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After years of denial and stonewalling, Amazon has admitted for the first time that they have a problem with counterfeit products. This primarily affects the Amazon Marketplace.
As a personal victim of getting counterfeit goods several times from Amazon (and eBay), I thought I'd help spread the word a bit farther. Apparently counterfeit board games is a big thing.
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Amazon Admits to Counterfeit Problem
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< nobse> bleh... last night I had a dream... someone NMU'ed vim...
nightmare
-- in #debian-devel
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday February 14 2019, @01:19PM (6 children)
This wasn't a counterfeit.
There's a particular Starbucks in Portland's highly-gentrified Pearl District - it was at first an unused railroad switchyard, as well as the site of some breweries that remain - that was a testbed for "Starbucks Evenings": they sold good wine, craft beer and expensive, unsatisfying yet tasty hot appetizers.
It's always been my favorite, even during my homelessness. But back when I had some cash I was sitting on the couch coding up Warp Life™ [warplife.com], my Real Soon Now iOS App, when some guy sat on the other end of the couch. As I was new in town I introduced myself then asked, "What do you do?"
"These days, mostly VC and serving on boards. But I got my start with an iPhone App that made two million because it was one of the very first in the App Store."
"What did it do?"
"It was an outright rip-off of a popular board game. Of course we got sued, but by then had established such a great reputation that our second product sold like hotcakes too."
Consider that despite his conviction on ten counts, with one being "Operating A Criminal Enterprise", itself composed of twenty-six other felonies including Conspiracy To Commit Murder, many of the Mexican people - especially farmers in the mountains - remain grateful to El Chapo because he created so very many jobs.
That particular Starbucks as well as the quite tragically out-of-business Backspace have always been places to meet to Discuss Deals. I think the chances were pretty good he wanted to talk about maybe funding my startup, but the whole reason I wound up homeless is that I'm quite blunt about the Software Industry being A Den of Iniquity [warplife.com]:
Far from policing themselves or setting standards, I've actually had recruiters send me hate mail to accuse me of stealing food from their hungry childrens' mouths.
The Mind Simply Reels.
I'm building Soggy Jobs for the specific purpose of De-Iniquitifying the practice of hiring.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 14 2019, @02:28PM (1 child)
So, you're really a Republican? Or a lawyer? Or both?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday February 14 2019, @02:49PM
There are all kinds of ways I could make six figures, but I prefer while away my hours, days, weeks and years - yea, even my lifetime! - to fapping to my Muse Euterpe.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday February 14 2019, @04:13PM (1 child)
I'm confused...
(Score: 3, Informative) by DutchUncle on Thursday February 14 2019, @08:34PM
I understood it as: hors d'oeuvre sized portions at meal-sized prices.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday February 14 2019, @05:11PM (1 child)
My take on copyright is that people will eventually get over it and the pirates will win. But it will take a while yet.
Copyright is brilliant in its evil and wrongness. Pushes people's buttons. Plays on the fear of loss. All the time, authors and collectors fall for the "copying is stealing" fallacy. There are also enough fans who fall for it to keep the system limping along. Those among the latter who dream of becoming authors themselves can be some of the most rabid supporters. Sympathy for the "authors' starving children" (everyone has starving children, no?) and the higher friction or absence of other ways to compensate authors also props up copyright. On that last, we really need more and better options, better crowdfunding, and such things as more digital notaries to squelch plagiarism.
As for board games and counterfeiting, I think board games are overpriced. I haven't visited computer game retail stores in a long time, but I hear that prices have really come down? Used to be $60 for a typical new title, and now it's, I don't know, $30? Maybe even $10? Anyway, board games are still at the equivalent of the old $60 price point of computer games. They're so expensive that with 3D printing coming down in price, it can be a lot cheaper to print than to buy a copy. While the quality of such items as automobile parts and handbags can matter and counterfeits can be vastly inferior, it's much harder for board game components to be too cheap, and not be obvious about it. Still possible, sure, but like writings, the value in a board game is more in the design and playtesting, not the physical components.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday February 14 2019, @05:40PM
I don’t worry about piracy, I worry about publishers. Consider the multiply-bestselling writer Steven Pressfield now owns his own publishing company, Black Irish Books, in partnership with his editor at their former publishing company.
Since living in the pacific north left I’ve met many who simply do not want computers or the web to be a part of their lives. Not one of them cited money or lack of computer skills as their reasons. One was a Clark County Custody Division Deputy who uses computers all day long but never when he’s off work.
Others prefer ebooks; one of my very best friends has never read one word of mine because I don’t have any audiobook editions.
For these two reasons I will crowdfund a press run of my collected essays on mental illness.
That will be at GoFundMe because I’ll give every last one of those books free as in beer to First Responders.
In the front of the book I’ll solicit donations to give away even more books to them.
My second book I’m keeping a lid on as it will be a for - hopefully - profit technical book. That one I expect to sell like hot cakes; my technical articles have always been exceedingly popular.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]