I disagree. My Windows 95 machine is still operating wonderfully. I sure am glad that I bought it once and for all. I would hate to have bi-yearly operating system upgrades that make my computer better, more secure, and faster. Thanks, Microsoft!
I know this is a little behind the curve, but I am going to call Doctorow on this whole thread.
1) Giving away electronic versions of your book for free makes you more money than "doing something about piracy"
2) If people care enough about your book to pirate it, pat yourself on the back--you are becoming famous.
You should re-release the book under a Creative Commons Attribution, No Derivatives, Non-Commercial license and let the internet do its thing.
Students who were going to buy print copies of your book will continue to do so, and the ones who were just going to get it from the library will get it online. Additionally, many people who were never going to buy and read your book will stumble upon it, learn your name, look for your other works, quote you, further your research...
I just posted this to the White House's new Facebook page:
When will you stop keeping the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) secret from us? You are supposed to be running an open government.
If you are going to be catering to the media industry and criminalizing your own citizens, the least you could do is let us see what is coming. This is not about national secrets; it is about money.
I recommend you put something similar up there, or the message will be so drowned out that no one will see it. I do not expect Obama to read it, but I do hope to reach a few of our fellow citizens.
Does someone want to tell me what's wrong with plain text?
It's expressive enough for legal documents... Are they using ClipArt, for Pete's sake?
Besides that, it takes a tiny fraction of the disk space or any other format; its standards are stable; it's platform- and application-independent; you can search, scrape, and analyze it with extreme ease; and they can use Unicode if they like non-Latin characters.
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I disagree. My Windows 95 machine is still operating wonderfully. I sure am glad that I bought it once and for all. I would hate to have bi-yearly operating system upgrades that make my computer better, more secure, and faster. Thanks, Microsoft!
I know this is a little behind the curve, but I am going to call Doctorow on this whole thread.
1) Giving away electronic versions of your book for free makes you more money than "doing something about piracy"
2) If people care enough about your book to pirate it, pat yourself on the back--you are becoming famous.
You should re-release the book under a Creative Commons Attribution, No Derivatives, Non-Commercial license and let the internet do its thing.
Students who were going to buy print copies of your book will continue to do so, and the ones who were just going to get it from the library will get it online. Additionally, many people who were never going to buy and read your book will stumble upon it, learn your name, look for your other works, quote you, further your research...
What more could you, as an academic, hope for?
I recommend you put something similar up there, or the message will be so drowned out that no one will see it. I do not expect Obama to read it, but I do hope to reach a few of our fellow citizens.
Unless they also include a "Linux mode", I'm still out.
Does someone want to tell me what's wrong with plain text?
It's expressive enough for legal documents... Are they using ClipArt, for Pete's sake?
Besides that, it takes a tiny fraction of the disk space or any other format; its standards are stable; it's platform- and application-independent; you can search, scrape, and analyze it with extreme ease; and they can use Unicode if they like non-Latin characters.
I'm not seeing the drawback here. No Wingdings?
even though software engineering is comparably untouched by the ongoing depression.
*Ahem* "recession" or "slowdown", please... let's not start a stampede.
Er, regardless of whether they lock you into a contract, if they promise you one thing and deliver another, they are answerable in court.
You may have had no way of knowing their adverts were lies until _after_ you signed the contract.
This is the sort of thing we have governments for.