ANN: Long-overdue CU bug-fix

[Richard Heathfield]

Keith Thompson said:

Presumably the publisher owns the copyright on the book.
Indeed.

You're asking Richard to violate that copyright (and the "usual
places" probably specialize in copyright violation).

Of course I will not violate the publisher's copyright. Having said
that, I am not enamoured of the concept of publishers owning the
copyright in books they did not themselves write. I had no choice for
CU, of course, but I do have choices for the future.

The OP also makes the rather silly mistake of assuming that a PDF of the
book actually exists. I have made no such PDF, and nor do I plan to.

I've seen cheap used copies for sale on www.barnesandnoble.com.
(There are only two, and now that I've posted this they'll probably go
quickly.)

I'm determined to find a better business model for technical writing.
The current model does not encourage people to provide highly polished
material for publication. What you get in the technical book market is
(mostly) badly-written pulp fiction[1] at premium hardback prices.
There aren't many gems out there, and finding them gets more and more
difficult.

[1] Of course, it's not /supposed/ to be fiction...

 

[Charlton Wilbur]

RH> I'm determined to find a better business model for technical
RH> writing. The current model does not encourage people to
RH> provide highly polished material for publication. What you get
RH> in the technical book market is (mostly) badly-written pulp
RH> fiction[1] at premium hardback prices. There aren't many gems
RH> out there, and finding them gets more and more difficult.

The current model arose because the audience for technical books seems
remarkably undiscriminating in terms of quality -- and so unscrupulous
publishers take advantage of that. So long as the majority of
customers are willing to pay premium hardback prices for gibberish,
that's what they'll get.

This is probably fed by the phenomenon that unless you know something
about the field, you can't tell a good reference from a bad one.
Failing that, you have to rely on the publisher to do a good job of
technical editing, and most of them can't be bothered.

So there's a lot of money to be made from selling wrong information to
ignorant people; and as it costs more in time and effort to produce
correct information, until people stop being willing to buy incorrect
information, the problem will persist.

Charlton

 

[Mark McIntyre]

Failing that, you have to rely on the publisher to do a good job of
technical editing, and most of them can't be bothered.

And even the ones that can, have deadlines imposed by printers, book
fairs, distributors and consumers. Nobody wants to buy the catalogue
for an exhibition /after/ its finished...

--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan