171–180 of 453 posts
This is a great example of how people in tech often get wrapped up in theory and just don’t junderstand how things work in practical reality. Yes, DRM sucks in theory, but in reality this is all rarely a problem. I got the original kindle a little over 15 years ago, and I can still open the books I bought back then on my new Kindle and read them just fine. And in another 15 years, I will probably still be able to rea…
DRM-laden digital books should be seen like the extra cheap paperbacks which fall apart sitting untouched on the shelf after a couple of years. Extremely different than the well-bound books one might think of when handling a 100 year old book. Non-DRM'd ebooks in formats which are open, easily parseable, and that people care to archive should be fine for a long time. Some people here are talking about a decade as if…
Is there a non-DRM format + an e-reader combo that allows for bookmarks, text selection, dictionary search? Ideally I would prefer to keep my Kindle but would really love to buy and own non-DRM books.
I don't buy drm crap, genesis all the way, I don't give a fuck, someone needs to come up with a better business model.
https://likebook.aliexpress.com/store/3333002
Looks like they have newer and probably better versions now.
maybe some day i'll have the luxury of storing a whole bunch of books, but they've always been one of the first things to to to the thrift store in a move. i've got my hardcover omnibus of hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, and a kindle.
This is a great example of how people in tech often get wrapped up in theory and just don’t junderstand how things work in practical reality. Yes, DRM sucks in theory, but in reality this is all rarely a problem. I got the original kindle a little over 15 years ago, and I can still open the books I bought back then on my new Kindle and read them just fine. And in another 15 years, I will probably still be able to rea…
> And in another 15 years, I will probably still be able to read those books
I bet the non-DRM books you bought on your kindle can also be opened 15 years later.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is nonsense. I have almost never seen paperbacks wear out. Obviously it's possible, but even in any of their common failure modes, they are still easily read. I don't know why anyone would argue that saved files are somehow more reliable, it feels not at all genuine
You've never seen a paperback made in the 1960s-1990s? The paper is brittle and the pages are literally falling apart. You can't read paper where pieces of it have fallen off and disintegrated.
I own tons from the 80s, all are in perfect condition. Also a few dozen from the 70s and they're all fine.
I also have a few books from the 1800s, those are hardcovers not paperbacks but also in reasonably good shape.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also digital formats are constantly evolving and backwards compatibility for old formats is removed. While that was certainly true at one time, Unicode text, HTML, XML, and ZIP files aren't going anywhere (or there'll be a collapse of society so thorough that print books are unlikely to survive, either). EPUB books are basically XHTML and XML zipped up along with any external assets (e.g., images). There are nuance…
> HTML, XML, and ZIP files aren't going anywhere I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those go out of use in a few hundred years, if not much earlier. There will probably be major conversion efforts going on at some point. The alternative, the above formats being maintained for eternity, would be somehow depressing.
They are all-but deprecated though: HTML 1.0 is much different from HTML5 (2014); XML is upgraded to XML 1.1 (2004) and most people use JSON nowadays; and ZIP is very inferior to gzip and 7-zip. We're lucky web browsers are strict with never remove compatibility for old sites, and ZIP is still used by macOS instead of .tar.gz for some reason.
Have a USB drive Hard Drive, or USB? Plug them in 10 to 15 years later, chances are, they will have far less damage than a book in all those years.
It's an unfair comparison.
This is a great example of how people in tech often get wrapped up in theory and just don’t junderstand how things work in practical reality. Yes, DRM sucks in theory, but in reality this is all rarely a problem. I got the original kindle a little over 15 years ago, and I can still open the books I bought back then on my new Kindle and read them just fine. And in another 15 years, I will probably still be able to rea…
Physical books wear out in decades to centuries, computers break in years to decades. Also digital formats are constantly evolving and backwards compatibility for old formats is removed. Even without publisher/legal issues it's clear that preservation of digital media for even the next 10 years , and especially for the next 100 or 1000, is at risk. But I really wonder why is there no other major service like the Inte…
Copyright, of course. The fact the Internet Archive hasn't been sued out of existence yet never ceases to amaze me.