“The books will stop working.” • Hacker News Board

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#331

Post by redisman » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:03 AM UTC

lukewrites wrote: post #154

logifail wrote: post #84

My grandmother is in her late 90s, has dementia, and is in a care home. My mother sent me this update last week: > Went to see Granny yesterday, was quite cheerful, read though the poems in "When we were very young"[0], her original copy[1], given to her in 1928, how about that. She knows them off by heart and joins in when you read them to her Q: When we're in our late 90s, how many of us will be able to consume 90-…

I love reading. I resisted ebooks until we had a baby at which point my reading time shrank to situations (bed w/the lights out, on the bus) where my Kindle is more convenient than a paper book. I buy/acquire ebooks that are the sort of thing I'd probably purchase, read, and then sell. For books I think (or know) I want to keep, I buy a paper copy, even if I've gotten an e-copy. I want my kids to have lots of book ar…

I much prefer real books but after having a baby it's just impossible to have two hands for reading during what now counts as reading time. Now it's mostly 0 hands where I just balance the reader on something.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#332

Post by NegativeK » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:10 AM UTC

knd775 wrote: post #60

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK Consumer Rights Act (CRA) appears to anticipate this as it has no absolute date beyond which goods should remain suitable for purpose. Digital goods should last infinitely, so a digital good that 'expires' should be fixed or the cost fully refunded (fully as there are still an infinite number of years of use left available; and that should be accounting for inflation too).

They are fully refunding all purchases, though.

I don't understand how publishers are going to continue pushing DRMed media if they have to keep every sale as a liability on their books.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#333

Post by tannhaeuser » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:17 AM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #147

logifail wrote: post #84

My grandmother is in her late 90s, has dementia, and is in a care home. My mother sent me this update last week: > Went to see Granny yesterday, was quite cheerful, read though the poems in "When we were very young"[0], her original copy[1], given to her in 1928, how about that. She knows them off by heart and joins in when you read them to her Q: When we're in our late 90s, how many of us will be able to consume 90-…

I've been hoping this nostalgia trend will end. It's time to move forward. Instead of teaching kids about Shakespeare, we should be teaching about Super Mario for cultural history. Why should anyone care about poems or poetry? It was the entertainment of the early-print society, it has comparably little value today.

Ignoring the provocative/trolling part, studying digital design from a cultural-historic PoV might turn out to much harder than reading books written centuries ago because of lost sources, formats, and devices. Even HTML, with its deep roots in the digital humanities (SGML), has been brittled to death because $reasons.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#334

Post by nikofeyn » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:23 AM UTC

while i understand the general sentiment, this type of outcry and little quip is kind of silly, because it's too late. everyone knew what they were signing up for, and people still know what they're signing up for with kindle, itunes, netflix, and every other "you're just buying a temporary license" service. meanwhile, libraries in the u.s. are struggling despite being one of our greatest ongoing services. libraries are awesome, but they are having to redefine themselves (not necessarily a bad thing along some vectors) because people aren't using the books that are there. so in effect, the books already stopped working, but that doesn't make for good twitter hype.

and as far as killing off services go, giving full refunds is pretty rare and should be applauded.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#335

Post by Kinnard » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:26 AM UTC

blakesterz wrote: post #15

Can you imagine someone trying to start public libraries if they didn't already exist now? I think it's safe to say it would never ever happen, at least in the US. Between lobbying and the general disdain for most things run by any type of government here, they'd never have a chance. Luckily we still have places that still purchase printed books (along with ebooks) and you can go borrow them any time and they never s…

Idk, some hackerspaces are like public libraries. cf noisebridge which is open to the public at no charge and has a library:

http://noisebridge.net

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#336

Post by Marsymars » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:37 AM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #255

patmcc wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>a subset of works would be onerous and somewhat annoying for 28 years, after which you could literally do whatever you want with them. Unfortunately, what would probably happen is more like what is happening to video games now; they are no longer profitable to publish, don't exist in an easy-to-backup, easy-to-share format (like an epub file with no DRM, for example), and so are essentially lost to time. If an ebo…

The AAA-class games with a budget of a blockbuster movie? Well, I'm fine with them following the movie locked-up route. New and original indie games? New Portal? New Monument Valley? Maybe even new Doom? I bet they would live with shorter copyright; Doom was released as free software much sooner than after 28 years.

The Doom source code was released, the game itself (notably, the IWAD files) was never released as free software.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#337

Post by Marsymars » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:42 AM UTC

stordoff wrote: post #196

filoleg wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that for certain types of books, digital works fine, while for others it is a disaster. For novels, poems, and other non-textbook books without tons of graphics, ebooks are great. For textbooks or other materials where you are expected to flip back and forth through pages trying to digest the material, as well as for books with tons of graphs and diagrams, ebooks are indeed suboptimal. My personal rule is tha…

Interestingly, I find I'm the other way. Reading for pleasure, I want a physical book. Anything where I'm flipping back and forth, I prefer an e-book, so I can quickly make bookmarks and have a clickable table of contents/index.

Relative niceness of ebook vs. physical book depends a lot on the actual ebook hardware. i.e. An ereader is much nicer than a tablet/PC for reading text, but nearly unusable if you need to flip around or do anything interactive other than turning pages from front to back.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#338

Post by cyphar » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:44 AM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #300

asdff wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because our collective western culture is still the direct product of Greek philosophy no matter how many mario kart games are released. The books in the western canon are important because they are good and went on to influence everything you consume today, even the narrative in super mario. Take some time to read a good chunk of these books and you will be wiser than most people you know on all sorts of topics.

My view is quite different. They're just stories that anyone could have told and don't contain any unobtainable wisdom. The people that told those stories simply existed before us. In many ways the stories are inferior to their modern counterparts.

> In many ways the stories are inferior to their modern counterparts.

This feels to me like a slightly tweaked form of an "appeal to novelty". The most insightful people alive today are not automatically more insightful than everyone who has died. Just because we are alive now doesn't discount the importance of previous works (and this is ignoring that today's society is based on our ancestors' philosophy and views).

Not to mention modern stories are often based on older stories, and those who write modern stories by definition were informed by older stories.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#339

Post by tomsmeding » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

lloeki wrote: post #210

sjy wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be longer than 100 years. I recently tried to find a copy of an article published in 1932. I can't find any version online and the nearest print version is in a library 1,000 km away. I asked the library if they could scan it and email it to me and they said no, it's still covered by copyright. This work was published early in the author's life; she died in 1983. So the Berne Convention would protect this wo…

Well I can’t even read my own research paper (lost my tex source and final digital copy when both hard drive and backup drive failed within the same hour). I know for a fact that it is archived and basically exactly where but it’s beyond either one of an abusive layer of bureaucracy or a paywall, whichever I would choose to go through. Not that it’s worthy of anything or even remotely interesting but it tells a lot a…

> when both hard drive and backup drive failed within the same hour

That is basically the horror scenario of backup'ing, since you don't usually protect against that kind of failure: the probability of it happening just seems too low. It's similar to having a limit to your attack model when securing your data/accounts/... against attacks: you can try to protect against a governmentally funded cyber attack on you personally, but you probably won't succeed and it's very surely not worth the trouble if you're not a very influential or otherwise important person.

In this case, the usual retort would of course be "why didn't you have a backup in 'the cloud'?" I have for part of my stuff, but not for all. I feel you.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#340

Post by mdpopescu » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 6:00 AM UTC

la_barba wrote: post #227

mdpopescu wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For movies? Netflix. For books? Piracy is irrelevant. (See far too many articles from Konrath, who at one point uploaded all his books on a torrent site AND advertised that on his blog... to no effect on his sales.)

I don't know if you know this, but DRM is a core part of Netflix. No studio would ever have signed up with them if they couldn't control distribution. >See far too many articles from Konrath, who at one point uploaded all his books on a torrent site AND advertised that on his blog... to no effect on his sales I am not familiar with that example. Any link to the data?

- The DRM of Netflix is irrelevant. The people who want to download the movies will do it anyway, but their number got way lower once Netflix (and probably Hulu and others like them) got a large enough catalog. People like convenience and are willing to pay for it.

- I couldn't immediately find the article where he announced that HE uploaded his books (as an experiment), but here is one of the many articles where he dismisses the issue:

https://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/05/piracy-again.html