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Jörg Stöver
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You know what would have been awesome ? Giving credit where credit is due. Stealing catchphrases ? Not awesome.
How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead
I've been fortunate to have some measure of success in my life, primarily through this very blog over the last eight years, and in creating Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange over the last four years. With the birth of our twin girls, I've had a few months to pause and reflect on those experienc...
To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed that this generally high quality blog still stoops down to childish, sensational stuff like this. No, apps won't kill websites. Just like websites didn't kill applications. And consoles didn't kill PC gaming. And handheld devices didn't kill the desktop PC. And Linux didn't kill Windows.
Making unsubstantiated claims like that is a short sighted way to get some free extra traffic. It undermines any sense of integrity and expertise the readers place in a blog like this.
Will Apps Kill Websites?
I've been an eBay user since 1999, and I still frequent eBay as both buyer and seller. In that time, eBay has transformed from a place where geeks sell broken laser pointers to each other, into a global marketplace where businesses sell anything and everything to customers. If you're looking fo...
"If an eBook can't outperform the Internet at layout, it loses one of the strongest arguments in its favor."
That seems a rather nonsensical statement for someone who doesn't think of computers as metal boxes filled with magic. Everything available on an eBook reader will always be a subset of what is available on a real computer/"the internet". If the layout ever looked better on my Kindle, one could just copy and paste the code to make it look just as good on my Firefox.
Did I misunderstand what you were trying to say there ?
As for the rest of your article, I must largely disagree based on the reality we live in: your arguments are all based on a perfect, theoretical world. In reality, a single word crushes nearly every single point you made in the article: "piracy". With piracy, bits can easily be copied, archived, or given to friends. The publisher do not have "near unlimited power", they have near none. If any book is popular in any way, you'll be able to put "bookname download" on Google and be able to download it for free within moments. As more draconian copy right enforcement like the silent removals happens, the willingness of customers to even consider paying drops. And as books are essentially simple things (compared to games), any kind of DRM scheme is easily broken. Bonus: the small size makes downloads of a few MBs that are worth thousands of dollars easily possible.
Just go and put "Star Wars novels download" in your Google search bar.
Books: Bits vs. Atoms
I adore words, but let's face it: books suck. More specifically, so many beautiful ideas have been helplessly trapped in physical made-of-atoms books for the last few centuries. How do books suck? Let me count the ways: They are heavy. They take up too much space. They have to be printed. ...
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Apr 10, 2012
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