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Another virus/worm affects MS Windows/IE, recording/movie industry sues file-swappers, Sony/Nokia/Apple releases new player/phone/game console, etc, etc.

As the industry matures, the "wow" stories seem fewer and further between and the job of finding really interesting headlines for the bottom half of this page becomes increasingly difficult.

Even mainstream publishers seem to be having difficulties in filling their pages.

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I notice that recently, Wired.com has all but given up writing stories on the ITC sector and are instead focusing on broader technology and science issues.

Indeed, eagle-eyed Aardvark readers will probably have noticed that I'm sneaking a few of what I think are more interesting science/technology links into the news section myself.

When it's a choice between a story about space, science or other non-ITC technology and yet another press release from Sony/Apple/Microsoft/etc then I'll go for the non-ITC story every time. How do readers feel about this though?

Am I right in assuming that Aardvark readers are bright folks who aren't solely focused on computers, software and communications issues? Do you enjoy being kept up to date with the occasional space exploration story, maybe a little snippet from medical science or other area?

One IT story that's appeared recently and is worth comment however, is Google's plan to scan every book in the world.

While the web as such is a wonderful resource, there's still a whole lot of incredibly useful and entertaining printed material that has never had a taste of cyberspace. Being able to search this wealth of printed material will be a truly incredible thing and further extend Google's position as the number one indexer of information on the planet.

Of course (wouldn't you know it) some publishers are up in arms about this service, claiming that it will infringe their copyright and kill sales. Haven't these people heard of libraries? Do they know that people can go into such an institution and borrow a copy of their book without paying a cent?

Google's approach to the whole issue seems very sensible, only allowing excerpted passages of copyrighted books to be displayed. If anything, that constitutes a free advertisement and publishers ought to be rejoicing!

Will you use a service like Google Books, or do you consider ink on paper to be "so last century?"

Go have your say in The Aardvark Forums

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