Space travel, real space travel not jaunts into earth orbit, is the most-challenging problem of our lifetimes.

If you like sci-fi, the Manifold series by Stephen Baxter (not a referrer link) makes a great argument about space travel and how "big dumb" technology from the past can be harnessed smartly to lower the costs.

We certainly will need more than reuse of old technology, but it is a start.

[self-replying]

Just wanted to clarify what I meant by "the field is still changing".

I think that Apple will not increase much further in smartphone market share because Steve Jobs is no longer leading the company. The last time that Steve left Apple things did not go well and the company nearly went under. I don't think Apple is headed downhill yet, but without the visionary man who made the company in the driver's seat, it will be run differently, and I believe, not for the better.

Android is constantly changing, partly because there are so many players, but also because Microsoft and Apple are applying pressure to most of the Android players through patent lawsuits and license agreements. I expect that Android will continue to hold significant market share because Google wants it to succeed and several of the OEMs have already had success with it.

With these two dynamics in play, the smartphone market is still changing.

I think that Windows Phone will slowly improve in market share using the same strategy that the Xbox did: pushing enough money into it until it eventually works. Whether it will actually take off to the same success as the Xbox remains to be seen. If they get a few killer apps (e.g. Halo for Windows Phone), then who knows what might be possible.

It will be a money sink for a while, but Microsoft can afford to continue to pump money and work into it. They know that they have to since phones and tablets are stealing some of the usual PC sales. They want to steal some of the market from Apple and Android and they certainly have the opportunity since the field is still changing.

It looks like Blackberry is doomed to sink below Windows Phone in terms of popularity and offerings.

They should still have US government customers for a while until the government-approved version of Android is widespread, so maybe a year or two left.

Beyond that, I don't see much of a future.

The Agency Model is a racket that takes away a seller's ability to price ebooks how they see fit.

This is bad for the consumer since it means that market forces have less sway and there is little to distinguish one store from another. You will not find ebooks on sale and there is no point in "shopping around" since the price is the same everywhere.

If similar agreements were in place for other products, it would cause lawsuits. Imagine if all of the oil products sold by Shell or BP were given fixed prices. Media companies would love to have their own profit-guaranteed cartel and will push for illegal agreements to defend their aging business model.

I never said that DRM and the agency model were related. I was merely pointing out that Apple's entry into the ebook market removed seller freedom and empowered publishers. This was in contrast to the parent post which stated that Steve Jobs brought freedom to music by removing DRM from music formats.

I personally think that Apple was afraid of losing too much of the ebook market to Amazon so they made a behind-the-scenes push for publishers to adopt the agency model to thwart Amazon's price advantage. This enabled them to enter the ebook market using their shiny iDevices and sell content at the same price as Amazon. Apple's policy change to require a 30% cut of in-app purchases further pushed their advantage and forced the Kindle app (as well as other ebook apps) to remove their "Store" button that launched Mobile Safari to the Kindle web store.

As to whether the agency model is better for consumers is arguable. It is good that there are more choices in the market. Having an Amazon monopoly on ebooks would be bad, but Apple's tactics to bully their way into the ebook market are pretty ruthless. Such ruthlessness can only be attributable to Steve Jobs' desire to have Apple control all consumer content on iDevices. iBooks is still somewhat of an afterthought compared to iTunes' offerings in terms of music and video. For example, why can't I read iBooks on my MacBook Air? Why can't I access my iBooks by a web browser (ala Kindle Cloud Reader).

I'm not an Apple hater. I own a MacBook Air and an iPhone. I think iDevices are very nice, but I don't think that the agency model is good for the consumer. It drives prices up and reduces the ability for ebook vendors to compete in the market.

Hmm. It seems that O'Reilly has two types of ebooks:

1) Ebooks obtained through their Safari Books Online website (using download tokens) are marked with email address and account name as I described in my above post.

2) Ebooks purchased through their website, shop.oreilly.com, are not marked this way.

Yes, I too think that DRM-free ebooks are a good thing.

If you read technical books, O'Reilly offers DRM-free ebooks from their website in several formats, including PDF, ePUB, and MOBI (Kindle-compatible).

They do this by marking your ebook: "Prepared for [your_email_address], [Your Name]" on the bottom of the pages. I think this is okay since it discourages piracy and marks the book as yours the same as if your wrote your name in the front cover of a paper book.

I hope that other publishers will adopt this practice or something similar.

You can thank Steve Jobs for the fully locked-down and now ubiquitous agency model that practically all publishers use.

"In the agency model, publishers set the price and designate an agent--in this case the bookseller--who will sell the book and receive the 30% commission. Adopting the model for e-books tends to mean e-book prices will rise, something both publishers and independent retailers applaud. Publishers believe low e-book prices devalue their books and cannibalize hardcover sales. Under the agency model once a price has been set it cannot be changed or discounted by the retailer and independent e-book retailers believe the higher prices of the agency model allow them to compete with big e-book vendors. " (from this article)

At least Amazon was selling ebooks for reasonable prices and encouraging competition in the market. Now we have a racket that is enforced on all sellers. Neither he nor Amazon have been able to dissuade publishers from using DRM.

Maybe not in print, but it has been conceptualized in video games

Ada 2005's task model is a real world, production quality approach to include concurrency in a hard-compiled language. Ada isn't exactly known for its GUI libraries (there is GtkAda), but it could be used as a foundation for an improved concurrent GUI paradigm.

This book covers the subject quite well.