that's just what you have now, only with nothing stopping the monopolies getting bigger, some of the lawyers' business going to thugs with lighters and petrol instead, and assassination becoming a viable business tactic.
...
gotta love how such are usually implemented by right wing entities, eh?
left wing ones tend to be effective... often horribly inefficiant, but they usually set out to do what they said they would (even if what they're trying to do is a terrible idea).
of course, this is before taking into account blatant incompetence and/or bureaucratic inertia, which have NOTHING to do with socialism or left/right wing ideology or anything of the sort and everything to do with people covering their arses, keeping their jobs, empire building, and lining their pockets. this issue crops up Alllll over the place. no matter the ideology, the government which can suppress this behavior will be more successful and more beneficial to it's people than the government which cannot.
personally, (at least in fictitious environments, there being no other way to ensure 100% conviction of the guilty with 0% false positives) i favour systems which punish corruption in wonderfully ironic, horrendously unpleasant, and utterly lethal, ways.
also easier to Fix. get someone in the system who Wants it to improve and it will, at least somewhat, due to lack of active opposition (just gotta overcome systematic inertia. difficult, but not as difficult as doing so while being, metaphorically, shot at.)
let's see, the article shows up in a comment with Those Parts The Commenter Thought Relevant To The Current State Of Things highlighted.
the general community considers this a relevant and insightful point on such a scale that it makes the end of the week post that exists Purely To Show Which Posts The Community Thought Significant.
i'm really not sure what you're complaining about.
actually, there's apparently a fair bit of work to do for e-book publishing due to the various propitiatory formats for this platform or that platform and this retailer or that retailer all being rubbish... in different ways.
according to blog articles by someone trying to selfpublish, anyway.
it Shouldn't be like that, but it is, because, you know, DRM, walled guardens, blah blah blah.
well, except that reading a book doesn't detract from it's awesomeness in your collection (provided you're careful with it) while mailing something with your collected stamp takes it out of your possession.
basically a collection of books can have slightly more use than just Being a collection without detracting from it's... collection... ness...
which stamps can't.
I have a reasonable collection of books (closer t a couple of hundred than over a thousand, mind, and that's counting each volume of manga separately as well as the novels and non-fiction) all of them (almost, i have a pile i haven't got to yet) I've read at least once. most of them not more than that. most of them are paperback, though not all.
i, personally, Really don't like e-books. oh, i like their existence and usefulness and that people pay money for them and that authors get money out of it and such...
but given a choice between a paperback and an e-book, i'll always buy the paperback. between an e-book and nothing i'll simply never get around to getting it at all, even if i want it and intend to (such as the e-magazine version of the Granteville Gazette). that said, given a choice between a hardcover and a paperback i'll always buy the paperback because the hardcovers cost so much that i can never justify the expense. given a choice between hardcover and nothing i'll usually save my money.
... ... i lost where this was originally going.
point is, there's still a place for physical books and collections there of, though i've never quite grasped the point in collecting things just for the heck of it. (books? you read them. trading card games? you Play them. why on earth would you collect them just to store somewhere and never use? baseball/basketball cards? why the hell does anyone even Care? kinda beyond me.)
pretty sure 'has potential to be entertaining?' has to be a 'yes' to trigger this entire logic chain. if it's a 'no' then it's all academic and irrelevant anyway :P
with digital goods i would not expect it to change anything at all, unless it was such a huge increase in sales per time that it overloaded their hardware's ability to handle it. at which point there's a one-off hardware upgrade cost, possibly.
point is that the per item cost of digital goods (as opposed to the 'i made a thing at all' cost*) is near, if not actually, nil.
* which is a different thing and is covered by your initial per-item profits and, once payed off, no longer matters at ALL. if you sell enough items that your per-item profit covers this expenditure, your product is a success. if not, it's a failure. that means increasing Items Moved is more important than increasing sale price per item for overcoming this Provided the market for the item in question is large enough. (you put the per item price higher if there are insufficient customers to buy enough of the item at the lower cost to cover this, And said customers would still pay the higher cost. if they Wouldn't, then the product would seem non-viable and you just lost out. oh well, such is life, move on.)
that's my understanding of it anyway. I'll admit to not having any relevant qualifications beyond actually reading, paying attention, and using my brain.
well, i'm not Sure, but i believe that for figures over 100%, %/100+1 = multiple.
100% gain is 2x the sales, 1000% gain is 11x the sales, and so on.
so... if those are 'increased by x%' you're using, you don't need the -1, just leave off the plus... but if they're 'percentage of original figure' and you're trying to find the gain as a multiple from it, then you'd be right.
the first case is thwarted by the bit of logic further up the tree which says 'we Could develop better medicine and cures for diseases... but stopping at 'treatments' is So Much More Profitable.'
likewise, though they're rarely up to date and spread over all the various libraries in the city council run system (which shares a common catalog and will tell you which library they're in, or get them in to That library for you if you're willing to wait a day or two... and i can't remember if there was a small fee on that or holding items for you or both (it was only a dollar or two reguardless.)
they do better than the school libraries, at least... (i've never understood why the school libraries (at least at the places i went to school) did not include copies of the text books, either. the text books were a common set, generally held onto by the teachers and handed out and returned in each class. otherwise they were a common set handed out at the start of the year and returned at the end.
good luck buying the things too. forget over-priced, i've yet to see (not that i've actively put effort into looking, mind, probably could find something Eventually if i did) a way for an individual to acquire copies of such books.
honestly, school libraries, in my experience, are mostly good for being out of the wind and rain, supervised (and thus lacking in most sorts of bullying) and being a convenient place to get fiction to read (you're at school already, after all.)
I'm lead to believe that Tertiary education institutes (Universities, Polytechnics*, and so forth.) are a lot different, but i wouldn't know.
but yeah, an entire section in the central library (can't remember if that's been sorted out since the last big earthquake or not, i should look into that) and at least a section of shelf in most of the branch libraries. (i know one or two are small enough that they may not).
Linguistics is another subject it's hard to find much on. (you're fine if you want to learn a language though. plenty of stuff for that.)
*i'm never sure on the word for this... the local one is called 'Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology' apparently. Everyone just calls them 'polytech' in contrast to 'uni' or 'the university' in normal speech.
On the post: If You Think The Cost Of 'Piracy' Is High, What About The Cost Of Enforcement?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
not really a good move :P
On the post: What Does The Election Of France's New President Mean For European Copyright?
Re: Reflections
gotta love how such are usually implemented by right wing entities, eh?
left wing ones tend to be effective... often horribly inefficiant, but they usually set out to do what they said they would (even if what they're trying to do is a terrible idea).
of course, this is before taking into account blatant incompetence and/or bureaucratic inertia, which have NOTHING to do with socialism or left/right wing ideology or anything of the sort and everything to do with people covering their arses, keeping their jobs, empire building, and lining their pockets. this issue crops up Alllll over the place. no matter the ideology, the government which can suppress this behavior will be more successful and more beneficial to it's people than the government which cannot.
personally, (at least in fictitious environments, there being no other way to ensure 100% conviction of the guilty with 0% false positives) i favour systems which punish corruption in wonderfully ironic, horrendously unpleasant, and utterly lethal, ways.
On the post: AT&T Argues That More Competition Is Bad For You & Leads To Higher Prices
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: UK Consumer Ebook Sales Increase by 366%: Publishers Association Calls For Digital Piracy To Be 'Tackled'
Re:
book publishers don't seem to be as dedicated to Actively screwing over their artists as the record labels are.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re:
the general community considers this a relevant and insightful point on such a scale that it makes the end of the week post that exists Purely To Show Which Posts The Community Thought Significant.
i'm really not sure what you're complaining about.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re: All Digital
heh.
On the post: Nobody Cares About The Fixed Costs Of Your Book, Movie, Whatever
Re: eBooks
according to blog articles by someone trying to selfpublish, anyway.
it Shouldn't be like that, but it is, because, you know, DRM, walled guardens, blah blah blah.
On the post: Nobody Cares About The Fixed Costs Of Your Book, Movie, Whatever
Re: Re: Re: Re: Concerning books
basically a collection of books can have slightly more use than just Being a collection without detracting from it's... collection... ness...
which stamps can't.
I have a reasonable collection of books (closer t a couple of hundred than over a thousand, mind, and that's counting each volume of manga separately as well as the novels and non-fiction) all of them (almost, i have a pile i haven't got to yet) I've read at least once. most of them not more than that. most of them are paperback, though not all.
i, personally, Really don't like e-books. oh, i like their existence and usefulness and that people pay money for them and that authors get money out of it and such...
but given a choice between a paperback and an e-book, i'll always buy the paperback. between an e-book and nothing i'll simply never get around to getting it at all, even if i want it and intend to (such as the e-magazine version of the Granteville Gazette). that said, given a choice between a hardcover and a paperback i'll always buy the paperback because the hardcovers cost so much that i can never justify the expense. given a choice between hardcover and nothing i'll usually save my money.
... ... i lost where this was originally going.
point is, there's still a place for physical books and collections there of, though i've never quite grasped the point in collecting things just for the heck of it. (books? you read them. trading card games? you Play them. why on earth would you collect them just to store somewhere and never use? baseball/basketball cards? why the hell does anyone even Care? kinda beyond me.)
On the post: Nobody Cares About The Fixed Costs Of Your Book, Movie, Whatever
Re: Re:
this that a typo? because it's not a roman numeral :P
(disclaimer, the above bit of amusement in no way invalidates your point.)
On the post: Nobody Cares About The Fixed Costs Of Your Book, Movie, Whatever
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Paulo Coelho Ebook Sales Jump Way Up Thanks To $0.99 Sale
Re: Re:
point is that the per item cost of digital goods (as opposed to the 'i made a thing at all' cost*) is near, if not actually, nil.
* which is a different thing and is covered by your initial per-item profits and, once payed off, no longer matters at ALL. if you sell enough items that your per-item profit covers this expenditure, your product is a success. if not, it's a failure. that means increasing Items Moved is more important than increasing sale price per item for overcoming this Provided the market for the item in question is large enough. (you put the per item price higher if there are insufficient customers to buy enough of the item at the lower cost to cover this, And said customers would still pay the higher cost. if they Wouldn't, then the product would seem non-viable and you just lost out. oh well, such is life, move on.)
that's my understanding of it anyway. I'll admit to not having any relevant qualifications beyond actually reading, paying attention, and using my brain.
On the post: Paulo Coelho Ebook Sales Jump Way Up Thanks To $0.99 Sale
Re: Re: Just a reminder...
100% gain is 2x the sales, 1000% gain is 11x the sales, and so on.
so... if those are 'increased by x%' you're using, you don't need the -1, just leave off the plus... but if they're 'percentage of original figure' and you're trying to find the gain as a multiple from it, then you'd be right.
i think?
On the post: Google's Fiber Makes MPAA Skittish. Why Does Hollywood See All Technology In Terms Of Piracy?
Re:
but i think this counts as irony.
maybe.
at minimum it's Something in that general ballpark...
On the post: Google's Fiber Makes MPAA Skittish. Why Does Hollywood See All Technology In Terms Of Piracy?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Google's Fiber Makes MPAA Skittish. Why Does Hollywood See All Technology In Terms Of Piracy?
Re:
your point remains valid though.
On the post: NY Times Notices That The Pirate Party May Be Changing Politics
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Re-Inventing Public Libraries For The Digital Age
Re:
though where'd '28 years' come from? current moves on all fronts from those in control seem to be aimed more at 'never'.
On the post: Re-Inventing Public Libraries For The Digital Age
Re: Re: Lack of Technical Books
they do better than the school libraries, at least... (i've never understood why the school libraries (at least at the places i went to school) did not include copies of the text books, either. the text books were a common set, generally held onto by the teachers and handed out and returned in each class. otherwise they were a common set handed out at the start of the year and returned at the end.
good luck buying the things too. forget over-priced, i've yet to see (not that i've actively put effort into looking, mind, probably could find something Eventually if i did) a way for an individual to acquire copies of such books.
honestly, school libraries, in my experience, are mostly good for being out of the wind and rain, supervised (and thus lacking in most sorts of bullying) and being a convenient place to get fiction to read (you're at school already, after all.)
I'm lead to believe that Tertiary education institutes (Universities, Polytechnics*, and so forth.) are a lot different, but i wouldn't know.
but yeah, an entire section in the central library (can't remember if that's been sorted out since the last big earthquake or not, i should look into that) and at least a section of shelf in most of the branch libraries. (i know one or two are small enough that they may not).
Linguistics is another subject it's hard to find much on. (you're fine if you want to learn a language though. plenty of stuff for that.)
*i'm never sure on the word for this... the local one is called 'Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology' apparently. Everyone just calls them 'polytech' in contrast to 'uni' or 'the university' in normal speech.
On the post: Paulo Coehlo Convinces His Publisher To Offer (Almost) All Of His Ebooks For $0.99
Re: Re:
same Key, different character.
come to think of it, what on earth is the origin of the pound sign? it doesn't really look like Anything else...
On the post: Paulo Coehlo Convinces His Publisher To Offer (Almost) All Of His Ebooks For $0.99
Re: Re:
hehehe.
(yes, i am aware that this is in no way helpful :P )
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