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My first book (Ship It! http://pragprog.com/titles/prj/ship-it ) was with the prags and it was a great experience. The book is now in 6 foreign languages editions and I keep getting quarterly checks. The editorial process was incredibly difficult, but that's because they push you to be the best you can.

And the 50% royalty rate is really what you get. I can tell you exactly how many books have been bought and returned, PDFs vs paper books, etc. I've not heard of anyone being able to match the level of information they provide authors.

The build system is also insanely cool. You can render the book on your local box, so you can see how it looks as you go. That's really motivating.

I just published a book on Lulu.com (for a variety of reasons, none negative towards the prags), and it was nearly painless. If you do publish on Lulu, be sure to start with their Word template and that eliminates a ton of the pain. But Career 2.0 ( http://www.lulu.com/content/5925115 ), my latest, has so many more typos, etc in it that Ship It!... it was easier to write, but the editing quality suffered a bit.

Regardless of who you publish with, you'll sell if you market it. Otherwise it won't. You write articles (InfoQ, DZone, etc), you set up a blog, you go to user's groups... you're the main PR arm for your book. You'll get out of it what you put into it.

A related option is to have an outfit like Lulu publish the book and sell it for you. You upload a PDF. They take orders and process them, print the book on demand, and send it out. They take a fixed cost (based on number of pages, binding, etc.) and you set the margin added to that, which goes to you. You get an ISBN, which gets the book into Books in Print, and they have arrangements for listing the book with Amazon.com and some other distributors. It looks attractive if you don't need the editing or marketing that a regular publisher provides.

Physical books don't have source code

Ofcourse they do. It's a lot easier to work with the (in almost all cases) original electronic text than the printed form. It's why word processors are so popular. Personally I'd prefer Vim and (La)TeX -- but the fact remains that most written works from the 90s onwards has something that could very well be described as source text (I agree, it's not really code, not even if it's in plan TeX).

I haven't seen a book published under any kind of open license available in print.

How about: http://diveintopython.org/ ? And depending on your definition of "available in print": http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?fKeywords=gnu (along with pretty much any book available in ps/pdf/tex that you can print for yourself at lulu, licence permitting...).

Also found this which is available as a gratis download, and might be of help to the original poster:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/intro-to-computers/2230846

Physical books don't have source code

Ofcourse they do. It's a lot easier to work with the (in almost all cases) original electronic text than the printed form. It's why word processors are so popular. Personally I'd prefer Vim and (La)TeX -- but the fact remains that most written works from the 90s onwards has something that could very well be described as source text (I agree, it's not really code, not even if it's in plan TeX).

I haven't seen a book published under any kind of open license available in print.

How about: http://diveintopython.org/ ? And depending on your definition of "available in print": http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?fKeywords=gnu (along with pretty much any book available in ps/pdf/tex that you can print for yourself at lulu, licence permitting...).

Also found this which is available as a gratis download, and might be of help to the original poster:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/intro-to-computers/2230846

I don't remember what his reaction to this particular one was. He's a prolific crackpot, and all his theories and reactions are hard to keep distinct in my mind. This might have been the one where he decided I really was a top academic mathematician, coming to usenet to undermine him before he could carry out his plan to take us all down by having everybody's tenure removed. (I am not a mathematician, and am not in an academic position).

If you would like to examine some of the works of this prolific crank, he publishes them on his blog. If you want to enjoy his insanity away from the computer, an alternative is his book.

His early work is not covered at the blog, though, so if you want his proof of FLT, you'll have to dig in the usenet archives.

Yeah, just did some research: http://www.lulu.com/ I can publish a hardbound book for $26. To publish digitally it would cost me at least $60 a month just for my internet connection.

And I realize I'm ignoring economies of scale. At some point it does become cheaper to publish digitally, but at no point does cheaper = free.

Something called an Expresso Book Machine is coming down the line, and it's going to cause a revolution too. Print on Demand caused a revolution as well.

I wouldn't really call the results of PoD a revolution, at least not in terms of fiction publishing (which, at least tacitly, is the topic at hand -- both Doctorow and LeGuin are fiction authors). PoD books are too expensive for mainstream purchasers to consider. While a typical novel will set you back around £7 ($10), a typical PoD novel would be more like £13 ($20) (e.g. most of the stuff here). From what I've heard about Espressoo Book Machine it's likely to suffer from the same issue... you'll be paying around 50-100% over the odds to purchase a book from it. They currently have the catalogue of Lightning Source, a PoD printer, and are I believe selling the books for the same (overinflated) cover prices that you'd pay to order one from Lightning Source.

Who needs a journal at all, when you have http://lulu.com/?

If the price point is right, community peer review can function just as well after publication. It is certainly preferable to having biased or imaginary reviewers.

At least as far as independent publishing of books goes, there is something sort of similar. I found that out when I was trying to find a place to print my thesis. This service called Lulu www.lulu.com which would print your PDF file as a book and also put it up for sale on Amazon (ISBN and all). Now, when I get the corrections from my examiners I do plan to put my thesis at Amazon (just to see how many people would pay to get a hard copy of my research), even if I make the PDF freely available on my website.

I'm going to burn some Karma here and pimp myself out a bit.

I'm currently trying to sell a novel, Trust Network: a contemporary techno-thriller about a woman who stumbles upon a group of people doing pretty much exactly the kinds of stuff with botnets that we're talking about here. She has a great idea involving social networks and online trust, which is at odds with what these people want to do. From there it's a fast-paced cat-and-mouse to see who can get the upper hand.

One of the reasons I wrote it was because I got tired of all of the contemporary fiction with computers that made you roll your eyes at how absurd the technology was. You know what I'm talking about: "It's a UNIX system -- I know this!". I wrote it to prove that you could get the technology right without sacrificing the story or making you want to scrape your eyeballs out. In other words, it was written specifically for the Slashdot technorati.

I haven't found an agent yet, but until then I have made the complete book available for anyone to read: you can read it online at Scribd, or download a free PDF or have a print-on-demand copy sent to you from Lulu. The cost of the printed book ($9-$17) from Lulu is 100% publishing cost, with nothing going to me. In the US, you can get it shipped to you for as little as ~$15 total. I've even got a sort of money-back guarantee if you decide it was a complete waste of your money.

If you are intrigued by the thought of what you could do with a million zombie computers at your command, and you enjoy geektastic fiction, then have at it. I hope you enjoy it. Meanwhile, I've got about a zillion query letters to agents that I have to get back to writing.

Well this has been an intelligent and interesting conversation. I have to check to make sure it is still Slashdot. :)

Anyway Wookieepedia is all about Star Wars, don't forget Wiki sites. Like a book, they have content and sometimes covers the secret history of Star Wars the same as a commercial book would. I cannot verify that the Wiki site covers the same material as that book as I didn't buy that book, but I am sure it is interesting.

I am trying to write my own book based on computer history to try to find out what went wrong in the industry. It is hard to write, and I read Stephen King's "On Writing" book and I am 75% finished with it. I have to make the book fiction to avoid being sued by the companies I mention in it. Like when IBM sold computers to Nazi Germany and they were used in the Holocaust, or all of the blunders that Microsoft and Apple make. I found that if I cannot get a publisher that Lulu.com will help me self-publish the book as an eBook and paper book and for $100 more list it on Amazon.com for sale. I thought I'd mention that an eBook helps people like me get published better by self-publishing my book through Lulu.com or some other web site. I have a lot of web links, so eBook is preferred over paper as one cannot click the links in paper format.

http://www.lulu.com/content/2417903

Full disclosure, I am the "author".

1. Some people write books for fun. Case in Point: NaNoWriMo. How many books have you written and published? (Why don't you go get ya shine box right now.)
2. Some people write books that may be useful for some people, but have a very small niche market. For example I wrote a guitar book, though I really stretch the meaning of "wrote" with it since it's mostly a journal with some useful nuggets in the front. I know 3 people who've already thanked me for it because there wasn't much in the market for that already.
3. I have 2 novels in first draft form that I plan on self-publishing through Lulu. Do they suck? well, right now yes because they're a rough draft, however when I publish them, I'm hoping they won't. I know enough talented people to help quite a bit with this sorta thing because...
4. My wife runs Literaryescapism.com which is a book review site. She quite a few books per month, and my favorite out of all of them that I've read is Pulling Strings by P. Vera, and he's self published.
5. To say we have no dignity because we self-publish is... more pathetic than anything. I really can't respond to someone who'd think that, I can only give you this advice:

6. Never go full retard (again).

1. Some people write books for fun. Case in Point: NaNoWriMo. How many books have you written and published? (Why don't you go get ya shine box right now.)
2. Some people write books that may be useful for some people, but have a very small niche market. For example I wrote a guitar book, though I really stretch the meaning of "wrote" with it since it's mostly a journal with some useful nuggets in the front. I know 3 people who've already thanked me for it because there wasn't much in the market for that already.
3. I have 2 novels in first draft form that I plan on self-publishing through Lulu. Do they suck? well, right now yes because they're a rough draft, however when I publish them, I'm hoping they won't. I know enough talented people to help quite a bit with this sorta thing because...
4. My wife runs Literaryescapism.com which is a book review site. She quite a few books per month, and my favorite out of all of them that I've read is Pulling Strings by P. Vera, and he's self published.
5. To say we have no dignity because we self-publish is... more pathetic than anything. I really can't respond to someone who'd think that, I can only give you this advice:

6. Never go full retard (again).

Yes, props for remembering the Allegory of the Cave. It's funny that you mention detractors of Plato. An author I know just finished working on a book he called The Platonic Idiom. It's available through lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/content/3614575. I look forward to reading his finished version.

[tinfoil] Sure, and adding signatures to all routers couldn't possibly be trying to make Thomas Paine roll over in his grave, now, could it? [/tinfoil]

Please send me your cum. I'm trying to cook dinner for my friends and I've run short.

Thanks!

And it's not like you cannot use http://www.lulu.com/ to keep it in print.

Self publish at 400% mark up to keep copyright seems fair enough.

If you cannot bother with that, I cannot see any reason to keep it under copyright.

Tolkein never tried to stop anyone from using elves and wizards... but what you're arguing means that things like Disney's version of Snow White would never be made without copious investment from someone with very deep pockets. They'll only invest in a "sure thing" which is why you see the glut of insane rehashings any more of any successful property. He had his chance to profit from the work (and he did quite well with it). Why then should his stories be locked up from the rest of society? We tell the stories of Goldilocks, Snow White, even Romeo and Juliet or The Odyssey as part of our cultural heritage. Those are outright copies, yet still add something new, something different, they add to our culture. Yet your statements advocate doing away with that.

To take a more modern example, look at J.K. Rowling. Has she profited from Harry Potter in a short time? I should say so. The world has latched on to the stories she created, the characters have captured imaginations. Which is wonderful. But that is the point... she should not be allowed to control other people's imaginations. She should control her stories, make a profit from them if she can, and then they should be given to the rest of the world so that the world can profit from them. She built her stories on the backs of those who came before her, whether she admits it or not. Nothing is ever completely novel.

Assuming I did have copyright over a particularly good garden design, I would not like it if a competitor (especially a large company) outright copied it initially. But if I couldn't publicize and sell it after, say, 14 years, then they should have every right to do so. As well as any other person who wanted to. Them copying it does NOT make me any less the original creator of the design, and if it gets popular, people will want to come to me for new designs, assuming I do things right. It's free advertising. Just like I couldn't claim the Mona Lisa as my own work, even if I made an identical copy of it, everyone would know it was Leonardo daVinci who painted it, and if he were alive, it would be HIS work that would be in demand, not mine. Unless someone just wanted a cheap copy of an original, which means they wouldn't be part of the market for the original in the first place.

As for your publisher example, if that happens, then the author has no business being in the business of writing. That's what contracts and so on are for... you don't just throw your novel to a publisher and hope for the best. You need to protect your investment by specifying dates, advertising, shipping, etc. in return for providing the manuscript. Provide parts of the manuscript as an example of the work, rather than the whole of the work, and provide the whole of the work upon the signing of a contract that is agreed on by both parties. Hell, in this day and age, anyone can be a publisher, so there's no excuse for getting taken advantage of.

You have some very strong emotional arguments. But that is all they are. Emotional. They are not based on anything more than "But I don't WANT that!". They are not for the good of society, only for the good of a few specific creators who by luck or design happen to get famous.

You might want to try this http://www.lulu.com/content/1270751

I've built a fusor while in high school (a couple of years ago), and it's certainly within the reach of a dedicated person, or somebody with lots of support.

More info for the interested at http://stores.lulu.com/raymondj .

For me the fusor wasn't really an end so much as a starting point: it is an educational experience that is unmatched, because to build a fusor, you've got to have a grasp of high voltage, high vacuum, and gas management systems. Learning about these things in theory is nice, but there is nothing that can compare to slaving over a hot wrench after bolting down your chamber for the last hour and leak checking every single seal.

And, if anything, it does look good on a resume.

Hate to self promote here...but why not buy the book?

Quite the entertaining read.

Why are the prices for textbooks so high when solutions like lulu.com make publishing free and easy and leave the resulting books as reasonably priced as the author requires?

The ebooks at Lulu (www.lulu.com) are also pure PDF and DRM free. PDF is easier to search than a real book, it can have beautiful colors and illustrative photos without the high printing cost. And it is so easy to copy and paste source code. It should be sold for no more than half the price of the printed version since it costs nothing to distribute.

Here's an example about computers and science. Compare the eBook preview to the preview for the printed version (black and white). For half the price, I'd get the eBook anytime, particularly for computer books with code examples.

I've found Lulu to have reasonable prices for printing and shipping, and the quality of the finished product is excellent. I've used it a number of times for printing hard copies of various manuals, IBM Redbooks, etc.

because it is cheaper to create a PDF and sell that, than print out a lot of paperback or hardcopy books.

The #1 reason why people pirate a book is cost, but a PDF book is relatively cheap next to a paper book, and Lulu.com knows that and helps people self publish ebooks in PDF format for really cheap, cheaper than a paper publisher would charge.

I am a big Traveller fan, and Far Future and Marc Miller are putting Traveller V5 in PDF format and selling the CD. Actually they have T5 in PDF format on the Citizens of the Imperium forums only available to people like me who paid for T5 in advance and let us become beta testers for the new gaming system and allow us to give feedback on the new T5 changes. Oddly enough, the T5 PDF files, while not copy protected or even watermarked, never found their way to file sharing networks unlike a lot of old RPG and Gaming materials already have. Most Traveller fans don't want Traveller to die out, so they refuse to pirate the PDF files for T5 and Mongoose Traveller, despite a lot of the Classic Traveller, etc stuff already been scanned and put on file sharing networks already.

In some cases, piracy of the Classic Traveller materials got enough people interested in the new T5 materials to buy them, and some even buy the Classic Traveller CD set from Far Future to support Traveller and make sure that it survives to the new settings and new T5 system.

Besides Google has Google Books that has a lot of books available online for free and while you cannot read a whole book you can search through it enough to find what you need so that you don't have to buy the book. Even if their are partial previews, they allow enough info to learn what you need and you can search through the book, chapter by chapter, and in theory read the whole book for free. I don't really see a difference between reading a book for free in Google Books or downloading it from a file sharing network for free before actually buying the book later to have a hard copy and see if you like the book enough to buy it. In a library or book store you can read the whole book for free anyway. Then decide to buy it or not, based on how you like it.

In that way Piracy actually helps people decide what they want to buy, provided they like it enough to buy it after previewing it. I myself have bought books for $20 to $55 or more, then finding out later that the book was useless or I didn't like it, but I was stuck with it and out of money and had to buy a different book that was better. Reviews really don't help, as people are paid to shill for a book and write a good review even if the book is horrible. Besides the person who liked the book and wrote a review, might not like the same things that I or anyone else likes to see in a book.

More recently I've been selling a book I wrote (plug: http://www.progressiverock.com/) and you know what, I start an auction on Saturday, a week later it ends, I sell the book, receive $$$ through Paypal, and ship via USPS which is debited from that same Paypal account. The day after payment is received (usually Sunday), the book is in the mail to the buyer. What an effortless transaction.

Here's the kicker: In my auction text, I have a link http://www.lulu.com/content/604953 which allows the interested party to buy the book a) immediately, b) for less $$$ and c) for less shipping. But every book I put up on eBay sells, and has multiple bidders. Whatever one may think of eBay and Paypal, it works for me...

I've recently self-published my book Zero to Superhero at Lulu.com, and the masterplan was to have it distributed by Lulu to Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble etc. One hundred dollars and 18 weeks later, and Lulu still hasn't had my book distributed to Amazon as promised. Or anywhere for that matter.

Saturday I discovered that Amazon will no longer accept books from other POD publishers, so even if Lulu were to finally act to fulfill their promise and my order, they can't. Lulu has yet to reply to my email asking for answers either, and the online help was useless.

I'm not sure what to do at this point. Most of my sales have been directly from my own website, but I would've liked to have my book available at the internet's largest book retailer as well (or at least my $100 back).

Maybe http://www.lulu.com/ is a sufficient way to publish.

Another great guy from Red Hat is Bob Young who went on to start LULU.com. This guy really groks the whole "open source" thing. Since I've built my million-dollar business on the back of RedHat Linux, I can say with complete honesty, I really appreciate their efforts!

Another great guy from Red Hat is Bob Young who went on to start LULU.com. This guy really groks the whole "open source" thing. Since I've built my million-dollar business on the back of RedHat Linux, I can say with complete honesty, I really appreciate their efforts!

One of the teachings in that book is this: Wealth is poison; it murders from within. Lucius Malfoy ("bad faith") killed himself with wealth before he embarked on his career as a Death Eater. Rowling has allowed herself to be turned into a corporate person -- such a "corpse" will never rest in peace.

• It is uncostitutional: see here (link in Italian);
• It won't be proposed in this form due to the huge debate it has raised.

There's a good writeup here (link in Italian), which describes well why it is uncostitutional (the author is a lawyer, as well).

It's a mixed bag, I think.

On the one hand, there are a lot more opportunities for making money from writing--blogs, namely. The downside of that, however, is that because there are so many people doing so, the pay is usually crap. To be successful, writers have to work much harder at promoting themselves directly to the readers. In the Olde Days(tm), writers had to promote their work to publishers, who then in turn promoted their work to their readers.

For fiction writers, I think it's a different animal altogether--in fact, I'd say that beyond offering a new medium for promotion and sales (Amazon), the Net hasn't had much effect on fiction writing. eBooks are not getting any traction. Online fiction zines typically don't pay very well (if at all), and aren't really well respected or frequented by readers.

I was at a con this weekend where there was a panel on Print-On-Demand, which is a technology used mainly by self-publishing companies and "vanity presses." Sites like Lulu.com are taking some of the stigma out of self-publishing (I've done it myself), but self-publishing again requires massive amount of work at self-promotion. (And some of the sleazier methods of said promotion are creating yet another stigma on the concept.) It's really only useful if you either have an audience already, or if you don't intend to sell more than a few hundred copies. As a means to earn a living, it just plain sucks.

For a fiction writer, the world hasn't changed much--dead trees are still the name of the game, as are the publishing firms that control them.

It would be nice if someone bought some for a change. There's a few videos I've made for various albums, and, to stay on topic, mny remix of "me i'm not" that I wrote using the multi-track sources Trent released for his new album (which I think, personally, is his best work in years).

Of course, no one has really ever stolen my music, since I tend to give it away, following the 'try before you buy' approach that is preached around here. I just think that you can't steal what I give away, but sometimes it's nice to get something back to continue along with all the work that I've done over the years to make my albums, writing and artwork.

Of course, one can alway just make a donation or buy some merchandise if they want to support the cause as well. I've been on this site for years and follow it's practices well...unfortunately it doesn't seem to pay, or not at least yet.

I hear most my work is quite good, maybe you might think so too.

All things on blogs are, as a rule, blog entries. This means that we, as readers, assume that: there was no editorial oversight, no fact checking done by someone other than the author, there is personal bias.

Of course, any sane person should assume the same three things about any news source. But the big difference between a real article and a blog entry article is that with a genuine article we can assume that the writer at least writes well enough to earn at least a partial living from writing, and someone is accountable if the article is a complete fabrication which gives it more credence.

So sorry, but calling an entry you wrote on your own blog an 'article' is like calling someone using Lulu a published author. Technically true, but realistically not.

http://www.lulu.com/content/919150

"All the people complaining about DRM should actually DO something"

DONE.

Sayings - Deterred Bahamian Novel - http://www.ourmedia.org/node/262954

Tings - Anuddah Bahamian Novel - http://www.ourmedia.org/node/85937 &
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/111123

drew Roberts's Storefront - Lulu.com - http://www.lulu.com/zotz

Some tings for you from zotz : CafePress.com - http://www.cafepress.com/zotz

Now for some other stuff of mine:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zotzbr o&search=Search
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=(creator%3 A%22drew%20Roberts%22)%20OR%20(collection%3A(ourme dia)%20AND%20%2Fmetadata%2Fauthor%3A(drew%20Robert s))
http://code.google.com/p/drsoundwall/
http://www.ourmedia.org/user/17145
http://musicians.opensrc.org/DrewRoberts
https://sourceforge.net/projects/zbcw

I am not the only one doing such things either. For instance:

http://ccmixter.org/media/tags/attribution

"so CREATE something yourself and see how it works voluntarily instead of forcing authors to agree with your politics."

Ah, I am not the one running to get copyright laws amended over and over. Retroactively. There was a legal (lopitical?) agreement made with the public, but it wasn't good enough for some. They wanted to change the agreement. Now it is wrong for others to change it back to something more like it was? Or even completely different?

Seems some people are trying to force us into new "agreements." Why should we not fight back?

all the best,

drew

Print on demand?

First you need a bunch of smart people to do the peer review. But if this typically done free as another poster mentioned, then no cost there. Then you need to get it to the people.

Maybe I'm naive, but gone are the days when printing a book required a few thousand bucks to order a bunch of copies (journal should be cheaper than books). There are on demand prinitng companies in fact, which take the order from end customers, print the book, keep the printing costs, and send you whatever profit you decided to make (figure cost of book + profit = price to consumer, you could choose "no profit" and then the consumer just pays the media cost). You don't have to set up a payment system or anything, that is provided by the printer. You just produce the material, make a PDF, and you're off. One such place is http://lulu.com/.

Anyway, such a system means that if you only have 100 subscribers, you won't have 300 unused copies molding in the garage for the next 20 years, but the few people who are interested in the info, can have a portable reliable dead-tree copy with a nice cover and real binding for archival/reference purposes.

I'd rather pirate the track and give the artist the buck directly. If only there were a way to do that...

Try out Lulu TV for doing short videos/trailers/webisodes and Lulu.com for DVD sales. Lulu TV converts to Flash for browser viewing, MP4 for iPod/PSP and 3GP for phones. We support OGG uploads, and will support the Gnash player when it releases. You also get your own RSS feeds, etc.

I work there, so I could just be a shill. But it's free, so you've nothing to lose by trying.

We have a guy using Lulu TV for webisodes of a documentary he's filming to raise funds and drive awareness. It's also a good place for all the footage he can't use for the film. He sells the DVDs of another documentary via Lulu.com:

http://www.lulu.tv/vlog/robhill
http://www.lulu.com/fortfisherhermit

Copyright holders should be more worried about people publishing wholey independent albums on sites like Lulu and the SAMPLES used on such albums. I'm not suggesting that random album has any copyrighted material on it (I had it tabbed when I was considering this post) - but it might as might thousands of others released via Lulu's publishing program... they are actually potentially SELLING copyrighted material.

Surely the evil empires would be more worried about that>

So why don't more people use systems like Lulu.com that allow users to create their own content, sell it online, or even get it bound as real books on demand? Why do they need to get involved in huge publishing deals?

It seems that even just building a blog and syndicating some Google ads down the side would make as much money for the same readership as publishing a book.

1. Market yourself in the local music scene.
2. Get local gigs and save that money towards studio time.
3. Studios can be rented for as little as $100/hr and you can even have them supply you with an Engineer.
4. Get a website (myspace, etc...) and market your to your fan base.
5. Get your audio masters and submit them to lulu or CD Baby.
6. Submit your audio to radio stations, satellite stations and even cable TV networks for air play.

I know I've oversimplified the process, but it can work. I have several friends who are doing this exact thing. One friend of mine started the band Serpent Underground. They are self produced have weekly radio play on XM, have had Cable spots on Playboy and are competing in MTV2's On The Rise contest for MTV Play.

My point is, you can eliminate the middle man and you can bypass the RIAA.

My take on the whole RIAA situation is that it is the equivalent of seeing a black lab crap on your lawn, subpoenaing the records of all the black lab owners in your neighborhood from the city, sending all the owners a settlement offer to pay $100 for your cleanup costs of all the poop on your lawn in the last year(when you can't prove how much you actually paid for the cleanup), If they don't remit payment then you sue for $100 for each incident even though you still can't prove you ever paid.

The RIAA bases their initial lawsuits on IP addresses. Everybody on slashdot knows that is completely unreliable proof of who was actually using the computer that was sharing the song or file. Once they know who had that song according to the unreliable IP address, they go after the owner of the ISP account. They CANNOT PROVE that anybody ever DOWNLOADED that song and they CANNOT PROVE that the song you possessed was not legally yours or another file named the same and they CANNOT PROVE that the IP address was your computer or that the files were shared of any users' free will without infringing on your 14th amendment rights and the CANNOT PROVE that they've actually lost any money (i.e. damages).

The problem is that most judges, attorneys and defendants involved do not understand the technology. So they give in and pay. It is extortion and it is borderline illegal. Only a class action suit will bring this to an end.

(I appologize for the double post, That's what I get for not paying attention)

I can help... 1. Market yourself in the local music scene. 2. Get local gigs and save that money towards studio time. 3. Studios can be rented for as little as $100/hr and you can even have them supply you with an Engineer 4. Get a website (myspace, etc...) and market your to your fan base 5. Get your audio masters and submit them to lulu or CD Baby 6. Submit your audio to radio stations, satellite stations and even cable TV networks for air play. I know I've oversimplified the process, but it can work. I have several friends who are doing this exact thing. One friend of mine started the band Serpent Underground. They are self produced have weekly radio play on XM, have had Cable spots on Playboy and are competing in MTV2's On The Rise contest for MTV Play. My point is, you can eliminate the middle man and you can bypass the RIAA. My take on the whole RIAA situation is that it is the equivalent of seeing a black lab crap on your lawn, subpoenaing the records of all the black lab owners in your neighborhood from the city, sending all the owners a settlement offer to pay $100 for your cleanup costs of all the poop on your lawn in the last year(when you can't prove how much you actually paid for the cleanup), If they don't remit payment then you sue for $100 for each incident even though you still can't prove you ever paid. The RIAA bases their initial lawsuits on IP addresses. Everybody on slashdot knows that is completely unreliable proof of who was actually using the computer that was sharing the song or file. Once they know who had that song according to the unreliable IP address, they go after the owner of the ISP account. They CANNOT PROVE that anybody ever DOWNLOADED that song and they CANNOT PROVE that the song you possessed was not legally yours or another file named the same and they CANNOT PROVE that the IP address was your computer or that the files were shared of any users' free will without infringing on your 14th amendment rights and the CANNOT PROVE that they've actually lost any money (i.e. damages). The problem is that most judges, attorneys and defendants involved do not understand the technology. So they give in and pay. It is extortion and it is borderline illegal. Only a class action suit will bring this to an end.

Why I remember just yesterday a whole Dell plant blew up, their inventory spontaneously erupting. You have no idea how huge a bite in the ass it is when all that resolution becomes debris in a wound. In the civil war they had to use maggots in fresh wounds contaminated by pixels, and that was back when resolution was 4x4. Now with new LCD technology, it has become a real nightmare. Do you think the average Malaysian hospital has the ability to properly treat (with modern methods, not maggots) a pixelated infection? Of course not. Until these companies realize that they need to grow an infrastructure beyond a frikking railspur in these developing nations, WE ARE ALL CRIMINALS.

Even worse, as a result of the same explosion, there has been significant contamination in the local water system. Huge quantities of "all" were already seeping into the groundwater, but now it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of gallons of "all" spilled directly into the Pahang River (look it up, bitches...I take my satire seriously). Soon we will have an "all" saturation of 1,000 pph (parts per headline).

What are the consequences? Well "all" is the natural enemy of "one" and its cousin "always" is the most common and numerous predator of "occasionally." "All" has already gotten rid of "one" and most occurences of "few" on the internet. Physical contaminattion of the Phahang Delta and neighboring reef environments will kill "all" local fauna...dammit. Now I got it. I got a big pile of "all." Thanks /.

In other news, an anonymous reader wants yoou all to buy my book http://www.lulu.com/content/221164.

As a student photographer I was planning on throwing a bunch of photos together and printing it via apple and iphoto. i looked into it and read some bad reviews of apple's printing methods so i decided to look more into the subject of print on demand. I looked at a ton of options and decided to go with LuLu. I layed out the book myself and uploaded it. Their site gave me a few problems with the formatting but a post to lulu's forums had that solved within a matter of minutes. So after printing a few copies I decided to make it a legit book and acquired an ISBN number for it right through lulu. It's now sold via their website, my website, a few independent bookstores, art galleries, and very soon, Borders and amazon.com. So as a result of using lulu (or any print on demand service) my photos are being seen all over the globe. Print on demand is revolutionizing more than just the literary world.

As a student photographer I was planning on throwing a bunch of photos together and printing it via apple and iphoto. i looked into it and read some bad reviews of apple's printing methods so i decided to look more into the subject of print on demand. I looked at a ton of options and decided to go with LuLu. I layed out the book myself and uploaded it. Their site gave me a few problems with the formatting but a post to lulu's forums had that solved within a matter of minutes. So after printing a few copies I decided to make it a legit book and acquired an ISBN number for it right through lulu. It's now sold via their website, my website, a few independent bookstores, art galleries, and very soon, Borders and amazon.com. So as a result of using lulu (or any print on demand service) my photos are being seen all over the globe. Print on demand is revolutionizing more than just the literary world.