Encyclopedia Britannica

So I was searching my library this morning and saw this book on the shelf Encyclopedia Britannica. I pulled it off the shelf, something I never would have done if all my books were in a kindle. So is this a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not even sure I would have this book in my kindle. I only bought it because it was a dollar at a yard sale and I have a fondness for reference books.

Anyway, I flipped through the book just in case it did have a reference to the topic which began my search. Remember that slight obsession I have with words (no I don't play scrabble but maybe I should)? Well there this entry on Burning and it said, "Burning, or Brenning in our old customs, denotes infectious disease, got in the stews by conversing with the lewd women, and supposed to be the same with what we now call the venereal disease." This was written in the 1788-1797 edition of the encyclopedia. In the 1992 reprint that I'm holding it notes, "Stews by the way are what we now call whorehouses." pages 91-92.

Interesting huh? Because these are just ordinary words now, they don't have the implications other words have such as gay.

So in defense of the kindle I looked at their "buy-me" video. It does look enticing. Apparently you can get a lot of books in e-book format not just the self-published ones. It must be the people I hang out with because all those writers from JRW are published in paper and they all seem to think that e-publish is self-publish and I didn't bother to actually look into the whole subject to find out more. All I could think about was being able to read some of the books I know I'll never read again nor do I want to keep on my shelf -- you know the beach reads -- for less than the $27 hard cover price. That would be nice because I never get to the library in time to reserve a copy and by the time I get around to buying the paperback the sequel has come out.

Now my question is, "How do they prevent people from stealing the e-books?"