Sometimes I do want to see two pages at a time, especially when reading technical or scientific books where a diagram or pseudocode takes up one page while there are paragraphs on the next page. It is less important for novels. So what if the extra LCD screen adds to the cost? If it doesn't have two screens, the plain old paper book is going to have the advantage of having two simultaneously viewable pages, which I consider an important one.
Palm and Clie are too small. For it to feel like a book and read like a book it should be at least as big as the common 4x7 size of a small paperback. I don't want to change pages or scroll every ten seconds.
Give me the comfort and convenience of a book, and I'll buy. If that cannot be met without driving the cost to ridiculous levels, then I and most other consumers will say no thanks.
Countries like India and China can provide technology services cheap not because they produce more efficiently per se, but because labor costs in those countries are artificially held down as a result of the labor supply not being able to cross borders with the same legal freedom as the work products of the labor supply. If Indian programmers and technologists had the freedom to work in developed parts of the world like Europe, Japan, and the USA, there is no way the Indian employers would be able to hold down salaries to $500/month.
1. The ebook readers looked and felt like a book. Meaning they would have the same shape, size, and weight of a book (perhaps with different sizes ranging from small paperback size to 8x11 hardcover size, depending on the preference of the customer), with a cover that looks like a book. When I open the cover, I should see two screens, similar to how I would see two pages when I open a book. That way I'll be able to relax and read it on the sofa just like reading a regular book.
2. Ebooks would cost at least 30% less than their paper counterparts. They aren't going to sell much if the savings in printing and distribution aren't passed on to consumers.
3. Ebook readers would cost less than $150.
4. Ebook readers could hold over 100 average books. I really wish I didn't have to have bookcases that took up so much space. When I was in school I would have really preferred to carry one ebook reader instead of lugging around a backpack with 40 pounds of books.
5. You could highlight a segment or page(s) of text and transmit it to your computer or a standard printer.
6. An industry standard format existed for ebooks or at least a small number of standards that could be implemented by every ebook reader.
There are a few readers that do satisfy one or more of the above, but I don't find ebooks worth it unless all the conditions are met.
"3. Parents always had choices. Wealthy parents have always sent their kids off to private schools. The voucher system would only hurt the poor and the middle class as it will take money away from the public schools but not give enough for them to actually go to a good private school."
Other countries implement school choice without vouchers. Instead, the public schools have the prospective students apply for entry, looking at various criteria which may include entrance tests, interviews, and transcripts from previous schools -- just like you do when you apply to college. Sure, if a kid isn't too bright s/he'll end up being forced into one of the schools that nobody else wants to go to, but at least it's based primarily on merit instead of the wealth of their parents, and it's better than being forced to go to a crappy school just because you live on the same street as it. It also raises the overall quality of just about all the schools, because students compete to get into the best schools and schools compete to attract the best students.
"We can't compete. That is the problem. They get $550/month in india."
Programmer salaries are just one part of the equation -- and in India the programmer salaries make up a minor part of it. Indian office real estate is no cheaper than in the US... in fact, places like New Delhi and Mumbai are just as expensive as New York and Boston. In America they might spend 20% of your salary to give you a cubicle and its related infrastructure; in India they spend 200% of the programmer's salary for that. That's why the offshore firms charge in the region of $30-$40 per hour, which dwarves the $550/month salary the programmers get.
"While it's good to ALLOW or to PROMOTE open-source, I do not belive in the adoption of open-source by force. It's when we force people to do things that we run in to trouble. I believe in free-enterprise, the system that our nation is founded on."
What "force" are you talking about? The Mass. government is only mandating open source within the Mass. government, the same way a corporation would mandate Microsoft or Linux or Oracle within itself. They aren't mandating open source for private citizens or corporations.
OK, you might say that by forcing open source within itself, the Mass. govt. is also forcing open source use by the citizens and vendors that communicate documents with them. Well, that sort of force exists anyway if they chose closed source software -- citizens and vendors would be forced to use the same or compatible closed source software to communicate with the government, which is worse than being forced to use free software.
Product placements don't interrupt the program or reduce my enjoyment of it, so I'd much rather see them than regular commercials.
But the product placements the article is talking about go beyond something like James Bond driving a BMW or Will Smith wearing Ray-Bans. When it is not merely a product being visible, but also involves a celebrity making positive statements about a product while appearing to be giving an honest opinion, especially in a non-fiction program like a talk show or "reality TV", that is deception. It won't deceive me in particular, but many will be misled.
"A small business that saves money by using free software has done so because they didn't pay for a competing solution. The folks working for companies that makes competing products aren't going to be too happy. Taken to the extreme, they'll be laid off, and have less money to spend on stuff that would keep other people employed."
You are mistakenly assuming that all the businesses would have bought the for-pay solution if the free solution wasn't available. Without a free or cheap solution, many wouldn't buy anything anyway, so it's not as if every user of the free solution means $X lost for the companies that make the for-pay products.
For the companies that would have paid for a product, it might be a wash because they'll just spend $X less on software and $X more on something else. But for the companies that would not have paid for a product anyway, receiving a free product creates a net positive creation of wealth. They get the benefits of the free software without having to pay for it, and without a corresponding decrease in any software company's revenue.
"If we want to talk constitutionality of something, where in the constitution does it state, that corporations have the right to infringe on my right not to be harrased."
You are living in the USA, where corporations have more rights than people. The constitution doesn't restrict corporations, who can buy politicians and judges.
This is a perfect example of why standards should never become intellectual property, and intellectual property must not be allowed to become a standard.
>"And why should you be able to make copies for family and friends? It's not your music, is it?"
It's my CD, I paid for it. Why should any record label or artist be able to stop me from making copies of the bit pattern on my CD? It isn't their CD, is it?
It's only copyright law creating the artificial restriction that stops me from copying the patterns of bits on my CD. I am willing to live with that to the extent that it gives an incentive for artists to create, but no longer than is necessary. Nobody writes a book or song expecting it to provide any significant income 20 years in the future.
> "Your post amounts to nothing more than class warfare. Who are you to decide when artists should no longer be paid for their work? If people decide that a 20 year old album is worth paying for, why shouldn't the artist be compensated for it?"
Who are you to decide when people can or can't make copies of a CD they paid for?
Copyright means somebody can go to jail or be fined or sued for playing background music in a restaurant, singing a song in public, or making copies of an album for friends and family. Don't forget that while copyright is an incentive for the artist, it comes at the expense of other people who are legally restrained from doing things they would otherwise be free to do.
There isn't an artist or author on earth who would have decided NOT to create whatever they created if copyright expired in only 20 years. But there are some (albeit a very tiny percentage, because almost nobody continues to make any money after the first 5 years of publication) who have STOPPED producing because they are still collecting money from old work and have no incentive to create anything new.
None of these governments are mandating what private individuals or companies must use. The government mandating what software must be used within the government is like IBM mandating what will be used within IBM. Surely the government must be able to choose what it uses within itself.
Ok, well you might say that when the government mandates open source software within itself, businesses and individuals will be forced to use similar software to communicate data and documents with the government. True, but that would still be the case if the government used Microsoft's or any other proprietary software. Choosing open source places a smaller burden on the public when it comes to obtaining compatible software to communicate with the government.
> "You do have a point. We live in a culture of hypocrisy. It's illegal to kill people, but if you do, we kill you. It's illegal to rape people, but if you do, we put you in prison, where you may get raped. It's illegal to speed, but the police do it, and not just in pursuit of criminals. I have seen cops speed up to make a yellow light and then pull into a parking lot and shut off, so they weren't in pursuit of anyone, but they tell you you're supposed to stop for a yellow if you can do so safely."
Yes, cops do speed and rapes happen a lot in prison, but that's more of an inefficiency in enforcement and prevention rather than actual policy.
Beyond that, locking up criminals or otherwise punishing them isn't hypocrisy in any way. A court forcing you to pay back a $1000 loan isn't morally the same as hacking into your credit card or bank account to extract $1000. Somebody shooting you because you first pointed a gun at them isn't the same as somebody shooting you because they don't like you. When somebody has done something wrong enough to deserve harm to their person or possessions, it isn't necessarily wrong to harm them.
The law isn't hypocritical by saying that killing or locking up a person is wrong, because it doesn't say "killing and imprisonment is wrong in all circumstances whatsoever."
> 'Similarly I've never understood why sick days "cause millions of damage to our economy each year!" (especially since vacations days don't create the same headlines). A sick person tends to buy cold medicine and visit the doctor (or Six Flags)... isn't that pumping money into those sectors?'
If the person remained healthy and working, they would have produced something of economic value during those healthy days, AND they would have some extra money available to spend on something else other than drugs and doctors. So sick days do cause not just millions, but billions of economic damage as a result of lost production. The difference is not in what they would have otherwise spent during the sick days, but in what they would have produced.
Vacation days and weekends may also cause some economic loss, but that isn't necessarily a big problem because most people who just work work work work without taking days off end up becoming less productive on a per-day basis, and the increased stress eventually leads to more illnesses, resulting in days off anyway. In addition, there is value that people place on getting days off, even if it can't always be measured in dollars. In other words, most people are willing to forgo the extra cash income in order to have vacation days and holidays available.
What is needed is a way to keep the micro-decisions away from the consumer. You should be able to pay one macro fee, say $10/year, which gives you access to a network of participating web sites. Then you visit those web sites as much as you want without worrying about per-article costs, and behind the scenes they work out how they share the revenue. I figure that's how those Adult verification services work.
There would also have to be the option of anonymous transactions, which could be accomplished by purchasing a prepaid card similar to what is done with phone cards.
Of course, there would have to be a small number of such networks otherwise you'll end up paying for dozens of $10/year subscriptions.
Going to dinner, buying a chocolate bar or taking a ferry are transactions that are big enough in size that the price of the actual item itself dwarfs the mental transaction costs. It's generally not a big bother to spend 25 cents of mental time and effort on deciding whether to buy a $15 dinner or $2 comic book, but when it's 10 cents of time and effort to decide whether a 1-cent article or web page is worth it, it becomes very discouraging to the customer.
The scenarios you describe are not made any worse with cryptographic smart card.
- You get mugged now, mugger has your wallet with your driver's license and he can pretend to be you. And now, he doesn't even have to mug you, he can just use information from your mail or some database to buy that Ferrari and make you get stuck with the bill.
- What batteries? Batteries are unnecessary.
- The smart card would only be used when you have to identify yourself anyway, so it won't increase anybody's ability to track you. If you don't have to identify yourself, then don't. If you do have to identify yourself, they can track you anyway whether you used a credit card, SSN, driver's license, or anything else. Worse yet, it's easier for somebody to use your credit card/SSN/DL to make it appear that you've left a trail of dastardly deeds.
Tom Tancredo is one of the most anti-immigrant Congressmen around. He is hardly a source of accurate H-1B statistics. 799 thousand H-1Bs in two years is garbage.
My business faces ruin. Horse carriage sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many horse carriages as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique carriage stores that sell obscure, independent carriage models that no-one rides, not even the people that buy them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family carriages - stuff that the whole family could ride in.
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes I do want to see two pages at a time, especially when reading technical or scientific books where a diagram or pseudocode takes up one page while there are paragraphs on the next page. It is less important for novels. So what if the extra LCD screen adds to the cost? If it doesn't have two screens, the plain old paper book is going to have the advantage of having two simultaneously viewable pages, which I consider an important one.
Palm and Clie are too small. For it to feel like a book and read like a book it should be at least as big as the common 4x7 size of a small paperback. I don't want to change pages or scroll every ten seconds.
Give me the comfort and convenience of a book, and I'll buy. If that cannot be met without driving the cost to ridiculous levels, then I and most other consumers will say no thanks.
Countries like India and China can provide technology services cheap not because they produce more efficiently per se, but because labor costs in those countries are artificially held down as a result of the labor supply not being able to cross borders with the same legal freedom as the work products of the labor supply. If Indian programmers and technologists had the freedom to work in developed parts of the world like Europe, Japan, and the USA, there is no way the Indian employers would be able to hold down salaries to $500/month.
I would buy ebooks if:
1. The ebook readers looked and felt like a book. Meaning they would have the same shape, size, and weight of a book (perhaps with different sizes ranging from small paperback size to 8x11 hardcover size, depending on the preference of the customer), with a cover that looks like a book. When I open the cover, I should see two screens, similar to how I would see two pages when I open a book. That way I'll be able to relax and read it on the sofa just like reading a regular book.
2. Ebooks would cost at least 30% less than their paper counterparts. They aren't going to sell much if the savings in printing and distribution aren't passed on to consumers.
3. Ebook readers would cost less than $150.
4. Ebook readers could hold over 100 average books. I really wish I didn't have to have bookcases that took up so much space. When I was in school I would have really preferred to carry one ebook reader instead of lugging around a backpack with 40 pounds of books.
5. You could highlight a segment or page(s) of text and transmit it to your computer or a standard printer.
6. An industry standard format existed for ebooks or at least a small number of standards that could be implemented by every ebook reader.
There are a few readers that do satisfy one or more of the above, but I don't find ebooks worth it unless all the conditions are met.
"3. Parents always had choices. Wealthy parents have always sent their kids off to private schools. The voucher system would only hurt the poor and the middle class as it will take money away from the public schools but not give enough for them to actually go to a good private school."
Other countries implement school choice without vouchers. Instead, the public schools have the prospective students apply for entry, looking at various criteria which may include entrance tests, interviews, and transcripts from previous schools -- just like you do when you apply to college. Sure, if a kid isn't too bright s/he'll end up being forced into one of the schools that nobody else wants to go to, but at least it's based primarily on merit instead of the wealth of their parents, and it's better than being forced to go to a crappy school just because you live on the same street as it. It also raises the overall quality of just about all the schools, because students compete to get into the best schools and schools compete to attract the best students.
The good Indian developers are already in the US or Europe or Australia, that's why most of those still in India are only capable of producing crap.
"We can't compete. That is the problem. They get $550/month in india."
... in fact, places like New Delhi and Mumbai are just as expensive as New York and Boston. In America they might spend 20% of your salary to give you a cubicle and its related infrastructure; in India they spend 200% of the programmer's salary for that. That's why the offshore firms charge in the region of $30-$40 per hour, which dwarves the $550/month salary the programmers get.
Programmer salaries are just one part of the equation -- and in India the programmer salaries make up a minor part of it. Indian office real estate is no cheaper than in the US
"While it's good to ALLOW or to PROMOTE open-source, I do not belive in the adoption of open-source by force. It's when we force people to do things that we run in to trouble. I believe in free-enterprise, the system that our nation is founded on."
What "force" are you talking about? The Mass. government is only mandating open source within the Mass. government, the same way a corporation would mandate Microsoft or Linux or Oracle within itself. They aren't mandating open source for private citizens or corporations.
OK, you might say that by forcing open source within itself, the Mass. govt. is also forcing open source use by the citizens and vendors that communicate documents with them. Well, that sort of force exists anyway if they chose closed source software -- citizens and vendors would be forced to use the same or compatible closed source software to communicate with the government, which is worse than being forced to use free software.
Product placements don't interrupt the program or reduce my enjoyment of it, so I'd much rather see them than regular commercials.
But the product placements the article is talking about go beyond something like James Bond driving a BMW or Will Smith wearing Ray-Bans. When it is not merely a product being visible, but also involves a celebrity making positive statements about a product while appearing to be giving an honest opinion, especially in a non-fiction program like a talk show or "reality TV", that is deception. It won't deceive me in particular, but many will be misled.
"A small business that saves money by using free software has done so because they didn't pay for a competing solution. The folks working for companies that makes competing products aren't going to be too happy. Taken to the extreme, they'll be laid off, and have less money to spend on stuff that would keep other people employed."
You are mistakenly assuming that all the businesses would have bought the for-pay solution if the free solution wasn't available. Without a free or cheap solution, many wouldn't buy anything anyway, so it's not as if every user of the free solution means $X lost for the companies that make the for-pay products.
For the companies that would have paid for a product, it might be a wash because they'll just spend $X less on software and $X more on something else. But for the companies that would not have paid for a product anyway, receiving a free product creates a net positive creation of wealth. They get the benefits of the free software without having to pay for it, and without a corresponding decrease in any software company's revenue.
You may be able to find and destroy the RFID tag, but you may also have to destroy or damage the item itself in order to get at the tag.
You forgot the "In Soviet Russia".
"If we want to talk constitutionality of something, where in the constitution does it state, that corporations have the right to infringe on my right not to be harrased."
You are living in the USA, where corporations have more rights than people. The constitution doesn't restrict corporations, who can buy politicians and judges.
This is a perfect example of why standards should never become intellectual property, and intellectual property must not be allowed to become a standard.
They should give away the recorded music and sell concert tickets.
>"And why should you be able to make copies for family and friends? It's not your music, is it?"
It's my CD, I paid for it. Why should any record label or artist be able to stop me from making copies of the bit pattern on my CD? It isn't their CD, is it?
It's only copyright law creating the artificial restriction that stops me from copying the patterns of bits on my CD. I am willing to live with that to the extent that it gives an incentive for artists to create, but no longer than is necessary. Nobody writes a book or song expecting it to provide any significant income 20 years in the future.
> "Your post amounts to nothing more than class warfare. Who are you to decide when artists should no longer be paid for their work? If people decide that a 20 year old album is worth paying for, why shouldn't the artist be compensated for it?"
Who are you to decide when people can or can't make copies of a CD they paid for?
Copyright means somebody can go to jail or be fined or sued for playing background music in a restaurant, singing a song in public, or making copies of an album for friends and family. Don't forget that while copyright is an incentive for the artist, it comes at the expense of other people who are legally restrained from doing things they would otherwise be free to do.
There isn't an artist or author on earth who would have decided NOT to create whatever they created if copyright expired in only 20 years. But there are some (albeit a very tiny percentage, because almost nobody continues to make any money after the first 5 years of publication) who have STOPPED producing because they are still collecting money from old work and have no incentive to create anything new.
At Lsat? So that's why lawyers can't spell!
None of these governments are mandating what private individuals or companies must use. The government mandating what software must be used within the government is like IBM mandating what will be used within IBM. Surely the government must be able to choose what it uses within itself.
Ok, well you might say that when the government mandates open source software within itself, businesses and individuals will be forced to use similar software to communicate data and documents with the government. True, but that would still be the case if the government used Microsoft's or any other proprietary software. Choosing open source places a smaller burden on the public when it comes to obtaining compatible software to communicate with the government.
> "You do have a point. We live in a culture of hypocrisy. It's illegal to kill people, but if you do, we kill you. It's illegal to rape people, but if you do, we put you in prison, where you may get raped. It's illegal to speed, but the police do it, and not just in pursuit of criminals. I have seen cops speed up to make a yellow light and then pull into a parking lot and shut off, so they weren't in pursuit of anyone, but they tell you you're supposed to stop for a yellow if you can do so safely."
Yes, cops do speed and rapes happen a lot in prison, but that's more of an inefficiency in enforcement and prevention rather than actual policy.
Beyond that, locking up criminals or otherwise punishing them isn't hypocrisy in any way. A court forcing you to pay back a $1000 loan isn't morally the same as hacking into your credit card or bank account to extract $1000. Somebody shooting you because you first pointed a gun at them isn't the same as somebody shooting you because they don't like you. When somebody has done something wrong enough to deserve harm to their person or possessions, it isn't necessarily wrong to harm them.
The law isn't hypocritical by saying that killing or locking up a person is wrong, because it doesn't say "killing and imprisonment is wrong in all circumstances whatsoever."
> 'Similarly I've never understood why sick days "cause millions of damage to our economy each year!" (especially since vacations days don't create the same headlines). A sick person tends to buy cold medicine and visit the doctor (or Six Flags)... isn't that pumping money into those sectors?'
If the person remained healthy and working, they would have produced something of economic value during those healthy days, AND they would have some extra money available to spend on something else other than drugs and doctors. So sick days do cause not just millions, but billions of economic damage as a result of lost production. The difference is not in what they would have otherwise spent during the sick days, but in what they would have produced.
Vacation days and weekends may also cause some economic loss, but that isn't necessarily a big problem because most people who just work work work work without taking days off end up becoming less productive on a per-day basis, and the increased stress eventually leads to more illnesses, resulting in days off anyway. In addition, there is value that people place on getting days off, even if it can't always be measured in dollars. In other words, most people are willing to forgo the extra cash income in order to have vacation days and holidays available.
What is needed is a way to keep the micro-decisions away from the consumer. You should be able to pay one macro fee, say $10/year, which gives you access to a network of participating web sites. Then you visit those web sites as much as you want without worrying about per-article costs, and behind the scenes they work out how they share the revenue. I figure that's how those Adult verification services work.
There would also have to be the option of anonymous transactions, which could be accomplished by purchasing a prepaid card similar to what is done with phone cards.
Of course, there would have to be a small number of such networks otherwise you'll end up paying for dozens of $10/year subscriptions.
Going to dinner, buying a chocolate bar or taking a ferry are transactions that are big enough in size that the price of the actual item itself dwarfs the mental transaction costs. It's generally not a big bother to spend 25 cents of mental time and effort on deciding whether to buy a $15 dinner or $2 comic book, but when it's 10 cents of time and effort to decide whether a 1-cent article or web page is worth it, it becomes very discouraging to the customer.
The scenarios you describe are not made any worse with cryptographic smart card.
- You get mugged now, mugger has your wallet with your driver's license and he can pretend to be you. And now, he doesn't even have to mug you, he can just use information from your mail or some database to buy that Ferrari and make you get stuck with the bill.
- What batteries? Batteries are unnecessary.
- The smart card would only be used when you have to identify yourself anyway, so it won't increase anybody's ability to track you. If you don't have to identify yourself, then don't. If you do have to identify yourself, they can track you anyway whether you used a credit card, SSN, driver's license, or anything else. Worse yet, it's easier for somebody to use your credit card/SSN/DL to make it appear that you've left a trail of dastardly deeds.
Tom Tancredo is one of the most anti-immigrant Congressmen around. He is hardly a source of accurate H-1B statistics. 799 thousand H-1Bs in two years is garbage.
For more accurate statistics, check the government's web site.
My business faces ruin. Horse carriage sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many horse carriages as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique carriage stores that sell obscure, independent carriage models that no-one rides, not even the people that buy them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family carriages - stuff that the whole family could ride in.