Re: [libreoffice-users] re. the youngster ...

On 08/10/2012 07:45 AM, James Knott wrote:
> Steve Edmonds wrote:
> > > I also used to work with punch card equipment.
> > And a breakthrough was marksense cards that freed you from the punch 
> > terminal.
>
> We used those in my Gr. 12 Fortran class.  I also worked on equipment 
> that could read them.  As I recall, we spent most of our class time 
> marking up those cards.

I started out with punched cards and teletype terminals.  I though it 
was Heaven to go to a CRT terminal a few years later. I bought my first 
PC-DOS type of computer in kit form.  I remember our local college 
offering courses in how to use Windows, when it came out.  I went from 
using a computer bigger than my apartment to one that is the size of a 
thin book.  I was a mainframe programmer in my early working days.  Then 
learned PC networking when that was becoming popular.

In the Star Trek Next Generation, they had tablet technology. Now we 
have it.  There was a prediction back in the 1950's that there was not 
going to be an need for more than 20 to 50 computers in the USA in the 
"future".  They just did not get what would become that old clunky 
monster.  Now it is something no kid can live without to do their school 
work, let alone its ability to entertain us.  I remember the B.B.S. 
systems.  My first email address was about 80 character long and it was 
via a B.B.S. network.  Now we cannot live without its descendant, the 
Internet.  Can you imagine your life without the Internet?

Young people today do not know what we had to go through without all of 
the computer-based items that they grew up with.  They would be lost 
without those devices.  How many kids in the near future will never have 
picked up a printed book, with the trend of eBooks on classroom laptop 
costing school less than buying new printed book every few years.  
Curling up with a nice tablet, instead of a nice book, does not appeal 
to me.

Yet, I am currently taking on the task of converting a batch of .ePub 
and .Mobi books to a A6 size PDf file for use with a tablet where the 
Kindle reader software will not read from the external microSD card.  
Calibre to convert .epub to .txt, then LO to create the A6 page size PDF 
file with a footer for page number and "book" title.  Then they will be 
read on a $100 USD Android tablet that will read PDF files via Kindle 
off that external card via the file manager.


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