Now if you find a way to hack the UEFI secure boot loader....
Not quite. If you can find a security hole in the Windows kernel that allows arbitrary code execution in privileged mode (not as easy as some Slashdot readers like to believe) then it's possible to bypass UEFI secure boot by making the Windows kernel into a chain bootloader.
How on earth would a normal person figure out that printing is on port 631?
One of two ways:
Seriously, your complaint makes as much sense as asking 'How on earth would a normal person figure out that you browse the web by running iexplore.exe?'
Um, mostly right but with one glaring error. They didn't 'send' books to bookstores, bookstores bought books. With that correction, that's exactly how things still work today.
Bookstores buy books on a sale-or-return basis. If they don't manage to sell them, they tear off the covers and ship them back to the publisher for a full refund and destroy the rest. And the books that they buy are often the ones that the publisher has spent some money promoting.
No, it's not "now feasible and affordable to do much smaller print runs" - because that means editing and marketing and other overhead must now be spread across a much smaller number of books.
Yes it is. I've talked with some publishers that specialise in exactly this. Some of the big publishers now outsource all of their copyediting to freelancers (some are bringing it back in-house, it oscillates a bit), but for small publishers it's very easy to hire a freelancer to copyedit a book and so they're not splitting copyediting staff, they're just spreading investment, and the copyediting on a book can cost under $1000 (it's a pretty crappy market for freelancers at the moment), so it's relatively easy to scatter money across a hundred titles and hope one does really well and the rest come close to breaking even.
Marketing, you might have, but marketing costs for small print runs are pretty small. Publishers scatter a few free copies to amateur reviewers and get some blog posts, put them on their web sites, and push them in the direction of book clubs. If they sell a couple of thousand copies, they've made a profit.
Bookstores have very little incentive to stock J. Random Nobody without a reasonable expectation that he will sell
Except for differentiation: no one wants to go into a book shop that just stocks the A-list books that they can get anywhere (and much cheaper on Amazon) and which the more active readers (i.e. their best customers) will have read already. People want to go to a book shop to find a book that they've not read before, and that means having a broad selection of things.
You mean, unlike the young people during the recessions of the '80s?
That said, I haven't been to a cinema for years. I used to go with my housemates and some other friends when I was a student, until we realised that for the cost of us to go a few times (including food and so on) my housemates and I could buy a projector and a set of surround-sound speakers - the DVD was cheaper than the cost of two people going to the cinema - and my friends could come around and bring food and beer (generally of a higher quality than available in cinemas and for less money). When I graduated, one of my housemates bought out my share in the projector, but I bought another one on eBay for just under £200 that's lasted me 5 years (it now tells me the lamp needs replacing). My cost per film, including renting the DVDs and the cost of the equipment, is under £1 and I get to sit on a comfy sofa and watch films with people I like, not random strangers who think shouting at the screen or using their mobile phone is a good idea (oh, and I can pause it if I need to go to the toilet). How do cinemas think they can compete with that by constantly increasing prices?
And it would not matter if it's a fiat currency or gold-backed currency
It would make a difference. If it were backed by gold, you could redeem it for the gold value, dump it in the sea, and then live on the continent made out of gold that you'd just built...
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.