E-Books That Read You 120
An anonymous reader writes "Internet users have sadly grown used to having their every click and scroll measured by advertisers and content providers seeking to squeeze every last ounce of attention out of them. Now, it seems such data gathering is spreading into your favorite novels as well. The NY Times profiles several companies trying to collect data on how people read ebooks. Quoting: 'Scribd is just beginning to analyze the data from its subscribers. Some general insights: The longer a mystery novel is, the more likely readers are to jump to the end to see who done it. People are more likely to finish biographies than business titles, but a chapter of a yoga book is all they need. They speed through romances faster than religious titles, and erotica fastest of all. At Oyster, a top book is What Women Want, promoted as a work that "brings you inside a woman's head so you can learn how to blow her mind." Everyone who starts it finishes it. On the other hand, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s The Cycles of American History blows no minds: fewer than 1 percent of the readers who start it get to the end. Oyster data shows that readers are 25 percent more likely to finish books that are broken up into shorter chapters. That is an inevitable consequence of people reading in short sessions during the day on an iPhone.'"
It's finally happened. (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia...erm...capitalist America, eBook reads you!
Re:It's finally happened. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fight back with torrents. Calibre doesn't care what format the ebook is in, and it certainly doesn't report back to Amazon or anyone else. To document my reading habits, you'll have to root my machine. To even find out what I read, you'll have to at least get a look at my hard drive.
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Just read my fine sci-fi book*. Two chapters a week are going online and the whole kit and kaboodle will be there this spring for absolutely free, no ads, no tracking (unless the NSA has hacked my Canadian web host).
Look, guys, fight back against the greed. This is bullshit. You're going to pay money for books that stalk you? Are you mad?? Do you want product or something from the heart? Don't buy products that stalk you, whether readers or content.
Give me paper (although that said, I'm reading a couple of
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No, fight back with IRC -- a little web research to find the right networks/channels, and you get a vastly superior variety of available books.
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I do that sometimes. That is, after all, the morally correct thing to do, if the book proves to be worth anything. So much that is published proves to be worthless though. Much much more proves to be worth only a fraction of the author and/or publisher's expectations.
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Why not actually buy the books, use calibre to convert them to some other format, and read them in the (non-spying) reader of your choice?
Because I would need a fictitious identity and anonymous payment system to replicate the cash-at-a-bookstore experience.
And I'm likely to encounter T&C in which I promise to give full and accurate information. So I might break more laws by not letting them track me than were I to just download some bits from someone (bits that may or may not correspond with a copyright holder's wishes).
Besides, why would I buy and convert when I can just download the converted product?
I'm not knocking your approach but
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capitalist America
That'd be corporatist America, wouldn't it? Corporatism seems more like neo-feudalism than capitalism. I wonder by how much America's national debt would be reduced if large American corporations were unable to exploit tax havens to evade tax.
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Excuse me, it's the Union of the Soviet Socialist States of Amerika, or U.S.S.S.A, comrade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_(TV_miniseries) [wikipedia.org]
I'll bet the future is not too different from this, minus the soviet-run UN military takeover, of course.. Maybe after an economic collapse, china takes us over to ensure we make good on our loans, using north korea as extra muscle? I do love speculative fiction, even when it appears to become less speculative and more truthful as time goes on.
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Excuse me, it's the Union of the Soviet Socialist States of Amerika, or U.S.S.S.A, comrade.
Excuse my english. It is not good yes and I have trouble understanding many recent change in your country. We prefer tovarishch, comrade is fashionista.
yeah (Score:1)
Yeah, I agree to some degree. It would be nice to have shorter chapters
Re: yeah (Score:5, Funny)
How about shorter novels? We could make them short enough to be a sentence. We could call them 'tweets'!
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Except that at least for science fiction a story has to be 40,000 words to be a novel. Any less is a novella, less than that a novelette, and less than that a short story. Nobots is barely a novel at 42042 words.
It would take a hell of a writer to write a satisfying story that was only a sentence long. Face it, twitter isn't for bibliophiles.
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Actually, most internet users are not aware of how much their every click is tracked, by how many different companies, for any given web page.
Not worried much (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not worried much (Score:5, Interesting)
I mind people mining data about me without paying me for it. I don't think it should automatically be illegal or regulated, but I'd like a "please" and a "here's your share of the loot". So how about:
A company with a suite of applications that tracks everything you do and then:
-spoofs the data other apps receive about you on your phone
-deletes cookies, proxies your IP addresses and google searches, etc.
-blocks all ads, etc.
Basically makes you absolutely useless to everyone - unless they purchase your information from the company. advertisers can also pay to have their ads whitelisted. The company turns over 50% of the revenue to the users that allow tracking and selective blocking of ads.
Only sharing revenue with users that register with an active mobile phone account, real residential address, and a $1 fee with via a credit card billed to the same address would cut down on farming of fake users. Google being willing, able, and strongly motivated to spend billions of dollars to crush the operation into dust might be a problem though.
yeah (Score:1)
Yeah, I agree to some degree. They could use this metadata to make books easier to read, with shorter chapters, and perhaps more graphics and bigger font.
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That's called a comic book.
Re: yeah (Score:2)
ebooks have the font size you want.
Since this is slashdot. (Score:2)
I know it's hard to implement for the average citizen but since this is slashdot: It isn't that hard to monitor/analyze/filter out the data that leaks out of your network and devices.
Re:Since this is slashdot. (Score:5, Interesting)
When dealing with normal computers, you always have the easy option of just installing wireshark.
If that's too disruptive, or you want to monitor multiple systems, or you don't trust the system you want to inspect, you just tap the last link before the ISP's probably-not-trustworthy gear and examine that. Wireless doesn't change the game much, as long as you know the key (passive tapping becomes easier; but there's a greater risk that your monitoring system will miss some packets in the noise, and driver support for things like promiscuous mode tends to be a lot spottier).
Cellular connections, though? The entire network is Ma Bell's black-box, so even RF sniffing won't get you much (unless you can coax it down to A5/1 or A5/2 and have some time on your hands), and doing the packet capture on-device is markedly harder than on a PC. At best, with a very well behaved android you should be able to use the same tools that you would on normal linux, against whatever peculiar device name is assigned to the cell connection. It's all downhill from there, though creative abuse of VPNs should work against any application not trying to hide from you, even on devices you can't root/jailbreak.
It isn't impossible, with the right device; but you can certainly make things a great deal more difficult if your application waits until it is on a cellular connection before phoning home.
Re:Since this is slashdot. (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't get wire shark reliably working with my wifi card, so here's how I sniff iphone app access.
Share the wifi from the laptop, sniff the wired connection to the router. With enough playing around you can get filters for exactly what you're interested in. But for simple monitoring app access it's good enough.
You wouldn't believe the stuff that gets sent around in plain text.
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At least it can make for interesting reading, if it's some other sucker's phone...
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Wireless doesn't change the game much, as long as you know the key (passive tapping becomes easier; but there's a greater risk that your monitoring system will miss some packets in the noise, and driver support for things like promiscuous mode tends to be a lot spottier).
One method I've used in the past is set up an ad-hoc wireless network with a USB-wifi key, and then you can sniff all the traffic with wireshark. If you happen to have a Windows Phone 7 (for example), this is a relatively easy way to get the binaries for your apps from the phone (if you do it while they are downloading from the app store).
Re:Since this is slashdot. (Score:4, Interesting)
RF sniffing to establish the the existence of traffic isn't that hard (doesn't everyone seem to own a set of cheap speakers that provides that 'feature' for free?); but anything more than very rough estimates of traffic volume would be orders of magnitude more difficult than anything running over your network...
Easy solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't buy e-book readers that force you to be connected to the internet, or only read proprietary file formats, or buy from online store.
My old Sony PRS-650 doesn't have hardware to go on the internet, and it reads whatever file I feed it, so I'm sure it doesn't snitch on me.
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I, too, have an e-book reader that does not have the hardware to go on the internet.
Isn't the Unix philosophy to have a single command that does only one job well? "cat", "head", "tail", "ls" are examples of the commands I have in mind. Extend this idea to the real world. I have an e-book reader, a music player, a (dumb) phone, and a wristwatch.
A smart phone is a bit like the Microsoft operating system: it does everything, but does not do any of them well.
Not much of a bargain. Mediocre performance AND the
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Nice response... designed to generate an emotional response. Maybe a better analogy would be git versus mercurial... different philosophies, effectively equivalent capabilities, different strokes for different folks.
Re: Easy solution (Score:2)
You're naive if you think that mercurial can do all that git does. The only ones that believe this are the mercurial developers, and it's becayse they never used git seriously.
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A smart phone is a bit like the Microsoft operating system: it does everything, but does not do any of them well.
Wouldn't that better describe a Linux operating system?
Gives you the full power to do everything with your computer, but is full of little bugs here and there.
In your words: it does everything, but does not do any of them well.
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And, you base all of that on what exactly? Recent personal experience? Linux had a poor user experience, historically. But, we don't live in history, do we? At present, I'm living in the year 2013, soon to be 2014. Today, Linux has not one, but two good sound systems available. It has pretty awesome graphics. Most NICs just work. As has been observed many times, you can set up a desktop, laptop, or whatever for your doddering old grandparents, and convince them that it's the "new Windows". And, we
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Fair enough. You're looking at present day problems - I suspected otherwise. I also suspect that some of those users might be "holding it wrong". ;^)
More seriously, there are, and probably always will be, bugs and glitches in all operating systems. I honestly believe that Linux rivals all other OS's in all respects today. Those bugs and glitches are addressed as quickly and efficiently as any other OS addresses their own bugs and glitches. More, those bugs and glitches are openly documented, unlike the
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Those bugs and glitches are addressed as quickly and efficiently as any other OS addresses their own bugs and glitches.
But they aren't. They sit in the distro's bug tracker forever, with the occasional unhelpful "have you tested the latest release if the bug is still present" and the bug ultimately just expires due to no activity.
That last one? Updating the kernel disables the keyboard? That's pretty serious. Something one would expect from Apple, LMAO!! The rather simple workaround, however, is to select the older kernel, where the keyboard did work. Presuming, of course, that the machine is configured so that selection of kernels is possible.
Yes. The keyboard bug is tracked in mainline [kernel.org] now and I personally did a kernel bisect and pinpointed out the particular commit which causes the bug. The result? Crickets chirping.
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Have you emailed a rant to Linus? You might trigger one of his famous tantrums, wherein he bites developer's heads off. Those are always amusing! And, it might just fix the problem!
I would just roll back to the last known good kernel. The distro I'm using is still at 3.10, and the wife's distro is still at 3.9 I believe. There really is little need to keep those kernels up to date all the time. I've often counseled the wife to just not update. Wait for the updates to roll out to the masses, then scro
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I have a little kernel bug (says it can't mount /tmp) and I have to select linux 3.8.0-32 kernel instead of 3.8.0-33 at boot every time, and I don't have the knowledge to configure grub 2 to do it for me, and I can't fix it because the internet connection went permanently down where the computer is. (well maybe /etc/default/grub has a entry to blacklist a kernel version or to force booting one, or I can switch to using grub legacy but might need the internet to install it).
I will probably give up on apt-ge
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Apparently, you know how to force the system to boot to 3.8.0-32. You just don't know how to edit the grub boot menu. So, look up the solution now, and put it onto some media that the remote computer without internet access can read. Or, put it onto your pad or phone, so that you can read it as you work on the ailing computer. Or, just print it out an tree flesh, and carry it along with you.
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/grub-2.html [dedoimedo.com]
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Isn't the Unix philosophy to have a single command that does only one job well?
Funny you should say that.
A proprietary device with an always on internet connection that can buy things from a specific online store seems to fit this philosophy really well.
With the Kindle whereever I am, if I finish a book, or someone recommends a book I can pull it out, press a button and start reading the book even if I don't own it. How is that not fitting exactly with the unix philosophy?
Or are you talking about the darker side of unix philosophy where doing one job and doing it well also means doing
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You've completely missed the point of the unix philosophy. The reason for splitting tasks like "Buy a book and read it" into single jobs is so that you can replace the individual parts. You probably have one or two ways to get books on your device: you can buy it from the store, and maybe you can use a desktop application to copy files over, provided they are in the right format.
By contrast, I can get books from wherever I want, from text files to Amazon to B&N to Project Gutenberg to backwater FTP sit
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I don't know of any that *require* it.. But they make it far more convenient for the average person.
Re: Easy solution (Score:5, Interesting)
You realize even the Amazon Kindle (supposedly the most evil device) does none of those things, right?
I have one, have never connected it to the Internet, and all the ebooks I have were downloaded online.
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Who said the Kindle is "the most evil"? I've not seen that. In what ways is it supposedly an evil device?
Re: Easy solution (Score:4, Funny)
Who said the Kindle is "the most evil"? I've not seen that. In what ways is it supposedly an evil device?
Just look at the word "Kindle" (=starting a burning fire ... as in hell) and the letters it contains:
The letters D, E, I, L are also found in the word "devil". And we all know that satan finds work for IDLE hands!
The letters L, I, E (which spells "lie" - a work of the devil) are found in the word "Lucifer". Kindle contains a lie from Lucifer.
And N, I, K are found in "Nick" (as in the satanic name "Old Nick"). Kindle is "kin" with Old Nick!
Every letter in the word "Kindle" is found in one or more of the common names for the devil.
It is positiviely brimming with evil! (Key! "brimstone" - get it?)
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Key!
Damn! That should be "Hey!"
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The Nook also does not require those things. Never connected to the Internet. All books sideloaded.
Of course, both the Nook and Kindle encourage you to connect them.
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My kindle is always connected using their 'whispernet', which is cell phone tech. They could, if they wanted to, use that to snoop on reading habits.
I really am not concerned about this. At this point, they can track me in the supermarket using my cell phone when it is in my pocket. Tracking how I read a book I've purchased isn't such a big deal compared to that. If Amazon isn't using its sales information to its advantage, it isn't doing its job for its shareholders.
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"Don't buy e-book readers that force you to be connected to the internet, or only read proprietary file formats, or buy from online store."
Buy anything you like and download Calibre.
http://calibre-ebook.com/ [calibre-ebook.com]
I own several kindles and I never connect to the web.
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
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I own several kindles and I never connect to the web.
Several kindles? That's called kindling. ;-) I'll look you up the next time I need to start a fire.
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Is this a problem that needs "solving"?
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You may want to actually do *some* research before poasting.
For one,
https://github.com/kobolabs/Kobo-Reader [github.com]
And registration is to be able to use Adobe ePub DRM books (that you can get from the Library at least in my country) and generally to get updates to installed factory software. Once you register your reader *once*, you never, ever need to have it connected to the network again. Any of the "social" features can be turned off too, as well as the Reading Life crap.
I would say Kobo i
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Soft sore porn vs a tome (Score:5, Insightful)
At Oyster, a top book is What Women Want, promoted as a work that "brings you inside a woman's head so you can learn how to blow her mind." Everyone who starts it finishes it. On the other hand, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s The Cycles of American History blows no minds: fewer than 1 percent of the readers who start it get to the end.
200 pages of soft core porn are more likely to be read than 500 pages of history. Who knew?
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"Everyone who starts it finishes it"
That's because after every chapter you're hoping the book will keep the tagline promise ("OK, maybe the *next* chapter will tell me what I want to know") only to find at the end that it doesn't.
Re:Soft sore porn vs a tome (Score:5, Insightful)
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Its a good thing.. (Score:2)
I don't buy any book that is encumbered at all, or that i cant strip from it.
Oh, and my reader's wifi, is never on.
Re:Its a good thing.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, and my reader's wifi, is never on.
I don't mean to sound like I have a tinfoil hat on, but all you're sure of is that you have instructed the software to turn the wifi off. That doesn't mean the software doesn't lie to you and keeps trying to connect without telling you.
Think I'm paranoid? Well, maybe I am, maybe I'm not [techdirt.com].
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Hardware switch off, only WiFi within range under my full control (and I mean it) - no attempt to connect. Hardware switch on, wireshark on, full dump - nothing suspicious. Good enough for me.
Get a good one and test it, that's it. Paranoia is fun, but needs to have some limits. Still, it is kind of a niche reader - if you use something more publisher-controlled, a Kindle or some official app... YMMV.
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My phone has a removable battery. And when I say removable I mean you take the back off and take it out, not have to undo some screws and risk damaging the device like some phones. The NSA might have trouble tracking me when the phone has no power at all.
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My phone has a removable battery. And when I say removable I mean you take the back off and take it out, not have to undo some screws and risk damaging the device like some phones. The NSA might have trouble tracking me when the phone has no power at all.
I used to find comfort in that same thought, but the techdirt link in the GP post has a comment that ups our healthy paranoia. Even with the "battery" off we should recall there's a secondary battery not maintained by the user, which may or may not power nefarious means (clock tick battery and settings, but why not a cell tower ping? GPS is expensive, but 1 and 2G can be pretty cheap power-wise)
Consider that a recent /. article said wireless chips are getting even smaller, so air-gapping "legal" interfaces
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Feeling justified in eschewing e-books (Score:2)
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On the count of three, throw your e-reader at the wall. I'll throw a printed book at the wall. Does yours still work? Mine does!
Now drop your other e-reader (since the first one was smashed against a wall, destroying it) into a tub of water, I'll drop my book in, too. Does your e-reader still work at all? No? My book is pretty wet, but I'm sure I can dry it out, and while it's ruined, I can still read it.
Next, we need a time machine to go 10 years into th
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Next, we need a time machine to go 10 years into the future. I'm being nice because I have books much older than that. In 10 year will your e-reader still work? Probably not.
Who cares? My eBooks are all in EPUB [wikipedia.org] format, and if for some bizarre reason no "eBook reader device" in 10 years supports this open format, the actual text of the book is nothing more than HTML and CSS.
If you seriously think I won't be able to find a device that will render HTML 10 years from now, you're paranoid beyond belief.
Meanwhile there will always be a market for printed books, which I will continue to read and enjoy for decades to come, free of any censorship, legal issues, anyone taking them away from me, breakdowns, battery issues, or anything else that comes with e-readers.
Again, EPUB is completely safe from being "taken away", and hardware issues really don't matter when you have a format that can be read on virtually any device. As for "censorship",
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Enjoy your e-reader and e-books, friend, and I'll just keep enjoying my lovely old paper books, and it's all good.
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Wow, you sure are mad aren't you? Why would you get so angry over this subject..
I get upset when anybody posts nonsense about any subject. From your statement about "if they have their way" I suspect you've the one who is angry at publishers of some content (books, movies, music, etc.) and haven't truly investigated eBooks and readers, but are merely relying on the one or two exceptional cases that made the news. If you had done your homework to look past those, you wouldn't be making silly claims in the face of open eBook formats and open-source readers.
I'll just keep enjoying my lovely old paper books, and it's all good.
Until I can get every book I
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Who cares? My eBooks are all in EPUB [wikipedia.org] format, and if for some bizarre reason no "eBook reader device" in 10 years supports this open format, the actual text of the book is nothing more than HTML and CSS.
ePub 2 seems to be not much more than xhtml (a bit of table of contents, title picture, but nothing hard). Writing your own ePub reader say for MacOS X isn't very hard. ePub 3 seems a lot harder, but then you can do things with it that go way beyond ePub 2.
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Again, EPUB is completely safe from being "taken away", and hardware issues really don't matter when you have a format that can be read on virtually any device. As for "censorship", read about how you can no longer get the original version of this book [wikipedia.org] in a physical book, yet my eBook version has the deleted text added back, because I did it myself. Sure, you might be able to hunt down a first edition and pay big money for it, but I'd rather spend far less money and a few minutes of my time to get the same result.
I spent a few minutes and found the 1966 Penguin version for under $10, shipping included: http://tinyurl.com/q2hf2rr [tinyurl.com]
And I'd really like to hear the rest of the story. It would be trivial to rant against fireworks in general, without using the manufacturer's name. So what pressure could they bring about? And why are there no cites? (They do preface the article with the "This article needs additional citations for verification" disclaimer).
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Would you like to participate in an experiment? Good!
On the count of three, throw your e-reader at the wall. I'll throw a printed book at the wall. Does yours still work? Mine does! [...]
I'm deeply impressed how you managed to get your post as a written letter delivered to slashdot via snail-mail. and have them type it in for you ;)
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Too Bad (Score:2)
Bill Hicks was right [youtube.com]: if you're a marketer you should kill yourself now.
Oh Boy! (Score:2)
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ONE CLEVER TRICK TO SHOW HOW SHALL I LOVE THEE, NEW PARADIGM; LET ME COUNT THE 5 WAYS
1. I can think of no way in which this could possibly compromise the quality of the TITS literary experience.
2. Let us not
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In Capitalist America... (Score:3)
In Capitalist America, book reads you!
Romances go fast... (Score:3)
Eroticas go faster because people are skipping over the pages of badly written sex trying to find more plot.
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Eroticas go faster because people are skipping over the pages of badly written sex trying to find more plot.
If you want plot over sex don't buy erotica. Probably the plot of erotica is skipped to find more hot carnal sex :-)
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Eroticas go faster because people are skipping over the pages of badly written sex trying to find more plot.
Are you dyslexic?
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Dylsexic?
skewed results (Score:2)
The results are skewed because the population of e-book vs paper-book readers is different. I hope the books I read won't be altered to match the apparent short attention span of e-book consumers.
Fifty Shades of Grey ... (Score:1)
People read books on their phones? (Score:2)
What a quaint custom.
Remind me again why I should care?
Surprise me. (Score:3)
The longer a mystery novel is, the more likely readers are to jump to the end to see who done it. People are more likely to finish biographies than business titles, but a chapter of a yoga book is all they need. They speed through romances faster than religious titles, and erotica fastest of all.
None of this would have been news to a book publisher in 1910.
Best Books of the 1900's - 1900-1909 [goodreads.com]
What is the point? (Score:2)
I am not sure I understand the motivation for companies: why would they care if someone finish a book? It will not make more money. On the contrary, if people skip chapters, they are done more faster, and will buy another book sooner.
Only the "all you can eat" business model has an interest to sell books that keep readers buy.
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Aren't we just talking about user metrics here?
We gather a lot of anonymous user metrics in the last MMO I worked on, and it wasn't done for any sort of nefarious purpose, but to understand what people are interested in, what they're doing, and how to create better products, or improve the current ones. For instance, we have the obvious metrics of positional heatmaps (showing concentration of players at a given moment or over time), skill usage, class and race selection, even when they turned off their sfx
Aint got no time for read'n. (Score:2)
The longer a mystery novel is, the more likely readers are to jump to the end to see who done it.
I know this references the nickname for mystery novels ("whodunits") but I still say it appears the same readers skipped to the end of their grammar books in grade school.
Final Frontier (Score:2)
As someone who's been married over 20 years, and to a woman, I assure you that you really don't want to be inside a woman's head, mostly because you really don't want to see yourself through her eyes.
Some stones are better left unturned.
Non-paywalled link to story (Score:4, Interesting)
Could Slashdot please refuse to post stories that link to paywalled sites? BTW, I put some of the text from the summary into Google, and the first non-paywalled link that popped up was http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/e-books-reading-the-minds-of-reader-to-learn-what-they-crave/articleshow/27903865.cms [indiatimes.com]
Return of the Hard and Soft Cover Book (Score:2)
If this trend continues books printed on paper will become popular again as the only place one will be able to read without distraction of someone trying to coax you out of your money while you read.
Have investors sold their shares in Barnes and Noble too soon?
inevitable (Score:2)
> That is an inevitable consequence of people reading in short sessions during the day on an iPhone.
So, it is? Any proof out there?
Using Data for the good (Score:1)
There's always a way around (Score:2)
Internet users have sadly grown used to having their every click and scroll measured by advertisers ...
Have they? I haven't - instead, I have installed things like NoScript, AdBlocker and other, and I use them to good effect. I always block all illustrations from sites that I find annoying - in fact, I mostly block the whole site with a wildcard. I only ever allow JavaScript temporarily - true, I have to reload many sites several times, but it works for me, and I rarely have to tolerate any of the obnoxious crap that others have to learn to ignore.
Wouldn't it be nice if it wasn't necessary? I can't for my li
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Because you can read it any time you have either an expected or unexpected down time. I've been reading "Great Expectations" on both my HP tablet and Android phone, switching from one to another, and never losing my place.