31–40 of 40 posts
I was an engineer on the Nook team. It isn't possible for the device software to change text of books. Most likely the author or conversion service took the Kindle edition, ran a search and replace for 'Kindle' and there you have it.
Well good thing the author of this post bothered to talk to anyone before throwing this out there on the internet.
This actually points to a risk that Barnes and Nobles, Amazon and other content stores are susceptible to: users who assume that they edit their content like a traditional publisher would or should. This was a 99c purchase of a public domain work that was probably reformatted by someone who didn't care enough to check their work. This work was then publicly criticized by a consumer who didn't care enough to check the…
I was an engineer on the Nook team. It isn't possible for the device software to change text of books. Most likely the author or conversion service took the Kindle edition, ran a search and replace for 'Kindle' and there you have it.
The device software reads data from flash and renders it in pixels on the screen. It is absolutely possible for it to modify the text as it does so.
I was an engineer on the Nook team. It isn't possible for the device software to change text of books. Most likely the author or conversion service took the Kindle edition, ran a search and replace for 'Kindle' and there you have it.
The device software reads data from flash and renders it in pixels on the screen. It is absolutely possible for it to modify the text as it does so.
This actually points to a risk that Barnes and Nobles, Amazon and other content stores are susceptible to: users who assume that they edit their content like a traditional publisher would or should. This was a 99c purchase of a public domain work that was probably reformatted by someone who didn't care enough to check their work. This work was then publicly criticized by a consumer who didn't care enough to check the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well good thing the author of this post bothered to talk to anyone before throwing this out there on the internet.
To the contrary of the snark, throwing this out there on the internet may have been about the only way for the post's author to get attention of a Nook team member. It wasn't B&N's fault (they're just retailing what they're paid to), so getting someone knowledgeable to look at the issue via nook.com may have been ... unlikely. It was posted, it got discussed on HN, within a few hours we have a good relevant answer fr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But remember that War and Peace was not originally written in English, and the quality of translation matters a great deal. With Russian literature especially, the quality of translation varies widely, and some of the best translations into English are still copyrighted. A bad translation might faithfully reproduce the text's literal meaning but badly mangle the literary elegance that made the book so acclaimed in th…
the quality of translation matters a great deal Indeed. The English translation of Jules Verne's "The Mysterious Island" in Project Guttenberg is an "old" one which censors certain aspects of Captain Nemo's anti-colonial background.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To the contrary of the snark, throwing this out there on the internet may have been about the only way for the post's author to get attention of a Nook team member. It wasn't B&N's fault (they're just retailing what they're paid to), so getting someone knowledgeable to look at the issue via nook.com may have been ... unlikely. It was posted, it got discussed on HN, within a few hours we have a good relevant answer fr…
Why do all that? Just look at the file you downloaded in another viewer, see if the word is still there. Then, load another file that contains the word kindle and see if it gets changed. What's so hard about that?
Is the authors implication that in the digital nature of ebooks the ability to manipulate text becomes easier? Regardless of medium isn't this always a possibility? Whether it happens at the publisher and then printed on dead wood or otherwise -- to me it seems like one in the same?
It's rather harder for some government/publisher/web search company to modify the hardback copies on my shelf to airbrush Trotsky out of the pictures. With an eBook all it takes is a click by somebody at Amazon
Earlier quoted context omitted.
the quality of translation matters a great deal Indeed. The English translation of Jules Verne's "The Mysterious Island" in Project Guttenberg is an "old" one which censors certain aspects of Captain Nemo's anti-colonial background.
Really? "The Mysterious Island" is one of my favorites, and I'd be curious to know what, exactly, is being elided in the Project Guttenberg edition. Is this something you noticed yourself, or something you read about?
An excerpt from Kingston's translation: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1268/1268-h/1268-h.htm (this is the one I read)
"Captain Nemo was an Indian, the Prince Dakkar, son of a rajah of the then independent territory of Bundelkund. His father sent him, when ten years of age, to Europe, in order that he might receive an education in all respects complete, and in the hopes that by his talents and knowledge he might one day take a leading part in raising his long degraded and heathen country to a level with the nations of Europe."
The corresponding excerpt from White's translation, which is also in Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8misl10h.htm (closer to the original French)
"In Captain Nemo was an Indian prince, the Prince Dakkar, the son of the rajah of the then independent territory of Bundelkund, and nephew of the hero of India, Tippo Saib. His father sent him, when ten years old, to Europe, where he received a complete education; and it was the secret intention of the rajah to have his son able some day to engage in equal combat with those whom he considered as the oppressors of his country."
And the original French
"Le capitaine Nemo était un indien, le prince Dakkar, fils d’un rajah du territoire alors indépendant du Bundelkund et neveu du héros de l’Inde, Tippo-Saïb. Son père, dès l’âge de dix ans, l’envoya en Europe, afin qu’il y reçût une éducation complète et dans la secrète intention qu’il pût lutter un jour, à armes égales, avec ceux qu’il considérait comme les oppresseurs de son pays."