Principia Discordia

Principia Discordia => Techmology and Scientism => Topic started by: the last yatto on December 26, 2010, 05:14:38 AM

Title: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: the last yatto on December 26, 2010, 05:14:38 AM
Holy shit the 3rd gen kindle has a fucking crisp screen,
Seriously its like looking at something an autistic kid drew on an etch-o-sketch
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: the last yatto on December 26, 2010, 05:19:07 AM
(http://i1013.photobucket.com/albums/af256/yattoksc/IMAG0289.jpg)
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on December 26, 2010, 04:02:54 PM
What's that you're reading there? I can only make out "erat verbum"
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: the last yatto on December 26, 2010, 06:21:40 PM
That's actually the screen saver
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on December 26, 2010, 06:24:50 PM
Nifty screen saver
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: the last yatto on December 26, 2010, 06:31:55 PM
Besides showing book covers, it also has profiles of various famous authors.
Tho with all the public domain books out there you think they at least load it with something other then the user manual and thes/dic.

Then again if it includes books, you might not buy any...
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Requia ☣ on December 26, 2010, 09:18:46 PM
I don't see the difference between it and the other e-ink screens I've seen.   :?
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: the last yatto on December 27, 2010, 03:33:25 AM
did you view it at full size?
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on December 27, 2010, 03:36:16 AM
Looking at a picture of a screen on another screen isn't gonna tell you shit either way.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: the last yatto on December 27, 2010, 03:38:14 AM
more so with the flash on
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Bu🤠ns on December 27, 2010, 07:23:21 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/technology/personaltech/26pogue.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Says that it has faster page turns and silent page turn button clicking and lighter weight due to a shrunken screen size.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Kai on December 28, 2010, 11:32:47 PM
Quote from: Doktor Blight on December 26, 2010, 04:02:54 PM
What's that you're reading there? I can only make out "erat verbum"

It's one of the illuminated pages from the Book of Kells.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Nephew Twiddleton on December 29, 2010, 01:57:07 AM
Quote from: ϗ on December 28, 2010, 11:32:47 PM
Quote from: Doktor Blight on December 26, 2010, 04:02:54 PM
What's that you're reading there? I can only make out "erat verbum"

It's one of the illuminated pages from the Book of Kells.

Thanks Kai.

Blight,
Irish fail
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Requia ☣ on December 29, 2010, 10:36:44 PM
Quote from: Burns on December 27, 2010, 07:23:21 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/technology/personaltech/26pogue.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Says that it has faster page turns and silent page turn button clicking and lighter weight due to a shrunken screen size.

Faster page turns in next gen screens I am very glad to hear about.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Don Coyote on December 31, 2010, 05:07:00 AM
Oh hey I got one of those.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Phox on December 31, 2010, 05:40:29 AM
Quote from: TGB on December 31, 2010, 05:07:00 AM
Oh hey I got one of those.

You gives it to us, my precious?
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Don Coyote on December 31, 2010, 05:49:09 AM
Quote from: Doktor Phox on December 31, 2010, 05:40:29 AM
Quote from: TGB on December 31, 2010, 05:07:00 AM
Oh hey I got one of those.

You gives it to us, my precious?

single word answers for $500.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Phox on December 31, 2010, 05:53:06 AM
Quote from: TGB on December 31, 2010, 05:49:09 AM
Quote from: Doktor Phox on December 31, 2010, 05:40:29 AM
Quote from: TGB on December 31, 2010, 05:07:00 AM
Oh hey I got one of those.

You gives it to us, my precious?

single word answers for $500.

What is "yes", my precious?
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Cain on December 31, 2010, 04:16:53 PM
Quote from: Don Coyooooote on December 31, 2010, 05:07:00 AM
Oh hey I got one of those.

Same.  Gotten a ton of use out of it already.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: the last yatto on January 01, 2011, 01:17:28 AM
Why does Gutenberg have to name files by numbers,
annoying to have to rename them one by one
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Don Coyote on January 01, 2011, 10:24:02 AM
Quote from: Cain on December 31, 2010, 04:16:53 PM
Quote from: Don Coyooooote on December 31, 2010, 05:07:00 AM
Oh hey I got one of those.

Same.  Gotten a ton of use out of it already.

Me too. Also managed to almost kill mine.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Cain on January 01, 2011, 03:00:06 PM
How'd you manage that?

I'm impressed with the battery time.  Been using mine exactly a week, and only today I've noticed the bar dip down today.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Don Coyote on January 01, 2011, 06:46:37 PM
It jumped from my bed to my carpeted floor and part of the back cover popped up.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Epimetheus on January 01, 2011, 07:50:06 PM
Quote from: Don Coyooooote on January 01, 2011, 06:46:37 PM
It jumped from my bed to my carpeted floor and part of the back cover popped up.

Coyote, sounds to me like you got one o' them sapient pearwood Kindles.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Don Coyote on January 01, 2011, 08:47:05 PM
Quote from: Epimetheus on January 01, 2011, 07:50:06 PM
Quote from: Don Coyooooote on January 01, 2011, 06:46:37 PM
It jumped from my bed to my carpeted floor and part of the back cover popped up.

Coyote, sounds to me like you got one o' them sapient pearwood Kindles.

I performed an emergency lobotomy with a screwdriver and all is well with it now.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Cain on January 01, 2011, 09:48:14 PM
Did you get a cover?  I haven't dropped mine anywhere near that far, but it does seem to add the durability of it somewhat.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Cain on January 06, 2011, 04:49:22 PM
Also, if like me, you have a ton of PDF files, Calibre e-book management's file conversion system (from PDF to .mobi) is awesome.  It's very readable, and while I've noticed a couple of minor flaws in breaks for paragraphing, they may be to do with the source file more than the conversion process.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Requia ☣ on January 06, 2011, 09:52:52 PM
Quote from: Cain on January 06, 2011, 04:49:22 PM
Also, if like me, you have a ton of PDF files, Calibre e-book management's file conversion system (from PDF to .mobi) is awesome.  It's very readable, and while I've noticed a couple of minor flaws in breaks for paragraphing, they may be to do with the source file more than the conversion process.

I thought Amazon finally added PDF support?  Was this wrong, or does it just not work very well?
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Cain on January 07, 2011, 07:31:45 AM
No, there is PDF support it just....well, it varies on the quality of the PDF.  The main problem is that, unlike with .mobi files where you increase the size of the letters, and the formatting stays the same, the only way to increase the size of the PDF is with a zoom function.  You can either do fit to page, which is usually too small for easy reading (though still possible with most standard ebooks) or you can zoom 150%, 200% or 300%, all of which involve having to scroll sideways across the screen constantly to read to the end of the sentence and is utterly terrible and jarring as a consequence.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Requia ☣ on January 07, 2011, 07:35:02 AM
Ah.  Yeah, that is kinda crappy, haven't they ever heard of word wrap?
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Triple Zero on January 14, 2011, 05:59:06 PM
That's not the way PDF works.

Not only does the PDF format not support word wrap, it doesn't even support line breaks.

That's right. Every line of text on a PDF page is a separate text box with the upper left point specified as coordinates relative to the page.

That is, if you're lucky.

Because there's also things like "kerning", where certain words or combinations of characters need to be spaced closer or farther apart in order to make the letters look more even, and all sorts of things that can break these line boxes into even smaller chunks.

In addition to that, there is no requirement that these text boxes appear in the PDF document in the natural order of the text, because as long as they're on the same page, the top-left coordinates determine where they'll be rendered.

Combine that with captions below figures, big pull-quotes, drop caps, and those little superscript footnote numbers, any kind of PDF-to-Text converter tool needs to do some serious black magic intelligent heuristics in order to even just determine which text boxes make up one paragraph, line, or even a single word.

Now not all PDFs are equally bad in that regard, except you don't know how they are generated, so the only thing a converter program can do it to somehow guess which text boxes belong to the same piece of text by how close together they are, and guessing most lines are nearly (but not always exactly ...) at the same distance from eachother etc etc.

And yes, it is completely stupid and retarded that this jumbled mess makes up what is the most widely used format, and the only format that everybody can read and be mostly certain to look pretty much exactly the same on every computer system and viewer, and that it's probably the best we got right now. But that's the way it is in computerland.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Requia ☣ on January 14, 2011, 09:24:51 PM
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 14, 2011, 05:59:06 PM
That's not the way PDF works.

Not only does the PDF format not support word wrap, it doesn't even support line breaks.

That's right. Every line of text on a PDF page is a separate text box with the upper left point specified as coordinates relative to the page.

That is, if you're lucky.

Because there's also things like "kerning", where certain words or combinations of characters need to be spaced closer or farther apart in order to make the letters look more even, and all sorts of things that can break these line boxes into even smaller chunks.

In addition to that, there is no requirement that these text boxes appear in the PDF document in the natural order of the text, because as long as they're on the same page, the top-left coordinates determine where they'll be rendered.

Combine that with captions below figures, big pull-quotes, drop caps, and those little superscript footnote numbers, any kind of PDF-to-Text converter tool needs to do some serious black magic intelligent heuristics in order to even just determine which text boxes make up one paragraph, line, or even a single word.

Now not all PDFs are equally bad in that regard, except you don't know how they are generated, so the only thing a converter program can do it to somehow guess which text boxes belong to the same piece of text by how close together they are, and guessing most lines are nearly (but not always exactly ...) at the same distance from eachother etc etc.

And yes, it is completely stupid and retarded that this jumbled mess makes up what is the most widely used format, and the only format that everybody can read and be mostly certain to look pretty much exactly the same on every computer system and viewer, and that it's probably the best we got right now. But that's the way it is in computerland.

The zoom on a Sony supports word wrap on PDFs regardless of these problems.  It's not ideal, but it does keep you from needing to scroll on a device where scrolling is a very bad idea.
Title: Re: look at that mother fucking screen
Post by: Triple Zero on January 15, 2011, 12:50:47 AM
Certainly. I'm jsut saying it's not very straightforward to do.