Since I do all my ad blocking in my firewall, firewalls without ad-holes are going to be illegal soon? Gotta take that ad medicine or else ...

"The little ones will be dependent on the tolerance of the big ones to get their content seen." Absolutely. This is the likely future of content. My original post was directed to an analogy between the old paper publishing houses (the gatekeepers, once known as the Big Six) and the devolution of the internet. Who will the new gatekeepers be (or already are)? The list is short: Google, Amazon, Trashrags, Inc - and now (Facebook).

Hmm ... that jives with the rumors about bitcoin being heavily mined by entities with three letter abbreviations.

The only bank that could be involved is the one taking the $Mega deposit after SHA256 been busted. Agent K to agent L: "Do you think we should have waited for a little bigger build out? Hey, could you rub a little more suntan lotion on my shoulder?"

The cell phone drones can only remember three levels of tap, and Gnome 3 takes this into account. You're only supposed to use authorized apps anyway.

Let's be fair! Gnome 3 is still better than the command line. Count your blessings.

There was a brief moment in time (sorry Stephen) when I thought the internet would break up the gate keepers. That moment has passed.

The paper is not a very big deal, but unsold inventory is a huge deal. The way publishing works is that the bookstores put their stuff physically on the shelves only when there's an agreement to buy back everything that doesn't sell at a whopping fifty percent discount. That's most of the waste in the system. Book paper is pretty cheap (I can run my 300 page novel in 5,000 volume batches at about a buck, U.S. )

Have you ever seen the dependencies list for that thing? Holy C___! I don't think I've ever seen a longer one, anywhere, anytime.

A solution might be to "stream" books over the web, rather than distribute them as files. I guess you'd still have the authorization hassles. The files are a problem. Publishers figure the files are way too easy to redistribute, and so they just add some cushion to the price to cover lost sales. But, it seems like I see more 99 cent offerings than $9.99 ones. I'm not sure where you're shopping. DRM is declining, because it severely restricts device compatibility.

They're pre-factoring the piracy. Software publishers have done this for years ...

"Formatting in physical books tends to be far better..." Yes, I can attest to that statement! It's entirely a nightmare to do the formatting, when producing ebooks. I've written one particular ebook that I would put in the nightmare category, as it was overflowing with diagrams, and almost impossible to do in kindle. The epub variant didn't do too badly, but still was not optimal...

Techies tend to buy the kinds of books that don't attach to the heart. I can't imagine developing feelings of sentimentality for my "Secrets of Writing Good Python Code" book.

The scary thing is, there's a movement afoot to bring the software licensing model into the durable goods market. In other words - take away your right to resell your bicycle!!!!

"So, give me the paper book that I can buy without telling what I had for breakfast and how my mother's milk tasted." -- Don't forget to add "your favorite underwear color" to the authorization requirements! Yes - I prefer the paperback, like you. It's very anonymous, especially if paying with cash. In terms of lending books, Amazon now offers some titles with "lending" authorization.