Just make your next ebook reader a non-Amazon device and you'll be 3/4 there, missing only the DRM'd content already on your Kindle.
Chances are good that my next reader, on which I can buy nearly any digital book without DRM, will also be from Amazon. We'll see; if it's someone else, great. It depends on who does the next generation distribution model better. I'd even buy an is-late, if I can cover up the Apple logo in public.
And I'll take whatever books I want from my Kindle; removing DRM is trivial, even if Amazon doesn't remove it from what I've already purchased, which I believe will happen.
Thanks for the cutesy "fixing" what I wrote, but you're wrong; non-DRM books are coming, from Amazon, and fairly soon. I think chances are good that DRM will be removed from books I've already purchased, but I wouldn't bet my life on it, or much care if it didn't happen.
The current model for ebooks works well enough for me that I'm willing to use it, while I look for the next move toward a better model, and jump to it. If you want to stand on principle and not buy DRM'ed books, of course that's your right. I need jump through no flaming hoops to get enormous advantage over paper books.
One thing about non-DRM music, though - Apple made publishers drop DRM? You're kidding, right? Corporate-whore Apple? No. Apple would still happily sell DRM'ed music if the customers didn't demand otherwise. Remember, Apple's whole business model is based on locking people into proprietary hardware/software cycles.
And as far as I know, the iTunes store STILL only offers 256K-bit AAC format files, which is bullshit.
I buy my music DRM-free from Amazon, in 320 k-bit variable MP3 format, so I don't have to choose between being locked into Apple software, or doing my own conversion to some more open format (and damaging the quality in the process).
I think you're right. We need to work on preserving content better through changing standards for formats and media. And we'd better do it quickly, because digitization of content will only increase, because of the overwhelming advantages.
So which do you fall under? Your missing the third option that looks at the appropriateness of the development and considers *IF* it is good and should be used. I personally fall into that third category
I actually evaluate technology and use it as I find appropriate. I still buy some physical books (with illustrations, or on topics where it's better to flip back and forth, such as instructions, or as gifts for Kindlephobes). You seem to be more in the second class than the third.
The problems you cite for digital media are just different from those of physical books. That first printing copy of Dracula you read is one a a very tiny number of that run that still exists; most of those books are dust. Most people can read Dracula today because publishers still reprint it; if not for that, it would no longer be available to the overwhelming majority of the world. Many books no longer exist in any form; many more exist only in a small number of physical copies where you and I will never know they exist, much less have the chance to read them.
I have lots of files on various media now that were once on floppy. ASCII is a very durable format. The obvious response to preserving content is to transfer it to new media. It's happening now; you've probably done it. When I move on from my Kindle, I will take un-DRM'd copies of the books I want to keep, and transfer them to new media. (Locked safe? I can break into it if I need to.) Within a couple of years, Amazon will probably remove the DRM for me, so I won't have to break any laws. Just like music, books will be sold without DRM. How quickly that happens depends on people (like me) who buy digital media, and migrate to the distibution channels that move in that direction.
The thing I find odd is that some people (you seem to be one) are still saying "IF!" or "NO!" to digital books. We're well past that, and now we're working out the "How".
I'm sorry your school chose a bad implementation for digital textbooks. Maybe if you organize enough protest, they'll choose a better one.
Absolutely. The paper pulp, the glue, the leather, the string in the binding, that's just trash to me. It's the content that matters.
I think that people who fetishize physical books are expressing a reactionary fear of losing control, of losing something familiar to them that they regard as an eternal constant. The problem with that attitude is, physical books are just another form for holding content. Before books, it was the storyteller in the square, before them it was paintings on cave walls. I'm sure there were people who said, "I don't hold with these here books, they destroy the whole storytelling experience."
This reminds me of people who are aghast at the idea of removing "under god" from the pledge of allegiance, because they don't realize it was a recent update to the pledge, added in the 40's to remind those godless communist russkies that America had a potent ally.
But then, what do I know? I could be wrong.
"There are two kinds of fools. One kind says, 'This is new and therefore good.' The other kind says, 'This is old and therefore better.'"
Maybe my turn will come to be the reactionary, when dynamic content replaces static books, and it's beamed into our heads, customized for each person.
And yes, I consider having sex consenting to become pregnant. You know damn well it can happen, if it would be a problem, keep your damn legs shut.
And yes, I consider driving on the highway consenting to be maimed and crippled for life, or killed. You know damn well it can happen, if it would be a problem, keep your damn car off the highway.
Unit tests are worthless, given that they are done by developers.
I'll take unit tests as a show of interest by the developers that they did, kind of, sorta want to deliver a usable product. What I really want is the regression tests, certified by the fugly, old, chain-smoking harridan who runs QA and haunts the dreams of the developers.
The specs actually look pretty good, including expandable memory with cards, replaceable battery, wi-fi in addition to dedicated high speed wireless.
But that stupid screen design is a killer. I have the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX (disclaimer). The color display at the bottom of the Nook is cute and all, but I couldn't read with that distraction. I didn't see; can you turn it off? I'm pretty sure you can't expand the reading area to reuse that space, so at best it's a blank spot at the bottom of the screen, at worst, a fatal distraction.
Nice try, no cigar. I'm curious to see how Amazon counters this. No matter what, I LOVE this competition; within a few years I'll be using a much better reader than anything on the market now, reading DRM-free books. And no, I don't care if it's Amazon's or some other reader. Worst case, I'll crack the DRM of any books from Amazon and take them with me to the new reader.
Except that the principle under discussion is "plain sight". If your bank records are in the same drawer as mine, and they thumb through the contents to get to yours, and see mine and... hey! look at this!
That seems to fit "plain sight" to me. Again, the physical analogies just don't seem to make any sense. We need better laws.
Nope, "find keys to his mother's apartment" is a terrible analogy.
A slightly more realistic analogy would be that they had a warrant to search your apartment for drugs, they entered your mother's room in the same apartment (yeah, she lives with you), and found illegal weapons. Is the warrant valid grounds to charge you (or your mother) for the weapons? Maybe, I guess that would be a valid issue for the courts.
Yes, my view isn't popular, but if we're going to try to transfer rules for search warrants from the physical world to the digital world, those additional drug testing records certainly qualify as found "in plain sight". Unless you think cops walk around properties they're searching with a warrant with their hands over their eyes.
It's lazy, dangerous, and ineffective to force-fit physical world rules to other realms. We should insist that they throw away rules of physical evidence and create reasonable rules for digital evidence.
No. "Burger-boarding" would be strapping them upside down to boards and stuffing meat down their throats in quantity and frequency that they have a legitimate fear of being suffocated to death.
Since they hate meat, this would be the equivalent of what US forces have done to Muslim prisoners; urinate on a Koran or shoot it full of holes, smear fake menstrual blood on the prisoner, AND water-boarding them.
I watched a great documentary on Nova, "Judgment Day; Intelligent Design on Trial". When one of the researchers assisting with the trial described finding the manuscript with "cdesign proponentsists" I was really tickled. Not only did they prove that the group's creationist book evolved into an intelligent design book, they found the intermediate form!
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Just make your next ebook reader a non-Amazon device and you'll be 3/4 there, missing only the DRM'd content already on your Kindle.
Chances are good that my next reader, on which I can buy nearly any digital book without DRM, will also be from Amazon. We'll see; if it's someone else, great. It depends on who does the next generation distribution model better. I'd even buy an is-late, if I can cover up the Apple logo in public.
And I'll take whatever books I want from my Kindle; removing DRM is trivial, even if Amazon doesn't remove it from what I've already purchased, which I believe will happen.
Thanks for the cutesy "fixing" what I wrote, but you're wrong; non-DRM books are coming, from Amazon, and fairly soon. I think chances are good that DRM will be removed from books I've already purchased, but I wouldn't bet my life on it, or much care if it didn't happen.
The current model for ebooks works well enough for me that I'm willing to use it, while I look for the next move toward a better model, and jump to it. If you want to stand on principle and not buy DRM'ed books, of course that's your right. I need jump through no flaming hoops to get enormous advantage over paper books.
One thing about non-DRM music, though - Apple made publishers drop DRM? You're kidding, right? Corporate-whore Apple? No. Apple would still happily sell DRM'ed music if the customers didn't demand otherwise. Remember, Apple's whole business model is based on locking people into proprietary hardware/software cycles.
And as far as I know, the iTunes store STILL only offers 256K-bit AAC format files, which is bullshit.
I buy my music DRM-free from Amazon, in 320 k-bit variable MP3 format, so I don't have to choose between being locked into Apple software, or doing my own conversion to some more open format (and damaging the quality in the process).
I think you're right. We need to work on preserving content better through changing standards for formats and media. And we'd better do it quickly, because digitization of content will only increase, because of the overwhelming advantages.
So which do you fall under? Your missing the third option that looks at the appropriateness of the development and considers *IF* it is good and should be used. I personally fall into that third category
I actually evaluate technology and use it as I find appropriate. I still buy some physical books (with illustrations, or on topics where it's better to flip back and forth, such as instructions, or as gifts for Kindlephobes). You seem to be more in the second class than the third.
The problems you cite for digital media are just different from those of physical books. That first printing copy of Dracula you read is one a a very tiny number of that run that still exists; most of those books are dust. Most people can read Dracula today because publishers still reprint it; if not for that, it would no longer be available to the overwhelming majority of the world. Many books no longer exist in any form; many more exist only in a small number of physical copies where you and I will never know they exist, much less have the chance to read them.
I have lots of files on various media now that were once on floppy. ASCII is a very durable format. The obvious response to preserving content is to transfer it to new media. It's happening now; you've probably done it. When I move on from my Kindle, I will take un-DRM'd copies of the books I want to keep, and transfer them to new media. (Locked safe? I can break into it if I need to.) Within a couple of years, Amazon will probably remove the DRM for me, so I won't have to break any laws. Just like music, books will be sold without DRM. How quickly that happens depends on people (like me) who buy digital media, and migrate to the distibution channels that move in that direction.
The thing I find odd is that some people (you seem to be one) are still saying "IF!" or "NO!" to digital books. We're well past that, and now we're working out the "How".
I'm sorry your school chose a bad implementation for digital textbooks. Maybe if you organize enough protest, they'll choose a better one.
Absolutely. The paper pulp, the glue, the leather, the string in the binding, that's just trash to me. It's the content that matters.
I think that people who fetishize physical books are expressing a reactionary fear of losing control, of losing something familiar to them that they regard as an eternal constant. The problem with that attitude is, physical books are just another form for holding content. Before books, it was the storyteller in the square, before them it was paintings on cave walls. I'm sure there were people who said, "I don't hold with these here books, they destroy the whole storytelling experience."
This reminds me of people who are aghast at the idea of removing "under god" from the pledge of allegiance, because they don't realize it was a recent update to the pledge, added in the 40's to remind those godless communist russkies that America had a potent ally.
But then, what do I know? I could be wrong.
"There are two kinds of fools. One kind says, 'This is new and therefore good.' The other kind says, 'This is old and therefore better.'"
Maybe my turn will come to be the reactionary, when dynamic content replaces static books, and it's beamed into our heads, customized for each person.
And yes, I consider having sex consenting to become pregnant. You know damn well it can happen, if it would be a problem, keep your damn legs shut.
And yes, I consider driving on the highway consenting to be maimed and crippled for life, or killed. You know damn well it can happen, if it would be a problem, keep your damn car off the highway.
Too easy.
Unit tests are worthless, given that they are done by developers.
I'll take unit tests as a show of interest by the developers that they did, kind of, sorta want to deliver a usable product. What I really want is the regression tests, certified by the fugly, old, chain-smoking harridan who runs QA and haunts the dreams of the developers.
The specs actually look pretty good, including expandable memory with cards, replaceable battery, wi-fi in addition to dedicated high speed wireless.
But that stupid screen design is a killer. I have the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX (disclaimer). The color display at the bottom of the Nook is cute and all, but I couldn't read with that distraction. I didn't see; can you turn it off? I'm pretty sure you can't expand the reading area to reuse that space, so at best it's a blank spot at the bottom of the screen, at worst, a fatal distraction.
Nice try, no cigar. I'm curious to see how Amazon counters this. No matter what, I LOVE this competition; within a few years I'll be using a much better reader than anything on the market now, reading DRM-free books. And no, I don't care if it's Amazon's or some other reader. Worst case, I'll crack the DRM of any books from Amazon and take them with me to the new reader.
The cake is a lie! (I run about 1-2 years behind the times.)
Except that the principle under discussion is "plain sight". If your bank records are in the same drawer as mine, and they thumb through the contents to get to yours, and see mine and... hey! look at this!
That seems to fit "plain sight" to me. Again, the physical analogies just don't seem to make any sense. We need better laws.
Nope, "find keys to his mother's apartment" is a terrible analogy.
A slightly more realistic analogy would be that they had a warrant to search your apartment for drugs, they entered your mother's room in the same apartment (yeah, she lives with you), and found illegal weapons. Is the warrant valid grounds to charge you (or your mother) for the weapons? Maybe, I guess that would be a valid issue for the courts.
Yes, my view isn't popular, but if we're going to try to transfer rules for search warrants from the physical world to the digital world, those additional drug testing records certainly qualify as found "in plain sight". Unless you think cops walk around properties they're searching with a warrant with their hands over their eyes.
It's lazy, dangerous, and ineffective to force-fit physical world rules to other realms. We should insist that they throw away rules of physical evidence and create reasonable rules for digital evidence.
No. "Burger-boarding" would be strapping them upside down to boards and stuffing meat down their throats in quantity and frequency that they have a legitimate fear of being suffocated to death.
Since they hate meat, this would be the equivalent of what US forces have done to Muslim prisoners; urinate on a Koran or shoot it full of holes, smear fake menstrual blood on the prisoner, AND water-boarding them.
I watched a great documentary on Nova, "Judgment Day; Intelligent Design on Trial". When one of the researchers assisting with the trial described finding the manuscript with "cdesign proponentsists" I was really tickled. Not only did they prove that the group's creationist book evolved into an intelligent design book, they found the intermediate form!