Slashdot Mirror
62% of 16 To 24-Year-Olds Prefer Printed Books Over eBooks
assertation writes "According to The Guardian, 62% of readers between the age of 16 and 24 prefer physical copies of books over ebooks. Reasons given were the feel of 'real books,' a perceived unfairly high cost for eBooks, and the ease of sharing printed books. 'On questions of ebook pricing, 28% think that ebooks should be half their current price, while just 8% say that ebook pricing is right.' The preference for physical copies was in contrast to other forms of media, such as games, movies, and music, where a majority preferred the digital version."
It's all about ebooks being too expensive. 10 dollars for a book that's 4 dollars online, or available at the library? Once kids figure out how insanely easy it is to pirate ebooks, they'll prefer ebooks.
I posed a question on social media recently asking if deleting an Ebook is akin to book burning. Very few saw a parallel. Most were appalled at the idea of burning a book but had no problem with deleting an Ebook. The reason they would not burn a book but were ok with deleting an Ebook? Not for the preservation of knowledge, not for passing on history, not for any other archeological reason. Just because they had a sentimental connection via their senses, the touch, the smell.
3A 4E 22 05 C1 83 0B 7A
It's random, but my posting it here is probably considered illegal to someone.
I'm 22 and prefer real books to printed on almost every case. I have a noon classic and an iPad, but prefer dead-free versions. No one I know (just started grad school) likes ebooks better.
You can buy the physical book, but for a small additional price you get the ebook version as well. I've had a kindle for a couple years now and still bought physical books and just pirated the ebook version. Now I'm able to purchase both for just about the same price.
There's already a name for this - Jean Luc Picard Syndrome.
To give some arguments that I don't see:
Printed books don't break when shoved into luggage.
Printed books have infinite "battery life".
Printed books don't get stolen like electronic devices.
I break a book, I just lost that particular book - well, no. I can still read it. I lose it, all I lost is one book - not an electronic device and all the other books on it.
At least some poor slobs (printers, packagers, truckers, etc ...) are making a living making these things (at no extra cost to me) as opposed to content creators who knock this off and make an infinite number at no additional cost (put it into the computer and infinite copies without any effort.).
...prefer pdf versions of textbooks over hardcovers that they have to lug between classes.
I base that number on absolutely nothing.
At first glance I was shocked at the acceptance of ebooks this implies. On further thought however (and without reading the article) this could as well mean that 38% don't read at all. Or have a more complex opinion than can be stated as a preference.
I refuse to believe that 38% of any population actually prefers those slow to flip through ebooks.
That said, we like authors and want them to get money. And books are more fun and don't have to be downloaded onto every device. If we want an ebook version we just get it FREE from the public library - usually when going on a trip or something.
Big Music - nah.
Most of the pirating going on is due to "region-encoding" or attempts to censor works or not distribute them in certain countries. No amount of legislation will stop that.
None.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
who knew. I haven't paid for any media in over a decade.
Half of the respondents were sourced through student moneysaving website Studentbeans.com, and half through a broader youth research panel.
You ask people at a money saving web site and they will choose the cheeper thing. Used books are way cheaper than ebooks. If you asked Amazon shoppers you would get a different answer.
Look at it from the other side. 38% of a very desirable demographic using a product that has not been around that long. It's been 500 plus years since the Gutenberg Bible and only 6 years since the Kindle came out. I think that 38% is pretty damn good.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
With a physical book, I can display it (coffee-table books).
With a physical book, I can loan it out easily. If it doesn't come back, I'm out no more than the cost of the book.
With a physical book, I can use it for component materials (burn it if I'm cold, prop up a table leg).
Physical books are "scarce", a first edition Harry Potter e-book will never be worth more than list price. Unknown how much a signed eBook goes for.
The point is, physical books have more value, thus should cost more. The price points for physical books is about right. So that means eBooks are overpriced. If I had to pay equal amounts for a book or an eBook, I'd pick the book every time. An eBook is worth about as much as a used book (1/2 to 1/10th original price). That's the price the books settle in at over the long term when the supply exceeds demand, which is the initial case with eBooks, as supply is infinite.
Learn to love Alaska
This is also the same age bracket that thinks PBR (http://www.pabstblueribbon.com/) is good beer.
I prefer tree books too. No glare, so it's easier to read for a duration. I can have it open next to my computer instead of taking real estate. They look nice on the bookshelf too.
Ask a bunch of young people whether they'd prefer the 'treat' of a car ride tomorrow, or a ride in a horse-and-carriage, and I'm sure you can guess the likely winner. Then, you too can post a story on Slashdot claiming the majority of young people prefer horse-drawn transport over the the automobile.
This is the oldest trick in the book when it comes to misleading polling or marketing. The Guardian, better known as "Tony Blair in print" in the UK, is at the forefront of pushing extremist pro-war agendas, and spin is second nature to every Guardian writer.
The rise of the ebook is NOT happening because people hate printed books per se. The rise of the ebook is happening because of EVERYTHING that associates with the technology of electronic publishing. The physicality of a 'real' book is obviously satisfying, just as sitting on the back of a real horse is, but this 'fact' does not have any impact on the irreversible and accelerating changes that are coming to the way most of us access written material.
The dribblers at the Guardian need to fill the column inches in-between the editorial content that screams constant calls to back Blair's terrorists in Syria with the full blown might of the armed forces of the West. The easiest way for third rate hacks to do this is to 'troll', crafting mock controversies and 'surprises' that their fellow travellers, like the owners of Slashdot, can then cross promote.
Notice the growth of the new, mainstream media, 'magazine' format websites - sites that rely entirely on similar tabloid journalistic tricks, spun in the direction of subjects more likely to catch the attention of people who shun the old media outlets. 'Loud' JUNK articles designed to dominate and drown out valid, significant, useful discussions.
Were any of you here so thick, you did not know that in the simple sense, if all issues of practicality are ignored, people usually prefer to read from 'real' books? Of course not. Then what game are the owners of Slashdot playing with you? Well, Slashdot's continuous stream of political articles designed to push Team Obama agendas, should be a bit of a clue.
Real books are much easier to reference/tag pagers and skim, easier to get a general idea of where information is, etc.. Electronic media fails totally on teh easy mental image of where information is.
Ask them if it's OK to delete the last copy of an eBook and see what response you get.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
With real books, I can donate them to charity when I'm done with them. Given that the general retail rate for used books is 60% of face value, that means the donation is worth about 30% (taking both state and federal tax deductions into account), so my effective printed book-price is 70% of face value. E-books need to be priced fairly against that.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
citation ?
I want to see a real study about this supposed eye stress people keep mentioning.
A real study would be good. At the same time, I haven't run across anyone in my personal life who doesn't prefer reading a dead-tree book over an ebook. Ebooks are certainly more convenient in many ways, especially once you factor in portability. But many (most?) ebook readers these days that I see around me are backlit (as they tend to be tablets), which does lead to a certain amount of eyestrain and can cause circadian imbalance.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
For light reading I prefer ebooks but anything professional, I'd want a real book so I can underline passages and take notes in the margins. That all can be done with ebooks but not nearly as well as far as I'm concerned.
"a perceived unfairly high cost for eBooks"
Uh, this implies that the perception is all it is.
Rather than actual observational fact.
"And I'd've gotten away with it if it weren't for those pesky kids!".
I don't buy the expensive ebooks. Just not at all. There are so many books to read, I move on. The model is changing, and once the authors have finished their contracts and can sell the ebooks directly and the new authors have moved up, the expensive ebooks will disappear.
Hipsters!
I think Rupert Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer said it best when confronted about books vs. computers:
Jenny Calendar: Honestly, what is it about [computers] that bothers you so much?
Giles: The smell.
Jenny Calendar: Computers don't smell, Rupert.
Giles: I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.
What?! They aren't just perceived unfairly high - they ARE unfairly high! If you subtract the cost to typeset, print, bind, and then ship (stock, and warehouse) hard-copy books from their total cost, and then apply normal markups, ebooks would not be over $5 USD, still providing the publishers and authors with their usual profits. Current pricing is totally absurd and unacceptable, especially since most require DRM, which means you are renting, not buying, their books. The major publishing houses are burning down their own houses around themselves by treating their customers like thieves...
Anyone that knows how to use ebooks and has a decent reader is going to probably prefer them.
The people that I've seen that prefer regular books either are very anti technology... either by age or inclination... or have never tried a quality reader.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
ebooks are too expensive by far. Excessive DRM is used to enforce. The reason is greed. Much of it influenced (forced) by the big players and publishing houses.
I know there was already an author (forget the name), who has already show that he could make more money by selling many more copies at a much reduced rate.
I will stick to my paper books thank you, and used when I can. Unless I go someplace where space is a premium and you can't easily find books. Like Space or possibly the Arctic/Antarctica, however baring that I can probably get by.
Though that is possibly the point. A protection racket so as to not compete with their paper based business. They don't want to offer a good product, as then they might supplant their paper business, and at which point is probably more susceptible to forced change from the cozy outdated business model they currently maintain.
As opposed to the paper versions...
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
I'm 61, not 16, and I prefer my eBook reader (my Android phone) for light fiction, especially when I'm trying to fall asleep or in a waiting room or eating a light meal in a coffee shop.
The price of Ebooks -- yes, way too high -- doesn't directly affect me, since my local library loans me eBooks. And then there's that huge public domain Gutenberg collection and others like it.
I'll pay for eBooks when they're half the price of mass-market paperbacks. Until then, I'll only read titles I can get for free.
Yes I like the smell of paper, and the ability to thumb through a book, and the ability to write a personalized note inside when giving one as a gift... but if your primary motivation is getting through content, if the experience of reading books is more important than the experience of having books, ereaders win. They are smaller, and can contain most/all of your collection simultaneously. No more having to choose which book to take on your vacation. Take all of them.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Although I do not fit in this demographic and now do the majority of my reading on my Kindle, I, too, prefer printed books. There are plenty of good things about ebooks. I particularly like the portability and built in dictionary. In spite of the conveniences that ebooks offer, I still prefer the FEEL of a real printed book. As a result, I have a good collection on my Kindle and an overloaded bookshelf.
I would have a sig but I am too busy updating programs and restarting my computer
I would use eBooks much more often if it wasn't for the damn DRM. My college is making me use some crappy textbooks, and the PDFs have DRM on them, so the first thing I do when I get one is remove the DRM. Then when the class is over I just delete the PDF because the info is pretty much useless to me since it's below my knowledge and intelligence level. I wouldn't be using these books at all if the college didn't require them. It's a good thing the state is paying for them because I sure wouldn't buy anything this crappy, especially when the internet gives you the exact same information for free.
while
Yes: one of my customers is a major publisher, and the printing costs, warehousing and transport are indeed a huge part of the cost of a book, certainly on the order of 40%. Some of this can avoided by the publisher, by having a retailer warehouse the books, but the retailer still has to pay for the warehouse, and therefor adds that cost into the price.
There ain't no free lunch (;-))
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Look, I'm in IT. I work with computing systems and stare at screens all day. I read a lot of stuff online. But, I also have over 5K books in my personal library. For me, it's not so much the feel of having a book in my hand as it is the smell of books. There's just something about that that you don't get staring at a display. I'm also one of those people who can't see paying $7 for something I can't hold. It's sort of like blowing cash on Candy Crush Saga. What are you really getting when you buy an ebook? Yes, the author's hard work, but it's the tangibility thing.
Not to mention, who's gonna spend millions on a first edition Ebook? :)
Pax Vobiscum
To be honest I am still in love with real books, I own a kindle and use it regularly but I still lump around a paper book in my bag as I just prefare it.
About the only time I go for the kindle version if it's cheaper than the paper version OR if it's only available in a digital edition (a few friends of mine are self published authors and I like there work so I buy a kindle copy), but given the chance it's a physical book all the way.
I don't really understand why people hang onto books. An atlas and other reference books? A Calvin and Hobbes anthology? Sure, I can accept those. ...but a Tom Clancy novel from 1994 next to Watership Down next to...? Why? I step into people's houses and see bookshelves lined with books that haven't moved in years. Are they really going to read all these books again? Why hang on to them. Send them on their way to someone else who will appreciate them.
I buy e-books from companies who expect me to treat them like physical books. If I lend a colleague a copy, I tell him if he likes it he should buy one. General speaking, (s)he does. Sometimes electronic, sometimes paper.
One publisher puts a "bookplate" in that says "This electronic copy of <title> belongs to David Collier-Brown, davecb@spamcop.net", in the top half of a page that contains a simplified set of terms and conditions, which explicitly says "treat me like a hardcover book".
I could remove it easily enough, it's just epub, but I don't care to. I agree with the publisher, and I want borrowers to know who they borrowed the book from, so they'll tell me if they buy their own. I expect most of my friends could pirate the book as well, and that they don't care to.
The publishers know I can pirate the book, but that I bought it. They take a risk that I may lend a copy to someone who "won't give it back", in the sense that he will keep it and won't buy his own copy. That tends to make me reluctant to lend him either electronic or physical books, just like I would if he didn't return a hardcover he borrowed.
In short, they expect most people are honest, can pirate and will buy books they like. See any of my postings about O'Reilly's Using Samba for proof that people did exactly that.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
As a 63 year old, life spent in IT, I fear e-books: DRM, can't share, they will be very selective about texts [blockbusters, crowd pleasers], 'book' can be removed remotely etc. etc. That's apart from the pleasure of having a house full of book, trashy science fiction from the 60s and 70s, crime novels and even a few serious books too.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
I expected more from this age group. With all of the awareness of shrinking natural resources, why anyone would choose printed books and their inherent danger to the environment. But, who cares that trees are cut down, thus adding to global warming, as long as I can have the feel and smell in my hands.
I expected more of this new generation.
Bearded Dragon
I really hope this is the backlash of "content industry" going rampant into scam mode.
I work at one of those self appointed "content providers", and the way content is treated there (just some amorphous stuff to be sold) *should* earn them that.
If you treat your own content as some sort garbage, just as a means to extract money from some gullets, you deserve going out of business.
It doesn't sound like you are "lending"; it sounds like you are distributing. Unless you delete your copy when you pass it on to someone else. You don't lend something by making a copy of it. You lend something by making it accessible to someone else while not being accessible to you. Read a sentence like "I loaned my hammer to the neighbor" to understand what lending is.
I think the language you used are why the young people who were polled prefer print.
They can hand a printed book off to someone without the word "pirate" being potentially used.
Why does a physical book, which requires printing, shipping, and storage until sale, cost only one or two dollars more than an electronic file, which cannot be resold or easily shared? Even accounting for amazing infrastructure, it is obvious that ebook pricing is a scam.
We want our knowledge to be solid and concrete, stuff we can use and hold, we want out pleasures to be ephemeral, love, ecstasy, drugs (effects). Solid sources of joy are losable, breakable, sources of worry. Solid sources of knowledge are usable, sharable, about to outlive the owner.
As per our example video games are extremely stimulating, though fairly simple physically, whereas board games while doing the same, can be made unplayable by losing a single piece. Books can be shared, written on, indexed physically in your mind (e.g.: about halfway though, in the large section of pictures), used as a pillow or a table, forgotten about for years then found again. E-Books are tied to a machine, or an account, if you lose access to either you lose your information. generally its hard to make notes or share, physically fragile and a slew of other things you don't want to associate with something as valuable as knowledge.
Also books come with the feeling of "property" which tends to make people more attached.
I spend at least 8 to 10 hours at work staring at a screen every day. Then, I come home to stare at another big screen for a couple of hours. The last thing I want to do is to stare at yet another screen to fall asleep.
E-readers are nice, up to a certain point. Contrast is still too low for my particular taste. I had a kindle for about an year, until I unconsciously would reach for printed books because it was just more pleasurable to read without having to fiddle with font sizes to compensate for the lack of contrast. Flashing page turns also broke my immersion.
But again, I am 26 - maybe I'm just too old to get into the e-book scene.
I find the price of ebooks on bit-torrent sites to be perfect. You can't beat free!
On a more serious note, they should be much cheaper than the printed version to be worth it. The hassle of DRM and not being able to loan it to a friend. The worry of losing your ability to read it someday with incompatible readers or simple drive failure. At least half the price of a physical book if not less, any more and piracy is my alternative.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Here are the missing things that are currently stopping me from defecting from the land of dead-tree books:
1) The reader that's as pleasant and easy to read as book, anywhere I might want to read (like in the bath, or our in the sun on a hot day), and that doesn't leave me twenty times as much out of pocket if it gets lost, stolen or damaged.
2) Cost of acquisition on a par with books. Currently, it's not uncommon for Amazon to be selling a paper book for less than they charge for the kindle version. Factor in the second-hand market, and you can pretty much always pick up a book for significantly less than an ebook.
3) The ability to sell/loan/give away ebooks. And be 100% sure that I'll always be able to read them. The value of books is significantly diminished if I can't lend them to friends and family (and borrow theirs), and if I no longer want them to sell them off or donate them to a charity shop. Or if in ten year's time the vendor went out of business and took their DRM system with them and I can no longer read my ebooks.
4) A way of converting all my paper books into (legal) ebooks. The biggest advantage of ebooks (hundreds of books in your pocket!) is completely if for any given book I wan to read there's a 95% chance that I'm going to have to go and get it off the bookshelf anyway (not that it wouldn't be nice not to be forever running out of bookshelf space)
That last one is, for me, the real killer. Ripping all my CDs into iTunes took a while, but now I have all my music wherever I go and my CDs are in boxes in the attic. I can't do that with books. Sure, I could try and track down pirated ebooks for every paper book I own, but that would take a very long time, and I'm betting there are plenty I wouldn't be able to find. Plus I'd still need to hang onto the originals to make the slightest claim on legality...
Windows moves in mysterious ways, its crashes to perform
I find paper books to be easier to read. I use either an iPad and an Android phone (with lapdock). Unfortunately I don't have any eInk displays yet, that might make a difference. I also am concerned about paying for eBooks with DRM. Will I have access to them forever?
But....
Space is valuable. I have too much junk, and too many books. I almost always choose the eBook now because they take no space!
Also, I like having my books on my phone. When I find myself away from home and bored (for example: shopping trip with the wife) I can use that time to read. My paper books are all stuck at home, useless.
It gives me a headache when I watch a screen for long periods of time, so I welcome any chance to be able get away from it. I have to use a computer for work, and for entertainment you pretty much need a screen for movies, shows and video games. Books are unique in that respect so I will always prefer the dead tree form.
If i want to share a physical book with a friend all i have to do is hand it to them. If i want to share an e-book i often have to go through loops to do so. DRM is the big killer of e-books. I would rather have an e-book for searching and research, but nothing beats having a real book for your book club.
They haven't had to move a library of physical books several times yet.
That's right...
because it is all just ***text on a page***
that page can be ink on paper, sprites on LCD screen, or pixels on a kindle
people want news more than ever, people want to be entertained more than ever, people want mental stimulation more than ever, & most importantly people **expect** to get this whenever they want
the text is the Message...the book or ereader is the Channel
Claude Shannon's SMCR Model always provides clarity ;)
Thank you Dave Raggett
1. books are more expensive to produce in volume because paper costs more than electronic bits.
2. ebooks are more expensive because bits need to be stored and downloaded, and they can be pirated more easily.
points 1 and 2 kind of even things out. I think we generally agree that an ebook shouldn't cost more than a print book, but I don't think the ebook should be cost less either.
with mediocre formatting that cost (far) too much. Unless, of course, they come without DRM or with easily-stripped DRM. But the latter isn't the preferred solution as they keep trying to make it illegal. If the thing costs more than a paper book, I can read the book (properly formatted), give it to friends, donate it somewhere, sell it to a used-bookstore or even burn it for warmth. And it will work in 2-3 years, independent of the status of the vendor. And I don't need to purchase a reader.
Tech is often driven by the youth market. If you lose the young, you lose.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"The preference for physical copies was in contrast to other forms of media, such as games, movies, and music, where a majority preferred the digital version."
Bullshit, I play all my games on analog!
Games, movies, and music, are only available (to end consumers) in digital formats.
I think the language you used are why the young people who were polled prefer print.
They can hand a printed book off to someone without the word "pirate" being potentially used.
Yes. It's nice to be able to share without worrying about Digital Rights Management.
227-3517
Teens probably think ebooks suck because they read them on their stupid little phones instead of using a decent e-Ink reader, a Nexus 7 or similar.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
This renews my faith in our youth. I am much older. In fact, I'm technically old enough to be the parent of most of the people in that demographic.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Lose a book, lose 10 bucks. Lose an eReader, lose 100 bucks. Onviously those numbers aren't firm, but on average, an eReader costs a lot more than a book.
My opinion is that every new printed book should have a free ebook 'companion' version available right on release, obtainable with some code/qr from the printed book, with let's say a 6 months expiration date. Then, the ones who have the printed version could purchase the electronic version for let's say 5% of the printed price, and for 20% if you don't have the printed version.
I'm sure I wasn't the first to think of such a scheme, but it seems they just don't want the ebook market to grow 100x faster than it is now, so they don't implement such a structure.
And that's exactly why I never bought any electronic book. The only electronic reading material I ever bought are scientific articles, and even that is very rare, since I find most of them for free somewhere, or get it directly from the authors.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I had to buy a kindle because small fonts gave me headaches and eye pain.
Similie.
davecb@spamcop.net
I agree completely that most eBooks are horribly overpriced.
I'm an independent author (see sig). I've priced my eBook version and paperback version at a level where I receive the roughly the same profit from both. Since paperbacks cost money to print, the paperback costs more than eBook (as you'd expect).
Nevertheless, when I look at offerings from other independent authors (using the same publishing platform as I did), the eBook is generally priced almost exactly the same as the paperback! I can tell you now - if you see an eBook priced the same as the paperback and it was published by "CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform", the author is making a much larger profit on the eBook than they are on the paperback.
Also, despite my eBook being significantly cheaper, it also gets significantly less sales. The ratio at the moment in my sales is around 8:1 in favour of the paperback.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
I prefer e-books to print books in most cases, however their cost is the main issue for me. I can usually find a used copy of a book of a book that I want to read for $4 or less, but the electronic version is almost universally $10 and up. If all I'm concerned about is the content of the book (which is all that you get when you buy an e-book) then why should I care if a book has been used or not? It's frustrating, because I'd really prefer to consume the content through my Kindle.
As far as college text books are concerned, it's a weird situation and I don't blame anyone who says they simply prefer a paper text book. Here's why. Have you ever tried to use the officially-sanctioned eBook solutions that are available on the market today? They're pathetic. Completely locked down with DRM and mired by bad interface design and usability. I bought an eBook for one of my classes at the beginning of the semester. I had thought to myself, "Hey, this could be great if it's like I imagine -- like downloading an eBook to my Kindle app on my iPad." Boy, was I mistaken. I had to download a half-backed piece of proprietary crap-ware in order to "read" my book. The user interface in this "app" (rhymes with "crap"?) was appalling. The interface was clunky and looked like it was thrown together in a single week. The pages were pixelated, not crisp like a PDF.
In the end, I resorted to _illegally_ downloading the books (as PDFs) I had just purchased legitimately on account of the inadequacies in the kosher versions. Ironically, now that I've gone through one semester being able to carry around my iPad (< two pounds) instead of paper text books (~ twenty pounds?), I would never -- not in a million years -- go back to paper text books. It's unfortunate that all these media corporations have been allowed to drag their feet so slowly in embracing new technologies and formats for delivering their content.
Reading on electronic devices is a lot more pleasant with white text on black. I have no idea why it's always the other way around...
http://aqfl.net/node/8443 for my old web site's poll and comments. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).