Kindle

[ciphergoth]

The Future of Reading - the dystopian side of Amazon's new Kindle described in quotes

ETA unrelated very strange short movie - recommended

ETA unrelated How much of your favourite show is left before they run out of script?

Comments

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I hate my local town - I always click on those links thinking it will be about there!

[figg.livejournal.com]

the dive into mark article is excellent.

[lovelybug.livejournal.com]

Those quotes are very good.

[djm4]

The future of reading is ... interesting. I'm not sure I agree with the people who claim that books don't have any form of DRM. In many ways, they have a highly restrictive form of DRM, in that it is very hard to do anyhting but pass the book on, in one block, at which point you no longer have access to it. It's like a from of DRM in which you can securely transfer licenses.

I realise that this is nothing like the Kindle as proposed, but I feel that some of the comments over-romanticise the 'freely-sharable' nature of books.

[topbit.livejournal.com]

I saw the "Dive into Mark" post earlier, when I was doing my own RSS feed round-up. Nothing very new in terms of Ebook DRM (the quotes from RMS are literally more than ten years old now), but interesting to see Bezos having to go back on his own reasons for the usefulness and openness of ink on paper, when it becomes bytes on disk.

Regarding the Kindle, as others have said, if the device was < £50, I'd probably buy one today - though I have little need for wireless updates - just being able to read in bed without having to hold up a 1000 page paperback of Cryptonomicon would be useful enough :-)

As for 'before they run out of script', as someone for whom a large part of my entertainment from the net a day or two after the Americans see it, it's unfortunate they will likely be delayed or halted prematurely - because so will my evening entertainments. The Daily Show writers did put it well though, and it's hard not to agree with them as to the fact they are getting a bad deal.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

The Kindle exemplifies just about everything I don't like about DRM and intrusive net services. Would this even be legal in the UK, under the EU privacy directive and the Data Protection Act?

(Disclaimer: I have a Sony PRS-505 ebook reader. It's their 3rd gen model and they've been spanked hard by the market, so it supports RTF and PDF files, it can open files off an SD card, and Sony have refrained from arbitrarily dicking around with their file format to break the open source LIBPRS500 project, a la Apple. In other words, it's Sony, but being less brain-deadeningly evil than is usual these days -- and the hardware's lovely.)

[adjectivemarcus.livejournal.com]

That's a great little film!

[skibbley.livejournal.com]

Reading books, not Reading the town. OK.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

That is a greatly disturbing film...

[strangerover.livejournal.com]

I initially mis-read the first line of your post as some sort of pre-apocalyptic portent of doom regarding a large town in the south of England...

[adjectivegail]

Hang on a minute. You buy ebooks from Amazon on Kindle and you can't lend out or resell or anything them after you've finished?

Not even on Amazon Marketplace?

.....

[henry_the_cow]

Re the TV shows: you mean they really are making it up as they go along? That would explain why they're all so crap.

Re DRM: I presume you are allowed to lend or give the Kindle itself, so some of Stallman's analogies don't apply.

The Kindle's monitoring may seem extreme but it's clearly based on current retail web sites, which give you no ability to opt out of tracking and monitoring you. This is a broader issue than just e-books.

Conversely, I don't see how the DRM question will ever go away. People want to enforce their legal rights and the only way that can be done is with a trusted hardware platform. Although I don't see why anyone would make a device that couldn't also display public domain material.

TV

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

I am devastated that 24 Season 7 has been affected, and I don't know when I will be able to bittorrent it.

(It seems curious that a writers strike happens on this scale, but I guess it results from having the AMPTP representing lots of companies; imagine the effects of a large scale geek strike...)