"If the major publishers switch to selling ebooks without DRM, then they can enable customers to buy books from a variety of outlets and move away from the walled garden of the Kindle store. They see DRM as a defense against piracy, but piracy is a much less immediate threat than a gigantic multinational with revenue of $48 Billion in 2011 (more than the entire global publishing industry) that has expressed its intention to "disrupt" them, and whose chief executive said recently "even well-meaning gatekeepers slow innovation" (where "innovation" is code-speak for "opportunities for me to turn a profit").

And so they will deep-six their existing commitment to DRM and use the terms of the DoJ-imposed settlement to wiggle out of the most-favoured-nation terms imposed by Amazon, in order to sell their wares as widely as possible.

If they don't, they're doomed. And all of us who like to read (or write) fiction get to live in the Amazon company town."

"KindleGen is a command line tool used to build eBooks that can be sold through Amazon's Kindle platform. This tool is best for publishers and individuals who are familiar with HTML and want to convert their HTML, XHTML, XML (OPF/IDPF format), or ePub source into a Kindle Book."

"I met a hacker from an antique land
Who said: Two tall and heavy mounts of steel
Lie in a basement. Near them on a stand,
Recessed, a dark CRT lies, whose peel’d
Cracked shell of dullest beige, and blinkenlights,
Tell that its fact’ry well those old specs read
Which yet survive, inked on the lifeless thing,
The die that stamp’d them and the power that fed.
And on the burned-in screen these words appear:
“My name is Awsymandias, king of kings:
Look on my racks, ye Mighty, and despair!”
No bits at all remain. Not far away
A data center waits, its humming air
Host to a boundless cloud by th’hour to pay."

"The best way to approach auction type situations like this is often to simply list the maximum price you can afford. Your instance(s) will get run if and when the spot instance price reaches that price and you will regularly get charged less depending on what other users are bidding for their instances.

Though I don’t recommend trying to chase the spot instance price around, it is natural to be curious about what others have been paying and whether or not you might have a chance to get in with your bid."

"Spot Instances are a new way to purchase and consume Amazon EC2 Instances. They allow customers to bid on unused Amazon EC2 capacity and run those instances for as long as their bid exceeds the current Spot Price. The Spot Price changes periodically based on supply and demand, and customers whose bids meet or exceed it gain access to the available Spot Instances. Spot Instances are complementary to On-Demand Instances and Reserved Instances, providing another option for obtaining compute capacity."

"The Ruby Development Center contains sample code, documentation, tools, and additional resources to help you build applications on Amazon Web Services."

"As he works from episode to episode it becomes apparent that Joss starts to remember who he is, but knowing he shouldn't draw attention to this fact he keeps it to himself and works slowly to improve Dollhouse from within. From episode 6 `Man on the Street' flashes of brilliance begin to save the show, culminating in the superb episode 9 `A Spy in the House of Love', by now Dollhouse has become gripping, funny, dark and touching with an intelligent and complex storyline that has people thinking. Joss is even able to help other people taken over by Fox and makes Eliza Dushku realise that she is an actress."

"When the add-on is installed, it integrates a new “download 4 free” button into the Amazon product page when the same article is also available via The Pirate Bay. It works for CDs, DVDs, games, books and basically all products that can be converted to a digital format."

"One of the coolest things about SimpleDB is that its interface is pure tuplespaces, also known as Linda. (Thanks to Nelson, who was one of the first people to point out this huge piece of SimpleDB's provenance.)"

"Actually, I’ve just been informed that we recouped all of our hardware costs about fifteen minutes ago. And we made enough to buy every Mac user a pony."

"SDRM is what Amazon should be using if it is worried about piracy."

"You pay for downloadable books that can’t be printed, can’t be shared, and can’t be displayed on any device other than Amazon’s own $400 reader..."

"...it is impossible to involve a mobile carrier with a technology without infecting that technology with Awful Crap."

"In my mind, the bellwether for ebooks is which format/platform is most popular for comics."

Somehow more professionally satisfying than just Googling yourself: Amazon yourself!

Invaluable advice on how to use all those analytics