Nice plot theory, however, I'd like to believe that signal travels better in free-space
Ok, you can just put your faith in your belief, or you can click on the parent link and see someone who tested it scientifically.
And the person who actually tested this is a professor of computer science at the University of Western Ontario, a mathematician, environmental scientist, and author of books on diverse subjects.
Slashdot is a hard place to figure out, if someone believes in God, then actual science is the only thing that really counts with the slashdot crowd, but if someone presents actual science, then faith in a personal belief overrides the actual science?
The way Professor Dewdney tested this makes pretty good sense to me. He took a plane up and made a chart of how well a cell phone worked at certain altitudes.
...And cell phones sometimes have trouble working when the plane is at cruising altitude because phone towers aren't built to project their signals that high.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they have to come up with what amounts to an onboard cell site/repeater to make the cell phones work from a flying airplane?
When people figure out how bad service is at cruising altitudes, they will start to question how all of those nice clear calls were made from those hijacked planes.
I don't think it matters. The point is, what is the difference between me believing a UFO "seeded" the earth with lifeforms, or me believing that cells grouped together and formed more advanced cells, which evolved to become life as we know it? Neither one can be proven scientifically, and either stance would take a leap of faith if a person considered either a deeply held belief.
Kind of amazing how two people can take a leap of faith and one be perceived as absolutely correct, and one be perceived as a nut job, when in fact, they are both pretty much equal as far as their ability to prove either stance "scientifically."
I don't think that it's faith that scientists go on; it's probability. We simply accept what is likely to be true based on evidence already collected and analyzed.
Well, I think we can both agree that animals adapt to their environment and improve both themselves and their offspring to thrive in said environment.
But I would disagree that scientists go on probability. The odds that cells improved, joined together and then turned into what we see today, are astronomical.
Now this doesn't prove the existence of God. For all we know, a UFO could have come down and seeded the earth. But it does prove that scientist take a lot of things on faith. I will stand by my former "flambait" on this: if someone walked in out of the desert and had never heard of Darwin, they would not look at the scientific evidence we have now and come to the conclusion that man evolved from cells on rocks. And funny, a lot of people will say that man evolved from apes, but if you start asking them about cells on rocks turning into monkeys, they usually start to have a lot of doubts, as any logically-thinking person should.
The one point that evolution can't explain is the creation of the first molecules that make it more likely that other molecules similar to themselves will come to be compared to alternatives.
And that's what always rubs me in this debate. At some point, evolutionists take a lot of things on faith, because quite simply, given the lack of actual evidence, it is easier to believe than an external being creating life in its full form. But at some point, faith and belief in something that can't be proven is just as much like believing in a God that created us, which also can't be proven (oh, I know, at least one side is "scientific" about its beliefs).
Now I have my beliefs, but I think if we hadn't have had evolutionist beliefs shoved down our throats from morning until night for all these years, there are few people that would believe that life just sprang from nothing and evolved from a few cells into complete animals.
If a person had never heard of Darwin's evolution and started studying the fossil record, I'm hard pressed to see that they would have come to same conclusions. Evidence Liebniz's studies some 300 years ago:
Liebniz's studies of the German silver-mines nearly 300 years ago still serve as a profound read in attempting to describe the untold picture of this world's primordial infancy as reflected in geological formations. Liebniz details a picture which is much different than any trendy evolutionary or impassive geological theory. Liebniz saw, in the Earthy silver-mines, layers and formations of rock indicating a wild, arbitrary, fantastic, confused, totally surprising geomorphic history of a planet Earth bursting with a metamorphoses of forms.
To put this idea in a more tangible context, Liebniz saw geology in as objective a fashion as we could hope, because he was not over-filled with any preconceived ideas as to what he should see. The contemporary models of geomorphism had not been developed yet and did not hamper his observations.
Yeah, a bloated and hated company that has a huge amount of computers going to its site every day buys a company that has a huge amount of cookies on everybody's computers. Match the two together somehow and you probably have more of an issue than searching on google and using gmail at the same time...at least this would probably be able to tie a much lager portion of users to their surfing habits.
What could only add to the mix would be Microsoft + Double Click + Homeland Security (and maybe throw AT&T into the mix as well)
You know, I can't think but of one or two times in my life I have used a manufactures warranty. I do consider it in my purchases from time to time, but if I had the choice between a snowboard with a warranty or the same board at half price and no warranty, I know exactly which one I would get.
I always think how much better the economy would run if manufactures just lowered the price on everything and stopped offering warranties all together. If something breaks, just buy a new one at a fair price and not have to waste time and money trying to ship something back. And at the cost of postage, sometimes it is more expensive to ship the item then what it is actually worth. Which by the way, is the reason many people don't use a warranty. So they are paying a premium on an item, just to not use something they paid for, because it isn't cost effective when you actually need it.
I'm actually taking two Cisco exams in April. Not sure if I will pass, but I do feel I have a shot at it.
And I will say, the worst thing about Brainbench is its kind of stupid name, in my opinion. But if I was an employer and had to hire someone, first, I would go for someone with actual experience, but failing that a Brainbench certification would impress me a heck of a lot more than a CompTIA cert.
I guess I'm just White & Nerdy, but I actually have some free practice test web sites, so I work with test questions quit a bit (not that that makes me an expert or anything), and the actual test questions on a Brainbench exam are really good, I don't care what anybody says. I took a couple of Cisco exams there that made sweat bead up on my forehead. I know people who took Cisco classes in college, and I would bet good money none of them would be able to just breeze through the exams.
I do agree that their certifications are basically worthless, but I think as far as the questions go, they are solid questions.
Ok, I snagged this from a Slashdot post a while back, author unknown:
Assume there are 2 people up for a job:
(1) If neither has the experience and one has the certification, the one with the certification wins. (2) If one has the experience and no certification and other has no experience but a certification, the person with experience wins. (3) If both have the same experience and only one has the extra certification, the one with the certification wins. (4) If both have the same certifications and the same experience, the one who is cheaper wins. (5) If both have certifications and neither has any experience, the one who talks better wins. (6) If neither has any certifications or experience, the one who looks better wins.
Got Network+ certified a couple of months ago. The actual test material isn't bad, and it covers a lot of networking fundamentals from a vendor neutral standpoint. I had heard they had really made the test a lot harder. Boy, if my test was hard, I would have hated to have seen the easy test. It seemed repetitive and all very easy, with a lot of port number questions, firewall questions, and basic TCP/IP utility questions, most of which I could have passed without hardly any actual study.
Now, I see no reason to make it so hard that hardly anybody can pass (Cisco are you listening?), but it would be nice to have a test that reflected the study material a little better. All in all, I have had Brainbench exams that were much, much harder to pass.
Well, because it isn't free I will probably get modded down for this, but I have messed around with stuff like OpenWRT on a Linksys and although it was kind of neat, what I would do is ditch the Linksys and run Mikrotik's RouterOS on a RouterBoard or similar hardware. I'm not saying it is perfect, but the RouterOS platform, which based on Linux, along with a custom-built CLI, is the most advanced of any software I have ever looked at for a wireless AP.
I came up with something similar about six months or a year ago which I dubbed "CopWatch."
Basically, it uses the same principle, but every time you see a traffic cop, you press a button somewhere in your car. Your car, with the use of a GPS, then beacons the location of the police car. Other cars then repeat the beacon, which does have a TTL value on it as well.
To prevent false positives, there is a limit to how many reports someone could generate in a set time period, and multiple reports in the same area could mod the threat up.
This would all be happening pretty transparently to everyone, unless they were within a set distance of an active alert, at which point they would be alerted to the danger.
Of course, this network would get shut down with a vengeance, but wouldn't it be nice to turn the tables and let everyone get to hear how the Man doesn't like to be watched.
You know, though, as we move into a Big Brother surveillance society, following in the steps of England, I see the use of technology to form rouge networks like the one above as one of the last ditch attempts at maintaining some appearance of freedom...
If you are interested in that, you might also like the book, Superlearning, by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder with Nancy Ostrander, which involves studying while listening to classical music. Also, another good book is The Memory Book, by Harry Lorayne & Jerry Lucas. You can go to Amazon and read a lot of people's comments about both books (and prob. pick up either book used for next to nothing).
I used both methods to study for an FCC GROL test I needed to take for work. Honestly, there is some crap involved in Superlearning, but I do feel there is a *little* something to it.
But here is my take on both of the above methods of learning. They work good if you have to memorize a set amount of information. For example, the FCC GROL has a question pool of around 900 questions and answers...and the actual test questions come out of this pool. I basically memorized the entire pool and used the Superlearning and memory tricks from the Memory Book to help me in the parts I had trouble with. I passed the test my first time, made a 99 on the hard part of the FCC GROL test, and finished the complete test in like 10 to 15 minutes (note: my boss at the time thought the test was super hard and failed it his first time.).
Now I have been studying for my Cisco CCNA. When you don't know what is actually going to be on a test, the Superlearning and memory tricks are much less useful, although I have used them in a couple of areas where I had trouble with specific items. Also, I am trying to learn the material more from doing than from just memorizing, because unlike the FCC GROL, I really want to understand what is going on with Cisco routers.
Unless he doesn't use online activation with arbitrary keys, but instead has an algorithm in his program that determines the validity of the key. That's just asking to be cracked.
The above is also asking that people not buy your crappy software. I have drastically cut down on the amount of software I register now due to the fact of online activation.
Before, if a company went out of business, and my computer crashed or I upgraded, I could just reinstall the program and enter my key. Now that they got all wise to piracy, if the company goes out of business and my computer crashes or I upgrade, I'm just out o' luck.
Well, I'm sorry, but I don't play that. I have registered a couple of things that I just had to because I had no choice, but there are things I would have once registered that the creators can just bite me if they think I'm giving them my money.
Just one more thing driving more people to free or open source software...
A large amount of malware configures itself so that it starts up each time you reboot. If something just popped up and said program x wants to start each time you boot your computer, do you want to allow this, yes/no, a ton of crap could be stopped right there. I know that is similar to a firewall asking if it is ok for an application to access the internet, but I have haven't ever seen anything that monitors programs that start on boot up.
On my list of windows annoyances, is that there are too many ways for a program to load itself at boot time, several of them pretty hard to understand for people who aren't too computer savy.
I have started putting the Startup Control Panel, by Mike Lin, on a lot of people's computers and it really makes it easier for them to control this crap. Plus, from time to time, someone actually gets a clue that huge amounts of stuff running in the background slows your computer down.
Tomacco was accidentally created by Homer Simpson when he "planted a little bit of everything" and fertilized his tomato and tobacco fields with plutonium. The result is a tomato that apparently has a dried, gray tobacco center, and, although being described as tasting terrible by many characters (Ralph Wiggum: "Eww, Daddy, this tastes like Grandma!"), is also immediately and powerfully addictive. (Wikipedia)
As stocks are pumped and dumped, its very possibly that many day traders (not investors) make a pretty penny by exploiting the actions of those who are pumping and dumping.
What would really be funny is if it was found out that it was the services that all of the day traders were using to do their trades, that was doing the spamming all along. Of all the winners and losers, the people making a flat rate or a percentage of each of these transactions, are the real winners, and they make their money on the transaction regardless of which way the stock goes.
Now how the hell was that posting a troll? The story was about IE 7 causing problems and I posted a comment on the upgrade to IE 7... causing problems.
Just another example of getting modded down if you don't goose-step the/. way...
I don't disagree with your position. I think that people who put work into something that is easily copied still deserve to be compensated for their work in the fashion that they so desire. I'm just pointing out that the vast majority of people here disagree with you except when it comes to information about them.
Ok, I misunderstood you. I'm certainly not new here, but I don't mind going against the grain from time to time. I thought you were just attacking me for DRM, when in reality, the books do not have DRM that keep them from being pirated...only what I thought was a fair trade-off that would at least make someone have to work a little bit to swipe the content.
I've published tons of material online for free under a Creative Commons 2.0 license, and I don't feel a bit bad if I have something that I worked hard on and don't want made available for free.
Besides, look at Baen Books; they're a very popular SciFi publishing company that publishes their books in DRM-free formats.
I agree, and I have read some of Baen's material. In the end, however, I think Baen really profits by selling hard copies of their books, and all of their DRM-free content is a great advertising vehicle. I don't have that luxury.
Unless you're a big name publisher (e.g. O'Reilly), you probably have nothing to worry about piracy of ebooks.
I wasn't really. The books contain no DRM that stops piracy. Piracy wasn't my concern, as much as just stopping people from being able to copy and paste the entire contents of the book and post it on a web site. The books are printable, so they could print and OCR the material. If they want to go to that much trouble, more power to them. I don't see why I should make it easy for them, though.
And the solution I came up with seem(ed) a lot more fair than a piece of crap PDF file, at least to me, anyway.
Personally, I don't think anyone got screwed. The purchasers got a good book for next to nothing, and there was no DRM that stopped distribution, despite the conclusions that some people jumped to, nor was there any implied agreement that the books would last forever. Stuff happens.
Microsoft sucks, but they do go out of their way for backwards compatibility (and that is one of the reasons that adds to their suckiness, ironically). But I don't think that anyone expects never to run into a program that works with every version of an OS, past, present and future.
I have run into the following issue, have you?
Dependency hell - Dependency hell occurs in package-based operating systems - particularly Linux - and is a colloquial term for the frustration of many users who have installed software packages which have dependencies on specific versions of other packages. This version information is often part of the package management system, which can refuse to install software without the precise versions of its prerequisite packages installed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_hell
Slashdot Mirror
Nice plot theory, however, I'd like to believe that signal travels better in free-space
Ok, you can just put your faith in your belief, or you can click on the parent link and see someone who tested it scientifically.
And the person who actually tested this is a professor of computer science at the University of Western Ontario, a mathematician, environmental scientist, and author of books on diverse subjects.
Slashdot is a hard place to figure out, if someone believes in God, then actual science is the only thing that really counts with the slashdot crowd, but if someone presents actual science, then faith in a personal belief overrides the actual science?
The way Professor Dewdney tested this makes pretty good sense to me. He took a plane up and made a chart of how well a cell phone worked at certain altitudes.
transporter_ii
From cnn.com:
...And cell phones sometimes have trouble working when the plane is at cruising altitude because phone towers aren't built to project their signals that high.
Source
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they have to come up with what amounts to an onboard cell site/repeater to make the cell phones work from a flying airplane?
Transporter_ii
When people figure out how bad service is at cruising altitudes, they will start to question how all of those nice clear calls were made from those hijacked planes.
See here Project Achilles' Report
Transporter_ii
What created that being?
I don't think it matters. The point is, what is the difference between me believing a UFO "seeded" the earth with lifeforms, or me believing that cells grouped together and formed more advanced cells, which evolved to become life as we know it? Neither one can be proven scientifically, and either stance would take a leap of faith if a person considered either a deeply held belief.
Kind of amazing how two people can take a leap of faith and one be perceived as absolutely correct, and one be perceived as a nut job, when in fact, they are both pretty much equal as far as their ability to prove either stance "scientifically."
Transporter_ii
I don't think that it's faith that scientists go on; it's probability. We simply accept what is likely to be true based on evidence already collected and analyzed.
Well, I think we can both agree that animals adapt to their environment and improve both themselves and their offspring to thrive in said environment.
But I would disagree that scientists go on probability. The odds that cells improved, joined together and then turned into what we see today, are astronomical.
Now this doesn't prove the existence of God. For all we know, a UFO could have come down and seeded the earth. But it does prove that scientist take a lot of things on faith. I will stand by my former "flambait" on this: if someone walked in out of the desert and had never heard of Darwin, they would not look at the scientific evidence we have now and come to the conclusion that man evolved from cells on rocks. And funny, a lot of people will say that man evolved from apes, but if you start asking them about cells on rocks turning into monkeys, they usually start to have a lot of doubts, as any logically-thinking person should.
And that's what always rubs me in this debate. At some point, evolutionists take a lot of things on faith, because quite simply, given the lack of actual evidence, it is easier to believe than an external being creating life in its full form. But at some point, faith and belief in something that can't be proven is just as much like believing in a God that created us, which also can't be proven (oh, I know, at least one side is "scientific" about its beliefs).
Now I have my beliefs, but I think if we hadn't have had evolutionist beliefs shoved down our throats from morning until night for all these years, there are few people that would believe that life just sprang from nothing and evolved from a few cells into complete animals.
If a person had never heard of Darwin's evolution and started studying the fossil record, I'm hard pressed to see that they would have come to same conclusions. Evidence Liebniz's studies some 300 years ago:
Yeah, a bloated and hated company that has a huge amount of computers going to its site every day buys a company that has a huge amount of cookies on everybody's computers. Match the two together somehow and you probably have more of an issue than searching on google and using gmail at the same time...at least this would probably be able to tie a much lager portion of users to their surfing habits.
What could only add to the mix would be Microsoft + Double Click + Homeland Security (and maybe throw AT&T into the mix as well)
Transporter_ii
You know, I can't think but of one or two times in my life I have used a manufactures warranty. I do consider it in my purchases from time to time, but if I had the choice between a snowboard with a warranty or the same board at half price and no warranty, I know exactly which one I would get.
I always think how much better the economy would run if manufactures just lowered the price on everything and stopped offering warranties all together. If something breaks, just buy a new one at a fair price and not have to waste time and money trying to ship something back. And at the cost of postage, sometimes it is more expensive to ship the item then what it is actually worth. Which by the way, is the reason many people don't use a warranty. So they are paying a premium on an item, just to not use something they paid for, because it isn't cost effective when you actually need it.
Transporter_ii
I'm actually taking two Cisco exams in April. Not sure if I will pass, but I do feel I have a shot at it.
And I will say, the worst thing about Brainbench is its kind of stupid name, in my opinion. But if I was an employer and had to hire someone, first, I would go for someone with actual experience, but failing that a Brainbench certification would impress me a heck of a lot more than a CompTIA cert.
I guess I'm just White & Nerdy, but I actually have some free practice test web sites, so I work with test questions quit a bit (not that that makes me an expert or anything), and the actual test questions on a Brainbench exam are really good, I don't care what anybody says. I took a couple of Cisco exams there that made sweat bead up on my forehead. I know people who took Cisco classes in college, and I would bet good money none of them would be able to just breeze through the exams.
I do agree that their certifications are basically worthless, but I think as far as the questions go, they are solid questions.
Transporter_ii
Ok, I snagged this from a Slashdot post a while back, author unknown:
Assume there are 2 people up for a job:
(1) If neither has the experience and one has the certification, the one with the certification wins.
(2) If one has the experience and no certification and other has no experience but a certification, the person with experience wins.
(3) If both have the same experience and only one has the extra certification, the one with the certification wins.
(4) If both have the same certifications and the same experience, the one who is cheaper wins.
(5) If both have certifications and neither has any experience, the one who talks better wins.
(6) If neither has any certifications or experience, the one who looks better wins.
Transporter_ii
Got Network+ certified a couple of months ago. The actual test material isn't bad, and it covers a lot of networking fundamentals from a vendor neutral standpoint. I had heard they had really made the test a lot harder. Boy, if my test was hard, I would have hated to have seen the easy test. It seemed repetitive and all very easy, with a lot of port number questions, firewall questions, and basic TCP/IP utility questions, most of which I could have passed without hardly any actual study.
Now, I see no reason to make it so hard that hardly anybody can pass (Cisco are you listening?), but it would be nice to have a test that reflected the study material a little better. All in all, I have had Brainbench exams that were much, much harder to pass.
Transporter_ii
Well, because it isn't free I will probably get modded down for this, but I have messed around with stuff like OpenWRT on a Linksys and although it was kind of neat, what I would do is ditch the Linksys and run Mikrotik's RouterOS on a RouterBoard or similar hardware. I'm not saying it is perfect, but the RouterOS platform, which based on Linux, along with a custom-built CLI, is the most advanced of any software I have ever looked at for a wireless AP.
Transporter_ii
I came up with something similar about six months or a year ago which I dubbed "CopWatch."
Basically, it uses the same principle, but every time you see a traffic cop, you press a button somewhere in your car. Your car, with the use of a GPS, then beacons the location of the police car. Other cars then repeat the beacon, which does have a TTL value on it as well.
To prevent false positives, there is a limit to how many reports someone could generate in a set time period, and multiple reports in the same area could mod the threat up.
This would all be happening pretty transparently to everyone, unless they were within a set distance of an active alert, at which point they would be alerted to the danger.
Of course, this network would get shut down with a vengeance, but wouldn't it be nice to turn the tables and let everyone get to hear how the Man doesn't like to be watched.
You know, though, as we move into a Big Brother surveillance society, following in the steps of England, I see the use of technology to form rouge networks like the one above as one of the last ditch attempts at maintaining some appearance of freedom...
Transporter_ii
If you are interested in that, you might also like the book, Superlearning, by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder with Nancy Ostrander, which involves studying while listening to classical music. Also, another good book is The Memory Book, by Harry Lorayne & Jerry Lucas. You can go to Amazon and read a lot of people's comments about both books (and prob. pick up either book used for next to nothing).
I used both methods to study for an FCC GROL test I needed to take for work. Honestly, there is some crap involved in Superlearning, but I do feel there is a *little* something to it.
But here is my take on both of the above methods of learning. They work good if you have to memorize a set amount of information. For example, the FCC GROL has a question pool of around 900 questions and answers...and the actual test questions come out of this pool. I basically memorized the entire pool and used the Superlearning and memory tricks from the Memory Book to help me in the parts I had trouble with. I passed the test my first time, made a 99 on the hard part of the FCC GROL test, and finished the complete test in like 10 to 15 minutes (note: my boss at the time thought the test was super hard and failed it his first time.).
Now I have been studying for my Cisco CCNA. When you don't know what is actually going to be on a test, the Superlearning and memory tricks are much less useful, although I have used them in a couple of areas where I had trouble with specific items. Also, I am trying to learn the material more from doing than from just memorizing, because unlike the FCC GROL, I really want to understand what is going on with Cisco routers.
Transporter_ii
The above is also asking that people not buy your crappy software. I have drastically cut down on the amount of software I register now due to the fact of online activation.
Before, if a company went out of business, and my computer crashed or I upgraded, I could just reinstall the program and enter my key. Now that they got all wise to piracy, if the company goes out of business and my computer crashes or I upgrade, I'm just out o' luck.
Well, I'm sorry, but I don't play that. I have registered a couple of things that I just had to because I had no choice, but there are things I would have once registered that the creators can just bite me if they think I'm giving them my money.
Just one more thing driving more people to free or open source software...
transporter_ii
My definition of a police state: When the lawmakers exempt themselves from the laws they make and enforce on everyone else.
Transporter_ii
A large amount of malware configures itself so that it starts up each time you reboot. If something just popped up and said program x wants to start each time you boot your computer, do you want to allow this, yes/no, a ton of crap could be stopped right there. I know that is similar to a firewall asking if it is ok for an application to access the internet, but I have haven't ever seen anything that monitors programs that start on boot up.
On my list of windows annoyances, is that there are too many ways for a program to load itself at boot time, several of them pretty hard to understand for people who aren't too computer savy.
I have started putting the Startup Control Panel, by Mike Lin, on a lot of people's computers and it really makes it easier for them to control this crap. Plus, from time to time, someone actually gets a clue that huge amounts of stuff running in the background slows your computer down.
Transporter_ii
"Eww, Daddy, this tastes like Grandma!" -- Ralph Wiggum
Tomacco was accidentally created by Homer Simpson when he "planted a little bit of everything" and fertilized his tomato and tobacco fields with plutonium. The result is a tomato that apparently has a dried, gray tobacco center, and, although being described as tasting terrible by many characters (Ralph Wiggum: "Eww, Daddy, this tastes like Grandma!"), is also immediately and powerfully addictive. (Wikipedia)
As stocks are pumped and dumped, its very possibly that many day traders (not investors) make a pretty penny by exploiting the actions of those who are pumping and dumping.
What would really be funny is if it was found out that it was the services that all of the day traders were using to do their trades, that was doing the spamming all along. Of all the winners and losers, the people making a flat rate or a percentage of each of these transactions, are the real winners, and they make their money on the transaction regardless of which way the stock goes.
Transporter_ii
You're never going to get everyone to agree on a set of appropriate tags.
Then how come everyone on here has agreed on a handful of standard tags:
?????
transporter_ii
Now how the hell was that posting a troll? The story was about IE 7 causing problems and I posted a comment on the upgrade to IE 7 ... causing problems.
/. way...
Just another example of getting modded down if you don't goose-step the
Meta Moderators...please do your job!
Transporter_ii
I don't disagree with your position. I think that people who put work into something that is easily copied still deserve to be compensated for their work in the fashion that they so desire. I'm just pointing out that the vast majority of people here disagree with you except when it comes to information about them.
Ok, I misunderstood you. I'm certainly not new here, but I don't mind going against the grain from time to time. I thought you were just attacking me for DRM, when in reality, the books do not have DRM that keep them from being pirated...only what I thought was a fair trade-off that would at least make someone have to work a little bit to swipe the content.
I've published tons of material online for free under a Creative Commons 2.0 license, and I don't feel a bit bad if I have something that I worked hard on and don't want made available for free.
transporter_ii
Besides, look at Baen Books; they're a very popular SciFi publishing company that publishes their books in DRM-free formats.
I agree, and I have read some of Baen's material. In the end, however, I think Baen really profits by selling hard copies of their books, and all of their DRM-free content is a great advertising vehicle. I don't have that luxury.
Unless you're a big name publisher (e.g. O'Reilly), you probably have nothing to worry about piracy of ebooks.
I wasn't really. The books contain no DRM that stops piracy. Piracy wasn't my concern, as much as just stopping people from being able to copy and paste the entire contents of the book and post it on a web site. The books are printable, so they could print and OCR the material. If they want to go to that much trouble, more power to them. I don't see why I should make it easy for them, though.
And the solution I came up with seem(ed) a lot more fair than a piece of crap PDF file, at least to me, anyway.
Transporter_ii
Personally, I don't think anyone got screwed. The purchasers got a good book for next to nothing, and there was no DRM that stopped distribution, despite the conclusions that some people jumped to, nor was there any implied agreement that the books would last forever. Stuff happens.
Microsoft sucks, but they do go out of their way for backwards compatibility (and that is one of the reasons that adds to their suckiness, ironically). But I don't think that anyone expects never to run into a program that works with every version of an OS, past, present and future.
I have run into the following issue, have you?
Transporter_ii