Every action has a reaction - electronic text content providers - Page 5

Font · 10-02-2011, 07:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harry_Y

You truly are clueless

Let's focus on the facts.

carld · 10-02-2011, 07:34 PM

The fact is, you are truly clueless.

RDaneel54 · 10-02-2011, 07:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Font

Let's focus on the facts.

Amazon is not a monopoly because they control the form and delivery of e-books. They do not control the form (others can use it). They do not control the delivery (others can deliver using Whispersync).

Harry_Y · 10-02-2011, 07:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carld

The fact is, you are truly clueless.

montsnmags · 10-02-2011, 07:43 PM

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Please feel free to disagree with a person's opinions, or dispute their facts or data, providing you do so politely. Likewise, please address your criticisms to those opinions, facts and data rather than the person. Refer to MobileRead's Guidelines, specifically the full text of the very first item. When posting, your attention to the Guidelines is required.

Cheers,
Marc
Moderator

geoffwood · 10-02-2011, 07:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Font

No the Amazon electronic text store combined with electronic text readers is not a business, it is a 'commercial-government' thus a monopoly.

What on earth is a "commercial-government"?

yifanlu · 10-02-2011, 07:47 PM

Sorry I'm late to the party guys. I'll go ahead and entertain the OP. Sorry if I'm repeating anything.

Quote:

So by being party to it's monopolising electronic text store and electronic reader, I am compromising myself to their electronic texts and paper publications completely that could have negative things.

If I understand correctly, you're saying Amazon has a monopoly on ereaders and ebooks and that could have "negative things." I won't get into the whole monopoly definition thing again, so for the sake of arguments, let's say Amazon has a monopoly on ebook readers and ebooks. What are these "negative things"? Do you mean they can start charging high prices for books? Publishers know that the number 1 competitor to any electronic content is piracy. If Amazon kills all competition (B&N for example) and start charging insane prices knowing that they're the only choice, people will start stealing more and they'll lose business.

Quote:

Using an alternative operating system on the Amazon electronic readers is better because then the Amazon store monopoly goes and the every action has a reaction burden is reduced. The corporate tie-in is disrupted and this provides consumer choice to shop at another electronic text store.

Again, let's say for the argument that Duokan is an "operating system." You still need to purchase a Kindle to use it and purchasing a Kindle makes you "party to it's monopolising ... electronic reader." Duokan doesn't have it's own ebook store, so you may still end up buying ebooks from Amazon. If you don't buy ebooks from amazon and end up using an alternative ebook store, there's no point of Duokan because Amazon's own "operating system" supports un-drmed content. You can also convert un-drmed EPUBs. Either way, you still bought a Kindle and amazon got your money. If you truly don't want to support Amazon, don't buy the Kindle. Using an alternative "OS" doesn't "harm" them in any way.

Quote:

Beam me down from Amazon electronic text store behaviour changed: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...7&postcount=32
Feature choice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BMn4mhFAPo

You shouldn't believe everything you read. "wesleyer" said "as far as he KNOWS", amazon can't install anything while you're in Duokan. That's not true. Duokan is just an application that runs on the Kindle before the Java kindle firmware from Amazon (Kindlet, the GUI you see). They still have low level control. They still receive logs if they want. Your Kindle is still seen by them and is registered to your account. The only way to lose all connection with amazon is to disable wireless.

Now, OP is misusing a lot of terms, but arguing on those terms is pointless. Just allow him to define "monopoly" what he wants and "operating system" as he wants. His general idea is that Amazon is too big and we should not give them business anymore as that would kill the competition and Amazon can have free reign over the ebook market. Let's keep the argument to this.

geoffwood · 10-02-2011, 07:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yifanlu

His general idea is that Amazon is too big and we should not give them business anymore as that would kill the competition and Amazon can have free reign over the ebook market. Let's keep the argument to this.

I don't buy that at all. Amazon used to be in a stronger position and could dictate pricing to publishers, back them most new releases were $9.99. Then Apple came long, broke the "monopoly" and now publishers dictate pricing and bestsellers cost $12.99 and more.

The publishers behavior is far more monopolistic than Amazons.

yifanlu · 10-02-2011, 08:05 PM

Just for s- & giggles, I'll add to the whole "what is an operating system" side-argument. I think it'll be useful to have a technical view of the Kindle boot process vs. a regular computer boot process.
Kindle: (On screen, you see "Please wait while kindle boots." with a picture of a guy sitting under a tree) Bootloader (uBoot) starts up and loads the Linux Kernel (2.6). The Kernel loads the drivers (for eink, sound, etc) and starts the boot process. (Now a progress bar appears) The boot process involves loading daemons which are basically background service tasks that the user doesn't see. For example, one daemon controls wifi encryption. Another one keeps track of the CPU speed and downclocks when idle. The last boot process is the "framework", a Java program that you use as the GUI. (You get the slide to unlock screen)
Duokan: Everything is the same until the last step. The last boot script is not the Java Kindle gui, but the Duokan GUI.
Windows: (Text on screen) The bootloader (BCD) loads the NT-Kernel. NT starts the boot process by loading the drivers. (Windows logo appears). Services (equivalent to daemons) gets started last service is the login window. (Login window appears, you log in). You see the GUI you know as "Windows"
Linux: (Text on screen) The bootloader (Grub) loads the Linux kernel. (More text on screen). The Kernel loads the drivers and begins the boot process (starting daemons). (Logo on screen). The boot process starts and the last one is "GNOME", or what you see as the GUI.

Basically the components are (terms are coined by me, since I'm too lazy to look up the technical names):
Bootloader is prepares the computer for the Kernel: uBoot (Kindle), BCD (Desktop Computer), Grub (Desktop computer)
Kernel does the backend stuff: Windows NT-Kernel, Linux Kernel, OSX's Darwin kernel, BSD kernel, etc
GUI is what the user sees: GNOME (most Linux distros), Windows Aero (The Vista/7 look), OSX "Cocca" (The Leopard+ look), KDE (another Linux distro), Kindlet (Kindle), Duokan, fbreader
Distribution: A set of programs, kernel with modifications, and/or unique GUI. Ubuntu (Linux 2.6 kernel, GNOME GUI, Grub bootloader), CyanogenMod (Linux 2.6 kernel, Gingerbread GUI, fastboot bootloader), Windows 7 (NT-kernel, Windows Aero GUI, BCD bootloader), OSX Lion (Darwin-kernel, Cocca GUI, EFI bootloader), and so on

Basically, "operating system" is too generic of a term.

jgaiser · 10-02-2011, 08:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Font

For example a Linux distro, Ubuntu. It is also called an operating system.

Sigh.... Linux is the operating system for all the distributions. They're *all* different flavors of the same OS. It's pretty obvious that you really don't know what you're talking about.

yifanlu · 10-02-2011, 08:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Sigh.... Linux is the operating system for all the distributions. They're *all* different flavors of the same OS. It's pretty obvious that you really don't know what you're talking about.

As I've said in the post above. Operating system is very vague. We mean the kernel as the OS (Linux 2.6/Windows/OSX/etc). He means the distributation (Ubuntu/Android/Windows XP/OSX Lion/etc). I guess one could argue that duokan is a distributation. But if so, it would be like saying CyanogenMod is a different distributation than Gingerbread (we consider both to be the distribuatation of Linux called "Android").

Fbone · 10-02-2011, 09:25 PM

It sounds like Font may be using a narrow definition of monopoly. Possibly definitions #3 and #4 listed by Nyssa.

An example of that may be if you own a Kindle and want to read The Help on it. Is Amazon the only place you can purchase The Help and read it on your Kindle? If it is, then can Amazon be said to have "exclusive control" of that particular book or commodity for that individual?

While Amazon may not have a global monopoly it may have a personal individual one.
This may be what Font is saying. The device and the store should not be mutually exclusive for any or all ebooks. Of course, I may be wrong.

geoffwood · 10-02-2011, 10:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fbone

The device and the store should not be mutually exclusive for any or all ebooks. Of course, I may be wrong.

So if we follow that logic Gillette should be able to sell blades for Schick razors? HP could sell ink for Kodak printers.

Even if you remove any issues around patents and DRM, while these companies are competitors, to put it crudely they don't piss in each other's Cheerios. They now that if one starts, then they all have to jump in and it's a race to the bottom. In the end they all lose, so they don't do it. It's basic business common sense, not a monopoly.

Jabby · 10-02-2011, 10:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichelRenaud

Look under "can be confused": http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/its

A always liked their explanation. Short story: when in doubt, just ask yourself "can I replace it by 'it is' ?" If yes, then it's "it's", otherwise it's "its".

True! But there would be far fewer mistakes if it were the other way around. Why "they" chose to treat nouns and pronouns differently is this regard has always been a mystery to me.

Regard - John

MichelRenaud · 10-03-2011, 06:25 AM

The device can read other books - fact. I've bought books on Smashwords and read them on my Kindle. I also got some free books from other third-parties. Read them on my Kindle.

The store may be "Kindle exclusive", but it's not even tied to the device: There are Kindle apps for PC, Mac, iPad, iPod Touch/iPhone, etc. Also I'm pretty sure just about everything you can buy on the Kindle store, you can buy at other e-book stores.

There's no monopoly, no matter how you try to spin it.

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10-02-2011, 07:34 PM	#62
carld Wizard Posts: 2,698 Karma: 4748723 Join Date: Dec 2007 Device: Kindle Paperwhite	The fact is, you are truly clueless.

10-02-2011, 07:43 PM	#65
montsnmags Grand Sorcerer Posts: 10,155 Karma: 4632658 Join Date: Nov 2007 Device: none	Moderator Notice Please feel free to disagree with a person's opinions, or dispute their facts or data, providing you do so politely. Likewise, please address your criticisms to those opinions, facts and data rather than the person. Refer to MobileRead's Guidelines, specifically the full text of the very first item. When posting, your attention to the Guidelines is required. Cheers, Marc Moderator

10-02-2011, 08:05 PM	#69
yifanlu Kindle Dissector Posts: 662 Karma: 475607 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: Amazon Kindle 3	Just for s- & giggles, I'll add to the whole "what is an operating system" side-argument. I think it'll be useful to have a technical view of the Kindle boot process vs. a regular computer boot process. Kindle: (On screen, you see "Please wait while kindle boots." with a picture of a guy sitting under a tree) Bootloader (uBoot) starts up and loads the Linux Kernel (2.6). The Kernel loads the drivers (for eink, sound, etc) and starts the boot process. (Now a progress bar appears) The boot process involves loading daemons which are basically background service tasks that the user doesn't see. For example, one daemon controls wifi encryption. Another one keeps track of the CPU speed and downclocks when idle. The last boot process is the "framework", a Java program that you use as the GUI. (You get the slide to unlock screen) Duokan: Everything is the same until the last step. The last boot script is not the Java Kindle gui, but the Duokan GUI. Windows: (Text on screen) The bootloader (BCD) loads the NT-Kernel. NT starts the boot process by loading the drivers. (Windows logo appears). Services (equivalent to daemons) gets started last service is the login window. (Login window appears, you log in). You see the GUI you know as "Windows" Linux: (Text on screen) The bootloader (Grub) loads the Linux kernel. (More text on screen). The Kernel loads the drivers and begins the boot process (starting daemons). (Logo on screen). The boot process starts and the last one is "GNOME", or what you see as the GUI. Basically the components are (terms are coined by me, since I'm too lazy to look up the technical names): Bootloader is prepares the computer for the Kernel: uBoot (Kindle), BCD (Desktop Computer), Grub (Desktop computer) Kernel does the backend stuff: Windows NT-Kernel, Linux Kernel, OSX's Darwin kernel, BSD kernel, etc GUI is what the user sees: GNOME (most Linux distros), Windows Aero (The Vista/7 look), OSX "Cocca" (The Leopard+ look), KDE (another Linux distro), Kindlet (Kindle), Duokan, fbreader Distribution: A set of programs, kernel with modifications, and/or unique GUI. Ubuntu (Linux 2.6 kernel, GNOME GUI, Grub bootloader), CyanogenMod (Linux 2.6 kernel, Gingerbread GUI, fastboot bootloader), Windows 7 (NT-kernel, Windows Aero GUI, BCD bootloader), OSX Lion (Darwin-kernel, Cocca GUI, EFI bootloader), and so on Basically, "operating system" is too generic of a term.

10-02-2011, 09:25 PM	#72
Fbone Is that a sandwich? Posts: 8,189 Karma: 100500000 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: Nook Glowlight Plus	It sounds like Font may be using a narrow definition of monopoly. Possibly definitions #3 and #4 listed by Nyssa. An example of that may be if you own a Kindle and want to read The Help on it. Is Amazon the only place you can purchase The Help and read it on your Kindle? If it is, then can Amazon be said to have "exclusive control" of that particular book or commodity for that individual? While Amazon may not have a global monopoly it may have a personal individual one. This may be what Font is saying. The device and the store should not be mutually exclusive for any or all ebooks. Of course, I may be wrong.

10-03-2011, 06:25 AM	#75
MichelRenaud Connoisseur Posts: 53 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: Ottawa, Canada Device: Kindle DXG	The device can read other books - fact. I've bought books on Smashwords and read them on my Kindle. I also got some free books from other third-parties. Read them on my Kindle. The store may be "Kindle exclusive", but it's not even tied to the device: There are Kindle apps for PC, Mac, iPad, iPod Touch/iPhone, etc. Also I'm pretty sure just about everything you can buy on the Kindle store, you can buy at other e-book stores. There's no monopoly, no matter how you try to spin it.

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