After the first few lines I was wondering why anyone would care that someone burned an opium producing flower. Sounded like a protest against drugs or perhaps against involvement in Afganistan.
Then I saw the explanation and I remembered you see everybody on UK television wearing one of these flowers on their breast and something clicked.
Is it bad if you don't know what a flower looks like but you do now it's drug producing qualities?
'they usually discover that they have much more in common than they perhaps expected.'
It seems Ms Weinstein has never visited the places where someone mentions:
a. Any particular gaming console
b. Any particular subset of PCs (Windows/Mac)
c. Football should be called soccer
d. Any particular religion or lack of it
e. Praise/critique of copyright/patent laws
Recently I bought a Britisch TV-series on DVD (Yes, that was me). Instead of obnoxious 30 second warnings about stealing stuff there was a 5 second message:
"By buying this DVD you support the British Film Industry and it's actors. THANK YOU!"
I really sat back for a couple of seconds and thought this was awesome. I was treated like a customer!
I've never seen it before on anything else but I urge other companies to adopt the same strategy.
Yes, Indian eye surgeons are probably just as good or better than US surgeons, they're more innovative too. Just recently there was an article about an Indian Hospital doing cataracts operations for $50 an eye, because they used a system not unlike a conveyor belt.
The rising cost for health care is one of the major problems in the Western world, closely connected to the ageing population. It seems we need to get to the root of the problem and exorbitant profits of Pharma companies seems a good start.
Yes, I said exorbitant profits, not profits. Profit=Good, Greed=Not good.
Although I buy a big amount of books, I refuse to buy an e-book that is priced higher than the physical version. To me that's nonsense, whatever they spend on editing.
And I agree with you fully that editing seems to be much sloppier now. I'm far from being a grammar nazi but in the average e-book you'll encounter a sizeable amount of grammmar- and spelling mistakes. It does take away from the experience...
Although I buy a big amount of books, I refuse to buy an e-book that is priced higher than the physical version. To me that's nonsense, whatever they spend on editing.
And I agree with you fully that editing seems to be much sloppier now. I'm far from being a grammar nazi but in the average e-book you'll encounter a sizeable amount of grammmar- and spelling mistakes. It does take away from the experience...
It is clear that if Mr. KiD CuDi would have followed the advice of his label and made another album similar to his previous one he would have debuted at #1 instead of a weak #3!
What will happen with this world if we allow artists to experiment? The art might change beyond recognition! I still play my Beach Boys record every day and it's still as good as the day it was (over)produced! We don't need new music, we need more of the same. Ask musicians to experiment and we end up with Dubstep!
It is available on Amazon.com. Since I'm in a non-English speaking country I can order there. I agree with you wholeheartedly that the system is messed up though.
What actually really messes me up is that the Kindle version is actually almost twice as expensive as the paperback. How does that even make sense? Unfortunately I already have enough dead trees in my house.
For a self proclaimed writer you seem to need a lot of words to make your point... No short stories for you then? (Sorry, cheap dig)
If you've followed TechDirt for some time you'd know that Mike is not advocating the end of the middlemen. He just says their role should change from gatekeepers to facilitators. See initiatives like Kickstarter etc.
I'm sure there are a lot of writers like you that don't want to make the effort to promote their own books. That means there is a hole in the market that somebody will fill by offering editing/promotional/management services and services like that probably already exist. However, since basically everybody can offer these services now because you don't need expensive printing presses anymore, it will be a much more competitive market which will mean you'll be able to negotiate much better terms than with the current gate keepers AND you'll be able to guard the integrity of your work yourself. Sounds like a win to me.
Additionally: Quit whining. Every job has good and bad sides. If you want to make money with something you have to be good at all of its facets.
Actually I would be rather worried if he took endorsements from Mother Theresa. She supported some pretty shady people when she was still alive, although it would be kind of awesome if the Senator could channel the dead...
Besides the point. However, even if it was true that the Senator took money from Google or is protecting his own state's interest, what does it matter? Haven't the comments from Chis Dodd not made clear that is how they get their support? By giving money in exchange of support?
Everybody discounting Senator Wyden for taking money from the wrong companies or supporting his own state just disqualified all the Senators supporting of SOPA/PIPA.
So, the majority of their traffic doesn't come from the search engines. Hmmmm, since they make no money, somebody must be doing an awful lot of free advertising for them.
I wonder who'd be so stupid to plaster the Pirate Bay name all over the Internet as an excellent place to find fee stuff... Oh, wait.
"her country's entire economy revolves around chocolate, bulbs and wooden shoes"
I'll speak up for my country because you seem stunningly ignorant about us.
I'll have you know The Netherlands has a very nicely stable economy that is still showing some (small) growth, even in these difficult times. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you're American. How high was your unemployment again? 9% and going up? In NL it's lower than 5%, we have a reasonably balanced state budget plus we have very good universal health care and unemployment benefits etc. Additionally you might want to check the Dutch stock exchange because you might recognise some names there.
So, please fix your own FFing country before dissing us because if anything is depressing our economy it's the mess YOU made. /Rant
On an interesting note: Kroes is actually considered quite right wing in the Dutch politacl spectrum ;-)
Blatant use of Tucans as well. Plus their name actually translates as Falcon so the only conceivable reason for them to use a Tucan is to leech of Kellog's trademark.
/sarc
Come on, you missed it completely! OOTB and his AC ilk are obviously agent provocateurs of Freetard Pirate Mike and his parasitic plans.
Nobody could be so braindead to think that their inane method of commenting could do anything other than cementing the opposition and putting the Big Media coorperations and their minions in a bad light. They're doing their cause more harm than good, they must be able to see that.
Our beloved Mike is just afraid you won't have anybody to unite against if he wouldn't pay somebody to make idiotic comments.
For those of you with poor sarcasm filters: Yes, paragraph 1 and 3 are sarcasm. Paragraph 2 is obvious truth.
Come on, you missed it completely! OOTB and his AC ilk are obviously agent provocateurs of Freetard Pirate Mike and his parasitic plans.
Nobody could be so braindead to think that their inane method of commenting could do anything other than cementing the opposition and putting the Big Media coorperations and their minions in a bad light. They're doing their cause more harm than good, they must be able to see that.
Our beloved Mike is just afraid you won't have anybody to unite against if he wouldn't pay somebody to make idiotic comments.
For those of you with poor sarcasm filters: Yes, paragraph 1 and 3 are sarcasm. Paragraph 2 is obvious truth.
As someone in a similar situation as yours, living in a country with reasonably priced excellent universal health care I always wonder the same.
What I find the most striking is that when Americans actually live in such a country they usually flip 100%. I know some Americans that lived in Germany for a while and they went from opposing UHC to fully supporting it because they saw how well it can work and how much better it is than the US.
It seems to be a matter of too little information. They simply dismiss it as socialism (thanks Reagan and Friedman) and don't bother to investigate. Additionally the media in the US seems to be extremely US focused so if you want to know how things work in other countries you need to go to other sources which is too much work for most people.
I should get my mind out of the gutter
After the first few lines I was wondering why anyone would care that someone burned an opium producing flower. Sounded like a protest against drugs or perhaps against involvement in Afganistan.
Then I saw the explanation and I remembered you see everybody on UK television wearing one of these flowers on their breast and something clicked.
Is it bad if you don't know what a flower looks like but you do now it's drug producing qualities?
Not so sure...
'they usually discover that they have much more in common than they perhaps expected.'
It seems Ms Weinstein has never visited the places where someone mentions:
a. Any particular gaming console
b. Any particular subset of PCs (Windows/Mac)
c. Football should be called soccer
d. Any particular religion or lack of it
e. Praise/critique of copyright/patent laws
3,2,1... Start Flame war!
This is how it can be done!
Recently I bought a Britisch TV-series on DVD (Yes, that was me). Instead of obnoxious 30 second warnings about stealing stuff there was a 5 second message:
"By buying this DVD you support the British Film Industry and it's actors. THANK YOU!"
I really sat back for a couple of seconds and thought this was awesome. I was treated like a customer!
I've never seen it before on anything else but I urge other companies to adopt the same strategy.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yes, Indian eye surgeons are probably just as good or better than US surgeons, they're more innovative too. Just recently there was an article about an Indian Hospital doing cataracts operations for $50 an eye, because they used a system not unlike a conveyor belt.
The rising cost for health care is one of the major problems in the Western world, closely connected to the ageing population. It seems we need to get to the root of the problem and exorbitant profits of Pharma companies seems a good start.
Yes, I said exorbitant profits, not profits. Profit=Good, Greed=Not good.
Re: eBook price fixing
Although I buy a big amount of books, I refuse to buy an e-book that is priced higher than the physical version. To me that's nonsense, whatever they spend on editing.
And I agree with you fully that editing seems to be much sloppier now. I'm far from being a grammar nazi but in the average e-book you'll encounter a sizeable amount of grammmar- and spelling mistakes. It does take away from the experience...
Re: eBook price fixing
Although I buy a big amount of books, I refuse to buy an e-book that is priced higher than the physical version. To me that's nonsense, whatever they spend on editing.
And I agree with you fully that editing seems to be much sloppier now. I'm far from being a grammar nazi but in the average e-book you'll encounter a sizeable amount of grammmar- and spelling mistakes. It does take away from the experience...
You don't understand!
It is clear that if Mr. KiD CuDi would have followed the advice of his label and made another album similar to his previous one he would have debuted at #1 instead of a weak #3!
What will happen with this world if we allow artists to experiment? The art might change beyond recognition! I still play my Beach Boys record every day and it's still as good as the day it was (over)produced! We don't need new music, we need more of the same. Ask musicians to experiment and we end up with Dubstep!
/sarc
Re: "PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY"
It is available on Amazon.com. Since I'm in a non-English speaking country I can order there. I agree with you wholeheartedly that the system is messed up though.
What actually really messes me up is that the Kindle version is actually almost twice as expensive as the paperback. How does that even make sense? Unfortunately I already have enough dead trees in my house.
Re: The "low barrier" has actually been raised
For a self proclaimed writer you seem to need a lot of words to make your point... No short stories for you then? (Sorry, cheap dig)
If you've followed TechDirt for some time you'd know that Mike is not advocating the end of the middlemen. He just says their role should change from gatekeepers to facilitators. See initiatives like Kickstarter etc.
I'm sure there are a lot of writers like you that don't want to make the effort to promote their own books. That means there is a hole in the market that somebody will fill by offering editing/promotional/management services and services like that probably already exist. However, since basically everybody can offer these services now because you don't need expensive printing presses anymore, it will be a much more competitive market which will mean you'll be able to negotiate much better terms than with the current gate keepers AND you'll be able to guard the integrity of your work yourself. Sounds like a win to me.
Additionally: Quit whining. Every job has good and bad sides. If you want to make money with something you have to be good at all of its facets.
Re: Re:
Actually I would be rather worried if he took endorsements from Mother Theresa. She supported some pretty shady people when she was still alive, although it would be kind of awesome if the Senator could channel the dead...
Besides the point. However, even if it was true that the Senator took money from Google or is protecting his own state's interest, what does it matter? Haven't the comments from Chis Dodd not made clear that is how they get their support? By giving money in exchange of support?
Everybody discounting Senator Wyden for taking money from the wrong companies or supporting his own state just disqualified all the Senators supporting of SOPA/PIPA.
Re:
Wow was also really the first word that popped into my mind after reading this post. I'll therefore add mine to all the other WOWs
Re: Certainly wrong
Drugs and Child porn: The Godwin of IP maximalists!
Free advertising
So, the majority of their traffic doesn't come from the search engines. Hmmmm, since they make no money, somebody must be doing an awful lot of free advertising for them.
I wonder who'd be so stupid to plaster the Pirate Bay name all over the Internet as an excellent place to find fee stuff... Oh, wait.
Re: Re: Re: Envious much
Thanks, I feel much better now.
Re: Envious much
"her country's entire economy revolves around chocolate, bulbs and wooden shoes"
I'll speak up for my country because you seem stunningly ignorant about us.
I'll have you know The Netherlands has a very nicely stable economy that is still showing some (small) growth, even in these difficult times. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you're American. How high was your unemployment again? 9% and going up? In NL it's lower than 5%, we have a reasonably balanced state budget plus we have very good universal health care and unemployment benefits etc. Additionally you might want to check the Dutch stock exchange because you might recognise some names there.
So, please fix your own FFing country before dissing us because if anything is depressing our economy it's the mess YOU made. /Rant
On an interesting note: Kroes is actually considered quite right wing in the Dutch politacl spectrum ;-)
I have their next target
Perhaps they should try their luck with this Dutch Hotel chain:
http://www.valk.com/pages/?id=4428
Blatant use of Tucans as well. Plus their name actually translates as Falcon so the only conceivable reason for them to use a Tucan is to leech of Kellog's trademark.
/sarc
Re: Re: Re: "undermining our nation's national security"
Sorry, double post.
Re: Re: "undermining our nation's national security"
Come on, you missed it completely! OOTB and his AC ilk are obviously agent provocateurs of Freetard Pirate Mike and his parasitic plans.
Nobody could be so braindead to think that their inane method of commenting could do anything other than cementing the opposition and putting the Big Media coorperations and their minions in a bad light. They're doing their cause more harm than good, they must be able to see that.
Our beloved Mike is just afraid you won't have anybody to unite against if he wouldn't pay somebody to make idiotic comments.
For those of you with poor sarcasm filters: Yes, paragraph 1 and 3 are sarcasm. Paragraph 2 is obvious truth.
Re: Re: "undermining our nation's national security"
Come on, you missed it completely! OOTB and his AC ilk are obviously agent provocateurs of Freetard Pirate Mike and his parasitic plans.
Nobody could be so braindead to think that their inane method of commenting could do anything other than cementing the opposition and putting the Big Media coorperations and their minions in a bad light. They're doing their cause more harm than good, they must be able to see that.
Our beloved Mike is just afraid you won't have anybody to unite against if he wouldn't pay somebody to make idiotic comments.
For those of you with poor sarcasm filters: Yes, paragraph 1 and 3 are sarcasm. Paragraph 2 is obvious truth.
Re: Buy why are prescriptions dearer in the US?
As someone in a similar situation as yours, living in a country with reasonably priced excellent universal health care I always wonder the same.
What I find the most striking is that when Americans actually live in such a country they usually flip 100%. I know some Americans that lived in Germany for a while and they went from opposing UHC to fully supporting it because they saw how well it can work and how much better it is than the US.
It seems to be a matter of too little information. They simply dismiss it as socialism (thanks Reagan and Friedman) and don't bother to investigate. Additionally the media in the US seems to be extremely US focused so if you want to know how things work in other countries you need to go to other sources which is too much work for most people.
Yes, I realise this is a gross generalisation.