Happy digital world: switching off your books

[Skybird]

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...soft-store-faq


Yes, its real. All notes somebody has written into "his" copy of the book, will be lost as well. The individual user has to decide whether the fincial comneonsaiton for that is worth it or not.


Now consider Steam. Online music libraries. Apple iTunes. Amazon Kindle. Cloud computing. Digital bank accounts with direct banks.



Still in principle love with it? Then you love beign a remote-controlled drone.



And you can be switched off from the distance, any time.

[Jimbuna]

Nothing beats a good old book.

[Skybird]

Indeed. And so far, when good quality paper was used and when the storage codnitons are kept optimal, paper is superior in loingevity to any modern tehcnbology dta astorage we so far have experience with. Books smell, and feel like something, and holding them already triggers memories in you. A digital data file - when the carrier and decyphering technology gets dated or got sorted out, you cannot even play it any longer.


I use a Tolino ebook reader, however - but only for books of very huge volume, that would be unpleasant to hold up when reading them in bed. Novels from 800 pages upward, for example. Good books like these I however also always own as a paper copy.


( Germany is the only Western country where Amazon'S kindle is not the number one ebook reader on the market. Over here, Tolinos are the market dominator. Technically comparable in qality to the Kindle, but you are not imprisoned in Amazon'S market biotope, but can switch between book chain shops, also can easily store pdfs and open format files on it. I recommend Tolinos over Kindles any time, they have just advantages over Amazon. In no other country, as far as I am aware, Amazon has been successfully confronted and countered on the ebook market. Tolinos are made by an alliance of other, non-Amazon book selling chain and online stores, and Telekom: a united front against Amazon, here it paid off for customers and the participants as well. )

[Eichhörnchen]

It leads one to ponder the worth of something so intangible; the "free" e-book turns out to be as completely insubstantial and worthless as one you paid hard (or even digital) cash for

[Catfish]

Books. Not eBooks, or if only those i can store away on a hard drive.
And CDs, DVDs.
Let the hipsters do what they want.

[Skybird]

Its worth to note that Amazon in the past years has remote-targeted individual Kindle devices as well and deleted content on them. In their fine-print, their rules say that if you use a Kindle from one continental trade zone in another to access any Amazon shop there, you forfeit any rights in both zones and that they can cancel your account then and you go void on all content you ever bought. That was what i have read several years ago at least, and it was done this way indeed. Not often, but it was done.



Also, in even fewer cases, politically unwanted books or content of disputed legal status also was remote-deleted on customer's Kindle devices, in a variety of Western countries, including the US and Germany.



Neither digital life and digital home nor big data accept just small offerings and just small sacrifices - they want it all and want to maximise your exposition to their mercy. Mercy translates into: their interest over yours.

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

I would rather die a thousand deaths then to go one day without a book.

[Sailor Steve]

I have a handful of books I've downloaded. They are on my computer for me to read at my leisure, though I will probably never get to them.

I have a monster book collection that I mostly picked up when I worked at the book distributor's warehouse, which is now more than twenty years ago. I'll never read most of them either, which is okay because most of them are junk which we got for free and looked interesting at the time. The better ones are being given to the main city library.

I also have a lot of books I've purchased and hope I have time to read them while I'm still here. Unfortunately most of my reading over the last five years have been historical and technical references. Useful but not as enjoyable as some of the classics I've bought.

My dad praised the wonders of Kindle to me. I replied with a short list of the real books I had waiting for me to read.

I've never bought anything at the Microsoft Store and never will.

[Buddahaid]

I know what you mean. Today, buy is a euphemism for rent because you don't own the product in any meaningful way. Sure, I can "buy" a movie on Xfinity, but I can only use it "by" using Xfinity so I've only bought the right to see it again on Xfinity at no extra charge. This is why I buy a hard copy of video and rip it, which is illegal, but screw that as I'm only using it for my own pleasure.

As far as ebooks go, most of what I buy there isn't more than of passing interest so I don't care all that much. If it's meaningful I'll buy the hard copy.

[ikalugin]

I tend to keep books in PDF or DJVU form.

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

I have some Kindle ebooks but only those which I could not get via Celia (Finnish state library for blind and visually impaired) as I'm no longer able to read paper books. I have never been comfortable with "owning" those ebooks and this annoucmenet by Microsoft certainly bolsters that feeling. However the "silver lining" in this is that this will slightly improve Amazon's and Google's position so they are (slightly) less likely to go out of ebook business.



I used to read a lot and bought quite some books myself. I also got many as gifts because my mother's family has long tradition of giving books as Christmas gifts. Oldest surviving book (AFAIK) in my mother's collection is from 1860s but most are from late 19th and early 20th centuries.


Most eye catching book has eagle and swastika in its cover along with title "Taisteluni" written by Adolf Hitler. Yes, that is a Finnish edition of "Mein Kampf". I have never read it so don't know how much it has been "edited" to make publishable in Finland (would be interesting to compare it to pre-war U.S. edition). My grandfather got that bestseller book as Christmas gift in 1942.


My own collection? Mostly scifi, some other novels and some history books. Oh and ofcourse a lot of Donald Duck cartoons (I'm Don Rosa fan). I have kept them in (propably pointless) hopes that someday I could read them again.