Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if it doesn’t void the warranty, it voids SafetyNet, so now Netflix and other apps might refuse to work. And even if it didn’t, it increases the attack surface. Random apps can ask for root, and the average user won’t know what it means. And even if you know the risks, now it’s much more of a hassle keeping your device up-to-date. So yes, rooting is theoretically a solution, but it’s not practical in the least.
If Netflix refuses to offer their services on a device that you own, you're always free not to pay netflix and instead take your money and attention elsewhere.
Digital books wear out faster than physical books
351–360 of 453 posts
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#352This seems to be quickly followed by some pretty clear survivorship bias argument about paper. A touch of sun, a dab of moisture, poor quality materials, the family pet, fire, and a paper book is toast.
I have files, ebooks, images, documents dating back to the 1990s because they're important and I do the work every so often to refresh them and keep them stored safely. Same sort of work people do for paper books in places like libraries (personal or otherwise).
Neither seems to be more or less durable. Ones, shorter existence than the other doesn't lend aid to proof for either side of the argument.
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
Saying anyone is "responsible" for a suicide is disingenuous
People are absolutely, 100% responsible for his death. A young person near the beginning of their career got sentenced to 13 federal crimes, 50 years of imprisonment and one million dollars in fines, for downloading some PDFs of scientific articles. It's not like someone asked him to delete the PDFs and he killed himself in protest. His life was ruined to make an example out of him.
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I also feel like Kindle is setting up a situation where my kids won't have the joy of discovering a book, or author, serendipitously. When the books are just sitting there on a shelf (they were in my bedroom as a kid, basically just as overflow because we had too many in the house), it's easy to get bored and pick up a book. All the ebooks in the library (actually, all of the several library systems I have access to…
In other words, completely invisible.
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they put reasonable barriers to piracy. They are of course possible to circumvent, as every other barrier in existence, but you can also scan or make photocopies of a physical book. And this is actually a good thing. Mildly related: the other they I was watching something on Netflix on my phone and found something funny so I tried to take an screenshot to share with my friends, which quite frankly I think is…
Those user hostile features are what drive me to piracy. No way I'll pay money to have the privilege of installing spyware just so I can stream low-quality video to whatever device the provider deems worthy at that particular moment. I'll just go on 1337x and in 2 minutes I have an high quality mkv that I can play anywhere I want. I'd happily pay 5-10$ a pop for this, and for indie movies I do make the effort of seei…
You pirate because you have no respect for law, because you are a entitled child or because you don't have enough money. Piracy isn't plain theft, but it's consuming a service without paying for it to its legimate owners. It's close, isn't it?
Would you sneak into a amusement park? Not pay for dinner if you found it not to your liking or if the brand don't meet your standards?
The reason you think piracy is ok is because you don't associate the crime with the victim.
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#356I moved my apple account between countries and lost a lot tv series and books I bought ... oh sorry I didn't buy them I bought the right to temporary view them. same with some old games/apps, they work still perfectly on my older iPhone with newest updates, yet due to changing the store and developers not "updating" them they are no longer available for me. moved to android, with linageOS.
It seems almost every "cloud" based system has a built-in time bomb.
I'm now getting notices that Amazon is closing some of its services.
Once things are no longer profitable, or technology shifts your stuff is quickly abandoned.
Microsoft Groove Music anyone?
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#357Planet Money did an episode on the "e-Book Wars" between libraries and publishers a week ago: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/09/1135639385/libraries-publishe... I learned a few things about digital library books that made me sad: * Publishers only allow a certain number of "rentals" of digital library books, after which the eBook license expires. * Publishers also put an expiration date on the license, so after maybe tw…
The episode is much more fair to the publishers. They specifically call out the Libby app as the turning point. Once it became super accessible for people to get ebooks through libraries, it started really putting the squeeze on publishers and authors. In the episode they talk about how publishers started seeing the curve go parabolic and were basically forced into panic action to stay solvent. The money disappears o…
Another challenge you don't mention is patrons. They want the latest James Patterson novel, and nothing else. The library, smaller publishers, and less known authors don't have the marketing budgets to get patrons interested. There is so much content now that new, independent authors don't often even want money, they just want someone, anyone to read their book.
Maybe unpopular opinion, but I think libraries should give up on best sellers or at a minimum embargo them for 12+ months. They'll end up with better terms from the big 4/5, and can be a discovery place for new authors in addition to/rather than Amazon KDP where many end up now.
Oh, and I haven't even touched the existential threat from Amazon. They just released their entire music catalog for prime subscribers. There will come a point when they do the same for books.
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#358Zip, UTF-8 and HTML are all ~30 year old standards. They're not going anywhere. It's just that we haven't had the chance to see how long they'll last.
As for the processing and reprocessing... We can't really do anything with printed books at scale without lots of manual labor. E-books open up that possibility. That's supposed to be a bad thing?
Printed books only keep if nobody opens them. Books that have been read often start crumbling. You have to reprint them, or keep a pristine, untouched copy, to ensure they last.
This is nostalgia, not science.
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those user hostile features are what drive me to piracy. No way I'll pay money to have the privilege of installing spyware just so I can stream low-quality video to whatever device the provider deems worthy at that particular moment. I'll just go on 1337x and in 2 minutes I have an high quality mkv that I can play anywhere I want. I'd happily pay 5-10$ a pop for this, and for indie movies I do make the effort of seei…
What a way to justify a crime. "I don't like how they act, so I don't comply with their rules". You pirate because you have no respect for law, because you are a entitled child or because you don't have enough money. Piracy isn't plain theft, but it's consuming a service without paying for it to its legimate owners. It's close, isn't it? Would you sneak into a amusement park? Not pay for dinner if you found it not to…
With digital items it isn't like that. I can make infinite copies at no harm, real or imagined, to the seller. What might make this more clear is the distinction between downloading a movie illicitly versus watching a friend's legit purchased copy with them. In both of these cases, the maker of the content was not compensated for a watch.
The reason I think piracy (defined as personal copyright infringement) is okay is because:
1. It is generally a victimless "crime" (and even this is a misnomer, the act of downloading a movie is a civil, not criminal matter. It has more in common with driving over the speed limit than it does stealing.), and as so is morally neutral.
2. Statistics show that habitual pirates tend to be habitual purchasers as well, further complicating any concept of harm.
3. Copyright is a government granted monopoly, not some natural right, and its continued abuse and deadweight on our culture is not something that should be respected.
4. Even if the previous 3 points were all invalid, why should I have any respect for an entity that has none for me? Slavish adherence to the law is mere obedience, it is not noble or useful on its own.
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#360Last year I decided to exit the Kindle ecosystem after buying quite a few books in it, and cracking the DRM was a pretty near thing. I was lucky to have an older Kindle device sitting around that didn't support Amazon's latest DRM. It seems like they may be winning the arms race. As an individual with a few hundred ebooks rather than an institution with millions of them, I'm a lot less concerned about losing my un-DR…