Slashdot Mirror
The End Of Books As We Know Them?
coxjohnson writes: "Ray Bradbury may have been partially correct in Fahrenheit 451 when he wrote that books would not exist in the future. Technology Review recently published a story predicting the demise of today's paper books with tomorrow's electronic paper books." This story about the continuing development of "electronic paper" has a nice overview of the history of the field and a some good info about current technologies under development.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
So... What if publishers decide that eBooks are all they're gonna do?
:)
People may or may not prefer these books for a while. As long as ePaper isn't almost exactly like reading off of real paper -- and even if it is, as long as the book interface/experiences of literal pages and a nice weighty feel is prefered over the slick single page attached to a chip -- people will probably want printed materials.
However, keep in mind that publishers have every incentive at the moment to go digital. Why? Access controls, and a legal framework that supports them . They can control who reads their published stuff, and charge per read. Say goodbye to ownership, say hello to licensing.
Not to mention that if they play their cards right, their cost for production and distribution will actually drop through the floor.
And they can do it all in the name of saving trees. How nice.
--
Tweet, tweet.
The problem is legacy.
We can read the rozeta(sp?) stone, because it was written down by means that we can understand.
You can read Shakspere(sp?) original plays and understand them, because they were written down.
Can you say the same for punched cards?
What about 100 years from now?
Shaksphere & the rozeta stone would be just as readable, how would those new books? Would I be able (assuming I live that long) to plug my current hard drive to a computer and read the data?
Would there be tools to interupt the data (after all, the data is just a streams of bytes)?
If you want to keep something durable, keep it off computers.
Print if on paper, rock or steel, and tuck it some place safe.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
(face it, your average bourgeois motherfucker has a shelf full of leather-bound, unopened "classics")
As a matter of fact, I do.
Cui peccare licet peccat minus. -- Ovid, Amores.
I spend a lot of time curled up with a book. Ok I don't have a fireplace, but that part is realy optional.
As for having commentary along side the text why do you need an e-book for that? I own many books that have commentary along side the text.
Plus I can read a paper book on Shabbos.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I'm sure publishers are leaning toward E-Books because you can license them. I'm leaning away from E-Books for the same reason. I don't want my technical library to go poof because I didn't pay my yearly technical licensing fee. Lets not go there.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
--brian
Everyone can argue technical advantages/disadvantages all we want, and wax poetic about our favorite old books, and the wonderful smell of paper, but the deeper issue has not been addressed.
As we have seen recently in the battle over Napster, DeCSS, etc. the real issue is not content display or transportation but content control, specifically copy protection and licencing. Sure these new e-books can display any information you want, and switch between different books instantly, but what good is that if you don't have control over the content in the book? Unlsee something changes drastically, these books are going to come out with a proprietary interface that guarantees that only approved content from approved providers can be uploaded. And that's not the worst part. they would most likely be pay-per-use items that would only be displayable for a fixed amount of time, unless you wanted to buy a permanent licence which would cost x20, x50,x100 of the temporary licence. I'm in full support of new technology, expecially something that's easier to read than my monitor, but I'm very wary of anything that can put a cap on what I can read and how often I can read it.
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
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Future license:
This book is not owned by you: you own the medium on which it is stored and/or the reader on which it resides. You may not transmit this book in its entirety or any portion therof to another reader or medium w/o express permission by Harcourt-Brace publishers....
(that transfering medium clause covers old fasioned paper, folks. And 'express permission' is licenses at $10 a pop... after all, w/o getting properly paid, who would produce books anyway?)
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Tweet, tweet.
This was the main theme of the article, the introduction of e-PAPER is an extention of e-BOOKS and only a small portion of the arguement. The theme of the article is trying to find a replacement for paper, which I argued would never overcome the issues of an electronic replacement for paper.
Maybe you should open your mind before replying to a post.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
"The book of the future, e-paper researchers like to say, will look just like a regular book. It will have a hard cover and a spine and several hundred thin, white, flexible pages. "
So everything you just said in support of the lowly print book will be just as true as the ebook with epaper. Only it will also have all the vast advantages of electronics.
Quit thinking that the future of ebooks = today's laptops and palms. The future is epaper, with resolution and reflectiveness that is as good as or better than today's printed pages. You will be able to fold epaper, scribble on them, underline words, flip back and forth as you wish, and do everything else that paper does now. When you add the electronic advantages, it becomes unbeatable, unstoppable, and ultimately desirable.
________________
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Private Essayist
I think you're missing the point of e-paper.
The analogy the article suggests is that e-paper is to paper what paper was to vellum.
It should have all the same properties of read when and where you like (why would e-paperbacks restrict you?), read in any order you like, quote from it like a real book, sell it to someone else, or lend to someone else.
Most of those things are *implementation* specific, and not technological specific. E-paper should look and behave just like regular paper. The content restriction properties is a very different issue entirely, and is as such a very valid concern.
If an e-book is designed with e-paper, if power goes out, it should act just like a regular book. Given the right tool, you should be able to mark it up just like a regular book. A little more complex than a pen or pencil, yes, but pens and pencils are themselves special tools specifically for paper. If content management is done correctly, the e-book is no different than a regular book.
The advantages of e-paperbacks is regular updates, being able to transmit notes and annotations between other e-paperbacks, being able to back up and translate your notes, being able to browse and search and query, being able to 'change' the content without changing the physical book itself.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
E-paper will take away none of this functionality.
In fact, in a properly designed e-book, you should be able to 'email' a book to someone.
'Hey, I think you'll enjoy this. Let me upload it to you!'
Of course, this also depends on the content restriction technologies some people are so keen on.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I agree with much of what has been said, but I still feel that e-books potentially can offer greater overall utility - I believe they could achieve "killer-app" status.
But first they need to overcome their disadvantages.
Portability: Until e-books are literally paper-thin (which it definately looks like they'll eventually achieve) there will be discontent.. I should be able to curl up in my bed or relaxing chair and read with zero additional stress over a paper-back. As for power, it seems to me that future devices will be passive - only requireing juice to change the displayed contents. Thus as with an uploading of a book, you should be able to recharge the book so as to at least be able to read 110% of the book (including back-flips). As for weather resistance, I have a wrist watch that's advertised as 300m water resistance (for whatever it's worth).. The technology is there. Soaking a book leaves you with a sence of loss.
Ease of use: We're living in an age where people are accepting the difficulties of learning curves.. It's our general nature to adapt and learn.. We have to be taught to drive a car, bike, etc. And you can even argue that we first go to school so that we can learn to learn. So I don't believe it's unacceptible to require a moderate learning curve. Beyond that, highlighting, annotations, book-marking and most importantly searching are the bed and breakfast of e-media. True it expends electricity, and requires some sort of input, which adds to the complexity. But these aren't used in a continual basis. The fact that you can't always highlight a cool phrase in a web page is the fault of the browser, not the computer. Word-files, PDFs and XML allow for very nice annotation / bookmarking capabilities, so long as the browser supports it. Herein lies the Utility aspect of e-media.
Durability: It is definately true that a book should outlast a desk-top and it's hard drive. I even hear that burned CD's don't have incredible shelf life. But since digital media can be 100% reproduced, active libraries can maintain the data. And it's always possible to use a robust long-term digital storage medium (such as a digital vinal recording which isn't suseptible to E&M or cosmic disturbances). In general, however, I'll give you this one (for hard-backs at least).
There will, in no way, be a death of the printed page. But I believe that the added utility, plus the idea that we're saving a few trees will assure an eventual migration to e-media for mainstream use.
-Michael
-Michael
Naah, I'm not going to haul my entire collection up there; if the e-books go out, I've more important things to do than read Hitchhiker's. But I'm not shaving a damn thing; haven't for over a decade, and I'm not starting now. Besides, I *intended* for Mission Control to need a toothpick. Make them think twice about fscking with the guys with their furry little butts on the cold, unforgiving line of space. And I will have my manuals.
--
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
-- Robbie Honerkamp
Of course the optimist in me says "Sure, I'll pay your 'publishing' 'licensing' fee", except that since they don't have a physical medium to control, IE paper and books, I don't see that they will be able to corner the market in the same way.
All it takes is someone to create an 'unrestricted' book, much like region free dvd players.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Again, it's for sentimental reasons. My wife loves the idea of a fireplace, and yes, it's right where you'd think of putting your TV. People house-shopping look at it and think, "We'll be able to cuddle up on the couch or the rug, sipping wine and talking about our love". They actually think that a fireplace will make them more romantic, and less inclined to watch TV. They don't think about firewood storage, the cost of fireplace equipment, the bother of cleaning out the ashes, etc. After one or two fires, they are back to sitting on the couch, watching TV, drinking beer and eating nachoes. But at an awkward angle, since the fireplace is taking up the space opposite the couch...
Material objects do not make the unromantic romantic. On an unrelated note, Happy Valentine's Day everyone!.
Not e-books, is the issue. If Xerox, EInk and IBM have their way, maybe publishing companies *will* go out of business, because 'paper' presses will no longer be necessary, in the traditional sense.
It's not that we'll stop using paper, with e-paper, it's that paper will be upgraded to all the advantages of electronic displays.
The article sums it up pretty clearly when describing e-paper to paper as paper was to vellum.
The whole idea of good older technology being blown away by newer technology is what happened with vellum and parchment, with stone and clay tablets. Not because the newer, more sophisticated was more expensive (they weren't) but because they were cheaper and more flexible.
E-paper *should* approach the cost of paper printing, if it uses the same print techniques (you do know, for example, we can use inkjet technologies to fabricate printed circuit boards?)
So when we can 'print' 'e-paper' from our printers using organic circuit technology, paper will be 'unnecessary' in the same way vellum, parchment, clay tablets, and stone tablets are unnecessary.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Hmm, ooh, lets see what E-Books have going for them:
Batteries: How nice, the book that keeps on taking, buy it once, then pay energizer, yeech, even if they are rechargable, I don't want to have to worry about battery length!
Priporiatary standards: Remember why we still have ASCII? Its so that people will be able to read documents written in the past, and continue reading documents written now in the future. E-Books, just what we need to leave behind no trace that our civilization ever had the written word.
Duribility: Books are durible, period. I can drop a book, I can drop a book from ten stories. I can sit on a book, I can put 1000lbs of pressure on a book, books rock, its to the that papery thang they have down so darn well!
Resolution: Want a high quality book, you just have to pay a bit more for it. Oversized? No problem, a few more cents here and there, but not much. Easy to read? You betcha! Books rock, you can keep reading books for hours on end and actualy get engrossed in the story, instead of ingrossed in a headache like you do with a moniter, yes, even LCD moniters aren't as good as books!
Vaporware technology: Hey look, e-paper, oh wow, by 2010 you say? Sheesh, its 2001 and we don't all have flying cars yet, and BlackLight Power (yah, theres a reliable source, LOL) said we'd have flying saucers! Zippy, where are they? There have been so many different developments in E-Paper (4 or 5 at last count) that it's getting rediculas, I'm begining to see why the IEEE and ANSI commitee's where formed, will somebody just make up their mind and start production already!
Flexability: No, I'm not talking about the paper (again) but rather all the different formats regular plain ol' fashion books come in. Full color illistrations, no prob, but don't look for those on a cheap B/W LCD moniter. Inlay's? No prob, maps? Once again, easy as pie. Just get the proper printing house to manage your book. What about a nice decrative cover? Oh wait, E-Books don't have cover art (or if they do, they are only on the web page you buy the e-book from).
I don't know about you, but getting done with a book and then looking at the cover and now reconizing the scene therein, is a great experance.
Software: Ickies, need I say more? I don't want to have to reboot my book, or wait for my book to boot up. Not to mention the entire scrolling around thing. Being one of those people blessed with the ability to open a book to almost exactly where I left off, (and feeling horribly dishonerable by saying such, heh:) I kinda like the current interface, you know, turning the page?
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
They're durable. Books can be burned or soaked, but short of that they're remarkably hard to destroy
:)
Let me introduce you to my two year old daughter. She will give you a new perspective on "hard to destroy"
Though I agree about the longevity of properly preserved paper.
This is the first argument I've seen that makes perfect sense why books won't die. I myself *love* my shelf of books. And DVDs. And CDs.
<BR>
<BR>Despite the fact that everything in my shelves could be scanned or stored digitally and archived, searchable, browseable, the fact that I have a shelf of stuff gives me satisfaction.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Actually I was worried about batteries, but several all day bussiness trips later, I've never run my Palm V out of its recharables, and an hour on the cradle when it gets home fixes them right up, and I've ran it for about 6 hrs straight on the backlight and not run em out. (of course, I have my CPU usage for the reader app turned right down, how many Mhz do you need to write characters on the screen :).
:)
And I find it just as bad to flip pages when I read
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Remove the rocks to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
I take great joy in all these posts. Maybe I'm overloading slashdot.
Anyway, none of what you argue is without merit.
But if Xerox, IBM, and Eink/Lucent have their way, instead of a shelf full of paper books, you'd have a shelf full of e-paper books.
Nothing you want goes away, but you get some of the benefits of electronic technology. Of being able to compare notes and annotations with fellow Asimov or Tolkien fans, of getting regular updates from local fan websites concerning your fav authors booksigning tour, or just browsing email from your favorite book ^^
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Recreational reading will stay paper for a while. Newspapers are vulnerable; so much paper is generated for the amount that gets read. So far, nobody has been able to really move the classified ad business to the web wholesale, but category by category (think eBay) it's going. Once that happens, newspapers will be much more marginal businesses. (Do more people in developed countries now have Internet access than newspaper subscriptions?)
We're going to see EULA hell. I think we need a political push to cut copyright back to 20 years or so, and make it illegal to use technical means to protect material beyond the limits allowed by copyright law.
I've tried that. I just can't stand reading material on the palm. The screen is much to small, and the resolution is very lacking.
The one nice thing that an e-book has over paper is search. Forgot when a character was introduced in a book, or who they were - search for the name and re-read the intro to them.
Your argument that it won't happen seems to boil down to two things:
1) People prefer paper over anything that's been produced thus far. This is true.
2) People will always prefer paper over any future technologies. This is extrapolation, and is a mistake. There may very well be something produced that people will prefer. The options discussed in the article have some advantages that other technologies haven't.
3) People will always have the option to exercise their preferences. Not necessarily so: _publishers_ control distribution here. If they decided to go eBook only at some point, that's how it would be, by and large. Especially as the economy of scale for paper production collapsed and the one for ePaper ramped up.
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Tweet, tweet.
Schools may be next, since textbooks are so expensive anyway. Once college kids start using them (trade in my 100 pound textbooks for one cool-looking textpad? Sure), they will slowly make their way into the workplace, then into homes.
And what happens when those textbooks, including sociology and history can be "updated" as seamlessly as the tech manuals? What about when all periodicals are online and you can only look up back issues in the publisher's central archive? I'll tell you what - we will be a hell of a lot closer to "1984" than a few automatic cameras at stoplights will ever get us.
It is important to be able to get perspective on how different parts of history have been played up or down. It is useful to be able to remind publishers of what their words were orriginally on an issue that they have now changed their minds on. Its even nice to read the first edition of the Stand and compare it to the "uncut". Paper books going away may save a little space, but I'd hardly call it a good thing.
*[rant] why the hell do /.ers seem to think that 1984 was all about cameras and farenhiet 451 was all about book burning? Those may be the most gripping and dramatic parts, but each book contained an entire world where the human changes and accomadations was at least as significant as the teasers. Smith's job as a rewriter of history was far more prophetic IMHO than the worry of universal cameras, but no one cares when that comes true. The four wall televisions and creeping impersonality that surrounded the fireman mean more in our world than the crazy idea that all books could be banned, but people read it like a one note screed against censorship instead of a comentary on PEOPLE.[end rant]
OK, anyway, the reason that there is no paperless office is the very "criticisms" some have made of paper. Its isn't rewritable, you have a long term record of the original mistake as well as the correction. (last nights Law and Order springs to mind)
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
This is a very naive idea. Did the price of recorded music fall when the cost of production fell?
I'll be very surprised if the publishers allow this to happen. Rather, I'd expect some type of expiration mechanism, even if it's the de facto barrier of being unable to copy the data to a new drive. The author is again glossing over the key issue of who controls the information.
OK, this author is hopelessly naive. Anyone who can mention such a capability without seeing that the potential for abuse vastly outweighs the benefits is more optimistic than me.
Semantics, semantics.
If you redefine books, the whole issue disappears. Print a book with e-paper instead of paper. Is it still a book? Yes. Has books disappeared? No. Have traditional paper-only books disappeared? Indeterminate. But the issue is no longer about books, it's about implementation.
Same with Moore's Law. If you redefine it to 'prcoessing power' and not 'MHz', I don't think the question is valid any more. We will continue to increase processing power (double every 18 months?) without having to worry about physical limits as concerning speed. Just change the question slightly, and a different answer will be produced.
As per driving flying cars to work and to the mall... with Telecommuting, the internet, and the electronic office, driving may become much less of an issue as well, even disregarding the fact we don't have flying cars. Though I want a flying car myself ^^
JonKatz will write interesting articles. There is no spoon.
We'll vacation on the moon. We're still working on that! Really!
Terabytes of data will be stored on a credit card sized device. Okay, so that's definitely wishful thinking, right now. But soon, I think!
Robots will do all of our house work: What, you actually keep your house clean?
CmdrTaco will learn to spell: Redefine the language to match CmdrTaco, and he spells fine!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Its sort of the myth of the paperless office. People have been saying we'll stop using paper for years and even though we could do that doesn't mean that we should or will. I work for an ISP and we have paper all over the place. I think the same will be true of books.
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
Ya, but consider the numerous disadvantages of books:
:)
:)
:)
1) lack of backlight. Try reading in bed with someone who sleeps earlier then you. Backlights are your friend
2) wieght. Holding a book in a reading position for hours on end is hard. Esp a hard cover.
3) availability. I can buy a book from Baen's webscriptions, send it to my palm and have it the day they publish it (or earlier if I don't mind not having the whole thing at one time)
4) cost. I can buy 4 ebooks from Baen for 10$ or 2.50$/book. (incidentally, the author gets twice as much in royalties from ebook sales through Baen, to compensate for the lower publishing cost)
5) searchability. As you pointed out, rapidly seaching through an ebook to find out which side of the space opera George was on as he comes charging out of hyperspace is very handy
Against these benifits books have clarity of text (in a well lit environment.)
For me, the benifits outwiegh the losses. I'm hapy to be a convert
--
Remove the rocks to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Wow, I'm impressed. Thank you very much for this reply.
I just wanted to add that I very much look forward to checking out your product as soon as it hits the shelves. Rest assured that I will evaluate it with an open mind, despite my (obvious) bias towards traditional books.
Best regards
Cui peccare licet peccat minus. -- Ovid, Amores.
1-not a problem. I have many rooms in the house and a nice futon couch when my wife goes to bed.
.pdb :)
2-I dunno...that's never been a problem.
3-true...however I have such a backlog of books to read, that's not an issue. Makes library returns an interesting point though - you must bring your palm back in 2 weeks so we can delete the
4-Great point there - can't argue it. Do they have anything in place if something wipes out my e-copy? Yes, I can have a paper one burn, but electronic is much easier to lose.
5-oh yeah!
Since my last post, I've been trying to find a good document reader for the palm. There seem to be about 20 different possible formats, and a ton of readers. Is there a "one ring to rule them all" that means I either convert the files on a PC or don't need to keep switching readers? Flame me for this, but a Microsoft Reader for the Palm would help too!!!
Without colour it won't support Pron. No pron, and it will never be a success. After all, it has driven the internet to its current state... :)
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Why even bother reading in the future? Matrix style data jacks will be the rage, right? We'll just bypass that annoying low-bandwidth optical interface!
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
People have an affinity for "things", especially in the case of the written word. As much as some of us might want to live in a Bauhaus, minimalist world, there's something warm and reassuring about a shelf filled with books.
It's an ego thing as well - "see how many books I have!". If we didn't like the physical qualities of books, of having them in our own homes, we'd all use the library a lot more ;-) .
Finally, there's something pleasurable in a tactile and visual way about a well-designed book. That's why people love coffee-table books about Bavarian castles. It's as much the book itself as the pictures and fluff text.
Of course, I'd love to have true electronic paper. But I don't see it killing paper books. Remember how the computer was supposed to do away with paper in the office? Maybe we'll see something similar with books.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Depending on how its implimented, it will eventually mean the death of publishing. If it were to catch on, then there is no need to have a printing press...it brings publishing to the realm of the author.
I predict, that if books go away (I don't think they will, partially just because - its nice haveing a personal library of selected books - I have one).
However, the only functions that will become important are editors (someone needs to proof the book) and marketers. Actual "publishing" would no longer have to be in the hands of people who own presses. Authors could deliver their works directly to sales houses.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
How come Xerox hasn't made it more visible?
At least, I haven't heard of it ^^
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Reminds me of another technology I've seen -- DVDs. Think "Special Edition" books, with multiple languages and author's commentary in the margin...
Visit the
Still got a point on the whole dropping thing, though.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
It will be a long time before e-books replace real ones, if ever. If for no other reason than books don't need to be powered, they will always be around. Heck, there are places in the world where paper books aren't really in yet...so e-books are very far off for them.
Think outside the more advanced nations, and the need for paper books is evidant.
we finish converting to the paperless office. Remember how computers were going to free us from the confines of forms, memos, and various other forms of paperwork? And how now we are up to our eyeballs in paper because computers make it so easy to generate?
If anything, I buy more books now to keep up to date on emerging computer technologies. So, I guess once again computers are having the opposite of the intended effect.
News Report - 2055 - Geek Gets Burnt Up By Own Books
I agree, it would be silly to have all the manuals on one computer. But if you had them on three redundant, self-lighted e-books? You could even turn them all on for ambient light if the emergency lights went out. Even then, you may have the paper manuals on the operation of the ship, like modern planes do. But will your Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy collection really help you at that point?
Mission Control requests you shave that furry little butt.
Oh. I love a shelf full of books too, but the thought is that there's nothing stopping them from being shelves full of e-books, if/when e-paper approaches the price point of regular paper.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I'm a lifelong technologist who's been on the Internet since the late 1980s. I make my living designing and promulgating services that run on the World Wide Web. I should know better than most that print is dead, the book is obsolete, the future belongs entirely to digital transmission, and the screen's the place for reading.
But books continue to matter, now and for any plausible future. Not as the only means to transmit information, entertainment, and knowledge--that hasn't been true for more than a century. Not as the dominant force among media--that hasn't been true for decades. But as a vibrant, healthy medium--one that serves a variety of needs better than any alternative and that makes good economic, ecological, and technological sense for the new millennium--the book just isn't going away.
One absolute article of faith in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s was that the DynaBook, or its equivalent, was just around the corner. This device offers better readability than a book and easier navigation. It is light enough in weight and has a high enough battery life so that it is as portable as a book; with rapid replacement of contents, it functions as a universal book. Every projection I've seen had such a device on the market long before now, at an extremely modest price.
It hasn't happened, and there's every reason to believe that it won't. Reading from digital devices, whether portable or desktop, suffers in several areas--among them light, resolution, speed, and impact on the reader--and there has been essentially no improvement in any of these areas in the last five years.
Many futurists have conceded this point. They now admit that people will print out anything longer than 500 words or so. It's just too hard to read from a computer, and it doesn't seem likely to get a lot easier. If every long text is printed out each time it is used, there are enormous economic and ecological disadvantages to the all-digital library: briefly, a typical public library would spend much more on printing and licenses than its current total budget and would use at least 50 times as much paper as at present.
What ever happened to Sony's BookMan, their portable digital book? Why didn't the DynaBook ever emerge as a real device? Why aren't we all using Personal Digital Assistants for most of our reading? The answers are complex, but the overall situation is clear. The PDAs being produced today and designed for tomorrow aren't intended to function as book replacements: the screens are small, hard to read, and awkward to navigate for lengthy text. It's increasingly clear that the public as a whole has no need for--or interest in-- digital book equivalents.
Two-thirds of adult Americans, and a higher percentage of children, use their public libraries. Roughly two-thirds of adult Americans purchased books last year. I'd guess that an even higher percentage reads magazines or newspapers. Is it possible that electronic tablets could achieve such ubiquity in the next few years--or even the next couple of decades? I doubt it.
Cui peccare licet peccat minus. -- Ovid, Amores.
I can't wait until it's easy to download pirated versions of Java/Oreilly books via gnureadster(tm). But seriously:
I will have a bookcase with real books on it, until someone with guns forcefully removes it from my house. You can't display great works of literature, or get the inspiration from a library, by reading an MP3-style playlist, and double clicking "War and Peace".
I enjoy not having to crypto-sign a release for a friend to borrow my copy of "1984", or even "Java in a Nutshell".
I think the only place for this is high-volume, low-cost books/literature:
Newspapers
Magazines
etc... etc...
When Computer books cost $80 or more, and travel books the same size/weight in paper can cost $9.95, it makes you wonder. The cost in publishing, is writing, editing, promotion, and distribution - of which only distribution is made partially easier with e-books.
I don't think many people would choose to have Java in a Nutshell for a mere $4.95 discount, in e-form only, dependent on electricity, etc...
Hacking Exposed is actually one of the next ones on my list, along with the FreeBSD Handbook
Hacking Exposed is nothing short of AWESOME. I do suggest that you pick up the second edition though, which came out a little while back. (Unfortunatly for me, it came out 2 months after I got the first edition...)
As for the Free BSD handbook, is that the red hardcover one about BSD 4.4? I have heard good things about it.
Of course, you are more advanced than I am - I've NEVER built a firewall.
I would hardly consider myself more advanced than you. The funny thing is that firewalls are far easier to build than you might imagine. Understanding them is the hard part, it sounds like you are well on your way towards that!
If you have any questions on them you can always mail me (despam my hotmail address) or check out our (very small and humble) message board off of our tiny LUG solug.org.
I had not checked out half.com before, it looks good, but unfortunatly with the exchange rate between the U.S. Dollar and the Canadian one I rarely shop online. I get a large proportion of my computer books from: Halfpricecomputerbooks.com but this is because it is a Canadian company, and I can drive to the store (6Hrs away...). (Heh, I have spent at least $2000.00 CDN there!) Due to the value of your dollar it should be of benifit for you to check it out too, although the prices at Half.com look better I must admit.
I will add your two books to my "get list"... Just what I need... I was at the grocery store today and they had one of those "discount computer book bins"...
Java In a Nutshell (O'Reilly) $9.99
LPI Linux Professional Institute Certification $19.99 (I already have it at $75.00 but I can give this to a friend who needs a copy)
Apache Server Commentary $19.99
Learning Debian/GNU Linux (O'Reilly) $19.99
(Ok, I did not need this last one, but hey, it was an O'Reilly and it was cheap!)
This book habit is bad. (I suppose it's better than drugs...) I can already hear some of the more recent books of fiction I bought calling me...
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Dunno. Why is the wrong question. It's a flimsy piece of plastic, with a plastic case and a few printed pieces of art.
A *similar* feeling occurs for my webpage, so it isn't out of the question that I can adapt.
But there is something, strangely enough, intangible about things that are tangible. Being able to flip through my comics, my novels, my references. I will want a print copy for sheer ownability, not for utility.
So if I get a library of e-books, I still may use the services of 'custom' printhouses to print out and store my top 10 fav publications just to sit on my shelf. The same may be true in a few years with my music collection, when over 15 gigs of music are availabe to my PDA, my PC, my notebook, or my car, that my favorite pieces I may still have the albums and cases. I do that with software; keep the boxes for display purposes
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
The paper medium has survived the "killer apps" of Radio and Television, whose to say it won't survive now? I know I myself enjoying laying in my room reading Asimov, Tolkein, and Faulkner, and the mere tactile feedback of reading a book that is yellowed with age from being from the 70s and before is enough as a reminder that whatever great authors today - Stephenson, Clancy, Crichton - they are merely standing upon the shoulders of the greats who went before them.
Incidentally, check out this study by Xerox/EuroPARC comparing computerized methods of studying versus their paper equivalent. If I recall correctly, they found paper based studying led to higher grades then their computerized equivalents. However, the computer was much more popular for items such as research. Paper and e-Paper both have their roles within society, just as technology and agriculture remain two vitally different but vitally important aspects of human culture.
Information is the catalyst for revolution
1 - *grins* I've never been able to get over the attraction of reading in bed. Can't get to sleep without it. :)
:)
:)
2 - Well reading a large hardcover in bed (as opposed to sitting at a table) is hard on the wrists for me at least
3 - *grins* sorry, wasn't clear... they publish it as they edit it, I assume, so you get more as you get closer to the publication date.
4 - Yep, you can go back to your web-library and download new copies (in various formats, everything from html to rtf to microsoft reader, rocket book, or pda compatable formats.) if you accidentaly nuke yours, or it's been a year and you want to reread it because the sequal just came out...
5 - *laughs* the bane of any space opera fan
I've been using mobipocket. They have a freebie publisher, so I can turn text or html files into mobipocket ones. *grins* I hear you ont he microsoft reader one, but that's never likely to happen as CE and PalmOS are direct competitors, and you've not seen MS Word for linux yet have you?
And Baen supports mobipocket directly which is a plus since I've been buying from them.
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On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
I'm hoping for a future where space travel is not only regular, but annoyingly regular. Where cross-planet flights often go into orbit, where we regularly visit space-stations in orbit, or travel to the Moon or Mars. Maybe it's a huge corporation, 'cause widgets can be make cheaper / faster / better in space, or maybe it's colonization, or maybe it's just government flights, but we're going up every day.
At that point, the folks in charge start considering safety vs. cost. It's a dirty little fact that car manufacturers weigh safety recalls vs. projected accidents and consumer opinion, and some occasionally faulty components don't get replaced. It will be the same for space flight.
What this means is, once components get good enough, they will start thinking about the cost of fuel and space for all those manuals, and start requiring the electronic copy. Maybe two or three redundant copies at first, but eventually just one. And you won't be able to go up with the paper copies, eventually, unless you declare them as luggage and pay for them. Of course, your seat cushion will act as a floatation device, if you happen to survive a water "landing" from orbit.
Now, that would make an interesting science fiction story...
- read when I like and where I like
- read in any order I like
- quote from for the purposes of research or in the creation of a derivative work
- sell to someone else
- lend to someone else
The new technology may be great but it's how the content will be restricted that worries me.--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
e-Books - going to be huge, no question about it.
Will paper die out ? Well, I still covet first editions in nice bindings, solely because of the aesthetics. Taking a lesser version of that, one-use paper will always be more cute & cuddly than that impersonal info-gadget, so I certainly wouldn't hold my breath waiting for paper to vanish.
The real difference though is one that this article skated right over. Paper is one-use with pre-packaged content, e-Books are on-line and live. The difference between "The History of..." and "What's Happening to..., Right This Minute" is a very big difference. It's not so big for Tolstoy. It's not even very big for Steven King. But it's enormous for a medical textbook.
Like the rest of you web-dev geeks, I must read through the whole of the W3C site every few weeks, what with checking the odd snippet ten times a day. Usually it's because of my failing memory, but often it's because some small part was revised last week and I need the current version. Now can you imagine how you'd work with that on static paper ? It's cases like that that will push the e-Book, not some chapter-by-chapter "stop if you don't like it" licensing deal on a new novel.
It's not like we haven't heard this spiel before. For years the likes of Lotus and Microsoft have been saying that our offices will be completely digital any day now and paper documentation will become a thing of the past, and all the while companies like Xerox have continued to make money on the simple reality that everyone, everywhere, still needs paper.
It's natural and obvious that the e-book publishers would be announcing that "that the day of ordinary books, magazines and newspapers was almost over." They, after all, want to make money on its replacement. But there are some things computers just can't replace, and this is one of them. E-books will supplement paper books in the Western world, but they will never replace them.
1) The article is about making a sort of paper that prints itself.. Would be just as easy to read.
2) Books are in digital form before they are printed... Often in TeX format I understand... Would be trivial to either distribute that, or some encrypted, compressed form of the same thing...
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
I don't doubt that eventually, it'll be possible to produce an electronic book that is acceptable to the vast majority of people (as opposed to today's solutions, which are generally not acceptable to most people).
For those of you following along at home, here are the major issues you need to resolve before electronic books replace the paperback:
Display resolution & contrast - I see good progress here, maybe in a couple more years.
Portability - Okay, no problem there
Batteries - You need either really long life, or solar cells. If I can't read it on the beach when I'm on vacation, it's not a "book".
Content rights management - I don't want to have to buy a new "e-book" for each novel I want to read, that'd be a waste. On the other hand, the authors need compensation.
Distribution outlets - Yeah, well, obviously the Internet. But who's going to manage the whole author->reader chain? Traditional publishing houses?
A reasonable user interface - Take a look at Acrobat Reader for an excellent example of how >b>not to design an interface for reading books. Ideally, you want something that takes advantage of the unique strengths of the medium (hypertext, multimedia, etc)
And, last but not least, cost. Books are still pretty darn cheap. Any electronic competitor needs to be either far superior, or not much more expensive, to compete.
On the other hand, anything that reduces the demand for paper has got to be a good thing...
fully replacing paper, or even just physical printed books, will be feat equal to reinventing the wheel.
tcd004
Check out the guts of the PENTIUM 4
BWstockphotos
I am continuously guilty of printing of text from web pages so I can read it. It's easy to say, and it has been said in the past, that paper will dissapear but I haven't seen any evidence of this, at home or at work. The truth of the matter is that the faster we can work with the aid of a computer, the more paper we'll generate.
It's much more convienient to take a book on a subway, to the park, on a plane, etc. than it would be to plug in a laptop and scroll though one. Why would people want to use up their laptop's valuable power to read a novel anyway? It would make more sense to download the novel or resource material and then print it out to read it.
But maybe I'm too old fashion.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
If books don't exist in Farenheit 451, what were the "firemen" burning all the time? Grocery lists?
Let's keep the stupid (not to mention incorrect and irrelevant) literary references to a minimum, shall we?
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Will e-paper be as effective at containing messes during housebreaking the dog as the New York Times?
On another topic, will the e-paper give off toxic fumes when burned? Newsprint makes excellent kindling for the fireplace: it burns fast and hot, is easy to manipulate, and doesn't poison the people settling in for a romatic glass of wine in front of the fire.
All in all though, it would be nice to have tough, waterproof pages that can stand up to reading and rereading as well as assaults by toddler.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
1. i love books too, as i love horses. doesn't mean we still ride them to work.
2. electronic paper IS something you can hold in your hands. it has all the advantages (clarity far better than CRTs, etc.) without the disadvantages (weight, size).
3. my favorite part: "Technology can do wonderful things, but it will never replace genuine human communication." i could make all manner of clever comments about "genuine communication" and its relation to technology, but i find most humorous the irony that this was a post on slashdot...
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fight global cooling
Electronic paper has disadvantages now, but they are most technological. When they become technologically possible and cheap, they will be quickly adopted. Tech manuals will be first (can you imagine a Linux book that updates with kernel revisions?), because the industry can afford it. Schools may be next, since textbooks are so expensive anyway. Once college kids start using them (trade in my 100 pound textbooks for one cool-looking textpad? Sure), they will slowly make their way into the workplace, then into homes.
In terms of quality, CDs are inferior to LPs, but they are smaller and easier to keep in good working condition. Eventually, I expect digital formats without physical medium (provide your own) will take over. Paper will go the same way. I can't imagine a future where geeks go to Mars carrying 500+ kg of paper manuals. Mission Control won't allow it.
I would have thought so too, but this new tech is NOTHING like what You see today. The advantage of the mylar coated tech-thing they're creating now, is that it's so much more like a "real" book than the ones that are around now.
I've actually been to my local library to check out an "e-book" in it's present form, and it's not really nice to read on those limited calculator like pads. But that's not what this development is about. This will be so much more like a real book, have the general feel and look of paper end everything, only diff is that You can set bookmarks, make searches, and don't even have to strain Yourself to turn the page.
In my opinion, the E-book WILL survive, but for the very foreseeable future it will co-exist with the regular book, since As You point out, they're part of our history. Additionally the production costs are a lot bigger at present. But as the E-book becomes cheaper and easier on the eyes, I truely believe that it will eventually become accepted.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
Books also depend on technology. You can't read them if it's dark, or if it's raining. Assuming that civilisation hasn't collapsed completely, is it easier for me to give you a copy of a book by beaming it Palm-to-Palm, or by photocopying a paper version ? Will a quality-made computing device outlive a cheap paperback on corrosive paper ?
The digital longevity issue is a good one. I can (and do) read 40 year old data sets, but I often can't read a 5 year old one. The reasons behind most of these happenings is that >20 years ago we defined data formats by doing just that; defining a format as fields, groups, rows etc. Ten years ago we instead would choose "WordPerfect" format -- devolving the format definition to an application vendor. Now it's these application-based formats that are the ones being lost (mainly), not those where the format was explicitly noted.
Fortunately, the future looks brighter. XML is a good start, but the increasing usage of schema-based formats with simple and commonplace syntaxes can free us entirely from application dependency. Who cares if the last XML parser is lost ? The XML syntax spec is shorter than a French holiday phrasebook, and we can just re-write one from scratch. Schema languages are increasingly self-describing and semantically powerful, so we can re-interpret our data by reading them.
i've recently purchased a book from audible.com.
first of all, after downloading the book, i realized that the book was in a proprietary format and i was forced to use a proprietary player (which basically sucked because it stuttered from time to time). i was unable to hear the book on my linux machine and had to install a microsoft product just to listen to it. what the hell is wrong with this picture?
that's like purchasing a book from the bookstore and having to read it with a special decoder spyglass! or how about purchasing a music cd that only plays on Sony CD players?
this is a serious issue and it needs to be fixed before it gets out of hand.
for this, i played the book on one machine, and recorded the audio onto another. then, i changed the recorded format to MP3 so i'm able to listen to it on my linux machine. i should make the MP3 available to the public just to spite those idiots...
BOYCOTT AUDIBLE.COM !!!
golgotha
I have a fondness for long novels, unfortunatly they are hard to carry around in a pocket all day, being so bulky, like the Cryptonomicon hard cover I carried around. Lately I've been greading them on my palm pilot. It's perfect, light, backlit, I don't have to carry another thing around with me (since I carry my palm anyways).
It has all the convience of a book (I can read it in front of the fireplace, etc), and all the convience of a light small device.
A year ago I would have said no way. Now it's 'bring on the ebooks!'
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Remove the rocks to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Guess I should go print and read it.
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"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Since I just got a Rocket eBook I've had this conversation a few times recently. Something that my friend pointed out is "I can't loan you my ebook after I'm done with it." He's right -- when I buy them, they're hard coded to my device. Unless I loan him the reader, which would be in sticking with the old "book license" methodology that only one person can read it at a time. The problem, of course, is that then I can't read any books while he has my reader. That's no good. Something that's assumed about paper books that's different from ebooks is that paper books have the "reader" inherently installed. Each book is therefore a standalone thing. eBooks, at least for the moment, are not. You have to think of the book and the reader (the content and the display?) as two different things having two different licenses.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
I recently wandered into a channel called #bookwarez on IRC. Instead of going to Barnes n' Noble to *buy* books the way you're supposed to, you can get them for free in PDF or HTML format. Most of the books I've seen available are tech-related (Teach yourself [language/app/cert] in 21 days), but I've also seen many fiction titles as well. This form of warez is new to me, but the fact that it's out there is kinda interesting. Most of the books I've seen are zipped up pretty good and I'd say 1000 pages = 2 megs. Makes you wonder what *won't* be available for free if you search hard enough. This brings up many ethical issues, and I don't advocate or reccommend that you go out and do this, but it is something to think about.
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
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There could perhaps be a window... [and] a hatch with explosive bolts on the spacecraft... and pitch and yaw thrusters so that the astronaut occc... pilot could have some... could have control of the re-entry procedure.
-- "The Right Stuff"
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.