

Singularity Proponent Ray Kurzweil Reinvents the Book, Again - ca98am79
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/blio-ray-kurzweil-book/

======
ryanwaggoner
Another exercise in missing the point. I'm getting so tired of reading
comparisons between tablets / netbooks and e-reader devices. Yes, I'm well
aware that my Kindle is black and white, doesn't have a touch screen, doesn't
handle video, has an incredibly slow refresh rate, etc, etc. And guess what?
_I don't give a fuck._ I got my Kindle for exactly one thing: reading the
written word. And for that purpose, it's incredibly well suited. Reading a
computer screen for hours is not enjoyable for me, but I get lost reading my
Kindle.

~~~
gregwebs
Thanks for expressing your point of view. However, this isn't slashdot- you
don't have to approach from a negative point of view, ask rhetorical
questions, and answer them with swear words. If you just keep the sentences
after the italicized swearing you would have a positive and more information
dense comment.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I find your premise that I should be positive rather odd. Isn't negativity
sometimes warranted?

Additionally, my goal when writing isn't to create more "information dense"
comments. My goal is to communicate information, ideas, and emotions.
Sometimes negativity, profanity, and rhetorical questions are my preferred
methods to accomplish that goal.

------
philk
I've never looked at a book and thought "wow, I wish I had video here".

I have looked at a video and thought "I wish I had a transcript instead".

~~~
ars
I have. Videos are sometimes very slow, and poor ways of giving information
(talking heads). So I have wanted transcripts.

And books can sometimes use videos to help demonstrate thing (although usually
when such a capability exists, people tend to overuse it).

~~~
jrockway
You misread his second sentence.

~~~
ars
Oops. Sorry.

------
Raphael
Wow! It's almost as good as a PDF viewer.

~~~
m0th87
Just like how the iTunes Store is almost as good as an mp3 player? Apples !=
oranges.

~~~
jrockway
The advantage of the iTunes Store is that it convinced the technology-hating
music industry to allow people to buy music online. Amazon has already done
that for the publishing industry.

------
nwatson
I live in San Mateo County and can already check out, along with other
Northern California public library patrons, full color editions of a limited
but hopefully growing selection of quite good books. The system uses Adobe
Digital Editions software for display and DRM and replicates the library one-
patron-checks-out-a-given-book-at-a-time model.

The majority of the current catalog is unfortunately full of the long tail of
crappy bodice-rippers but if you wade through there are some good books. I
don't see Kurzweil's system adding anything other than irrelevant eye candy.

------
jrockway
This reads like a press release. I like the screenshot that shows pretty
pictures but completely unreadable text.

The Kindle was successful because most books are just text, and it presents
text pretty well. Not pretty well from a "typesetting is art" perspective, but
pretty well from a "being able to read it for extended periods of time"
perspective. Guess which one sells e-readers and e-books.

------
eagleal
_[...] Ray Kurzweil, a prolific inventor who is best known for his prediction
that machine intelligence will surpass that of humans around 2045 [...]_

Today it's 2045 and the machines surpassed humans in intelligence. (or it's
2009 they 'actually' surpassed us).

Am I missing a few decades here?

------
InclinedPlane
Why is this always so hard for people to figure out?

Netbooks, notebooks, and PCs use emissive displays that can be tiring to use
for extended reading (because it's like staring into a flashlight) and are
relatively low resolution (~120dpi) compared to print (300dpi is generally
considered the minimum for acceptable text printing).

E-ink is used by all of the major electronic book readers today because,
despite its many other serious disadvantages, it leads to a more natural
reading experience due to higher resolution (~170dpi) and a reflective display
which is less tiring on the eyes.

Say what you will about the limitations of e-ink (color, refresh rate, etc.)
it's still a superior technology for reading books. Thankfully a lot of folks
recognize that (the makers of the sony reader, amazon kindle, bn nook, etc.
and their customers). A piece of software, no matter how well crafted, will
never be able to bridge the hardware gap that exists between LCDs and e-ink.

