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The Internet Books Media Book Reviews

The Satori Effect 74

Posted by timothy from the aren't-you-glad-that-LCD-screens-are-hip? dept.
The novelty of electronic books can wear out quickly -- now that the potential for distributing books as bits is obvious to everyone right up to famous writers and their publishers, it's not enough that a book be electronic. There has to be a good story. Reader 11131719 contributed this review of what sounds like a killer book that satisfies on both counts, and perhaps one well suited to spark some genuine e-book action.

The Satori Effect
author David Pesci
pages 615
publisher David Pesci www.thesatorieffect.com
rating 8.5
reviewer 11131719
ISBN n/a
summary Kick-ass Internet murder mystery with a techie hero and one killer app.

One Killer App What the hell is the author of Amistad doing writing a contemporary mystery about hacking, viruses, a computer forensics specialist and the FBI? That was my first thought as I started reading The Satori Effect, the new novel by best-selling author David Pesci. By the time I hit page 20, I could see exactly what he was doing: kicking ass.

Pesci, best known for his novel Amistad (inspiration for the Steven Spielberg movie), steps out of history with The Satori Effect and lands firmly in a future that might be just a few months away. The story, a mystery wrapped around the world of hacking, e-mail viruses and apps, opens with a suicide and quickly moves to a possible homicide: the victim is decapitated when his computer monitor explodes. This turns out to be the second such incident in less than a month. The FBI suspects a Unabomber type, dubbed "The CyberBomber" by the media. A computer forensics tech named Flint, who works in a top-secret government facility, is charged with going through the overwrites on the victims' hard drives in search of clues.

What Flint finds is not the traces of a bomber but pieces of code, one that he comes to believe are part of an app designed specifically to use the system's hardware to kill the user. It's a wild premise, and not even Flint's co-workers believe such an app could be written. But as Flint and his partner (the very hot, seen-it, done-it Special Agent Buhner) begin to investigate, the clues start mounting up. So do the bodies, and it becomes a race to find out who has the app and catch him (or them) before the code is given a replication subroutine and turn it into a full blown Internet virus.

All this is revealed in The Satori Effect's first 120 pages, which are posted online (PDF format) for free at www.thesatorieffect.com. There is also a rich cast of characters, including a dark-hat hacker with a serious information addiction, Flint's boss (who makes Machiavelli look like one of the Backstreet Boys), Flint's co-worker -- a know-it-all wise-ass lesbian tech named Berlow -- and an ever-deepening plot where almost nothing is as it seems on the surface. The writing is first-rate, the details accurate, the story flies and there are more than a few surprises.

My only real hit against The Satori Effect is that it's not available in book form yet. I found out about it after a friend sent me the URL for the book. According to the Matrix-flavored website built around the free pages, Pesci's publishers have hedged on putting this out because he is known as a history writer and they don't think his readers will follow him to technofiction. Pesci, who oozes attitude in the site's copy, has flipped them the bird by posting this online. If readers like the free 120 pages posted on his site for free, the rest is available in PDF format for $10 via PayPal. I quickly found that didn't like reading the book on screen, so I was printing out 100 pages at a time and carrying them around loose, which sucked. Still, I think Pesci's going to get the last laugh on his publishers. The Satori Effect rocks. Neal Stephenson beware: Pesci may be eating your lunch soon, if not your Captain Crunch.

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  • That they've put the first bunches of pages online as a PDF file. If more publishers did this, it would go a long way to help you decide whether or not you like a book - or an author. I wouldn't mind seeing more of this...

  • In the right direction... (Score:3)

    by BrK ( 39585 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @06:24AM (#735311) Homepage
    This sounds better to me than Stephen Kings idea of digital publishing. There doesn't seem to be the same grief from the author about the same user reading the same story on different platforms. I bought The Plant online just to support the concept in general, but I never really felt that it was all the way there. It would be cool if publishers caught on to this, I would love to be able to read the first few chapters of a book before deciding to buy it.
  • So if it's being released as a PDF, anyone know of a PDF reader for Palm OS?

    The only reason to take the subway into work is so I can sync my palm before I leave, and catch up on the news, etc... it'd be nice if I could download books to it, too, without needing some other piece of hardware to carry with me.
  • Personally, I prefer to read my books from a non-interlaced, non-pixilated, non-radiation emitting, multi-layered surface which we call paper. Also, what will the e-book revolution do to us? Will banning books be as simple as changing access from r-xr-xr-x to ---------? What about book-burnings? Will we have to go to a Kinko's to print out many hardcopies of books just to get our message across?

    IMHO, the closer the e-book gets to reality, the closer our society starts to resemble "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984". The government has been lying to us; the final frontier isn't space, it's THEM.

  • Don't download it! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Deavid Pesci has already written the virus that will make your computer decapitate you. He's now using the premise of a free book to place the virus. Once the number of downloads has reached 10,000, he will trigger the payload, and decapitate you all! Fools!

  • Reading on the screen (Score:3)

    by stephenbooth ( 172227 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @06:30AM (#735315) Homepage Journal

    . I quickly found that didn't like reading the book on screen,

    I used to have difficulty reading long pieces off the screen. After I really got into fanfic, distributed via mailing lists, I got used to it and now have no problems. It's just a case of getting aclimated.

    Now the only time I print something off is to read in bed (still not comfortable curling up with a laptop), to read on the bus or if I need to show it to someone who doesn't have a computer.

    Stephen

  • Re:PDF on a PDA? (Score:3)

    by Trinition ( 114758 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @06:32AM (#735316) Homepage
    RichReader version 1.61 [palmgear.com] can convert PDFs to their format for reading on the PalmOS. I believe other readers can do this as well, but this is the first that came to mind.
  • What Flint finds is not the traces of a bomber but pieces of code, one that he comes to believe are part of an app designed specifically to use the system's hardware to kill the user. It's a wild premise, and not even Flint's co-workers believe such an app could be written.

    Tell me you haven't ever thought to look at the coronary-heart-disease rates of your average fat bearded sysadmin? Where I work, it may have been the pizza and nachos that pulled the trigger, but it was Unix which cocked the gun.
  • If there weren't enough reasons to get an LCD monitor..

    The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196

  • Where is the URL?!
  • Then don't read it, troll boy.
  • In the days before raster scan monitors it was possible to get the electron beam to sit at a single point on the screen long enough to cause sufficient thermal stress in the glass for the screen to implode. Dunno if it ever killed anyone tho.

    So what does this fictional trick involve then? Darned if I'm going to cough up 10 bucks to find out.

    Regards, Ralph.

  • Re:Interesting... (Score:3)

    by A Big Gnu Thrush ( 12795 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @06:39AM (#735322)
    Hey, you can read the first three chapters of my book at the above sandbox address, or buy the pdf for $10.

    Hell, email me and I'll send you the whole thing. I'm a cheap ho.

  • Ok. So being able to read the first part of a book online does have its charms. There are many arguments along the lines of knowing what your're getting into before paying for getting into it.

    But releasing the whole book in PDF? That seems kind of self defeating. I think even the most hardcore slashdotters will agree that most of the charm of books is that you can put one in your bag and carry it anywhere, and that you can hold it, and physically flip the pages.

    PDF is for spec sheets and boring manuals (though i personally prefer HTML in those instances). But regardless, i think that the electronic book format is cool as a supplement, say if you wanted to search for something, etc. But needing a decent speed PC with you should not be a prerequisite to reading a book. Nor is printing out a good solution if you ask me.

    After all, you can't put a PDF file on a shelf with the proud satisfaction of having finished it, so it can stand there until you recommend it to your kids or lend it to a friend.

    If it's that good, I really hope they decide to publish it old-school.

  • Wow, I'm paranoid, and that post even makes me think twice.
    When I get my eBook I'm going to buy or build a lead cover for it so that it's contents cannot be remotely altered.
  • I agree reading a book off the screen is not the most romantic way to read a book. Hard copy books keep me reading while the laptop keeps me gaming. It's hard to read online when the option to play is right behind the "pages".
  • Pekka the Finn rings a bell, if not his Captain Crunch...if not his Captain Crunch.

  • "1. Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch."
    Eric S Raymond - Cathedral and the Bazaar

    Woah, dude. You just found yourself an open source project.
  • I suppose this has nothing to do with the book review, but this thread can only evolve into a discussion regarding online ditribution, so here goes my 2 cents...

    I don't think that online book distribution will catch on for reasons far more mundane than finding the right marketing / payment scheme. The fact of the matter is that almost everybody (the reviewer obviously included) hates reading things on a screen and prefers the tactile sensation of a book in their hands. Face it, even the hardest core get sick of man pages after a while and consult whatever paper guide is closest at hand.
    People enjoy books for reasons which transcend the content. I have an early edition of the Lord of the Rings which, I feel, adds to the enjoyment of the book. Not b/c it's rare, but because its rough, feels and smells old -- namely, it has character... something your monitor isn't likely to have, ever.

    Someday, perhaps, e-books (the hardware) will mature and replace dead tree books -- good, I like the forests -- but not yet. The market isn't there because people don't want to read 1000 pages of text on a monitor. It's just not the same experience...

    -k-
    krb1@email.com
  • www.thesatorieffect.com
  • Isn't that title of Haldeman's (was it Haldeman?) story?

    John Varley, actually, and it was only 16 years ago [husted.com]. Of course, the seminal work in the net-comes-alive genre is Vernor Vinge's 1980 True Names [jademountain.com].

  • A while ago slashdot posted an unsettling story of a publisher who published the latter ammount of his/her book via portable data format on an accompanying cdrom. With this then it is technically possible to prevent you from accessing the material that you have without odious possibilities of harm from the DMCA.
  • Granted, it's not 120 pages, but OSC has the first 1-4 chapters of most (or all?) of his books up at www.hatrack.com. He even has some short stories in totality. If you don't know him, go buy (or borrow) _Ender's Game_. GREAT scifi book.
  • What would be really neat is to have an artist module add in for your e-book. That way when your reading a really good book you can choose from your favority artists who have drawn some copy for said book. That way you see the "type" of art you want, plus it gives any book added dimension. A story could have anything from Photos, to Heavy Metal style graphics. Even blues clues for the kids.

    It's all about choice, and I think this would be a neat choice for an "e-book" product.

  • Or you could take pictures of the book reader's screen and then analyze them for the letters they contain. Or do as the monks of old did and copy them word by word, letter by letter. In fact once that happens then you can distribute them as much as you want as ascii text files.
  • Could this be somehow related to the DeathRay [ciac.org] virus hoax?

    Regards, Ralph.


  • Just in case you missed it the first two times:

    Neal Stephenson beware: Pesci may be eating your lunch soon, if not your Captain Crunch.

    Neal Stephenson beware: Pesci may be eating your lunch soon, if not your Captain Crunch.


    I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
    Q.Tell me what the trail was.
  • One of the best things you can do for yourself is invest in so good high quality low acid bond and use that to print so long range materials (long range being defined as things you really, really, really want to keep like resumes and code with accompanying line numbers, etc). Stories are no different. Also it's independent of power.
  • Truth be told the books of the past are really much longer. War and Peace, Hugo's works, Balzac. Also you usually can get through technical works without reading all of them. To combat the size of a book from hurting your psyche just take it in stride and work on the book one day/hour at a time.
  • PDF is so nicely formatted that it's used in many instances for formatted computer generated output for printing.

    PDF is for spec sheets and boring manuals (though i personally prefer HTML in those instances). But regardless, i think that the electronic book format is cool as a supplement, say if you wanted to search for something,
    etc. But needing a decent speed PC with you should not be a prerequisite to reading a book. Nor is printing out a good solution if you ask me.

    What I would like to see is a method of being able to alter in a WYSIWYG format the contents of a PDF document or simply create one from scratch in an open source manner. I wonder if such a project exists.
  • Isn't this a puzzle from Crystal Kingdom Dizzy?
  • Is making an app that uses computer hardware to kill a user fiction? There are many stories (maybe urban legends) of monitors exploding by changing theiresolution. Or what about trancing the user by displaying rotating objects and then making him touch the electricity wires. just my imagination, a good book inspires it.
  • I (hereby) agree.

    I'd much prefer one long page. A la slashdot.org.

    Encapsulated in one big bloody table too. Yeah, that'd be neato.

  • but it was Unix which cocked the gun

    Don't worry, Microsoft is trying as hard as it can to catch up!

  • O.K. I had to respond to this one because it touched on one of my favorite books, "Fahrenheit 451", which is up on my bookshelf next to "Armor", "Starship Troopers", "Computer World", and a few other choice books I always have in my apartment.

    Getting back to point, "Fahrenheit 451" was not about burning books, so much as control of the press and information distribution. Reading was not a crime (as the movie may have suggested), reading certain books were. E-books allows us to create our own books and distribute them. I can create a book and upload it to memoware.com (for the Palm OS). I can also beam it to whoever wants it.

    E-books, if they catch on, could mean more independant books being published/distributed. There may not be any money made by the artists, but they may be more concerned with getting their point of view out into the world than with making money from it.

    Hackernews.com has a great quote on their page:
    Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one. - A.J. Liebling
  • Reader 11131719 contributed this review ...

    Good lord, they don't even refer to us by name anymore...
  • Or maybe the exploding CPU [slashdot.org] email virus?

    Regards, Ralph.

  • http://www.thesatorieffect.com [thesatorieffect.com]


    +1 karma whoring

  • PDFlib (Score:1)

    by kyz ( 225372 )
    What I would like to see is a method of being able to alter in a WYSIWYG format the contents of a PDF document or simply create one from scratch in an open source manner. I wonder if such a project exists.

    You're in luck - PDFlib [pdflib.com] can help. Sadly, your hands are tied if you actually want to release anything you write - Aladdin only allow you free-as-in-beer distribution of your stuff.

  • Hey, prior art!

    Yes, after reading the Death Ray hoax, and the XFree86 HowTo, I dreamed up the idea of a virus that would

    • print something dead small in the centre of the screen so the user puts his head about 1cm from the screen,
    • modify the XF86Config file and drive the monitor at such a crazy frequency that it would explode.

    I thought about this for so long and so hard, that the idea must be kind of out there in the noossphere now, in the world of objective contents of thoughts...

    Then, when your fridge and microwave are on the Internet (IPv6, of course), I've got another one...

    • the virus looks in your Outlook diary, to find out when you're going away for three weeks,
    • the day before you leave, it order lots of pork and chicken products to be delivered to your place,
    • it hacks your fridge, leaving the temperature at 22C for three days, and disables the sensor that smells when food is going bad,
    • it starts your Kitchen Wizard, so when you get back it suggests a microwaved dish based on those MIR-Space-Fungus-Infested pork and chicken bits (just to reassure you, Kitchen Wizard tells you to cook at full power in the microwave for thirty minutes!),
    • it connects to your microwave, so as to cook at only "defrost" setting for about ten minutes, then it keeps you busy at your computer screen so you don't know what's going on in the kitchen.

    And the recipe has so much tobasco and what-have-you, that you'll not know whether it's been cooked to a cinder or if it's still raw. In any case, it's teeming with life, and you've just been killed by a computer virus, poisoned by the Internet....

    Oh, won't the future be wonderful with Outlook and IPv6 controlling you groceries...

  • Ok, most people are complaining about reading e-books (or e-text, or whatever you call it). The reasons being the nasty screen, the dumb technology, the lack of book smell, blah blah blah, yada yada yada....

    A few thousand years ago, people write books on bamboo slices in China. Then someone invented paper, and then suddenly, everyone write books on paper. And then, guess what, someone complained that books on bamboo are the best, because paper smells bad, it's soft, it's too light, and you don't have the feeling of "having the book on your hand".

    Put all books and documents in digital format, I'll buy them in that format. And I'll carry a 50GB HD and have my whole library on it.

    Welcome to the future. I'd rather live in the future than in the past.

  • Ouch!! Write a book. I'll read.


  • There's a few benefits of dead trees, as much as I like to keep everything in a digital format --

    it has its own sort of built in 'memory'--

    If I look at the edge of my old camel book (the new edition I haven't quite beat down this far yet), not only can I see the slight discoloration from thumbing through certain sections more than others, but if I were to put the book on its spine, and let go, I know it's going to pop open to the function reference section.

    Whenever I've started a new job, if I'm taking over something from someone who's left and they didn't take the reference books with them, at the very least, I can look through the manuals and see if they've folded down any corners, scribbled in the margins, highlighted a few lines, or stuck in a few post-its to bookmark something. With man pages, I'd have to look through their shell history, and see if I can find out what they found so interesting that it was worth consulting repeatedly.

    Now, if they'd start making books from a more renewable material, and not from trees (cotton rag, hemp, even bamboo fibers, as they have a quicker growing time), and as they're now using soy based inks, I'd say that printed manuals and books definately have their benefits, even if you can't just grep for what you're looking for.
  • I use an HP Jornada 548 with 32 MB of RAM. I use the Adobe Access plug-in Acrobat to convert from PDF to text, then use the Microsoft Reader plug-in in Word to convert it to Microsoft Reader format. I sometimes have to go through it and remove page numbers, headers, or footers to make it more legible. Try sticking even a paper back in your shirt pocket. I carry around ten books on my Jornada. Once you get used to it, paper books just seem annoying.

    I used to print out my code to read it before IDE's got to where they are now. I guess its just human nature to resist change. But I wouldn't have expected it from Slashdot readers.
  • Well, the gov sure wants us to buy into it.
  • "Getting back to point, "Fahrenheit 451" was not about burning books, so much as control of the press and information distribution. Reading was not a crime (as the movie may have suggested), reading certain books were."

    That was one of my points. I don't know how you linked "Fahrenheit 451" to the book-burning part (I did separate those two with a two-line gap, didn't I?). I know that F451 wasn't just about burning books; it was about thought control. I see it already; the RIAA, MPAA, and FBI trying to supress "crimethink". I wonder which federal agency will be put in charge with burning all those books, maybe the ATF...

  • > I have an early edition of the Lord of the Rings which, I feel, adds to the enjoyment of the book. Not b/c it's rare, but because its rough, feels and smells old -- namely, it has character... something your monitor isn't likely to have, ever.
    You really should see my monitor, I got two colors orange and blackish orange. And it smells (something about 10 years of pizza).
  • Like to read books on velure, which does not turn yellow and crumble with age. Or on marble slabs which will last almost forever. But becuase of the convinience and cheapness of paper I read paper books.
    Dealing with pixelation, radiation and oter -ations is a technical problem which will be resolved soon enough. E-book revolution will allow us to purchase books cheaply, carry huge libraries in very small packages, search in text of the books, use dictionary on the spot when we see a new word, and many, many other things that we absolutely can not do with regular books.
    There will be no central location for all the books, just like the regular books, e-books will be scattered across multiple devices and locations. There also will be hard copies, for the unlikely event if those EMF radiating atomic bombs start flying.
    After the library of Babylon people learned not to keep all the books in the same place, so global censorship will not be a problem. If anything, it will be easier to distribute unwanted books. Electronic samizdat [dictionary.com] is a lot easier than messing with a lot of paper. Besides, I hope you just noticed how neat the dictionary lookup feature of electronic medium is :)
  • I'm actually curious about the release of an entire book in PDF format... Will we end up with every user altering sections of the book to fit their idea of how things should have happened? It'll be interesting to see what may come of altered books... Perhaps putting your own thoughts and agendas then distributing it? Authors name on the work and all...
  • z> However I discovered that reading from a PDA (in my case Psion) doesn't overly stress my eyes. PDA's do have nice, sharp screens, for the most part, but I can't imagine reading for pleasure on one! How many tiny, itty-bitty screens does it take to make a book?! Read for five seconds, next page, read for five seconds, next page, etc. Good God, the patience you must have!!!
  • Also probably not a good idea to read it if you're not from the states, you won't be able to purchase the rest if you like it as paypal only accepts payment from US.
  • Hmmmmm

    a. Satori Effect
    b. Snow Crash

    a. Code is written which actually manipulates the physical world (monitor blows up)
    b. Code is written which actually manipulates the physical world (Hacker put in a Coma)

    a. FBI agents investigate
    b. A cool ass cyber-skateboarding pizza delivery boy investigates.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @10:03AM (#735362)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I can't imagine reading for pleasure on one!...Good God, the patience you must have!!!

    YMMV, but reading on a PDA fills a certain niche for me. At any given point, I'm plowing through between 2 and 8 various books. There's one by my bed, one in my office, one in the kitchen, one next to the comfy chair...and one on my Palm.

    The one on the Palm is for when you're locked in some time-wasting mode; whip out the PDA and fill that time with something better than the dentist's 4 year old People mags (or the CEO's annual state of the company address...) It's portable, and most importantly, always with you, because it's hard to predict when you're really going to need something worthwhile to read.

    Added bonus: Andrew Lang's colored fairy books are all in the public domain; several are available [memoware.com] in DOC format. If you ever need something to read in the dark to a sick 5 year old at 3 AM, a backlit PDA is a blessing. Pretty good stories for adults too, if you're into that sort of thing. They're the originals, before DisneyCo got their saccharin mouseclaws into them.

  • I hated eBooks until I got my iPAQ. Now I would prefer to read all my books that way. The iPAQ's great screen, coupled with MS's "innovative" anti-aliasing technology, makes for a perfectly enjoyable reading experience.

    Now if M$ would just fix the damn Reader software so it can handle encrypted stuff from Barnes & Noble (or better yet, is anyone working on cracking M$ Reader's encryption scheme? I pay for my books, but I really want to avoid the hassle of the stupid encryption. If I pay for it, I'll read it where and how I please, thank you).

    BTW, Baen [baen.com] has a great sci-fi selection, and they carry eBooks. They are currently giving three away for free. They use a subscription model, so you can pay a small monthly fee and get something like 10 books a month.

    -Vercingetorix


  • "The training he had received to acquire his MIS degree nearly 15 years ago gave him a basic background in program architecture and several programming languages, all of which were no longer in use, except for UNIX, and that had evolved significantly in the interim."
  • I read something somewhere about how someone was making somekind of e-paper. It was made out of lots of tiny bits with black on one side and white on the other that could be flipped electronicly.

    The example used was actualy a Uber-book that could become any book, althouth they said a more practical usage might be for re-usable storefront signs.
  • The above comment was poorly moderated, as the post is mildly sarcastic and genuinely original. Real flamebait would have been, "Ohh, computers that blow up? How original. My mom could kick your mom's ASS!"
  • When I read the idea of monitors blowing up and killing people, it reminded me of an actual problem with the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 2 (the all-in one "business" computers with the 8" floppy dirves).

    On that system, it was possible to cause the monitor to "blow" using software by sending a 255 to one of the OUT ports (33, I think - it's been a while). It wasn't usually an explosion, but smoke was definitely involved.

    I never did it myself, since I depended on the kindness of the Radio Shack people to let me use their computers before I got my own, but I had a friend who used to love to blow up the demo units in the store.

    The particular vulnerability on those machines had to do with poor voltage regulation, I think, but still, it was a cool trick.

  • Fahrenheit 451 (Score:3)

    by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @11:26AM (#735369) Homepage
    Actually, if the people in Farhenheit 451 would have had electronic books, the would have been a lot better off. Much easier to hide, and much easier to duplicate.

    The point of the story isn't that books-as-paper were banned -- it's about books-as-ideas.

    --

  • $10 (Score:3)

    by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @11:43AM (#735370) Homepage
    Not to sound like a cheapskate or anything... actually, yes, to sound like a cheapskate: $10 seems like a lot, when a paperback book is $6 or so.

    --

  • I'm leaving my bonus is place on this one so more people can see it, and if it gets modded down, well, that's part of my divine punishment;)

    The duplicated sentence was utterly and completely my fault. In the course of editing, I did a copy-and-paste because I'm paranoid about cut-and-paste, and then failed to clean up the original copied item. Repeat: the writer didn't do it, I did.

    Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. My apologies to both writer and reader :(

    timothy
  • Baen books www.baen.com has some of their new books fisrt chapters online. You can also buy a subscription for the whole book, a few chapters at a time.

    At least this is a step in the right direction.
  • I believe that InstallBuddy can convert PDFs, though I haven't personally tried it yet.
    --
  • I saw this same plot in a story in the weekly world news the other day. Apparently "hackers" have managed to make a BOMB!!! out of your computer using email. Although for some reason knowing what I do about VB makes this completely believable, I'm still a little suspicious.
  • Switch turn onto another track...

    Why are e-books so expensive in light of the great cost reductions in materials and distribution?
  • It's funny but just today I was reading Programming Python and thinking a web-pad with thumb-buttons to flip pages would be a lot easier than flipping paper. If a fairly cheap device with easy to read fonts was available to do this I doubt I'd being buying as many printed books as I do today. I'd still buy the really good ones in print because they look good on my bookshelves--of course, I'm already two levels deep in books/mags so it would be a space saver as well.

    numb
  • What we are dealing with is a new technology, it will have pros and cons over former technologies. The bamboo vs. paper conversion led to paper because the pros outweighed the cons.

    The battle between soft and hard cover seems to have met a stalemate with neither being a complete victor, there is a balance in the pros and cons.

    The battle of e-text vs. pulp will be decided in the near future. I suspect it will end in a similar stalemate with both existing since there are reasons that each is prefered by certain sizable market segments.

  • Reader 11131719 contributed this review...
    Good lord, they don't even refer to us by name anymore...

    I was thinking the same thing. >:^) Everyone's complaining about Slashdot's moderation system, stories getting posted too late, Signal11 leaving (well, maybe not that...:^))... Basically they're tearing Rob Malda to shreds over these issues, but they're ignoring the real reason Slashdot sucks these days-- that "User #xxxxx Info" link.

    It used to say just "User Info", but Rob doesn't want to bother remember our names anymore. Now, I'm reader #144525. You're reader #16212. Since our comments and traffic are helping Rob and co. stay rich, we're not people -- we're just numbers. If we were citizens of a country, we'd have UPC-style barcodes and machine-readable numbers tattooed on our foreheads at birth.

    You'll never get away with this, Taco! I am a person, not a number!!

  • Just because people like to read paper books doesn't mean that we have to ship paper books around here and there.

    Bookshops should just download and print books on customer demand.

    Scenario:
    Bookstores only stock a few paper copies of the popular books.

    You can still look at unstocked books online, when you want one, they just print the whole book for you (better to wait 15 minutes for a book than pay obscene shipping costs). So they just need a fancy book printer, raw materials and the documents.

    It's still too much hassle for the public to print their own books - in the real "book" format, and it can actually be more expensive too given the usual consumer grade printers. So bookstores can fill that gap. Plus the publishers may not want to trust the public that much, but it's easier to keep an eye on a few booksellers. They can give accounts to the bookstores and revoke them - just imagine if you're a bookseller and you get banned because you were naughty and printed more than you reported to them.
  • It has nothing to do with being aclimated, you're putting a tremendous strain on eye muscles that shouldn't be doing that much work.

    There are reading glasses specifically for using the computer (and they work dandy for reading too :) and I just got them. My eyes haven't been bloodshot and haven't bothered me since. Suddenly reading something on a computer is just how it was for me in 1994 when I first got my comp: fun! Those glasses alone may make the difference between whether or not ebooks succeed.
    --
    Peace,
    Lord Omlette
    ICQ# 77863057
  • Ok, I went and downloaded the free part. And I'm an avid reader. And I read the first 20 or so pages and it's the tritest, worst characterized stuff I've read in ages. First the depressed guy whose whole family was killed in a car crash. Then the manipulative scum who's trying to get his secretary to cheat on her husband. How about some real characters? This writer has NOTHING on Neal Stephenson - he isn't even favorably comparable to Danielle Steele. Ick, I'm not even gonna read past that point. I didn't even get to the neat techie stuff. Oh well.
  • Ugh. Non-computer literate person attempting to pass themselves off as one. Almost as bad as those Tom Clancy books.

    It's even based around the whole "Good Times" email virus hoax. Blech.

    Jason Pollock
  • Well, maybe some of the crappy ones at the grocery store. But any decent book is going to be published by Vintage International is going to run $10 to $16. Add to that the fact an early release is going to be in Hardback format, which will usually run something in the neighborhood of $20, and I think $10 isn't bad.

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