(978): When a man talks dirty to a woman, it's sexual harassment. When a woman talks dirty to a man, it's $3.95 a minute.

I recently read Predictably Irrational.

It's a fascinating examination of why human beings are wired and conditioned to react irrationally. We human beings are a selfish bunch, so it's all the more surprising to see how easily we can be manipulated to behave in ways that run counter to our own self-interest.

This isn't just a "gee-whiz" observation; understanding how and why we behave irrationally is important. If you don't understand how these irrational behaviors are triggered, the marketing weasels will use them against you.

In fact, it's already happening. Witness 10 Irrational Human Behaviors and How to Leverage Them to Improve Web Marketing. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Let's take a look at the various excerpts presented in that article, and consider how we can avoid falling into the rut of predictably irrational behavior -- and defend ourselves from those vicious marketing weasels.

1. Encourage false comparisons

When Williams-Sonoma introduced bread machines, sales were slow. When they added a "deluxe" version that was 50% more expensive, they started flying off the shelves; the first bread machine now appeared to be a bargain

When contemplating the purchase of a $25 pen, the majority of subjects would drive to another store 15 minutes away to save $7. When contemplating the purchase of a $455 suit, the majority of subjects would not drive to another store 15 minutes away to save $7. The amount saved and time involved are the same, but people make very different choices. Watch out for relative thinking; it comes naturally to all of us.

• Realize that some premium options exist as decoys -- that is, they are there only to make the less expensive options look more appealing, because they're easy to compare. Don't make binding decisions solely based on how easy it is to compare two side-by-side options from the same vendor. Try comparing all the alternatives, even those from other vendors.
• Don't be swayed by relative percentages for small dollar amounts. Yes, you saved 25%, but how much effort and time did you expend on that seven bucks?

2. Reinforce Anchoring

Savador Assael, the Pearl King, single-handedly created the market for black pearls, which were unknown in the industry before 1973. His first attempt to market the pearls was an utter failure; he didn't sell a single pearl. So he went to his friend, Harry Winston, and had Winston put them in the window of his 5th Avenue store with an outrageous price tag attached. Then he ran full page ads in glossy magazines with black pearls next to diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Soon, black pearls were considered precious.

Simonsohn and Loewenstein found that people who move to a new city remain anchored to the prices they paid in their previous city. People who move from Lubbock to Pittsburgh squeeze their families into smaller houses to pay the same amount. People who move from LA to Pittsburgh don't save money, they just move into mansions.

• Scale your purchases to your needs, not your circumstances or wallet size. What do you actually use? How much do you use it, and how frequently?
• Try to objectively measure the value of what you're buying; don't be tricked into measuring relative to similar products or competitors. How much does buying this save you or your company? How much benefit will you get out of it? Attempt to measure that benefit by putting a concrete dollar amount on it.

3. It's "Free"!

Ariely, Shampanier, and Mazar conducted an experiment using Lindt truffles and Hershey's Kisses. When a truffle was $0.15 and a kiss was $0.01, 73% of subjects chose the truffle and 27% the Kiss. But when a truffle was $0.14 and a kiss was free, 69% chose the kiss and 31% the truffle.

According to standard economic theory, the price reduction shouldn't have lead to any behavior change, but it did.

Ariely's theory is that for normal transactions, we consider both upside and downside. But when something is free, we forget about the downside. "Free" makes us perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is. Humans are loss-averse; when considering a normal purchase, loss-aversion comes into play. But when an item is free, there is no visible possibility of loss

• You will tend to overestimate the value of items you get for free. Resist this by viewing free stuff skeptically rather than welcoming it with open arms. If it was really that great, why would it be free?
• Free stuff often comes with well hidden and subtle strings attached. How will using a free service or obtaining a free item influence your future choices? What paid alternatives are you avoiding by choosing the free route, and why?
• How much effort will the free option cost you? Are there non-free options which would cost less in time or effort? How much is your time worth?
• When you use a free service or product, you are implicitly endorsing and encouraging the provider, effectively beating a path to their door. Is this something you are comfortable with?

4. Exploit social norms

The AARP asked lawyers to participate in a program where they would offer their services to needy employees for a discounted price of $30/hour. No dice. When the program manager instead asked if they'd offer their services for free, the lawyers overwhelmingly said they would participate

• Companies may appeal to your innate sense of community or public good to convince you to do their work at zero pay. Consider carefully before choosing to participate; what do you get out of contributing your time and effort? Is this truly a worthy cause? Would this be worth doing if it was a paid gig?
• When it comes to the web, make sure you aren't being turned into a digital sharecropper.

5. Design for Procrastination

Ariely conducted an experiment on his class. Students were required to write three papers. Ariely asked the first group to commit to dates by which they would turn in each paper. Late papers would be penalized 1% per day. There was no penalty for turning papers in early. The logical response is to commit to turning all three papers in on the last day of class. The second group was given no deadlines; all three papers were due in the last day of class. The third group was directed to turn their papers in on the 4th, 8th, and 12th weeks.

The results? Group 3 (imposed deadlines) got the best grades. Group 2 (no deadlines) got the worst grades, and Group 1 (self-selected deadlines) finished in the middle. Allowing students to pre-commit to deadlines improved performance. Students who spaced out their commitments did well; students who did the logical thing and gave no commitments did badly.

• Steer clear of offers of low-rate trial periods which auto-convert into automatic recurring monthly billing. They know that most people will procrastinate and forget to cancel before the recurring billing kicks in.
• Either favor fixed-rate, fixed-term plans -- or become meticulous about cancelling recurring services when you're not using them.

6. Utilize the Endowment Effect

Ariely and Carmon conducted an experiment on Duke students, who sleep out for weeks to get basketball tickets; even those who sleep out are still subjected to a lottery at the end. Some students get tickets, some don't. The students who didn't get tickets told Ariely that they'd be willing to pay up to $170 for tickets. The students who did get the tickets told Ariely that they wouldn't accept less than $2,400 for their tickets.

There are three fundamental quirks of human nature. We fall in love with what we already have. We focus on what we might lose, rather than what we might gain. We assume that other people will see the transaction from the same perspective as we do.

• The value of what you've spent so far on a service, product, or relationship -- in effort or money -- is probably far less than you think. Be willing to walk away.
• Once you've bought something, never rely on your internal judgment to assess its value, because you're too close to it now. Ask other people what they'd pay for this service, product, or relationship. Objectively research what others pay online.

7. Capitalize on our Aversion to Loss

Ariely and Shin conducted an experiment on MIT students. They devised a computer game which offered players three doors: Red, Blue, and Green. You started with 100 clicks. You clicked to enter a room. Once in a room, each click netted you between 1-10 cents. You could also switch rooms (at the cost of a click). The rooms were programmed to provide different levels of rewards (there was variation within each room's payoffs, but it was pretty easy to tell which one provided the best payout).

Players tended to try all three rooms, figure out which one had the highest payout, and then spend all their time there. (These are MIT students we're talking about). Then, however, Ariely introduced a new wrinkle: Any door left unvisited for 12 clicks would disappear forever. With each click, the unclicked doors shrank by 1/12th.

Now, players jumped from door to door, trying to keep their options open.They made 15% less money; in fact, by choosing any of the doors and sticking with it, they could have made more money.

Ariely increased the cost of opening a door to 3 cents; no change--players still seemed compelled to keeping their options open. Ariely told participants the exact monetary payoff of each door; no change. Ariely allowed participants as many practice runs as they wanted before the actual experiment; no change. Ariely changed the rules so that any door could be "reincarnated" with a single click; no change.

Players just couldn't tolerate the idea of the loss, and so they did whatever was necessary to prevent their doors from closing, even though disappearance had no real consequences and could be easily reversed. We feel compelled to preserve options, even at great expense, even when it doesn't make sense.

• If your choices are artificially narrowed, don't passively get funneled towards the goal they're herding you toward. Demand choice, even if it means switching vendors or allegiances.
• Don't pay extra for options, unless you can point to hard evidence that you need those options. Some options exist just to make you doubt yourself, so you'll worry about not having them.

8. Engender Unreasonable Expectations

Ariely, Lee, and Frederick conducted yet another experiment on MIT students. They let students taste two different beers, and then choose to get a free pint of one of the brews. Brew A was Budweiser. Brew B was Budweiser, plus 2 drops of balsamic vinegar per ounce.

When students were not told about the nature of the beers, they overwhelmingly chose the balsamic beer. When students were told about the true nature of the beers, they overwhelmingly chose the Budweiser. If you tell people up front that something might be distasteful, the odds are good they'll end up agreeing with you--because of their expectations.

• Whatever you've heard about a brand, company, or product -- there's no substitute for your own hands-on experience. Let your own opinions guide you, not the opinions of others.
• Just because something is labelled "premium" or "pro" or "award-winning" doesn't mean it is. Research these claims; don't let marketing set your expectations. Rely on evidence and facts.

9. Leverage Pricing Bias

Ariely, Waber, Shiv, and Carmon made up a fake painkiller, Veladone-Rx. An attractive woman in a business suit (with a faint Russian accent) told subjects that 92% of patients receiving VR reported significant pain relief in 10 minutes, with relief lasting up to 8 hours.

When told that the drug cost $2.50 per dose, nearly all of the subjects reported pain relief. When told that the drug cost $0.10 per dose, only half of the subjects reported pain relief. The more pain a person experienced, the more pronounced the effect. A similar study at U Iowa showed that students who paid list price for cold medications reported better medical outcomes than those who bought discount (but clinically identical) drugs.

• Price often has nothing to do with value. Expensive is not synonymous with quality. Investigate whether the price is justified; never accept it at face value.
• Don't fall prey to the "moneymoon"; just because you paid for something doesn't mean it's automatically worthwhile. Not everything we pay money for works well, or was even worth what we spent for it. We all make mistakes when buying things, but we don't want to admit it.

What I learned from Predictably Irrational is that everyone is irrational sometimes, and that's OK. We're not perfectly logical Vulcans, after all. The trick is training yourself to know when you're most likely to make irrational choices, and to resist those impulses.

If you aren't at least aware of our sad, irrational human condition, well ... that's exactly where the marketing weasels want you.

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This post is the latest in an ongoing series about how we harness the data we collect to improve our products and services for our users. - Ed.

What if you could do a little something to improve the world during your daily drive to work? Here are a few ideas: tell everybody in the city when you're stuck in slow-moving traffic; warn the drivers on the freeway behind you that they should consider an alternate route; tell the people still at home that they should spend another ten minutes reading the morning news before they leave for work; tell your city government that they might want to change the timing of that traffic light at the highway on-ramp. Of course, you can't just get on the phone and call everybody, and your one traffic report from your one spot on the road might not help much anyway. But if everybody on the road, all at once, could tell the world how fast their car is moving, and we could make it easy for anybody to check that information on their computer or cell phone, well — then we'd be getting somewhere.

If you use Google Maps for mobile with GPS enabled on your phone, that's exactly what you can do. When you choose to enable Google Maps with My Location, your phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you're moving. When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions. We continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers. It takes almost zero effort on your part — just turn on Google Maps for mobile before starting your car — and the more people that participate, the better the resulting traffic reports get for everybody.


This week we're expanding our traffic layer to cover all U.S. highways and arterials when data is available. We're able to do this thanks in no small part to the data contributed by our users. This is exactly the kind of technology that we love at Google because it's so easy for a single person to help out, but can be incredibly powerful when a lot of people use it together. Imagine if you knew the exact traffic speed on every road in the city — every intersection, backstreet and freeway on-ramp — and how that would affect the way you drive, help the environment and impact the way our government makes road planning decisions. This idea, which we geeks call "crowdsourcing," isn't new. Ever since GPS location started coming to mainstream devices, people have been thinking of ways to use it to figure out how fast the traffic is moving. But for us to really make it work, we had to solve problems of scale (because you can't get useful traffic results until you have a LOT of devices reporting their speeds) and privacy (because we don't want anybody to be able to analyze Google's traffic data to see the movement of a particular phone, even when that phone is completely anonymous).

We achieve scale by making Google Maps for mobile easy to install and use, and by making it easy for people to provide information about their own vehicle speed. There's no extra device to plug into your car and no extra software to buy. Google Maps is free and works with most cell phones, and the number of cell phones with GPS is rising every day. Some phones, such as the T-Mobile myTouch 3G and the Palm Pre, come with Google Maps and traffic crowdsourcing pre-installed (the iPhone Maps application, however, does not support traffic crowdsourcing). Google is fortunate to have a lot of people using our products, and that scale helps make our products better.

We understand that many people would be concerned about telling the world how fast their car was moving if they also had to tell the world where they were going, so we built privacy protections in from the start. We only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate traffic conditions, and only do so when you have chosen to enable location services on your phone. We use our scale to provide further privacy protection: When a lot of people are reporting data from the same area, we combine their data together to make it hard to tell one phone from another. Even though the vehicle carrying a phone is anonymous, we don't want anybody to be able to find out where that anonymous vehicle came from or where it went — so we find the start and end points of every trip and permanently delete that data so that even Google ceases to have access to it. We take the privacy concerns related to user location data seriously, and have worked hard to protect the privacy of users who share this data — but we still understand that not everybody will want to participate. If you'd like to stop your phone from sending anonymous location data back to Google, you can find opt-out instructions here.

We've already been able to provide useful traffic information with the help of our existing mobile users, but we hope that is just the start. As GPS-enabled phones and data plans get less expensive, more people will be able to participate. Crowdsourcing traffic gives us a way to harness bits of location data from our users and give it back to them in a form they can use to make impactful decisions that affect their free time, their pocketbooks and the environment. The more people use it, the better it will get. So next time you're sitting in morning traffic, turn on Google Maps for mobile and let someone else know they can hit the snooze button one more time. Tomorrow morning, they might do the same for you.

Posted by Dave Barth, Product Manager for Google Maps

Do you remember Microsoft Bob? If you do, you probably remember it as an intensely marketed but laughable failure -- what some call the "number one flop" at Microsoft.

There's no question that Microsoft Bob was nothing short of an unmitigated disaster. But that's the funny thing about failures -- they often lead to later successes. Take it from someone who lived and breathed the Bob project:

I was the one who sent Bill Gates email at the height of the positive Bob-mania that said we were likely to face a horrible backlash. Tech influentials had started telling me that they were going to bury Bob. They not only didn't like it, they were somehow angry that it had even been developed. It was personal.

And that's exactly what happened. Bob got killed. But first, it was ridiculed and stomped.

For Microsoft, it was a costly mistake. For the people who worked on it, Bob taught many lessons. Lessons that came into play for subsequent products that made a big impact, both at Microsoft and beyond.

How many people know that the lead developer for Bob 2.0 was also the co-founder of Valve and the development lead for Half-Life, which became an industry phenomenon, winning more than 50 Game of the Year awards and selling more than 10 million copies?

Or that Darrin Massena - development lead for Bob 1.0, most recently named Technical Innovator of the Year here in Washington State - and Valve co-founder Mike Harrington are the co-founders and partners behind Picnik - which is now the world's leading online photo editor, attracting almost 40 million visits a month and a million unique users a day.

And then, of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Melinda French -- Bill Gates' future wife -- managed the Microsoft Bob project at one point. Bob was the first Microsoft consumer project that Bill Gates personally had a hand in launching. Well, at least he got a wife out of it.

Yes, Bob was an obvious, undisputed and epic failure. We can point and laugh at Bob. But to me, Bob is less of a comic figure than a tragic one.

Unless you're an exceptionally lucky software developer, you've probably worked on more projects that failed than projects that succeeded. Failure is de rigeur in our industry. Odds are, you're working on a project that will fail right now. Oh sure, it may not seem like a failure yet. Maybe it'll fail in some completely unanticipated way. Heck, maybe your project will buck the odds and even succeed.

But I doubt it.

I own a boxed copy of Microsoft Bob. I keep it on my shelf to remind me that these kinds of relentless, inevitable failures aren't the crushing setbacks they often appear from the outside. On the contrary; I believe it's impossible to succeed without failing.

Charles Bosk, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, once conducted a set of interviews with young doctors who had either resigned or been fired from neurosurgery-training programs, in an effort to figure out what separated the unsuccessful surgeons from their successful counterparts.

He concluded that, far more than technical skills or intelligence, what was necessary for success was the sort of attitude that Quest has -- a practical-minded obsession with the possibility and the consequences of failure. "When I interviewed the surgeons who were fired, I used to leave the interview shaking," Bosk said. "I would hear these horrible stories about what they did wrong, but the thing was that they didn't know that what they did was wrong. In my interviewing, I began to develop what I thought was an indicator of whether someone was going to be a good surgeon or not. It was a couple of simple questions: Have you ever made a mistake? And, if so, what was your worst mistake? The people who said, 'Gee, I haven't really had one,' or, 'I've had a couple of bad outcomes but they were due to things outside my control' -- invariably those were the worst candidates. And the residents who said, 'I make mistakes all the time. There was this horrible thing that happened just yesterday and here's what it was.' They were the best. They had the ability to rethink everything that they'd done and imagine how they might have done it differently."

I recently watched the documentary Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball.

It's a gripping story of a pinball industry in crisis. In order to save it, the engineers at Williams -- the only remaining manufacturer of pinball machines in the United States -- were given a herculean task: invent a new form of pinball so compelling that it makes all previous pinball machines seem obsolete. I don't want to spoil the whole documentary, so I'll gloss over exactly how that happened, but astoundingly enough -- they succeeded.

And then were promptly laid off en masse, as Williams shut down its pinball operations.

Unlike Microsoft Bob, the Williams engineers built an almost revolutionary product that was both critically acclaimed and sold well -- but none of that mattered. It's sobering to watch the end reel of Tilt, as the engineers involved mournfully discuss the termination of their bold and seemingly successful project.

Everyone was in awe. They couldn't understand why it happened. Here we'd just done this thing that from all we could tell was a total success. Why would they do that?

We succeeded. Management gave us an impossible goal, and we sat there and we actually did what they thought we couldn't do.

You know, we didn't really win... we lost. I gave it everything I had. I think that those fifty guys that worked on it, they also passionately did everything that they could.

Sometimes, even when your project succeeds, you've failed. Due to forces entirely beyond your control. It's depressing, but it's reality.

The trailout isn't all doom and gloom. It also documents the ways in which these talented pinball engineers went on to practice their craft after being laid off. Most of them still work in the video game or pinball industry. Some freelance. Others formed their own companies. A few went on to work at Stern Pinball, which figured out how to make a small number of pinball machines and still turn a profit.

These two stories, these two projects -- the abject failure of Microsoft Bob, and the aborted success of Pinball 2000 -- have something in common beyond mere failure. All the engineers involved not only survived these failures, but often went on to greater success afterwards. Possibly as a direct result of their work on these "failures".

Failure is a wonderful teacher. But there's no need to seek out failure. It will find you. Whatever project you're working on, consider it an opportunity to learn and practice your craft. It's worth doing because, well, it's worth doing. The journey of the project should be its own reward, regardless of whatever happens to lie at the end of that journey.

The only truly failed project is the one where you didn't learn anything along the way.

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From http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/98csj/why_hasnt_there_been_a_serious_antitrust_suit/

If Microsoft started offering a computer (the hardware) and made some changes to Windows that forced all Windows users to use the Microsoft-sold computer, while simultaneously breaking any other computers' ability to run Windows (whether they be Dell, HP, eMachines, etc.), there would be outrage. Why is nobody outraged at Apple for engaging in this very practice?

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I'm a tech at a school that has around 700 Macs in various forms, I primarily use Windows at home for software development, and all my servers run some Unix variant. I have a working knowledge of all major operating systems, and wouldn't necessarily consider myself biased. That said, I've always wondered how Apple gets away with things that Microsoft would be fiercely attacked for.

The Apple/Microsoft debate is a strange one. Microsoft sells an OS, while Apple bundles their OS/hardware and sells the whole thing as a package. Many people compare the two like they're both only selling their OS. Once you can differentiate between the offerings, the real debate can begin.

1) The hardware architecture is identical. All of Apple's computers are now built from standard "pc" components. Apple simply locks their OS so that it only runs on their "supported" hardware, and intentionally breaks compatibility with unsupported hardware, so its not viable to build a "frankenmac" or otherwise use off-the-shelf components to enhance your Mac. Additionally, although the components are the same as you find in low-cost "PCs," Apple has decided to significantly increase the price of the hardware (and I love how Apple brags that their OS only costs $100 or so [if the enhancements/fixes made through the OS X series were made to Windows, they would only be released as free service packs]).

2) People compare Vista to Mac OS X. At Vista's launch, there were plenty of hardware incompatibilities, driver issues, and other headaches for Microsoft. Many people claimed that OS X had none of these issues -- and of course not! If Microsoft developed their OS to only support a tiny handful of hardware (and essentially forced ALL users of Vista to use that hardware), there wouldn't have been ANY problems with Vista, as all of the devices could have been thoroughly tested. Could you imagine how much flak Microsoft would get if they tried to lock users into a single system configuration? Let alone a system configuration that THEY specify and that is ONLY sold by Microsoft. Why do people even bring this up? Windows is clearly superior in that it supports far more hardware than Mac does. You can't even boot the Mac installer on most "pc" hardware; and even if you were to get the OS installed, you'd be lucky if ANY of your hardware actually worked properly.

3) Microsoft gets attacked for even including its own browser with Windows without offering users a choice of competing products. How can Apple get away with this? How can Apple get away with things such as breaking the ability for competing mp3 players to sync with iTunes?

4) Apple has shown consistently, through mediums such as the Mac OS, iPhone app store approval process, and iTunes/music store, that they want to maintain strict control over their software and lock users into proprietary/expensive systems.

Why is it that while Apple has done significantly more to intentionally break competing products and force users to stick with its entire line of hardware/software/devices, it doesn't gather the same criticism as Microsoft? Why has no serious anti-trust suit been filed against Apple over their obvious moves to eliminate competition?

One of the side effects of using the iPhone App store so much is that it's started to fundamentally alter my perception of software pricing. So many excellent iPhone applications are either free, or no more than a few bucks at most. That's below the threshold of impulse purchase and squarely in no-brainer territory for anything decent that I happen to be interested in.

But applications that cost $5 or more? Outrageous! Highway robbery!

This is all very strange, as a guy who is used to spending at least $30 for software of any consequence whatsoever. I love supporting my fellow software developers with my wallet, and the iPhone App Store has never made that easier.

While there's an odd aspect of race to the bottom that I'm not sure is entirely healthy for the iPhone app ecosystem, the idea that software should be priced low enough to pass the average user's "why not" threshold is a powerful one.

What I think isn't well understood here is that low prices can be a force multiplier all out of proportion to the absolute reduction in price. Valve software has been aggressively experimenting in this area; consider the example of the game Left 4 Dead:

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell announced during a DICE keynote today that last weekend's half-price sale of Left 4 Dead resulted in a 3000% increase in sales of the game, posting overall sales (in dollar amount) that beat the title's original launch performance.

It's sobering to think that cutting the price in half, months later, made more money for Valve in total than launching the game at its original $49.95 price point. (And, incidentally, that's the price I paid for it. No worries, I got my fifty bucks worth of gameplay out of this excellent game months ago.)

The experiments didn't end there. Observe the utterly non-linear scale at work as the price of software is experimentally reduced even further on their Steam network:

The massive Steam holiday sale was also a big win for Valve and its partners. The following holiday sales data was released, showing the sales breakdown organized by price reduction:

• 10% sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
• 25% sale = 245% increase in sales
• 50% sale = 320% increase in sales
• 75% sale = 1470% increase in sales

Note that these are total dollar sale amounts! Let's use some fake numbers to illustrate how dramatic the difference really is. Let's say our hypothetical game costs $40, and we sold 100 copies of it at that price.

Original price	Discount	Sale Price	Total Sales
$40	none	$40	$4,000
$40	10%	$36	$5,400
$40	25%	$30	$9,800
$40	50%	$20	$12,800
$40	75%	$10	$58,800

If this pattern Valve documented holds true, and if my experience on the iPhone App store is any indication, we've been doing software pricing completely wrong. At least for digitally distributed software, anyway.

In particular, I've always felt that Microsoft has priced their operating system upgrades far, far too high -- and would have sold a ton more licenses if they had sold them at the "heck, why not?" level. For example, take a look at these upgrade options:

Mac OS X 10.6 Upgrade	$29
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade	$119

Putting aside schoolyard OS rivalries for a moment, which one of these would you be more likely to buy? I realize this isn't entirely a fair comparison, so if $29 seems as bonkers to you as an application for 99 cents -- which I'd argue is much less crazy than it sounds -- then fine. Say the Windows 7 upgrade price was a more rational $49, or $69. I'm sure the thought of that drives the Redmond consumer surplus capturing marketing weasels apoplectic. But the Valve data -- and my own gut intuition -- leads me to believe that they'd actually make more money if they priced their software at the "why not?" level.

I'm not saying these pricing rules should apply to every market and every type of software in the world. But for software sold in high volumes to a large audience, I believe they might. At the very least, if you sell software, you might consider experimenting with pricing, as Valve has. You could be pleasantly surprised.

I love buying software, and I know I buy a heck of a lot more of it when it's priced right. So why not?

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In the past we’ve documented studies that showed how the majority of artists sell more music thanks to piracy and that those who download (more) also buy more. Last week another study was added to this ever growing list, arguing that pirates are 10 times more likely to buy music than those who don’t.

So why do pirates buy more music? The simplest explanation for this finding might be that people who are not interested in music don’t have the need to pirate or buy it. I have to agree that it’s not the the sexiest, most controversial or inspiring answer, but it does tell us something about the core of the piracy ‘problem’.

The real reason is in fact very simple. The true music enthusiasts simply want to consume, sample and discover as much new music as they possibly can, and the most straightforward and convenient way to do this is through file-sharing networks. Music pirates are just regular consumers really, and they love music just as much as anyone else.

Although I personally believe that the ability to sample music through file-sharing has a positive effect on music sales, much of the correlation between piracy and sales is simply caused by a third factor - a passion for music. This is one of the main reasons why most users of music oriented BitTorrent sites love an initiative such as Spotify where they have access to one of the largest music libraries online.

Although piracy can breed consumers, it’s generally happens the other way around. The Internet has freed music and the music labels’ greed and abuse of copyright is the only barrier that stands between the artists and millions of potential fans. Creative business models where consumers have instant access to unprotected and high quality music are the future.

The labels of course fail to see this all too obvious connection and continue to exploit their acquired (copy)rights.They would rather pump yet more millions into overpaid pro-copyright lobbyists and expensive lawyers trying to keep their outdated business model alive - the model where the artist gets 1 to 10% of the total music sales while the labels are filling their pockets. No wonder the passionate music fans flee to BitTorrent.

What we can learn from the studies is that true music fans buy and pirate more music. The labels are fighting against those who generate a large chunk - perhaps even the largest - of their yearly revenue. The labels should understand that piracy is merely a signal that they are on the wrong track.

The Internet makes it possible to offer unlimited access to music cheaply with virtually no production and distribution costs. Unlimited access is exactly what most consumers want. It’s an opportunity not a threat.

Post from: TorrentFreak

Aujourd'hui, grâce au changement d'heure, mon copain a battu son record au lit : 1h10. VDM

...la révolution commence

Dans un sondage SOM - Branchez-Vous à paraître lundi, on apprend que les internautes québécois s'informent plus sur Internet que dans les journaux, les magazines ou la radio.

Hahahah y'en a qui ont vraiment l'esprit vite :P

Aujourd'hui, en plein coït avec ma moitié... - "Dis-moi un truc cochon..." - "Côtelettes." VDM

De tous les gens que je connais qui ont travaillés dans des places de sushi, c'est finalement Dave qui va m'avoir montré comment faire :P

Episode 7 is out. It's actually about sashimi. You're actually a noob.

Yay! Sébastien a recommencé à faire des web comics!

Depuis le Carnet Techno de Radio-Canada avec Bruno Guglielminetti. http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/techno

Avec la publication de son étude annuelle portant sur l'évolution de l'utilisation des médias au Canada, le Bureau de la publicité interactive du Canada confirme que l'Internet a dépassé les journaux et les magazines pour occuper maintenant la troisième place en termes de temps hebdomadaire total d’utilisation des médias par les adultes. L'Internet est devancé par la télévision et la radio. L'étude révèle également que l’Internet se classe au premier rang relativement au pourcentage de temps qui lui est consacré par semaine chez les 18-24 ans et les 25-34 ans et il s’approche rapidement des niveaux de la radio et de la télévision chez les 25-34 ans.

Ça récapitule bien toute l'histoire du Net Neutrality au Canada

Ignited by the Comcast fiasco in the US, the concept of net neutrality has certainly been brought into the mainstream. ISPs are rarely transparent when it comes to their throttling, capping and otherwise interfering behavior, but in Canada they had to come clean due to a CRTC investigation.

The Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is currently looking into the traffic management practices of Canadian ISPs, which came to a head as a result of a dispute between CAIP, and its wholesale provider, Bell. The core objectives of the investigation are to examine the Internet traffic management practices being used, and check that they are in accordance with the Telecommunications Act.

The CRTC is looking at the effects of filtering on both regular customers and wholesalers, and the results of the first round of questions are just in. Even though some of the responses are filed in confidence (summarized by Chris Parsons), there is enough information to conclude that all major ISPs slow down customers, with most specifically targeting peer-to-peer traffic.

In their response to the CRTC investigation, Bell, Cogeco, Rogers and Eastlink all admit to slow down P2P traffic, arguing that it negatively affects network performance. Shaw, one of the other big players, admitted that customers are slowed down, but most of its responses were filed in confidence and P2P was not specifically mentioned.

Bell was more open about its practices, and admits using deep packet inspection (DPI) to throttle its individual customers and wholesalers. On Bell Wireline, P2P traffic is slowed down between 4.30 PM and 2 AM. To cope with the increasing bandwidth demands of its customers, they further plan to disconnect heavy users and introduce metered plans where customers pay for the bandwidth they use.

Cogeco started to throttle P2P users back in 2001, when they were only using a tiny fraction of what they do now. However, it was seen as necessary because of the increasing load these users put on the network. Like other ISPs, Cogeco considered other options such as metered plans, but these would not solve the network ‘abuse’ by P2P users. Furthermore, the ongoing battle with P2P users who strive to evade their management solutions led the ISP to use deep packet inspection (DPI) as well.

Rogers claims it has to throttle P2P users to prevent their network from becoming “the world’s buffet,” as they like to call it. Not only does this affect their network, their bandwidth bills also increased due to the growing popularity of BitTorrent and other filesharing networks. Similar to Bell and Cogeco, Rogers is also known to use DPI. Upstream P2P traffic is slowed down across their entire network, regardless of congestion,

Shaw filed most of its answers in confidence, but provided a rather paradoxical statement which clearly shows that they slow down upstream traffic. “The traffic management technologies have reduced the rate of upstream consumption to a more manageable rate,” they write, claiming that this allows their customers to reach their full contract speeds. Similar to the other ISPs Shaw is predicting that bandwidth usage will grow, and that traffic shaping is essential to manage their network.

In summary, we can conclude that there is no such thing as net neutrality in Canada. All of the larger ISPs slow down their customers, with most of them specifically targeting P2P traffic through deep packet inspection. Because of this, P2P users can’t enjoy the speeds they were promised, and several legitimate businesses whose income depends on delivering content through BitTorrent or other filesharing networks are unable to compete with those who don’t. It’s now up to the CRTC to draw the right conclusions.

Post from: TorrentFreak

RIAA court cases are few and far between. The cost of attorneys usually makes hiring one a costly alternative in comparison to the settlement money that they ask from alleged infringers. Thus far, only one case has actually gone to trial, resulting in a heavy judgment against the defendant, Jammie Thomas. While that case has been declared a mistrial, it has not stopped other cases from going ahead.

One of the cases vying to be the first to go all the way for a standing decision, is the case involving Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum. After initially offering to settle for $500, and having it rejected back in 2003, he decided to fight. His case has proved quite a headache for the RIAA by all accounts. Starting with a counterclaim asserting abuse of federal power, and that the damages demanded were unconstitutional, it has eventually gone to court after several settlement attempts. In court Joel is assisted by Professor Charles Nesson, and his law students.

In the Thomas case, the lawyer involved wasn’t particularly enthusiastic nor experienced in this area, and it showed. The same can’t be said of Prof. Nesson, who is a Harvard law professor as well as Founder and Co-Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. In what might be considered a coup, he convinced the judge to allow the trial to be webcast on the Internet. This will allow others to see just how the lawyers act in a case. Yet, in the last few hours, it has been revealed that the RIAA has appealed the motion, clearly upset that it might harm their public image further.

It’s hard to see how it can though, when the RIAA makes statements on the case that do nothing to generate goodwill. RIAA’s Cara Duckworth said in a statement, “While this might be an interesting academic exercise for the professor and his class, there’s been real world consequences for those who create music.” Clearly little things like following the law are second place to their revenue steam, and how DARE the defense bother to fight the case against them. In the meantime, we’re looking forward to the webcast.

Post from: TorrentFreak

Aujourd'hui, j'ai appris que mes parents venaient voir ma chambre d'étudiant. J'ai exactement trois heures et demi pour transformer le Mordor en Disneyland. VDM

Aujourd'hui, j'ai dû réconforter mon chéri qui pleurait car, étant devenu un Jedi, il devait me quitter. J'adore le somnambulisme. VDM