I recently took a course that listed both the traditional book and the ebook as choices for the class. I looked at the license for the ebook (yes, I know, something no one ever bothers to do).
I was astounded that the license forbade reading the ebook aloud. Before opting for the, less expensive, ebook it might be worthwhile to read the licensing restrictions.
It makes very good sense. Doing this increases uncertainty.
That is very valuable in undermining all intelligence reports. This makes real movements and formations, while equally likely to be seen, less likely to be given notice.
A similar story hit the news when I was living in P.R. China. The part of the story that confused the Chinese executives was why the Americans let Chinese have access to sensitive information in the first place. They know Americans allow Chinese access to this data; but, they can not see why.
As far as taking the information and sending it to China, the executives and officers say that, "of course they will spy, that is their duty." While I was there it was assumed I was a spy; after all, that is ones national duty.
Back when I was a county investigator I pulled peoples records on a regular basis. The records showed all arrests and the results of the arrests. After you turn 18 nothing is removed. IANAL, this is just based on my observations of the reports I pulled.
I have one semester, out of four, left on my MBA. I have never heard anyone say, "it is the ethical duty of a business owner to return maximum profit to the shareholder, as reported in quarterly statements."
If it were said, and it were not being said as an example to be torn apart, I would expect any of the instructors, or fellow students, to tear such a position to shreds. It may fit your notion of what is taught in Business School; but, it is not what is actually taught in Business School.
As I read this I have one semester left for my M.B.A. I am picking my classes for my final semester this week.
With this change do you think it would be worthwhile to take a class in Python during my final semester (this assumes that my University even offers such a class)?
For those who can't figure out how to search the Vehicle Code, here it is.
21451. (a) A driver facing a circular green signal shall proceed straight through or turn right or left or make a U-turn unless a sign prohibits a U-turn. Any driver, including one turning, shall yield the right-of-way to other traffic and to pedestrians lawfully within the intersection or an adjacent crosswalk.
(b) A driver facing a green arrow signal, shown alone or in combination with another indication, shall enter the intersection only to make the movement indicated by that green arrow or any other movement that is permitted by other indications shown at the same time. A driver facing a left green arrow may also make a U-turn unless prohibited by a sign. A driver shall yield the right-of-way to other traffic and to pedestrians lawfully within the intersection or an adjacent crosswalk.
(c) A pedestrian facing a circular green signal, unless prohibited by sign or otherwise directed by a pedestrian control signal as provided in Section 21456, may proceed across the roadway within any marked or unmarked crosswalk, but shall yield the right-of-way to vehicles lawfully within the intersection at the time that signal is first shown.
(d) A pedestrian facing a green arrow turn signal, unless otherwise directed by a pedestrian control signal as provided in Section 21456, shall not enter the roadway.
21452. (a) A driver facing a steady circular yellow or yellow arrow signal is, by that signal, warned that the related green movement is ending or that a red indication will be shown immediately thereafter.
(b) A pedestrian facing a steady circular yellow or a yellow arrow signal, unless otherwise directed by a pedestrian control signal as provided in Section 21456, is, by that signal, warned that there is insufficient time to cross the roadway and shall not enter the roadway.
21453. (a) A driver facing a steady circular red signal alone shall stop at a marked limit line, but if none, before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection or, if none, then before entering the intersection, and shall remain stopped until an indication to proceed is shown, except as provided in subdivision (b).
(b) Except when a sign is in place prohibiting a turn, a driver, after stopping as required by subdivision (a), facing a steady circular red signal, may turn right, or turn left from a one-way street onto a one-way street. A driver making that turn shall yield the right-of-way to pedestrians lawfully within an adjacent crosswalk and to any vehicle that has approached or is approaching so closely as to constitute an immediate hazard to the driver, and shall continue to yield the right-of-way to that vehicle until the driver can proceed with reasonable safety.
(c) A driver facing a steady red arrow signal shall not enter the intersection to make the movement indicated by the arrow and, unless entering the intersection to make a movement permitted by another signal, shall stop at a clearly marked limit line, but if none, before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection, or if none, then before entering the intersection, and shall remain stopped until an indication permitting movement is shown.
(d) Unless otherwise directed by a pedestrian control signal as provided in Section 21456, a pedestrian facing a steady circular red or red arrow signal shall not enter the roadway.
The first problem that I saw was in some of the schools that required that the payment for grades be held in a bank account, only to be paid in graduation for high-school. Very simply, that is too remote a reward for it to provide ample incentive. As the article later illustrated, students who received frequent reward were better motivated by the reward. It is no surprise that the system failed to produce significant results in the schools that made the reward distant.
A second failing in the experiment, it was pointed out that this motivation system was significantly more effective in raising boys results then those of girls. The facts are that the focus in school is in raising the results of girls relative to the boys. Thus, this program produces exactly the opposite of the desired political goal. It will be rejected.
Juts to tel you, the High-speed trains in China, also known as the "D" trains, do run on the same track as everything else. Of course, the maglev does not. But, the maglev is a very short run in comparison the the number of High-speed runs in China
Keep in mind, Morse code is no longer a component in any amateur radio exam. Further, if you get an extra class license you will not have to take the code portion of the exam to your radio-telegraph operators license as the extra class license exempts you fro that portion of the exam.
I think you are missing the point of netbooks. What you want would add to the quality of the internal parts (cost), would use more power (battery life), and would need a large screen (Size).
What I, and the netbook users I know, are looking for, and using, is something that will have the battery life to make it through several classes (battery life) and is reasonably cheap (cost), light, and doesn't take up much space on the desk (size). I think you would be better served by a regular, or power user oriented, computer or laptop.
When I was in High School, back in the 80's, students were not allowed to use a computer unless they had completed Algebra 2 and were enrolled in Trig or calculus. Th reasoning was that computers were super calculators and, as such, the only students that needed them were advanced math students.
I was allowed in the computer lab, all Apple IIs', as long as I was there with an authorized student; however, I was not allowed to actually touch a computer. This created a procedure where I, and other interested students, would write out our programs on paper and then hand them to another, authorized, student, to type in to the computer.
Fortunately, an accountant I knew got an Apple II to run Visacalc on. I was then able to us a computer all I wanted so long as I was able to use the spreadsheet when he needed something set up on it.
I used to play video games. I stopped. That means I stopped buying games. In simple terms, they got too hard.
I enjoyed the Baldurs Gate / Icewind Dale series, and the mech-warrior series, along with fallout 1 and 2. However, I haven't even given serious thought to buying fallout 3. I know that to wow the new generation of gamers (and more importantly, game reviewers) it will be unplayable to me. The last games I purchased were Vampire: the masquerade, something with the Clive Barker name attached to it , and Half Life. I never finished any of them. They were simply too hard for me.
The result is that I stopped buying games; after all, why should I purchase an story that I can not finish. Now some are thinking "wait, those games came out ten years ago." That's right, over ten years of not selling games to me.
One of the basic principles in purchasing stock in consumer goods manufacturers is that you probably are within the bell curve. If you see there to be a problem a problem with a product, you are probably not alone. I see my friends playing ten year old games instead of new ones. I see a trend. The trend is a lot of people who like games but are not buying new ones.
Now, I am not saying that this trend is absolute, obviously, there are people buying new games. However, there is a huge untapped market in the people who play games but haven't purchased a game in years. I used to, lightly, tease my wife about pre-purchasing games that hadn't even been released. As it stands, she hasn't purchased a game in years. She enjoys the games she has.
When you ask this 35+ crowd what happened you keep hearing the same two things: first, they don't have the time, and second, the games have gotten too hard. This is a large market that has literally been lost. They used to purchase the product and they no longer do. To any business, loosing customers that they spent money to get is a disaster. Nintendo is doing the right thing from a business sense.
Of course my degree is on my resme. It does me no good; but, it is there.
For work as a copier tech it (the degree) is actiually a negative. It indicates that I may want to advance in the orgnization.
I realize that I missed the point I was trying to make (yes, I will blame the computer, I am using someone elses and it is very uncmfortable to use). Having left the industury and completed my BA I am not able to get back in. It is nearly impossibel to get a job as a copier tech with a college degree. So, with over ten years experince I am indeed unemployed and pretty much unemployable.
You don't see the copier repairman out of work very often.
Mining machinery, oil platform systems, medical devices, robotics repair...any of those would offer opportunities to travel to exotic places and make a lot of money.
Wrong. I spent over ten years as a copier repairman. I then made the mistake of gong back to colege and finishing my BA. Th eresult is that I have never made as much as I made as a copier repairman and have spent over half of my time after completing college unemployed. I am now stuck in the school grind, working on my MBA in hopes that it wil help lead to a job.
I have to say tha I liked working on copiers. I like working with my hands and I like machines. I disliked two things. The first was my knees were giving trouble (if you watch a copier thech, you will see that there is a lot of up and down). The second, and the big one, I was tired of the way I was treated. The cuustmers, the companies, and people who just know what you do all treat techs like idiots who are not capaible of doing "anything more" in their life. The subtule, and not so subtule, asumptions and associated treatment eventualy chased me out of the industury.
That is why these types of systems will be driven by the Service Station companies. working with the automakers. One can not do it without the other. As far as what incentive the Service Station companies have to install this system, ultimately it will have to be profit.
The oil companies expect to be here for the indefinite future and they realize, better than most, that they have a rapidly depleting product. If there is anyone that has an incentive to be part of, "the next big thing," it is them.
So, the Service Station compnies have the infrastructure, and they have to motivation (Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Freedman goes into the alternate energy motivation and interest of people you would not think of as being part of "alternate Energy"). They are the ones to watch.
I believe more "average people" (primarily Windows refugees since 90% of desktop users are currently using Windows) can quickly get comfortable with Ubuntu or even Fedora, than with OS X. Certainly Open Office and Evolution are more like the familiar Microsoft Office and Outlook than are the equivalent OS X apps.
As you saying that OpenOffice is more like Microsoft Office than Microsoft Office is? As a sentence it makes no sense. I use Office on OS X and OpenOffice on Ubuntu daily. I can tell you with a high degree of certitude that Microsoft Office is more like Microsoft Office than Openoffice is.
I also use (but much less often) Microsoft Office on Vista. Microsoft Office on OS x is more like Microsoft Office on Vista, and the opposite is also true, than OpenOffice on Ubuntu.
OpenOffice is a good product for the price (really it isn't because with a price of zero you wind up with an infinity in the answer... but while I do well at finance I am really no math guy). However, There are times I consider putting OX x on my netbook just so I will have Microsoft Office available, it is that different.
Three problems. The first is that there is no mention of price in the article. In simple terms, the readers that have come out have been rather expensive; please, none of this, "well if you spread the price out over several years..." First, I am not convinced that these things will last several years, certainly not as long as physical books. For the amortization argument to work I would have to expect the device to last fifty to a hundred years, or more, just like a real book. So, here we have one (possibly two, but they are both the same in economic terms), price and longevity.
The next is the price of the books themselves. Ebooks are not reasonable in price. I have read the writings of the past Jim Baen on the economics of publishing. Most of the cost is in production, transportation, and returns. Ebooks do not face these costs to nearly the same degree but do not reflect the reduced price. Very simply, there is no reason for it beyond markup. Now, there is noting wrong with markup, However, for the market to work, some have to refuse to pay for it at a certain price, and I refuse to pay for it at the price being charged.
The third is the problem, much lamented here in Slashdot, that the purchaser never owns the books that they have purchased, unlike real books. I can resell a real book. I can not resell an ebook; thus, I do not own it. It is not simply that there is no current marketplace for used ebooks, there are legal and technological barriers to the resale of ebooks. It is the existence of legal barriers that makes it clear that, non-public domain, ebooks are never owned.
All that being said, I read, frequently, on my PDA (it is really one of the only reasons that I continue to use a PDA). However, I limit my reading to Public domain, and otherwise free (such as Jim Baen's releases) ebooks. I would like to see ebooks succeed; However, I think I am not the only person who is uncomfortable with the issues that I have mentioned.
I don't buy it. I bike, walk and use public transit.
That is a cop out. In truth you don't know where you buy your petrol from, it is nothing to be ashamed of, most of us don't. When you pay your fare for Public Transit you are buying petrol. Your computer os full of it. Even if you shop at farmers markets from local organic farmers you are buying petrol for the tractor and the truck he used to bring the produce to market.
You can not absolve yourself from society, even one that you feel is repugnant. Like it or not, you are part of it.
Taking personal efforts, like you claim to do, is, for the most part, a good thing (I am not so sure about passing on the costs of the maintenance of society to others as being a very honorable thing). However, the claim you seem to be making, that you have "tuned in and dropped out" is false.
Along with Fallout II, and simcity, this was the last game that I really enjoyed. The funny thing is that one of the things mentioned in the article is one of the reasons that I stopped playing video games.
They simply got too hard. I seemed to me that the developers kept trying to impress reviewers and hard core players with new, near impossible, challenges. Somewhere along the way they lost a lot of players. About the only company that I will pay for games from is spiderweb software http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/ , the graphics are terrible; but, the games are playable and relaxing.
The games have gotten too hard. Before you make comments about being a whiner; remember, what I am is a lost costumer.
It's ALWAYS the driver of the car behind who is at (greater) fault in a rear-end collision.
I take it you have never heard of the "unsafe lane change."
There is also a particular maneuver that involves three (it can be done with two) cars. It involves swerving at the target, in order to distract the target, with car one; at the same time, car two brakes rapidly. This is a criminal activity. In a criminal activity, the criminal is ALMOST ALWAYS responsible for accidents and injuries.
"The ones in jail are probably blogging about anti-government related things"
Not always. I was threatened with jail for writing a book review (it really was a crappy book). The charge was "interfering with a trade good." The rational was that a book is an item offered for sale, thus a trade good. Writing a poor review of it had the potential of negatively impacting sales, thus interference.
As I am sure you can guess (by the fact that I am here to post this) I pulled the book review and all mention of it and the author from my blog.
So, it is not just anti-government things. In this case the book was a very poor workbook that intended to teach English though watching movies written by a total crank.
Slashdot Mirror
I recently took a course that listed both the traditional book and the ebook as choices for the class. I looked at the license for the ebook (yes, I know, something no one ever bothers to do). I was astounded that the license forbade reading the ebook aloud. Before opting for the, less expensive, ebook it might be worthwhile to read the licensing restrictions.
Think of how useful they would be for giving directions, ". . . the party . . . just look for the house with the tank on the lawn."
It makes very good sense. Doing this increases uncertainty.
That is very valuable in undermining all intelligence reports. This makes real movements and formations, while equally likely to be seen, less likely to be given notice.
A similar story hit the news when I was living in P.R. China. The part of the story that confused the Chinese executives was why the Americans let Chinese have access to sensitive information in the first place. They know Americans allow Chinese access to this data; but, they can not see why. As far as taking the information and sending it to China, the executives and officers say that, "of course they will spy, that is their duty." While I was there it was assumed I was a spy; after all, that is ones national duty.
Because all changes and accesses are logged in the record.
Back when I was a county investigator I pulled peoples records on a regular basis. The records showed all arrests and the results of the arrests. After you turn 18 nothing is removed. IANAL, this is just based on my observations of the reports I pulled.
I have one semester, out of four, left on my MBA. I have never heard anyone say, "it is the ethical duty of a business owner to return maximum profit to the shareholder, as reported in quarterly statements."
If it were said, and it were not being said as an example to be torn apart, I would expect any of the instructors, or fellow students, to tear such a position to shreds. It may fit your notion of what is taught in Business School; but, it is not what is actually taught in Business School.
As I read this I have one semester left for my M.B.A. I am picking my classes for my final semester this week.
With this change do you think it would be worthwhile to take a class in Python during my final semester (this assumes that my University even offers such a class)?
For those who can't figure out how to search the Vehicle Code, here it is.
21451. (a) A driver facing a circular green signal shall proceed
straight through or turn right or left or make a U-turn unless a sign
prohibits a U-turn. Any driver, including one turning, shall yield
the right-of-way to other traffic and to pedestrians lawfully within
the intersection or an adjacent crosswalk.
(b) A driver facing a green arrow signal, shown alone or in
combination with another indication, shall enter the intersection
only to make the movement indicated by that green arrow or any other
movement that is permitted by other indications shown at the same
time. A driver facing a left green arrow may also make a U-turn
unless prohibited by a sign. A driver shall yield the right-of-way to
other traffic and to pedestrians lawfully within the intersection or
an adjacent crosswalk.
(c) A pedestrian facing a circular green signal, unless prohibited
by sign or otherwise directed by a pedestrian control signal as
provided in Section 21456, may proceed across the roadway within any
marked or unmarked crosswalk, but shall yield the right-of-way to
vehicles lawfully within the intersection at the time that signal is
first shown.
(d) A pedestrian facing a green arrow turn signal, unless
otherwise directed by a pedestrian control signal as provided in
Section 21456, shall not enter the roadway.
21452. (a) A driver facing a steady circular yellow or yellow arrow
signal is, by that signal, warned that the related green movement is
ending or that a red indication will be shown immediately
thereafter.
(b) A pedestrian facing a steady circular yellow or a yellow arrow
signal, unless otherwise directed by a pedestrian control signal as
provided in Section 21456, is, by that signal, warned that there is
insufficient time to cross the roadway and shall not enter the
roadway.
21453. (a) A driver facing a steady circular red signal alone shall
stop at a marked limit line, but if none, before entering the
crosswalk on the near side of the intersection or, if none, then
before entering the intersection, and shall remain stopped until an
indication to proceed is shown, except as provided in subdivision
(b).
(b) Except when a sign is in place prohibiting a turn, a driver,
after stopping as required by subdivision (a), facing a steady
circular red signal, may turn right, or turn left from a one-way
street onto a one-way street. A driver making that turn shall yield
the right-of-way to pedestrians lawfully within an adjacent crosswalk
and to any vehicle that has approached or is approaching so closely
as to constitute an immediate hazard to the driver, and shall
continue to yield the right-of-way to that vehicle until the driver
can proceed with reasonable safety.
(c) A driver facing a steady red arrow signal shall not enter the
intersection to make the movement indicated by the arrow and, unless
entering the intersection to make a movement permitted by another
signal, shall stop at a clearly marked limit line, but if none,
before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection,
or if none, then before entering the intersection, and shall remain
stopped until an indication permitting movement is shown.
(d) Unless otherwise directed by a pedestrian control signal as
provided in Section 21456, a pedestrian facing a steady circular red
or red arrow signal shall not enter the roadway.
The first problem that I saw was in some of the schools that required that the payment for grades be held in a bank account, only to be paid in graduation for high-school. Very simply, that is too remote a reward for it to provide ample incentive. As the article later illustrated, students who received frequent reward were better motivated by the reward. It is no surprise that the system failed to produce significant results in the schools that made the reward distant.
A second failing in the experiment, it was pointed out that this motivation system was significantly more effective in raising boys results then those of girls. The facts are that the focus in school is in raising the results of girls relative to the boys. Thus, this program produces exactly the opposite of the desired political goal. It will be rejected.
Juts to tel you, the High-speed trains in China, also known as the "D" trains, do run on the same track as everything else. Of course, the maglev does not. But, the maglev is a very short run in comparison the the number of High-speed runs in China
Keep in mind, Morse code is no longer a component in any amateur radio exam. Further, if you get an extra class license you will not have to take the code portion of the exam to your radio-telegraph operators license as the extra class license exempts you fro that portion of the exam.
I think you are missing the point of netbooks. What you want would add to the quality of the internal parts (cost), would use more power (battery life), and would need a large screen (Size).
What I, and the netbook users I know, are looking for, and using, is something that will have the battery life to make it through several classes (battery life) and is reasonably cheap (cost), light, and doesn't take up much space on the desk (size). I think you would be better served by a regular, or power user oriented, computer or laptop.
When I was in High School, back in the 80's, students were not allowed to use a computer unless they had completed Algebra 2 and were enrolled in Trig or calculus. Th reasoning was that computers were super calculators and, as such, the only students that needed them were advanced math students.
I was allowed in the computer lab, all Apple IIs', as long as I was there with an authorized student; however, I was not allowed to actually touch a computer. This created a procedure where I, and other interested students, would write out our programs on paper and then hand them to another, authorized, student, to type in to the computer.
Fortunately, an accountant I knew got an Apple II to run Visacalc on. I was then able to us a computer all I wanted so long as I was able to use the spreadsheet when he needed something set up on it.
I used to play video games. I stopped. That means I stopped buying games. In simple terms, they got too hard.
I enjoyed the Baldurs Gate / Icewind Dale series, and the mech-warrior series, along with fallout 1 and 2. However, I haven't even given serious thought to buying fallout 3. I know that to wow the new generation of gamers (and more importantly, game reviewers) it will be unplayable to me. The last games I purchased were Vampire: the masquerade, something with the Clive Barker name attached to it , and Half Life. I never finished any of them. They were simply too hard for me.
The result is that I stopped buying games; after all, why should I purchase an story that I can not finish. Now some are thinking "wait, those games came out ten years ago." That's right, over ten years of not selling games to me.
One of the basic principles in purchasing stock in consumer goods manufacturers is that you probably are within the bell curve. If you see there to be a problem a problem with a product, you are probably not alone. I see my friends playing ten year old games instead of new ones. I see a trend. The trend is a lot of people who like games but are not buying new ones.
Now, I am not saying that this trend is absolute, obviously, there are people buying new games. However, there is a huge untapped market in the people who play games but haven't purchased a game in years. I used to, lightly, tease my wife about pre-purchasing games that hadn't even been released. As it stands, she hasn't purchased a game in years. She enjoys the games she has.
When you ask this 35+ crowd what happened you keep hearing the same two things: first, they don't have the time, and second, the games have gotten too hard. This is a large market that has literally been lost. They used to purchase the product and they no longer do. To any business, loosing customers that they spent money to get is a disaster. Nintendo is doing the right thing from a business sense.
Of course my degree is on my resme. It does me no good; but, it is there. For work as a copier tech it (the degree) is actiually a negative. It indicates that I may want to advance in the orgnization.
I realize that I missed the point I was trying to make (yes, I will blame the computer, I am using someone elses and it is very uncmfortable to use). Having left the industury and completed my BA I am not able to get back in. It is nearly impossibel to get a job as a copier tech with a college degree. So, with over ten years experince I am indeed unemployed and pretty much unemployable.
You don't see the copier repairman out of work very often.
Mining machinery, oil platform systems, medical devices, robotics repair...any of those would offer opportunities to travel to exotic places and make a lot of money.
Wrong. I spent over ten years as a copier repairman. I then made the mistake of gong back to colege and finishing my BA. Th eresult is that I have never made as much as I made as a copier repairman and have spent over half of my time after completing college unemployed. I am now stuck in the school grind, working on my MBA in hopes that it wil help lead to a job.
I have to say tha I liked working on copiers. I like working with my hands and I like machines. I disliked two things. The first was my knees were giving trouble (if you watch a copier thech, you will see that there is a lot of up and down). The second, and the big one, I was tired of the way I was treated. The cuustmers, the companies, and people who just know what you do all treat techs like idiots who are not capaible of doing "anything more" in their life. The subtule, and not so subtule, asumptions and associated treatment eventualy chased me out of the industury.
That is why these types of systems will be driven by the Service Station companies. working with the automakers. One can not do it without the other. As far as what incentive the Service Station companies have to install this system, ultimately it will have to be profit.
The oil companies expect to be here for the indefinite future and they realize, better than most, that they have a rapidly depleting product. If there is anyone that has an incentive to be part of, "the next big thing," it is them.
So, the Service Station compnies have the infrastructure, and they have to motivation (Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Freedman goes into the alternate energy motivation and interest of people you would not think of as being part of "alternate Energy"). They are the ones to watch.
I believe more "average people" (primarily Windows refugees since 90% of desktop users are currently using Windows) can quickly get comfortable with Ubuntu or even Fedora, than with OS X. Certainly Open Office and Evolution are more like the familiar Microsoft Office and Outlook than are the equivalent OS X apps.
As you saying that OpenOffice is more like Microsoft Office than Microsoft Office is? As a sentence it makes no sense. I use Office on OS X and OpenOffice on Ubuntu daily. I can tell you with a high degree of certitude that Microsoft Office is more like Microsoft Office than Openoffice is.
I also use (but much less often) Microsoft Office on Vista. Microsoft Office on OS x is more like Microsoft Office on Vista, and the opposite is also true, than OpenOffice on Ubuntu.
OpenOffice is a good product for the price (really it isn't because with a price of zero you wind up with an infinity in the answer... but while I do well at finance I am really no math guy). However, There are times I consider putting OX x on my netbook just so I will have Microsoft Office available, it is that different.
Three problems. The first is that there is no mention of price in the article. In simple terms, the readers that have come out have been rather expensive; please, none of this, "well if you spread the price out over several years..." First, I am not convinced that these things will last several years, certainly not as long as physical books. For the amortization argument to work I would have to expect the device to last fifty to a hundred years, or more, just like a real book.
So, here we have one (possibly two, but they are both the same in economic terms), price and longevity.
The next is the price of the books themselves. Ebooks are not reasonable in price. I have read the writings of the past Jim Baen on the economics of publishing. Most of the cost is in production, transportation, and returns. Ebooks do not face these costs to nearly the same degree but do not reflect the reduced price. Very simply, there is no reason for it beyond markup. Now, there is noting wrong with markup, However, for the market to work, some have to refuse to pay for it at a certain price, and I refuse to pay for it at the price being charged.
The third is the problem, much lamented here in Slashdot, that the purchaser never owns the books that they have purchased, unlike real books. I can resell a real book. I can not resell an ebook; thus, I do not own it.
It is not simply that there is no current marketplace for used ebooks, there are legal and technological barriers to the resale of ebooks. It is the existence of legal barriers that makes it clear that, non-public domain, ebooks are never owned.
All that being said, I read, frequently, on my PDA (it is really one of the only reasons that I continue to use a PDA). However, I limit my reading to Public domain, and otherwise free (such as Jim Baen's releases) ebooks. I would like to see ebooks succeed; However, I think I am not the only person who is uncomfortable with the issues that I have mentioned.
I don't buy it. I bike, walk and use public transit.
That is a cop out. In truth you don't know where you buy your petrol from, it is nothing to be ashamed of, most of us don't. When you pay your fare for Public Transit you are buying petrol. Your computer os full of it. Even if you shop at farmers markets from local organic farmers you are buying petrol for the tractor and the truck he used to bring the produce to market.
You can not absolve yourself from society, even one that you feel is repugnant. Like it or not, you are part of it.
Taking personal efforts, like you claim to do, is, for the most part, a good thing (I am not so sure about passing on the costs of the maintenance of society to others as being a very honorable thing). However, the claim you seem to be making, that you have "tuned in and dropped out" is false.
Along with Fallout II, and simcity, this was the last game that I really enjoyed. The funny thing is that one of the things mentioned in the article is one of the reasons that I stopped playing video games.
They simply got too hard. I seemed to me that the developers kept trying to impress reviewers and hard core players with new, near impossible, challenges. Somewhere along the way they lost a lot of players. About the only company that I will pay for games from is spiderweb software http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/ , the graphics are terrible; but, the games are playable and relaxing.
The games have gotten too hard. Before you make comments about being a whiner; remember, what I am is a lost costumer.
It's ALWAYS the driver of the car behind who is at (greater) fault in a rear-end collision.
I take it you have never heard of the "unsafe lane change."
There is also a particular maneuver that involves three (it can be done with two) cars. It involves swerving at the target, in order to distract the target, with car one; at the same time, car two brakes rapidly. This is a criminal activity. In a criminal activity, the criminal is ALMOST ALWAYS responsible for accidents and injuries.
Remember, ALWAYS is ALWAYS the wrong answer.
"The ones in jail are probably blogging about anti-government related things"
Not always. I was threatened with jail for writing a book review (it really was a crappy book). The charge was "interfering with a trade good." The rational was that a book is an item offered for sale, thus a trade good. Writing a poor review of it had the potential of negatively impacting sales, thus interference.
As I am sure you can guess (by the fact that I am here to post this) I pulled the book review and all mention of it and the author from my blog.
So, it is not just anti-government things. In this case the book was a very poor workbook that intended to teach English though watching movies written by a total crank.