The End of the World as We Know it?

[Dannyalcatraz]

And only time will tell.

I'm well aware of the hazards of owning physical books. I've lost a few to floods and theft. My family lost a small barn-full (yes, a barn-full) of first edition Louis L'Amour (and other western softcovers) collected over generations in a fire. Ive had books disappear in cross-country or cross-city moves. However, the losses of physical material I've experienced in my entire life pales in comparison to the amount of electronic data I've lost with each of my above-mentioned transitions.

So, we can pick this discussion up in 30 years, when the facts are in.

 

[Dannager]

And only time will tell.

I'm well aware of the hazards of owning physical books. I've lost a few to floods and theft. My family lost a small barn-full (yes, a barn-full) of first edition Louis L'Amour (and other western softcovers) collected over generations in a fire. Ive had books disappear in cross-country or cross-city moves. However, the losses of physical material I've experienced in my entire life pales in comparison to the amount of electronic data I've lost with each of my above-mentioned transitions.

So, we can pick this discussion up in 30 years, when the facts are in.

Just gimme a minute while I save this discussion to the cloud so that I can refer to it 30 years from now...

 

[Dannager]

Not believing that one will pan out for a second. Too much history says the opposite.

And, see, that's the thing.

History stopped being instructive yesterday.

 

[Ryujin]

And, see, that's the thing.

History stopped being instructive yesterday.

History started being instructive, as soon as it became history. What you're talking about is called the present

 

[Mirtek]

The latest news is that the head of Paizo says that her sources say that Pathfinder is outselling D&D print products.

Of course this leads to the question which data he has available.

I am not saying that's impossible for him to know, in fact I am inclined to believe him as I worked in different industries in the B2B market and they always had pretty accurate (+/- a few %) of their current market shares vs. their main competitors

And yes, in thirty years, I'm confident that I'll still be able to read the PDFs I have today, or will have ported them to whatever format is contemporary and widely-used for the time.

Yeah, I was once thinking the same about all the data now collecting dust in my cellar in boxes of 3.5 and 5.25 inch floppy discs

 

[Scribble]

History started being instructive, as soon as it became history. What you're talking about is called the present

Not anymore.

 

[Dannager]

Of course this leads to the question which data he has available.

I am not saying that's impossible for him to know, in fact I am inclined to believe him as I worked in different industries in the B2B market and they always had pretty accurate (+/- a few %) of their current market shares vs. their main competitors

She, but basically yeah.

Yeah, I was once thinking the same about all the data now collecting dust in my cellar in boxes of 3.5 and 5.25 inch floppy discs

Unless those discs contain file formats that are literally unreadable on any current operating system platform (and, frankly, there aren't many such formats), I'd say you're one $0.50 3.5" drive and one $0.50 5.25" drive away from being able to read those.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Unless those discs contain file formats that are literally unreadable on any current operating system platform (and, frankly, there aren't many such formats), I'd say you're one $0.50 3.5" drive and one $0.50 5.25" drive away from being able to read those.

In my case, yes, many of the file formats are unreadable- I know this because the data was transported to new machines, but they could not read them, even though it was all Microsoft software. The data is lost unless I go to a pro.

As for the stuff that could be read, don't forget the machine to hook them up to to read them- a 5.25" drive won't connect to just anything.*

And once you have it up & running, you have to have it up and running until you can manually type in the data to the new machine.


* At least, AFAIK.

 

[Danzauker]

That way they know where to start again. If I don't remember the last time I logged on I would have to guess what I downloaded and what I haven't. If it had a time stamp I could at least know that anything posted after that date was not downloaded.

I'm assuming that what he was referring to. I think the biggest issue is the fact that IF I wanted to download a whole month of magazines I would have to download ~12 different pdfs. That's alot of time wasted when they could have been compiled to one. And sure, maybe most of do not want the whole magazine, but at least some people do. And you know, if the article quality was better, more people would want the whole thing instead cherry picking one or two articles a month.

That's the point.

I don't log and check daily. I DON'T want to log and check daily.

Let's face it: the whole "online magazine offering" is just a glorified file server. There's nothing "online" in it. It's just PDFs that you download and read offline (yes, I know that you can read it in the browser with the right plugin, and most people do, but it's not required).

So, why must I wade through the contents of every entry in the archive in order to download what I want? Wouldn't have just been easier to put the clickable download link also in the table row?
If I must click twice in order to get what I could get with just one click, it means DOUBLE the time I must spend on the site. That's design oversight.
I'm a professional web designer and programmer. I hate those things. Every superfluous click is wasted time for the user and bad user experience.

I mean, it's not asking something impossible. It has cost circa zero. Heck, most torrent/download sites already work like this.

Plus, don't forget that articles can be updated every time, so original post date is not completey relevant. Does the archive page reflect the last update? I admit I never checked this.

 

[Ryujin]

Most users will see it as annoying and superfluous, but many marketing people see it as an opportunity to funnel you through more advertisements, for new products. It's the same logic that has stores like Ikea funnel you through literally every product department, before you can buy that one 'Bjorkefall' candle holder you were looking for.