I don’t write about Linux much, but this story by fellow ZDNet blogger Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols caught my eye today:

Red Hat extends Red Hat Enterprise Linux lifecycle to ten years

I’m a big believer in “It’s not broke, then don’t fix it.” So is leading Linux company, Red Hat. The company has just announced that it is extending the production lifecycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 and 6 from seven to 10 years in response to enterprise customer demand and Red Hat’s hardware original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners.

A lot of consumers and tech bloggers fail to understand that enterprises prefer stability over shiny new toys. It’s hard to imagine using a 10-year-old mobile phone or MP3 player, but boring corporate apps need stability on the dektop and server sides.

Interestingly, this puts the leading maker of Linux servers on the same support lifecycle as … Microsoft. Consumer versions of Windows are supported for five years, business versions (including servers) get extended support for a total of 10 years.

I’ve got an old but still useful post that explains it all:

How long will Microsoft support XP, Vista, and Windows 7?

The point of having a predictable release cycle—a new Windows version every three years—is to encourage upgrades. That’s especially true for consumers, who can skip one version but not two. Even so, full support will be available until the beginning of 2015. For businesses, anyone considering a Windows 7 migration can take comfort in knowing it will be supported for nearly another decade more—until January 14, 2020.

If you’re curious about how this translates into actual dates, the post also includes a table that breaks support for desktop Windows versions down by version.

Way back in 1999, the first draft of the Open eBook Standard was submitted for final approval. It evolved to become the current open EPUB standard.

Here’s what the man who spearheaded the standards-setting body had to say at the time:

It was critical for the success of the electronic book industry to unite and provide publishers and consumers with a common standard to which all eBooks could be formatted … Without a common standard, publishers would have to format eBook titles separately for each electronic device and the number of titles available for any device would be small. This would be a recipe for disaster.

Guess where that effort started.

Steve Jobs published his Thoughts on Music in February 2007.

I’ve taken the liberty of doing a little search and replace on this section:

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music books encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player reader can play music display books  purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable books that can be read on all players readers. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.

It doesn’t seem like anyone is working very hard to make that vision possible. Quite the opposite, in fact.

7 Tutorials reviews Windows 7 Inside Out, Deluxe Edition

Windows 7 Inside Out, Deluxe Edition is an excellent reference and a genuine educational resource. It’s a huge book and has all kinds of information that the reader may not have known before (but can be put to good use immediately). If you buy only one Windows 7 reference book, this definitely should be the one. It’s a keeper!

My co-authors and I are grateful for the many reviews we’ve received like this one.

Just a reminder that this book, like all of my Microsoft Press titles, is available in digital editions without any DRM. You are free to use the content in any program and on any device you own. We (my fellow authors and publishing partners) trust our readers.

Ironically, the best way to get the electronic edition of this book might be to buy the print edition first.

The print edition of Windows 7 Inside Out, Deluxe Edition is currently available at Amazon for $37.79. The Kindle edition is available for $34.01. You might be able to find it for a lower price elsewhere. At Barnes & Noble, the print edition is $41.30, whereas the digital edition for the Nook is $40.31. Those are pretty paltry discounts.

O’Reilly, which distributes Microsoft press titles, offers the book as well, but not at competitive prices. The print edition is $59.99, the ebook is $47.99, and a package of the two is (gulp) $65.99. If you paid those prices, thank you very much for your generous support. (If you own a previous edition, you can qualify for a 40-50% discount, as I explain later.)

So what’s the most cost-effective way to add this book to your library?

The print edition includes a full PDF copy on the disc bound into the back of the book. If all you want is the ability to read the book on your PC and search for specific words or phrases, get the print edition and copy the unprotected PDF copy to your PC, Mac, or other device.

Want the book on an e-reader? You can get a DRM-free copy suitable for use on any e-reader for a mere five bucks.

Here are the details:

• Start by signing up for a free membership at oreilly.com, which distributes Microsoft Press titles. After you create your oreilly.com account and sign in, you can see all of the options available to you (including the option to purchase updated editions for a 40-50% discount) at this page: Exclusive Membership Offers.
• Buy a print edition of the book from any source you like, online or at a brick-and-mortar store. If you already own the book, skip to the next step.
• Register your new book using its title or ISBN number. Sorry, English-language editions only. And no, they don’t care where you bought it.
• Click Your Products and then click the Print Books tab. Order the digital edition of the book you just registered and pay $4.99 for the full e-book package. Here’s what the transaction looks like:
  

That $4.99 upgrade applies to any Microsoft Press or O’Reilly title on your bookshelf, making it a great deal if you want a copy for your Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPhone, or Android device. After you complete the purchase, go to the Ebooks tab to see the download links. Here’s what it looks like for another of my titles:

The digital package you download from oreilly.com contains DRM-free copies in multiple formats. You can download any or all of them. For Android devices, choose ePub. For Kindles (including the Kindle Fire), choose Mobi. If you lost the disk and want a replacement for the PDF file, choose PDF.

If you’re confused by those acronyms, I’ve put together an explainer here: On digital book file formats.

Questions? Please ask away in the comments below.

Microsoft’s Tim O’Brien, General Manager of Developer & Platform Evangelism, confirms what most Microsoft-watchers already suspected:

[W]e have decided to merge MIX, our spring web conference for developers and designers, into our next major developer conference, which we will host sometime in the coming year. I know a number of folks were wondering about MIX, given the time of year, so we wanted to make sure there’s no ambiguity, and be very clear… there will be no MIX 2012.

O’Brien cites good reasons: developer confusion and "event fatigue" on the part of reporters, analysts, and tech bloggers. (Like me.)

"Sometime in the coming year" is a pretty broad timeframe. But there’s a big clue in the end of the post:

And something that was more behind the scenes but very relevant to the time management aspect relates to our engineering teams. If you’ve gone to a Microsoft developer event, you know that a non-trivial percentage of speakers and participants are from engineering. They take time out from shipping to prepare for and travel to these events and connect with developers, and their time is one of the most valuable resources we have in the company.

My takeaway from that is that the event—let’s call it BUILD 2012—will take place after Microsoft has released Windows 8 to manufacturing but before the product has gone on sale to the general public. If we assume release to manufacturing (RTM) in late summer (July/August) and general availability (GA) in late October, that puts this year’s developers conference on track to be exactly one year after last year’s event, in mid-September.

More details and speculation from my ZDNet colleague Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft to replace Mix with a new developer conference

I am greatly encouraged by the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in U.S. v. Jones (PDF). In particular, these remarks by Justice Sotomayor seem to recognize that technology changes the very definition of privacy:

[P]hysical intrusion is now unnecessary to many forms of surveillance. … With increasing regularity, the Government will be capable of duplicating the monitoring undertaken in this case by enlisting factory- or owner-installed vehicle tracking devices or GPS-enabled smartphones.

[…]

More fundamentally, it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties. … This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks. People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase to online retailers. Perhaps, as JUSTICE ALITO notes, some people may find the “tradeoff” of privacy for convenience “worthwhile,” or come to accept this “diminution of privacy” as “inevitable” … and perhaps not.

Here’s the part that really resonates with me:

I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the Government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year. But whatever the societal expectations, they can attain constitutionally protected status only if our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence ceases to treat secrecy as a prerequisite for privacy. I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection.

Meanwhile, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of Congresspersons and Senators who understand these issues with even a fraction of Justice Sotomayor’s depth.

(h/t Forbes)

Daniel Steinberg has been signing crummy contracts with traditional publishers for a long time, which apparently means he is no longer bothered by other crummy contracts he runs into:

I’ve been told by a publisher that they want a second edition of one of my books. Their conditions on me are that I drop this series of ebooks I’m working on because it might compete with the title. When I said no they responded that that’s ok they’ll just get someone else to revise my book.

My book.

It’s not really mine. Even though the copyright is in my name, that turns out not to mean very much.

So am I bothered by the iBooks Author EULA? No. But maybe that’s because I’ve been signing contracts with traditional publishers for so long.

Traditional publishers have standard contracts that are filled with all sorts of onerous clauses. One reason I have been represented by a tough-as-nails literary agent for 15+ years is so that crap like this doesn’t end up in contracts I sign.

That 15% commission seems like a lot until you run into situations like this, especially with a successful book.

Digital Book World:

NBC News is launching a book publishing arm to capitalize on growth in e-reader and tablet adoption, the decreasing cost of e-book production and a backlog of over one million hours of video content.

NBC Publishing, as the business unit will be called, will be part of NBC News, a division of media conglomerate NBCUniversal, and will be based in New York at NBC’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

“Over the last two years, we’ve been looking at the tablet market and e-reader market and watching it develop,” said Michael Fabiano, general manager of NBC Publishing. “Consumers are getting more comfortable downloading books with video. None of this is slowing down any time soon.”

The company will produce enhanced e-books using both archival and new NBC video footage as well as traditional, print-based e-books.

NBC is mum on details about formats and production partners.

I’m skeptical that they’ll really be able to create "new multimedia experiences." In some respects, this reminds me of the mania that ensued when publishers discovered interactive CD-ROMs back in the early 1990s. I might even have a rare collectors copy of PC Computing on CD-ROM buried in a box somewhere…

A well-written, well-researched New York Times article on why Apple and other high-tech manufacturers choose to build their products in China:

How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work

Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas, a small fraction of the over 400,000 American workers at General Motors in the 1950s, or the hundreds of thousands at General Electric in the 1980s. Many more people work for Apple’s contractors: an additional 700,000 people engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones and Apple’s other products. But almost none of them work in the United States.

This quote about Foxconn is especially chilling:

“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”

Once, high-tech products were not just designed in the U.S. but made here too. Those jobs are gone, and they’re not coming back:

“We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries,” a current Apple executive said. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”

John Gruber concludes, apparently without irony:

Chinese manufacturing isn’t merely cheaper, but also perhaps even more importantly, nimbler, more flexible, and faster.

I guess that’s one way to describe it. It sounds more like America’s company towns on a much grander scale.

And yes, it’s not just Apple. But as the largest manufacturing company in the world (at least as measured by market capitalization) and one of the most profitable, Apple gets the spotlight here.

Now that I’ve been on all three sides of the digital book business, as reader, author, and publisher, I realize how confusing some of the technology can be.

So here’s the first in a series of posts on digital publishing in general and in specific.

Today’s topic: file formats.

The acknowledged open standard for ebooks is EPUB, which superseded the Open eBook standard in September 2007. EPUB is developed and managed by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). That group has a membership of more than 300, including a who’s who of traditional publishing, open source advocates, publishing tool makers, font companies, and more. Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft are all members. Amazon is not.

Apple has used the EPUB format exclusively since its introduction of iBooks in April 2010. At the time, Apple called EPUB “the most popular open book format in the world,” and today it refers to EPUB as “the industry-leading … digital book file type.”

With the release of iBooks Author in January 2012, Apple has introduced a new, proprietary ebook format that is based on EPUB but is incompatible with software and hardware designed to use EPUB. The iBooks reader still supports DRM-free EPUB files, regardless of their source.

Every Android-based device I’ve seen supports EPUB directly, including the Barnes and Noble Nook Color and Nook Tablet.

Amazon’s popular Kindle devices do not support EPUB format directly. (This limitation applies to the Kindle Fire as well, despite the fact that its operating system is an Amazon-customized version of Android.) The default format on the Kindle is Amazon’s proprietary AZW. Kindles do, however, support the MOBI format (.mobi), which was originally developed by Mobipocket, which was purchased by Amazon in 2005.

Some e-book distributors (including Fair Trade DX and O’Reilly, where my books are sold) include MOBI files in their retail offerings. You can also use software to convert EPUB to MOBI format. I use and recommend the free, open source Calibre ebook management program for this and many other tasks.

The preceding formats are all designed for use with reflowable content, meaning that fonts and graphics shift to adapt to the display. So you can read the same ebook on a smartphone, a tablet, a dedicated reader, or a PC/Mac.

Reflowable content works great with fiction or books that include inline illustrations. It’s not so good for projects where the designer wants to control the precise arrangement of each page, including fonts. For that purpose, the best choice is still a PDF file.

There are many more digital book formats (see this Wikipedia article for an exhaustive list), but those are the ones that matter.

Digital rights management (DRM), aka copy protection, is an optional feature in the AZW and EPUB formats (and, presumably, in the new iBooks format). None of the digital editions of my books include DRM, but that’s a topic for another day.

Plug: My latest book, Windows 8 Head Start, is available in a downloadable package that includes three DRM-free digital formats for 30% off its $9.95 list price, with a free update to the next edition. Details are here.

Cross-posted to fairtradedx.com