Slashdot Mirror

I'm not familiar with Wikisource and there's surly a lot of overlap in content between these, but for older public-domain books there's the venerable (in net.time, anyway) Gutenberg Project:
http://www.gutenberg.org/

You may find a copy of Sun-Tzu's "Art of War" at your local [bookstore]

You may find a copy of Sun-Tzu's "Art of War" at your local [bookstore]

iPhone + Project Gutenberg. I can read thousands of classics, wherever I am, on the best looking screen I've found. And with no DRM.

I use my smartphone in with the free Mobipocket Reader software installed as eBook reader software and am more than happy with it.

My ebook reader being my celphone means I just lug it around everywhere I go, fits in my pocket fine, no hassle.

The resolution's fine too, at 240x320 pixels, it's not much different from the old 80x24-character displays on monochrome monitors in the 80's. Some might say the display's a little small, but it's perfectly fine with me, helps the little critter fit in my pocket better.

With tons of books from Project Gutenberg and whatever else sources you can find on the net, them's a lot of books on one handy little device

The heck with these eBook reader-only gadgets. Maximize your smartphones, guys! Very handy for waiting in lines, etc.

Did this make anyone else think of this short story?

No, in fact, all of his works can be found on Project Gutenberg, although you may notice a good number of minor differences from the versions you have seen before because any published edition has copyrighted touch-ups to the spelling and formatting.

It might be fun to watch the K Street Klowns continuously on the run from state to state and district to district. It would probably boost the travel industry too.

particularly when they're taking fire. I'm thinking Piper had a good idea there...

Or acquire others more legitimately via http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page .

This is my first direct posting to /. I've read a number of the FAQs, but didn't see a limit to how long these postings could be, but judging by what I've seen there is one, so I probably need to do a "journal" article to say everything I have to say about this. If anyone would care to advise me how to do /., email me at hart@pglaf.org /// REPLY: It is nice to be remembered, and to be quoted in an accurate manner, many thanks! The idea[l] of "pay per" is a hidden goal of many business plans-- particularly those of "The MBA Generation" who feel there is no limit to how to get the bottom line. Bill Gates started that aspect when he copyrighted a version of BASIC when BASIC had always been free before that. Today we tend to forget that computers originally came with operating systems, programs and that buying them separate was a "new innovation" that made Microsoft what it is today. In modern systems we simply presume that $100s of dollars will go to Microsoft just to turn it on, unless those systems are running Linux or the like. One solution is simply to skip half the new OSs. Another is simply to only buy used equipment. Many people would be surprised to know that someone such as me, one of the Internet pioneers, has never owned a brand new computer. I find I can do quite well via garage sales, refurbs, etc., and can still have a worldwide impact from a dialup modem. The "new" idea of the Internet/Web is that it SHOULD be populated by people who have more dollars than sense and who are willing to pay lots and lots of those dollars via the Internet. "The MBA Generation" looks at the Internet as just another geographic area to be colonized much as Spain, France and the UK did a couple hundred years ago. Thus, the idea[l] is that we should PAY for everything we see and do, and OWN nothing at all. If you don't believe any of this, just talk to anyone who has bought an eBook reader device, and then found just how much it will cost to fill it up. If you can't load thousands of free Project Gutenberg eBooks on your device, then it is obvious, or at least should be, that you are living in that new "rentier economy." More later, if there is interest. Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Inventor of eBooks http://www.gutenberg.org/ http://www.gutenberg.cc/

Shelly "is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language."

That's a strong endorsement. Lord Byron had an interesting group of characters about him. Between them they make Generation X look like a bunch of prudes.

Since he died before Mickey Mouse was born, you can find all of his works here at project Gutenberg.

Oh - support Project Gutenberg. When works in the public domain are forgotten we all lose something precious.

And just the thing for these beasties

I know you're not alone, but can I put the opposite point of view? I was brought up on the works of Snorre Sturlasson, in particular the Hiemskringla (which I love - you can't get an anti-hero to beat Olaf Tryggvason). You have to see the Silmarillion against that sort of background. You can't assess it as a modern novel, because it isn't a modern novel. It's a synthetic mythos, and consequently it can only be compared against real mythic texts. And it compares very well.

In my opinion, both Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion are seriously flawed - but they're seriously flawed masterpieces; among the great cultural creations of the twentieth century. And for my money, Silmarillion is better than Lord of the Rings.

Your comment ignores the plethora of free content for ebook readers. Never heard of Project Gutenberg? And it's not the only game in town, lots of publishers are trying to raise interest by free giveaways, at least in the science fiction / fantasy genre (Tor, Baen).

> if you are a heavy reader. -----> if you are a heavy reader of expensive enough ebooks.

There, fixed that for you.

Christianity requires astrology to be true (according to the Book). To wit:

2:1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of
Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to
Jerusalem, 2:2 Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for
we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.
-- King James Bible

Conversely, astrology does not require Christianity to be true.

Christianity requires astrology to be true (according to the Book). To wit:

2:1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, 2:2 Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. -- King James Bible

Conversely, astrology does not require Christianity to be true.

And if you read this in a good detective story, you would immediately know that the man fleeing the house with a bloody knife is almost certainly *not* the killer. Near the end of the book, you will be gratified to learn that indeed, it was not the poor bloke fleeing the house, (who was fleeing for his own life after unsuccessfully battling the killer), but neither was it the sinister filthy rich jerk you've suspected all along. In fact, you would have never suspected who it turns out to be.

For a good example, try The Clue of the Twisted Candle.

While these stories are fiction, and idealize the principle, circumstantial evidence in real life can be like a magicians sleight of hand, making you believe you saw what wasn't there. The classic ballad Go Down you Murderer speaks to the sometimes tragic results.

He should get in contact with Project Gutenberg, that would make a nice volunteer and resource center for this project. Both have the same end goal; to get public domain knowledge freely available.

And a free edition is available, formatted for most any ebook reader you can think of (including Kindle and Sony reader.) Manybooks.net has all 16 volumes. Manybooks got them from Gutenberg.

There are over 20,000 free ebooks available at Project Gutenberg..

http://www.gutenberg.org/

Also available in text, html and the handy plucker format which is what I use to read ebooks on my old zaurus.

Here's one just for slashdot crowd.. Beowulf ;)

They have a quite extensive sci fi collection..

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Science_Fiction_(Bookshelf)

You wont get the latest books there but still lots of great stuff.

There are over 20,000 free ebooks available at Project Gutenberg..

http://www.gutenberg.org/

Also available in text, html and the handy plucker format which is what I use to read ebooks on my old zaurus.

Here's one just for slashdot crowd.. Beowulf ;)

They have a quite extensive sci fi collection..

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Science_Fiction_(Bookshelf)

You wont get the latest books there but still lots of great stuff.

There are over 20,000 free ebooks available at Project Gutenberg..

http://www.gutenberg.org/

Also available in text, html and the handy plucker format which is what I use to read ebooks on my old zaurus.

Here's one just for slashdot crowd.. Beowulf ;)

They have a quite extensive sci fi collection..

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Science_Fiction_(Bookshelf)

You wont get the latest books there but still lots of great stuff.

The ideas of social darwinism used by the Nazis were not founded in science. They were not based on Darwins ideas and Darwin would have rolled over in his grave had he heard of such perversion of his work.

Darwin explicitly advocated those ideas:
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. 'Anthropological Review,' April 1867, p. 236.), will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."
The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin

I take it, then, that you've never read Dante's Inferno. FYI, he tells us that the bottom of Hell is a lake of ice. Hell froze over a long, long time ago.

Yes.... it is called a sequencer. Only good ones aren't so cheap.

I'm sure that eventually somebody will offer some open source designs that will eventually work for sequencing a genome, but we are still at the stage of designing the tools that will make the tools that will do the job.

Some "hackers" have also done a fairly good job of adding some comments to the source code as well, but you are free to try and add your own if you think you can make some headway in trying to figure out some of the functions as well.

If you say it wasn't about sex, then I believe you...at least you have talked yourself into believing that. Keep drinking the Cool Aid they taught in seminary. Women are definitely attracted to charismatic leaders, and Joseph Smith fits the bill. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Don't worry though, even Joseph Smith's own son needed convincing about the facts too. Here is the relevant quote from wikipedia:

I still think Mark Twain had it about right, especially when add the photographic evidence of the sour faces of the early Mormon women. They were tough, but not so cute. Twain wrote this about the Mormons he found along the way in his travel log through the wild west in Roughing It

I don't think you could seriously argue that the second amendment covers cannons, mortars, bombs, and landmines.

I suggest you read "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine.

"If premiums were to be given to merchants, to build and employ in their service ships mounted with twenty, thirty, forty or fifty guns, (the premiums to be in proportion to the loss of bulk to the merchants) fifty or sixty of those ships, with a few guardships on constant duty, would keep up a sufficient navy, and that without burdening ourselves with the evil so loudly complained of in England, of suffering their fleet, in time of peace to lie rotting in the docks."

His advice was to have privately owned cannon, on privately owned ships, subsidised by the government to compensate for loss of trading ability, as the basis of the navy.

Handguns strike me as "murder weapons" and "weapons to be used in self-defense against other handgun-toting criminals"

You consider using a pistol for self-defense to be a criminal act?

Larger weapons scare me a lot less...

Weapons scare you? Why do you fear inanimate objects? How strange!

Do you ever consider the Rwandan genocide in which many of the protagonists were armed with machetes? 500,000+ dead.

At my local markets, a man sells ornamental swords. They do not have shrapened edges, because in my country that would mean they had to be registered as weapons, which would make them very difficult to buy or sell. A few steps away, machetes and other edged instruments are available without restriction for a few dollars. It's ludicrous. Most weapons legislation I've seen is ludicrous. It doesn't prevent murder, it doesn't prevent mass murder. It just gives the advantage to the physically strong.

I didn't notice anyone mentioning international issues with the public domain. Thanks to my involvement with Project Gutenberg, I'm often in the situation where something that is public domain in one place is still under copyright protection elsewhere.

Project Gutenberg has long held that by making something in the public domain available, we do not infringe in places where that public domain item is not in the public domain. So, for example, PG's eBook of Peter Pan is public domain in the US and most other places, but not in the UK.

We have regularly stood up to claimants from non-US countries (and, in the case of Gone with the Wind, in the US: complaining about the PG of Australia organization), saying that infringement is committed by infringers -- not by those *legally* making an item available. We haven't been sued yet, and like the RIAA case there are aspects of copyright law that don't have much legal precedent. (Internationally, there are few precedents.)

The idea that infringement is done by infringers, not by those with legal rights to an item, is a very important distinction. Presumably there might be issues for conspiracy to infringe, for traffickers, and those who profit by fostering an environment for infringement. But for the everyday person with legal rights to an item, the ability to rip, store, share, etc. would be nice to confirm.

Another related aspect: what if I rip a CD (or whatever) I legally own, and make it available for download, and you own the same item and download it. Confirming this is non-infringing would really help... an analogous situation would be digitizing an eBook from a printed volume I own, and you own...even if the book is copyrighted, can we share the digital copy?

The final point for US residents is the anti-circumvention provision of copyright law. If we can confirm these various rights, does that mean that bypassing DRM etc. is legit? While there is deemphasis on DRM for music currently, it's still pretty strong for video, for the dedicated eBook formats, and re-emerging with Blu-Ray discs. I don't think DRM (or spawn of DRM) is dead yet. gbn

These issues could be taken care of by not allowing any sort of 'corporate' funding of political candidates. Also, kill all lobbyist.

Great idea. Too bad it'll never work. Roughly translated, the phrase "Who will guard the guardians?" comes to mind. The problem isn't new, it goes all the way back to and past Rome. How do you regulate a ruling class that intends on 'policing' itself? You can't. A solution is known, but again, it'll never be implemented, for obvious reasons.

And for what it's worth, I kinda LIKE Piper's solution.

Reading the 'Origin of Species' gives great insight into those ideas. It's gives pretty interesting explanations (though a bit outdated) on why some species seem to revert to old forms (such as why whales look like fish), and why some useful features stay the same through the ages seemingly unchanged. Go on, get it and take it one idea at a time. It's available to everyone as a free audiobook or free text

You can't have winners in life when there are no losers.

Not only that, but spoofed headers are a critical plot element in a classic work of fiction!

. I get my books from places like ebooks.com in Microsoft Reader (win2k in a virtual machine) format because the DRM can be broken

No karma blown, they've never tried one so therefore ebooks/readers must suck.

Yes I like reading processed trees as much as any bibliophile, but I'd really rather carry my Nokia 770 with me. Currently there are 76 books loaded in there from all over the place, Gutenberg, the Baen Free Library, the CIA World Factbook, and more. It was really great on vacation this last Summer. All those endless train rides across Europe and there was no way I was going to pack a half a dozen paperbacks and an equal number of roadmaps for the trip.

For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well-affectioned towards the god, whose seed they were; for they possessed true and in every way great spirits, uniting gentleness with wisdom in the various chances of life, and in their intercourse with one another. They despised everything but virtue, caring little for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them; neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober, and saw clearly that all these goods are increased by virtue and friendship with one another, whereas by too great regard and respect for them, they are lost and friendship with them. By such reflections and by the continuance in them of a divine nature, the qualities which we have described grew and increased among them; but when the divine portion began to fade away, and became diluted too often and too much with the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, they then, being unable to bear their fortune, behaved unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see grew visibly debased, for they were losing the fairest of their precious gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and unrighteous power.

Saying so doesn't make it true. For example, take a look at the HTML editions of a section of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19699, Music Notation and Terminology by Karl Wilson Gehrkens http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19499, and Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany by Douglas Houghton Campbell http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20390, all recent productions from Distributed Proofreaders and top 100 downloads from Project Gutenberg. It is true that we're still using LaTeX to describe formulae, and some of our formatting notations are nowhere near the sophisticated tools a former technical writer at Adobe is no doubt used to. I think we're doing a far better job of retaining the non-textual information you claim we're dropping than your cursory re-examination of our site would indicate.

Saying so doesn't make it true. For example, take a look at the HTML editions of a section of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19699, Music Notation and Terminology by Karl Wilson Gehrkens http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19499, and Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany by Douglas Houghton Campbell http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20390, all recent productions from Distributed Proofreaders and top 100 downloads from Project Gutenberg. It is true that we're still using LaTeX to describe formulae, and some of our formatting notations are nowhere near the sophisticated tools a former technical writer at Adobe is no doubt used to. I think we're doing a far better job of retaining the non-textual information you claim we're dropping than your cursory re-examination of our site would indicate.

Saying so doesn't make it true. For example, take a look at the HTML editions of a section of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19699, Music Notation and Terminology by Karl Wilson Gehrkens http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19499, and Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany by Douglas Houghton Campbell http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20390, all recent productions from Distributed Proofreaders and top 100 downloads from Project Gutenberg. It is true that we're still using LaTeX to describe formulae, and some of our formatting notations are nowhere near the sophisticated tools a former technical writer at Adobe is no doubt used to. I think we're doing a far better job of retaining the non-textual information you claim we're dropping than your cursory re-examination of our site would indicate.

Second, how can you be credible when you say that water vopour is a greenhouse gas in the same way as CO2? Water is always in a saturated state in the atmosphere. Yes, it is a major contributor to global warming that was *always there*. 70% of the surface is water! If CO2 was in pools like water and water was at the levels of CO2, then it would be backwards. Hope you can understand the difference between saturated, always there state and *new* additional greenhouse gases like CO2 and methane. The 2 latter ones are never saturated and hence add to the greenhouse effect of what gases we currently have in the atmosphere.

Well, first, water vapor isn't a constant in the atmosphere. It isn't always saturated. And if the models claiming Co2 is the culprit treat it as a static constant, then I suggest fixing them. It has been increasing in amount for the last few decades. The Dew points have been rising which means that there has been more water vapor. In fact, the water vapor in the atmosphere is not saturated. It remains at a level below saturation and this level has increased beyond the coefficient of relative humidity. Here is an article that explains roughly 70% of germany's increase in temperature to water vapor increases.

And notice I said look at the dew point, this number shows the amount of water vapor below saturation and to the point of saturation. Interestingly, if this is increasing, then that specifically means that both the water vapor in the atmosphere isn't in a state of saturation and that it is increasing somewhat so that when the air cools down, it becomes saturated faster because of the increased water vapor.

Another example would be Titan (moon of Saturn). Currently it is thought that it contains liquid methane seas, etc. Thus, on Titan methane would not be a "global warming" greenhouse gas like it is on Earth.

Wow. You really don't know what your talking about do you? Pools of it laying around doesn't determine if it is a greenhouse gas or not. The ability to absorb or reflect long wave radiation is what makes it a greenhouse gas. Maybe your think of a term called a forcing verses a feedback. and while true that a constant value always there would be a feed back process triggered by a separate forcing, it is unclear if the increased amount of the said gas should be considered a feedback or a forcing. A 2% increase of water vapor which could be attributed to factors other then Co2 increases is a significantly higher of an increase then a similar increase of 2% in Co2 levels.

Regarding evolution, it is a scientific fact now. It may have been a hypothesis by Darwin (his free book here: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2009), but now it is a fact that microbiologists rely on. It is even observed in nature on large organisms without our short lifespans. Of course you may chose not to read what Darwin has to say regarding his observations but continue to believe in dogma.

Parts of evolution in itself is a scientific fact but science has gotten nowhere close to proving it. There is no empirical evidence supporting quite a bit of the theory. I don't really care to get into this argument with you. You already resorted to the "my opinion is the only one that matters, all else is dogma". Well, it isn't and you are sadly wrong/mistaken about evolution but unlike you, I don't pretend to want to push my views onto you. you can keep your misguided views. I guess we will leave that drop before I have to school you.

As for other examples, give me proof instead of idle talk. Especially about funding. And if you approach any project as "disprove of a", you'll not get funding because yo

Don't twist my words please.

Second, how can you be credible when you say that water vopour is a greenhouse gas in the same way as CO2? Water is always in a saturated state in the atmosphere. Yes, it is a major contributor to global warming that was *always there*. 70% of the surface is water! If CO2 was in pools like water and water was at the levels of CO2, then it would be backwards. Hope you can understand the difference between saturated, always there state and *new* additional greenhouse gases like CO2 and methane. The 2 latter ones are never saturated and hence add to the greenhouse effect of what gases we currently have in the atmosphere.

Another example would be Titan (moon of Saturn). Currently it is thought that it contains liquid methane seas, etc. Thus, on Titan methane would not be a "global warming" greenhouse gas like it is on Earth.

Regarding evolution, it is a scientific fact now. It may have been a hypothesis by Darwin (his free book here: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2009), but now it is a fact that microbiologists rely on. It is even observed in nature on large organisms without our short lifespans. Of course you may chose not to read what Darwin has to say regarding his observations but continue to believe in dogma.

As for other examples, give me proof instead of idle talk. Especially about funding. And if you approach any project as "disprove of a", you'll not get funding because your method is unscientific. The idea is to observe something that then through that observation would disprove "a". This means, you cannot disprove evolution (which is a fact). Well, prove that creation happens right now. Prove to me that the bacteria that are now resistant to antibiotics were "created" in such a way that would contradict evolution (no, humans engineering them doesn't mean creation - unless you think humans are now gods? :). So far the "evolution way" has been seen observed in every repeated case for how these bacteria evolved to deal with the antibiotic.

Of course, there is Chernobyl. Or were these animals that clearly descended from the original ones did not change in response environmental pressures mysteriously created by some deity?

http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/index.html?http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/437/4324.html

Or are you going to state that this is it a government cover up of the alien experiments? :) lol

Anyway, at least read some articles from BBC (or do you considered them biased gov't sponsored propaganda?),
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/629/629/7074601.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7081026.stm

I'm an ebook person, I've been testing a site that'll work on Kindle devices. To date, I've put 30 or 40 books from that site onto my device--works fine. No bills for it have shown up in my Amazon Kindle account. Note this is not to hype the mobile site, I'm soon to replace it with a Joomla version (but probably the guy who does booksonphone will blow me away soon anyway).

Anyway, free content loads flawlessly, I haven't been charged for putting it on my device via Amazon's bandwidth, and the tools are there to generate mobipocket books.

Project Gutenberg should maybe make a mobile interface as well...

I used to feel the same way about books, until I started one of the Baen.com ebooks online and found myself reading the whole thing in front of my computer. It turned out that this particular book had a sequel that was also part of the Baen's free library and so I downloaded that too. This time, however, I spent a little bit of time coercing the ebook into the plucker format so that I could read it on my palm.

Next thing I knew I had purchased the entire series, including the final version of the book as a $20 advanced reader copy so that I could get it before it came out in print. What's more, I realized that what I really liked was reading, not books. All of a sudden I saw used book stores for the creepy, smelly places that they really are instead of the magical place of wonder that I had built them up to be in my head.

I liked being able to fit an entire library in my pocket. I liked being able to read in the dark without waking my wife. I liked being able to search my book collection with grep. I liked the fact that I no longer got ink on my hands from a cheap paperback, or had to worry about breaking the spine of a book. Most of all I liked the fact that I no longer had to plan time to read. I always had my palm with me, and so whenever I got a bit of time, even just a few minutes, I could make progress on whatever it was that I was reading. You can't do that with a book, unless you happen to be a security guard.

What's more, even including the price of the pda ($70) I was actually saving money by reading ebooks. I did this by only purchasing unencrypted ebooks, which are generally priced at paperback prices (or less), and by utilizing resources like Project Gutenberg

The real reason that ebooks have not taken off to this point has nothing to do with the format, and everything to do with the price of ebooks and ebook readers. The Kindle is a perfect example. Seriously, who wants to pay $400 for a dedicated ebook reader? I will grant Amazon.com that the price of the books for the device are mostly reasonable. They are still a little steep, considering the fact that they will be delivered digitally, but not as bad as most ebook vendors. However, $400 will buy a large pile of hardback books.

Eventually, the ebook folks are going to get things right, and that will be that for books. Oh, there will still be some folks that stick to their books in the same way that some music lovers still purchase vinyl, but the mainstream will move on.

An ebook with a network connection has the potential for a no-brainer feature of all time: built-in integration with Project Gutenberg.

I suppose amazon.com doesn't want to do anything that might discourage people from paying $3.96 when they could download it for free.

Still, even though I may well end up buying ebooks, I would never buy an ebook reader that didn't make it ridiculously easy to browse/read Gutenberg books. This is called "get them in the door with the free stuff". The sales pitch is "With this ebook reader, you can easily read 20,000 free books from PG, and buy 100,000 titles from amazon".

I referred to iTunes, an application that predates the iPhone by roughly 6 years. Wikipedia has an article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes. One of the program's features is synchonization, protecting you against the loss of content if your expensive device is lost, stolen or broken.

Less ugly does not mean sexy. But, Amazon has succeeded in making Sony's eBook reader look damn sexy ... and cheaper.

Moby Dick can be downloaded for free in under ten seconds in a portable format from http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2701.

More importantly, if you can't back up the content and carry it to other devices, at some point, you've wasted the money you spent on all that content. Thanks to my download testing, I know own a nice paper academic version (picked up for a buck at a used book store) and an electronic version that's going on Palm.

FWIW, Moby Dick is tedious at first, but worth reading... at least it is now that I'm about half way through. I'm looking forward to soaking in the tub with it tonight...

I keep hearing this described as the iPod for books, which strikes me as a really misguided goal. I don't want an iPod for books, and most serious readers I know wouldn't either. There's something fundamentally different between flipping wantonly through my ever-shifting collection of 10,000 albums and singles, and spending days or weeks immersed in a single great book. I couldn't give a hoot about being able to store 200 books, or download a new title at the drop of a hat. What is the point of wireless? The most voracious readers I know would not find themselves constrained by the need to occasionally hook up to a PC and 10 or 20 more titles. I could map out my entire reading for the next five years in about 5 minutes of downloading from Project Gutenberg. The reading world just doesn't spin as fast or as serially as the iPod world. It's off-putting to see it now falling under the iPod rubric, where it will be forced to compete for a dwindling slice of our increasingly short attention span.

Don't get me wrong, I'm completely open to the idea of an e-book; as an environmentalist I positively love it. But it seems like too much attention has been focused on making an iKindle, to the detriment of the actual reading experience itself. e-ink is much better than LCD, certainly, but anybody who would claim it's is as pleasing to look at as even a $.99 paperback has pretty low standards. And I feel like a real opportunity has been missed in making it waterproof, too. Who wouldn't love to be able to read in the shower! :-) Anyways, going solely on what I've heard from reviews, I'd have to say I agree with the assessment that it probably should have gone on sale in time for Christmas `09. Technology will continue its inexorable march towards perfection, and in a couple years today's screens will look primitive. Early adopters and gadgeteers will snap this up, but readers will stick with our dead trees for a few years yet.

+ Reader has to be under $100.

How about free? Provided, of course, that you provide your own Blackberry, Palm, Smarter-Than-Thou-Phone, PC or other geek-faux-wang. If you don't already have one you can probably find something acceptable at or near your $100 price point. It won't have the big e-Paper screen that the Kindle does, but I have no troubles using a smaller display.

* Books have to be half the price of print books or lower.

e-Book pricing is all over the place right now, with titles ranging anywhere from free, free, or free, all the way to about the same as printed books. As the market grows expect to see more pressure on prices which should force things down a bit, but don't hold your breath.

+ No bullshit DRM. I better be able to back the content up, copy it to my ipod, save it on my hard drive. Whatever.

Some books ship with bullshit included while others come pas-des-merde-des-vasche. With a good reader you can feed it anything from flat ASCII text, HTML or PDF files through to insanely encrypted tracts of bull and have something readable come out the other end. The choice is yours.

+ I better be able to resell it, just like I can resell a used book. Otherwise, all of this is just a run-around way for the publishing industry to attacked the used book trade, which they hate more than almost anything else on earth (including their loathing of public libraries).

Yes, you can absolutely resell the hardware that you read books on just like you resell a used book. Reselling _data_ is a trickier problem, as it is nothing like a used book. Besides, the only way for second hand ebooks to have any value would be if they included "Bullshit DRM". Which do you want, resale or steerpoopage?