01-04-2010, 08:53 PM | #1 | |
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Cincinnati buys Mayor, other politicians Kindles to save $25K/year
From http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs...108/301040058/
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01-04-2010, 08:58 PM | #2 |
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Wow, that's a lot of paper.
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01-04-2010, 09:02 PM | #3 |
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Ghiz said she loves her Kindle, but that she and others - including council aides - will still need paper copies because they take notes on them. She also said the Kindle light and cover, as well as other accessories, must be bought separately.
PDFs of documents will be e-mailed to City Hall employees without Kindles. Some paper copies also still will be available in the clerk's office, Autry said, for people without computers. Now.........tell me again how this saves money? |
01-04-2010, 09:15 PM | #4 | ||
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Successful or not, this is going to be one interesting experiment! |
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01-04-2010, 09:17 PM | #5 |
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should have waited for the Que or some other larger format reader with stylus input.
or purchased the Boox from me since it has really nice PDF support and allows stylus input for note taking. |
01-04-2010, 09:22 PM | #6 |
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01-04-2010, 09:26 PM | #7 | |
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01-04-2010, 09:27 PM | #8 |
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01-04-2010, 09:39 PM | #9 |
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Another example of the blind leading the blind in American politics and pandering under the guise of saving money. If the first universities which tested the DX for use by students came out with a very well reasoned look at what is wrong with the DX as a way to save paper and use for document management is not enough to show these people what sort of white heffalump they are buying into, well, I suppose people get the government they deserve.
What a monumental waste of resources...I seriously doubt they will print one less sheet of paper thanks to these DX's. Just how are the supposed to take notes during meetings putting the notes where they belong in the document relative to the discussion/debate? And not a change having one DX each is going to save $25k in printing fees...if each individual council member is printing $4k-$5k in documents per year then they have far worse issues to consider. What about the dozens of staff members who read, markup and review the documents before the council member even see them? Each of those folks will have their own print out, at least one if not several copies per reviewer will be printed. Now if those people were using true collaboration software and putting their comments into the document and sharing electronically, then we are talking...but no way this ends well...these DX's are going to end up in a surplus auction inside of a year. I would love to see the video from the first council meeting with every member looking at their DX for the first 20mins then grabbing the printed copy deftly tossing the DX into they bag or under their legal pad... Best we can say is at least they tried...they failed before starting but it was at least a start. Hard to make a correct decision until they fail a few dozen times, it is our government after all... |
01-04-2010, 09:51 PM | #10 | |
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Just not a smart choice as far as I can see. Now here is where wifi works OK for a ereading device. Of course there are still security concerns even with WPA2 or better encryption. I suppose encrypted documents could be passed through to Amazon, but what the heck will Amazon do with them and then how would the DX itself decrypt the encrypted document? Maybe via the browser? Download the document over the broadband connection of course it's not as if mobile phone services are encrypted enough to be secure at all...a real boon to the media as well as those seeking for inside info from the city council...snoop their DX. Not trying to wiz in the Cheerios here, but everything about this is wrong, not because the device is a bad idea, but because the device is not in any fashion geared toward this sort of use. Of course if anyone has watched the Chief's or Royals play for the past decade or more, then one might understand why this might seem smart to the voters of KC... |
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01-04-2010, 09:53 PM | #11 |
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I'll bet they end up at their homes not in any sale. I just wounder if they'll make their taxpayers buy their novels too.
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01-04-2010, 09:58 PM | #12 | |
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And I agree they should have waited for the new ereaders - this is a long term investment (if they hope to save any money) and today's ereaders aren't exactly long-term investment material. |
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01-04-2010, 10:02 PM | #13 |
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Since the Dx's are connected to an Amazon account, how is accountability handled?
How do they keep the new owners from downloading books? |
01-04-2010, 10:03 PM | #14 | |
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And the investment in creating an infrastructure to support these devices into the city's IT ecosystem is going to cost a lot as well. Of course that is something which will need to happen eventually anyway and they are starting on a very small scale here...so the positive is they did not order 100 DX's... Tim32127: I would hate to be the politician who is caught reading Lolita during a city council meeting... |
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01-04-2010, 10:09 PM | #15 | |
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Where is Marion Berry now anyway? Oh, wait, he failed upwards!! gotta love America!! |
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