Or perhaps you don't live anywhere near an Apple store -- you do realise that there are countries in the world with only one or two, or even none whatsoever? And that some of those are actually big Apple markets? Like Scandinavia where every monkey and his uncle has an iPhone but there are basically no Apple stores? And perhaps you have capped broadband, with a 4gig download taking a massive chunk out of the monthly limit? Perhaps you both live in a country without an Apple store *and* have capped broadband or, horror of horrors, dialup internet?
It wouldn't take much for Apple to have just released this the normal way in addition to the Mac App Store. But no, they went about it this way, intentionally alienating a section of their market. Not a very large or profitable section, mind, which is why they don't give a shit. Likewise with ditching Rosetta.
1: Go to Apple store. 2: Use one of their computers to download the Lion update. 3: Copy onto a flash drive. 4: Go home. 5: Update computer.
Of course, this is no help if, like the guy commenting above, your nearest Apple store is 1,500km away. There *aren't* even any Apple stores in my country. But Lion is beginning to make me think that when Snow Leopard gets too old and tired to continue I'll be swapping back to Arch, so that's no trouble for me anyway.
You may be. I'm not actually convinced that I am (I live in Europe and we've got slightly different laws. I'm not even sure that we're legally allowed to copy LPs to cassette yet though the record companies stated long ago that they wouldn't prosecute anyone doing so, which was very generous of them.)
I've taken the view that a publisher will most likely take the view of a record company and not prosecute me for downloading an eBook I already bought in hard copy, but if that were tested in court I'm not at all confident that I'd win.
I skimmed it earlier but I don't know if you'll get a better answer from the paper -- they're cautious and they're presenting their results and suggesting a few models (and pointing out that it's strongly identified with the centre of the host galaxy and most likely a star falling into the central black hole) but they're not doing any firm models.
I believe (though it's not my field so I might be very out-dated; I learned about these at university and that was ten years back... and so it was a model at least fifteen years old) even gamma ray bursts are most likely along collimated beams. We just see so many of them because there's a *massive* number of them.
I'm sure the people spending years programming supercomputers to model supernovae will be fascinated to hear your ruminations. Not sure they'd agree with them, though...
Just a few thoughts in reply:
Not every star goes supernova. In fact, supernovae are really very rare. Most stars have a less violent end. Our own sun, for example, is never going to go supernova but is likely to become a planetary nebula and look quite beautiful to a civilisation a few tens of light years away.
Even if this star would be massive enough to go supernova, why would you assume that tidal stresses would cause a supernova? Or that you can trigger a supernova like that? Supernovae happen when the core of the star is basically made out of iron and it stops burning; the envelope then collapses under gravity and bounces, dramatically and catastrophically. A star that isn't at that stage isn't going to go supernova regardless of what stresses you put it through.
A supernova spits out a lot of gamma radiation, that's true. It also spits out a hell of a lot of other radiation -- and it's pretty characteristic, too. We know what the spectra of different types of supernovae look like and we know how the light-curves evolve over time. If this was a star going supernova we could tell, even if it were falling into a black hole at the same time.
And theoretically, it's possible for a star to become elongated and stretched. Consider a much less brutal example -- a red giant being orbited by a smaller orange star. There's something called a "Roche lobe" which is basically defines where the star's gravity dominates. That means that something within the Roche lobe of one star it's bound to that one, while if it's within the Roche lobe of the other it's bound to *that* one. But if the stars get close enough, there's a point where the Roche lobes meet -- and the two lobes elongate to touch one-another. The giant can then expand, as giants are wont to, and fill its Roche lobe. It takes on an elongated form (and a small stream of matter spirals into the other star). A slightly more dramatic version of this is when a star is orbiting a neutron star; given enough material flowing from the elongated companion onto the neutron star and you *do* trigger a supernova... but it's of the neutron star and not the companion.
i interpreted him as meaning that i can swap to any coordinate system i like with any time coordinate i choose. of course, we're still connected to it on a null geodesic and can define meaningful measures of distance and time
generally black holes eject along beams from their poles. if one of those beams is pointing towards earth we get a big flash; if it's not we don't see as much.
it's much the same with pulsars. the standard model is that they're neutron stars emitting extremely focused radiation from their poles.
well, true, but i can certainly establish a meaningful measure. that thing's in our past light-cone, so it's not like it's separated by spacelike geodesics or anything. what they did in the article itself was to use the luminosity distance to say how far away it is. it's not a big jump from there to a time.
it's the same as saying the universe is 13.7 billion years old. it is, if you choose the right coordinate system and are careful enough about how you define it.
Redshift of 0.3 or so. Corresponds to a luminosity distance of almost 2 gigaparsecs. That's pretty far away.
Also, those gamma rays are all observed above the atmosphere. Interesting and totally off-topic aside, gamma ray bursters were only observed when we started putting military satellites in orbit to check on nuclear development. There were all these high-intensity sources around, leading to an investigation as to whether the Soviets had any new technology. Eventually it was determined that, no, they didn't and that these sources were extremely far away.
Neither. It's a relative term -- the black hole in question is the black hole at the centre of a galaxy. I've not read the Science article (I've only read the abstract) so they've not put numbers on it, but it'll be thousands and thousands times the mass of the Sun. A black hole which isn't massive would be up to maybe ten times the mass of the Sun.
"Another option is to require ISBNs for ebooks, which would dramatically increase the cost of submitting twenty books a day. Though they'd need some method of verifying that the ISBN is real."
Verifying it's real would probably be the easier part to set up -- but this wouldn't work. It costs me nothing (in Norway) to register an ISBN. I *think* it's free in Britain as well though I'm not entirely sure about that since I only started self-publishing after I left. It would certainly take a bit more time for a spammer, but not that much more time. They could block-book ISBN numbers once a week and just churn through them. Having gone through the system, it would be pretty easy even for me to automate, and I'm rubbish at scripting.
I'd be all for that. As you say, it doesn't have to be a fee, just a deposit. It would kill off at least a lot of the spam and it wouldn't cost me anything as an author selling a few stories on Amazon while at the same time thinning out the dreck that currently clogs up the results and hides my listings...
check under "files kindle recognises": "Kindle (.AZW,.AZW1). Text (.TXT), Unprotected Mobipocket (.MOBI,.PRC)"
then check under the files you can email amazon to have converted: "Microsoft Word (.DOC) Structured HTML (.HTML,.HTM) RTF (.RTF) JPEG (.JPEG,.JPG) GIF (.GIF) PNG (.PNG) BMP (.BMP) PDF (.PDF): Look below for details. Microsoft Word (.DOCX) is supported in our experimental category."
i don't know what this guy's been doing (other than trolling), but i'd suspect he's been converting his epub into a mobipocket himself (using one or other of the many tools around that will do that) and then loading it onto his kindle. fair enough, but that's very different from "My kindle from four years ago, which has never been updated, eats ePub just fine. So does my DX." which apparently isn't true.
There may be three, by the way. Apple were at least threatening to use their own DRM on ePubs bought through the iBookstore. I've not bought anything from it so I don't know if they followed through on that but it wouldn't at all surprise me.
Also, an honest question -- are you sure your Kindle reads ePubs? Just ePubs that you copy straight onto it? Because so far as I was aware, the Kindle never has supported ePub and still doesn't. I realise Wikipedia is hardly a good source, but their section on the Kindle lists the formats supported and explicitly says that the Kindle does not support ePub -- not now, let alone "four years ago". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindle#File_formats
Woh, are you feeling OK? I'm not sure why you're sounding quite so aggressive about all this, or where you get the idea that I'm bashing Amazon -- or even the Kindle. Or why you're suggesting I'm saying we should do business with Random House, given that one of the things i said I wanted changed was shoddy editing, like Random House's. If you want my suggestion of a publisher that does do eBooks well then it would be Baen, who tend to actually proof-read their stuff and issue it without DRM.
To make it clear: I'm not attacking Amazon themselves. Why would I when I'm also selling through Amazon? I'm not attacking the Kindle itself; why would I when I've barely even touched one? The ones I've used are nice machines.
Amazon use DRM. That's undeniable and if you're trying to claim Amazon have never used DRM you're deluded. Do I care? No. I actually don't have a big issue with DRM; if I don't want to buy something with DRM, I don't. If I'm happy to, I will. (And since I don't use a Kindle, the DRM I'll get is Adobe ADEPT, which is easily broken should I ever feel the urge to -- if finally there's no way of accessing the book I've purchased, for example.) Am I saying everything on Amazon is protected by DRM? No, I'm not, because I've no idea.
About ePub/PDF/Mobipocket etc. Horses for courses. If you've got a hard-on for PDF or for straight HTML that's great, run with it. Likewise if you're in love with Mobipocket. I quite like ePub. Yes it could be issued as straight HTML, but then it would still need the supporting files -- images, if nothing else -- and for convenience you'd want it packaged in a single file by, oh, compiling it (like Mobipocket) or putting it into some kind of archive (like ePub). Since it's blank text going on, you're also saving hard drive space by archiving or compiling it. And PDF, I've got some PDFs on my eReader too. They don't reflow very well. Until recently PDF's *didn't* reflow well because it's totally against the original point of PDF. Now it's a bit easier. Use what you like, it's no skin off my nose. If you love PDF then convert everything into PDF and knock yourself out. Format wars are one of the most pointless things I can think of, beating even OS wars.
I also said "I do see the argument that the author, the editor, the type-setters and all the marketing and promotion cost money so it can't be given away *too* cheaply". Of course I do. A book that's being properly produced and marketed costs money to do all that. You can't go and sell a novel for peanuts and expect to recover your costs, much less make a profit. I'm not suggesting the things are given away free -- just that that marketing and promotion cost is the same as for a print book... except there's no printing cost, no shipping and distribution cost, no cost to have the ebook stored in a warehouse, just the cost to have it sitting on a hard drive somewhere. So the ebook should be cheaper than a paperback. And yet they're normally equivalent, and sometimes more expensive. That's stupid. Amazon are better at that than most. Since I don't have a Kindle, I don't buy my eBooks through Amazon, hence my gripe about prices. A gripe which, by the way, didn't mention Amazon once. I thought that the context made it clear that I was talking about eBooks in general. There's a bigger market than just Amazon although RMS doesn't appear entirely aware of this.
So let's see, anything else I missed out.
"ePub is zipped XHTML if you don't know anything about XHTML. It has a custom DTD and eliminates most useful tags; it requires a specific directory structure; it has content size limits; it requires a specific character encoding; et cetera."
Regardless, ePub is zipped XHTML. Of course I can't use the whole feature set -- I'm writing it for an e-ink screen, for Christ's sake. So obviously I'll be using a subset of XHTML. Then I put in a standard directory that an ebook reader expects to see, containing a single file that points the reader to a file manifest, zip the whole lot up, and we're good to go. I'm n
On my Sony Reader which has no wireless connectivity whatsoever and isn't managed using Sony (or Adobe) software since I can use it as an external hard-drive... no to all the questions unless you count credit card info as personal data in which case you're shit out of luck no matter what you buy unless you only use cash.
They're all roughly quoting that 8,500 or so, but you'll never get that properly. That's screen refreshes. I tend to turn my reader off -- and that takes one page turn to blank the screen, then another when I turn it on. On a Kindle it takes an extra two, to put their little screen-saver ad on there, and then to take it off. (I've no idea if you can stop it doing that; probably.) Then the pages are formatted much smaller than a paperback would be.
Still, my battery lasts for quite a while. Then again I'm not reading as much as I used to.
Oh I've no doubt the battery life will decay, but it won't be too rapid since it gets recharged so infrequently it doesn't go through cycles fast. But yes, it will drop. I expect my reader to have a useless battery in maybe three or four years -- maybe a bit less. At that point I'll be a bit more upset about it... (Also, that 8,500 pages is an advertising myth; it's 8,500 screen refreshes, which includes turning it on, turning it off, the Kindle's screen-saver adverts and so on. And the pages tend to be half the size of a normal book's page, so it's far less than it naively sounds -- unsurprisingly.)
The backlight is an issue but because I bought quite early I didn't get a built in light with mine -- so it's attached to the cover and just takes AAA cells. They last for ages giving good amounts of light, and it's no chore to carry a few triple As around.
For me for leisure reading my ereader makes sense, but then so do normal books. Depends what format I've got a book in, really, and what I'm doing. When I'm travelling I definitely just take the ereader. Though I gave up arguing with stewardesses on planes a long time ago. "You have to turn that off now, sir." "But it's just a screen hooked up to a flash drive. There's no phone signal and no wireless internet. This thing is as dangerous as the in-flight magazine." "You have to turn it *off*, sir."
Slashdot Mirror
Or perhaps you don't live anywhere near an Apple store -- you do realise that there are countries in the world with only one or two, or even none whatsoever? And that some of those are actually big Apple markets? Like Scandinavia where every monkey and his uncle has an iPhone but there are basically no Apple stores? And perhaps you have capped broadband, with a 4gig download taking a massive chunk out of the monthly limit? Perhaps you both live in a country without an Apple store *and* have capped broadband or, horror of horrors, dialup internet?
It wouldn't take much for Apple to have just released this the normal way in addition to the Mac App Store. But no, they went about it this way, intentionally alienating a section of their market. Not a very large or profitable section, mind, which is why they don't give a shit. Likewise with ditching Rosetta.
Or a flash drive.
1: Go to Apple store.
2: Use one of their computers to download the Lion update.
3: Copy onto a flash drive.
4: Go home.
5: Update computer.
Of course, this is no help if, like the guy commenting above, your nearest Apple store is 1,500km away. There *aren't* even any Apple stores in my country. But Lion is beginning to make me think that when Snow Leopard gets too old and tired to continue I'll be swapping back to Arch, so that's no trouble for me anyway.
You may be. I'm not actually convinced that I am (I live in Europe and we've got slightly different laws. I'm not even sure that we're legally allowed to copy LPs to cassette yet though the record companies stated long ago that they wouldn't prosecute anyone doing so, which was very generous of them.)
I've taken the view that a publisher will most likely take the view of a record company and not prosecute me for downloading an eBook I already bought in hard copy, but if that were tested in court I'm not at all confident that I'd win.
Yes, because THAT would make SO MUCH business SENSE.
That wasn't meant to be as arsey as it sounds, by the way.
The full paper's here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.3356
I skimmed it earlier but I don't know if you'll get a better answer from the paper -- they're cautious and they're presenting their results and suggesting a few models (and pointing out that it's strongly identified with the centre of the host galaxy and most likely a star falling into the central black hole) but they're not doing any firm models.
I believe (though it's not my field so I might be very out-dated; I learned about these at university and that was ten years back... and so it was a model at least fifteen years old) even gamma ray bursts are most likely along collimated beams. We just see so many of them because there's a *massive* number of them.
Hey, they could've done. A lot of things were hidden behind the Iron Curtain and were lost in the chaos of the 90s...
I'm sure the people spending years programming supercomputers to model supernovae will be fascinated to hear your ruminations. Not sure they'd agree with them, though...
Just a few thoughts in reply:
Not every star goes supernova. In fact, supernovae are really very rare. Most stars have a less violent end. Our own sun, for example, is never going to go supernova but is likely to become a planetary nebula and look quite beautiful to a civilisation a few tens of light years away.
Even if this star would be massive enough to go supernova, why would you assume that tidal stresses would cause a supernova? Or that you can trigger a supernova like that? Supernovae happen when the core of the star is basically made out of iron and it stops burning; the envelope then collapses under gravity and bounces, dramatically and catastrophically. A star that isn't at that stage isn't going to go supernova regardless of what stresses you put it through.
A supernova spits out a lot of gamma radiation, that's true. It also spits out a hell of a lot of other radiation -- and it's pretty characteristic, too. We know what the spectra of different types of supernovae look like and we know how the light-curves evolve over time. If this was a star going supernova we could tell, even if it were falling into a black hole at the same time.
And theoretically, it's possible for a star to become elongated and stretched. Consider a much less brutal example -- a red giant being orbited by a smaller orange star. There's something called a "Roche lobe" which is basically defines where the star's gravity dominates. That means that something within the Roche lobe of one star it's bound to that one, while if it's within the Roche lobe of the other it's bound to *that* one. But if the stars get close enough, there's a point where the Roche lobes meet -- and the two lobes elongate to touch one-another. The giant can then expand, as giants are wont to, and fill its Roche lobe. It takes on an elongated form (and a small stream of matter spirals into the other star). A slightly more dramatic version of this is when a star is orbiting a neutron star; given enough material flowing from the elongated companion onto the neutron star and you *do* trigger a supernova... but it's of the neutron star and not the companion.
i interpreted him as meaning that i can swap to any coordinate system i like with any time coordinate i choose. of course, we're still connected to it on a null geodesic and can define meaningful measures of distance and time
generally black holes eject along beams from their poles. if one of those beams is pointing towards earth we get a big flash; if it's not we don't see as much.
it's much the same with pulsars. the standard model is that they're neutron stars emitting extremely focused radiation from their poles.
well, true, but i can certainly establish a meaningful measure. that thing's in our past light-cone, so it's not like it's separated by spacelike geodesics or anything. what they did in the article itself was to use the luminosity distance to say how far away it is. it's not a big jump from there to a time.
it's the same as saying the universe is 13.7 billion years old. it is, if you choose the right coordinate system and are careful enough about how you define it.
Redshift of 0.3 or so. Corresponds to a luminosity distance of almost 2 gigaparsecs. That's pretty far away.
Also, those gamma rays are all observed above the atmosphere. Interesting and totally off-topic aside, gamma ray bursters were only observed when we started putting military satellites in orbit to check on nuclear development. There were all these high-intensity sources around, leading to an investigation as to whether the Soviets had any new technology. Eventually it was determined that, no, they didn't and that these sources were extremely far away.
Neither. It's a relative term -- the black hole in question is the black hole at the centre of a galaxy. I've not read the Science article (I've only read the abstract) so they've not put numbers on it, but it'll be thousands and thousands times the mass of the Sun. A black hole which isn't massive would be up to maybe ten times the mass of the Sun.
"Another option is to require ISBNs for ebooks, which would dramatically increase the cost of submitting twenty books a day. Though they'd need some method of verifying that the ISBN is real."
Verifying it's real would probably be the easier part to set up -- but this wouldn't work. It costs me nothing (in Norway) to register an ISBN. I *think* it's free in Britain as well though I'm not entirely sure about that since I only started self-publishing after I left. It would certainly take a bit more time for a spammer, but not that much more time. They could block-book ISBN numbers once a week and just churn through them. Having gone through the system, it would be pretty easy even for me to automate, and I'm rubbish at scripting.
I'd be all for that. As you say, it doesn't have to be a fee, just a deposit. It would kill off at least a lot of the spam and it wouldn't cost me anything as an author selling a few stories on Amazon while at the same time thinning out the dreck that currently clogs up the results and hides my listings...
Why's that?
Honest question, I've not heard the argument.
Yes but some people are too busy to read the summary! Have a heart.
actually according to amazon themselves it's bullshit
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200493090
check under "files kindle recognises": "Kindle (.AZW, .AZW1). Text (.TXT), Unprotected Mobipocket (.MOBI, .PRC)"
then check under the files you can email amazon to have converted: .HTM) .JPG)
"Microsoft Word (.DOC)
Structured HTML (.HTML,
RTF (.RTF)
JPEG (.JPEG,
GIF (.GIF)
PNG (.PNG)
BMP (.BMP)
PDF (.PDF): Look below for details.
Microsoft Word (.DOCX) is supported in our experimental category."
i don't know what this guy's been doing (other than trolling), but i'd suspect he's been converting his epub into a mobipocket himself (using one or other of the many tools around that will do that) and then loading it onto his kindle. fair enough, but that's very different from "My kindle from four years ago, which has never been updated, eats ePub just fine. So does my DX." which apparently isn't true.
There may be three, by the way. Apple were at least threatening to use their own DRM on ePubs bought through the iBookstore. I've not bought anything from it so I don't know if they followed through on that but it wouldn't at all surprise me.
Also, an honest question -- are you sure your Kindle reads ePubs? Just ePubs that you copy straight onto it? Because so far as I was aware, the Kindle never has supported ePub and still doesn't. I realise Wikipedia is hardly a good source, but their section on the Kindle lists the formats supported and explicitly says that the Kindle does not support ePub -- not now, let alone "four years ago". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindle#File_formats
Woh, are you feeling OK? I'm not sure why you're sounding quite so aggressive about all this, or where you get the idea that I'm bashing Amazon -- or even the Kindle. Or why you're suggesting I'm saying we should do business with Random House, given that one of the things i said I wanted changed was shoddy editing, like Random House's. If you want my suggestion of a publisher that does do eBooks well then it would be Baen, who tend to actually proof-read their stuff and issue it without DRM.
To make it clear: I'm not attacking Amazon themselves. Why would I when I'm also selling through Amazon? I'm not attacking the Kindle itself; why would I when I've barely even touched one? The ones I've used are nice machines.
Amazon use DRM. That's undeniable and if you're trying to claim Amazon have never used DRM you're deluded. Do I care? No. I actually don't have a big issue with DRM; if I don't want to buy something with DRM, I don't. If I'm happy to, I will. (And since I don't use a Kindle, the DRM I'll get is Adobe ADEPT, which is easily broken should I ever feel the urge to -- if finally there's no way of accessing the book I've purchased, for example.) Am I saying everything on Amazon is protected by DRM? No, I'm not, because I've no idea.
About ePub/PDF/Mobipocket etc. Horses for courses. If you've got a hard-on for PDF or for straight HTML that's great, run with it. Likewise if you're in love with Mobipocket. I quite like ePub. Yes it could be issued as straight HTML, but then it would still need the supporting files -- images, if nothing else -- and for convenience you'd want it packaged in a single file by, oh, compiling it (like Mobipocket) or putting it into some kind of archive (like ePub). Since it's blank text going on, you're also saving hard drive space by archiving or compiling it. And PDF, I've got some PDFs on my eReader too. They don't reflow very well. Until recently PDF's *didn't* reflow well because it's totally against the original point of PDF. Now it's a bit easier. Use what you like, it's no skin off my nose. If you love PDF then convert everything into PDF and knock yourself out. Format wars are one of the most pointless things I can think of, beating even OS wars.
I also said "I do see the argument that the author, the editor, the type-setters and all the marketing and promotion cost money so it can't be given away *too* cheaply". Of course I do. A book that's being properly produced and marketed costs money to do all that. You can't go and sell a novel for peanuts and expect to recover your costs, much less make a profit. I'm not suggesting the things are given away free -- just that that marketing and promotion cost is the same as for a print book... except there's no printing cost, no shipping and distribution cost, no cost to have the ebook stored in a warehouse, just the cost to have it sitting on a hard drive somewhere. So the ebook should be cheaper than a paperback. And yet they're normally equivalent, and sometimes more expensive. That's stupid. Amazon are better at that than most. Since I don't have a Kindle, I don't buy my eBooks through Amazon, hence my gripe about prices. A gripe which, by the way, didn't mention Amazon once. I thought that the context made it clear that I was talking about eBooks in general. There's a bigger market than just Amazon although RMS doesn't appear entirely aware of this.
So let's see, anything else I missed out.
"ePub is zipped XHTML if you don't know anything about XHTML. It has a custom DTD and eliminates most useful tags; it requires a specific directory structure; it has content size limits; it requires a specific character encoding; et cetera."
Regardless, ePub is zipped XHTML. Of course I can't use the whole feature set -- I'm writing it for an e-ink screen, for Christ's sake. So obviously I'll be using a subset of XHTML. Then I put in a standard directory that an ebook reader expects to see, containing a single file that points the reader to a file manifest, zip the whole lot up, and we're good to go. I'm n
So far as I'm aware:
On my Sony Reader which has no wireless connectivity whatsoever and isn't managed using Sony (or Adobe) software since I can use it as an external hard-drive... no to all the questions unless you count credit card info as personal data in which case you're shit out of luck no matter what you buy unless you only use cash.
They're all roughly quoting that 8,500 or so, but you'll never get that properly. That's screen refreshes. I tend to turn my reader off -- and that takes one page turn to blank the screen, then another when I turn it on. On a Kindle it takes an extra two, to put their little screen-saver ad on there, and then to take it off. (I've no idea if you can stop it doing that; probably.) Then the pages are formatted much smaller than a paperback would be.
Still, my battery lasts for quite a while. Then again I'm not reading as much as I used to.
Oh I've no doubt the battery life will decay, but it won't be too rapid since it gets recharged so infrequently it doesn't go through cycles fast. But yes, it will drop. I expect my reader to have a useless battery in maybe three or four years -- maybe a bit less. At that point I'll be a bit more upset about it... (Also, that 8,500 pages is an advertising myth; it's 8,500 screen refreshes, which includes turning it on, turning it off, the Kindle's screen-saver adverts and so on. And the pages tend to be half the size of a normal book's page, so it's far less than it naively sounds -- unsurprisingly.)
The backlight is an issue but because I bought quite early I didn't get a built in light with mine -- so it's attached to the cover and just takes AAA cells. They last for ages giving good amounts of light, and it's no chore to carry a few triple As around.
For me for leisure reading my ereader makes sense, but then so do normal books. Depends what format I've got a book in, really, and what I'm doing. When I'm travelling I definitely just take the ereader. Though I gave up arguing with stewardesses on planes a long time ago. "You have to turn that off now, sir." "But it's just a screen hooked up to a flash drive. There's no phone signal and no wireless internet. This thing is as dangerous as the in-flight magazine." "You have to turn it *off*, sir."
Exactly. It's really not that hard to pull out the original master, which will be in some typesetter's format or other -- or it shouldn't be.