I went to see a silent film with a live band playing along recently and think that's vastly superior than any movie going experience I've ever had.  I wish they still played silent movies with live orchestras instead of giving us garbage like Transformers 2 or Saw VI.

I like records better than any of the subsequent recording formats.

I also prefer solving problems on plain paper by hand to using calculators or computers.

For as entranced as I occasionally become by video games, I'm a grumpy luddite at heart.  I'd give back every technological advance since the advent of antibiotics if I could.

Your confarngelled gadgetry will replace the book only to those whose literary interests are largely confined to the contents of magazine stands and those poxy best-seller lists.

That doesn't even make sense. So the only paperbacks and books on CD are poxy best sellers and mags?

A great thing to come out of Australia is their version of Project Gutenberg.

Because their copyright laws are less strict, you can get access to literally gigabytes of texts.  Here's a few off the front page:

Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D H Lawrence
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf

Personally, I think that the WAY information is delivered has no bearing on the information itself.  I do have a room full of books, too, and if I could convert those books into electronic format without destroying them in the process, I certainly would.

I'm a grumpy luddite at heart.

You smash up the tools of your trade to make a point about socioeconomic inequality??

People who posses a love for literature generally do not give a damn what display technology is being used if it ain't good old Paper 1.0.

People who poses a love for literature, also tend to posses a love for books.

I appreciate that you took the time to come back and step through that with me.

I don't particularly agree with the philosophy, but since you've communicated your stance clearly I can at least understand your opinion and respect it as yours.

I've been known to smash the tools of my trade.

Less explicitly about socioeconomic inequality and more about the value of the work being done with it.  

A great thing to come out of Australia is their version of Project Gutenberg.

Because their copyright laws are less strict, you can get access to literally gigabytes of texts.  Here's a few off the front page:

RE: Australian and copyright...

A case finaliy started on Tuesday. A negitive result for iinet will most likey have an impact on you. ( US copyright holders will evolve their cases )

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,26168959-5013040,00.html

TODAY the spotlight will be on Australia's Federal Court as the entertainment industry attempts to take its most coveted legal prize since the internet began draining its royalty revenue -- a ruling that would make internet service providers liable for copyright infringement.

This is a HUGE deal within IT over here. The cost of isp having to install humans and software to deal with would push our overpriced access up.

A few words on their defence...

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/157336,revealed-iinets-film-copyright-defence.aspx

and the general one stop place for all the 'best' articles on Aust. IT issues.

 http://whirlpool.net.au/

And you're still missing the point, which Zoomie apparently grasped without any trouble whatsoever.

I grasped the point because I grew up in a home with several bookcases, built by my brothers and I, filled to the top with leather bound tomes of Keats, Shelley, Stoker, Dickens, Aristotle, Carroll and Grahame. I learned to appreciate them and read them all several times with very good reason: We didn't have cable, video games, home computers or cellular telephones. I only consider myself a Luddite in my fantasies. However, literature is crafted by genius and delivered in ink. Not electrons.

That having been said, John Sandford and James Patterson are still my guilty pleasures. And Journey, of course...

And you're still missing the point, which Zoomie apparently grasped without any trouble whatsoever.

I grasped the point because I grew up in a home with several bookcases, built by my brothers and I, filled to the top with leather bound tomes of Keats, Shelley, Stoker, Dickens, Aristotle, Carroll and Grahame. I learned to appreciate them and read them all several times with very good reason: We didn't have cable, video games, home computers or cellular telephones. I only consider myself a Luddite in my fantasies. However, literature is crafted by genius and delivered in ink. Not electrons.

That having been said, John Sandford and James Patterson are still my guilty pleasures. And Journey, of course...

I read a book by James Patterson on a plane once, never ever again. Ugh.

And you're still missing the point, which Zoomie apparently grasped without any trouble whatsoever.

I grasped the point because I grew up in a home with several bookcases, built by my brothers and I, filled to the top with leather bound tomes of Keats, Shelley, Stoker, Dickens, Aristotle, Carroll and Grahame. I learned to appreciate them and read them all several times with very good reason: We didn't have cable, video games, home computers or cellular telephones. I only consider myself a Luddite in my fantasies. However, literature is crafted by genius and delivered in ink. Not electrons.

That having been said, John Sandford and James Patterson are still my guilty pleasures. And Journey, of course...

I listened to a song by Journey once, never ever again. Ugh.

Oh yeah? Well when you two finally fuck I'm gonna get video of it and that shit's goin' on youtube...

Any Way You Want It, starring Sasha "Miss Ile" Twister and Paul "Red" Bogan.

They should put James Patterson's books all onto electronic books, bypassing print.

We all have some horrid, uncultured, uncool guilty pleasures. You know it. You're just not secure enough in your manhood to climb the highest peak and proclaim to the world, "I LISTEN TO RUSH LIMBAUGH AND WATCH THE RAMS!!!" or some such shite...

Ah, Terry Pratchett books.

Kindle... I don't know, it seems like just another tool that's going to bring on Mike Judge's vision of homogenized retardedness presented in Idiocracy.

I just found out recently that the large corporate book sellers actually have say in book covers and editing, and I'm assuming their dictations to the publishing houses is based on their sales figures. Example: The man in on this cover is wearing a brown suit, but our figures say that people buy more books with men wearing blue suits on the cover. Tell the publisher we need the cover changed to a blue suit.

Now, if the Kindle can delete your content, who's saying that it's not capable of reporting on your reading habits? I mean, we all know of course that they'll know what books we've purchased, but what's going to keep them from data mining what books have been read to completion, how long it took to read, and whether specific parts were read more than once? In my mind the results of such data accumulation would be a fucking disaster.

Could you imagine a world where everything published has been created only to satisfy a data model based on the type of shit the average person reads most?

Yeah, it's exactly what happened with television

Giant corporations and their retarded marketing departments will inevitably turn every good thing in the world into homogenized garbage.  They've done it to movies, music, automobiles, and countless other things.

At least with books, like music, self-publishing is possible.  Until the internet is fucked over and they put a cost prohibitive tax on paper & ink to prevent piracy.

realistically, revocation of net neutrality would topple the internet faster than a paper tax.

Taxing paper was just a paranoid joke about the ends some bodies might go to in order to control the flow of information.

Now, if the Kindle can delete your content, who's saying that it's not capable of reporting on your reading habits? I mean, we all know of course that they'll know what books we've purchased, but what's going to keep them from data mining what books have been read to completion, how long it took to read, and whether specific parts were read more than once? In my mind the results of such data accumulation would be a fucking disaster.

Since the Kindle is built on Linux, the license requires that they release the product's source to the public.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/16/want-the-kindle-source-code-you-can-have-it/

The book reading software *IS* closed source but, if that really worries you, I fall back on - again - the Kindle is built running Linux.  So, you can just run your own software, including software for book reading.

There's a whole community of hackers (in the good sense) out there breaking all kinds of shit, so that you can use & abuse technology.

Taxing paper was just a paranoid joke about the ends some bodies might go to in order to control the flow of information.

well, if you're going to be paranoid, I'd recommend bring paranoid about the right things. 

Taxing paper was just a paranoid joke about the ends some bodies might go to in order to control the flow of information.

well, if you're going to be paranoid, I'd recommend bring paranoid about the right things. 

Stuff like this actually makes me feel a little better about control of the internet: http://www.rferl.org/content/US_Loosens_Control_Over_Internet/1841281.html

Now, if the Kindle can delete your content, who's saying that it's not capable of reporting on your reading habits? I mean, we all know of course that they'll know what books we've purchased, but what's going to keep them from data mining what books have been read to completion, how long it took to read, and whether specific parts were read more than once? In my mind the results of such data accumulation would be a fucking disaster.

Since the Kindle is built on Linux, the license requires that they release the product's source to the public.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/16/want-the-kindle-source-code-you-can-have-it/

The book reading software *IS* closed source but, if that really worries you, I fall back on - again - the Kindle is built running Linux.  So, you can just run your own software, including software for book reading.

There's a whole community of hackers (in the good sense) out there breaking all kinds of shit, so that you can use & abuse technology.

The point is not that I don't want somebody to data mine my reading habits, the point is that I don't want my choice of reading materials to be dictated by data mining done of the collective public's reading habits... A large portion of whom would never go to such trouble as to place a secure OS on their Kindle.

Doing so could also some day be made illegal. Several years ago Microsoft got pissed about people buying original XBoxes, installing Linux, and using them as inexpensive media servers. Their response was to push for user agreement legislation that would make it illegal to install unintended software on purchased hardware. I think all of corporate America would love to see such legislation in place.

I went to see a silent film with a live band playing along recently and think that's vastly superior than any movie going experience I've ever had.  I wish they still played silent movies with live orchestras instead of giving us garbage like Transformers 2 or Saw VI.

Get out of my head! I actually go to pains researching the background music that was historically played behind silent movies in lieu of a score. If possible I try to play the proper music along with the film. Silent movies are great.

Along a slightly different vein, I'm also really into dialogueless films like The Triplets of Belville and documentaries like the Qatsi trilogy, Microcosmos, Bodysong, Barka, etc.
Does anybody share my sickness? Does anyone have any recommendations?

I'm too lazy to read. I have stacks of magazines, and books, and more books around the house, that have remained in stacks for years.

Might I recommend this delightful book shelf for your stacks of books and magazines?

No dangle? The dudes in the push-up position has no dick. Maybe it's tucked?

Thanks for the thoughtful recommendation, as always Sasha.