As the author of five books (and my most recent one entirely self-published), I haven't yet worked out how I feel about this or how to respond. My current compromise is to charge more on the DRM-free LeanPub.
Genuine questions here, not rhetorical or trying to imply anything with them.
Why charge more on a DRM free site? Do you think people buying from there are doing so that they can share the book illegally?
If someone wants to share the book illegally, I would imagine they'll just download it from one of the pirate mirrors out there and not bother paying you at all. My guess is you're probably just reducing the number of people willing to pay the price. Classic supply and demand curve against price.
Where possible, I try not to focus on negative motives. Quite simply, if people see a benefit in DRM-free, why not expect them to pay for it? And there are other platforms beside the two I mentioned – it’s not a choice between DRM-free and (for better or for worse) Amazon.
In case your question was not rhetorical: to folks like me, I view DRM as abuse, because it inevitably leads to me paying for something that I won't end up being able to access down the line. It is in direct conflict with building a library. Having the author opt-in to applying DRM to their books (as you have on Amazon and Google Play, for example) and then expected me to pay them extra so I can actually own the thing I paid for makes me take three steps back from the "Buy" button. I tend to just walk out rather than be treated that way. As a result, I've stopped buying Amazon Kindle books entirely (now that I can't strip the DRM). If I'm paying the money, I'm going to demand control, and if I can't get that control, there will be no transaction.
FWIW, LeanPub for your book suggests $25, and the DRM-laden version is $13.50. That's quite the premium!
This is silly. You aren't competing with amazon you're competing with Anna. If someone is interested in DRM free they aren't stupid. Take the sale but don't take the piss.
Amazon wins by miles, almost to the point of incomparability. For all my issues with Amazon, that’s fine by me: compared to all other platforms, that’s where the reviews and other forms of social proof are.
Another possible compromise might be to use watermarking-based DRM. Amazon doesn't seem to support it, but other e-bookstores do. In any case, thank you for offering the LeanPub option!
Brit here. Your first pragraph describes older housing stock, not anything built in decades. Not that the quality of our quality of our stock couldn't be improved, or that our (very real) energy standards for new builds couldn't be stricter, but things aren't quite as grim everywhere as the picture you paint.
A fun project no doubt, and the “No tracking” notice at the bottom is cool I guess, but I still won’t submit a search to a previously unknown page that lacks any kind of About link or privacy-related information. What does “No tracking” mean for in terms of logging, analysis, etc, for example?
Where I live, ambulances use pulse oximeter probes incompatible with those used by in hospital and issued to home (my daughter was ventilated at night and this was a real issue). That one at least would be solved (and not expensively if only people talked to each other. It didn’t need Ferrari to surface that one!
I once worked as a paramedic at the German-French border in the 1990s. Cross-border collaboration between us ("DRK RPF 2/83/1") and the French firefighters ("Samu-67") was cordial but the radio frequencies were not just different but such that the German radios could not even be set to the French frequency (this was before mobile phones were spread beyond C-net phones for business people that looked like suitcases), and syringe tips and infusion needle tips had incompatible endings.
So on one occasion, after running out of medicine and lacking a medic, we called the French colleagues for assistance, and we'd improvise and put a needle on a syringe and injected atropin, adrenaline etc. as needed into the plastic infusion bottle instead of connecting the syringe's ending right to the incompatible butterfly (nick name for the intravenal needle).
That episode (Saturday, August 1, 1992) remains particularly memorable since this was my first day on the job, and job #4 on that 24-hour-shift (now they are banned to work that long) would become my first primarily successful resucitation after 45 min of CPR.
Re precomputing fifth powers, seems Fortran not only has array comprehensions, but compile-time array comprehensions. It was never exactly my cup of tea, but nearly 40 years out of university it seems Fortran has kinda kept up!
reply