Ok, double-checking: The Kindle supports both it's own version of mobi, and the normal mobi format. Sorry, I was confused there.
Mobi is not an open format: It is based off of an open ebook format, but it is a proprietary format by the Mobipocket company, who licenses it and controls what and how devices can read it.
ePub is an open, documented format by an international standards body, that can be implemented freely.
Amazon lists that they have over 360,000 ebooks available.
B&N lists just under 105,000.
Those are what are directly available through their own sites. Baen.com also has ebooks available. As does Fictionwise. And Project Gutenburg. And TOR. And Google books. And eReader. And probably a few dozen others I can't think of at the moment. All of the above have downloads in ePub format. All but Google have in Kindle format as well.
Converters - for every platform - can be found as free downloads for ePub. A free converter to mobi format can be downloaded from Mobipocket's website, for Windows 2000/XP only. (And requires Internet Explorer.)
The number through the dedicated sites is relevant, but is not the whole story. It is slightly easier to find ePub books from other sites, and it is definitely easier to create your own. (Especially if you don't run Windows.)
That's short-term, and right now. Longer term, ePub is easier and cheaper to support, and is supported by more different types of devices. (Including one, now, with the market visibility of the Kindle.) It's also a slightly newer format. Amazon is going to find itself in the position of being a sole defender of a file format (which they do not even own, and have to pay to use), while the rest of the industry is standardizing on a different format. It might have the installed base to defend that, but I doubt it overall.
Both formats are already widely used, along with a good half-dozen other formats. (Which are dieing slow deaths.) Every major publisher has books for sale someplace in both formats. Minor publishers are likely to have their entire catalogs.
While the Kindle was the only major player, there was a slight move to standardize on it's format. However, the rest of the ebook market (fragmented and invisible as it might be) had been moving steadily towards ePub. Now there is a major player using that format, which is a real open standard, and not just the format of the dominant company.
I think both formats at this point have enough of a mass of books for any normal reader to be likely to find books they would like to read in it. Mobi/Kindle may have a slight current edge, in sheer numbers. ePub is easier to use and freer, while being extremely competitive in title selection.
(In computer-history terms: mobi is.doc, and ePub is a well-designed ODF, and it's still the start of the document format wars. I think the format that the publishers and device manufactures can use easily will be the dominant format, since the install base is still small.)
mobi is a proprietary format (it is owned by a company, and they control the format), and Kindle's version isn't straight mobi, it's a slight modification. Txt and pdf aren't ebook formats. (They are text and e-paper formats, respectively. Yes, there is a difference.) And the Nook can use those as well.
epub is a true open format: available to any without licensing fees and such. Software is available freely to convert books and other text into it, and out of it should you so choose. (Provided they haven't been encrypted using the DRM provision, of course.)
And it's the Kindle that has the more limited selection: Epub is the more common format, and the Nook also supports the older (proprietary) eReader format, that has been used for around 10 years, starting on the Palm platform.
I fully expect to be able to read 70-90% of my current library of ebooks without conversion on my Nook. I'd have to convert 100%, using Amazon's service, on the Kindle.
I also think my job's system isn't that bad: I'm salaried, for which they basically expect 80 hours of work every two weeks. Unless there is a reason otherwise, that should be during standard work days. But if I'm on call and have to work during non-standard hours, those hours count just as the rest. Quite often after an on-call week I've been able to take a half-day or more off, because I've already worked the hours.
Actually, that's one of the advantages of the Nook in my opinion: It uses an open, standard format (EPUB) as it's normal book format. The format supports DRM, but doesn't require it, and there are quite a few ebook stores out there already selling books in epub format. Nearly every other ebook reader on the market is also supporting the epub format. (The exception is the Kindle, which uses a proprietary format.)
Current bestsellers are likely to be DRM'd if you can find them, but most of everything else is available and non-DRM'd, if you look.
I got notification from UPS a bit earlier today that they had a package for me. Since the only package I'm waiting on at the moment is a Nook, I think your wife will be getting hers. (I ordered a few days after the announcement.)
That'd be my guess. Second guess would be that they agreed to having a backup - as soon as some politician determined where the backup site would be. (Which, of course, hasn't happened yet.)
Also, given their size and portability, I'd expect netbooks to have harsher treatment than a laptop. Laptops are big enough you think 'expensive computer' when you are handling one, where netbooks are (intentionally) designed to feel like they are more of a 'mid-sized electronic device'.
It's not much, but it could well account for a 1% difference, IMHO.
I agree in principle that a good professional society that can help enforce minimum standards of ethical conduct is probably a good idea. (Basically: Have them stated, be prepared to support those who uphold them, and keep accounting of who and where they are being intentionally violated, so that they can be shamed.)
And there doesn't seem to be one. It would probably take a while for one to get fully established, then recognized, and accepted. But that could only happen after one gets started.
Just wanted to say that MacOS for a while there supported 4 architectures: i386 and PPC, both in 32 and 64 bit. Very few apps actually shipped with all four, since there were also fallbacks in place. (A few high-end apps did, but only a few.)
And even then there were a half-dozen utilities out there for 'cleaning' the architectures you didn't need out of the files. Which could get back a fair amount of disk space.
And yes, it's dueling egos. Theo is a very good coder, and OpenBSD is an amazing system, but Theo should stop talking to the public. It never helps. (Even when he's right, which he usually is when the discussion involves something technical.)
They are probably using a slightly different definition of 'survive' in this case: instead of just holing up in the equivalent of a bacterium space suit, they feed, grow, and reproduce.
How about a license that allows people to read it, comment on it (both pro and con) publicly without constraint, and doesn't automatically assume Sequioa own all voting-related code that person might subsequently write at some point in the future? (Obviously, that assumes the code isn't copied.)
Also, kill switches of this sort are kinda stupid: It's intentional bugs, and intentional security by obscurity. You just hope your enemy hasn't hacked your system through the backdoor you put in.
(Of course, this assumes you are building the hardware yourself. If you are buying it from someone, expect these to be there in case they ever decide they don't want to be your friends.)
I never get why people want to rent movies electronically.
If you were 'renting' the TV season, you'd still have to download it (in the same quality as the 'buy' version) and play it. So the only real difference, in the electronic-delivery world, between 'buying' and 'renting' is in the latter you need a complicated DRM scheme. (Even more complicated than a normal DRM scheme.)
So, it actually costs the company more to rent it to you. Selling it to you, even if you only play it once and then delete it, costs both the company and you less. Or at least it should.
Given that it's an electric car (so the common power-steering system would need adjustments anyway) and they said it would be all drive-by-wire, I'd assume you'd be just as stuck with a steering wheel, as it wouldn't be directly connected to the wheels anyway.
Given this is a just a demo, I'm sure they haven't worked all the bugs out, but this sounds like a solvable problem.
Also, almost no one has any natural immunity or resistance to H1N1, and it would take quite a chunk out of the economy if ~1/4 of the workforce were to have to take two to three weeks off sometime this winter...
'Many cases?' All Cases. In the form of right-of-way access and eminent domain rights.
Most have also taken money, and limited-area monopoly rights, saying they would upgrade and develop their lines in return. (Most have failed to do so, to any significant degree.) But all have had government assistance, just to exist.
Black hole? Maths say they exist - but you will never really know, nor will it ever really matter - if you cannot even know your "self".
Actually, there is some argument there. They fall out of Relativity quite easily, but Relativity doesn't take into account any quantum effects. Black holes are one of the few places where that really matters. Depending on how you reconcile the two, you may not get an actual black hole. (You will get something that behaves quite similarly, but not exactly the same.)
One good one is to test your assumptions: Making sure software ports cleanly over a couple of different (although very similar) underpinnings means you are likely to find bugs that you might otherwise overlook. But which would likely bite you later.
Ok, so that's a reason for Debian to do it, not necessarily for you to use it, but it's a valid reason non the less.
Also, the Linux kernel and the FreeBSD kernel are tuned differently. It's quite possible that one would be better under some loads than the other. This gives you the choice.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, double-checking: The Kindle supports both it's own version of mobi, and the normal mobi format. Sorry, I was confused there.
Mobi is not an open format: It is based off of an open ebook format, but it is a proprietary format by the Mobipocket company, who licenses it and controls what and how devices can read it.
ePub is an open, documented format by an international standards body, that can be implemented freely.
Amazon lists that they have over 360,000 ebooks available.
B&N lists just under 105,000.
Those are what are directly available through their own sites. Baen.com also has ebooks available. As does Fictionwise. And Project Gutenburg. And TOR. And Google books. And eReader. And probably a few dozen others I can't think of at the moment. All of the above have downloads in ePub format. All but Google have in Kindle format as well.
Converters - for every platform - can be found as free downloads for ePub. A free converter to mobi format can be downloaded from Mobipocket's website, for Windows 2000/XP only. (And requires Internet Explorer.)
The number through the dedicated sites is relevant, but is not the whole story. It is slightly easier to find ePub books from other sites, and it is definitely easier to create your own. (Especially if you don't run Windows.)
That's short-term, and right now. Longer term, ePub is easier and cheaper to support, and is supported by more different types of devices. (Including one, now, with the market visibility of the Kindle.) It's also a slightly newer format. Amazon is going to find itself in the position of being a sole defender of a file format (which they do not even own, and have to pay to use), while the rest of the industry is standardizing on a different format. It might have the installed base to defend that, but I doubt it overall.
Both formats are already widely used, along with a good half-dozen other formats. (Which are dieing slow deaths.) Every major publisher has books for sale someplace in both formats. Minor publishers are likely to have their entire catalogs.
While the Kindle was the only major player, there was a slight move to standardize on it's format. However, the rest of the ebook market (fragmented and invisible as it might be) had been moving steadily towards ePub. Now there is a major player using that format, which is a real open standard, and not just the format of the dominant company.
I think both formats at this point have enough of a mass of books for any normal reader to be likely to find books they would like to read in it. Mobi/Kindle may have a slight current edge, in sheer numbers. ePub is easier to use and freer, while being extremely competitive in title selection.
(In computer-history terms: mobi is .doc, and ePub is a well-designed ODF, and it's still the start of the document format wars. I think the format that the publishers and device manufactures can use easily will be the dominant format, since the install base is still small.)
mobi is a proprietary format (it is owned by a company, and they control the format), and Kindle's version isn't straight mobi, it's a slight modification. Txt and pdf aren't ebook formats. (They are text and e-paper formats, respectively. Yes, there is a difference.) And the Nook can use those as well.
epub is a true open format: available to any without licensing fees and such. Software is available freely to convert books and other text into it, and out of it should you so choose. (Provided they haven't been encrypted using the DRM provision, of course.)
And it's the Kindle that has the more limited selection: Epub is the more common format, and the Nook also supports the older (proprietary) eReader format, that has been used for around 10 years, starting on the Palm platform.
I fully expect to be able to read 70-90% of my current library of ebooks without conversion on my Nook. I'd have to convert 100%, using Amazon's service, on the Kindle.
I also think my job's system isn't that bad: I'm salaried, for which they basically expect 80 hours of work every two weeks. Unless there is a reason otherwise, that should be during standard work days. But if I'm on call and have to work during non-standard hours, those hours count just as the rest. Quite often after an on-call week I've been able to take a half-day or more off, because I've already worked the hours.
Actually, that's one of the advantages of the Nook in my opinion: It uses an open, standard format (EPUB) as it's normal book format. The format supports DRM, but doesn't require it, and there are quite a few ebook stores out there already selling books in epub format. Nearly every other ebook reader on the market is also supporting the epub format. (The exception is the Kindle, which uses a proprietary format.)
Current bestsellers are likely to be DRM'd if you can find them, but most of everything else is available and non-DRM'd, if you look.
I got notification from UPS a bit earlier today that they had a package for me. Since the only package I'm waiting on at the moment is a Nook, I think your wife will be getting hers. (I ordered a few days after the announcement.)
That'd be my guess. Second guess would be that they agreed to having a backup - as soon as some politician determined where the backup site would be. (Which, of course, hasn't happened yet.)
Also, given their size and portability, I'd expect netbooks to have harsher treatment than a laptop. Laptops are big enough you think 'expensive computer' when you are handling one, where netbooks are (intentionally) designed to feel like they are more of a 'mid-sized electronic device'.
It's not much, but it could well account for a 1% difference, IMHO.
I agree in principle that a good professional society that can help enforce minimum standards of ethical conduct is probably a good idea. (Basically: Have them stated, be prepared to support those who uphold them, and keep accounting of who and where they are being intentionally violated, so that they can be shamed.)
And there doesn't seem to be one. It would probably take a while for one to get fully established, then recognized, and accepted. But that could only happen after one gets started.
So, the next question is: How do we start one?
Irrelevant. If the BSA comes calling, do you think this guy's boss is going to admit he was warned? Of course not. It's all 'that IT-guy's fault.
If the poster has his complaints in writing, that might help him. Maybe.
Just wanted to say that MacOS for a while there supported 4 architectures: i386 and PPC, both in 32 and 64 bit. Very few apps actually shipped with all four, since there were also fallbacks in place. (A few high-end apps did, but only a few.)
And even then there were a half-dozen utilities out there for 'cleaning' the architectures you didn't need out of the files. Which could get back a fair amount of disk space.
It's not Linus and Theo, it's Theo and everybody.
And yes, it's dueling egos. Theo is a very good coder, and OpenBSD is an amazing system, but Theo should stop talking to the public. It never helps. (Even when he's right, which he usually is when the discussion involves something technical.)
They are probably using a slightly different definition of 'survive' in this case: instead of just holing up in the equivalent of a bacterium space suit, they feed, grow, and reproduce.
If you can prove killing Hitler will stop WWII, yep.
I suspect it produces less waste per kilowatt-hour than nearly anything else in use. (Solar and wind might come up with less.)
How about a license that allows people to read it, comment on it (both pro and con) publicly without constraint, and doesn't automatically assume Sequioa own all voting-related code that person might subsequently write at some point in the future? (Obviously, that assumes the code isn't copied.)
That'd be about my minimum.
Also, kill switches of this sort are kinda stupid: It's intentional bugs, and intentional security by obscurity. You just hope your enemy hasn't hacked your system through the backdoor you put in.
(Of course, this assumes you are building the hardware yourself. If you are buying it from someone, expect these to be there in case they ever decide they don't want to be your friends.)
New rule, passed the next day:
'Internet access for MPs and Ministers cannot be interfered with.'
This is Disney. They've already solved the 'copyright ends eventually' problem. They bought Congress.
I never get why people want to rent movies electronically.
If you were 'renting' the TV season, you'd still have to download it (in the same quality as the 'buy' version) and play it. So the only real difference, in the electronic-delivery world, between 'buying' and 'renting' is in the latter you need a complicated DRM scheme. (Even more complicated than a normal DRM scheme.)
So, it actually costs the company more to rent it to you. Selling it to you, even if you only play it once and then delete it, costs both the company and you less. Or at least it should.
Given that it's an electric car (so the common power-steering system would need adjustments anyway) and they said it would be all drive-by-wire, I'd assume you'd be just as stuck with a steering wheel, as it wouldn't be directly connected to the wheels anyway.
Given this is a just a demo, I'm sure they haven't worked all the bugs out, but this sounds like a solvable problem.
Also, almost no one has any natural immunity or resistance to H1N1, and it would take quite a chunk out of the economy if ~1/4 of the workforce were to have to take two to three weeks off sometime this winter...
'Many cases?' All Cases. In the form of right-of-way access and eminent domain rights.
Most have also taken money, and limited-area monopoly rights, saying they would upgrade and develop their lines in return. (Most have failed to do so, to any significant degree.) But all have had government assistance, just to exist.
Black hole? Maths say they exist - but you will never really know, nor will it ever really matter - if you cannot even know your "self".
Actually, there is some argument there. They fall out of Relativity quite easily, but Relativity doesn't take into account any quantum effects. Black holes are one of the few places where that really matters. Depending on how you reconcile the two, you may not get an actual black hole. (You will get something that behaves quite similarly, but not exactly the same.)
So, that's right on schedule for Windows 8 then.
One good one is to test your assumptions: Making sure software ports cleanly over a couple of different (although very similar) underpinnings means you are likely to find bugs that you might otherwise overlook. But which would likely bite you later.
Ok, so that's a reason for Debian to do it, not necessarily for you to use it, but it's a valid reason non the less.
Also, the Linux kernel and the FreeBSD kernel are tuned differently. It's quite possible that one would be better under some loads than the other. This gives you the choice.