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People, (usually two women), who decide to stand in the middle of a doorway for a chat.
Things that really wind you up?
- Thread starter pugh-the-special-one
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- a Canadian expat in Taiwan
Kindle is a closed network in my books so long as they have their own Whispernet that lets you access features for Amazon-purchased books only and for delivery (however, I believe Amazon is not focusing on this as much anymore. Read what some tech experts have said about Amazon's and Apple's closed networks). And you have to use your PC to crack the DRM on their DRM-restricted e-books, so that's not a point in Amazon's favor either.
More things that wind me up:
- people who finance lifestyles beyond their means with credit cards and lines of credit.
- similar to above, people who lease a Mercedes Benz and who roll the lease over every two or three years. They have no idea what they're driving. That's a car that's meant to be driven for 20 or 30 years, not as an image booster.
- people who are willing to pay 20 times the average price for some exotic coffee beans even though they don't cost anywhere near that to produce.
- businesses that take a decent, well-made product, then add exotic and rare components just to boost the selling price, their company's image, and their margins.
- litigation-happy companies that love to hid behind Intellectual Property and Copyright laws, and then charge whatever they darn well feel like charging, all the while insisting it is market price when people really have to choice but to pay for it because there is no competition.
More things that wind me up:
- people who finance lifestyles beyond their means with credit cards and lines of credit.
- similar to above, people who lease a Mercedes Benz and who roll the lease over every two or three years. They have no idea what they're driving. That's a car that's meant to be driven for 20 or 30 years, not as an image booster.
- people who are willing to pay 20 times the average price for some exotic coffee beans even though they don't cost anywhere near that to produce.
- businesses that take a decent, well-made product, then add exotic and rare components just to boost the selling price, their company's image, and their margins.
- litigation-happy companies that love to hid behind Intellectual Property and Copyright laws, and then charge whatever they darn well feel like charging, all the while insisting it is market price when people really have to choice but to pay for it because there is no competition.
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SlowRain said:
you can buy books for the kindle from other services though you dont have to buy them from amazon, i know you need to use a computer to break the drm
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Boab said:
I'd have to disagree, a lot of these issues are actually solveable, however not through moaning about them in a pointless internet thread.
/Max
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- a Canadian expat in Taiwan
shanky887614 said:
Yes, but try buying a book from Amazon to use on other devices or with other software. Cracking the DRM is illegal in many (most?) countries. :icon_sad:
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Boab said:
the ironic thing about drm is, i know quite a few people that wont buy pc games from certain people, ea for example becasue of the drm they use
some more tech savy people i know, buy the game install it then go online and download a patch for it to remove/block the drm
it seems only the people that buy the games suffer from drm, pirates just remove it
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Comic Sans
Even CERN use it - for the love of the deity of your choice, stop it, stop it right now.
Even CERN use it - for the love of the deity of your choice, stop it, stop it right now.
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- a Canadian expat in Taiwan
Boab said:
True, the closed-network and DRM issues are separate entities. The closed network and proprietary software is just a nasty way for Amazon to lock people in, denying them the choice to do what they want with the books they've purchased. As has been pointed out, there are various illegal ways to work around it.
Amazon has other unethical practices as well. Check out the recent article in The Guardian, as well as the current debate surrounding their KDP Select program.
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SlowRain said:
But is it not only in the USA that it is illegal to remove drm and that's down to generic law about interfering with copyright protection .
Also as said earlier you can buy books for the kindle from other places as well, it's not as easy as just going to amazon but why would they make it just as easy to give your money to someone else.
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But it's not closed really - it accepts many formats natively - it just so happens that one of them is proprietary (AZW) but based on an open standard (Mobipocket).... no different to the DRM-encumbered ePubs. Rather than being a closed system it's limited (in that it can't read some formats - but they can be converted...) no different to most ePub readers that can't natively read mobipocket files. Again conversion is trivial.
Of course they (like all eBook device sellers) direct you towards their store of choice - which most people will head straight to because it's "easiest".
As for DRM - interesting that the book trade seemingly hasn't learned from the music trade (where sales of downloads took off once DRM became the exception rather than the rule). I'd quite like them to all be platform agnostic - it would surely drive sales. But since all the DRM removal processes are trivial and well documented, it's not an issue.
As for Amazon's unethical practices - they're not alone in "big business" in unethical practice, from the sugar producers of central America where they have people working up to 19 hours per day to the sweatshops of Shenzhen where shiny consumer electronics are made with suicide nets around all the buildings.
Of course they (like all eBook device sellers) direct you towards their store of choice - which most people will head straight to because it's "easiest".
As for DRM - interesting that the book trade seemingly hasn't learned from the music trade (where sales of downloads took off once DRM became the exception rather than the rule). I'd quite like them to all be platform agnostic - it would surely drive sales. But since all the DRM removal processes are trivial and well documented, it's not an issue.
As for Amazon's unethical practices - they're not alone in "big business" in unethical practice, from the sugar producers of central America where they have people working up to 19 hours per day to the sweatshops of Shenzhen where shiny consumer electronics are made with suicide nets around all the buildings.
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hunnymonster said:
+1 with knobs on. Installed the ttf package from the Ubuntu repositories, and then took great delight in deleting that bloody font.
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