Christopher Cashell

I'm considering signing up for O'Reilly's Safari online book subscription service.

You pay a monthly subscription fee, and you gain access to a number of "points". These points are good for checking out books. Most books are 1 point, with a few being 1/2 (mostly older editions of books) and some being 2 or even 3 (mostly expensive or a few brand new books). You can choose a new book for any points you have at any time, and unsubscribe from books once every 30 days (since your last unsubscription). Since I currently have half a dozen books on my bookshelf that have newer editions available, I wonder if I might be better off simply using something like Safari.

Has anyone tried it? Have any opinions on it?

I'm considering signing up for O'Reilly's Safari online book subscription service.

You pay a monthly subscription fee, and you gain access to a number of "points". These points are good for checking out books. Most books are 1 point, with a few being 1/2 (mostly older editions of books) and some being 2 or even 3 (mostly expensive or a few brand new books). You can choose a new book for any points you have at any time, and unsubscribe from books once every 30 days (since your last unsubscription). Since I currently have half a dozen books on my bookshelf that have newer editions available, I wonder if I might be better off simply using something like Safari.

Has anyone tried it? Have any opinions on it?

Well, they've finally done it.

The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft institute and Thomson Multimedia have finally decided to charge royalties not only on mp3 encoders, as they have in the past, but also on mp3 decoders.

What does this mean?

It means that anyone who creates or sells an mp3 decoder (mp3 player) will now be forced to pay Fraunhofer/Thomson in order to do so.

Now seems to be a really good time to dump mp3 and start using Ogg Vorbis and specifically, the Ogg Vorbis Codec for real.