| Author | Message | ||
     Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
I was in Waterstone last week and some guy tried to persuade me to buy this new E-book thing. First he told me that it could hold 20,000 books in its memory to which I replied, "How many of those can I read at once?" As he tried to argue that it was a more efficient whatever, I picked up a real book off the nearest table, dropped it in the floor in front of him, picked it up, opened it checked the words were still on the page inside and said "I can still read this one after I dropped it. If I'd dropped that I'd now not be able to read 20,000 books." He then conceded defeat that I wasn't interested in the E-book and left me alone. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Presumbly these things run on batteries, too. If you're a slow and careful reader, as you should be, it could cost quite a bit to get through a novel. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.231.27 |
Now use the same argument, Weber, with an iPod and a CD.  | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
Music is irrelevant to this. CD's were an improvement on Vinyl and cassettes. I don't have an ipod because I'm not online at home but they do have advantages over the other medias. All musical medias would break if you stamped on them. E-books or whatever they're called are not an improvement. A paperback has clear advantages over these electric gizmos as listed above. Plus the battery can't die in the middle of a chapter with a real book. As long as you've got a light source you can read a real book. The One Show on BBC1 did a feature on e-books recentlywhere the presenter was given one to try out and her opinion was that she hated it more after trying it out for two weeks than she did beforehand. To use the most sophisticated and erudite argument I can think of, E-books are poo. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.235.65 |
E-books don't have the rich spicy smell real books possess. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.157.114.128 |
If you lose a paperback it can be dear to get again, but presumably you could just get these books back off your computer at no extra charge. I think these things have good points as well as bad. I think for text books they'll be great, or newspapers, or biographies - stuff you might not want to keep. Maybe if you read an ebook and you like it then you would buy the book. It might be quite a green thing, possibly. Maybe, in the dark, they'll be cosy - no need for big lights on in the room. I'll probably have one of these eventually AND have books! And am I right in thinking you can write on them? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
>>>If you lose a paperback it can be dear to get again, If you lose your e-book thingie, you lose your whole library. >>>And am I right in thinking you can write on them? Some have annotation facilities. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.233.199 |
So you can alter the text and pass it on? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.152.134 |
CD's were an improvement on Vinyl... ! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.13.37 |
So you can alter the text and pass it on? Interesting... so one could rewrite the texts, and get away with it - it's too hard to actually re-bind a book or magazine; but in this pdf form, one could, say: have Ahab capture Moby Dick... have Jake Barnes discover Viagra... have Cthulhu successfully rise and Godzilla-stomp the world.... How does this relate to copyright laws? If I were to buy a book, actually rewrite the ending, re-bind it say, and then put it in my library... a friend comes over and wants to borrow it - perfectly legal - and I loan it to him, never telling him I rewrote it... did I break any laws?... since: buying a book means I now legally own the property, and have full control of the property.... (sorry: I find copyright issues, endlessly fascinating) | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.152.134 |
I think ebooks are protected... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.152.134 |
...or at least, those still in copyright often are. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
CD's were an improvement on Vinyl... ! IMHO yes. OK so i miss the picture discs and stuff like that that vinyl offers but I can't play my vinyl in the car while I'm driving. >>>If you lose a paperback it can be dear to get again, If you lose your e-book thingie, you lose your whole library. If you lose you're ebook thingy it's going to cost at least 20 times the amount it costs to relace your average paperback. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Everything's getting streamlined and shrunken, as if that's a good thing by definition. I suspect marketers believe that the more stuff we have in a tiny place (everything in our laptops, mobiles, e-book thingies), the more space we have free to fill with more stuff. Space - and lack thereof - may well be the final buffer against complete domination by objects. Well, No, say I. I reserve the right to own a big, old fashioned, hulking sprawl of a paper book collection. So fuck off, marketers. There. Feel better now. Off to watch telly. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.17.13.244 |
A "twisted tales" story, where a small-town Spindle-pusher is suddenly attacked in his home late at night, by all the mounds of books that were taken to the dump by their owners as a result. They "shred" him and "press" him; the next day, the authorities find every part of his body - finger here, toe there, eyeball here - pressed butterfly-like between the leaves of this or that tome.... And then all the books are carted back to the dump again.  |