Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
But will it write to memory cards, or just read from them? Forgive me if I'm being dense, but of what use for a bookreader is a device which will only read memory cards?
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The ColorSpace is the FIRST device in this category that will write to cards, copying data from the hard disk. Before this, they all copied from the memory card to the hard disk (only.)
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The one thing that really bugs me is people who think that because we've had Internet for a decade and a half, that we'll always have it. They are willing to bet everything on having uninterrupted Internet access.
My grandparents grew up in a world where international trade had ruled the seas for over 100 years. No serious impediments had been raised to merchants in several generations. Then, in 1942, they stood on the beach at Galvston, TX and watched the oil tankers sink within sight of shore after being torpedoed by German U-Boats.
Which is more secure: our current virus-infested PCs, or the massive international shipping industry of 1940?
Our Internet connections can go away. Our power grid can collapse. We can loose utilities. The casualties of Katrina didn't seem to realize that sometimes the systems you are used to fail, and you have to rough it.
My goal is to have a library that covers all the knowledge known to man, emphasizing the useful stuff. Food production, self defense, transportation, auto repair, and medical care and very useful. Architecture & bridge design are useful. Great books are somewhat useful. Art is not useful.
I have different goals than someone who believes a few 4GB cards will be sufficient. My target audience is someone who is not "supposed" to have access to this data.
* My library should be entirely self contained. It should never need to be connected to a network. Wireless connections should not be possible, so a repressive government can not sniff out baned devices.
* My library must be self-powered (solar?) because power jacks may not be available.
How can my library survive? The only answer I can find is: redundancy. If you hand out enough pocket calculators, someone will always have one around. Yes, they can be damaged. Yes, the disks can develop errors. Yes, they can get too old to work. Still, a million dollar-store libraries will outlast a few expensive systems.
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Have you ever read L. Neil Smith's North American Confederacy series? ("The Probability Broach," "The American Zone," etc.?) He imagines libertarians/anarchists taking over the world by dropping in easily concealable weapons by the billion to repressed people. It's a cause I've supported for years. If you arm the victims of genocide, you make the genocide a lot harder. Adding my library into that equation, it's hard to keep people ignorant when they have pocket libraries that expose them to every idea in existence.
I'm sure people will find my ideas abhorrent. They believe that only certain groups in society need power. Some claim that only a religious cast (taliban?) should have power. Others claim that only the police (stasi? guestapo?) should have power. It's all the same. These people love banning "saturday night specials" because they want to disarm the most likely victims of crime (poor people.) They believe that you must grow up in the right family, or you have the right license, or the right job, than you have no right knowing what the precursors to C4 are. They claim that only the "right people" should have "that" knowledge.
My view is that information is always good. I want everyone to know everything.
Other people believe that bad things never happen, and that nobody needs to defend themselves. They also believe that anyone who kills an animal is evil, while they sit there eating their hamburger. They think that roads just happen naturally, and putting away anything for a rainy day is silly. They would have been in denial if they had seen every ship leaving Galveston sinking within sight of shore. They don't realize how many modern countries have been destroyed by civil war (Serbia,) or have been conquered by radical nuts (Thailand.) They really believe that that all happens somewhere else, and that anyone who sits in an air conditioned room and watches it on TV is safe from what happens in the third world. Denial is very common today.
My view is that bad things happen, especially to me, especially when I'm not prepared.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by athlonkmf
I'm not saying that we don't need the storage at all, but AT THIS MOMENT such a setup is overkill.
First, there aren't that many books digitized. Even if you count the digitizing comics and mangaprojects (which produces the largest files) you won't be able to fill the space up.
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I've got TBs of books, audio books, etc. The useful material is out there. You have to know where to dig for it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by athlonkmf
Second, it's quality that counts now. The ereadercompanies have to work on displayquality. Not storage limitations.
By the time the full color ebook-readers with massive runtime are available, memory-capacity will follow.
Seeing that they now can fit so many GB into a micro-sd, I'm pretty sure that in a few years the readers comes with a few GB of internal storage and with slots for cards that breaches TB-boundaries.
It's only when full colorbooks are available, that large storage capacities is needed.
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We'll need lots of stuff beyond a color reader with a big screen and some color eBook downloads from Amazon.com to create my library. When full color ebooks appear on the market, and the rest of the hardware catches up, I plan to be ready. So, I'm working on my library's software now.
When the full color books are available, we'll need a database or search feature to find what we are looking for. For example, I'd like to know who was a fictional character in Shakespeare's MacBeth, and who was a historical figure. Was the king a real person?
When the full color books are available, we'll need an AI to note that you lack the prerequisite knowledge to grasp what you're looking at, and to suggest other (simpler) books. I've (accidentally) found that the books cited in a book I'm reading, or the books that cite the book I'm reading make a good starting point to filter to find prerequisite knowledge.
When the full color books are available, I'll still be in the middle of a book when I need to put down the reader. I'll want to tap a button, and switch to an audio book. I can drive to where I'm headed, then switch back to the text version (at the point I stopped the audio book) without loosing a word, and without flipping pages. (I'm working on that software.) What happens when your audio book is abridged, and the text is unabridged? (That's a question I hope to answer.)
I've (accidentally) found that original papers on a subject engender interest far beyond what a text book can. A science lesson comes to life when students get a copy of Ben Franklin's original letter to the (then) Royal Society of London about his kite experiment. Local high school students have been recreating Bohr's gold foil experiment that showed atoms are mostly empty space, based on Bohr's original paper that came from my library prototype.
I've noticed that you can not set out your library to charge - it's too noticeable. It's far better to charge off a car's 12V DC than off solar power, if you have a car. Using standard rechargeable batteries allows a generic charger to charge the batteries and for your library to stay hidden.
Andy