Yep. Not long ago, I got caught in a management change that resulted in a complete lack of actual production. The first week seemed great because we were going to finally put resources into projects that had been lingering for months or years. But the next week, all that got pushed out by a new set of projects that were all promised within a week. Too bad it was a month's worth of work. The next week, those projects were pushed aside by a new set of projects. Every damn week, there would be another month's worth of projects approved with delivery dates of 1 week. Eventually, nothing ever got started, let alone completed because we knew any effort we put into this week's projects would be wasted when those projects get shelved next week. Any benefit from working? No. Any immediate negative consequences to not working? No.

After a few weeks, I just ignored the new projects and picked ones I considered critical and worked them to completion. After a few months, I left. I had other stuff going on IRL and decided to retire to focus on that. Couldn't be happier. The thing is if the job hadn't gone completely sideways, I'd probably still be there contentedly plugging away and banking more cash.

Why on earth would I want to load myself and the kids* in the car and schlep it over to the library to read stuff on an electronic device? It'd be a lot easier to do that from home using the entartubes. Are there still library systems out there that haven't drank the Overdrive Kool-Aid? I don't even need to put on pants to do that.

*I don't have kids but, from what others tell me, they can be a handful.

That option's there. You just didn't see it.

Let's see. 7 screens of various types if I count my tablet and TV. Tho I rarely, if ever, have them all on at once. Usually just the TV and a laptop.

Now I'm tempted to grab an old 4:3 panel out of the closet to fill in a gap. Don't judge me! It's a disease!

I've only been using Android since 2011 and my devices have never had any kind of lag. Maybe because I have Nexus devices that aren't encumbered by third party skins and interfaces.

I have a 750 gig Seagate hybrid drive on my gaming computer. Only thing on it is the OS, games, and a few apps. No movies, no music, no "junk drawer". I'm currently using 562 gigs. That's with all but the most recent restore point deleted, and a recent disk cleanup. I don't even have productivity software installed.

So a 960 gig SSD is of interest to me. What would be of more interest is a 2tb or larger hybrid drive with a moderately sized SSD. Something like the 3tb fusion drive Apple has would be excellent. I've been quite happy with the performance of my hybrid drive and I'd rather pay $200 or so for a 2tb hybrid than $600 for a 960gb SSD.

Let's see. 22 or older and I've had a personal cell phone for at least 16 years and no land line for 14 years. Oh, and my first cell phone was the Sony CM-Z100 with service from GTE. They gave me a basketball for signing up. That phone was awesome. Everyone else was lugging around those big flip phones on belt holsters and I had this little thing smaller than a pack of smokes that slipped in a pocket. And it went 24 hours on a charge with the stock battery (which was LiPo if I remember right). Most people had 4-6 hours of NiCD standby and had to carefully manage their charge cycles to avoid cutting that even shorter.

You just said that you did exactly what I described in Point 4 so I'm not sure how you think my point is irrelevant or misleading or why my comment needs to be "cleared" by anyone.

And I said

How is what I said not exactly what you did? A new format came along and you re-purchased your favorite LPs in the new format.

It's called The Library. Seriously. My library system lend ebooks and audio books.

Point by point.

1) This example is absurd. A cromulent contrast would be "pure text" vs. "mixed text and images". Novels work fine with flowing layouts that adjust to the size and pixel density of the display. Doesn't matter if they're fiction, non-fiction, or historical fiction. However, if you have material with a lot of pictures and diagrams (textbook, magazine, etc.) then printed books have a distinct advantage. Most e-readers are not good at handling images and re-flowing the content can separate images from their associated text. However, that is starting to change. The iPad and a few Android tablets are sporting 2048x1536 displays which have enough pixels to adequately reproduce something pretty close to the quality of a printed page. And now there's the Nexus 10 at 2560x1600 that does an even better job.

Also, pretty significant advances have been made in the design of electronic "printed" media. I used to work for a large magazine when they were first starting to produce content for phones and tablets, the result was pretty crude. I took a look at what they're producing today on Google Magazine using my Nexus 10 and it's amazing. Razor sharp text, sliding columns, Pullup/pullout sidebars, print quality images, etc. So even the "mixed text and images" presentations are improving significantly on portable devices. It's just a matter of time before color e-ink is available in densities of 300ppi or higher, bringing a similar experience outdoors.

2) While I may be an early adopter, I'm not much of an early consumer on the content side. I didn't use my first e-reader much until I had a way to remove DRM from the content. Amazon's Kindle hardware and content sales were booming long before I started making content purchases. That was regular folks who were dazzled by the tech and didn't care about the high prices and content controls. Ebooks outsold paper books at Amazon over 1.5 years ago.

The author says 59% have no interest in ebooks. So that means as many as 41% do have an interest in a new form of literature consumption that's only been around for a few years. That's one hell of an adoption rate. Amazon's done for print distribution what Apple did for music distribution.

3) Oh, my gosh! People who are being paid to market a new thing might be exaggerating. That's unpossible!

4) LP to cassette to CD to MP3. VHS to Laserdisc to DVD to Blu-Ray. Same thing. So people re-purchase their favorite titles in a big chunk when they get the device then slow down to their regular rate of buying 5-10 books per year. That seems like the expected pattern for existing content being re-released on new media.

5) This statement makes no sense at all. The fact that I can read my content on my phone and tablet has increased my adoption of ebooks. When I had to carry a dedicated reader, ebooks were far less convenient. There was little advantage over a regular book because it was still a single-purpose object that had to be carried around. Now I can read anywhere on my phone because I always have my phone with me. And it syncs with my tablet so I can pick up where I left off on either device. So if I know I'm going to have some downtime, I can bring the tablet. If I have unexpected downtime, I've got my phone. And, since I've stripped the DRM from all of my purchased content, it doesn't matter which device I used to buy the titles. I can see how there would be adoption problems for people who get stymied by DRM. That is the kind of thing that will turn people off.

6) I actually agree that ebook pricing is bullshit. I can understand premium prices for new releases but, once a title gets to "paperback" phase, the price should be significantly cheaper than paperbacks because so much of the production and distribution cost has been eliminated. As I said, I worked for a large magazine. I know what it costs to print and ship all those dead trees. Not to mention the coordination required to make sure everything happens at just the right moment.

2008 technology. Seems more like three universities are getting stuck with it than anything else. The parts will be 5 years old by the time everything is divided up and distributed. That's fine if you're redistributing old desktops to set up a lab for kids to type up term papers or something but supercomputers are supposed to be cutting edge. Maybe they can use it for a computer history class. "This is how we built supercomputers back in the day."

If the part that's lost is the scabby, rot-mouth tweaker who steals power tools to pawn for $20 to get that next hit, sounds good to me. It hardly sounds like this procedure is so precise, tho. Like trimming fingernails with a chainsaw. And the success rate is just shy of 50% in their very limited study. I'd want high 90s before I'd consider letting some Dr. Nick stick wires in my brain.

Fortunately, my only addiction is tasty food and that's socially acceptable in America.

I can see it. Switch to 1080p and fullscreen. You can see the two red lights controlling the two left turn lanes in the red car's direction of travel. You can also see that the opposing traffic has "straight" green lights as the red car is entering the intersection tho those lights pass out of frame before the accident.

The first time I ran X on my home computer, I had to call Diamond to get the timings for my SpeedStar card so I could calculate the correct values to put in my xconfig file. And the person who answered the phone knew exactly what I needed, flipped thru a binder, and read off the numbers.

There's no "same house" option other than the one about the party coming to me. I assure you there will be no party.