Re: Deep Rescue: Will a shuttle float?

Pat Flannery (flanner@xxxxxxxxxx) writes:
Andre Lieven wrote:

No, but the reader can get busted pretty easily. I've dropped a lot
of books on the floor, over the decades...

And, I dare say that I treat my books well enough that no hardcover
copies of mine have had that problem.

In the case of my books, that's a badge of honor, along with the cheese
oil and peanut butter stains on the pages.

:-). A few of my older books have suffered such markings, but I have
done rather better in more recent... decades.

This means the book has been read out of many, many times, and is like
some old soldier returning from battle without one of his legs, but
covered in medals.

Sure. Its a matter of personal tastes.

That, and the fact that it has been really difficult to find decent
binding on book for the past few decades.

I hear that. One method I use to assist in the longer term survival
of my hardcovers, is to store them lying on their sides. That way,
their pages don't develop " page droop " from the pages hanging,
unsupported, in mid air ( As standing up, hardcovers have their
end boards touching the shelf, but not the pages, which just hang
there, and eventually, pull away from the upper levels of the
binding ).

What helps me do this, is using Ikea Billy 80 CM. wide bookcases,
as they are just wide enough to fit three stacks of regular
hardcovers on their sides, and with a pair of extra shelf pieces,
I can make sure that the book stacks are not too tall, thus not
pushing down very hard on the lowest books of the stacks.

In our town the library is quite small, and the ability to find what you
are interested in quite limited.

Thats an issue of small townness, not the greater suitability of
on line sources.

I still think that they go the way of the dodo inside of thirty years
due to advancing technology.

Well, I disagree.

...and that spooks me, as one nice thing about books is that they are
self-contained once printed and don't rely on any fragile technology to
use.

And, I belieev that is one of the biggest reasons why books will still
be here, quite some time into the future.

I sure don't want to read using an electronic device in the tub...

Our society hinges on the use of sophisticated interlocked technology,
and if it ever fails we are going to be in a great deal of trouble.

Never mind failure, try changes in product specs. Hows the data on
your old 5.25 inch floppies doing ?

Imagine if they had grounded all the commercial aircraft on 9/11... and
they had been forced to stay grounded ever after...that's the scenario
that worries me about something really wreaking havoc with the internet
on a global scale.

The " Simpsons " Halloween episode about the Millennium bug been on
where yuou are lately ? <bg>

Somebody comes up with the ultimate computer virus that spreads
worldwide in a few hours, and destroys the data in pretty much all of
the world's computers in such a way that once gone, you can't ever
restart the computer, as the only thing left in it is the virus, and it
will deny you the ability to reboot or erase it other than by
magnetically scrubbing the hard drive and erasing everything in the RAM.
So, you have to rebuild all of the world's computer memory pretty much
from scratch, and then use entirely new-build OS's, as all of the
current ones are susceptible to the virus at a fundamental level, and
you'll get infected again the moment you go online.
The world would be in complete economic collapse inside of a week.
This stuff would be the Butlerian Jihad in digital form.

A good reason to keep all the books, then...

The real advantage is speed- I can look up pretty much anything I want
on the web in a mater of a couple of minutes at most, which is a lot
faster than driving down to the library, checking the catalog, and then
trying to find the info I'm after in the books I find.

Sure. Whats the reliability rates ? The big problem of the web is that
stuff can be put up without peer review, without fact checking, and
without editing.

Ever read "Intercept-But Don't Shoot" by Renato Vesco? It's about the
Nazi flying saucers. :-D

No, seeing Fox nes when I'm in the US and flippin', is enough
of that madness...

Of all the books and articles published in a year in printed versions,
what percentage ever get peer reviewed?

Well, I should have added " fact checked ", which is still used by
a few of those pesky ol' paper news transmission devices...

The internet is the same way- always check up on the reliability of your
source.

Sure. But, when I dig into a book by a former astro, its reasonable
to presume that their own desire not to be blown out in public as a
fibber or a loon ( See whashisname whose book Oprah touted, then
had to back away from, when it turned out that it was made up... )

Brad Guth is a good case study in what the web can offer... <g>

YOU BROWN-NOSING INCEST CLONED BORG SPOOK! How dare you say that!

I blame the beer... <g>

Somehow, I think Brad's website is going to become one of the classics
of internet history, right up there with dancing babies and
http://tech2.nytimes.com/mem/technology/techreview.html?res=940DE4D61531F937A35754C0A9649C8B63
Although they are becoming pretty repetitive now, the first time I read
one of Brad's postings, it was like seeing the written equivalent of a
Hieronymous Bosch paiting...why the hell does that owl have green snakes
where the legs should be, and a ocarina for a beak? Huh?
Nowadays it's more like this: http://www.schizophrenia.org/artist.html
Dig it, cat!

Not with this headcold. :-)

Andre

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