Amazon quietly removed George Orwell's 1984 from its Kindle e-book readers due to a copyright fraud thing going on there.
Wireless network.
Whispernet.
Schwing, deleted the books from people's devices and refunded the money they paid.
And that proves ... something!
You should always buy your books in pop-up form. Free from the doings of Whispernet.
io9 via Small Dead Animals.
64 comments:
Probably legal and all that--but still...
creepy.
So, when's the pop-up version due out?
Baen only sells its own books, of course, but they sell them in such a way that you can download them onto your computer or devices (I have my purchases on my computer and then put them on my Nook), DRM free and if you save the files onto other media they aren't going to be able to touch it.
I suppose this might be the difference between regular publishers and a publisher that is exclusively publishing science fiction. Who is going to understand technology and the future better?
Publishers of books or music seem to have approached electronic formats with the first thing in their heads being maintaining control. It's all about control.
I was talking about digital photos with someone only the other day.
We take more pictures than ever but a hundred years from now? Color photos are about just as bad. The ones from our childhoods are already faded and fading away.
So... what DBQ said.
It was hilarious to me when I though about it at another post. the idea of fitting the bible in a kindle.
First I thought it something sexual but maybe its not.
Now that i'm remembering the kindle bible humor connection again, I'm thinking that the humor may come from something that happened when I was a very young. My father distributed bibles for La Sociedad Biblica. they gave away free bibles. I remember people running to the jeep at a town in the countryside only to be handed a bible. I think they expected something else.
I'm just going to go on ahead and assume that there is such a thing as pop-up book pornography out there and I'm not going to Google it.
Very Big Brother.
Or should we still say Big Sis?
What is funny about fitting a Bible in a Kindle?
Something big fitting into something small?
Big old solid with gravitah fitting into new wafer-thin and insubstantial, malleable, utterly plastic.
Lem, you baffle me sometimes.
Hey Lem, Did you get my email today? Trooper never got the ones I sent him at hotmail, so I'm wondering if I have a problem.
BTW, Should the sentence "I wonder what day it is." have a question mark? It's not a question, but then it actually is.
I think the word 'wonder' substitutes for the question mark.
You could say: "You wonder about big important things, but me, I wonder what day it is." See then the same phrase is definitely not a question. When I say: "I wonder what day it is." without a question mark, I might just be telling you what's going on in a powerful 89 IQ mind. Most people can't even imagine.
BTW, Should the sentence "I wonder what day it is." have a question mark? It's not a question, but then it actually is.
Depends on who you are saying it to:
If to yourself, it is a statement of your state of mind at a particular moment in time.
If to someone else, it would probably be a question.
Okay, I'm waiting for Chip Ahoy's edition of 1984.
How Orwellian.
Nobody ever says How Huxleyian.
Probably because 1984 has a more relateable main character so that's the one that sticks in your head.
Here's the neat bit: If they can sneak in and take stuff away, they can sneak in and leave stuff, too. I brought this up a while ago wrt the NSA stuff. I see that yesterday Instapundit mentioned the same thought.
Now THAT is scary!
I have a new tablet and with it the temptation to do a lot more ebooks.
I'm wary partially because of stuff like this and partially because when the technology changes, it'll be lost, like the papers stored on floppy disks I wrote in the 90s.
Every dollar I spend is a rental fee. There's a huge discount on a commentary series, one that's like $3500 if I bought all the volumes in print. $600 if I get it as ebooks connected to my Bible program. I'm very tempted (have some gift money I could use) but I can't get myself to do it because in 10 years, what?
Which leads me to want to go out and buy another kayak instead.
Kayaking is better for your health anyway. As long as you don't drown, that it.
Lem, speaking of tracking data, have you considered adding a sitemeter button. It's free.
I had a dream last night that the NSA was physically searching my house and "found" that awful thing that is the worst kind of media that a person can have in my attic.
" that awful thing that is the worst kind of media that a person can have..."
The famed Ernest Borgnine/Bea Arthur sex tape? That is so hard to find. How much you want for it?
@IHMMP
I had a dream last night that the NSA was physically searching my house and "found" that awful thing that is the worst kind of media that a person can have in my attic.
You mean, an 8-track tape of Red Sovine singing trucker songs?!
Ye Gods, anything but that!
Wow, how the hell can Amazon do that? Is that even legal to do?
Lem, speaking of tracking data, have you considered adding a sitemeter button. It's free.
It would be a distraction.
@meth,
Wow, how the hell can Amazon do that? Is that even legal to do?
It's perfectly legal if they give you back your money.
If you check your "Terms of Use" agreement (or whatever the hell they officially call it), they can do all sorts of stuff. E-books, like many software EULAs, are in essence rental agreements.
I had a dream last night that the NSA was physically searching my house and "found" that awful thing that is the worst kind of media that a person can have in my attic.
Captain & Tennille's "Muskrat Love" on 8-track.
Ken Cuccinelli just lost the Virginia Governor's race.
Idiot.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/virginia-governor-gop-candidate-ken-cuccinelli-launches-website-pushes-reinstatement-state-anti-sodomy-law-article-1.1402340
Hey Lem, Did you get my email today?
Nope. can't say as I have.
That's what you get when you want to ban all oral and anal sex.
OK I'm gonna try again. It might be important.
BTW - my response would be quicker if you guys email me your question instead of commenting them. As I'm not always here scanning comments.
I'm going to try to be more attentive than when I was only commenting but you/we are many. not that i'm complaining. I just want to answer you quick and email is the best bet.
Sharknado on a DVD?
By the way, the second showing starts in 10 minutes on SiFi. Be there. Or not.
I'm gonna try it from my yahoo, and my google account. I can't believe you and trooper aren't getting these and I get no error message.
The subject is "a proposal"
My Irish mam said it was a mortal sin, so did the nuns.
The subject is "a proposal"
I think either asking Lem to eat children or to sleep with you for a million dollars could get your email marked as spam.
Lem, I'm not saying I'll pay a million for each child, or each night, and Freeman is not my agent,........ unless she can make this happen, then 10%.
1984 in pop-up form
Winston Smith in Spartan room eating black bread and Victory gin, there is a journal
Nice public square scene with large television and everything of natural beauty is a microphone and camera, people enjoying looking. At each other. Through binoculars telescopes and such.
meets Julia
Lives with Julia normally but secretly, this is the one single pleasant page, a fanciful illustration of retro-future 1984 minimalistic secret cohabitation.
flees from authoritah and separation
capture and harsh reeducation by Ministry of Love
ROOM 101 separate page for this. Rat cage lowering thing. With escaped rats running all over the place. This is the main page. All the horror is here.
harsh flat reuniting with Julia both acknowledge each other's betrayal.
Secondary characters are propping up things and occupying separate smaller pop-ups filling the negative space on the page created by the nature of the thing. So tiny cards or books within the book. And hardly NO words at all. HATE all those stupid words. Words are accepted, but avoided, the whole point is to avoid them.
I want Drudge TV.
Great idea.
The subject is "a proposal"
Awwww....
I'm going to try to be more attentive than when I was only commenting but you/we are many. not that i'm complaining. I just want to answer you quick and email is the best bet.
Don't sweat it, Lem. This isn't a 'job' for you and if you don't get back to people....no biggie. We appreciate the opportunity to have this space. I, for one, do not want it to be a burden on you.
We will survive.
Well, he's almost famous now. I called him first.
If DBQ, doesn't want to be a burden, I'll take her spot.
Cropduster earlier, and now flying an airshow a hundred yards from my house (video).
Airplanes can get above an elephant's eye.
I had a long meetings on empty stomach all day. After dinner I take particular delight in the funny stuff people say around here. I must be suffering from exhaustion or mild vit d depletion. I just don't have anything clever to say or add.
but this is funny:
So I'm swimming in the surf off the coast of North Carolina on vacation, and up swims phx. And he's high on methamphetamines and amyl nitrate. And he swims right up to me and asks if I've ever played "Put the Eel in the Cave".
We kid because we love you, phx.
and looking at Bagoh likes he's a bacon wrapped Twinkie.
perfect.
and 1984 set to pop-up.
Of course I maintain you kid me because nobody stands up to you like I can and like I do.
My good conservative friends!
Phx....that's the spirit!
(and that wasn't sarcastic)
;D
Well I've always dished out as well as I got, I thought. But I TRY to reign it back to an argument that requires thinking instead of bullshit.
And I also don't usually take other people's politics personally. We argue, we have a beer afterwards. Talk about movies or music. Then fight again.
Compartmentalize people!
My scold voice.
Cropduster earlier, and now flying an airshow a hundred yards from my house (video).
Nice! I wonder if they let old women be cropdusters. I'll need to do something after the youngest child leaves the nest. The plan right now is to buy a fancy microscope, a fancy telescope, and a fancy camera setup to take pictures through both of them. I will probably need to do something else besides taking these pictures. Cropdusting.
I have about two decades to plan this out, so I figure I should have it figured out to the last detail by then.
By the way, anyone have a microscope recommendation? I'm in the market. (Not for the fancy retirement one.)
Schwing
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Tell me more about ironing and Orwell. What am I missing here? I hate it when I do not get the reference.
What does the post title mean?
Driving down on the 5, a couple of cropdusters were on both sides, biplanes, doing their thing.
That's a great job. Fun, slightly adventurous, home for dinner every night. Get to fly a biplane for work. Who else gets to fly a biplane for work, except airshow folks?
Do they still have the ladies who walk on the wings of biplanes? That used to be big back in the day.
"By the way, anyone have a microscope recommendation?"
I just bought a digital one that plugs in the USB. Only goes up to 250X, but it's on your computer screen, so it's big, it's easy to use, and you can save the images. No slides needed, just aim it at something and move iin or out to focus. They may have high magnification ones too. I also have regular optical one. All of them are pretty cheap now days, so just go on Amazon, and you can find all kinds.
When my step daughter was about five, we ask her what she wanted for Christmas. She said "an interesting species". You might think, well that's pretty philosophical, and a little edgy for a person with chocolate down the front of their shirt, and untied shoes, but English was her second language, so we thought maybe not, and after some extensive interrogation we determined that what she actually wanted was a microscope. She's 30 now, and I we just laughed together about it a couple days ago for the millionth time.
The flying part of cropdusting isn't hard. The attention part is.
Do they still have the ladies who walk on the wings of biplanes? That used to be big back in the day.
Fewer and fewer. A lady wing-walker just went down in a ball of flame with her pilot at the Dayton Airshow last month. I haven't decided whether "tragic" is the right word when someone goes down purposefully tempting fate like that. But definitely sad.
Wow, how the hell can Amazon do that? Is that even legal to do?
You don't "own" a copy of an e-book. E-books are licensed- you just buy a license to use it (in ways approved by the publisher).
It wouldn't surprise me if publishers decide that an e-book should wear out, much as a paper book does, from re-reading. Therefore, after the twentieth reading it just ... disappears.
So, who reads a book twenty times, anyway? Well, you might use a reference work more than that. And some libraries have been lending e-books by lending it with the e-reader it was downloaded to.
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