Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Digital books wear out faster than physical books

blog.archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 453 posts

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#321

Post by f1refly »

longlivebooks wrote: post #307

What if we had a world where digital books were just .txt files? E-book readers can format the book with any font, margins, or layout they want, but the book itself is just a plain text file. Is such a world possible? I believe that simple text files can bring books to life regardless of the technology used. Even if all e-readers are gone, you can still use Vim or Notepad to read books. Even if the editor went away,…

That's pretty much what epub files are. You can unzip them and then read the html they contain. You can also use something to strip the html tags and only plain text will remain.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#322

Post by Naga »

version_five wrote: post #42
falcolas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trade paperbacks will wear out in months or years. Zip files containing HTML documents... we'll be able to read them for a very long time.

This is nonsense. I have almost never seen paperbacks wear out. Obviously it's possible, but even in any of their common failure modes, they are still easily read. I don't know why anyone would argue that saved files are somehow more reliable, it feels not at all genuine

This entire thread is essentially "I have an anecdote about an old book falling apart, so therefore old books are bad". Reminds me of people at work who push back against changing business processes because "what about this one edge case that might happen?" where the edge case is minor, rare and can be easily identified and handled manually where the new process would also save literal hours of time per week.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#324

Post by thaumasiotes »

oblio wrote: post #287
thaumasiotes wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It didn't work because it seems that although I paid for my phone, it's not really my phone. Root it.

Not an option. Rooting the device voids the warranty. It's not a reasonable thing to ask the average person.

Not having a warranty is, frankly, also a part of it being really your phone.

"I want to be allowed to do whatever I want, but if I do something I regret, I get a refund" is not a coherent position to take.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#325

Post by pseingatl »

DocTomoe wrote: post #234
jayeshhere wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They actually store multiple copies. They even use IPFS to store it over decentralized network. But copyright is the main issue we don't see many services like open library or internet archive. Rest in peace Aaron Swartz

Also remember the man responsible for his death: Stephen Heymann. Lest we forget.

Carmen Ortiz shares the blame. Heymann is no longer an AUSA and his career has stalled, to say the least. He will be forever remembered linked with Swartz. Karma is a cold goddess.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#326

Post by jack_pp »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #281
adalacelove wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they put reasonable barriers to piracy. They are of course possible to circumvent, as every other barrier in existence, but you can also scan or make photocopies of a physical book. And this is actually a good thing. Mildly related: the other they I was watching something on Netflix on my phone and found something funny so I tried to take an screenshot to share with my friends, which quite frankly I think is…

> It didn't work because it seems that although I paid for my phone, it's not really my phone. Root it.

I was thinking of doing that but then I don't think you can use netflix at all or if you make your way around that your banking app might not work etc

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#327

Post by moffkalast »

ivanhoe wrote: post #289
robinsonb5 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital data doesn't wear out, but it also doesn't degrade gracefully. Usually if a printed page starts to degrade there is at least the opportunity for someone to notice and take corrective action before the content is lost completely (scanning, processing and re-printing, perhaps). Digital data tends to go from "fine" to "gone" with no middle ground.

That's what backups and RAID arrays are for. We certainly know by now how to build a redundancy that will guaranty the data safety. For most of the libraries it's really a budget problem - they've been given huge expensive buildings with controlled air conditions for storing paper books and that's sort of taken for granted, but then governments take cuts on providing them with proper IT infrastructure and knowledgeab…

Bit rot: bonjour

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#328

Post by pseingatl »

version_five wrote: post #42
falcolas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trade paperbacks will wear out in months or years. Zip files containing HTML documents... we'll be able to read them for a very long time.

This is nonsense. I have almost never seen paperbacks wear out. Obviously it's possible, but even in any of their common failure modes, they are still easily read. I don't know why anyone would argue that saved files are somehow more reliable, it feels not at all genuine

The paper of mass-market paperbacks has a high acid content and over time the paper will crumble. Take a look at mmp from the 1950's if you don't believe this. That is why librarians wash books, to get the acid out. Rag paper with no or little acid content will last 300, 400 years or more. Books from the incunabula, properly tended, have not crumbled into dust.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#329

Post by daitangio »

When I was younger (!) and I had time, I used Calibre to unlock my e-books to be sure I will be able to read it (only for archiving purpose).

Now I prefer sellers who provide me pdf books.

For this reason I prefer to buy technical books from O'Reilly or Packt: they cost more of the same book on Amazon, but I get multiple unlocked formats, and I can print some pages if I need to.

It is okey for me to pay a bit more to get a future-proof format like a pdf one.

PDF seems the only format which is a bit more durable nowadays.

The 7-bit ASCII is probably the most "future proof" format we have: even a Commodore PET (1980) should be compatible with 7bit-ASCII as far as I know.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#330

Post by freetanga »

armchairhacker wrote: post #5

Physical books wear out in decades to centuries, computers break in years to decades. Also digital formats are constantly evolving and backwards compatibility for old formats is removed. Even without publisher/legal issues it's clear that preservation of digital media for even the next 10 years , and especially for the next 100 or 1000, is at risk. But I really wonder why is there no other major service like the Inte…

Agreed. But also since publishing is so cheap, an enourmous amount of garbage is published every year. I don’t care much if a reality celeb memoirs book vanishes from existence. Or that Python 2 handbook from 5y ago.

The books that changed my life are sitting in my shelf and will be offered to my kids one day.

Post reply on HN