Meandering thoughts, continued...

As I ruminate upon the threads I elaborated a couple of posts ago, there might appear to be an apt analogy between buying the same, yet incompatible video content from different providers and buying two copies of a book. I mean, am I trying to imply that, having bought one copy of some potboiler, I ought to be able to get another copy at no cost?

It's not quite the same analogy, though.

First of all, books aren't set up (yet) to allow you to enjoy them, say, only in certain countries (as is the case with DVDs). There is nothing to keep you from enjoying the same book at home or in a hotel room, as there is to keep you from enjoying the same video content on an iPod or a Sansa e260.

If there was some dippy rule that required all books read in the city of Philadelphia to have red covers and all books read in New York City to have blue covers - and if we assume that enforcement occurs automatically, i.e., blue books are unreadable in Philadelphia, and vice versa - then I would maintain, as I did in my previous post, that the price paid for each book is being paid very nearly entirely to make it readable.

Just a thought.

Cheers...

What's wrong with this picture?

There is a government agency in the UK that calls itself the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (a name that evokes memories of early James Bond films, as the first "E" in SPECTRE stands for "Executive" in the apparently British sense of "organization," but I digress...)

It is the job of the GMPTE, ostensibly, to help make the city "work together," and to further that goal, it has commissioned a spiffy new consciousness-raising poster:


Try to figure out what happens if one attempts to turn one of the gears.

Cheers...

Photo nicked from Transport Blog; with a tip o' the hat to Samizdata.net