This Christmas, Amazon have been selling more kindle than physical books.

For those who still don't know the kindle is an e-book reader, you can access to an online library and download your e-books, and do everything you'd to usually except maybe reading in the bath.
I hate the product, deeply, due to very shady terms of use, I've blogged about it before.

It kills me to know that while privacy is becoming a major topic, which will probably be buzzing all around the web in 2010, people still fall for a device that spies on everything you read.

According to the chart on eff.org, the Kindle is not the only guilty one here, Google Books and the BnB Nook are also sharing information about your readings... to third party service providers.

Who are the third party service providers? I just wish it's not a potential future Independent Bureau Of Thought Correctness...

Well, just wait, see, and hope New Moon is never made illegal.

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You've read me before, you might know I don't really understand the Kindle buzz.

I've been a bit farther than wandering round the bush, and took a look at he the licence agreement and terms of use.

Now I'm (almost) scared, and if anything, really puzzled. And mildly berzerk, too.
See by yourself :

Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, (1)solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use.
[...]
(2)You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content.
[...]
Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make in your Device are (3) backed up through the Service. Information we receive is subject to the Amazon.com Privacy Notice.

(1) Whould it mean that I cannot transfer my e-books from a Kindle to another ? What if I want to transfer my files before reselling the thing ? What if I want to back them up ?

(2) Would it mean that I can't share my readings anymore ? Information, culture, literature, all that in a plastic hermetic vault for the sole use of him who pays ? I have always bought used books, and more often than never, I've given them away for my great pleasure, the pleasure of sharing. I would have to give it all away and pay for it ? Oh, and, probably, forget anything about the Kindle replacing school manuals.

(3) Amazon lives in a wonderful world where Amazon decides of our rights to share culture and knowledge, and uses the information we send them at will. Amazon has a caring eye, who will lead us to better readings, and eventually Amazon will know us better than our own family without us asking.

Here are is the privacy notice they provide, since I didn't find a world about the Kindle, I still don't know if buying it gives them the right to eavesdrop our phone lines.

What really disgusts me is the copywrong mentality creeping under every aspect of our culture. We've had trouble with music, movie, softwares... and now, the only thing left with less issues than usual, the very medium that freed the masses and spread consciousness among mankind, the book, is targeted not only with venal intentions but also the will to control and monitor.

I am not completely afraid, since DRM based content's success is currently free-falling, and users seem to have had enough with this kind of totalitarian restrictions. Nontheless, I wouldn't use this device even if it was given away.

As a bonus, I give you this very interesting link about the Kindle, 1984 and our rights as readers, this other link to amazon's return policy, and a new logo that would really fit them if it didn't take two "Z" (yes I am currently being irritated, and I blow my nose at the Godwin point).

Technorati Tags: Kindle, totalitarism, 1984, Amazon

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I got myself a new laptop, local brand called Zyrex.
It's a pretty cool machine, except for the VGA but I don't really care.

Well, I didn't, in the beginning.

First thing, when the salesman got my laptop and started Vista, the stuff froze almost instantly. No way, I'm Installing XP and everything is more or less fine (well, grub will need some fixing but...)

Next, that's what happened :

See, I am a gamer. Not the "high end special effect-lover-directx56-addict-nolife-geek type" but more the "have-fun-with-anything" type.

So I installed my favorite game :Toribash, I am gonna talk about it one day. The game doesn't need much, only a processor that can run a little bit faster than you.

Having a core duo loaded in my machine, I was confident. I shouldn't have been, since the game game me a ridiculous 15 fps in its best moments.

I spent quite some time browsing the web for a solution, too much time due to the extremely slow indonesian broadband, and I found the sources of the problem.

1. A CPU Trhottle control soft that came with the bundle was telling me that I was running full spedd while I was in fact at 50% velocity. (Goodbye my boy.)

2. And THAT HORRIBLE TRUTH. Not only XP Sp2 is not optimized for the dual core processors embarked on laptops, but MS didn't bother including the patch in their automatic updates.

Got the patch, Toribash runs WAY better, and I am happy. But for Fulbert's sake I won't ever, ever say that XP is more user friendly than a good Linux distro.

And by the way I'm downloading a Kubuntu, some news from the fawn very soon.

Technorati Tags: core duo, patch, xp, sp2, microsoft, lazy slackers

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Well, enough shouting at things and people, now time for more personal though.

The question of life, universe and all the rest having already been answered (42, really good answer since 4+2=6 and 6/2=3, and 3 is a magic number), I will try to answer another question regarding an existentio-geek problem :

What if I dumped my mouse ?

HA ! Says you, why dumping a mouse ?

I'll tell you why : because I have the sequel of a dislocated shoulder. Thus I have two choices, stop moving it all day long or getting a surgery. Surgery bad.
So I've tried stuffs, many. And I will not make a very detailed comparative because it's already been done, better and by many others.

But, I can tell you the result : Trackball.

I don't know why the deuce people don't have these things all the way at home or in the office. NOT for shooter games, and just really unadvised for photoshop or any graphic stuff. But if you are the kind of person who surfs and writes and play with photos (a mac user), or the kind of uber performance oriented geek (linux user), this is definitely to try, it's faster than a mouse and doesn't require more space than its actual surface, the ergonomic is often really cool and coming in various flavors.

And it's so, like, so, like, you know... funky.

Well, of course there is the really annoying comment that goes with the pic below : "And it doesn't bother you to spend your days with your fingers on a huge red ball ?"

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