On Fri, 22 Jun 2001, Tony Duell wrote:
[someone else, ?, wrote:]
I'm
against the idea of destroying the original as well, but I think your
point about losing the digital copy is pretty silly. It's digital... just
OK, which would you rather have to read? A book (printed in English)
written about 150 years ago, or a magnetic tape from an Elliot 803?
The answer is quite simple to arrive at: a printed book. Alas, too
many books have been printed on acidic paper... of course, the
solution is rather simple, a good photocopy on acid-free paper. :-)
Point is, as we've argued many times before,
digitally-recorded data has
a much shorter life than dead trees (both due to degredation of the
magnetic media and the fact that the equipment used to read it becomes
obsolete).
As to the "dead trees" argument made by rabid environmentalists: not
all paper comes from trees, such as 100% cotton paper. Alas, the
idiot biz-'droids often label it as "resume paper" or somesuch; why
waste such good quality paper on resumes that will be tossed into the
wastbasket within minutes of their receipt, I don't know... on the
otherhand, 100% cotton paper is nice for photocopies of valuable
things as well as for use as stationary (yes, some of us still like
stationary and a fountain pen for writing letters).
I'm all for making copies of such things and
distributing them digitally
if the copyright owner agrees, but I am not in favour of keeping digital
versions of a book/document rather than the original.
I agree completely. Furthermore, printed books are much more pleasant
to read than a computer screen.
--
Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals:
All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature &
rdd(a)perqlogic.com 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such
http://www.perqlogic.com beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.