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Bookworm ePub Reader Gets Boost From O'Reilly
stoolpigeon writes in with news that ought to kindle Amazon's attention: "O'Reilly announced recently that they are now hosting Bookworm, an online ePub reader. ePub is composed of three open standards (OPS, OPF, and OCF) that allow users a great amount of flexibility without any lock-in. Bookworm lets users upload ePub files, read them online from a PC or mobile device, and also export them to mobile devices that support ePub. Bookworm can also export directly to Stanza. Once a user has uploaded their ePub books to Bookworm, they can track progress through them even across multiple devices."
For twelve years you've been asking "Who is John Galt?" This is John Galt speaking. I'm the man who's taken away your victims and thus destroyed your world. You've heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis and that Man's sins are destroying the world. But your chief virtue has been sacrifice, and you've demanded more sacrifices at every disaster. You've sacrificed justice to mercy and happiness to duty. So why should you be afraid of the world around you?
Your world is only the product of your sacrifices. While you were dragging the men who made your happiness possible to your sacrificial altars, I beat you to it. I reached them first and told them about the game you were playing and where it would take them. I explained the consequences of your 'brother-love' morality, which they had been too innocently generous to understand. You won't find them now, when you need them more than ever.
We're on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to know how I made them quit, I told them exactly what I'm telling you tonight. I taught them the morality of Reason -- that it was right to pursue one's own happiness as one's principal goal in life. I don't consider the pleasure of others my goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the goal of anyone else's life.
I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don't force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical.
You've allowed such men to occupy positions of power in your world by preaching that all men are evil from the moment they're born. When men believe this, they see nothing wrong in acting in any way they please. The name of this absurdity is 'original sin'. That's inmpossible. That which is outside the possibility of choice is also outside the province of morality. To call sin that which is outside man's choice is a mockery of justice. To say that men are born with a free will but with a tendency toward evil is ridiculous. If the tendency is one of choice, it doesn't come at birth. If it is not a tendency of choice, then man's will is not free.
And then there's your 'brother-love' morality. Why is it moral to serve others, but not yourself? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but not by you? Why is it immoral to produce something of value and keep it for yourself, when it is moral for others who haven't earned it to accept it? If it's virtuous to give, isn't it then selfish to take?
Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab.
You know that you can't give away everything and starve yourself. You've forced yourselves to live with undeserved, irrational guilt. Is it ever proper to help another man? No, if he demands it as his right or as a duty that you owe him. Yes, if it's your own free choice based on your judgment of the value of that person and his struggle. This country wasn't built by men who sought handouts. In its brilliant youth, this country showed the rest of the world what greatness was possible to Man and what happiness is possible on Earth.
Then it began apologizing for its greatness and began giving away its wealth, feeling guilty for having produced more than ikts neighbors. Twelve years ago, I saw what was wrong with the world and where the battle for Life had to be foug
I guess he really is.
I used to work in the college textbook industry, and there was a constant background drum from the book publishers talking about switching everything to eBooks. However, all the students that I ever asked about it were very much in favor of being able to fold down corners, draw in the margins, use highlighers, etc. Personally, when I read, I *like* the tactile interaction with the book. I'm not all that familiar with the current eBook readers - are they very popular?
Will I get an eBeer when I go to the ePub?
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
ePub? Is that like an internet cafe?
A large university can install a mini printing press (or in other words, a big printer that does bookbinding) in the library. Publishers (or authors) can distribute their books electronically, and for those students who want to pay for it, a print-on-demand copy will be fairly cheap. Other students might prefer to buy an ebook reader like the Kindle (or just use their mobile phone, in a couple of years' time when screens are good enough) or just spend as little money as possible by reading the book on a college PC.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Thats good news for the Sony Ebook Readers like the PRS-505 and what not. Currently the Kindle doesn't support ePub so it really is interesting to see how the ebook format war will shake out.
Geneva university here.
Lots of university made material (professor's slides and notes, other documents written by the faculty staff, chapters from books that professors have authored and have the right to publish themselves, chapters of recommended books [the university libraries pay a tax that gives them the right to make books available to their students] etc.) are distributed in PDF format on a specialised website.
The students can either read it on screen or print it with the university's or their home printers.
Just throw in a low-power device able to read PDFs and it's exactly the situation you describe.
At least with university-produced documents.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It depends on how the price the eBooks. For example, I remember a single semester that the textbooks were well over $400. So if the pricing of the eBooks reflects the reduction in production costs, it might be far cheaper to get a reader + eBooks instead of new (or used) deadwood books every 6 months x 4 years (if you're lucky).
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Reading eBooks is all about interface. This one assumes that you can override text-size on your browser. My G1 doesn't do that... It'll zoom in, but then you are constantly scrolling left and right to read.
And formats! This thing only accepts ePub format. I've never found a book in the wild in that format. Baen.com doesn't have it for sale.
I'm all about open formats, but ... You know, they have to be useful.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Oh, my first impression about bookworms was wrong. I thought that a bookworm is a piece of malware which is distributed through e-books.
I post this three hours after this story hit the front page of slashdot and there are 32 comments. I take this as indicative of the interest among Slashdot readers in this new technology. Contrast that to the interest, a few days ago, in the Kindle and you can draw your own conclusions. My own conclusion is that this will not fare well, at least in this demographic, and O'Reilly/ePub may want to consider some additional marketing/buzz generation schemes.
Then again, I think someone said that about the iPod years ago, so maybe this post will go down in the historical lore of Slashdot. In 2012: "You remember when the Bookwork was first announced and no one on Slashdot was interested!?!"
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Libraries are primarily staffed by polite and helpful women. Thus they are a non-threating environment to practice interaction with female adults you are not related to.
Pooper. Nothing has significantly to decline for to get involved in you are a screaming Are you a NIGGER taken over by BSDI product, BSD's IS DYING LIKE THE and shouting that much organisation, Channel #GNAA on to survive at aal Paranoid conspiracy To the politically We don't sux0r as and/or distribute the numbers. The every chance I got sure that by the
"Mom's Basement" jokes in 3...
Just tried it out, and the bookworm "mobile site" (http://m.bookworm.oreilly.com) works pretty well from my Kindle's browser.
If you're so committed, why don't you have any free offerings? O'Reilly has tons of selections freely available online, and likely tons of books hidden in storage that are both out-of-print and never to return (at least without serious revision). Why not open up and share them?
The ePubBooks.com site says it wants ePub to be to books what MP3 is to music ... the only way that can happen is if there are tools to publish content, legal and questionable, and have free, questionable, and licensed media be easily shared. MP3 is what it is today because it was used for noncommercial purposes without restrictions. What resulted was a complete change in paradigm, putting the record stores almost completely out of business and then moving on to threaten the whole recording industry with a new model fronted by iTunes.
Is the book industry ready for such a transformation? You've got a bit of an advantage, with no easy way for users to "rip" books from bound tombs to ePub files, but that's only a temporary fix as user demand will push forward digital releases soon enough.
Brace yourselves and prepare. Is this the right path? Is there money to be made while still playing fair? Who will be the "iTunes" of books (and can they get there without DRM)? Take inspiration from Audible and friends, but also note the red flags waved around regarding what DRM does and why it is bad (and why even Apple ended up discarding DRM in the end).
You want ePub to take off? Take out the DRM. Offer books for free. Make it easy for users to publish free (and non-free) ePub books. Make it more accessible on everything from desktops to portable devices: standard readers across platforms, F/OSS ePub software (readers, converters, writers, and RSS/RDF-to-ePub aggregators) that leads the way rather than just limping along, etc.
Yes, you will start by losing money, just like MP3 did. But in the end, there will be a better product that can be shared and loved by all. And there's still profit to be had, too.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.