The usual price-setting method is to look at the entire potential market, from the many at the economic lower end to the few at the top, and set a price somewhere in between the top and bottom that will maximize total revenues. But if you cede the bottom to piracy, you can set a price between the top and the middle. The result: higher revenues per copy, and potentially higher revenues overall.

(This is, by the way, the opposite of the conventional economic approach to developing-world piracy, which is to lower the cost of a product closer to the pirate version, closing the pricing gap to try to win customers over to the official version. In practice, however, the pirate price is so low that it's rarely possible to close that gap enough to make much of a difference.)

The Long Tail: 'Just enough piracy'

Redmond (WA) - Putting an end to speculation that Microsoft had indefinitely postponed, or even cancelled, the proposed contextual file system that chairman Bill Gates introduced in October 2003, the company this morning released Beta 1 of WinFS.

Tom's Hardware Guide: Tom's Hard News

IPPI vs. JELY
Pictures from the A-Consolation Finals game- I Prefer Pi vs. Chironex Fleckeri.

The game where my team (without me) took 5th place in the Pittsburgh Summer League.

IPPI vs. JELY

Once AOL identified the New Hampshire Spammer, he decided to cooperate with AOL. The spammer's cooperation, while helpful, didn't absolve him from paying for the harm he caused AOL members, and under CAN-SPAM, AOL was able to seize everything the spammer made during his "career." The result: AOL got the spammer's fully loaded Hummer H2, as well as a hoard of cash and gold bullion.

And to say "thank you" to AOL members for their help in tracking down this lawbreaker, AOL is giving these ill-gotten goods away to members through the AOL Spammer's Gold Sweepstakes.

America Online | Press Center | Spammer's Loot

Every billionaire needs a hobby. And every city, it has come to seem, needs an aquarium.

How convenient, then, that Bernie Marcus, who opened the first Home Depot store here in 1978, has spent the past few years designing, building and obsessing over a $200 million aquarium he hopes will be the world's most impressive fish tank.

As Marcus, 76, said in a recent interview at the offices of the Marcus Foundation, "I love big fish, OK?"

The Seattle Times: Atlanta hopes aquarium makes big splash

Revealed Friday in the journal Environmental Health, this is the first time the byproducts of illicit drugs like cocaine have been detected in river water.

More surprisingly, the level of residues translates into at least 40,000 daily doses of coke snorted by residents of the Po Valley -- a great deal more than official estimates of 15,000 doses of cocaine per month.

Wired News: Rivers of Coke

For the foodies out there, check out Noriko Takiguchi's (so far) five part series on 'How to Eat Sushi Properly' (links to earlier parts at bottom of the linked post). Not only does the series deliver on the title, but she also passes along tidbits such as the history of our epicurean debt to Yohei Hanaya, and the names of the best sushiyas in the Bay Area, with a little assist from commenters.

Due Diligence: Theory and Practice of Sushi

" 'Chappelle's Show' is over, man. Done," comic Charlie Murphy told TV Guide. "It took me a long time to be able to say those words, but I can say it pretty easy now, because it's the truth."

Chappelle's sudden "spiritual retreat" to South Africa on the eve of his show's third season has left the series in limbo since May. About half of a new season had been filmed before Chappelle left, Murphy said.

CNN.com - Actor: 'Chappelle's Show' is over - Aug 3, 2005

But Schmidt won quite narrowly -- she beat Hackett by a margin of 52-48 percent in a district in which Republicans badly outnumber Democrats and that Portman carried by more than 40 percentage points the last time around. So yes, the GOP retains the seat, but Republicans outside Schmidt's victory party probably aren't doing much celebrating this morning.

Salon.com - War Room

A team led by psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus of UC Irvine found that it could persuade people to avoid fattening foods by implanting unpleasant childhood memories about them — even though the memories were untrue.

In a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team said it successfully turned people off strawberry ice cream and, in earlier studies, it had done the same with pickles and hard-boiled eggs — in each case by manipulating the subjects to believe that the foods made them sick when they were children.

The scientists say they have also successfully implanted positive opinions about asparagus by convincing subjects that they once loved the vegetable.

Swallowing a Lie May Aid in Weight Loss, Research Suggests