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You missed last night. I don't normally drink but I had a couple with the kids and g/f. Fortunately, not too many and I didn't go off the rails ranting about something different. I'm kinda tired tonight so you'll have to find a new bedtime story.

I recommend some awful (so bad it's good) science fiction.
http://www.baenebooks.com/10.1...

I agree entirely and think that we can just go by what the authors seem to prefer. For instance, using Piers Anthony, he calls his Xanth works Fantasy and his earlier works are Science Fiction. It won't be perfect but it *might* be better. There are going to be blurred lines and whatnot but unicorns, elves, and magic are not, generally, science.

Maybe we need a genre called "Science Fantasy" for the space opera type stuff. Where the "science" isn't science at all but is made up stuff that has no science behind it at all we can put that in its own category and then have the three genres for better classification? Still, some will blur the lines. "But it doesn't violate the laws of physics." True but catching my fart and painting it green is probably do-able within the laws of physics but probably still quite impossible.

Alright, that's not my best analogy...

I mentioned Retief in this thread. I'm not surprised that nobody picked up on it. It's overlooked binge reading material. I've a few well-thumbed anthologies kicking around at the house unless someone's wandered off with them. (They're reasonably good about returning them.) I wasn't able to find a whole lot online for you (because I think you, in particular, might be interested if time allows you such) but I did find this:

http://www.baenebooks.com/10.1...

I'm attempting a grab with HTTrack but I won't have the rights to distribute that work. Should the grab be successful then you can ping me by email (if wanted) and I might let slip an open port and let you grab it from the network or, you know, just mail the results to you in zipped format. Obviously you should then fall in love with the works and buy the rest of them. They're great rainy day works where you can just dive in and forget the rain and be amused for a while with something that's not very serious and yet, strangely, not pretentious and actually good about being what it is and knowing what it is. I am, obviously, a fan. ;-)

Last night I bought a Baen EBook: Terry Bisson - Numbers Don't Lie.

The book consists of three stories, one of them is about a "Hole in the Hole", a Brooklyn junkyard which uses a spacetime rift connecting the junkyard to the Moon in order to get rid of old tires. Our protagonists tries to use said rift to retrieve one of the three Apollo Moon buggies that were left behind.

Terje

From the summary:

...almost 50 years after coming close to possibly provoking a nuclear disaster, Secretary of State John Kerry, following years of wrangling between Spain and the U.S., signed an agreement...

Now, I'm not really John Kerry's biggest fan, but I think it's a bit much to blame him for "coming close to possibly provoking a nuclear disaster".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier

I also find the phrase "coming close to possibly provoking a nuclear disaster" rather strange. What sort of "disaster" does one "provoke"? One might provoke a war, or cause a disaster. And is "coming close to possibly" the same thing as "coming close", or does "possibly" mean that it wasn't that close?

P.S. It's not actually likely that a nuclear bomb that isn't armed will go off in a nuclear explosion by accident. The carefully-designed explosive charges need to go off in a specifically timed sequence, and if one of them goes off first because the bomb fell on it from a high altitude, what you would expect to happen is exactly what happened here: a non-nuclear explosion that scatters the radioactive components of the bomb over an area. If you define "scattering radioactive material" as a "nuclear disaster" then one did occur; if you don't define it that way, then no "nuclear disaster" was very likely to occur.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3bm65m/has_a_nuclear_bomb_ever_been_accidentally_set_off/

It's because of the above that I had trouble swallowing the plot of part of The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross. The protagonist needs to prevent a nuclear detonation from a warhead, and comes up with a needlessly elaborate plan involving a magical gadget that changes chemical compositions. All they needed to do was stick an explosive on one side of the warhead and light it off with a delay timer or remote detonator; after that, the radioactive bits would be blown here and there and no nuclear detonation would be possible.

I guess the protagonist of that story never read "The Long Watch" by Heinlein. You can read it, though, at this link:

http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133417/1439133417___4.htm

If you go to a Baen Free Library book page, there are two options to read on a Kindle.

Example: http://www.baenebooks.com/show...

The first is the email option. Send it to your Kindle's free email address and it will transfer it for you. The second is the MOBI/Palm/Kindle option. Connect the Kindle with a USB cord and copy the file over. That assumes that the new tablet works like every other Kindle. Project Gutenberg has a similar option although it won't email it for you. You'd have to download it and either copy with USB or email it yourself.

In addition, if it's a Fire tablet, it has a PDF viewer app that you can use. And an ePub app as well.

I'm willing to bet consumption, both legitimate and illegitimate, is up; so I wonder how much damage this "rise in piracy" is actually doing.

Quite a bit less than the whiny "we want to be last to market" bitches that keep suing their customers and otherwise treat them like crap. If you ignore the paid-for "studies" the effect is actually net positive. You have to remember that these are intangible "culture goods" that gain value with sharing.

That is, such goods make more money for the owners if more people have access to them. It's no secret that "airplay" is the be-all end-all for artists on radio and tv. Yet the focus of the big content cartel is on tightly controlling the material.

The late owner of Baen Books did the reverse, giving away for free a number of electronic books, calling it a license to print money.

IOW, if you ignore their own propaganda, the available sources, studies, and indications paint the sharing-decriers a bunch of doodie-heads.

If I was a publisher I'd be far more worried that this incentivises me to read older, public domain books.

Well, there's one reason why copyrights get extended every time the mouse threatens to become public domain. In fact, eg. google books considers re-issues of old, even centuries old, material to come with fresh copyright so things like the Illiad in a recent publication is considered protected under current terms as if it was published yesterday.

Yet at the same time over in Europe there's various countries that have country-wide rules propping up book prices to enable retention of large back-catalogues. So you pay more for every book including new ones because, you know, retaining old books in print is otherwise not profitable, or so the narrative goes. Make of that what you will.

I disagree. They aren't mutual, they are absolute opposites.

Absolute freedom is anarchy - everyone can do what they want, and nobody has security.
Absolute security is freedomless - one's actions are circumscribed in every possible way to reduce risk.

Of course, reality is always a compromise between such theoretical poles.

If you take as a hypothetical the TV show Lost: the characters in that drama had essentially no government, no police, and the freedom to do pretty much what they wanted. Concurrently, they had very little security.
Alternatively, if you have a society in which the government is expected to mitigate every risk, to protect from every harm, you have substantial security (ostensibly) but very limited freedoms (sacrificed on the altar of the "greater good" or "protect the children" or "fighting terror").

We seem to want the latter; we just spent 10 years at war and trillions of dollars over an attack that cost the US a (relatively trivial) 3000 lives. You say the modern police-state has failed? I'd disagree - we are getting *precisely* the state that we as a body public have voted for. I'm a libertarian, I truly would prefer a country with more freedom, cognizant that this means fewer safety nets, but I recognize too that I'm in a far minority, and will be outweighed by the masses that want single-payer health care, massive social safety-nets, and a society that weeps piteously over every sparrow that falls from their nest.

Read up on social contract theory, and then read John Campbell's Tribesman, Barbarian, and Citizen. (I found the full text of the piece quoted at http://www.baenebooks.com/chap... )

FYI - It's a reference to the sci-fi novel Live Free or Die by John Ringo, which is a great story and the first in what is so far a trilogy (though the third novel in that series has some serious plot problems and was a disappointing read.) Maple Syrup plays prominently in Live or Die Free, though I won't spoil the story by explaining how.

see also "The Long Way Home", Fred Saberhagen http://www.baenebooks.com/chap...

Very insightful! The Culture series is great for exploring these ides and clashes.

And on your water example, there was an episode in Star Trek: Voyager where Neelix is first introduced and he considers water a rare luxury. There is a a funny scene onboard Voyager where he surrounds himself with glasses of water the way we today might surround ourselves with gold and diamonds and i7 cores. But as you said, Neelix did not then drink himself to death, and he went on to find other useful and interesting things to do with his time.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wik...

See also James P. Hogan's "Voyage From Yesteryear" (VFY) sci-fi novel which has a gift economy in it where people acquire status by being good at something and using it for the public benefit. There is a clash of cultures there (one from old Earth similar to ours today) which includes a scene where some aristrocratic person in the old culture is going on about how fine some new silverware or something is (the old status system in play) when the two people she is trying to impress know such things could be had just for the asking in the new culture (which is powered by fusion energy and automated production lines). I think VFY really addresses the culture shock of the transition, something so brilliant I did not recognize how insightful it was when I first read the novel, thinking instead how silly that the old Earthlings could not get that things have changed and abundance is there for the asking. Sadly, I know see how prescient James P. Hogan was.
http://p2pfoundation.net/Voyag...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
http://www.baenebooks.com/chap...

Sadly, the late James P. Hogan's site seems to be down recently:
https://web.archive.org/web/20...

So I'll quote this here at length:
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
-----
An Earth set well into the next century is going through one of its periodical crises politically, and it looks as if this time they might really press the button for the Big One. If it happens, the only chance for our species to survive would be by preserving a sliver of itself elsewhere, which in practical terms means another star, since nothing closer is readily habitable. There isn't time to organize a manned expedition of such scope from scratch. However, a robot exploratory vessel is under construction to make the first crossing to the Centauri system, and it with a crash program it would be possible to modify the designs to carry sets of human genetic data coded electronically. Additionally, a complement of incubator/nanny/tutor robots can be included, able to convert the electronic data back into chemistry and raise/educate the ensuing offspring while others prepare surface habitats and supporting infrastructure, when a habitable world is discovered. By the time we meet the "Chironians," their culture is into its fifth generation.

In the meantime, Earth went through a dodgy period, but managed in the end to muddle through. The fun begins when a generation ship housing a population of thousands arrives to "reclaim" the colony on behalf of the repressive, authoritarian regime that emerged following the crisis period. The Mayflower II brings with it all the tried and tested apparatus for bringing a recalcitrant population to heel: authority, with its power structure and symbolism, to impress; commercial institutions with the promise of wealth and possessions, to tempt and ensnare; a religious presence, to awe and instill duty and obedience; and if all else fails, armed military force to compe

That's just confirming that I'm on the right path, when I buy an ebook, the first thing I do is to strip-out the DRM and then save this copy in my backed-up storage. If I paid for it, I want to make sure I own it, period.

Wrong. By purchasing the DRM'd copy in the first place, you're financially supporting their flawed business model and making it appear that you're okay with the crippled product you purchased.

I will only buy non-DRM eBooks. If that means that certain authors can only be purchased in dead-tree versions, well, that's how it's gotta be.

Somehow I had thought that the "prison for the unemployed" scenario would look more like Christopher Anvil's vision, but after seeing what the current American public is willing to endure for the illusion of safety, I wonder...

For some people paradise is "In the Queue".

...and again and again, while I wait in the queue.

http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0743435370/0743435370.htm

The Lunarians did it!

O'Reily and Pragmatic Bookshelf and Baen all publish in major formats (pdf, epub, mobi, etc), all DRM-free.

The problem is when you can only get books from one location you are screwed.

Also, the fact that Amazon can retroactively wipe books off the Kindle means even after the sale, they can Take It Back, like if you buy a book from a brick and mortar and they follow you out to your car, throw you up against the side, rifle through your bag, take your book and then drop some coin on the ground (your "refund").

In real life, they'd get shot. Online, they get more money.

Aha! Another John Ringo fan: http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/9781451639193/9781451639193.htm?blurb

Funny you should mention zombies and rabies in an article about a flu pandemic.

John Ringo just published a fictional book about a zombie apocalypse involving a customized rabies virus hiding in a flu stain

Under a Graveyard Sky - http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/9781451639193/9781451639193.htm?blurb

Funny you should mention a modern, derivative work, David Morrel wrote about this decades ago: http://davidmorrell.net/books/the-totem/

Funny you should mention zombies and rabies in an article about a flu pandemic.

John Ringo just published a fictional book about a zombie apocalypse involving a customized rabies virus hiding in a flu stain

Under a Graveyard Sky - http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/9781451639193/9781451639193.htm?blurb

For eBooks (if you like fantasy/SF) I've found Webscription (Baen books) to be a very very good service.

http://www.baenebooks.com/

Start there. They have a fairly large library, with quite a few books for free download. No DRM, fairly inexpensive (think $4-$7 per book) and downloadable in just about any format you'd want.

Once you've created an account, those books will stay available on your account page for download on whatever device you want it on.

I've put this same thing in several threads over the last few years, but I think they're still worth mentioning :)

It would probably help if they'd honor their web prices in their stores. I looked up the new David Weber title last night, and it was about $18 on the website, $25 in the stores, and they don't honor the web price in the store, and after shipping it basically costs the same. Found this out calling the store. I didn't bother to buy it. I'll wait for a copy to show up at a used bookstore. I only have about a dozen of those to choose from around here.

Try Baen ebooks. (They have a section on David Weber.) They've got easily the best prices I've seen on science fiction titles, they often give away the first one or two books of an established series to get you hooked, and there's no DRM. They are the only publishing company I've encountered that treat their customers as people. If I want a book, I always try Baen first, then if they don't have the book I'll try the other stores.

It would probably help if they'd honor their web prices in their stores. I looked up the new David Weber title last night, and it was about $18 on the website, $25 in the stores, and they don't honor the web price in the store, and after shipping it basically costs the same. Found this out calling the store. I didn't bother to buy it. I'll wait for a copy to show up at a used bookstore. I only have about a dozen of those to choose from around here.

Try Baen ebooks. (They have a section on David Weber.) They've got easily the best prices I've seen on science fiction titles, they often give away the first one or two books of an established series to get you hooked, and there's no DRM. They are the only publishing company I've encountered that treat their customers as people. If I want a book, I always try Baen first, then if they don't have the book I'll try the other stores.

That's why I use Calibre + plugin to strip out the DRM from Amazon e-books. Then I can lend them to whomever I like!

That's why I refuse to buy from Amazon, even their so-called 'DRM-Free' books, because they don't offer eBooks in a universal format.

Buy direct from Baen and O'Reilly or, as a last resort, find the DRM-Free books on Kobo, because at least they offer them as epub downloads. It's not easy to sift the DRM-Free gems from the DRM'd dross at Kobo, but it can be done with patience.

...buy a monthly book bundle from Baen! :o)

Indeed. Apple figured this out with iTunes. Sadly they and most major ebook publishers have not figured that out with epubs.

Kudos to Baen Books who have figures it out and sell their non-DRM books in multiple formats at a reasonable price.

I had hoped to work on them while getting a PhD in the 1980s: http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html

Still trying to make them on-and-off:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
http://oscomak.net/
http://openvirgle.net/

The human imagination is the ultimate resource (as economist Julian Simon said). What really killed the 1970s vision was Senator Proxmire's Golden Fleece Award. It's taken a long time to recover from that nastiness politically, coupled with other mistakes like the Shuttle (compared to cheap rockets with a return capsule). Plus computers have absorbed most of the creative energy that was going into the space program in the Apollo era.

The world itself has plenty of material resources and energy. We'll even probably have both hot and cold fusion soon which will make it easy to recycle everything. The real reason to go into space is about diversity, challenge, curiosity, exploration, community, and just room for more creativity -- to use space resources in space.

I took an undergrad course with Gerry O'Neill. He called me a "dreamer" for wanting to make self-replicating space habitats. :-) I was inspired by James P. Hogans's sci-fi novel "The Two Faces Of Tomorrow" which has a space habitats with an automated factory.
http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0671878484/0671878484.htm

I I later found out J.D. Bernal proposed them in the 1920s:
http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/

Gerry O'Neill anticipated there would be a slow capitalistic expansion into space, and built his plans around that. Sadly, US capitalism was not kind to any of his business plans (Geostar, LAWN) which he had hoped would fund more space ventures.

Meanwhile, the non-profit world of cooperation in cyberspace seems to be what is taking off, and what ultimately may get us space habitats (self-replicating or not). I tried a couple times over the past two decades to try to get his legacy non-profit SSI interested in supporting a free and open source effort towards developing space habitats. But I found the core there was still enamored of Gerry's old business plan of creating solar space satellites and using that to fund a slow expansion into space. That plan may have made sense in the 1970s, but it ignore today's reality that such satellites could be used as weapons, and the cost of solar power on Earth is falling exponentially, and local power storage is rapidly improving via batteries and fuel cells, etc.. Once we are in space for other reasons, maybe beamed power might make sense for either facories or to aircraft or laser launch systems.

Anyway, I'm still trying to keep some of the dream alive. Mostly, in my spare time, for decades I've been focused (too much) on making a triple-based social semantic desktop to organize all the needed information (while the world passed me by on that too, like with RDF and URLs and so on):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pointrel/

It's been interesting, even if not too much obvious direct results to show for it.

Read "The Warriors" by Larry Niven. It's that very scenario, except it doesn't quite end as badly due to the way it is set up.

Actually I don't think baenebooks.com sells books directly anymore. Last time I was there they said that they were now using amazon.com as their ebook distributor.

S'weird, cause I just bought their latest monthly book bundle...the downloads don't seem to come through Amazon...and I can pay with PayPal...

I did notice, though, that Tor is selling on there as well, so maybe they just decided not to bother setting up their own store.

I've noticed more and more Amazon eBooks, especially sci-fi books, being released without DRM. It's still very much in the minority, but at least it's happening.

I posted feedback to their help center a while back telling them that they needed to implement a DRM filter on their advanced search page, at least something like "DRM? Y/N". Yeah, right, I won't be holding my breath for it...

In the meantime, search Amazon for books from Baen or Tor, they're the only two major publishers I am aware of that have implemented a no DRM policy. Or better yet, buy direct from Baen. Tor's supposed to have a store too, but something seems to have gone awry there.

Some more:

http://nostarch.com/
http://pragprog.com/
https://www.baenebooks.com/t-drm.aspx
http://www.dragonmount.com/index.php/News/book-news/new-drm-free-ebook-store-r401
http://lifehacker.com/5946956/grab-a-bundle-of-drm+free-ebooks-on-the-cheap

"Radiation shielding is hard, its not impossible."

Good points. Freeman Dyson says much the same, and does some calculations showing that in one of his essays, where he says, adjusted for inflation, the costs to go from Europe to the Americas was on the order of what it would cost now to go into space. Remember, many people coming over to the "colonies" came as indentured servants who had to work off their travel for seven years. So, as a ballpark figure, let's guesstimate that person was giving up US$100K per year for inflation-adjusted wages (people typically worked six days a week and fourteen hours a day back then), and that's US$700,000 as an indenture. So, the move to North America was not that cheap for many.

On radiation shielding, see Marshall Savage's "The Millennial Project" where he suggests simply having two layers of transparent plastic with six feet of water between them. We could get the water in space from asteroids or comets (or launch the water from the earth or the moon via mass driver). Radiation problem solved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millennial_Project:_Colonizing_the_Galaxy_in_Eight_Easy_Steps
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Other ideas from the Carter Administration:
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/

Read James P. Hogan's "Voyage from Yesteryear" and "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" for some realistic hard sci-fi set in habitats.
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0671878484/0671878484.htm

More ideas:
http://www.openvirgle.net/

All that said though, I would point out that the same sorts of technologies we need to live in space (such as near 100% recycling, healthier materials to be around, improved agriculture, portable doctoring and a better understanding of human nutrition and health, flexible manufacturing, improved governing processes for small communities, accessible digital libraries, improved conflict resolution skills, and so on), are mostly the *same* things we need to make Spaceship Earth work for everybody. So, overall, there is no deep conflict between an interest in space habitats and trying to make the Earth a better place.

I don't think anyone tried to patent the "rumble" feedback. Here's another feedback. Is this really patentable?

If so, I expect companies will rush out and file patents on making a controller emit audio to serve as a game feedback, making a controller flash LEDs to serve as a game feedback, making a controller give little electric shocks as a game feedback, etc. Basically just go down the list of possible stimuli and patent everything.

P.S. In the novel Bug Park, people tele-operate micro-robots by VR technology. The battery life of the remote micro-robot is signaled by means of a thermal plate touching the operator's skin: when the battery is full, the plate feels warm, and the plate cools as battery life drops. I'm not a lawyer, so maybe "in a video game" is different enough from "when tele-operating a micro-robot"... but IMHO, even if this patent passes the "obvious" test, it should flunk the prior art test.

steveha

All the signs I've ever seen there say: "TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT; SURVIVORS WILL BE PROSECUTED"

And they're not kidding, either. Diddo with the "Danger - Landmines" signs...

This totally reminds me of Vernor Vinge's "The Ungoverned".

No, it's that we know that aliens tried to steal the syrup. This is obviously the start of The Maple Syrup War!

It's called "A Pail of Air" by Fritz Leiber from 1951.
The planet was actually earth, which had been torn away from the Sun by a dark star passing through.
It's a nice and rather short story and can be read in full here. http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0743498747/0743498747___6.htm

You mean like they made it illegal to brand "GM free" foods? Yeah. Lovely country we have here... the government sure does protect us from those bad companies selling tainted food. We might actually be better-off without the 3-letter agencies.

Here's another site I want to nominate for the DRM-free logo. They even hand-out free books for download:
http://www.baenebooks.com/
http://www.baenebooks.com/c-1-free-library.aspx

You mean like they made it illegal to brand "GM free" foods? Yeah. Lovely country we have here... the government sure does protect us from those bad companies selling tainted food. We might actually be better-off without the 3-letter agencies.

Here's another site I want to nominate for the DRM-free logo. They even hand-out free books for download:
http://www.baenebooks.com/
http://www.baenebooks.com/c-1-free-library.aspx

Most unappreciated has to go to Poul Anderson.

He wrote so much stuff, and almost all of it top-notch. His name deserves to be right up there with Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein.

The Flandry books. The van Rijn books. The Time Patrol. The Hoka books!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poul_Anderson

http://baen.com/author_catalog.asp?author=panderson

His work was nominated for Hugo awards on numerous occasions, but the top names released popular stories at the same time and he lost to those.

Somewhere I saw a discussion of the best SF books to give to SF-hating friends to try to win them over. The Time Patrol books were chosen by several. "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" is fantastic.

Baen collected all the Time Patrol stuff into one mega volume:

http://www.baenebooks.com/p-428-time-patrol.aspx

You can read the first novella and most of the second one for free at the above link (click on "View sample chapters").

steveha

Personally I almost wish this scenario had played out as in:
A State Of Disobedience: http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0743471709/0743471709.htm?blurb

Recommended reading: Poul Anderson's Wings of Victory .

The science fiction author Charles Sheffield wrote a story about a similar idea in the late 1970s called What Song the Sirens Sang. The protagonist is a journalist investigating a politician who has come seemingly out of nowhere and is about to be nominated for president. He discovers that the secret to the politician's success is that he has developed a theory of communications that allows him to combine words and music to evoke optimum emotional responses. Check it out, it's a short read and very good.

IIRC, there was a study done which concluded that 14 years was the more or less optimum time period for most intellectual property as a protected monopoly and such. Assuming this is true, I would move the number to 10 years and place the property on a yearly auction/property tax. After which, the owner must declare a sale price, and pays a small proportional property tax for every year it is not sold. If it the property is crap it will be put in public domain forthwith by declaring $0 in value for year 11 (this is the default value at this year), which is obviously not taxed either. If the Intellectual property is $hiny the owner will declare a high value and hope noone buys the property, AND hope the guessed right so they can afford the yearly property tax. Refusing a valid would-be purchaser invokes serious penalties...use imagination here. Or Something like this. Which was derived from the sci-fi novel Leo Frankowski's A Boy And His Tank. http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0671578502/0671578502.htm

there are no completely new ideas.

Of course there are. Electric lights? Automobiles? Telephones? Computers? The Fucking Internet??? Nobody thought of the internet until 1946 (Full text at the link).

That said, though, you're right, DropBox didn't invent "cloud" computing (I hate that damned "cloud" ignorance the tech-illiterate marketers came up with).

I'd love to see them fix their pricing. I've noticed people have mentioned Tor and Baen, but their pricing was terrible (at least for the author I liked).

Latest David Weber Book -
http://www.baenebooks.com/p-1550-a-rising-thunder.aspx - $6

Price of David Weber Book published by Tor (not sure how long its not been available) -
http://www.baenebooks.com/p-601-off-armageddon-reef.aspx - $18

I just don't understand how they think because they are Tor, they should charge 3 times the price!

I'd love to see them fix their pricing. I've noticed people have mentioned Tor and Baen, but their pricing was terrible (at least for the author I liked).

Latest David Weber Book -
http://www.baenebooks.com/p-1550-a-rising-thunder.aspx - $6

Price of David Weber Book published by Tor (not sure how long its not been available) -
http://www.baenebooks.com/p-601-off-armageddon-reef.aspx - $18

I just don't understand how they think because they are Tor, they should charge 3 times the price!

I'd gladly pay for an e-book if a) it is cheaper than the hard copy AND b) I could read it on any device at anytime without an internet connection long after [insert controlling entity] is gone.

Then head over to Baen and start buying. Their ebooks are cheaper than paper, with absolutely no DRM, and they offer every major format plus HTML and RTF.

I have spent hundreds of dollars at Baen on ebooks, partly because I am voting against DRM with my dollars. When Tor ebooks are available DRM-free I'll start buying Tor as well.

http://www.baenebooks.com/

You mean like this one http://www.baen.com/library/ ?

That seems to be some sort of mix. First book that caught my attention I can't even buy let alone read online ... The possible free books appear to be a very small subset and the books that are listed as "Baen Books" are closer to what I'm talking about but the selection is small and the topic is very narrow (sci-fi fantasy?).

Rainbow's End isn't published by Baen, it's published by Tor Books. I'm presuming some sort of agreement between the companies came apart resulting in the book being made unavailable (Though Tor does ebooks and have stated they're going DRM-free starting this year). Not sure why they'd leave it listed though.

Baen isn't exactly a huge publisher. They have about 40 or so authors.

Also, sci-fi/fantasy is all they do.

You mean like this one http://www.baen.com/library/ ?

That seems to be some sort of mix. First book that caught my attention I can't even buy let alone read online ... The possible free books appear to be a very small subset and the books that are listed as "Baen Books" are closer to what I'm talking about but the selection is small and the topic is very narrow (sci-fi fantasy?).

Rainbow's End isn't published by Baen, it's published by Tor Books. I'm presuming some sort of agreement between the companies came apart resulting in the book being made unavailable (Though Tor does ebooks and have stated they're going DRM-free starting this year). Not sure why they'd leave it listed though.

Baen isn't exactly a huge publisher. They have about 40 or so authors.

Also, sci-fi/fantasy is all they do.

You mean like this one http://www.baen.com/library/ ?

That seems to be some sort of mix. First book that caught my attention I can't even buy let alone read online ... The possible free books appear to be a very small subset and the books that are listed as "Baen Books" are closer to what I'm talking about but the selection is small and the topic is very narrow (sci-fi fantasy?).

Rainbow's End isn't published by Baen, it's published by Tor Books. I'm presuming some sort of agreement between the companies came apart resulting in the book being made unavailable (Though Tor does ebooks and have stated they're going DRM-free starting this year). Not sure why they'd leave it listed though.

Baen isn't exactly a huge publisher. They have about 40 or so authors.

Also, sci-fi/fantasy is all they do.

You mean like this one http://www.baen.com/library/ ?

That seems to be some sort of mix. First book that caught my attention I can't even buy let alone read online ... The possible free books appear to be a very small subset and the books that are listed as "Baen Books" are closer to what I'm talking about but the selection is small and the topic is very narrow (sci-fi fantasy?).

Thanks for demonstrating goodwill in this exact situation to counter the OP's "seriously?" comment.

There's only ever been a few cases I've found out of hundreds where music has been discontinued on Bandcamp and the one instance I know of is a French band Malajube ... even bands like fun. that "graduate" to big labels keep their first releases up on Bandcamp.