"This is a steep discount compared to what users in the U.S. and elsewhere are charged for the software."
It's still about $65.80 more than what many people are paying all over the world.
Didn't somebody comment on the last article about Vista piracy in China that it was good for Microsoft because it established them in the market? So what happened to that? From their point of view, how is being ripped off for $65.80 any better than being ripped off for over twice that?
I would kind of assume that, given the approximate speed of technology development, many of the minor issues such as screen glare, (auto-)scrolling, etc will be addressed in the coming years. One of the most important issues I think needs addressing is, as you mentioned, eye-strain. I haven't tried at all to look into the research behind it and I don't even know how much research there is, but it needs to be looked into and technology should/will accomodate.
But yes, there is something about physically holding the book in one's hands that simply can not be replaced.
A few months ago, I attended a discussion forum at the University of Rochester that brought in a few well-established people from various professions in and related to the publications of books. The main topic they discussed was how new technology will affect the way books ultimately reach the readers. They talked about things like print-to-order books and walking around with eBooks on your portable computer as well as an online database of books that people can simple go to and read whatever is there.
More questions were raised than answers given, but one conclusion that everybody there seemed to be happy to agree with was that printed texts are not going anywhere. They've been around longer than just about any other technology that is still used on a daily basis by millions of people. They'll be here tomorrow, next year, next decade, and I would be next century (unless we all kill ourselves by then).
The next question has to do with their popularity. Surely, people would prefer to carry around a small 2-pound computer that can store hundreds of books than literally carrying around those hundreds of books. So at some point there is a shift in preference. I think that the answer of where exactly is that shift is still anybody's guess. Time will tell, to be sure.
My point being that the stats used by this company to make their bold statement about 2010 only went back to 2005. Sure, computers are a new and exciting technology, but at this point, we have around 15-20 years of history in which computers have been sold to consumer-level society on a mass scale. Of course if you compare the actual technology to that of 15 or 20 years ago, there are drastic differences and I'm not saying they should be overlooked. But completely ignoring this wealth of relevant statistical information in order to make a wild proclamation that does little more than sell advertising space on the webpage doesn't score high in my book. Even though it may successfully shock some uninformed viewers, those kinds of people are rarely the ones making the big decisions that actually matter anyways (although I'm sure some people would gladly call their high-powered boss "uninformed").
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"This is a steep discount compared to what users in the U.S. and elsewhere are charged for the software." It's still about $65.80 more than what many people are paying all over the world. Didn't somebody comment on the last article about Vista piracy in China that it was good for Microsoft because it established them in the market? So what happened to that? From their point of view, how is being ripped off for $65.80 any better than being ripped off for over twice that?
Can you Google me now?
Is this related to the dust storm in Arizona? (photo and video) Maybe the giant face of Mars saw Arizona and decided he could out-dust-storm us.
because we only have 6.5 billion years of proper sunlight left.
A great slogan for this program, but I bet our latex buddies have an entirely different interpretation of that...
I would kind of assume that, given the approximate speed of technology development, many of the minor issues such as screen glare, (auto-)scrolling, etc will be addressed in the coming years. One of the most important issues I think needs addressing is, as you mentioned, eye-strain. I haven't tried at all to look into the research behind it and I don't even know how much research there is, but it needs to be looked into and technology should/will accomodate. But yes, there is something about physically holding the book in one's hands that simply can not be replaced.
A few months ago, I attended a discussion forum at the University of Rochester that brought in a few well-established people from various professions in and related to the publications of books. The main topic they discussed was how new technology will affect the way books ultimately reach the readers. They talked about things like print-to-order books and walking around with eBooks on your portable computer as well as an online database of books that people can simple go to and read whatever is there. More questions were raised than answers given, but one conclusion that everybody there seemed to be happy to agree with was that printed texts are not going anywhere. They've been around longer than just about any other technology that is still used on a daily basis by millions of people. They'll be here tomorrow, next year, next decade, and I would be next century (unless we all kill ourselves by then). The next question has to do with their popularity. Surely, people would prefer to carry around a small 2-pound computer that can store hundreds of books than literally carrying around those hundreds of books. So at some point there is a shift in preference. I think that the answer of where exactly is that shift is still anybody's guess. Time will tell, to be sure.
My point being that the stats used by this company to make their bold statement about 2010 only went back to 2005. Sure, computers are a new and exciting technology, but at this point, we have around 15-20 years of history in which computers have been sold to consumer-level society on a mass scale. Of course if you compare the actual technology to that of 15 or 20 years ago, there are drastic differences and I'm not saying they should be overlooked. But completely ignoring this wealth of relevant statistical information in order to make a wild proclamation that does little more than sell advertising space on the webpage doesn't score high in my book. Even though it may successfully shock some uninformed viewers, those kinds of people are rarely the ones making the big decisions that actually matter anyways (although I'm sure some people would gladly call their high-powered boss "uninformed").
Yeah, at that point it becomes absolutely hilarious. Seriously, fuck WalMart.
...sue the voices in her head that told her to download copyrighted material.