Slashdot Mirror

Pardon my language, but this is BS and FUD.
Napster was killed by legal action, not "immature technology"; as was the original MP3.com, Kazaa, and others.

Note that the various existing P2P file sharing programs seem to be doing just fine with the technology we already have (and older, yet!). Where does "immature technology" come into the picture? I fail to understand that. To me, it sounds like a weak excuse for for failing to understand the consumer market and what consumers want. A very weak excuse; perhaps why most labels resort to lawyers instead of listening to their customers and artists.

The problem is reflected in the book industry; people would like to have the equivalent of a library to go to to try out music before they buy (NOT the limited "library" of predetermined play on radio stations); and many object to the artificially high prices of music bought at the stores. RIAA, what part of "NO" don't you understand? Even a lot of artists are saying NO! Wake up and smell the burning coffee.

Eric Flint makes the point very succinctly in his comments on Baen's Free Library
here
and I'll quote shamelessly:

The only time that mass scale petty thievery becomes a problem is when the perception spreads, among broad layers of the population, that a given product is priced artificially high due to monopolistic practices and/or draconian legislation designed to protect those practices. But so long as the "gap" between the price of a legal product and a stolen one remains both small and, in the eyes of most people, a legitimate cost rather than gouging, 99% of them will prefer the legal product.

(Microsoft, are you listening?)

'nuff said.

Shadowbearer

You can check out the first 5 chapters of The Web Between the Worlds by Charles Sheffield or The Fountains of Paradise by none other than Arthur C. Clarke. Both are an intereting read and were written at about the same time.

• Alexlit
  
• Mind's Eye
  
• Peanut Press/Palm Digital Literature
  
• Fictionwise
  
• MemoWare
  
• Baen Webscriptions/Free Library

Since the poor bastard is dead, I don't care that you're violating the Sneetches copyright.

Copyright lasts longer than life; it currently lasts life plus 70 years, and Congress has an unwritten contract with Disney to extend it by 20 more years every 20 years. The only way to stop is to send everybody this link to a story explaining why perpetual copyright is a bad idea: http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___ 1.htm

Non-commercial pirates are ordinary people, who otherwise would be like you and me (well, ok maybe they're exactly like me.) They are the people who like certain content and are just looking to access it at their leisure. Non-commercial pirates are fans of content. They are students (formal and informal) who want to learn from the content. They are critics who further critical discussion of content. They are consumers who will likely purchase content when they are able. They are archivists saving the content that the distributors have abandoned. They are nurturers who want to see more content and help make content better.

But, in order to have a large enough inventory to attract people to their wares, some pirates may turn their activities into businesses. Turning commercial causes provable financial damage to the content holder (at least whatever the pirate charges, theoretical maximum of up to what the content holder charges, although certainly the discount rates of the pirate may boost his sales over what the legitimate holder would have) With such damages, there is an unquestionable standing for a lawsuit. On-line commercial pirates are especially susceptible. The 24/7 availability that offers such an advantage to on-line business, dramatically increases the pirates' chances of getting caught. Unlike the street-corner pirate, the on-line pirate can't turn off his web site if the cops come strolling by. Suffice it to say, commercial pirates are thieves, they are scum, whatever ugly adjective you want to use probably applies to them. They take the creative labor of others and use it to make a profit for themselves. Laws, regulations, mandates, and technical barriers will not stop them from their piracy. They have access to devices to circumvent whatever barriers put before them. They smell money, and don't care who is hurt in their pursuit of it.

Eric Flint from Baen Publishing isn't worried about online piracy because is a minor problem, any losses are offset by increased exposure of the content, and any attempt to restrict piracy is worse than the problem of priacy in the first place (see this Salon cartoon for an example carried none too far to the extreme ). His own experience has shown that content released freely, and without barriers to priracy (technological, legal, or moral) are the ones that drive exposure to the artist and sell better than similar books not available freely.

Content distributors (especially in the music industry, the RIAA and record companies) tend to justify their existance because of the amount of their marketing of the artists (in addition to the actual production/distributing efforts.) Online piracy is, then, a dilemma for artists. Piracy increases their exposure by definition, but at an inferior quality and no royalties. Piracy should show to consumers the complete uselessness of the content distributors as guardians of good taste. How many awful CD's do you have that you bought because of a catchy tune on the radio.

Current copyright laws almost ensure that there will be a historical hole where content simply disappears. Which company will be the one to ensure that Arthur Byron Cover's 1988 novel Planetfall for future generations? Neither quality nor the commerial success of content should be the judge of whether or not it is to be preserved. Many of Shakespeare's plays where bawdy low-rent entertainment in its era, but is now considered high-art. American Pie 2 deserves no less preservation than American Beauty. Plantfall deserves no less preservation than Snow Falling on Cedars. Married With Children no less than The Honeymooners. With corporate takeovers and massive inventories, content distributors can be the worst preservers of content. While this report notes some possible solutions, it generally suggests working with the content distributors to authorize preservation efforts. This is unworkable when a distribtor is unaware of their content property, has dissolved, or is hostile to the preservation effort. The societal need for preservation outweighs the property rights of the distributor.

It is high time that legislators and regulators stop acquiescing to every demand of the content distributors. The policy pendulum has swung too far in their favor. The problem is that the pendulum has swung quietly, without the public's knowledge. Efforts that the public does know about don't sound as harmful as they actually are, so your constituents (or those who are affected by your regulations) aren't alarmed. But as representatives of the people, you are the guardians of their rights. Fair use rights that the content distributors are attempting to restrict and even to abolish. The most perilous danger with legislative acts recently, such as the DCMA, is that they ingore that all copyrighted materials will eventually reach the public domain, as required by law (via the "limited time" clause). While content entering into the public domain is not advantageous to content distributors, it is vitally important to the general public.

Of course, that's just my opinion... (don't sue me Dennis!)
-sk

Baen once more accused of a sleazy trick.

The author obviously did not read the Miles, Mystery, and Mayhem information that was available. There are sample chapters that have the cover blurb included which clearly states:

Publisher's Note: Miles, Mystery & Mayhem was previously published in parts as Cetaganda, Ethan of Athos, and "Labyrinth." This is the first unified edition.

As well as the Table of Contents which shows:

Miles, Mystery and Mayhem
Table of Contents

Cetaganda
Ethan of Athos
Labyrinth
Afterword

Baen probably puts more information on-line about their books than anyone, with sample chapters, cover blurbs and you can read them on the cheap as un-encrypted e-books through their WebScriptions. But if you don't read the information, it won't do you much good.

Well, the Baen Books Publication Schedule is a pretty clear source for this information. I saw the book several months ago, got excited for a second, then noted the "Publisher's Note: Miles, Mystery & Mayhem was previously published in parts as Cetaganda, Ethan of Athos, and "Labyrinth." This is the first unified edition." on it, and got less excited. True, if you aren't a follower of the schedule (I am mainly because I do escriptions - read it all early on a Visor!, and occasionally drop stuff in the slush forum on the bar) it may not occur to you to check, and I'm a little surprised that the little tag on the back was missing... but I always check SF (c) information first anyway, as I like to know if I'm buying a book that simply collects a serial I read in Analog or SF&S or AsimovSF... after all, I prefer the feel of paperbacks for casual reading, and reserve HCs for a particular kind of book (Fireplace reading), which means I wouldn't want to buy something in the more expensive and less enjoyable HC edition out of pure impatience, when I'd already read it.

Speaking of which, there's a real new Miles book coming out in May... Diplomatic Immunity. I'll probably read the escriptions copy, then buy the PB when it comes out. (Hey, the author gets $1.85 or so from my escriptions fee, which is probably actually more than the cut on a HC these days... plus the pennies from the PB purchase later. I'm quite happy with it, from the getting the early read perspective, and I get this nice whatever format I prefer electronic copy to read from a computer or PDA... and the author gets well compensated. Funny, given Jim's reputation for nasty contracts to newbie writers.)

Well, bunky, it's like this. Book publishing is still largely designed for brick'n'mortar sales. Surely you wouldn't have been such an idiot as to pick up the book from the shelf and rush straight to the checkout without glancing at it, would you? But let you loose in an online store...

However, you don't really even have this excuse. Publishing as a whole is still rather clueless about the net, but this book's publisher isn't. You really need to get your head out of your, uhm, belly-button, let's say, and head on over to Baen's web site, which you are clearly completely unaware of.

C'mon, being a geek's reviewer means not having your head up your, uhm, belly-button all the time. Get with the program! Only you can stop yourself from being an uninformed, stupid cow of a consumer!

That link was only to the first half of the story. Here's a better one: Melancholy Elephants

I don't know if we'll still be reading his books in 50 years but they're certainly a great way to pass time right now.

Here's a list: http://electronictiger.com/shorts/dw_hh.htm

On another note, I just love Baen's free library concept... a collection of freely downloadable copies of top notch books by a small but growing list of their authors.

One of the goodpoints of digital rights management, for all its bad points, is that this future will probably be more along the lines of: You pay money to buy rights to listen to such-and-such. If you lose it in a hard disk crash (if they even let you keep a static version) you still own the rights and can download it again.

There are ways to make DRM work for both the producer and the consumer. Any DRMS that allows me to use a file that I have purchased on any machine and in any format I want, even when I do not own the machine, would be acceptable to me.

Alas, the content companies don't seem to share my view. As another poster has pointed out, the RIAA, MPAA et al seem focused on a pay per play future.

And I could see the situation where my digital music player dies and istead of honoring my license to music on the now dead system, I an forced to repurchase said music since it will now keyed to a different machine.

It's sad really. There are a number a technologies I'd love to be using right now, HDTV, DVDA/SACD, DAT, digital music, 'DVD VCRs', that but for the greed of the content companies are essentially on hold.

Steve Jobs and the folks at Baen Books get it. Piracy is a behavioral not technelogical problem.

Sigh.

Steve M

Th link here is extraordinary.

The level of insight offered in this speech is outstanding and thoroughly depressing when compared to the level of debate offered by parliament or congress. What would one of these men thought if transported into the 21st century and introduced to a debate in our current "democracies"? Imagine the disgust such a man would have felt at the degeneration and stupidity that has overtaken our political system.

Guy, you haven't been in a Barnes & Noble or a Borders in recent memory, have you?

The SMALLEST of those stores contains massive amounts of books, from unknown or little-known authors, on hundreds and thousands of subjects. The Top-20 "Superstar" list you refer to is called the New York Times' Best SELLER list.

Say it again with me. BEST SELLER. That's right. They get advertised because thousands of people are buying them already! So blows the hole in your superstar theorem. If you'd like further proof, go to Baen.com and check out the Baen Free Library. I could recommend the authors, but what's the point? They're placing stuff up for free.

Music? Hrm. I've got some 206 songs on two CD-ROMs kicking around my apartment somewhere from the mp3.com promotions. They don't include a single superstar song on there. Everyone knows about mp3.com from their days in court.

Let's face it. Simple fact of the matter is, there's no big corporate superstar business model. They'll drop today's superstar like a sack and build a new one in a heartbeat. They just respond to the mob. Simple mathematics will tell you that there's thousands more artists out there now than there were a hundred years ago, because we haven't bred the arts out of our race.

What exactly is everyone doing with their handhelds that makes "color" and "multimedia" top priorities (other than using them as expensive toys that is)?

I bought my Sony Clié 710 specifically for the screen. I love reading books on my Palm, but my old Palm III's screen was just way too low contrast. The Clié's screen is bright and very high-contrast. The front light makes it extremely easy to see in any lighting condition. And the hi-res display gives me great text. (It's even better now that iSilo supports the hi-res screen directly!)

The other "multimedia" features can go jump in a lake as far as I'm concerned. I would have gladly bought the 610 (same specs, minus the MP3 hardware) if it had been available at the time. I watched the demo movies that came with it, then deleted them. I do like to keep photos in there; it's a good way to carry around the output of my digital camera. Actually, right now I have a large chunk of the Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet comics installed.

I also considered the HandEra 330, but I didn't like the 240x320 display. (Although the virtual silkscreen area rocks!) That makes a scaling factor of 1.5x to fit apps on the screen, which makes a lot of bitmaps look just plain wrong. The Clié's 320x320 display is double the Palm's 160x160, so anything that doesn't play nice with the hi-res display can just be viewed in 2x mode.

BTW, I'll do my karma-whoring for the day and give a plug to Baen Webscriptions. Baen books is making all their new paperback releases available electronically concurrent with the dead-tree release. (Actually earlier, if you want to read incomplete galleys.) The releases are done in HTML. No "digital rights management", no bizarro proprietary format, just the book in bog-standard HTML. (Available in other formats too, but I think the HTML is the most portable and most useful.) They also have a free library of complete books so you can try before you buy. Kudos to Baen for being a major dead-tree publisher that actually seems to grok electronic publishing as well!

Ah yes, the "balanced drive" from Charles Sheffiled's "McAndrews" stories. He didn't use a black hole though, IIRC it was a very massive disk compressed by electromagnetic fields. The stories can be purchased in ebook form from Baen here.

Yes. Go to http://www.baen.com.

They're selling digital books over the Internet, at approximately $2.50 each, way less than the paperback version.

I've had a RocketReader since they first came out. However, I never purchased any books for the device. I didn't want to deal with the hassle of re-licensing books if my reader ever bit the dust (which is likely considering how many times I've dropped it already). Too much like Divx (the failed DVD format) for my tastes.

In contrast, Baen sells books unencrypted, in formats like RTF and HTML. I feel safe buying these books, because I know I'll always have software available to read the format. This is a very good thing.

There's a very good essays on their site explaining their philosophy, and why they think it works. Jim Baen clearly sees which way things are going because of advances in technology. He gets it. Which shouldn't be too suprising since he's a SF publisher...

I read a LOT of books on my Palm, but I don't pay for proprietary, access-controlled expensive e-books. I convert texts from Project Gutenberg, download freely available texts and e-books from other sites, get free books from the Baen Free Library....

...and once in a great while I buy un-protected books from Baen's Webscriptions service. I refuse to buy access-controlled e-books that lock into a particular machine or limit my usage. When I buy a book, I buy a book, I don't license software.

Oddly enough, I haven't run out of books to read, nor am I likely to anytime soon; my backlog is huge. I also still buy hardbacks heavily (I have cut way back on paperbacks because they are too fragile for the long-term--I always end up replacing them in a few years.)

Don't give financial support to the publishers who come up with schemes you don't like (access-control, proprietary hardware requirements, etc)--i.e, don't buy their e-books. Support the publishers who do things the way you like (in my case, Baen Books). Publishers will pay attention to what sells and what doesn't, or they will go out of business. Remember why copy-protection on PC software, which was once ubiquitous, mostly went away? (Until recent attempts to revive it...) Because people wouldn't buy it if there was an alternative!

Publishers: if you make it a major hassle to use your product, people won't bother and will go to your competitor.

AFAICT, there are only two features that e-books have over regular books:

1) You can use the same physical device for multiple content. Unless you are on the space shuttle, who cares?

2) You can download books from the Internet. Great, except has anybody here tried to use Napster/Gnutella recently? From the moment you first start looking to the moment you are able to use the (correct) file how much time elapses?

Gutenberg or Gnutella'd titles take a little longer, as I have to unwrap the text before running it through a converter--but even then, emacs makes it easy enough that it just takes a couple of minutes and a few Meta-X commands before I'm done. And if it's a Gutenberg book or otherwise freely available, I can even donate it to the Memoware free e-book library when I finish. (Search under "Meadows" there for all the titles I've donated so far.)

For me, reading books on my Visor is fast, convenient, and a sure-fire boredom fighter. But to each his own.

Check out the Baen Free Library and Webscriptions sometime. You might be pleasantly surprised.

I'm still reading the books on my PC or laptop as I haven't found the "Bookman" of my dreams yet. I find the screens on the Palm and Palm like devices to be too small (always seem to be paging forward).

Has anybody out there found the perfect ebook reader?

I went to the Baen books site and checked out the link to the Baen Free Library.

Jim Baen and Eric Flint get it when it comes to ebooks and intellectual property.

Check out the site, it's worth the read.

Steve M

These guys sum up pretty much every bitch or moan you're likely to read here on Slashdot, and offer som REALLY interesting solutions, not to mention some freely downloadable books!

Click here.

The author of the book cited in the article is missing the point as well. People want to read best-sellers. If there had been some publicity about his book, maybe it would have sold some as an e- or p-book. Chances are it would have sold just as badly if he hadn't listed it electronically.

Obligatory plug for the Baen Free Library".

I've said this before, but publishers are only hurting themselves with this insane obsession with spending millions on consumer-hostile "protection" schemes.

Look at Baen Books, which (in addition to dead trees) publishes books in electronic format, which uses good old documented and portable formats such as HTML and RTF with no passwords, encryption, "digital rights management", monitoring, locking the book to a single computer, or other nonsense, and which seems to be the only publusher of e-books that's actually making money at it.

I don't believe this is a coincidence. It may be time for other publishers to remove their heads from their asses, stop paying buckets of money to the concocters of baroque DRM schemes and various Congresscritters, observe Baen's experience, and learn. Imagine! A company that makes money, not by threatening its customers with legal action and hamstringing them with Evil Code, but by providing them a useful product at a reasonable price that yields a profit!

quote: Most publiers are releasing only older titles on e-books. I have yet to see a new hardcover edition be simultaneous released on e-books.

First, this is going the way of DivX; nobody in their right mind is going to pay to read a book for a short period. People pay for books they want to keep permanently; for temporary trial reading, they borrow books from the free public library. As far as I can tell, they've just thought of a new way to prove that e-books are not profitable.

Second, is it just me or were they extraordinarily stupid to release their timed ebook in Adobe E-book format right after Elcomsoft's Advanced E-book Processor has been heavily publicized in every geek-oriented news channel on the Internet? What are they saying here, "Crack me! Crack me!"?

Third, making available preview e-book versions of a novel is effective marketing--if it's free. Baen Books has been making the first chapters of new books available for on-line preview for quite a while now, as well as making the first books of some popular series available in their entirety for free--apparently it's been an effective enough marketing tactic that they have expanded their list of free e-books. That's right, expanded! Now, can anyone tell me how effective that would have been if they charged a $1 fee for a short reading period per book in the Baen Free Library?

Do publishers actually think when they come up with these schemes, or did the geniuses that came up with dot.bomb business plans move into publishing when I wasn't looking?

First, this is going the way of DivX; nobody in their right mind is going to pay to read a book for a short period. People pay for books they want to keep permanently; for temporary trial reading, they borrow books from the free public library. As far as I can tell, they've just thought of a new way to prove that e-books are not profitable.

Second, is it just me or were they extraordinarily stupid to release their timed ebook in Adobe E-book format right after Elcomsoft's Advanced E-book Processor has been heavily publicized in every geek-oriented news channel on the Internet? What are they saying here, "Crack me! Crack me!"?

Third, making available preview e-book versions of a novel is effective marketing--if it's free. Baen Books has been making the first chapters of new books available for on-line preview for quite a while now, as well as making the first books of some popular series available in their entirety for free--apparently it's been an effective enough marketing tactic that they have expanded their list of free e-books. That's right, expanded! Now, can anyone tell me how effective that would have been if they charged a $1 fee for a short reading period per book in the Baen Free Library?

Do publishers actually think when they come up with these schemes, or did the geniuses that came up with dot.bomb business plans move into publishing when I wasn't looking?

Right, so, who wants to build a space station with me and leave this BS behind?

Have a look at the Baen Books Free Library. They explain their thinking and I agree with them. I own a lot of their books, purely because of their free library.

I wish more people did this. Then again, looking at my wallet, perhaps it's good that they don't! :-)

1. Online piracy -- while it is definitely illegal and immoral -- is, as a practical problem, nothing more than (at most) a nuisance.
2. Losses any author suffers from piracy are almost certainly offset by the additional publicity which, in practice, any kind of free copies of a book usually engender.
3. Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market is far worse than the disease.

Global Warming is FUD.

Now, before you hit the "flame" button, think about this: I believe in saving the earth just as much as Greenpeace does. However, I believe in doing so sanely. I don't believe in shutting down the American industrial complex; I believe in transforming it so that it works with nature, rather than against it. Organic farming. Biodiesel. Composting. Recycling. Well-thought-out mass transit. Telecommuting. Reducing government and spreading what's left throughout the land, rather than concentrating it in smoggy cities, and linking them all with the Internet. Good Honest Hemp for paper and clothes and plastic and pig food. Wind farms. Houses made of rammed earth or straw bales or dug into the side of a hill. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

The current crisis in California is the tip of the iceberg of what will happen if the eco-radicals get their way. California hasn't built a power plant of any kind in ten years. It Wasn't Allowed. And now, basically, they're screwed. And so are we, if we don't perform a crano-rectal reinversion and figure out that what's going on is that a very small, vocal bunch is trying to shut down America.

Let me repeat myself here in case somebody doesn't get it. I believe in saving the planet too, for all the animals. Including the big semi-furless funny-looking mammals that have a real serious tool codependence. I believe that, instead of looking for things we should not do to the planet, we should look for things we can do to save both the whales and our civilization. I think we can be both high-tech and high-touch, green and gold, work with nature rather than either against it or abandoning it. When I see things like Mt. St. Helens and Yellowstone, I am reminded that the Earth has done far more terrible things to itself than we do, and recovers beautifully... and while I still feel physically ill every time I head down towards Mt. Ranier and see what Weyrhauser has done to our forests (Good, Honest HEMP!) I think the time and effort we spend beating down the timber companies would be far better spent promoting alternate solutions rather than simply trying to shut them down....

If you tell a man "stop what you're doing, you're naughty-bad-evil-wicked" he's as liable to flip you the bird as anything. If you tell him "hey, there's a much easier, better way to do that" and even give him a business case including his conversion costs.... he might just take you up on it.

This is what we need to be about. Global warming, global schmarming. Just find ways to sustainably do things cleaner and better, and let the Earth worry about the rest. It'll do just fine, and has for years. <carl_sagan> Billions and billions of them. </carl_sagan>

P.S. Fallen Angels kicked ass.

A competing theory, put forward fictionally in the book Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn (available free in its entirety through the Baen Free Library), is that the earth is actually entering a cooler period (a Maunder Minimum), and if it weren't for the "greenhouse gas" in the atmosphere, we'd be experiencing another ice age.

The book is fiction, but the scientific theory it cites is real. (And it has RMS in it.)

--

A competing theory, put forward fictionally in the book Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn (available free in its entirety through the Baen Free Library), is that the earth is actually entering a cooler period (a Maunder Minimum), and if it weren't for the "greenhouse gas" in the atmosphere, we'd be experiencing another ice age.

The book is fiction, but the scientific theory it cites is real. (And it has RMS in it.)

--

In fact, I believe the first story involving beanstalks involve an attack on one - the companion "science fact" article explained their physics. I'm sure I'll remember the name of the author just after I hit submit - probably either Benford or Sheffeld.

If you were thinking of Charles Sheffield's The Web Between Worlds, the story considered the possibilty of a terrorist attack but it didn't actually happen.

BTW I think A.C. Clarke had a space elevator story out just a few months (weeks?) before Sheffield's novel was released.

I believe that there was recently a New York Times article about them.

His point is simple, copying a book is the same whether in printed or electronic form. If someone can read it online they _may_ buy a copy, they might just print it out.

Actually, most people prefer to read stuff in book form. While folks can print it, I don't fancy feeding several hundred pages into my printer and waiting for an hour or so for it to print (not to mention that then it's not free since I'm using up paper and printer toner/ink).

Books that I have read online and not had in my possession in physical form = 2. Both of which happened to be in the public domain anyway(the first two tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs for the curious).

Number of books I have read in whole or part online = approximately 12.

We can all get high and mighty but at the end of the day he has a point: He does this for a living, how would _you_ feel if someone copied your work just before you handed it in to the client and got the cash instead of you.

This is a faulty analogy. People who publish his works online aren't getting paid. If they were then I would support Mr. Ellison's stance completely. If somebody is to be paid, then either he or his publisher deserve to be the ones receiving the payment.

However, there is no significant indication that publishing books on the net reduces sales. Any book that I have liked I desire to own from a legitimate source. Any book that I suspect that I won't like I usually check for in the library first anyway (if online versions are easily available I will often browse at least part of the book online).

I recommend visiting the Baen free library for a different, and IMO more rational, take on the issue.

My iPaq has better sound quality than my portable CD player, and it's LOUD. With a 2GB microdrive I can store my entire mp3 collection. Batttery life is no worse than my CD player, and it recharges rapidly.

Portable gaming machine? Okay, another neat app. So I'm going to play quake and doom on this little tiny screen? And that will be fun how???? Sure that's cool, but it's a gimick. What else...tetris??? come on...

Graphics quality is actually very good, even with the little screen. Doom is perfectly playable. There is one problem with it not being able to recognize multiple keypresses, but that may be fixed via a ROM update. What's really fun is using a stowaway keyboard. Doom works great with that. I play tetris all the time on mine as well.

ebook reader? Okay, another neat use. I'm going to read a book on that little tiny screen? No. I don't even read books on my PC with my nice big screen and my cushy chair. It's a strain on my eyes and not nearly as enjoyable as a dead tree.

The eBook reader is probably one of the best things about the iPaq. I have now switched almost entirely to reading books using it. I've read about five books so far on it, and I have about six more stored on the thing that I'm currently reading. The clear type technology makes the print quality VERY good. It's easy on the eyes, and more convenient than a paper book. I would say that in terms of time spent using the thing, the majority has been for reading books. Baen offers a subscription-based sci-fi book club that has tons of titles.

As for demand, Compaq can't keep them on the shelves. The iPaq is currently the most popular PDA in terms of sales growth out there. They've been going on eBay for as much as $1500. Everyone who has seen mine immediately wants to buy one. It's a desktop machine the size of a Palm III.

-Vercingetorix

After spending the last several years in the tech support industry, it is my feeling that electronic anything (banking, books, buying/selling) has a long way to go before it's accepted by the masses, but not for the reasons most of the Slashdot crowd would expect. To put it quite simply, most people who grew up before computers cannot deal well with anything computerized. I call it CISS (prounounced "kiss") which stands for Computer Induced Stupidity Syndrome. This is the phenomenon of otherwise completely normal, intelligent human individuals become blithering idiots when placed in front of a computer. Their brain shuts off. I have tried to find a cause for this but I have yet to pin it down. In the case of electronic books it should be simple. Hell my four-year-old Palm Pilot Professional can read all of the Baen Free Library books (With minor modifications) and I've already read two of the books with it. So why can't other people do the same? Like I said, I don't know. Maybe it's resentment. They don't like the idea of electronic books. Everyone has a bit of ludite in them and most of the people I know who didn't grow up with computers somehow think an electronic version of something will be somehow less than the original version. Maybe it's fear. They're afraid that with all the news they've heard about all these companies excercising insane levels of control over something they've already "sold" to the public, electronic books will be another SDMI or worse. Maybe it makes them feel their own mortality. They realize that something new is coming out and some primitive part of them starts gibbering and raising a clammour. Whatever it is, I fear the only way to get past it is to "replace" these people with their children, a generation who have grown up with computers and who seem to exhibit an amazing resistance to CISS.

Also you might want to check out the Baen Free Library and read through the introductionary letter by Eric Flint, First Librarian ;-)

It's a bit long, but has excellent arguments in favor of free books online.

Offcourse, there's also the Gutenberg Project, but I don't really like that one myself...

Long ago, there was an article on Slashdot about a free, high quality online university subsidized by Michael Saylor of Microstrategy. This was the missing link. There are already a few good free sources of information out there (Project Gutenberg, The Baen Library), but a comprehensive educational program available for free would provide a much more "equal opportunity." Has anyone heard anything from this, or is it vaporware?

Why limit it to non-fiction!? Take a look at http://www.baen.com/library/ where you can download some great fiction for free. Make no mistake, Jim Baen and the authors want to make money off this little project, by spreading the word and getting the mid-list author's names out there, and they are bound to do better than the music industry, since they are embracing the web instead of denying its existence.

Uhh, They didn't.

WebScriptions has been running for over a year. Elizabeth Moon has books in the December 1999 and the December 2000 WebScriptions and her lastest book =Against the Odds= was just released by Baen last month.

Lois has published one book outside of Baen, primarily because Baen got outbid in an auction. But
=A Civil Campaign= is a WebScription and Lois has even written an essay about WebScriptions approving of it highly. See:

Lois McMaster Bujold on Book Distribution 2000

Doesn't feel like they left to me.

Uhh, They didn't.

WebScriptions has been running for over a year. Elizabeth Moon has books in the December 1999 and the December 2000 WebScriptions and her lastest book =Against the Odds= was just released by Baen last month.

Lois has published one book outside of Baen, primarily because Baen got outbid in an auction. But
=A Civil Campaign= is a WebScription and Lois has even written an essay about WebScriptions approving of it highly. See:

Lois McMaster Bujold on Book Distribution 2000

Doesn't feel like they left to me.

Uhh, They didn't.

WebScriptions has been running for over a year. Elizabeth Moon has books in the December 1999 and the December 2000 WebScriptions and her lastest book =Against the Odds= was just released by Baen last month.

Lois has published one book outside of Baen, primarily because Baen got outbid in an auction. But
=A Civil Campaign= is a WebScription and Lois has even written an essay about WebScriptions approving of it highly. See:

Lois McMaster Bujold on Book Distribution 2000

Doesn't feel like they left to me.

It would be very foolish for the music industry to assume that people downloading music for free will always automatically want to buy it if it turns out to be good.

You are falling into the trap that assumes "most people are thieves." Eric Flint address this directly in the Introduction. He says, "most people would rather be honest than dishonest...One of the things about the online debate over e-piracy that particularly galled me was the blithe assumption by some of my opponents that the human race is a pack of slavering would-be thieves held (barely) in check by the fear of prison sentences. Oh, hogwash."

I think the same arguement can be made for music listeners. I know that I have the desire to purchase CDs (getting the cover artwork, liner notes, etc) and I think most people feel the same way. After all, the percentage of slashdot trolls in the world is rather small.


--------

Eric Flint's welcome page essay on the welcome page of the Baen Free Library is an excellent read. I have not read as well thought out an argument about the whole online "stealing" vs. "free-promotion" thing since it started. If only Metallica had read this article before allowing their managers to scare them into suing Napster at the behest of their arm-twisting label. Sigh. It does give some hope for the future...

"artificially protecting American jobs at the expense of jobs in Third World countries" could merely imply being against free trade agreements such as NAFTA and World Trade Organization principles, which does not imply right-wing. Free trade has done lots of ugly things to first world and third world workers alike.

Moreover, just because something does not fit the traditional mold of "left wing" does not imply that it is "right wing". Politics and principles are not boolean, nor even on a one-dimensional scale: read about the Pournelle Political Axes, and why the traditional "left and right" model is harmful.

What I wonder is whether the planet might exhibit the same behavior as the rogue planet in Charles Sheffield's McAndrews stories.
--

Now if M$ would just fix the damn Reader software so it can handle encrypted stuff from Barnes & Noble (or better yet, is anyone working on cracking M$ Reader's encryption scheme? I pay for my books, but I really want to avoid the hassle of the stupid encryption. If I pay for it, I'll read it where and how I please, thank you).

BTW, Baen has a great sci-fi selection, and they carry eBooks. They are currently giving three away for free. They use a subscription model, so you can pay a small monthly fee and get something like 10 books a month.

-Vercingetorix