One buys physical books because they are easy to read - I still find paper much easier to read than on screen, though e-book readers could change that. Today e-book readers are way too expensive. Add to that the fact that I can make notes in the margin (though in some cases it could be too small: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat's_last_theorem) and books make worth buying. But, the digital ones make sense - many are easily available, they are searchable etc. One nice model is bundling the physical and digital version together. The physical book should actually cost less than or equal to what would be spent in printing out the book and binding it - there should eb an advantage to the economies of scale. A book that needs colour should have it in the publisher printed version - that is one advantage - colour laser printers are still probhibitively expensive.
Scribd seems to allow people to make money off digital books. Possibly docstoc too
Haven't used them, but I didn't a mention in the few responses I checked. Open Source books, reasonably priced. Check out: http://authors.packtpub.com/
MsWord has too large an installed base and there is too much inertia for people to change.
Somewhere near 600 million to 1 billion people know how to use MsWord. It might not die.
Even if it does it wont die swiftly.
A fraction of the quoted figure - 0.6-1bn actually know how to use MS-Word. The rest just behave like monkeys would if given a typewriter. Frankly, people just do not get it. You send documents in editable formats like that of MS-Word if and when you want the recipient to make changes. Else, you just send out a PDF.
For me - TeX/LaTeX and the userfriendly WYSIWYM GUI LyX on top of it
AMD logo on an ARM newsitem?
Slashdot is getting old
The only way a competitor can use your code without letting you use any improvements he makes is to not make any changes to your code at all.
Or, not to distribute the modifications. One important thing to remember is that the GPL's clauses kick-in only on distribution. As long as changes stay within the organisation, there is no legal requirements to give back the changes. In that case, IMHO, all Free and Open Source licenses are equal.
Happiness is twin floppies.