Yes. Yes it will. Believe it or not, most professors actually CARE about the cost of the textbooks their students need. So called "Open Source" text books may not be popular (or complete, comprehensive, and accurate) right now, but being able to purchase reasonably priced print copies of a community-developed book or a book written by the instructor for his/her class will certainly have an effect.
The people who go to vanity publishers usually do so because their work isn't good enough for the professional publishing houses.
No... people go to POD/vanity publishers to meet a specific need.
A few examples: A good number of universities require students to submit a bound copy of their dissertation (meeting ALA standards). POD makes this easy and affordable.
Some books are of local interest only, and need very short print runs -- A local historical society may want to publish book, series of books, or books for special events (i.e. for a towns 150th aniversary).
A local museaum may want to publish a book related to a particular exhibit. (Not all museaums are big -- in Greenville, PA [Pop. ~6,500] there are *two* museaums.)
An individual may want to compile a geneology into book form to hand out at a family get-together.
A new bride might want to compile wedding photos and stories into book for friends and family.
A photographer might want a portfolio he could pass out to clients.
A teacher may want to publish a text specific to a class s/he teaches or a collection of lecture notes and course materials.
I could go on. The point here is the POD business is far larger than the yahoo who thinks their poetry collection is going to be a best seller or their sci-fi/fantasy novel is going to spark a phenomenon.
We need a whole new set of standards for the web. As the web has grown, changed, and matured, so must web technologies. We can all admit that web standards and technologies are an absolute mess -- and they've been an absolute mess for far too long.
We have HTML, XHTML, DHTML, Java/ECMA Script, CSS, "AJAX", FLEX, Flash/Shockwave, Java, ActiveX, and uncountable variants, extensions, dead-ends (VRML), and the like. IT'S HORRID.
The advent of the so-called web 2.0 applications (built on the existing steaming-pile of standards with their inconsistent implementations) only serves to make matters worse. A recent article (I can't find a link) cautions AJAX developers to make their pages "gracefully" degrade so that the "20%" of uses with JavaScript disabled can use their pages. Unfortunately, most of these page-app chimeras degrade to a simple "turn on JavaScript!" notice.
This is to say nothing of the nearly unmanageable problem of accessibility. (Not that most web publishers actually care. The W3C accessibility guidelines are all but worthless and don't reflect the current state of the web.)
If this wasn't enough, web developers insist of using the standards in ways that they were never intended to be used! (We've ALL used tables for layout -- admit it.) Look at any random web page source and you're likely to see a gross misuse of CSS and other crimes like using images for navigation buttons that require JavaScript in order to function.
What new standards does the web need? Ones that fit the current state of the web of course!
Applications are NOT documents -- We need standards for web applications. IMO, web applications should be interfaces decoupled from the actual application. We need a standard protocol for web application interfaces to communicate w/ their respective applications so that 1) interfaces can be changed depending on the platform the application is to be used and to suit the needs of differently-enabled users 2) interfaces can be generated dynamically for the same user group and same reasons. (This is very complicated; I won't go into it here.)
There are very different KINDS of documents on the web. We have dynamic documents, interactive documents, forms, and plain vanilla documents -- each has its own place, as well as its own needs. [Insert Rant Here].
Documents have Content, Formatting, Structure, and Layout. Structure needs defined first -- Layout last (and optionally! -- so we can make pages "pretty" for most users with good eyesight/large displays and Accessible for the rest.)
Bah, we also need to stop using things like FLASH and Shockwave and instead develop reasonable open replacements for these technologies. Or just stop using the silly things! (Web applications should be able to fill the void for a good many of the current uses of Flash.)
While we're at it, let's replace JavaScript with a sensible language that can be used with the new (and clean) set of standards.
Speaking of clean, how about a simple set of standards? Each of these should be easy for the average web developer (or user, preferably) to understand. Avoid things like feature-bloat and stick with the basics. (The PDF 1.2 spec is an excellent example of a clean and simple standard that let's you do powerful things - though the web needs a format you can edit with a simple text editor.)
I'm done ranting... anyone agree with me in principle at least?
The mods marked your post 'troll' because of the content of the site you linked. I'm not sure if the author(s) of those articles were serious or not, but either way the entire site is, well, crackpottery!
Show some compassion, man! Hell, if such a place exists, is generally considered to be a place of ETERNAL suffering. I can think of no crime so heinous that the only just punishment is an ETERNITY of endless suffering.
Try to feel empathy for this mans family -- it should help.
Eyes make people nearly three times as thirsty as flowers.
I'm confused. Do you mean Eyes make people nearly three times more thirsty than the thurst of flowers? -or- Do you mean that Eyes are nearly three times more effective than flowers at making people thirsty?
The best term I've encountered is 'Wholesale rebellion'. Children at that age feel a need to find their own identity and place in society. Some choose to begin that process by attempting to reject a society they don't believe they 'fit' in.
The fastest way to achieve that particular end? $50 pants at 'hot topic' are a start -- for a few hundred dollars you too can deny societal norms!
Yes, It's here folks! Instant rebellion, at wholesale prices! Get the look, the attitudes and values (buttons and stickers in-stock) all pre-packaged for your convenience! Be exactly like your friends and you can stop caring what other people think! Feel sad? Alone? Show the world with a new faux-leather Anarchy(tm) vest! Cash or Credit. No Personal Checks Accepted.
Trying to take credit for another persons work (you didn't indicate in the origional post that this was some article you copied)... We used to call that plagiarism, the highest of all academic crimes. You don't seem bothered by this at all.
No, I don't sell cigars or other tobacco products. I only replied to your post because you asked for more information.
It's clear you didn't read the links sent, so providing more probably won't help. At least one of your points is directly addressed by two of the links from my previous post so I'll address that here.
Secondhand smoke involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers from other people's cigarettes is classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a known human (Group A) carcinogen, responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually in U.S. nonsmokers.
You're refering to the infamous 1993 EPA study that concluded that ETS (environmental tobacco smoke aka second hand smoke) was a class A carcinogen. In 1998 U.S. District Court Judge (Thomas Osteen) ruled that the EPA 'wrongly declared' ETS to be so.
Why? Well, the EPA (only for ETS!) significantly lowered it's standards. (see the second and third links from my earlier post) The EPA lowered the confidence interval for this study from a typical 95 to 90 (a very significant change -- nearly doubling their chances of finding a link.) and could STILL only find a Relative Risk of two (three is considered the minimal for the study to even be considered!) -- Why did the EPA lower it's standards? Because it couldn't find a 'risk' otherwise. Where I come from, we call this a lie.
The one article (the third link from my earlier post) puts it best: "So where does this leave us? Do we know passive smoking doesn't cause lung cancer? No. But we know that either it does not or that if it does the risk is so tiny as to be unmeasureable. Does this mean passive smoke poses no health risks? No. It makes sense it would aggravate athsma and other breathing problems, if nothing else." (emphasis added)
I would suggest you do some reading and some research on the matter if you'd like to see the whole truth. I cannot change your mind, and I don't intend to try. You will believe what you want dispite the evidence to the contrary. Is smoking good for you? I doubt it -- I also doubt (with good reason) that it isn't nearly as bad as people blindly believe it to be. If you're just looking for something to pick on, alchohol and obesity are two problems far greater than smoking.
Don't believe the anti-smoking propaganda. Smoking may not be good for you, but it's certainly not as bad as the average person claims. (Note, you'll find similar pseudo-science in most 'anti' style literature, youth drug/alchohol literature is an easy example. Same nonsence in older studies on radon.)
The bottom line is when we find out in 40 years that, like the tobacco companies, the cell phone companies covered up and restrained research in the pursuit of profits, your grandchildren will be pissed. I use a cell phone, but why is there all this resistance to finding out the facts?
The tobacco campany analogy is correct, for the wrong reasons. Cigarettes have never been shown to cause cancer -- but people are convinced by the anti-tobacco propaganda that they do.
Cellphones have never been shown to cause cancer -- but people, for reasons beyond my capacity, believe that they do.
So why the resistance to funding? Well, people like cellphones more than they like cigarettes -- though there isn't any evidence either one causes cancer, you're more likely to get funding for cigarette/cancer studies than cellphone/cancer studies (Because they're evil, after all. Think of the children.).
Now that's a sweetheart deal...who did you get that from?
Cellular One Their evil though, so watch out. The 'official' stores try to sell you the worst plans possible and say things like 'I can't do that' when you propose an alternate plan -- they lie. Call customer service first (have them send a message to the store you plan on going to), or go to an independent dealer to get the best plan possible.
The current promotion is for the anytime (no counting minutes) with 'statewide' calling area ($5/mo for additional adjacent states to not roam in.)
Oh, and don't let them sell you that $80/month pc card or tell you that your phone won't work as a modem! My phone (sadly only 115kbps [GPRS SonyEriccson J300a]) works just fine as a modem w/ the 'data plus' plan + drivers from Sonys' website.
They WILL give you some trouble about the long distance bit as it was part of an earlier promotion -- I had to fight to keep that part of my old plan when I 'upgraded'. Call customer service or have the rep call for you -- they can give it to you.
Except that for telephone, you're probably paying them for a certain number of minutes, not unlimited usage.
I pay $50/month for unlimited voice service. (It's like having free nights and weekends all day long and all week long. As a bonus I pay no additional charge for so-called 'long distance' calls. I can place a call from the east coast to a party on the west coast, talk all month, and not pay any amount beyond my flat monthly use fee.) I pay an additional $15/month for unlimited data usage (to use my phone as a modem -- the normal rate is $0.03/kb! I'll pay the $15 with a smile).
Needless to say, I'm not a T-Mobile customer.
I don't like the idea of 'counting minutes' and refuse (er, by paying extra money) to do so. Hopefully other carriers will follow suit and offer similar plans. Competition means better service and lower prices.:)
As far as text-messaging is concerned, I could pay an additional $5/month (tacked on to my data plan) for 'unlimited texting' As it stands now, I have 100 'free' texts on my current data plan (exactly 100 more than I need). If you're into that sort of thing, it's a good deal (current rate for most carriers in my area is ~$0.10/text sent, $0/text rec.).
How, exactly, is theory useless? In case you didn't know, it costs real money to hire a new employee and train or retrain existing employees. Someone with a strong theoretical background is better able to adapt and requires less training. Also, someone with a heavy theoretical background tends to come with very strong information literacy skills -- which I consider essential to any position (even blue-collar work).
Same principle as the boneheads who bitched about outlawing smoking in bars and then discovered that the young people and bar crowd still goes out but now so do the non smokers. Go figure.
If that's the case, I wouldn't expect this to slow down piracy at all...
Until a study can demonstrate, step-by-step, how the bacterial flagella (and the other IC challenges listed) came into existence without divine intervention, the Irreducible Complexity camp will not cower in defeat.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. Yes it will. Believe it or not, most professors actually CARE about the cost of the textbooks their students need. So called "Open Source" text books may not be popular (or complete, comprehensive, and accurate) right now, but being able to purchase reasonably priced print copies of a community-developed book or a book written by the instructor for his/her class will certainly have an effect.
The people who go to vanity publishers usually do so because their work isn't good enough for the professional publishing houses.
No... people go to POD/vanity publishers to meet a specific need.
A few examples:
A good number of universities require students to submit a bound copy of their dissertation (meeting ALA standards). POD makes this easy and affordable.
Some books are of local interest only, and need very short print runs -- A local historical society may want to publish book, series of books, or books for special events (i.e. for a towns 150th aniversary).
A local museaum may want to publish a book related to a particular exhibit. (Not all museaums are big -- in Greenville, PA [Pop. ~6,500] there are *two* museaums.)
An individual may want to compile a geneology into book form to hand out at a family get-together.
A new bride might want to compile wedding photos and stories into book for friends and family.
A photographer might want a portfolio he could pass out to clients.
A teacher may want to publish a text specific to a class s/he teaches or a collection of lecture notes and course materials.
I could go on. The point here is the POD business is far larger than the yahoo who thinks their poetry collection is going to be a best seller or their sci-fi/fantasy novel is going to spark a phenomenon.
We need a whole new set of standards for the web. As the web has grown, changed, and matured, so must web technologies. We can all admit that web standards and technologies are an absolute mess -- and they've been an absolute mess for far too long.
We have HTML, XHTML, DHTML, Java/ECMA Script, CSS, "AJAX", FLEX, Flash/Shockwave, Java, ActiveX, and uncountable variants, extensions, dead-ends (VRML), and the like. IT'S HORRID.
The advent of the so-called web 2.0 applications (built on the existing steaming-pile of standards with their inconsistent implementations) only serves to make matters worse. A recent article (I can't find a link) cautions AJAX developers to make their pages "gracefully" degrade so that the "20%" of uses with JavaScript disabled can use their pages. Unfortunately, most of these page-app chimeras degrade to a simple "turn on JavaScript!" notice.
This is to say nothing of the nearly unmanageable problem of accessibility. (Not that most web publishers actually care. The W3C accessibility guidelines are all but worthless and don't reflect the current state of the web.)
If this wasn't enough, web developers insist of using the standards in ways that they were never intended to be used! (We've ALL used tables for layout -- admit it.) Look at any random web page source and you're likely to see a gross misuse of CSS and other crimes like using images for navigation buttons that require JavaScript in order to function.
What new standards does the web need? Ones that fit the current state of the web of course!
Applications are NOT documents -- We need standards for web applications. IMO, web applications should be interfaces decoupled from the actual application. We need a standard protocol for web application interfaces to communicate w/ their respective applications so that 1) interfaces can be changed depending on the platform the application is to be used and to suit the needs of differently-enabled users 2) interfaces can be generated dynamically for the same user group and same reasons. (This is very complicated; I won't go into it here.)
There are very different KINDS of documents on the web. We have dynamic documents, interactive documents, forms, and plain vanilla documents -- each has its own place, as well as its own needs. [Insert Rant Here].
Documents have Content, Formatting, Structure, and Layout. Structure needs defined first -- Layout last (and optionally! -- so we can make pages "pretty" for most users with good eyesight/large displays and Accessible for the rest.)
Bah, we also need to stop using things like FLASH and Shockwave and instead develop reasonable open replacements for these technologies. Or just stop using the silly things! (Web applications should be able to fill the void for a good many of the current uses of Flash.)
While we're at it, let's replace JavaScript with a sensible language that can be used with the new (and clean) set of standards.
Speaking of clean, how about a simple set of standards? Each of these should be easy for the average web developer (or user, preferably) to understand. Avoid things like feature-bloat and stick with the basics. (The PDF 1.2 spec is an excellent example of a clean and simple standard that let's you do powerful things - though the web needs a format you can edit with a simple text editor.)
I'm done ranting... anyone agree with me in principle at least?
eh, why not:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte
The mods marked your post 'troll' because of the content of the site you linked. I'm not sure if the author(s) of those articles were serious or not, but either way the entire site is, well, crackpottery!
No, we're not stupid 'again' -- we have always been stupid. :)
Some religious intolerance for you:
The poor little witch
The nervous witch
Show some compassion, man! Hell, if such a place exists, is generally considered to be a place of ETERNAL suffering. I can think of no crime so heinous that the only just punishment is an ETERNITY of endless suffering.
Try to feel empathy for this mans family -- it should help.
(603) 598-4044
Thank you switchboard!
I'm confused. Do you mean Eyes make people nearly three times more thirsty than the thurst of flowers? -or- Do you mean that Eyes are nearly three times more effective than flowers at making people thirsty?
Wow, you really need some facts:
http://www.forces.org
http://www.forces.org/evidence/prologue.htm
Pseudoscience Going Up in Smoke
Secondhand smoke myth
Warning: nicotine seriously improves health
The best term I've encountered is 'Wholesale rebellion'. Children at that age feel a need to find their own identity and place in society. Some choose to begin that process by attempting to reject a society they don't believe they 'fit' in.
The fastest way to achieve that particular end? $50 pants at 'hot topic' are a start -- for a few hundred dollars you too can deny societal norms!
Yes, It's here folks! Instant rebellion, at wholesale prices! Get the look, the attitudes and values (buttons and stickers in-stock) all pre-packaged for your convenience! Be exactly like your friends and you can stop caring what other people think! Feel sad? Alone? Show the world with a new faux-leather Anarchy(tm) vest! Cash or Credit. No Personal Checks Accepted.
Trying to take credit for another persons work (you didn't indicate in the origional post that this was some article you copied)... We used to call that plagiarism, the highest of all academic crimes. You don't seem bothered by this at all.
I must question your integrity.
It's clear you didn't read the links sent, so providing more probably won't help. At least one of your points is directly addressed by two of the links from my previous post so I'll address that here.You're refering to the infamous 1993 EPA study that concluded that ETS (environmental tobacco smoke aka second hand smoke) was a class A carcinogen. In 1998 U.S. District Court Judge (Thomas Osteen) ruled that the EPA 'wrongly declared' ETS to be so.
Why? Well, the EPA (only for ETS!) significantly lowered it's standards. (see the second and third links from my earlier post) The EPA lowered the confidence interval for this study from a typical 95 to 90 (a very significant change -- nearly doubling their chances of finding a link.) and could STILL only find a Relative Risk of two (three is considered the minimal for the study to even be considered!) -- Why did the EPA lower it's standards? Because it couldn't find a 'risk' otherwise. Where I come from, we call this a lie.
The one article (the third link from my earlier post) puts it best: "So where does this leave us? Do we know passive smoking doesn't cause lung cancer? No. But we know that either it does not or that if it does the risk is so tiny as to be unmeasureable. Does this mean passive smoke poses no health risks? No. It makes sense it would aggravate athsma and other breathing problems, if nothing else." (emphasis added)
I would suggest you do some reading and some research on the matter if you'd like to see the whole truth. I cannot change your mind, and I don't intend to try. You will believe what you want dispite the evidence to the contrary. Is smoking good for you? I doubt it -- I also doubt (with good reason) that it isn't nearly as bad as people blindly believe it to be. If you're just looking for something to pick on, alchohol and obesity are two problems far greater than smoking.
Hospitals filled with smokers dying of lung cancer? Really?
t orial%201-4.html
"lung cancer accounts for only 2% of the annual deaths worldwide and only 3% in the US."
Smoking doesn't cause lung cancer (who/cdc)
http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/Editorials/Edi
Court Rules Against EPA on Secondhand Smoke (oops, they lied)
http://www.sepp.org/reality/courtrules.html
More on the infamous 1993 EPA study...
http://www.sepp.org/reality/pseudosci.html
Ton of links that tell the truth:
http://www.forces.org/evidence/evid/lung.htm
Don't believe the anti-smoking propaganda. Smoking may not be good for you, but it's certainly not as bad as the average person claims. (Note, you'll find similar pseudo-science in most 'anti' style literature, youth drug/alchohol literature is an easy example. Same nonsence in older studies on radon.)
The tobacco campany analogy is correct, for the wrong reasons. Cigarettes have never been shown to cause cancer -- but people are convinced by the anti-tobacco propaganda that they do.
Cellphones have never been shown to cause cancer -- but people, for reasons beyond my capacity, believe that they do.
So why the resistance to funding? Well, people like cellphones more than they like cigarettes -- though there isn't any evidence either one causes cancer, you're more likely to get funding for cigarette/cancer studies than cellphone/cancer studies (Because they're evil, after all. Think of the children.).
The current promotion is for the anytime (no counting minutes) with 'statewide' calling area ($5/mo for additional adjacent states to not roam in.)
Oh, and don't let them sell you that $80/month pc card or tell you that your phone won't work as a modem! My phone (sadly only 115kbps [GPRS SonyEriccson J300a]) works just fine as a modem w/ the 'data plus' plan + drivers from Sonys' website.
They WILL give you some trouble about the long distance bit as it was part of an earlier promotion -- I had to fight to keep that part of my old plan when I 'upgraded'. Call customer service or have the rep call for you -- they can give it to you.
I pay $50/month for unlimited voice service. (It's like having free nights and weekends all day long and all week long. As a bonus I pay no additional charge for so-called 'long distance' calls. I can place a call from the east coast to a party on the west coast, talk all month, and not pay any amount beyond my flat monthly use fee.) I pay an additional $15/month for unlimited data usage (to use my phone as a modem -- the normal rate is $0.03/kb! I'll pay the $15 with a smile).
Needless to say, I'm not a T-Mobile customer.
I don't like the idea of 'counting minutes' and refuse (er, by paying extra money) to do so. Hopefully other carriers will follow suit and offer similar plans. Competition means better service and lower prices.
As far as text-messaging is concerned, I could pay an additional $5/month (tacked on to my data plan) for 'unlimited texting' As it stands now, I have 100 'free' texts on my current data plan (exactly 100 more than I need). If you're into that sort of thing, it's a good deal (current rate for most carriers in my area is ~$0.10/text sent, $0/text rec.).
Smoking causes cancer?
http://www.sepp.org/reality/courtrules.html
http://www.junkscience.com/news/newets.htm
http://www.forces.org/evidence/files/stats.htm
How exactly did you become familiar with the child-porn industry? -- That's creepy...
It's far worse than 'too forgiving' -- it's not even a programming language! There is no itteration, conditions, branching, operators, etc.
In the late 90s lots of people who only 'knew html' considered themselves programmers -- I still don't know why.
How, exactly, is theory useless? In case you didn't know, it costs real money to hire a new employee and train or retrain existing employees. Someone with a strong theoretical background is better able to adapt and requires less training. Also, someone with a heavy theoretical background tends to come with very strong information literacy skills -- which I consider essential to any position (even blue-collar work).
If that's the case, I wouldn't expect this to slow down piracy at all...
http://www.davehitt.com/facts/badforbiz.html
http://www.channel3000.com/news/8340048/detail.ht
http://www.smokersclubinc.com/banloss3.htm
http://www.geocities.com/madmaxmcgarrity/SMOKERSA
http://www.nycclash.com/CaseAgainstBans/Introduct
Here is an easy to understand explanation: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200_1.htm
Dispite your claim, this will not satisfy you. You'll just come up with something else yet to be explained and claim proof of ID.
If ID were like second-hand smoke ID would be harmless -- but everyone would think it was the most dangerous substance in our environment.
ID is more like asbestos -- It looked harmless for a while, now it's causing cancer.
Don't you watch MacGyver? Murdoch NEVER dies!