branko said:
I think annecdotal evidence is no evidence at all.
then why call it "evidence" at all? it is indeed a certain type of evidence, and as long as you understand and accept its limitations, it's useful.
It is useless to discuss the growing or lessening popularity of ebooks in general based on a few of Vijay's personal observations.
it would be unwise to trust his short-term observations over our long-term observations if the two conflicted, but so far i would say they've been in close alignment... perhaps it upsets some people here that a person does not need to be an expert to realize the important issues, but that's the way this particular situation is...
Those personal observations can be fun to talk about in their own right, but they are not evidence of a trend.
they are _not_ much fun to talk about any more, are they? isn't that why nobody's really responding to vijay's posts? they've already been discussed to death on the listserves. but perhaps it's not good for us to be so jaded, and thus reminders of the issues by seeing them through new eyes might be just the ticket for waking us from complacency. for instance, notice how the issue of the viewer-program surfaces so often in vijay's observations? that's a focus that i think is extremely important to the end-readers, but most of the "experts" here just gloss over it entirely... -bowerbird