The Vent and Rant Thread

[Katsunami]

An actual e-book related rant; one that has appeared here numerous times for sure.

Two days ago I went to "Murder on the Orient Express" (2017 version), and I liked the movie. Even though I have known the story for a long time, some things slipped my mind:

- The book is by Agatha Christie
- It features Hercule Poirot

Despite having read everything of Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and having known of Poirot for at least 20 years, I've never read any story featuring him, or even anything else by Agatha Christie. I thought to chance that, and found a book containing all the short stories. So I went to Kobo.

For some reason, it directed me to the store (URL: kobobooks.com/us/nl, the US store in Dutch), and it told me that the book isn't available to me because I'm not in the US and I should buy it in the Netherlands. Fine... so I went there... and then my jaw dropped.

NOT IN YOUR LIFE, Kobo. G***YS.

This red one the only edition that is available here, and misses a bonus story that was discovered much later, if I'm correct. All other stores I visit tell me that the one that I want is not available in the Netherlands (ISBN 9780062251657), and the alternative, older one with the red cover costs like €35 or so, compared to $12.99 / €10.99 for the one I actually want.

I hope this kind of crap ends as soon as the EU passes its non-geo-blocking legislation. Even if it only pertains to the EU, I'll at least be able to see if books such as these are available in another EU-country. (The most likely one, the UK, exited the EU...)

This drives customers to illegally downloading stuff, people... or in my case, buying the book on my Kobo US account. (I wonder how long that will still be possible.)

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

An actual e-book related rant; one that has appeared here numerous times for sure.

Two days ago I went to "Murder on the Orient Express" (2017 version), and I liked the movie. Even though I have known the story for a long time, some things slipped my mind:

- The book is by Agatha Christie
- It features Hercule Poirot

Despite having read everything of Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and having known of Poirot for at least 20 years, I've never read any story featuring him, or even anything else by Agatha Christie. I thought to chance that, and found a book containing all the short stories. So I went to Kobo.

For some reason, it directed me to the store (URL: kobobooks.com/us/nl, the US store in Dutch), and it told me that the book isn't available to me because I'm not in the US and I should buy it in the Netherlands. Fine... so I went there... and then my jaw dropped.

NOT IN YOUR LIFE, Kobo. G***YS.

This red one the only edition that is available here, and misses a bonus story that was discovered much later, if I'm correct. All other stores I visit tell me that the one that I want is not available in the Netherlands (ISBN 9780062251657), and the alternative, older one with the red cover costs like €35 or so, compared to $12.99 / €10.99 for the one I actually want.

I hope this kind of crap ends as soon as the EU passes its non-geo-blocking legislation. Even if it only pertains to the EU, I'll at least be able to see if books such as these are available in another EU-country. (The most likely one, the UK, exited the EU...)

This drives customers to illegally downloading stuff, people... or in my case, buying the book on my Kobo US account. (I wonder how long that will still be possible.)

Don't hold your breath waiting on book prices to drop. Unless the EU is setting the prices.

[Katsunami]

I'm not waiting for prices to drop. I'm waiting to be able to actually buy the books I want. It's digital stuff. There's no reason for me to be unable to buy something from a different country except when 'someone' decides I can't.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

There's no reason for me to be unable to buy something from a different country except when 'someone' decides I can't.

Obama had a cure for that - TTIP - assuming the Walloon government would have allowed it. Now you'll have to wait until a trade friendly POTUS shows up

Or maybe when CETA is ratified you'll be able to use the NAFTA back door

BR

[Katsunami]

TTIP would have have been bad for the Dutch safety and quality standards that are now in place. Not only for the Dutch ones; for many other European ones as well. It's not for nothing the EU tried to force TTIP, tried to keep it secret as much as possible. The only ones who would have gotten better because of it would have been the very big companies.

I don't expect it to be gone though; parts of it will just be in other, smaller treaties, and in time, TTIP will have been introduced, even if it has to be done in a fragmented and circumspect way.

But I think this is becoming too much of a political discussion for the normal forum, so I won't say anything more about it.

[Toxaris]

In this case it is because there is one company in the Netherlands that has the rights to distribute books in English and so they are blocking as much as they can or charge high prices. Fortunately things in Europe are changing and we can buy things in other countries from Europe as well. Personally, I don't see the issue. If I want to by an American book via Internet, I should be able to. The only thing restrictions like this will result into, is to piracy. I once communicated with an author about buying his book and that I wasn't able to due to this. The book just wasn't available here and even he could not find out who owned the rights over here.
This was the reason that I had for a long time an account with as address the NY Yankee stadium just to buy e-books...

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I did upgrade it to Android 5.1.1 with a custom ROM because some applications were dropping support for Android 4.x... but now, some are dropping support for the actual CPU (such as Firefox, which I can't upgrade further than version 52.0.2 any more). Let's see how long it lasts yet.

My production tablet runs Android 4.4.2 Jellybean. It won't get an upgrade because the vendor isn't providing them for the model I have, but it does everything else I want and I largely don't care. (It's almost entirely used with locally stored data, and it online only to check for app updates from home, so the increased security in later Android versions is irrelevant.)

I do have a couple of apps that want at least Android 5.0 and won't run on it, but those are nice to have but not critical, and can be lived without.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

In this case it is because there is one company in the Netherlands that has the rights to distribute books in English and so they are blocking as much as they can or charge high prices. Fortunately things in Europe are changing and we can buy things in other countries from Europe as well. Personally, I don't see the issue. If I want to by an American book via Internet, I should be able to. The only thing restrictions like this will result into, is to piracy. I once communicated with an author about buying his book and that I wasn't able to due to this. The book just wasn't available here and even he could not find out who owned the rights over here.
This was the reason that I had for a long time an account with as address the NY Yankee stadium just to buy e-books...

This has been going on for as long as I can recall.

Historically, publishers bought exclusive rights to sell books in their geographical area. This could be beneficial to writers, as foreign rights were additional sources of revenue, if you were popular enough to get interest elsewhere in the world.

eBooks upset the apple cart, because they were inherently cross border.

And it's a thorny problem for publishers in small language markets, where the entire reading population of a country may be less than the population of the metropolitan area I live in in the US. There was an industry conference a while back in the Baltic where dealing with that was a concern. The biggest issue faced by such publishers is that most of the folks who did buy and read books could read in English as well as their birth tongue, and would simply buy the English edition from a US publisher. (Easier if it's an eBook, more complicated but still possible for print editions.)

A side-effect of that is the impact on publication of native language works. Translation of international work is less likely to occur because the folk inclined to read it largely won't need the translation to be able to do so, and the local market for the sort of specialized work that might only be written in the native language might be too small to make publication practical.

Publishers these days (at least in the US) all seem to be buying world rights, especially for eBook editions, to try to avoid the issues.
______
Dennis

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

This was the reason that I had for a long time an account with as address the NY Yankee stadium just to buy e-books...

I'm actually 'living' in a New York zoo... next to TubeMonkey

[DMcCunney]

I posted previously about Firefox 57, and the fun involved when 40+ extensions that worked under previous versions all stopped working under FF 57 because of architectural changes in the browser. Fortunately, enough new extensions that are pure JavaScript using the Web Extensions API are available to fill some of the gaps, though there is still a way to go to restore everything I used to be able to do.

One of the older extensions I made heavy use of was Stylish. Stylish was called Greasemonkey for CSS, and it was accurate. (Note that the FF 57 version of Greasemonkey has problems, and ViolentMonkey or TamperMonkey are better choices if you want to play with UserScripts. TamperMonkey is also available for Chrome and Edge.)

Greasemonkey allowed you to run arbitrary JavaScript called UserScripts on pages you visited, based on the page. Stylish allowed you to apply arbitrary CSS called UserStyles to pages you visited, without having to restart the browser. Stylish could also style the browser itself, and I used an assortment of custom CSS to modify Firefox's appearance. The canonical source for UserStyles is UserStyles.org with a lot of stuff to look at.

There is now a Firefox 57 compatible version of Stylish, and I use it. But while it can style sites you visit, like Facebook and Reddit, it can't style Firefox itself. That can only be done in UserChrome.css and UserContent.css files in the chrome folder in the browser's browser's profile. (That does not exist by default, but can be created.}

One of the extensions that no longer works in FF 57 was called Classic Theme Restorer by a chap named Aris, which did all sorts of nice things to the Firefox interface. What it did can't be done under Firefox 57 with the Web Extensions API. But one of the things Aris used as part of CTR was CSS. He's collected it on [https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx]Github[/url] in a pair of zip files. Exit Firefox, and create the chrome directory in the profile. Then download one, and extract the contents to the chrome directory you created.directory you created in the profile, and restart Firefox. The difference will be dramatic.

The attached screen shot came from unzipping the file custom_css_for_fx_v1.4.5.zip to the chrome directory and restarting. There's a lot in that file, and I just used it as is for a start, but it's well commented and you can experiment with what tweaks to apply. Mess yourself up? Not a problem. Exit Firefox, and delete the chrome directory and its contents, then restart Firefox. You'll get the previous default appearance.

Enjoy.
______
Dennis

[cc_in_oh]

I was hoping Classic Theme Restorer would eventually be available - sounds like I'm out of luck.

I hate the refresh/stop toggle - it's much more difficult to stop sites like WaPo before they hide the article with their registration screen.

At least AdBlock and SpeedDial are working so can't complain too much, though I'm also not seeing any noticeable performance improvement in 57...

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

I was hoping Classic Theme Restorer would eventually be available - sounds like I'm out of luck.

You are. As mentioned, what CTR did can't be done in FF 57 with the WebEx API.

I hate the refresh/stop toggle - it's much more difficult to stop sites like WaPo before they hide the article with their registration screen.

There's an addon on the Mozilla site that claims to be able to bypass paywalls on stuff like that.

At least AdBlock and SpeedDial are working so can't complain too much,

Group Speed Dial works fine here. There are a couple of other Speed Dial addons, but I wanted the functionality of Josip Del Rio's version, and GSD comes closest.

I don't run AdBlock. I use the WebEx version of uBlock Origin, which does enough for my purposes.

though I'm also not seeing any noticeable performance improvement in 57...

Curious. I do notice the difference, and didn't expect to. What are you running FF 57 on?
______
Dennis

[cromag]

Somehow, my son managed to switch the language selection on his Sansa Clip Jam to Arabic.

Easy enough to fix if you go into the Administration menu and select "Language" and then select "English." Assuming you know what the word "Language" looks like in Arabic.



I went online. Eventually I found a site that helpfully suggested that I go into the Administration menu, then pick the first option, then pick the ninth option. The language selections are all printed in the languages they represent.

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

You are. As mentioned, what CTR did can't be done in FF 57 with the WebEx API.


There's an addon on the Mozilla site that claims to be able to bypass paywalls on stuff like that.


Group Speed Dial works fine here. There are a couple of other Speed Dial addons, but I wanted the functionality of Josip Del Rio's version, and GSD comes closest.

I don't run AdBlock. I use the WebEx version of uBlock Origin, which does enough for my purposes.

Curious. I do notice the difference, and didn't expect to. What are you running FF 57 on?
______
Dennis

I'm on an ancient Core i7 system, maxed out at 16GB. But my bottleneck is probably my 25-ish mbps DSL. Especially since I have Playlater recordings soaking up the meager bandwidth most of the time

I'll have to look for that paywall addon. When I had separate stop/refresh buttons I could usually bypass with 2 or 3 tries.

I've been happy with FVD Speed Dial but haven't tried others...

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

I'm on an ancient Core i7 system, maxed out at 16GB. But my bottleneck is probably my 25-ish mbps DSL. Especially since I have Playlater recordings soaking up the meager bandwidth most of the time

I'll have to look for that paywall addon. When I had separate stop/refresh buttons I could usually bypass with 2 or 3 tries.

I've been happy with FVD Speed Dial but haven't tried others...

I confess, I'm a Chrome-FVD Speed Dial fan. That suits me, and I'm pretty happy with it.

(If I had 25 mbps, I'd be positively orgasmic. I have the fastest-available speed--10mbps--and I'm lucky to achieve 1mbp uploading. Faster than what it used to be, when I had 5mbps, but...oy. My computer can go like a r*ped *pe, but the connection is a tiny, tiny pipeline.)

Hitch