Kindle -should I buy now ?

Ratboy

With the demise of Woolworths, Jessops, and now HMV, do people not realise the destruction to the economy they are causing, by making people lose their jobs?

I'll buy a £80-150 device, download a book, might read it once, then delete it. That is history lost, like online photos, media moves on, your online photos will not exist to show your kids. Print the photos out, stick them in an album. But not on your cheap Lexmark printer, the photo will degrade, get it sorted professionally. Oh there are none left, because tech overran use.

So my £100 device works for a couple of years, then I upgrade, or it breaks. How much does a library book cost?

People are UNinventing technology at a faster rate these days. If you store your photos on Flikr/FB whatever online, and it gets hacked/goes offline/goes bust etc, then how will you get those pictures back?

But if you use high street shops to print them out professionally, they are there forever. You also have the benefit of only printing out the best shots, but most what I see on FB are drunken parties and lots of red eye, despite the numerous photoshop applications.

debitcardmayhem

Ratboy wrote: »

With the demise of Woolworths, Jessops, and now HMV, do people not realise the destruction to the economy they are causing, by making people lose their jobs?

I'll buy a £80-150 device, download a book, might read it once, then delete it. That is history lost, like online photos, media moves on, your online photos will not exist to show your kids. Print the photos out, stick them in an album. But not on your cheap Lexmark printer, the photo will degrade, get it sorted professionally. Oh there are none left, because tech overran use.

So my £100 device works for a couple of years, then I upgrade, or it breaks. How much does a library book cost?

People are UNinventing technology at a faster rate these days. If you store your photos on Flikr/FB whatever online, and it gets hacked/goes offline/goes bust etc, then how will you get those pictures back?

But if you use high street shops to print them out professionally, they are there forever. You also have the benefit of only printing out the best shots, but most what I see on FB are drunken parties and lots of red eye, despite the numerous photoshop applications.

Sadly if those photos get ruined by flood/fire/overzealous clear out , what then .... nice idea sadly not the best presented argument

-TangleFoot-

Ratboy wrote: »

But if you use high street shops to print them out professionally, they are there forever.

Nothing lasts forever.

Ratboy

Similar records have lasted for thousands of years, if you can't understand that technology isn't compatible to todays technology, then you are deluded. How do you think that a PC will be a PC in 20 years, when 40 years ago, a PC didn't exist?

Try the Amiga computer that you stored in the loft....if won't work, it's full of fluff..

The Sega MegaDrive you stored in the loft? NO OUR Technology is failing, and uninventing things. As the computer won't work, due to dirt ingress. I tried it. It does.

But what have we to show the next culture? The FAT THUMBED no fingerprints, always on their iphone xx, and this also causes more road accidents, because either the driver is listening to music, and not taking note, or the pedestrian, that walks out in front of a car.

-TangleFoot-

Ratboy wrote: »

Similar records have lasted for thousands of years...

...because they were written really, really big. Digital storage squeezes more into less space and is so easily duplicated that as long as there are two or more functional archiving systems around to store something, that something will last a lot longer than a piece of rock with some scratches in it.

Basically: it's only a problem if we're not around to worry about it.

Ratboy

-TangleFoot- wrote: »

Nothing lasts forever.

What about all those dinosaur bones, and fossils, and rocks, and shells?

Time to actually GROW UP.

-TangleFoot-

The bones and shells were gradually replaced by rock, becoming fossils. Change is nature, so get used to it.*

*Everything changes, with the possible exception of war.

prowla

Ratboy wrote: »

With the demise of Woolworths, Jessops, and now HMV, do people not realise the destruction to the economy they are causing, by making people lose their jobs?

I'll buy a £80-150 device, download a book, might read it once, then delete it. That is history lost, like online photos, media moves on, your online photos will not exist to show your kids. Print the photos out, stick them in an album. But not on your cheap Lexmark printer, the photo will degrade, get it sorted professionally. Oh there are none left, because tech overran use.

So my £100 device works for a couple of years, then I upgrade, or it breaks. How much does a library book cost?

People are UNinventing technology at a faster rate these days. If you store your photos on Flikr/FB whatever online, and it gets hacked/goes offline/goes bust etc, then how will you get those pictures back?

But if you use high street shops to print them out professionally, they are there forever. You also have the benefit of only printing out the best shots, but most what I see on FB are drunken parties and lots of red eye, despite the numerous photoshop applications.

I'm not sure that the physical vs. digital photo argument is valid:

• I rarely have photos printed - some time back a high street shop ruined two rolls of film of mine.
• Your physical photos age and are susceptible to damage.
• You typically only have one copy of the physical photo and often keep it with the negatives.
• You can store as many copies of digital photos as you like - on your own computers, on USB hard disks, CD/DVD media, online. And every copy is exactly the same as the original. it is only at risk if you hold it in just one place.
• With things like tablet computers, it is easier to view photos than it is to get out a photo album.

In terms of people losing jobs, I spend a few hundred pounds at HMV over the past couple of months, and when I went in there was always a queue.


And on to books:

• The problem with books is that they take up space, are heavy, and they are easily damaged.
• An electronic book is much more convenient, and more robust than a physical one.
• A physical book has over an two advantages over an electronic one: (i) you don't need to charge its batteries, and (b) you can read it during take-off and landing on a plane.
• With an electronic reader you can hold (almost) as many books as you like in a single unit that is smaller than a physical book. I have a whole library's worth on my Kindle Touch.

prowla

Ratboy wrote: »

Similar records have lasted for thousands of years, if you can't understand that technology isn't compatible to todays technology, then you are deluded. How do you think that a PC will be a PC in 20 years, when 40 years ago, a PC didn't exist?

Try the Amiga computer that you stored in the loft....if won't work, it's full of fluff..

The Sega MegaDrive you stored in the loft? NO OUR Technology is failing, and uninventing things. As the computer won't work, due to dirt ingress. I tried it. It does.

But what have we to show the next culture? The FAT THUMBED no fingerprints, always on their iphone xx, and this also causes more road accidents, because either the driver is listening to music, and not taking note, or the pedestrian, that walks out in front of a car.

Well, I think that the current data formats (JPEG, MPEG, MP3, etc.) will persist, even if the machines that we use to access them evolve.

Of course, it may be wise anyway to keep track of changes and maybe convert files to new formats if/when they do come along. The key thing is that the content would still be a perfect reproduction of the original.

And of course, personal computing will exist in some format or another; in 100 years the PC may not be a Mac, an IBM compatible PC, an iPad, or whatever, but there will still be computing for the individual, and it will be seamlessly integrated into everyday life to the point that the term computer may be dropped from normal usage.

The key point is that the particular computer you are using at a given time is a mechanism for getting at the data, but the data itself can persist way beyond the life of that one machine.

-TangleFoot-

prowla wrote: »

I think that the current data formats (JPEG, MPEG, MP3, etc.) will persist, even if the machines that we use to access them evolve.

Hopefully not those particular formats - they're lossy and proprietary. If you're archiving, other formats are available.