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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: The Bookworm <Thomas.M.Price@*******.EDU>
Subject: Electronic Books (was: Leather Fetish)
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:17:15 -0500
On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, Spike wrote:

> And verily, did Ubiratan P. Alberton hastily scribble thusly...
> |
> |At 12:03 12/07/98 +0100, you wrote:
> |>And verily, did Ubiratan P. Alberton hastily scribble thusly...
> |>| With so many things, there won't be space for the rules... :)
> |>Nahhh, the rule's be in a 5 Gig ROM on board the photocopier. Oh, he forgot
> |>to mention that it's a photocopier/laser printer, and it has a built in sVGA
> |>LCD screen and acrobat reader....
> | Buy a computer, damnit. It would be cheaper :) .
> But you don't get the entire works of FASA built into a computer!
> What's the use in that?

Ya know this thread has reminded me of something i saw in the paper
recently. It seems that a group out at *thinks* MIT has come up with an
electronic ink. Basicaly each ink partical is White on one side and Black
on the other. They are also ellectricaly sensitive. By manipulating fine
wires built into the page of the book you can cause the ink particals to
flip over changing their color. The idea is that you have an entire book
made up of pages with the wire mesh and coated with the special ink. You
plug it in and load the full text to Hamlet, plug it in again and change
it to the BBB, again and its todays newspaper. Intstant recycling! They
still are working on getting the electronics and wire mesh small enough
and flexible enough to fit in the pages but give them a few years...

Thomas Price
aka The Bookworm
thomas.m.price@*******.edu
tmprice@***********.com
Message no. 2
From: "Jonny D. Robinson" <OracleBlur@***.COM>
Subject: Re: Electronic Books (was: Leather Fetish)
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 12:11:49 EDT
In a message dated 98-07-14 10:17:28 EDT, you write:

> It seems that a group out at *thinks* MIT has come up with an
> electronic ink. Basicaly each ink partical is White on one side and Black
> on the other. They are also ellectricaly sensitive. By manipulating fine
> wires built into the page of the book you can cause the ink particals to
> flip over changing their color. The idea is that you have an entire book
> made up of pages with the wire mesh and coated with the special ink. You
> plug it in and load the full text to Hamlet, plug it in again and change
> it to the BBB, again and its todays newspaper. Intstant recycling! They
> still are working on getting the electronics and wire mesh small enough
> and flexible enough to fit in the pages but give them a few years...
>
> Thomas Price
> aka The Bookworm

Hey, that kinda....rules! You know FASA's going to get it first, though...
Message no. 3
From: Sommers <sommers@*****.UMICH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Electronic Books (was: Leather Fetish)
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 12:31:15 -0400
At 09:17 AM 7/14/98 -0500, you wrote:
>On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, Spike wrote:

>Ya know this thread has reminded me of something i saw in the paper
>recently. It seems that a group out at *thinks* MIT has come up with an
>electronic ink. Basicaly each ink partical is White on one side and Black
>on the other. They are also ellectricaly sensitive. By manipulating fine
>wires built into the page of the book you can cause the ink particals to
>flip over changing their color. The idea is that you have an entire book
>made up of pages with the wire mesh and coated with the special ink. You
>plug it in and load the full text to Hamlet, plug it in again and change
>it to the BBB, again and its todays newspaper. Intstant recycling! They
>still are working on getting the electronics and wire mesh small enough
>and flexible enough to fit in the pages but give them a few years...
>

I read that article too. It was a combination of the paper and the ink,
both of them being necessary. The spine has a little chipjack that has the
codes for the book you want in it. You load it and and "flash" the book.
The electrical signals arrange all of the ink on all of the pages of the
book so that they can be read. Once the book is flashed you pull the chip
and store it/throw it away/whatever.

The 2 big avantages over electronic books like they have on Star Trek is that

1) You only send out the electrical signal once to set the pages and then
they're done. The power doesn't have to be continuous, so the batteries can
be very small. Set a page and it'll stay that way until you change it.

2) its paper, which is just better to read books on, dammit!

> Thomas Price
> aka The Bookworm
>thomas.m.price@*******.edu
>tmprice@***********.com

Sommers
"Bookworm? Appropriate for the topic. Wonder what Sommers is appropriate
for?"
Message no. 4
From: Nexx Many-Scars <Nexx3@***.COM>
Subject: Re: Electronic Books (was: Leather Fetish)
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 15:57:04 EDT
In a message dated 98-07-14 12:32:01 EDT, you write:

> Sommers
> "Bookworm? Appropriate for the topic. Wonder what Sommers is appropriate
> for?"

Selling Thighmaster.

Nexx
Message no. 5
From: "Ubiratan P. Alberton" <ubiratan@**.HOMESHOPPING.COM.BR>
Subject: Re: Electronic Books (was: Leather Fetish)
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 16:15:02 -0300
At 09:17 14/07/98 -0500, you wrote:
>On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, Spike wrote:
>
>Ya know this thread has reminded me of something i saw in the paper
>recently. It seems that a group out at *thinks* MIT has come up with an
>electronic ink. Basicaly each ink partical is White on one side and Black
>on the other. They are also ellectricaly sensitive. By manipulating fine
>wires built into the page of the book you can cause the ink particals to
>flip over changing their color. The idea is that you have an entire book
>made up of pages with the wire mesh and coated with the special ink. You
>plug it in and load the full text to Hamlet, plug it in again and change
>it to the BBB, again and its todays newspaper. Intstant recycling! They
>still are working on getting the electronics and wire mesh small enough
>and flexible enough to fit in the pages but give them a few years...
>

Last time I read about it, they had gotten the size right, but the book
was costing
about $1.000 a page. Ugly.

Bira
Message no. 6
From: Martin Steffens <chimerae@***.IE>
Subject: Re: Electronic Books (was: Leather Fetish)
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:22:27 +0000
and thus did Sommers speak on 14 Jul 98 at 12:31:

> The 2 big avantages over electronic books like they have on Star Trek is that
>
> 1) You only send out the electrical signal once to set the pages and then
> they're done. The power doesn't have to be continuous, so the batteries can
> be very small. Set a page and it'll stay that way until you change it.
>
> 2) its paper, which is just better to read books on, dammit!

Plus it just gets a lot easier to pretend that you're reading "How
to solve every problem in the world by re-aligning the phase coil
inducers" while having the latest "Neill the Ork Barbarian" slotted
:)

Martin
(who's detention time could have been much reduced if they had
invented this one earlier)

Further Reading

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These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!