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Comment E-Calibre? (Score 3, Interesting) 154

by willynate (#35041890) Attached to: eBooks Nearly Outsell Print Books At Amazon
I'm just curious why no one has mentioned e-calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) as a great tool for essentially removing the DRM from Amazon books. Just suck your .amz or .mobi books off your Kindle and convert them to .epub and back. A buddy and me have permenantly "loaned" each other copies of several books we bought off Amazon in this manner.
Music

Atari Loses Copyright Suit Against RapidShare 198

Posted by Soulskill from the game-over-play-again? dept.
dotarray writes "Online copyright lawsuits aren't all about music. Video game publisher Atari Europe recently became concerned that copies of its game Alone in the Dark were floating around one-click file-hosting service RapidShare, so it took the hosting company to court. While they won the initial case, the decision was overturned on appeal, finding that RapidShare is doing nothing wrong."
Games

Submission + - The Murky Origins of Zork's Name (nickm.com)

Submitted by
mjn
mjn writes: "Computational media researcher Nick Montfort traces the murky origins of Zork's name. It's well known that the word was used in MIT hacker jargon around that time, but how did it get there? Candidates are the term "zorch" from late 1950s DIY electronics slang, the use of the term as a placeholder in some early 1970s textbooks, the typo a QWERTY user would get if he typed "work" on an AZERTY keyboard, and several uses in obscure sci-fi. No solid answers so far, though, as there are problems with many of the possible explanations, that would have made MIT hackers unlikely to have run across them at the right time."
Databases

Submission + - Why Oracle can't easily kill PostgreSQL (ostatic.com)

Submitted by ruphus13
ruphus13 writes: Monty Widenius, the main MySQL developer, fears that the argument that PostgreSQL is a FOSS alternative to MySQL and hence Oracle should be allowed to pursue MySQL is specious. He fears that Oracle, or someone else, can easily squash PostgreSQL by just 'buying out' the top 20 developers. The Postgre community has fired back, calling that claim ridiculous. According to the article, "PostgreSQL as a project is pretty healthy, and shows how vulnerable projects like MySQL are to the winds of change. PostgreSQL could die tomorrow, if a huge group of its contributors dropped out for one reason or another and the remainder of the community didn't take up the slack. But that's exceedingly unlikely. The existing model for PostgreSQL development ensures that no single entity can control it, it can't be purchased and if someone decides to fork the project, the odds are that the remaining community would be strong enough to continue without a serious glitch."

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