Still wrong

[altivo]

The "high probability of thunderstorms and heavy rain" failed to materialize. It was sunny most of the day, and very hot and humid.

Finally got a response out of the vendor I'd ordered batteries from. They are on the way, UPS says delivery Thursday. Which, of course is amusing since they are UPS batteries. ;p

New boss and old boss traded places today, so the director's office is now occupied by the new director. Everyone was confused at times, including the cat who is accustomed to sit on the desk in there, but the wrong person was in the chair. They were out a good bit of the time yesterday and today getting signature cards changed at the banks, etc.

No computers misbehaved today, or at least not in my presence. This is unusual. Maybe they were distracted by summer.

Felt a slight temptation to evil on hearing that the Kindle version 2 has been marked down to $189 (which probably means that version 3 is in the wings) largely because a number of books I've wanted to get in electronic format are available on Kindle but not on my eBookwise. Was saved by the thought that this is likely due to Amazon's exclusive marketing contracts, and furthered sobered by thinking of Amazon's past practices with respect to censoring files off users' Kindles after they were legitimately purchased and downloaded. That strengthened my resolve. No Kindle for me.

Comments

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

i still don't understand why e-book readers are so complicated. Requiring the ability to read a special format. Why did they not just make them simple PDF readers or something? The only answer I can come up with is market control. And that, is anti-competitive as far as I am concerned.

[schnee]

and furthered sobered by thinking of Amazon's past practices with respect to censoring files off users' Kindles after they were legitimately purchased and downloaded. That strengthened my resolve. No Kindle for me.

Aye, that's one thing that'd definitely keep me, too.

[schnee]

I think one of the reasons is likely that they're concerned that people would just trade and swap PDF files en masse (kinda like how they do with music etc. now). That's not necessarily an illegitimate concern, either; but the solution is throwing out the baby with the bathwater and impinging on rights you very much DO have, too, such as being able to lend books to friends (or generally do whatever you want with them that doesn't involve copying) — or keeping them even when the vendor disagrees, for that matter.

Perhaps we'll see an industry-standard e-book platform in the long run that addresses these concerns. Alternatively, perhaps vendors will be legally forbidden from impinging upon certain rights. Either way, I myself am gonna keep on buying dead-tree editions until I can get an equal deal with e-books at the very least. ;)

[altivo]

Well, PDF is pretty darned complicated and incredibly bulky itself. Most of the ebook formats I've seen are much more compact. PDF also requires fairly high resolution graphics, where formats such as the one Sony originally used in the 90s and the one used by eBookwise stick to basic text and only use graphics for images (in the case of eBookwise.)

I'd hate for ebooks to be standardized on the PDF format, frankly. It's too cumbersome, too bulky, and too slow. There was a competing format called "Common Ground" but its developer, Hummingbird, didn't have the market clout to shout down Adobe. Common Ground used about 30% of the storage space that PDF requires, and ran much faster.

[altivo]

Amazon's prices are higher for the content, as well. My eBookwise runs 25% or more lower, but unfortunately doesn't offer nearly as many titles. That's because Amazon has used it's tremendous marketing clout to force publishers into licensing their material for Kindle, and in many cases with an exclusivity clause that shuts out other reader devices.

[altivo]

Yes and no. The eBookwise format has a "secure" and a "public" mode. Secure books are those that the publisher won't permit to be released in a copyable or transferable form (usually best sellers and mainstream titles) while public books are shareable in various ways.

Market control is the name of the game, though. It's not just Amazon there, but the publishers themselves. And you're right, they fear what happened with music. Putting a 400 page hardbound book through a copier or scanner is painful enough to inhibit that kind of sharing a lot more, but an open format digital book would be easily distributed through illicit channels.

[schnee]

Putting a 400 page hardbound book through a copier or scanner is painful enough to inhibit that kind of sharing a lot more, but an open format digital book would be easily distributed through illicit channels.

Aye, exactly. It's not as if dead-tree editions can't be copied, but it takes some effort and isn't easily done — and you don't even end up with a real copy of the original product.

[schnee]

PDF also requires fairly high resolution graphics, where formats such as the one Sony originally used in the 90s and the one used by eBookwise stick to basic text and only use graphics for images (in the case of eBookwise.)

Actually, PDF doesn't require text to be present as images, either, does it? It doesn't keep you from doing that, and some people do, alas, but it's not a requirement, and PDFs can be quite lean.

But I know you hate PDFs, so I'm not gonna argue about this. ;)