MacBook back-up necessity
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From: Woody on 30 Jun 2010 13:27 Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > > > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > [snip] > > > > I've never met a way of displaying the content of a book that's as > > > convenient to use as ink on paper. > > > > > > I take it you find no such trouble? > > > > Not only no such trouble, apart from certain minor cases such as an > > appendix in a technical book of a couple of pages as a quick lookup I > > find them mostly preferable. > > !!!!! > > Well, my reading speed drops massively when faced with electronic > reading. I'm hugely faster on paper - not that I `have trouble' with > e-reading, it's just that paper's oh so much better and faster. Obviously the speed of reading either is dependant on how both are laid out. assuming they are the same there is probably not much in it. If the electronic book has a sensible indexing system rather than slavishly copying the book, I will find it faster. If it actually comes to a standing start, locating the book or ebook and finding the information, the ebook will win by a long way. > > But then I don't read end to end, and electronic helps with searching. > > Uhuh. I often read back and forth - paper helps with that; e-books make > it nearly impossible to flip back and forth without disrupting the flow. Not to me. > > > > If they all disappeared tomorrow my first thought would be that I had a > > > > lot more free space > > > > > > So why keep them? > > > > the sheer effort of doing anything about it. It takes no effort to leave > > them there, where as it would take considerable effort to move them. > > I still do buy books, I have quite a few I haven't read. > > Now that's weird... What is? That I don't have the time to clear the books up or that I buy more? -- Woody www.alienrat.com
From: Rowland McDonnell on 30 Jun 2010 15:32 Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > > > > > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > > > > > Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > > > > > > > > > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > > > > > > [snip] > > > > > > > > > > I've never met a way of displaying the content of a book that's as > > > > > > convenient to use as ink on paper. > > > > > > > > > > > > I take it you find no such trouble? > > > > > > > > > > Not only no such trouble, apart from certain minor cases such as an > > > > > appendix in a technical book of a couple of pages as a quick lookup I > > > > > find them mostly preferable. > > > > > > > > !!!!! > > > > > > > > Well, my reading speed drops massively when faced with electronic > > > > reading. I'm hugely faster on paper - not that I `have trouble' with > > > > e-reading, it's just that paper's oh so much better and faster. > > > > > > Obviously the speed of reading either is dependant on how both are laid > > > out. assuming they are the same there is probably not much in it. > > > > There's more to it than that. > > > > Particular drawbacks of e-reading (dedicated reader or PC screen or > > whatever) compared to ink-and-paper: > > > > The screens always reflect light from the front surface, partially > > obscuring the image below to a greater or lesser extent, depending on > > screen tech, angle to the light, angle to the eye, and so on. > > Almost always, yes. In the dark they don't If it's dark, there is no light. if there is light, it's reflecting off the screen. Have you never been troubled by the reflection of your own face from a backlit screen in the dark? I have. >but otherwise agreed. > > > Proper printing is higher resolution. > > On the devices I have, true, however probably not for ever. I don't see why not. > > Proper ink on paper printing is higher contrast. > > Thats not true. <puzzled> But poor constrast is one of the big unsolved problems of electronic displays. > > Proper ink on paper printing can be read at a wider range of angles - > > and if you've seen me with a book, you'll understand why that's > > important to me.[1] > > I have two screens where the screen can be read at close to 180 degrees. > Possibly a higher angle than a piece of paper that isn't straight. The reflection problem and other issues means that /in practice/, paper's better for angled readings. One example: Glancing angles of reflection tend to result in total internal reflections from ambient light sources bouncing off the screen, and *that* totally wipes out any view of the words behind. > > I don't see any way that you could lay out an electronic document the > > same way as a book in the case of most e-book readers in particular > > (display on computer screen is a different matter) except in the case of > > some of them, because the screens are just too small. > > I don't get what you mean, if you mean that a bigger book has more scope > for being laid out well than a smaller ebook, then yes, but then the > converse is also true, so I can't really see a point there. The layout on a book is meant to be seen one page at a time. Electronically supplied documents are, mostly, only practical to read in scrolling down the page mode. Get my point? > > Not many of them can display a full page - in fact, it's only been > > recently that my desktop Macs have been able to display a full A4 page > > at decent resolution and size. I saw A4 Mac displays back in the 1990s, > > but never had one myself - and they weren't high resolution, not by > > modern standards. > > Agreed. When it comes to A4 books, ebooks are definately a second class > thing, which is why my sony ebook was not as good as the iPad for a4 > stuff (although I didn't have the iPad until very recently) When it comes to normal paperbacks too, if you ask me. Big books are totally not possible to replace by electronic versions. > > Proper ink on paper printing is easier for flipping back and forth by > > one or two orders of magnitude - the difference in *that* respect is > > staggeringly huge and is the main reason e-books are a total no-no for > > me. > > I don't have a problem with it. Obviously not - which is good for you, because it means you can use this very convenient method of carting words around and then using them. > > > If the > > > electronic book has a sensible indexing system rather than slavishly > > > copying the book, I will find it faster. > > > > Hmm - what's a sensible indexing system for your needs, then? I seek > > information. > > Well, instant search (not like PDF), Do tell. > proper index (ie, not having to go > to the back of the book), Eh? But the back of the book is where the index is if it's a proper index. What do you mean? > proper TOC (ie, not having to go to the front > of a book). Eh? Ditto - so what do you mean? [snip] > > When it comes to looking up information, I've often given up on the > > electronic version in disgust and gone and grabbed the paper version. > > Yeah, often. > > I am the opposite with that, which is where I really go for electronic. > Recently when I was doing an OU course, I had the A4 docs and the PDFs. > For looking up info, I would use the PDF, and bearing in mind how poor > PDFs are for that sort of thing, PDFs are best for that sort of thing in my experience - when they are created properly with internal structure. If it's just a paper document slapped into a PDF without adaptation, of course it'll be rubbish. [snip] > > Well crafted pdfs generated by pdfTeX with help from hypertex (TeX code > > to add internal and external hyperlinks to a TeX doc), indexing > > machine-generated too - ah now, they are often a great pleasaure to work > > with, because it's so easy to find the bit of the document you're after. > > Well, I have a lot of PDFs made with XSLT, which can be ok, although it > has flaws. Surely XSLT is just a method of converting between XML variants? - so you'd do the conversion to pdf with something else - something meant to convert XML to PDF. If you specify the document with sufficient subtlety and then use decent software to turn it into a pdf, you should get results as good as anyone could manage with anything. TeX's a good tool for that job. Or have I misunderstood XSLT? [snip] > > > > Now that's weird... > > > > > > What is? That I don't have the time to clear the books up or that I buy > > > more? > > > > 1) That you're so uninterested in the books that you'd not care if they > > vanished. > > well, that is a separate point already covered. is there nothing you > have that you feel the same way about? I don't know what you mean - feel like what about what? <shrug> > > 2) That you keep them in your house. > > Its the only place I have to keep them But why not throw them away? > > 3) That you keep adding to the heap. > > Well, most of the books I buy now are technical books for subjects I am > interested on. I haven't bought any other sort of books for a while > (although I have got some on eBook from essex library and various places > on the net). Righto. > The technical books contain information on subjects that I am either > interested in, or am going to need to be interested in soon, but I have > so much to do that sometimes it just doesn't get round to it. Okay - so keeping them makes some sense. > > Why not just chuck 'em in your recycling bin? I hate to see books > > destroyed, I really do - but in your position? > > Our council doesn't pick up books. Huh? You mean they don't recycle *paper*? What???? > > ... or advertise 'em on freecycle. > > That would be a better option probably, but it is a long way down the > list of things I need to do. I have a load of stuff to eBay which I > haven't done yet, computers back to the Powerbook 160 (I threw a load of > others - lc475 / sun sparc / pcs), cameras etc. ARGH!!!!! Shoulda let me at that 475 - I need a floppy drive ejector... > > Hint: about twice as many of the one than the other, but > > huge huge huge huge heaps, so much so that I'm glad they're out of the > > loft so as to reduce the risk of a ceiling collapse. Yeah, it was that > > bad. (probably not too bad - I tend to be paranoid about that kind of > > thing. Comes of having had so much to do with health and safety and > > what happens when it's not applied...) > > I never had anything to do with health and safety (well, apart from > fire/rescue and air traffic safety, at least one of which isn't that > much of an issue for me) but I get paranoid about that twice. If you've ever worked for a firm as an employee or as a contractor, or been a pupil in a school, or visited a hospital, or employed people, or... if *ANY* of those things, you have had health and safety concerns and obligations on you to meet certain H&S regulations so as to avoid endangering yourself and others to an troublesome extent. Or did you never read any of those H&S posters displayed on the walls of the science labs at school? And in the workplaces you've worked in? And so on? They apply to you - which is why they put the posters up in the first place. I get really annoyed when people say that they've got more immediate concerns than health and safety, or that it's not important, or... H&S is the primary concern for everyone - or ought to be. Always was when I was teaching, I can tell you. But it should be so well integrated into your thinking that it doesn't get in the way at all. I never let it do that - H&S is not there to stop us having fun and doing things, it's there to let us do what we want without running excessive risk. H&S regulations and H&S inspectors are all in favour of risks that are not excessive, but any H&S inspector gets really upset when he sees excessive risk being run because *HE* is the one who investigates when it goes wrong, and *HE* knows just how often people get killed doing X Y and Z because he visited the scene when the mangled corpse was there. Guess what my wife's late father used to do for a living? He showed me the photos by way of explaining *WHY* he got snotty about that sort of thing. I didn't need convincing, or so I thought - I was wrong, I was too risky in those days. So much blood, sprayed around so many different workplaces, due to so many different bloody stupid and totally avoidable fuckwittednesses. Some of the bloody bits were big bloody bits - deaths had occurred, although he'd never show me any photos that identified a person or showed anyone dead (those investigations are on a different level of deadly seriousness). Badly injured, yes; dead, no. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Jim on 30 Jun 2010 15:38 Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > Agreed. When it comes to A4 books, ebooks are definately a second class > > thing, which is why my sony ebook was not as good as the iPad for a4 > > stuff (although I didn't have the iPad until very recently) > > When it comes to normal paperbacks too, if you ask me. Disagree, where the iPad and the iBooks app are concerned. I've got a pretty damn complete Asimov collection on it and, when reading, it's suprisingly book-like in feel. (And no, I don't mean physical feel). My iPad now has something like 50 books on it. It's a joy to use. Jim -- "Microsoft admitted its Vista operating system was a 'less good product' in what IT experts have described as the most ambitious understatement since the captain of the Titanic reported some slightly damp tablecloths." http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/
From: Rowland McDonnell on 30 Jun 2010 15:45 Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > > Agreed. When it comes to A4 books, ebooks are definately a second class > > > thing, which is why my sony ebook was not as good as the iPad for a4 > > > stuff (although I didn't have the iPad until very recently) > > > > When it comes to normal paperbacks too, if you ask me. > > Disagree, That's a bit of a combative opening - seems to me that you can't really disagree in any sane way with the point that for me, that's how it is. It might be different for you - so why not just say so, without saying `disagree' like that? <shrug> What I wrote is true, regardless of whether or not your reading experience is different. > where the iPad and the iBooks app are concerned. I've got a > pretty damn complete Asimov collection on it <snort> Bet you ain't. There's no way you've tracked down even half of his written output. >and, when reading, it's > suprisingly book-like in feel. (And no, I don't mean physical feel). Well, no, that couldn't be what you mean, could it? > My iPad now has something like 50 books on it. It's a joy to use. My wife has an iPod touch. I don't like reading on it. Until we have real electronic paper, I'm going to be unhappy with reading electronically (if you see what I mean). Obviously, I don't have any real trouble with short works on screen - how else could I do email and news? But for anything of significant length, I like to have a paper copy. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: James Jolley on 30 Jun 2010 15:50
On 2010-06-30 20:45:10 +0100, real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid (Rowland McDonnell) said: > Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: > >> Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: >> >>>> Agreed. When it comes to A4 books, ebooks are definately a second class >>>> thing, which is why my sony ebook was not as good as the iPad for a4 >>>> stuff (although I didn't have the iPad until very recently) >>> >>> When it comes to normal paperbacks too, if you ask me. >> >> Disagree, > > That's a bit of a combative opening - seems to me that you can't really > disagree in any sane way with the point that for me, that's how it is. > > It might be different for you - so why not just say so, without saying > `disagree' like that? <shrug> What I wrote is true, regardless of > whether or not your reading experience is different. > >> where the iPad and the iBooks app are concerned. I've got a >> pretty damn complete Asimov collection on it > > <snort> Bet you ain't. There's no way you've tracked down even half of > his written output. > >> and, when reading, it's >> suprisingly book-like in feel. (And no, I don't mean physical feel). > > Well, no, that couldn't be what you mean, could it? > >> My iPad now has something like 50 books on it. It's a joy to use. > > My wife has an iPod touch. > > I don't like reading on it. > > Until we have real electronic paper, I'm going to be unhappy with > reading electronically (if you see what I mean). > > Obviously, I don't have any real trouble with short works on screen - > how else could I do email and news? But for anything of significant > length, I like to have a paper copy. > > Rowland. I'll say one thing though, ebooks are just superb for the blind. I've got one of the specialist players for the blind called a booksense. Basically it's a TTS player for text files. It'll support RTF, TXT, DOC, DOCX (whatever that one is), HTML and a few others. The joy of just copying over the texts on to the player and reading them on the go is something special for me. As I once remarked to eliot via email, access to ebooks is something that i'm always on the look out for. With regards to the IBooks store, I did buy one book, "The collected short stories of Roald Dahl" and that is working fine on the iPod touch. VoiceOver interacts superbly with the IBooks app, the text reads back perfectly. It's in a protected Epub form though so I can't take it on the booksense but better than nothing. Is it possible to do the conversion or are you stuck with the iBooks app? The Booksense page is at http://www.gwmicro.com/Booksense/ Best -James- |