Would folders capability require a hardware or a software upgrade?

J. Steinbeck said:

I certainly don't agree with pirating/stealing of copyright materials....however, I think it is time for consumers to fight back. I think if I buy the use or rights to listen/view such material, I shouldn't have to repurchase it over and over and over again over the course of my lifetime. Examples: Sgt Peppers on vinyl, then on 8 track, then cassette, then CD, then DRM'd digital. OR Star Wars on beta max, then VHS, then Blue-Ray, then digital drm. That is a huge scam on the part of the industries involved. Heck, if I owned a huge share of the music industry market I would be changing formats every 5 years and reap the benefits.

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You didn't have to re-purchase any of these. Sgt. Peppers still plays just fine on a turntable, and you can still buy a turntable. My VHS recorder will still play my Star Wars tape with no difficulty... and you can still buy them.

You seem to be arguing for consumers "fighting back" against your own need to own the "latest and brightest" toy.

Bacardi Jim said:

You didn't have to re-purchase any of these. Sgt. Peppers still plays just fine on a turntable, and you can still buy a turntable. My VHS recorder will still play my Star Wars tape with no difficulty... and you can still buy them.

You seem to be arguing for consumers "fighting back" against your own need to own the "latest and brightest" toy.

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Believe it or not my father actually owns an 8 track, it still works, I checked. He won't replace something until it breaks, no one has to they only chose to.

Gruntman said:

Believe it or not my father actually owns an 8 track, it still works, I checked. He won't replace something until it breaks, no one has to they only chose to.

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We agree again.

Damn whiners.

Bacardi Jim said:

You didn't have to re-purchase any of these. Sgt. Peppers still plays just fine on a turntable, and you can still buy a turntable. My VHS recorder will still play my Star Wars tape with no difficulty... and you can still buy them.

You seem to be arguing for consumers "fighting back" against your own need to own the "latest and brightest" toy.

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I don't want to hi jack this thread any more, but how will you feel in 30 years when that vhs machine is broken and nobody will fix it? no more star wars. My idea is that we are renting the rights to a work for our life, regardless of format. I think it will be more viable in the future, because everything will likely be digital and/or software driven.

PS- do you know any good 8 track/laser disc/beta max repairmen...I need to fix my hardware.

Toshiba didn't sell me star wars and Fox didn't make my VHS player neither one should be on the line for the other if I can't make it work 30 years down the road.

And I forgot to mention that if you bought a Betamax, well.... Mr. T pities you.

Bacardi Jim said:

And I forgot to mention that if you bought a Betamax, well.... Mr. T pities you.

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A good reason to wait for second gen before buying the next toy.

I certainly don't want Mr. T to pity me.

Bacardi Jim said:

As I understand it, the Kindle uses Linux. It's an open-source OS that naturally supports directories (folders). I'm surprised some programmer hasn't already come up with a "folder" mod.

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Well, writing the code itself is easy. Getting it into the compiled code on the Kindle so that it's usable as a feature is entirely another matter. And you might even have to monkey with the OS itself depending on if it does any code validation. And it may do a code validation with Amazon before it offloads new content (some device vendors are more paranoid than others) so whispernetting might be an additional concern. Now, you can do this (if you have the time and inclination) but it's not really worth the trouble just to hack in such a small feature.

With the source code at hand, though, it wouldn't be a big deal at all.

I'd settle for it to process web pages locally, at least then I could write up some HTML (well, I'd write up some code to wrap HTML around a database dump) to cut down the clutter with some faux-bookshelves. I can't find a way to do that or externally link from a .prc file.

Well that settles it.

Gruntman said:

Well that settles it.

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I bet Mr T would get folders/tags/etc

V said:

I bet Mr T would get folders/tags/etc

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If he didn't he would beat them up, and then pity them.

I would love to have folders at some point in time, but for now, I would settle for the option to show just my books in memory or on SD on my home page just like I can do in Content Manager... now how hard would THAT be??

V said:

A browse-by-folders option would take all of 20-30 minutes to write, along with another 20-30 for an update to content manager to handle moving them around (Amazon would dump them in the main directory like it does now, no need to alter that at all). It's really a degree of shoddy implementation that this isn't there as a half-way descent developer could have a workable system in place over lunch.

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Working in Product Management for a software company I really have to take to task this statement.

Whilst we might think it is this simple, invariably it is not so simple to implement changes such as this. Sometimes what we think is the simplest change, can require lots of engineering effort.

Back on topic, I would vote for tags.

jmeaders said:

Working in Product Management for a software company I really have to take to task this statement.

Whilst we might think it is this simple, invariably it is not so simple to implement changes such as this. Sometimes what we think is the simplest change, can require lots of engineering effort.

Back on topic, I would vote for tags.

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I could live with tags and some sort of "smart" folder.

Tags could work too.

V said:

It's about categorization (i.e., bookshelves) not folders or tags or other means per-se.

A browse-by-folders option would take all of 20-30 minutes to write, along with another 20-30 for an update to content manager to handle moving them around (Amazon would dump them in the main directory like it does now, no need to alter that at all). It's really a degree of shoddy implementation that this isn't there as a half-way descent developer could have a workable system in place over lunch.

Bookshelves, using a tagging system most likely since it gives the easiest flexibility, would be a bit harder but not overmuch. Two days (max) to allow both bookshelves and folder accessibility...and I know they're making enough profit off this to allocate a dev for 2 days to do this.

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V, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but your time estimates are down right funny.

Bacardi Jim said:

And I forgot to mention that if you bought a Betamax, well.... Mr. T pities you.

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I had Betamax and loved it, VHS never had a picture as good. DVD is closer. I'm an early adopter so I have all the failed stuff from the past.

To return to the subject it is a software fix, but hacking it would void the warranty and probably make all the books you have downloaded disappear.

Bacardi Jim said:

And I forgot to mention that if you bought a Betamax, well.... Mr. T pities you.

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Are you kidding me? I still have my family's Betamax from the '80s in my attic, complete with the owner's manual. My father bought it because he was convinced that people would pay a few dollars more for superior video quality. HA!

Of course, now that I think about it, how many people that have K1 are buying K2 because of an additional 12 shades of grey?

stu11926 said:

Are you kidding me? I still have my family's Betamax from the '80s in my attic, complete with the owner's manual. My father bought it because he was convinced that people would pay a few dollars more for superior video quality. HA!

Of course, now that I think about it, how many people that have K1 are buying K2 because of an additional 12 shades of grey?

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Raises hand.....

stu11926 said:

Are you kidding me? I still have my family's Betamax from the '80s in my atticshades of grey?

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I was dumb enough to buy the Sanyo V-Cord II before the Betamax, then a Betamax, and then an RCA VHS machine. But I don't have them in the attic. Three years ago I transferred over all the good stuff to DVD (boy the tapes had deteriorated quite a bit).