I should read it again, too. And I also should look for a copy of Count Zero, as that's one that is missing from my bookshelf.
You should read all the three; Mona Lisa Overdrive binds together a number of threads from the earlier books (as a conclusion of a trilogy should). All the three bounce quite a bit in time, place as well as persons, so these books are something to read in alert state; you need to keep quite a big record in your mind about all the things underway and persons interacting. The other way (which I think I should try some day) would be to read these while jotting the things down in a notebook, for later references.
I'd say these books are something that need to be reread for a few times before actually understanding the story (but then, I'm not a native English speaker, so that may have an effect). Also , they're not to be read in a hurry (like "I don't get this part, I'll just skip it and read on"). There's just too much to miss on a casual reading.
It would be great if the amount of waste would be reduced by this.
However, for me at least, it's quite a long since I discarded any electronic equipment because of a failure. More often, things just become obsolete in one way or another. Obsolete enough that I can't even get them sold to anyone (at any price - even 1 is too much).
I did have bad caps on one motherboard, three to four years ago, I think (at which time the board had been in use for one year). I replaced the caps, and still have the motherboard in use.
As for Prism being supported in kernel; pretty much any Prism-descendant you can find nowadays is a so-called softmac adapter - and support for these is not that good.
The worst thing with Prism-based adapters is, that there are some models that used to be based on fullmac chips (and thus were working with Linux) , but were changed into softmac models without any changes in the adapter designation. "lspci" will show different values, but the sales package will be the same.
While there is a lot of technology to be invented for the e-books to become reality, I think the biggest problems lie elsewhere. Like Gutenbergs technology, the e-paper will once again dramatically reduce the price of producing a new copy of a work, thus in essence make the copies of existing works more available.
What now becomes a problem is that we all know (honestly, don't we) how easy it technically is to copy anything that already is in electronic form. I see here a grave risk to authors' income - and I'm not so certain the traditional publishers will like to promote e-books, either.
As to whether the consumer prices of publications will drop, I'm not so certain. Today the publishers are eager to argue that the price is not due to printing costs, but because the author needs to live, too, but have any of you really tried the validity of that argument (try getting a cheap (the low printing costs only) replacement for a book that was ruined in a rain, for example; I'd bet you'll end up paying the street price, in essence a new license).
So, what we're talking about is something requiring a drastic change in both copyright laws and the economical system (yes, the economical system; just think how much money goes around in producing the paper and producing and transporting everything printed on paper).
I saw someone being worried about the licensing issues - and I agree; would my library just cease being if I didn't pay my yearly license? On the other hand, how can the author and publisher prevent me from illegally giving out copies of the work?
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I should read it again, too. And I also should look for a copy of Count Zero, as that's one that is missing from my bookshelf.
You should read all the three; Mona Lisa Overdrive binds together a number of threads from the earlier books (as a conclusion of a trilogy should). All the three bounce quite a bit in time, place as well as persons, so these books are something to read in alert state; you need to keep quite a big record in your mind about all the things underway and persons interacting. The other way (which I think I should try some day) would be to read these while jotting the things down in a notebook, for later references.
I'd say these books are something that need to be reread for a few times before actually understanding the story (but then, I'm not a native English speaker, so that may have an effect). Also , they're not to be read in a hurry (like "I don't get this part, I'll just skip it and read on"). There's just too much to miss on a casual reading.
It would be great if the amount of waste would be reduced by this.
However, for me at least, it's quite a long since I discarded any electronic equipment because of a failure. More often, things just become obsolete in one way or another. Obsolete enough that I can't even get them sold to anyone (at any price - even 1 is too much).
I did have bad caps on one motherboard, three to four years ago, I think (at which time the board had been in use for one year). I replaced the caps, and still have the motherboard in use.
The worst thing with Prism-based adapters is, that there are some models that used to be based on fullmac chips (and thus were working with Linux) , but were changed into softmac models without any changes in the adapter designation. "lspci" will show different values, but the sales package will be the same.
While there is a lot of technology to be invented for the e-books to become reality, I think the biggest problems lie elsewhere. Like Gutenbergs technology, the e-paper will once again dramatically reduce the price of producing a new copy of a work, thus in essence make the copies of existing works more available.
What now becomes a problem is that we all know (honestly, don't we) how easy it technically is to copy anything that already is in electronic form. I see here a grave risk to authors' income - and I'm not so certain the traditional publishers will like to promote e-books, either.
As to whether the consumer prices of publications will drop, I'm not so certain. Today the publishers are eager to argue that the price is not due to printing costs, but because the author needs to live, too, but have any of you really tried the validity of that argument (try getting a cheap (the low printing costs only) replacement for a book that was ruined in a rain, for example; I'd bet you'll end up paying the street price, in essence a new license).
So, what we're talking about is something requiring a drastic change in both copyright laws and the economical system (yes, the economical system; just think how much money goes around in producing the paper and producing and transporting everything printed on paper).
I saw someone being worried about the licensing issues - and I agree; would my library just cease being if I didn't pay my yearly license? On the other hand, how can the author and publisher prevent me from illegally giving out copies of the work?