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Comparing pages to bytes
A traditional book is composed of two things: 1) Information, which is stored in and rendered by the 2) characters (and sometimes images) printed on paper. People describe traditional books by how thick they are or how many pages they have, and references are made to particular pages and paragraphs. A lot of new information in this information age in which we live is stored on digital media and rendered on electronic display screens. People routinely describe this digital information by referencing a particular file name, which takes up a specific number of bytes on their digital media.

One problem is that most people have not stopped to think about the fact that their favorite novel, which contains 397 pages, 36 lines per page, and 85 characters per line could just as easily be stored as a text file on their computer containing a little over 1 megabyte of unformatted information (since 85 x 36 x 397 = 1,214,820). A lot of people know that 1 megabyte is a relatively small size, and will routinely save off e-mail attachments of this size to their hard drive without even worrying about space issues. At this size, most people's entire home library could fit on one or two standard CDs. The advantages of this are many, including physical space savings, durability and recoverability by being able to have a master and backup of your entire collection on either magnetic or optical media. I think e-books will become more popular as people become more comfortable with being able to easily do a mental conversion between pages and bytes, and become convinced of the benefits of digitization for ALL information (except perhaps voting, test-taking, etc.).
Posted by: gas_z   Posted on: 08/27/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use
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You learn from paper not e-books  American Pride | 08/27/04
Nothing like curling up next to the fireplace with a nice laptop?!?!  Xunil_Sierutuf | 08/27/04
You need more than 72-90 dpi for comfortable reading  Atlant | 08/27/04
Agreed, but some funny thoughts  bthomasmo@... | 08/27/04
LOL... Oh, let me just rip this advertisment out.. ZZZZZZZZZzzt!  Xunil_Sierutuf | 08/27/04
Depends on the laptop  Yagotta B. Kidding | 08/27/04
Have e-books turned a page?  Loverock Davidson | 08/27/04
In praise of Jim Baen  sales@... | 08/27/04
Mod parent up!  Yagotta B. Kidding | 08/27/04
Sounds good  Melmac_z | 08/27/04
It's all about mobility..  d_jedi | 08/27/04
Option offered  Yagotta B. Kidding | 08/27/04
Until  James Dean_z | 08/27/04
Or  bthomasmo@... | 08/27/04
Here's my view of E-books  voska | 08/27/04
Not a replacement for paperbacks, but  sales@... | 08/27/04
I find loading dozens of tech books  voska | 08/27/04
Comparing pages to bytes  gas_z | 08/27/04
You forgot about compression!  Atlant | 08/27/04
Economy  eaydinceren@... | 08/27/04
Even better, Don't need the publisher  voska | 08/27/04
I like the idea.  mathandmetal | 08/27/04
Linux Games  voska | 08/27/04
The key, for me, will be re-acquiring my existing library  Atlant | 08/27/04
Ebooks  Melmac_z | 08/27/04
As long as I BUY them not rent them  CobraA1 | 08/27/04
what we want is privacy  V Sanders | 08/29/04
Librie  samirss | 01/06/06

What do you think?

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