MrC

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Commented on Coffee in a can from a vending machine is big (and manly) in Japan
POCCA used to have a brewery/cannery up in American Canyon in northern california. Never quite took off and they left the US market. You can get UCC and other canned coffees in Japanese enclaves and most asian markets at least...
Commented on Kindle owners start to lose text-to-speech on purchased books -- how do DRM-free Kindle books work?
The Mobipocket format is, if not an open spec, an openly deconstructed spec. You can get your books now on Kindle without DRM, just go to feedbooks.com....
Commented on Lenora Claire's new "doNUTS" web series
This sounds interesting and all, but it did so the last 2-3 times it was page-topped. Whatever BB's doing that causes articles to keep popping to the top is causing issues trying to keep up with whats new. Please fix...
Commented on Sony adds half a million public domain books to Reader library
I have a PRS-505 and a co-worker has a K2. I still like the build/design quality of the Sony better. I get a lot of my books from feedbooks.com which has both CC licensed and out of copyright books. I've...
Commented on NZXT Panzer Box
I built a bunch of computers out of the NZXT "Hush' HU001 case a while ago. Some of the best designed and build PC cases I've used, good cooling, foam sound suppression, and a good price....
Commented on Searching for an Honest Bank
I have been a happy customer of Union Bank of California, which as far as I've been able to tell, has not been caught up in any of the "Tainted assets" crap. They are, however, not an 'merican bank, as...
Commented on Own a Frank Lloyd Wright home
@Starcadia The house in Bottle Rocket was another FLW house, but in Dallas. Good catch...
Commented on Christian salt, a wingnut alternative to Kosher salt
@OSKAR As mentioned in both the article and other commentators above, Kosher(ing) salt is different from table salt because of the size and shape of the sodium chloride crystals. The different shape crystals may not affect taste, but they affect...
Commented on Hidden government cameras in digital converter boxes? No.
This reminds me of the stories when closed caption decoders became mandatory in US TVs. There was a contingent of the tinfoil hat society that insisted the CC decoder was a secret spy device to watch you while you watch...
Commented on Trader Joe's fan commercial not to be missed
Too true, although the concept of putting an ad on TV anti-TJs anyway. At least they claim in their radio spots. Like every TJ's lover I have a long list of stuff I liked but they don't carry anymore, although...
Commented on Author's Guild claims text-to-speech software is illegal
As Rob pointed out, the blind/vision impaired crowd have done a good job protecting their rights. Even the odious DMCA provides provisions to crack DRM in order to use a machine reader....
Commented on Sears upsells plasma television "recharging" service (Hint: no such thing)
Thanks funny. Although almost every Plasma own I know has had the power supply replaced at least once in the first 5 years. Admittedly they were all early adopters, but it did put me off plasma....
Commented on Verizon announces the Hub, the world's first paralyzed smartphone
My local AT&T store had something almost identical to this, but I can't find it on their website to compare now....
Commented on Trailer for Psych-Out (1968)
My lady and I saw this on one of the "classic" movie channels a couple of years ago. Living/Working in and around San Francisco my whole life added to the fun experience. If you get a chance, it's worth seeing....
Commented on Special offer from CRAFT magazine
Thanks for the fix Mark. Boing Boing and Make/Craft come through again....
Commented on Special offer from CRAFT magazine
Sadly that doesn't help, and if you change the embedded from tngng to bngbng on the subnew.asp page the price goes back to $34.95 as well. Thanks for the idea though....
Commented on Special offer from CRAFT magazine
I would love to give this to my GF for Christmas, but the "give a gift of craft" link does not honor the $24.95 price. Can the wonderful powers-that-be that made this offer please extended to work on the gift...

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nosehat commented on Kindle owners start to lose text-to-speech on purchased books -- how do DRM-free Kindle books work?
I've read 100s of e-books for about 9 years now, using my pocket PC and the MS Reader program which uses the .lit format. I think the .lit format is based very closely on HTML (or RTF), and the file format must be pretty easily hackable--At any rate, there's plenty of free utilities to convert things to and from .lit. I've got dozens and dozens of Project Gutenberg books I've converted this way, and it works fine. As I understand it, there's some kind of optional DRM built into the file format, but as a user I've never once encountered...
Uncle_Max commented on Kindle owners start to lose text-to-speech on purchased books -- how do DRM-free Kindle books work?
HERSHMIRE @20: "So what's the benefit of a kindle over a book?" The major one is that you can easily carry many books around with you. If you're on the bus/train/subway a lot, it's much easier to have one Kindle with many books than to bring separate books every day (sort of like having an iPod with your entire music collection, instead of bringing a CD player and a separate CD every day). This can be incredibly handy if you're going on a trip someplace. Suitcases have limits, and this can free up a lot of space. Beyond that, you...
VoiceForge commented on Kindle owners start to lose text-to-speech on purchased books -- how do DRM-free Kindle books work?
What about the issue of sticking readers with just one voice? Amazon should consider http://www.VoiceForge.com - an online TTS service with over 50 cool voices. Imagine each character gets a unique voice; or, assigning different voices to different blogs or news categories. The guild is missing the use case. Do you use TTS 100% of the time? Or, do you flip-flop to TTS for chunks of content when the situation demands audio (e.g., driving). This is what "multi-modal" interfaces and best for....
PappyCaligula commented on Searching for an Honest Bank
Don't think Credit Unions OR small-er banks are necessarily the way to go either. I live in South Carolina and the banks that sound small have had some mysterious massive spurts of growth. Adding tons of services and many more branches without the ability to actually service the accounts they've guarnered. It makes you wonder IF some larger bank actually controls the smaller bank/loaned them the cash for their expansion KNOWING that alot of folks believe the BIG Banks are only for BIG Biz. Echo that with a local Credit Union that is FULL of incompetents. Refusing to release direct...
BobTwinKindle commented on Kindle owners start to lose text-to-speech on purchased books -- how do DRM-free Kindle books work?
Hi everyone I bought my kindle used from a colleague for about 150.00. I am a train commuter (1 hr) train ride and adore my kindle for reading and easily downloading books (not to mention the 'sample' feature). My gripe with DRM has come to light with Sony's support for library ebooks (http://scls.typepad.com/techbits/2009/03/rekindling-ebook-enthusiasm-.html). Using 'igorsk's infamous de-drm script' should not be an option, as your average 'Joe' / 'Susan' is not going to want to hack their Kindle. To me this is a show stopper for Kindle and would force me to buy a Sony reader. I like the idea...

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