Supply & demand, simple as that. There is no demand for ebooks - so the supply is low. As soon as there is a greater demand, there will be more interest, and then they will appear. It will be a small effort for publishers to convert paper texts into etexts when there is money to be made in it. When finally the apetites of the market become attuned to these then there will be a supply with little or no delay. That's basic economics 101.
No - books ARE relatively available. Specific books are not. In the cases where specific texts go out of print, that's an issue of market demand. If there was significant demand for these texts than they would still be in print. The fact that they are no longer in print indicates that there is not a significant demand for publishers to print them. In the case that you are looking for any rare / antique item, you have to accept it as a given that it is going to be difficult to find. I agree that this is a good reason for having etexts. But my arguments were about the role of etexts in the market as a whole, and why most there is no demand for them on the part of the majority. If there is no demand for these specialty books, there will be just as little demand for them in etext form.
From the bookmarks that a local bookstore ( bookcity ) gives out with purchases:
Introducing the new Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge device - BOOK.
BOOK is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology; no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It's easy to use. Even a child can operate it.
Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere - even sitting in an armchair by the fire - yet is powerful enough to hold as much as a CD-ROM.
[...]
BOOK never crashes nor requires rebooting. The 'browse' function allows instant movement to any sheet, forward or back, as one wishes. Many come with an 'index' feature, which pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval.
Portable, durable and affordable, BOOK is being hailed as a precursor of a new entertainment wave. BOOK's appeal seems so certain that thousands of content creators have committed to the platform and investors are reportadly flocking to the medium.
It seems paradoxical, but there it is. I spend a huge amount of time glued to the screen, reading articles, blogs, forums, FAQs, HOW-TOs, etc. But I don't like it, in fact I find it aggravating.
I am lured and lulled by the vast amount of easy information suitably tailored to my interests, all with an easy to use intuitive associational ( read hypertextual ) interface. But it is tiring, staring at a flickering glaring screen for hours, my eyes get dry, and I strain and get tired picking out fuzzy objects when I try to focus at distance. Its nasty and annoying.
Here is my point about this project. Nobody wants to read books on their computers. Well maybe some do, but I think the vast majority don't. Paper books are easily available and cheap. If you can't find the one you want in a local library or bookstore there are a multitude of ways of ordering them. You don't get tired looking at them, they are actually enjoyable. So why should there be a desire amongst the majority for e-books?
Don't get me wrong, I think its a good idea, but not one that I, nor I think the majority, will go in for until a better way is developped of presenting them. LCDs are an improvement, but they still are shabby. I don't think a project like this is going to see much public interest until some better presentation media is found. E-Paper will be needed before the E-book becomes a reality for most people. Some kind of little book-sized unit that you can hold and which will display on a matt - non-glaring, non-luminous surface.
Quite possible. I've never heard this term before, but that seems to make sense to me. However I wonder how much any changes in mitochondrial DNA can have upon the phenotype of the resulting creature.
Wouldn't a little hardening of the electronics be able to stop this?
And if so, wouldn't you have to turn up the power on such weapons ( if it is even possible ) to the point that it would be harmful to civilians / nearby people?
I find it odd how so many continue believe this myth that clones are somehow identical carbon copies of each other. I don't know where this started, but a simple look into nature will show you that it can't possibly be so.
Look at identical ( monozygotic ) twins. Twins of this type are as close as you will ever be able to "duplicate" someone. They share the same DNA, as they are produced from the same egg and same sperm in conjunction. They shared the same womb environment, and all forces that shaped one in the fetal stages of development would also have occured to the other. In the cases where they are not given up for adoption, they share the same family & early childhood environmental influences. It is true that there can be slight differences, it is often true that parents will ( often unconsciously ) treat one twin differently from the other, viewing one as "the strong one" and the other as weak. Even in the womb, there can be slight differences, where one gets a kind of biological "preferencial treatment" receiving slightly more nutrients, oxygen, etc. than the other. But they are as close as can ever be made by anyone.
Now compare this with a clone. Certainly they share the same DNA - but under most circumstances they do not share the same fetal environment or the same early developmental environment. Even if they are born to the same mother and raised in the same place, simply the difference in time between when one is born and the other can yield significantly larger differences. Beyond all that, those who study such things regularly say that only about 40-50% of what we would consider to be the "fundamental characteristics" of a person is determined by genetics, the rest of it being some mix of individual experience combined with individual decisions. Ie: genetic factors only account for 40-50% of the variation between individuals.
So we can easily see that twins ought to be much more alike than clones. Yet we know that even identical twins are often not carbon copies. They may look nearly identical, but they often have quite different personalities. True that there are cases where identical twins seem nearly mirror images of each other, and strange tales of those who are seperated at birth and find that years later they have lived almost parallel lives, but that is by far the minority. As for such ridiculous things as "what happens to your soul if you get cloned?" - noone ever worry about the souls or "essential personality" of twins as being a philosophical problem, so why clones?
Maybe this could make toys hate your baby...
on
When Appliances Revolt
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Well if species keep disappearing at a high rate, and researchers keep discovering new ones at a moderately slow rate - then eventually these two should converge at some point.
So it follows that we should kill off more species to help these scientists in their noble task. ( amazing what absurd things can be done with pure logic )
While this is a great idea in some respects, it still fails in others. Part of what makes me "perform less than optimally" when I'm hungry is that my stomach is making all kinds of nasty noises & having nasty feelings. It is rather distracting. Regardless of what I put on my arm, without something in my stomach, it won't stop.
and continuing our dependence on the Middle East and supporting terrorists when we fuel up.
All very informative, but this was a bit of unnecessary hyperbole. I for one am getting a bit sick and tired of the mindless post911 claptrap that sees terrorists and their supporters everywhere. Terrorists have little or nothing to do with the oil industry. Not all muslims / arabs are terrorists. Perhaps this was just a bit of overexageration on your part, but my tolerance for these kinds of remarks is wearing thin.
Ethanol is a bit of a sham solution. It seems fine at first glance, but when you look under the cover, it in fact requires much more energy per gallon to produce than many other energy sources. The majority of ethanol fuel is derived from corn, and the quantity of energy expended in the tilling & harvesting, etc. of that corn exceeds by far the energy expended producing most other fuels. Usually this expenditure is in the form of burning other fossil fuels in tractors & combines.
The motivations for the promotion of ethanol seems to be to provide a subsidy to corn farmers under the guise of an alternative fuel source so as to not encurr the wrath of international trade organizations like the WTO.
Wow, a hugely complex scripting environment with hooks into every aspect of the OS.
Virus writers - here is your big chance to spread like wildfire through windows machines! .... Again!
An android Jenna Jameson wet nurse will tickle your senile old chin and giggle suggestively as it changes your diapers and wipes the drool from your face, and you'll feel oh-so-ripped off that you aren't young enough to enjoy the advantages of the future.
Well then, I think we can safely say that this individual is not exactly a "conventional" thinker. In my limited experience with such matters I would say he seems to have the hallmarks of schizophrenic thinking. But one way or the other, this is pretty damn far from scientific research. I wish articles like this would actually get read before they're posted.
This is such a waste of effort. All this means is that the person to first rip the data and then let it loose on gnutella ( or morpheus, etc. pick your fav. p2p ) will have to pay for the privelege. How is this different from buying a movie ticket and then taping it with your handycam and giving / selling the result?
Someday these corps. are going to have to realize that digital is _more_ easily copied than analog, not less. No matter what clever locks and barriers they put up, the data is the same, and so it is inherently easy to reproduce. The demands of digital secrecy/security are fundamentally opposite to the demands of broadcasting and never the twain shall meet.
CFCs were responsible for ozone depletion - that is different but related to the global warming problem. It is true that CFCs have been phased out, but other greenhouse gases are still in use.
Slashdot Mirror
Supply & demand, simple as that. There is no demand for ebooks - so the supply is low. As soon as there is a greater demand, there will be more interest, and then they will appear. It will be a small effort for publishers to convert paper texts into etexts when there is money to be made in it. When finally the apetites of the market become attuned to these then there will be a supply with little or no delay. That's basic economics 101.
No - books ARE relatively available. Specific books are not. In the cases where specific texts go out of print, that's an issue of market demand. If there was significant demand for these texts than they would still be in print. The fact that they are no longer in print indicates that there is not a significant demand for publishers to print them. In the case that you are looking for any rare / antique item, you have to accept it as a given that it is going to be difficult to find. I agree that this is a good reason for having etexts. But my arguments were about the role of etexts in the market as a whole, and why most there is no demand for them on the part of the majority. If there is no demand for these specialty books, there will be just as little demand for them in etext form.
Well I'd prefer them not to be "shiny" - I find that is part of the problem, but this is the sort of thing that would be great for reading books.
I use an Nvidia geforce2 on a samsung 955 dynaflat - I run 1280x1024 @ 85 Hz. I still get sore eyes.
Whoops my mistake - that link is to the wrong bookcity - doh! I meant bookcity in Toronto, Canada.
Introducing the new Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge device - BOOK.
BOOK is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology; no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It's easy to use. Even a child can operate it.
Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere - even sitting in an armchair by the fire - yet is powerful enough to hold as much as a CD-ROM.
[...]
BOOK never crashes nor requires rebooting. The 'browse' function allows instant movement to any sheet, forward or back, as one wishes. Many come with an 'index' feature, which pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval.
Portable, durable and affordable, BOOK is being hailed as a precursor of a new entertainment wave. BOOK's appeal seems so certain that thousands of content creators have committed to the platform and investors are reportadly flocking to the medium.
It seems paradoxical, but there it is. I spend a huge amount of time glued to the screen, reading articles, blogs, forums, FAQs, HOW-TOs, etc. But I don't like it, in fact I find it aggravating.
I am lured and lulled by the vast amount of easy information suitably tailored to my interests, all with an easy to use intuitive associational ( read hypertextual ) interface. But it is tiring, staring at a flickering glaring screen for hours, my eyes get dry, and I strain and get tired picking out fuzzy objects when I try to focus at distance. Its nasty and annoying.
Here is my point about this project. Nobody wants to read books on their computers. Well maybe some do, but I think the vast majority don't. Paper books are easily available and cheap. If you can't find the one you want in a local library or bookstore there are a multitude of ways of ordering them. You don't get tired looking at them, they are actually enjoyable. So why should there be a desire amongst the majority for e-books?
Don't get me wrong, I think its a good idea, but not one that I, nor I think the majority, will go in for until a better way is developped of presenting them. LCDs are an improvement, but they still are shabby. I don't think a project like this is going to see much public interest until some better presentation media is found. E-Paper will be needed before the E-book becomes a reality for most people. Some kind of little book-sized unit that you can hold and which will display on a matt - non-glaring, non-luminous surface.
Load these onto F-15s and lets go clean up Iraq!
Quite possible. I've never heard this term before, but that seems to make sense to me. However I wonder how much any changes in mitochondrial DNA can have upon the phenotype of the resulting creature.
Wouldn't a little hardening of the electronics be able to stop this?
And if so, wouldn't you have to turn up the power on such weapons ( if it is even possible ) to the point that it would be harmful to civilians / nearby people?
I find it odd how so many continue believe this myth that clones are somehow identical carbon copies of each other. I don't know where this started, but a simple look into nature will show you that it can't possibly be so.
Look at identical ( monozygotic ) twins. Twins of this type are as close as you will ever be able to "duplicate" someone. They share the same DNA, as they are produced from the same egg and same sperm in conjunction. They shared the same womb environment, and all forces that shaped one in the fetal stages of development would also have occured to the other. In the cases where they are not given up for adoption, they share the same family & early childhood environmental influences. It is true that there can be slight differences, it is often true that parents will ( often unconsciously ) treat one twin differently from the other, viewing one as "the strong one" and the other as weak. Even in the womb, there can be slight differences, where one gets a kind of biological "preferencial treatment" receiving slightly more nutrients, oxygen, etc. than the other. But they are as close as can ever be made by anyone.
Now compare this with a clone. Certainly they share the same DNA - but under most circumstances they do not share the same fetal environment or the same early developmental environment. Even if they are born to the same mother and raised in the same place, simply the difference in time between when one is born and the other can yield significantly larger differences. Beyond all that, those who study such things regularly say that only about 40-50% of what we would consider to be the "fundamental characteristics" of a person is determined by genetics, the rest of it being some mix of individual experience combined with individual decisions. Ie: genetic factors only account for 40-50% of the variation between individuals.
So we can easily see that twins ought to be much more alike than clones. Yet we know that even identical twins are often not carbon copies. They may look nearly identical, but they often have quite different personalities. True that there are cases where identical twins seem nearly mirror images of each other, and strange tales of those who are seperated at birth and find that years later they have lived almost parallel lives, but that is by far the minority. As for such ridiculous things as "what happens to your soul if you get cloned?" - noone ever worry about the souls or "essential personality" of twins as being a philosophical problem, so why clones?
Then again it could just be another evil Chinese commy conspiracy - uh, yeah right.
Well if species keep disappearing at a high rate, and researchers keep discovering new ones at a moderately slow rate - then eventually these two should converge at some point.
So it follows that we should kill off more species to help these scientists in their noble task. ( amazing what absurd things can be done with pure logic )
While this is a great idea in some respects, it still fails in others. Part of what makes me "perform less than optimally" when I'm hungry is that my stomach is making all kinds of nasty noises & having nasty feelings. It is rather distracting. Regardless of what I put on my arm, without something in my stomach, it won't stop.
All very informative, but this was a bit of unnecessary hyperbole. I for one am getting a bit sick and tired of the mindless post911 claptrap that sees terrorists and their supporters everywhere.
Terrorists have little or nothing to do with the oil industry. Not all muslims / arabs are terrorists. Perhaps this was just a bit of overexageration on your part, but my tolerance for these kinds of remarks is wearing thin.
I see - I didn't know about this before. That sounds like a very valuable project. Thanks for the info.
well not if we could get tabletop fusion working - that would be a far higher EROI than oil. But that's a pipe dream, and mostly you're right.
Ethanol is a bit of a sham solution. It seems fine at first glance, but when you look under the cover, it in fact requires much more energy per gallon to produce than many other energy sources. The majority of ethanol fuel is derived from corn, and the quantity of energy expended in the tilling & harvesting, etc. of that corn exceeds by far the energy expended producing most other fuels. Usually this expenditure is in the form of burning other fossil fuels in tractors & combines.
The motivations for the promotion of ethanol seems to be to provide a subsidy to corn farmers under the guise of an alternative fuel source so as to not encurr the wrath of international trade organizations like the WTO.
Removing command line editing? How is that an advantage? I use that constantly!
Wow, a hugely complex scripting environment with hooks into every aspect of the OS.
.... Again!
Virus writers - here is your big chance to spread like wildfire through windows machines!
An android Jenna Jameson wet nurse will tickle your senile old chin and giggle suggestively as it changes your diapers and wipes the drool from your face, and you'll feel oh-so-ripped off that you aren't young enough to enjoy the advantages of the future.
he claims to be the "Teachmaster" of Logologie - the first cyberage- religion.
His other article on "health information" is titled: Warning: Pink can be dangerous for health!.
Well then, I think we can safely say that this individual is not exactly a "conventional" thinker. In my limited experience with such matters I would say he seems to have the hallmarks of schizophrenic thinking. But one way or the other, this is pretty damn far from scientific research. I wish articles like this would actually get read before they're posted.
This is such a waste of effort. All this means is that the person to first rip the data and then let it loose on gnutella ( or morpheus, etc. pick your fav. p2p ) will have to pay for the privelege. How is this different from buying a movie ticket and then taping it with your handycam and giving / selling the result?
Someday these corps. are going to have to realize that digital is _more_ easily copied than analog, not less. No matter what clever locks and barriers they put up, the data is the same, and so it is inherently easy to reproduce. The demands of digital secrecy/security are fundamentally opposite to the demands of broadcasting and never the twain shall meet.
And when the refrigerator ends up in the scrapyard - what then??
No, not CFCs - other greenhouse producing gases.
CFCs were responsible for ozone depletion - that is different but related to the global warming problem. It is true that CFCs have been phased out, but other greenhouse gases are still in use.