Tcl/Tk, Amazon and general exercise in off-topicness

[DaddyHoggy]

Split from the Progress thread.

Windows have caught up with the Mac - one or two bugs still, but I guess we are finally on the right track:
Before:


After:

Is that a Tcl/Tk window A_C?

I haven't programmed in that for years!

(One of my lecturers and now work colleagues has written books on it!)

EDIT: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sams-Teach-Your ... 158&sr=1-1

(Not sure why it's £248 new! I guess it's not in print now)

[another_commander]

Is that a Tcl/Tk window A_C?

Yes, it is part of either Python itself or one of the components required to create the Debug Console (pywin32 and Twisted), but in any case an integral part of the console system.

[Disembodied]

(Not sure why it's £248 new! I guess it's not in print now)

Off topic, for which my apologies, but speaking from inside the book trade: Don't Trust Amazon. Crazy reseller prices, and no Amazon buy button, do not mean that a book is otherwise unavailable, or even out of print: I'm currently trying to sort out their listing for an audio CD which is in print, and correctly listed as in print on Nielsen Bookdata (a bibliographic database where Amazon buy their information), with a retail price of £9.95: right now Amazon won't give it a buy button, instead claiming that it's available new from a reseller – in this case aphrohead – for the bargain price of £212.26. For a CD. That you can get from any other retailer for £9.95, including VAT.

Sorry for the interruption. Back to topic. Remember: Don't Trust Amazon!

[another_commander]

I have to split this to a separate thread, as the Progress one in particular should really be as little cluttered as possible. Feel free to expand on the thoughts here and let's see where we can lead this discussion to. The possibilities for jumping from one subject to a totally different and irrelevant one are endless.

[DaddyHoggy]

Apologies - I decoyed the thread and once the wedge is inserted its clearly easy to drive open the gap!

Thanks for the info Disembodied.

[Disembodied]

Quite right, my apologies! Thanks for taking this to Outworld. For a further update (I need to get this off my chest ), people might be interested to know that the reseller in question bought one copy of this audio CD, new, for £5.08 on 6 December ... and two weeks later are trying to charge over £200 for it.

To be honest, I don't think this is a deliberate attempt to screw people. Nobody will actually be stupid enough – I hope – to pay over £200 for an audio CD. This is the result of a) Amazon refusing to acknowledge that the item is available to retailers, in combination with b) somebody's – either Amazon's, or the reseller's or a third party's – demand-led pricing software going nuts.

Basically, Amazon is not reliable when it comes to questions of the availability of products. Amazon like people to think that they sell everything: in truth, they don't want to, as it's hugely difficult to make money that way. In books, for instance, they like you to think you can get anything from them; in reality, they'd much rather you just bought copies of what they've already bought in, in giant quantities.

If, for example, you order a copy of An Obscure Novel from Minuscule Press, Amazon have to order that in specially, probably from a wholesaler, and will only get something like 30% discount tops on a single-copy order (Minuscule Press will have already given around 50% to the wholesaler). After a few days, one copy of An Obscure Novel arrives in Amazon's warehouse. Some Amazon drudge will have to unpack it, scan it, and shelve it somewhere. Then some other peon will have to pick up the despatch note, wander through the warehouse looking for the single copy of An Obscure Novel, find it, pack it and send it out again. By this time, even at low low wages, this is costing Amazon money, especially if the customer has chosen free postage.

If, however, you want a copy of Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code, Amazon has already ordered several tons of this from Behemoth Books; they're stacked up half a mile high in the warehouse behind a long table manned by an endless row of shackled serfs. Amazon probably got 70% discount or more from Behemoth, because of the size of the order, and each book takes less than 30 seconds to pack and process, so even though Amazon are giving their customers great lumpen discounts they are still making money – just – on each transaction. Because they're making millions of transactions, they come out in the black.

So Amazon has a variety of ways of discouraging its customers from buying odd titles from small presses, up to and including pretending that the book is unavailable through normal retail channels. I'm not saying this is true in every case! Your colleague's book, DH, might well be genuinely out of print. Even there, though, you need to shop around. There are various sneaky things going on in Amazon's marketplace pricing systems, from software that undercuts the lowest price by a penny to demand-led pricing software that sets prices on a runaway train.

[Rxke]

demand-led pricing software going nuts

Good to know.

I often wondered why particular books were so excessively pricey.

[DaddyHoggy]

Indeed Disembodied - very informative!

My friend Katherine, author of The Legacy, discovered that Amazon, having agreed a "will not sell below" price with her publisher, immediately started selling it below this price (after it won the C4 TV Book Club prize). As Orion's contract with Katherine was a fixed amount per book (not a percentage) - guess who got horribly squeezed in that equation? Katherine sold 10s of thousands of book, but made only pennies per copy.

[Disembodied]

Indeed Disembodied - very informative!

My friend Katherine, author of The Legacy, discovered that Amazon, having agreed a "will not sell below" price with her publisher, immediately started selling it below this price (after it won the C4 TV Book Club prize). As Orion's contract with Katherine was a fixed amount per book (not a percentage) - guess who got horribly squeezed in that equation? Katherine sold 10s of thousands of book, but made only pennies per copy.

That's downright rotten. Orion has to take some of the blame here, for not telling Amazon where to get off, but even large publishers find it difficult to stand up to them (see this article from the Boston Review – I linked to it in the original off-topic post – for more dark doings by Amazon).

Still, they may not last. They seem to have their corporate head wedged firmly between the buttocks of the 20th century. The Kindle is a prime example. An electronic product that only does one thing, and not terribly well at that ... using a proprietary format!

[DaddyHoggy]

Interesting article - interesting comments.

What I only recently discovered about Amazon Rankings, is that if somebody visits a book but then doesn't buy it - the book automatically falls in the rankings!

Amazon basically wants one click and buy...

[Disembodied]

For more interesting stuff about the publishing industry, check out this selection of essays by SF writer Charles Stross.

Also, moving off topic from the original off-topic, he's got an interesting take on the current global situation in Invaders from Mars:

We are now living in a global state that has been structured for the benefit of non-human entities with non-human goals.

No tinfoil hats required, though! An interesting take on what a "corporate state" might be ...