Re: 7 Ruby Programming ebook

On May 16, 2008, at 12:51 PM, As23 Mega wrote:

> You keep pandering to the best corporate insterests, that sure is
> "integrity". Keep making tha fat cats fatter when dealing with  
> knowledge
> as if it was a merchandise and not a right.

Knowledge is not merchandise. When you buy a book, you're paying the  
author for his or her time organizing that knowledge for you—you're  
paying for a service. If you don't want to pay for that service,  
you're free to use the available knowledge to learn just the same way  
the original author did. You can read the source code, write the  
thousands of lines of code, read the web, email experts, put stuff out  
for review, and so on. For most people, the money spent on a book  
repays the opportunity cost of the time they'd otherwise spent  
gathering, filtering and organizing the knowledge for themselves. If  
that equation doesn't work in particular circumstances, then the  
source knowledge is still there. But stealing the book is not  
defeating a capitalist machine. It's simply a disincentive for that  
author to put the effort in to creating another book.

Dave