Obviously impossible to say without knowing more. Do you currently own a Kindle? If so, which? I’m not going to bother picking up the newest model, because I got the newest model last time and remain extremely satisfied with it. But if you either don’t own a Kindle or have an extremely outdated one, then picking up the latest one might be worthwhile. Just depends.
I wouldn’t. I went through five of the previous version. The screen is incredibly delicate. Simply being in my pocket with my wallet was enough to kill several of them. One drop from a bedside table killed another.
I switched to the Kindle Fire, which is basically a cheap smartphone without the phone. That one, carried the same way, has lasted a year now with only minor software glitches. (It reset itself once, required me to download all the books again.)
But, the Kindle Fire has smartphone problems: needs charging daily, the screen is legible in sunlight, barely.
I have a hand-me-down first-generation Kindle. I find the screen-refresh too slow and the contrast too low. I find the iPad Kindle app adequate, not awesome.
I have the earlier version of the Paperwhite. Refresh rates are better; contrast is much better.
The problem I have with it is the reflective screen surface which provides uniform lighting is easily scratched and once scratched it creates glowing spots and shadows on the screen. That light can be turned down but not off. That light is blue-white so it will disrupt melatonin — just not as much as a regular screen.
Get an iPad. It has better resolution and depiction of the page, much easier screen navigation, and it can run any ebook format including Kindle and Nook. You do need a special app for each format. I have six. And you cannot download other formats from Apple’s store.
The iPad also provides all sorts of other apps like iWork, Safari, Mail, which are useful, and it supports wifi and 3 and 4G connections.
Here is a question: which edition of Game of Thrones is better? The KIndle edition or the iBooks edition. I am up to book 4 and noted in the samples that the iBooks’ maps are clearer than the Kindle’s ones. But are there extra features that one will get with either edition that clearly makes the choice of one over the other rational. Of course I am using an iPad with a retina display.
For what it is worth, I would wait for the next generation iPad in the Fall because it will come with a next generation CPU that will permit more complex computing to be performed. Watch the video of the announcement at Apple’s web site, the one on the recent Developer’s Conference.
I’ve switched to an iPad for all my reading, from the Kindle Paperwhite. This was mainly because a lot of non-fiction has a lot of filler, so the iPad’s instant refresh rate makes it a lot easier to skim. Also I read a lot of PDF books, which don’t work well at all on the Kindle.
Phileas Frogg: If a government official is emphatically calling something, “evil,” that could, if pursued, accrue more power to the government, you know it’s evil.
Jim: Yeah… maybe. But Russia invaded the Ukraine, and some shady motherfuckers were running a billion bioweapons facilities there. As far as I know, nothing was ever released—and the war continues to grind on, I assume.
Phileas Frogg: When I was a child and I had all of the time in the world to be bored getting driven around in the backseat of a car, I used to look out at large buildings with strange corporate names and wonder what they did in them. I’d concoct stories about secret government programs, or occult meetings, or weapons research, etc. Then I’d imagine sneaking into them and discovering their nefarious schemes. As an adult I’ve come to realize, my boredom induced imaginative ramblings may...
Bob Sykes: “Reported” A nice weasel word. “I didn’t say it” Very nearly every news story out of Ukraine that is published in the western media is an outright lie, and the publishers know it. Those deep strikes are being ordered, directed, and conducted by actual US/NATO officers servicemen. Ukraine itself is a proxy and has no say in what is done. They just provide local meat for the Russian grinder. US/NATO troops have been active on the ground in Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union, well...
Phileas Frogg: Jim, I agree, but as a Catholic I still want the house cleaned up over at the Lateran Palace. With regard to bioweapons, you might be right, but I always liked to think of them as the, “Poor Nations Nuke.” I could be wrong, but I don’t think we’ve actually tried invading a nation armed with them, so they’re at least sufficiently dissuasive as to prevent American military intervention.
Jim: Phileas, we don’t need to further expand the power of the Vatican to resuscitate manly honor and suppress the women and the olds. Even the Congress’s Commerce, Equal Protection, and Naturalization Powers, properly understood, could do that. As for bioweapons, they have radically different properties and a much-different activation curve. I frankly doubt that they are actually all that useful.
Phileas Frogg: Jim, Funnily enough that’s one of the reasons I’m in favor of re-establishing the Papal States as key step in the remediation of the Roman Curia, despite the fact that it’s administered by dubiously Catholic individuals at present. As for modern bioweapons, it’s inevitable and stupid, but perfectly rational. Not every nation can afford, develop, or manage to sneak a nuke into operational existence, particularly under the watchful eye of the various Great Powers, so...
Jim: A law without a court, without an army, is hardly a law at all.
Bob Sykes: The Russians have already set up a separate combat arm for drones.
Isegoria: I’m getting strong Terminator-future vibes from drones hunting survivors in the rubble.
Bruce: At Monte Cassino, we bombed the stone building to rubble, and the Germans put machine gun nests in the randomly scattered rubble. Pricy getting them out. I expect drones to routinely arrive just after a bomb strike and nest in the rubble. Maybe in Ukraine they already are. Next, they look at the field manuals on fortifications and start sneaking construction drones into inconvenient places. Maybe in Ukraine they already are.
Jim: That is an astute observation, Phileas. Indeed, to abuse Bill Gates, “People overestimate how much decline can occur in one year, and underestimate how much decline can occur in ten.”
Phileas Frogg: When degradation happens universally, at a roughly uniform rate, it’s much harder to detect, and much more likely to be accepted as, “normal,” than genuinely isolated incidents. Isolated asymmetric catastrophes are more jarring for the public and more like to cause a response than universal and uniform ones. “Family of 3 is carjacked and killed,” in a small town is more likely to elicit a response than, “Over the course of 10 years, your small...
Phileas Frogg: The fact that they both arrived at a general method is interesting, and naturally begs the age old philosophical question: “Is reality a mathematical structure? Or, is reality necessarily instantiated with mathematical properties? Or, is reality simply able to be modeled via mathematics?” I lean towards the 2nd, but I can’t wholly dismiss the 1st and 3rd, though this tidbit does seem to argue against the 3rd indirectly.
Phileas Frogg: Unless and until they release an actual sticker price, it’s only prudent to reserve judgement given the inflationary predilections of our bureaucracy.
Jim: Don’t worry, guys, not only would they not have participated, if Our Greatest Ally had somehow received advance notice, they would have helped to stop it.
Bob Sykes: Next thing you know, people will be claiming Mossad did 9/11.
The new Kindle Paperwhite, announced today, has a 300 ppi display. Should I finally get one?
Obviously impossible to say without knowing more. Do you currently own a Kindle? If so, which? I’m not going to bother picking up the newest model, because I got the newest model last time and remain extremely satisfied with it. But if you either don’t own a Kindle or have an extremely outdated one, then picking up the latest one might be worthwhile. Just depends.
I wouldn’t. I went through five of the previous version. The screen is incredibly delicate. Simply being in my pocket with my wallet was enough to kill several of them. One drop from a bedside table killed another.
I switched to the Kindle Fire, which is basically a cheap smartphone without the phone. That one, carried the same way, has lasted a year now with only minor software glitches. (It reset itself once, required me to download all the books again.)
But, the Kindle Fire has smartphone problems: needs charging daily, the screen is legible in sunlight, barely.
I have a hand-me-down first-generation Kindle. I find the screen-refresh too slow and the contrast too low. I find the iPad Kindle app adequate, not awesome.
I have the earlier version of the Paperwhite. Refresh rates are better; contrast is much better.
The problem I have with it is the reflective screen surface which provides uniform lighting is easily scratched and once scratched it creates glowing spots and shadows on the screen. That light can be turned down but not off. That light is blue-white so it will disrupt melatonin — just not as much as a regular screen.
The “cool” white light that you can’t turn off is, well, a turn-off, but 300-ppi e-ink sounds great.
Get an iPad. It has better resolution and depiction of the page, much easier screen navigation, and it can run any ebook format including Kindle and Nook. You do need a special app for each format. I have six. And you cannot download other formats from Apple’s store.
The iPad also provides all sorts of other apps like iWork, Safari, Mail, which are useful, and it supports wifi and 3 and 4G connections.
If you hate Apple (some do), get another tablet.
Here is a question: which edition of Game of Thrones is better? The KIndle edition or the iBooks edition. I am up to book 4 and noted in the samples that the iBooks’ maps are clearer than the Kindle’s ones. But are there extra features that one will get with either edition that clearly makes the choice of one over the other rational. Of course I am using an iPad with a retina display.
For what it is worth, I would wait for the next generation iPad in the Fall because it will come with a next generation CPU that will permit more complex computing to be performed. Watch the video of the announcement at Apple’s web site, the one on the recent Developer’s Conference.
I’ve switched to an iPad for all my reading, from the Kindle Paperwhite. This was mainly because a lot of non-fiction has a lot of filler, so the iPad’s instant refresh rate makes it a lot easier to skim. Also I read a lot of PDF books, which don’t work well at all on the Kindle.