Let me be perfectly clear: I have no price sensitivity with regards to books. I read the books I want to read when I want to read them. I have never bought or avoided buying a book based on whether it was hardcover or trade paperback. (Incidentally, since we’re all businessmen here, let’s be honest: you want to extract as much money out of me as possible because I am price insensitive, and staggering hardcover and paperback release dates is just a way to accomplish that. Neither of us really care about the physical format in the slightest.)

It does not matter to me what you charge for the books on my Kindle. However, I’m hearing things about you windowing Kindle releases — i.e. delaying them so that you can protect your hardcover sales. You think my likely behavior is to go to the bookstore where no one knows my name and pay extra so that I can have the hardcover on release day. Words cannot express how mistaken you are.

Four Open Letters To The Book Industry


Picking the wrong fight happens to all of us at some point. The question is if you learn anything from it or previous people who have fought that battle. I would have thought that publishers might get a small hint from the music industry. If that were the case though, I don't know why the hardback didn't disappear many many years ago (or at least be a niche release like vinyl albums).

Great Read.


UPDATE:
Further reading -> Amazon Pulls Macmillan Books Over E-Book Price Disagreement
At Amazon, Giving In to Demands
Good read on summary of events -> Hooray for Amazon!

Books books, kindle

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Apple's New Thing (iPod) [Circa 2001]
I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new! I want them to think differently! Why oh why would they do this?! It's so wrong! It's so stupid!


The First Hints Of A Dinosaur's True Colors
Scientists have found evidence of some of the original coloration of a dinosaur that lived about 125 million years ago, showing that it had rings of orange-brown bristly feathers around its tail.


If It's In the Name, It's In the Game
GO YOU MOTHER BUCKIN' ELKS!


11 Minutes of Action
According to a Wall Street Journal study of four recent broadcasts, and similar estimates by researchers, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes.

But how many minutes of crying?


LockMart Exoskeleton Update (via Joel)
Amazing.. I give it 10 years till someone starts thinking about fusing it to bone.

Gaming, General, Multiplicitome , Tech football, exo-skeleton, ipad

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The Old Man and the Seymour from The Old Man and the Seymour on Vimeo.

I actually found myself laughing at multiple parts of this. Great short(er?) film.



Court: Waupun Inmate Can't Play Dungeons and Dragons
Singer was told by prison officials that he could not keep the materials because Dungeons & Dragons "promotes fantasy role playing, competitive hostility, violence, addictive escape behaviors, and possible gambling," according to the ruling. The prison later developed a more comprehensive policy against all types of fantasy games, the court said.


Musical Predictions
The act of listening, it turns out, is really an act of neural prediction


CHART OF THE DAY: One Third Of U.S. 11-Year-Olds Have Cellphones
Why I believe the ipad will never be like the iphone.


NYT Opin: Salvation (for Newspapers) Is at Hand
The next three years are going to be very interesting. I have contemplated buying the NYT on my Kindle, but went with Newsweek instead. Its a great way to read the magazine, but even now I don't keep up with a weekly periodical, much less a daily one.


Confessions of a Book Pirate
I have only done a few. Between 2002-2005 I created around 200 ebooks by scanning the physical copy, OCRing and proofing the output, and uploading them to USENET.
I can't imagine how tedious scanning each page much be.

Gaming, Multiplicitome , Musak music, books, ipad, ad&d

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Here's your silver platter
PS3 has been pwned.


Does TV Make us Dumber-er?
I call Occam's Razor.


The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures
Like the Ab Shot, the Cleavage Shot is very successful, drawing 12.9 new contacts per month, or 49% more than average. But unlike the Abs Shot, this positive effect actually trends against the effects of age.
One could say it sags with age?

Disney Ptex library is available for download
Ptex, Walt Disney Animation Studio's cutting-edge 3D texture mapping library which was first used on nearly every surface in the 2008 animated feature Bolt, was released under the BSD license on Friday.


Crayola Colors (1903-2010)
I'm still a big fan of the color half way in between the true blue and true green.

Gaming, Multiplicitome , Tech color, disney, tv, ps3

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