There are some virtual communities that are real. I've made friends in a newsgroup that became frineds in person, when I saw them. Sorry, slashdotters, but the virtual community I spend the most time in is Baen's Bar, a newsgroup that's part of the Baen Books website:
http://bar.baen.com/~bar
When I went to the World Science Fiction convention a month ago, I wasn't one guy lost among 5,000 science fiction fans. Instead, I had a couple dozen friends I just hadn't seen in person before. If that's not a virtual community that's real, I don't know what is.
Fred
Re:Stephen King and eBooks
on
RMS On eBooks
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· Score: 1
There's another way to fight this. Buy e-Books from a publisher that doesn't encrypt them at all. I'm aware of one. Baen Books publishes all their releases in electronic form, in addition to the traditional Dead Tree Edition. There's no encryption. And the file format is HTML.
If you want to check it out for yourself, here's their FAQ:
Everyone here is acting like this is the first time a big name author has had an electronic book out. Well, I suppose this depends on your definition of "big author." Obviously, Stephen King is bigger than, say, David Weber (whose latest novel, Ashes of Victory will be #12 on Friday's New York Times bestseller list). Or David Drake. Or Dean Ing. I suppose King might even be bigger that Poul Anderson, in his way . ..
Baen Books has been putting their entire monthly release out out as electronic text for months. And they sell a collection of 4 or 5 novels for $10. Those are 4 or 5 real novels, not short stories.
Slashdot Mirror
There are some virtual communities that are real. I've made friends in a newsgroup that became frineds in person, when I saw them. Sorry, slashdotters, but the virtual community I spend the most time in is Baen's Bar, a newsgroup that's part of the Baen Books website: http://bar.baen.com/~bar When I went to the World Science Fiction convention a month ago, I wasn't one guy lost among 5,000 science fiction fans. Instead, I had a couple dozen friends I just hadn't seen in person before. If that's not a virtual community that's real, I don't know what is. Fred
There's another way to fight this. Buy e-Books from a publisher that doesn't encrypt them at all. I'm aware of one. Baen Books publishes all their releases in electronic form, in addition to the traditional Dead Tree Edition. There's no encryption. And the file format is HTML.
If you want to check it out for yourself, here's their FAQ:
http://www.baen.com/WS_FAQ.htm
Fred
Everyone here is acting like this is the first time a big name author has had an electronic book out. Well, I suppose this depends on your definition of "big author." Obviously, Stephen King is bigger than, say, David Weber (whose latest novel, Ashes of Victory will be #12 on Friday's New York Times bestseller list). Or David Drake. Or Dean Ing. I suppose King might even be bigger that Poul Anderson, in his way . . .
Baen Books has been putting their entire monthly release out out as electronic text for months. And they sell a collection of 4 or 5 novels for $10. Those are 4 or 5 real novels, not short stories.