Never expected the price of an e-book to be the same as a paper one.
This may come as a chock for you, but the printing cost of a paper book is something like 10% of the total production price of the book. As far as I can decipher, the only way to get ebooks significantly cheaper is to cut out the middle men (distributors, bookshops and eshops) and buy directly from the publisher/author. However, as the middle men own the market place, most publishers shy away from offering their books at wholesale prices online.
My grandfather (age 87) is considering to buy an iPad to read ebooks. He eyesight is not as good as it has been, and the ability to adjust font size of the book he is reading is a killer app for him. Neither my parents (60something) or my brother (40) owns a dedicated e-reader or tablet. They do have a computer.
Yeah, the DRM thing is quite annoying. Fortunately, more and more publishers are starting to offer their books DRM free, e.g. Baen Books and Tor/Macmillan, so I make it a point to only buy unencumbered ebooks. Many vendors do not make it easy to see which books are DRM free and which are DRM chained, though.
And as they age, their eyesight will deteriorate, leaving many of them with a choice between audio books, books with large print or ebooks where the font size can be adjusted. Wonder what they will pick?
Handles have indeed changed from 32 bit to 64 bit, but MS has promised that the value saved in the handle will never use more than 32 bits, so it is still "safe" to cast it into a 32 bit variable. However, it is bad practice.
We might as well switch to alternatives before supply goes down and energy prices go way up.
Why? It makes sense to switch then, when supply goes down and the appropriate fossil fuel price (not energy!) goes up. Due to time value of money, procrastination here can be quite beneficial.
The longer we wait to develop alternative sources of energy, the more immature will alternative sources of energy be when energy prices of fossil fuels start to rise. If the rising prices happen as scarcity of fossil fuels becomes wide spread, we may run into issues of energy scarcity which could present a serious problem to the stability of modern civilization. On a side note, developing alternatives to fossil fuels would have the added advantages of making the world less dependent on the whims of a number of nasty dictators and may make our environments a lot less poisonous.
Also, keep in mind that fossil fuels vary greatly in amount and accessibility. Oil and natural gas will run low before coal does. So a program that switches over completely now does so in the face of high availability of coal.
Coal has a number of drawbacks, compared to oil and natural gas. Notably, coal usually contains a lot of toxic components that are emitted when it is burned. It is also difficult to pack and transport. These issues are the main reasons that many nations have been moving away from coal as a source of energy.
Showering was not included in the 25 minutes as I would have to shower either at home or at work. I work in the city, so driving speed is significantly reduced by red lights and crowded streets. And that is quite a long way you have to work. Looking at a two hour commute each way, I would most likely not use a bike.
Does anyone live in a city where the winter biking thing actually works? (One with snowfall, that is.) Just curious, really.
It works reasonably well in Copenhagen. Usually they start clearing the roads and bike lanes early in the morning. If it is snowing heavily at that time, however, it can get pretty difficult to traverse the lane.
However, bike commuting is so incredibly slow, that if I biked I'd never have time to exercise other than bike riding
Compared to what? I commute on bike each day, using 25 minutes each way. In a car, I would be using 15 minutes. For me, the saved time would not be used in a gym. It would most likely be used on my back side. Net result is 50 minutes of exercise each day that I would not be getting if I drove a car. I'm sure I'm not the only one in that situation.
Sure it increases your fitness levels, but with all the smog and pollution I very much doubt that cycling or jogging to work is actually healthier for you.
A number of studies have shown there is more air pollution inside cars than on bike lanes. The physical activity causes bikers to inhale more air and spend more time outside (unless there is a traffic jam), but the volume of toxic particles per km looks to be equivalent.
It's the old forms of power - coal especially - that runs flat out 24/7 because throttling those kinds of powerplants is incredibly costly, inefficient and slow to react.
I didn't know that. Is oil as bad? And how do power companies deal with the 24 hour demand curve?
That may be a better way of storing energy, but it will not solve the problem of making cars independent of oil and coal. It does have a certain elegance to it that the excess nightly production from renewable sources are used to power cars.
GMO's are designed to increase the effective food output of our land
No they are not. GMOs are designed to make money to the corporation selling them. If it happens that a GMO crop has higher yields, it's just a nice side benefit. One common trait of GMO crops are that they are immune to certain poisons (herbicides and insecticide) sold by the same corporation. Thus, the farmers can use more poison on their fields without killing their crops. This may increase crop yields, but it also has a nasty side effect. Even though the corporation claims that the poison will never be able to find its way into the ground water, most eventually do find their way.
Because things are bad, there is no reason to try to stop them getting worse?
That's a pretty bleak standpoint. One that accepts the current status quo with a shrug and allow the cronies to continue. Yeah, sorry, hyperbole and all, but unless someone stands up to them (and lots of others back them up), they are just going to continue chipping away one freedom or right at a time until there is nothing left. Taking on the entire system to clean it up is a humongous undertaking; one issue at a time is much more tractable, even if it is slower.
Believe it or not... the main cost of publishing a book is not the actual printing. Author Charles Stross has a quite interesting series on the subject here. A few quotes:
Overall, the process of turning a manuscript into a book is estimated to cost $7000-$20,000 — an amount comparable to the author's likely earnings from the book. In fact, the actual division of labour on a book is split roughly 50/50 between the author and the publisher.
and
In particular, about 80-90% of the cover price of a book has nothing to do with the paper and ink object you buy in a shop; indeed, using current production standards, ebook production requires nearly as much work as paper book production.
Yes, yes, I know that they already have made their initial investment back an obscene number of times, but that is a different matter.
The government of Canada has the legal right to ignore the constitution (google notwithstanding clause). In the USA they just make up an excuse why it doesn't apply (google unlawful enemy combatant).
You forgot that areas in close proximity to US borders are Constitution free zones, as described by the ACLU. And "close proximity" is 100 miles. Remember that if you ever need a restraining order...
As an alternative to large scale starvation, I expect that the effects of environmental damage to have negligible negative effect on human health care, but I do not know enough about the specifics. However, I do know that the industrialized agriculture could be run in a manner significantly more friendly to the environment. Pumping cattle with antibiotics, using too much herbicide, terminator genes etc. are significant problems that need to be addressed.
Slashdot Mirror
I was comparing to paper books that do not have that ability ;-)
Magnifying glasses are just not very comfortable if you are reading more than a few paragraphs.
Never expected the price of an e-book to be the same as a paper one.
This may come as a chock for you, but the printing cost of a paper book is something like 10% of the total production price of the book. As far as I can decipher, the only way to get ebooks significantly cheaper is to cut out the middle men (distributors, bookshops and eshops) and buy directly from the publisher/author. However, as the middle men own the market place, most publishers shy away from offering their books at wholesale prices online.
My grandfather (age 87) is considering to buy an iPad to read ebooks. He eyesight is not as good as it has been, and the ability to adjust font size of the book he is reading is a killer app for him. Neither my parents (60something) or my brother (40) owns a dedicated e-reader or tablet. They do have a computer.
Yeah, the DRM thing is quite annoying. Fortunately, more and more publishers are starting to offer their books DRM free, e.g. Baen Books and Tor/Macmillan, so I make it a point to only buy unencumbered ebooks. Many vendors do not make it easy to see which books are DRM free and which are DRM chained, though.
That LARGE portion of the population is aging
And as they age, their eyesight will deteriorate, leaving many of them with a choice between audio books, books with large print or ebooks where the font size can be adjusted. Wonder what they will pick?
Handles have indeed changed from 32 bit to 64 bit, but MS has promised that the value saved in the handle will never use more than 32 bits, so it is still "safe" to cast it into a 32 bit variable. However, it is bad practice.
We might as well switch to alternatives before supply goes down and energy prices go way up.
Why? It makes sense to switch then, when supply goes down and the appropriate fossil fuel price (not energy!) goes up. Due to time value of money, procrastination here can be quite beneficial.
The longer we wait to develop alternative sources of energy, the more immature will alternative sources of energy be when energy prices of fossil fuels start to rise. If the rising prices happen as scarcity of fossil fuels becomes wide spread, we may run into issues of energy scarcity which could present a serious problem to the stability of modern civilization. On a side note, developing alternatives to fossil fuels would have the added advantages of making the world less dependent on the whims of a number of nasty dictators and may make our environments a lot less poisonous.
Also, keep in mind that fossil fuels vary greatly in amount and accessibility. Oil and natural gas will run low before coal does. So a program that switches over completely now does so in the face of high availability of coal.
Coal has a number of drawbacks, compared to oil and natural gas. Notably, coal usually contains a lot of toxic components that are emitted when it is burned. It is also difficult to pack and transport. These issues are the main reasons that many nations have been moving away from coal as a source of energy.
Posted to undo moderation error. Please Ignore. Sorry.
Showering was not included in the 25 minutes as I would have to shower either at home or at work. I work in the city, so driving speed is significantly reduced by red lights and crowded streets. And that is quite a long way you have to work. Looking at a two hour commute each way, I would most likely not use a bike.
Does anyone live in a city where the winter biking thing actually works? (One with snowfall, that is.) Just curious, really.
It works reasonably well in Copenhagen. Usually they start clearing the roads and bike lanes early in the morning. If it is snowing heavily at that time, however, it can get pretty difficult to traverse the lane.
However, bike commuting is so incredibly slow, that if I biked I'd never have time to exercise other than bike riding
Compared to what? I commute on bike each day, using 25 minutes each way. In a car, I would be using 15 minutes. For me, the saved time would not be used in a gym. It would most likely be used on my back side. Net result is 50 minutes of exercise each day that I would not be getting if I drove a car. I'm sure I'm not the only one in that situation.
It's healthier and it's more fun.
Sure it increases your fitness levels, but with all the smog and pollution I very much doubt that cycling or jogging to work is actually healthier for you.
A number of studies have shown there is more air pollution inside cars than on bike lanes. The physical activity causes bikers to inhale more air and spend more time outside (unless there is a traffic jam), but the volume of toxic particles per km looks to be equivalent.
It's the old forms of power - coal especially - that runs flat out 24/7 because throttling those kinds of powerplants is incredibly costly, inefficient and slow to react.
I didn't know that. Is oil as bad? And how do power companies deal with the 24 hour demand curve?
That may be a better way of storing energy, but it will not solve the problem of making cars independent of oil and coal. It does have a certain elegance to it that the excess nightly production from renewable sources are used to power cars.
The excess electricity produced by wind, hydro and geothermal energy during the night can be used to charge car batteries ;-)
GMO's are designed to increase the effective food output of our land
No they are not. GMOs are designed to make money to the corporation selling them. If it happens that a GMO crop has higher yields, it's just a nice side benefit. One common trait of GMO crops are that they are immune to certain poisons (herbicides and insecticide) sold by the same corporation. Thus, the farmers can use more poison on their fields without killing their crops. This may increase crop yields, but it also has a nasty side effect. Even though the corporation claims that the poison will never be able to find its way into the ground water, most eventually do find their way.
Because things are bad, there is no reason to try to stop them getting worse?
That's a pretty bleak standpoint. One that accepts the current status quo with a shrug and allow the cronies to continue. Yeah, sorry, hyperbole and all, but unless someone stands up to them (and lots of others back them up), they are just going to continue chipping away one freedom or right at a time until there is nothing left. Taking on the entire system to clean it up is a humongous undertaking; one issue at a time is much more tractable, even if it is slower.
It also looks remarkably like a randomly generated Civilization I map ...
Somehow the link got foobar'ed. Here it is:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-misconceptions-about-pu-1.html
My apologies.
Overall, the process of turning a manuscript into a book is estimated to cost $7000-$20,000 — an amount comparable to the author's likely earnings from the book. In fact, the actual division of labour on a book is split roughly 50/50 between the author and the publisher.
and
In particular, about 80-90% of the cover price of a book has nothing to do with the paper and ink object you buy in a shop; indeed, using current production standards, ebook production requires nearly as much work as paper book production.
Yes, yes, I know that they already have made their initial investment back an obscene number of times, but that is a different matter.
Someone gets power, and power tends to corrupt. No one wants to be a[nother] pawn in someone else's game.
Given that the employer already has a lot of power, the counterbalance given by the union may actually be a pro?
I get Canadian Pacific Railway Limited and Club Penguin from Google, and I suspect that GP did not refer to either.
The government of Canada has the legal right to ignore the constitution (google notwithstanding clause). In the USA they just make up an excuse why it doesn't apply (google unlawful enemy combatant).
You forgot that areas in close proximity to US borders are Constitution free zones, as described by the ACLU. And "close proximity" is 100 miles. Remember that if you ever need a restraining order ...
... but, but we are being paid so much money to say yes. Besides, how can we refuse those nice people when they pull out the puppies?
As an alternative to large scale starvation, I expect that the effects of environmental damage to have negligible negative effect on human health care, but I do not know enough about the specifics. However, I do know that the industrialized agriculture could be run in a manner significantly more friendly to the environment. Pumping cattle with antibiotics, using too much herbicide, terminator genes etc. are significant problems that need to be addressed.