And Amazon also did the right thing by not going taking the typical non-acknowledgment position and instead admitting -- quite publicly -- that they screwed up big. I still have some problems with how Amazon does particular things (read: Kindle DRM), but it's refreshing to see a company fess up in no unequivocal terms when they do something that upsets their customers.
Yes, "we are the government." The problem is that too many people are too stupid, too disinterested, or some combination therein, to take that role seriously. They'd rather watch the finale of some reality show than watch a meaningful debate. Oftentimes they have only a cursory understanding of the issues, they pay little attention to world events, and then they go to the polls and vote from the perspective that anything that gives them more of [insert entitlement here] or makes them "safer" must be good, damn the price, principles, or attendant loss of freedoms and rights.
A representative democracy is still in my opinion the best form of government for a large society, but it only works when the citizens are informed and engaged.
There are probably multiple errors in the passage above, but it's comparable to what I read online so it's ok...;)
Actually, I can't spot a single one -- correct usage of its/it's and there/their/they're, commas all in the right places rather than being sprinkled on with a peppershaker, etc. Bonus points for using semicolons and dashes outside of emoticons. (Please forgive the sentence fragment.)
I wonder what this world will be like in fifty years. Will these revolutions help make this a much better place to live? Or will we find a way to fuck it up?
I sometimes think it'll be the latter. Maybe I've been watching too many dystopian movies, but technology, for all its benefits, can also change societies for the worse. Assume that 50 years from now we have the capability to put chips into people's brains. What will governments do with that sort of capability? I can easily see a proposal being introduced that would allow remote brain monitoring of sex offenders, for example. Science and technology will continue their advance and fifty years from now, I think we'll all be less likely to die from cancer, less likely to be mentally debilitated by Alzheimer's, and physically healthier overall, but I think we'll also have less freedom.
Get enough devices out there capable of using some form of DRM, and that DRM will become the defacto standard for ebooks
How many iPods and iPhones are out there? They're capable of some form of DRM, yet the defacto standard for purchased music is now DRM-free. It wasn't always that way, of course, but consumer sentiment forced the retail digital music market to change. Amazon saw that folks just didn't like DRM on their music and recognized an opportunity. So when they started selling MP3, they were DRM free from the beginning. That put pressure on Apple's store and eventually they went DRM-free on music too.
If enough people grumble for long enough, someone will come by and try to tap into that frustration. I'm confident that eventually retail e-books will open up. All you need is one crack in the dam.
No argument on the Sony's PDF and EPUB support, however, just to clarify:
Copying content to the Kindle works exactly the same way. It shows up like a USB drive just like the Sony does.
You can read DRM-free Baen and Fictionwise content on Kindle as well. Essentially all of Fictionwise's multiformat books work on Kindle.
Really, DRM-free is the key here. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but with DRM-free books, it's not just a matter of "I own this collection of bytes and I can move it around as I choose." It's also means a much greater likelihood that you'll be able to find that book in whatever format you want. And if for some reason you can't find it in format X, chances are you can convert it yourself.
I've never been to the UK but over the years I've read no small number of stories coming from across the pond that just leave me shaking my head: the ever-present cameras, the citizen databases, the monitoring and surveillance, etc. How are the good folks in the UK not in the streets about all this? Maybe I'm wrong -- in fact I hope that I am -- but the UK seems to be barreling down the road to Big Brother. To see a Western nation going down this path truly disturbs me.
The interesting thing here -- and this comment is partly motivated by your sig -- is that this killing of the domestic satellite spying program is not a liberal action but a conservative one. If you need an example of where real conservatives and today's Republicans differ, here it is. Republicans such as Peter King will say this is "a step back in the war on terror" but a real conservative would say the U.S. government never had any business spying on its citizens in the first place.
By necessity, I discovered and used this software just last night, and the data recovery process was smoother than I had anticipated. At one point when I was copying the salvaged files to a good drive, Windows took exception with one of the files and started barking one of its usual program-terminating error messages. I was afraid that I'd have to have GetDataBack reread the whole drive and start the whole process all over again, but the program was robust enough to avoid crashing. It just moved on to the next file and kept on going. It's not often that I pay for software but this was $80 well spent.
I think Apple is very much interested in going after the e-book market. Sales of e-books are growing very rapidly, and right now Amazon essentially has a stranglehold on the market, at least in the U.S. As a Kindle owner, I welcome Apple bringing some serious competition into this area. Maybe it'll put some pressure on Amazon to open up to the ePub format.
Okay, the book is ten years old. Seeing how the book is in the tech field, the author shouldn't expect to see that much income from it ten years out. There are exceptions, sure, but in general, I get your point. What I'm interested in is the rest of your statement:
isn't this exactly what is the problem with copyright? People sitting on their asses, demanding to get paid, while blaming piracy for not getting money for some work created ages ago.
Does this apply to, say, works of fiction, too? If you were to write the Great Gatsby for our time -- a book that wasn't particularly well received when it first came out but whose appreciation grew over the years -- would you feel you had the right to get paid for it 10 or 20 years later when your book finally starts getting the recognition (and sales) it deserved?
This is exactly it. The most important aspect of science literacy is also the most basic: the method by which it works. Unless you teach HOW science works, how we know what we know and what happens when we make observations that counter what we "know", you've basically failed to separate religion from science. Both science and religion at that point are putting forth assertions, saying "trust us, this is Truth."
Finally, someone who knows what he's talking about here. And before someone brings up the whole "but Amazon charges you to send your docs to your Kindle!" nonsense, you can also send your docs to whatever@free.kindle.com. Amazon will do whatever format conversion they need to, and then e-mail the docs back to you. You can then copy them to your Kindle via USB, and you didn't get charged a red cent.
I'll also mention that I think every aspect of Kindle, which is to say both the device itself as well as the books, are loss-leaders at Amazon. Amazon is the one adjusting the e-book prices such that most popular books can be bought for $9.99 or less, not the publishers. Amazon may very well be losing money on the books, too. But they see it as worthwhile losses because they're not only demonstrating that a market for e-books really exists, but they're also very quickly becoming the heavy in the room.
Just to clarify: You are NOT locked into getting all of your reading material from Amazon. You can basically read ANY non-DRM'ed e-book on Kindle, regardless of where it comes from.
There are probably a hundred thousand DRM-free books that you can get and load to your Kindle, if not more. Sure, a lot of it is public domain but there are publishers like O'Reilly that are putting e-books out there with no DRM. There are also DRM-free e-books you can get from Tor or Baen, some of which are "no cost" free as well.
I've got a Kindle and I can count on one hand the number of books I've actually bought on Amazon.
I don't know, I'm becoming more and more wary about all the personal information Google is acquiring, and this is another area where Google is able to collect and store such information. Gmail, Calendar, Blogger, Desktop and now essentially, Phone Manager. The way things are going, soon Google will will be able to set your alarm clock for you without your direct input. They'll just know what time you need to wake up and voila.
Wasn't Enterprise a syndicated show a la Next Generation? In my area, Enterprise wasn't airing on a Fox affiliate. Whatever schedule changes were made to Enterprise were probably local-station decisions.
Slashdot Mirror
That's it? Come on, we can walk faster than that!
And Amazon also did the right thing by not going taking the typical non-acknowledgment position and instead admitting -- quite publicly -- that they screwed up big. I still have some problems with how Amazon does particular things (read: Kindle DRM), but it's refreshing to see a company fess up in no unequivocal terms when they do something that upsets their customers.
I doubt that Disney will interfere much with Marvel's comics, I just hope they give Marvel's movie-production division as much autonomy.
Yes, "we are the government." The problem is that too many people are too stupid, too disinterested, or some combination therein, to take that role seriously. They'd rather watch the finale of some reality show than watch a meaningful debate. Oftentimes they have only a cursory understanding of the issues, they pay little attention to world events, and then they go to the polls and vote from the perspective that anything that gives them more of [insert entitlement here] or makes them "safer" must be good, damn the price, principles, or attendant loss of freedoms and rights.
A representative democracy is still in my opinion the best form of government for a large society, but it only works when the citizens are informed and engaged.
There are probably multiple errors in the passage above, but it's comparable to what I read online so it's ok... ;)
Actually, I can't spot a single one -- correct usage of its/it's and there/their/they're, commas all in the right places rather than being sprinkled on with a peppershaker, etc. Bonus points for using semicolons and dashes outside of emoticons. (Please forgive the sentence fragment.)
They'll be coming out of the (petrified) woodwork again...
I wonder what this world will be like in fifty years. Will these revolutions help make this a much better place to live? Or will we find a way to fuck it up?
I sometimes think it'll be the latter. Maybe I've been watching too many dystopian movies, but technology, for all its benefits, can also change societies for the worse. Assume that 50 years from now we have the capability to put chips into people's brains. What will governments do with that sort of capability? I can easily see a proposal being introduced that would allow remote brain monitoring of sex offenders, for example. Science and technology will continue their advance and fifty years from now, I think we'll all be less likely to die from cancer, less likely to be mentally debilitated by Alzheimer's, and physically healthier overall, but I think we'll also have less freedom.
Get enough devices out there capable of using some form of DRM, and that DRM will become the defacto standard for ebooks
How many iPods and iPhones are out there? They're capable of some form of DRM, yet the defacto standard for purchased music is now DRM-free. It wasn't always that way, of course, but consumer sentiment forced the retail digital music market to change. Amazon saw that folks just didn't like DRM on their music and recognized an opportunity. So when they started selling MP3, they were DRM free from the beginning. That put pressure on Apple's store and eventually they went DRM-free on music too.
If enough people grumble for long enough, someone will come by and try to tap into that frustration. I'm confident that eventually retail e-books will open up. All you need is one crack in the dam.
No argument on the Sony's PDF and EPUB support, however, just to clarify:
Copying content to the Kindle works exactly the same way. It shows up like a USB drive just like the Sony does.
You can read DRM-free Baen and Fictionwise content on Kindle as well. Essentially all of Fictionwise's multiformat books work on Kindle.
Really, DRM-free is the key here. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but with DRM-free books, it's not just a matter of "I own this collection of bytes and I can move it around as I choose." It's also means a much greater likelihood that you'll be able to find that book in whatever format you want. And if for some reason you can't find it in format X, chances are you can convert it yourself.
I've never been to the UK but over the years I've read no small number of stories coming from across the pond that just leave me shaking my head: the ever-present cameras, the citizen databases, the monitoring and surveillance, etc. How are the good folks in the UK not in the streets about all this? Maybe I'm wrong -- in fact I hope that I am -- but the UK seems to be barreling down the road to Big Brother. To see a Western nation going down this path truly disturbs me.
I actually thought of that scene in Evil Dead 2 where Bruce Campbell's possessed hand starts beating him senseless...
To me it sounds like one of the signs that our society has become a big game of Jenga.
The interesting thing here -- and this comment is partly motivated by your sig -- is that this killing of the domestic satellite spying program is not a liberal action but a conservative one. If you need an example of where real conservatives and today's Republicans differ, here it is. Republicans such as Peter King will say this is "a step back in the war on terror" but a real conservative would say the U.S. government never had any business spying on its citizens in the first place.
By necessity, I discovered and used this software just last night, and the data recovery process was smoother than I had anticipated. At one point when I was copying the salvaged files to a good drive, Windows took exception with one of the files and started barking one of its usual program-terminating error messages. I was afraid that I'd have to have GetDataBack reread the whole drive and start the whole process all over again, but the program was robust enough to avoid crashing. It just moved on to the next file and kept on going. It's not often that I pay for software but this was $80 well spent.
I think Apple is very much interested in going after the e-book market. Sales of e-books are growing very rapidly, and right now Amazon essentially has a stranglehold on the market, at least in the U.S. As a Kindle owner, I welcome Apple bringing some serious competition into this area. Maybe it'll put some pressure on Amazon to open up to the ePub format.
Okay, the book is ten years old. Seeing how the book is in the tech field, the author shouldn't expect to see that much income from it ten years out. There are exceptions, sure, but in general, I get your point. What I'm interested in is the rest of your statement:
isn't this exactly what is the problem with copyright? People sitting on their asses, demanding to get paid, while blaming piracy for not getting money for some work created ages ago.
Does this apply to, say, works of fiction, too? If you were to write the Great Gatsby for our time -- a book that wasn't particularly well received when it first came out but whose appreciation grew over the years -- would you feel you had the right to get paid for it 10 or 20 years later when your book finally starts getting the recognition (and sales) it deserved?
Maybe I'm English and I just don't get him....
When will you know for sure whether you're English?
Seriously, you don't have to be English not to get him. This plain ol' American doesn't get him either -- and finds him irritating as hell too.
When the FAA and NASA know about it...
Please, sir, may I have another (achievement)?
This is exactly it. The most important aspect of science literacy is also the most basic: the method by which it works. Unless you teach HOW science works, how we know what we know and what happens when we make observations that counter what we "know", you've basically failed to separate religion from science. Both science and religion at that point are putting forth assertions, saying "trust us, this is Truth."
Finally, someone who knows what he's talking about here. And before someone brings up the whole "but Amazon charges you to send your docs to your Kindle!" nonsense, you can also send your docs to whatever@free.kindle.com. Amazon will do whatever format conversion they need to, and then e-mail the docs back to you. You can then copy them to your Kindle via USB, and you didn't get charged a red cent.
I'll also mention that I think every aspect of Kindle, which is to say both the device itself as well as the books, are loss-leaders at Amazon. Amazon is the one adjusting the e-book prices such that most popular books can be bought for $9.99 or less, not the publishers. Amazon may very well be losing money on the books, too. But they see it as worthwhile losses because they're not only demonstrating that a market for e-books really exists, but they're also very quickly becoming the heavy in the room.
Just to clarify: You are NOT locked into getting all of your reading material from Amazon. You can basically read ANY non-DRM'ed e-book on Kindle, regardless of where it comes from.
There are probably a hundred thousand DRM-free books that you can get and load to your Kindle, if not more. Sure, a lot of it is public domain but there are publishers like O'Reilly that are putting e-books out there with no DRM. There are also DRM-free e-books you can get from Tor or Baen, some of which are "no cost" free as well.
I've got a Kindle and I can count on one hand the number of books I've actually bought on Amazon.
I don't know, I'm becoming more and more wary about all the personal information Google is acquiring, and this is another area where Google is able to collect and store such information. Gmail, Calendar, Blogger, Desktop and now essentially, Phone Manager. The way things are going, soon Google will will be able to set your alarm clock for you without your direct input. They'll just know what time you need to wake up and voila.
Wasn't Enterprise a syndicated show a la Next Generation? In my area, Enterprise wasn't airing on a Fox affiliate. Whatever schedule changes were made to Enterprise were probably local-station decisions.
Big Bang Theory reference, I presume? One of the few shows I make it a point to watch on a weekly basis.