convenience.
Sounds like MacMillan needs to diverge into two new companies. You need a publishing company that sells physical books and then you need a new company that sells ebooks. The overhead of the paper book business shouldn't affect the cost of the paper book business. A lot of the overhead from the pdf you linked to only applies to the old fashioned paper books. I don't want to pay for that overhead.
Here is a summary of the pdf:
32.1% Publisher's Paper/Printing
15.3% Publisher's Marketing Costs
11.5% Authors Income
11.4% Book Store Employees
9.9% Publisher's Administrative Costs
7.0% Publisher's Income
6.8% Store Operations Costs
4.7% Store Income
1.3% Freight Expense
Of which nearly 50% of the cost is not there for an e-book.
The first 32.1 percent can be reduced and outsourced to a distributor like Amazon.
The next 15% is a justified expense of a publisher.
We want our authors to get paid.
Why is a store getting 11.4 percent? This rolls into the outsourcing to a distributor like Amazon, this cost should be gone.
In the electronic age the publishers administrative costs should be declining, but if they aren't this 9% is justified.
7% to publishers income, well if thats what you need fine.
6.8 to the store, I don't think so.
4.7 to the store? No thanks.
1.3 for shipping? Not anymore.
Expected discount for an e-book between 24.2 and 56.3 depending on how much printing costs can be reduced.
I seriously doubt that $2 is the cost to get the book from the press to the store. If it is then all the outrage about digital media is unjustified.
The way I've assumed the price breakdown to look like for a $10 paperback:
$2 promoting the book.
$1 author.
$1 editor.
$3 publishing company.
$3 manufacturing and distribution.
I've though that same book as an ebook should look like:
$2 promoting the book.
$1 author.
$1 editor.
$1 IT costs.
Where the increased volume makes up for the lower price.
Would be awesome if they made it wolf like with razor sharp fangs and glowing red eyes. Oh and if they roamed in packs. That would be some scary shit.
I was looking for a skynet reference in this thread. Haven't seen it yet, but this technology is scary from a skynet perspective. (If not skynet a mad scientist!)
I've lived in places where the only way to get around is public transportation and in places where you had to drive a car. Both models are broken and in need of a new model. Public transportation doesn't work because everyone has to go out of their way to get to their location, be it one block or 30. It isn't very efficient. Cars aren't practical because you're hauling so much more than you need everywhere.
What is needed is a new paradigm. There needs to be a way to have your own single/family occupant vehicle that can attach to mass transit. Something that protects you from the elements, rain, cold, heat and allows you to transport groceries and other goods. There are some neat ideas about having cars that connect to a "train" on the road and can leave the "train" when they need to without disrupting the flow. This allows for mass transit arteries while having the capillaries be maneuvered by individual cells.
Smart highways would be nice. During the move to electric cars it would be nice if highways acted like rail systems. You queue up at the on ramp and are connected to a base power that also controls the car. You let the smart highway know where you want to exit and it does the rest. If you need to stop for a bathroom break it would route you to the nearest exit and then allow you to resume control of the vehicle at the exit. This would improve efficiency while maintaining independence.
Thank God for the free market! At least we can still flycharter. It may cost more, but at least you can avoid all the mess. Flying used to be a luxury, it looks like its moving back in that direction.
For quick domestic flights check with your local small airport and you might find a pilot willing to fly for just fuel costs. Most pilots love to fly but it is very expensive maintaining an aircraft, if you help a pilot with their fuel and maintenance costs you may get quality cheap flights with zero security checkpoints!
They are just using supply and demand to set the optimum price. To the publishers (if they did their research properly) they may have found that $15 will give them the largest ROI. A book may only have a limited audience and that audience would be willing to pay $15, the audience may not grow even if the price were $0 because nobody else is interested in the topic. What this means is that publishers are just getting more bang for their buck.
What is wrong with the way they are doing it is that consumers feel like they are getting screwed. They see the costs of manufacturing plummeting yet prices are rising. From the business side they are seeing costs of manufacturing going down and an opportunity to increase profit margins. They aren't passing on cost savings to the consumers, they are instead lining their pockets; which they are in their right to do. It just isn't going to endear them to me and I won't be buying any books any time soon - paper, digital, or otherwise.
Or we could acting like selfish primates and start sharing knowledge. I heard this morning that publishers are raising their prices on e-books. Prices should be going down not up.
We are at a new golden age for information where we have the ability to share and catalog all the knowledge this planet has ever produced. However there is a small group of people who still think it is in the best interest of the world to lock up this information. The Internet was developed to share information. It wasn't developed to be monetized the way it has been. The Internet is about sharing information freely - ALL INFORMATION. No one should have to pay for information of any kind. We should repurpose all the funds we spend on information to actually produce goods and services. The trillions of dollars being spent on information and protecting information could be better spent on anything else. It could be used to feed every person on the planet ending hunger. It could be used for so much more than hording a resource that can be freely given, but the greed of a few is keeping it from reaching every man, woman, and child on the planet.
Copyrights, patents and all intellectual property is holding back the next great advancement in humanity. We finally have a resource that is close enough to being infinite that a communist model would work. Scarce resources require a capitalist market to distribute fairly, intellectual property is nearly infinite and so distributing it equally to everyone is not only possible but what should be done. Copyright is a crime against humanity as a whole.
The problem the American people have with all these projects isn't because they are "socialist" or because they don't believe in helping others and working on big projects. The problem people have with it is that the government hasn't answered the first question accurately yet. That question is "How are you going to pay for it?" Currently the US is running a 1.6 Trillion dollar deficit, our other big programs Social Security and Medicare are eating all of our tax dollars. If the government could do these new projects and stay in the black without raising taxes you wouldn't have the huge outcry from the populous. A large portion of our tax dollars go to paying interest on the debt of all these projects. If we didn't have these social obligations and financial obligations eating away all our tax dollars we could do so much more.
China has a cash surplus in their government and also doesn't have the same social obligations that the US has. This allows China to do big construction and infrastructure projects that the US just can't afford.
So go ahead and preach modesty and frugality - you are absolutely correct. But know that no one is listening. Therefore at least let's find some other way of producing what we need in the meantime - because believe me, we WILL use all the resources on this planet at one point. ALL of them. And then we die, just like the J-curve bacteria in the petri dish when they finally deplete their nutrients.
Which is why we shouldn't cut spending to the space program. We need to get off this rock and find more resources!
Slashdot Mirror
Those issues don't scare me. I've been self employed and have skills that can't be taken away from me. If I need medical care I can pay cash if need be. What scares me is the idea of the government arresting me without cause because my DNA sample was found at the scene of some crime.
My son was born with a thyroid problem, without the required state testing he probably wouldn't have been diagnosed until after he started having developmental issues. Because of the screening he was immediately put on Synthroid and leads a normal healthy life.
Other than using the DNA to later in life convict him of a crime, I have no other problems with any entity having access to DNA. The only thing that scares me is being put in jail for petty crimes because you're linked to a crime by your DNA. As long as that can't happen I don't care what they do with the DNA.
Property laws and Copyright laws are mutually exclusive. We could completely nullify all copyrights without having any effect on property laws whatsoever.
There is no need for intellectual property anymore. Information is moving and changing to fast. If you lock something up in a patent or have it copyrighted derivative works are set back half a generation or more. Intellectual property laws need a full overhaul to address the change in technology and how information is spread. Personally I don't believe we need any intellectual property restrictions at all; I believe they do more harm than good. I believe that people could fully share all knowledge with each other and that there would still be a market for using that knowledge as a service or to produce a good. I think we should still cite the original creators of the knowledge, but that it should be free to all. We should give credit to the authors of knowledge, but at the same time they shouldn't be able to horde and monopolize knowledge.
What is wrong with Cheeze Whiz?
They managed to put cheese in a can and have it be easily dispensable. They perfected cheese!
Can they counter sue? I mean they did ruin this guys life for the past couple of years...
Thats all we consumers ask. We don't want to pay the 30% for physically printing the books and the 40% to the retail location. So e-books should only cost 30% of what a print book costs. So if you're selling the print book for $10 the e-book should be $3. Its just that simple. Anything more and the consumer feels like bohica.
Another example. You form a band and make a fantastic song. At one of your little bar shows a guy records the song. He is a music scout.. he has the cash to really get your song out there... but he doesn't need you. So he takes your lyrics, your song, and gets it out on the radio and selling it on CDs in walmart. You get nothing and can't stop him. If that doesn't make sense i'll try another.. and on topic this time.
This is what the Internet does best! This is no longer an issue, the Internet fixed it. If someone steals someones work now, the Internet shames the thief. Fans of the original artist get the word out and the thief looses credibility with their fans. The Streisand effect is the best form of copyright yet invented.
You write a book (you're a full time writer) about some random sci-fi scenerio you've been thinking about since a kid. You want to sell it and make money. So you print like 1,000 and bind them with your own equipment. One of the people who bought it really loved it.. but they have the connections and money to really push the book so they take it (not illegal) and republish it minus your name (not illegal anymore). They stole your book and there is nothing you can do about it.. they did not commit any crime.
The same goes for this book scenario as well. If you're the original publisher of the content the Internet remembers. If the thief's book becomes more popular the word will get out that they stole it. This is the democratization of information. Wikipedia and the like will name the original author and the hordes of Internet fans will shame the thief. Before the Internet the person with the larger microphone would just steal the spotlight, the internet has removed the spotlight and has provided the perfect form of copyright protection without the courts.
Don't believe me? Look up the cases of auto dealerships selling cars on e-bay motors for a below market prices and getting shamed into honoring their agreements.
Yes, that is what we do now. That is what we have been trained to do, but that isn't what we have to do. The Internet changed things. This is one of those things. Information is something that doesn't have to be paid for anymore. We just continue to pay for it because that is what we've always done.
The information providers can still earn a very comfortable living without hording their information. If a professor writes a text book, a university will still need him to teach it. If a mechanic writes a manual for an engine, someone will still pay him to do the work for them. Physical goods and services aren't going away. This primitive idea of hording information is holding back humanity from reaching even greater heights. Information is being lost because people horde it. If instead of hording information all information was free we could continue to grow our knowledge base. Instead everyone is so scared they will loose their wellbeing that they won't freely share their information. The problem is that people are still going to need to produce goods and service the things we build. The knowledge base is no so specialized that even the the information may be available not everyone is going to take the time to learn the material. Learning the material gives you new skills that you can market.
why do you assume that volume will increase just because a book's being sold in ebook format?
I didn't. If you read my first post I made the exact same point. My second post referenced consumer frustration, not an increase in sales.
If people don't like the current price of books, they can just get them from the library. Price is not the limiting factor in sales for this market; actual demand is.
However, checking the book out at the library is also a lost sale. If you are going to make the effort to go to the library to read a book instead of buying it, I bet you'd be willing to spend some money for convenience.
Sounds like MacMillan needs to diverge into two new companies. You need a publishing company that sells physical books and then you need a new company that sells ebooks. The overhead of the paper book business shouldn't affect the cost of the paper book business. A lot of the overhead from the pdf you linked to only applies to the old fashioned paper books. I don't want to pay for that overhead.
Here is a summary of the pdf:
32.1% Publisher's Paper/Printing
15.3% Publisher's Marketing Costs
11.5% Authors Income
11.4% Book Store Employees
9.9% Publisher's Administrative Costs
7.0% Publisher's Income
6.8% Store Operations Costs
4.7% Store Income
1.3% Freight Expense
Of which nearly 50% of the cost is not there for an e-book.
The first 32.1 percent can be reduced and outsourced to a distributor like Amazon.
The next 15% is a justified expense of a publisher.
We want our authors to get paid.
Why is a store getting 11.4 percent? This rolls into the outsourcing to a distributor like Amazon, this cost should be gone.
In the electronic age the publishers administrative costs should be declining, but if they aren't this 9% is justified.
7% to publishers income, well if thats what you need fine.
6.8 to the store, I don't think so.
4.7 to the store? No thanks.
1.3 for shipping? Not anymore.
Expected discount for an e-book between 24.2 and 56.3 depending on how much printing costs can be reduced.
I seriously doubt that $2 is the cost to get the book from the press to the store. If it is then all the outrage about digital media is unjustified.
The way I've assumed the price breakdown to look like for a $10 paperback:
$2 promoting the book.
$1 author.
$1 editor.
$3 publishing company.
$3 manufacturing and distribution.
I've though that same book as an ebook should look like:
$2 promoting the book.
$1 author.
$1 editor.
$1 IT costs.
Where the increased volume makes up for the lower price.
Would be awesome if they made it wolf like with razor sharp fangs and glowing red eyes. Oh and if they roamed in packs. That would be some scary shit.
I was looking for a skynet reference in this thread. Haven't seen it yet, but this technology is scary from a skynet perspective. (If not skynet a mad scientist!)
HA! Silly person, that will only yield 10 times the mules :)
I've lived in places where the only way to get around is public transportation and in places where you had to drive a car. Both models are broken and in need of a new model. Public transportation doesn't work because everyone has to go out of their way to get to their location, be it one block or 30. It isn't very efficient. Cars aren't practical because you're hauling so much more than you need everywhere.
What is needed is a new paradigm. There needs to be a way to have your own single/family occupant vehicle that can attach to mass transit. Something that protects you from the elements, rain, cold, heat and allows you to transport groceries and other goods. There are some neat ideas about having cars that connect to a "train" on the road and can leave the "train" when they need to without disrupting the flow. This allows for mass transit arteries while having the capillaries be maneuvered by individual cells.
Smart highways would be nice. During the move to electric cars it would be nice if highways acted like rail systems. You queue up at the on ramp and are connected to a base power that also controls the car. You let the smart highway know where you want to exit and it does the rest. If you need to stop for a bathroom break it would route you to the nearest exit and then allow you to resume control of the vehicle at the exit. This would improve efficiency while maintaining independence.
Thank God for the free market! At least we can still fly charter. It may cost more, but at least you can avoid all the mess. Flying used to be a luxury, it looks like its moving back in that direction.
For quick domestic flights check with your local small airport and you might find a pilot willing to fly for just fuel costs. Most pilots love to fly but it is very expensive maintaining an aircraft, if you help a pilot with their fuel and maintenance costs you may get quality cheap flights with zero security checkpoints!
They are just using supply and demand to set the optimum price. To the publishers (if they did their research properly) they may have found that $15 will give them the largest ROI. A book may only have a limited audience and that audience would be willing to pay $15, the audience may not grow even if the price were $0 because nobody else is interested in the topic. What this means is that publishers are just getting more bang for their buck.
What is wrong with the way they are doing it is that consumers feel like they are getting screwed. They see the costs of manufacturing plummeting yet prices are rising. From the business side they are seeing costs of manufacturing going down and an opportunity to increase profit margins. They aren't passing on cost savings to the consumers, they are instead lining their pockets; which they are in their right to do. It just isn't going to endear them to me and I won't be buying any books any time soon - paper, digital, or otherwise.
Or we could acting like selfish primates and start sharing knowledge. I heard this morning that publishers are raising their prices on e-books. Prices should be going down not up.
We are at a new golden age for information where we have the ability to share and catalog all the knowledge this planet has ever produced. However there is a small group of people who still think it is in the best interest of the world to lock up this information. The Internet was developed to share information. It wasn't developed to be monetized the way it has been. The Internet is about sharing information freely - ALL INFORMATION. No one should have to pay for information of any kind. We should repurpose all the funds we spend on information to actually produce goods and services. The trillions of dollars being spent on information and protecting information could be better spent on anything else. It could be used to feed every person on the planet ending hunger. It could be used for so much more than hording a resource that can be freely given, but the greed of a few is keeping it from reaching every man, woman, and child on the planet.
Copyrights, patents and all intellectual property is holding back the next great advancement in humanity. We finally have a resource that is close enough to being infinite that a communist model would work. Scarce resources require a capitalist market to distribute fairly, intellectual property is nearly infinite and so distributing it equally to everyone is not only possible but what should be done. Copyright is a crime against humanity as a whole.
The problem the American people have with all these projects isn't because they are "socialist" or because they don't believe in helping others and working on big projects. The problem people have with it is that the government hasn't answered the first question accurately yet. That question is "How are you going to pay for it?" Currently the US is running a 1.6 Trillion dollar deficit, our other big programs Social Security and Medicare are eating all of our tax dollars. If the government could do these new projects and stay in the black without raising taxes you wouldn't have the huge outcry from the populous. A large portion of our tax dollars go to paying interest on the debt of all these projects. If we didn't have these social obligations and financial obligations eating away all our tax dollars we could do so much more.
China has a cash surplus in their government and also doesn't have the same social obligations that the US has. This allows China to do big construction and infrastructure projects that the US just can't afford.
So go ahead and preach modesty and frugality - you are absolutely correct. But know that no one is listening. Therefore at least let's find some other way of producing what we need in the meantime - because believe me, we WILL use all the resources on this planet at one point. ALL of them. And then we die, just like the J-curve bacteria in the petri dish when they finally deplete their nutrients.
Which is why we shouldn't cut spending to the space program. We need to get off this rock and find more resources!
55378008
Why claim a $500 reward when you can exploit and steal more?
Was going to post about this too, here is the Microsoft link for it.
The average cervix is only 6 inches deep.
So less than 10 inches should be more than enough for the average lady.
Gee, I was thinking Michael Jackson....
to soon?
Would be awesome if I could use it as a glorified tv remote. If it could be used in place of this remote then I would look at buying one.