I’d love a Kindle if it wasn’t a hideously locked-down proprietary money funnel. I’m waiting for something with an eInk screen that just opens documents if I put them on it, in whatever format. I’ve wanted something like that to read PDFs with approximately forever.
I already don’t read my paper books. I’d rather download a PDF than read the book that’s on the shelf just over there. This appears to be unusual amongst my friends.
The Kindle 3G has native PDF support. It also supports .mobi ebooks from any non-DRM’d source. (And most other formats can be converted to .mobi using a program like Calibre.)
I got my hands on a Kindle a year back, and it just opened PDFs and text documents I put on it using it as an USB drive. Amazon even provided an app for rolling your own Kindle-format ebooks from hypertext files, which you could again just plop on the Kindle over USB.
My main problem was that the regular Kindle was too small for viewing technical article PDFs full screen. I can already use my smartphone for reading stuff that’s easily reflowable, like most fiction. The Kindle DX should be better for this, but I haven’t had a chance to try that.
There are other e-readers that have far less stringent requirements for getting books. The Nook and Kobo are an example (as are the Sony E-Readers). I have a Nook and have yet to purchase any books from the Barnes and Noble store. I constantly put DRM free books from Project Gutenberg on it and just placed the Less Wrong sequences on it as well. There are also FLOSS programs for editing PDFs to make them easier to read on an e-reader. A little research goes a long way!
I use my thinkpad tablet—my main computer—for reading anything I can manage to get in .pdf, but I do really envy the Kindle screen. And battery life. I keep checking back to the PixelQi site hopefully...
I read paper books because 1) I can get them really cheap used (cheaper than the library fines I always get from borrowing them...), 2) they require no batteries, 3) dropping them or stepping on them will not damage them irreparably, and 4) they are not likely to attract unwelcome attention on the buses through the rougher parts of town.
keep checking back to the PixelQi site hopefully...
The first batch of Notion Ink Adam tablets have shipped, they have a PixelQi screen and run Android. Can’t yet buy one unless you caught the pre-order, but to me that means they’ve moved out of ‘vapourware’.
If you know that your dislike of paper is weird, you shouldn’t be giving general advice about it. (you said we should throw out books)
Your dislike of the Kindle sounds like status quo bias to me. Maybe the proprietary format means that the books will only last a few years, but is that so bad? In return, you get a searchable format and no physical clutter. And if you switch to another format and lose everything, you’re purged of electronic clutter!
Yes, you should definitely throw out your books. For everyone else it was obvious hyperbole for literary effect, but for you I mean it literally. What on earth?
Yes, that is so bad. I’m not paying paper prices for bits that evaporate, and I’m not giving Amazon a hundred quid’s encouragement to pull that sort of stunt. That’s an even more direct incentive to piracy than trying to watch a commercial DVD. In return, I get a searchable format and no physical clutter!
Although purging my life of digital clutter is actually an attractive idea. Hence the notion of “inbox zero”. Like not really appreciating minimalism until you’ve been subjected to horrible aesthetic noise for a long time.
That’s an even more direct incentive to piracy than trying to watch a commercial DVD.
I liked that cartoon, but it’s not completely accurate. I can skip over all of those things on my computer with software DVD players, whether the DVD was commercially authorized or not. This is a problem with some DVD players, not really a “piracy” issue.
Enforcement in software players is lax for whatever reason, but makers of DVD players need to agree to honor the Prohibited User Operations flags in order to get a patent license to use the DVD video format. So the general point stands that if you’re skipping previews, someone is either in breach of contract or breaking the law.
I don’t like PDFs because Word Documents can be sent to your Kindle, which makes them more convenient for me. Edit: Apparently, this isn’t so. Never mind then!
One other comment: I like being able to annotate things, or copy/paste parts of things, and I know more about how to do that in Word or with a Kindle.
In case you are wondering why people have downvoted you, it’s because you have bastardized the computing usage of ‘portable’ almost beyond recognition. Word documents are one of the classic examples of unportable file formats—formats locked into Microsoft software, which are portable neither over time nor computing platforms.
Although it might also just be because you are apparently wrong when you say you can’t email a PDF to your Kindle like you can your Word documents.
(Even the XML MS format is pretty terrible, as groups like Groklaw analyzed back when MS first began pretending it was a real alternative to OOXML.)
Thank you for explaining that! I didn’t realize “portable” had a technical meaning; I was reffering to how I can carry them around on a Kindle. I’ve edited the grandparent.
Books can be valuable even if you never read them again, in several ways. If you have kids, you never know what they might read, or just what attitudes they might pick up from the presence of books. If your books are in a public part of your house, guests may see them and either start a conversation or be impressed. If they are behind where the guests sit, you may see a book a guest will like and give it to them. Also, of course, there’s the potential for bathroom reading, a page of an old favorite.
That said, when you’re moving house, you should be more ruthless than usual with books.
Oh boy. I also have books I do not agree with at all. And a hole section on my shelf for »stupid s*it«. It can be weird if your books lead people to form mistaken opinions about you.
Better yet, get a Kindle.
I’d love a Kindle if it wasn’t a hideously locked-down proprietary money funnel. I’m waiting for something with an eInk screen that just opens documents if I put them on it, in whatever format. I’ve wanted something like that to read PDFs with approximately forever.
I already don’t read my paper books. I’d rather download a PDF than read the book that’s on the shelf just over there. This appears to be unusual amongst my friends.
The Kindle 3G has native PDF support. It also supports .mobi ebooks from any non-DRM’d source. (And most other formats can be converted to .mobi using a program like Calibre.)
I got my hands on a Kindle a year back, and it just opened PDFs and text documents I put on it using it as an USB drive. Amazon even provided an app for rolling your own Kindle-format ebooks from hypertext files, which you could again just plop on the Kindle over USB.
My main problem was that the regular Kindle was too small for viewing technical article PDFs full screen. I can already use my smartphone for reading stuff that’s easily reflowable, like most fiction. The Kindle DX should be better for this, but I haven’t had a chance to try that.
There are other e-readers that have far less stringent requirements for getting books. The Nook and Kobo are an example (as are the Sony E-Readers). I have a Nook and have yet to purchase any books from the Barnes and Noble store. I constantly put DRM free books from Project Gutenberg on it and just placed the Less Wrong sequences on it as well. There are also FLOSS programs for editing PDFs to make them easier to read on an e-reader. A little research goes a long way!
I use my thinkpad tablet—my main computer—for reading anything I can manage to get in .pdf, but I do really envy the Kindle screen. And battery life. I keep checking back to the PixelQi site hopefully...
I read paper books because 1) I can get them really cheap used (cheaper than the library fines I always get from borrowing them...), 2) they require no batteries, 3) dropping them or stepping on them will not damage them irreparably, and 4) they are not likely to attract unwelcome attention on the buses through the rougher parts of town.
The first batch of Notion Ink Adam tablets have shipped, they have a PixelQi screen and run Android. Can’t yet buy one unless you caught the pre-order, but to me that means they’ve moved out of ‘vapourware’.
If you know that your dislike of paper is weird, you shouldn’t be giving general advice about it. (you said we should throw out books)
Your dislike of the Kindle sounds like status quo bias to me. Maybe the proprietary format means that the books will only last a few years, but is that so bad? In return, you get a searchable format and no physical clutter. And if you switch to another format and lose everything, you’re purged of electronic clutter!
Yes, you should definitely throw out your books. For everyone else it was obvious hyperbole for literary effect, but for you I mean it literally. What on earth?
Yes, that is so bad. I’m not paying paper prices for bits that evaporate, and I’m not giving Amazon a hundred quid’s encouragement to pull that sort of stunt. That’s an even more direct incentive to piracy than trying to watch a commercial DVD. In return, I get a searchable format and no physical clutter!
Although purging my life of digital clutter is actually an attractive idea. Hence the notion of “inbox zero”. Like not really appreciating minimalism until you’ve been subjected to horrible aesthetic noise for a long time.
I liked that cartoon, but it’s not completely accurate. I can skip over all of those things on my computer with software DVD players, whether the DVD was commercially authorized or not. This is a problem with some DVD players, not really a “piracy” issue.
Enforcement in software players is lax for whatever reason, but makers of DVD players need to agree to honor the Prohibited User Operations flags in order to get a patent license to use the DVD video format. So the general point stands that if you’re skipping previews, someone is either in breach of contract or breaking the law.
and DJVUs. So there isn’t anything like this yet. Thanks for saving me some research time.
I don’t like PDFs because Word Documents can be sent to your Kindle, which makes them more convenient for me. Edit: Apparently, this isn’t so. Never mind then!
One other comment: I like being able to annotate things, or copy/paste parts of things, and I know more about how to do that in Word or with a Kindle.
In case you are wondering why people have downvoted you, it’s because you have bastardized the computing usage of ‘portable’ almost beyond recognition. Word documents are one of the classic examples of unportable file formats—formats locked into Microsoft software, which are portable neither over time nor computing platforms.
Although it might also just be because you are apparently wrong when you say you can’t email a PDF to your Kindle like you can your Word documents.
(Even the XML MS format is pretty terrible, as groups like Groklaw analyzed back when MS first began pretending it was a real alternative to OOXML.)
I approve of explaining heavily-downvoted posts (FSVO ‘heavily’). Thank you on behalf of LessWrong!
Thank you for explaining that! I didn’t realize “portable” had a technical meaning; I was reffering to how I can carry them around on a Kindle. I’ve edited the grandparent.
You may find these links helpful for understanding what people expect ‘portable’ to mean in a computer context:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_portability
http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/portabilitychapter.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_format
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataPortability
Aaaaand also upvoting this for related reasons.
Books can be valuable even if you never read them again, in several ways. If you have kids, you never know what they might read, or just what attitudes they might pick up from the presence of books. If your books are in a public part of your house, guests may see them and either start a conversation or be impressed. If they are behind where the guests sit, you may see a book a guest will like and give it to them. Also, of course, there’s the potential for bathroom reading, a page of an old favorite.
That said, when you’re moving house, you should be more ruthless than usual with books.
Oh boy. I also have books I do not agree with at all. And a hole section on my shelf for »stupid s*it«. It can be weird if your books lead people to form mistaken opinions about you.
I own more books than would fit on a kindle.
Also I really like them and don’t want to get rid of them… but that’s a totally different pathology ;)