Give wish you could rate the parent a 6, he nailed the whole thing. Apple really does not care about the people who see this as an issue. This device is not aimed at the hacker niche, it is aimed at the rest of the planet.
The app store is great and combined with the touch and iPhone has completely changed the face of mobile media and gaming. This is the next step in that chain. Why no flash? It is an archaic and pointless waste of resources that adds absolutely nothing to the end user experience.
How do you know they HAD to get sued. I did not see anything in the article indicating anyone even asked for the functionality. I agree it is probablly something they should have thought of prior to making a move into the public Universities, but even in the schools it is still a pilot program which was designed to uncover these types of issues. Why these organizations could not simply say "Hey this feature is needed to make this usable by blind students and more suited for the Universities" Instead they OMG get the DOJ sue the schools..
Absolutely. I am not sure why they did not simply ask Amazon to add it to the menus. There was not an immediate threat to any particular students accessibility to class content.
They are rightly applying pressure to publishers who disabled text-to-speech, which will probably ultimately be good for all of us.
Ack. Look ma someone else who can't read the article but is still able to post. Kindle supports text-to-speech only disabled when a publisher disables it for a specific piece of content. Issue is no audio in menus, Amazon is currently fixing. Stop blamey Amazon - you go blamey publisher is text-to-speech disabley. Please read the article prior to any additional responses.
I am getting worn down but seriously people Kindle/Amazon have not sabotaged anything. Text to speech still works on the kindle, publishers are able to disable it if they wish. Some chose not to, feel free to be angry at them. What Amazon can and is doing is enabling audio prompts in the menus. (Anyone who actually read the article knows all this).
At lot of people who made the DRM observation, you are the first one who seems to understand that it is not Amazon but the publishers behind it. If the Universities said we will only use text books available in format X,Y and Z than textbooks would be available in those formats. The trick is, if all of those formats support some form of DRM, it would only take a handful of Universities to drive the change, if however they want a DRM free format, it would take the overwhelming majority of universities to drive the change.
There is a lot that has to be down to make it work right without degrading performance, it is not just reading the menus, it has to tell you where you have the cursor, allow you to start navigating before it completely reads the menu. Companies that make actual consumer electronic devices that people will use and like tend to do a little usability testing on updates before shoving them out the door.
Text to speech is not disabled in the Kindle. It is an option to disable in content which is controlled by the publishers. Most Kindle books seem to allow it still. The issue in this case (That Amazon is correcting) is that the menus are not accessible by the blind.
It reads fine the Kindle does a good job of reflowing text. While you obviously have to click the page turn button more often, it is still a better solution than a 40lb copy of a 1 lb novel.
WOw it just continues. #1. On the Kindle a legally but not completely blind person could just put the text in the largest format which would take them all of 4 seconds and they would be all set forever. (Seems a little easier than your book dissemble, reproduction and reassembly procedure. #2. The Kindle supports and Amazon sells completely open formats for content. The drm enabled Kindle format is an option for publishers who are free to publish books in any format they wish.
Again. Kindle does not own content. Content is owned by publishers and Amazon does not prevent them from publishing their content in absolutely any format they want. The can sell their books on Kindle and publish it as bridge grafitti for all Amazon. The publish in the open Mobi format and still sell it in the Amazon store. If you know nothing at all about how the Kindle, buying books on the Kindle, or publishing on the Kindle works, please stop making these stupid anti-Amazon-closed-system-posts. They are irritating, like most ignorant people acting like experts are.
There is nothing about a book being available on Kindle that prevents them from being created in braille. It might require professors to reference Kindle locations and page numbers, but I believe braille pagination is different anyway, Amazon has already said they plan to add audio navigation in an upcoming patch, which was the point of this whole exercise anyway.
Of course publishers are free to allow their content on any Ebook reader they want, with very little or no effort. If univeristies said we will only use text books that support ebook formats x and y, all text book publishers would produce books in those formats. Amazon does not own content nor do they restrict publishers to only producing books in the kindle format, nor does the kindle only support Amazon's proprietary format.
Behind the Kindle file is text that is easily converted to absolutely any format at all the PUBLISHER wishes. If the PUBLISHER wishers to only allow his book to be available on the kindle that has nothing to do with a close system created by Amazon (which also supports most open formats including buying mobi books from the Kindle store). Kindle supports a closed format that attempts to allow publishers better control over the distribution of their copyrighted material. The Kindle is not a closed system, at least not in the sense you are implying. (It is closed in the sense that it is not open source, but that is entirely irrelevant to tis discussion).
I would loved to see some documented sources on this. What google service were you suspended from? The only two services I am aware of them ever suspending anyone from are Adsense and Adwords and they usually have pretty good reasons. I suppose if you were using their mail servers to pump out spam they might shutdown your gmail account.
Apple tends not to rush features in for features sake. It is why iPhone users are infinitely more likely to actually use their web browsers. Apple also had to make sure it would work well in their SDK and it is available across all APPS. The iPhone was the first of its kind, there were no phones with a similar interface when it came out. The first phone like the iPhone that had cut and paste was that clunky blackberry touchscreen toy that came out and no one really liked.
Slashdot Mirror
Users are ok with it. Blowhards aren't..
Here is another parent that needs to be modded up to 6
Give wish you could rate the parent a 6, he nailed the whole thing. Apple really does not care about the people who see this as an issue. This device is not aimed at the hacker niche, it is aimed at the rest of the planet.
The app store is great and combined with the touch and iPhone has completely changed the face of mobile media and gaming. This is the next step in that chain. Why no flash? It is an archaic and pointless waste of resources that adds absolutely nothing to the end user experience.
Absolutes and ignorance are not a good mix. There are plenty of iPhone and Wii games that make very effective use of accelerometers.
Of course the issue is the content, not the Kindle and publishers are free to provide content in any format they see fit or their Universities demand.
How do you know they HAD to get sued. I did not see anything in the article indicating anyone even asked for the functionality. I agree it is probablly something they should have thought of prior to making a move into the public Universities, but even in the schools it is still a pilot program which was designed to uncover these types of issues. Why these organizations could not simply say "Hey this feature is needed to make this usable by blind students and more suited for the Universities" Instead they OMG get the DOJ sue the schools..
Absolutely. I am not sure why they did not simply ask Amazon to add it to the menus. There was not an immediate threat to any particular students accessibility to class content.
They are rightly applying pressure to publishers who disabled text-to-speech, which will probably ultimately be good for all of us.
Ack. Look ma someone else who can't read the article but is still able to post. Kindle supports text-to-speech only disabled when a publisher disables it for a specific piece of content. Issue is no audio in menus, Amazon is currently fixing. Stop blamey Amazon - you go blamey publisher is text-to-speech disabley. Please read the article prior to any additional responses.
I am getting worn down but seriously people Kindle/Amazon have not sabotaged anything. Text to speech still works on the kindle, publishers are able to disable it if they wish. Some chose not to, feel free to be angry at them. What Amazon can and is doing is enabling audio prompts in the menus. (Anyone who actually read the article knows all this).
Publishers are the ones who add content to the Kindle store and are free to add their DRM or non-DRM versions. It is not Amazon deciding anything.
Amazon does not turn it off, individual publishers do. Amazon needs to add an audio menu navigation system.
At lot of people who made the DRM observation, you are the first one who seems to understand that it is not Amazon but the publishers behind it. If the Universities said we will only use text books available in format X,Y and Z than textbooks would be available in those formats. The trick is, if all of those formats support some form of DRM, it would only take a handful of Universities to drive the change, if however they want a DRM free format, it would take the overwhelming majority of universities to drive the change.
If you read the article, you would know they are. The real question is why go to court instead of simply asking...
There is a lot that has to be down to make it work right without degrading performance, it is not just reading the menus, it has to tell you where you have the cursor, allow you to start navigating before it completely reads the menu. Companies that make actual consumer electronic devices that people will use and like tend to do a little usability testing on updates before shoving them out the door.
Text to speech is not disabled in the Kindle. It is an option to disable in content which is controlled by the publishers. Most Kindle books seem to allow it still. The issue in this case (That Amazon is correcting) is that the menus are not accessible by the blind.
The good news out of this is after Amazon fixes the interface, they will sue any publishers who do not allow their content to use text-speech.
It reads fine the Kindle does a good job of reflowing text. While you obviously have to click the page turn button more often, it is still a better solution than a 40lb copy of a 1 lb novel.
WOw it just continues. #1. On the Kindle a legally but not completely blind person could just put the text in the largest format which would take them all of 4 seconds and they would be all set forever. (Seems a little easier than your book dissemble, reproduction and reassembly procedure. #2. The Kindle supports and Amazon sells completely open formats for content. The drm enabled Kindle format is an option for publishers who are free to publish books in any format they wish.
Again. Kindle does not own content. Content is owned by publishers and Amazon does not prevent them from publishing their content in absolutely any format they want. The can sell their books on Kindle and publish it as bridge grafitti for all Amazon. The publish in the open Mobi format and still sell it in the Amazon store. If you know nothing at all about how the Kindle, buying books on the Kindle, or publishing on the Kindle works, please stop making these stupid anti-Amazon-closed-system-posts. They are irritating, like most ignorant people acting like experts are.
There is nothing about a book being available on Kindle that prevents them from being created in braille. It might require professors to reference Kindle locations and page numbers, but I believe braille pagination is different anyway, Amazon has already said they plan to add audio navigation in an upcoming patch, which was the point of this whole exercise anyway.
Of course publishers are free to allow their content on any Ebook reader they want, with very little or no effort. If univeristies said we will only use text books that support ebook formats x and y, all text book publishers would produce books in those formats. Amazon does not own content nor do they restrict publishers to only producing books in the kindle format, nor does the kindle only support Amazon's proprietary format.
Behind the Kindle file is text that is easily converted to absolutely any format at all the PUBLISHER wishes. If the PUBLISHER wishers to only allow his book to be available on the kindle that has nothing to do with a close system created by Amazon (which also supports most open formats including buying mobi books from the Kindle store). Kindle supports a closed format that attempts to allow publishers better control over the distribution of their copyrighted material. The Kindle is not a closed system, at least not in the sense you are implying. (It is closed in the sense that it is not open source, but that is entirely irrelevant to tis discussion).
I would loved to see some documented sources on this. What google service were you suspended from? The only two services I am aware of them ever suspending anyone from are Adsense and Adwords and they usually have pretty good reasons. I suppose if you were using their mail servers to pump out spam they might shutdown your gmail account.
Apple tends not to rush features in for features sake. It is why iPhone users are infinitely more likely to actually use their web browsers. Apple also had to make sure it would work well in their SDK and it is available across all APPS. The iPhone was the first of its kind, there were no phones with a similar interface when it came out. The first phone like the iPhone that had cut and paste was that clunky blackberry touchscreen toy that came out and no one really liked.
And not a single article suggesting Jobs should win anything..