Corvinus85 Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 5 hours ago, Spockydog said: B&N nukes the NOOK with a 15 March deadline for customers to save content Nearly got a Nook a while back. Glad I stuck with Amazon now. The part with the videos and apps I can understand. They tried to compete with Amazon on creating a more versatile tablet and lost. They should just stick to selling simple e-readers. But the part you highlighted with the customers in the UK having to transfer their books to another platform is idiotic. I guess no one in the UK will buy any more NOOKs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MisterOJ Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 14 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: I'm confused. The books you buy aren't stored in your eReader? If the company that makes them folds you can lose the books you've bought? The books you have bought are stored in your ereader. This headline is kind of click baitish. For American customers, nothing is really changing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spockydog Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: I'm confused. The books you buy aren't stored in your eReader? If the company that makes them folds you can lose the books you've bought? Yes, in the main digital copies of your books are stored on the device. Although depending on the storage capacity of your e-reader and the size of your book collection, you may not be able to store all of your books. My kindle allows about 3000. Anything over that is archived on Amazon's servers, to be downloaded as and when required. Also, every time you get a new device you will need to download your book again. And if the company you bought it from has gone bust, or put the service into mothballs, or flogged your content licence to another company, it pretty much sucks to be you. I haven't got a Nook myself, so I'm unsure of the nuts and bolts, but telling UK users they need to open an account with Sainsbury's in order access their books - books that they cannot even guarantee will be available on the new platform - signals a pretty big change for customers who've invested hundreds or perhaps thousands of pounds on their e-book collections. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ormond Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 On 2/19/2016 at 2:49 AM, Rorshach said: I have been told that research shows that you do remember better if you write stuff down by hand. Further, I've been told that writing the same stuff on a computer does not lead to better learning. As far as I know, there were no reasons given for the discrepancy, just speculation as to where further research should go. I found this information interesting enough to remember, but not interesting enough to read the research for myself, so this post should be read with a sceptic mind. Sorry I forgot about this thread for a while. Yes, taking notes by hand does result in better performance on tests than taking notes on a keyboard. The reason is that people typing their notes tend to try to transcribe the lecture word for word. People who are writing notes by hand know they can't possibly do that, so they are paying more attention to figuring out what the most important points in the lecture are, and so are actually processing the material more deeply and paying closer attention to what meaning of what is being said as opposed to just the words themselves. And processing material according to meaning, rather than trying to memorize "exact words", is much better for understanding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Thanks, this makes it a lot less mysterious. (For whatever reason at least for some things and in some learning age, literally copying things down the teacher wrote on the blackboard also helps although it does not involve the mental work of picking out the important stuff.) With DRM, clouds, companies folding and formats becoming obsolete I think there is a lot of things one should be aware of when going all digital. True, books are smallish files, so it is not such a big deal to download, convert, backup in different storage media. (It's quite different with music and movies.) And one does not have to imagine cataclysmic events. Just imagine a world at the tech level of 1990. Almost nothing would change in the big picture, we still have cars, trains, washers, dryers, TV, CD players etc., but fast and ubiquituous internet, smartphones and mobiles would be gone. No more streaming and downloads except with a slow modem on the telephone landline (My mother would hardly notice except for fewer TV programs.) I do not think cataclysmic breakdowns are necessary for parts of the Western world to return to a 1980s/early 90s high tech level. Real crises would drop us MUCH further in comfort and tech level. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Jo, My paper books would survive a much more serious technology catastorphy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Sure they would. I am not exactly anticipating a catastrophic crisis. Just trying to point out that only a rather small disturbance (those of us old enough would agree that life was worth living in 1990 ;)) in technology, infrastructure, affordability etc. would be enough to completely wreck streaming, cloud storage and the like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrackerNeil Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 On 3/8/2016 at 5:02 PM, Spockydog said: Yes, in the main digital copies of your books are stored on the device. Although depending on the storage capacity of your e-reader and the size of your book collection, you may not be able to store all of your books. My kindle allows about 3000. Anything over that is archived on Amazon's servers, to be downloaded as and when required. Also, every time you get a new device you will need to download your book again. And if the company you bought it from has gone bust, or put the service into mothballs, or flogged your content licence to another company, it pretty much sucks to be you. I've always known that if Amazon goes out of business I may lose access to my Kindle books, and I'm OK with it. Honestly, we spend $10-12 on a one-time license to see a film in a room with 200 other people, but we think that $.99 entitles us to a novel at all times in all formats until the heat-death of the universe. Every form of media has its limitations, and to my mind you* accept those limitations when you purchase. (Or else you crack the DRM and steal someone's work.) *The rhetorical "you", not you, Spockydog. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 10 hours ago, TrackerNeil said: I've always known that if Amazon goes out of business I may lose access to my Kindle books, and I'm OK with it. Honestly, we spend $10-12 on a one-time license to see a film in a room with 200 other people, but we think that $.99 entitles us to a novel at all times in all formats until the heat-death of the universe. Every form of media has its limitations, and to my mind you* accept those limitations when you purchase. (Or else you crack the DRM and steal someone's work.) *The rhetorical "you", not you, Spockydog. Tracker, Excellent point. However, my point is that the durablity of paper books is another reason I prefer them. If the publisher who made them goes out of business they don't disappear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MisterOJ Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: Tracker, Excellent point. However, my point is that the durablity of paper books is another reason I prefer them. If the publisher who made them goes out of business they don't disappear. They don't disappear if you've backed them up properly either. In that respect, they're actually more durable than paper. With paper, if something happens to your lone copy, you've lost it. With ebooks, as long as you take care of your library, that will never happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spockydog Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 By backing up, do you mean stripping the DRM and making an illegal copy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MisterOJ Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 10 minutes ago, Spockydog said: By backing up, do you mean stripping the DRM and making an illegal copy? No. I mean just saving it to a computer hard drive or on additional devices. You can legally do that without stripping the DRM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrackerNeil Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: Tracker, Excellent point. However, my point is that the durablity of paper books is another reason I prefer them. If the publisher who made them goes out of business they don't disappear. Sure, and if I read a book I really like, I buy it in paper to ensure I won't lose access to it. There is room in my world for both paper and ebooks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 Tracker, Understood. I still don't like eBooks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Cartman Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 Not against either, but most of my recent acquisitions are e-versions. Simply because of convenience. I read on the subway, when waiting in a queue or over lunch whenever I could find time and not always easy to carry book everywhere. And I like to switch series. If a book gets too tedious, I take a break and browse through some favourite segments in a earlier book. Hard to do so in paper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Selig Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 17 hours ago, TrackerNeil said: I've always known that if Amazon goes out of business I may lose access to my Kindle books, and I'm OK with it. Honestly, we spend $10-12 on a one-time license to see a film in a room with 200 other people, but we think that $.99 entitles us to a novel at all times in all formats until the heat-death of the universe. Every form of media has its limitations, and to my mind you* accept those limitations when you purchase. (Or else you crack the DRM and steal someone's work.) *The rhetorical "you", not you, Spockydog. You don't steal anything if you remove the DRM of the books you have bought. I do it for all the books I own to be able to format them the wya I prefer and to have a backup in case the seller decides to pull a trick like B&N just did. Also when the epub version is cheaper, of course I'd buy it and then convert it to the Kindle format. I don't see anything wrong with not allowing corporations to screw me over with their artificial incompatibilities (EPUB and AZW are basically the same format, but Amazon used the latter to ensure only their devices can read the ebooks they sell) and idiotic DRM that doesn't allow me to format the ebook the way it's most convenient to me even though it's extremely easy to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrackerNeil Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 35 minutes ago, David Selig said: You don't steal anything if you remove the DRM of the books you have bought. I do it for all the books I own to be able to format them the wya I prefer and to have a backup in case the seller decides to pull a trick like B&N just did. Also when the epub version is cheaper, of course I'd buy it and then convert it to the Kindle format. I don't see anything wrong with not allowing corporations to screw me over with their artificial incompatibilities (EPUB and AZW are basically the same format, but Amazon used the latter to ensure only their devices can read the ebooks they sell) and idiotic DRM that doesn't allow me to format the ebook the way it's most convenient to me even though it's extremely easy to do. I'm not sure I agree that you're being screwed over a $.99 ebook, but maybe your standards are different from mine. In any case, I don't have a problem with people cracking DRM for personal use only. It's when those ebooks are then copied from friend to friend and uploaded to a torrent site that I get stabby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MisterOJ Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 14 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said: I'm not sure I agree that you're being screwed over a $.99 ebook, but maybe your standards are different from mine. In any case, I don't have a problem with people cracking DRM for personal use only. It's when those ebooks are then copied from friend to friend and uploaded to a torrent site that I get stabby. I've not bought many 99 cent ebooks. Most of the ones I have purchased have been in the $6-$9 range - or, roughly the same cost as a mass market paperback. Does the price point make a difference to you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrackerNeil Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 18 minutes ago, MisterOJ said: I've not bought many 99 cent ebooks. Most of the ones I have purchased have been in the $6-$9 range - or, roughly the same cost as a mass market paperback. Does the price point make a difference to you? Not really. As I said upthread, we spend a lot more than six bucks to see a movie, and we don't think that entitles us to forever access. In my view, the appeal of ebooks is that they are convenient to buy and store, but the trade-off is that, no, we don't own them the same way we do a paperback. Hell, I've donated so many paper books to charity or to the library over the years I'm really not bothered by losing access to an ebook. In any case, since you are only using those books for personal purposes, I imagine it doesn't matter to you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 I can read and loan my paper books without ever having to worry about DRM or guilt over copying something I don't have the right to copy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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