Oh well, whatever the reason it's a real shame (O'Reilly has also
confirmed by email that the series has been axed). Plain HTML is
pretty much an ideal format for reference material like this (how many
of us are guilty of cutting and pasting recipes straight from the
Cookbook?), and having the whole thing in a nicely indexed format was
a great complement to perldoc.
CHM does the same. What's in my not so humble opinion really crazy is
that *buying* an e-book in CHM format is next to impossible (if not,
please give me a site). Moreover, e-books have been protected, so I am
afraid it's impossible to convert, say, LIT to CHM (which I understand
should be no big deal), or LIT to PDF.
It's like going to a book store, picking a book, and having to decide if
you're going to read it in a chair, in bed, or behind a desk, and are
not allowed to read it somewhere else.
(But I might be wrong here)
By dowloading via Usenet / BitTorrent, there is no such problem. Not
that I recommend the latter, but book publishers shouldn't join the
music and video industry and accuse everybody of piracy (which is
probably not far from the true), and then waste money on measurements
like everybody is a dangerous criminal.
Also, I forgot the actual price, but getting a book by mail here (I live
in Mexico) is about 1/4th of the price of a book. Books are not cheap,
and sending them neither (and it takes 2-5 weeks). I am all for e-books,
withouth DRM (silly, people can remove that in no time, waste of money).
I can read a normal book in the library, take it from the library, copy
50 pages (or under Dutch law, all), and use the copy. I can give it to a
friend for a month, and he can make copies. Why are e-books less
compared to normal books (printing might be disabled, copy paste ditto).
Because of the pirates? Come on, books are already on Usenet and various
torrents *before* they have been printed.
Safari doesn't really do it for me - I
don't like the idea of depending on rented information, often work
offline, and can't really justify the price of a subscription for the
number of books I'm likely to use.
I can afford it, but I agree with you. My PDA has Wi-Fi, but that drains
batteries, so I prefer to upload documentation to it, and be able to
read where ever I want.
But then I'm one of those people
who still buys CDs in preference to DRM'd downloads (Safari is rather
Ditto, and DVDs for that matter. I still buy, despite nowadays it's
easier to just download (DRM free that is)
like the current Napster basic monthly subscription, where access to
the whole library ceases when you stop paying). Hopefully they'll keep
printing the paperbacks for a while yet...
If they don't I am sure number #1 cause will be the pirates, those
pirates.
I can understand piracy being a real issue for the Bookshelves - it's
I doubt it is. Printed books are also pirated. Like I wrote earlier, I
use more and more often either perldoc or Google to solve issues. I am
sure I am not alone with this. Also, more and more publishers seem to be
publishing computer related books. I recall there was a time there where
2 books for years. Now there are several published a year as far as I
can see, (even bad ones, or not worth the money ones). Reprints and new
books (I once had 3 Perl Cookbooks, which is about 120 USD (!)).
got to the stage where the first page of Google hits for many common
Perl seaches features at least one pirate site.
I used to report this but got the idea that they are not really
interested. Tracking piracy probably costs more then the actuall loss.
Via bit torrent people download hundreds of books. Wouldn't amaze me if
publishers count each of those books as a major loss. Instead of doing
that, they *should* look into real causes that maybe can be handled.
Dig a little deeper,
and you'll find pages from (e.g.) major universities (and at least one
competing publisher!) including pirate sites in their external Perl
and Linux links (quite possibly without even realising that the sites
aren't legitimate). Pirated material from other sources (e.g. OCR'd
books or ebooks with cracked DRM) isn't as blatantly accessible, and
Really, like many others, you're looking in the wrong places. The real
thing happens on Usenet and Bittorrent.
<
http://btjunkie.org/torrent?do=stat&id=
3782dc2f43b0c6e2bd6a183298d79e85a588e92b0158>
353 O'Reilly books. You really think that everybody downloading those
should have bought all those books? I own a lot of O'Reilly books, but I
don't even come close to that figure.
You really think that each download should be booked as: minus 353 x (40
USD - costs USD) USD? Wouldn't amaze me if publishers will use it like
that, record companies seem no to have problems with it, so why not?
I called it earlier propaganda: "The systematic propagation of a
doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests
of those advocating such a doctrine or cause." (source:
http://www.answers.com/topic/propaganda )
is hard to run into by accident. But it's still a shame O'Reilly bowed
to this pressure.
Again, I doubt this is the major cause.
I don't really see legitimate online resources as direct competitors
CPAN, perldoc, and the hundreds and hundreds of well written articles, a
lot standing far, far above some books I bought. Also documentation that
comes with programs seem to have improved. In the '90s this was often
"use the source, Luke".
I mean, when I used a web server for the first time, documentation was
hard to find. Now one can find countless good articles on how to
configure such a program, hints, tips, etc.
to the Bookshelves - Perl has had good free literature for a long time
(both in the core docs and in articles on sites like Stonehenge), much
of it written by the same people who write the books.
I am quite sure it's much more, and growing. The Internet is an
extremely easy publishing platform. I get about 14,000 visitors. I doubt
that if I published a book I would even get that many buyers in total,
and I am sure I will make more money in the end with it. :-D.
