Given what I’ve written about eBay Australia and PayPal recently, is it hypocritical to have added a “donate” button to my website which works through PayPal? I don’t think so. After all, I did say that for small businesses setting up online, PayPal is “often the most cost-effective way to accept credit card payments, and the easiest to set up technically”. And it is. I got that “donate” button set up in 10 minutes. The gripe was about eBay forcing its sellers to use PayPal, which they own. What do you think?
The US economy as stained glass
This cute iconographic image is actually a visualisation of consumer spending in the US economy. The full version is at The New York Times, where you can learn that housing makes up 42%. Hat-tip to Sean C.
Oh you poor, dear record companies…
You’ve got to hand it to “the music industry”. This week they released a propaganda film Australian Music In Tune which asks us to sympathise with musicians because they’re all poor struggling artists. Diddums.
The only reason musicians trying to “make it” are poor is that as soon as they do get that sought-after recording contract they still pay for everything from there on. Before they see a single cent from their music, they have to pay off the studio hire, recording engineer, video director, stylists, set designers, editor and dozens of other parasites — including music company executives with their nice lunches and their BMW leases.
An entire industry — “the music industry” and their retail outlets — sits between the musicians and their audience, sucking out something like 90% of the money in the process.
And they have the gall to rope musicians into their propaganda film under false pretences, telling people like Frenzal Rhomb’s Lindsay McDougall that it was a movie about life as an artist.
He said he was told the 10-minute film, which is being distributed for free to all high schools in Australia, was about trying to survive as an Australian musician and no one mentioned the video would be used as part of an anti-piracy campaign.
OK, so who are the guys in the photo? Jared Madden (left) and Adam Purcell (right) have created tune-out.com in response to the industry crying poor.
Oh noes, thoze fickle “Gen Y” ppl…
…were right about job-hopping. In the big chair:
Major companies no longer value long service by their workers… The poll of 32 national and international firms found that when defining a high-performing worker, 69 per cent rated “length of service” as least important or not even applicable…
“If you turn the clock back 10 or 15 years, length of service would have been seen as a significant attribute of high performance,” Mr Tipper [Jeremy Tipper, business development director of recruitment firm Alexander Mann Solutions] told AAP on Tuesday.
“The reason for that is they had a great deal of knowledge… about the organisation and a good understanding of what’s happening in the marketplace.
“Today, because information is so much more freely available because of technology, that ‘information is power’ probably doesn’t exist to the same extent.”
Mr Tipper said the new breed of workers was less “risk averse” — they were more prepared to change jobs and they were more aware of the value and portability of their skills.
Hat-tip to the Snarky Platypus. He even wrote the headline. He also has his own blog, but is too goddam lazy to post there. We must convince him to fix this.
The Chaser’s APEC charges dropped
News has just come through that charges against The Chaser team for their APEC security breach stunt have been dropped. Good, someone has a brain. Yes, they did enter the APEC security zone — but you, dear police and security forces, stood back and saluted as you waved them through the checkpoints.
eBay/PayPal discussions continue
If you don’t follow the comments feed, you’re missing a lengthy discussion evolving from my piece about eBay forcing sellers to use PayPal. Maybe they took my admonition to fight amongst yourselves yesterday a little too literally.