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Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Why the commercial ebook market is broken (Charle's Diary)

Charles Stross writes:

I've been ruminating for a whole long time now about the dog that didn't bark in the nighttime world of publishing — the coming ebook revolution, which has been coming now for something like 20 years and counting without much sign of actually arriving.

In point of fact, ebook sales figures are dismal. At best, they tend towards 20% of hardcover sales by volume — and that's for ebooks that are available in open formats that are not tied to a particular hardware platform, and that are not crippled by DRM (digital rights management) encryption schemes that prevent users from reading them on more than one machine. DRM-infested ebooks sell an order of magnitude fewer copies, in many cases not even covering the cost of taking the existing typeset masters and saving them in an ebook format.

The performance of the ebook market is in fact piss-poor. It can be explained in part by readers' natural aversion to DRM (if you change mobile phone or laptop, why should your entire library evaporate?), but also in part by publishers' idiotic aversion to the idea of trusting readers. (more...)

[via BoingBoing]

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Daylight Saving Time Update for Palm OS Devices (Palm)

What does this update do?

  • Replaces the old DST rule with new DST rule on your smartphone or handheld. Then it notifies the Date & Time application that DST rule change occurred.
  • Replaces the old DST rule embedded in any Calendar events that occur after March 11, 2007 (when the DST change begins). This allows events within the DST rule change window to remain at their original times.
It is always a good idea to make a backup of your important information. Prior to installing this update, Palm recommends backing up your Calendar events, or printing them out for reference, in the event that Calendar information is lost. To back up your Calendar by exporting it, see Knowledge Library article 28751: Export PIM data.