On Mon, 25 Oct 2010, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote:
It's interesting: I just got an iPad a few weeks ago, mostly as a reader/web-browser device, and I've been reading a variety of out-of-copyright works: H. Rider Haggard, Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain. Thank you Gutenberg Project!
It is awesome, isn't it?
And, since I am sitting/lying here with a very sore back from moving boxes of books around this weekend looking for that book that I *know* is in there somewhere, the prospect of some magic box that would scan all my books into a format usable into eternity would be quite nice. I might even think that a personal "print on demand" would be nice that could generate a cheap/quick copy for reading in bed(yes, the iPad and Kindle, etc., are nice, but there's affordances provided by the paper edition that is nice.. But I don't need hardcover or, even, any cover..) (or, even better, a service that has scanned all the books for me, e.g. Google, and that upon receiving some proof of ownership of the physical book, lets me have an electronic copy of the same... I'd gladly pay some nominal fee for such a thing, providing it wasn't for some horrible locked, time limited format which depends on the original vendor being in business 20 years from now. I also recognize the concern about how "once in digital form, copying becomes very cheap" which I think is valid.)
What a killer idea. Acceptable use, doggone it! I'd ship them books by the boxful in exchange for a movable (even DRM controlled) image, a la Ipod music. I just don't want to rebuy them, like I've now bought most of my music collection TWICE (vinyl and CD). rgb Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:r...@phy.duke.edu _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
