The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

-- J 4 Orono Weekly Times, Wednesday, April: 16, 2003; : ,7 Basic Black by Arthur Black Scrolled any good books lately? If you've had the dubious pleasure of fighting your way through any of Canada's larger airports lately, you may have noticed a brand new booth tucked in amongst the sunglasses, sunglasses, ball caps and T shirt boutiques. It's a service called "Teleporter". For twenty bucks or so they'll let you rent a DVD player along with a copy of the movie of your choice. You take them on board, watch the movie during the flight, then turn the player and the movie back in at your destination airport. There's an even cheaper piece of entertainment hardware hardware that's been available at airports for years. They don't need batteries, cables, modems or discs. What's more you can jam them in your hip pocket, drop them, kick them, even spill coffee all over them and they still work like a charm. They call them paperbacks. Remember how a few years ago some cybertech gurus were proclaiming the death of books? They assured us that it was only a matter of time before the only paperbacks or hardcovers around would be in museums and we'd all be reading reading - make that 'scrolling* -the latest bestsellers on our laptops. laptops. Well, sure. Who wants something cheap and portable like a pocketbook when you can give yourself carpal tunnel damage and a five-alarm migraine staring at the phosphorescent phosphorescent screen of a $2,000 temperamental piece of gad- getry that's fragile, needs a power source and is prone to crashing unexpectedly? The success of electronic books has been highly underwhelming underwhelming while the death of the conventional book has, to cop a line from Mark Twain, been greatly exaggerated. As a matter of fact, the simple book is turning out to be more durable than anyone ever suspected. suspected. . Sixteen years ago, in the first flush of cyberphoria, the British Broadcasting Corporation Corporation grandly announced the inauguration of The Domesday Domesday Project. It was to be a computer-driven computer-driven multimedia version version of the famous, thousand- year-old Domesday Book. The idea behind the project was to bring some pizazz to the fusty old pages of the famous book and at the same time showcase Britain's growing electronic sophistication. Big thinkers were hired and computational computational brainiacs were charged with developing special special computers to handle videodiscs of text, photographs, photographs, maps and archival footage. That was back in 1986. An Easter Bunny's helper will be periodically giving out FREE CHOCOLATE BUNNIES on Main Street, Orono Saturday, April 19th Bring your children and tell your friends tppipHmimpHnmtittiiiiHHUHiB NEWCASTLE FUNERAL HOME Family owned and operated by Carl Good, Funeral Director, and Joyce Kufta 386 Mill St. S., Newcastle 987-3964 www.ncwcastlcfuncralhome.com "Caring for our Community" Earlier this year, the Domesday Project was officially declared dead. Why? Because the technology technology used to create the project project has been eclipsed. Everything developed for the project is already obsolete. Unreadable. As opposed to the real, 11th century Domesday Book, which is in near-perfect condition condition and available to the reading reading public in The Public Record Office in London. That's one thing the Webheads didn't count on: incompatibility. As Katy Hafner wrote recently in the New York Times, "In an ideal world, all the information from an old machine would float effortlessly, invisibly, over to the new one with the click of a mouse. But the real world has other- plans. New software is incompatible with the old. Ancient cables won't fit the latest latest machines." Tell me about it, Katie. I've got a Commodore 64 in the closet that I plan to use very soon --just as soon as I can figure out how to weld it to an anchor chain. As for books, I don't think they'll ever die. Mind you there's a good chance they'll be forgotten by a large chunk of the Internet-infatuated public. I am reminded of the story told by an instructor for an adult-education program at a community college not far from here. One day a young student walked into the library area of the school and did a double- take .when he saw a wall of Encyclopedia Britannica volumes volumes in front of him. "Whoa! What are all these books?" he asked incredulously- incredulously- Encyclopedias, he was told. "Awesome" he replied. "You mean somebody printed out the whole thing?" EWCASTLE BOWLING MIXED LEAGUE score results 175 + over for April 10, 2003 BOWLER Game One Game Game Two Three Jim Armstrong 209 Wes Forget 251 340 244 Ruth Forget 185 Joe Forget 220 241 197 Brenda DeLaat •177 Tim Marshall 184 Adrian DeLaat 218 Fae Forget 195 270 Roy Hopkins 191 Debi Hannigan 202 183 Mike Swan 187 Orono Business Improvement Association £§? a&tm Saturday, April 19 Childrens' Concert starts at 10 a.m. at ORONO TOWN HALL Egg Hunt takes place at Library lawn after concert. c©j? Children will be piped down the street to Library • It's Free! C®A Clip and Save WASTE DISPOSAL SITES EASTER HOLIDAY SCHEDULE The Region of Durham operates full waste facilities in the following locations: 1640 Ritson Rd. N Oshawa 905-433-2050 1623 Reach Street Port Perry 905-985-7973 Brock Sideroad 17 Brock Township 705-437-2933 These facilities will operate on the following holiday schedule: Good Friday, April 18, 2003 - Closed Saturday, April 19, 2003 - open 8 am to 4 pm Sunday, April 20, 2003 - Closed--- Easter Monday, April 21, 2003 - Closed Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - open 8 am to 4 pm The Region of Durham also operates a waste facility at 3590 Edgerton Rd. in Blackstock. This site is only open.Fridays & Saturdays 8:00 am to 4:00 pm. However, for the Easter holiday-schedule, this site will be closed on Friday, April 18; 2003. o ■5" Û) 3 a CZ) 0) < <D