"It's great for your CV, it gives you something easy to talk about in interviews, it is surprisingly respected by co-workers, and if you've done a half-decent job of it, you will be contacted by people seeking an expert in the field."
There's that, yes. I've made precious little directly off of writing, but I strongly suspect I got my current (very good) job because of it. And it intimidates the hell out of co-workers.
I wrote a tech book and chapters of a few others some years back and, by coincidence, worked for a technical publisher in my "day job." These are the factors I see:
1. Tech books are often large, which means they're more expensive to edit, more expensive to lay out, and more expensive to print and ship.
2. The pool of potential authors is very small and could be making more money doing something else. The number of people who have the technical skills to write a book, the writing skills to convey technical information, and the willingness to act like a professional in return for tiny material gain is...well, there's not a lot of people like that. The impression I get is that people writing technical books get better deals than in other sectors of publishing, though it comes down to a pittance and a half rather than just a pittance. Still, that does make it a more expensive deal for the publisher.
3. Even once a manuscript leaves an author's hands, there's additional overhead. There's the additional cost of hiring technical editors to make sure that what the author said is accurate, possibly the cost of licensing arrangements with software publishers, possibly the cost of doing illustrations (which also make the book even longer for its word count, which makes it yet more expensive), and possibly other costs.
4. The market is small. This may be the single biggest factor. You've got relatively large up-front costs and limited possibilities for sales. Even the most successful book on, say, C# or photomanipulation with Gimp just isn't going to be a runaway best-seller on the order of a Harry Potter or Steven King book.
Sure, he's a fashion designer, but his business has the same IT needs as every other business. They do sales and marketing, buy from suppliers, sell to distributors and retailers, hire and pay employees and provide them with benefits, coordinate and pay for travel, and so on. In the modern business climate, he still needs computers for all of that, even if the activity underlying it all involves ultimately swaning about with charchoal sketches and fabric swatches.
Again ignoring the rather self-serving nature of a modified span of 200 years: any number of great thinkers during that timespan, like Einstein, were Jewish. Given the status of homosexuality during those years, it's difficult to say for certain who may or may not have been gay, but Alan Turing comes to mind. Without him, none of us would be posing here.
"It isn't (IMO) the content that is copyrighted as much as the meaning."
Other way around. That is, copyright protects a specific expression of an idea, which is to say a particular batch of words in a particular order. Ideas are, for the most part, not protected.
That said, there's a certain amount of fuzziness around exactly what is involved in the expression of an idea. Frex, a few years back, White Wolf Games sued the producers of the movie Underworld for lifting a number of elements from their games under, I believe, copyright law.
To put it another way, you sidle up to the stockboy at the grocery store and whisper "Hey, got any donkey porn?" The stockboy yells out "Hey, anybody got any donkey porn?" The stockboy knows you asked, but he always asks for that kind of thing, so nobody minds him. The question might be whether or not anyone notices or should draw any conclusions from the fact that you're the guy standing next to the stockboy. To sum up: the folks at Google must shop at some weird grocery stores.
"I've since been told that if I were to start with the first episode instead, I'd like it more"
Or possibly not. That was the first episode I saw, and it didn't grab me, nor (and here I lose all my geekish cred) did the two or three others I caught at one time or another. Perhaps it's because I found the combination of sci-fi premise, Reconstruction-era trappings, and Whedon dialogue jarring. Or maybe it's just than Nathan Fillon bugs the hell out of me. Either way, I don't get it. Like Doctor Who, it's going to be one of those things which remains beyond me, and I envy those of you who get such joy from it.
I agree with both of your points, but I wasn't talking about either. I was responding to the notion that any creator should be satisfied with just seeing his stuff being used without any thought of material compensation.
Um...no. I'm disagreeing, rather strenuously. For example, how would you react if your boss came into your office and said "Everybody loves the widget-processing QA procedure you wrote. That should make you happy, so we won't be paying you this week." Creation for creation's sake is all well and good and I'm certainly grateful to the people who do that, but it's narrow-minded to think that that's the only reason new ideas can and should be created, and it's particularly selfish for someone to impose that mindset on a creator. Some people will create purely for the joy of creation or for the validation of other people using their work. Some might not regard it as truly validating unless other people are willing to make an effort (that is, spend some of their hard earned cash) on their work. Some create to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head.
It's not unreasonable to want to be compensated for the time and labor you expend producing something which other people find value in. Think about that in terms of your own job: if you like what you do, would you be happy if more people followed your recommendations, used programs you wrote, etc., even if you didn't get paid for it?
...I tend to carry data between computers which have software which I know will run the files I have rather than to strangers' machines without a predictable set of software. Then again, most of the stuff I carry around is text files, so this may very well be of use to people who aren't me.
Depends on your context. Most people outside of the geek world had never heard of wiki before the recent wikipedia scandal. And by now, I imagine, most people outside of the geek world have forgotten it again.
Slashdot Mirror
"It's great for your CV, it gives you something easy to talk about in interviews, it is surprisingly respected by co-workers, and if you've done a half-decent job of it, you will be contacted by people seeking an expert in the field."
There's that, yes. I've made precious little directly off of writing, but I strongly suspect I got my current (very good) job because of it. And it intimidates the hell out of co-workers.
I wrote a tech book and chapters of a few others some years back and, by coincidence, worked for a technical publisher in my "day job." These are the factors I see:
1. Tech books are often large, which means they're more expensive to edit, more expensive to lay out, and more expensive to print and ship.
2. The pool of potential authors is very small and could be making more money doing something else. The number of people who have the technical skills to write a book, the writing skills to convey technical information, and the willingness to act like a professional in return for tiny material gain is...well, there's not a lot of people like that. The impression I get is that people writing technical books get better deals than in other sectors of publishing, though it comes down to a pittance and a half rather than just a pittance. Still, that does make it a more expensive deal for the publisher.
3. Even once a manuscript leaves an author's hands, there's additional overhead. There's the additional cost of hiring technical editors to make sure that what the author said is accurate, possibly the cost of licensing arrangements with software publishers, possibly the cost of doing illustrations (which also make the book even longer for its word count, which makes it yet more expensive), and possibly other costs.
4. The market is small. This may be the single biggest factor. You've got relatively large up-front costs and limited possibilities for sales. Even the most successful book on, say, C# or photomanipulation with Gimp just isn't going to be a runaway best-seller on the order of a Harry Potter or Steven King book.
"You do know that computers are always built out of explosives, don't you?"
It's true! The G4 is made of C4!
Sure, he's a fashion designer, but his business has the same IT needs as every other business. They do sales and marketing, buy from suppliers, sell to distributors and retailers, hire and pay employees and provide them with benefits, coordinate and pay for travel, and so on. In the modern business climate, he still needs computers for all of that, even if the activity underlying it all involves ultimately swaning about with charchoal sketches and fabric swatches.
...(a lost battle around here, I suppose), but what about pr0n? That industry always seems to be out on the cutting edge.
I ask purely for information, of course. No, seriously.
Again ignoring the rather self-serving nature of a modified span of 200 years: any number of great thinkers during that timespan, like Einstein, were Jewish. Given the status of homosexuality during those years, it's difficult to say for certain who may or may not have been gay, but Alan Turing comes to mind. Without him, none of us would be posing here.
...which might not be a bad thing.
Hey, as long as we're not giving them control of port 25...
"It isn't (IMO) the content that is copyrighted as much as the meaning."
Other way around. That is, copyright protects a specific expression of an idea, which is to say a particular batch of words in a particular order. Ideas are, for the most part, not protected.
That said, there's a certain amount of fuzziness around exactly what is involved in the expression of an idea. Frex, a few years back, White Wolf Games sued the producers of the movie Underworld for lifting a number of elements from their games under, I believe, copyright law.
In the words of the poet, "if money can't buy happiness, I guess I'll have to rent it."
To put it another way, you sidle up to the stockboy at the grocery store and whisper "Hey, got any donkey porn?" The stockboy yells out "Hey, anybody got any donkey porn?" The stockboy knows you asked, but he always asks for that kind of thing, so nobody minds him. The question might be whether or not anyone notices or should draw any conclusions from the fact that you're the guy standing next to the stockboy. To sum up: the folks at Google must shop at some weird grocery stores.
"Google to make alternative planet Earth?"
You have seen Google Earth, right?
That's "Tubet shuold be fre," but that's close enough.
"I've since been told that if I were to start with the first episode instead, I'd like it more"
Or possibly not. That was the first episode I saw, and it didn't grab me, nor (and here I lose all my geekish cred) did the two or three others I caught at one time or another. Perhaps it's because I found the combination of sci-fi premise, Reconstruction-era trappings, and Whedon dialogue jarring. Or maybe it's just than Nathan Fillon bugs the hell out of me. Either way, I don't get it. Like Doctor Who, it's going to be one of those things which remains beyond me, and I envy those of you who get such joy from it.
...or was it just found in a really big pond?
That bodes well for any children Veronica Mars might have.
I agree with both of your points, but I wasn't talking about either. I was responding to the notion that any creator should be satisfied with just seeing his stuff being used without any thought of material compensation.
Um...no. I'm disagreeing, rather strenuously. For example, how would you react if your boss came into your office and said "Everybody loves the widget-processing QA procedure you wrote. That should make you happy, so we won't be paying you this week." Creation for creation's sake is all well and good and I'm certainly grateful to the people who do that, but it's narrow-minded to think that that's the only reason new ideas can and should be created, and it's particularly selfish for someone to impose that mindset on a creator. Some people will create purely for the joy of creation or for the validation of other people using their work. Some might not regard it as truly validating unless other people are willing to make an effort (that is, spend some of their hard earned cash) on their work. Some create to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head.
It's not unreasonable to want to be compensated for the time and labor you expend producing something which other people find value in. Think about that in terms of your own job: if you like what you do, would you be happy if more people followed your recommendations, used programs you wrote, etc., even if you didn't get paid for it?
I'm just wondering where they're finding onions with corners.
Remember: if you lick somebody else's keyboard, you're also licking all the other keyboards they've typed on.
Ew.
Powerstones may not be in the Basic Set (my books aren't to hand, so I can't check), but they're definitely still in GURPS Magic.
He'd be a natty-looking savior. The black would do a good job of hiding the wound in his side.
...I tend to carry data between computers which have software which I know will run the files I have rather than to strangers' machines without a predictable set of software. Then again, most of the stuff I carry around is text files, so this may very well be of use to people who aren't me.
Depends on your context. Most people outside of the geek world had never heard of wiki before the recent wikipedia scandal. And by now, I imagine, most people outside of the geek world have forgotten it again.
Damn right. They can have my flying pink unicorn when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.