That is far from being my logic. My example, as I indicated, was my observation of what "theft" proponents argue. And I was correct in saying that this position does work.
Look at the cable companies in the US. Mine in particular is a major player in the industry, and a horrible, dishonest monopoly which hides behind an allegedly cute CG mascot. My provider runs local commercials often depicting honest American consumers being forced to pay higher prices for all sorts of things (including food), because of someone skipping out on the bill. The logic is that a cable "thief" is robbing consumers of a finite resource -- not just the original creator. This position seems to be working. Some might argue that physically connecting to hot coax cables creates a huge burden on the cable network; but to that elfin magical theory, I have to retort: then reduce the load by removing the 30 or so scrambled channels I have piping into my cable box.
My point is, the distinction between theft and copyright is self-evident to anyone who can think logically. The people who say it isn't from my experience tend to be consumers who are easily manipulated by cutesy CG mascots and angry looking attorneys, or people who own and provide content.
I propose that we try to separate unauthorized use of commercial software from copyright altogether. Copyright infringement predates digital property. It's purpose wasn't so much the protection of exclusivity in ideas as it was the prevent one from taking another's ideas and passing it off as one's own. In software piracy, you have a different phenomenon. It's bootlegging.
This is an semantic debate, a meaningless one at that. If you're a game developer and you sink everything you have into making a single good game, sell it to just one person who then gives free copies to 1,000 people (the max. population in my example), then you will not be able to recoup your costs for development or make a profit. The incentive to develop games commercially is lost. You go back to your day job of factory working and occasionally make little games for fun. This is what the proponents of copyright infringement as theft might argue, and it works because there is something fundamentally unfair about enjoying the labor of one person without compensating them fairly.
Had it not been for that pirated copy of the original Warcraft, I would never have bought the 2nd and 3rd installments.
Are you sure you weren't playing the demo of Warcraft? Cause when one of my old college mates handed me the installation diskettes for the Warcraft demo, I uploaded it everywhere I could. I loved that game, and I became a Blizzard devotee. Demos work. And I would like to see more PC game developers release demos. There are many demos out there for sure, but in my eyes, no where near as many as back in the days of a young Apogee and Id.
It's not that so few companies actually put out workable, good products. The PC is a near zero-entry cost platform to development games on. Computer gaming doesn't share the barriers that console and arcade gaming has. So, if it *seems* like there are so few good PC games, it's only because one hasn't stepped back to look at the vast amount of games there are, but is instead focusing on the biggest titles in the trendiest genres.
I agree, games don't need to be free. I'll go one step further and say respectfully that David Perry is wrong in the general sense. Some will be free, many will not. He's really talking particularly about a specific segment of the game population: casual gamers. This won't apply to game enthusiasts who will buy their games.
It would be a nice act. I'm sure it would be appreciated. But I A scholarship would be a great idea for these kids. But any condolences should be worded carefully. The last thing these kids need is a bouquet of flowers with a card that says something insensitive about how wrong it was for their dad to be persecuted for being a geek.
However, the fact that Reiser was from this community means nothing. And it should mean nothing to you. Reiser was a part of a lot of different communities. He was part of the Oakland community, the UC Berkeley community, the extended IBM community, and so on. I say this so there's not a sense that there's a shared OSS community responsibility to take a formal position.
Right, there's no guarantee his sentence will be reduced, but he's hoping for it, and you can be sure his attorney at least thought to negotiate for it.
To answer the parent, the reason the court might reduce a sentence is because recovering the body provides closure, both to the family of the victim and to society as a whole; so the ideal situation is that we can give the victim a proper burial.
Seems like you're taking a more Utilitarian approach to Reiser, and using the deterrence justification for criminal punishment. Our judicial systems is based mostly on the Kantian view of retribution, that society needs retribution in order to be made whole again. We do see prison as a deterrence, but theoretically, we operate mostly on the theory of retribution.
He has to be punished for his crimes. To say he gets to continue doing what he loves, to allow him to continue to participate in society (even on a diminished level) actually mocks society. Yes, he has some worth that society could benefit from. But prisons are full of inmates who possessed skills society could benefit from. What of them?
Reiser was a talent programmer. So what? I bet there's enough talent on/. to more than compensate for the intellectual loss that the OSS community will suffer as a result of the selfish act he committed. We didn't lose an asset that can't be regain elsewhere.
Criminal punishment isn't about helping to find a murder an outlet through which to help society. It's about separating the murderer from society in order to protect society. We don't know that Reiser would ever kill again, but we don't know he wouldn't either.
I understand that you're arguing an alternative theory to criminal punishment, and I think that's admirable. But based on the theory which governs criminal punishment, there's no excusable way to allow Reiser's skill to be put to use.
He murdered his wife. I believe most if not all teleological standards consider murder to be a despicable act. And by the Kantian standards Americans follow in our judicial system, murderers are despicable people.
As for the stress of divorce. So what? Reiser's mental state never seemed to be a question throughout the proceedings or even in the space of time between the murder and the indictment. Reiser's actions following the murder are consistent with the belief that he didn't act out of heated excitement (a.k.a., crime of passion). In the legal definition of "acting out of heated passion" you get just the one moment where you're temporary insane and not responsible for your actions. Reiser's action didn't fall within the window of time.
I don't believe it's unfair to say that Reiser is not a decent human being when he murders his wife, buries the body in an unmarked grave, conceals the evidence in the days that follow, defames his wife in order to throw off the investigation, and then finally only admits to the murder after his conviction in order to leverage a lighter sentence for his benefit.
I agree, but I wonder how many of his supporters went beyond the OSS connection and saw Reiser as a geek who's being persecuted merely for being different and socially awkward. Reading some of the other threads on this topic, it's clear there are a few people on/. who believed this.
It's an interesting hypothetical. As you said, there's a mechanism in place here in America to keep us in line. Not so for certain old-world countries like Iraq. I think Bush would push people around, even pull their pants down in public, but I don't believe he would go on a massive killing spree.
Bush strikes me as being the classic bully. He happily asserts himself onto people who are weaker than him, but he craves positive attention too. He wants to be liked a lot. Also, he's not particularly reflective or introspective. He can be reined in easily by anyone who can show him up physically and intellectually. Hussein was a highly introspective person. He was a brutish thug, but he wasn't stupid. Bush in Iraq would depend as much on his puppet masters as he would here. He would depend on a cult of personality as well. I don't see Bush running around doing the things Hussein allegedly did, but I can see his flunkies actually coming pretty close, if not crossing the line.
Actually, Hussein did take over another non-threatening country. He took over Kuwait in 1990, annexing it a few days after the initial invasion. To be fair, Iraq accused Kuwait of slant drilling oil as a form of economic warfare, but not longer after the UN stepped in, Iraq claimed that Kuwait was naturally a part of Iraq, but had been carved away by the British as a result of the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913.
There's never been proof that Hussein sent people to the shredders; however, his sons were known to be very vicious and they *may* have done acts like this.
Use of chemical weapons against US citizens by police is sadly a long-standing tradition in this country which predates Bush. If we're going to credit him with that, we should also credit every president before him going back to at least the '60s.
I do agree with you about the President leaving in January. He broke the law on many occasions and shouldn't be allowed to serve out his presidency without answering to the people. Sadly the Democrats in their infinite selfishness feel it's better for their own political ambitions to let Bush continue to be a social and political pariah.
Yes, yes, so you've read John Keracher. Without relying on Keracher's circular reasoning and marketing jibe, what exactly is the way to eliminate the parasites?
Our system is such that we will never be able to remove the influence of rich businessmen over the government. It existed during the time of the founding fathers, and it exists today. It will exist tomorrow.
Accepting that the government will never care about your opinion unless you are a wealthy corporation or a cable news darling of the week; you're really left with just the option of organizing a grass roots campaign to boycott corporations which attempt to influence government to an extent that it really harms the public.
For example, Verizon is pushing hard for telecom immunity. If Verizon customers were gutsy enough to suck up the early termination fee and drop Verizon for its anti-consumer behavior, Verizon would eventually back down. And once a major corporation loses its money, they lose their power.
The problem is, Americans bitch and moan about everything, and yet do nothing, because as previous responses have suggested, we are easily appeased with shiny objects. Consider the Wal*Mart effect on local economies. People will complain, and yet the same people will still shop at Wal*Mart because of the low prices.
Another example: Abercrombie & Fitch and a number of other trendy apparel companies are linked to the sexual exploitation of asian women who work as slave labor on the island of Saipan. I suspect that even if someone were able to get the media to cover this, teenager girls and boys will still buy A&F products.
I am definitely behind in Linux distros. I stopped chasing distros years ago after upgrading to Slackware 10. But these days, I use Mac OS X almost exclusively and virtualize any other environment I might need.
The only distro I've been casually following lately has been Yellow Dog because I have an interest in trying it out on my PowerPC and my PS3.
I watch censored Japanese porn for the interesting articles!
I can understand what you're getting at, I think. American porn is dominated by the gonzo filmmaking style, and it's really getting old; and while studios like Vivid still make story-driven adult films, these movies still encourage the heavy use of the fast-forward button. The Japanese have a completely different perspective and different taboos, and so it's refreshing to American viewers who are so used to the American formula that we can predict the choreography perfectly.
Of course, this was really just an opportunity for me to say bukkake on/.
Actually the AC had somewhat of a valid point hidden beneath his own self-righteous rightist opinion.
If you give the US permission to be the world's policeman, that permission is irrevocable. The US is the only superpower. Once the US has that badge, it will assert its authority often, and not always for noble reasons.
The situation in Sudan demands criminal prosecution and nation building. So far, I haven't seen the UN accomplish much in line with its mission. And I haven't seen any nation with a strong military step in to try to check the Sudanese government. Personally, I would like us to be there as I believe the mission to be just; but I know being there only furthers the argument that the US has some kind of authority to intervene with the internal matters of another sovereign nation.
I have only twice ever called Microsoft for support, and both times it was because I wasn't able to activate Windows XP.
I remember back in the '90s FOSS advocates were chanting that we could all make our money from support. I thought it was idiotic back then too since most computer users above 18 had already been used to being able to call up a software company to get support from a real programmer. I'm speaking of BBS software in particular, but I found this to be true for a lot of small commercial apps.
People persist with the "free software is communism" garbage because religious zealots like Richard Stallman persist with screaming that proprietary commercial software is intrinsically evil and will bring about the downfall of mankind and the subjugation of all humanity.
Not every commercial software developer out there is looking to dick the world over or impose a new world order. Some just want to sell you an archival utility or a game.
As for what communists believe in. At heart, a communist is a person prone to whatever varied beliefs people are prone too. Some care about Free software, some don't mind proprietary software, and I suspect most communists could care less because it's only software.
I'm not an GPL guru, so I could use a clarification. Is it possible for an author to loose control over a product he/she puts under the GPL license. Bob writes an application, releases it GPL'd. It becomes a success. He later regrets using the license, then releases the same product (not a newer version) under a different proprietary license. What is the impact on someone deciding to fork the original GPL'd release?
"Out-of-the-box driver support for just about everything" is really more of a virtue of Windows and not Linux. When I first started with Linux, I had to compile in support for my soundcard. My video capture hardware still doesn't work under Linux although that's Pinnacle's and eMuzed's own fault. So this is one way in which Windows is better than Linux.
"Central package management system" Whose Linux do you run? I myself never could stand RPMs during the Red Hat Days, and I never bothered with Slackware's own PKGs. I built and installed everything from source. Windows apps use an executable installer which works pretty much all the time. Plus, Windows users can uninstall many if not most apps effectively.
"3D effects" ? I'm not sure I understand? Did you mean application layer stuff, or the OS' user interface? Windows has DirectX and Open GL.
"Support for all major filetypes?" This is application level stuff. Linux doesn't know anything more about a JPEG than does Windows absent a graphics app. With Linux, there's a glut of apps available for immediate installation so yes, this saves the user trouble of hunting down apps to open specific file types, but that strength is also a weakness. I prefer the Windows camp's method of just going online to find my own apps to use.
On that note, the earth's magnetic field is just a really large pickup, and the earth is just a really large guitar, and the solar wind is merely a celestial Steve Vai blowing across the strings to create music.
I've seen a few textbooks which come with the book as an e-book in PDF format, either as a CD extra or as some optional download.
I'm sure people have even gone as far as to personally scan every page of a textbook. Also, you have to figure that we live in an age where warez dudez can now find a niche market and choose to specialize. My personal hope is that there's an ebook pirate out there who has a vintage TV Guide collection to distribute!
Not all computer scientists are programmers though. Computer Science isn't even about being a programmer. There's more to the discipline than writing code for the sake of developing an application. This is why I do my best to distinguish myself. There are people out there who think, "You're a computer scientist? I am having trouble with Windows and..."
This guy is a computer scientist. If he doesn't want to be a professional programmer, and he doesn't want to help people with their printers, I believe he needs to go back to computational theory. He might consider teaching. If he's a good technical writer, maybe he can put his knowledge and experience towards tech-journalism. Or, if he is really focused on IT (which is *NOT* the same as computer science), he might try to consult businesses on adopting computer technologies -- a more suit and tie alternative to system admin'ing.
There's always USENET. But textbooks aren't standardized enough in my experience that I could go to any repository and expect to find the book I need. Certain textbooks are standard reading, but so many more are not.
Slashdot Mirror
That is far from being my logic. My example, as I indicated, was my observation of what "theft" proponents argue. And I was correct in saying that this position does work.
Look at the cable companies in the US. Mine in particular is a major player in the industry, and a horrible, dishonest monopoly which hides behind an allegedly cute CG mascot. My provider runs local commercials often depicting honest American consumers being forced to pay higher prices for all sorts of things (including food), because of someone skipping out on the bill. The logic is that a cable "thief" is robbing consumers of a finite resource -- not just the original creator. This position seems to be working. Some might argue that physically connecting to hot coax cables creates a huge burden on the cable network; but to that elfin magical theory, I have to retort: then reduce the load by removing the 30 or so scrambled channels I have piping into my cable box.
My point is, the distinction between theft and copyright is self-evident to anyone who can think logically. The people who say it isn't from my experience tend to be consumers who are easily manipulated by cutesy CG mascots and angry looking attorneys, or people who own and provide content.
I propose that we try to separate unauthorized use of commercial software from copyright altogether. Copyright infringement predates digital property. It's purpose wasn't so much the protection of exclusivity in ideas as it was the prevent one from taking another's ideas and passing it off as one's own. In software piracy, you have a different phenomenon. It's bootlegging.
This is an semantic debate, a meaningless one at that. If you're a game developer and you sink everything you have into making a single good game, sell it to just one person who then gives free copies to 1,000 people (the max. population in my example), then you will not be able to recoup your costs for development or make a profit. The incentive to develop games commercially is lost. You go back to your day job of factory working and occasionally make little games for fun. This is what the proponents of copyright infringement as theft might argue, and it works because there is something fundamentally unfair about enjoying the labor of one person without compensating them fairly.
Had it not been for that pirated copy of the original Warcraft, I would never have bought the 2nd and 3rd installments.
Are you sure you weren't playing the demo of Warcraft? Cause when one of my old college mates handed me the installation diskettes for the Warcraft demo, I uploaded it everywhere I could. I loved that game, and I became a Blizzard devotee. Demos work. And I would like to see more PC game developers release demos. There are many demos out there for sure, but in my eyes, no where near as many as back in the days of a young Apogee and Id.
It's not that so few companies actually put out workable, good products. The PC is a near zero-entry cost platform to development games on. Computer gaming doesn't share the barriers that console and arcade gaming has. So, if it *seems* like there are so few good PC games, it's only because one hasn't stepped back to look at the vast amount of games there are, but is instead focusing on the biggest titles in the trendiest genres.
I agree, games don't need to be free. I'll go one step further and say respectfully that David Perry is wrong in the general sense. Some will be free, many will not. He's really talking particularly about a specific segment of the game population: casual gamers. This won't apply to game enthusiasts who will buy their games.
Wasn't Windows 2000 also an attempt to deliberately break backwards compatibility for the sake of moving forward?
It would be a nice act. I'm sure it would be appreciated. But I
A scholarship would be a great idea for these kids. But any condolences should be worded carefully. The last thing these kids need is a bouquet of flowers with a card that says something insensitive about how wrong it was for their dad to be persecuted for being a geek.
However, the fact that Reiser was from this community means nothing. And it should mean nothing to you. Reiser was a part of a lot of different communities. He was part of the Oakland community, the UC Berkeley community, the extended IBM community, and so on. I say this so there's not a sense that there's a shared OSS community responsibility to take a formal position.
Right, there's no guarantee his sentence will be reduced, but he's hoping for it, and you can be sure his attorney at least thought to negotiate for it.
To answer the parent, the reason the court might reduce a sentence is because recovering the body provides closure, both to the family of the victim and to society as a whole; so the ideal situation is that we can give the victim a proper burial.
Seems like you're taking a more Utilitarian approach to Reiser, and using the deterrence justification for criminal punishment. Our judicial systems is based mostly on the Kantian view of retribution, that society needs retribution in order to be made whole again. We do see prison as a deterrence, but theoretically, we operate mostly on the theory of retribution.
He has to be punished for his crimes. To say he gets to continue doing what he loves, to allow him to continue to participate in society (even on a diminished level) actually mocks society. Yes, he has some worth that society could benefit from. But prisons are full of inmates who possessed skills society could benefit from. What of them?
Reiser was a talent programmer. So what? I bet there's enough talent on /. to more than compensate for the intellectual loss that the OSS community will suffer as a result of the selfish act he committed. We didn't lose an asset that can't be regain elsewhere.
Criminal punishment isn't about helping to find a murder an outlet through which to help society. It's about separating the murderer from society in order to protect society. We don't know that Reiser would ever kill again, but we don't know he wouldn't either.
I understand that you're arguing an alternative theory to criminal punishment, and I think that's admirable. But based on the theory which governs criminal punishment, there's no excusable way to allow Reiser's skill to be put to use.
He murdered his wife. I believe most if not all teleological standards consider murder to be a despicable act. And by the Kantian standards Americans follow in our judicial system, murderers are despicable people.
As for the stress of divorce. So what? Reiser's mental state never seemed to be a question throughout the proceedings or even in the space of time between the murder and the indictment. Reiser's actions following the murder are consistent with the belief that he didn't act out of heated excitement (a.k.a., crime of passion). In the legal definition of "acting out of heated passion" you get just the one moment where you're temporary insane and not responsible for your actions. Reiser's action didn't fall within the window of time.
I don't believe it's unfair to say that Reiser is not a decent human being when he murders his wife, buries the body in an unmarked grave, conceals the evidence in the days that follow, defames his wife in order to throw off the investigation, and then finally only admits to the murder after his conviction in order to leverage a lighter sentence for his benefit.
I agree, but I wonder how many of his supporters went beyond the OSS connection and saw Reiser as a geek who's being persecuted merely for being different and socially awkward. Reading some of the other threads on this topic, it's clear there are a few people on /. who believed this.
It's an interesting hypothetical. As you said, there's a mechanism in place here in America to keep us in line. Not so for certain old-world countries like Iraq. I think Bush would push people around, even pull their pants down in public, but I don't believe he would go on a massive killing spree.
Bush strikes me as being the classic bully. He happily asserts himself onto people who are weaker than him, but he craves positive attention too. He wants to be liked a lot. Also, he's not particularly reflective or introspective. He can be reined in easily by anyone who can show him up physically and intellectually. Hussein was a highly introspective person. He was a brutish thug, but he wasn't stupid. Bush in Iraq would depend as much on his puppet masters as he would here. He would depend on a cult of personality as well. I don't see Bush running around doing the things Hussein allegedly did, but I can see his flunkies actually coming pretty close, if not crossing the line.
Actually, Hussein did take over another non-threatening country. He took over Kuwait in 1990, annexing it a few days after the initial invasion. To be fair, Iraq accused Kuwait of slant drilling oil as a form of economic warfare, but not longer after the UN stepped in, Iraq claimed that Kuwait was naturally a part of Iraq, but had been carved away by the British as a result of the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913.
There's never been proof that Hussein sent people to the shredders; however, his sons were known to be very vicious and they *may* have done acts like this.
Use of chemical weapons against US citizens by police is sadly a long-standing tradition in this country which predates Bush. If we're going to credit him with that, we should also credit every president before him going back to at least the '60s.
I do agree with you about the President leaving in January. He broke the law on many occasions and shouldn't be allowed to serve out his presidency without answering to the people. Sadly the Democrats in their infinite selfishness feel it's better for their own political ambitions to let Bush continue to be a social and political pariah.
Yes, yes, so you've read John Keracher. Without relying on Keracher's circular reasoning and marketing jibe, what exactly is the way to eliminate the parasites?
Our system is such that we will never be able to remove the influence of rich businessmen over the government. It existed during the time of the founding fathers, and it exists today. It will exist tomorrow.
Accepting that the government will never care about your opinion unless you are a wealthy corporation or a cable news darling of the week; you're really left with just the option of organizing a grass roots campaign to boycott corporations which attempt to influence government to an extent that it really harms the public.
For example, Verizon is pushing hard for telecom immunity. If Verizon customers were gutsy enough to suck up the early termination fee and drop Verizon for its anti-consumer behavior, Verizon would eventually back down. And once a major corporation loses its money, they lose their power.
The problem is, Americans bitch and moan about everything, and yet do nothing, because as previous responses have suggested, we are easily appeased with shiny objects. Consider the Wal*Mart effect on local economies. People will complain, and yet the same people will still shop at Wal*Mart because of the low prices.
Another example: Abercrombie & Fitch and a number of other trendy apparel companies are linked to the sexual exploitation of asian women who work as slave labor on the island of Saipan. I suspect that even if someone were able to get the media to cover this, teenager girls and boys will still buy A&F products.
I am definitely behind in Linux distros. I stopped chasing distros years ago after upgrading to Slackware 10. But these days, I use Mac OS X almost exclusively and virtualize any other environment I might need.
The only distro I've been casually following lately has been Yellow Dog because I have an interest in trying it out on my PowerPC and my PS3.
I watch censored Japanese porn for the interesting articles!
I can understand what you're getting at, I think. American porn is dominated by the gonzo filmmaking style, and it's really getting old; and while studios like Vivid still make story-driven adult films, these movies still encourage the heavy use of the fast-forward button. The Japanese have a completely different perspective and different taboos, and so it's refreshing to American viewers who are so used to the American formula that we can predict the choreography perfectly.
Of course, this was really just an opportunity for me to say bukkake on /.
Can't he be both?
Actually the AC had somewhat of a valid point hidden beneath his own self-righteous rightist opinion.
If you give the US permission to be the world's policeman, that permission is irrevocable. The US is the only superpower. Once the US has that badge, it will assert its authority often, and not always for noble reasons.
The situation in Sudan demands criminal prosecution and nation building. So far, I haven't seen the UN accomplish much in line with its mission. And I haven't seen any nation with a strong military step in to try to check the Sudanese government. Personally, I would like us to be there as I believe the mission to be just; but I know being there only furthers the argument that the US has some kind of authority to intervene with the internal matters of another sovereign nation.
I have only twice ever called Microsoft for support, and both times it was because I wasn't able to activate Windows XP.
I remember back in the '90s FOSS advocates were chanting that we could all make our money from support. I thought it was idiotic back then too since most computer users above 18 had already been used to being able to call up a software company to get support from a real programmer. I'm speaking of BBS software in particular, but I found this to be true for a lot of small commercial apps.
People persist with the "free software is communism" garbage because religious zealots like Richard Stallman persist with screaming that proprietary commercial software is intrinsically evil and will bring about the downfall of mankind and the subjugation of all humanity.
Not every commercial software developer out there is looking to dick the world over or impose a new world order. Some just want to sell you an archival utility or a game.
As for what communists believe in. At heart, a communist is a person prone to whatever varied beliefs people are prone too. Some care about Free software, some don't mind proprietary software, and I suspect most communists could care less because it's only software.
I'm not an GPL guru, so I could use a clarification. Is it possible for an author to loose control over a product he/she puts under the GPL license. Bob writes an application, releases it GPL'd. It becomes a success. He later regrets using the license, then releases the same product (not a newer version) under a different proprietary license. What is the impact on someone deciding to fork the original GPL'd release?
"Out-of-the-box driver support for just about everything" is really more of a virtue of Windows and not Linux. When I first started with Linux, I had to compile in support for my soundcard. My video capture hardware still doesn't work under Linux although that's Pinnacle's and eMuzed's own fault. So this is one way in which Windows is better than Linux.
"Central package management system" Whose Linux do you run? I myself never could stand RPMs during the Red Hat Days, and I never bothered with Slackware's own PKGs. I built and installed everything from source. Windows apps use an executable installer which works pretty much all the time. Plus, Windows users can uninstall many if not most apps effectively.
"3D effects" ? I'm not sure I understand? Did you mean application layer stuff, or the OS' user interface? Windows has DirectX and Open GL.
"Support for all major filetypes?" This is application level stuff. Linux doesn't know anything more about a JPEG than does Windows absent a graphics app. With Linux, there's a glut of apps available for immediate installation so yes, this saves the user trouble of hunting down apps to open specific file types, but that strength is also a weakness. I prefer the Windows camp's method of just going online to find my own apps to use.
Disclaimer: I don't use Windows.
On that note, the earth's magnetic field is just a really large pickup, and the earth is just a really large guitar, and the solar wind is merely a celestial Steve Vai blowing across the strings to create music.
I've seen a few textbooks which come with the book as an e-book in PDF format, either as a CD extra or as some optional download.
I'm sure people have even gone as far as to personally scan every page of a textbook. Also, you have to figure that we live in an age where warez dudez can now find a niche market and choose to specialize. My personal hope is that there's an ebook pirate out there who has a vintage TV Guide collection to distribute!
Not all computer scientists are programmers though. Computer Science isn't even about being a programmer. There's more to the discipline than writing code for the sake of developing an application. This is why I do my best to distinguish myself. There are people out there who think, "You're a computer scientist? I am having trouble with Windows and..."
This guy is a computer scientist. If he doesn't want to be a professional programmer, and he doesn't want to help people with their printers, I believe he needs to go back to computational theory. He might consider teaching. If he's a good technical writer, maybe he can put his knowledge and experience towards tech-journalism. Or, if he is really focused on IT (which is *NOT* the same as computer science), he might try to consult businesses on adopting computer technologies -- a more suit and tie alternative to system admin'ing.
There's always USENET. But textbooks aren't standardized enough in my experience that I could go to any repository and expect to find the book I need. Certain textbooks are standard reading, but so many more are not.