Re: Re: Is an ebook edition really less valuable than a paperback?
People buy something when value to them >= price.
If the value remains high, there is no reason for the price to come down (regardless of production cost) unless they can buy THE SAME THING cheaper elsewhere.
You seem to be suggesting that even though Amazon can clearly sell stuff at this price, they should actually drop the price because of a theory about price eventually tending to marginal cost.
Or are you in fact suggesting they won't manage to sell at that price because
- the paper book is cheaper
- there is some comparable digital alternative (such as ?)
- some other reason
Wrong. A pretty poor raw scan of a dead tree book is free.
It's not like a PDF I could reformat and put on my eReader.
It's not *should*. This is basic economics: price gets driven to marginal cost. A recipe for failure is if you ignore this basic tenet, because it means competitors will eat your lunch.
You think Amazon are stupid ?
Yeah, they're clearly going out of business.
In a competitive market, pricing is driven by marginal cost, or you fail. That's the point.
This is not a competitive market. Who else sells a Kindle edition ? To a person with a Kindle, who wants a full featured experience, this is the only deal in town.
My argument is that this pricing is a mistake, and basic economics (the kind found in a book like this) should point that out.
1. If people buy it, the pricing is not a mistake.
And as their pricing is easily changeable, they can rectify such a mistake easily. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens in an almost automated fashion when they assess sales periodically.
2. The price you should compare this with is that of a kindle edition elsewhere (or an other format that can be read on a Kindle) not a paper book. Comparing the price with that of a paper book is irrelevant. The Kindle owner didn't come here looking for a paper book.
3. Maybe (just maybe) Amazon has been reading Techdirt and realises that the content alone has a marginal cost of zero, so they are finding ways (ie Kindle) to add value over and above the raw content, so they can charge more for it.
I'd have thought the Mike Masnick reaction to this pricing would have been "go Amazon, finding a way to break free of the curse of downward price pressure".
As many have said, rather than try to ban the transfer of info that is in the public domain already, just don't release it.
But on commenter suggests that the problem still remains with exit polling.
But it does in any election. Early exit polling can influence late voters.
Though only a terribly biased TV station could convince a sane person of the result based on early exit polls, and if they take their cue from such a station, all is lost anyway surely ?
Worries about information asymmetry would prohibit publication of exit poll results.
I'm sure in the UK the exit polls used for the pundit shows on election night are kept under wraps until the last voter votes. Same rules would apply to multi timezone voting, surely ?
I'd say it shows why Netflix is popular.
If it wasn't for Netflix and their ilk the illegal downloading would surely be worse.
In the UK we have LoveFilm (which seemed to take over from Amazon rental). It is reasonably priced and it works.
Plus for about £3 I can decide on the spur of the moment to stream a movie on demand for the kids. I even get 4 hrs / month free on my basic DVD by mail plan.
Now, near us is a "community theatre". Internet booking of movies for £2 / child, maybe £3 (£4 tops) for adults. Basic, new clean comfortable theatre, (good sound, big screen) attached to a nice "wholefood coffee shop" sort of place.
Movies that the kids have only just seen the trailers for on rental disks come around regularly.
And they don't let you take food into the theatre which means
- no sticky stuff down your back
- less opportunity to bankrupt yourself on popcorn.
Compared to this place the "mainstream" movie theatres feel like a mugging in a huge Macdonalds.
At one point I thought that with kids animated movies, the prices would come down, as there would be no need to pay giant celeb actor wages. But now all the decent animated movies are voiced by stars anyway.
It's a bit like going to see soccer live in the UK. Costs a fortune then you see the players salaries and see why. Is this why movies cost so much ? Or is it just greed ? Or is it like drug development - you need to pay for all the failures as well ?
In other news the law will be extended to all other places where single adults might hook up.
weddings (you must now screen your guests)
out walking your dog (parks must now have a security screen on the gate)
supermarkets (loyalty cards to now work with DHS)
the school gate (school districts in league with TSA)
the beach
public streets
The perp, meanwhile, will sue match.com for hooking him up with someone he later went on to assault, claiming "they should have prevented this, it has ruined my life".
Match.com will sue google for lowering everyone's expectations of what things cost on the internet making it unfeasible for them to screen everyone.
Lawyers will sue CNN for publicising the event thus reducing the likelihood of lucrative repeat events.
Microsoft will unearth an obscure patent related to an algorithm for choosing a victim and sue the perp.
MPAA will claim the whole incident was the plot of some movie noone ever watched and sue everyone for copyright.
SCO will try to claim Match.com is somehow based on an
infringing version of Linux.
TAM will claim that Mike Masnick said online dating should be free.
Various senators will try and pass a "Clear Tubes Act" written by lobbyists which will allow online dating packets to be prioritised.
Some college pal of the match.com founder will unearth a restauraunt napkin on which supposedly a deal was signed to give him half the company.
Jonathon Tasini will claim that he posted stuff in his Match.com profile without payment and has just realised match.com are making money and hence some it should be his.
And (to quote Del Amitri) we'll all be lonely tonight, and lonely tomorrow... (see link above)
I think it's a bit of a stretch to compare a dislike of having your employees spill your secrets to the competition with supporting talented foreign programmers entering the country.
Not the same thing at all.
I was once asked to sign a non compete with a small specialised company. No biggie, their competition was a joke and I'd never want to go work for them.
But my employer got bought by a behemoth who supplied a vast array of products to the life science industry. It was once claimed to me that the non compete now applied to the competition of the new owners. This would force me to leave the entire industry if I ever left.
I think in the UK you cannot remove someone's means of earning a living. So a court judgement that confiscated a carpenters's tools, or a non compete that ruled out any way to practice the trade the person was qualified for, would be illegal.
Most of us see non compete's as almost irrelevant because we're simply not important enough.
- noone would spend the money suing for ordinary folks like us
- most HR depts wouldn't even know we had gone to the competition if we weren't in mega high profile jobs.
But in most cases, "forgetting" to sign it from the outset is the easiest policy, because at the beginning they are happy to have you there and don't make a fuss and thereafter it gets forgotten due to HR incompetence.
Surely, if TD updates were scripted it wouldn't go deathly quiet at weekends (requiring new creative ventures such as "Dark Helmet's favourite posts of the week" to satisfy TD addicts).
(In the interests of disclosure, I'm all in favour of these "meta posts")
If I upload a song I have by definition distributed it to the population of the planet, with all the lost sales that this implies. Hasn't the xxAA education campaign taught you anything ?
Meanwhile, concerning the original story, wasn't the gmail account in question dormant ? Or am I misremembering this story.
- Pi being an irrational number is by definition not expressible as a ratio, surely.
- hex is not base 8
- you'd actually want something like base 12 as a scale is made up of 12 semitones, not 8 tones.
But if you did this and the resulting music DIDN'T sound absolutely awful, then I guess that would actually be quite interesting.
The problem here with the TSA appears to be the stable door syndrome. They are trying to prevent 9/11, but locked cockpit doors and everyone knowing that hijackers don't just want to be taken somewhere will stop that ever happening again.
9/11 succeeded because they were organised, motivated and had the element of surprise. Apart from some idiotic shoe bomber type incidents (ie poorly organised and no real element of surprise), we don't know of any real attempts at a major attack since 9/11.
If the next event is as completely unexpected as a mode of attack as the last one was, it won't be prevented by security that works like this.
The reason I worry is because I have no confidence in law enforcement (or Government)'s imagination.
I once traded in some airmiles I was never going to use for about 6 annual mag subscriptions.
The Economist stuck (though I consume it mainly in MP3 form while walking the dog) but I remember thinking that Time (and especially Newsweek) were basically comics rather than grown up reading.
I also ended up with a NewYorker subscription because a previous resident at the address never redirected it, and I always learn something when I read it.
When it's a quality read or offers a good analysis/summary, a magazine has plenty of future. But when it doesn't even itself know of a reason why it should exist then it deserves to die.
I think that a lot of people are (intentionally) missing the point here.
If (which may not be the case here) you have a flat rate plan, then your supplier of internet bandwidth may have created a business plan that is based on a reasonable amount of data being used, based on average user consumption.
If (for example) I bought unlimited cable net access, they would have every right to be peeved if I was allowing the whole neighbourhood access to my wireless network and hence using a vast amount more then a single reasonable user would.
Now, if I do the same with my iPhone, say, and create a wireless access point so that a load of other people can share my connection, that is a similar thing. It could be seen as an abuse of a flat rate plan that was based on a business model taking into account average use of a single user.
Like offering an all you can eat buffet in a restaurant and then having a large family come and share a plate.
But hey, if the user is on a "pay per gigabyte" plan, why the hell should they care ?
Answer - because they'd rather have two customers paying for a gig than 1 paying for 2 gig because there are fixed charges too, and other upselling opportunities.
I suspect the "tethering" that is objected to is not "using my phone as a modem for me" but "using my phone as open access for the whole coffee shop".
Often this seems to be enabled on people's devices by default. For a while I found on UK trains I could find a net connection simply by hunting with my bluetooth. Not that I ever use it - that might be illegal...
Sounds to me like a guaranteed car crash - far more distracting than dial by voice.
99% of the application of this will be for severely disabled.
There have been many false dawns in the drive to get rid of keyboards and keypads and they have survived because they work fairly well, and they are totally unambiguous.
For example people would rather use tiny keyboards than near perfect handwriting recognition with a stylus. Why ?
But I see the DHS rubbing their hands in glee at the polygraph implications...
On the post: 'Economics In One Lesson' Apparently Doesn't Include Pricing; Kindle Version Most Expensive
Re: Re: Is an ebook edition really less valuable than a paperback?
If the value remains high, there is no reason for the price to come down (regardless of production cost) unless they can buy THE SAME THING cheaper elsewhere.
You seem to be suggesting that even though Amazon can clearly sell stuff at this price, they should actually drop the price because of a theory about price eventually tending to marginal cost.
Or are you in fact suggesting they won't manage to sell at that price because
- the paper book is cheaper
- there is some comparable digital alternative (such as ?)
- some other reason
Or are you saying they won't sell any ?
On the post: 'Economics In One Lesson' Apparently Doesn't Include Pricing; Kindle Version Most Expensive
Re: Re: Come on TechDirt...
First, the book is freaking free.
Indeed !
Wrong. A pretty poor raw scan of a dead tree book is free.
It's not like a PDF I could reformat and put on my eReader.
It's not *should*. This is basic economics: price gets driven to marginal cost. A recipe for failure is if you ignore this basic tenet, because it means competitors will eat your lunch.
You think Amazon are stupid ?
Yeah, they're clearly going out of business.
In a competitive market, pricing is driven by marginal cost, or you fail. That's the point.
This is not a competitive market. Who else sells a Kindle edition ? To a person with a Kindle, who wants a full featured experience, this is the only deal in town.
My argument is that this pricing is a mistake, and basic economics (the kind found in a book like this) should point that out.
1. If people buy it, the pricing is not a mistake.
And as their pricing is easily changeable, they can rectify such a mistake easily. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens in an almost automated fashion when they assess sales periodically.
2. The price you should compare this with is that of a kindle edition elsewhere (or an other format that can be read on a Kindle) not a paper book. Comparing the price with that of a paper book is irrelevant. The Kindle owner didn't come here looking for a paper book.
3. Maybe (just maybe) Amazon has been reading Techdirt and realises that the content alone has a marginal cost of zero, so they are finding ways (ie Kindle) to add value over and above the raw content, so they can charge more for it.
I'd have thought the Mike Masnick reaction to this pricing would have been "go Amazon, finding a way to break free of the curse of downward price pressure".
On the post: 'Economics In One Lesson' Apparently Doesn't Include Pricing; Kindle Version Most Expensive
Re: Re:
On the post: We May Have Unbundled The Music... But We've Smartly Bundled The Music Experience
On the post: Canadians Face Fines & Jail Time If They Tweet Election Result News Prior To West Coast Poll Closings
So easy to fix
But on commenter suggests that the problem still remains with exit polling.
But it does in any election. Early exit polling can influence late voters.
Though only a terribly biased TV station could convince a sane person of the result based on early exit polls, and if they take their cue from such a station, all is lost anyway surely ?
Worries about information asymmetry would prohibit publication of exit poll results.
I'm sure in the UK the exit polls used for the pundit shows on election night are kept under wraps until the last voter votes. Same rules would apply to multi timezone voting, surely ?
On the post: New RIAA Evidence Comes To Light: Napster Killed Kerosene Too!
Kerosene ?
Or maybe there is illegal kerosene sharing ?
On the post: Studios Offering $30 Movie Rentals; Theater Owner Complains That He Can't Compete With That
Re:
If it wasn't for Netflix and their ilk the illegal downloading would surely be worse.
In the UK we have LoveFilm (which seemed to take over from Amazon rental). It is reasonably priced and it works.
Plus for about £3 I can decide on the spur of the moment to stream a movie on demand for the kids. I even get 4 hrs / month free on my basic DVD by mail plan.
Now, near us is a "community theatre". Internet booking of movies for £2 / child, maybe £3 (£4 tops) for adults. Basic, new clean comfortable theatre, (good sound, big screen) attached to a nice "wholefood coffee shop" sort of place.
Movies that the kids have only just seen the trailers for on rental disks come around regularly.
And they don't let you take food into the theatre which means
- no sticky stuff down your back
- less opportunity to bankrupt yourself on popcorn.
Compared to this place the "mainstream" movie theatres feel like a mugging in a huge Macdonalds.
At one point I thought that with kids animated movies, the prices would come down, as there would be no need to pay giant celeb actor wages. But now all the decent animated movies are voiced by stars anyway.
It's a bit like going to see soccer live in the UK. Costs a fortune then you see the players salaries and see why. Is this why movies cost so much ? Or is it just greed ? Or is it like drug development - you need to pay for all the failures as well ?
On the post: Studios Offering $30 Movie Rentals; Theater Owner Complains That He Can't Compete With That
Re: Re: Lame experience
Isn't that terrorism , sorry, piracy , er ... against the terms of use ?
On the post: Woman Sues Match.com Because She Was Assaulted By Someone She Met On Site
Re:
weddings (you must now screen your guests)
out walking your dog (parks must now have a security screen on the gate)
supermarkets (loyalty cards to now work with DHS)
the school gate (school districts in league with TSA)
the beach
public streets
The perp, meanwhile, will sue match.com for hooking him up with someone he later went on to assault, claiming "they should have prevented this, it has ruined my life".
Match.com will sue google for lowering everyone's expectations of what things cost on the internet making it unfeasible for them to screen everyone.
Lawyers will sue CNN for publicising the event thus reducing the likelihood of lucrative repeat events.
Microsoft will unearth an obscure patent related to an algorithm for choosing a victim and sue the perp.
MPAA will claim the whole incident was the plot of some movie noone ever watched and sue everyone for copyright.
SCO will try to claim Match.com is somehow based on an
infringing version of Linux.
TAM will claim that Mike Masnick said online dating should be free.
Various senators will try and pass a "Clear Tubes Act" written by lobbyists which will allow online dating packets to be prioritised.
Some college pal of the match.com founder will unearth a restauraunt napkin on which supposedly a deal was signed to give him half the company.
Jonathon Tasini will claim that he posted stuff in his Match.com profile without payment and has just realised match.com are making money and hence some it should be his.
And (to quote Del Amitri) we'll all be lonely tonight, and lonely tomorrow... (see link above)
On the post: Judge Blocks Former Microsoft General Manager From Working For Salesforce
Free flow of talent
Not the same thing at all.
I was once asked to sign a non compete with a small specialised company. No biggie, their competition was a joke and I'd never want to go work for them.
But my employer got bought by a behemoth who supplied a vast array of products to the life science industry. It was once claimed to me that the non compete now applied to the competition of the new owners. This would force me to leave the entire industry if I ever left.
I think in the UK you cannot remove someone's means of earning a living. So a court judgement that confiscated a carpenters's tools, or a non compete that ruled out any way to practice the trade the person was qualified for, would be illegal.
Most of us see non compete's as almost irrelevant because we're simply not important enough.
- noone would spend the money suing for ordinary folks like us
- most HR depts wouldn't even know we had gone to the competition if we weren't in mega high profile jobs.
But in most cases, "forgetting" to sign it from the outset is the easiest policy, because at the beginning they are happy to have you there and don't make a fuss and thereafter it gets forgotten due to HR incompetence.
On the post: Robot Journalist Writes A Better Story On College Baseball Perfect Game
Re: Re: Speaking of robots writing articles
(In the interests of disclosure, I'm all in favour of these "meta posts")
On the post: Judge Not Allowed To Hide Google's Report About Shutting Down Gmail Account Per Judge's Order
Re:
If I upload a song I have by definition distributed it to the population of the planet, with all the lost sales that this implies. Hasn't the xxAA education campaign taught you anything ?
Meanwhile, concerning the original story, wasn't the gmail account in question dormant ? Or am I misremembering this story.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: 2piF/c = wavelength (lamda)
However,
- Pi being an irrational number is by definition not expressible as a ratio, surely.
- hex is not base 8
- you'd actually want something like base 12 as a scale is made up of 12 semitones, not 8 tones.
But if you did this and the resulting music DIDN'T sound absolutely awful, then I guess that would actually be quite interesting.
On the post: TSA Says 'You Might Be A Terrorist If... You Complain About The TSA'
No imagination
9/11 succeeded because they were organised, motivated and had the element of surprise. Apart from some idiotic shoe bomber type incidents (ie poorly organised and no real element of surprise), we don't know of any real attempts at a major attack since 9/11.
If the next event is as completely unexpected as a mode of attack as the last one was, it won't be prevented by security that works like this.
The reason I worry is because I have no confidence in law enforcement (or Government)'s imagination.
On the post: FBI Hijacks Botnet, With Court Order... Then Issues Kill Signal To Millions Of Computers
Re: Hard Sale for stopping this activity
Hmm. Why not send corporate email through google ?
Route it in, pop/IMAP it out. One google user each, free.
KISS as they say.
Or even go the whole hog and move to Google corporate email. Saves you running a mail server too.
On the post: FBI Hijacks Botnet, With Court Order... Then Issues Kill Signal To Millions Of Computers
Re: Re: Hard Sale for stopping this activity
On the post: Latest Issue Of Newsweek Down To Just Six Ads
Comics
The Economist stuck (though I consume it mainly in MP3 form while walking the dog) but I remember thinking that Time (and especially Newsweek) were basically comics rather than grown up reading.
I also ended up with a NewYorker subscription because a previous resident at the address never redirected it, and I always learn something when I read it.
When it's a quality read or offers a good analysis/summary, a magazine has plenty of future. But when it doesn't even itself know of a reason why it should exist then it deserves to die.
On the post: Dumbest Lawsuit Ever? HuffPo Sued By Bloggers Who Agreed To Work For Free... But Now Claim They Were Slaves
Let me get this straight
The reporting of it makes CNN money.
Without my actions, they wouldn't have the news content.
Do I deserve a slice of CNN's profits ?
On the post: Is Tethering Stealing Bandwidth?
May be missing the point
If (which may not be the case here) you have a flat rate plan, then your supplier of internet bandwidth may have created a business plan that is based on a reasonable amount of data being used, based on average user consumption.
If (for example) I bought unlimited cable net access, they would have every right to be peeved if I was allowing the whole neighbourhood access to my wireless network and hence using a vast amount more then a single reasonable user would.
Now, if I do the same with my iPhone, say, and create a wireless access point so that a load of other people can share my connection, that is a similar thing. It could be seen as an abuse of a flat rate plan that was based on a business model taking into account average use of a single user.
Like offering an all you can eat buffet in a restaurant and then having a large family come and share a plate.
But hey, if the user is on a "pay per gigabyte" plan, why the hell should they care ?
Answer - because they'd rather have two customers paying for a gig than 1 paying for 2 gig because there are fixed charges too, and other upselling opportunities.
I suspect the "tethering" that is objected to is not "using my phone as a modem for me" but "using my phone as open access for the whole coffee shop".
Often this seems to be enabled on people's devices by default. For a while I found on UK trains I could find a net connection simply by hunting with my bluetooth. Not that I ever use it - that might be illegal...
On the post: Sorry, My Brain Accidentally Called You
The ultimate hands free ?
99% of the application of this will be for severely disabled.
There have been many false dawns in the drive to get rid of keyboards and keypads and they have survived because they work fairly well, and they are totally unambiguous.
For example people would rather use tiny keyboards than near perfect handwriting recognition with a stylus. Why ?
But I see the DHS rubbing their hands in glee at the polygraph implications...
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