Emergency Situation: electronic books

[BigBallinStalin]

Look at these awful websites! They're giving away all those books at no charge. If everyone did this, then no one would write any more books--since profits could not justify the production! It's an outrage!!!

[Lootifer]

wut?

[Dukasaur]

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/avoiding-a-digital-dark-age/1

Avoiding a Digital Dark Age

Data longevity depends on both the storage medium and the ability to decipher the information

Kurt D. Bollacker

When I was a boy, I discovered a magnetic reel-to-reel audio tape recorder that my father had used to create “audio letters” to my mother while he was serving in the Vietnam War. To my delight (and his horror), I could listen to many of the old tapes he had made a decade before. Even better, I could make recordings myself and listen to them. However, all of my father’s tapes were decaying to some degree—flaking, stretching and breaking when played. It was clear that these tapes would not last forever, so I copied a few of them to new cassette tapes. While playing back the cassettes, I noticed that some of the sound quality was lost in the copying process. I wondered how many times I could make a copy before there was nothing left but a murky hiss.

A decade later in the 1980s I was in high school making backups of the hard drive of my PC onto 5-¼-inch floppy disks. I thought that because digital copies were “perfect,” and I could make perfect copies of perfect copies, I couldn’t lose my data, except by accident. I continued to believe that until years later in college, when I tried to restore my backup of 70 floppy disks onto a new PC. To my dismay, I discovered that I had lost the floppy disk containing the backup program itself, and thus could not restore my data. Some investigation revealed that the company that made the software had long since gone out of business. Requests on electronic bulletin board systems and searches on Usenet turned up nothing useful. Although all of the data on them may have survived, my disks were useless because of the proprietary encoding scheme used by my backup program.

The Dead Sea scrolls, made out of still-readable parchment and papyrus, are believed to have been created more than 2,000 years ago. Yet my barely 10-year-old digital floppy disks were essentially lost. I was furious! How had the shiny new world of digital data, which I had been taught was so superior to the old “analog” world, failed me? I wondered: Had I had simply misplaced my faith, or was I missing something?

Over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st, an increasing proportion of the information we create and use has been in the form of digital data. Many (most?) of us have given up writing messages on paper, instead adopting electronic formats, and have exchanged film-based photographic cameras for digital ones. Will those precious family photographs and letters—that is, email messages—created today survive for future generations, or will they suffer a sad fate like my backup floppy disks? It seems unavoidable that most of the data in our future will be digital, so it behooves us to understand how to manage and preserve digital data so we can avoid what some have called the “digital dark age.” This is the idea—or fear!—that if we cannot learn to explicitly save our digital data, we will lose that data and, with it, the record that future generations might use to remember and understand us.

[PLAYER57832]

"site blocked" : (

[nietzsche]

Actually, I buy more books now for my kindle.

Although there's a romantic idea of having the book in paper, sometimes I'm researching something and find a book that I'm interested in, and instantly I buy it cheaper than on paper and I can read half of it in the same night I learned it existed.

I do have downloaded for free a few books, but normally you want to read something in specific and to browse among those sites or torrents to see if it's there and then risk to download it, lay down and get ready only to find it's all badly formatted, well, I'd rather spend 10 bucks and have a pleasant reading experience.

I actually think some authors are making much much more dough nowadays.

A couple of weeks ago, in a period of a month, I think I bought and read around 8-10 books.

Although the case might be different for textbooks or consult books, I don't know their proper name in English.

[xeno]

I recommend getting the free books app off the istore it has about 2000 or so books that are in public domain and beautifully formatted. I don't know if I want to read a book any other way again as the agitation of holding pages back and all that rubbish is gone

[Army of GOD]

"how to make a book"















...don't you just write?

[thegreekdog]

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/avoiding-a-digital-dark-age/1

Avoiding a Digital Dark Age

Data longevity depends on both the storage medium and the ability to decipher the information

Kurt D. Bollacker

When I was a boy, I discovered a magnetic reel-to-reel audio tape recorder that my father had used to create “audio letters” to my mother while he was serving in the Vietnam War. To my delight (and his horror), I could listen to many of the old tapes he had made a decade before. Even better, I could make recordings myself and listen to them. However, all of my father’s tapes were decaying to some degree—flaking, stretching and breaking when played. It was clear that these tapes would not last forever, so I copied a few of them to new cassette tapes. While playing back the cassettes, I noticed that some of the sound quality was lost in the copying process. I wondered how many times I could make a copy before there was nothing left but a murky hiss.

A decade later in the 1980s I was in high school making backups of the hard drive of my PC onto 5-¼-inch floppy disks. I thought that because digital copies were “perfect,” and I could make perfect copies of perfect copies, I couldn’t lose my data, except by accident. I continued to believe that until years later in college, when I tried to restore my backup of 70 floppy disks onto a new PC. To my dismay, I discovered that I had lost the floppy disk containing the backup program itself, and thus could not restore my data. Some investigation revealed that the company that made the software had long since gone out of business. Requests on electronic bulletin board systems and searches on Usenet turned up nothing useful. Although all of the data on them may have survived, my disks were useless because of the proprietary encoding scheme used by my backup program.

The Dead Sea scrolls, made out of still-readable parchment and papyrus, are believed to have been created more than 2,000 years ago. Yet my barely 10-year-old digital floppy disks were essentially lost. I was furious! How had the shiny new world of digital data, which I had been taught was so superior to the old “analog” world, failed me? I wondered: Had I had simply misplaced my faith, or was I missing something?

Over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st, an increasing proportion of the information we create and use has been in the form of digital data. Many (most?) of us have given up writing messages on paper, instead adopting electronic formats, and have exchanged film-based photographic cameras for digital ones. Will those precious family photographs and letters—that is, email messages—created today survive for future generations, or will they suffer a sad fate like my backup floppy disks? It seems unavoidable that most of the data in our future will be digital, so it behooves us to understand how to manage and preserve digital data so we can avoid what some have called the “digital dark age.” This is the idea—or fear!—that if we cannot learn to explicitly save our digital data, we will lose that data and, with it, the record that future generations might use to remember and understand us.

I'm one of those "old school" people that takes digital photographs and immediately prints them. I also print out anything that I write that may be worthwhile to use in the future. I have an incredible distrust for digital whatsahoobies and computers... especially for a 33 year old that has grown up with computers.

[oVo]

Some people think the internet/blogging and stuff
has created an abundance of so called "writers"
that will have an effect on all legit authors.

[AndyDufresne]

If you like Science Fiction or Fantasy, they are evidently giving away the '2014 Campbellian Anthology' -- the book 'attempts to collect in one volume representative works by most of the writers eligible for this year’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.'

I haven't read much recent science fiction, but I mean, this is free: http://stupefyingstories.blogspot.co.uk ... ology.html

There are files for Kindles and Ipads and other ereaders. You can also just download the ipad file and then use a free online converter to convert to .pdf -- which is what I did. Now I have a .pdf with nearly 500 pages. Maybe I'll read some of it.


--Andy

[PLAYER57832]

Look at these awful websites! They're giving away all those books at no charge. If everyone did this, then no one would write any more books--since profits could not justify the production! It's an outrage!!!

Public libraries.

Profits are not all there is. Without education and free flow of good information, including entertainments, there is no free market, there is only manipulation.

[AndyDufresne]

Look at these awful websites! They're giving away all those books at no charge. If everyone did this, then no one would write any more books--since profits could not justify the production! It's an outrage!!!

Public libraries.

Profits are not all there is. Without education and free flow of good information, including entertainments, there is no free market, there is only manipulation.

Player, this topic isn't meant for continuing discussion regarding OP, nearly a year ago. Silly!


--Andy

[AslanTheKing]

Avoiding a Digital Dark Age

Data longevity depends on both the storage medium and the ability to decipher the information

Kurt D. Bollacker

When I was a boy, ..........................................................................................

very philosopical post, indeed, for my understanding

i do agree with the mess of backups,
just two years ago it happened to me, i made a backup of my harddrive with a certain programm
and after i deleted the program i couldnt get into the data anymore, i fixed it later and it worked

but it seems to me that our human race must have been where we are now before
everything is lost
all we can look at are some papyrus rolls, pyramids ( inside are wallpaintings how to brew beer !!)
maybe thats why they are called beeramyds, and other messages carved in stone,
this is all we have from our histroy left, and we are just talking about 5000 years,

looking now back since discovery of electricity until our computerworld today, only 200 years have passed by

the question is what else has been found what our eyes are not supposed to see?

about the ebook industry, its the same like music or filmindustry
other options emerge,
we still will be reading, listening to good music and watch movies

but the biggest threat of the internetworld has become the total control of privacy
it is possible that every citizens history of the internetuse, bank, privacy , whereabout is stored

[BigBallinStalin]

Look at these awful websites! They're giving away all those books at no charge. If everyone did this, then no one would write any more books--since profits could not justify the production! It's an outrage!!!