A kindle up your nook (DOG EAR)
A kindle up your nook (DOG EAR)
At dinner the other night, a friend was flashing his reader at me, showing me his “stack”. Well, first, don’t wave your toy at me at the table. Adults talk books, they don’t thrust ePuds under their companion’s noses.
Second, I have stacks. I have 30 feet of books (four shelves deep) in my Florida room. I’ve got hardbacks over my sofa, a huge shelf groaning with historical references in the living room, and piles along the side of the bed, my “next reads”. I’ve got stacks.
You, you have folders. Big difference.
I was thinking about this piece, my usual snooty anti-E bit, and something else hit me. Two weeks ago I got nailed with a cluster of viruses that I had a devil of a time removing (all the drama HERE). Then, three nights ago, I pulled down a special reader and got the Babylon malware (not only did it pop 40 bots all over my system, it altered my browser to point through a click-though marketing group). And that took a few hours to set right.
While there is a special, crackly-warm place in hell for virus malingers, there is a consideration to be gained from all this.
Right now, all over the world, people are hunched over kindles and nooks, looking for vulnerabilities. Think about the volume of submissions for these tools. Think about all those unchecked, unscanned files. Someone’s going to figure out a way to sneak in code in a book – they could even submit it under a trusted literary title like Fahrenheit 451. You download it and suddenly they have you. Perhaps they spiteful nihilists who rub out your entire stack. Perhaps they are playful bastards who knock out some of your command keys. Perhaps they are neo-capitalists, and will flash pop-up adds in front of your Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Or maybe its just the Russian mob, who will steal your VISA information.
And if you don’t think that’s happening in a sense, now, think again. Do you think Amazon and B&N don’t track your purchases? That you won’t get some message next time you buy something, a blurb about “People who purchased Fifty shades of gray also have ordered…”
With my old paper friends, it’s just me and my book. With your Epud, it’s you, an unvetted writer/encoder, corporate marketing boards, and hackers the world over.
Something to think about.