5 ms·

I 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 Ki

by eclipxe 14y ago

I 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 ago
Agreed. 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 ago
Well good thing the author of this post bothered to talk to anyone before throwing this out there on the internet.
- ctdonath 14y ago
  To 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 ago
    Why 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 ago
  What the HELL are you talking about? Insecure much?
tlb 14y ago
The 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 ago
  Not necessarily. There are many more moving pieces to this, especially considering DRM.
- tchebb 14y ago
  I 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.

by eclipxe 14y ago

CWuestefeld 14y ago

Agreed. 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 ago

Well good thing the author of this post bothered to talk to anyone before throwing this out there on the internet.

ctdonath 14y ago
To 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 ago
  Why 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 ago
What the HELL are you talking about? Insecure much?

tlb 14y ago

The 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 ago
Not necessarily. There are many more moving pieces to this, especially considering DRM.
tchebb 14y ago
I 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.