Book vending at railway stations

[Quoth]

Paperbacks were sold on railway platforms in England from the 1930 and was one of the factors in the launch of Penguin.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...ending-machine

Shouldn't there be such vending machines with a screen, USB socket, SD slot (both covered with hatch till you purchase) and WiFi so that ebooks can be bought too?

Is the House of Random Penguins simply replacing the 1930s counter with a more limited vending machine. Lack of imagination.
It's been done with VHS & DVD (sale and rental basis) decades ago.

A vending machine to do paperbacks is a 30 year old or more off the shelf. I actually worked on design and development of a vending machine with a mechanical expert in 1992 with a PC and voice synthesis.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Shouldn't there be such vending machines with a screen, USB socket, SD slot (both covered with hatch till you purchase) and WiFi so that ebooks can be bought too?

Umm, no.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Umm, no.

I suppose most people think a Mobile/Cell connection on the go suffices. Oddly not everyone has home internet or smart phones. I know one young person that by choice has a dumb phone, though he has broadband.

What about in cash orientated societies with poor Internet connectivity? Maybe solar powered and geosynchronous satellite two-way internet (the latency doesn't matter for this).

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I suppose most people think a Mobile/Cell connection on the go suffices. Oddly not everyone has home internet or smart phones. I know one young person that by choice has a dumb phone, though he has broadband.

There was an article in the NY Times a few months ago about a group of New York teens who have eschewed smart phones. [Gift link; no paywall]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/s...smid=url-share

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by issybird

There was an article in the NY Times a few months ago about a group of New York teens who have eschewed smart phones. [Gift link; no paywall]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/s...smid=url-share

Let's report back on those teens in six months to a year. Remember when minimalism was the new hotness?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Paperbacks were sold on railway platforms in England from the 1930 and was one of the factors in the launch of Penguin.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...ending-machine

Shouldn't there be such vending machines with a screen, USB socket, SD slot (both covered with hatch till you purchase) and WiFi so that ebooks can be bought too?

Is the House of Random Penguins simply replacing the 1930s counter with a more limited vending machine. Lack of imagination.
It's been done with VHS & DVD (sale and rental basis) decades ago.

A vending machine to do paperbacks is a 30 year old or more off the shelf. I actually worked on design and development of a vending machine with a mechanical expert in 1992 with a PC and voice synthesis.

How would the vending machines handle ADE DRM? Would Amazon allow Kindle eBooks?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I suppose most people think a Mobile/Cell connection on the go suffices. Oddly not everyone has home internet or smart phones. I know one young person that by choice has a dumb phone, though he has broadband.

A customer for your e-book vending machine would need to be carrying an e-reader of some type already. All they would need is connectivity to buy from whatever book store they normally use and there is likely to be free Wi-Fi available somewhere in a train station big enough to support book vending machines.

Originally Posted by Quoth

What about in cash orientated societies with poor Internet connectivity? Maybe solar powered and geosynchronous satellite two-way internet (the latency doesn't matter for this).

It seems to me that there is unlikely to be much of a population of e-reader users in such a place.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How would the vending machines handle ADE DRM? Would Amazon allow Kindle eBooks?

More importantly, why bother? You can buy and download books directly on your ereader with a WiFi connection.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by jhowell

It seems to me that there is unlikely to be much of a population of e-reader users in such a place.

Japan is a cash oriented society with surprisingly poor internet availability. And yeah, paper is very popular there. Going into a 7-Eleven there reminded me of convenience stores in the US in the eighties. Big magazine racks full of magazines, manga and paperbacks.

Ereaders exist there, but I never saw one in the wild.

[Kindleing]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Shouldn't there be such vending machines with a screen, USB socket, SD slot (both covered with hatch till you purchase) and WiFi so that ebooks can be bought too?

Plugging your ereader/laptop/smart phone into strange USB slots with a data cable is not recommended; the security risks are too great. This has become a problem in airports and other travel areas where people access public charging stations.

from the US Federal Communications Commission:
https://www.fcc.gov/juice-jacking-da...rging-stations

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Kindleing

Plugging your ereader/laptop/smart phone into strange USB slots with a data cable is not recommended; the security risks are too great. This has become a problem in airports and other travel areas where people access public charging stations.

from the US Federal Communications Commission:
https://www.fcc.gov/juice-jacking-da...rging-stations

I wondered when someone would spot that flaw. I'd not use an SD card slot or Public WiFi with my ereader or phone either.

Even over 15 years ago I only used public WiFi with a VPN client on my laptop to a VPN server at home on port 80.

Man in the Middle attacks.

No, the entire concept of a vending machine for ebooks or other files can't work. Even HTTPS is no protection on a malicious WiFi point. It can be using poisoned DNS as well as faking the destination web site in a Man in the Middle attack.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by issybird

There was an article in the NY Times a few months ago about a group of New York teens who have eschewed smart phones. [Gift link; no paywall]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/s...smid=url-share

Modern dumb phones typically have hotspot functionality built in too. Even some older ones did but you needed a cable to be able to connect it to a PC which often wasn't included. Heck in Japan you could even use your mobile phone's internet connection with your Game Boy Color and copy of Pokemon Crystal back in 2000.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I wondered when someone would spot that flaw. I'd not use an SD card slot or Public WiFi with my ereader or phone either.

Even over 15 years ago I only used public WiFi with a VPN client on my laptop to a VPN server at home on port 80.

Man in the Middle attacks.

No, the entire concept of a vending machine for ebooks or other files can't work. Even HTTPS is no protection on a malicious WiFi point. It can be using poisoned DNS as well as faking the destination web site in a Man in the Middle attack.

I'm so confused. If this is the way you feel, why in the world would you suggest and argue for such a machine in the first place??

Shari

[Quoth]

I wasn't arguing for it. I was discussing it. I'd thought about it before for physical bookshops and decided it wasn't a viable idea. Physical bookshops could maybe have POD eventually. POD is only viable right now for the main warehouse of a big bookshop chain, like Barnes&Noble/Waterstones.
Also in the long term physical bookshops will depend on the sort of books always going to be much poorer on phones, tablets and eink.
Paper and ebooks have overlap, but eventually will serve different content: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=352864

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I wasn't arguing for it. I was discussing it. I'd thought about it before for physical bookshops and decided it wasn't a viable idea. Physical bookshops could maybe have POD eventually. POD is only viable right now for the main warehouse of a big bookshop chain, like Barnes&Noble/Waterstones.
Also in the long term physical bookshops will depend on the sort of books always going to be much poorer on phones, tablets and eink.
Paper and ebooks have overlap, but eventually will serve different content: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=352864

Ok.

Shari