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You're right; Gutenberg isn't good for readability. I've read a few books onscreen, and while I don't mind that much, I'd rather have them in dead-tree.

That said, Gutenberg has a much larger selection than Wal-Mart. (Not to mention that the Wal-Mart books are sold for more like $6 to $11.) Some of their 16,000+ books are things like "a million digits of Pi" or "an electronic-speech version of some popular book", but some of them certainly aren't. The "stuff that wouldn't be worth printing in the traditional way", as you say.

To do some testing-out, I downloaded Kinko's stupid 10MB tool to get some pricing information. I picked a random but popular etext (1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose)... and discovered that getting plain pages printed at Kinko's is grotesquely expensive. Okay, let's say you're a school and you own a printer. Let's say you own a duplexing printer, even. Paper is as cheap as $25/5000, so a 350-page book printed on both sides of the page would actually use about eighty-eight cents of paper. Toner runs something like $30/5000 sheets' worth, so the total materials cost would be about $1.90.

Binding at Kinko's runs something like five bucks for spiral-bind.

Pfah. Well, who knows. It could conceivably be worth the price at some point. Maybe if the pages were chopped in half to make the book more paperback-shaped.

--grendel drago

I know Google is soooo hard to use.

Just to let you know, Kinko's has locations in the UK, Australia, Japan and several other countries. Here are some in London.

Also, by the way, Citizens of the United States are American. Citizens of the United Kingdom are British. You get the idea. 2 strikes against you.

What is a Kinkos????

My first thought was like "Huh? Kino Kiosk?", because that's what it sounds like to me, but if you check out http://www.kinkos.com/ you can see that they offer a service where they print and ship documents (or photos) for you. Apparently they have a set of terminals around in the US where you may log on to, download and e-mail them your documents, and pay by credit card.

$5/page? Do some research. My reply has nothing to do with scanning.

From a CD? Have you checked out Their website lately? You don't even need to run out to kinkos until you're ready to pick up your prints, or even let kinkos fedex them to a recipient for you. Screw printers, You're way better off using the local kinkos.
Oh and hey, if you're like me and there isn't a local kinkos, you can Still use copymax

So if I make a copy of a copyrighted book using the copier at my local Kinko's should they be responsible? Or is it my responsibility for making the copy?

This is the same as prosecuting an ISP because someone used the bandwidth they bought from the ISP to download a pirated MP3.

I think I see what you're getting at.
So do others...

Kinko's Computer Rental

Whether you want to produce professional documents, create stunning graphics, surf the Internet or simply update your résumé, Kinko's makes it easy and affordable, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

When you rent one of our Macintosh or Windows PC computer workstations, you'll be using state-of-the art machines loaded with popular operating systems, software, typefaces and Web browsers. Most Kinko's locations even have high-end design workstations with special software and high-resolution scanners for image manipulation.

Here is a list of software available on the rental computers at all Kinko's stores. If you don't see exactly what you're looking for, call your local store to see if they have it.

...
Adobe Photoshop
This photo-manipulation and design tool lets you produce compelling images for the printed page, the Web and virtually any other medium.

One Word..... KINKO's

I work at a place that is open 24 hours a day, I get full benefits (medical, dental, life insurance, and more), and make about $12 an hour plus profit sharing. And, the more profitible locations are ALWAYS looking for computer savy people.

My job duties include working with multiple platforms (Win, Mac, Solaris), doing all kinds of geeky stuff as a computer service specialist.

Plus, most importantly, you meet anyone who is anyone in the local companies ... I am on a first name basis with most of the top brass at a huge biotech company, several aerospace companies, a really cool, really geeky engineering department in the music industry, and just about anywhere else worth working in my area.

I get job offers all of the time, but am holding off until I finish school.

This is aparently an IETF initiative rather than a U.S. government initiative, however, given government backing, will contact through this mechanism be considered a means of official notification? By this I mean will the government then be able to deliver IRS documents and notifications via Email, and have them be considered legal notifications? This seems to present the potential problem of adoption by older generations of Americans, who either might not own a computer or other device (maybe fax machine) on which to print delivered documents. This would give Kinkos a whole new revenue streams. 'What? you want to recieve your absentee ballot? The printing fee is $5'. While I can't say this is definately wrong or inappropriate, but it certainly leaves an uneasy feeling...

--CTH

The 70-hour workweek is one aspect of some successful models of software development. Nevertheless, it is hardly a sufficient aspect. IBM and others have for years encouraged long hours and it seems in my experience this was just effort tossed away. Also, the extreme programming approach advocated by Jeffries and others puts a premium on proper design and pair programming work rather than isolated heroes, seems to be successful, and keeps within a reasonable workweek both so to not overly fatigue its participants and to be predicatable.

Simply put, a 40+ hour week is not sustainable for the long term. Further, it is not realistic as an HR policy. The participants will either get old enough to wonder about other things in their lives (and have made enough money so they can bolt and not give a damn) or pull back because of health reasons. And I really wonder about the ethics of an industry that says its doesn't care and demands such despite its effects.

Finally, one successful e-entrepeneur, Jeff Bezos, makes it a policy to demand he and folks around him get enough sleep. Or at least so he told the Wall Street Journal . It appears he's backed up by a lot of scientific evidence. There are recent articles about this in Kinko's IMPRESS magazine, the Washington Post, and the above-mentioned Wall Street Journal, unfortunately either only available for a fee or only in dead-trees form.

It would appear that the finding was faxed from a Kinko's, as clearly stated at the top of each page. Apparently the judge doesn't have his own fax machine. Maybe someone on our side should buy him one :).