I once got a book back from a friend. Some time after I took it out to look something up. Out of the book fell a very spicy picture of his wife. Nothing hidden to say it that way

This reminded me of this brief dialog:

Do you have any nude pictures of your wife?
Course not!!
Want to buy some?

 

That's what happens when a book is actually used and not just put on a shelf.

I am very careful with any printed material but notes....plenty!

 

Maybe influenced by the library my father had (as a kid I counted them once and there were some thousands of books) I have a lot but not THAT much.

Anyway I feel that books have to pass from hand to hand. I lend any of them but electronics or related subjects.

My first bad experience was with an RCA's manual (CMOS datasheets and application notes). The guy living just one stage above us, brought it with him when moving. At that time those manuals were gold because it was hard to get hem. All I have in printed form I got by patiently writing to have them for free. Varied success, let me tell you.

My first day connected to the Web, I downloaded some datasheets and realized that things had changed for good forever!

 

The internet has changed forever how we seek and find information. How many folks now have a collection of Encyclopedia Britannica or similar paper publication?

Wikipedia has changed all of that.

I still like to look up paper versions occasionally. Many times I will print out a hard copy of entire documents or just a relevant page or two.

I carry around pdf versions of 800-page User Manuals with me on my iPad for quick reference while working on a computer or away from a computer.

 

Basically I print the whole manual of a chip if I going to use it for the first time and eventually those subjects that demand re-reading more than once or what I need to carry with me when traveling and plan not to have my laptop with me.

Printing in general, I do less and less even for my work. Last formal report I printed out was maybe more than 8 or 9 years now. By that time I used to work as a Supercargo for a big German owner who sent a worldwide email requesting everyone to send everything in electronic form.

Two hours after returning from the last port, my info was there, ready for their opening. What a nice thing!!

 

Over the Easter holidays I experimented with binding my own books. They turned out pretty well, both proper bound (where pages are folded and sewn together before having a hard cover added) and perfect bound (where pages are aligned and glued at the spine, as with paperbacks and magazines).

Makes for much easier reading, for me at least. Especially as I like to flick between pages. To do that on a pdf you have to remember where you were, keep scrolling to the page you want to go to, ah but there's another one yet. So you have to remember the second page and so on... With a book, I can just use my hand.

I will post up some pics of my efforts, when I get back home.

Sparky

 

Especially as I like to flick between pages. To do that on a pdf you have to remember where you were, keep scrolling to the page you want to go to, ah but there's another one yet. So you have to remember the second page and so on... With a book, I can just use my hand.

Readers like Acrobat have a scheme for bookmarks which you could say works more or less as when you browse "manually" through printed books. Found it somewhat lacking of flexibility (clickig et al). Anyway, the function that allows you to browse back along the pages you visited since you started a session is a good thing.

Over the Easter holidays I experimented with binding my own books. They turned out pretty well, both proper bound (where pages are folded and sewn together before having a hard cover added) and perfect bound (where pages are aligned and glued at the spine, as with paperbacks and magazines).

Believe it or not we were taught that at the primary school. Did it for a long time.

What I could not find was the way of calculating the actual dimensions / slack (?) to allow a proper opening of the covers without pulling too much from the rest of the sheets inside. A major stumbling block for me. Maybe the reason I stopped doing that.

Some months ago, I gave my copy of "IC op amps cookbook" by Walter Jung to an artisan specialised i binding, just here around the corner, to put it in sound condition again.

It was nice to have it binded again....until I checked the index where two of the pages was still out of sequence what demands lot of stunts to find what you need. Pity is that I cannot request it to be remade. It would be he end of that book.

Yes, please post some pictures.

 

The internet has changed forever how we seek and find information. How many folks now have a collection of Encyclopedia Britannica or similar paper publication?

Wikipedia has changed all of that.

What I would like to understand, is who in blazes did all the data entry for the internet as a whole... realizing that it is in a constant state of flux...

 

There have been a lot of people on the internet for quite some time now. THe web has been around for 25 years, and its first goal was to be a means of sharing and collecting information.

All you need is a few tens of millions of people, each willing to write, perhaps a paragraph on average once every two months and you'll have a billion paragraphs of information. Add in a few million who are either paid or enjoy writing up larger amounts (like a page) and you're looking at billions of web pages of information.

Then of course, the social aspect. Where people begin to substitute part of the social interaction (like telephone calls) for facebooking, twitter, youtube, etc and you'll garn tons of information again.

Then there are people who will write scripts and things to scan these interactions and automatically produce data, perhaps not quite so big, but still relevant.

It's size is due to the sheer number of people, and a greater than steady trickle of use over 25 years.

Sparky

 

If you are asking about content on the Internet or just Wikipedia, the answer is the same as Sparky pointed out, sheer number of people. There are millions of people both paid and unpaid who are willing to contribute to the intellectual commons for the sheer fun of it.

I have contributed to Wikipedia and am also webmaster of more than half a dozen websites. Collectively we all share in the knowledge and information. Let us hope that the Internet remains a public common and not become controlled by corporations or the state.

 

Agreed.

I enjoy finding what I call the little 'jewel' websites. Normally personal websites that are visually quite basic, but the content is just outstanding. I think a lot of modern day websites tend to always make things suitable for the beginner, just as science shows on TV always explain the very basics.

These websites hold no punches, much like the old Open University programs on TV. You may not understand everything being said, but there's no patronising going on either.