Science fiction author and former 'Byte' computer columnist Jerry Pournelle has a new Amazon Kindle. His initial comments are on his current column/blog Computing at Chaos Manor, January 29th (http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com/oa/2008/20080115_col_330-b.php).

Whether it's worth the money depends how much of your life is involved in carrying books around and reading them. I know in my case I am very glad to have it: I won't ever be caught in a waiting room without a book to read, because I am loading the Kindle up with older mysteries (priced from half a buck up) and books I always intended to read (most of those are free) and I'll have that selection with me wherever I go.

I used to devour "Chaos Manor" back in the day. I hadn't thought of that in years. Thanks for the link. I wonder if Jerry is still getting tons of computer stuff for free like he did in the old days?

Neat! Anybody here know him well enough to invite him to Mobileread? He might appreciate another source for books and information. Info such as the keypad hints, etc.

Neat! Anybody here know him well enough to invite him to Mobileread? He might appreciate another source for books and information. Info such as the keypad hints, etc.I dropped him a note. We'll see.
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Dennis

Peter Glaskowsky (a member here I think) is a Chaos Manor Advisor, so I'd expect J.P. to be aware of Mobileread, even if he's not a member. Given the recent discussion about eBooks and readers on Chaos Manor (see the current mailbag) perhaps he should be...

Cheers, Peter.

I'm surprised that someone who has used computers as long as he has could so consistently screw up the text of his blog. There is one character he keeps using that doesn't show up properly.

I'm surprised that someone who has used computers as long as he has could so consistently screw up the text of his blog. There is one character he keeps using that doesn't show up properly.

I was thinking the same thing. I was taking a look around and going "Man... this website looks like something from 1996...."

I'm surprised that someone who has used computers as long as he has could so consistently screw up the text of his blog. There is one character he keeps using that doesn't show up properly.
That's because the HTML-Code is a bit messed up.
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Chaos Manor Reviews Column 330, Part 2, January 29, 2008</title>
<meta httpequiv="ContentType" content="text/html; charset=iso88591" />
See? The browser doesn't know which charset to use, in my case (Firefox) it uses ISO-8859-1, which is the wrong one for that website. When I switch to UTF-8 manually the messed up characters are transformed to – (en dash)

FWIW, the "Sony's eBook Store begins "stocking" Short Stories!" news story on the Mobileread home page has the same problem...

Thanks, Peter. It's that pesky quotation mark. I tworks fine in most circumstances, but not on our front page.