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David_Gerard comments on Procedural Knowledge Gaps - Less Wrong
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Better yet, get a Kindle.
I'd love a Kindle if it wasn't a hideously locked-down proprietary money funnel. I'm waiting for something with an eInk screen that just opens documents if I put them on it, in whatever format. I've wanted something like that to read PDFs with approximately forever.
I already don't read my paper books. I'd rather download a PDF than read the book that's on the shelf just over there. This appears to be unusual amongst my friends.
I got my hands on a Kindle a year back, and it just opened PDFs and text documents I put on it using it as an USB drive. Amazon even provided an app for rolling your own Kindle-format ebooks from hypertext files, which you could again just plop on the Kindle over USB.
My main problem was that the regular Kindle was too small for viewing technical article PDFs full screen. I can already use my smartphone for reading stuff that's easily reflowable, like most fiction. The Kindle DX should be better for this, but I haven't had a chance to try that.
The Kindle 3G has native PDF support. It also supports .mobi ebooks from any non-DRM'd source. (And most other formats can be converted to .mobi using a program like Calibre.)
There are other e-readers that have far less stringent requirements for getting books. The Nook and Kobo are an example (as are the Sony E-Readers). I have a Nook and have yet to purchase any books from the Barnes and Noble store. I constantly put DRM free books from Project Gutenberg on it and just placed the Less Wrong sequences on it as well. There are also FLOSS programs for editing PDFs to make them easier to read on an e-reader. A little research goes a long way!
I use my thinkpad tablet--my main computer--for reading anything I can manage to get in .pdf, but I do really envy the Kindle screen. And battery life. I keep checking back to the PixelQi site hopefully...
I read paper books because 1) I can get them really cheap used (cheaper than the library fines I always get from borrowing them...), 2) they require no batteries, 3) dropping them or stepping on them will not damage them irreparably, and 4) they are not likely to attract unwelcome attention on the buses through the rougher parts of town.
The first batch of Notion Ink Adam tablets have shipped, they have a PixelQi screen and run Android. Can't yet buy one unless you caught the pre-order, but to me that means they've moved out of 'vapourware'.
If you know that your dislike of paper is weird, you shouldn't be giving general advice about it. (you said we should throw out books)
Your dislike of the Kindle sounds like status quo bias to me. Maybe the proprietary format means that the books will only last a few years, but is that so bad? In return, you get a searchable format and no physical clutter. And if you switch to another format and lose everything, you're purged of electronic clutter!
Yes, you should definitely throw out your books. For everyone else it was obvious hyperbole for literary effect, but for you I mean it literally. What on earth?
Yes, that is so bad. I'm not paying paper prices for bits that evaporate, and I'm not giving Amazon a hundred quid's encouragement to pull that sort of stunt. That's an even more direct incentive to piracy than trying to watch a commercial DVD. In return, I get a searchable format and no physical clutter!
Although purging my life of digital clutter is actually an attractive idea. Hence the notion of "inbox zero". Like not really appreciating minimalism until you've been subjected to horrible aesthetic noise for a long time.
I liked that cartoon, but it's not completely accurate. I can skip over all of those things on my computer with software DVD players, whether the DVD was commercially authorized or not. This is a problem with some DVD players, not really a "piracy" issue.
Enforcement in software players is lax for whatever reason, but makers of DVD players need to agree to honor the Prohibited User Operations flags in order to get a patent license to use the DVD video format. So the general point stands that if you're skipping previews, someone is either in breach of contract or breaking the law.
and DJVUs. So there isn't anything like this yet. Thanks for saving me some research time.