[TriLUG] [OT] Kindle jeers? [Was e-mail suckback]

[Noel Nunkovich]

For what it's worth, I've owned a Kindle 1 for about 18 months now. I
absolutely love the thing and I'm thinking about passing this one on to
the wife and upgrading to a Kindle 2.  Mine has been my constant
companion and there is absolutely nothing better when traveling.
Reading on the device is comfortable and even better than a book in my
opinion, simply due to the fact that books, especially hard covers, are
physically awkward to hold in many positions.

I understand the concerns with the pull-back of 1984 and in fact share
them myself to some extent.  On the other hand, Amazon did refund the
money.  Also, I've been a very frequent customer of Amazon, and an
Associate until Bev Perdue's lovely legislation killed it for me, so I
trust that they will generally do "the right thing."  On top of that,
books on the Kindle generally cost less (and in some cases much less)
than paper books, the convenience of being able to just download
something else when your sitting in the airport waiting for a flight and
you decide that the book you've got isn't doing it for you, the
convenience of being able to carry tens or hundreds of books with you at
all times (a huge plus for me since I used to refuse to step into an
airport without at least 3 paperbacks), and the ability to store books
digitally (another huge plus for me given that I read at least 3 or 4
books per week normally) make the Kindle well worth the trade-off of
dealing with DRM.

Just my opinion.
Noel

On Wed, 2009-08-05 at 16:55 -0400, Christopher L Merrill wrote:
> Allen Freeman wrote:
> > It's not only true, it's already been done. See also: 1984. 
> 
> All sarcasm aside, this may not have been handled as well as it could
> have been, but this IS the point of DRM.  If you don't like DRM, then
> don't buy a device with it.  I guess a lot of people didn't bother to
> understand what they were buying (much like the chinese and russians
> buying our high-risk mortgages).
> 
> The readers essentially purchased stolen goods, through no fault of
> their own. When Amazon found that they didn't have the rights to sell
> it, they revoked it and refunded the money.  If the police come and
> confiscate some stolen property, there is no guarantee you'll get your
> money back, depending on where you bought it. So IMO, nobody should
> complain too loudly.
> 
> I know this is probably an unpopular sentiment, but they chose the
> most expedient path to "doing the right thing", IMO - which is to clean
> up their mess.  Could they have tried to negotiate a better resolution
> and get the rights to it? Maybe. How long would it take? How much would
> it cost them? Hard to guess. But IIRC, it was one of their publisher/
> partners that made the mistake, not Amazon.  You can hardly blame
> Amazon for that.
> 
> Just my 2c
> Chris
> 
> 
> > --- On Thu, 8/6/09, Brian Henning <lugmail at cheetah.dynip.com> wrote:
> > 
> > From: Brian Henning <lugmail at cheetah.dynip.com>
> > Subject: [TriLUG] [OT] Kindle jeers?  [Was e-mail suckback]
> > To: "TriLUG" <trilug at trilug.org>
> > Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 12:54 AM
> > 
> > Hi Gang,
> > 
> > This recent thread and the mention of Kindle has given me a good setup to
> > ask -- what's bad about Kindle?  I was thinking about getting one of the 2G
> > models, with their nice slimness and ability to read any TXT or PDF file.
> > The implication just now is that Amazon can make unreadble a book you've
> > paid for after the fact.  Is that true?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > ~Brian
> > 
> > --
> > TriLUG mailing list        : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> > TriLUG FAQ  : http://www.trilug.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >       
> > --
> > TriLUG mailing list        : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> > TriLUG FAQ  : http://www.trilug.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions
> > 
> > 
> 
>