Finding Books Using File Sharing - Page 2

HarryT · 12-14-2006, 09:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alex_d

Exactly! Publishers of books and music collude and pricegouge owing to their position, power, and the nature of what they're selling. We owe nothing to them.

Hmmm. Serious question - have you ever written a book?

Publishers do a lot lot of work, most of which people who've never been involved in the business perhaps don't appreciate. A good editor can make the difference between a masterpiece and a disaster, not to mention all the work that publishers do promoting and marketing books.

Authors need good publishers, whether the end result is distributed using dead trees or electrons.

NatCh · 12-14-2006, 11:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RWood

Quote:

Originally Posted by alex_d

Compensating authors directly according to popularity is a form of communism.

Let me see if I understand you correctly. More popular authors are the ones that sell the most and therefore it is Communistic to pay them more?

I think perhaps he's not refering to the system of government, but rather to the practice of a group of people having everything in common in a commune -- not "Communism" but "communism" -- that assumes that the capitalization difference was deliberate.

That being said, I still don't think I follow you, alex_d.

I'm not particularly up on how communes work, other than thinking it requires an unusual group of people for any sizable number of them to be able to set their individual self-interests aside enough to make it work.

Could you elaborate a bit on what you mean?

sic · 12-14-2006, 01:33 PM

Do you really think publishers sort out the "garbage" for you?
are you willing to pay 10 times the price of a book for that? (because that's their margin)
I would rather get those 9 books that the publisher didn't find good enough and decide myself.

I also disagree re: the marketing effort publishers do.
we were discussing on other threads how difficult it is to market a book. I don't see publishers doing an awful lot there.

But... correct me if I'm wrong.

HarryT · 12-14-2006, 01:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sic

Do you really think publishers sort out the "garbage" for you?

Yes, unquestionably. One of my friends is a volunteer for Baen (one of the very, very few publishers who will even look at unsolicited manuscripts), who sorts through the "trash heap" looking for the gems. They are few and far between.

Quote:

are you willing to pay 10 times the price of a book for that? (because that's their margin)

That's a very misleading thing to say. You are correct that an author typically receives about a 10% royalty on the "cover price" of a book, but the publisher doesn't get the other 90%. Most of it goes to the wholesaler and the retailer.

Quote:

I also disagree re: the marketing effort publishers do.
we were discussing on other threads how difficult it is to market a book. I don't see publishers doing an awful lot there.

You're entitled to your opinion, of course

. Having gone through "the mill", however, I have to say that personally I think your chance of achieving any type of "notice" for a self-published and self-publicised book are asymptotically close to zero

.

Quote:

But... correct me if I'm wrong.

Far be it from me to say that anyone's wrong. All I'll say is that perhaps the practical experience of getting a book published might give you a different perspective on the matter.

sic · 12-14-2006, 05:02 PM

thanks Harry for setting me straight

In my opinion we need to think about what publishing means in the digital age.

alex_d · 12-14-2006, 07:46 PM

Stingo-"Devices such as ours are not expected to sell on the volume of an ipod. The market is simply not seen as big. Moreover once you buy your unit, you will not need another for years."

The early hard disk mp3 players were not expected to sell well either. Indeed they did not. Selling content is certainly not what kept early players such as Archos and Creative in business, and selling mp3s doesn't keep anyone in business even today. (In fact, Sony makes more money off of iTunes than Apple.)

Your argument that I won't need another reader for years is likewise misguided, and this is illustrated by the same analogy. An mp3 player isn't just something that plays music. Having one isn't the same as having them all. There are is still HUGE room for eInk readers to improve (in terms of features, quality, screen size, and plain old aesthetics) that there'll be plenty of upgraders with every generation, and fresh users who are shown the light.

Stingo- "They are manufactured in the expectation of making money on the media."

Here I'll agree. But we must shake that expectation from the manufacturers. The mp3 player market bloomed beautifully precisely because manufacturers did not have any such expectations. If they had such expectations, they would have followed Sony's example of minidisk and other audio products which hardly even allowed people to play mp3s. If manufacturers have such expectations regarding ebooks, they will follow Sony's example of the Librie which hardly even allowed people to read their own books.

I am not arguing anything unreasonable. The greed of the content cartel has to be fought, or it will corrupt the hardware. It will make the hardware unpleasant, and it will certainly slow adoption like molasses. (Just look at minidisk and librie!)

Stingo- "Although it would be nice to change the way the world of copyright works, for the immediate future, if you want best sellers, and you want to pay for them to encourage more media, you are stuck with the publishing system as it exists....The current system sucks. But don't expect that governments to change how copyrights operate. The publishers have the lobbyists."

But if I want the publishing system and the world of copyright to change, then not paying for bestsellers is exactly how to encourage more media. Stuck in the system as it exists, it is unfortunate that it cannot be changed without disobedience. I again agree about the failure of the legislature. In fact, I doubt the laws will ever be changed. But if they are, it is because the publishers are pushed into a corner where they do not make any money and seek change. That scenario is extreme. More likely, piracy will simply increase competitive pressure on publishers, increasing the quality of content and decreasing price.

The usual argument that taking away money from publishers will decrease quality and increase price is only true in a system of perfect competition, and is invalid in the real world. In the monopolistic system we have, moderate piracy will paradoxically increase quality and decrease price.

Stingo- "Finally, in most communist governments, as they exist in real life, the government employer owns the work and the artist cannot market, publish it or sell it without government approval. I hardly consider that an effective reform."

Neither do I. Of course outright preventing people from publishing without approval is NOT communism, it is totalitarianism. However, putting the government in charge of figuring out how much to pay and whom is not something that can be effectively carried out yet (although rough methods of paying in proportion to popularity might do the job well enough). I am just as much in favor of taking the Adam Smith route of promoting greater competition. This will still take government action to break up conglomerates and prevent publisher mergers, but like I said piracy is an effective competitor too (as long as it does not grow too rampant, and it certainly is nowhere close to that point yet).

RWood- "Let me see if I understand you correctly. More popular authors are the ones that sell the most and therefore it is Communistic to pay them more? When I last studied that system of government it seemed that writers were paid a certain amount. If they wrote correctly and sold they were allowed to keep writing, if not, other positions were found for them.

To reward one's efforts by the market reaction is a capitalistic method."

Not true at all. Communism simply means that the government makes the decisions, while capitalism means that decisions are made on their own with the help of competition and the invisible hand. If the market ends up compensating based on popularity on its own, it is capitalism. If a government decides to compensate people based on popularity, it is communism. The advantage of well-run (competitive) capitalism is that it automatically factors in costs into the price while under communism that has to be thought-out manually. The advantage of well-run communism, however, is that, for example, the costs of writing a book are one time and it is NOT efficient to charge each person for access (the government pays for its creation, and everyone gets a copy for free). Capitalism has a very hard time dealing with products whose costs are ONLY one-time and whose marginal costs are zero. It can succeed at this task, but only under conditions of UPMOST competition which are very difficult to achieve in the real world.

The issue of capitalism vs communism is very complex and nowhere near as simple as high school made it seem. Both work perfectly in the ideal case, but the world is obviously far from ideal. Indeed, the topic has many of the characteristics of a good, deep engineering problem.

What is clear, however, is that the current capitalist intellectual property system is just as broken as the communist toilet paper one.

jaed- "Apart from their role in discovering artists and authors and presenting them to the public...? I'm still happy to pay them for doing this... One quick look at the Internet shows that talent is still rare, and expecting everyone to trawl through the dross isn't very workable..."

Good point, but are you the type of person who thinks the best movies and books are the ones that have the most ad dollars behind them? It works somewhat, I agree, but it's still broken. On a related note, being better able to discover which books and movies are good value (ie quality/price) will go a LONG way toward promoting better competition and making the current capitalist system run much better (higher quality at lower prices). It will, in fact, probably do more good than simply breaking up companies and I should have mentioned this before. However, such clarity isn't in media conglomerates' interests and you don't see the Connect store collating reviews.

harryT- "A good editor can make the difference between a masterpiece and a disaster, not to mention all the work that publishers do promoting and marketing books."

Agreed about editors, but they don't cost a fortune. As for promoting and marketing... paying money to convince people to want your book is a facet of a broken system which we'd be better off without. (See above paragraph.)

Liviu_5 · 12-14-2006, 08:53 PM

The main conundrum for ebooks is the same as for all digital content - what was called somewhere the Picard syndrome - right now people do not value digital content as much as physical content, so they are not willing to pay the corresponding prices, so the revenue is not there and it is unlikely that you can expand the pie enough to make up for the ratios involved.

However books as opposed to music/movies/tv are different in the sense that is comparatively hard and time consuming to digitize them at home, while it is trivial to rip a cd, and almost as trivial (assuming you are willing to do it) to rip a dvd. So the publishing industry right now does not face the external pressures music/movie studios face.

Regarding devices, iPods do not sell because of iTunes, iTunes was just the way for Apple to avoid costly ip lawsuits since this way they can tell the studios, look you make 70c per song, we barely profit if so, so ignore that out the thousands of songs people have on their ipods statistically only about 50 come from iTunes...

Any serious ebook reader manufacturer will need a drm store for the same reasons as Apple until drm dissapears, but I do not think they expect to make the real money from there, the Gemstar and Librie failures hopefully disabused anyone from that.

Liviu

TheMadBrewer · 12-29-2006, 01:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ktb1381

If I ever used such a source I would make sure to buy the books in paper, and I advise all to do the same.

I have downloaded books in txt, html, etc. when I already own a paper book but want to re-read it as an eBook. Sometimes its a series and and want to read them all in order, or sometimes I just want to read an author. Or sometimes I know the books is in one of the dozens of boxes in storage but am just to damn lazy to find it

I'd support an inexpensive, time-limited format -- eRenting an eBook from an eLibrary

nerys · 12-29-2006, 10:48 PM

this creates a delimma. I consider DRM to be illegal. I consider the application of DRM to be theft. So I do not buy DRM'd content. If this means I have to get it illicitly so be it.

If I like a book I always 100% of the time buy the "actual" physical book. So as far as I am concerned I am covered morally (I could care less about legally since the politicians don't care about me so its even)

If I do not like a book to me its the same as borrowing it from a library and deciding I did not like it.

The only issue that is important to me is my personal moral compass. and its satisfied with this method.

I would rather see this ebook industry FAIL than see DRM become "accepted" as normal. DRM is bad. Morally and Legally as far as I am concerned. its is NOT being used to stop piracy (its 100% ineffective at that) IT IS however being used to STRIP legitimate users of there PPR rights (Personal Property Rights)

The only way to send the message is to BUY LOTS of hardware that SUPPORTS open formats (IE being able to toss files on the SD card and read them natively Kudo's sony on finally getting this right even if not perfect)

and to buy NO software that is DRM infested. They will then have a choice. Release it without DRM and at a PROPER price or simply not release it at all.

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/

nerys · 12-29-2006, 11:06 PM

ALSO Minidisk was one of the greatest things sony made and in fact was very ANTI sony of today. the first few generations of Minidisk were VERY consumer friendly. LOTS of connection very few restrictions. you could do nearly anything you wanted with them.

THE PROBLEM with minidisk and it really was the only problem at the time was REAL TIME RECORDING. ie to put 2 hours onto an MD it took 2 hours. THIS is what killed it as mp3 started to gain ground.

THEN sony made NETMD and that is when things went bad.

First it came several years too late (Flash units already had a foot hold) next problem is they started to get RESTRICTIVE.

you had to make everything ATRAC3 (sony;s proprietary format) and it was ONE WAY

They also would NOT permit you to take your OWN recordings OFF the device to the computer digitally (IE without degradation) this was the beginning of the end. what started as a CONSUMER FRIENDLY device in extreme was becoming a consumer UNFRIENDLY device rapidly especially in the face of competition.

Eventually they made HiMD and eventually they allowed unrestricted transfer of analog content and EVENTUALLY they allowed direct mp3 playback but all this was too little too late (a pitty since MD really is the IDE music format in so many ways)

MD has ZERO disadvantage in format 100% of the disadvantages were artificially created by sony

to make matters worse they ABANDONED there very loyal user base with the HI MD by STRIPPED all the things that make MD MD in the first place (line in Mike in optical out etc..) in the affordable models. these "STANDARD" on 100% of md units to date "features" were relegated to only teh EXPENSIVE $400 md units of the time.

they basically told all there loyal users to go F off. that was the last straw sadly and the MD died (effectively)

If they had developed netmd several years sooner and made himd wide open like they did with the original units we might not be talking about "ipods" as common place. Many of us might not even know what an ipod was but we would certaintly know what a Minidisk was.

Minidisk was perfect. it was SONY's greed and artificial imperfection that killed it.

Think about it. $2 disk that will hold 5 hours of music (much more on hi md) recording in PCM wav and 30 40 and even 50+ hours of playback time on a charge. Never skips never wears out (I still have one of my original MZR55's and I used to own the R1 one of the first recorders) Recording from anything to anything.

My netmd unit gets over 2 days playback time on a single AA battery!! and it smaller than an ipod (ok the new video ipod is thinner now)

but I had all this 6+ years ago !!! I think I got my first MD in 1997 maybe earlier.

they could have OWNED the portable music market but they pooched it and big time.

I am slightly hopeful that the "hack" CD fiasco has humbled them a little and they realize they are killing themselves. the not bad NATIVE filesupport of the Sony Reader is a good sign! Lets see if they stick with it.

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/

stxopher · 12-30-2006, 11:28 AM

The truly funny part about being one of the few people still using a old MD player? Most of the younger ones raised on standard flashplayers and ipods see you whip out your traveling discs, open the player, load up and say 'that is so cool!'. One of the things they find most interesting is that each disc is actually its own playlist! Amazing!

One thing that really lights up some eyes is when they find out that the line in is digital. "Is that legal?" "Hmmmm, not as much as it used to be. A lot of places you can be arrested for using it." "COOL!" (Kids...)

But that also shows a point about the generation coming up. Not only do they know how to get around DRM (which in many cases is no more than dressing anyway) but find it generally so foolish that it isn't even worth time to worry about what it was put in for. The end product is simply "there" and if they can't get it easily through a legit source, they'll get it easier (and cheaper) through some other channel.

File sharing koan: If you copy something that doesn't exist because it is unavailable, did you really copy anything?

nerys · 12-30-2006, 11:36 AM

Here is a nice one :-) I have one of the original sony CD Players with OPTICAL OUT !! (Portable cd player !!!) so I whip out this CD player my MD link them and Perfect Digital Bliss :-) its real time but its also perfect !!

Did you see the new PHILLIPS boombox at bestbuy for $70 that RIPS CD's to Mp3 and tosses them on a thumbdrive you plug into a USB port on the front !!!

Chris Tayor
http://www.nerys.com/

NatCh · 12-30-2006, 07:27 PM

nerys -- If you like the sort of stuff they offer, Baen offers a lot of their titles as DRM-free files in several formats (including RTF, my personal favorite for the Reader), and their prices are quite reasonable -- I don't think there are any single books for more than $6, and they offer a monthly bundle (webscription) of about 5 books for $15, any of which you can buy or not at any time.

12-14-2006, 07:46 PM	#21
alex_d Addict Posts: 303 Karma: 187 Join Date: Dec 2006 Device: Sony Reader	Stingo-"Devices such as ours are not expected to sell on the volume of an ipod. The market is simply not seen as big. Moreover once you buy your unit, you will not need another for years." The early hard disk mp3 players were not expected to sell well either. Indeed they did not. Selling content is certainly not what kept early players such as Archos and Creative in business, and selling mp3s doesn't keep anyone in business even today. (In fact, Sony makes more money off of iTunes than Apple.) Your argument that I won't need another reader for years is likewise misguided, and this is illustrated by the same analogy. An mp3 player isn't just something that plays music. Having one isn't the same as having them all. There are is still HUGE room for eInk readers to improve (in terms of features, quality, screen size, and plain old aesthetics) that there'll be plenty of upgraders with every generation, and fresh users who are shown the light. Stingo- "They are manufactured in the expectation of making money on the media." Here I'll agree. But we must shake that expectation from the manufacturers. The mp3 player market bloomed beautifully precisely because manufacturers did not have any such expectations. If they had such expectations, they would have followed Sony's example of minidisk and other audio products which hardly even allowed people to play mp3s. If manufacturers have such expectations regarding ebooks, they will follow Sony's example of the Librie which hardly even allowed people to read their own books. I am not arguing anything unreasonable. The greed of the content cartel has to be fought, or it will corrupt the hardware. It will make the hardware unpleasant, and it will certainly slow adoption like molasses. (Just look at minidisk and librie!) Stingo- "Although it would be nice to change the way the world of copyright works, for the immediate future, if you want best sellers, and you want to pay for them to encourage more media, you are stuck with the publishing system as it exists....The current system sucks. But don't expect that governments to change how copyrights operate. The publishers have the lobbyists." But if I want the publishing system and the world of copyright to change, then not paying for bestsellers is exactly how to encourage more media. Stuck in the system as it exists, it is unfortunate that it cannot be changed without disobedience. I again agree about the failure of the legislature. In fact, I doubt the laws will ever be changed. But if they are, it is because the publishers are pushed into a corner where they do not make any money and seek change. That scenario is extreme. More likely, piracy will simply increase competitive pressure on publishers, increasing the quality of content and decreasing price. The usual argument that taking away money from publishers will decrease quality and increase price is only true in a system of perfect competition, and is invalid in the real world. In the monopolistic system we have, moderate piracy will paradoxically increase quality and decrease price. Stingo- "Finally, in most communist governments, as they exist in real life, the government employer owns the work and the artist cannot market, publish it or sell it without government approval. I hardly consider that an effective reform." Neither do I. Of course outright preventing people from publishing without approval is NOT communism, it is totalitarianism. However, putting the government in charge of figuring out how much to pay and whom is not something that can be effectively carried out yet (although rough methods of paying in proportion to popularity might do the job well enough). I am just as much in favor of taking the Adam Smith route of promoting greater competition. This will still take government action to break up conglomerates and prevent publisher mergers, but like I said piracy is an effective competitor too (as long as it does not grow too rampant, and it certainly is nowhere close to that point yet). RWood- "Let me see if I understand you correctly. More popular authors are the ones that sell the most and therefore it is Communistic to pay them more? When I last studied that system of government it seemed that writers were paid a certain amount. If they wrote correctly and sold they were allowed to keep writing, if not, other positions were found for them. To reward one's efforts by the market reaction is a capitalistic method." Not true at all. Communism simply means that the government makes the decisions, while capitalism means that decisions are made on their own with the help of competition and the invisible hand. If the market ends up compensating based on popularity on its own, it is capitalism. If a government decides to compensate people based on popularity, it is communism. The advantage of well-run (competitive) capitalism is that it automatically factors in costs into the price while under communism that has to be thought-out manually. The advantage of well-run communism, however, is that, for example, the costs of writing a book are one time and it is NOT efficient to charge each person for access (the government pays for its creation, and everyone gets a copy for free). Capitalism has a very hard time dealing with products whose costs are ONLY one-time and whose marginal costs are zero. It can succeed at this task, but only under conditions of UPMOST competition which are very difficult to achieve in the real world. The issue of capitalism vs communism is very complex and nowhere near as simple as high school made it seem. Both work perfectly in the ideal case, but the world is obviously far from ideal. Indeed, the topic has many of the characteristics of a good, deep engineering problem. What is clear, however, is that the current capitalist intellectual property system is just as broken as the communist toilet paper one. jaed- "Apart from their role in discovering artists and authors and presenting them to the public...? I'm still happy to pay them for doing this... One quick look at the Internet shows that talent is still rare, and expecting everyone to trawl through the dross isn't very workable..." Good point, but are you the type of person who thinks the best movies and books are the ones that have the most ad dollars behind them? It works somewhat, I agree, but it's still broken. On a related note, being better able to discover which books and movies are good value (ie quality/price) will go a LONG way toward promoting better competition and making the current capitalist system run much better (higher quality at lower prices). It will, in fact, probably do more good than simply breaking up companies and I should have mentioned this before. However, such clarity isn't in media conglomerates' interests and you don't see the Connect store collating reviews. harryT- "A good editor can make the difference between a masterpiece and a disaster, not to mention all the work that publishers do promoting and marketing books." Agreed about editors, but they don't cost a fortune. As for promoting and marketing... paying money to convince people to want your book is a facet of a broken system which we'd be better off without. (See above paragraph.) Last edited by alex_d; 12-14-2006 at 08:04 PM.

12-14-2006, 01:33 PM	#18
sic Addict Posts: 202 Karma: 692 Join Date: Oct 2006 Device: SONY reader	Do you really think publishers sort out the "garbage" for you? are you willing to pay 10 times the price of a book for that? (because that's their margin) I would rather get those 9 books that the publisher didn't find good enough and decide myself. I also disagree re: the marketing effort publishers do. we were discussing on other threads how difficult it is to market a book. I don't see publishers doing an awful lot there. But... correct me if I'm wrong.

12-14-2006, 05:02 PM	#20
sic Addict Posts: 202 Karma: 692 Join Date: Oct 2006 Device: SONY reader	thanks Harry for setting me straight In my opinion we need to think about what publishing means in the digital age.

12-14-2006, 08:53 PM	#22
Liviu_5 Books and more books Posts: 917 Karma: 69499 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: White Plains, NY, USA Device: Nook Color, Itouch, Nokia770, Sony 650, Sony 700(dead), Ebk(given)	The main conundrum for ebooks is the same as for all digital content - what was called somewhere the Picard syndrome - right now people do not value digital content as much as physical content, so they are not willing to pay the corresponding prices, so the revenue is not there and it is unlikely that you can expand the pie enough to make up for the ratios involved. However books as opposed to music/movies/tv are different in the sense that is comparatively hard and time consuming to digitize them at home, while it is trivial to rip a cd, and almost as trivial (assuming you are willing to do it) to rip a dvd. So the publishing industry right now does not face the external pressures music/movie studios face. Regarding devices, iPods do not sell because of iTunes, iTunes was just the way for Apple to avoid costly ip lawsuits since this way they can tell the studios, look you make 70c per song, we barely profit if so, so ignore that out the thousands of songs people have on their ipods statistically only about 50 come from iTunes... Any serious ebook reader manufacturer will need a drm store for the same reasons as Apple until drm dissapears, but I do not think they expect to make the real money from there, the Gemstar and Librie failures hopefully disabused anyone from that. Liviu

12-29-2006, 10:48 PM	#24
nerys Addict Posts: 243 Karma: 48 Join Date: Dec 2006 Device: PRS 500 - REB 1200	this creates a delimma. I consider DRM to be illegal. I consider the application of DRM to be theft. So I do not buy DRM'd content. If this means I have to get it illicitly so be it. If I like a book I always 100% of the time buy the "actual" physical book. So as far as I am concerned I am covered morally (I could care less about legally since the politicians don't care about me so its even) If I do not like a book to me its the same as borrowing it from a library and deciding I did not like it. The only issue that is important to me is my personal moral compass. and its satisfied with this method. I would rather see this ebook industry FAIL than see DRM become "accepted" as normal. DRM is bad. Morally and Legally as far as I am concerned. its is NOT being used to stop piracy (its 100% ineffective at that) IT IS however being used to STRIP legitimate users of there PPR rights (Personal Property Rights) The only way to send the message is to BUY LOTS of hardware that SUPPORTS open formats (IE being able to toss files on the SD card and read them natively Kudo's sony on finally getting this right even if not perfect) and to buy NO software that is DRM infested. They will then have a choice. Release it without DRM and at a PROPER price or simply not release it at all. Chris Taylor http://www.nerys.com/

12-29-2006, 11:06 PM	#25
nerys Addict Posts: 243 Karma: 48 Join Date: Dec 2006 Device: PRS 500 - REB 1200	ALSO Minidisk was one of the greatest things sony made and in fact was very ANTI sony of today. the first few generations of Minidisk were VERY consumer friendly. LOTS of connection very few restrictions. you could do nearly anything you wanted with them. THE PROBLEM with minidisk and it really was the only problem at the time was REAL TIME RECORDING. ie to put 2 hours onto an MD it took 2 hours. THIS is what killed it as mp3 started to gain ground. THEN sony made NETMD and that is when things went bad. First it came several years too late (Flash units already had a foot hold) next problem is they started to get RESTRICTIVE. you had to make everything ATRAC3 (sony;s proprietary format) and it was ONE WAY They also would NOT permit you to take your OWN recordings OFF the device to the computer digitally (IE without degradation) this was the beginning of the end. what started as a CONSUMER FRIENDLY device in extreme was becoming a consumer UNFRIENDLY device rapidly especially in the face of competition. Eventually they made HiMD and eventually they allowed unrestricted transfer of analog content and EVENTUALLY they allowed direct mp3 playback but all this was too little too late (a pitty since MD really is the IDE music format in so many ways) MD has ZERO disadvantage in format 100% of the disadvantages were artificially created by sony to make matters worse they ABANDONED there very loyal user base with the HI MD by STRIPPED all the things that make MD MD in the first place (line in Mike in optical out etc..) in the affordable models. these "STANDARD" on 100% of md units to date "features" were relegated to only teh EXPENSIVE $400 md units of the time. they basically told all there loyal users to go F off. that was the last straw sadly and the MD died (effectively) If they had developed netmd several years sooner and made himd wide open like they did with the original units we might not be talking about "ipods" as common place. Many of us might not even know what an ipod was but we would certaintly know what a Minidisk was. Minidisk was perfect. it was SONY's greed and artificial imperfection that killed it. Think about it. $2 disk that will hold 5 hours of music (much more on hi md) recording in PCM wav and 30 40 and even 50+ hours of playback time on a charge. Never skips never wears out (I still have one of my original MZR55's and I used to own the R1 one of the first recorders) Recording from anything to anything. My netmd unit gets over 2 days playback time on a single AA battery!! and it smaller than an ipod (ok the new video ipod is thinner now) but I had all this 6+ years ago !!! I think I got my first MD in 1997 maybe earlier. they could have OWNED the portable music market but they pooched it and big time. I am slightly hopeful that the "hack" CD fiasco has humbled them a little and they realize they are killing themselves. the not bad NATIVE filesupport of the Sony Reader is a good sign! Lets see if they stick with it. Chris Taylor http://www.nerys.com/

12-30-2006, 11:28 AM	#26
stxopher Nameless Being	The truly funny part about being one of the few people still using a old MD player? Most of the younger ones raised on standard flashplayers and ipods see you whip out your traveling discs, open the player, load up and say 'that is so cool!'. One of the things they find most interesting is that each disc is actually its own playlist! Amazing! One thing that really lights up some eyes is when they find out that the line in is digital. "Is that legal?" "Hmmmm, not as much as it used to be. A lot of places you can be arrested for using it." "COOL!" (Kids...) But that also shows a point about the generation coming up. Not only do they know how to get around DRM (which in many cases is no more than dressing anyway) but find it generally so foolish that it isn't even worth time to worry about what it was put in for. The end product is simply "there" and if they can't get it easily through a legit source, they'll get it easier (and cheaper) through some other channel. File sharing koan: If you copy something that doesn't exist because it is unavailable, did you really copy anything?

12-30-2006, 11:36 AM	#27
nerys Addict Posts: 243 Karma: 48 Join Date: Dec 2006 Device: PRS 500 - REB 1200	Here is a nice one :-) I have one of the original sony CD Players with OPTICAL OUT !! (Portable cd player !!!) so I whip out this CD player my MD link them and Perfect Digital Bliss :-) its real time but its also perfect !! Did you see the new PHILLIPS boombox at bestbuy for $70 that RIPS CD's to Mp3 and tosses them on a thumbdrive you plug into a USB port on the front !!! Chris Tayor http://www.nerys.com/

12-30-2006, 07:27 PM	#28
NatCh Gizmologist Posts: 11,615 Karma: 929550 Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Republic of Texas Embassy at Jackson, TN Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3	nerys -- If you like the sort of stuff they offer, Baen offers a lot of their titles as DRM-free files in several formats (including RTF, my personal favorite for the Reader), and their prices are quite reasonable -- I don't think there are any single books for more than $6, and they offer a monthly bundle (webscription) of about 5 books for $15, any of which you can buy or not at any time.

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