First:
So, presumably, by paying the tax, I can pirate as much music as I like! Excellent.

Second:
I've written and recorded a song. Where do I sign to get my share of the cash?

For years, everyone has been saying that only the small market share of OS X stops criminals from targeting it.

This must mean that OS X has now reached a significant milestone in market share! Hurrah!

That's IBM.

They have patents on automatic masturbators and technodildonic devices.

Actually, I've worked in publishing for over fifteen years. But you're right, I probably didn't learn anything in all that time. Are you suggesting that publishers don't market and sell the books they've invested in these days....?

50% of the retail price goes to the bookseller.
If you want your book in the window or on the table in a large chain store, then the publisher pays extra for that.

The publisher must take all his costs, including the author's royalty out of the remainder. That includes production costs, warehousing, distribution; as well as all your staff who do the editing, marketing, and sales. Most publishers have a team of salesmen who schlep around book stores/chain asking if sellers will take their books.

A book is only worthwhile for a publisher if they can be fairly certain that it will sell many 10s of 1000s of copies in its lifetime. A book that only sells 5000 across 10 years will not make them any money, even at the "academic" prices that you find abhorrent.

I'm actually all in favour of self-publishing, but it is not a magic bullet. If you think you can market and sell 1000s of copies, then off you go. But for the vast majority, they'll be sitting in the attic for years to come.

And let's not pretend that publishers are evil money-grabbers. There's an old joke in publishing: "If we wanted to make money, we would be paper merchants."

The internet is actually helping publishers to sell their books directly, thus cutting out the booksellers. As for ebooks, they have their place and their use, but there will still be a market a physical book for many years to come.

Yes, you could offer your editor a cut when you self-publish. Oh, and you might want to get someone to do marketing and PR for you, and offer them a cut. Oh, and then a salesman to schlep round book chains touting your book, and offer them a cut. And you'll need a print production consultant to oversee the print run. They should get a cut too. And maybe a designer.

I guess warehousing and distribution will probably just come out of your end.

Here's some numbers about publishing that might help in any Slashdot discussion about dead tree vs. PDF and evil academic presses:

50% of the retail price goes to the book seller. The seller can of course discount the price to stimulate interest, out of this.
The other half goes to the publisher, who must pay:
Print and Production costs (on a 500-page, casebound, colour-illustrated book on a short print run, this can be high)
Distribution (shipping, warehousing, delivery).
Overheads of running the business: staff, rent, heating, lighting, advertising, etc
8%-12% goes to the author.

So a book that has projected sales of under 5,000 copies is not a safe bet for a publisher.

If you self-publish, you get a larger share of the retail price -- but then you also have to pay for the costs yourself. It's also worth pointing that even the most erudite author benefits from a good editor.

I'm still not convinced by the "market share" argument. The traditional rebuff is that Mac OS 9 had more malware than OS X, despite a smaller market share.

There may well be large gaping holes in Mac security. The question is: why is no one exploiting them? I don't mean winning a competition, but maliciously or criminally using them.

At what percentage of market share does it become viable to start writing malware? 25%? 50%? 75%?

Regardless of percentage, there are reckoned to be c. 94 million OS X users. Is that still not enough? As we all know, Mac users are computer illiterates with far more money than sense. Surely this sector would seem ideal for targeting by malware writers?

Assuming the reason for the lack of malware is NOT the inherent robustness of the OS; and it's NOT the market share: then what IS it?

"Cripes. Sauron is really Old Man Withers!"

"And I would have got away with it, if it wasn't for you pesky meddling kids. Oh, wait, you're hobbits, not kids."

So can we use this technology to make smarter sharks? That would be an interesting piece of research with no foreseeable problems.

It would also go well with some laser research that I've been doing.

3D seemed to be popular first in the 1950s, with all the schlock B-movie sci-fi; then it had another run in the 80s (I saw Jaws 3-D, which was rubbish then).

Now it's having another go. I've seen Despicable Me, and Tron Legacy at the Leicester Square Empire, which is THX 1138 approved and pretty much the best cinema experience you can have. They actually REMOVED seats to improve the experience!!!!

Given the choice, I wouldn't watch films in 3D. Both times, I wasn't expecting it.

What March says is true: it's bad for your eyes, you have to constantly adjust your depth of field according to where the pokey object is; and it's primary use is simply the novelty of poking stuff towards you.

This is a fad as it was in the 80s and the 50s. God only knows why anyone would want a 3D TV in their living room.

-ize has only stopped being standard British English in the last 20 years. Check the Oxford English Dictionary, where most words are still given the ize suffix as default, with -ise as an accepted alternative.

However, there were a handful of exceptions that were strictly spelled with -ise, and because it was thoguht a greater crime to spell them with a z than to spell the remainder with an s, -ise became popular through the rule: "if in doubt, use an s".

There's even an episode of the 80s TV detective series Morse, where he questions the authenticity of suicide note, because "No Oxford man would spell 'realize' with an s".

When people say "They are business, it's not censorship. They can sell whatever they want", I am reminded of the following:

Giosué Orefice: "No Jews or Dogs Allowed." Why do all the shops say, "No Jews Allowed"?
Guido: Oh, that. "Not Allowed" signs are the latest trend! The other day, I was in a shop with my friend the kangaroo, but their sign said, "No Kangaroos Allowed," and I said to my friend, "Well, what can I do? They don't allow kangaroos."
Giosué Orefice: Why doesn't our shop have a "Not Allowed" sign?
Guido: Well, tomorrow, we'll put one up. We won't let in anything we don't like. What don't you like?
Giosué Orefice: Spiders.
Guido: Good. I don't like Visigoths. Tomorrow, we'll get a sign: "No Spiders or Visigoths Allowed."

La vita é bella, Roberto Begnini.

It may also explain why Beowulf was a sack of shit.

However, it doesn't explain why you can feel strong empathy with the characters in Finding Nemo; and also why you find the facial expressions that pass for acting in some soaps so unhuman as to pass for furniture.