One random thing you enjoy.

[MagGnome]

Originally Posted by Vigil80

Nature documentaries, and animal videos. And animals.

I need a dog.

I've been watching the BBC's Planet Earth. It's wonderful.

[SilentScreams]

Originally Posted by MagGnome

I've been watching the BBC's Planet Earth. It's wonderful.

Yeah I love that series.

I watched another documentary on the BBC iPlayer about the Zambezi river in Africa (the one with the Victoria Falls in it) and that was pretty great too. It was mostly about the wildlife, but it also covered a lot of stuff about how the local people deal with the rise and fall of the water levels throughout the year. Interesting stuff.

[MagGnome]

I'll have to check that out, thanks!

[Bad Buddha]

Paychecks! I love paychecks!

I got my first paycheck in about 9 months today!

[Vigil80]

I watched all of River Monsters that was on Netflix. They overdo the horror movie presentation sometimes, but it's a neat show overall. "Biologist and extreme fisherman" Jeremy Wade is an unsung badass.

[J Arcane]

Uninstalling iTunes.

Feels good, man.

[Narradisall]

Oh god, I wish I could do that. I rarely, and I mean *rarely* boot it up on my computer, I try to throw as much stuff on my iphone at once, or directly to the phone rather than have to use that crap piece of software.

God I loath itunes.

[drewmg]

One random thing I enjoy: My daughter, who was born last fall. Most of the time.

[Zero]

Apple getting sued for being dicks.

[Xerxes]

Originally Posted by Zero

Apple getting sued for being dicks.

This is so long over due. But the damage is already done isn't it?

[Shieldmaiden]

I get a real kick when I actually get to make customers happy. I spend so much time dealing with problems and giving people bad news, it's nice to be able to tell someone that their stuff is going to be delivered today, or that we have got what they want in stock and can ship it to them in time for a particular event/film shoot/performance.

[Matthias]

Originally Posted by Zero

Apple getting sued for being dicks.

To be honest, I'm not really sure I understand this. Amazon artificially and single-handedly lowers the price of a category of goods to get users into their ecosystem, harming many B&M stores and arguably publishers in the process (I say arguably because they seemed to still be paying publishers the full wholesale amount and sold at a loss, but in doing so were forcefully lowering the number of sales publishers were making in other channels).

Apple comes in and allows publishers to set their own prices via an "agency" model. To me, this seems much closer to a traditional retail model, where stores sell an item at MSRP, with the main difference being that in the latter model, retailers can decide to lower the resale price on their own if stock isn't moving off the shelves quickly enough. This doesn't really seem to be an issue in the e-book market, however, since there isn't any stock. The only impetus to lower prices is if the publisher feels there isn't enough demand for its good at the current price point (aka, the price more directly follows supply and demand).

I guess I understand the issue of a few publishers colluding to set artificially high prices, but the e-book market seems elastic enough that publishers would need to lower prices to meet demand and stay profitable.

tl;dr: I just don't understand how Apple having started with no marketshare in the e-book industry and agreeing to be a "dumb sales pipe" for publishers constitutes a larger antitrust violation than Amazon using its very large marketshare to sell a product at a loss so it can lock people into its store and devalue a market in the process.

[muddi900]

It's price fixing. I am currently having trouble finding an article on publishing, but it clearly stated that publishers actually made less money with the agency model. Their reason was to stop Amazon to form a proto-monopoly like itunes has on music, and to cull the devaluation of their product. This saw an increased market-share for Amazon's competitor, namely B&N, so you might say they are successful in that regard. But Amazon launched Kindle Singles in that time, which is cheap, curated, short content and they have been immensely popular and have actually eaten into ebook sales.The reason it could be considered an anti-trust violation is because Apple and the big 5 colluded to fix prices and stifle competition in the market. What Amazon did was not any different than what Walmart did and to be closer, what Apple did with itunes and ipod. Nobody was stopping Apple, or anybody else, to also sell at a loss to gain footing in the market. That is not stifling competition that is competition.

The biggest loser here is Apple here. They are being slapped with a federal suit in return for tiny part of a miniscule but growing market. I am quite sure Apple's forcing IAP on other ebook vendors(and banning even the mention of the term store) is going to be brought up, since they did it knowing full well none of them can comply.

Also, traditional retail functions quite differently than that. Smaller vendors buy from whole-sale vendors, while larger vendors purchase on returnable consignment directly from a publisher.

[Narradisall]

Music.

Some good music can really turn round a shitty day, make doing unplesant things easier and generally make time fly by (in the good way).

[Thanasimos]

Sleeping in the shower. I wake up tired, turn on the hot water and lean against that wall. Oh man.

[carnage11]

I really enjoy growing my own veggies and eating them fresh off the plant.


I just made a Steak-Um sandwich and threw in some fresh banana peppers I grabbed from my garden. Delicious!

[TheKeck]

What's a steak-um sandwich?

[carnage11]

[Xerxes]

Originally Posted by muddi900

It's price fixing. I am currently having trouble finding an article on publishing, but it clearly stated that publishers actually made less money with the agency model. Their reason was to stop Amazon to form a proto-monopoly like itunes has on music, and to cull the devaluation of their product. This saw an increased market-share for Amazon's competitor, namely B&N, so you might say they are successful in that regard. But Amazon launched Kindle Singles in that time, which is cheap, curated, short content and they have been immensely popular and have actually eaten into ebook sales.The reason it could be considered an anti-trust violation is because Apple and the big 5 colluded to fix prices and stifle competition in the market. What Amazon did was not any different than what Walmart did and to be closer, what Apple did with itunes and ipod. Nobody was stopping Apple, or anybody else, to also sell at a loss to gain footing in the market. That is not stifling competition that is competition.

The biggest loser here is Apple here. They are being slapped with a federal suit in return for tiny part of a miniscule but growing market. I am quite sure Apple's forcing IAP on other ebook vendors(and banning even the mention of the term store) is going to be brought up, since they did it knowing full well none of them can comply.

Also, traditional retail functions quite differently than that. Smaller vendors buy from whole-sale vendors, while larger vendors purchase on returnable consignment directly from a publisher.

You said it better than I could. Now everyone accepts .99 cents a song as standard but the Amazon ebook 9.99 standard is gone. I didn't know the Kindle was being sold at a loss though. I always remember Sony and others keeping similar if not cheaper prices for readers. Also I was always able to find DRM free epubs equally priced.

Publishers were never happy but they want to charge hardcover prices for non physical books. I don't see this changing prices though.

[maharahaj]

Originally Posted by Thanasimos

Sleeping in the shower. I wake up tired, turn on the hot water and lean against that wall. Oh man.

Cool. I'm not the only one who does that then.