Re: Re: Re: Let's take a more Macro look at putting out books
It's just too bad that he has never figured out that marginal costs are often not the big end of things, at least until you start turning out really big numbers.
OR really small numbers. Every teenager who took dad's lawnmower and started making money cutting grass uses this principal. Since the marginal cost of the next lawn to cut is the cost of the gas, oil and maintenance on the lawnmower, the kid can afford to cut a few neighbors lawns and make some pocket cash. Since the cost of the lawnmower is a sunk cost (fortunately by mom or dad), the kid can come out ahead but cutting a few lawns.
The concept of marginal cost works across the entire range of economic scales not just "really big numbers". Please go back to school and learn your economics.
Authors have had an interesting ride so far. They sign away about 75% to 90% of the price of a book and they are afraid to change to get (another) deal. Often, they don't take the time to think about what they away, just what they think they are getting (an advance and a cut of the sales once the advance is covered). Often though the other side of the contract is ignored. Did they sign away their copyright on the book (and maybe all future copyrights on future books)? Did they give up their free time by agreeing to go on signing tours on the publishers schedule? Did they give up the right to make any future decisions about stage or screen productions of the story? Do they have any control over any of the publishing process including things like the cover art, type size, whether or not "too much" is squeezed onto a page, and so on.
I could write a book, self-publish on my web site and get 100% of the sales price (if anyone ever finds out about it and actually buys it). When I sell a million at $1.00 each, I'd have a million dollars, right? Well that assumes that a million people would ever find it and buy it, and that it doesn't cost me anything to have it on a website. Even if I could put it up on the mini-site provided by my ISP, my account with the ISP is not free. Somehow, I would need to do some promotion (time spent that is not "free") and probably additional cost.
While I agree that all other things being equal, an eBook should not cost as much as paper books because all of the costs associated with making and distributing a physical product are gone. What this thread seems to be missing so far is what are the "other" costs (besides what the author wants to get paid) and what is the right price for a book now.
It would be interesting if someone who has access to the right data could do an accurate comparison of the costs of a physical book versus an eBook. A good comparison would include things like bandwidth vs. shipping, hosting vs. printing, and so on. Costs such as advertising, signings (you can't do a book signing so what do you do, sign a postcard?), bus stop signs, and other types of promotion. How would the cost of an agent be handled (do they become a pay for service type provider now that there is no publisher to give them a cut of the sales)? Is an agent still needed? There are a lot more issues to be ironed out over and above the authors cut.
This issue cries out for an analysis of the economic inter-dependencies of all of the various "moving pieces" of getting a story from the authors mind to the reader. Once this analysis is in place, a part of that would be a stab at what is the percentage the author "should" get.
Don't you get it, for movies, music, and now e-books, you must pay your money before you ever get a peak. How on earth are the gatekeepers going to rake in the millions if you have to actually like the content before you buy it? AND, heaven forbid, you should not be allowed to enjoy it if you can't pay for it, that's a lost sale (or maybe 6 or 7 if you are the RIAA or MPAA, they count kinda funny). YOU MUST GIVE THEM MONEY FIRST. Then, you can experience it, but they already have the money so it doesn't matter whether or not you like it. That's why they try to get reviewers that give the item a bad rating fired.
When I first installed Comcast (a very long time ago), I ordered the self install kit. Well I could not get connected. Finally, I called the help desk. The technician would not move on until I installed their crap software. Having spent 20 years in IT by that time, I knew better. So, I took an old spare computer that was not connected to the router and installed the software (I just couldn't lie to them) and told the technician (cough cough) that I installed the software on my computer (which was 100% true, just not the one connected to their network which he didn't ask me). Amazingly enough, installing their software on a computer that was only connected to itself, magically made my other computer connected to their cable modem start working. I knelt down and prayed to the computer gods. Of course the real magic was the MAC address I had given him earlier for the network card in the computer connected to the cable modem. Not only are they liars and crooks, but they think the whole rest of the world is stupid as well.
TechDirt (i.e. Masnick) is not receiving a dime from you. Please start sending the money. I have to pay my money to Comcast every month for my bandwidth. I should not have to see there ads as well. Especially since the software is crap.
I think part of the lawyers job will be to find out just how original that tattoo really is. There is just not that much to it except that it is on Tyson's face. Which is also part of my question, is just the tattoo copyrighted or is the fact that it was done on Tyson's face make Tyson part of the artwork?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This site is just out of touch.
Way back when, oh without researching it, music was only performed. An artist got up in front of a person or group of people (or a herd of animals) and performed. Then one day, Thomas Edison I believe, used technology and recorded it. Actually preserved a reusable copy of that music where the artist was no longer needed to hear the music. When that technology became commercially viable, lawsuits happened all over the place a copyright law was amended to cover music so that although the artist "recorded" it once, they got money for every sale of a "copy" of the recording. There is even a push to get paid every time the recording is "performed" because, you know, they did spend a couple of hours 2 decades ago making that recording. In most every other field of industry, the cost of a product is controlled by the economic reality of marginal cost. But "record labels" banded together into societies and fixed the price at about $10.00 (don't quibble over a couple of cents here and there) and even when the cost of blank CD went from $3.00 to $0.25 or less the cost of a music CD stayed at $10.00 or so. Since the societies were in control, even though the marginal cost dropped, the price stayed the same. Now, jump ahead to the last decade or so and the ability to make a copy is a viable option for any person with a computer.
People knew the cost of a blank CD had dropped, buying them in the store to make copies of their home pictures they could see the cost drop from a couple of dollars apiece to $10.00 for 100 blanks. They could make their own copy and cut out the middle man (which as we know is the record labels and they really really don't want to be cut out of making all that money on the little plastic disks). Now with big hard drives,the internet and MP3 players, the little plastic disks are no longer needed even. But, somebody spent a couple of hours making a "recording" and now wants to get paid for the following 75 years every time it gets played. Does this mean that now I should also be paying the carpenter every time I go to sleep in my house? For that matter, the guy who made the bed frame, the mattress, the sheets, the blankets, and the pillows? Does it mean that I have to pay the "artist" who made my custom quilt every time I sleep under it or heaven forbid let someone else see it?
It used to be that a musician had to be a working musician to get paid (wasn't it great to be the court musician/composer?). Now "the band" must get paid every time the song is played? Why doesn't the soundman, the electric company, and the makers of the drumsets and guitars get paid every time the band plays? Well they don't have "collection societies" (yet) of course.
Moral or immoral, I get paid for an hour to work an hour. Unfortunately, I can't record my work and get paid over and over and over again until I die and then have my kids get paid for my hour for the next 75 years after I'm dead. But the two sisters who wrote (or at least claim to have written) the "Happy Birthay" song (in about 2 hours probably) do expect that. Where is the morally right in that?
No, in conclusion, the marginal cost to the artist/composer/and everybody else involved in the making of the recording is now ZERO which makes this an infinite good. That means that the price has dropped to ZERO for the recording (you don't need to argue against this, just read an economics textbook to learn all about it). The marginal cost of "attending" a live performance is much higher and much more scarce. Consequently, the cost to me (for example to see Elton John recently cost me more than $400 for the wife and I) is much higher than ZERO.
I still don't understand why they don't go after the source
OK, the 3-strikes rule is going to kick in if the file sharing doesn't decrease. While I agree that stopping alleged illegal file sharing is not necessarily going to increase sales, what I really want to know is why, if they know where the illegal file sharing is and can measure it, why don't they go after the source and stop it there. For example, Google is being sued for just linking to allegedly illegal images from Perfect 10. Why is Perfect 10 going after Google? Google is pointing them to exactly where the the allegedly infringing material is located. Why aren't they going after getting allegedly infringing material removed at the source. Then, there is nothing for all of the search engines to link to. If the a teenager or other scofflaw can so easily find and download the allegedly infringing material, why can't the owner go after the one source? It just boggles my mind. It seems that the business model is to sue everybody except the source of the allegedly infringing material. It seems that this should even be Google's defense against Perfect 10. Look, we linked to it for you, go get them to take it down, then we won't even be able to link to it.
The control freaks will never go away. I worked at a company that decided that all those frequent flyer miles that employees were getting belonged to them. Once they decided to try to take them, they all disappeared. Who wanted to go to all that extra effort to put in the member numbers for somebody else to take the free trips.
The important thing that a company should take away from this is that it is important to make sure that their customers deal with many employees. If there is no one "shining light" that always takes care of them then there is no reason to "go" with that person. That won't work in the case of say Steve Jobs, but with the typical sales rep or repair technician, make sure that the customer has several points of contact, a call-in number, technical support, sales, sales support, and so on. Make sure the whole company takes care of your customers, not just one person (even if that person is you, after all, you will want to sell the company and retire one day).
and who really has time to evaluate keylogger files
Have you ever looked at a keylogger file? It is huge. Without proper analysis tools and a background to understand it, it is practically useless. It would take hours to go through a typical keylogger file and understand what was going on. I am an experienced computer professional and know that a keylogger is not a good solution for spying on a child. All this will eventually do is make the kids find another outlet, justify installing Linux, or find any decent excuse to just reinstall the OS. Which will mean constantly going back and reinstalling the keylogger and losing the log files anyway. But it will be a good excuse later when they say, "I tried".
What is totally lacking from this pogrom is an explanation of why they are going after "LINK" sites. If a site is just linking to somewhere else that has infringing material, why not go after the target of the link? That would kill two potential "infringers" with one action. Instead they just keep going after the linking sites. It must be job security. If there is one site hosting infringing material, they don't shut down just that one, they go after the other 10 that are linking to it. Then, they have 10 times as much work to do, which really keeps them busy. Next year, that one site hosting the infringing material is still there, so they can go after 10 more linking sites. Wow, a permanent career going after the linking sites while not shutting down the original potential infringers. Since I figured this out, I guess I shouldn't go into law enforcement (well civilian infringement enforcement).
The ISPs are making a money grab on the already built out infrastructure and they are not thinking it through. In general there are three types of websites, informational, ad supported, and services for pay. The whole equation of accessing these sites will change with metered service. Advertising supported sites are going to suffer the most. There will be a HUGE backlash about paying per byte for ALL types of advertising. Probably the first to go will be Flash based animated advertising. Why would I want to keep wasting "MY" money to pay for the download of all of that flashy graphic advertising. Then the banner ads and so on. It already tries my patience waiting for that crap to download (and it holds up what I really want to see).
Then the services that are out there are going to suffer. Will I really want to browse through Amazon anymore? It is going to cost me a lot of money to download all of the flashy displays they have and to look through page after page of products. I won't want to buy anything without seeing a picture and by the time I look at 15 to 20 picture of say a stereo system, I will have paid $10 just to see the pictures. I will probably have to go back to the brick-and-mortar stores and stop shopping online unless I know exactly what I want and where I want to get it.
Google is going to become useless. It will cost $1.00 a page to look at the results of a Google search. That will stop fairly quickly. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn will all come to a grinding halt. Who will want to pay to download "I ate stinky fish for lunch" ever again. Or, just how much will it cost to watch a dancing baby on YouTube? All those pictures and wall updates on Facebook will be a lot less interesting at $1.00 a page to look at the updates. On the other hand, newspapers will be happy. Who could afford to search on Craigslist or Monster at $1.00 per page view? The big sports systems will also lose out. Who is going to keep NFL.com up and updating on all the games at $1.00 per refresh? One Sunday of watching Football on NFL.com is going to cost $40 to $50.
The cable companies (at least Comcast) are trying to switch everyone to digital and drop the analog signal from their wires because digital uses a lot less bandwidth. Yet, they charge extra to switch to the less bandwidth version. Why would I want to pay more when it costs them less to send it? Especially with the way that I keep losing the signal altogether.
I sure hope that Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and those other big 2.0 companies are ready to shutdown, because those services are going to be a lot less useful under a metered plan.
Oh, Yeah! The internet is also going to become a much more dangerous place to surf. I sure won't want to pay $20 to download all of those Microsoft updates, Java updates, iTunes updates and so on and so on and so on. All of the automatic updaters are going to be turned off and deleted from my system so that they don't keep eating up my bandwidth. What about the virus definitions. My current anti-virus package (It's Avast and I love it) checks for updates several times a day. I'll have to turn that off and rely on my memory to check for updates every week or so. Of course I won't get many viruses because I won't be surfing the NET either. I guess that is an OK trade-off for the ISP though. I'm guessing that online stock trading is going to go away as well. Who could afford to let a stock trading system be up and using all that bandwidth all day to watch their stock portfolio? It would cost more than could ever be made.
I should start working on my easy to use advertising blocking system right away.
One of the ideas/concepts not taken into account when supporting these "shoot first - ask questions later" types of laws is "What would happen when it got turned around?". What if I decided to start making guitar strings (heaven forbid) and decided to go on the attack? Let's say I just go out and convince the right person that "D'Addario and Company" are copying me? So, the response should be shut them down until it gets sorted out? What happens to those 1000 jobs while no one can buy D'Addario guitar strings while they were incorrectly accused of pirating them. Once a law like this is on the books, anybody that is not a billion dollar company (and even some of those) could very easily be shut down by a false accusation, until it got straightened out (at least 6 months down the road and counting, since those other websites haven't even been charged with an actual crime yet). Everyone with a web site is going to have to shoot first against all possible competitors (not necessarily just the pirates) just to stay in business.
A big huge part of the movie industries business model is that you must pay before you see. And, they don't give you back your money if you don't like what you see. So to see the extra features (which I mostly don't care about anyway), you have to pay first. The reason I don't care about them, is that in reality, they are mostly very lame. Certainly not worth paying for the plastic just in case they are any good.
I bet they are thinking they are selling a "value" to consumers
I'm sure there are a lot of people who buy the kindle for the convenience of the thing. If it weighs 1 pound with 1 book on it, how much does it weight with 100 books on it (1 pound of course). So it is convenient to carry around with lots of books stored in it. It is also a fancy new gadget. This blog talks about the economics of "things" a lot. While this is a very new concept and gadget, there will be a premium on some things. As the novelty wears off and the new competitors enter the market (remember, in economics new competitors go to where the profit margins are high and force those margins down to near zero above marginal cost). So now the nook has entered the market (and others that I can't recall), so after there is some fierce competition to be able to say that "XXX sold xxx millions of copies of books" after Christmas, the prices should start getting more reasonable. The real key is going to be getting enough competitors into the market who are competing on selling eBooks. EVERYBODY knows that downloading an eBook costs practically nothing for each book, but that maintaining the infrastructure to do so is expensive. So eventually, the cost of an eBook should approach some small cost of maintaining the infrastructure and advertising plus a near zero marginal cost of distributing the book. The $64,000 question is when will the economics take over from the "Wow" factor.
As for the title of my post, I see no value to me (personally) for the eBooks especially after reading (here at TechDirt) about the ability to "lose" the books I would think I was buying with no recourse. And of course I can't collect them or resell them (as my wife wants me to do). For now, I'm just going to stick to the paperback ones.
And, it really is about the safety of the Planes not People
So, for the last 13 years I've been a travelling consultant pretty much flying to client sites every Monday and home again on Thursday or Friday. Recently, it came to my attention because of a long security line (and no "go to the front of the line pass that day") and just staring around at anything that caught my eye, that this security theater isn't even about the safety of the travelers after all. Before passing through the "look at you naked" box, you have to dispose of all of those dangerous bombs in the trashcan. Now maybe I have been watching too many movies, but from what I recall, if there is a suspected bomb everyone should clear the area and the suspected item should be moved to a safe area and defused by a bomb squad. I can't imagine why a rational person would think, "Hey, let's put ALL of those suspected bombs into one huge plastic trashcan, all together, to provide a safe environment for all of the hundreds of people standing in the long security line taking all of their clothes off (I mean being security scanned)".
Nope, the only slight margin of safety is the slightly decreased possibility of a plane getting blown up. I mean, have you seen them? The 33 gallon sized trash can of bottles of banned materials: water, soda, deodorant, shaving cream and toothpaste, right next to a very long line of irritated travelers waiting to pass through the "naked body scanner"? All that potentially dangerous material piled together, ready to be detonated as soon as the bad guys get far enough away to be safe.
That is definitely NOT for my safety (and I truly can't believe that the couple of dozen TSA workers will be any safer than me). I just hope I'm not in line the day the "non-government terrorists" figure this out.
On the post: Author Says eBooks Will Hurt Authors Because Of Royalty Rates
Re: Re: Re: Let's take a more Macro look at putting out books
OR really small numbers. Every teenager who took dad's lawnmower and started making money cutting grass uses this principal. Since the marginal cost of the next lawn to cut is the cost of the gas, oil and maintenance on the lawnmower, the kid can afford to cut a few neighbors lawns and make some pocket cash. Since the cost of the lawnmower is a sunk cost (fortunately by mom or dad), the kid can come out ahead but cutting a few lawns.
The concept of marginal cost works across the entire range of economic scales not just "really big numbers". Please go back to school and learn your economics.
On the post: Author Says eBooks Will Hurt Authors Because Of Royalty Rates
Let's take a more Macro look at putting out books
I could write a book, self-publish on my web site and get 100% of the sales price (if anyone ever finds out about it and actually buys it). When I sell a million at $1.00 each, I'd have a million dollars, right? Well that assumes that a million people would ever find it and buy it, and that it doesn't cost me anything to have it on a website. Even if I could put it up on the mini-site provided by my ISP, my account with the ISP is not free. Somehow, I would need to do some promotion (time spent that is not "free") and probably additional cost.
While I agree that all other things being equal, an eBook should not cost as much as paper books because all of the costs associated with making and distributing a physical product are gone. What this thread seems to be missing so far is what are the "other" costs (besides what the author wants to get paid) and what is the right price for a book now.
It would be interesting if someone who has access to the right data could do an accurate comparison of the costs of a physical book versus an eBook. A good comparison would include things like bandwidth vs. shipping, hosting vs. printing, and so on. Costs such as advertising, signings (you can't do a book signing so what do you do, sign a postcard?), bus stop signs, and other types of promotion. How would the cost of an agent be handled (do they become a pay for service type provider now that there is no publisher to give them a cut of the sales)? Is an agent still needed? There are a lot more issues to be ironed out over and above the authors cut.
This issue cries out for an analysis of the economic inter-dependencies of all of the various "moving pieces" of getting a story from the authors mind to the reader. Once this analysis is in place, a part of that would be a stab at what is the percentage the author "should" get.
On the post: Former Google CIO & EMI Digital COO Guy Explains How File Sharing Is Good For Artists
ARE YOU CRAZY?
On the post: Comcast Hijacks Mac Firefox Users' Homepage; Offers Blame Game And Faux Apology In Return
You've been lucky
On the post: Comcast Hijacks Mac Firefox Users' Homepage; Offers Blame Game And Faux Apology In Return
Re: How much are you paying for TechDirt?
On the post: Is The Mike Tyson Tattoo On Ed Helms A Parody?
Can parts of an art work be copyrighted also
On the post: If You Can't Understand The Difference Between Money And Content, You Have No Business Commenting On Business Models
Actually, it reads like a funny parody
On the post: Revisiting The Question Of Who Deserves Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This site is just out of touch.
People knew the cost of a blank CD had dropped, buying them in the store to make copies of their home pictures they could see the cost drop from a couple of dollars apiece to $10.00 for 100 blanks. They could make their own copy and cut out the middle man (which as we know is the record labels and they really really don't want to be cut out of making all that money on the little plastic disks). Now with big hard drives,the internet and MP3 players, the little plastic disks are no longer needed even. But, somebody spent a couple of hours making a "recording" and now wants to get paid for the following 75 years every time it gets played. Does this mean that now I should also be paying the carpenter every time I go to sleep in my house? For that matter, the guy who made the bed frame, the mattress, the sheets, the blankets, and the pillows? Does it mean that I have to pay the "artist" who made my custom quilt every time I sleep under it or heaven forbid let someone else see it?
It used to be that a musician had to be a working musician to get paid (wasn't it great to be the court musician/composer?). Now "the band" must get paid every time the song is played? Why doesn't the soundman, the electric company, and the makers of the drumsets and guitars get paid every time the band plays? Well they don't have "collection societies" (yet) of course.
Moral or immoral, I get paid for an hour to work an hour. Unfortunately, I can't record my work and get paid over and over and over again until I die and then have my kids get paid for my hour for the next 75 years after I'm dead. But the two sisters who wrote (or at least claim to have written) the "Happy Birthay" song (in about 2 hours probably) do expect that. Where is the morally right in that?
No, in conclusion, the marginal cost to the artist/composer/and everybody else involved in the making of the recording is now ZERO which makes this an infinite good. That means that the price has dropped to ZERO for the recording (you don't need to argue against this, just read an economics textbook to learn all about it). The marginal cost of "attending" a live performance is much higher and much more scarce. Consequently, the cost to me (for example to see Elton John recently cost me more than $400 for the wife and I) is much higher than ZERO.
On the post: New Zealand Uses Earthquake As An Excuse To Sneak 3 Strikes Law Through
I still don't understand why they don't go after the source
On the post: Yet Another Judge Says No To Mass Infringement Lawsuits
Where does she sit?
On the post: Who Owns Employee Social Media Accounts? 'The Correct Answer Is: Shut Up'
But Its MINE MINE MINE
The important thing that a company should take away from this is that it is important to make sure that their customers deal with many employees. If there is no one "shining light" that always takes care of them then there is no reason to "go" with that person. That won't work in the case of say Steve Jobs, but with the typical sales rep or repair technician, make sure that the customer has several points of contact, a call-in number, technical support, sales, sales support, and so on. Make sure the whole company takes care of your customers, not just one person (even if that person is you, after all, you will want to sell the company and retire one day).
On the post: Police Chief Tells Parents To Hack Kids' Facebook Accounts
and who really has time to evaluate keylogger files
On the post: How To Debunk A Fact-Free Fox News Fearmongering Piece About New Video Game
Wow just look at their logo and laugh
On the post: Homeland Security Tries And Fails To Explain Why Seized Domains Are Different From Google
Buy why just the LINK sites
On the post: Metered Bandwidth Isn't About Stopping The Bandwidth Hogs; It's About Preserving Old Media Business Models
Re: Re: Somebody is NOT Thinking It Through
On the post: Metered Bandwidth Isn't About Stopping The Bandwidth Hogs; It's About Preserving Old Media Business Models
Somebody is NOT Thinking It Through
Then the services that are out there are going to suffer. Will I really want to browse through Amazon anymore? It is going to cost me a lot of money to download all of the flashy displays they have and to look through page after page of products. I won't want to buy anything without seeing a picture and by the time I look at 15 to 20 picture of say a stereo system, I will have paid $10 just to see the pictures. I will probably have to go back to the brick-and-mortar stores and stop shopping online unless I know exactly what I want and where I want to get it.
Google is going to become useless. It will cost $1.00 a page to look at the results of a Google search. That will stop fairly quickly. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn will all come to a grinding halt. Who will want to pay to download "I ate stinky fish for lunch" ever again. Or, just how much will it cost to watch a dancing baby on YouTube? All those pictures and wall updates on Facebook will be a lot less interesting at $1.00 a page to look at the updates. On the other hand, newspapers will be happy. Who could afford to search on Craigslist or Monster at $1.00 per page view? The big sports systems will also lose out. Who is going to keep NFL.com up and updating on all the games at $1.00 per refresh? One Sunday of watching Football on NFL.com is going to cost $40 to $50.
The cable companies (at least Comcast) are trying to switch everyone to digital and drop the analog signal from their wires because digital uses a lot less bandwidth. Yet, they charge extra to switch to the less bandwidth version. Why would I want to pay more when it costs them less to send it? Especially with the way that I keep losing the signal altogether.
I sure hope that Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and those other big 2.0 companies are ready to shutdown, because those services are going to be a lot less useful under a metered plan.
Oh, Yeah! The internet is also going to become a much more dangerous place to surf. I sure won't want to pay $20 to download all of those Microsoft updates, Java updates, iTunes updates and so on and so on and so on. All of the automatic updaters are going to be turned off and deleted from my system so that they don't keep eating up my bandwidth. What about the virus definitions. My current anti-virus package (It's Avast and I love it) checks for updates several times a day. I'll have to turn that off and rely on my memory to check for updates every week or so. Of course I won't get many viruses because I won't be surfing the NET either. I guess that is an OK trade-off for the ISP though. I'm guessing that online stock trading is going to go away as well. Who could afford to let a stock trading system be up and using all that bandwidth all day to watch their stock portfolio? It would cost more than could ever be made.
I should start working on my easy to use advertising blocking system right away.
On the post: Jim D'Addario Defends His Support Of COICA & Domain Seizures
Please Consider the "Other" Side
On the post: Movie Studios Purposely Crippling Rental DVDs In Misguided Effort To Get People To Buy
Because it's was they way they always did it.
On the post: Irony: Ebook About Clueless Media Moguls Costs Many Times Brand New Hardcover Version
I bet they are thinking they are selling a "value" to consumers
As for the title of my post, I see no value to me (personally) for the eBooks especially after reading (here at TechDirt) about the ability to "lose" the books I would think I was buying with no recourse. And of course I can't collect them or resell them (as my wife wants me to do). For now, I'm just going to stick to the paperback ones.
On the post: British Air Boss Points Out That Removing Your Shoes At Airport Security Is Silly
And, it really is about the safety of the Planes not People
Nope, the only slight margin of safety is the slightly decreased possibility of a plane getting blown up. I mean, have you seen them? The 33 gallon sized trash can of bottles of banned materials: water, soda, deodorant, shaving cream and toothpaste, right next to a very long line of irritated travelers waiting to pass through the "naked body scanner"? All that potentially dangerous material piled together, ready to be detonated as soon as the bad guys get far enough away to be safe.
That is definitely NOT for my safety (and I truly can't believe that the couple of dozen TSA workers will be any safer than me). I just hope I'm not in line the day the "non-government terrorists" figure this out.
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