Comments on: Kill Your Kindle

By: carnival funnel cake recipe

carnival funnel cake recipe — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:02:51 +0000

yummmmy:) thanks to your tips , i’d love to adhere to your weblog as generally as i can.use a good day~~

By: fr.christopher

fr.christopher — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 03:19:06 +0000

I think it’s funny/ironic that she’s lamenting kindles via another form of digital media.

By: Kill Your Kindle « Ukiah Blog Live

Kill Your Kindle « Ukiah Blog Live — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:33:12 +0000

[...] From BY SUSAN McWILLIAMS Front Porch Republic [...]

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:41:18 +0000

For me, this article summed it up best:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/23/entelligence-two-strikes-for-kindle-is-enough-for-me/

I am a self-professed Digital Boy and love all things digital. I am also a big fan of backing up, archiving, and ensuring compatibility – in 10 years will the books on your Kindle be as useful as the books on your shelf? I believe in 10 years your Kindle will be as useful as your 5.25 inch floppies are today.
I still refer to my college textbooks – the cost was onerous, but I believe I have recouped my investment many times over.
In a pulpy SciFi novel, the protagonist was asked why he kept a damaged volume of an encyclopedia when he could have an entire library on an electronic reader – the response was that the electronic versions only worked with power whereas the print copy, even though damaged, only required a bit of moonlight or candle light and could still provide something.
For me, the disadvantages and limitations outweigh the advantages and convenience.

By: Marion Miner

Marion Miner — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:01:35 +0000

I agree on all points. As others have noted, the mere weight and feel of the book in your hands adds a great deal to the pleasurable experience of reading, in my opinion.

That said, the Kindle does seem to have some beneficial qualities, as Marty has noted. When it comes down to it, however, I will always personally prefer reading the real, hard copy, whose pages I can turn with my own hands.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:40:25 +0000

Regarding the use of electronic books in our colleges and universities, who will speak for the backpack industry?

By: Marty

Marty — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 14:10:42 +0000

A Kindle is on my Christmas list. I am hoping that my bride has picked up in my hints.

I know a Kindle will not replace my library and books, but it does have some advantages. I rarely buy magazine subscriptions any longer and read most news, on the web. Yet, I still subscribe to lasting journals, such as the journals from ISI.

The same would work for my Kindle. I would get my NY Times sent to my Kindle, blogs and electronic magazine subscriptions sent to my Kindle.

Books form ISI(again) would be purchased and added to my shelf and passed on to my children and friends. Yet, a police novel or Conservative bestseller will do better on a Kindle.

I will use both.

***IT ALSO HELPS LOCAL WRITERS***

You can self publish on the web as many of you know. But, if I want to read your book I need to download 250 pages in PDF format and print out all of those pages on my home printer. Now, I can download those books to my Kindle and read them anytime with so much more ease. So, Kindle is helping local indie writers!!!

By: Stewart K. Lundy

Stewart K. Lundy — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:25:02 +0000

John,

Essentially, Amazon reserves the right (and the power because of the perpetual connection to a G3 network) to delete anything you purchase if here is a copyright issue–even after they’ve sold it to you. For example, earlier this year–irony of ironies–George Orwell was censored: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

A better alternative to the Kindle will be the open-source version, the eReader, which I am looking forward to. Amazon is oppressive by making all of its content proprietary and not allowing for you to load other legitimately purchased ebooks from other stores or from the Gutenberg Project.

This is the reason to hate the Kindle, if we’re to hate it!

By: John Médaille

John Médaille — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:18:16 +0000

This might be pushing the case, but:

“When I hear the term Kindle I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit. And when I hear the term “hi-tech” I think not of helpful androids efficiently performing household chores or light-speed rockets gliding seamlessly through space but of the fact that between 1933-45, modern technology was used to perform in ever more efficient ways the mass murder of six million of my people. The instruments of so-called progress, placed in the hands of the modern state, disappeared six million Jewish men, women and children, into a void from which they will never return and in which a majority of them remain forever unidentified. This was done in the name of progress by means of technology for the creation of a better world.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-kaufman/google-books-and-kindles_b_380536.html

By: Bob Cheeks

Bob Cheeks — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:14:23 +0000

Kindle, smindle! Bah!

By: TN

TN — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:59:23 +0000

I can think of no better response to this than to recommend without reservation Ivan Illich’s “In the Vineyard of the Text.”

If anyone is of the opinion that the advent of devices like these is inconsequential, Illich, I hope, will disabuse you.

By: Rick Rose

Rick Rose — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:00:18 +0000

I’m waiting for the “open-source” version that reaches into Project Gutenberg for its texts and simply formats them nicely for reading. I’m sure one will come along and that Amazon will maintain its grip on electronic text rights about as long as Apple kept its grip on digital music files. God loves hackers.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:12:20 +0000

Regarding the ‘deleting books thingie’, Amazon realized that they did not, in fact, have the right to sell a digital version of 1984 so they deleted the book from the devices of anyone who purchased this book and reimbursed the purchase price.
It was not Amazon’s fault that they were selling this book, but I find their response to be reprehensible. There have been many cases of copyrighted material being published, both in digital and physical form, when the publisher did not have the right to do so – I believe this is the first case where the publisher broke into the purchaser’s home and repossessed the material.

By: John Médaille

John Médaille — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:52:32 +0000

Somebody explain this “deleting books” thingy to me. Do they really reach into your kindle and take out what they don’t like?

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:50:16 +0000

I love that the first book deleted from Kindles was 1984. How ironic that the book that first introduced us to electronic censorship was the first book electronically censored on the Kindle.
It is almost to perfect to be a coincidence.

By: Mitzi

Mitzi — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:20:44 +0000

My problem would be cookbooks. I have used my laptop to store recipes, but in the middle of cooking, covered in flour or vegetable residues, to have to wash up to page down to the next step (just to dirty up again) is pretty irritating. I much prefer my cookbooks and physical recipe files, splattery and dog-eared as they are. I even have a 50+ year old Betty Crocker cookbook I picked up from a pile of attic-cleanup rejects on the side of the road. You probably won’t be able to do THAT with a Kindle.
Kindles will have their place, reducing the number of back injuries and hernias among academics and college students from carrying those insanely heavy textbooks (seen a Biochemistry text lately? Good grief…), but for dirtier applications like gardening, cooking, crafting, car repair, or reading in the wild, give me a real book (or a paper recipe/diagram in a plastic sleeve) any day.