


Demystified Videos In Demystified, Britannica has all the answers to your burning questions.

Britannica Classics Check out these retro videos from Encyclopedia Britannica’s archives.Britannica Explains In these videos, Britannica explains a variety of topics and answers frequently asked questions.They can roll their own open-source projects into production, or they can choose to work with vendors that make it easy through support, SAAS, and other convenience-adding features. My time doesn't scale, and is worth a lot more to me than $1.60. Or I can pay a few dollars for someone else to do that for me at scale. Try with the on-premise solution, but with SAAS.Ĭan I get the same reading experience on my Kindle with the free Project Gutenberg texts? Sure. But for those who value convenience highly, a SAAS offering will be critical. Yes, you can (and many will) download and install these for themselves. I believe the next wave of "convenience" for open source will be software-as-a-service offerings of SugarCRM, Loopfuse, MindTouch, JBoss, etc. Yes, you can compile your own Linux distribution, but why when you can have Red Hat Enterprise Linux Premium for $1,200, which is a drop in the bucket compared to Windows Server and pennies on the dollar compared to proprietary Unix offerings like HP-UX?Ĭonvenience sells. This is one of the core principles underlying successful open-source companies like Red Hat. For $1.60, I can have that exact same book with everything pre-formatted for me. Line breaks aren't formatted for the Kindle, making the normally exceptional Kindle-reading experience.much less exceptional. The problem, however, is what happens once it's there. pdf (i.e., PDF can be converted into a supported format), and other file formats, it's easy to get free content like Northanger Abbey into the Kindle. This week I tried downloading Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey from Project Gutenberg. This is where my open-source experiment comes in. None of which matters, however, without good content. The only thing missing is a backlight for reading in low-light conditions, but it's already better than reading a physical book because the screen is comforting to view and the weight/feel of the product is exceptional. No, what I really like about the Kindle is the reading experience. I don't care about its wireless capabilities - downloading updates to blogs is a waste given that I don't like to read blogs unless I'm in an immediate position to comment on them, and the ability to buy directly from the device is not an earth-shattering advancement - and I find its menu interface a bit clunky. I've become a big fan of the Kindle in a short time.
