Mupdate - It is not yet Friday...but close!

[weaktwos]

Today I logged in my 150th visit to the gym at work. I will be reimbursed for my entire year of gym fees! This pleases me greatly. Sure, It's not like I'm going to be able to quit work and bang on me drum all day because of this, but it gives me some satisfaction.

I heard the author of this book interviewed today. I am very interested in reading it.

I'm sure there are countless books on DaVinci, but his accomplishments never cease to dazzle me.

My lust for the Amazon Kindle has increased. I don't really want to buy new books until I know where my mind is on the Kindle. So I won't be buying The Science of Leonardo just yet. And it appears people do have some success with pdf files. As well as word documents and .JPG and .GIF Files. My resolve is weakening. The good news is they are sold out. So gratification cannot be instant. Maybe, like a bad rash, my craving for this object will subside and I'll get over it.

Maybe not.

I was watching the second episode of season 1 of BSG and came upon the scene where we see Admiral Adama's book collection. Now that we have at least two ebook devices on the market that are easy on the eyes, I was amused that he still lugged around big ol' books. I can understand. Book are a pleasure to hold and to read...sometimes. Of course, in the BSG world, the value of those books jumped to huge proportions, since likely all written matter was blown up real good. Except anything that stayed around on Earth. Which they have yet to find.

Comments

[mehitabelmmoss.livejournal.com]

Other people I know have looked at the Kindle and said "No way!". You can ONLY read your books on the Kindle, cannot share or lend. So not only do you lose the joy of paper, but it's worse than iTunes, where you can at least rip your tunes to a CD. You'd be beholden forever to Amazon. Very scary.

[weaktwos.livejournal.com]

Actually, you're not beholden to Amazon. People are downloading ebooks from other sources as well. And I think the trend in the industry is towards drm free. Now that Walmart is pressing for drm free music...wow. The walls should come down on that soon.

Now, yes, you lose the ability to share. However, sharing costs more. You can acquire ebooks elsewhere for free or new releases for 10 bucks instead of $26.

The joy of paper and sharing is for the Library. ;-)

Furthermore, give the hacking community some time. I'm sure they'll figure out a way to break the drm. ;-)

[darness.livejournal.com]

I, too, am equally intrigued by the Kindle. I am a lover of words and ideas, but I'm not tied to a paper page by any stretch. I did hear one potential downside but figured I needed to look into it a bit more - something about the "always on" connectivity that made it hard for folks to use on an airplane. But my guess would be it would have to have some way to turn off the wireless without turning the whole device off, just like BlackBerrys and such.

You should get one so you can report back to the rest of us on the Kindle :)

[weaktwos.livejournal.com]

Oh don't worry. It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine. Just not before Christmas. :-)

The more I read, the more I like about it. However, it is considered an electronic device. So, until the airport staff learns not to stress out about you turning off the device, I think they will bust you on putting it away during takeoff. I imagine this is a logistics issue for the flight staff, because they aren't trained on every wireless device and knowing when the wireless is turned off.

But I'm okay with that grey area on the Kindle. A)When on a plane I'll use the device until they tell me to shut it off. B)I can take a 5-15 minute power nap until we're safely in the air. I like to shut my eyes at some point on the plane, so that's no big deal.

I'm not concerned about the DRM. People gripe about not being able to share books, but it's hard. We don't often share books with friends by photocopying the pages of the book and giving them a copy. We actually give them the book. Who wants to radiate their reproductive organs by standing in front of the copier for that long? But in the electronic world, we're hooked on this notion of copying our cds because it's so easy. Well, because it's so easy it shouldn't mean we should be able to do it.

Now, if we were able to actually transfer the license over easily, such that no more than one person at a time can read that copy, I think we will have indemnified the Book industry. The good news about ebooks is that new e-copies are 30-40% cheaper than hard copies. I think that compensates for the lack of flexibility of being unable to share books without forking over your entire Kindle.

The feedback I do agree on, that I've heard, is that you can't use the Amazon Store to buy books for others via your kindle wireless access. I think it would be a good convenient solution to let kindle owners buy gift ebooks for Kindle -owning friends. Or just gift shop for others.

However, that's not a deal breaker for me. After all, this Kindle would be mostly about me and getting my e-read on. :-)