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What are you talking about? They have lockers. Use them. For schools that don't have lockers either forbid them to bring the phones or come up with a secure box to store them during the day.

You should learn how many schools are removing lockers these days.

Amazon already own it's own color screen technology,.
http://www.reuters.com/article...
https://www.google.se/search?q...

I wouldn't really settle for the very poor colors of the Triton screen. Maybe it would be an improvement for Dungeons & Dragons rule books (or not due to poorer resolution?) but it's too shitty for comics. Why would I read that on that screen rather than IPS or OLED?

I opened the second link but I can not really follow it / don't know what to look at.

I guess for speedometers(?) it may be fine.
Check Mirasol: http://the-digital-reader.com/...
And Liquavista: http://the-digital-reader.com/...
The later is the one which look the best IMHO. But Amazon hasn't put it into a kindle even though they own the company. They will know much more about the capabilities of the display than I do though =P

The last concept unit you linked look "better."
It doesn't have to have perfect color some is better than none.
The problem with Mirasol or atleast in some versions of this is that it seem to look like say butterfly wings: http://www.netbooknews.com/wp-...
I think it worked about the same by working with very small gaps too (matching wave-length of light.)

Amazon already own it's own color screen technology,.
http://www.reuters.com/article...
https://www.google.se/search?q...

I wouldn't really settle for the very poor colors of the Triton screen. Maybe it would be an improvement for Dungeons & Dragons rule books (or not due to poorer resolution?) but it's too shitty for comics. Why would I read that on that screen rather than IPS or OLED?

I opened the second link but I can not really follow it / don't know what to look at.

I guess for speedometers(?) it may be fine.
Check Mirasol: http://the-digital-reader.com/...
And Liquavista: http://the-digital-reader.com/...
The later is the one which look the best IMHO. But Amazon hasn't put it into a kindle even though they own the company. They will know much more about the capabilities of the display than I do though =P

The last concept unit you linked look "better."
It doesn't have to have perfect color some is better than none.
The problem with Mirasol or atleast in some versions of this is that it seem to look like say butterfly wings: http://www.netbooknews.com/wp-...
I think it worked about the same by working with very small gaps too (matching wave-length of light.)

Son'y device was marked down, and now sells for $800. And another similar model is up for pre-order.

Seems that Forbes is blocking people who use ad-blockers (funny - I don't block ads, just scripts and tracking). Wonderful given that at least twice this year they have served up malware. Anyone have any specifics about how they are detecting ad-blockers and how to fix the check so that it doesn't see me as having an ad blocker.

Yes. Here's a post which explains why that is the case: http://the-digital-reader.com/...

Is a money thing. Other sites like Smashwords spells it out more thoroughly. The claim is that they are unable to keep up with the requests for refunds due to bad porn and people who claim they didn't really buy it and risk having their merchant licenses pulled.

I can't tell if it's stupidity or ignorance when reading that refunds were due to "bad porn", as if consumers of this actually know what good porn is...

Is a money thing. Other sites like Smashwords spells it out more thoroughly. The claim is that they are unable to keep up with the requests for refunds due to bad porn and people who claim they didn't really buy it and risk having their merchant licenses pulled.

Given that the new terms are voluntary and limited to just KU, this will likely be fine for everyone. What the above summary missed was that the new payment terms only apply to the books authors put into Kindle unlimited, and not to the entire Kindle Store. http://the-digital-reader.com/... Amazon made the change to encourage authors to submit longer works to KU. The old terms were based on per ebook read, not page. That favored short works over longer works.

It turns out that he did have a formatting issue in the ebook: http://the-digital-reader.com/... The author coded the ebook by hand and used minus signs in place of hyphens. While that would look okay when you read the ebook, a TTS engine would have issues.

To the best of my knowledge, you don't have any alternative when it comes to getting the file; but stripping the DRM and reading it on something else does spare you the reporting that Adobe does of every move you make from one page to another, and keeping your copy of Digital Editions on a separate system(VM or isolated physical machine), will presumably keep it from scanning its merry way through your entire library...

Even if there were a 'clean' client, they'd still know who sent a request to their servers, and for what; but the ADE behavior goes well beyond that, and most of it will only work if the client is a traitor to the reader.

To the best of my knowledge, you don't have any alternative when it comes to getting the file; but stripping the DRM and reading it on something else does spare you the reporting that Adobe does of every move you make from one page to another, and keeping your copy of Digital Editions on a separate system(VM or isolated physical machine), will presumably keep it from scanning its merry way through your entire library...

Even if there were a 'clean' client, they'd still know who sent a request to their servers, and for what; but the ADE behavior goes well beyond that, and most of it will only work if the client is a traitor to the reader.

Do you know what would explain the difference? The fact that only 2 people from the Kindle group had used one before. That is going to throw the results, I think.

Bingo. It takes some time to get used to read on an e-reader, to navigate through pages and place bookmarks - a person who has never used a kindle will naturally have a hard time knowing and remembering how to put bookmarks, how to go back to them, how to flip pages back and forth.

Experience should have been handled as a control variable. Since it was not, one has to infer some type of correlation with the results. At best, given the experiment, one can ask if there was such a correlation. Another variable that needed to be under control is education.

Have people with minimal, but effective experience using the device and comparable education, and have them read several documents. For each document, ask the same questions as in the original experiment. Rinse and repeat.

As it is, though, the research has value if it points in the direction of usability for people new to e-readers.

Do you know what would explain the difference? The fact that only 2 people from the Kindle group had used one before. That is going to throw the results, I think.

Here's an interesting detail not in the original post. According to what the bookstore director told me, the UC Davis bookstore only earned around $140 thousand in affiliate commissions in the first 6 months. Considering that the bookstore had revenues of around 20 million dollars last fiscal year (July to June 2014), the partnership doesn't look like it is worth anything to the bookstore. http://the-digital-reader.com/...

My guess is that they benefited far more than 450 million dollars from this.

The entire eBooks market was only making $3 billion in revenue in each of 2012 and 2013. And I think we'll all agree that the market of today is much larger than it was back in 2010, when Apple and the iPad entered the scene with their combination of an Agency Model and Most Favored Nation clauses, which were deemed to be anticompetitive when used together.

  Apple's share of the market in 2010 was somewhere between 10% and 20%, depending on who you believe (most suggest it was 10%, but let's go with 20% for the sake of argument, since it'd mean they'd have made more money). So, if we use 2012's numbers (which, again, will be larger than 2010's actual numbers), their revenue would have only been $600 million at most during that time. I'll admit that I am not an accountant, so I may be misusing these numbers, but as I understand it, their 30% cut for the agency model would be taken out of the $600 million, meaning they'd receive roughly $180 million in a year.

To say the least, you'd have a hard time making the case that the $180 million they made was somehow $450 million or more greater than the amount they'd have made had they not engaged in anticompetitive practices. Though, if I recall correctly, treble damages were being pursued, so that may explain a large chunk of the discrepancy. Even so, it is highly doubtful Apple benefitted by anywhere even in the ballpark of the amount they are being fined.

According to an update on the article, there are 7300 audiobook titles listed.

You can also take out audiobooks from your local library for free.

Onyx Book T68 and T96, full fledged android tablets with eink displays. The specs on the devices could have been better considering they're releasing them in 2014.

Also, YotaPhone, the specs are similar to flagship phones but its not a tablet and it has a regular screen and an eink screen so not exactly what you probably had in mind but still :-), a full fledge android device with an eink display.

I haven't actually tried it, but I found this. It seems to be a bit of a hack but supposedly works:

http://www.the-digital-reader....

Have you checked this out?
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/nates-reviews/stream-amazon-instant-videos-android-tablet
It specifically mentions the Nexus 7 but you may need a hacked version of flash via a link provided in Troubleshooting. In the comments I see someone saying this works with Nexus 7 running KitKat.

Actually, I bypass the middleman and decrypt directly.

I know I'm the odd one out, but I never could get excited about Calibre. I have other tools, and they may not be drag-drop-drool simple, but they're easy enough and allow me to do just about anything I want to any format I want.

Sure, whatever works for you. I inferred from your comment that you deferred decryption to some later date, and that would've been risky. Using calibre and just leave the books unorganised, but searchable, might have been the most efficient way to do it in bulk. I didn't intend to tell you how to do it, only to do it at all :)

Incidentally, I just read that Adobe has dropped the "drop dead" deadline, although they're still pushing the new DRM scheme for the long term.

Yeah, I read that too, and I'm not surprised. As many, many others are saying, breaking the reading habits of millions of customers (both those who remove DRM and those who don't) would have been a PR nightmare. I'm inclined to think that Adobe was just testing the water to see whether this was something they could pull of, I'm only surprised that they thought it would fly at all.

After nearly 300 comments here, has anybody noticed that Adobe has backed off on this decision ?

You are incorrect. That particular smutpocolypse already happened in 2010. What they are going after now is things which are perfectly legal which seem "bad" -- and it's all being driven by some right-wing rag in Great Britain (you know, land of the page 3 girls...). If you are getting your news from the BBC, you are already a little late to the story.

Before committing to anything you might want to read this follow up post.Apparently there are titles shown in the library that may not actually be available in your geolocation. In addition, you won't find out about that until you actually try to open the book. It's really quite disingenuous of them to show you books and let you add them to your library, when they clearly later know that those titles are not available to you for actual reading.

Unless the two dominant sources of e-books (Amazon and Apple) support it: no.

That would be a yes then:

Amazon infuses e-books with HTML5 power with new KF8 format
It’s Official: iBooks Now Supports Epub3 which is based on XHTML1.1 which introduced html5 features to XHTML

It's the design. It looks to have a bump on the bottom, maybe batteries go in there similar to the Apple wireless keyboard. But unlike the product they got their inspiration from, the bump is at the wrong end. When placed on a flat surface, the screen will be angled away. Major design FAIL.

It's so hard to evaluate tablets looking at specs. it's such an intimate experience that the only way to buy is one is by trying them out, preferably for an extended period (borrow from friends?).

It's only hard to evaluate looking at specs if the specs don't automatically doom the product:

In this case, they do. In order to hit their BoM target, they had to cut this thing to the bone, to the point where it doesn't actually handle parsing the epub/pdf/whatever onboard; but depends on a companion application to load it with pre-rendered page images(up to 5 whole books can be stored!!!!). So, no text resize, no reflow, no nothing except page turning unless you go back to your phone and reload over bluetooth.

The fact that it was finally shut down was news. http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/12/02/wistorn-folds-up-polymer-vision-flexible-ereaders-are-once-again-science-fiction/#.UL0VTIM0V8G

At least where there are people still innovating instead of just following the adventures of the vocal iSheep who follow nothing but the iPad, iCloud and iAnyoldthing devices.

Here is an example of what is happening on the other side of the pond and is very interesting. I am a classical guitarist and putting one of these puppies on my music stand would be really nice for easily reading music pdfs that I and others are capable of creating.

I am sure they would be much more expensive than a kobo or a kindle but they could be absolutely killer for musicians or for what this post is all about because of Wacom capabilities on e-ink. HEY SLASHDOT do stuff on more than what is only happening in the USA again get those iBlinders off! iAm afraid iWe are missing the forest for the trees in North America because of the iFixation and down right self serving blinded iSheep posting constantly everywhere on tech sites.

So the OS is a complete failure because some cheap OEM decides to ditch the touchscreen to save a few bucks?

I guess I always knew in my heart that Android was a failure.

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/06/15/how-add-kindle-drm-removal-plugin-calibre/

Just back the files up and you'll be fine.

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/06/15/how-add-kindle-drm-removal-plugin-calibre/

You can just strip the DRM off your Kindle purchases and then back them up.

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/06/15/how-add-kindle-drm-removal-plugin-calibre/

From a different article about this story:

The one place you won't find such discounts, however, is the iBookstore, Apple has opted to fight the Justice Department and go to trial alongside Penguin and MacMillan next year.

Why am I not surprised?

Maybe because you had to go to a different article about this story to find wrong information, since the article linked from the story says:

A reader pointed me at the iBookstore, where Harpercollins titles are now being discounted. I’ve spot checked a half dozen titles and whenever Apple discounted them Apple was the one who usually had the best price – sometimes by several dollars. For example, the Kindle edition of Men are from Mars sells for $8.89, while B&N has it for $9.99 and Apple sells it for $7.99. And it’s not the only one, either.

I understand why they went with their own standard at the time (although i may have personally preferred if they had contributed to the standards process), but now that epub is mature, the clear winning standard, and possibly superior technology.

I’ve also checked and the guidelines says Javascript is not supported, and neither are some HTML5 tags...

It seems to me that at this point Amazon could manage backwards compatibility just fine while transitioning to (and contributing in) the epub format; so if it's no longer a question of quality is KF8 more aimed at vendor lock-in?

I have to ask, have you ever actually *used* an iPhone ? ... ... because the "factory reset" thing you're describing just doesn't happen, at least in my experience. I've broken and replaced the iPhone and got back all my saved information between phones, because the thing syncs a backup to the Mac every time it's placed in the dock to charge. If the phone breaks, the new one is plugged in, and it asks you if you want to restore from the backup on your *own* goddamn computer.

So no, I don't believe you, because what you're saying is bullshit. Perhaps it's a problem with Android phones (I don't honestly know, but I'm being charitable and assuming you're getting this from *somewhere* and not just pulling it out of your arse).

In fact it does decrease tech support, because the only tech support needed is 'swap this out for a new one at the local store, mail order if you live too far away', then restore the phone and get everything back as you had it before. No need to find an expensive local "GeekSquad"-a-like to "fix" it (these guys frequently do as much harm as good, IMHO) for you. It's simple. People *like* simple.

One other point: DRM is not illegal, using DRM is not illegal. I don't much like DRM, but extortion it is not.

As for your 'Apple killed Stanza' diatribe, it's far more likely that Amazon killed it, not Apple, and not by action, but by inaction.

Basically your post comes down to "I don't like this", and that's fine, everyone can have their own opinion, all I'm doing is calling you out on the bullshit reasons you're putting forward as supposed justification for your hatred.

Simon.

There's no way I can ever conceive of lugging a tablet around with me just going about everyday tasks

Let me guess: man who wouldn't be caught dead with "a purse". I have a bag for my netbook.

for really important documents I want a paper backup that I can still access in case of a power outage.

How long do you expect such outages to last?

With an electronic copy, we need some kind of digital device to accommodate the transfer

Such device could be a mobile phone. I'm under the impression that it has become customary to carry a mobile phone in case of needing to make an urgent call, such as car/bike trouble or notifying someone of one's impending arrival at the locked front door of a multiple-story apartment. The one wrinkle could be that one of the parties is a cheapskate like myself who carries a dumbphone because smartphone service is ten times as expensive as dumbphone service.

and we have to make sure the document is in some format that both of our devices understand

Apple iOS ships with a PDF reader, and several PDF readers are available for Android.

I specifically didn't mention the Kindle. Mobi is atrocious, and Amazon cares more about the bottom line than presenting an acceptable reading experience. You're right, not everyone uses the same algorithms to determine hyphenation and line-breaking, but in my experience, ePub and the readers that use ePub (at least the Nook - I really can't speak for others such as the Kobo or iRiver readers, not having used them) do a better job than the atrocity in that article. Of course, none of it matters if the publishers don't bother putting a little bit of care into their e-books. I may have come on a little strong, but I believe e-readers are not all as bad as you and the article you linked are making them out to be. http://www.the-digital-reader.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/nook.jpg is at least an improvement on the look of the Kindle's page, however I agree, it's not perfect.

Every Amazon purchased app will try to contact the Amazon Appstore when it is launched.
The Appstore itself will try to phone home at least a few times a day even if the Amazon purchased apps are not running.
Some Amazon purchased apps will not launch if you uninstall the Appstore.
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2011/04/12/apps-from-amazon-routinely-phone-home-and-other-interesting-details/

Zenpad4?

According to the first result from Google for zenpad 4 , Apple has this product handily beat in build quality.

Or a PDA format: http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2010/06/17/88-android-pda/

From the linked page: "Android 1.5".

Amongst many others.

Can you specify? I tried searching Google for android 2.2 tablet, but this result claims that the word "tablet" calls to mind 7" and 10" devices, and "PDA" better fits the 4" and 5" devices such as the iPod Touch and Archos 5. So I tried searching Google for android 2.2 pda, but apparently that combination is so seldom encountered on the Web that Google though I misspelled android 2.2 xda.

do you have any clue what so many phones / tablets seem to be released with 1.6?

I've read rumors that Google won't allow Android 2.x devices with no cellular radio to have Google's apps or Android Market.

Zenpad4?

According to the first result from Google for zenpad 4 , Apple has this product handily beat in build quality.

Or a PDA format: http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2010/06/17/88-android-pda/

From the linked page: "Android 1.5".

Amongst many others.

Can you specify? I tried searching Google for android 2.2 tablet, but this result claims that the word "tablet" calls to mind 7" and 10" devices, and "PDA" better fits the 4" and 5" devices such as the iPod Touch and Archos 5. So I tried searching Google for android 2.2 pda, but apparently that combination is so seldom encountered on the Web that Google though I misspelled android 2.2 xda.

do you have any clue what so many phones / tablets seem to be released with 1.6?

I've read rumors that Google won't allow Android 2.x devices with no cellular radio to have Google's apps or Android Market.

Archos 5 is a tablet, but I don't want 1.6. Which makes and models of tablet were you thinking of that have Android 2.1 or later and Android Market, in sizes comparable to both iPod Touch and iPad?

I haven't used any android tablets, but a google search turns up a lot that are either out now, or soon to be out. Zenpad4? Or a PDA format: http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2010/06/17/88-android-pda/. Amongst many others.

Barring much knowledge of the Android ecosystem, do you have any clue what so many phones / tablets seem to be released with 1.6? Seems like the Android market is really splintering with different versions possibly becoming problematic?