Rainn Wilson: The 5 Questions You Hate Not Knowing the Answer to

Rainn Wilson: The 5 Questions You Hate Not Knowing the Answer to:

"4. Why the hell did I buy an iPad?

It looked so damn snazzy, and I'm an Apple geek as well, but I never use it! Did I ($800 later) fall victim to crass commercialism? I like to think I'm above that, but am I any different than my son, who wants whatever sugar-laden cereal happens to be showing in the ad before whatever cartoon he's watching?"

E-Book Piracy and the iPad

Is the iPad Driving E-Book Piracy, and Does it Matter? | Gadget Lab | Wired.com:

Wired wrote an interesting article on how the iPad led to an increase in e-book piracy:

BitTorrent downloads grew by an average of 78% in the days after the iPad went on sale. Even so, the numbers were still tiny compared to the traffic in movies and music

E-book downloads on bitTorrent are miniscule. Compared to music and videos its practically non-existent. E-book piracy, however, has been around for about 15 years -- ever since scanners have been available.

"Original files come from those with enough time and patience to scan, OCR and proof-read the resulting files, but the majority of what you find are duplicates of these. Contrast this to music, where you pop a CD into your computer and wait a few minutes while it rips the tracks and downloads the metadata."

The rate at which unique e-books appeared increased proportionately with the decrease in scanner prices and the increase in OCR software effectiveness.

...then copying an entire book, even if protected by DRM, will be as simple as automating screenshots of pages and sending them to an OCR (optical character recognition) program.

DRM stripping software is already out there. OCR "scanning" of PDF files is still common, but as digital books become more common cracking and decryption will become more predominant, and OCR artifacts (mis-scanned 'typos', missing links, and even the '* * *' when a scene change occurs at the top of a page) will be a thing of the past.

If it causes a rise in book piracy, it is only because it is driving demand. The book industry should embrace this and give us what we want: cheap books, published day-and-date with their paper equivalents, along with all back-catalog titles made available. And preferably DRM-free.

Amen. DRM and lawsuits will be same same failure for eBooks as it has been for movies and music. Innovative marketing and a fair pricing will keep piracy in the shadows where it has an insignificant impact on sales. It may in fact increase demand by introducing a greater number of authours  wo a wider audience.


eBook Piracy ‘Surges’ After iPad Launch [TorrentFreak]

Eken M001 Android WIFI Tablet

This looks really good. Its a 7" tablet with wifi running Android 1.6. It is also cheap enough to use as a simple e-reader.

Apparently it has a very responsive and accurate touchscreen (although I don't know if it is multi-touch), an accelerometer, and a nice set of built-in features and installed apps (including e-reader software). One review said that is also has a built-in 1.3Mp camera, and will also support an external hard drive of up to 16 GB (through device-specific docking port?). Even without the camera it is a bargain.

The big downside mentioned in most reviews is that it has a poor battery life. Another question is how easy it will be to upgrade to Android 2.1.

• 600 MHz WonderMedia PRIZM MW8505
• 2 GB internal NAND flash storage, 128 MB of DDR2 RAM
• audio port, an SD card reader (of up to 32 GB), USB port
• 7", 800 x 480 TFT screen.

The Eken M001 TP701 Android WIFI Tablet is available in Canada from Merimobiles.com for $125 right now.



Shanzai.com: Video: EKEN M001 Android tablet for USD100
tomshardware.com: Eken's 7'' Android Tablet Starts @ $100
Shenit.com: Eken M001 7” Google Android 1.6 iPad Tablet Slate PC UMPC MID Netbook

The iPad makes julienne fries

My favourite review of the new iPad tablet is by Cory Doctorow entitled Why I won't buy  an iPad (and don't think you should either). His first point is the most important and all his subsequent arguments reinforce it: Incumbents made bad revolutionaries. Apple has essentially modified the iPod a bit to lock more consumers into a restrictive marketplace of content and applications.

My favourite quote in Doctorow's article is in fact a reference to William Gibson's description of a "consumer" as "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."

The iPad is, in fact, not a product designed with consumers in mind, but designed to maximize the profits of corporate content providers. This is why there has been so much positive buzz about this product in the traditional media.

You know when something is fishy when someone reports that the lack of multitasking is a feature so that the user can concentrate on one thing at a time. Another article tried to claim that writing on an iPad is practical except he had to use an external bluetooth keyboard and a desktop PC to complete the experiment.

This is not a computer for people, its a product for sweaty potatoes.