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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 11/11/2009 In defense of books
..... I saw a
cartoon recently that showed a little boy and his mother walking into a
library and seeing signs for the internet access section and the games and
other high tech offerings, and the cartoon caption has the little boy saying
to his mother “Do you remember when we came here for the books?” The
little boy in that cartoon reminded me of myself as a boy, in Portland Maine
back in the 1950’s, the day I was able to get my own library card, and
how thrilling it felt to be able to take my red wagon to the library and
check out my own books and take them home. I’ve
loved books all my life; I still have some books from my childhood,
and many books from different stages of my adult life when I was interested
in different topics. I have bookcases arranged by different
types of books, and it’s like having old friends that I can see anytime
I want. The covers are familiar
faces, and the illustrations take me back to delicious enjoyment and
imagination of my childhood. There’s many I
know I have read a dozen times, and I will be re-reading them again too. Today Amazon introduced
its new Kindle
Reader for Windows a beta
software program that will allow you to read books previously only readable
on the Kindle now on your PC. These are all E-books which were converted to
Kindle format and sold as Kindle books, but seeing as the Kindle hasn’t
had much market impact, Amazon is now hoping that people will want to read
these kindle-formatted books on their pc’s.
There are 360 thousand books available including 101 of 112 New York
Times® Best Sellers, all selling for $ 9.99 unless marked otherwise. I tried reading e-books on a portable
computer years ago. As opposed to
picking up a paperback book which is small and light, you have to pick up a
computer which weighs several pounds. You can’t quickly open the e-book
to a specific page, as you can with a paperback. You can’t thumb through an e-book
or turn down the pages like you can a paperback. It’s hard to read an
e-book in bed; you can’t lay on your side like
you normally do – you have to lie on your back. And very often
I’ll fall asleep and my paperback book will fall on my face. A computer
really hurts when that happens; I found out. And I don’t care if my
paperback slips off the bed, but I have great concerns about my computer
doing that. You
can’t just loan an e-book to a friend, unless they have a computer or
kindle too. And it’s probably against the copyright regulations anyway.
Which explains why there’s lots of used book stores,
but no used e-book stores.
I like to
go into used books stores and browse, they’re usually very interesting
places, and they have very good prices, and I usually end up buying books I
hadn’t intended to, just because they look interesting, and because they’re
books. Bravo to Books ! |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2009 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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