Let look at the difference between theft and copyright infringement as pertains to its effect on a software vendor.
The software vendor creates a software package, imprints it on 100 CD's and begins to sell them. So there are 100 CD's in the warehouse that the vendor paid for that he wants to sell for a profit.
Now, one of the developer's takes a copy the final build of the software home on his laptop and shares it out on Kazaa or some such P2P program. 100 people download and install it.
There are still 100 CD's sitting in the warehouse waiting to be sold.
The vendor decides to sell the 100 CD's to a software retail outlet and makes a decent profit. Now there are 100 CD's in the retail outlets waiting to be sold. The vendor has not lost any money.
A shoplifter stuff 3 CD's from one of the stores and makes it home. The store paid for those CD's but was unable to make a profit off of them, in fact, they took a loss due to the THEFT.
ok, this was just one scenario. In this case copyright infringement had no affect on sales. Lets say the software vendor needed to produce and sell 10,000 's to make a profit on the software package, but they only sold 9,000. Let's say 10,000 copies of the application were downloaded and 1,000 of those downloaders would have purchased the application if it had not been available for download, and so easy to use ( like weak copy/cdkey protection ).
Now, in the second case, you may jump out and say "hey! look! they lost money because of copyright infringement!", but no, that is not the case. The vendor miscalculated supply and buying demand his product and produced more than he could sell. It was a risk he understood but decided to stamp out 10,000 cd's anyway.
Looking at the problem, the vendor later estimates that spending time/money on copy protection would increase the sales by 500, and that including the game manual with the CD ( plus not including any help files with game ) would have increased sales by 250, and finally including an upgrade discount coupon with the CD also would have gotten another 500 sales, putting the profit margin back to where he wanted it.
I wrote this quickly during lunch, but hopefully it shows the difference between copyright infringment and theft, and why the business lost money. The point of that being is softare companies have to consider and account for copyright infringement when releasing a product, not expect some "software tax" to bail them out. Btw, I am in no way endorsing copyright infringement where the infringers sole reason for copying is to get something that they would normally buy and keep for free.
Oh, and the retail outlet decided to put all its software in the warehouse and only put empty display boxes on the floor.:)
Have you ever heard of speeding development/testing time? Running 2 other OS's in VM's plus having your main OS to up and running all on one machine saves a lot of time. Think about it, if you want to test your code ( say OS neutral Java code )across systems, would you rather A) Copy the.jar file over the virtual network connection in VM and then run it on each OS and see the results in a few minutes without ever shutting down the Java IDE, B) copy the code to a commonly available media ( cd, floppy, network share, etc ), reboot into other OS , login, and test, then repeat the process for each OS? Personally, I would take choose A) , and even better than A) would be to have separate system running each OS.
Word to the wise - IRC-related file transfers come in different flavors: DCC - Peer to Peer File Transfer ( with nice resume feature ). The IP addresses for the receipent and sender are traded via the IRC network, but that is where is ends.
FTP/Web etc - Channels dedicated to trading HOST/PORT/Login Info which then result in file trading or leeching.
The most common type is DCC, but I have frequented the FTP channels, too. Neither of these type if file transferring go through the IRC servers. So preventing channels from forming that deal with these them will not reduce bandwidth except perhaps the bandwidth using to exchange information as detailed above. As far as I am concerned, DALNET is through, finished, kaput and people began the exodus to other servers during the DDoS attacks last year. During the same period, two of Dalnets largest hubs quit the network due to differences with the networks policies, which put another nail in the coffin.
Dalnet may survive, but it will be a frail shadow of it's former self. People come there to share information and files ( remind you of newsgroups at all? ), so cutting off one will just cause people to go where they can do both again.
Efnet, Zerofuzion.net, Undernet, etc. will reap the benefits of Dalnet's demise with new servers joining the network and an increased user base.
Put this into perspective, when you decide to run a web site that is connected to the Internet, you need to understand that anyone else who is also connected to the Internet can potentially access it. You know what the costs are, and it was YOUR decision to put up the web site in the first place, and it's also your risk that your site will become popular and start using a large amount of resources ( including bandwidth ). I personnaly don't believe in charging people to access web content, nor do I believe in ads. This all stems from the fact I came on the Internet when both of these ideas were foreign, and I really wish either commercial interests had stayed off the Internet, or at least formed their own network ( maybe.com specific? ) separate from the original net that offered everything for free with NO ADS whatsoever. My web server hosts serveral domains for FREE and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Ahh. how I miss those early days of downloading Pamela Anderson pics off an Ad-free Internet.
Hear! Hear! I agree. I have seen too many posts that describe Linux as "hard to learn", "foreign", etc. Being a bit old, I went through the whole DOS 3.0 - Windows XP during my career ( about 14 years ), but I am getting close to being a "medium" skill level Linux user after only 5 months of using it as my main OS at home! I still look to get to 'Advanced' and maybe 'Expert' this year, but I don't think I will ever qualify for 'Guru' as my focus is Java Programming and not Linux administration.
O.K. I took the long way to get to the point. Remember how long it took you to become familiar with MS Windows? Did your parents show it to you? Did you use it in Junior/High School? Yep, it didn't seem so easy to use back then, eh? Well, give Linux the same amount of time and effort. It may seem hard because no one else you know may use it, include work/school/home, but if you get some good training books or find a someone local to teach you, it will become easy to use in an amazing short period of time. As far as the "hack" type stuff like getting Windows programs to run under Linux (heresy, I tell you! ), that is much harder,and it is also one of the reasons I haven't reached "medium" skill level yet.
Good luck on the road to Linuxdom. It isn't OZ, but it's as close as we can get to it in the real world. Oh, and I am still waiting for a Linux client forNeverwinter nights...which kept me from sleeping the week before it's tentative release date!
Amen Brother! I am not on Kazaa(have Gnutella on my Mandrake OS) at the moment, but I am going to start sharing tons of "legal" files like linux distros and do searches on the files later to see how far it gets:). Research papers etc would also be good things to share out...assuming you got a good score on them.
As far as movies/music goes, I have found the bulk of that content to be unreliable ( different volume, bitrates, and missing files from albums/movies ), so I go to better sources for those (IRC,FTP, anyone?).
Then point being, as stated above, P2P apps are just tools that can be used for good or bad ( sharing Spears/Timberlake is bad!). It's up to us to choose which way we are going to use them.
I once came upon some edonkey links while searching for music videos, and decided to give it a try ( to get the videos ). After loading the authors version of Edonkey and doing some searches plus clicking on edonkey link to queue up file, I wound up with nothing. It may have been a config problem, though I searched through message boards and check out issue/resolution posts. Still nothing. I even resorted to the basic searches like *.mpg, *.mp3, etc and still nothing.
In comparison, Kazaa(using Kazaa lite ) may not always turn up what I am looking for. But it is much better than Zero hits, and I think that is due to its popularity. Suprisingly, Shareza does a good job also, though I have to wait a bit to find peers and supernodes to connect to. On linux I have only used Qtella, which also works fine in regards to returning results to my searchs.
I digressed a bit by mentioning other P2P networks, but I am in a comparison mood right now, so I compared all the ones I used so far.
Question - is there a "kazaa-lite" for (Mandrake)Linux? I would love to try out their network while on my favorite OS.
F0rt0r Sig Impaired and Proud of It!
Re:No, WE JUST DON'T WANT IT ON LINUX/FREEBSD!
on
Windows Media Player 9
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
And-And? Why should should I care if Microsoft wants to know what I watch? It is none of their business! If they want to know, they can pay me to participate in a voluntary survey out in the open instead of wasting my hard drive space, memory (RAM), CPU cycles, and network bandwidth to subversively monitor the content I am playing on my computer.
I have nothing to gain from them monitoring me, and they didn't even bother to ask for my permission, so
as far as I am concerning there is no justification
for it. Kind of puts thing in a different perspective now, doesn't it, Anonymous Coward?
Another way to look at it is imagine someone walking into your house and just sitting next to our computer and writing down everything you watch on your media player program. Still don't see my point? Reread the first paragraph and think about it.
On the same side of the coin, I don't see a reason to switch to a invasive media player application when there are non-invasive open source solutions that do MORE that Microsoft's application already out available. No, M$ can keep their crappy spyware on their own OS, IMHO.
Yikes, the post was in nice paragraphs in the editor, it came out as a stream of text and space characters. Next time I will use preview...so much for my second slashdot post. I will be more carefule next time.
First, I started using Mozilla when I did my first experiment with migrating to alternate OS's last July ( FreeBSD was the OS ), and I when I found there was a Windows version of it, I was hooked. Here are my list of pluses and minuses that stand out in my mind:
1. Tabbed Browsing - I do a lot of research on the web, mostly because I have yet to find a highly portable electronic reference that I can take with me anywhere on any computer I happen to be using. What I do is open a 1-2 Google windows, run my searches, and then examine the hits to see if any of them have what I am looking for. I am pretty sure this is how I 'accidently' found slashdot:). Having the resulting 8-12 web sites I am referencing in a tabbed interface is VERY convenient.
2. Privacy Control - The control over stored passwords, cookie storage, javascripts, popup windows, etc. replaces multiple applications I used to use for these features. These are nothing short of outstanding features IMHO.
3. Miscellaneous - I am discovering more cool features as I go along. 2-3 weeks ago I discovered image-blocking, which kills most ads except for the flash ones, but then again. I have not and do not plan on installing flash anyhow.
Minuses:
1. Data portability - I have a dual-boot workstaion at home (in addition to my servers ), and my work's laptop that I try to keep the bookmarks and email in sync so I can access the same information wherever I am at. Note: I am looking at researching a web interface for my qpopper server, that would help with the email sync.). So far this has been a total pain in Mozilla. First, I have yet to find any email import/export tools, and the "Manage Bookmarks" tool doesn't work the way I would like it to. What I mean is when I import bookmarks, I would like it to do a differential import. For example, say I have a bookmark folder called "java" on two computers. They start off in sync with the same too url's in the folder. If I add a url to the folder on computer A, export it, and then import it to computer B, I would expect computer B's corresponding folder to now have the original 2 url's plus the 3rd one I added to A. Instead, Mozilla (1.2.1 even ) will add a horizontal divider to the bookmark list, create a copy of the 'java' folder and the 3 url's I imported. I can fix this manually, but why should I have to? To be safe Mozilla could let me choose how it handles the import, to give user to get the desired results. I could copy bookmark files between them, but this could potentially erase bookmarks that I put on computer B that were not one computer A at the time I was importing bookmarks from computer A to computer B.
2.Support Forums - To tell you the truth, I can't tell if these even exist or not. I was looking for help on the email import problem and followed the Mozilla's web site link to it's newgroups forums. I shouldn't have wasted it my time. None of the forums looked to be end user support ( Q&A ) related, and when I posted to one that seemed to be the closest thing to this ( after searching it
to see if the question had already been asked ) I got flamed for posting in a developer-only group even though there was no indication that that is what it was for ( i.e. the word 'developer' or similiar were not in the newgroup name. What is worse yet is that not one of the flames said "YOu idiot, you should have know tech support questions get posted here !", so after all the time they spent flaming me, I still have no idea where I should have posted my question. How about they put up a nice web-based searchable and archivable set of Mozilla forums with each forums focus clearly identified by the title ( or the forum description text ). Sorry newgroup-lovers, nothing against newsgroups, but my experience with them has been nothing but negative.
3. Bookmark Sorting - Why can't I have all my Bookmarks sorted in alphanumeric order? Inside of bookmark manager I can do this, but once I leave the manager window my bookmarks go back to being unsorted. Maybe there is a big sign on the toolbar saying "click here to sort your bookmarks", but I am not seeing it.
4. Memory Hog ( Windows Version ) - This has been mentioned before, but I would like to note that it seems to have been fixed now that I am using version 1.1 on my work laptop, older version seem to get unresponsive after being open for extended periods of time and when I checked resources in use, it averaged about 32MB. I have not experienced any lagginess with the Linux versions, but then again that may be because Linux is such a zippy( fast ) OS anyhow.
In conclusion, I could have included a list of things I would like to have added to the browser, but the topic is 'experience', and there you have it. Where I disgressed by saying "fix this, add that" was me just clarifying why I thought the problem was a problem. So please, no "off topic" flames.
Also, this is my second post on slashdot...ever. Hopefully you find this post informative. I expect that by my sixth post to have graduated to " In Russia, Mozilla Browses You!", but I am not quite there yet. Peace.
I always wanted to get a few ebooks so I could have reference material with me on the go ( on or offline ) without carrying a ton of books with me. There are two reasons I haven't:
1) Forced to use the ebook on the computer I used to purchase it ( I change computers like underwear ).
2) Forced to use Microcrap software to access them.
Since I have only been to the ebooks.com site, that is all I know about them, and I don't like it one bit. I was hoping for something like PDF format that I can read in Linux, read again when I boot into Windows, and then finish reading during lunch on my PDA, all in the same day. Wishful thinking? Most likely. Anyone know a way I can do this? Post away.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Let look at the difference between theft and copyright infringement as pertains to its effect on a software vendor.
:)
The software vendor creates a software package, imprints it on 100 CD's and begins to sell them. So there are 100 CD's in the warehouse that the vendor paid for that he wants to sell for a profit.
Now, one of the developer's takes a copy the final build of the software home on his laptop and shares it out on Kazaa or some such P2P program. 100 people download and install it.
There are still 100 CD's sitting in the warehouse waiting to be sold.
The vendor decides to sell the 100 CD's to a software retail outlet and makes a decent profit. Now there are 100 CD's in the retail outlets waiting to be sold. The vendor has not lost any money.
A shoplifter stuff 3 CD's from one of the stores and makes it home. The store paid for those CD's but was unable to make a profit off of them, in fact, they took a loss due to the THEFT.
ok, this was just one scenario. In this case copyright infringement had no affect on sales. Lets say the software vendor needed to produce and sell 10,000 's to make a profit on the software package, but they only sold 9,000. Let's say 10,000 copies of the application were downloaded and 1,000 of those downloaders would have purchased the application if it had not been available for download, and so easy to use ( like weak copy/cdkey protection ).
Now, in the second case, you may jump out and say "hey! look! they lost money because of copyright infringement!", but no, that is not the case. The vendor miscalculated supply and buying demand his product and produced more than he could sell. It was a risk he understood but decided to stamp out 10,000 cd's anyway.
Looking at the problem, the vendor later estimates that spending time/money on copy protection would increase the sales by 500, and that including the game manual with the CD ( plus not including any help files with game ) would have increased sales by 250, and finally including an upgrade discount coupon with the CD also would have gotten another 500 sales, putting the profit margin back to where he wanted it.
I wrote this quickly during lunch, but hopefully it shows the difference between copyright infringment and theft, and why the business lost money. The point of that being is softare companies have to consider and account for copyright infringement when releasing a product, not expect some "software tax" to bail them out. Btw, I am in no way endorsing copyright infringement where the infringers sole reason for copying is to get something that they would normally buy and keep for free.
Oh, and the retail outlet decided to put all its software in the warehouse and only put empty display boxes on the floor.
Omg, I forgot about VMWare for Linux. I can almost get rid of my Windows partition if I get that program.
You dah man, that is all I gotta say.
Have you ever heard of speeding development/testing time? Running 2 other OS's in VM's plus having your main OS to up and running all on one machine saves a lot of time. .jar file over the virtual network connection in VM and then run it on each OS and see the results in a few minutes without ever shutting down the Java IDE, B) copy the code to a commonly available media ( cd, floppy, network share, etc ), reboot into other OS , login, and test, then repeat the process for each OS? Personally, I would take choose A) , and even better than A) would be to have separate system running each OS.
Think about it, if you want to test your code ( say OS neutral Java code )across systems, would you rather A) Copy the
Btw, (off-topic ) does OS X run in VMWare?
Think about it.
Word to the wise - IRC-related file transfers come in different flavors:
/Login Info which then result in file trading or leeching.
DCC - Peer to Peer File Transfer ( with nice resume feature ). The IP addresses for the receipent and sender are traded via the IRC network, but that is where is ends.
FTP/Web etc - Channels dedicated to trading HOST/PORT
The most common type is DCC, but I have frequented the FTP channels, too. Neither of these type if file transferring go through the IRC servers. So preventing channels from forming that deal with these them will not reduce bandwidth except perhaps the bandwidth using to exchange information as detailed above. As far as I am concerned, DALNET is through, finished, kaput and people began the exodus to other servers during the DDoS attacks last year. During the same period, two of Dalnets largest hubs quit the network due to differences with the networks policies, which put another nail in the coffin.
Dalnet may survive, but it will be a frail shadow of it's former self. People come there to share information and files ( remind you of newsgroups at all? ), so cutting off one will just cause people to go where they can do both again.
Efnet, Zerofuzion.net, Undernet, etc. will reap the benefits of Dalnet's demise with new servers joining the network and an increased user base.
Put this into perspective, when you decide to run a web site that is connected to the Internet, you need to understand that anyone else who is also connected to the Internet can potentially access it. You know what the costs are, and it was YOUR decision to put up the web site in the first place, and it's also your risk that your site will become popular and start using a large amount of resources ( including bandwidth ). I personnaly don't believe in charging people to access web content, nor do I believe in ads. This all stems from the fact I came on the Internet when both of these ideas were foreign, and I really wish either commercial interests had stayed off the Internet, or at least formed their own network ( maybe .com specific? ) separate from the original net that offered everything for free with NO ADS whatsoever. My web server hosts serveral domains for FREE and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Ahh. how I miss those early days of downloading Pamela Anderson pics off an Ad-free Internet.
Hear! Hear! I agree. I have seen too many posts that describe Linux as "hard to learn", "foreign", etc. Being a bit old, I went through the whole DOS 3.0 - Windows XP during my career ( about 14 years ), but I am getting close to being a "medium" skill level Linux user after only 5 months of using it as my main OS at home! I still look to get to 'Advanced' and maybe 'Expert' this year, but I don't think I will ever qualify for 'Guru' as my focus is Java Programming and not Linux administration.
O.K. I took the long way to get to the point. Remember how long it took you to become familiar with MS Windows? Did your parents show it to you? Did you use it in Junior/High School? Yep, it didn't seem so easy to use back then, eh? Well, give Linux the same amount of time and effort. It may seem hard because no one else you know may use it, include work/school/home, but if you get some good training books or find a someone local to teach you, it will become easy to use in an amazing short period of time. As far as the "hack" type stuff like getting Windows programs to run under Linux (heresy, I tell you! ), that is much harder,and it is also one of the reasons I haven't reached "medium" skill level yet.
Good luck on the road to Linuxdom. It isn't OZ, but it's as close as we can get to it in the real world. Oh, and I am still waiting for a Linux client forNeverwinter nights...which kept me from sleeping the week before it's tentative release date!
Fortezza
Sig Challenged.
Amen Brother! I am not on Kazaa(have Gnutella on my Mandrake OS) at the moment, but I am going to start sharing tons of "legal" files like linux distros and do searches on the files later to see how far it gets :). Research papers etc would also be good things to share out...assuming you got a good score on them.
.
As far as movies/music goes, I have found the bulk of that content to be unreliable ( different
volume, bitrates, and missing files from albums/movies ), so I go to better sources for those (IRC,FTP, anyone?)
Then point being, as stated above, P2P apps are just tools that can be used for good or bad ( sharing Spears/Timberlake is bad!). It's up to us to choose which way we are going to use them.
F0rt0r
Signature Impaired
I once came upon some edonkey links while searching for music videos, and decided to give it a try ( to get the videos ). After loading the authors version of Edonkey and doing some searches plus clicking on edonkey link to queue up file, I wound up with nothing. It may have been a config problem, though I searched through message boards and check out issue/resolution posts. Still nothing. I even resorted to the basic searches like *.mpg, *.mp3, etc and still nothing.
In comparison, Kazaa(using Kazaa lite ) may not always turn up what I am looking for. But it is much better than Zero hits, and I think that is due to its popularity. Suprisingly, Shareza does a good job also, though I have to wait a bit to find peers and supernodes to connect to. On linux I have only used Qtella, which also works fine in regards to returning results to my searchs.
I digressed a bit by mentioning other P2P networks, but I am in a comparison mood right now, so I compared all the ones I used so far.
Question - is there a "kazaa-lite" for (Mandrake)Linux? I would love to try out their network while on my favorite OS.
F0rt0r
Sig Impaired and Proud of It!
I have nothing to gain from them monitoring me, and they didn't even bother to ask for my permission, so as far as I am concerning there is no justification for it. Kind of puts thing in a different perspective now, doesn't it, Anonymous Coward?
Another way to look at it is imagine someone walking into your house and just sitting next to our computer and writing down everything you watch on your media player program. Still don't see my point? Reread the first paragraph and think about it.
On the same side of the coin, I don't see a reason to switch to a invasive media player application when there are non-invasive open source solutions that do MORE that Microsoft's application already out available. No, M$ can keep their crappy spyware on their own OS, IMHO.
Yikes, the post was in nice paragraphs in the editor, it came out as a stream of text and space characters. Next time I will use preview...so much for my second slashdot post. I will be more carefule next time.
First, I started using Mozilla when I did my first experiment with migrating to alternate OS's last July ( FreeBSD was the OS ), and I when I found there was a Windows version of it, I was hooked. Here are my list of pluses and minuses that stand out in my mind: 1. Tabbed Browsing - I do a lot of research on the web, mostly because I have yet to find a highly portable electronic reference that I can take with me anywhere on any computer I happen to be using. What I do is open a 1-2 Google windows, run my searches, and then examine the hits to see if any of them have what I am looking for. I am pretty sure this is how I 'accidently' found slashdot :). Having the resulting 8-12 web sites I am referencing in a tabbed interface is VERY convenient.
2. Privacy Control - The control over stored passwords, cookie storage, javascripts, popup windows, etc. replaces multiple applications I used to use for these features. These are nothing short of outstanding features IMHO.
3. Miscellaneous - I am discovering more cool features as I go along. 2-3 weeks ago I discovered image-blocking, which kills most ads except for the flash ones, but then again. I have not and do not plan on installing flash anyhow.
Minuses:
1. Data portability - I have a dual-boot workstaion at home (in addition to my servers ), and my work's laptop that I try to keep the bookmarks and email in sync so I can access the same information wherever I am at. Note: I am looking at researching a web interface for my qpopper server, that would help with the email sync.). So far this has been a total pain in Mozilla. First, I have yet to find any email import/export tools, and the "Manage Bookmarks" tool doesn't work the way I would like it to. What I mean is when I import bookmarks, I would like it to do a differential import. For example, say I have a bookmark folder called "java" on two computers. They start off in sync with the same too url's in the folder. If I add a url to the folder on computer A, export it, and then import it to computer B, I would expect computer B's corresponding folder to now have the original 2 url's plus the 3rd one I added to A. Instead, Mozilla (1.2.1 even ) will add a horizontal divider to the bookmark list, create a copy of the 'java' folder and the 3 url's I imported. I can fix this manually, but why should I have to? To be safe Mozilla could let me choose how it handles the import, to give user to get the desired results. I could copy bookmark files between them, but this could potentially erase bookmarks that I put on computer B that were not one computer A at the time I was importing bookmarks from computer A to computer B.
2.Support Forums - To tell you the truth, I can't tell if these even exist or not. I was looking for help on the email import problem and followed the Mozilla's web site link to it's newgroups forums. I shouldn't have wasted it my time. None of the forums looked to be end user support ( Q&A ) related, and when I posted to one that seemed to be the closest thing to this ( after searching it
to see if the question had already been asked ) I got flamed for posting in a developer-only group even though there was no indication that that is what it was for ( i.e. the word 'developer' or similiar were not in the newgroup name. What is worse yet is that not one of the flames said "YOu idiot, you should have know tech support questions get posted here !", so after all the time they spent flaming me, I still have no idea where I should have posted my question. How about they put up a nice web-based searchable and archivable set of Mozilla forums with each forums focus clearly identified by the title ( or the forum description text ). Sorry newgroup-lovers, nothing against newsgroups, but my experience with them has been nothing but negative.
3. Bookmark Sorting - Why can't I have all my Bookmarks sorted in alphanumeric order? Inside of bookmark manager I can do this, but once I leave the manager window my bookmarks go back to being unsorted. Maybe there is a big sign on the toolbar saying "click here to sort your bookmarks", but I am not seeing it.
4. Memory Hog ( Windows Version ) - This has been mentioned before, but I would like to note that it seems to have been fixed now that I am using version 1.1 on my work laptop, older version seem to get unresponsive after being open for extended periods of time and when I checked resources in use, it averaged about 32MB. I have not experienced any lagginess with the Linux versions, but then again that may be because Linux is such a zippy( fast ) OS anyhow.
In conclusion, I could have included a list of things I would like to have added to the browser, but the topic is 'experience', and there you have it. Where I disgressed by saying "fix this, add that" was me just clarifying why I thought the problem was a problem. So please, no "off topic" flames.
Also, this is my second post on slashdot...ever. Hopefully you find this post informative. I expect that by my sixth post to have graduated to " In Russia, Mozilla Browses You!", but I am not quite there yet. Peace.
I always wanted to get a few ebooks so I could have reference material with me on the go ( on or offline ) without carrying a ton of books with me. There are two reasons I haven't:
:-)
1) Forced to use the ebook on the computer I used to purchase it ( I change computers like underwear ).
2) Forced to use Microcrap software to access them.
Since I have only been to the ebooks.com site, that is all I know about them, and I don't like it one bit. I was hoping for something like PDF format that I can read in Linux, read again when I boot into Windows, and then finish reading during lunch on my PDA, all in the same day. Wishful thinking? Most likely. Anyone know a way I can do this? Post away.