
New Kindle Leaves Rivals Farther Behind - Setsuna
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/technology/personaltech/26pogue.html?_r=1&ref=technology
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cullenking
I really want to like ebooks, I really do, however I can't stand the thought
of purchasing a device that assumes I am a thief. It's the digital equivalent
of employees standing at the door of a store, checking bags and receipts.
Except worse. The fact that I can't share books is terrible, I wouldn't be
able to read books in open formats even more so.

The kindle is definitely the nicest reader, however it seems to Sony reader is
the most open.

~~~
callahad
This is only an issue if you're buying e-books from Amazon. There are plenty
of wonderful texts available in the public domain, already formatted for the
Kindle [0,1], and plenty of other options for public domain texts in other
supported formats [2,3].

But regardless, the Kindle natively supports PDF, HTML, and plain text, and
should you want to, Amazon provides a tool to convert those and other formats
(including ePub) to the Kindle's proprietary mobipocket-derived format. They
even provide Linux binaries [4].

Don't want to deal with conversions and manually managing your library? Just
use Calibre [5]; it's open source.

And that's exactly why I placed my order: I'm not willing to accept Amazon's
DRM, which will force me to read older works to get value out of the device. A
goal I've had since reading a quote dubiously attributed to Einstein:
"Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors
looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is
completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he
never gets to see or hear anything else."

[0]: <http://manybooks.net/>

[1]: <http://www.feedbooks.com/>

[2]: <http://classics.mit.edu/>

[3]: <http://www.gutenberg.org/>

[4]:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000234621)

[5]: <http://calibre-ebook.com/>

~~~
acqq
The quote is not so dubiously attributed, here's how it appears in his "Ideas
and Opinions" 1954, Crown Publishers:

"ON CLASSIC LITERATURE Written for the Jungkaufmann, a monthly publication of
the Schweizerischer Kaufmaennischer Verein, Jugendbund, February 29, 1952.

Somebody who reads only newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors
looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is
completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he
never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own
without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is
even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.

There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with
good taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work belongs
among the most precious possessions of mankind. We owe it to a few writers of
antiquity that the people in the Middle Ages could slowly extricate themselves
from the superstitions and ignorance that had darkened life for more than half
a millennium. Nothing is more needed to overcome the modernist's
snobbishness."

~~~
callahad
Thank you! I had only done a bit of cursory Googling, but I kept coming up
with blogs and other sites that provided rather limited attribution.

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tptacek
_Sadly, lots of them are now $13, up from the flat $10 that Amazon used to
charge for all best sellers. Those prices seem high. The fact that e-books
involve no printing, binding, shipping, distributing or taking back and
shredding unsold copies ought to save you something. And it’s outrageous that
you can’t sell or even give away an e-book when you’re finished with it. You
paid for it; why shouldn’t you be allowed to pass it on? (End of rant.)_

Argh. This isn't how pricing works. If it was, Photoshop would cost 40 cents.

$13... for a _book_! Egads!

~~~
Supermighty
It will be this way until some upstart disrupts the industry taking a smaller
cut for routing authors directly to customers side stepping the old publishing
houses.

~~~
tptacek
I'll be happy to hear that authors are getting (say) 80% of the $15 that books
end up costing, but that doesn't change the fact that book pricing has nothing
whatsoever to do with materials and binding and whatnot.

~~~
Supermighty
I would love to hear that too. The sad fact is that author's are getting even
less for ebooks while the publisher is getting more.

[http://www.daemonsbooks.com/2010/08/09/ebook-vs-regular-
book...](http://www.daemonsbooks.com/2010/08/09/ebook-vs-regular-book-
pricing/)

~~~
tptacek
I'm on board with this, but that doesn't change anything about book pricing;
this is an orthogonal concern.

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moultano
The music industry lost 10 years believing that DRM works and it may never
recover. Now the publishing industry is looking to do the same . . .

Software is the only medium in which DRM has any hope of succeeding long-term,
and that's only because it typically _needs_ to be managed as a service. Video
can tolerate it for now because the file sizes are too large to conveniently
separate from the physical media, but that won't be true for long.

~~~
ja27
For most people, DRM doesn't bother them at all until stuff stops working.

So far, DVDs pretty much play in every DVD player. (If less PC makers would
ship Windows without third party DVD software, more people would care.)

Music was closest to having real DRM problems, but almost every non-hacker I
know is perfectly fine with Apple's DRM because they only listen to music in
iTunes or on an iPod. If other devices ever really became popular, non-DRM
music might finally become essential to the average person.

So as long as the average person only uses the Kindle (or Nook or Sony) and
never tries to port their DRMed ebooks to a new, incompatible device, they
won't feel the pain of DRM. But first we need average people to start using
ereaders for a while, which I think is close to happening.

~~~
jcurbo
Music on iTunes no longer has DRM.

------
motters
I am a fan of books, but I'll only get an ebook reader if:

a) I can be confident that books purchased will still be readable in ten
years.

b) That I can still do all of the usual things I do with books, like lending
and moving them from one platform (shelf) to another.

c) That at no time there is even the possibility of books being remotely
deleted from my device without my permission.

d) That ebooks I purchased are owned by me, not rented or temporarily
borrowed.

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minouye
Also of note, Kindle's will be available at all Staples locations this fall.
There goes the Nook advantage of being able to try before you buy.

<http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/08/31/staples-kindle/>

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turnersauce
I don't find the Nook's touch screen to be "balky" at all, at least in
comparison to any touchscreen phone. In fact, I think that the use of a
touchscreen instead of a hardware keyboard opens the door for a lot more
design flexibility.

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DougBTX
_The Kindle 3 is ingeniously designed to be everything the iPad will never be:
small, light and inexpensive._

I'd hold my breath on that one, at least until Thursday. Having said that, my
Kindle is ordered and on it's way.

~~~
sliverstorm
I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Based off pictures, it's a good deal
smaller and by conjecture lighter than the Kindle 2, which is really quite
small and light already. So much so I'm having a hard time saying "no" to one.

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listic
What is the physical keyboard good for?

I understand the need for keyboard on smartphones where you might want to
browse, type text, ssh or whatever... But what's its purpose on a reader?

UPDATE: Thanks for quick response. I really haven't thought of this, these
uses make the device better than I thought. I really wish Amazon will start
selling these devices here in Russia (and in 100+ other countries as well) so
I can wholeheartedly recommend it. Meanwhile, the local market is owned by
Chinese knock-offs sold for $300, while Amazon, Barnes&Noble and Sony don't
seem to be interested.

~~~
kalid
I use it to write quick notes/thoughts inside the book as I'm reading -- new
ideas, questions I have, follow-ups, etc (amazon stores the location of the
note). It's much slower than pencil, but the benefit is that it's synced to
the cloud, and you can actually _find_ your notes afterwards (how often do you
go through the margins of old books?).

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richchan
Has any one heard anything about the Kindle Development Kit? Looks like they
are still in private beta.

I wonder if there will be Kindle apps (and app store??) coming any time soon.

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georgecmu
The article doesn't mention that every book available for Kindle is also
available on the iPad with the Amazon's Kindle App.

~~~
tptacek
Yes it does.

