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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 07, 2011, 11:02 AM »

That's why the e-book market is getting such a topic though.

Lots of self-marketers are already hyping how e-books would make the game a little bit fairer.

It's not so much absent as lots of people are waiting for that reality to happen and some have already took to ignoring the format wars in the hopes of riding the bandwagon of cheap e-books.

What's really absent is how piracy matters in that discussion seeing as pirated books has often reached a higher status of exposure when combined with word of mouth twitter trends than e-book readers really have of exposing that one "must buy for e-book reader" book. Again my 2 cents.

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 07, 2011, 10:29 AM »

Stephen King is ok, but I was thinking more along the lines of some super scandal ridden kiss&tell "names names" type thing that had the potential of motivating someone to buy a reader just to get it.

Could work since any time the book got mentioned, it would likely also be mentioned that it's "only available on Kindle" or whatever. So it's a built-in advert/endorsement for a specific platform.

So far, only Apple seems to be able to get away with that. 

-40hz (February 07, 2011, 10:18 AM)

Damn, I must be way behind the times now. I thought Stephen King was still above ok and the reason I searched for that link was because I thought I chanced upon that news back in the day in one of those trending social media links.

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 07, 2011, 10:27 AM »

All say they hate the idea of losing the feel of a real book, the tactile pleasure, the smell. All love the idea of carrying around lots of books in a small device. All are impressed with the screens on the latest generation of ebook readers. Everyone over 40 loves the fact that you can vary font size! (this is a huge selling point).

Since I'm not from a first-world nation, my perception of e-book readers here is that most people have not heard of it. The few who do, they shell out the cash on the Kindle thinking Kindle = e-book.

That is dying though because people are mostly getting Ipads and other tablets.

And my point is...the price of books is hardly ever mentioned as a barrier/reason to purchase. They all spend lots of money on books, and they'll continue to do so. Real books, ebooks, whatever. Price is always an issue, everywhere, but I've never heard a member of the "masses" complain about the price of an ebook, or say they should be cheaper than they are. They do moan if the ebook is dearer than the print version. This happens quite often these days, due to Apple's scandalous deal with book publishers, which allows publishers to set ebook prices. This will hopefully be declared unlawful in the UK, as it is essentially a re-introduction of the Net Book Agreement*. The Office of Fair Trading is already investigating.

On my end, most of my culture guessing makes me feel people rarely talk about expensive things they can't afford.

A bookstore stalker for example would flip books all they long but even if they know of e-books, they won't really feel like it's worth talking about.

Similar with book clubs. A few person may have an e-book reader but it's just a nifty gadget and there's really no true interest in having a full-on e-book discussion as people would still most likely be buying and seeing books.

We're mostly a bookstore culture though and hey, I'm not saying there's not an e-book crowd - just that this is my impresson of the masses' perception of e-books.

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 07, 2011, 10:04 AM »

The acid test will be the day some major best-selling author does a book, and they announce it will only be available on Kindle. That will be the first warning that hardball is about to commence.

How the public reacts and (more importantly) buys will determine future publishing directions.

Just my two anyway.

-40hz (February 07, 2011, 09:55 AM)

This seems to have happened already:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur_(novella)

Ur is a novella by Stephen King. It was written exclusively for the platform Amazon Kindle, and became available for download on February 12, 2009.[1][2] It was later released on audiobook.

Also I feel as wraith mentioned earlier that things like the Dresden Files are better litmus meters. This may be my own preference but even back then, I felt the Nook was getting me more excited than the Kindle.

It's not as advertised or mentioned but the name, the business, the site, the features - only thing keeping me away from the Nook is because it seems like E-book readers are in the PPC stage and I was burned out by it once when I ended up getting a cheap PPC months before the Iphone arrived.

Let's take the last book of the Dresden Files for example: I haven't read the Dresden Files except an IMDB review stating the book is better than the TV show way way back in the past.

However, if I felt the Nook was going to get the last of a popular book, the completionist in me would prefer the Nook over any exclusive titles the Kindle may offer because I feel I must have at least invested in that series of books and willing to support the author to really get that final book barring things like Twilights and Harry Potters. On the other hand, if something was exclusive to the Kindle alone, I get the perception that the author must not be putting as much effort in that book and if it did eventually become popular - it will have a non-Kindle version.

It also strongly correlates with Amazon and Barnes & Noble's perception. Amazon should be the Google or at least Wikipedia of books. You buy Kindle so you can choose between real books and e-books. If an author feels like they won't lose any marketshare from making it a  Kindle exclusive on the Google of bookstores - then it puts a sense of doubt whether the author really feels invested in creating a quality book that would have a chance of being read by many.

In reverse, if something is exclusive on the Nook - especially something like the Dresden Files - it makes you wonder if the author isn't sending the message that they really like this e-book reader A LOT and are willing to sacrifice sales for the support of this lesser known reader.

It's all general un-sourced speculation but I don't really have an alternative evidence to show that something else must be the acid test.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Do Visions and Missions work for you?

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 07, 2011, 09:55 AM »

In my experience, most clients could care less about your mission or your vision. They prefer to focus on the quality of your service and products, your reputation, and how conscientiously you handle their account on a day to day basis.

-40hz

Of course often times, businesses without visions and missions also have questionable quality and consistency in their products.

I find marketing very funny that way sometimes. Shove stuff you should be following as a culture internally back to customers where they don't care and then shove stuff your customers need back to your staff and making the rare A to the Q&A a hell of a mess.

The VBM methodology was (is) superb, and I still put it into use today where it seems relevant for client work. However, I have found that, in the main, whilst you might have the most brilliant marketing plan, it is just a plan, and if people will not "buy in" to it (i.e., are not committed to it), or cannot understand it, then they will inevitably help to screw the thing up on the execution/implementation of that plan (i.e., it will not be achieved).

-IainB

Could the reason people don't buy into it is due to the plan being a waterfall method? Not trying to sound snarky but as a non-programmer who just read articles explaining why agile methods and start-up style tactics work really well in reality, I often come to the conclusion that business plans are mostly useless except for business pitch, quality control, quality presentation and exit strategy.

I'm not really sure how to link this to visions and missions though (and it seems off-topic to Getting Organized) but your experiences kind of made me want to inquire about this situation.

This might be acceptable, if not of vital necessity, in religions (belief in some kind of imaginary god or super-being), but it could be doubtful in business and politics, no matter how inspiring it may seem, and it can be downright lethal when incorporated into strong religio-political ideologies used for the control of humankind. A classic example of just how dangerous and deadly such a vision could become would be Hitler's Fascist vision for the purity of the dominant Aryan race, cleansed of Jews especially (and not forgetting some other minority groups). This particular vision, apparently "bought into" by the German people as a nation, gave us the legacy of the genocide of an estimated 6 million Jews during the Holocaust in WW2.

What's your take on the Google and Apple type of cultures? If I'm not mistaken these cultures are even much more stronger within the company than they are to their consumers.

Microsoft too and Facebook has a strong culture as well as most of Silicon Valley but nothing reads as grand as "do no evil" and "privacy except when we're data mining your privacy".

Extra question:

This discussion has made me consider another side-thought:

We often think of businesses or self-help theories when thinking of missions and visions but how do you guys see this concept's efficiency when leaning towards academics?

Externally businesses and personal lives advises aim to hold missions and visions to "improve productivity" but this seems opposite in universities especially business school cultures in that the vision is not to improve productivity but to market a learning system in which students must abide by said protocol and in that culture, we could say the students are being more productive through sheerly being exposed to systems they may be ignorant of acquiring - but do the missions and visions of the school add to that learning productivity or are they merely learning sprinkles where the school connections/courses/facilities/staff are the ones truly adding to the student's productivity by virtue of adding to their knowledge and experience?

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 07, 2011, 08:58 AM »

*puts on tinfoil hat*

I do often wonder though if there's pressure on these people to make book buying sound like they're going cheaper to derail the masses from adopting e-books.

It's not like authors are going to avoid publishing houses from now on if they are looking for the easy way to market their real books.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Do Visions and Missions work for you?

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 06, 2011, 01:09 PM »

Heh, I feel the same but I admit in my personal notes I do have stuff written like that but I don't consider them missions and visions, just words for brainstorming.

There's a whole sect of motivational productivity people though and that's why I made this topic. It's not like the intentions of the ideas aren't bad but ehh... (Plus the example you wrote doesn't make sense to me. Really sounds like something written by a manager who don't even know what the heck he is managing)

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Do Visions and Missions work for you?

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 06, 2011, 04:04 AM »

Similar theme to this topic

Source

Mission Statements

In my earlier posts I left the how to develop a mission statement out, because I decided that anyone who wanted to write a mission statement could find one of the many useful articles, or books on the subject. Doug, innowen, and myself have all at one time or another written on the subject. For the Middle Way, the mission statement is not use much time on a weekly basis. Once it is developed it is used to set up the week.

However, one of the first questions I received on my last post was this:

I have looked at many different planning systems and all of them have as a part of the system a "Mission Statement".

Do you really need a "Mission Statement"?

I can see setting goals. That gets a project done. But a "Mission Statement".

I as an individual have no mission. I just want to get my life in order and make sure I get things done that need to be done. Perhaps if I were setting up some sort of association, a small business whatever a mission statement might be important but it is a waste of time that can be occupied getting things done that need to be done and reviewing and editing it is doubly useless.

Or am I wrong?

The mission statement is a document which has to come from the heart. It can not be found outside of yourself. It has to come from within. The mission statement is a collection of what matters most to you. the following quote illustrates the frustration people have with mission statements when they fail to connect the person with their values, and beliefs in a meaningful way.

The next point from the discussion I want to comment on is:

I have just never understood the need for a mission statement and when I first started trying some of these organizational methods I tried to make one but it always seemed so silly and for the most part I would be copying the mission statements that were presented as examples.

This was my experience when I first started trying to develop a mission statement. I learned that I was so afraid of putting on paper what was most important to me. I felt that it just could not be a mission statement, because it was of a spiritual nature, not a day to day be successful nature. I caution anyone entering into the exercise of writing a mission statement that it is very personal, and example mission statements often derail the process. Also, remember that while you are committing ideas down to paper that it does not mean that your Mission Statement becomes set in stone. You are allowed to change it, in fact, that is why we revisit it in the Middle Way Method, so that you can decide for yourself whether or not you still want to be held up to those words or if you want to change them.

I Wear Many Hats and if I were to write a personal mission statement, it would have about 17 chapters, none of which tied in to each other.

Or, I guess I could spend a couple of hours searching my mind for some over-arcing principle to try to tie everything together. I could then do a typographic poster of my mission statement, hang it on the wall — and it wouldn't change whet I'm doing, not one bit.

I believe that our values transcend occupations. Who we are often defines what work we will do, but I can work in accounting, or flipping burgers, but my values of integrity, civility, and kindness transfer to the new job with me. I caution people to not let something as transitory as a job, occupation, or hobby define your values. The mission statement is a guide for choosing what you will do, and how you will accomplish it.

Vision Statements

Lastly I want to reiterate the value of the vision statement.

Please find your most comfortable place. Somewhere quiet, and private. If it helps play some music which helps you to relaxe, and maybe dim the lights. Now close your eyes, and ponder what would your life be like in two to five years if you were a complete individual. You have accomplished your present goals, you have learned all you set out to learn, you have developed the values in yourself you desire to posses. You are ready for bigger, and better things. How does your life look? How does it feel? Live it in your mind.

Immediately after doing that write a paragraph or two which bring those feelings back to you. This is your vision, keep it close to your mind. When you feel discouaged recite it to yourself. It has the power to pull you up, and to help you keep going.

I started out writing, because I hoped that in writing I would make a difference to someone, help someone solve a problem, or find a way to be a little better off. I am very grateful to the many people who have taken the time over the last few months to read, and share back thoughts about the Middle Way Method, and the system I created for it. I look forward to hearing about your successes, and being able to answer anymore questions you may have. If you have questions please feel free to contact me. I hope that this series gives everyone something to think about. I can be contacted through D*I*Y Planner's contact form, or through the website listed in my profile. When you e-mail me about the Middle Way method, please include the term Middle Way as part of the subject, so I can respond quickly to your message.

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 05, 2011, 03:30 PM »

I assure you I was not wilfully exaggerating. But neither can I quickly find a source for my numbers. I may be wrong. I'll work on it! However I think the essential point is true -- print costs are a very small part of the cost of a book. Authors frequently emphasise this point when discussing book prices with their readers. This article is instructive.

-johnk (February 05, 2011, 02:49 PM)

Yes, this was why I thought you were exaggerating. I wanted to add the "a bit" part but really I feel like we're talking small change as I hold the same conclusion 40hz has that things may get to the point - it's just not that clear cut yet.

There's also something "bubble-like" about modern day outsourcing. I just get that nag that it's much closer to African American slavery than wage slavery and think the whole cheap process could be derailed depending on which countries' economy make a revolution against the current way of min-maxing costs.

See? That's what I mean about the difficulty of using political terminology across boundaries.

To be fair, it's goes beyond borders. It's in-country, in-state, in-people, in-knowledge, in-bias.

Reminds me alot of the volatility between each person's interpretation of capitalism.

With that said:

No, my phrasing was just ambiguous. My intended definition was: the less you accept government intervention, the more "right-wing" you are.

Hmm... sounds like Libertarianism to me. 

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 05, 2011, 12:03 PM »

@40hz

I thought johnk was exaggerating but thanks for that wonderful post.

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 05, 2011, 12:00 PM »

With debt you're confusing governing economic systems with banking systems. It's possible to have debt/credit in capitalist, socialist, communist, fascist systems.

-Renegade (February 05, 2011, 10:48 AM)

See that's another confusing criteria to the whole situation. Is capitalism not a banking system but a purely governing economic system?

Can government systems be even separated from banking systems?

I don't think all people agree that it should be possible to spend debt in a capitalist system. (Note that this is different from whether it is possible to acquire debt while in a capitalist system.)

But capitalism is far more prevalent. There are no socialist or communist states (that matter). They are all captialist. Those that profess to be socialist/communist are in name only. Go to a "communist" state like China or Vietnam. It's a joke. They are capitalist all the way.

I'm only talking in real terms about what is the case.

Except again here, what is real? Like you said, a communist state could be a capitalist system but then you also said a socialist state can also be capitalist.

Certainly the word capitalism is thrown more often but is it more prevalent? For me it's not because most people don't even agree or know what a capitalist system often times and other times there's a bias towards stating all are capitalist but not all are socialist or communist especially in parts of the world like America where socialism is portrayed as something of an evil thing even if by people who only say so just to force away a healthcare plan that their party is against.

Capitalism just happens to be the prevailing system world-wide. It's not unfair. It's simply fact. Socialism is only a flavoring right now.

I have to disagree unless by now you mean something that stretches back to the Great Depression. Again it's not like a vacuum where capitalism with say NAFTA is the same as capitalism with a different Free Trade Agreement or capitalism without a gold standard is just a different flavor of capitalism with a gold standard.

Certain things depending on certain people's definition of capitalism could break another person's definition of capitalism.

But it is the dominant system everywhere. (Everywhere that matters anyways.)

We'll have to agree to disagree there.

This sound preposterous until you see how this sentence could be applied to both socialism and communism too:

Socialism fosters them in a financial and visceral way, and they are the major resistance against any change. (issues like opting out of healthcare, increased spending despite being in debt to help the needy, produce sharing at the cost of quality or necessity)

-Paul Keith (February 05, 2011, 07:29 AM)

Not sure what to say about that.

-Renegade

I'm just demonstrating how open (or closed) your sentence could be when trying to fit it into capitalism.

I don't know what you mean by "dependents".

Dependents as in situations that don't exist in a vacuum. Things that have cause and effects and different elements that could determine different necessities. Like a poor hungry kid in a vacuum could be helped by giving them money but depending on their roles, like say a beggar, they may not be able to utilize that money for food or healthy foods.

But there are no socialist or communist forces pulling kids out of school. Those forces are all capitalist or religious.

-Paul Keith (February 05, 2011, 07:29 AM)

This doesn't mean pulling young children to work in factories is the right moral path to take either but we don't exist in a vacuum. Something like everyone having a VCR under communism may sound good but everyone getting free internet might be better but everyone paying and supporting web developers thus increasing the number of people interested in that job branch may also seem even better especially if it could lead to cheaper sustainable products... but then again, they could be worse.

-Paul Keith (February 05, 2011, 07:29 AM)

I don't see where that counterfactual has any basis in the world we live in. Can you provide an example?

-Renegade

Well that's the thing. We only have one branch of timeline. Everything else is theory. If you believe the Gold Standard people for example, you could say after the gold standard there was no capitalism anymore.

But then that's not clear either. Even communism, the only way you can see there is no communist school forcing kids out is because most communist systems fell. Then imagine things like healthcare. In a hypothetical prime of healthcare, you're not going to see many casual people go against healthcare bills outside of the fear mongerers. Yet if that healthcare bill falls then it falls as a capitalist system even though it's a socialist intended system because well... it was paid in currency that is central to a capitalist system.

But that's alot of what ifs depending on each of your beliefs and knowledge and it's just too vast.

Again, for the Gold Standard people, the economic bubble is history repeating itself. For the non-Gold Standard people, it may not be history repeating itself but the natural course of capitalism and greed. Then of course depending on the other sub-branches like a communist would just as say "See, it's not just communism that doesn't work when it's corrupt" and socialists on the other hand may say "Well, look at so and so socialist country that's not overspending or over-in-debt as the United States of America, look at how they are handling the recession."

There are no real example of socialism or communism, and that's the problem.

To be clear -- I like working in a capitalist system. I simply don't like the abuse of it.

See again that's dependent on your own definition but there are just as many that would say, in the practical sense, there was and are real examples of communism and socialism and that's not the problem. The problem is socialism and communism gets certain exemptions from their flaws unlike capitalism because conceptually they sound more like good will governments. Which one is right there?

Well the answer doesn't matter in this discussion because we're not really defending or going against another system. Simply discussing whether a system is so prevalent in it's structure that it has dictator-like hold on the world to which I said, I don't feel that way. Maybe socialism has a dictatorship but not capitalism.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / (Lots of images) Review: 42Goals finally becomes a one of a kind web application

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 05, 2011, 10:06 AM »

42goals started out as a less recognized more powerful version of Joe's Goals.



As you can see from the screenshot, the options are a lot more diverse than that of Joe's Goals and other habit trackers but don't worry - it defaults to the basic counter set up and all you just need is to type your task name and hit save and you get the same simplicity of Joe's Goals.

Unique features

Icon search



Icon search is very hit and miss. Constantly chucking out errors and sometimes forcing you to go back to the main page before you can get your icon search results back but when it works, you get tons of icons to choose from at the price of free and since you only ever need to get a custom icon once for each task, it's not really that annoying.

Note: When you first open the task list, there are preset icons that are always there so it's not like you have to search and wait just to get an icon for your task.

Additional Parameters:



The main appeal of 42goals. Note that I didn't verify if the stats really work but here is the latest fix sheet from their blog:

Bug fixes and etc.

• Fixed sorting goals
• Fixed wrong counting of monthly values
• Fixed wrong data aggregation when building charts
• Performance enhancements

Some alternative suggestions of what to put for unit of measurements: pages/rounds/breaks/cup/sequence/argument

Calendar:



I don't use this much but as you can see, it has enough elements to serve as a recurring reminder application also.

Chart settings:



There's a cool new feature later for this but for now this is the last of the unique settings that 42goals offer seeing as it's very rare for any free application to have charts at all.

Notes in an icon:



Unlike Joe's Logbook, notes are built into a pop-up and I don't really know if you can see the note elsewhere in a list but whenever you reclick the icon, it will show the notes you wrote there. (but be sure to click the green check icon to save the note!)

Btw the image not loading there? I didn't pick an icon so that's probably the reason for why it looks that way.

Boosted Edition:



One thing nice about 42goals is that it doesn't list the premium features but instead treats the features like most premium desktop software where certain features are locked so you know you're not being sold on a feature you're not sure you really need.


BUT!

Click on any of the star and you get this screen:



Which leads to this screen:

A full version that you can play around with with no time limits



Features include:
a timer (stopwatch) and multiple tabs

Going One of a Kind: Click on Link for official blog update post

This is how it looks blank:







Alot of these are meant for public profile sharing but in reality these features could just as serve to allow you to have a personal habit tracker private diary of your tasks.

The goal tab alone is like a +1 sub-tab without having to pay for the premium edition of the application.

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 05, 2011, 07:29 AM »

I meant practicality in a personal sense in that we live in a predominately capitalistic society and must deal with it

See the thing is this is up for debate. I'm not one of the experts but if you check out the model, there's a lot of things that go both ways.

Example: Debt. Many would consider something like that un-capitalistic. However many also consider it a necessity to compete with a global economy full of needs and demands.

If money is the dictator, then capitalism, being strongly linked with it, is guilty by association.

Yes, that is what I was trying to imply. It could be guilty by association but guilty by association is not what a dictator makes. The same could be said for socialism. It's just that socialism is less about associating as it is about a prevailing mindset therefore it seems more akin to a dictator to me than capitalism but only if we are looking at which is more prevalent in our global culture.

I believe that it's a matter of the "prevailing system" being capitalism, with various flavors of others thrown in as spice, e.g. Canada has a capitalist market economy, yet still has some socialist influences in there. It's not an all or nothing deal -- there are gray areas. e.g. By comparison, the US is more capitalistic than Canada.

The question is only one of which system is dominant, as in capitalism, socialism or some other system being dominant. (Having the most influence.)

Exactly. Which is why it seems unfair how socialism can be more or less socialistic vis-a-vis another country but capitalism must somehow be the prevailing system "with various flavors thrown in".

Either both have various flavors thrown in or both have to be considered as one and there shouldn't be a comparison of what is and isn't socialism in a country.

My reason for stating that capitalism is the new dictator is because it is so entrenched, so prevalent, so all-encompassing that any attempt to extricate any country/society/state/whatever is certainly doomed to failure (back to vested interests -- capitalism fosters them in a financial and visceral way, and they are the major resistance against any change). Further, it has fostered forces in the market/society/life that are so strong that anything different is nothing more than a twig being swept along a raging river.

The thing though is, depending on which branch of people you inquire, capitalism may not be entrenched. It may not even be present.

This sound preposterous until you see how this sentence could be applied to both socialism and communism too:

Socialism fosters them in a financial and visceral way, and they are the major resistance against any change. (issues like opting out of healthcare, increased spending despite being in debt to help the needy, produce sharing at the cost of quality or necessity)

Communism fosters them in a financial and visceral way, and they are the major resistance against any change. (real historical flaw of Communism)

As you said:

Marxism/communism were doomed to failure because people simply cannot act altruistically enough to give them a chance. (If everyone were like Mother Theresa, it wouldn't be an issue, but we aren't.) They need certain conditions to be met inside of people, and those weren't there, and aren't there. We all look out for #1, and capitalism works with that very well, and rewards that. I believe that's only a statement of the obvious, the way things are.

Also depending on which flavor of capitalism, it doesn't always reward someone being #1.

It's ok to inadvertently take a wrong turn. It is not Ok to purposefully take a wrong turn. At the moment, it seems like greed is leading capitalism down a path of intentional wrong turns. e.g. It is NOT ok to pull young children out of school and pay them $0.50 a day to work in factories, even if the local laws permit it. (The argument logic is in many aspects the same as the argument logic against clitoridectomyw.)

Except that capitalism is a concept and not an entity. Just as schools, factories, food to eat, ease of start-up are all dependents.

Let's take your example, is it ok for young children to be forced to go to work anyway despite not being pulled because they have a poorer economy under socialism or an inferior equalized school quality under communism?

This doesn't mean pulling young children to work in factories is the right moral path to take either but we don't exist in a vacuum. Something like everyone having a VCR under communism may sound good but everyone getting free internet might be better but everyone paying and supporting web developers thus increasing the number of people interested in that job branch may also seem even better especially if it could lead to cheaper sustainable products... but then again, they could be worse.

It's one thing to be greedy and hurt people or do damage. It's another thing to be greedy and still manage to help people. Capitalism has both going on in it. I'd like to see the former stop.

Again, the same thing can be said for communism and socialism if we are taking them up as blanket concepts.

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 04, 2011, 09:59 PM »

@Renegade

Well to me your initial post sounded more like it was talking about the impracticality of it all and yet the despair over the mass adoption of that impractical model that forces it to be necessary.

If economics or currency alone is what stands for capitalism then technically it's not capitalism that's the dictator but money and well... money makes the world go round isn't really a new idea and doesn't really go deep enough to dictate the market at all.

Plus I don't know if it's being fair to say Compared to so and so country something is socialist and yet at the same time assume that capitalism is a blanket. Either it's all general blanket statements or then it's not really fair to say socialism gets the right to be compared to other systems while capitalism can't have the issue of being "more capitalistic" or "less capitalistic".

I guess a simpler way of stating it is that there's no one capitalist economic model not even in the practical sense where as socialism is much easier in that there's a mindset of good will that runs much similar to Marxism or Communism except it accepts or admits to the economic failure of those two latter concepts at least based on how the applied systems deteriorated and that mindset alone even with the partnership of an economic model can still be narrowed down to one mindset not much different from virtues and vices. Capitalism on the other hand, it's linked to greed often times only because it's linked primarily to the exchange of currency with the ideal preference of getting more as it is a system based on competition. However once you add things like socialism into it for example or even the mere proliferation of corporations then there's always that different gap between how people view greed and how they spend their money. It all seems to really depend whether the acceptance is that it is a natural deterioration due to greed or that capitalism has many branches and often the wrong economic model forces it to take a wrong turn. Nonetheless as a blanket idea, the main thing against capitalism being a dictatorship is that money is widely used and money is most associated with capitalism. Of course I'm not really an expert and I'm not sure if by expanding on my opinion, I'm making it clearer or just making it more confusing but this is why I feel socialism is more widespread.

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 04, 2011, 09:01 PM »

That's how capitalism works. There are alternatives...

-johnk (February 04, 2011, 05:55 PM)

Like what?

I can't see an alternative. (Practically that is, though it is *possible* to imagine counterfactuals.)

Capitalism is the new dictator. You either follow it, or perish. There are no alternatives and there are no choices.

Everyone, including the big corporations, is caught in its grasp. Governments are powerless to change the model. Even in "communist" countries, capitalism is alive and well. If you don't believe me, visit a few.

It's an overwhelming system, and it's dictating behavior for corporations. They do not have a choice in the matter. They MUST be greedy.

"All problems [in computer science] can be solved by another level of indirection." David Wheeler (de-emphasis added)

-Renegade (February 04, 2011, 06:55 PM)

Since we're going to the philosophical side of the issue, I personally feel it's the opposite and socialism is the modern day dictator. (although not too modern)

Not in the scare monger version of socialism but in the way corporations are both the giver and receiver of all the elite staff and all the elite development and it's much harder to be "entrepreneurs" or radicals.

The oldest visible example is probably the minimum wage debate but let's connect it with more modern issues of DRM for example.

Why is it that most of this generation doesn't want to pay for an item? Because they don't see enough value to paying for it and it's becoming safer and safer to test trial a full program and this generation wants to invest in peer pressure over premium items and they view these well-hyped items as premium ones over the random gamble of trusting in closed-sourced companies.

It's not that there wasn't this phenomena before but now there are actually free alternatives that are satisfactory enough. If capitalism was the dictator, then corporations would wise up and step up their premium products.

Instead we have this idea that "reducing profits" is akin to "increasing profits". To me that's very socialist in the sense that the victim (in which these publishers feel they belong to because they were spoiled by the older model) needs to be entitled to "protect" or "gain" something.

...and it's not just a one side issue. The reason this generation also wants to pay for less quality is because they have been spoiled to want "more" and "more" so cheaper or free equals more money to spend on more items. If this were a capitalistic dictatorship, consumers would see a need and become more entreprenurial prosumers and a group would arise that would be different from the bestsellers category but have equal pull. Instead these are mostly delegated to the rare successful self-marketer. The end result thus is that there isn't as large a support for DRM-free as much as there is a complaint for DRM items and hence it's not as easy to penetrate the market because the market still demands items from the old model but "cheaper".

Finally you look at the original idea of capitalism and you'll see that the general idea of more competition was always to bring it to a breaking point where certain older concepts eventually become free whether it be from complimentary tickets up to free IPAD give aways. Competition was always supposed to head this way under capitalism and currency wasn't supposed to be "entitlement" or "right to bail out and prevent progress".

It's really more of a socialistic dictatorship. People want to be entitled to bonuses, discount coupons, merchandise...and if this means that technology could make it cheaper - then it's a "cheap alternative" demand not really an "e-book" or hell... a "book". Yet e-books in order to reach critical mass needs to be demanded as clear cut e-books. Hardware readers and open formats may push the demand but there has to be a meaning to the supply beyond the supply of "cheaper books". An identity much similar to notetakers, outliners and budget managers where text is not an alternative to be put there but rather a necessary productivity boost while at the same time being addictive and share friendly even to people who can't afford the readers or don't know much about the formats.

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 04, 2011, 01:20 PM »

The nook is the hardware and the app.  I'm not saying it's a killer app.  iTunes isn't a killer app.  Most people don't even like it.  They put up with it because of the hardware.  That's why software isn't the issue- it's more hardware.

They also put up with it because often times that's the first thing they are exposed to. Most people are exposed to the idea of the e-books through the Kindle and the Iphone E-book Readers but there's not one true software that connects their minds to all of these.

With that said, I'd just like to clarify that I didn't mean to imply the Itunes itself was a killer app.

You're missing one part of the point.  Adobe tried to get into it after the market started maturing.  PDFs have never been considered a big format in the game.  The formats from the beginning were .mobi (which is now owned by Amazon), and .pdb (which is now owned by B&N).  People try to compare .epub in the same category, but the format was not created until 2007... well after the other two had become entrenched.  Though the market was not as large as it is now, it was large enough that neither of them had any pressure to drop their format and change to a non-tested format.  And both had secure and non-secure formats, so it wasn't like .epub was offering something that wasn't there.  That's my point.  An open format can't be an also-ran, or there won't be an argument towards moving to it, other than we don't want to use a proprietary format.

Do you *really* think another format is going to come along at this point that's going to change the way that things operate?  Unless it gives something radically new, I think you're dreaming.  You can see that in the market even now.  Sony has a hard time, and they have a lot of leverage behind them from other entertainment markets.  Borders is a huge chain, but they came a bit late, and so are falling a dollar short... if someone that large can't make it, then who can?

Not trying to dodge the point but I don't feel like I'm missing the point and at the same time I don't have anything to add except for pointing out that I feel there is a contradiction between these two paragraphs.

With that said, I'd also again like to clarify that I never argued for the format being the game changer in any of my post. It's a possibility but format does not = entire software.

The format isn't the concept either.  It's the content within the e-book, and that's what the publishers control.

Actually semantically you could make that issue even more confusing by repeating some of the taglines of e-book selling which is that it's possible to avoid the publisher entirely and be a self-marketing e-book author.

I'm not saying it's easy or there's not a strong pull against that trend for many popular authors but hey, it wasn't like I was saying the format is the concept either.

To continue that ... the exclusivity on consoles is *again* content.

Not really. If you're looking at it purely from a technological view, yeah it leans towards that but for the actual consumers many times it could be something other than content.

The reason that it works like it does is because of the number of publishers.  There aren't as many publishers of books as their are of games.  And as the number of publishers dwindle in the gaming market, the number of exclusive titles also dwindle.  Have you looked at what's exclusive now?  Only games that are published by the manufacturers of the consoles.  That doesn't really create lock-in.  I want infamous, but it's not enough to make me buy a ps3.  But if a large publisher consistently made games only for one console, then that would be more of a draw.

Which is why I feel the current situation is much closer to the Nintendo/Sega era than the analogy with RIAA but again it's all perspective. I don't really have a disagreement with your stance. Just adding my own 2 cents.

The killer app analogy doesn't really equate in this situation.  A killer app is something that is content that sells hardware.

It's actually interesting. For me and my knowledge of the general hype of the title "killer app" back then was that you couldn't define it. You could explain it afterwards and justify it but for the most part, it's not "anything".

After all if it's something that "just works" then there's no point of differentiating between a killer app that changes the consumer culture of a market from that of a merely great app that the market finally accept.

As you said it starts a critical mass. My perspective for the future of e-book adoption is that.

With consoles, they have exclusives that everyone *has* to have... and once it's in their possession, the sales of other things on the console rise because people now have the big investment part out of the way. 

...and I don't consider exclusive videogame titles (at least most of them) as equivalent to a killer app critical mass acception.

With the kindle, there was no killer book that made people buy the kindle.  It was bought because it was cool, and useable, and people could consume books on it.  *Any* device that could have satisfied those needs would have slipped into the same profitable area.  It was just the Kindle that did it first, right as there was a critical mass of ebooks starting in the market.  That's one of the reasons that they bought the .mobi format rather than making their own- it was proven, and there were *already* books in that format; only minor tweaking was needed to bring the content to market.

Actually if it was proven, then the market model wouldn't be stifled by DRM currently.

There's a difference between an existing market and a market that's ready for critical mass.

Same thing with the netbook analogy. You could always argue netbooks were close to possible; and really the OLPC wasn't selling itself as a netbook.

For me also, there wasn't a critical mass for e-books then. There was a growing market and Amazon tried to capitalize on it but if there was really a critical mass, you'd see it first in the shops and stores and libraries and how it cuts away at a huge element of real books.

That didn't happen because there really was no critical mass. Critical mass for me it's not just some fad that suddenly disappears and yet that's kind of the situation e-books have now. The focus is all on readers and price and DRM because frankly a single e-book is not as notable a discussion compared to the entire genre yet and it's like that because there's no critical mass that could have occurred. Not to mention again, the very nature of the word "critical", it's not something that evokes the image of being stifled secretly.

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 04, 2011, 11:20 AM »

How is software a question mark?  Every reader (even the doomed Kobo) has a software equivalent on the major platforms.  That's one of the reasons I ended up getting a iPad rather than a Nook- I run stanza, eReader, Kindle, and Nook apps on it.  When the last Dresden Files novel came out, it was only available on the Nook.  My friends that had a Kindle were out of luck.  It wasn't even in eReader format even though that format is the same as the B&N format.  You could only get it electronically if you had a Nook.  But I was still able to get it, because I had the Nook app.

It's alot like the argument for Final Draft or MS Word as far as "typing" goes.

Nook has one of the better business models (although I don't monitor e-book news so I don't really know of your specific tid-bit) but it's not a "killer app".

It's a great app (although I had assumed it was hardware) but it's taking the same model as before and just making it better or making it more interesting to interested people.

E-books though are bigger than that. That's why they are so hard to sell and the current business model is at the same time so easy to corrupt. This is all my uneducated opinion mind you but it's just what I see.

E-books have something bigger to them, that's why even though the final product is mostly the same - it tooked E-Ink Readers to get a small set of people interested in the actual idea of an e-book reader as opposed to a natural pattern where technology just caught up.

To the other argument about using PDF... did you ever experience the abortive effort by Adobe with it's reader editions?  That was a very big fiasco, and there's one other problem with that- PDF isn't an open format.  Adobe has shown this several times in trying to exert muscle over the use of PDF. 

You're actually making my case. PDF is bad but why did it take this long before something like epubs appearing? Let's not even consider PDFs but factor in the difference between how many people know of every popular types of e-book readers from how many people subconsciously have an idea of what Adobe Reader is showing on-screen?

The RIAA analogy isn't based on software, hardware, or anything of the sort.  It's based on content not delivery.  And in the same way, the big publishers are the same as the RIAA, just not as in bed with each other, so not as easy a target.  They rip off authors in the same way as the RIAA does with artists, they control the channels in the same way as the RIAA.  They are the choke point, and the source of the issues.

Actually it's based on all of that but we're mostly talking about semantics at this point. Even if you just took the content argument, it's still not 1:1 comparison between how people share and perceive the contents of an e-book from a movie/song/audiobook.

They are one of the major choke points but let's not kid ourselves and think e-books or even books never had a marketability issue compared to movies and music.

Amazon didn't start the rise in eBooks.  They took a risk, but it wasn't as big of a risk as you make it out to be.  They did innovate, but they weren't the first to try.  What they did was buy the correct technology, then leverage it with hardware at the exact time that the market was starting to take off.  If they hadn't done it, it would have still happened IMO- there were signs pointing that way already.

Amazon didn't have to start the rise of anything. That's kind of the point of the killer app category right? It's not who begins but who ends up sticking around and growing and redefining the users.

In that sense, the Kindle was the equivalent of the first netbook. It wasn't the OLPC but once the EEEPC got out, you knew netbook was a category of it's own and even today you could make the argument that netbooks doesn't have as huge a market despite not having to carry a format on it's shoulders.

As with anything, it's the content that drives the market, not the other way around.  There are other ways of getting content to the users, but without content, the deliverers of that content are dead in the water.  So just as it is the RIAA standing in the way of the progression of the digital music movement, the publishers are the same gatekeepers for the switch from analog to digital in print media.

Is the e-book the content? Not really. In this topic alone, most everyone commented about the format more than the concept.

When you mentioned the exclusive Nook files, were you selling the book or were you selling the idea of certain exclusive books like how gaming consoles work?

The RIAA is standing in the way of digital music that has pretty much been maxxed out except for certain audiophile people as far as everything goes.

There may be a better format but it's an uphill "upgrade" format at this point. E-books on the other hand, even if you don't choke that out, it's full potential isn't really out there yet.

Or rather you could say even if you accept all the current concepts and forms e-book selling has taken currently minus the DRM, it doesn't mean it has the same mass adoption yet so everything that's being stifled now is like trial by fire in my opinion to force content providers to adapt to a paradigm shift and that's really just my stance. I'm not really saying ok there's no problem, let's wait it out. I'm just saying it's not FUBAR yet. It may become dormant because of the corruption but it's this type of corruption that is going to upseat a new form of format acceptance as well as new forms of delivery and even opportunities for other businesses to "make up" for where these companies have massively failed and that still includes software even though now it seems e-book readers are known by most.

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 04, 2011, 10:12 AM »

If way back when there were few books sold, one format had been decided on and supported, and the publishers brought in at that point, maybe things would be better.  Maybe if an open format had been written a lot sooner things would be different (.epub wasn't brought about until 2007, 7+ years(!) after .mobi and .pdb) But because of the publishers controlling the channels, and the amount of money spent on e-books, and the already fragmented market, it's very unlikely that anyone else will be able to get in on the scene.  Hardware... maybe.  Because you can support the e-reader software of both.  But to actually get in the market is pretty hard, as Borders and Apple have found... they just can't get the licenses to support a new format.  And because of the purchase of the .mobi and .pdb formats, they aren't open.  But in reality, it's the channel agreements that are killing the ebook market.  And even the owners of the formats are held at the mercy of the publishers.  Fictionwise has been very adversely affected because of this.  Of course the owners have already made their money, but the shell that's left keeps getting gutted because of limitations placed on it by the channel agreements- not it's parent company.  It's the RIAA all over again... but in this case, the distributors take the heat, and the publishers play their puppets behind the scenes, screened from the negative PR by their pawns...

No. Software is also a question mark.

It's easy to look at the format problems and think it's a mess but in reality, it never really did become organized and in many ways hardware did push this current market when Amazon launched the Kindle.

However from a non-hardcore e-book reading community, the ones these corporations are trying to market at, there really wasn't much of a software distribution design that went killer app enough to rival the RIAA situation for music and movies.

Both of the latter two categories are very flat. You mostly needed a viewer and you almost heard of the songs and movies the mainstream really wanted.

Books not only don't hold that mystique but it's not a natural digital age fit. As a format, epub is not as widely recognized as pdf and pdf would not be the most widely recognized if there were other competing formats with the same amount of software readers supporting said formats.

Then there's media libraries. Most people who want to get into music have things outside of Itunes for desktop playback. Most people who want to get into books have applications like GooReader.

Alot of these sound repetitive but the truth is wasn't this the same for online book publishing before Amazon came along? ...and then when Amazon came along, everything changed as far as e-commerce went. The e-book issue seems to be in the same case of problematic stage.

The only difference is that there is the market wanting it to grow already and there's more places to discuss it due to the bigger presence of the internet but most of these dilemmas remain the same even without greedy publishers/distributors: There's no next generation "Web" yet that did for books what the dotcom boom did for online book buying. Everyone's trying to fit the "business" into an app/reader/etc. already but in reality there's really only a small room for a newbie to jump into being an e-book fanatic especially without spending any cash on. (How many really share or talk about e-books that weren't just copies of real books? Audiobooks are much easier to try out than e-books and even audiobooks are not as widely sold yet in stores.)

All this greedy publisher issue relies on the assumption that you need these publishers to jump start the e-book market into mainstream usage but that's like saying books not Amazon.com helped Amazon.com more even though anyone could have and have tried stealing the momentum away from Amazon.

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Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 04, 2011, 07:17 AM »

I don't know if you can say it's FUBAR.

If these three corporations succeeded in getting a monopoly on the market then the problem might forever be unresolved.

As it stands now, there's a niche opening for the next Amazon or the next Barnes & Nobles and it's not like e-book market infrastructure is dying.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Agree or Disagree? It is not just focus, it is also about perspective

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 04, 2011, 02:14 AM »

Agree on all points 40hz although I'd just like to bring up something that I might have not emphasized (or written) in my initial post:

As the later comments implied, one size fits all timers should not just factor in work but also rest. So not only is it dependent on how good we are at knowing when to take breaks, the topic could easily absorb subjects such as the usage of alarm clocks in our daily lives.

Note that alarm clocks also don't work for me in real life but I am not employed. Still...back in the days I find I woke up later when I used alarm clocks just because my mind expects to hear the sound before doing anything other than sleeping. (Where as I tend to wake up too early due to over-anticipation when I rely on my own instincts but only in certain deadlines)

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: IPE Template (Warning! Not Really a Template)

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 03, 2011, 02:38 PM »

Blog Link: http://unproductive....emplate-warning-not#

Just ignore the preview and click on the small download link below the preview near the beginning of the post. It should still be a .xls file despite the preview.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Agree or Disagree? It is not just focus, it is also about perspective

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 03, 2011, 01:56 PM »

Ironically enough, I have such respect for App's Instant Boss that even today it's just subconsciously not in my head when I'm thinking of timers but yeah, I get what you mean by focus problems.

For me the switch between a different computer alone messes up any timer-centric model for me so I just use it sporadically and I still couldn't really envision using a timer but at the same time it's so tempting. Anyways good luck with your search for a timer - unfortunately I really haven't found one that flat out changed my life.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Agree or Disagree? It is not just focus, it is also about perspective

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 03, 2011, 01:09 PM »

Do you use a timer Paul?

I jump around between using and not using one that it's not even funny...or limited to a single answer anymore.

Too many timers out there: Pomodoro/Heart Rate Monitor/Time an Application remains Open/Tea Timer/WorkRave/ETA for sleep/Time boxing/Habit Trackers/Do it Tomorrow lists (yes this is a timer in disguise)

P.S. Thanks for replying.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / IPE Template (Warning! Not Really a Template)

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 03, 2011, 12:38 PM »

Edit: Apparently DC doesn't accept .xls files so I'll just attach the file to my blog post once I'm finished writing it.

I - Individual
P - Productivity
E - Evaluation

IPE Template Disclaimer: I'm not sharing this because I found the "solution" to getting organized. In fact, these past few months have been some of the most unproductive and disorganized days of my life. This is here because I feel I'm no longer capable of adding anything to this template and I've gotten enough benefits from this that it's worth making a topic of in the hopes that it would help someone.

1. What does IPE hope to add to your productivity?

IPE is at it's core an experiment on trying to generate the Forer Effect on an unproductive user (me being the guinea pig) and hoping to gleam some sort of productive value out of it.

Since I'm not really knowledgeable enough to know how to stress test a system or even maximize the features in a spreadsheet (since I don't really know how to use one at all) all that's included in this template are generic "feel good" tags and categories. Many sounding obvious, others directly ripped from other systems, and there's really nothing magical or unique about the contents except for the fact that they should work close to the horoscope model but in numerical form.

I plan to expand this on a blog post but all this really means is that when I tried this template, it worked for me regardless whether I forgot about it, I suddenly put random items in it and I skipped tons of days before adding anything.

Instructions:

Copy your to-do list items on any category that has the words "Tasks" above.

Put today's date on any category that has the words "Dates".

Put random numbers everywhere else that you feel matches with the category above.

P.S.

It might help if you freeze the categories for the top row (or top two row) so that you can see it as you scroll down.

Probably an obvious feature but hey, like I said, I don't really know how to work a spreadsheet so it was a notable feature to me.

In Gnumeric, this option is in view- Freeze Panes
In Google Spreadsheets, drag the lines in the upper left box of the Document

I don't really know for other programs.

650

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: RandomPlayer - play a mp3 file at (almost) random intervals

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 03, 2011, 11:32 AM »

Thanks. I've forgotten about your apps, app.

The multiple instances kind of scares me but still thanks a lot, I thought it would be a lot more complicated to get a feature like this.