I know it's trendy to hate apple, but the fault lies at the feet of the extremely greedy publishers.
An e-book should be MAX 50% the price of the paper book.
A lot of the troubles of the modern-day world can be credited to "should be". A lot of things "should be", but actual fact makes them impossible.
Before saying an e-book "should be" max 50% of a paper book, I'd want to see an honest breakdown of the true costs of producing the book in the abstract - paper, electronic - or whatever, totalling up the costs of creating the book, making it fit for human consumption, typesetting, marketing and so forth, all while paying all those involved a decent living wage and supplying them with the capital equipment they require. Plus enough profit to make them want to go through it all over again for the next book. If that can be done for half than the approximately $7USD/copy that seems to be about average for USA paperbacks, well and good. but leave the "should be"s out of it. A fair price for a fair product is all that I ask. There are books I haven't bought because I considered them overpriced, and no few of them are ebooks at hardback prices, and there are books that I bought because they were so cheap I didn't care if they were immortal literature or not. Very little of my purchase decision was based on what "should be" the cost of producing them.
Books are not commodities. A work by Terry Pratchett probably costs no more to produce than a bodice-ripper from Harvey Snorkwacker. Less, once purchase volumes start kicking in. However, Pratchett's work has more intrinsic value, and that's something worth paying a premium for. At least as long as it's not too high a premium. The old-fashioned "sell it hardback for a year at a high price first" model doesn't work for me. Even when it was the only game in town, I waited for the lower-cost paperback edition.
They built a crappy laptop. What many people are missing is that the Raspberry pi is best for two groups of people. Underprivileged kids who will use the Pi as the basis of a scrounged together machine. Or for people needing a fairly decent machine for their embedded project (robot, car computer, etc).
To simply reinvent the laptop seems like a waste of a Pi.
Three^W four kinds of people. A RPi pulls only around 5 Watts of power. Sufficiently low that it's you can make it solar-powered, which can come in handy for those of us who occasionally suffer multi-day power outages or want a "computer fix" away from civilization The main power draw, in fact, would be the display.
Another use of a RPi is for a low-power satellite system, for things like word processing, email, or recipes in the kitchen. Take an old monitor, tape an RPi to the back of it, stuff a WiFi ethernet USB dongle into it, and connect it to the SAN. Add keyboard and mouse as needed (or use Bluetooth).
At $25 for the minimal Pi and $35 for the loaded version, you can practically hand them out as party favors. It's almost certain that whatever you plug into them will cost more than the computer itself, but fortunately. with the possible exception of HDMI, a lot of us have spare parts gathering dust anyway.
last i heard esset ist now kaput! ss i the new norm!
Give grandpa a break! Old habits die hard.
Actually, I was told the rules for ß are now reduced, but it isn't dead yet. And what's the good of an international keyboard if you can't exploit all the extra letters, anyway? I think English should bring back "thorn". Not only is it more convenient for writing ye definite article, it collates better phonetically!
Due to a misunderstanding with European contractors, Oklahoma City's new data centre was only designed to handle very light breezes of up to 310 meters per hour (m/h), and collapsed moments after construction was completed. When asked how they could confuse "MPH" with "m/h", the response was "wast ist eine 'mile'?". Full story at 11...
Was heißt "meile"? Fragen Sie bitte seine Grosßvater!
First, I have to agree that DRM really gets in the way. It is unreasonable to make it nearly impossible to share books that I have finished reading--even with my wife. The books/readers also leave a lot to be desired. No index, no reasonable cross-references, and no easy way to communicate locations with readers of physical books--as one does in a book club, for example.
I don't find myself changing font, or point-size, or orientation (intentionally) so often that I appreciate the on-the-fly recomposition of the book. The trade-off ain't there.
Lastly, there are many books that I would like to add to my library (the room) but also have availble to read anywhere, anytime. I should think that publishers could take a cue from the film industry and offer a print edition along with a digital edition for a few dollars more.
Providing things like indexes and cross-references is the author's job, if the book warrants it, and I've been electronically producing documents with indexes and cross-references since long before e-readers came on the market. One thing an e-reader can do that you cannot do with a physical book is scan the entire document for an arbitrary word or phrase. However, an index (done right) has the advantage of being more intelligently arranged, which is why the mere ability to scan is no excuse for omitting an index, especially with the power of a modern word processor to build indexes as the book is being written.
"Read anywhere" can be done with either an e-reader or physical books. For all the yammering about batteries, an e-ink reader can go for days at a time without an electric fix, and most of us can find time and a place to top them off. They're not like cellphones and laptops that inconveniently go dry if not fed every few hours.
I believe there's another legitmate use for DRM. I can go on my local library's site and "check-out" an audio book using OverDrive. OverDrive has DRM mainly to make sure you don't "keep" the audio book past it's due-date. Since I didn't buy this audio book and the DRM forces a standard library model, I really don't mind it. It allows the library to serve it's customers in a new way that is more convienent.
I gave up on OverDrive. When a major metro area has one "copy" of an ebook, there's no point in queuing up to be the 147th person in line to read it. The local branch often has multiple copies of popular books, even if they are in dead tree form. So I can get it faster that way than I can via the Internet.
My tablet doesn't have a cellular connection. And if your beach has wifi, then I think you're doing it wrong.
My beach is part of the metro area. So yes, WiFi is an option. But since I only need the WiFi to buy the books, not to read them, more secluded beaches are not a problem either.
After all, if your beach is that close to a bookstore, you're also doing it wrong. And, come to think of it, a lot of bookstores have WiFi.
Advertisements work much better than word of mouth.
From what I've heard from advertising people, no they don't. Advertising can help people discover stuff that no one knew about before. Advertisement can keep a specific product near front of a potential customer's mind. But for actually getting people to make a specific purchase, nothing beats and endorsement from people you know and trust.
It works for me. Instead of whining that something is awful like you expect everyone to agree with you, why don't you elaborate on what you don't like about PDF-format ebooks? If a particular device doesn't handle them well, is that the format's fault? Explaining this would be much more constructive and educational for the rest of us.
Personally I use PDF-format ebooks with no problems. Usually I view them with Okular on my Linux netbook. It displays the text and images with no problems. If you can name a problem with them I didn't even know I had, let's hear it.
Yes, PDF documents formatted for an 11-inch tablet are at fault for being painful to read on a 7-in tablet. And I really prefer the 7-inch form for casual reading.
The HTML-based formats used natively on most e-readers are flexible because the goal on HTML is to render text readably on as wide a range of devices as possible - even my 3-inch phone screen (which I have read many books on, including War and Peace). HTML is about the information. PDF is the mechanism you want when you want something whose layout must be exactly reproduced, and for general reading, the layout is secondary to the words themselves.
There is an adaptable option for PDF, but it's not as free-form as HTML.
I received a kindle as a gift this Christmas. I am not a big reader. I like old fashioned books more. The DRM doesn't bother me. And I think mainstream publishers aren't shooting themselves in the foot with a bit of DRM.
I am just a bloody hard sell for any kind of book. I mostly read fiction. And in my youth I read a lot more then I do now. Though I think National Geographic would be interesting in e-reader format. Considering the nice color displays some have now.
One reason I never subscribed to National Geographic was that I could never bear to throw out back-issues and you can end up buried alive in them. So being able to pack them all into a virtually open-ended reader is a major plus.
The one downside to NG's archives are that they were actually shipping JPEG images of the pages, which can limit the quality of the text.
I carry my entire library on a form smaller than a postage stamp. There's just no replacement for that convenience.
Just make sure that there's also just no replacement for the library. DRM-free ebooks can be backed up to alternative locations in case the original memory chip goes bad and the publisher's servers have gone offline.
Certain publishers are DRM free to keep their pricing low. While not my cup of tea, I happen to know that Entangled Publishing http://www.entangledpublishing.com/ is DRM free (fiance is interning there). I'm sure there are other smaller publishing houses that do the same... as with most things it's the big companies that have forgotten their customers.
I'm not sure that the cost of DRM to the publisher is all that high. When I buy a Nook book, the actual DRM is applied by the B&N server as part of the download process, since it's specific to my user credentials.
Baen, Tor, and O'Reilly may not be the biggest publishers in the world, but they're hardly "smaller", and Baen and O'Reilly were philosophically against DRM from the beginning. Tor had some entanglements to resolve, but have since jumped on the bandwagon.
Specialized computer technologies often require some form of advanced math, which can be anything from statistics all the way up to tensor analysis.
However, if your goal in life is to develop webapps and payroll systems, these disciplines are useful:
1. Algebra. Because you aren't going to be able to do squat with symbolic arithmetic without a thorough knowledge of algebra. 2. Differential calculus. Not so much for the differential equations as for the concepts of functions, domains and ranges that underlie the structure of most common programming languages. 3. Symbolic logic. Because it's basically "algebra for booleans". There is a particular sub-domain known as the Calculus of Propositions that has been immense help to me, but I don't think that it's all that common.
In actuality in my state, Calculus 1 (differential) and 2 (integral) are requirements that I'm not even sure that the football majors can avoid. Calc 1, is useful for CS, as I said, but I did very poorly in Calc 2 because it had been several years since high school trig and I had completely forgotten that there was such as thing as a "trigonometric identity", much less how to employ them. That's even sadder, since before I got into programming, I was big on geometric and trigonometric proofs. Which, themselves are symbolic manipulation disciplines. But it shows exactly how much practical use I'd had for them in the intervening years working as a professional developer.
But it always does in the long run. Of course in the long run we're all dead.
Actually, there's no law that says it ever has to work out. All you have to do is stay below the threshold of pain. If the only people who won't put up with it don't have the leverage to force a change, the situation will endure until some external factor comes into play.
If I produce a "theft-resistant" package that lacerates and maims the hands of my customers but my customers don't carry enough influence to make me change, I could very well go on crippling people until either a more profitable safer form of packaging comes along, my products become obsolete, the company dissolves (possibly for non-market reasons such as retirement of the principals), or I ruin the career of a neurosurgeon who knows an expensive lawyer (which promotes him out of the realm of "non-influential").
The person you're responding to didn't say it had to be athletic. And the person that person was responding to (me) was talking specifically about the merits of rewarding athletes with seats at an academic university.
I understand it takes a lot of work. I understand everything you're saying.
I don't understand why it is in society's best interest to do it this way.
Specifically, why is it better for society to continue this status quo than to eliminate collegiate sports entirely?
Because - and here's the irony - the alumni with the fat pocketbooks are more likely to contribute to their alma mater's having superior athletic programs than to superiority in more academic areas.
Personally, instead of the joke that modern college athletics are, I wish they'd just employ professional teams, give the players academic benefits if they want them, and stop pretending that "student athletes" are real students.
Nah but its only popular because it's the place public drunkeness is allowed in American culture. After all it's not like you go to watch a non-stop exciting game.
That's what football is for. The Florida-Georgia game's nickname is "the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party".
If government is NOT a failure, then how is the arrangement you describe even possible?
Capitalism, cronyism, nepotism, and letting people who worked in the industries who caused the meltdown in the first place to be setting monetary policy.
It was people from Wall Street who got appointed to run the show who set the awful policies which led to this in the first place.
You know, an epic failure of the financial system caused by the people who think they know how it runs, and who value profit over accountability.
Your free market is a joke, it always has, and always will be an oligarchy. Government fails because it panders to that, not because of an inherent failing in government. Republicans just think it's perfectly normal to let multinational corporations run the show.
There are some things that governments excel at, and some things that they do miserably.
There are some things that markets excel at, and some things that they do miserably.
There are some things that both of the above do miserably at and that entirely different approaches excel at.
The problem with so many people is that they expect one solution to be the silver bullet that works on everything. The proverbial "small child with a hammer" solution. Since the real world isn't so one-dimensional, most of their "solutions" therefore end up as miserable failures, which typically they then blame on something/someone else instead of recognizing that some other approach might have been better. And/or on not trying "their solution" hard enough - doubling-down. Clue: if your solution can only work in the absence of opposition, it's not a viable solution. Space travel works despite the existence of Flat-Earthers, not because there are no Flat-Earthers.
Banding together into parties and ideologies is a solution for the essential helplessness of the individual, but when a party or ideology has to be the sole solution to all problems, it has become a problem itself.
Slashdot Mirror
"aimed at reigning in certain patent-holding firms"
"Reining", not "reigning". Think horses, not kings.
The king reigns because he holds the reins.
But did you lose your loose change? And can you tow a line to where people can toe it?
Plus enough profit to make them want to go through it all over again for the next book
There's the rub. In other words, the price *should be* what it is now.
I tell my employers what my salary "should be". They laugh.
Problem with e-publishing is that Apple and friends get most of the say-so in the "should be" .
I know it's trendy to hate apple, but the fault lies at the feet of the extremely greedy publishers.
An e-book should be MAX 50% the price of the paper book.
A lot of the troubles of the modern-day world can be credited to "should be". A lot of things "should be", but actual fact makes them impossible.
Before saying an e-book "should be" max 50% of a paper book, I'd want to see an honest breakdown of the true costs of producing the book in the abstract - paper, electronic - or whatever, totalling up the costs of creating the book, making it fit for human consumption, typesetting, marketing and so forth, all while paying all those involved a decent living wage and supplying them with the capital equipment they require. Plus enough profit to make them want to go through it all over again for the next book. If that can be done for half than the approximately $7USD/copy that seems to be about average for USA paperbacks, well and good. but leave the "should be"s out of it. A fair price for a fair product is all that I ask. There are books I haven't bought because I considered them overpriced, and no few of them are ebooks at hardback prices, and there are books that I bought because they were so cheap I didn't care if they were immortal literature or not. Very little of my purchase decision was based on what "should be" the cost of producing them.
Books are not commodities. A work by Terry Pratchett probably costs no more to produce than a bodice-ripper from Harvey Snorkwacker. Less, once purchase volumes start kicking in. However, Pratchett's work has more intrinsic value, and that's something worth paying a premium for. At least as long as it's not too high a premium. The old-fashioned "sell it hardback for a year at a high price first" model doesn't work for me. Even when it was the only game in town, I waited for the lower-cost paperback edition.
They built a crappy laptop. What many people are missing is that the Raspberry pi is best for two groups of people. Underprivileged kids who will use the Pi as the basis of a scrounged together machine. Or for people needing a fairly decent machine for their embedded project (robot, car computer, etc).
To simply reinvent the laptop seems like a waste of a Pi.
Three^W four kinds of people. A RPi pulls only around 5 Watts of power. Sufficiently low that it's you can make it solar-powered, which can come in handy for those of us who occasionally suffer multi-day power outages or want a "computer fix" away from civilization The main power draw, in fact, would be the display.
Another use of a RPi is for a low-power satellite system, for things like word processing, email, or recipes in the kitchen. Take an old monitor, tape an RPi to the back of it, stuff a WiFi ethernet USB dongle into it, and connect it to the SAN. Add keyboard and mouse as needed (or use Bluetooth).
At $25 for the minimal Pi and $35 for the loaded version, you can practically hand them out as party favors. It's almost certain that whatever you plug into them will cost more than the computer itself, but fortunately. with the possible exception of HDMI, a lot of us have spare parts gathering dust anyway.
last i heard esset ist now kaput! ss i the new norm!
Give grandpa a break! Old habits die hard.
Actually, I was told the rules for ß are now reduced, but it isn't dead yet. And what's the good of an international keyboard if you can't exploit all the extra letters, anyway? I think English should bring back "thorn". Not only is it more convenient for writing ye definite article, it collates better phonetically!
Due to a misunderstanding with European contractors, Oklahoma City's new data centre was only designed to handle very light breezes of up to 310 meters per hour (m/h), and collapsed moments after construction was completed. When asked how they could confuse "MPH" with "m/h", the response was "wast ist eine 'mile'?". Full story at 11...
Was heißt "meile"? Fragen Sie bitte seine Grosßvater!
That the only DRM free publisher is also named Tor.
You find it amusing incorrectly. Tor was a relative latecomer to the ranks of DRM-free. But I forgive them.
First, I have to agree that DRM really gets in the way. It is unreasonable to make it nearly impossible to share books that I have finished reading--even with my wife. The books/readers also leave a lot to be desired. No index, no reasonable cross-references, and no easy way to communicate locations with readers of physical books--as one does in a book club, for example.
I don't find myself changing font, or point-size, or orientation (intentionally) so often that I appreciate the on-the-fly recomposition of the book. The trade-off ain't there.
Lastly, there are many books that I would like to add to my library (the room) but also have availble to read anywhere, anytime. I should think that publishers could take a cue from the film industry and offer a print edition along with a digital edition for a few dollars more.
Providing things like indexes and cross-references is the author's job, if the book warrants it, and I've been electronically producing documents with indexes and cross-references since long before e-readers came on the market. One thing an e-reader can do that you cannot do with a physical book is scan the entire document for an arbitrary word or phrase. However, an index (done right) has the advantage of being more intelligently arranged, which is why the mere ability to scan is no excuse for omitting an index, especially with the power of a modern word processor to build indexes as the book is being written.
"Read anywhere" can be done with either an e-reader or physical books. For all the yammering about batteries, an e-ink reader can go for days at a time without an electric fix, and most of us can find time and a place to top them off. They're not like cellphones and laptops that inconveniently go dry if not fed every few hours.
I believe there's another legitmate use for DRM. I can go on my local library's site and "check-out" an audio book using OverDrive. OverDrive has DRM mainly to make sure you don't "keep" the audio book past it's due-date. Since I didn't buy this audio book and the DRM forces a standard library model, I really don't mind it. It allows the library to serve it's customers in a new way that is more convienent.
I gave up on OverDrive. When a major metro area has one "copy" of an ebook, there's no point in queuing up to be the 147th person in line to read it. The local branch often has multiple copies of popular books, even if they are in dead tree form. So I can get it faster that way than I can via the Internet.
Google "epub download"...
tl;dr, executive summary: Locks are for honest people.
My tablet doesn't have a cellular connection. And if your beach has wifi, then I think you're doing it wrong.
My beach is part of the metro area. So yes, WiFi is an option. But since I only need the WiFi to buy the books, not to read them, more secluded beaches are not a problem either.
After all, if your beach is that close to a bookstore, you're also doing it wrong. And, come to think of it, a lot of bookstores have WiFi.
Advertisements work much better than word of mouth.
From what I've heard from advertising people, no they don't. Advertising can help people discover stuff that no one knew about before. Advertisement can keep a specific product near front of a potential customer's mind. But for actually getting people to make a specific purchase, nothing beats and endorsement from people you know and trust.
What an awful format for ebooks.
It works for me. Instead of whining that something is awful like you expect everyone to agree with you, why don't you elaborate on what you don't like about PDF-format ebooks? If a particular device doesn't handle them well, is that the format's fault? Explaining this would be much more constructive and educational for the rest of us.
Personally I use PDF-format ebooks with no problems. Usually I view them with Okular on my Linux netbook. It displays the text and images with no problems. If you can name a problem with them I didn't even know I had, let's hear it.
Yes, PDF documents formatted for an 11-inch tablet are at fault for being painful to read on a 7-in tablet. And I really prefer the 7-inch form for casual reading.
The HTML-based formats used natively on most e-readers are flexible because the goal on HTML is to render text readably on as wide a range of devices as possible - even my 3-inch phone screen (which I have read many books on, including War and Peace). HTML is about the information. PDF is the mechanism you want when you want something whose layout must be exactly reproduced, and for general reading, the layout is secondary to the words themselves.
There is an adaptable option for PDF, but it's not as free-form as HTML.
I received a kindle as a gift this Christmas. I am not a big reader. I like old fashioned books more. The DRM doesn't bother me. And I think mainstream publishers aren't shooting themselves in the foot with a bit of DRM.
I am just a bloody hard sell for any kind of book. I mostly read fiction. And in my youth I read a lot more then I do now. Though I think National Geographic would be interesting in e-reader format. Considering the nice color displays some have now.
One reason I never subscribed to National Geographic was that I could never bear to throw out back-issues and you can end up buried alive in them. So being able to pack them all into a virtually open-ended reader is a major plus.
The one downside to NG's archives are that they were actually shipping JPEG images of the pages, which can limit the quality of the text.
I carry my entire library on a form smaller than a postage stamp. There's just no replacement for that convenience.
Just make sure that there's also just no replacement for the library. DRM-free ebooks can be backed up to alternative locations in case the original memory chip goes bad and the publisher's servers have gone offline.
Certain publishers are DRM free to keep their pricing low. While not my cup of tea, I happen to know that Entangled Publishing http://www.entangledpublishing.com/ is DRM free (fiance is interning there). I'm sure there are other smaller publishing houses that do the same... as with most things it's the big companies that have forgotten their customers.
I'm not sure that the cost of DRM to the publisher is all that high. When I buy a Nook book, the actual DRM is applied by the B&N server as part of the download process, since it's specific to my user credentials.
Baen, Tor, and O'Reilly may not be the biggest publishers in the world, but they're hardly "smaller", and Baen and O'Reilly were philosophically against DRM from the beginning. Tor had some entanglements to resolve, but have since jumped on the bandwagon.
Specialized computer technologies often require some form of advanced math, which can be anything from statistics all the way up to tensor analysis.
However, if your goal in life is to develop webapps and payroll systems, these disciplines are useful:
1. Algebra. Because you aren't going to be able to do squat with symbolic arithmetic without a thorough knowledge of algebra.
2. Differential calculus. Not so much for the differential equations as for the concepts of functions, domains and ranges that underlie the structure of most common programming languages.
3. Symbolic logic. Because it's basically "algebra for booleans". There is a particular sub-domain known as the Calculus of Propositions that has been immense help to me, but I don't think that it's all that common.
In actuality in my state, Calculus 1 (differential) and 2 (integral) are requirements that I'm not even sure that the football majors can avoid. Calc 1, is useful for CS, as I said, but I did very poorly in Calc 2 because it had been several years since high school trig and I had completely forgotten that there was such as thing as a "trigonometric identity", much less how to employ them. That's even sadder, since before I got into programming, I was big on geometric and trigonometric proofs. Which, themselves are symbolic manipulation disciplines. But it shows exactly how much practical use I'd had for them in the intervening years working as a professional developer.
You have to wait until the market works it out.
But it always does in the long run. Of course in the long run we're all dead.
Actually, there's no law that says it ever has to work out. All you have to do is stay below the threshold of pain. If the only people who won't put up with it don't have the leverage to force a change, the situation will endure until some external factor comes into play.
If I produce a "theft-resistant" package that lacerates and maims the hands of my customers but my customers don't carry enough influence to make me change, I could very well go on crippling people until either a more profitable safer form of packaging comes along, my products become obsolete, the company dissolves (possibly for non-market reasons such as retirement of the principals), or I ruin the career of a neurosurgeon who knows an expensive lawyer (which promotes him out of the realm of "non-influential").
The person you're responding to didn't say it had to be athletic.
And the person that person was responding to (me) was talking specifically about the merits of rewarding athletes with seats at an academic university.
I understand it takes a lot of work. I understand everything you're saying.
I don't understand why it is in society's best interest to do it this way.
Specifically, why is it better for society to continue this status quo than to eliminate collegiate sports entirely?
Because - and here's the irony - the alumni with the fat pocketbooks are more likely to contribute to their alma mater's having superior athletic programs than to superiority in more academic areas.
Personally, instead of the joke that modern college athletics are, I wish they'd just employ professional teams, give the players academic benefits if they want them, and stop pretending that "student athletes" are real students.
Only if there are opportunities to cheat. Opportunities can be reduced or eliminated, in theory.
Ummm. Yeah. And we can create the ultimate malware-proof system. And unbreakable DRM.
Nah but its only popular because it's the place public drunkeness is allowed in American culture. After all it's not like you go to watch a non-stop exciting game.
That's what football is for. The Florida-Georgia game's nickname is "the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party".
There's no crying in Baseball!!!
They should rename it to Mutantball. Apparently, baseball, like many other sports, is no longer playable competitively by normal human beings.
Capitalism, cronyism, nepotism, and letting people who worked in the industries who caused the meltdown in the first place to be setting monetary policy.
It was people from Wall Street who got appointed to run the show who set the awful policies which led to this in the first place.
You know, an epic failure of the financial system caused by the people who think they know how it runs, and who value profit over accountability.
Your free market is a joke, it always has, and always will be an oligarchy. Government fails because it panders to that, not because of an inherent failing in government. Republicans just think it's perfectly normal to let multinational corporations run the show.
There are some things that governments excel at, and some things that they do miserably.
There are some things that markets excel at, and some things that they do miserably.
There are some things that both of the above do miserably at and that entirely different approaches excel at.
The problem with so many people is that they expect one solution to be the silver bullet that works on everything. The proverbial "small child with a hammer" solution. Since the real world isn't so one-dimensional, most of their "solutions" therefore end up as miserable failures, which typically they then blame on something/someone else instead of recognizing that some other approach might have been better. And/or on not trying "their solution" hard enough - doubling-down. Clue: if your solution can only work in the absence of opposition, it's not a viable solution. Space travel works despite the existence of Flat-Earthers, not because there are no Flat-Earthers.
Banding together into parties and ideologies is a solution for the essential helplessness of the individual, but when a party or ideology has to be the sole solution to all problems, it has become a problem itself.
Why, for profit of course.
If we let any old schmuck access it, that could undermine the ability to patent research paid for by someone else and/or be first to market.
And not charging for the access would put the publishers out of business, and we can't lose their valuable contributions to science.
Don't you know the role of publicly financed research is to enrich corporations? Why do you hate America?
That's right!
If it loses money, socialize it and use it as proof that government is a failure.
If it makes money, privatize it, give it to the Job Creators, and trumpet it as a triumph of the free market.
It was the lizard men!
The Tritonian Ring!