I agree on the lack of need for PC integration, but lets not paint Kindle lock-in and Nook lock-in in the same light. At least with the Nook you are able to buy an ebook from any ePub retailer. There are many besides B&N. With Kindle you have no such luxuary.
Why do people keep repeating this? With a Kindle you can buy an e-book from any mobi retailer, and you can convert any epub that doesn't use DRM... but you generally don't have to since almost all ebooks are available direct from Amazon whereas only a fraction are available from B&N.
The only thing tying anyone to a Kindle is publisher-installed DRM on the e-book files that prevents them from moving books to their Kindle from other retailers or from their Kindle to a different e-reader.
dramatic fiction (which is a huge element to the appeal of, say, RPGs) depends on a cogent story being told. one thing must logically lead to the next. stakes should rise as the game progresses. events should build to a climax.
Why?
I probably spent more time playing Elite than any other game in my life, and that had a total of about five missions in the version I had. The entire rest of the game was 'here's a spaceship, you can mine things and carry cargo and there are some bad guys, shoot them or avoid them, that's up to you'.
This crazy idea that 'a game MUST force the player to follow our story!' is one of the biggest problems with the gaming industry right now.
From my experience, the unskippable logos at the beginning are actually there because the game is loading and they're nicer to look at than a progress bar.
That'll be why the disk light stops flashing while it's playing the 'We paid megabucks to license the Whatsit Engine' video and why the game loads much faster when I can skip through those videos.
We paid Famous Hollywood Actor X $20,000,000 to record that inane and repetitive dialog explaining things you don't care about and you are damn well going to get our money's worth!
To paraphrase Aliens, when I'm playing an FPS the only thing I want to know is where's the next thing to shoot. I don't give a damn about the silly story the game company made up to explain why I'm shooting them and I certainly don't want to be forced to listen to a twenty minute history of the war between the H'azafa and T'fasdgatwerty before I get to shoot something else.
If you can do this with abandoned satellites, can you do it with not-quite abandoned ones?
Satellites are often abandoned due to running out of fuel. I've read that a number of new satellites are being fitted with a standard fuel connector so they could be refueled at some point in the future; no such 'tanker' exists yet but if the market is big enough someone may build it.
From what I remember another problem is that solar panel output declines over time, but that's probably a less important issue.
What killed the USSR was that few people wanted to be productive when their efforts would merely enrich the unproductive. Central planning certainly helped, but if people had been willing to work hard for no benefit the USSR might still be around today.
I suspect the bigger problem is that there are so many patents on video codecs that any better open source alternative would infringe on at least one of those patents.
Most e-books on Amazon are DRM-free. The majority of books on Amazon from big publishers use DRM, which is why I mostly buy e-books from self-publishers and small publishers because they rarely do.
It will be interesting to see if the likes of Amazon honour the publishers wishes, or whether they still insist on using DRM.
Amazon do not force anyone to use DRM. Which part of this is so hard to understand?
When a publisher uploads a book to Amazon, they get a check box in the web interface to select DRM or no DRM. If the publishers choose DRM, that's their problem.
The only issue I'm aware of is that you apparently can't turn off DRM once you've enabled it for a book; from what I understand you have to delete the book and upload it again, which loses reviews and 'also boughts'.
It's maybe an extra click or two. But if you're like the guy that can't handle the close button being on the "wrong" side, then good luck finding an alternative.
You have noticed that Ubuntu has dropped from #1 to #2 Linux distro precisely because Mint doesn't force Unity or Gnome 3 on users, right?
BTW, I notice you mention running on a netbook in another post, where Unity is okay. The problem is that Ubuntu are also pushing it on desktop users, where it's a freaking disaster.
My point is that you're not "ripped off" when you buy DRM-laden media since you knew a priori that it was DRM-laden and still chose to buy it at the price being asked.
Really? Where does Amazon say whether a book has DRM?
I believe I've worked out which arcane line in the product description implies that a book is DRM-free, but there's nothing on the site which tells you directly.
But that's impossible. Everyone knows that e-books from trade publishers are so expensive because of the cost of proper formatting and copy-editing. You must be imagining it.
Badly typeset books with mistakes in are more difficult to read and even the best authors rely heavily on their editors to shape and refine the book before publication.
Yet the worst complaints I've seen about e-books are trade publishers charging $9.99 or more for books they've just scanned, OCR-ed and released with no quality checks.
Aside from being completely wrong, that was a great post.
Few of those books have DRM and the price is generally set by the author because the big publishers demanded that Amazon stop setting prices itself and let them set the price instead. You may not have noticed, but there's currently a big lawsuit going on about publishers colluding to raise e-book prices, not lower them.
Yes, you'll occasionally see a book from a trade publisher discounted to $0.99, but they're the rare exception.
Like, duh, dude. Amazon don't give a crap about DRM, they only include it because the publishers demanded it.
As others have mentioned, DRM is an option the publisher selects when they upload the book. They want to tie their book to your Kindle and then whine that readers keep buying books from Amazon because they're all tied to their Kindle.
Just more proof that the publishing industry is run by monkeys.
You should have stopped right there. Do a little math, why don't you? Ah no, calculus is HARD.
Math has nothing to do with it, this is an engineering matter and there have been numerous perfectly viable methods studied for moving asteroids. I've no idea which they intend to pursue, but I've yet to see one which requires gasoline.
Yeah, because they're going to drive their asteroid through space with a giant V8 engine powered by gasoline.
I've no idea how they plan to move an asteroid, but even ignoring nuclear engines or gravity tugs there are about four million tons per second of free energy blasting out uselessly into space from the sun for anyone to collect.
One tiny asteroid contains more material than every satellite ever launched. Also, satellites generally don't contain water or similar useful materials for supporting human life... while they often contain various toxic fuels that would complicate reuse of the materials they do contain.
Me, I think gold's useless. Outside of plating electrical connectors (something silver's pretty good at too), it's only in my house 'cos my wife like wearing the stuff decoratively.
The odd part is that you have just demonstrated the primary reason why men like to have a big stash of gold while simultaneously claiming that it's useless.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree on the lack of need for PC integration, but lets not paint Kindle lock-in and Nook lock-in in the same light. At least with the Nook you are able to buy an ebook from any ePub retailer. There are many besides B&N. With Kindle you have no such luxuary.
Why do people keep repeating this? With a Kindle you can buy an e-book from any mobi retailer, and you can convert any epub that doesn't use DRM... but you generally don't have to since almost all ebooks are available direct from Amazon whereas only a fraction are available from B&N.
The only thing tying anyone to a Kindle is publisher-installed DRM on the e-book files that prevents them from moving books to their Kindle from other retailers or from their Kindle to a different e-reader.
dramatic fiction (which is a huge element to the appeal of, say, RPGs) depends on a cogent story being told. one thing must logically lead to the next. stakes should rise as the game progresses. events should build to a climax.
Why?
I probably spent more time playing Elite than any other game in my life, and that had a total of about five missions in the version I had. The entire rest of the game was 'here's a spaceship, you can mine things and carry cargo and there are some bad guys, shoot them or avoid them, that's up to you'.
This crazy idea that 'a game MUST force the player to follow our story!' is one of the biggest problems with the gaming industry right now.
From my experience, the unskippable logos at the beginning are actually there because the game is loading and they're nicer to look at than a progress bar.
That'll be why the disk light stops flashing while it's playing the 'We paid megabucks to license the Whatsit Engine' video and why the game loads much faster when I can skip through those videos.
It costs money to avoid unskippable cut scenes?
We paid Famous Hollywood Actor X $20,000,000 to record that inane and repetitive dialog explaining things you don't care about and you are damn well going to get our money's worth!
To paraphrase Aliens, when I'm playing an FPS the only thing I want to know is where's the next thing to shoot. I don't give a damn about the silly story the game company made up to explain why I'm shooting them and I certainly don't want to be forced to listen to a twenty minute history of the war between the H'azafa and T'fasdgatwerty before I get to shoot something else.
If you can do this with abandoned satellites, can you do it with not-quite abandoned ones?
Satellites are often abandoned due to running out of fuel. I've read that a number of new satellites are being fitted with a standard fuel connector so they could be refueled at some point in the future; no such 'tanker' exists yet but if the market is big enough someone may build it.
From what I remember another problem is that solar panel output declines over time, but that's probably a less important issue.
What killed the USSR was that few people wanted to be productive when their efforts would merely enrich the unproductive. Central planning certainly helped, but if people had been willing to work hard for no benefit the USSR might still be around today.
so, is the US now communist?
Logic lesson: if all your apples are red, that does not mean that all your red things are apples.
I suspect the bigger problem is that there are so many patents on video codecs that any better open source alternative would infringe on at least one of those patents.
Most e-books on Amazon are DRM-free. The majority of books on Amazon from big publishers use DRM, which is why I mostly buy e-books from self-publishers and small publishers because they rarely do.
It will be interesting to see if the likes of Amazon honour the publishers wishes, or whether they still insist on using DRM.
Amazon do not force anyone to use DRM. Which part of this is so hard to understand?
When a publisher uploads a book to Amazon, they get a check box in the web interface to select DRM or no DRM. If the publishers choose DRM, that's their problem.
The only issue I'm aware of is that you apparently can't turn off DRM once you've enabled it for a book; from what I understand you have to delete the book and upload it again, which loses reviews and 'also boughts'.
There have been authors that wanted to distribute ebooks through Amazon without DRM and Amazon said no.
DRM is a check-box on the Amazon e-book upload page; enable it or don't, that's your choice.
It's maybe an extra click or two. But if you're like the guy that can't handle the close button being on the "wrong" side, then good luck finding an alternative.
You have noticed that Ubuntu has dropped from #1 to #2 Linux distro precisely because Mint doesn't force Unity or Gnome 3 on users, right?
BTW, I notice you mention running on a netbook in another post, where Unity is okay. The problem is that Ubuntu are also pushing it on desktop users, where it's a freaking disaster.
My point is that you're not "ripped off" when you buy DRM-laden media since you knew a priori that it was DRM-laden and still chose to buy it at the price being asked.
Really? Where does Amazon say whether a book has DRM?
I believe I've worked out which arcane line in the product description implies that a book is DRM-free, but there's nothing on the site which tells you directly.
But that's impossible. Everyone knows that e-books from trade publishers are so expensive because of the cost of proper formatting and copy-editing. You must be imagining it.
Badly typeset books with mistakes in are more difficult to read and even the best authors rely heavily on their editors to shape and refine the book before publication.
Yet the worst complaints I've seen about e-books are trade publishers charging $9.99 or more for books they've just scanned, OCR-ed and released with no quality checks.
Aside from being completely wrong, that was a great post.
Few of those books have DRM and the price is generally set by the author because the big publishers demanded that Amazon stop setting prices itself and let them set the price instead. You may not have noticed, but there's currently a big lawsuit going on about publishers colluding to raise e-book prices, not lower them.
Yes, you'll occasionally see a book from a trade publisher discounted to $0.99, but they're the rare exception.
Like, duh, dude. Amazon don't give a crap about DRM, they only include it because the publishers demanded it.
As others have mentioned, DRM is an option the publisher selects when they upload the book. They want to tie their book to your Kindle and then whine that readers keep buying books from Amazon because they're all tied to their Kindle.
Just more proof that the publishing industry is run by monkeys.
Charles Stross also has an explanation of why reducing ebook costs to that level is impractical...
Indeed. Those hundreds of thousands of $0.99 e-books on Amazon can't possibly exist.
A while back I saw a study of the top 100 SF best-seller e-books on Amazon and if I remember correctly the most popular price was $2.99.
Sure, a trade publisher with shareholders and a fancy New York office can't afford to sell books at that price, but plenty of writers can.
Big stash? There is more iron in my house than gold in all the jewelry in 3 generations of my family combined.
And that is why you don't have a harem of hot chicks in your house.
You should have stopped right there. Do a little math, why don't you? Ah no, calculus is HARD.
Math has nothing to do with it, this is an engineering matter and there have been numerous perfectly viable methods studied for moving asteroids. I've no idea which they intend to pursue, but I've yet to see one which requires gasoline.
Yeah, because they're going to drive their asteroid through space with a giant V8 engine powered by gasoline.
I've no idea how they plan to move an asteroid, but even ignoring nuclear engines or gravity tugs there are about four million tons per second of free energy blasting out uselessly into space from the sun for anyone to collect.
One tiny asteroid contains more material than every satellite ever launched. Also, satellites generally don't contain water or similar useful materials for supporting human life... while they often contain various toxic fuels that would complicate reuse of the materials they do contain.
Me, I think gold's useless. Outside of plating electrical connectors (something silver's pretty good at too), it's only in my house 'cos my wife like wearing the stuff decoratively.
The odd part is that you have just demonstrated the primary reason why men like to have a big stash of gold while simultaneously claiming that it's useless.
I'm sure they're really scared that the UN might be really, really upset with them while they're sitting in space on their asteroid.
The Fed can print money much faster than you can build rockets to launch it into space.