15 ms·
Nookd
- ja27 14y agoThe 99-cent War and Peace I see on their site is published by a third party, Superior Format Publishing. Could they not be the ones that search-and-replaced "kindle" with "nook"?
- nathanm412 14y agoFrom their site (http://superiorformatting.com/ http://superiorformatting.com/), it appears that's not the only problem they are having (from their site): Some of Our Titles Whoops, looks like there was a problem get the book data from Amazon. Please try again in a moment Whoops, looks like there was a problem get the book data from Amazon. Please try again in a moment Whoops, looks like there was a problem get the book data from Amazon. Please try again in a moment
- eclipxe 14y agoI was an engineer on the Nook team. It isn't possible for the device software to change text of books. Most likely the author or conversion service took the Kindle edition, ran a search and replace for 'Kindle' and there you have it.
- CWuestefeld 14y agoAgreed. This book not being under copyright (afaik), the text is almost certainly from some guy in his garage grabbing Gutenberg Project, etc., books and formatting them for various e-readers. He probably has some boilerplate stuff like "Formatted for Kindle by John Doe", which gets inserted into the Kindle .mobi version (Kindle being the dominant platform, he does that first). Then he does a search-and-replace, turning "Kindle" into "Nook" in order to create a version appropriate to that platform. In fact, he could use something like Calibre to do the conversion from .mobi to .epub, which I believe allows for regular expression substitutions as part of the process. That would allow him to get whole shelves of the Gutenberg library in one simple, automated process. Nothing insidious here. Just somebody being a little bit careless.
- tyree732 14y agoWell good thing the author of this post bothered to talk to anyone before throwing this out there on the internet.
- ctdonath 14y agoTo the contrary of the snark, throwing this out there on the internet may have been about the only way for the post's author to get attention of a Nook team member. It wasn't B&N's fault (they're just retailing what they're paid to), so getting someone knowledgeable to look at the issue via nook.com may have been ... unlikely. It was posted, it got discussed on HN, within a few hours we have a good relevant answer from an insider.
- StavrosK 14y agoWhy do all that? Just look at the file you downloaded in another viewer, see if the word is still there. Then, load another file that contains the word kindle and see if it gets changed. What's so hard about that?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Treisfeo 14y agoWhat the HELL are you talking about? Insecure much?
- tlb 14y agoThe device software reads data from flash and renders it in pixels on the screen. It is absolutely possible for it to modify the text as it does so.
- eclipxe 14y agoNot necessarily. There are many more moving pieces to this, especially considering DRM.
- tchebb 14y agoI would assume that eclipxe meant that the software shipped with the Nook does not allow for on-the-fly text modification. Even if it did, this is the only occurrence of text substitution that has been seen, so the fault still lies with the publisher.
- bishnu 14y agoStupidity like this only hurts the long-term goal of making printed books something only hobbyists are interested in (like vinyl records), but what's the solution? Data integrity regulation from governments? Or will the markets take care of it?
- goostavos 14y agoIt worries me that one day hard copy books will be viewed as a hobbyists endeavor..
- bishnu 14y agoIt worries you that people will read more? That people will read more varied things? That authors will get better compensation? That self-publishing will become a much more viable model for literally millions of authors? Man you worry about some weird stuff dude.
- wulczer 14y agoPerhaps other things worry him and I don't think you should assume they are the ones you mentioned. Your comment struck me as snarky and unfair and I have downvoted it and upvoted its parent.
- aiscott 14y agoHard-copies endure. Digital, not so much. Checkout Jordan Mechner's recent archaeological expedition to retrieve some source code of his from 25 years ago (Prince of Persia). It was nearly lost, and that is only 25 years! The digital world is ephemeral.
- aamar 14y agoSource code is intentionally kept secret and is different from the widely-distributed version. The book-equivalent of source code is the collection of discarded drafts and working notes of the author. These, too, are often lost, but that has little to do with whether they are digital or not. It's expensive to properly store and maintain physical copies of things like books. I understand that archivists have some trepidation replacing a known system of storing physical books with a relatively unfamiliar and untested system of storing digital goods. But the bugs are already being worked out; if you want to make sure something lasts, make it digital and make sure lots of others can get to it.
- why-el 14y agoI have the kindle version and it looks fine. And why are they paying for copyright-free material? They can get a nice eBook version from Project Gutenberg.
- daeken 14y agoI pay for public domain works all the time, often because the formatting is better or it's a specific translation I'm interested in.
- jgfoot 14y agoBut remember that War and Peace was not originally written in English, and the quality of translation matters a great deal. With Russian literature especially, the quality of translation varies widely, and some of the best translations into English are still copyrighted. A bad translation might faithfully reproduce the text's literal meaning but badly mangle the literary elegance that made the book so acclaimed in the first place. I'd rather pay $14 for a good translation than spend 1100 pages regretting being cheap.
- why-el 14y agoI agree, but I think in the case of Tolstoy, or even Dostoevsky, the best translations also have their copyrights expired, since they were written usually few years after the works were published. I read a French version of Anna Karenina (Recommended by the way) once in hard copy, then reread the Gutenberg version, and to me the literary differences were minimal.
- duaneb 14y agoI can't speak for Tolstoy, but the Gutenberg version of Dostoevsky was atrocious compared to the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation. FOr a more modern example, Simone de Beauvoir's first translation was by an unskilled botanist who happened to know french and english. A recent translation came out that is night and day compared to the original, but it will enter public domain some fifty years later.
- 14y ago
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- monatron 14y agoIs the authors implication that in the digital nature of ebooks the ability to manipulate text becomes easier? Regardless of medium isn't this always a possibility? Whether it happens at the publisher and then printed on dead wood or otherwise -- to me it seems like one in the same?
- excuse-me 14y agoIt's rather harder for some government/publisher/web search company to modify the hardback copies on my shelf to airbrush Trotsky out of the pictures. With an eBook all it takes is a click by somebody at Amazon
- glesica 14y agoThis is a good argument against DRM and e-book-related cloud services but not really against e-books generally. I own a Nook and have never bought a locked-down e-book, so the publisher really can't edit the copy I own short of breaking into my computer.
- oh_sigh 14y agoNo it doesn't take "a click". It's pathetic how you malign Amazons good name, when they were the ones who are the victims in this case.
- swdunlop 14y agoThis actually points to a risk that Barnes and Nobles, Amazon and other content stores are susceptible to: users who assume that they edit their content like a traditional publisher would or should. This was a 99c purchase of a public domain work that was probably reformatted by someone who didn't care enough to check their work. This work was then publicly criticized by a consumer who didn't care enough to check their facts, either.
- neuroelectronic 14y agoTalk about Caveat emptor, now you have to learn programming before you can make a purchase.
- ojbyrne 14y agoThere has always been similar things with books. I remember being warned away from el-cheapo Shakespeare collections, etc.