It's pretty evident that I'll get nowhere in this game without the manuals. Of course, I don't have manuals. What I have is PDF files. So what to do?

Well, the obvious solution is to move them onto the Kindle Fire. Then I can access them while playing the game.

So I tried copying them into the "Docs" directory on the Fire. And then turned on the device, and there was nothing there but a message saying I should send documents to myname@kindle.com. (My actual name.) So I sent them there, all 23 megabytes or so. Took a LONG time.

And nothing showed up. I finally noticed a pair of buttons on top labelled "cloud" and "device". The default is "cloud". When I switched to "device" then they showed up.

Presumably eventually they'll show up in the cloud, too, but I don't really care.

By the way, they look great. But I have to use the Fire in portrait mode; otherwise the text is too bitty to read with my old eyes.

(If that hadn't worked, I could have used the Slate, of course. I may still end up doing that, because it has a larger screen.)

UPDATE: They did show up, but as potential downloads in the "Device" rather than in the cloud. Since they were duplicates, they didn't actually download. Instead, there were "x" marks on top of the icons, and clicking them deleted them.

Nonetheless, Amazon has made a tremendous mistake here, and eventually someone is going to notice and take advantage of it. If you know someone's Amazon account name (and while not exactly public knowledge it isn't really a secret either), then you can email graphical spam in the form of a PDF file to theirname@kindle.com and it will get downloaded onto their device automagically. I'm going to try sending a different PDF file to myself to see if it requires me to click to download it, or it comes automatically.

It doesn't really matter, though. How long before every Kindle owner's "doc" directory is loaded up with icons offering herbal drug-equivalents and get-rich-quick schemes and all the other stuff we all know and loath?

UPDATE: They have an app for it, but it isn't required. Ordinary email is all you need if you know the account name.

UPDATE: They download automatically. You don't have to approve.

This will end very badly. Good thing they can push firmware updates, because they're eventually going to have to. They've left a barn door wide open here, and it will get abused.

Actually, I don't yet know that for sure. It is barely possible that Amazon has connected my email address to my account name, and only accepted the document because it was mailed by me. One more experiment in the works.

UPDATE: I was wrong! They did think this through. Just now J did me a favor and tried sending me a PDF file. I got an email acknowledgement, but the file itself isn't on my Kindle.

So I tender my apologies to the folks at Amazon for doubting them.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at 08:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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