Original article from Engadget
Know Your Rights is Engadget’s technology law series, written by our own totally punk ex-copyright attorney Nilay Patel. In it we’ll try to answer some fundamental tech-law questions to help you stay out of trouble in this brave new world. Disclaimer: this isn’t legal advice, but it is best read aloud by a text to speech app.

Yeah, that’s totally ridiculous! Wait, what?

Well, think about it this way — once you get it on the Kindle 2, an ebook can serve as both a regular book (that you read) and a recording (that you listen to). What the Authors Guild seems to be saying — in a totally backwards and potentially inaccurate way — is that while Amazon has the rights to sell you the book, it doesn’t have the rights to sell you the recording.

Are you seriously saying that I don’t have the right to read a book out loud? Girl, you crazy.

No, you absolutely have the right to read a book out loud — but you’re not allowed to make recordings of yourself and sell them. That’s something only authors are allowed to do, and it’s hard to have a problem with that. You’d be pretty miffed if someone started selling recorded versions of your blog without compensating you, wouldn’t you?

But the Kindle isn’t playing back recordings — it’s synthesizing sounds based on the words in the book! Isn’t that just a private reading?

Sure, and a MIDI piano isn’t playing back song recordings, it’s just playing notes from a file that sound exactly like the sound recording, right?

This is actually pretty tough stuff — as far as edge cases go, this one pushes right up against the boundaries of the current law. On one hand, you definitely have the right to read books that you own out loud using whatever tools you want, and on the other, authors definitely have the right to prevent others from selling audio versions of their works. The Kindle’s text-to-speech feature blurs the lines between books and recordings, and that means those two rights are in conflict with each other.

Come on, text-to-speech has been around forever! What’s next, suing Apple for MacInTalk?

It’s always gotta be Apple, doesn’t it?

Answer the question, smartass.

Well, sure, you can buy ebooks and play them back using OS X’s text-to-speech voices. But here’s the thing — no one really does that, so no one cares. The Kindle is the first major text-to-speech device that could impact audiobook sales, so it’s not surprising it’s the first to garner this kind of scrutiny. Remember: just because someone can file a lawsuit doesn’t mean they have to.

Okay, but who’s honestly going to choose the Kindle’s computer voice over a real person reading an audiobook?

You’re right, nothing’s ever going to compare to a real live person reading to you, but it’s not like technology ever stops progressing — while the Kindle 2′s voice isn’t the best, we’d bet almost anything that the Kindle 5 or the Kindle 10 will be more than adequate for a lot of people. Remember, people happily listen to 128kbps MP3s through crappy iPod headphones all day long — eventually the quality tipping point will come, and the Authors Guild is just trying to protect its own before they get totally bowled over.

So basically Amazon just has to pay up?

Well, maybe — it’s not exactly terrific public policy to say that text should be considered a recording as well, especially given the prevalence and intrinsic value of computerized text-to-speech. We’d say that means Amazon should fight this one out, honestly, but that doesn’t mean Jeff Bezos won’t just cut a check and make this all go away for now. You can do that when you’re Amazon.

Look, just make this easy for me: who should I flame in comments? That’s all I really need to know.

Doesn’t matter — we read everything back in the OS X “Princess” voice anyway, tough guy.

Thanks again to Matt Gavronski of Michael Best & Friedrich for his assistance!

Original Article Engadget…

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If that is true, then is this a sign that the once mighty relational database finally has a chink in its armor? Is this a sign that relational databases have had their day and will decline over time? In this post, we’ll look at the current trend of moving away from relational databases in certain situations and what this means for the future of the relational database.

Relational databases have been around for over 30 years. During this time, several so-called revolutions flared up briefly, all of which were supposed to spell the end of the relational database. All of those revolutions fizzled out, of course, and none even made a dent in the dominance of relational databases.

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It appears the Dalai Lama is following in the footsteps of Pope Benedict XVIand moving into the world of social networking. Today he joined microblogging service Twitter.

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OHHDL is responsible for all media pertaining to the Dalai Lama and will administer the Twitter account. In just over 9 hours, the OHHDL has managed to attract in excess of 2000 followers and is following most of them back

Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer’s notebook … look closely

As of this week, Gmail has reached perfection: You no longer have to be online to read or write messages. Desktop programs like Microsoft Outlook have always been able to access your old mail. There is a certain bliss to this; if you’ve got a pile of letters that demand well-composed, delicate responses (say you’re explaining to your boss why you ordered that $85,000 rug), unplugging the Internet can be the fastest way to get things done. That’s why offline access is a killer feature—it destroys your last remaining reason for suffering through a desktop e-mail program.

Google’s not alone in providing this option. Microsoft’s Windows Live Mail, Yahoo’s Zimbra, and the mail app made by the Web startup Zoho, among other services, also provide some measure of untethered e-mail access. For now, Google calls this addition “experimental”—you’ve got to turn it on explicitly, and the company is asking users to report any bugs—but I found it easy to set up and a delight to use.
To get offline access, you first need to download and install a small program called Google Gears (except if you’re using Google’s Chrome browser, which comes with Gears built in). Then, after you enable Gmail’s offline capability, the system will download two months of your most recent messages, which should take 30 minutes to an hour. Now you’re good to go: When you’re offline, type www.gmail.com into your browser, log in—yes, Gears enables you to log in even when you don’t have a Web connection—and there’s your e-mail. Though I work from home and rarely find myself away from a hot Wi-Fi connection, I shut off my router and parked myself on my couch for about an hour yesterday. I loaded up Gmail on my laptop, and it responded seamlessly—I could read, search through, and respond to any message I’d received during the last two months, all through the familiar Web interface. Eureka! I’ll never again be mailless on a plane, a subway, or anyplace else where you don’t have the Web but do have a lot of time to kill. Find out more…

Crackulous, the one-click cracking application for software purchased from Apple’s AppStore, was previously only available to a select few. Now anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch can start cracking software purchased from Apple so that they can share them with their friends, since Crackulous has just gone public.

Recently we have reported on what can happen when iPhone software from the Apple store is cracked and made available to the public. In our articles we briefly touched on how these applications were cracked, via a piece of code known as Crackulous. This software removes the protection from iPhone and iPod Touch games and applications, to enable people to share them with their friends. Find out more…