Pete C. wrote:
aemeijers wrote:
Smitty Two wrote:
In article
,
Cindy Hamilton wrote:

Not all wisdom is available on the Internet.
I don't think wisdom is available anywhere at any price, grasshopper.
But as far as information, the World Wide Web is the clearance aisle of
Wal-Mart, packaged primarily for a stunningly dumb audience.

OTOH, the internet at large (of which the WWW might be 1%, but I'm
guessing) contains a vast wealth of information, unseen by most.
Virtually everything that's ever been published in any medium, in any
language, anywhere in the world, at any time, is on the internet
somewhere.
Uh, actually NOT. An amazing amount of (mostly old) data, publications,
records, etc, has not been and likely never WILL be digitized. It simply
fails the cost-bennies test of how often it is likely to ever be
accessed. Digitizing old data is expensive, if it only exists in
hardcopy. And stuff under current copyright is often not available at
all. There are projects out there to digitize public-domain old stuff
before it vanishes, or titles the authors and publishers donate to the
cause. But it is only a tiny volume of the works published in last 20
years, much less the last 200 or 2000.

I know better, having grown up using actual paper libraries, and still
have to fight to avoid the syndrome of 'if it isn't on Google, it
doesn't exist'. Teachers are reporting it as endemic among the younger
set- to them a keyboard and a screen is their ONLY portal to recorded
storehouses of knowledge. Spending a day in the stacks, much less using
an old-style physical card catalog, would bore them to tears.

aem sends...

You'd be surprised, as I was at some of the data available in electronic
form. I needed service information for the Kohler engine in my lawn
mower. I looked on the Kohler site and found info listed for newer
models, but nothing for my old one. I did the "contact us" email form
thing with the engine model and serial number info, not really expecting
much, this was about 3pm central time. About 9:15am the next day I got
an email from Kohler with links to the full owners and service manuals
in PDF form... and this was for a 32 year old engine! It's amazing how
good some companies are.
That is a good example of data that DOES pass the cost-bennies test for
digitization. Industrial engines like Kohler are often built off same
design for many years, and in use for decades. Not having to keep a
shelf stock of paper manuals and reprint them every so often more than
offsets the cost of having them scanned.

aem sends...