good apples and bad apples, no problem wit hit, what i really can't stand is their absurd in-your-face nationalism, jesus i haven't seen such things even when traveling in communist and socialist countries, my impression is their nationalism is fostered a lot by the government itself as it's the only real value after money that keep them all united under the same flag.

yanks seem to top the list of most hated country, thought, especially in europe.

Here's my opinion on that type of humor - I call it the "funny to mean ratio"(copyright Lisafx ).  A comedian can say ANYTHING, no matter how offensive, as long as it is at least as funny as it is mean.  The meaner it is, the funnier it has to be to compensate.  If the funny to mean ratio is off, the joke doesn't work.    When some of these jerks just get up and insult everyone, but the jokes aren't that funny, they come off looking like ass(arse)holes.  

Quote from: Artemis on June 04, 2011, 17:57

Quote from: ShadySue on June 04, 2011, 17:29

I'm almost  too embarrased to admit this  , but I have no idea how to thumbs up/down threads there. 

Dont be embarrased, its useless knowledge anyways
On the right hand side of each post next to 'permalink' there's a thumbs up and down symbol you can click.

Oh, I remember seeing permalink before. It must be removed, with the thumbs, if you're Lobotomised: I did a 'Find:permalink' to be sure.
 

Specifically pointing out that it is iStock's turn in the barrel, so to speak.  Right now, most hate and ire is aimed at iStock.  Deservedly so, I suppose.  But this has been the most vicious attack that I've seen in my short time on MSG.

I wrote a polite message in their forum about istock having the lowest royalty scheme in the industry and Lobo deleted it sending me also an email where he threats to ban me from the forum if i dare try again .. what ?

 Slowly, one phase at a time, they are pushing a new pricing model and reinventing themselves.

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on May 31, 2011, 02:30

Quote from: Black Sheep on May 30, 2011, 22:12

There's too much oversupply at the moment, and it was predictable from the start since the bar to join IS has been low for a long time.

Since 2002, presumably?

The trad sector operated as a closed shop, setting barriers designed to keep all the cake for a small elite. By doing so, it locked out a lot of people who were more than capable of meeting the market's demand for quality. The artificial inflation in prices it was able to impose in this way created a barrier that prevented money flowing into the industry but ensured that the bit that did come in from stock was split between the select few allowed into the club.

OK, so presumably you were there and you liked it that way. But it's pretty clear that the system was inefficient, artificial and (how I hate to use the word in a normal context now!) unsustainable. Once digital shooters started hammering at the castle gate, undeterred by the only real barrier, of high running costs from having to buy and process film, there was no way the edifice could withstand the assault.

Now you want to rebuild the castle, disregarding the lessons of history?

If iStock sets high barriers to try to reduce the influx of new material and artificially boost prices, sellers will simply go elsewhere and the buyers will gradually migrate to cheaper options. That's how the free market works and it is the free market that has pumped such huge sums of money into photography as a result of breaking the old barriers.

And who is seeing the money? Well, the old-timers are seeing less because the cartel don't work no more. The micro agencies are seeing a lot and they didn't exist. A few thousand upstart photographers who would never have made anything in the 1990s are making a living and hundreds of thousands are getting some pocket money.

The biggest winner of all from this wall of cash is probably the electronics sector, with tens of thousands of newbies buying and upgrading high-end cameras, lenses, computers, programs and memory cards, with purchases being justified against future earnings from stock. The microstock industry has probably generated sales of billions of dollars worth of hardware and software (not to mention lens caps) and accelerated the introduction of high-end DSLRs.

It would be nice if the agencies weren't siphoning off so much of the cash and left more from us. But attempting to choke off the supply of images won't boost prices or earnings.

There are two "bars" that matter: quality and price. The quality bar can be set as high as you like, as long as the price bar is kept low enough not to encourage buyers to look elsewhere. If you raise the price to a level where where buyers will start looking for alternatives, you need to drop the quality bar so that you are not driving high-quality suppliers to other agents by rejecting perfectly good work (I wonder if that is why iStock now seems easier to get work into than Dreamstime or Shutterstock).

The only time the free market will let you succeed by setting very high prices and simultaneously insisting on very high quality is when what you are selling is sufficiently unique for low-priced alternatives not to be available. The cartel system allowed apples on white to sell for hundreds of dollars, the free market won't support that model.

give that man a heart!

It's bad enough for some Istock admins to be giving out the "don't let the door hit you in the back" attitude, but it's just insane for microstock contributors to be handing that out!  Anyone trying to send customers to Flikr is, to put it as tactfully as possible,  unlikely to be someone who is reliant on any microstock income.  

Hard to have sympathy with that one, given that it was posted after the latest best match shuffle, which puts non-esclusive, non P+ images in half of the top line of five of my usual searches.