I've been using Mellel for several years now. It was written primarily for working with VERY large documents, which is necessary for me as a writer. Granted, Mellel was optimized for academic paper writing, but it is still quite usable for novels.

The key thing I like about this program is it stores its data in a ZIP-compressed, human-readable, XML file. If Mellel ever closed shop, I'll still be able to recover all my writing with relative ease, unlike having to draw it out of proprietary file formats used by other companies. And if I'm feeling like it, a simply PHP script will allow me to extract all my writing from the XML file with the original formatting It also handles other tasks such as advanced page formatting, margin control, indexing, etc., which is necessary when going to print for a novel.

It's not perfect—I have yet to find a writing program that is—but it really does get the job done.

Just my opinion, but:

1. Motion sickness. Getting people in an immersive, 3D environment usually induces motion sickness to those who are vulnerable. I was the only employee in the company who could withstand being inside the CAVE visualization room for any length of time without staggering out looking for a bucket to throw up into. 3D home TV systems will have the same effect on most consumers.
2. Really, really bad 3D movie production. They all go for gags and gimmicks such as 'throwing' things at the audience, swinging objects right into your face, etc. This causes dizziness (see item 1), it is uncomfortable to the eyes, and it is highly annoying. They are basically going for gratuitous action that really has no use in the movie. They really need to focus on just clean, 3D, imaging so people can enjoy something that looks natural. I would love it if I could watch a 3D movie that looked like I was sitting aside the scene just watching it unfold before me, like actors on stage.
3. Eye strain. The camera positions tend to be wider than the human eyes are spaced. It exaggerates the 3D effect, but it strains the eyes. They also tend to try and stuff things into your face (see item 2), causing you to have to cross your eyes constantly. Well, pushing an image in 3D closer to your face while the actual screen is much more distant causes your eyes to strain in order to focus distant while crossing to see the close-up object. This will cause you to get a headache in short order. Worse, it can cause motion sickness when the physical cues don't match up with the visual cues. Watching a 3D movie is simply quite uncomfortable.

Until these issue get addressed, 3D will never actually catch on. In my opinion.

The fall detection is a must for us.

As my mother's health declined, the falls began to happen. It's one thing when you hear about it happening to someone else, but when it is happening in your own household and right in front of you and you can't move fast enough to catch that person, it is mortifying. And it isn't just one fall. It is over and over again. There is nothing more horrifying than hearing that terrible "THUD!" in the middle of the night.

It became so bad, we didn't dare leave her alone in the house. In the end, she spent her final days in a nursing facility.

A family friend suffered a stroke and spent over 18 hours on the floor of his kitchen before someone discovered him. When he didn't show up for a scheduled meeting—something that is out of character for him—and didn't respond to phone calls, someone went to check on him and found him on the floor, partially paralyzed, unable to reach the telephone that was just out of arm's reach.

For my father, the fall detection means a lot. It means he can maintain his independence and mobility, but knows someone will be able to come to his aid should he begin to suffer falls. He has health issues that are creeping up on him and could start interfering with his ability to balance.

As an author, I've always taken the stance that if you buy one of my books as an ebook, you should be able to read that book on any device you own that can display books. Be it an iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Galaxy #, etc. This is why I do not allow DRM on my books when published. Copyright fair use allows that you should be able to read that file on any device that you own. What copyright does not allow is you to make copies of that file and sell it to other people.

If your son has the ebook on his iPad, it is most likely in EPUB format. (If it is an enhanced book in Apple's iBook format, then this won't work.) Just make a copy of the EPUB file to the desktop. You can then run software that will convert the file to the Kindle MOBI format that he can then side load onto his Kindle.

Amazon has software that will convert EPUB files to Kindle files so you can read them on your Kindle. The program Calibre can also convert between formats.

I certainly appreciate your son's concern and respect for the copyright. But in this case, he can go ahead and make the copy so he can read it on another device.

At this point, there just isn't enough money to support such an endeavor.

And as much as it galls me to say this, if we turn back the clock a few centuries to the so-called "Age of Exploration," the truth is it was more the Age of Exploitation. The whole drive behind exploring and colonizing the New World was funded by those looking for economic return, not to expand knowledge and the human condition. It was all done in the name of profit, not glory. And worse, it was for short-term profit, not long-term gains.

Unless we discover significant deposits of precious metals enough to cover the enormous cost of transport to and fro, there just aren't any short-term gains to be had settling Mars.

The primary long-term gain is we gain the ability to leave the Earth and thereby guarantee the possibility of our specie's survival. For those wondering what the return is on studying a tiny population of endangered butterflies that only are found in one field, such a study is a model for how we can ensure our own survival. Consider that one field supporting those butterflies is a direct analog for the planet Earth. For now, there is only one place where humans can exist, and the Earth is our field.

I'm getting tired with all the leaks. It's like looking at all the presents under the Christmas tree and knowing what is in each wrapped box. It takes all the fun out of it. Let me be surprised!

...Strike Virginia off my list of potential places to live. :/

[p]...And now it desperately wants cake.[/p] [p]A great cake! So delicious and moist![/p]

I'm a writer.

As such, there are times when I really need to get away from everyone and everything so I can totally immerse myself in just writing. Doing this while camping is wonderful. Or, sometimes just jumping on the bike with the computer in a daypack so I can park my butt in some shady spot in a park forest is good enough.

While writing and programming share the same mental processes, they have different demands on a computer. Programming is going to be much more demanding on a computer than writing prose. The MacBook Air is certainly at the top of the heap when it comes to low power consumption, but if you are programming some pretty heavy stuff that could drain the battery faster than the work I am doing now. That could greatly reduce your working time if you are completely off grid in the woods. That could be enough to impair your productivity and nix your project.

Power comes first. Without power, nothing else will work. As mentioned above, those big, portable solar panels are a very good idea. Free energy when there is enough sunlight. On any mostly sunny day, one panel should easily be enough to keep a MacBook Air chugging away all day. Even on a mostly cloudy day, the larger panels might be able to provide enough juice to keep you going. But this will also dictate your location. You need clear access to the sun. If you are in deep forest, it won't work. This means camping in a meadow or on the shore of a lake. A plus side here is when the sun goes down, you will have a wonderful view of the starry sky above. (Great for recharging your batteries!) If you are on a lake and are inclined to fishing, there you go.

Connectivity is important to you. It is for me, too, as a writer because often I need to jump online to reference various subjects. This means, you won't really be doing any "deep forest" camping, where you are truly away from all aspects of civilization. A lot of family and national forest campgrounds now supply power to campsites. That solves the power issue. One extension cord and surge protector power strip and you are ready to get everything done while you sit by the fire. Some of these campgrounds really suck. They are overrun and poorly maintained. But there are others that are truly gems! Sure there are other people around, but I find that kind of adds to the ambience. I do enjoy hearing the soft voices echoing in the trees. The sound of distant laughter. The smell of campfire smoke wafting on the wind. The campsites in the older campgrounds are well surrounded by trees and shrubs, so you really can't see one site from the next. This guarantees your privacy and isolation if you need it. You have to hunt for these gems. When you find them, you may find them quite enjoyable. The added services do make life a lot more pleasant while camping, and you can maintain your full technical capacity without hinderance.

You can set up your smart phone briefly as a hotspot for your online sessions. If you are only on for short periods during the day, this shouldn't press your data plan limits. For those who have very heavy data needs, it would probably be cheaper to buy a cellular modem and connect to that than it would to tether to your phone.

Another mention above was to use an RV. You can use a small trailer, too. Much more economical. With a larger trailer called a "Toy Box", you could also pack a motorcycle in along to use as your get around vehicle when you want to get away from the campsite for a change of scenery. A trailer or RV offers protection from the elements. I'm convinced I am the incarnation of a rain god, as the moment I pitch a tent, the rain starts falling. It also allows for better security for your equipment. Sure, a crowbar could get past a locked camper door, but most of the losers who skulk around campsites to steal things are looking for easy pickings and don't want to work for their booty.

You'll notice that my suggestions start with deep woods camping and move closer to civilization. But how you implement things depends on how you mix these elements together. One of my cousins purchased a chunk of land up in Maine. He parked a trailer in the center of his property, connected up a solar panel and a windmill to generate power, and added a composting toilet to the site. He can live off-grid for extended periods until he needs to go to town to get food and supplies. Owning your own land means there are no problems with restrictions of being on public land or being worried you might be on private property and possibly invoke the wrath of the landowner. The only flaw in my cousin's setup nowadays is that his property is isolated enough that he gets no signal for telecommunications. He bought it long before smartphones existed, so that wasn't a consideration way back then.

Take all the suggestions and put together the different pieces that you like and try and find the right balance for yourself and your needs.

One thing I should mention about SSDs is that I have a couple of thumb drives that have been sitting around untouched for years that are still usable and the files are still readable. The only one that doesn't work is one that was sacrificed to a very powerful magnet in a demonstration of how vulnerable flash drives are to magnetic fields. So, perhaps an SSD drive will be more stable than I suspected.

Get a large-capacity, multi-disk drive housing and set it up as a mirrored RAID. Over time, as each drive fails, all you have to do is swap out the failed disk and the RAID will re-mirror the data to the new disk. This is the most robust perpetual storage option. It is possible that the magnetic fields on the disks can fade over time if left in an unpowered state. The biggest downside is that the RAID is onsite, and if there is a catastrophic event such as a fire or a flood, the drive could be destroyed. A RAID is what I am currently using for my longterm, permanent storage needs. I've lost a couple of files to bit rot, nonetheless.

Optical media storage is decent for long-term storage, but there is evidence to suggest that these disks break down over twenty to thirty years and become unreadable. So, bit rot is still an issue with optical media. However, they offer the advantage of being able to store the data in a stable medium without any power required and are easily portable to safe locations. Also, newer disk technology developed in recent years is more stable than older disks.

At the moment, I don't consider SSDs as a reliable long-term storage. All it takes is one cosmic ray to flip a critical memory cell and your drive becomes unreadable. Also, when disconnected from power the charges fade over time and in as little as a few years the drives could just erase themselves. The advantage they offer is being small, lightweight and easily portable.

The important thing to remember is that technology is changing all the time, and there are newer and better alternatives on the horizon that answer the shortcomings of each of the above solutions. The biggest problem with any long term storage is bit rot, where random bits get flipped or erased over time. Storage technology companies are striving to improve all the time, so the choices available to you will also continue to improve.

"Luckily for libraries, they're safe for now because they still beat Kindle Unlimited and its competitors in at least one category: content you want to read.

There is so much wrong with that backhanded insult that there is no "content you want to read" among self-published books.

Currently, the top bestsellers lists contain more self-published authors than authors represented by publishing houses. Self-publishing authors are outselling traditionally published authors and are .

The OP's comment comes from the misnomer that self-publishing is the last bastion of a writer whose writing was so bad, he couldn't get it accepted. The reality is the cartel of the Big-5 publishing companies have been artificially keeping the number of authors on the market artificially small so they could better control the markets in terms of product availability and price controls.

The advent of digital publishing has given authors a way to get around the market controls of big-industry publishing. Even traditionally published authors such as Barry Eisler and H.M. Ward have walked away from the publishing houses and turned to self-publishing. The work coming out of self-published authors is incredible. Hugh Howey's dystopian science fiction Wool would probably have never seen the light of day if not for self-publishing and his books have sold millions of copies. There are other yet-to-be discovered authors such as William D. Richards Aggadeh Chronicles Book 1: Nobody or Michael Patrick Hicks Convergence who are turning out real page turners with gripping stories and excellent writing.

Yeah, there is some crap out there (published as a joke; read the description; the author, Phronk, is a satirist and pretty damned funny). If you are unsure about a book by a self-published author, just download the free sample of their work and see how it reads before you buy. Many authors with a series of books offer the first book free—if you don't like it, you aren't out any money. If you do, then you've got a whole series to buy.

Many independent writers take their craft very seriously. They employ a team of editors, proof readers, and a cover artist or two to ensure that the reader is going to get the best reading experience possible. If they weren't putting so much work into assuring the quality of their work was there, the self-publishing movement would have collapsed years ago. Instead, because of the commitment to quality by the authors, the self-publishing movement has been growing in strength, variety, and quality. Self-published authors gain no support from advance payments, no corporate backing, and no financial assistance. They are not subsidized by monies from other authors (as is a practice in traditional publishing). Instead, they make 100% of their incomes from direct sales to readers. If they weren't doing the proper Q.A. on their books, their livelihoods would be unsustainable.

So, don't go listening to big-publishing shills trying to shoot down the first real competition they've ever faced. There is plenty of excellent reading to be found among self-publising writers, contrary to what the O.P. alludes. And as far as public libraries are concerned, independent writers are huge supporters of libraries, unlike big-industry publishers who try to milk money from municipalities by over-charging libraries for books and ebooks.