[Beowulf] how Google warps your brain

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Mon Oct 25 09:25:10 PDT 2010


On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 09:03:08AM -0700, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote:

> And, since I am sitting/lying here with a very sore back from moving boxes
> of books around this weekend looking for that book that I *know* is in there
> somewhere, the prospect of some magic box that would scan all my books into
> a format usable into eternity would be quite nice.  I might even think that
> a personal "print on demand" would be nice that could generate a cheap/quick
> copy for reading in bed(yes, the iPad and Kindle, etc., are nice, but
> there's affordances provided by the paper edition that is nice.. But I don't
> need hardcover or, even, any cover..)

I've heard of a rumor, that while certainly free-books.dontexist.c?m there's 
something out there, called Library Genesis. That mythical place purportedly has some
320 k volumes, the deluge coming pouring down with a torrent of rain, and only takes
a native Southern Athabascan, a set of training wheels 
	http://blogs.loveandnature.co.za/www/perl/php.jpg
and a never-forgetting elephant, in the (about 4 tebibyte-sized) room
to call your own. 

That's all pretty strange, I know.
 
> (or, even better, a service that has scanned all the books for me, e.g.
> Google, and that upon receiving some proof of ownership of the physical
> book, lets me have an electronic copy of the same...  I'd gladly pay some
> nominal fee for such a thing, providing it wasn't for some horrible locked,
> time limited format which depends on the original vendor being in business
> 20 years from now.  I also recognize the concern about how "once in digital
> form, copying becomes very cheap" which I think is valid.)


-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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