Invisible escreveu:
>> I've got no respect for /real books/, their large volumes messing around
>> with home space, their smell and yellow pages as they get old and the
>> forests killed to make them.
> 
> Uhuh.
> 
> Last time I checked, most paper comes from renewable sources these days. 
> People grow trees as crops, much as they crow wheat or barley as crops. 
> There's a lot of profit to be made from renewable wood and paper.
> 
> Electronics, on the other hand, requires large amounts of energy for its 
> production, and lots of exotic and usually toxic substances that are 
> rare and difficult to find, and difficult to deal with once the device 
> is no longer wanted.
> 
> And, uh, /which/ one of these is more sustainable?

Trees are consumed much faster than grown.  20 years to grow one, 1 
minute to bring it down to create some, what, 1000 books?  How many 
books are consumed over 20 years, let alone paper for office printing, 
toilet paper, comic book paper, newspaper paper etc?...

eInk doesn't consume much energy.  OTOH, I'm unsure about its 
durability... not that it matters if it's cheap.

>>> Besides, who wants a system that can delete the books you've paid for
>>> at any time, for no defined reason?
>>
>> that's plain FUD last time I heard, both from tree killers and
>> traditional book publishers.
> 
> Erm, no, it's a documented fact. People actually have had their books 
> deleted. Twice.

once.

> That is quite neat, but given how often I buy books, hardly persuasive. 
> Plus there's the utterly tiny range of books available for the Kindle. 
> (I have no idea about other e-readers, but the Kindle range is very 
> small indeed.)

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/

that's one good reason for the web browser, BTW.  Another is wikipedia 
always at hand... :)

-- 
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