The Kindle does have one disadvantage that is making me give the Nook a stronger look.
PDF's.
I buy a lot of Role Playing materials from Steve Jackson Games' "e23" site. They are in very high quality PDF documents and something that can display them without having to lug around a large, heavy, and massively power hungry laptop is a god send.
However, even though I legally own a copy of the PDF, Amazon refused to convert the PDF into a Kindle Ready file due to (as I was informed) copyright issues.
The Nook supports PDF out of the box and the internal file storage as well as the expansion slot gives me the room for all of the PDF's that I have.
So while it might not be a Kindle Killer, it has some features that put it close enough to the Kindle to make it a worthwhile contender.
I understand that the Kindle has recently added full support for PDFs... I'm not sure how this differs from the not-full support they had before... But your PDFs might work now. Maybe. Possibly.
But this is one of the main reasons I ordered a nook this season, instead of a Kindle. Full, native support for PDFs and an SD card slot mean that I can put pretty much anything on it that I want to. Even things that aren't already in a supported format can easily be converted to PDFs.
Wake me up when there's an ebook reader that works more like a real book.
It should have softish covers, and once you open it, there should be 2 screens inside (one for each page).
This way the screens would be protected all the time, and it would feel more natural as a reading tool
Having the screens protected all the time would be nice...
But I'd rather not have two soft covers to keep open all the time. One of the annoyances of reading a printed book is the tendency of those floppy covers to want to close. If you're doing something else with your hands, it can be a pain to prop the thing up/open. Especially with big, thick, 1,000+ page books...
The review mentions AT&T 3G, but I couldn't find any mention of whether a new AT&T contract is required to buy the device at the stated price. If it is, then fsck that. If it isn't, then 'meh'. Its still pretty expensive. Wait for v 2.0.
No new contract, no bills at all. The 3G is free, just like the Kindle's.
Also, if one plugs its USB in, does it appear as 'USB storage', that one can copy PDF's to and be able to read them? Or is one required to use its proprietary software on a proprietary platform to load only special files with DRM?
No idea how it works with USB as I don't have one yet, but it does read SD cards... So you could always just throw your files on an SD card to avoid whatever software they think you should be using.
It will read PDFs and EPUB documents - both of which are more open than what Barnes & Noble is using now. Barnes & Noble has indicated that they plan to move their entire ebook store over to EPUB eventually.
And how about on wifi? Can one use any sort of standard protocol (ssh, ftp, smb) to copy PDF's in (or out) and/or can it navigate to an arbitrary URL and download a PDF, or does it only support the device accessing company-specified websites to 'buy' books?
Again, I can't say because I don't have one yet... But it sounds like the WiFi is fairly limited at the moment. There is no web browser and I don't believe you can transfer anything wirelessly... Except for maybe accessing the B&N bookstore over WiFi.
Bottom line - Mandatory contract bad. Mandatory proprietary software bad.
The reason I chose a nook instead of a Kindle is the relative openness of the platform. With the SD cards and support for PDF and EPUB format, I figure I can use this thing with basically any content I want - even stuff Barnes & Noble doesn't sell or support. And with the Wi-Fi I can probably maintain my connectivity even if B&N kills the 3G for some reason. And the user-replaceable battery means I don't have to go to great lengths just because the battery is old and flaky - unlike the Kindle.
will this be available to rest of us mere mortals living outside the US (like Europe)?
i can get the kindle and the sony reader so would i have to wait forever for this?
At the moment, everyone is waiting forever. If you were to order one today you wouldn't see it until sometime in January.
At the moment, the nook is limited to US customers. I don't think its 3G will even roam outside the US. You could always use the Wi-Fi... But I'm not sure how well that would work.
Perhaps it is my slashdot bias, but the story about Kindles having books removed from readers' machines still strikes a sour chord with me. I recognize that most consumers don't know a thing about and many don't care. I don't see much difference between book burning and book deleting. To me the reasons, are irrelevant. Abuse will always emerge when opportunity is given.
One of the reasons I ordered a nook this season, as opposed to a Kindle, is that you don't really need to go through Barnes & Noble if you don't want to. The WiFi will let you connect wirelessly without their cell network... The SD cardslot will let you load up whatever you want... And the thing reads EPUB and PDF documents natively.
I have used OpenDNS. I agree it is faster and I prefer that to my local ISP's dns servers. But the NXDOMAIN thingy is not so easy for me to turn off since I have a dynamic ip. I started using 4.2.2.2 as primary because of that. Yesterday I changed to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Hopefully I don't have to change this for a long time now.
That is a problem.
They have a dynamic IP updater you can use... But it's kind of a pain just to keep from getting your NXDOMAIN responses redirected.
Which is why I'm thinking this Google DNS could be great. There's no mention of any kind of filtering or playing with NXDOMAIN... Just straight-up vanilla DNS. We could start rolling that our for some of our clients and not have to worry about their dynamic addresses.
...but even for a favorite-movie type, you spend some of your time finding new favorite movies, right? How much of the time do you watch a new film vs an old one? You can see there is definitely a place for (renting or streaming) and for owning here.
I never claimed there wasn't.
In fact, I specifically said that there are plenty of movies that are only good for one viewing.
The OP claimed that nobody ever watched a movie more than once. I made no such sweeping statements.
You've mis-read "unlimited". It couldn't ever have meant "unlimited" and you never thought that it did.
The wire running to your door is a limit -- it limits the bandwidth. You knew that.
You are limited by distance -- you can't use it from the sahara desert, nor from the moon. You knew that too.
They aren't changing you more as you use more. Your usage is unlimited by your payments. You knew that. That's what you were actually purchasing. And that's why you didn't choose a service that changes by the hour -- like old dial-up.
You aren't limited by the time of day, day or week, nor by what you are downloading.
You aren't being limited, you're being discarded. You can use as much as you'd like within the other limits. And they'll never drop you for using too much. They will, apparently, drop you for using more than others.
So if you'd get everyone else to use more, you wouldn't be dropped as the out-lier.
Incorrect.
I have personally purchased a 10 Mbps connection. I understand that there is network overhead, line noise, packet loss, whatever... But I have never, ever seen any more than 3 Mbps.
I am being limited by their oversold equipment. I am not being discarded. I am not an outlier. Their equipment simply is not able to deliver the level of service they sold me.
If I'm going to get in a car crash I'd rather have an airbag in my car
Except that wasn't a choice that you made. You didn't get to do a cost benefit analysis and conclude that you think airbags are worth the money.
Actually, it was.
I'm driving a used car. When I purchased it, they had the exact same model sans-airbags. It was a different color, and there might have been a few miles difference between the two of them... But what ultimately decided me was the presence of airbags.
That decision was made for you by your friendly government bureaucrats.
Those bureaucrats are, at least in theory, democratically elected.
Now, it is certainly true that the average citizen doesn't get involved much in politics... And those bureaucrats are generally only interested in their corporate backers... But that's the political system that we as a nation have built for ourselves.
Obviously it isn't bothering enough people badly enough for it to be changed.
The popularity of DVD rentals (Netflix, Blockbuster, mom and pop) is proof that most people want to see a wide selection of movies exactly once. You're pointing at outliers and calling it the norm.
DVD rentals have nothing to do with ultimate sales.
I have watched many movies on Netflix, decided they were good enough to own, and then purchased them. Before Netflix I did the same thing with the local rental store.
Next thing you'll tell me is that because lots of people see movies at the theater, nobody buys DVDs.
I have not run my own caching DNS server on my own home network.
We have plenty of customers that we support who are running their own DNS servers simply because they're using Active Directory. These days we'll typically use OpenDNS's servers just because it is one set of numbers that works regardless of who the ISP is... But I haven't really noticed much difference between using OpenDNS's servers over the local ISP's servers once you've got your own DNS in-house.
However... Given all the other issues I've had with my ISP at home... I'm just going to assume that they've got a crappy DNS server that can't handle the load.
I understand all that. And I don't have a problem with that.
The problem I have is with an ISP selling something called "unlimited" when they know perfectly well that they have neither the ability nor the intention of delivering anything vaguely resembling unlimited service.
And while I can assume that they don't actually mean unlimited literally, I don't generally have any way to know what they do mean by unlimited. Most of the times the limits or caps are not documented or are not predictably enforced or are not made available to customers.
I have absolutely no problem paying for the level of quality that I want.
I do have a problem paying for the level of quality that I want, and then finding out that the ISP has a different definition of "quality."
So what if it did? Would anyone really stop using cell phones? I suspect it's kind of like knowing that the odds are pretty good that sometime in your lifetime, you'll have an automobile accident. It might even be fatal. Are you going to stop driving?
Everything is a risk. It all comes down to judging how much of a risk something is versus what you gain from taking that risk. Even if using cell phones increases your risk of brain cancer, it must be by some amount that is so minuscule that it's practically non-existent, witnessed by the fact that 95% of our population isn't walking around with brain cancer.
I like those odds.
Good point.
Here in the US, at least, folks seem pretty risk-averse. There's always a push to make thing safer, eliminate danger, etc. That's not necessarily a bad thing... If I'm going to get in a car crash I'd rather have an airbag in my car... But it isn't necessarily a good thing either, as fewer people actually get out and experience the world around them.
There is such a thing as an acceptable risk. As you said, it's fairly certain that you'll eventually get in a car accident and maybe even die from it... But, for most people, that's an acceptable risk.
And I think most folks, even if they knew there was an increased risk of cancer, would keep using their cell phones.
your local DNS server hierarchy is going to be far more responsive, even if it does have a higher miss rate.
I switched to OpenDNS a while back because we were having so many problems with our local ISP's DNS.
The issue, at the time, was straight-up DNS failures. I don't know if they were making changes or if someone tripped over a power cord... But we weren't able to resolve anything - even though I could ping by IP address. So I plugged in the OpenDNS servers and everything started working again.
Since that time I've done some un-scientific testing and found that OpenDNS's servers are consistently faster than my local ISP's. It'll take several moments to even look up a name with my local IPS's DNS. OpenDNS can find the server almost instantly.
Then there's the fun stuff with ISPs playing with your NXDOMAIN results... There was a lot of talk for a while about redirecting folks to search pages to generate advertising. OpenDNS does this by default, but it is very easy to opt-out. And it is done on their end of things, so I don't have to remember to set a cookie or anything like that. You just tell them no NXDOMAIN weirdness from my address, and it is done.
So... I could easily see switching to Google's DNS if you've got slow servers at your local ISP, or if your ISP is redirecting your NXDOMAIN results.
My real concern with Google DNS is privacy. Your DNS records are extremely valuable to google, so I sincerely doubt google is not going to record them.
I'm not sure I really care...
I mean, There's probably some kind of record or cache being generated even without Google's DNS being involved. I know we do some logging at pretty much every business we support, and our own internal network is doing some monitoring as well. I just kind of assume that various ISPs along the way are doing similar things.
Further, pretty much every website you visit is going to log you and drop a cookie on your machine.
I mean, I'm sure Google will try to use this information to improve their advertising revenues... They'd be silly not to... But I'm just having a hard time getting worried about it.
Burger King's burger sold me is nothing like the one on the TV screen. At all. Yet I don't feel justified in collecting the meager burgers served to the other customers and piling them up until it makes me happy. Mostly because I knew damn good and well that there would be a gap, and I was never at any point deceived.
This is a bad analogy, to say the very least.
You and another guy show up at Burger King at the same time. You both order two burgers.
Burger King only actually has the fixings for two burgers, but they still sell you both two burgers.
The order comes up, they hand you your bag, you open it - just one burger.
You complain and they indicate that the other burger is going to the other customer. You demand your two burgers. The guy behind the counter calls you a "burger hog" because you want to deprive their other paying customers of the burgers they ordered. He takes away your burger and kicks you out of the store. Then he gives your burger to the other customer - so that he actually gets the two burgers he ordered and doesn't cause another scene.
The difference is the relative proportion of movies that you’ll re-watch vs. the proportion of songs that you’ll listen to again.
The other difference is that most people listen to music virtually all the time, while doing other things that basically take all their attention. People don’t do that with movies. TV perhaps, but not typically with movies.
That's true...
But, at least in my case, it isn't music that I've paid for. I've normally got the radio on, or my TV tuned to a music station, or something like that.
I honestly don't remember the last time I purchased music. Which is not to say that I pirate everything... I don't remember the last time I queued up a playlist or went looking for a specific song either.
I used to agree with you, but as general movie quality has slipped, so has my opinion...
Childhood infatuations aside (which I don't think are healthy anyway and are a direct result of advertising and peer pressure, IMO), there are a very low percentage of movies that I would prefer to watch more than once. Maybe 1 movie every two years. The rest of what comes out is complete crap that can be completely understood and remembered after one (sober) viewing.
The three favorite movies you just listed were from 1979, 1987, and 1998, so I gather you agree with me to some extent.
I don't think it is fair to compare movies to books either due to the fact that books are able to offer so much more nuance and storyline complexity.
I agree with you on just about every point...
Movie quality has certainly gone down. I'm not sure I could name anything in the last several years that I really feel the need to own on DVD. There just hasn't been anything that good.
And childhood infatuations are probably not the most healthy thing... But if it wasn't a movie it'd be a book they made you read every night, or a blanket they dragged around everywhere, or a favorite toy... Childhood infatuations have been around longer than movies have.
However, you can have an incredible amount of depth, nuance, and complexity in a movie. Just as you can have completely flat and uninteresting books. That isn't a function of the medium, but rather the artist.
So... Yes, it is possible to hog the bandwidth. But only if the ISP oversells their bandwidth. Which means that if the ISP is being honest in its marketing and sales material, it should be impossible to hog the bandwidth.
And it has been generally accepted that the network is oversold by design and that using it in a manner that pretends that it was not oversold is hogging it.
Yes, overselling wrong.
Pretending that it was not oversold is also wrong.
And to go one further, pretending that your price for a non-oversold network would be the same is also wrong.
It is also not only wrong, but straight-up illegal here in the US to advertise a product deceptively.
It may be a safe assumption that my ISP is overselling things, but that isn't really my problem. It may seem that $20/month is awfully cheap for "unlimited" bandwidth, but that isn't my problem.
If my ISP sells me "unlimited" bandwidth, I should be able to assume that I'm going to have unlimited bandwidth. If there is, in fact, a limit on my bandwidth - then it isn't unlimited. They are being deceitful in their advertising.
If that is allowed, why bother stopping there? They can sell me 5 Mbps with a 10 GB/month cap... And then only deliver 2 Mbps with a 1 GB/month cap. Or maybe they'll bill me every month and just not provide any bandwidth at all.
I also go through my client list and drop those that consume more of my time and resources in favour of the easier clients who ultimately improve my business at a lesser cost. What's wrong with that? My company, my rules. "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" -- it's in every restaurant. Why would you expect a business to serve you? Why would you consider it a right?
Let's say you sell widgets.
You have 5 people come to you, each one wants to buy 1 widget. And another guy shows up and wants to buy 5 widgets.
You only have 5 widgets in stock, you need 10, but you really want their money. So you sell each of those people a coupon for their widgets, and tell them to pick it up at your warehouse. You figure they won't all run over there right now, and you'll probably have time to get a couple more widgets in stock before anybody notices.
Of course you don't tell your customers this. You don't tell them "I only have 5 right now, you'll have to wait 'til the next shipment" You just take their money and leave them with the impression that the widget is there, waiting for them, available for pickup whenever they want.
So all of them show up at the warehouse about 5 minutes later. All of them want their widgets now. But you don't have enough widgets to go around. So you call the guy who bought 5 widgets a "widget hog", cancel his order, and throw up a hastily-made sign that says "limit 1 per customer."
Legal? Yeah, I guess... Assuming you refund his money.
Right? Not so much. You should have clearly explained that you only have 5 widgets in stock, or that the coupon couldn't be redeemed for a week, or that there was a limit of 1 per customer, or something. You mis-represented what you were selling to your customers.
Likely to leave a good impression on your customers? Nope.
If that's not hogging bandwidth, I'm not too sure what is.
Yes. Your brother's room-mate was hogging the available bandwidth in their apartment.
If this doesn't scale, logically, up to the network at a whole, I'm not sure why.
It will only scale up to the network as a whole if you're overselling your bandwidth.
Now, to be completely clear - I feel overselling bandwidth is wrong.
Err... Well, if it's wrong to oversell bandwidth... Then it is wrong to create a situation where it is possible to hog bandwidth...
If I buy a 5 Mbps connection from a small ISP here in town, I expect to be able to get roughly 5 Mbps. And unless they make it very clear to me ahead of time, I'm going to expect that "unlimited" really means unlimited.
Say they've got another 9 users out there who bought the 5 Mbps connection as well. So that's 10 of us. The network hardware should cap each of us individually at 5 Mbps because that's all we're paying for. So the most the 10 of us could pull down is roughly 50 Mbps.
If the ISP actually provisions enough equipment and buys enough bandwidth to handle 50 Mbps, then it is impossible for any user to "hog" the bandwidth. There is enough for each individual user to get their full 5 Mbps connection. Even if I completely saturate my connection, there's still enough hardware and bandwidth out there to handle another 45 Mbps.
The problem is that ISPs don't do this. They assume that a given user will only use a very tiny portion of their bandwidth at any point in time. They assume you might download some email, watch a YouTube video, or something like that... Maybe have some bursts of traffic that hit that 5 Mbps mark... But, in general, you'll barely be touching it.
So the ISP only provisions enough hardware and buys enough bandwidth for 25 Mbps... Or maybe even less.
So if I'm using my full 5 Mbps, there's only enough left over for another 20 Mbps - that's only 4 users worth, and there's actually 9 users out there.
Where it gets really bad is at the neighborhood level... Everyone in the neighborhood shares a trunk line of some sort back to the ISP. And that trunk line is going to be oversold just like everything else. Maybe that trunk line can only handle 5 Mbps total. Even though two of my neighbors bought the 5 Mbps package, the trunk line just can't handle more than 5 Mbps at a time. So if all three of us are trying to make full use of our connection we're going to be saturating that trunk line. We'll each see about 1.5 Mbps - nothing more. Even though we're paying for 5 Mbps.
So... Yes, it is possible to hog the bandwidth. But only if the ISP oversells their bandwidth. Which means that if the ISP is being honest in its marketing and sales material, it should be impossible to hog the bandwidth.
It seems to me that this plan would be reliant on people actually wanting to watch the new releases after having seen the previous ones. You seem to assume that after watching the low-quality VCD, folks would want to watch the DVD... And after watching the DVD, they'd want to see the theatrical release and buy the boxed set.
The problem with this, of course, is that a lot of movies just aren't that good.
But I'm not certain that it would work for the majority of movies out there. I mean, I enjoyed The Hangover... But, having watched it on VCD or DVD, I really don't think I'd feel the need to see it in the theater. And I certainly wouldn't buy the boxed set. And that was a pretty fun movie.
Sure, if the popularity for the VCD is low you don't have to make a crapton of DVDs... And if the DVDs don't move you can just skip the theatrical release... But it seems to me that most of the money goes into producing the film itself - not duplicating it in various mediums. The money goes to paying actors, and lighting guys, and directors, and writers, and whoever else... Not to buying blank discs and celluloid.
So I'm really not certain you'd wind up making enough money to break even. I really think that with most of the crap coming out of Hollywood these days, most people would be content with a VCD or DVD. I don't think you'd really see all that many people showing up in the theater or buying the boxed set.
And let's not forget the instant gratification demanded by many consumers. On typical broadband, a song downloads in less than a minute. The significantly longer time required to download a movie (if purchased and stored in Blue Ray quality) is longer than the time required to drive to Blockbuster or Walmart to buy the physical copy of the same movie.
For instance, a few months ago, I ordered PPV Gran Torino in 1080p for my wife and I to view one evening. Six hours later it was ready to view, but she was already in bed.
We've got something called "on demand" on our cable box. It uses our broadband connection to download and play a movie pretty much whenever we want. I don't have an HD TV... So it isn't 1080p... But I can start watching that movie long before it finishes downloading. Give it about 15 minutes or so, and it's ready to play.
Let's work something out: a $60 game will get you what, hopefully 10+ hours of playtime? (Sidenote: oh how I long for days gone by when that would've been considered short...) That's less than $6/hour. Blu-ray discs are about $20; given a movie length of about 2 hours, that's around $10/hour - almost twice as expensive.
Exactly.
It is really hard to justify going to the movies these days. Our local theater charges roughly $12/ticket... So that's $24 for the wife and I. For roughly two hours of entertainment. And more often than not it really doesn't feel like we're getting our money's worth... Either the movie will be mediocre (if not completely disappointing) or the other patrons will be distracting or whatever.
Instead, we can wait a few months until it comes out on DVD and pick it up at Blockbuster for $5 or so... Or at a Redbox machine for $1... Or grab it on Pay-Per-View for $7... Or wait for Netflix to send it out... All of which dramatically lower the price and dramatically increase the chances of us enjoying ourselves (no annoying folks in the theater, etc.)
Or I can spend my money on a game instead... We used to have a couple WoW accounts going. $30 a month, for the two of us, for basically unlimited entertainment. Much cheaper than going to the movies or renting or anything else.
Apples and oranges. You might as well say that ice cream sales are faltering because more people are buying burgers. A $10 bargain bin or budget game might give me 30 hours of entertainment, while a $10 movie might give me 2 hours, but its different type of entertainment so I'm not going to be choosing between them. So I'd end up watching 1 move and buying 1 game, instead of buying 2 games or watching 2 movies.
Actually, I think it is a fair comparison...
At the end of the day/week, when everything is done, I've got some disposable income and some leisure time - both of which are fixed.
I can choose to spend $20+ to go to the movies with my wife, which will keep us entertained for roughly two hours... Or I can spend $5 to rent a movie and be entertained for roughly the same amount of time... Or I can spend $50 on some game and be entertained for 20 hours or so.
Sure, occasionally there's a movie that looks especially interesting. Something that you want to see for itself, not just as a diversion.
But, more often than not, it's a matter of simply being entertained for a period of time.
And a movie, or television, or going out on a date, or a game, or whatever can all accomplish that just fine.
So if I've got exactly $50 to spend on entertainment this week - I want to make sure I get as much entertainment out of that money as I can.
An obvious difference is that people are interested in seeing a movie exactly once, and as soon as possible.
Music relies on people wanting to hear it multiple times and they are probably more interested in the music well after it exists. And complete knowledge of the contents of the music increases, rather than decreases, their desire to hear it.
Incorrect.
Completely wrong.
So wrong it makes me wonder where on Earth you came up with this idea.
In a lot of ways, a movie is like a novel. There are some you read through once, and then get rid of because they just aren't that amazing. There are some you have to re-read several times simply to understand them. And then there are the favorites that you keep coming back to year after year.
To claim that everyone is only interested in seeing a movie once, and that they're all basically disposable, is simply ignorant.
Sure, if you're talking about some generic action/horror movie aimed at teenfolk that's probably accurate. They're just looking for something to serve as background noise while they hang out with their friends. They'll go see it within days of the opening, they'll see it once, and they won't even pay much attention to it.
But then you've got the G/PG stuff aimed at little kids. You've obviously never witnessed a small child and their favorite movie. They'll drag you to the theater a dozen times while it is showing... They'll make you buy every single solitary piece of merchandise tied into the film... They'll need the DVD the day it becomes available... And they'll watch it over and over again, until the disc literally wears out.
Then you've got movies with some real substance to them. Things like Pulp Fiction. Movies where you literally notice something new each time you watch it. Movies that take multiple viewings to actually understand what is going on.
Then there are the quality movies that just don't get old. This will, of course, vary quite a bit depending on your personal preferences... But I don't know how many times I've watched Alien or Evil Dead II or Cannibal: The Musical.
Slashdot Mirror
The Kindle does have one disadvantage that is making me give the Nook a stronger look.
PDF's.
I buy a lot of Role Playing materials from Steve Jackson Games' "e23" site. They are in very high quality PDF documents and something that can display them without having to lug around a large, heavy, and massively power hungry laptop is a god send.
However, even though I legally own a copy of the PDF, Amazon refused to convert the PDF into a Kindle Ready file due to (as I was informed) copyright issues.
The Nook supports PDF out of the box and the internal file storage as well as the expansion slot gives me the room for all of the PDF's that I have.
So while it might not be a Kindle Killer, it has some features that put it close enough to the Kindle to make it a worthwhile contender.
I understand that the Kindle has recently added full support for PDFs... I'm not sure how this differs from the not-full support they had before... But your PDFs might work now. Maybe. Possibly.
But this is one of the main reasons I ordered a nook this season, instead of a Kindle. Full, native support for PDFs and an SD card slot mean that I can put pretty much anything on it that I want to. Even things that aren't already in a supported format can easily be converted to PDFs.
Wake me up when there's an ebook reader that works more like a real book.
It should have softish covers, and once you open it, there should be 2 screens inside (one for each page).
This way the screens would be protected all the time, and it would feel more natural as a reading tool
Having the screens protected all the time would be nice...
But I'd rather not have two soft covers to keep open all the time. One of the annoyances of reading a printed book is the tendency of those floppy covers to want to close. If you're doing something else with your hands, it can be a pain to prop the thing up/open. Especially with big, thick, 1,000+ page books...
The review mentions AT&T 3G, but I couldn't find any mention of whether a new AT&T contract is required to buy the device at the stated price. If it is, then fsck that. If it isn't, then 'meh'. Its still pretty expensive. Wait for v 2.0.
No new contract, no bills at all. The 3G is free, just like the Kindle's.
Also, if one plugs its USB in, does it appear as 'USB storage', that one can copy PDF's to and be able to read them? Or is one required to use its proprietary software on a proprietary platform to load only special files with DRM?
No idea how it works with USB as I don't have one yet, but it does read SD cards... So you could always just throw your files on an SD card to avoid whatever software they think you should be using.
It will read PDFs and EPUB documents - both of which are more open than what Barnes & Noble is using now. Barnes & Noble has indicated that they plan to move their entire ebook store over to EPUB eventually.
And how about on wifi? Can one use any sort of standard protocol (ssh, ftp, smb) to copy PDF's in (or out) and/or can it navigate to an arbitrary URL and download a PDF, or does it only support the device accessing company-specified websites to 'buy' books?
Again, I can't say because I don't have one yet... But it sounds like the WiFi is fairly limited at the moment. There is no web browser and I don't believe you can transfer anything wirelessly... Except for maybe accessing the B&N bookstore over WiFi.
Bottom line - Mandatory contract bad. Mandatory proprietary software bad.
The reason I chose a nook instead of a Kindle is the relative openness of the platform. With the SD cards and support for PDF and EPUB format, I figure I can use this thing with basically any content I want - even stuff Barnes & Noble doesn't sell or support. And with the Wi-Fi I can probably maintain my connectivity even if B&N kills the 3G for some reason. And the user-replaceable battery means I don't have to go to great lengths just because the battery is old and flaky - unlike the Kindle.
will this be available to rest of us mere mortals living outside the US (like Europe)?
i can get the kindle and the sony reader so would i have to wait forever for this?
At the moment, everyone is waiting forever. If you were to order one today you wouldn't see it until sometime in January.
At the moment, the nook is limited to US customers. I don't think its 3G will even roam outside the US. You could always use the Wi-Fi... But I'm not sure how well that would work.
Perhaps it is my slashdot bias, but the story about Kindles having books removed from readers' machines still strikes a sour chord with me. I recognize that most consumers don't know a thing about and many don't care. I don't see much difference between book burning and book deleting. To me the reasons, are irrelevant. Abuse will always emerge when opportunity is given.
One of the reasons I ordered a nook this season, as opposed to a Kindle, is that you don't really need to go through Barnes & Noble if you don't want to. The WiFi will let you connect wirelessly without their cell network... The SD cardslot will let you load up whatever you want... And the thing reads EPUB and PDF documents natively.
I have used OpenDNS. I agree it is faster and I prefer that to my local ISP's dns servers. But the NXDOMAIN thingy is not so easy for me to turn off since I have a dynamic ip. I started using 4.2.2.2 as primary because of that. Yesterday I changed to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Hopefully I don't have to change this for a long time now.
That is a problem.
They have a dynamic IP updater you can use... But it's kind of a pain just to keep from getting your NXDOMAIN responses redirected.
Which is why I'm thinking this Google DNS could be great. There's no mention of any kind of filtering or playing with NXDOMAIN... Just straight-up vanilla DNS. We could start rolling that our for some of our clients and not have to worry about their dynamic addresses.
...but even for a favorite-movie type, you spend some of your time finding new favorite movies, right? How much of the time do you watch a new film vs an old one? You can see there is definitely a place for (renting or streaming) and for owning here.
I never claimed there wasn't.
In fact, I specifically said that there are plenty of movies that are only good for one viewing.
The OP claimed that nobody ever watched a movie more than once. I made no such sweeping statements.
You've mis-read "unlimited". It couldn't ever have meant "unlimited" and you never thought that it did.
The wire running to your door is a limit -- it limits the bandwidth. You knew that.
You are limited by distance -- you can't use it from the sahara desert, nor from the moon. You knew that too.
They aren't changing you more as you use more. Your usage is unlimited by your payments. You knew that. That's what you were actually purchasing. And that's why you didn't choose a service that changes by the hour -- like old dial-up.
You aren't limited by the time of day, day or week, nor by what you are downloading.
You aren't being limited, you're being discarded. You can use as much as you'd like within the other limits. And they'll never drop you for using too much. They will, apparently, drop you for using more than others.
So if you'd get everyone else to use more, you wouldn't be dropped as the out-lier.
Incorrect.
I have personally purchased a 10 Mbps connection. I understand that there is network overhead, line noise, packet loss, whatever... But I have never, ever seen any more than 3 Mbps.
I am being limited by their oversold equipment. I am not being discarded. I am not an outlier. Their equipment simply is not able to deliver the level of service they sold me.
If I'm going to get in a car crash I'd rather have an airbag in my car
Except that wasn't a choice that you made. You didn't get to do a cost benefit analysis and conclude that you think airbags are worth the money.
Actually, it was.
I'm driving a used car. When I purchased it, they had the exact same model sans-airbags. It was a different color, and there might have been a few miles difference between the two of them... But what ultimately decided me was the presence of airbags.
That decision was made for you by your friendly government bureaucrats.
Those bureaucrats are, at least in theory, democratically elected.
Now, it is certainly true that the average citizen doesn't get involved much in politics... And those bureaucrats are generally only interested in their corporate backers... But that's the political system that we as a nation have built for ourselves.
Obviously it isn't bothering enough people badly enough for it to be changed.
Incorrect? Completely wrong?
The popularity of DVD rentals (Netflix, Blockbuster, mom and pop) is proof that most people want to see a wide selection of movies exactly once. You're pointing at outliers and calling it the norm.
DVD rentals have nothing to do with ultimate sales.
I have watched many movies on Netflix, decided they were good enough to own, and then purchased them. Before Netflix I did the same thing with the local rental store.
Next thing you'll tell me is that because lots of people see movies at the theater, nobody buys DVDs.
I have not run my own caching DNS server on my own home network.
We have plenty of customers that we support who are running their own DNS servers simply because they're using Active Directory. These days we'll typically use OpenDNS's servers just because it is one set of numbers that works regardless of who the ISP is... But I haven't really noticed much difference between using OpenDNS's servers over the local ISP's servers once you've got your own DNS in-house.
However... Given all the other issues I've had with my ISP at home... I'm just going to assume that they've got a crappy DNS server that can't handle the load.
I understand all that. And I don't have a problem with that.
The problem I have is with an ISP selling something called "unlimited" when they know perfectly well that they have neither the ability nor the intention of delivering anything vaguely resembling unlimited service.
And while I can assume that they don't actually mean unlimited literally, I don't generally have any way to know what they do mean by unlimited. Most of the times the limits or caps are not documented or are not predictably enforced or are not made available to customers.
I have absolutely no problem paying for the level of quality that I want.
I do have a problem paying for the level of quality that I want, and then finding out that the ISP has a different definition of "quality."
So what if it did? Would anyone really stop using cell phones? I suspect it's kind of like knowing that the odds are pretty good that sometime in your lifetime, you'll have an automobile accident. It might even be fatal. Are you going to stop driving?
Everything is a risk. It all comes down to judging how much of a risk something is versus what you gain from taking that risk. Even if using cell phones increases your risk of brain cancer, it must be by some amount that is so minuscule that it's practically non-existent, witnessed by the fact that 95% of our population isn't walking around with brain cancer.
I like those odds.
Good point.
Here in the US, at least, folks seem pretty risk-averse. There's always a push to make thing safer, eliminate danger, etc. That's not necessarily a bad thing... If I'm going to get in a car crash I'd rather have an airbag in my car... But it isn't necessarily a good thing either, as fewer people actually get out and experience the world around them.
There is such a thing as an acceptable risk. As you said, it's fairly certain that you'll eventually get in a car accident and maybe even die from it... But, for most people, that's an acceptable risk.
And I think most folks, even if they knew there was an increased risk of cancer, would keep using their cell phones.
Hell, plenty of people keep smoking...
your local DNS server hierarchy is going to be far more responsive, even if it does have a higher miss rate.
I switched to OpenDNS a while back because we were having so many problems with our local ISP's DNS.
The issue, at the time, was straight-up DNS failures. I don't know if they were making changes or if someone tripped over a power cord... But we weren't able to resolve anything - even though I could ping by IP address. So I plugged in the OpenDNS servers and everything started working again.
Since that time I've done some un-scientific testing and found that OpenDNS's servers are consistently faster than my local ISP's. It'll take several moments to even look up a name with my local IPS's DNS. OpenDNS can find the server almost instantly.
Then there's the fun stuff with ISPs playing with your NXDOMAIN results... There was a lot of talk for a while about redirecting folks to search pages to generate advertising. OpenDNS does this by default, but it is very easy to opt-out. And it is done on their end of things, so I don't have to remember to set a cookie or anything like that. You just tell them no NXDOMAIN weirdness from my address, and it is done.
So... I could easily see switching to Google's DNS if you've got slow servers at your local ISP, or if your ISP is redirecting your NXDOMAIN results.
My real concern with Google DNS is privacy. Your DNS records are extremely valuable to google, so I sincerely doubt google is not going to record them.
I'm not sure I really care...
I mean, There's probably some kind of record or cache being generated even without Google's DNS being involved. I know we do some logging at pretty much every business we support, and our own internal network is doing some monitoring as well. I just kind of assume that various ISPs along the way are doing similar things.
Further, pretty much every website you visit is going to log you and drop a cookie on your machine.
I mean, I'm sure Google will try to use this information to improve their advertising revenues... They'd be silly not to... But I'm just having a hard time getting worried about it.
Burger King's burger sold me is nothing like the one on the TV screen. At all. Yet I don't feel justified in collecting the meager burgers served to the other customers and piling them up until it makes me happy. Mostly because I knew damn good and well that there would be a gap, and I was never at any point deceived.
This is a bad analogy, to say the very least.
You and another guy show up at Burger King at the same time. You both order two burgers.
Burger King only actually has the fixings for two burgers, but they still sell you both two burgers.
The order comes up, they hand you your bag, you open it - just one burger.
You complain and they indicate that the other burger is going to the other customer. You demand your two burgers. The guy behind the counter calls you a "burger hog" because you want to deprive their other paying customers of the burgers they ordered. He takes away your burger and kicks you out of the store. Then he gives your burger to the other customer - so that he actually gets the two burgers he ordered and doesn't cause another scene.
The difference is the relative proportion of movies that you’ll re-watch vs. the proportion of songs that you’ll listen to again.
The other difference is that most people listen to music virtually all the time, while doing other things that basically take all their attention. People don’t do that with movies. TV perhaps, but not typically with movies.
That's true...
But, at least in my case, it isn't music that I've paid for. I've normally got the radio on, or my TV tuned to a music station, or something like that.
I honestly don't remember the last time I purchased music. Which is not to say that I pirate everything... I don't remember the last time I queued up a playlist or went looking for a specific song either.
As you said, it is generally background noise.
I used to agree with you, but as general movie quality has slipped, so has my opinion...
Childhood infatuations aside (which I don't think are healthy anyway and are a direct result of advertising and peer pressure, IMO), there are a very low percentage of movies that I would prefer to watch more than once. Maybe 1 movie every two years. The rest of what comes out is complete crap that can be completely understood and remembered after one (sober) viewing.
The three favorite movies you just listed were from 1979, 1987, and 1998, so I gather you agree with me to some extent.
I don't think it is fair to compare movies to books either due to the fact that books are able to offer so much more nuance and storyline complexity.
I agree with you on just about every point...
Movie quality has certainly gone down. I'm not sure I could name anything in the last several years that I really feel the need to own on DVD. There just hasn't been anything that good.
And childhood infatuations are probably not the most healthy thing... But if it wasn't a movie it'd be a book they made you read every night, or a blanket they dragged around everywhere, or a favorite toy... Childhood infatuations have been around longer than movies have.
However, you can have an incredible amount of depth, nuance, and complexity in a movie. Just as you can have completely flat and uninteresting books. That isn't a function of the medium, but rather the artist.
So... Yes, it is possible to hog the bandwidth. But only if the ISP oversells their bandwidth. Which means that if the ISP is being honest in its marketing and sales material, it should be impossible to hog the bandwidth.
And it has been generally accepted that the network is oversold by design and that using it in a manner that pretends that it was not oversold is hogging it.
Yes, overselling wrong.
Pretending that it was not oversold is also wrong.
And to go one further, pretending that your price for a non-oversold network would be the same is also wrong.
It is also not only wrong, but straight-up illegal here in the US to advertise a product deceptively.
It may be a safe assumption that my ISP is overselling things, but that isn't really my problem. It may seem that $20/month is awfully cheap for "unlimited" bandwidth, but that isn't my problem.
If my ISP sells me "unlimited" bandwidth, I should be able to assume that I'm going to have unlimited bandwidth. If there is, in fact, a limit on my bandwidth - then it isn't unlimited. They are being deceitful in their advertising.
If that is allowed, why bother stopping there? They can sell me 5 Mbps with a 10 GB/month cap... And then only deliver 2 Mbps with a 1 GB/month cap. Or maybe they'll bill me every month and just not provide any bandwidth at all.
I also go through my client list and drop those that consume more of my time and resources in favour of the easier clients who ultimately improve my business at a lesser cost. What's wrong with that? My company, my rules. "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" -- it's in every restaurant. Why would you expect a business to serve you? Why would you consider it a right?
Let's say you sell widgets.
You have 5 people come to you, each one wants to buy 1 widget. And another guy shows up and wants to buy 5 widgets.
You only have 5 widgets in stock, you need 10, but you really want their money. So you sell each of those people a coupon for their widgets, and tell them to pick it up at your warehouse. You figure they won't all run over there right now, and you'll probably have time to get a couple more widgets in stock before anybody notices.
Of course you don't tell your customers this. You don't tell them "I only have 5 right now, you'll have to wait 'til the next shipment" You just take their money and leave them with the impression that the widget is there, waiting for them, available for pickup whenever they want.
So all of them show up at the warehouse about 5 minutes later. All of them want their widgets now. But you don't have enough widgets to go around. So you call the guy who bought 5 widgets a "widget hog", cancel his order, and throw up a hastily-made sign that says "limit 1 per customer."
Legal? Yeah, I guess... Assuming you refund his money.
Right? Not so much. You should have clearly explained that you only have 5 widgets in stock, or that the coupon couldn't be redeemed for a week, or that there was a limit of 1 per customer, or something. You mis-represented what you were selling to your customers.
Likely to leave a good impression on your customers? Nope.
If that's not hogging bandwidth, I'm not too sure what is.
Yes. Your brother's room-mate was hogging the available bandwidth in their apartment.
If this doesn't scale, logically, up to the network at a whole, I'm not sure why.
It will only scale up to the network as a whole if you're overselling your bandwidth.
Now, to be completely clear - I feel overselling bandwidth is wrong.
Err... Well, if it's wrong to oversell bandwidth... Then it is wrong to create a situation where it is possible to hog bandwidth...
If I buy a 5 Mbps connection from a small ISP here in town, I expect to be able to get roughly 5 Mbps. And unless they make it very clear to me ahead of time, I'm going to expect that "unlimited" really means unlimited.
Say they've got another 9 users out there who bought the 5 Mbps connection as well. So that's 10 of us. The network hardware should cap each of us individually at 5 Mbps because that's all we're paying for. So the most the 10 of us could pull down is roughly 50 Mbps.
If the ISP actually provisions enough equipment and buys enough bandwidth to handle 50 Mbps, then it is impossible for any user to "hog" the bandwidth. There is enough for each individual user to get their full 5 Mbps connection. Even if I completely saturate my connection, there's still enough hardware and bandwidth out there to handle another 45 Mbps.
The problem is that ISPs don't do this. They assume that a given user will only use a very tiny portion of their bandwidth at any point in time. They assume you might download some email, watch a YouTube video, or something like that... Maybe have some bursts of traffic that hit that 5 Mbps mark... But, in general, you'll barely be touching it.
So the ISP only provisions enough hardware and buys enough bandwidth for 25 Mbps... Or maybe even less.
So if I'm using my full 5 Mbps, there's only enough left over for another 20 Mbps - that's only 4 users worth, and there's actually 9 users out there.
Where it gets really bad is at the neighborhood level... Everyone in the neighborhood shares a trunk line of some sort back to the ISP. And that trunk line is going to be oversold just like everything else. Maybe that trunk line can only handle 5 Mbps total. Even though two of my neighbors bought the 5 Mbps package, the trunk line just can't handle more than 5 Mbps at a time. So if all three of us are trying to make full use of our connection we're going to be saturating that trunk line. We'll each see about 1.5 Mbps - nothing more. Even though we're paying for 5 Mbps.
So... Yes, it is possible to hog the bandwidth. But only if the ISP oversells their bandwidth. Which means that if the ISP is being honest in its marketing and sales material, it should be impossible to hog the bandwidth.
It seems to me that this plan would be reliant on people actually wanting to watch the new releases after having seen the previous ones. You seem to assume that after watching the low-quality VCD, folks would want to watch the DVD... And after watching the DVD, they'd want to see the theatrical release and buy the boxed set.
The problem with this, of course, is that a lot of movies just aren't that good.
I could easily see this working for something like Kill Bill or Ghost Busters...
But I'm not certain that it would work for the majority of movies out there. I mean, I enjoyed The Hangover... But, having watched it on VCD or DVD, I really don't think I'd feel the need to see it in the theater. And I certainly wouldn't buy the boxed set. And that was a pretty fun movie.
Sure, if the popularity for the VCD is low you don't have to make a crapton of DVDs... And if the DVDs don't move you can just skip the theatrical release... But it seems to me that most of the money goes into producing the film itself - not duplicating it in various mediums. The money goes to paying actors, and lighting guys, and directors, and writers, and whoever else... Not to buying blank discs and celluloid.
So I'm really not certain you'd wind up making enough money to break even. I really think that with most of the crap coming out of Hollywood these days, most people would be content with a VCD or DVD. I don't think you'd really see all that many people showing up in the theater or buying the boxed set.
And let's not forget the instant gratification demanded by many consumers. On typical broadband, a song downloads in less than a minute. The significantly longer time required to download a movie (if purchased and stored in Blue Ray quality) is longer than the time required to drive to Blockbuster or Walmart to buy the physical copy of the same movie.
For instance, a few months ago, I ordered PPV Gran Torino in 1080p for my wife and I to view one evening. Six hours later it was ready to view, but she was already in bed.
We've got something called "on demand" on our cable box. It uses our broadband connection to download and play a movie pretty much whenever we want. I don't have an HD TV... So it isn't 1080p... But I can start watching that movie long before it finishes downloading. Give it about 15 minutes or so, and it's ready to play.
Let's work something out: a $60 game will get you what, hopefully 10+ hours of playtime? (Sidenote: oh how I long for days gone by when that would've been considered short...) That's less than $6/hour. Blu-ray discs are about $20; given a movie length of about 2 hours, that's around $10/hour - almost twice as expensive.
Exactly.
It is really hard to justify going to the movies these days. Our local theater charges roughly $12/ticket... So that's $24 for the wife and I. For roughly two hours of entertainment. And more often than not it really doesn't feel like we're getting our money's worth... Either the movie will be mediocre (if not completely disappointing) or the other patrons will be distracting or whatever.
Instead, we can wait a few months until it comes out on DVD and pick it up at Blockbuster for $5 or so... Or at a Redbox machine for $1... Or grab it on Pay-Per-View for $7... Or wait for Netflix to send it out... All of which dramatically lower the price and dramatically increase the chances of us enjoying ourselves (no annoying folks in the theater, etc.)
Or I can spend my money on a game instead... We used to have a couple WoW accounts going. $30 a month, for the two of us, for basically unlimited entertainment. Much cheaper than going to the movies or renting or anything else.
Apples and oranges. You might as well say that ice cream sales are faltering because more people are buying burgers. A $10 bargain bin or budget game might give me 30 hours of entertainment, while a $10 movie might give me 2 hours, but its different type of entertainment so I'm not going to be choosing between them. So I'd end up watching 1 move and buying 1 game, instead of buying 2 games or watching 2 movies.
Actually, I think it is a fair comparison...
At the end of the day/week, when everything is done, I've got some disposable income and some leisure time - both of which are fixed.
I can choose to spend $20+ to go to the movies with my wife, which will keep us entertained for roughly two hours... Or I can spend $5 to rent a movie and be entertained for roughly the same amount of time... Or I can spend $50 on some game and be entertained for 20 hours or so.
Sure, occasionally there's a movie that looks especially interesting. Something that you want to see for itself, not just as a diversion.
But, more often than not, it's a matter of simply being entertained for a period of time.
And a movie, or television, or going out on a date, or a game, or whatever can all accomplish that just fine.
So if I've got exactly $50 to spend on entertainment this week - I want to make sure I get as much entertainment out of that money as I can.
An obvious difference is that people are interested in seeing a movie exactly once, and as soon as possible.
Music relies on people wanting to hear it multiple times and they are probably more interested in the music well after it exists. And complete knowledge of the contents of the music increases, rather than decreases, their desire to hear it.
Incorrect.
Completely wrong.
So wrong it makes me wonder where on Earth you came up with this idea.
In a lot of ways, a movie is like a novel. There are some you read through once, and then get rid of because they just aren't that amazing. There are some you have to re-read several times simply to understand them. And then there are the favorites that you keep coming back to year after year.
To claim that everyone is only interested in seeing a movie once, and that they're all basically disposable, is simply ignorant.
Sure, if you're talking about some generic action/horror movie aimed at teenfolk that's probably accurate. They're just looking for something to serve as background noise while they hang out with their friends. They'll go see it within days of the opening, they'll see it once, and they won't even pay much attention to it.
But then you've got the G/PG stuff aimed at little kids. You've obviously never witnessed a small child and their favorite movie. They'll drag you to the theater a dozen times while it is showing... They'll make you buy every single solitary piece of merchandise tied into the film... They'll need the DVD the day it becomes available... And they'll watch it over and over again, until the disc literally wears out.
Then you've got movies with some real substance to them. Things like Pulp Fiction. Movies where you literally notice something new each time you watch it. Movies that take multiple viewings to actually understand what is going on.
Then there are the quality movies that just don't get old. This will, of course, vary quite a bit depending on your personal preferences... But I don't know how many times I've watched Alien or Evil Dead II or Cannibal: The Musical.