Why eReaders totally suck!

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by Bobstad

"desertgrandma" seems the type devoted to creating the hell they want me to end up roasting in? Yeah, I"m a real meanie here, ask anyone.

Instead of doing anything meaningful with my life, I've ended up for the most part having to figure out and then resist the encroachment of those all too happy to be targeting others, for their abuse. What the heck does this mean?

Anyone else familiar with Malcolm Lowry? To try to direct the discussion somewhere feasibly constructive.

Do you ever come out and say anything clearly?

[Seanette]

Originally Posted by Iridal

Well Bobstad ...

I respect your opinions, although I don't particularly support them. But if you don't like e-readers or the people who buy them, you really should join some other forum. Hopefully you'll find 'like-minded people' there.

Just one more thought: this is an international forum, not everyone is a native English speaker. You might want to take that into consideration when you're posting. I gave up on your last post, because I couldn't for the life of me understand anything you wrote (which has absolutely nothing to do with my lack of intelligence). In my opinion it's just a lot of bullsh*t in a pretty package.

I am a native English speaker (only language I have any competence in), and Bobstad makes about as much sense as "Dianetics". (Tried to read a few paragraphs once at a thrift store and promptly got a brain-ache trying to make sense of the word salad on the page.)

[Worldwalker]

Unlike Desertgrandma, I'm not considered one of the nice people around here. So I'll put it very simply: Dude, you showed up and acted like a dick. People reacted accordingly. If that's happening to you everywhere, it's not them, it's you.

No, you're not impressing people with your long-winded diatribes. You see, we know how to use punctuation. We know how to use words. And we know when you're typing a lot but saying nothing. This may not happen to you often, but you've landed among people who are, by and large, at least as smart as you are. You're not going to impress the people here by filling a page with words that you can't quite get right.

You're also not impressing people by insulting them. Not by insulting their intelligence, not by insulting their education, and not by insulting their world knowledge. Especially, I should add, when you don't know these people and others in this discussion do. You're certainly making someone look bad, but it's not the people you're trying to insult.

Why do people here write "sound bite" posts? Because they write what they think needs to be said, and no more. I'm one of the ones who blathers on endlessly, which is a great failing of mine. But, unlike someone who babbles nonsense in an attempt at impressing others, I generally at least have something to say.

Your 20-dollar words are funny because you're using them for 1-dollar concepts. You seem to think that if you use a fancy word for something (even if it's the wrong word) it means more ... and those rubes at MobileRead will never know the difference anyway. See above regarding people at least as smart as you are. Unlike the other people here, I'm not nice; that's why I'm the one telling you what a total git you're acting like. Yes, I could express myself loquaciously with grandiloquent verbiage if I perceived a need to perform thus. I'd rather write plainly, however, so long as the words are the ones with the meaning I need (which yours generally aren't). And I know how to use punctuation.

If you don't want to talk about your ebook reader (which seems to be the case, since you don't have one) you should really find a forum that isn't specifically for talking about ebook readers. Seriously, would you expect me to go to an anti-capitalist/anti-consumer forum and want to start a discussion of how great my Sony 505 is? No? Then why come here and rant on about something totally off-topic to this forum?

Only, I would suspect, because you're a troll.

Go back under your bridge. You're not wanted here.

[Iridal]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

If you don't want to talk about your ebook reader (which seems to be the case, since you don't have one) you should really find a forum that isn't specifically for talking about ebook readers. Seriously, would you expect me to go to an anti-capitalist/anti-consumer forum and want to start a discussion of how great my Sony 505 is? No? Then why come here and rant on about something totally off-topic to this forum?

Only, I would suspect, because you're a troll.

Go back under your bridge. You're not wanted here.

[GeoffC]

Nothing more to see here ....


Move on now....

[Bobstad]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Seriously, would you expect me to go to an anti-capitalist/anti-consumer forum and want to start a discussion of how great my Sony 505 is? No?

Then why come here and rant on about something totally off-topic to this forum?

Only, I would suspect, because you're a troll.

Go back under your bridge. You're not wanted here.

Interesting, how one person so easily takes on speaking in behalf of everyone? Is there some "big brother" of this forum, I'm getting dissed by?

Okay, I'm not too conversant with "net" shorthand or such as the net usage of for instance "troll" that I've seen around elsewhere, yet not until now applied to myself. Perhaps someone could provide the specific definition as is used here? Troll, that is?

What did come to mind where so many have seemed to entirely miss my points: Are my own experience with new musical styles I'd been unfamiliar with previously then immersed within suddenly. If a reader is not already conversant with the ideas I'm expressing, there is going to be a similar sensation; where everything as in a new musical realm, will sound like all the same thing. In comparison to the styles I've long been familiar with.

I don't doubt the people who've replied here consider themselves articulate and intelligent; but, there is likely the exceptional now, since no one has come forth like-minded to myself.

This is exactly the situation I've found when using my AMERICAN HERITAGE dictionary I consider an excellent one, though hardly unabridged.

Where when I'm within my most favored realms, this book is often useless and only an unabridged dictionary will suffice. Yet, as soon as I'm involved in any subject area I'm not familiar with, suddenly my AMERICAN HERITAGE dictionary is more than adequate again.

Yes, I can appreciate my writing here tends to the verbose. I'm not taking the time to craft my expressions to the best of my ability; but, instead taking things off the top of my head. Where too, I remember Anais Nin's comment that she found herself writing in the style of whomever she was currently reading. My own writing, and I do a lot of that, currently is more rudder-less than for a long time; where my most regular correspondent has been unavailable.

If anyone has read the fine novels of T. Coraghessan Boyle <http://www.tcboyle.com/> you may likely of noticed how at the beginning of his career he'd had a monstrously huge vocabulary, which with each succeeding book grew more and more diminished in complexity; that in his instance I think created an increasingly better product. One of the reasons Malcolm Lowry, who I've mentioned in this thread, fascinates me; is because his use of the language unlike Boyle's never seems superfluous, and which many besides myself have credited him for. When I tend to work at editing myself I also can cull out that which is unnecessary or confusing; but, here is more the way I tend to think to myself. And, even at its most extreme, my vocabulary is hardly that complex or evolved. Though probably my thought is circuitous.

I also have usually tried to make a koan of my grandmother's restatement to me of very commonly held advice; that if you can't say anything nice, better to say nothing at all. But; in this instance I've felt for me an eReader, like the proverbial final straw on the camel's back.

People as for instance a person who is twenty-two years old and a recent graduate of the University of Washington, I've hired from my Craig's List ad to help in my apartment part time a month or two; are sometimes wholly adapted to cyber technology, which is frightening to someone having to ultimately "bite the bullet" later in middle age when I finally broke down and got my first Mac April of '03 and since have been trying to learn to move away from pen and paper expressing myself. Some aspects of which are truly delicious, the ease for instance of rewriting and polishing something I've written. Yet as with my helper, when I learn that person's "mother board" has fried on their lap-top last week, which as yet I'm very uninformed about; I'm envisioning the entire loss of much of their academic career to date, a person for whom this represents an obvious disaster where the cost of a new computer is far less than what would be necessary to deal with the current catastrophe.

I think I do represent plenty of other people, far from happy with being compelled to adapt to the prevailing norms of technological advance. Though also just as convinced there is no other immediate route. Just reading now in a book about the ancient Greeks, I've gotten a definitely respectable English academic telling me from his perspective in 1951, that certainly around 600-500 BC, and thereabouts; was the height of civilization on the planet, compared to which anything since is at best, a very porous facsimile.(THE GREEKS, by H. D. F. Kitto; Penguin Books, Middlesex & Baltimore, 1951)

Kittos' point of view just happens to echo that of the modern macrobiotic movement founder Georges Ohsawa; who for me is one of the authors whose brand new books I'll pay the premium price to acquire, of which I've fifty or so by him and other authors influenced by Ohsawa. I think Ohsawa is relevant to the discussion here, in that his notion is the past five thousand years of our species has been devoted to the mastery of fire and salt; in other words metallurgy and chemistry.

To the near exclusion of the whole rest of the human potential; in what currently has culminated in the vastly problematic situation on the planet today.* Where in fact, the most common by far extension of this long technological advance; are the use of cyber type devices by a large though far from a majority portion of the global populace. In fact, an all but unavoidable modality for anyone seeking to advance themselves or even modestly survive, at this juncture.

So, anyway; to those to whom I seem to represent an effort to "impress" I don't get that at all. What I'd hoped would arise would be those like-minded enough to myself to recognize concepts hardly unique to me, certainly ones I've not created; which my writing here would've stimulated to draw supportive comment from.

Yet, instead I get mostly detractors whose comments focus not upon anything I'm contributing; but, instead minutia which they can attack I've tried to avoid doing myself with them. Except, I have to admit "desertgrandma" making me think of emigrant bashing Arizonans supportive of right-wing militias; the Tea Party type mentality seems the most diffuse representative of now days.

Particularly again; Michael Parenti is an excellent source if anyone is interested, in very reasoned critical analysis of media and the impact of that upon the population. As well as how that is controlled by a very small quite wealthy and powerful segment of society; and the gross inequity of that as well as the profoundly problematic nature of the reality. Simply put, people who've devoted themselves to acquiring wealth and power; seem to be the least well equipped to use that well in the service of the species and our relationship to the rest of life.

Beyond Parenti I'd also again strongly recommend Georges Ohsawa; who also appeals to definitely those political conservatives, I've run across. I like Ohsawa's ancient Asian perspective, drawing from his association as a native; with one of the few surviving contiguous cultures and societies on the planet. Someone Japanese who'd identified with cultural roots in Chinese society and culture ultimately, while also deeply influenced by his own roots in Japan. Unlike many a westerner; able to see humanity in much larger segments of time, so that for instance there is a better balance between the prevailing dominance of technological advance, with the other realms often long denied; which together would amount to a much more balanced human entropy.

So, to reiterate..."spell check" certainly makes me look better, LOL.

I feel here in this forum, I've suffered by my expectations; mainly in that so far at least, no one has come forth with similar feelings to myself.

I don't agree with the opinions offered negative to me; dismissing me as someone trying to be "impressive" where there is really none of that going on.

If anyone would like to read me where I do attempt such a thing; try me as "bobstad" also, at <http://www.fordfestiva.com>. Where my input is certainly uneven, though at my best attracting a small cadre of fans there.

Where I also learned what a big chore writing effectively can be. After hours of work on something posted at three in the morning, coming back later after some sleep, that same morning around eleven to see what a hopeless attempt at communication I'd just made; which when clicking on "send" I'd thought I'd really had something worthwhile.

Indeed often the gist was excellent; but, the product really obscure. What was held in mind quite worthy, that needed a lot more work to communicate the ideas effectively. For the first few years I could come back at any time to work on my initial posts; but, lately there that has ended with a thirty minute only time frame, to edit oneself. Which has demanded of me I change my habits there.

I think I'm still impressed with an odd experience my junior year of high school, when writing furiously sitting in the hall twenty minutes before class; I'd gotten an A minus on the term project for my English class that year. Which I'd only begun at the start of that twenty minutes, just before handing in what I'd done only as an attempt to satisfy the barest required of me.

I think also besides Ohsawa and Michael Parenti; I should too mention as a large influence the world famous hobo journalist, printer, publisher and author John Patric I'd worked for as a fifteen year old the first half of the summer of '67.

Someone whose single page weekly THE SATURDAY EVENING FREE PRESS I subscribed to a couple years; has one line I've always remembered he wrote, "at the age of sixty-eight, my sole ambition in life is to become the world's greatest general nuisance." Who'd lived to be eighty-three and productive nearly all that time.

This a person who'd in his home, four huge linotype machines he'd used exclusively to compose upon; each the size of a small bedroom filled with molten lead, with a typewriter style keyboard. Once the way newspapers were printed, before photo-offset printing. Imagine the dedication and skill his efforts demanded, in comparison with the average lap top user's.

His most famous and well read book YANKEE HOBO IN THE ORIENT, c. 1946 is still available often on the internet for not too expensive a price, in the twenty dollar range. A book also serialized by READERS DIGEST. Though written at the height of his greatest optimism, who from that point grew increasingly cynical; as a person particularly distressed at the influence of both "big business and big government." Unlike me, hardly someone wild about socialism; one tends to imagine at least, though definitely silent about that, writing himself.

Patric had also written in the thirties several long articles with his own photos for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC; but, complained after the second world war the advertisers took over the magazine's editorial function and closed him out, as did the rest of the publishing world.

When I'd worked for him and subsequently through the seventies, one of his habits was to run for either the governor of the state of Washington, or the US senate; during the primaries in the same party as the incumbent, just to be making as much trouble as he could.

He'd lived as a pauper and indigent, though owner of rental properties he'd made a point of renting to those least able to afford their own shelter; who'd often barter their work for rent from him he'd encouraged. One legacy of his hobo experiences, particularly during the great depression of the nineteen thirties: Who'd been valedictorian of the high school I graduated from in sixty-nine; when he was fifteen in nineteen seventeen, the same year he ran away from home to become a hobo; whose mother and a grandmother were local librarians.

Sort of a Huck Finn with his Ph.D. in other words. Whose writing for me seems a good combination of Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac and Lenny Bruce, whose use of the word "homophobia" in YANKEE HOBO IN THE ORIENT is certainly ahead of its time.

He'd also been then regarded as "the most brilliant legal mind in the country, outside the legal profession" by the early '70s. Who by then had taken over a hundred and seventy cases to court as his own counsel. Such dedication, not to mention amazing experience and expertise is far beyond me to even well imagine; but, a person whose life as someone particularly unusual, I'm sure resonates strongly in my own.

You wonder about such persons, where as with Socrates, Bach or Beethoven to mention another three; during their lifetimes and for long after, they'd not gotten much if any recognition. With many others remaining obscure, simply due to too few of their efforts surviving them by the time they finally began to be rediscovered. John Patric's complete works, available as cyber product; sure would seem more advantageous to the human effort than say anything Stephen King has or may yet contribute. Without undue prejudice against that author.

Musician Bert Wilson is someone I've also known; many people feel similarly about, who has remained obscure during his own life except amongst other musicians. Confined from the age of four to a wheel chair by severe polio; who practices saxophone and clarinet twelve hours a day and now is seventy and still playing, teaching and performing; mostly in his home in Olympia, WA though also in Seattle and Portland too on occasion.

Thus, I guess my own complaints are not ever going to be too popular; but, where I'm certain I'm only repeating with perhaps a few of my own insights, ideas I've gotten from others. And had expected to find a few if hardly a majority here, whose ideas would be supportive.

*One feasible extension of technology I do support whole heartedly is that of space travel; when devoted to creation of a protective shield of the earth from celestial collision with anything like meteors or comets large enough to have a disastrous effect when colliding with the earth.

There was a special on PBS about five or six or eight years ago on just this subject; where a comet scheduled to pass by earth in 2012 will again come near the earth in 2035; that then depending on the effect of the earth's gravity in 2012 could collide directly with the earth, and render life as we know that back to the evolutionary stage of cock roaches being the most advanced intelligence on earth.

Which is a subject the media seems all but to ignore. Or maybe I only don't know where to look?

The PBS special commented that then the current paid crew of researchers into the problem, amounted to a staff about the size of the late night shift at a fast food restaurant.

Compared to what gets hired to design and promote the latest eReaders, is probably miniscule. And even that, vastly small in relation to the budgets for new car or television design and promotion for instance; where even those expenditures are dwarfed by what the military plunks down all the time, without barely any questioning from the relevant legislative bodies of those countries feeling the need of such compelling means to advocate for themselves.

[desertgrandma]

Again. You are obviously not reaching the audience you are trying to.

Why persist in your meaningless, headache inducing, boring diatribes?

Here's a thought.

This is the "introduce myself" forum. Had you started out civilly, asking for information, help, explaining you were not familiar with ebooks........you would have found a world of friendly, helpful people with lots of great advice.

Apparently, thats not what you were looking for.

I have to wonder....are you a "guest" of some mental institution?

[poohbear_nc]

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