maybe i'm just biased because the last thing i read entirely on-screen were the functional specs and documentation for new chip engineering software, in their entirety.
or maybe i've just ruined my eyes with bi-weekly, 48-hour bouts of being awake in front of my computer. my eyes don't put up with a lot of that anymore.
I thought you were... but to make this entirely argumentative is more than i care to do.
cover price on lonesome dove is 5.95 - there's a bookstore around here that sells new books at 20% off cover, and used books for 1/2 cover price. 950 awesome pages = $3.
for starters - I get your points. Secondly, please don't condescend. I know a lot about printers, book design, paper sizes and weights, and printing time/issues with downloads/OS compatibility/ripping a large doc through a small printer/ETC. However, it is still my preference to books.
I live in the U.S, and for what it's worth, it's still WAY cheaper to buy a $3 book. Better still to go to the library and get a pile of books for FREE.
Right now I'm reading "Lonesome Dove." 950 Pages. even at 2 pages per side, that's 240 duplexed pages.
so: downloading a 950-page book, sending a 950-page document through a printer, and clipping 1/2 a ream of paper together would be at your rate at least 20 minutes. and have you tried to carry a binder-clipped sheaf of A4 paper around? it's awkward. granted, you could grab 20 pages at a time, but I'd rather just have the book and be able to go back and look things up or re-read them.
so for my 30 minutes of time (minimum), lack of printer, not wanting to carry around a half ream of paper, availability of free or cheap paperbacks - I'll stick to commercially printed books. plus, that way if the author is still living, that means they are more likely to get a cut. If I spend $5 on a book, and the author gets $1 or 50, I feel it's better than just spending $5 on printing supplies and binder clips.
that's why I said "the pages are conveniently sized and bound."
What I thought was self-evident was that I meant: "and I don't have to print, fold, and somehow bind them together on my own, because it's time-consuming and 1/3 an ink cartridge and a ream of paper is more expensive than three dollars."
You can also just give books to people....sometimes they even like them better than hand-made pre-owned sheaves of inkjet prints.
BUT I do think CtrlF is a way better way to find your favorite passage - especially in a long document.
I think this is only good for short documents.... I think if I read Finnegan's Wake or Hawaii on-screen, my eyes would bleed and tear themselves out of my skull. (not to mention downloading PDFs for days.) In that case, I'd much rather just go buy a paperback for $3. Then I don't have to read on-screen, the pages are conveniently sized and bound, and I can take my book to places I wouldn't bring a laptop. Like a bubble bath, bed, or my commute to work every day.
I work @ a real estate co. in Boston. We use keyhole, aerial programs such as aerials express, and have pilots fly sites, to zoom in on properties, for sales/leases/whatever.
having a site flown is expensive, can't be done for the number of buildings we are in charge of working with. you can keep prints when you get them, but the photos become old quickly. aerial software is also a great concept - but after even one year, the images are out of date also.
As far as google funding this on its own, I don't think it has to: keyhole is a pretty decent program already, and if they get enough people to buy subscriptions (as we have) they could come up with more funding.
I personally love anything in 3D, and I am trying to get back into the 3D/VFX field. I'd love to see Boston as a 3D fly-through. But especially with the Big Dig, that'll be a few years...
Slashdot Mirror
when the gold spoon wraps itself around his face, all goverment testing of this thing will stop...
maybe i'm just biased because the last thing i read entirely on-screen were the functional specs and documentation for new chip engineering software, in their entirety.
or maybe i've just ruined my eyes with bi-weekly, 48-hour bouts of being awake in front of my computer. my eyes don't put up with a lot of that anymore.
I thought you were... but to make this entirely argumentative is more than i care to do.
cover price on lonesome dove is 5.95 - there's a bookstore around here that sells new books at 20% off cover, and used books for 1/2 cover price. 950 awesome pages = $3.
for starters - I get your points. Secondly, please don't condescend. I know a lot about printers, book design, paper sizes and weights, and printing time/issues with downloads/OS compatibility/ripping a large doc through a small printer/ETC. However, it is still my preference to books.
I live in the U.S, and for what it's worth, it's still WAY cheaper to buy a $3 book. Better still to go to the library and get a pile of books for FREE.
Right now I'm reading "Lonesome Dove." 950 Pages. even at 2 pages per side, that's 240 duplexed pages.
so: downloading a 950-page book, sending a 950-page document through a printer, and clipping 1/2 a ream of paper together would be at your rate at least 20 minutes. and have you tried to carry a binder-clipped sheaf of A4 paper around? it's awkward. granted, you could grab 20 pages at a time, but I'd rather just have the book and be able to go back and look things up or re-read them.
so for my 30 minutes of time (minimum), lack of printer, not wanting to carry around a half ream of paper, availability of free or cheap paperbacks - I'll stick to commercially printed books. plus, that way if the author is still living, that means they are more likely to get a cut. If I spend $5 on a book, and the author gets $1 or 50, I feel it's better than just spending $5 on printing supplies and binder clips.
that's why I said "the pages are conveniently sized and bound."
What I thought was self-evident was that I meant: "and I don't have to print, fold, and somehow bind them together on my own, because it's time-consuming and 1/3 an ink cartridge and a ream of paper is more expensive than three dollars."
You can also just give books to people....sometimes they even like them better than hand-made pre-owned sheaves of inkjet prints.
BUT I do think CtrlF is a way better way to find your favorite passage - especially in a long document.
I think this is only good for short documents....
I think if I read Finnegan's Wake or Hawaii on-screen, my eyes would bleed and tear themselves out of my skull. (not to mention downloading PDFs for days.) In that case, I'd much rather just go buy a paperback for $3. Then I don't have to read on-screen, the pages are conveniently sized and bound, and I can take my book to places I wouldn't bring a laptop. Like a bubble bath, bed, or my commute to work every day.
will be "Babblefish" - which will translate your garbled conversation back!!
What would I do with all the time I'd have, that I currently devote to caressing Internet Explorer into rendering pages right? More slashdot!
I work @ a real estate co. in Boston. We use keyhole, aerial programs such as aerials express, and have pilots fly sites, to zoom in on properties, for sales/leases/whatever.
having a site flown is expensive, can't be done for the number of buildings we are in charge of working with. you can keep prints when you get them, but the photos become old quickly. aerial software is also a great concept - but after even one year, the images are out of date also.
As far as google funding this on its own, I don't think it has to: keyhole is a pretty decent program already, and if they get enough people to buy subscriptions (as we have) they could come up with more funding.
I personally love anything in 3D, and I am trying to get back into the 3D/VFX field. I'd love to see Boston as a 3D fly-through. But especially with the Big Dig, that'll be a few years...