It does not matter if people want Linux or not. People are supposed to have a choice in a Free Market. It was what the 1776 Revolution was fought for and why you call your government a "democracy" today: Free choice. When MS removes all choice from the market by putting pressure on OEMs to, for instance, not sell computers without operating systems or forcing OEMs to place signs near all an OEM's public displays saying, "It's always better with Windows!", MS is abusing its monopoly power.
You are probably a troll, but for the record, I am not so much a fan of Linux as I am an incensed victim of M$. Microsoft has violated every law a software company can, and the legal things they have done have been equally immoral. They hate liberty, individuality, and free choice. They thumb their noses at the government and bribe crooked public officials, like the US's last president ("campaign contributions" -- that anti-trust lawsuit sure went away quickly, did it not?). They advocate central control of information and ownership of all ideas by large corporations (All your base...). They spy on users (WGA anyone?). They appear to have initiated frivolous lawsuits and abused the court system (one word: SCO). They are enemies of the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States and Human Rights the world over (DRM supports third party invasion of your private computer and limits your ability to speak freely online).
If there were more choices than Linux out there, I would most likely experiment with them. I would love to see Haiku actually work (BeOS was another unfortunate victim of MS's OEM manipulation). However, as things stand, there are few Free choices in the software world. Macs are controlled by a company that has a worse track record for vendor lock in (To Jobs, "free" means "free to buy more Apple products"). The mobile world is full of non-free operating systems. Even Android is more of an assault on Freedom than support for it.
So, you tell me, how can I in good conscience support an amoral, law-breaking, malicious software company just because the general public is ignorant of that company's behavior? Is following the crowd so important that I have to give up all of my morals?
I am a fanboi. I am a Freedom fanboi. I believe in the Constitution, human rights, and Liberty -- especially Free Speech. Why should I financially support the enemies of these concepts? Further, why do you?
Yes, but they are about twice the price of netbooks on Amazon, and they have spinning platter drives. They are not available to the public in the sense that nobody that does not regularly deal with Linux would know about those. MS successfully eliminated the Linux netbook from the mass market.
When I bought my EEE901, I predicted that this would happen, and it was exactly as I predicted. Unfortunately, I did not buy more than one. I regret that more and more every day.
While the iPad may have been a nail in the coffin, the death of netbooks has been obviously on the horizon since MS changed its tune and began to "support" them (MS support == embrace, extend, and extinguish). When the first EEEPC came out, it was a cool device: SSD storage, lightweight, better than average (for laptops) battery life, and it could fit in a fashionable woman's purse. These devices were extremely useful for science, diagnostic testing, playing, reading, etcetera -- in fact, these were the first real instance of mobile computing. Laptops were bulky, expensive, ran hot, and had terrible batteries. The first year of netbooks was somewhat of a golden age.
Enter M$. Now, what do netbooks look like? I checked last week, and it is now impossible to buy a netbook without a spinning platter hard drive. Linux netbooks are almost completely unavailable. I checked Amazon and Newegg. Both listed Linux netbooks that were "no longer available". The available netbooks are no longer much lighter or more convenient than traditonal laptops. In fact, battery life is about the only selling point they have left.
I figure it was just a matter of time before the public came to realize that netbooks are just about the same as laptops now, so they have to go somewhere else to search for convenient mobile devices. The fact that so many people are rushing to the iPad is just more proof that Steve Jobs -- bastard that he is -- is a genius at predicting the right time and climate to release a product. Just as people are fed up with MS ruining the very concept of the netbook, we have the iPad: long battery life, nice screen, hardware accelerated video, light and portable, all the things that MS has taken away from the netbook.
While anyone who buys Apple products is still a jerk, I think MS owes the hardware manufacturers and the public an apology for destroying a lucrative sector of the market and a useful product for people to use. Unfortunately, running to Apple is not an unreasonable choice. This just proves the harm that comes from monopolies being allowed to exist.
I am not interested in wasting my time with MS software of any flavour. My gripes with MS software are an order of magnitude greater than those few that I listed for Ubuntu.
I love (or perhaps loved) Ubuntu. It works better than anything I have ever used (yes, that also includes Mac's lockware). My love for Ubuntu is the factor that compels me to complain. Ubuntu is still better than any other disto, and I would like it to stay that way. I have lived many years with the rougher edges of the Linux desktop, and now that Ubuntu has the chance to be literally better than any other OS (not to mention distro) available, I do not want to see it destroyed by oversimplification and proprietary crap like Mono. Freedom does not have to be ugly and inconvenient.
Why is Ubuntu still clinging to an install CD while all the other distros are using DVDs? Again, Ubuntu is not Windows, and it is not made by MS. Why follow MS's weak design choices?
If Ubuntu claimed that a CD version could not include OpenOffice and instead included Abiword, I would not be arguing. But the GIMP is almost as central to Linux as Gnome or KDE. It is a staple, like rice or bread. Without it, the desktop will be "undernourished".
Ubuntu also is not Puppy Linux. It does not take up a mere 100MB of disk space. It does not run on 20 year old computers. Why should the default install not include the best and brightest of the Linux world?
There is no question that the GIMP was installed by default in 8.04 -- in fact, in every version of Ubuntu until 10.04. That is precisely why the review pointed it out (first, I might add) as one of the things that were new in this release. It is also available in the live desktop on all of those versions. Pull out the old CDs and run them if you do not believe me.
This also makes Ubuntu the only major distro to not include the GIMP by default.
This is a definite WTF moment. How could Ubuntu not include the GIMP?!! And worse yet, they have replaced it with F-Spot -- one of the most difficult and annoyingly feature free graphics programs I have ever seen. IIRC, it is based on Mono, too, which is another reason to hate it.
Well, Ubuntu is shaping up to be more and more useless with every release. In 8.04, I could resize an external monitor to whatever resolution the monitor could take. Updates disabled that functionality and constrained me to hardware detection. In 8.10, using an external monitor on an EEE causes a blank screen. CUPS is broken on every release soon after install. Skype and USB audio have not worked since 8.04. Firefox has been getting worse and worse, as well.
Ubuntu used to be easier to use than anything, but now, it is getting like Windows: Many things are broken and cannot be fixed whatever one does. I guess I will just have to keep my fingers crossed for Haiku or switch back to Fedora. For all the money Canonical has spent and all the work that has been done, I would have believed they would have come out with something better. I guess I will never be able to upgrade my EEE:(
A similar database must have been built in the US as well. How else would we have Social Security Numbers (primary keys for each non-Amish individual living in the US) and the Capitol have Individual Master Files for every individual? Governments started tracking people with computers the minute the technology was available, and God knows what technology they are using now. Let us all hope that the US government never does the kinds of things the Nazis did. The track record is not promising, though. Internment camps during WWII. The genocide of the tribes of North America. Torture and unconstitutional inprisonment in Guantanimo Bay.
As for what the Nazis used the database for, what is the difference between identifying the people who go to the gas chamber and actually turning the switch?
I attempted to visit a local Canonical office last year and was given quite a cold reception. Even though the person who invited me told me "Just come any time. You don't need an appointment," I was told he was in a meeting and not given the promised tour. The building the office was situated in was crawling with creepy, corporate security guards. The entire experience made me feel unclean.
Given the fact that Ubuntu is supposed to be something for everyone, something where all people derive their identities from their relationships to one another, and the fact that Canonical is not Microsoft, what is Canonical doing to remain people friendly in meatspace?
Well, I am one of those copyright abolitionists, so I believe in everything being in the Public Domain. Deregulate. Remove the law from the books. That would not be controlling anybody.
However, paraphrasing what the GGP said: Countries that allow slavery are not Free. Systems that allow people take information from the Public Domain and monopolise it are not Free, either. If you call that "telling people what to do", then you live in your own alternate universe.
While I quite understand your point, I still have to disagree. First, if copyright were wholly connected to money, I doubt anybody would criticise it. My opposition to copyright has never had to do with "I don't want to pay for it". It might have to do with "I don't want to pay them for it, though". You can replace "them" with your evil monopolists of choice.
I oppose copyright because since 1976 in the US, the scope has come to encompass all recorded information, not just a few works intended for sale. While copyright is in its current state, the GPL is the best solution to the problem. It allows everything except taking the code and hiding it away which is pretty much what copyright originally intended. Copyright is very far from that original ideal. Today, it is used to stifle communication and even control certain uses of electronic devices. The GPL helps remedy this situation.
The problem with the GPL is this: it is a license. By its existence, it supports one of the copyright lobby's main objectives. That objective is to force everybody to license all information, to have copyright cover all speech, to make all speech like property. So, as much as I like the GPL, it would be better to be in a world with no GPL and no copyright, a world where people could exchange information freely without fear of corporate censorship, a world where my computer is mine (and not Microsoft's or Apple's or Google's).
So, while I currently advocate the use of the GPL and CC licenses in this climate, I believe licenses are harmful to society in general and promote a framework of litigation for future (negative) exploitation of The People of the US and the world. The world would be a better and freer place in the absence of monopolies (copyright) and licenses.
Oh, please. You know very well that companies like MS use the fact that their source is not free to conceal spyware and malware. What about Diebold stealing whole elections -- presidential ones?
If people choose to have their software controlled by other by other people, fine. But when people have no choice, it is the same as slavery. I, personally, do not like being told what to do or how to do it by my computer.
I think there might be a better way to "have it both ways".
One of the major points of the GPL is that it treats software as a grouping of binary and source code. That unit is what everyone has a Right to, not only a part of it. What if copyright began to protect the Public Domain? Software vendors could be required to release all of their source code when a program became Public Domain. If a company in question denied a user request for this source or provided incomplete or crippled source, they could, as a penalty, lose their rights to enforce copyrights at all for a year or indefinitely.
Once the software and source code were Public Domain, there would also be a great incentive for employees to release it against the interests or demands of the company. If some business was going to pay you a consulting fee to patch some software in the Public Domain, would you have any reservations about doing so and taking the money?
The escrow thing is still probably a better idea, but that would be impossible without formalities. This is just another reason why the copyright lobby is ripping off the The People (you know, the ones mentioned in the Constitution of the US).
So, let me get this straight: You, Andrew Welch or "malice", claim that all people who defend the Constitution of the United States of America and its ideals are "hippies speaking in tongues"? According to you, are George Washington and Benjamin Franklin hippies?
It sounds to me like you are a monarchist and should go back to the lands of the sovereign who owns you.
There is a big difference between "minding" and calling it "theft". I think that would be an example of plagiarism and a violation of copyright, but I would never categorise that as "theft".
Having said that, I have nowhere said that the author does not deserve to profit first from the author's own work. If I wrote a book, and it never sold, I would never expect a penny. If I wrote a book, and someone else sold it for a million dollars and did not pay me a cent, I would be angry. If I wrote a book and millions of people shared it and no money was exchanged, I would not care.
The point is simple: If, and only if, money is exchanged, the creator should be the first to benefit. By adding the idea that you would sell my program, you included the only thing I would object to. Copyright should control monetary transactions and not information transactions.
Thus the copies that were deposited on people's Kindles were there in violation of copyright law.
But the copies were not "stolen", and therefore, no one was deprived of anything. Amazon deleting purchased books from people's devices without their permission is more practically theft.
I totally agree. Purchasing one physical copy of the book should allow the purchaser to have the same book in any or all desired digital formats for free (as in beer), and books purchased in only digital formats should be cheaper because they contain no expensive physical materials and cost practically nothing to produce.
[redherring]
What are publishers but printers, anyway? If they do not print things, what are they doing? Editing? I have recently read that Kindle books have similar error rates to Project Gutenberg texts. If this is true, what is Amazon doing to earn more than a dollar per book?
[/redherring]
Kindle customers have, in effect, been sold "stolen" property. . . If you buy a stolen ipod, it can get confiscated by the police.
IGNORANCE IS NOT STRENGTH
IDEAS ARE NOT PROPERTY
Taking an iPod from somebody deprives that person of an iPod. Having an extra copy of a book does not take anything from anyone. Purchasing unauthorised copies is neither equivalent to nor even similar to stealing.
You are kidding right? At last year's and this year's COMPUTEX, Green Computing was all the rage. There were displays ranging from innovative (power conserving data center technology) to absurd (PC towers made from recycled bottles). But what really stood out is the same thing that always stands out when businessmen get on a marketing trend: rubbish. Not electronic rubbish. Verbal rubbish.
Step 1: Invent something that sounds like it is good for the environment.
Step 2: Lie to the public and make it sound true.
Step 3: Profit.
This is the same method McDonald's used when health suddenly exploded onto the public consciousness. McDonald's released pamphlets describing, honestly, how unhealthy they really were knowing no one would ever read them. Then they claimed that they were doing things to improve the healthiness of their food (ice cream became frozen yogurt and the fries got less salt). The implication was that McDonald's was now healthy enough to feed to one's children. This is a marketing illusion and, thus, a lie. Anyone who has ever eaten McDonald's should know that it is practically toxic waste (although I must admit I like it), but most people, if asked, think McDonald's is now marginally "healthy".
If corporations are entrusted with some sort of environmentalism, they will do something small and claim it is big. They will sell more products and generate more garbage, and in the end, the world will be worse off than when it started.
"Consumers" generally cannot eliminate their ignorance by hiring experts. Large firms can. Corporations understand the manufacturing processes and materials they use (otherwise, they could not use them). Individuals could not possibly be expected to understand or be responsible for the manufacturing processes at the hundreds of thousands of companies that they buy products from in their lifetimes.
The vast majority of people do not even understand their own health. How can they be expected to grasp manufacturing and chemical processes that take years of training to design and implement?
The question is: Considering how electronic trash is distributed, will there be enough of anything valuable in one place to justify the energy cost in retrieving it? Following from that, by the time this happens, how many of the poisons will have already leeched out into the environment?
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It does not matter if people want Linux or not. People are supposed to have a choice in a Free Market. It was what the 1776 Revolution was fought for and why you call your government a "democracy" today: Free choice. When MS removes all choice from the market by putting pressure on OEMs to, for instance, not sell computers without operating systems or forcing OEMs to place signs near all an OEM's public displays saying, "It's always better with Windows!", MS is abusing its monopoly power.
You are probably a troll, but for the record, I am not so much a fan of Linux as I am an incensed victim of M$. Microsoft has violated every law a software company can, and the legal things they have done have been equally immoral. They hate liberty, individuality, and free choice. They thumb their noses at the government and bribe crooked public officials, like the US's last president ("campaign contributions" -- that anti-trust lawsuit sure went away quickly, did it not?). They advocate central control of information and ownership of all ideas by large corporations (All your base...). They spy on users (WGA anyone?). They appear to have initiated frivolous lawsuits and abused the court system (one word: SCO). They are enemies of the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States and Human Rights the world over (DRM supports third party invasion of your private computer and limits your ability to speak freely online).
If there were more choices than Linux out there, I would most likely experiment with them. I would love to see Haiku actually work (BeOS was another unfortunate victim of MS's OEM manipulation). However, as things stand, there are few Free choices in the software world. Macs are controlled by a company that has a worse track record for vendor lock in (To Jobs, "free" means "free to buy more Apple products"). The mobile world is full of non-free operating systems. Even Android is more of an assault on Freedom than support for it.
So, you tell me, how can I in good conscience support an amoral, law-breaking, malicious software company just because the general public is ignorant of that company's behavior? Is following the crowd so important that I have to give up all of my morals?
I am a fanboi. I am a Freedom fanboi. I believe in the Constitution, human rights, and Liberty -- especially Free Speech. Why should I financially support the enemies of these concepts? Further, why do you?
Yes, but they are about twice the price of netbooks on Amazon, and they have spinning platter drives. They are not available to the public in the sense that nobody that does not regularly deal with Linux would know about those. MS successfully eliminated the Linux netbook from the mass market.
When I bought my EEE901, I predicted that this would happen, and it was exactly as I predicted. Unfortunately, I did not buy more than one. I regret that more and more every day.
While the iPad may have been a nail in the coffin, the death of netbooks has been obviously on the horizon since MS changed its tune and began to "support" them (MS support == embrace, extend, and extinguish). When the first EEEPC came out, it was a cool device: SSD storage, lightweight, better than average (for laptops) battery life, and it could fit in a fashionable woman's purse. These devices were extremely useful for science, diagnostic testing, playing, reading, etcetera -- in fact, these were the first real instance of mobile computing. Laptops were bulky, expensive, ran hot, and had terrible batteries. The first year of netbooks was somewhat of a golden age.
Enter M$. Now, what do netbooks look like? I checked last week, and it is now impossible to buy a netbook without a spinning platter hard drive. Linux netbooks are almost completely unavailable. I checked Amazon and Newegg. Both listed Linux netbooks that were "no longer available". The available netbooks are no longer much lighter or more convenient than traditonal laptops. In fact, battery life is about the only selling point they have left.
I figure it was just a matter of time before the public came to realize that netbooks are just about the same as laptops now, so they have to go somewhere else to search for convenient mobile devices. The fact that so many people are rushing to the iPad is just more proof that Steve Jobs -- bastard that he is -- is a genius at predicting the right time and climate to release a product. Just as people are fed up with MS ruining the very concept of the netbook, we have the iPad: long battery life, nice screen, hardware accelerated video, light and portable, all the things that MS has taken away from the netbook.
While anyone who buys Apple products is still a jerk, I think MS owes the hardware manufacturers and the public an apology for destroying a lucrative sector of the market and a useful product for people to use. Unfortunately, running to Apple is not an unreasonable choice. This just proves the harm that comes from monopolies being allowed to exist.
I am not interested in wasting my time with MS software of any flavour. My gripes with MS software are an order of magnitude greater than those few that I listed for Ubuntu.
I love (or perhaps loved) Ubuntu. It works better than anything I have ever used (yes, that also includes Mac's lockware). My love for Ubuntu is the factor that compels me to complain. Ubuntu is still better than any other disto, and I would like it to stay that way. I have lived many years with the rougher edges of the Linux desktop, and now that Ubuntu has the chance to be literally better than any other OS (not to mention distro) available, I do not want to see it destroyed by oversimplification and proprietary crap like Mono. Freedom does not have to be ugly and inconvenient.
Why is Ubuntu still clinging to an install CD while all the other distros are using DVDs? Again, Ubuntu is not Windows, and it is not made by MS. Why follow MS's weak design choices?
If Ubuntu claimed that a CD version could not include OpenOffice and instead included Abiword, I would not be arguing. But the GIMP is almost as central to Linux as Gnome or KDE. It is a staple, like rice or bread. Without it, the desktop will be "undernourished".
Ubuntu also is not Puppy Linux. It does not take up a mere 100MB of disk space. It does not run on 20 year old computers. Why should the default install not include the best and brightest of the Linux world?
There is no question that the GIMP was installed by default in 8.04 -- in fact, in every version of Ubuntu until 10.04. That is precisely why the review pointed it out (first, I might add) as one of the things that were new in this release. It is also available in the live desktop on all of those versions. Pull out the old CDs and run them if you do not believe me.
This also makes Ubuntu the only major distro to not include the GIMP by default.
This is a definite WTF moment. How could Ubuntu not include the GIMP?!! And worse yet, they have replaced it with F-Spot -- one of the most difficult and annoyingly feature free graphics programs I have ever seen. IIRC, it is based on Mono, too, which is another reason to hate it.
Well, Ubuntu is shaping up to be more and more useless with every release. In 8.04, I could resize an external monitor to whatever resolution the monitor could take. Updates disabled that functionality and constrained me to hardware detection. In 8.10, using an external monitor on an EEE causes a blank screen. CUPS is broken on every release soon after install. Skype and USB audio have not worked since 8.04. Firefox has been getting worse and worse, as well.
Ubuntu used to be easier to use than anything, but now, it is getting like Windows: Many things are broken and cannot be fixed whatever one does. I guess I will just have to keep my fingers crossed for Haiku or switch back to Fedora. For all the money Canonical has spent and all the work that has been done, I would have believed they would have come out with something better. I guess I will never be able to upgrade my EEE :(
A similar database must have been built in the US as well. How else would we have Social Security Numbers (primary keys for each non-Amish individual living in the US) and the Capitol have Individual Master Files for every individual? Governments started tracking people with computers the minute the technology was available, and God knows what technology they are using now. Let us all hope that the US government never does the kinds of things the Nazis did. The track record is not promising, though. Internment camps during WWII. The genocide of the tribes of North America. Torture and unconstitutional inprisonment in Guantanimo Bay.
As for what the Nazis used the database for, what is the difference between identifying the people who go to the gas chamber and actually turning the switch?
I attempted to visit a local Canonical office last year and was given quite a cold reception. Even though the person who invited me told me "Just come any time. You don't need an appointment," I was told he was in a meeting and not given the promised tour. The building the office was situated in was crawling with creepy, corporate security guards. The entire experience made me feel unclean. Given the fact that Ubuntu is supposed to be something for everyone, something where all people derive their identities from their relationships to one another, and the fact that Canonical is not Microsoft, what is Canonical doing to remain people friendly in meatspace?
That was precisely my point. Thank you for putting it so concisely.
Well, I am one of those copyright abolitionists, so I believe in everything being in the Public Domain. Deregulate. Remove the law from the books. That would not be controlling anybody.
However, paraphrasing what the GGP said: Countries that allow slavery are not Free. Systems that allow people take information from the Public Domain and monopolise it are not Free, either. If you call that "telling people what to do", then you live in your own alternate universe.
While I quite understand your point, I still have to disagree. First, if copyright were wholly connected to money, I doubt anybody would criticise it. My opposition to copyright has never had to do with "I don't want to pay for it". It might have to do with "I don't want to pay them for it, though". You can replace "them" with your evil monopolists of choice.
I oppose copyright because since 1976 in the US, the scope has come to encompass all recorded information, not just a few works intended for sale. While copyright is in its current state, the GPL is the best solution to the problem. It allows everything except taking the code and hiding it away which is pretty much what copyright originally intended. Copyright is very far from that original ideal. Today, it is used to stifle communication and even control certain uses of electronic devices. The GPL helps remedy this situation.
The problem with the GPL is this: it is a license. By its existence, it supports one of the copyright lobby's main objectives. That objective is to force everybody to license all information, to have copyright cover all speech, to make all speech like property. So, as much as I like the GPL, it would be better to be in a world with no GPL and no copyright, a world where people could exchange information freely without fear of corporate censorship, a world where my computer is mine (and not Microsoft's or Apple's or Google's).
So, while I currently advocate the use of the GPL and CC licenses in this climate, I believe licenses are harmful to society in general and promote a framework of litigation for future (negative) exploitation of The People of the US and the world. The world would be a better and freer place in the absence of monopolies (copyright) and licenses.
. . . sooo, what exactly is your job at Microsoft?
Oh, please. You know very well that companies like MS use the fact that their source is not free to conceal spyware and malware. What about Diebold stealing whole elections -- presidential ones?
If people choose to have their software controlled by other by other people, fine. But when people have no choice, it is the same as slavery. I, personally, do not like being told what to do or how to do it by my computer.
I think there might be a better way to "have it both ways".
One of the major points of the GPL is that it treats software as a grouping of binary and source code. That unit is what everyone has a Right to, not only a part of it. What if copyright began to protect the Public Domain? Software vendors could be required to release all of their source code when a program became Public Domain. If a company in question denied a user request for this source or provided incomplete or crippled source, they could, as a penalty, lose their rights to enforce copyrights at all for a year or indefinitely.
Once the software and source code were Public Domain, there would also be a great incentive for employees to release it against the interests or demands of the company. If some business was going to pay you a consulting fee to patch some software in the Public Domain, would you have any reservations about doing so and taking the money?
The escrow thing is still probably a better idea, but that would be impossible without formalities. This is just another reason why the copyright lobby is ripping off the The People (you know, the ones mentioned in the Constitution of the US).
So, let me get this straight: You, Andrew Welch or "malice", claim that all people who defend the Constitution of the United States of America and its ideals are "hippies speaking in tongues"? According to you, are George Washington and Benjamin Franklin hippies?
It sounds to me like you are a monarchist and should go back to the lands of the sovereign who owns you.
There is a big difference between "minding" and calling it "theft". I think that would be an example of plagiarism and a violation of copyright, but I would never categorise that as "theft".
Having said that, I have nowhere said that the author does not deserve to profit first from the author's own work. If I wrote a book, and it never sold, I would never expect a penny. If I wrote a book, and someone else sold it for a million dollars and did not pay me a cent, I would be angry. If I wrote a book and millions of people shared it and no money was exchanged, I would not care.
The point is simple: If, and only if, money is exchanged, the creator should be the first to benefit. By adding the idea that you would sell my program, you included the only thing I would object to. Copyright should control monetary transactions and not information transactions.
Thus the copies that were deposited on people's Kindles were there in violation of copyright law.
But the copies were not "stolen", and therefore, no one was deprived of anything. Amazon deleting purchased books from people's devices without their permission is more practically theft.
I totally agree. Purchasing one physical copy of the book should allow the purchaser to have the same book in any or all desired digital formats for free (as in beer), and books purchased in only digital formats should be cheaper because they contain no expensive physical materials and cost practically nothing to produce.
[redherring]
What are publishers but printers, anyway? If they do not print things, what are they doing? Editing? I have recently read that Kindle books have similar error rates to Project Gutenberg texts. If this is true, what is Amazon doing to earn more than a dollar per book? [/redherring]
Mod the parent up. Amazon is the thief here.
Kindle customers have, in effect, been sold "stolen" property. . . If you buy a stolen ipod, it can get confiscated by the police.
IGNORANCE IS NOT STRENGTH
IDEAS ARE NOT PROPERTY
Taking an iPod from somebody deprives that person of an iPod. Having an extra copy of a book does not take anything from anyone. Purchasing unauthorised copies is neither equivalent to nor even similar to stealing.
You are kidding right? At last year's and this year's COMPUTEX, Green Computing was all the rage. There were displays ranging from innovative (power conserving data center technology) to absurd (PC towers made from recycled bottles). But what really stood out is the same thing that always stands out when businessmen get on a marketing trend: rubbish. Not electronic rubbish. Verbal rubbish.
This is the same method McDonald's used when health suddenly exploded onto the public consciousness. McDonald's released pamphlets describing, honestly, how unhealthy they really were knowing no one would ever read them. Then they claimed that they were doing things to improve the healthiness of their food (ice cream became frozen yogurt and the fries got less salt). The implication was that McDonald's was now healthy enough to feed to one's children. This is a marketing illusion and, thus, a lie. Anyone who has ever eaten McDonald's should know that it is practically toxic waste (although I must admit I like it), but most people, if asked, think McDonald's is now marginally "healthy".
If corporations are entrusted with some sort of environmentalism, they will do something small and claim it is big. They will sell more products and generate more garbage, and in the end, the world will be worse off than when it started.
"Consumers" generally cannot eliminate their ignorance by hiring experts. Large firms can. Corporations understand the manufacturing processes and materials they use (otherwise, they could not use them). Individuals could not possibly be expected to understand or be responsible for the manufacturing processes at the hundreds of thousands of companies that they buy products from in their lifetimes.
The vast majority of people do not even understand their own health. How can they be expected to grasp manufacturing and chemical processes that take years of training to design and implement?
What if the necessity does not dawn on people until it is too late?
The question is: Considering how electronic trash is distributed, will there be enough of anything valuable in one place to justify the energy cost in retrieving it? Following from that, by the time this happens, how many of the poisons will have already leeched out into the environment?