Yes, they get the online version, too. (Arlington VA) The high schools are starting to give out iPads, too. Some number of kids are given laptops if they don't have computer access at home (my not-poor but deprived kid got one of these because, well, we don't do Windows). This is a fairly affluent district, but the iPad used doesn't seem so $$$ compared to textbooks that already cost $80/each. The kids take better care of them than I would have expected, too. I wonder if Apple has a good bulk price for the things. Hey, most of the kids already carry cellphones worth $200-800. When I was a kid I carried a quarter for the payphone, and it was NOT that long ago. Yes, there's no reason most of the same stuff should not be available on a cheap kindle or nook or whatever. The iPad does allow the student to do some more creative work... ... but the immediate Q here is content. The e-reader (whatever the tablets are) is inevitable. I'm hoping textbooks become kind of like Linux? Except easier to install. :) I didn't refocus on college textbooks, the actual OP, but there OMG i would have saved a lot of money. On texts I often didn't use. ... if texts stay proprietary, will there be a secondary market in them? I think the publishers will at *most* offer licensing deals to institutions. Well, anyway, surely we can manage some public domain basic math texts; the fundamentals haven't and never will change.

It's not just a good idea, it's inevitable. The immediate drive, always a convincing one in politics, is money. the interesting Q is HOW to do it, but whether to start, and to do it with public money is a no-brainer. You might otherwise as well question whether public-financed education is relevant. That ship has sailed, and this is just one part of that critical project. Feynman's essay on textbook adoption is timeless: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

Current textbooks are overweight, expensive, and boring. Many schools including ours have been reduced into getting students two copies because they were to heavy to take to school and back (really). Now the kids rarely even open the things.

Patience, it will happen. I wonder about the translation barrier—good translation is expensive. No, not all of us Americans expect everyone to learn English. :) But also, the book I'm working on ... I'm very sensitive about the way I put things and have to wonder how much is "lost in translation." Anyway, these arte other issues from copyright.... Where do you live? I'll make it a priority!

Yep. As I emphasized, the stuff should get read, and copyright at some point just gets in the way. I'm not sure how many authors, now dead, would have wanted the extensions to happen. *Disney* on the other hand wants to conserve its assets and didn't want to see new Mickey Mouses. That's the real fire behind these extensions, and weird sentimentality about the oeuvre of (semi-martyred) Sonny Bono. Now, most writers *don't* die with huge estates and do want to pass something of value to their heirs (it's unlikely to be a family estate! which doesn't expire). They have to strike a balance in there somewhere.

When you made the burgers, you were paid on the apot. That's not the usual model for writers. They get it a dime or dollar at a time. Maybe that's part of the problem.

Writers are part of society. What is best for society includes their welfare (food, housing) and, for their readers (all of us), keeping them productive. Finally, this is for better or worse capitalism, so you have some control over the things you make (in Lockean theory). If you want to depart from that principle, fine, but don't just inflict it on the writers because it's easy!

The rest of your arguments are just that writers like musicians can get into some other business and give their work away. Well, some can, but why force them in the name of the common good? Writing is a profession in itself with real work product taht deserves the respect given other things. (Yes, I know there's a longrunning debate over "words want to be free" or something, but I can't even grasp that one imposed 100%. I *do* love old works that are public domain, i think it's a great thing -- partly because many copyrighted works are for the moment so hard to come by.)

Preservation of the text obviously takes precedence over losing them! Then everyone loses. Google is engaged in a very important thing and I hope they'll be socially mided about it ... as opposed to (evil) greedbags.

And I intimated in the original comment that our current laws are stupid. That one's easy.

... that people get to read these works!

As a writer I understand the tension between wanting to be read and wanting to be paid. Some want only the former, some the latter; I want both, kind of like eat to live and live to eat combined. Such is my right. But I find the resistence to digitization foolish, a fixation on money and a holdover from dead tree books plus a first use doctrine many publishers and authors never liked. It's obstructionist.

As a reader, full speed ahead. I am so tired of books missing at the library or out of print. Then there's the allure of getting a book within thirty seconds. Yes, I'll pay for the privilege, can we please hurry up with an eye to both principles (get read, get paid)? And books in the public domain? Rapture. (Topic for another day: The insane extension of copyright in the Mickey Mouse / Sonny Bono Act.....)

Calvin & Hobbes: http://madshakespeare.com/2010/08/sunday-funnies-verbing-weirds-language/

The schools are running scared. School IT admin seems to lag everywhere by a generation or two or three. We're going through the latest round of IT snafus in our school system as the year begins, and it's really quite sad.

I think the blanket "protective" rules are aimed at setting up bright lines that any idiot can administer without really dealing with the human beings involved or reflecting on how porous technology makes communication to anyone determined. Seduction (in either direction) is a *social* problem not tech, and sure wasn't invented recently. These rules won't stop the problem, they're just a way of the schools burying their heads in the sand instead of dealing with the content of the problem. It's like relying on curfew to stop teenage pregnancy. Preventing abusive relationships is an education topic, not appropriate for some idiotic 50's notion that the key is to prevent the communication of "bad ideas" -- or than the medium generates the ideas!

I agree and would characterize the benefits that definitely have flowed from NASA as more of a "rebate," kind of a hidden reduction of the cost of the programs to reach stated objective. People who say the indirect acheivements make the main mission worth the money are not considering the benefits of actually investing in the goal straightaway in the first place. The manned space program, in particular, I think had been very wasteful. It is well documented that it sapped other important science projects of funding and NASA struggled to make everything a Shuttle mission. I'm not heartless: Apollo was also phenomenally expensive, but, well, I'm glad we did it! Reaching for the stars is not crazy, even if it's inefficient at generating real payoff.

Whether we would have been disciplined enough to pursue these goals if, say, space were impossible is another and no less important question (probably not! and that makes me sad). Go to the Moon or Mars gets the public interested. Probes surveying distant worlds or even space telescopes, not so much (but it helps a lot if they return gorgeous pictures of relatively little scientific value). This sounds elitist and maybe it is, but it's pragmatic, too. Many people like the space program for the same reason they like TV and sports -- entertainment, and that's not all bad.

Frankly the space program is mere pennies in comparison to other areas of the budget, one in particular. We could flood NSF with money, maybe cure cancer, and also build a (probably useless) Moon base.

Has anyone cited?: http://xkcd.com/538/ ("Security") It appleis to crime invesigations, too.

The geeky view is to ascribe much too much sophistication to criminals and decry logical failings. The brilliant "but I coudn't have been there" stories suggested just don't work in interrogation. In the real world 95% of crimes are really pretty simply and the perps don't plan things out very well. When I worked for an appeals court, very very few of the cases would have provided good material for a crime drama. Most of the time, it was a pretty simple matter of catching the guy and not that much investigative work went into it. The sawed-off shotgun was lying out in plain view on the bed and so on. It was depressing, really.

Yep. Evidence is pretty much all "circumstantial," some a lot less so, others more. Even a confession or video or whatever can have serious issues. ... and of course most criminals outside of TV shows and movies DON'T think things through meticulously. There are plenty of impulsive crimes and dumb criminals. It's one of the only silver linings on the correlation of bad education and bad acts. Plus most of us don't realize how much is being recorded all the time by cellphones, internal car computers, etc.

You miss my point! I was playing paranoid and mostly grumpy about the expansion of security cameras and hidden cameras "gotcha" stings. There will be little difficulty getting coverage, it's mostly there already, and then there are the little remote control airplanes etc. No NASA needed (and the project does sound cool).

So smile. :)

How long will that last, once the tech and infrastructure is in place? But it'll be to stop the terrorists, really.

I don't see how Apple fanboi == anti-Microsoft any more. Microsoft still gets heat as the "evil empire," blah blah blah, but I don't see it as Apple's archrival any longer. Frankly they won their point on quality over quantity.

As for hypocrisy, well, the Netgear hype sounds like wishful thinking. As the commenters here point out, you can't just say open platforms rule when Apple has so thoroughly proven that in some cases closed does very, very well. I don't like the iPhone/iPad monopoly on philosophical grounds, but I don't for a second doubt it can be successful if handled well. The iPod provides a very profitable example.

Apple's record speaks for itself; TFA is selectively ignoring it.

Amen. And so I referred to the "bias problem" and systemic warpage not any particular institutional bias. Saying bias will happen no matter what, well, we might as well be talking about auto accidents. Yes, it's inevitable, but safety counts tremendously.

I'm thinking also of that incident a couple years ago with the Wikipedia "editor" who was aggressive but had utterly bogus credentials. I'd like to know more how this is kept in check. (Part of the answer, btw, is to hire and retain good talent -- and that takes money. If they're going to fund that, kudos.)

I use Wikipedia all the time, but if I don't know much about something, presumably the most likely reason I'm looking it up, how likely am I to detect well-written nonsense?