Harry Potter ebooks! Really!

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

I had really hoped that these wouldn't have any geo-restrictions on them. Anyone in the US figured out a way to buy the UK versions?

Not yet but I'll probably look into VPN or proxies when I get home. Also need to figure out how to handle payment (assuming they see a UK IP address, do they also need a UK billing address?).

Nvm. Saw a post with instructions a little ways down.

[spindlegirl]

Originally Posted by Wasgo

Tuques, or as I more commonly see it up here, Toques, are a term for knitted wool (or now synthetic) hats. It's a very large category and refers to almost everything you would see on a mountain while skiing or snowboarding, other than a helmet.

Born/raised Canadian, I grew up with the spelling being toque, with the pronunciation rhyming with "fluke". Most classic toques are knit either plain stockinette in the round or ribbed stitch (knit 2 purl 2), and some have a pompom on.

I've also knit now for nearly 40 years. I still knit toques of real wool, but do acrylic from time to time when giving as gifts. I have friends who prefer the real warm insulation of wool and if they are sensitive they wear it as a top layer (2 toques) in days where its -20 windchill.

[Wasgo]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

I fail to see why any one would pirate the just released versions. The pirated versions that already exist are excellent. Why risk it?

There's no risk if anyone wanted to. Take two copies of the newly released version, do a byte by byte comparison. Where differences exist, omit as possible watermarking.

Pirates are really good at this stuff, and don't do it out of pragmatism, they do it out of an unfortunate sense of pride.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by Wasgo

Pirates are really good at this stuff, and don't do it out of pragmatism, they do it out of an unfortunate sense of pride.

Case in point

Further convincing Iwinski of the futility of DRM is the fact that pirates ignored the GOG version of The Witcher 2, which was DRM-free at launch, and went after the SecuROM-protected retail release instead

[ProfCrash]

WOW so it is all an ego trip.

I guess that should not surprise me but for some reason, it does.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Are you British, Joe? I'm astounded that you've never heard of bobble hats if you are.

Isn't a bobble hat what the bobble heads wear?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

This is a beanie

Now that you remind me. I have to say that the Pope is JEWISH. He does wear a yamaka which is a Jewish item of clothing.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Could be...

Not could be... IS!

[Wasgo]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

WOW so it is all an ego trip.

I guess that should not surprise me but for some reason, it does.

It's been an ego trip issue since piracy began. Back in the early 90s, some groups would even replace company logos with the logo of the piracy group in actual game releases.

Others would include launchers that display their own 'credit's prior to the game starting. They'd even write their own graphic routines and music for the 'credits'.

[HarryT]

I'm curious as to when you think piracy began. The use of the term "piracy" to describe the unauthorised copying of books, dates back over 400 years. See, for example, the complaints about piracy in the introduction to Thomas Dekker's book "The Wonderfull Yeare", published in 1603. His pirates appear to have been motivated solely by greed.

[KevinH]

Hi,

In general I agree, but ..

That assumes any and all differences between the two files are related to watermarking. It would be easy to change enough different things to make simply dropping all differences not doable. Repackage text from the end of one file to the beginning of the next, constantly changing the characters used to generate whitespace (and in unicode there are a large number of different whitespace characters) change used and unused glyphs in fonts, make every image unique, etc. Effectively you are hiding the real watermark changes in a forest of other small meaningless changes. If you dropped everything that was different based on a byte for byte comparison you would be left with a mess that is effectively unreadable without hand work to clean it up. Whitespace in text cleanup might be automated but which version of which image or font are you going to use or do you want to try and edit all of those as well.

So all they need do is make enough changes to render it more bother than it is worth.

Originally Posted by Wasgo

There's no risk if anyone wanted to. Take two copies of the newly released version, do a byte by byte comparison. Where differences exist, omit as possible watermarking.

Pirates are really good at this stuff, and don't do it out of pragmatism, they do it out of an unfortunate sense of pride.

Reposting my question which seems to have gotten lost a few pages back: How are the special fonts handled in the American versions of these ebook files? (I'm thinking mainly of the Marauders' handwriting in book 3.) Are these just embedded images, or truly embedded fonts?

I'm thinking about buying the series as gift for a family member with bad eyesight, so if I can't resize the text, it sounds like we may be better off going with the UK version with no fancy fonts or illustrations.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by december

Reposting my question which seems to have gotten lost a few pages back: How are the special fonts handled in the American versions of these ebook files? (I'm thinking mainly of the Marauders' handwriting in book 3.) Are these just embedded images, or truly embedded fonts?

I'm thinking about buying the series as gift for a family member with bad eyesight, so if I can't resize the text, it sounds like we may be better off going with the UK version with no fancy fonts or illustrations.

There are no special fonts (or any font for that matter) embedded into the epubs. They're just displayed as normal text (although somewhat stylized).

[Wasgo]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm curious as to when you think piracy began. The use of the term "piracy" to describe the unauthorised copying of books, dates back over 400 years. See, for example, the complaints about piracy in the introduction to Thomas Dekker's book "The Wonderfull Yeare", published in 1603. His pirates appear to have been motivated solely by greed.

Sorry I didn't include the necessary context for my comment. In this case I'm only referring to electronic piracy. The difference being that electronic piracy has protection mechanisms that people take pleasure in circumventing.

[catsknit]

Originally Posted by Nahgem

ProfCrash is right. The UK versions never had the illustrations or varied fonts in the print editions either. I'd just pull the illustrations and fonts and add 'em in if you want the best of both worlds. I'm mildly considering doing that myself, actually.

I have the fonts - can you direct me to directions on how to easily do this? I have Calibre but have not done more than simple conversions and organization with it. I'd prefer the UK books but would like the nice fonts in them. thanks