[P1] iBook article in the NYT

[Michael Flournoy]

The problem is that the book publishers are at least as paranoid ( if 
not more so ) as the music industry is about pirating. They are both 
sitting on cash cows and don't want to get with the new world. If 
downloading bought music off the internet were; attractive, easy, and 
reasonably cheap the bulk of the stealing would stop. ( Not all of it, 
but the bulk ).  If the movie industry is happy to sell a movie on dvd 
for $15 why do the music cd's cost $18?
When the eBook idea was tried about 2 or 3 years ago it died because 
buying the books wasn't; attractive, easy, and cheap. Every brand of 
eBook had it's own proprietary format and you could only buy the books 
through them. It was all about locking up a market. Adobe had a 
professor thrown in jail because he pointed out a way around their 
eBook format security. Gee, that has a chilling affect don't you think. 
He wasn't stealing anything, he just pointed out that it could be done 
so don't lock up trade secrets with it.
  One iBook could easily hold all of a child's text books. And it could 
be updated with current information yearly. In fact with 40 & 60 GB 
hard-drives most of the research information could be held in each 
machine. Each machine could carry a " virtual internet" . The fact that 
it isn't being done is astounding.
          Mike

On Wednesday, March 5, 2003, at 11:22  PM, Jack Rodgers wrote:

> On Wednesday, March 5, 2003, at 10:55  PM, Michael Flournoy wrote:
>
>> One of the issues is the incredible load of heavy  books the kids are 
>> carrying. It is hoped that as subjects are switched to computer this 
>> will lessen. This sounds trivial but it is not, I have to strain to 
>> pick up my sons backpack and he never carries them all.
>
> I was watching kids today struggling under the weight of their 
> backpacks and wondered why none of them where smart enough to have two 
> sets of books, one for home and one for school...
>
> Maybe we should investigate the monopoly on knowledge that the printed 
> book publishers have and their lobby with the school boards that spend 
> zillions buying and rebuying their books. If the EB can be put on CD, 
> surely school books can. Or the knowledge could be put on the > internet.
>
> ---
>
> Break the Rules! Use a Sprint PC Connection Card with a tiBook:
> <http://www.powerpage.org/story.lasso?newsID=10220>
>
> jackrodgers at earthlink.net
> http://www.jackrodgers.com
>
>
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