Another thought, after reading more about the Baha'i faith.
This religion appears to make a very noble attempt at seeking truth over dogma. I hope that my prior comment was not seen as disparaging. Please understand that I know little about Baha'i.
The link that you provided states that the Baha'i faith asserts the existence of a God who is the creator of all things. I certainly accept that science does not fully explain our existence, but I feel that it is not proven that an entity "created" the universe. Asserting that this is so puts a religion at odds with science, because science should only assert to be true what can be proven to be true, and allow for everything else to be unknown.
I agree that changing science is part of the "problem". In fact, I would go further to say that science is sometimes wrong and even manipulated. Scientists who participate in big projects with lots of funding are often critical of challenges to their research because challenges put their grants at stake. This is why "cold fusion" was so violently rejected by the established scientific community during the 80s: it challenged the billions of dollars of research funds involved in building Tokamaks.
But I have to disagree that religion rarely changes. Take the Bible for example. The bible is a compilation of texts. Someone chose which texts to include and which to leave out. Further, many biblical stories are rewritten legends that date back to Sumeria. Finally, mainstream religious leaders change their dogma from one generation to the next: e.g., the Catholic Church now accepts many scientific theories that it rejected not too long ago.
The original goal of religion must have been to explain the unknown. That is the goal of science. Unfortunately people hang onto established beliefs even when they are found to be untrue: thus, today's religions are out of harmony with science. The two should be in harmony.
What I personally have little patience for is when people accept religion without questioning: they "believe". That is not only irrational, but dangerous, because it leads to dogma, and a willingness to accept what someone else tells you without question. That is the foundation of religious extremism, and is the currency of terrorism.
The posts here that claim that Apple and/or Microsoft are over-valued might be right. I don't know.
But: there is indeed a change taking place. As the article in the NY Times says, "Consumer tastes have overtaken the needs of business as the leading force shaping [endpoint information] technology".
I think that the PC approach (which is also exemplified by the Mac) is unsustainable. Those operating systems (Mac OS, Windows, etc.) are too complex for the average user and too insecure and flaky to be used as the foundation of a base platform for truly ubiquitous computing. We need OS that are simpler, more robust, and more mobile from the ground up: OSs that don't require a user to be a system administrator.
The OS used by the iPad is not yet full featured enough to serve the needs of most users. Indeed, people do write documents, edit images, do more than one thing at a time. However, I expect that the iPad and other mobile OSs will fill out in the coming years. They are a fresh start, and a chance for the industry to do better.
I cannot say for sure, but I do not believe that an inertial confinement system is decades away. In fact, there was a-lot of research into such systems during the 1960s. It was abandoned during the 70s when nuclear energy for space became politically untenable, but then it was picked up again during the 90s. During the late 90s it very abruptly stopped - or went dark. (Perhaps it was successful...)
In any case, it turns out that the energy required to compress fissile pellets (the size of a grain of sand) to critical density for fission requires particle beam equipment the size of a refrigerator - i.e., very achievable. The engineering challenges then are not related to creating fission, but rather to managing the high temperature plasmas to produce usable thrust without damaging the system. These engineering challenges are very similar to the challenges that VASIMIR has, and so if they can be solved for VASIMIR one would expect that they could be solved for a fission-powered system. I believe that the plasma temperatures for a micro pulse fission system (using water as a propellant mass source) are similar to those for VASIMIR, but I cannot say for sure.
According to the RFI at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=34056 nuclear propulsion is excluded unless it is used solely for heat generation or as a power source for electric propulsion. Thus, some of the most promising nuclear technologies for rocket propulsion such as micro pellet inertial confinement compression-induced fission are excluded.
I am sure your premise is right, that OSs written in assembler are more compact. But we are talking about three orders of magnitude in growth of the size of both OSs and apps, for comparatively small gains in actual tangible functionality. There must be more to the story...
I have had an Apple TV for more than a year. The interface is beautiful and indeed I use the thing for most of my TV viewing, and for playing music. But:
There is something wrong with Apple's wifi network stack. On a Mac this is no problem because if your wireless connection stops responding (can happen even with a strong signal) you just stop Airport and restart it: this takes maybe five seconds. People with Macs do this without even thinking. I have noticed that it happens in my home a-lot and I am wondering if it related to interference in my neighborhood. I have a recent model Belkin 802.11n/g router, but before that I had a recent model Cisco/Linksys router and I trashed it because of the problems that I describe - and which switching to the Belkin did not fix.
But the Apple TV does not have an easily accessible wifi on/off function or even a power on/off function and I have found that the wireless stack does not have the ability to recover when it has a problem. For example, if my wifi router loses its own internet connection (e.g, by unplugging the cable going into it) but then the connection is restored, the wireless Apple TV will think it can't get to the Internet and you have to restart it. (It does not recover from this state on its own.) I end up unplugging the Apple TV maybe once a day, because the thing has no on/off switch. Also, if it is downloading or uploading something it swamps the network and you can't do anything else.
The Apple TV is managed from iTunes on your Mac, so you really need to have a Mac (I do). The Apple TV often spontaneously disappears from iTunes and you have to try restarting iTunes and/or the Apple TV (sometimes several times) to get it to show up again.
Lastly, the Apple TV is not a media server: it is a media cache and viewer. The content on it actually lives on your Mac. So you had better have lots of storage space on your Mac. To save space on my Mac I manually copy the video files from iTunes's folder to a network drive, then delete those shows in iTunes and empty my trash. The shows then disappear from the Apple TV the next time it syncs. I wish that iTunes had an interface feature for archiving files to another drive but it does not as far as I know.
I wish they would make the thing more reliable because the functionality is fantastic. I especially love watching YouTube on it, except that it frequently loses its wifi connection somehow (even thought the signal is strong). The thing doesn't stream, technically, but for practical purposes it does, because you can start watching an HD show within moments of renting or purchasing it. I really enjoy watching 24 on it, commercial free (but $2.99 for an HD episode, $1.99 for SD). It does not usually have a wifi problem while I am watching a show: only when a show completes and then I try to watch another. I can't figure out why this would be, but I cannot tell you how many times I have had to unplug the thing and re-plug after a show in order to watch another show. Maybe it works better with an Apple wifi router - I don't know.
If you use it with a hard ethernet line it would probably not have these problems, but I have not tried that.
I see many misinterpretations of Bob Lewis's article.
If I understand him correctly, he is saying that IT should be integrated, not apart from the business. This is in fact what my book Value-Driven IT is about. (http://valuedrivenit.com/) Mark Lutchen, the author of Managing IT as a Business, wrote a foreword for this book.
However, the choice should depend on whether IT is strategic to an organization: if it is, then IT needs to be integrated, and should not be a separate internal business or a service.
If IT is strategic to an organization, it no longer makes sense to distinguish between technical issues and "business issues": in such an organization, technical issues *are* business issues. The key is to know what issues matter, and what issues don't.
This does not mean that there should not be an "IT department": there should, to manage infrastructure; but strategic IT should not be the province of a separate "non-business" group.
In my book I advocate for having a strategic "change management" group that spearheads and oversees strategic change, including technology deployment. This helps to ensure that the organization has a center of excellence for managing change, thereby reducing risk, reducing time to implement change, and increasing the agility of the organization.
I agree that "real mathematics" is more useful for application programming that discrete math.
And I also agree with the statement that most scientific professions require lots of math. I was a physics major for undergrad, and my first master's degree was in engineering, and I once estimated that I had had in effect no fewer than 20-odd math courses, because each course required lots of mathematics.
But I think that the answer to this person's question depends. It depends if the goal is to be able to do application programming, or to build reliable large scale or mission critical systems. For the latter, the lack of training in discrete mathematics has really hurt the software engineering profession. Have you noticed how the news is filled with spectacular failures of software? Often these manifest as security breaches. Sometimes they are airplane crashes. Or then we have the multitudinous reports of bugs in critical systems such as operating systems.
The root cause of the high incidence of these problems is that reliable techniques are not used to design and build most mission critical software. That is because the people designing it do not have the training to be aware of the techniques, many of which are based on discrete mathematics and proofs.
Interestingly, Erlang, a language developed to build reliable telecommunications systems that can never be turned off, was designed by electrical engineers. However, there is a mathematical basis for the language.
Yes, discrete math is extremely important for designing reliable systems. It is less so for departmental business applications that have small numbers of users.
If you want him to grow up to be a hacker with little system design discipline, teach him C.
If you want him to grow up with trade skills for writing corporate business code, teach him an OO language such as Java or Ruby, as these are the Cobol of tomorrow.
If you want him to grow up to be a designer of rock solid systems, teach him scala or another functional language, and encourage him to think in terms of algorithms and patterns instead of code.
As far as I know Starbucks wifi is not free. (I use it in the Washington DC area.) I use it daily but I am an AT&T wifi subscriber and for me it is well worth it. To use it free in a Starbucks you have to register your Starbucks card (I think you have to do that ahead of time, but I have not checked lately), and then you get two hours of use if you buy something and go through the process of requesting that a code be sent to you via a text message and then you log on with that code. If the Starbucks is attached to a Barnes & Noble, then the wifi is free because B&N has free wifi via AT&T. Panera wifi is free. Cosi has free wifi too, but they block SMTP so you can't email unless you use webmail. The Starbucks wifi in my area (many locations) used to be really, really, really unreliable on a chronic basis, but it has gotten a-lot better very recently (past few weeks) in my area: they must be improving their setup. Note that the TurboChef convection ovens used at Starbucks sometimes interfere with the wifi signal, so during the morning breakfast rush when people are requesting egg muffin things the wifi can be zapped. Also, B&N wifi disconnects you about once an hour, requiring you to log on again (requires you to go through several screens). Starbucks/B&N wifi is quite fast: you can stream music with no problem, but don't try downloading an HD video. Cosi's wifi is not very fast. Don't recall for Panera.
I agree. The industry needs to start being accountable for bugs. The problem is, the term "bug" needs to be better understood. I think you are on the right track that there needs to be a common understanding of what the standard environment is. Is it just the OS? Is it the OS with OS-certified apps?
If software vendors were accountable for bugs, then they would put pressure on the OS vendor to have a more reliable platform. Reliability would start to be something that is demanded at all levels. Maybe the OS vendors would get the message and simplify their systems instead of adding layer on top of layer on top of layer....
It is a horrible problem. My heart goes out to anyone who is a victim in such a situation. My own step son was recently a victim of something like this, but the perpetrator was also under-age. I agree that something needs to be done; I just think that we need to be careful that we don't create a problem as we try to solve a problem. The laws need to consider the situations in which communication with a child is appropriate and beneficial. Older people can offer much to younger people. Our society is in such a state of hysteria about it thought that one cannot even talk to a child anymore. It is a real shame.
Maybe Apple did indeed buy them to get engineering know-how. Apple certainly don't know how to build a reliable appliance for media serving. I have an Apple TV. It is the most troublesome product I have every had, in any category. It "just doesn't work". I have to restart the thing about once a day because it gets "stuck" if it temporarily loss a connection. It is so, so, so fragile. It is awful. It is so bad that I started keeping a log of all the times that it freezes. And it doesn't even have a power button so you have to yank the chord out and plug it back in! In contrast, I also have a Roku, and it never, ever has to be restarted and never gets "stuck". It just works. I shudder to think what Apple's new media slate will be like....
I would not expect so, but unless the rules are clear and known to all, there can be many misunderstands that end up with very severe and unexpected consequences. For example, suppose the child asks an adult (say, a rock musician) whether he/she should join a rock band. He/she explains that it is what he/she really wants to do, but his/her parents don't want him/her to do this. Suppose the musician had joined a rock band at that age and found it to be a great learning experience. Advising him/her to follow his/her dream could be construed as going against the parents' wishes, and could be construed in a very negative way, depending on the way that the government looks at "joining a rock band". (Recall that rock music was not allowed to be broadcast in England during the 60s.) My point is that the guidelines need to be clear and common sense. Otherwise, we will see court cases in which someone was merely giving their opinion with no ill intention and they end up in jail for 20 years. I have seen laws like this go astray; e.g., in Wisconsin there was a case of a 19 year old man who was found to have been sleeping with his then almost 17 year old fiance, and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison and registered as a sex offender, even though her parents knew about the relationship and approved of it and the couple was engaged to be married. These government laws to protect children, while well-intentioned, can often be very poorly written and cause tremendous harm to innocent people.
Yes. And what if a child writes to you? I have written books: what if a 16 year old writes to me and asks me something about my book? What if he/she then digresses and says "Can you please give me career advice? I like A and B but think maybe I should go into C. What do you think?" Should I then say "You are a minor so I can't really talk to you or offer you any of my wisdom, because it could be construed as an attempt to influence you and I could go to jail."
A pertinent question: Do you think that the time has come for the academic world to self-publish academic texts? Do you think that self-publishing opens up more possibilities for broad peer review, and might actually increase the quality of texts? And might it be that the very format of texts might change, from a fixed format (a "book") to a more dynamic format (e.g., a wiki)?
Hi - I might have mis-communicated. In IT publishing, the standard for a new author is indeed 10%, but it is 10% of the wholesale price, which is usually only half of the retail price, and so one ends up getting only half of 10% - i.e. 5% - of the retail price. Regards, - Cliff
As someone who has published three books through traditional publishers, and who has many colleagues who have also published, I can tell you that for technical books 5% is pretty much standard. Actually, it's 10% of the actual sale price to the publisher, which is usually half of the cover price. The other half is the markup that bookstores and other distributors get. In the technical realm, you would have to be a true superstar to get any terms better than that.
Also, the posters here who say that the author has given away exclusive rights are probably right: it is standard to do that. Publishers don't care if you retain the copyright because the contract is generally exclusive. Again, exceptions are sometimes made for "superstar" authors.
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Another thought, after reading more about the Baha'i faith.
This religion appears to make a very noble attempt at seeking truth over dogma. I hope that my prior comment was not seen as disparaging. Please understand that I know little about Baha'i.
Respectfully, I do not think so.
The link that you provided states that the Baha'i faith asserts the existence of a God who is the creator of all things. I certainly accept that science does not fully explain our existence, but I feel that it is not proven that an entity "created" the universe. Asserting that this is so puts a religion at odds with science, because science should only assert to be true what can be proven to be true, and allow for everything else to be unknown.
I agree that changing science is part of the "problem". In fact, I would go further to say that science is sometimes wrong and even manipulated. Scientists who participate in big projects with lots of funding are often critical of challenges to their research because challenges put their grants at stake. This is why "cold fusion" was so violently rejected by the established scientific community during the 80s: it challenged the billions of dollars of research funds involved in building Tokamaks.
But I have to disagree that religion rarely changes. Take the Bible for example. The bible is a compilation of texts. Someone chose which texts to include and which to leave out. Further, many biblical stories are rewritten legends that date back to Sumeria. Finally, mainstream religious leaders change their dogma from one generation to the next: e.g., the Catholic Church now accepts many scientific theories that it rejected not too long ago.
The original goal of religion must have been to explain the unknown. That is the goal of science. Unfortunately people hang onto established beliefs even when they are found to be untrue: thus, today's religions are out of harmony with science. The two should be in harmony.
What I personally have little patience for is when people accept religion without questioning: they "believe". That is not only irrational, but dangerous, because it leads to dogma, and a willingness to accept what someone else tells you without question. That is the foundation of religious extremism, and is the currency of terrorism.
The posts here that claim that Apple and/or Microsoft are over-valued might be right. I don't know.
But: there is indeed a change taking place. As the article in the NY Times says, "Consumer tastes have overtaken the needs of business as the leading force shaping [endpoint information] technology".
I think that the PC approach (which is also exemplified by the Mac) is unsustainable. Those operating systems (Mac OS, Windows, etc.) are too complex for the average user and too insecure and flaky to be used as the foundation of a base platform for truly ubiquitous computing. We need OS that are simpler, more robust, and more mobile from the ground up: OSs that don't require a user to be a system administrator.
The OS used by the iPad is not yet full featured enough to serve the needs of most users. Indeed, people do write documents, edit images, do more than one thing at a time. However, I expect that the iPad and other mobile OSs will fill out in the coming years. They are a fresh start, and a chance for the industry to do better.
Thanks for this clarification.
I wonder if some of the more promising long term technologies are covered under a different initiative?
I cannot say for sure, but I do not believe that an inertial confinement system is decades away. In fact, there was a-lot of research into such systems during the 1960s. It was abandoned during the 70s when nuclear energy for space became politically untenable, but then it was picked up again during the 90s. During the late 90s it very abruptly stopped - or went dark. (Perhaps it was successful...)
In any case, it turns out that the energy required to compress fissile pellets (the size of a grain of sand) to critical density for fission requires particle beam equipment the size of a refrigerator - i.e., very achievable. The engineering challenges then are not related to creating fission, but rather to managing the high temperature plasmas to produce usable thrust without damaging the system. These engineering challenges are very similar to the challenges that VASIMIR has, and so if they can be solved for VASIMIR one would expect that they could be solved for a fission-powered system. I believe that the plasma temperatures for a micro pulse fission system (using water as a propellant mass source) are similar to those for VASIMIR, but I cannot say for sure.
According to the RFI at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=34056 nuclear propulsion is excluded unless it is used solely for heat generation or as a power source for electric propulsion. Thus, some of the most promising nuclear technologies for rocket propulsion such as micro pellet inertial confinement compression-induced fission are excluded.
I am sure your premise is right, that OSs written in assembler are more compact. But we are talking about three orders of magnitude in growth of the size of both OSs and apps, for comparatively small gains in actual tangible functionality. There must be more to the story...
I just cannot understand why OSs - and apps as well - have become so huge. It seems that productive value per Mb has gone way, way down.
Maybe it won't require a Gb of RAM to do what used to be done with 1Mb.
I have had an Apple TV for more than a year. The interface is beautiful and indeed I use the thing for most of my TV viewing, and for playing music. But:
There is something wrong with Apple's wifi network stack. On a Mac this is no problem because if your wireless connection stops responding (can happen even with a strong signal) you just stop Airport and restart it: this takes maybe five seconds. People with Macs do this without even thinking. I have noticed that it happens in my home a-lot and I am wondering if it related to interference in my neighborhood. I have a recent model Belkin 802.11n/g router, but before that I had a recent model Cisco/Linksys router and I trashed it because of the problems that I describe - and which switching to the Belkin did not fix.
But the Apple TV does not have an easily accessible wifi on/off function or even a power on/off function and I have found that the wireless stack does not have the ability to recover when it has a problem. For example, if my wifi router loses its own internet connection (e.g, by unplugging the cable going into it) but then the connection is restored, the wireless Apple TV will think it can't get to the Internet and you have to restart it. (It does not recover from this state on its own.) I end up unplugging the Apple TV maybe once a day, because the thing has no on/off switch. Also, if it is downloading or uploading something it swamps the network and you can't do anything else.
The Apple TV is managed from iTunes on your Mac, so you really need to have a Mac (I do). The Apple TV often spontaneously disappears from iTunes and you have to try restarting iTunes and/or the Apple TV (sometimes several times) to get it to show up again.
Lastly, the Apple TV is not a media server: it is a media cache and viewer. The content on it actually lives on your Mac. So you had better have lots of storage space on your Mac. To save space on my Mac I manually copy the video files from iTunes's folder to a network drive, then delete those shows in iTunes and empty my trash. The shows then disappear from the Apple TV the next time it syncs. I wish that iTunes had an interface feature for archiving files to another drive but it does not as far as I know.
I wish they would make the thing more reliable because the functionality is fantastic. I especially love watching YouTube on it, except that it frequently loses its wifi connection somehow (even thought the signal is strong). The thing doesn't stream, technically, but for practical purposes it does, because you can start watching an HD show within moments of renting or purchasing it. I really enjoy watching 24 on it, commercial free (but $2.99 for an HD episode, $1.99 for SD). It does not usually have a wifi problem while I am watching a show: only when a show completes and then I try to watch another. I can't figure out why this would be, but I cannot tell you how many times I have had to unplug the thing and re-plug after a show in order to watch another show. Maybe it works better with an Apple wifi router - I don't know.
If you use it with a hard ethernet line it would probably not have these problems, but I have not tried that.
I see many misinterpretations of Bob Lewis's article.
If I understand him correctly, he is saying that IT should be integrated, not apart from the business. This is in fact what my book Value-Driven IT is about. (http://valuedrivenit.com/) Mark Lutchen, the author of Managing IT as a Business, wrote a foreword for this book.
However, the choice should depend on whether IT is strategic to an organization: if it is, then IT needs to be integrated, and should not be a separate internal business or a service.
If IT is strategic to an organization, it no longer makes sense to distinguish between technical issues and "business issues": in such an organization, technical issues *are* business issues. The key is to know what issues matter, and what issues don't.
This does not mean that there should not be an "IT department": there should, to manage infrastructure; but strategic IT should not be the province of a separate "non-business" group.
In my book I advocate for having a strategic "change management" group that spearheads and oversees strategic change, including technology deployment. This helps to ensure that the organization has a center of excellence for managing change, thereby reducing risk, reducing time to implement change, and increasing the agility of the organization.
I agree that "real mathematics" is more useful for application programming that discrete math.
And I also agree with the statement that most scientific professions require lots of math. I was a physics major for undergrad, and my first master's degree was in engineering, and I once estimated that I had had in effect no fewer than 20-odd math courses, because each course required lots of mathematics.
But I think that the answer to this person's question depends. It depends if the goal is to be able to do application programming, or to build reliable large scale or mission critical systems. For the latter, the lack of training in discrete mathematics has really hurt the software engineering profession. Have you noticed how the news is filled with spectacular failures of software? Often these manifest as security breaches. Sometimes they are airplane crashes. Or then we have the multitudinous reports of bugs in critical systems such as operating systems.
The root cause of the high incidence of these problems is that reliable techniques are not used to design and build most mission critical software. That is because the people designing it do not have the training to be aware of the techniques, many of which are based on discrete mathematics and proofs.
Interestingly, Erlang, a language developed to build reliable telecommunications systems that can never be turned off, was designed by electrical engineers. However, there is a mathematical basis for the language.
Yes, discrete math is extremely important for designing reliable systems. It is less so for departmental business applications that have small numbers of users.
If you want him to grow up to be a hacker with little system design discipline, teach him C.
If you want him to grow up with trade skills for writing corporate business code, teach him an OO language such as Java or Ruby, as these are the Cobol of tomorrow.
If you want him to grow up to be a designer of rock solid systems, teach him scala or another functional language, and encourage him to think in terms of algorithms and patterns instead of code.
Interesting. I'll try that in my area just to see if it works.
As far as I know Starbucks wifi is not free. (I use it in the Washington DC area.) I use it daily but I am an AT&T wifi subscriber and for me it is well worth it. To use it free in a Starbucks you have to register your Starbucks card (I think you have to do that ahead of time, but I have not checked lately), and then you get two hours of use if you buy something and go through the process of requesting that a code be sent to you via a text message and then you log on with that code. If the Starbucks is attached to a Barnes & Noble, then the wifi is free because B&N has free wifi via AT&T. Panera wifi is free. Cosi has free wifi too, but they block SMTP so you can't email unless you use webmail. The Starbucks wifi in my area (many locations) used to be really, really, really unreliable on a chronic basis, but it has gotten a-lot better very recently (past few weeks) in my area: they must be improving their setup. Note that the TurboChef convection ovens used at Starbucks sometimes interfere with the wifi signal, so during the morning breakfast rush when people are requesting egg muffin things the wifi can be zapped. Also, B&N wifi disconnects you about once an hour, requiring you to log on again (requires you to go through several screens). Starbucks/B&N wifi is quite fast: you can stream music with no problem, but don't try downloading an HD video. Cosi's wifi is not very fast. Don't recall for Panera.
I agree. The industry needs to start being accountable for bugs. The problem is, the term "bug" needs to be better understood. I think you are on the right track that there needs to be a common understanding of what the standard environment is. Is it just the OS? Is it the OS with OS-certified apps?
If software vendors were accountable for bugs, then they would put pressure on the OS vendor to have a more reliable platform. Reliability would start to be something that is demanded at all levels. Maybe the OS vendors would get the message and simplify their systems instead of adding layer on top of layer on top of layer....
Good points.
It is a horrible problem. My heart goes out to anyone who is a victim in such a situation. My own step son was recently a victim of something like this, but the perpetrator was also under-age. I agree that something needs to be done; I just think that we need to be careful that we don't create a problem as we try to solve a problem. The laws need to consider the situations in which communication with a child is appropriate and beneficial. Older people can offer much to younger people. Our society is in such a state of hysteria about it thought that one cannot even talk to a child anymore. It is a real shame.
Maybe Apple did indeed buy them to get engineering know-how. Apple certainly don't know how to build a reliable appliance for media serving. I have an Apple TV. It is the most troublesome product I have every had, in any category. It "just doesn't work". I have to restart the thing about once a day because it gets "stuck" if it temporarily loss a connection. It is so, so, so fragile. It is awful. It is so bad that I started keeping a log of all the times that it freezes. And it doesn't even have a power button so you have to yank the chord out and plug it back in! In contrast, I also have a Roku, and it never, ever has to be restarted and never gets "stuck". It just works. I shudder to think what Apple's new media slate will be like....
I would not expect so, but unless the rules are clear and known to all, there can be many misunderstands that end up with very severe and unexpected consequences. For example, suppose the child asks an adult (say, a rock musician) whether he/she should join a rock band. He/she explains that it is what he/she really wants to do, but his/her parents don't want him/her to do this. Suppose the musician had joined a rock band at that age and found it to be a great learning experience. Advising him/her to follow his/her dream could be construed as going against the parents' wishes, and could be construed in a very negative way, depending on the way that the government looks at "joining a rock band". (Recall that rock music was not allowed to be broadcast in England during the 60s.) My point is that the guidelines need to be clear and common sense. Otherwise, we will see court cases in which someone was merely giving their opinion with no ill intention and they end up in jail for 20 years. I have seen laws like this go astray; e.g., in Wisconsin there was a case of a 19 year old man who was found to have been sleeping with his then almost 17 year old fiance, and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison and registered as a sex offender, even though her parents knew about the relationship and approved of it and the couple was engaged to be married. These government laws to protect children, while well-intentioned, can often be very poorly written and cause tremendous harm to innocent people.
Yes. And what if a child writes to you? I have written books: what if a 16 year old writes to me and asks me something about my book? What if he/she then digresses and says "Can you please give me career advice? I like A and B but think maybe I should go into C. What do you think?" Should I then say "You are a minor so I can't really talk to you or offer you any of my wisdom, because it could be construed as an attempt to influence you and I could go to jail."
A pertinent question: Do you think that the time has come for the academic world to self-publish academic texts? Do you think that self-publishing opens up more possibilities for broad peer review, and might actually increase the quality of texts? And might it be that the very format of texts might change, from a fixed format (a "book") to a more dynamic format (e.g., a wiki)?
Hi - I might have mis-communicated. In IT publishing, the standard for a new author is indeed 10%, but it is 10% of the wholesale price, which is usually only half of the retail price, and so one ends up getting only half of 10% - i.e. 5% - of the retail price. Regards, - Cliff
As someone who has published three books through traditional publishers, and who has many colleagues who have also published, I can tell you that for technical books 5% is pretty much standard. Actually, it's 10% of the actual sale price to the publisher, which is usually half of the cover price. The other half is the markup that bookstores and other distributors get. In the technical realm, you would have to be a true superstar to get any terms better than that.
Also, the posters here who say that the author has given away exclusive rights are probably right: it is standard to do that. Publishers don't care if you retain the copyright because the contract is generally exclusive. Again, exceptions are sometimes made for "superstar" authors.
Because of these difficulties, I published my fourth book myself. See my thoughts on this at http://expresswaysolutions.com/valuedrivenit_com/wiki1/tiki-index.php?page=Living+Book+Concept