What it'd take to get my e-book business
Steve Parker
as it stands now, there's no way I'm gonna invest in a reader, unless
some things change dramatically.
#1) Portability. I *won't* read a book on my computer screen. The
posture I take when I'm on the computer is not the posture I like
reading in. I like reading everywhere. In the theater 10 minutes
before the movie starts, in the bathroom, while I'm cooking, etc. If I
can't tuck it into my back pocket or clip it to my belt, I'm not
interested.
#2) Screen size. I read fast. I'm not a page-at-a-glance reader, but I
take...chunks of paragraphs in at once. and I have a hard time reading
moving text for any length of time. That means I want a screen big
enough that I can see approx. the amount of words that I can see on a
paperback page. I don't want to have to hold down the "page down"
button as I'm reading.
#3) Price: I want an e-book reader that I don't have to worry about
someone swiping. If someone steals a paperback of mine, I'm out, $7-8
bucks, tops. If I'm outside camping and my paperback gets soaked,
ditto. I want a disposable e-book reader, one that, if it breaks, gets
lost, has a system crash, whatever, I simply go out and buy a new one.
The reader would have to be about $35.00, max.
and
#4) "Preservability" for lack of a better word. Right now, I have
hardcovers dating back over 100 years, pulps dating back 60 years and
paperbacks about 50 years. There are no technological hassles to
reading any of these. I pick 'em up, and there's the text. I want
e-books distributed on a media that I can back up and transfer.
Right now, I'm using a DAT recorder, borrowed from my dad to
copy a bunch of old, rare, vinyl albums that'll *NEVER* be reissued on
CD to my hard drive so I can burn 'em to CD. It's a hassle (I've got
to go through about 12 steps per album) and the sound quality's only
OK, but it's do-able. If the e-book is encrypted, or on some sort of
weird proprietary media (like the old Lynx game "chips" were), in 20
years, I'm going to be stuck with a bunch of out-of-print books that
have no other use than poker chips. (I understand the problem with
piracy, and I don't have any solutions to offer, but if I can't back
up the book to another media, I'm not buying.)
#5) Standards: I can plunk any brand of video tape into my VCR and
it'll play, I can put any cd from any manufacturer into my cd player
and it'll play. Until the e-book manufactures come to an agreement on
a format that they'll all use, I'm not going to bother. I refuse to
have one Reader for Tor books, another for Del Rey and another for
Baen (although, with Baen, given their ongoing scam, all I'll need to
do is get an old reader, and put a new cover on it...)
Frankly I doubt any of the above will be happening soon, if ever so I
don't see myself as a potential e-book customer anytime soon. Which is
a shame, because I see some (many) advantages to e-books. But until
the tech catches up to what I want, I'm waiting.
Steve
--
My Hugo-reviews Page (now featuring SPOILER SPACE!) can be found at
http://www.crosswinds.net/~sparker9/home.html
John S. Novak, III
>I buy a *lot* of books a year and e-books may be the coming thing, but
>as it stands now, there's no way I'm gonna invest in a reader, unless
>some things change dramatically.
Here's my list:
1) Price.
I'm not going to suffer the publishing and selling industry as
a whole to reduce their costs by 40% (completely made up number)
without seeing a slice of that myself. Won't happen. It's for
this reason that I refuse to use ATMs to withdraw cash-- pure
bloody spite.
Example: Barnes and Noble, which last I looked tried to charge me the
same amount for an electronic book as for a paper book, despite the
drastic reductin in costs on their end (negligible shipping,
negligible storage, negligible costs of materials, etc.)
2) Open architecture.
I'm not going to buy a widget that chains me to one or two particular
publishing schemes, nor will I buy a widget that doesn't play with
some of the major publishing schemes. Won't happen.
Example: Softbook. Great looking piece of hardware. Would love to
own one. Except that their widget refuses to play with anyone except
Softbook. If they go out of business, I'd be screwed. If I wanted to
read something they neglected to pick up, I'd be screwed.
Stupid business plan on their end, and I refuse to be a part of such a
debacle.
3) Transferability.
I'm not going to buy a widget that I can't make a transfer _from_ as
well as a transfer _to_. You can hardcode routines which erase it
from one machine as it transfers to another, that's fine. But if I
decide to upgrade my reader hardware, I'll be bent and buggered if I
buy all the books again, or even if I have to submit myself to the
frustration of logging the changed hardware with some central
authority and downloading them over my slow connection all over again.
Won't happen.
Taken together, these probably amount to much the same thing as
Steve's list.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@concentric.net
The Humblest Man on the Net
GSV Three Minds in a Can
wonderful John S. Novak, III <j...@concentric.net> asserted
<snip>
>Example: Barnes and Noble, which last I looked tried to charge me the
>same amount for an electronic book as for a paper book, despite the
>drastic reductin in costs on their end (negligible shipping,
>negligible storage, negligible costs of materials, etc.)
But as was discussed on the 'E-Books cheaper?' thread about a month
(two?) ago, the materials, shipping, etc for a dead-tree-book is
probably all of 50 cents (I'm talking regular PB here, not 4" thick
leather bound coffee table book).
The only way to get the cost down 'significantly' (your 40%) is to do
away with the retailer completely.
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Elisabeth Carey
> <snip>
> >Example: Barnes and Noble, which last I looked tried to charge me the
> >same amount for an electronic book as for a paper book, despite the
> >drastic reductin in costs on their end (negligible shipping,
> >negligible storage, negligible costs of materials, etc.)
>
> But as was discussed on the 'E-Books cheaper?' thread about a month
> (two?) ago, the materials, shipping, etc for a dead-tree-book is
> probably all of 50 cents (I'm talking regular PB here, not 4" thick
> leather bound coffee table book).
>
> The only way to get the cost down 'significantly' (your 40%) is to do
> away with the retailer completely.
You're talking about the regular pb, and also about the UK. Shipping's
a more significant factor in North America. I don't think it raises
the physical costs to 40%, but John was pretty clear about the fact
that that figure was more on the order of a wild guess than a real
estimate.
--
Lis Carey
This post is copyright 2000 by Elisabeth Carey. Permission to
insert links when displaying it is available for $100. Use in
this fashion constitutes acceptance of these terms.
Mark Atwood
>
> The only way to get the cost down 'significantly' (your 40%) is to do
> away with the retailer completely.
And this is bad because...?
--
Mark Atwood | It is the hardest thing for intellectuals to understand, that
m...@pobox.com | just because they haven't thought of something, somebody else
| might. <http://www.friesian.com/rifkin.htm>
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
John S. Novak, III
<G...@quik.freeuk.com> wrote:
>But as was discussed on the 'E-Books cheaper?' thread about a month
>(two?) ago, the materials, shipping, etc for a dead-tree-book is
>probably all of 50 cents (I'm talking regular PB here, not 4" thick
>leather bound coffee table book).
>The only way to get the cost down 'significantly' (your 40%) is to do
>away with the retailer completely.
First, the basic point remains-- I'm not moving to a new format that
saves someone else money, unless I save some money, too.
Second, I don't have a problem doing away with the retailer. If
Barnes and Noble wants to insert itself into the process, they have to
add value. If the publishers want the retailers inserted into the
business, they have to give me a reason to put up with their
parasitism.
P Nielsen Hayden
>wonderful John S. Novak, III <j...@concentric.net> asserted
><snip>
>>Example: Barnes and Noble, which last I looked tried to charge me the
>>same amount for an electronic book as for a paper book, despite the
>>drastic reductin in costs on their end (negligible shipping,
>>negligible storage, negligible costs of materials, etc.)
>
>But as was discussed on the 'E-Books cheaper?' thread about a month
>(two?) ago, the materials, shipping, etc for a dead-tree-book is
>probably all of 50 cents (I'm talking regular PB here, not 4" thick
>leather bound coffee table book).
That's pretty low.
--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
Andrew C. Wheeler
> GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.freeuk.com> writes:
> >
> > The only way to get the cost down 'significantly' (your 40%) is to do
> > away with the retailer completely.
>
> And this is bad because...?
Because if the only way to get books is to deal directly with the publisher,
only hard-core book-junkies will generally bother. How do you expect the next
generation of readers to start if there aren't any places with books for sale?
(There are other objections as well, but this would be the big one for me.)
--
Andrew Wheeler
Editor, Science Fiction Book Club
business e-mail: andrew....@bookspan.com
Terry Austin
>On 20 Aug 2000 23:56:23 GMT, p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 20 Aug 2000 10:53:10 +0100,
>> GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.freeuk.com> wrote:
>>>Bitstring <slrn8putq...@ts030d39.chi-il.concentric.net> from the
>>>wonderful John S. Novak, III <j...@concentric.net> asserted
>>><snip>
>>>>Example: Barnes and Noble, which last I looked tried to charge me the
>>>>same amount for an electronic book as for a paper book, despite the
>>>>drastic reductin in costs on their end (negligible shipping,
>>>>negligible storage, negligible costs of materials, etc.)
>>><Snip>
>>>
>>>But as was discussed on the 'E-Books cheaper?' thread about a month
>>>(two?) ago, the materials, shipping, etc for a dead-tree-book is
>>>probably all of 50 cents (I'm talking regular PB here, not 4" thick
>>>leather bound coffee table book).
>>
>>That's pretty low.
>
>No kidding. If the cost of producing and selling books were actually that
>low, publishers would make Microsoft look like a poor company struggling to
>eke out a few cents on each sale.
I believe the idea was that this was the cost of putting ink on paper, which
is far from the overall cost of publishing. E-books, for instance, will not
save a single dime in marketing costs. Certainly, ink and paper are not the
only cost to publishers.
Michael Hargreave Mawson
<m...@pobox.com> writes
>GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.freeuk.com> writes:
>>
>> The only way to get the cost down 'significantly' (your 40%) is to do
>> away with the retailer completely.
>
>And this is bad because...?
>
ATB
--
Mike
"His wish was to become a historian - not to dig out facts and store
them in himself... but to understand them, call the dead back to life
and let them speak through him to their descendants. She sometimes
wondered who would pay for it and who would heed."
- from "Harvest of Stars" by Poul Anderson.
Michael Hargreave Mawson
<G...@quik.freeuk.com> writes
>Bitstring <slrn8putq...@ts030d39.chi-il.concentric.net> from the
>wonderful John S. Novak, III <j...@concentric.net> asserted
><snip>
>>Example: Barnes and Noble, which last I looked tried to charge me the
>>same amount for an electronic book as for a paper book, despite the
>>drastic reductin in costs on their end (negligible shipping,
>>negligible storage, negligible costs of materials, etc.)
>
>But as was discussed on the 'E-Books cheaper?' thread about a month
>(two?) ago, the materials, shipping, etc for a dead-tree-book is
>probably all of 50 cents (I'm talking regular PB here, not 4" thick
>leather bound coffee table book).
A few years ago I worked in the Production department of a major coffee-
table book publisher. The target cost for producing a book was 1/7 of
planned retail cost. Whilst the coffee-table book market may well have
a different pricing structure to the paperback fiction market, 50 cents
seems rather low - particularly once you factor in distribution costs.
John S. Novak, III
<O...@46thFoot.com> wrote:
>>> The only way to get the cost down 'significantly' (your 40%) is to do
>>> away with the retailer completely.
>>And this is bad because...?
>...you will be unable to browse.
Fixable problem-- allow free download of ten pages.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Atwood <m...@pobox.com> asserted
>GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.freeuk.com> writes:
>>
>> The only way to get the cost down 'significantly' (your 40%) is to do
>> away with the retailer completely.
>
>And this is bad because...?
Did I say it was =bad=?? It's just =different= from the 'lets do away
with the dead tree and save a lot of money' assumption.
--
Mark Atwood
>
> I believe the idea was that this was the cost of putting ink on paper, which
> is far from the overall cost of publishing. E-books, for instance, will not
> save a single dime in marketing costs.
Yes, they will, if they arn't utterly stupid about it. *Don't* try to
stay in the same channel, with the same retail outlets.
That whole rickety structure needs to be sledgehammered anyway.
The payola for shelfspace will go away, for example.
Mark Atwood
>
> Because if the only way to get books is to deal directly with the publisher,
> only hard-core book-junkies will generally bother. How do you expect the next
> generation of readers to start if there aren't any places with books for sale?
Because the publisher will be able to "interface" with potential
readers without having to shell out payola to WalMart.
Like I said upthread, use the advantage of ebooks to bypass the whole
old assinite channel that evolved during the Great Depression.
Or be destroyed by the publishers that do.
P Nielsen Hayden
>Terry Austin <tau...@hyperbooks.com> writes:
>>
>> I believe the idea was that this was the cost of putting ink on paper, which
>> is far from the overall cost of publishing. E-books, for instance, will not
>> save a single dime in marketing costs.
>
>Yes, they will, if they arn't utterly stupid about it. *Don't* try to
>stay in the same channel, with the same retail outlets.
There's a non sequitur for you. Was someone in the conversation suggesting
that ebooks should?
>That whole rickety structure needs to be sledgehammered anyway.
It's certainly much more satisfying to weild a "sledgehammer" than to
actually consider details, specifics, and annoying nuances. Hey, those
kulaks deserved to starve, anyway.
>The payola for shelfspace will go away, for example.
Now _that's_ comedy.
Mark Atwood
> On 21 Aug 2000 07:08:34 -0700,
> Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
> >
> Hey, those kulaks deserved to starve, anyway.
Bad bad *bad* analogy. The historical kulaks weren't wiped out because
someone else came up with a better way of growing food. They were
wiped out because some idiots with guns came up with a *worse* way of
growing food, and then to avoid starvation, took theirs.
> >The payola for shelfspace will go away, for example.
>
> Now _that's_ comedy.
Oh, I'm sure there will still be payola. But not for shelfspace,
as shelfspace will have expanded to infinity, and so the price
will crash to zero.
Maybe payola for preferred search results, or top billing, or some
such. (We have that now, already.)
P Nielsen Hayden
>"Andrew C. Wheeler" <andyw...@ultracom.net> writes:
>>
>> Because if the only way to get books is to deal directly with the
>> publisher, only hard-core book-junkies will generally bother. How do you
>> expect the next generation of readers to start if there aren't any places
>> with books for sale?
>
>Because the publisher will be able to "interface" with potential
>readers without having to shell out payola to WalMart.
>
>Like I said upthread, use the advantage of ebooks to bypass the whole
>old assinite channel that evolved during the Great Depression.
>
>Or be destroyed by the publishers that do.
Very appealing. And I have been an evangelist within Holtzbrinck both for
the Web and for the idea of ebook publishing.
But like most libertarian techno-enthusiasts, you talk as if the entire
world is going to leap online all at once. One of the good things about the
old ID distribution system was that it put books in front of smart kids who
were growing up in families that didn't have the book habit, who never went
into bookstores. As the ID system fades, and fewer and fewer different
titles appear in grocery-store wire racks, bookstores account for a larger
and larger percentage of the books sold. Which is good in many ways. But
it's also part of a general process of class stratification. Expansion by
the big chains has made bookstores available to more Americans than ever
before, and they do a good job of getting the Americans who _do_ go into
bookstores at least once a year to buy more books, but we're losing our
outreach to those Americans who don't have the habit of going into
bookstores...and, most crucially, to their kids. It's hard to see that
"ebooks" will address this problem on a mass level any time soon, as
effectively as the old (now dying) ID distribution system did. I'd love to
be wrong.
Also, as I remarked elsewhere, the idea that e-commerce will purge us of the
sins and corruptions of "payola" and the like is simply risible. As long as
human enterprises are conducted by anything short of all-powerful,
invulnerable, and omnipotent superbeings with infinite attention spans and
an unlimited capacity for detail, some folks are going to figure out how to
set up tolls.
As I said, I'm all for e-text, e-commerce, and the general wonderfulness of
e-everything. But you are, not for the first time, making claims for it
which are beyond reason and well into the utopian.
Nancy Lebovitz
P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>But like most libertarian techno-enthusiasts, you talk as if the entire
>world is going to leap online all at once. One of the good things about the
>old ID distribution system was that it put books in front of smart kids who
>were growing up in families that didn't have the book habit, who never went
>into bookstores. As the ID system fades, and fewer and fewer different
>titles appear in grocery-store wire racks, bookstores account for a larger
I've noticed that _Darwin's Radio_ is getting pretty good wire-rack
distribution. I wish it were a better novel, but it seems like a step
in the right direction.
Has anyone else been seeing a tiny bit more sf at the supermarket?
>and larger percentage of the books sold. Which is good in many ways. But
>it's also part of a general process of class stratification. Expansion by
>the big chains has made bookstores available to more Americans than ever
>before, and they do a good job of getting the Americans who _do_ go into
>bookstores at least once a year to buy more books, but we're losing our
>outreach to those Americans who don't have the habit of going into
>bookstores...and, most crucially, to their kids. It's hard to see that
>"ebooks" will address this problem on a mass level any time soon, as
>effectively as the old (now dying) ID distribution system did. I'd love to
>be wrong.
>
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
My buttons and I will be at Chicon
Buttons at Pennsic: S&M Leather (Booth 119), Plunder Lane
P Nielsen Hayden
>> On 21 Aug 2000 07:08:34 -0700,
>> >
>> Hey, those kulaks deserved to starve, anyway.
>
>Bad bad *bad* analogy. The historical kulaks weren't wiped out because
>someone else came up with a better way of growing food. They were
>wiped out because some idiots with guns came up with a *worse* way of
>growing food, and then to avoid starvation, took theirs.
My point is that when you make assertions like "the whole rickety structure
deserves to be sledgehammered, anyway," you're making the same moral error
as the worst Jacobins or Bolsheviks. You're rhetorically handwaving away
the details with grandiose claims about how it's better to knock everything
over with a "sledgehammer," since the whole structure is "rickety."
Who cares whether the structure is "rickety" or not? What matters is
individuals. What matters is getting good creative work to people who will
gladly pay for it. What matters is maximizing opportunity for writers and
artists of merit to do good work and be decently paid for it.
The current structure is flawed to the extent that it sometimes doesn't do
those things very well. It's not flawed because it's "rickety." And fixing
those flaws is liable to entail a long process of weirdly nuanced
adjustments, not the use of a "sledgehammer."
>> >The payola for shelfspace will go away, for example.
>>
>> Now _that's_ comedy.
>
>Oh, I'm sure there will still be payola. But not for shelfspace,
>as shelfspace will have expanded to infinity, and so the price
>will crash to zero.
>
>Maybe payola for preferred search results, or top billing, or some
>such. (We have that now, already.)
Correct. And people will come up with other tolls to collect, as well.
Some people need to learn that the Internet changes everything. And some
people need to learn that it doesn't.
John McMullen
Michael Hargreave Mawson <O...@46thFoot.com> wrote:
> <m...@pobox.com> writes
> >GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.freeuk.com> writes:
> >>
> >> The only way to get the cost down 'significantly' (your 40%) is to
do
> >> away with the retailer completely.
> >
> >And this is bad because...?
> >
> ...you will be unable to browse.
>
More importantly, you will be unable to browse the product of more
than one publisher at a time. (I realize this may be unimportant to
many, given the current set of mergers, but I'm a fan of small presses,
so it's important to me.)
If you want to see the catalogs of multiple publishers, you'll need
to visit a distributor -- who will effectively be a retailer, since
it is selling to the public (you) -- or you'll need to visit a lot
of sites. And if it's a nuisance, most people won't do it.
I worked in a bookstore for years -- a chain bookstore, even -- and I
was certainly not at a level where payola happened. I can't say that
it doesn't happen, but it certainly doesn't happen for the bookstores
or bookstore owners I know.
Maybe in my town we're just more upright morally.
(I have some difficulty believing that; I've seen too many town
council meetings.)
John
--
John McMullen
I don't speak for my employers; my employers don't speak for me.
Clever quotation following by surface mail.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
James Nicoll
Michael Hargreave Mawson <O...@46thFoot.com> wrote:
><m...@pobox.com> writes
>>GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.freeuk.com> writes:
>>>
>>> The only way to get the cost down 'significantly' (your 40%) is to do
>>> away with the retailer completely.
>>
>>And this is bad because...?
>>
>...you will be unable to browse.
That's ok. Set up a Ministry of Books to assess and distribute the
worthy material.
--
Much apologies but my return path is temporarily broken. Please
use jdni...@home.com instead.
James Nicoll
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) writes:
>> On 21 Aug 2000 07:08:34 -0700,
>> Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> >
>> Hey, those kulaks deserved to starve, anyway.
>
>Bad bad *bad* analogy. The historical kulaks weren't wiped out because
>someone else came up with a better way of growing food. They were
>wiped out because some idiots with guns came up with a *worse* way of
>growing food, and then to avoid starvation, took theirs.
>
>>
>> Now _that's_ comedy.
>
>Oh, I'm sure there will still be payola. But not for shelfspace,
>as shelfspace will have expanded to infinity, and so the price
>will crash to zero.
>
>Maybe payola for preferred search results, or top billing, or some
>such. (We have that now, already.)
Or for positive reviews.
"Nice book you have here. Be a shame if Th*r*n F*ll*r were to
review it."
James Nicoll
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>Terry Austin <tau...@hyperbooks.com> writes:
>>
>> I believe the idea was that this was the cost of putting ink on paper, which
>> is far from the overall cost of publishing. E-books, for instance, will not
>> save a single dime in marketing costs.
>
>Yes, they will, if they arn't utterly stupid about it. *Don't* try to
>stay in the same channel, with the same retail outlets.
>
>
>
I get offered ad-help but that's it.
I'm not a big player wrt books but I seem to be in rpgs for
Southern Ontario, which is a damned odd situation to find myself.
It's not so much that I have a great selection as that a lot of other
rpg shops have let their stocks slide down into oblivion during the
temporary rpg downturn of the half generation.
I can't express how chirpy being called a parasite for making
stuff available to people who want it makes me feel.
J. B. Moreno
> But like most libertarian techno-enthusiasts, you talk as if the entire
> world is going to leap online all at once. One of the good things about the
> old ID distribution system was that it put books in front of smart kids who
> were growing up in families that didn't have the book habit, who never went
> into bookstores. [snip books not in regular stores anymore] It's hard to
> see that "ebooks" will address this problem on a mass level any time soon,
> as effectively as the old (now dying) ID distribution system did. I'd
> love to be wrong.
Well, not everyone will be online all at once, but that is certainly the
way things are heading, don't more than half of all households in the US
have a computer with an internet connection nowdays? And of course I
haven't heard of a school without computers in quite some time.
I'd suggest a kid and preteen section and heavy discounts through
schools (say 20-50 bucks, certainly less than a hundred, and the whole
class[1] gets a copy).
[1] with class being defined as the 20-40 kids in a single room for a
single period, not everybody at the school.
--
JBM (that's me) thinks that Mark Twain said "The difference between the
right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning
and a lightning bug."?
James Nicoll
Well, that seems reasonable.
>(I have some difficulty believing that; I've seen too many town
>council meetings.)
I used to type in copies of the council minutes online before the
web. Dull stuff. Excruciatingly dull, dull stuff (I was surprised that
once long time council member [Tom Galloway, no relation to the online
TG] turns his wages back in or did back then). Did you know Dom Cardillo's
[Kitchener's mayor for many years, for those of you unfortunate to come
from other, lesser cities] chair in council had fingernail claw marks
on the arms?
James Nicoll
Mark Atwood
>
> More importantly, you will be unable to browse the product of more
> than one publisher at a time. (I realize this may be unimportant to
> many, given the current set of mergers, but I'm a fan of small presses,
> so it's important to me.)
>
> If you want to see the catalogs of multiple publishers, you'll need
> to visit a distributor -- who will effectively be a retailer, since
> it is selling to the public (you) -- or you'll need to visit a lot
> of sites. And if it's a nuisance, most people won't do it.
Idea. Publishers "publish" their title list as an RDF. Various
aggragator sites can pull them together, digest them in some value
added way, and then present them to buyers/browers/users in some
useful way.
I can see Alex Lit doing exactly that.
(This data exchange model is exactly how "news" and "weblog" oriented
sites now already exchange and present their headlines and articles to
each other. The "slashboxes" on SlashDot, or the news boxes on "My
Netscape" are very simple examples.)
Peter Bruells
> Well, not everyone will be online all at once, but that is certainly
> the way things are heading,
Not, not necassirly. Japan does pretty well without Internet-based
e-commerce and over here in the EU everybody gears up for m-commerce
as well.
Things will certinaly not stay the way they were, but It's quite
unclear in what direction things are heading.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
wonderful Ian Montgomerie <iadm...@uwaterloo.ca> asserted
>On 20 Aug 2000 23:56:23 GMT, p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 20 Aug 2000 10:53:10 +0100,
>>>Bitstring <slrn8putq...@ts030d39.chi-il.concentric.net> from the
>>>wonderful John S. Novak, III <j...@concentric.net> asserted
>>><snip>
>>>>Example: Barnes and Noble, which last I looked tried to charge me the
>>>>same amount for an electronic book as for a paper book, despite the
>>>>drastic reductin in costs on their end (negligible shipping,
>>>>negligible storage, negligible costs of materials, etc.)
>>><Snip>
>>>
>>>But as was discussed on the 'E-Books cheaper?' thread about a month
>>>(two?) ago, the materials, shipping, etc for a dead-tree-book is
>>>probably all of 50 cents (I'm talking regular PB here, not 4" thick
>>>leather bound coffee table book).
>>
>
>No kidding. If the cost of producing and selling books were actually that
>low, publishers would make Microsoft look like a poor company struggling to
>eke out a few cents on each sale.
Your are (both) off on the same mis-direction we had last time. I put up
50 cents (and Ok, maybe it's 80 cents) for the cost of the paper,
printing, and trucking. Nobody said this is the cost of 'producing and
selling' .. just the delta cost for a physical as opposed to E-text,
version.
As we well know, the cost of 'selling', if you include the distributor
and retailer mark up, and the cost of refunding 'stripped' MMPBs, is a
lot more than that. Also the cost of producing (as in editing,
merchandising, and all that good stuff) is also an adder, but one that
doesn't go away with E-text (I damn well =hope= my E-text books would be
competently edited!!).
--
J. B. Moreno
In the US it is definitely heading towards everyone being online, and we
seem to buy more books than the rest of you.
Peter Bruells
> In the US it is definitely heading towards everyone being online,
> and we seem to buy more books than the rest of you.
Really? Do you have any numbers at hand?
Andrew C. Wheeler
The numbers I've seen (caveat: not recently, and not to hand) are entirely
the other way: the USA is at the low end of the books-read-per-capita
scale among industrialized nations.
The UK, for example, sells many more books per capita than the US does,
and that's a similar English-speaking nation.
And I really don't think the US is heading towards "everyone being
online." There's whole masses of people -- mostly poor and mostly in inner
cities -- who aren't online now and won't be any time soon. Whether
they're terribly important in the prevailing e-commerce model is another
question.
Andrew C. Wheeler
> I worked in a bookstore for years -- a chain bookstore, even -- and I
> was certainly not at a level where payola happened. I can't say that
> it doesn't happen, but it certainly doesn't happen for the bookstores
> or bookstore owners I know.
It's not "payola" exactly, but how were the books for the front-of-store
displays chosen? I'll bet the stores were told what books to put on the
tables by the central office -- and the central office determined those
books through examination of publisher's co-op allowances and other
programs.
In a nutshell, publishers pay for prominent display in stores. There's
nothing seriously wrong with this -- retail space is a scarce commodity
and thus valuable -- but it does exist. It's nowhere near as bad in the
publishing industry as in, for example, grocery stores, where you have to
pay for every inch of shelf space.
Andrew C. Wheeler
> Terry Austin <tau...@hyperbooks.com> writes:
> >
> > I believe the idea was that this was the cost of putting ink on paper, which
> > is far from the overall cost of publishing. E-books, for instance, will not
> > save a single dime in marketing costs.
>
> Yes, they will, if they arn't utterly stupid about it. *Don't* try to
> stay in the same channel, with the same retail outlets.
>
> That whole rickety structure needs to be sledgehammered anyway.
>
> The payola for shelfspace will go away, for example.
Mark, are you familiar with the "catalog revolution" of the late '70s and '80s?
It was a brand new sales channel, more convenient than actually going to stores,
and all the pundits in the industry said it was the next big thing. Retail was
going to be killed, they said. Malls and all their tenants would be driven out of
business. And, for a while, they seemed to be right; growth was phenomenal for a
few years.
But catalogs topped out at about 10% of the retail market (a substantial
business, sure, but not a killer), and have stayed in that vicinity since then.
I'm not alone in predicting that e-commerce will have a similar history.
Lots of people like to get out of the house, and that's one huge advantage
real-world shopping will always have.
Andrew C. Wheeler
> Oh, I'm sure there will still be payola. But not for shelfspace,
> as shelfspace will have expanded to infinity, and so the price
> will crash to zero.
Yes, and *atomic power* will be "too cheap to meter!"
Costs never entirely disappear.
Terry Austin
>> >The payola for shelfspace will go away, for example.
>>
>> Now _that's_ comedy.
>
>Oh, I'm sure there will still be payola. But not for shelfspace,
>as shelfspace will have expanded to infinity, and so the price
>will crash to zero.
>
>Maybe payola for preferred search results, or top billing, or some
>such. (We have that now, already.)
It all amounts to the same thing: The ones with lots of money get the most.
Basic business principle.
Terry Austin
>Terry Austin <tau...@hyperbooks.com> writes:
>>
>> I believe the idea was that this was the cost of putting ink on paper, which
>> is far from the overall cost of publishing. E-books, for instance, will not
>> save a single dime in marketing costs.
>
>Yes, they will, if they arn't utterly stupid about it. *Don't* try to
>stay in the same channel, with the same retail outlets.
Heard how much Stephen King has made on _The Plant_? So far, about as much
as he spent on advertising.
What sells books is advertising, and no matter what channel you choose, it's
not cheap to be effective.
>
>That whole rickety structure needs to be sledgehammered anyway.
>
>The payola for shelfspace will go away, for example.
I wouldn't want to bet on that. The nature of it will change, certainly, but
the basic principle is so deeply ingrained in the business world that it's
unlikely to change.
Mark Atwood
> Mark Atwood wrote:
>
> > Oh, I'm sure there will still be payola. But not for shelfspace,
> > as shelfspace will have expanded to infinity, and so the price
> > will crash to zero.
>
> Yes, and *atomic power* will be "too cheap to meter!"
>
> Costs never entirely disappear.
The "free power" that it was hoped that nukes would give us, with the
whole "too cheap to meter" deal, didn't mean that anyone expected the
the power bill to be zero, but that residentual power would be billed
like US local telephone service, i.e. connection charge only, no usage
charges.
--
Mark Atwood |
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Jay Shorten
James Nicoll <jam...@nyquist.uwaterloo.ca> wrote in message
news:8nrl10$iri$1...@watserv3.uwaterloo.ca...
> I used to type in copies of the council minutes online before the
> web. Dull stuff. Excruciatingly dull, dull stuff (I was surprised that
> once long time council member [Tom Galloway, no relation to the online
> TG] turns his wages back in or did back then). Did you know Dom Cardillo's
> [Kitchener's mayor for many years, for those of you unfortunate to come
> from other, lesser cities] chair in council had fingernail claw marks
> on the arms?
Where is he now?
Jay Shorten
who lived in Waterloo during the Brian Turnbull era, and saw the rise and
fall of Christy and the coming of Carl Zehr,
and who is likely the only person in Oklahoma who knows of these people.
Robert A. Woodward
Lebovitz) wrote:
> In article <slrn8q2fk...@panix3.panix.com>,
> P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote:
> >
> >But like most libertarian techno-enthusiasts, you talk as if the entire
> >world is going to leap online all at once. One of the good things about the
> >old ID distribution system was that it put books in front of smart kids who
> >were growing up in families that didn't have the book habit, who never went
> >into bookstores. As the ID system fades, and fewer and fewer different
> >titles appear in grocery-store wire racks, bookstores account for a larger
>
> I've noticed that _Darwin's Radio_ is getting pretty good wire-rack
> distribution. I wish it were a better novel, but it seems like a step
> in the right direction.
>
> Has anyone else been seeing a tiny bit more sf at the supermarket?
>
I have noticed some variability in the Puget Sound area. Two grocery
stores (same chain, about 4 miles apart) had different mixtures of
paperback books (the best I can tell, one had twice the SF as the other -
it also had _Freedom and Necessity_ for several weeks). Another store
(which isn't a pure grocery store) has just as much paperback SF as it had
12 years or so ago (and this is an appreciable amount - IIRC, the racks
were 6 feet high, 3 feet wide, and there are 3 of them).
--
rawoo...@aol.com
robe...@halcyon.com http://www.halcyon.com/robertaw/
Joe Slater
>old ID distribution system was that it put books in front of smart kids who
>were growing up in families that didn't have the book habit, who never went
>into bookstores.
I don't think we ever really had an equivalent of the ID system in
Australia, unless newsagents count. These are shops that sell
newspapers, stationery, magazines and books. Despite this, our level
of literacy is probably the same as the USA's. The same goes for other
countries.
jds
--
And now kind friends, what I have wrote,
I hope you will pass o'er,
And not criticize, as some have done,
Hitherto herebefore. (Julia Moore, "The Author's Early Life")
Elisabeth Carey
>
> p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) wrote:
> >One of the good things about the
> >old ID distribution system was that it put books in front of smart kids who
> >were growing up in families that didn't have the book habit, who never went
> >into bookstores.
>
> I don't think we ever really had an equivalent of the ID system in
> Australia, unless newsagents count. These are shops that sell
> newspapers, stationery, magazines and books. Despite this, our level
> of literacy is probably the same as the USA's. The same goes for other
> countries.
Newsagents do count; why would you think they wouldn't? Newsstands
used to be a significant part of the ID market in the US. Also
drugstores and convenience stores and supermarkets. But the actual
distribution system may well be different, since there's no particular
reason why developments in the US and Australia should have duplicated
each other.
--
Lis Carey
This post is copyright 2000 by Elisabeth Carey. Permission to
insert links when displaying it is available for $100. Use in
this fashion constitutes acceptance of these terms.
Michael Hargreave Mawson
Novak, III <j...@concentric.net> writes
>On Mon, 21 Aug 2000 05:53:14 +0100, Michael Hargreave Mawson
><O...@46thFoot.com> wrote:
>
>>>> The only way to get the cost down 'significantly' (your 40%) is to do
>>>> away with the retailer completely.
>
>>>And this is bad because...?
>>...you will be unable to browse.
>
From a single publisher's website? A single author's? A single
genre's?
One of the best things about bookshops is the fact that you can jump
around between authors/publishers/genres without any difficulty.
Having said that, my favourite bookshop locally - a long-established
family business - has just changed its stocking policy. The Science
Fiction/Fantasy/Horror sections have been combined and the new section
contains approximately two dozen books. Dammit, I've been trying to
support them, but if they do this to me, I guess I'm going to browse at
Waterstones from now on. :-(((
ATB
--
Mike
"His wish was to become a historian - not to dig out facts and store
them in himself... but to understand them, call the dead back to life
and let them speak through him to their descendants. She sometimes
wondered who would pay for it and who would heed."
- from "Harvest of Stars" by Poul Anderson.
James Nicoll
Jay Shorten <jsho...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>James Nicoll <jam...@nyquist.uwaterloo.ca> wrote in message
>news:8nrl10$iri$1...@watserv3.uwaterloo.ca...
>
>> I used to type in copies of the council minutes online before the
>> web. Dull stuff. Excruciatingly dull, dull stuff (I was surprised that
>> once long time council member [Tom Galloway, no relation to the online
>> TG] turns his wages back in or did back then). Did you know Dom Cardillo's
>> [Kitchener's mayor for many years, for those of you unfortunate to come
>> from other, lesser cities] chair in council had fingernail claw marks
>> on the arms?
>
>Where is he now?
>
the local power commission. Also an elected position but Cardillo
was very popular with many voters and there was never a doubt he'd
get it as a pseudo-retirement gift. Cardillo's legacy includes one
of the ugliest city halls in North America, a sort of bastard cross-
breed of a bus station with an airport.
He was replaced by a one term mayor who had all the vices of
a tenured professor [which he was] and none of the virtues. Mostly
he assumed priviledges he didn't have, didn't listen and never learned
from experience. IMS, he was convinced his thorough curb-stomping
by the current mayor was because of a conspiracy of the local elites
rather than, I don't know, the local electorate thinking he was a self-
important puffed up little pipsqueak who needed to be reminded he
was serving in a democracy.
Andrew C. Wheeler
> On Mon, 21 Aug 2000 21:36:13 +0000, Andrew C. Wheeler <andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
> >Mark Atwood wrote:
> >
> >> Oh, I'm sure there will still be payola. But not for shelfspace,
> >> as shelfspace will have expanded to infinity, and so the price
> >> will crash to zero.
> >
> >Yes, and *atomic power* will be "too cheap to meter!"
> >
> >Costs never entirely disappear.
>
> Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
Are you saying that open source has no costs? Or that the producers, for reasons of their
own, do not chose to pass those costs on to the consumers? The two situations are not
identical.
Again, my point is that, when anyone tells you that "all this {waves hands} will be
_free_. come the revolution," the first thing I want to do is break out an hoary old
Heinlein acronym.
J Greely
>>Costs never entirely disappear.
>Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
Not if you have to rely on it. Then it's only as cheap as the people
you hire to support and maintain it.
-j
Phil Fraering
> Again, my point is that, when anyone tells you that "all this {waves
> hands} will be _free_. come the revolution," the first thing I want
> to do is break out an hoary old Heinlein acronym.
I'm reminded of that joke Dorothy repeated here, where the punch
line was, "Come the Revolution, you will have Strawberries and
Cream, and YOU WILL LIKE IT!"
--
Phil Fraering "One day, Pinky, A MOUSE shall rule, and it is the
p...@globalreach.net humans who will be forced to endure these humiliating
/Will work for tape/ diversions!"
"You mean like Orlando, Brain?"
Terry Austin
>On Mon, 21 Aug 2000 21:36:13 +0000, Andrew C. Wheeler <andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
>>Mark Atwood wrote:
>>
>>> Oh, I'm sure there will still be payola. But not for shelfspace,
>>> as shelfspace will have expanded to infinity, and so the price
>>> will crash to zero.
>>
>>Yes, and *atomic power* will be "too cheap to meter!"
>>
>>Costs never entirely disappear.
>
>Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
Now that's *funny*. Unless you're claiming that, say, Red Hat has no income.
Heh.
phil hunt
>Mark Atwood wrote:
>
>> Oh, I'm sure there will still be payola. But not for shelfspace,
>> as shelfspace will have expanded to infinity, and so the price
>> will crash to zero.
>
>Yes, and *atomic power* will be "too cheap to meter!"
>
>Costs never entirely disappear.
Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
--
*****[ Phil Hunt ]*****
** The RIAA want to ban Napster -- so boycott the music industry! **
** Don't buy CDs during August; see http://boycott-riaa.com/ **
** Spread the word: Put this message in your sig. **
Damien Neil
Andrew C. Wheeler <andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
>> Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
>
>for reasons of their own, do not chose to pass those costs on to the
>consumers? The two situations are not identical.
(You may wish to check your line lengths; I rewrapped this to fit.)
Speaking as a professional programmer employed in working on open-source
software, I think I can safely say that my boss would not describe
the cost of writing it as "too cheap to meter".
Furthermore, as someone else pointed out, even using it has a cost --
you need to pay someone to support it for you. (Or, if you support it
yourself, you incur the cost in terms of your own time.)
>Again, my point is that, when anyone tells you that "all this {waves
>hands} will be _free_. come the revolution," the first thing I want to
>do is break out an hoary old Heinlein acronym.
There is a bit of a difference between "too cheap to meter" and "free".
The former simply means that the unit cost is low enough that a single
charge is enough to cover any amount of usage -- an all-you-can-eat
lunch is unmetered, although it still costs money.
This certainly hasn't happened with power yet, of course.
- Damien
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold
>
> Yes, and *atomic power* will be "too cheap to meter!"
Where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars!
-- M. Ruff
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold
>
> Again, my point is that, when anyone tells you that "all this
> {waves hands} will be _free_. come the revolution," the first
> thing I want to do is break out an hoary old Heinlein acronym.
Hey, who are you calling a hoar?
-- M. Ruff
Captain Button
You were promised killer mutant zombie biker gangs after the Y2K bug
crashed civilization too.
Count your blessings.
--
"You may have trouble getting permission to aero or lithobrake
asteroids on Earth." - James Nicoll
Captain Button - [ but...@io.com ]
Cosmin Corbea
"phil hunt" <ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:slrn8q657v...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
> >Costs never entirely disappear.
>
> Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
Well, I can meter the time it takes to download (and I pay for my ISP
connection, and I hear in Europe one also pays for connection time). The
cost equivalent of the time needed to set up and maintain it is not
negligible either (unless you consider your time worthless).
Regards,
Cosmin Corbea
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Ruff / Lisa Gold <Storyt...@worldnet.att.net> asserted
>"Andrew C. Wheeler" wrote:
>>
>> Yes, and *atomic power* will be "too cheap to meter!"
>
>Where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars!
You have to go to your dealer and buy one .. we don't deliver. 8>.
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
John Schilling
>Wild-eyed conspiracy theorists insist that on Wed, 23 Aug 2000 11:08:28 GMT, Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold <Storyt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> "Andrew C. Wheeler" wrote:
>>> Yes, and *atomic power* will be "too cheap to meter!"
>> Where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars!
>You were promised killer mutant zombie biker gangs after the Y2K bug
>crashed civilization too.
Where are the killer mutant zombie biker gangs? I was promised killer
mutant zombie biker gangs!
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
phil hunt
>phil hunt wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 21 Aug 2000 21:36:13 +0000, Andrew C. Wheeler <andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
>> >Mark Atwood wrote:
>> >
>> >> Oh, I'm sure there will still be payola. But not for shelfspace,
>> >> as shelfspace will have expanded to infinity, and so the price
>> >> will crash to zero.
>> >
>> >Yes, and *atomic power* will be "too cheap to meter!"
>> >
>> >Costs never entirely disappear.
>>
>> Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
>
No, I'm saying it is too cheap to meter: that is, it would be uneconomic to
attempt to charge users for each copy of an OSS program they use. Just like if
electricity was too cheap to meter, then users would be given a connection,
but it wouldn't be metered and charged on a per-usage basis.
> Or that the producers, for reasons of their
>own, do not chose to pass those costs on to the consumers?
Some OSS costs money to produce. Other oSS doesn't, bering produced entirely
in peoples spare time as a hobby.
>Again, my point is that, when anyone tells you that "all this {waves hands} will be
>_free_. come the revolution," the first thing I want to do is break out an hoary old
>Heinlein acronym.
OSS is free *now*. We don't need a revolution to make it happen (or the
revolution is already happening, if you want to think of it that way). If
your belief system can't handle that, it is defective and needs changing.
phil hunt
>On Tue, 22 Aug 2000 22:38:57 +0000,
>Andrew C. Wheeler <andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
>>> Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
>>
>>for reasons of their own, do not chose to pass those costs on to the
>
>(You may wish to check your line lengths; I rewrapped this to fit.)
>
>Speaking as a professional programmer employed in working on open-source
>software, I think I can safely say that my boss would not describe
>the cost of writing it as "too cheap to meter".
Irrelevant, because that isn't the cost that gets metered. If the user
metered for whether they use the software, and made to pay for it if
they do? In the case of Star office, for example, Sun have paid a lot
of money for this, but have decided to let anyone use it freely, and
not to charge them if they use it. Si it is "too cheap to meter".
Do any of you actually *understand* that phrase or know where it comes
from?
>Furthermore, as someone else pointed out, even using it has a cost --
>you need to pay someone to support it for you.
Rubbish. I use OSS al the time & have never paid anyone to support it
fro me.
>(Or, if you support it
>yourself, you incur the cost in terms of your own time.)
Which is typically no more that the costs of closed source, so this is
a negative opportunity cost.
phil hunt
>ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 21 Aug 2000 21:36:13 +0000, Andrew C. Wheeler <andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
>>>Mark Atwood wrote:
>>>
>>>> Oh, I'm sure there will still be payola. But not for shelfspace,
>>>> as shelfspace will have expanded to infinity, and so the price
>>>> will crash to zero.
>>>
>>>Yes, and *atomic power* will be "too cheap to meter!"
>>>
>>>Costs never entirely disappear.
>>
>>Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
>
>income.
I wish some people on this ng understood English.
Rec Hat *give away* their Linux distro. You can go to their website and
download it.
When you buy Red Hat linux, you are paying for the manual, the pretty
box it comes in, the physical media, and the support they offer. You are
not paying for the software.
Captain Button
Uh, it seems to me that almost all software is unmetered, open source or
not.
If it was metered it would be charging you based on *how much* you use it.
By the hour, or by the keyclick or per document save, or some such.
Phil Fraering
> >You were promised killer mutant zombie biker gangs after the Y2K bug
> >crashed civilization too.
> Where are the killer mutant zombie biker gangs? I was promised killer
> mutant zombie biker gangs!
I sympathize. I've been studying Hapkido, so I can be the evil overlord in
an S. M. Stirling novel...
Andrew C. Wheeler
> "Andrew C. Wheeler" wrote:
> >
> > Yes, and *atomic power* will be "too cheap to meter!"
>
> Where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars!
I was hoping for a rocket backpack myself, but I'd gladly take a
flying car.
Terry Austin
>On Tue, 22 Aug 2000 22:38:57 +0000, Andrew C. Wheeler <andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
>>phil hunt wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 21 Aug 2000 21:36:13 +0000, Andrew C. Wheeler <andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
>>> >Mark Atwood wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> Oh, I'm sure there will still be payola. But not for shelfspace,
>>> >> as shelfspace will have expanded to infinity, and so the price
>>> >> will crash to zero.
>>> >
>>> >Yes, and *atomic power* will be "too cheap to meter!"
>>> >
>>> >Costs never entirely disappear.
>>>
>>> Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
>>
>>Are you saying that open source has no costs?
>
>No, I'm saying it is too cheap to meter: that is, it would be uneconomic to
>attempt to charge users for each copy of an OSS program they use. Just like if
>electricity was too cheap to meter, then users would be given a connection,
>but it wouldn't be metered and charged on a per-usage basis.
Except that a number of companies specialize in charging for OSS programs,
and support of same.
In other words, you're shooting at shadows. It's a stupid analogy. Give it
up.
Terry Austin
>On Tue, 22 Aug 2000 21:00:02 -0700, Terry Austin <tau...@hyperbooks.com> wrote:
>>ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) wrote:
>>
>>>On Mon, 21 Aug 2000 21:36:13 +0000, Andrew C. Wheeler <andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
>>>>Mark Atwood wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Oh, I'm sure there will still be payola. But not for shelfspace,
>>>>> as shelfspace will have expanded to infinity, and so the price
>>>>> will crash to zero.
>>>>
>>>>Yes, and *atomic power* will be "too cheap to meter!"
>>>>
>>>>Costs never entirely disappear.
>>>
>>>Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
>>
>>Now that's *funny*. Unless you're claiming that, say, Red Hat has no
>>income.
>
>I wish some people on this ng understood English.
You'd be a good place to start.
>
>Rec Hat *give away* their Linux distro. You can go to their website and
>download it.
And it's worth what you pay for it, especially if you are a business and
using it for mission critical apps. If it's important, you *must* have
support, and that *costs* *money*.
>
>When you buy Red Hat linux, you are paying for the manual, the pretty
>box it comes in, the physical media, and the support they offer. You are
>not paying for the software.
The software, in and of itself, is nearly useless for anything important.
Either you have support staff on your payroll, or you pay for it from a
third party. It's *never* free in the monetary sense.
Not to mention, that isn't what the "free" in "free software" even means.
Get a clue, will ya?
Terry Austin
>general subthread comment:
>
>Uh, it seems to me that almost all software is unmetered, open source or
>not.
>
>If it was metered it would be charging you based on *how much* you use it.
>
>By the hour, or by the keyclick or per document save, or some such.
Give Microsoft another year or two, and you'll be paying yearly licensing
fees for Windows.
Not to mention the whole ASP thing.
Terry Austin
>On Wed, 23 Aug 2000 23:03:11 GMT, Ian Montgomerie <iadm...@uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>
>>Calling it "too cheap to meter" is misleading at best. It is charitable
>>production,
>
>Some of it is. Other OSS is produced by hard-headed businesses with an
>(indirect) eye to the bottom line.
Which is to say, it's not too cheap to meter. Glad you agree.
Terry Austin
>
>"phil hunt" <ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:slrn8q657v...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
>> On Mon, 21 Aug 2000 21:36:13 +0000, Andrew C. Wheeler
><andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
>
>> >Costs never entirely disappear.
>>
>> Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
>
>Well, I can meter the time it takes to download (and I pay for my ISP
>connection, and I hear in Europe one also pays for connection time). The
>cost equivalent of the time needed to set up and maintain it is not
>negligible either (unless you consider your time worthless).
>
I think you've hit the nail on the head.
Terry Austin
>> The
>>cost equivalent of the time needed to set up and maintain it is not
>>negligible either (unless you consider your time worthless).
>
>True but irrelevant, unless you use a stopwatch to time how long you
>spend setting it up, and send yourself a bill calculated on this time.
Bullshit. Every single second you spend working on OSS software, even as a
user, is time you could be spending doing something else. The cost of
downloading and installing it is not being able to spend that time
elsewhere.
Unless, of course, you spend your entire life playing with OSS software, and
_nothing else_ at any time.
Terry Austin
>On 23 Aug 2000 07:35:44 GMT, Damien Neil <ne...@centauri.org> wrote:
>>On Tue, 22 Aug 2000 22:38:57 +0000,
>>Andrew C. Wheeler <andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
>>>> Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
>>>
>>>Are you saying that open source has no costs? Or that the producers,
>>>for reasons of their own, do not chose to pass those costs on to the
>>>consumers? The two situations are not identical.
>>
>>(You may wish to check your line lengths; I rewrapped this to fit.)
>>
>>Speaking as a professional programmer employed in working on open-source
>>software, I think I can safely say that my boss would not describe
>>the cost of writing it as "too cheap to meter".
>
>Irrelevant, because that isn't the cost that gets metered. If the user
>metered for whether they use the software, and made to pay for it if
>they do? In the case of Star office, for example, Sun have paid a lot
>of money for this, but have decided to let anyone use it freely, and
>not to charge them if they use it. Si it is "too cheap to meter".
>Do any of you actually *understand* that phrase or know where it comes
>from?
Do you? Have you even read what you're replying to? Or are you just playing
word games because you picked a stupid analogy, and don't want to admit it?
>
>>Furthermore, as someone else pointed out, even using it has a cost --
>>you need to pay someone to support it for you.
>
>Rubbish. I use OSS al the time & have never paid anyone to support it
>fro me.
And, obviously, you are representative of 100% of all computer users
everywhere, in every way.
Or a moron.
Aaron Denney
> but because open-source software is produced via charity and economics keeps
The first copy is not cheap to produce, no. All the rest are.
--
Aaron Denney
-><-
John McMullen
andyw...@ultracom.net wrote:
> John McMullen wrote:
>
> It's not "payola" exactly, but how were the books for the
front-of-store
> displays chosen? I'll bet the stores were told what books to put on
the
> tables by the central office -- and the central office determined
those
> books through examination of publisher's co-op allowances and other
> programs.
>
> In a nutshell, publishers pay for prominent display in stores. There's
> nothing seriously wrong with this -- retail space is a scarce
commodity
> and thus valuable -- but it does exist. It's nowhere near as bad in
the
> publishing industry as in, for example, grocery stores, where you have
to
> pay for every inch of shelf space.
>
Actually, that would make sense of some of the bizarre decisions
that head office would sometimes hand down.
And grocery stores are cut-throat.
John
--
John McMullen
I don't speak for my employers; my employers don't speak for me.
Clever quotation following by surface mail.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
James Burbidge
wrote:
>general subthread comment:
>
>Uh, it seems to me that almost all software is unmetered, open source or
>not.
>
>If it was metered it would be charging you based on *how much* you use it.
>
>By the hour, or by the keyclick or per document save, or some such.
It used to be, on older batch systems.
Software was leased, and payment was made for the CPU time a given
program had used in a given period. (This was in the days when CPU
time was more valuable than programmers' time.)
James Burbidge jamesandma...@sympatico.ca
phil hunt
>
>"phil hunt" <ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:slrn8q657v...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
><andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
>
>> >Costs never entirely disappear.
>>
>> Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
>
>connection, and I hear in Europe one also pays for connection time).
True. i am in the same situation. However, this is just a passing
phase: Internet access with get cheaper ands faster over time.
> The
>cost equivalent of the time needed to set up and maintain it is not
>negligible either (unless you consider your time worthless).
True but irrelevant, unless you use a stopwatch to time how long you
spend setting it up, and send yourself a bill calculated on this time.
phil hunt
>production,
Some of it is. Other OSS is produced by hard-headed businesses with an
(indirect) eye to the bottom line.
--
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold
>
> I've noticed that _Darwin's Radio_ is getting pretty good
> wire-rack distribution. I wish it were a better novel, but it
> seems like a step in the right direction.
>
> Has anyone else been seeing a tiny bit more sf at the supermarket?
Does "Dianetics" count?
-- M. Ruff
Tapio Erola
(Snippage about RedHat linux and it's value)
> And it's worth what you pay for it, especially if you are a business and
> using it for mission critical apps. If it's important, you *must* have
> support, and that *costs* *money*.
Few points here:
1) RedHat support services are cheap compared to ...say MicroSoft to whom
you pay for _both_ license and support.
2) You can train/hire/whatever your own support personnel who will be able
to do useful stuff without signing M$ NDA:s with their own blood.
3) It's much more convenient as you don't have to screw around with
licenses, license keys, BSA audits, dongles, whatever. RedHat Software
doesn't care if you install 1 or 100 workstations from same set
of disks. Try this with non-free software...
> >When you buy Red Hat linux, you are paying for the manual, the pretty
> >box it comes in, the physical media, and the support they offer. You are
> >not paying for the software.
>
> The software, in and of itself, is nearly useless for anything important.
Have you ever tried to do it _without_ software?
> Either you have support staff on your payroll, or you pay for it from a
> third party. It's *never* free in the monetary sense.
You are confusing software to running the said software. Latter is never
free. Former is sometimes free.
> Not to mention, that isn't what the "free" in "free software" even means.
> Get a clue, will ya?
Free as a speech, free as a beer. Sometimes both apply. Sometimes only
one. Sometimes neither.
--
Tapio Erola t...@rieska.oulu.fi (No mail to rak061.oulu.fi, please)
"Never meddle in the affairs of NT. It is slow to boot and
quick to crash." --Stephen Harris
Mark Atwood
>
> 3) It's much more convenient as you don't have to screw around with
> licenses, license keys, BSA audits, dongles, whatever. RedHat Software
> doesn't care if you install 1 or 100 workstations from same set
> of disks. Try this with non-free software...
Or a hundred workstations at the same time!
Think NT will ever have a working jumpstart feature? I don't think so...
--
Mark Atwood |
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Ross Presser
Austin).wrote.posted.offered:
>Give Microsoft another year or two, and you'll be paying yearly
>licensing fees for Windows.
We basically are already:
Pay for Windows 95
Pay for Windows 98
Pay for Windows 2000
...
--
Ross Presser * ross_p...@imtek.com
A blank is ya know, like, a tab or a space. A name is like wow! a
sequence of ASCII letters, oh, baby, digits, like, or underscores,
fer shure, beginnin' with a letter or an underscore.
Bob
In article <39A19D21...@ultracom.net>, "Andrew C. Wheeler"
<andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
> Really? Do you have any numbers at hand?
>
>The numbers I've seen (caveat: not recently, and not to hand) are entirely
>the other way: the USA is at the low end of the books-read-per-capita
>scale among industrialized nations.
>
>The UK, for example, sells many more books per capita than the US does,
>and that's a similar English-speaking nation.
>
>And I really don't think the US is heading towards "everyone being
>online." There's whole masses of people -- mostly poor and mostly in inner
>cities -- who aren't online now and won't be any time soon. Whether
>they're terribly important in the prevailing e-commerce model is another
>question.
>
>--
>Andrew Wheeler
>Editor, Science Fiction Book Club
>business e-mail: andrew....@bookspan.com
First, Kudos to the Science Fiction Book Club. I've been a member 20+ years.
Hopefully Harry Potter will push those number up here in the US. It will be a
long time before e-books replace paper. For now e-books are better suited to
textbooks and reference and paper for "beach reading" and casual reading.
E-books will have to be portable-really portable- and thin and light weight to
become pervasive. Think of the cost saving to students and the ease of
correcting inaccuracies.
Bob
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Presser <rpre...@NOSPAMimtek.com.invalid> asserted
>alt.distingu...@hyperbooks.com (Terry
>Austin).wrote.posted.offered:
>
>>Give Microsoft another year or two, and you'll be paying yearly
>>licensing fees for Windows.
>
>We basically are already:
>
>Pay for Windows 95
>Pay for Windows 98
>Pay for Windows 2000
But why would you do that, given Win95 SR2 works at least as well (I
could argue 'better than', except for USB support) anything issued
since??
'Upgrade mania' is a most destructive (and expensive) disease .. 'if it
ain't broke, don't mess with it' is about the best advise you can give
anyone w.r.t. computer software.
Keith F. Lynch
Ian Montgomerie <iadm...@uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> Having an internet connection is kind of like "has access to some
> form of vehicle and a road". It doesn't mean that someone is
> actually spending lots of time, say, shopping online any more than
> having a car and access to a road means that someone shops at some
> type of IRL business.
I agree completely. I have been on the net for 23 years, often
several hours per day every day, and I have never purchased anything
online. I prefer to see a thing before I buy it. Plus, I've never
had a credit card, and online merchants make it difficult to do
anything without one. Plus, the Lynx browser won't due secure
transactions. Plus, I don't like to have to stay home for a full day
or two so as to be here when the delivery person happens to show up.
And not everyone who "has access to some form of vehicle and a road"
has a car, as you imply. My vehicle is a bicycle. I've ridden it
tens of thousands of miles on various roads.
--
Keith F. Lynch - k...@keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/
I always welcome replies to my e-mail, postings, and web pages, but
unsolicited bulk e-mail sent to thousands of randomly collected
addresses is not acceptable, and I do complain to the spammer's ISP.
Avram Grumer
<G...@quik.freeuk.com> wrote:
> 'Upgrade mania' is a most destructive (and expensive) disease .. 'if it
> ain't broke, don't mess with it' is about the best advise you can give
> anyone w.r.t. computer software.
That's why Microsoft deliberately makes your old software broken -- by
causing the newest versions of their Office software to produce files that
can't be read by older versions.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@grumer.org | http://www.PigsAndFishes.org
"Some people need to learn that the Internet changes everything.
And some people need to learn that it doesn't." -- Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Andrew C. Wheeler
God, I hope not.
I'd settle for seeing _any_ SF at the supermarket. Now, admittedly, I'm
usually shopping with a 2-year-old, so the book racks don't get my
whole attention...
Terry Austin
>Tapio Erola <t...@rak061.oulu.fi> writes:
>>
>> 3) It's much more convenient as you don't have to screw around with
>> licenses, license keys, BSA audits, dongles, whatever. RedHat Software
>> doesn't care if you install 1 or 100 workstations from same set
>> of disks. Try this with non-free software...
>
>Or a hundred workstations at the same time!
>
>Think NT will ever have a working jumpstart feature? I don't think so...
Heh. I know people who have installed NT from disk images. It's quite a bit
quicker than using the install program from NT or Linux.
Try again, bub.
Terry Austin
>alt.distingu...@hyperbooks.com (Terry
>Austin).wrote.posted.offered:
>
>>Give Microsoft another year or two, and you'll be paying yearly
>>licensing fees for Windows.
>
>We basically are already:
>
>Pay for Windows 95
>Pay for Windows 98
>Pay for Windows 2000
>...
None of which stop working if you don't renew the license. MS originally
planned to have Win2000 do so.
Terry Austin
>On Wed, 23 Aug 2000 21:37:45 -0700, Terry Austin <tau...@hyperbooks.com> wrote:
>>ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) wrote:
>>
>>>On Wed, 23 Aug 2000 23:03:11 GMT, Ian Montgomerie <iadm...@uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Calling it "too cheap to meter" is misleading at best. It is charitable
>>>>production,
>>>
>>>Some of it is. Other OSS is produced by hard-headed businesses with an
>>>(indirect) eye to the bottom line.
>>
>>Which is to say, it's not too cheap to meter. Glad you agree.
>
>Oh for fucks sake.
>
>Do you understand English at all????????????????????????????????????
Do you?
Terry Austin
>On Wed, 23 Aug 2000 21:37:39 -0700, Terry Austin <tau...@hyperbooks.com> wrote:
>>ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) wrote:
>>
>>>On 23 Aug 2000 07:35:44 GMT, Damien Neil <ne...@centauri.org> wrote:
>>>>On Tue, 22 Aug 2000 22:38:57 +0000,
>>>>Andrew C. Wheeler <andyw...@ultracom.net> wrote:
>>>>>> Wrong. Open source software *is* too cheap to meter.
>>>>>
>>>>>Are you saying that open source has no costs? Or that the producers,
>>>>>for reasons of their own, do not chose to pass those costs on to the
>>>>>consumers? The two situations are not identical.
>>>>
>>>>(You may wish to check your line lengths; I rewrapped this to fit.)
>>>>
>>>>Speaking as a professional programmer employed in working on open-source
>>>>software, I think I can safely say that my boss would not describe
>>>>the cost of writing it as "too cheap to meter".
>>>
>>>Irrelevant, because that isn't the cost that gets metered. If the user
>>>metered for whether they use the software, and made to pay for it if
>>>they do? In the case of Star office, for example, Sun have paid a lot
>>>of money for this, but have decided to let anyone use it freely, and
>>>not to charge them if they use it. Si it is "too cheap to meter".
>>>Do any of you actually *understand* that phrase or know where it comes
>>>from?
>>
>>Do you? Have you even read what you're replying to? Or are you just playing
>>word games because you picked a stupid analogy, and don't want to admit it?
>
>I still think it's a good analogy. Obviously it isn't, at least to many
>people on this ng.
>
>So I am apparently wrong.
Apparently.
>
>>>
>>>>Furthermore, as someone else pointed out, even using it has a cost --
>>>>you need to pay someone to support it for you.
>>>
>>>Rubbish. I use OSS al the time & have never paid anyone to support it
>>>fro me.
>>
>>And, obviously, you are representative of 100% of all computer users
>>everywhere, in every way.
>
>No, read the comment I replied to.
Soon as you do.
> It said "*you* need to pay someone to
>support it for you" (my emphasis).
And you said OSS is "too cheap to meter." Which is most definitely *not*
"too cheap to meter for *you*." Doh!
>
>It didn't say "a typicasl computer user needs to pay someone to
>support it for them".
You didn't mention the typical computer user, either, bub.
Terry Austin
>On Wed, 23 Aug 2000 21:37:47 -0700, Terry Austin <tau...@hyperbooks.com> wrote:
>>ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) wrote:
>>
>>>> The
>>>>cost equivalent of the time needed to set up and maintain it is not
>>>>negligible either (unless you consider your time worthless).
>>>
>>>True but irrelevant, unless you use a stopwatch to time how long you
>>>spend setting it up, and send yourself a bill calculated on this time.
>>
>>Bullshit. Every single second you spend working on OSS software, even as a
>>user, is time you could be spending doing something else.
>
>True but irrelevant. The original claim was that it is "too cheap to
>meter".
Which no one has supported yet.
>
>That doesn't mean it is free of cost to create or maintain.
>
>It means the costs are so low that it isn't economically worthwhile
>to charge people money for it.
Which no one has supported yet in any way.
Terry Austin
>On Wed, 23 Aug 2000 21:37:39 -0700, Terry Austin <tau...@hyperbooks.com>
>wrote:
>
>>>>Furthermore, as someone else pointed out, even using it has a cost --
>>>>you need to pay someone to support it for you.
>>>
>>>Rubbish. I use OSS al the time & have never paid anyone to support it
>>>fro me.
>>
>>And, obviously, you are representative of 100% of all computer users
>>everywhere, in every way.
>>
>>Or a moron.
>
>Shame on you for changing your email address. Into the killfile again...
I haven't changed my email address in quite some time, pookie. But if you
want, I can.
Terry Austin
>Terry Austin <tau...@hyperbooks.com> writes:
>
>(Snippage about RedHat linux and it's value)
>> And it's worth what you pay for it, especially if you are a business and
>> using it for mission critical apps. If it's important, you *must* have
>> support, and that *costs* *money*.
>
>Few points here:
>1) RedHat support services are cheap compared to ...say MicroSoft to whom
> you pay for _both_ license and support.
Glad you agree it's not too cheap to meter.
>
>2) You can train/hire/whatever your own support personnel who will be able
> to do useful stuff without signing M$ NDA:s with their own blood.
Said personnel will not work for free, and the experts who train them will
not work for free even more.
Glad you agree it's not too cheap to meter.
>
>3) It's much more convenient as you don't have to screw around with
> licenses, license keys, BSA audits, dongles, whatever. RedHat Software
> doesn't care if you install 1 or 100 workstations from same set
> of disks. Try this with non-free software...
Glad you agree it's not too cheap to meter. Which is the point at hand.
>
>> >When you buy Red Hat linux, you are paying for the manual, the pretty
>> >box it comes in, the physical media, and the support they offer. You are
>> >not paying for the software.
>>
>> The software, in and of itself, is nearly useless for anything important.
>
>Have you ever tried to do it _without_ software?
Nice dodge. Did you do that on purpose, or are you a moron? Try answering
what I actually said, instead of changing the subject.
>
>> Either you have support staff on your payroll, or you pay for it from a
>> third party. It's *never* free in the monetary sense.
>
>You are confusing software to running the said software. Latter is never
>free. Former is sometimes free.
When talking about software in a business environment, there is no
distinction. TCO, Total Cost of Ownership. Try to convince a corporate exec
that OSS is better because it's free, even though he'll have to fire all
this $35,000 MCSEs and hire an equal number of $100,000 Linux certified
admins. The software is free, sure. Unless you count the real cost.
(And no, you don't have to make that precise trade-off to go from Windows to
NT. But when the Linux Taliban refuse to address the support costs - and you
people do, nine times out of ten - the people who control the money assume,
usually rightly, that you have something to hide. Deal with *reality*, not
what you want to be reality.)
>
>> Not to mention, that isn't what the "free" in "free software" even means.
>> Get a clue, will ya?
>
>Free as a speech, free as a beer. Sometimes both apply. Sometimes only
>one. Sometimes neither.
And when the software matters, it's never free financially. The other
meanings are irrelevant to the business world. A point that will keep OSS
from pushing MS out of the top until the zealots understand it.
J Greely
>Or a hundred workstations at the same time!
>Think NT will ever have a working jumpstart feature? I don't think so...
That's okay, Linux doesn't really have much of one, either, although
MOSIP will cheerfully do custom image installs of NT, Solaris, Linux,
and pretty much anything else you can convince Rory to support.
[and, yes, there is a Microsoft-supported method for unattended batch
installs of NT, and it's in use at a number of sites; you just don't
want to know how it works. You *really* don't want to know]
-j
phil hunt
>>
>>>Furthermore, as someone else pointed out, even using it has a cost --
>>>you need to pay someone to support it for you.
>>
>>Rubbish. I use OSS al the time & have never paid anyone to support it
>>fro me.
>
>And, obviously, you are representative of 100% of all computer users
>everywhere, in every way.
No, read the comment I replied to. It said "*you* need to pay someone to
support it for you" (my emphasis).
It didn't say "a typicasl computer user needs to pay someone to
support it for them".
phil hunt
>ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) wrote:
>
>>>cost equivalent of the time needed to set up and maintain it is not
>>>negligible either (unless you consider your time worthless).
>>
>>True but irrelevant, unless you use a stopwatch to time how long you
>>spend setting it up, and send yourself a bill calculated on this time.
>
>user, is time you could be spending doing something else.
True but irrelevant. The original claim was that it is "too cheap to
meter".
That doesn't mean it is free of cost to create or maintain.
It means the costs are so low that it isn't economically worthwhile
to charge people money for it.
phil hunt
>ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) wrote:
>
>>>
>>>Calling it "too cheap to meter" is misleading at best. It is charitable
>>>production,
>>
>>Some of it is. Other OSS is produced by hard-headed businesses with an
>>(indirect) eye to the bottom line.
>
Oh for fucks sake.
Do you understand English at all????????????????????????????????????
--
Nancy Lebovitz
Keith F. Lynch <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>
>I agree completely. I have been on the net for 23 years, often
>several hours per day every day, and I have never purchased anything
>online. I prefer to see a thing before I buy it. Plus, I've never
>had a credit card, and online merchants make it difficult to do
For your purposes, is a debit card the same sort of thing as a credit
card?
>anything without one. Plus, the Lynx browser won't due secure
>transactions. Plus, I don't like to have to stay home for a full day
>or two so as to be here when the delivery person happens to show up.
>
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
My buttons and I will be at Chicon
Steven Yap
[...]
> anything without one. Plus, the Lynx browser won't due secure
> transactions. Plus, I don't like to have to stay home for a full
> day or two so as to be here when the delivery person happens to show
> up.
>
Actually, you can get Lynx which has been compiled against the SSL
(Secure Socket Layer) libraries, which is the "standard" encryption
protocol for "secure" online transactions.
--
Steven
Steinn Sigurdsson
> rebooted... wow, an actual multi-user, reasonably stable and secure OS that
> is compatible with most of the hardware and software out there.
Great. After 20 years of development M$ gets to a point
where they have an OS (sort of) which can sort of do what a mediocre
Unix implementation did in the mid-80s.
Steven Yap
> Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> writes:
>
> > Or a hundred workstations at the same time! Think NT will ever
> > have a working jumpstart feature? I don't think so...
>
> That's okay, Linux doesn't really have much of one, either, although
> MOSIP will cheerfully do custom image installs of NT, Solaris,
> Linux, and pretty much anything else you can convince Rory to
> support.
>
I take it then that RedHat's KickStart is not up to scratch with
regards to unattended custom installs (of disc images or otherwise).
--
steven
Phil Fraering
I've heard slackware has one, but I've never used it.
--
Phil Fraering "One day, Pinky, A MOUSE shall rule, and it is the
p...@globalreach.net humans who will be forced to endure these humiliating
/Will work for tape/ diversions!"
"You mean like Orlando, Brain?"
J Greely
>I take it then that RedHat's KickStart is not up to scratch with
>regards to unattended custom installs (of disc images or otherwise).
I'll have to play with it again sometime, but last I looked at what
was out there, not really. Perhaps the biggest problem is that I've
yet to see a Linux distribution that was worth installing on five
hundred machines that you're betting the rent on; nothing wrong with
the kernel or the code, but distributions tend to be assembled by
people who think a dozen machines is a lot.
The tools are getting better, and are paying more attention to
cross-platform issues, but if I had a free choice between supporting a
large room filled with Linux boxes and a large room filled with
Solaris boxes, I'd take Solaris. Or even HP-UX.
Please don't ask me about NT or W2K. :-)
-j