My Other Car Decapitates Lists

For the few people actually reading this goofy crap (Hi Mom) I decided to write down some of what I have been thinking about the Kindle, which every other blogger on the planet seems to be pissing themselves in either spasmodic glee or rage about.

Frequent readers (or people who, you know, actually KNOW me) are aware of the fact that I read books like they are going out of style.  I took four* books out of the library here on Saturday and I am done with two.**  And it was a busy weekend without much time to read.  Though I am a well known skimmer, I truly love reading books.

I also like programming.  And technology, and computers, and all kinds of things other programmers and technophiles enjoy.  This includes little gadgety handheld things, though I rarely buy them.  I actually only own an iPod due to my clumsy attempts to flirt with the girl selling raffle tickets leading me to buying a ticket with my coffee money for that day.

This combination of the love of gadgets and books ought to make me uniquely biased towards the Kindle, but you know what?  I seriously could care less about the thing.  While it has some features that I like (E-Ink, the ability to read non-Amazon text files easily), it also has a slew of features that piss me off to no end.

1)  It looks fugly.  Yeah, yeah, looks don't matter, only functionality.  Grow up.  If it looks like asshole, I don't want my hands on it.

2)  DRM.  Wait, what?  You mean I can't lend other people my Amazon  eBooks bought through my Kindle?  Well fuck you too, Bezos.  If you are so petrified of BOOK PIRACY(!) then just build in a month-long time limit before the book I lent to my friend evaporates from my friend's Kindle. 

3)  Orwell's worst nightmare comes true.  Peruse this chilling passage from the Kindle's Terms of Service:

The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to the content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device). Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make in your Device are backed up through the Service.  - Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service.

Publishers' marketing research must just be tossing Bezo's salad all night long over that one.  Nothing like intensely close scrutiny of one's reading habits!  It's bad enough that Amazon itself tracks so much information when people use its site, but tracking such things as bookmarks and deletions is completely intolerable.  I can see it sending out police patrols to arrest me for pedophilia after reading Lolita one too many times. 

So, needless to say, I will be passing on this loathsome hunk of shit.  However, OLPC has your back for all your nerd holiday shopping needs.  The XO is on sale through the 31st of December!  Now THERE is something that should be setting the blogosphere*** aflame, but everyone is too busy jerking off all over the Kindle.




*  Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, The Confusion by Neal Stephenson, and Atonement by Ian McEwan in case anyone cares.

** Both Vinge books.  I hope he keeps writing; his space operas are amazing in depth and vision, and the postcyberpunk stuff like Rainbow's End is equally excellent.

*** Kill me now.

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