Personally I put it down to the fact that when the make an e-book most publishers are not simply copy-pasting the digital print version (I assume somewhere in the modern printing process a digital version is made for the printers??) and instead just scan a hard copy with a word-detector. The problem is this raises loads of problems because the machine reads/interprets words wrong - I've seen a good few glaring oddities!

My other hate though is that most don't seem to put much emphasis on quality into the ebook product; it just seems to be as quickly done as possible (most of the images I see for covers are, if present at all, terrible scans to the point where it looks like they scanned with Vaseline rubbed all over the scanner and the image they scanned)!

"Is that a paperback in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?"

I bet you get that all the time!

1) Glad you enjoy it. To be frank, I find that Quebec/Ontario look rather similar until you interact with the people.

Montreal has a more European styled architecture, I'll grant it that.

2) Yeah, I think part of the problem is that IPs often fall into the hands of people other than those who created the product in the first place.

As such, they most often don't appreciate what they have and see it more as a money generator than anything else, to be throw anyways when it can no longer fulfill that purpose well.

There should be laws against such things imo, at least for content that is considered cultural (books, movies, games, etc).

3) And yet, isn't it how the private sector operates anyways?

When they don't need someone, they have very few qualms about throwing them to the curb.

I understand why they do it. You need to keep the process efficient.

The private sector often talks about job to justify it's importance to the public (usually when talking about taxes), all the while minimizing labor cost and considering it an overhead (I can understand doing away with unnecessary labor, but I have a harder time sympathizing with exporting labor to third world countries or not paying overtime).

Only the public sector is sucker enough to believe in that maximizing jobs so that everyone can eat crap.

What you really want is not to maximize jobs. What you want is to optimize the efficiency of the process while keeping it humane (making sure everyone can eat, has a roof over their head, access to healthcare, etc).

4) I'm not sure about desire (some people just don't like books, but I'd venture in guessing that at least 10% of the populace will have bought a significant amount of books within their lifetime, be they comic books, textbooks, novels or other), but books are not that expensive. Anyone that is lower middle class and above can afford to buildup a sizeable personal library over time, especially if they buy books when they are cheap.

I mean, I pay ~10$ for most novel paperbacks, get some books for 5$ on special in the bargain bin and even a sizeable number of textbooks can be acquired in the 20$-40$ price range.

5) It all depends on the consumption rate. If 1% get the printed books and 99% get the ebook, then it's not that bad.

Another compromise might be to make sure that all libraries have a printed copy and individuals can get the electronic copy.

I'm sure they'll get cheaper (especially that 10'' Kindle format that was like 350$).

It will help when they start to really pass the costs saved by not having to distribute so many printed copies directly to the customer (something that is not in many distributors such as Amazon's interest, because they also distribute printed copies).

Then, the ereader will pay for itself.

E-books are great for convenience. Other than that, I do quite like hardcovers although paperback has it's perks sometimes too.

As for the trees argument, well, trees are a renewable resource. Clear-cutting is not such a good idea for maintaining a sustainable supply though. It's a classic tragedy of the commons case. A company gets a contract on public land and they have incentive to clear-cut as much as they can before someone else comes in and does it instead. If they don't have to do a cost-benefit analysis because it's not their land and they're not scaling trees individually to pay a price for them, why not?

In my experience, this happens much less frequently when buying trees from a privately owned piece of timber, although there are some bad apples out there.

1) The owner/manager does not want their timber decimated so they will make that known to the buyer before agreeing to anything. The buyer has to be more careful to make sure the timber still has value to the owner. Maybe they will top trees so they don't bust up other trees nearby when they are felled since the buyer can't just cut down every tree in the way (again keeping value for the owner)

2) Call it selective harvesting if you want, but it's an effect that's necessary from having to buy and sell the trees/logs in a market. The buyer will leave smaller trees in the timber because they want to leave some value for the owner and because the cost of purchase plus the work put into cutting, topping, and dragging won't be worth the reward if selling to a big mill because big mills don't want to be bogged down with huge amounts of small common logs. A small mill might take logs this size, but many times they just trade some of the boards they make for getting the logs to them. In ten years time, these smaller trees will be valuable in the market again. I remember doing some work for a hippie that owned about 10 acres of timber, and he quite liked that timber was managed this way because he was worried about the squirrels having nuts for food, erosion, and the rest of the trees in general. Plus he now had a good supply of firewood.

I could go on some more, but these are the major points I wanted to bring up. I'm also mostly around farmland with patches of timber here and there, not somewhere like the Pacific Northwest.

Probably the biggest thing that an owner doesn't like is when a log buyer leaves the tops of trees in the timber, but if all that has to be cleaned up, the buyer will pay much less money for the trees.

A market for wood chips as bio-fuel or something like that would take care of that problem though. Sell a few people some Tarms or something similar and supply them with wood chips, but hey, when competing with heavily subsidized products, what can you do. If someone else (a bureaucrat, no less) is going to spend a potential customer's money for them, they might as well use that product. It's not like having diversity is a good thing :( I know a college campus that gets 100% of their heating in the winter and 50% of their cooling in the summer from gasification wood boilers and wood chips. Maybe more people would practice pollarding or coppicing then.

This doesn't mean that a private owner won't ever clear their timber, although from what I gather around where I'm at, that's usually because of subsidizing corn and soybean markets heavily mostly for ethanol purposes. Nothing like subsidizing markets so that they can use up 3 times more calories to harvest than what they bring in in terms of energy. Just another example of unintended consequences from government intervention. Plus those trees and grasslands that farmers are clearing have helped hold down and stop wind blown soil so there's not another Dust Bowl like there was in the Dirty Thirties.

So yeah, I can't stand it when people want everything to be commons. If it is commons, manage it so it's not destroyed, but leave privately managed property be.

edit: oops, didn't realize it was going to be that big of a wall of text.

That's something I totally agree with. It's why I hate it whenever someone equates corporation with private.

1) Yeah that's true, I have an ex who was from a Quebec town, and she turned into such a colossal b...umm well not very nice girl.

2) That is true, it's unfortunate too because so many just hammer out crappy knock offs, and half assed versions of originals. I agree, I also think that certain products should be made available to those who wish to purchase a legal copy as well. Prime examples being Star Wars the original theatrical cut trilogy, and System Shock 2. Unfortunately, that is much easier said than done more often than not. I agree though, abuse of IPs by "legal" holders SHOULD be illegal.

3) Yeah, we have created a society where everything is based on speculation and here-say. It's a sad fact but there isn't much you can do unless society as a whole makes some major uprooting changes. I still hope that humans as a whole eventually realize it needs to take care of everyone for the species not to go the way of the dinosaur.

4) While that is true in First World nations, however, I was primarily referring to those of limited income and situations such as Second and Third World nations. Though, on that note they have bigger issues than having a library collection too. But, I am also of the belief that many used books should be shipped to such places and given to people for free. Everyone deserves at least one copy of "The Hobbit" in my opinion. I'm speaking figuratively though, not necessarily The Hobbit of course.

5) Yes i say anywhere under 10% I could foresee as being "not bad" as well, myself. See, while I prefer to have a personal library stacked with my own books that were mine and no one elses, THAT is a compromise I could live with so long all libraries had copies of every book ever printed (good or bad), or at least all available, I would be happy.

Yeah, I love my Kobo, I really do (I avoid Kindle due to it's proprietary formats, and limited formats to which it can read). I like the fact mine reads epub, mobi, html, cbz (not cbr for some reason), txt, etc... pretty much every format, and I can throw it in my bag of holding (yes I own a bag of holding :P).

The Kobo model above mine doesn't, it's only bonus is a colour screen and runs mpeg audio/video, and avi, which I saw as pointless for what I wanted it for. I like the Kindle Fire HD but it's far too limited from what I've seen. If it were to open up to more formats and include cbz (hopefully cbr) I would consider buying one.