"t's easy to swallow the story line that Amazon is building a closed, sterile system with its Kindle and that B&N, Sony, and all the others are unleashing a torrent of innovation with their open ePUB standards and promises of interoperability. This story line usually makes an analogy with the early days of the PC, in which Apple's proprietary Mac system was swamped a wave of innovation fostered by the PC's open design and Microsoft software that worked with all the hardware. The irony of Apple using ePUB for their iBookstore on the iPad is dutifully noted and left unexamined.


Somehow, BEA failed to sell me on the open vs. closed story line for ebooks. I don't see how open standards are going to clean up the scrapheaps on which the current book industry is built and in which the ebook industry is stuck. "" I think the key to understanding the different entrants in the ebook race is to understand which messes they're trying to tidy.

Amazon, with its Kindle, has focused on maintaining a clean shopping experience and a clean reading environment. By eliminating the computer tether with wireless Whispernet, they avoid a hardware compatibility mess. By choosing a proprietary file format, they avoid a document compatibility mess. By launching only in the US and extending to other territories slowly, they avoid all the territorial mess. Since their online bookstore had already addressed all the messy details of e-commerce for a huge catalog, the execution of Kindle was in large part an exercise in avoiding having to deal with any new messes.""More than any of the current ebook players, Kobo is emphasizing an any-screen strategy. Unlike Amazon, Kobo is not afraid to takle the mess of making a consumer's ebook work on all the devices they own. Kobo's $150 ebook reader device, which launches in the US on June 17, looks and feels like the device that Apple would have designed if Steve Jobs bothered to reads books anymore""On on day last month, Kobo sold books to customers in 174 countries. Kobo does business in 6 different currencies and has agreements to sell books from 1600 publishers."

'Every year, more than 120,000 new books are published in Britain, creating millions of volumes that will never be opened, let alone read. Many of these unread books are shredded into tiny fibre pellets called bitumen modifier, which can be used to make roads, holding the blacktop in place and doubling up as a sound absorber. A mile of motorway consumes about 50,000 books. The M6 Toll Road used up two-and-a-half million old Mills and Boon novels, romantic dreams crushed daily by juggernauts.'

"Although washing the rubbish was a real chore, it wasn’t half as bad as it might have been in any other country in the world. If you are set the task of washing rubbish, make sure it is in Japan. The entire liquid waste for the week can fit into half this medium sized jar."

Atomic tests at the Nevada Proving Grounds (later the Nevada Test Site) show effects on well-kept homes, homes filled with trash and combustibles, and homes painted with reflective white paint. Asserts that cleanliness is an essential part of civil defens