Re:After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses
by waterlesscloud on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @07:09PM
(#3700792)
There was huge value in thumbing through these as a child. We could never afford the set, but I had used copies of individual volumes and I spent many, many hours reading random topics. You just don't get that kind of discovery in an online version. Maybe you could, but you don't.
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Re:After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses
by bartread on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @08:12PM
(#3701025)
Seriously? YOU don't? You've obviously never experienced the Wikipedia death spiral: 30 browser tabs open all on unrelated Wikipedia pages. It was dangerously close to an addiction for me at one point and the amount of random crap I now know it irritates me I'm still so poor at pub quizes. There's probably some Godwin's Law equivalent where once you've opened a tab relating to Hitler or the Nazis, having started off on an article about Bengal Tigers, you know it's time for bed.
Re:After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses
by waterlesscloud on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @08:30PM
(#3701115)
The problem is that you're selecting the topics. The value of a physical encyclopedia is that they've selected the topics and you're browsing them at random.
Re:After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses
by kijin on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @07:38PM
(#3700890)
Half the time, that leads to auto-generated stub articles about small towns in the middle of nowhere.
Re:After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses
by aValidUserName on Wednesday March 14, 2012 @05:37PM
(#3705500)
So just hit it again until it leads to something interesting.