Thread: Rant about not getting a decent linux handheld
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geneven is offline geneven
2010-05-21 , 20:24
Posts: 5,795 | Thanked: 3,151 times | Joined on Feb 2007 @ Agoura Hills Calif
#19
Originally Posted by wmarone View Post
The Kindle is interesting, but mostly valuable as a book reader. Their use of DRM and remote-delete to remove people's copies of 1984 was supremely ironic and removed my urge to ever buy one.

And while the Kindle is Linux based, it too (like Android) does not offer what one would expect from a Linux environment, intentionally so as it's built from the same perspective as the iPhone (the underpinnings are invisible and inaccessible to you.)
Note that I'm talking about the next Kindle, not this one; some of the problems you mention can be solved. In fact, Amazon has gone a long way towards making its DRM useless -- I am reading several Amazon books on my N900. And with Kindle for PC you can read its books practically everywhere, plus of course Kindle for iPad and Kindle for Android, etc.

In fact, I have suspected Amazon of finding a way of weakening its DRM deliberately so it doesn't have to confront the book vendors with the fact that their books are becoming less and less protected.

Interesting fact: It's now almost as easy to read the NY Times for free on your Kindle as it is to pay for the NY Times on your Kindle...

On the 1984 issue: I'm not sure that you can escape the basic problem that as cloud-like storage gets more widespread, lightning strikes from the clouds become more common. The users fought back against what happened to 1984 (which, by the way, you can get for free right now from the Australian Gutenberg site) and Amazon is not that likely to repeat their gaffe.