LWN: Comments on "Calibrating Calibre 1.0"

Calibrating Calibre 1.0

eternaleye — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 06:35:48 +0000

A device running Android (or Replicant) with FBReader would be a good bet. If you go with Replicant and FBReader, it's all FLOSS software, and FBReader can (AFAIU) pull from Calibre's OPDS server mode over the network.

Bam, a fully trustworthy e-reader device.

Calibrating Calibre 1.0

kmself — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 02:37:37 +0000

Thanks for the review, Jon. And in particular your comments on the update mechanism -- I'm seeing similar mechanisms increasingly, and they raise my hackles...

On a related note: does anyone know how to change the default PDF viewer Calibre uses? It's beyond useless, and I'd much prefer either xpdf or evince.

0.9.31+dfsg-1 under Debian.

DRM

dwmw2 — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 17:34:44 +0000

FWIW there are plugins for Calibre which let you easily import DRM-afflicted books, stripping the DRM from them automatically as you go.

I usually run Kindle4PC or Adobe Digital Editions under wine, and then import the download books into Calibre.

A Digital Editions purchase gives you a .acsm file which is essentially an XML blob describing the download. Would be really nice if someone reverse-engineered that and we had a tool which would do it all, rather than needing to run DE under wine and then de-DRM the resulting download. A few beers and a night with mitmproxy should do it.

Would be nice if we had a Kindle implementation which worked the same, of course, but that seems much less likely to happen (and to keep working if it did).

Troika

nix — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 09:44:53 +0000

Unfortunately not. These things were expensive chapbooks when they were printed -- now, years out of print, you're talking £70+. With a lot of +.

Google Play bug

raven667 — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 19:10:03 +0000

I have seen programs try to sync something with nothing and end up with nothing which is a frustrating bug

Google Play bug

njwhite — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 12:26:32 +0000

Still a pretty severe bug though, that I can't imagine happening with software which hadn't been written with DRM in mind. I've never seen a music playing program decide it would delete all of its music library after an update (though saying that, I suppose it wouldn't suprise me if I heard of something DRM loving like iTunes doing that).

Troika

klossner — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 23:21:36 +0000

I have observed successful purchases of geographically-restricted digital products from Amazon by routing the web traffic through a proxy in a non-restricted country. Evidently the customer's home address and credit card currency are not considered.

Troika

mathstuf — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 19:55:11 +0000

Surely you mean £10? I'd expect a lot more than a novella at £100…

Calibrating Calibre 1.0

nix — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 17:34:22 +0000

The setuid helper has not existed since Nov 5 2011. It's udisks all the way now (which is also pretty horrible software, IMNSHO).

Troika

nix — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 17:32:49 +0000

Jon lives in the US, while I live in the UK like Alastair so, it seems, am not allowed to read his stuff unless I want to spend on the order of £100 per novella. Wonderful. :/

Google Play bug

erwbgy — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 11:57:59 +0000

Apparently the Google Play issue was due to a bug - from Gizmodo:

Update: Google has reached out to use to explain that this is not normal or intended behavior for the Google Books app, but instead the result of a bug. Google Play stores will not allow additional purchases while in territories where they do not operate, but this active removal of content was apparently an isolated issue unrelated to normal Google Books DRM behavior.

Troika

dlang — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 13:24:40 +0000

The problem is that the Authors have historically sold publishers the rights to publish books only in specific parts of the world.

this makes sense when you are talking about printed books, where the publisher needs to have a distribution chain setup in that part of the world to be able to sell the books.

But unfortunately, the e-book version suffers from the same distribution limits, even when they don't really make sense.

Troika

ayeomans — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 06:30:18 +0000

From the UK, when I tried that link I get the message "Kindle titles are available for UK customers on Amazon.co.uk." (where the "Buy" button is normally), Only the hardback is (expensively) available.

Troika

hummassa — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 09:40:08 +0000

The link works from Brazil, too.

Calibrating Calibre 1.0

rsidd — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 09:02:54 +0000

Thanks for that.

Calibrating Calibre 1.0

TomH — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 08:34:41 +0000

Fedora also replaces it with a non-setuid dummy script: http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/calibre.git/tree/calib...

Calibrating Calibre 1.0

Trou.fr — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 08:20:44 +0000

Note that Debian replaces the setuid helper with a custom component relying on other (standard) suid programs : http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~calibre-packagers/calibre/de...

Calibrating Calibre 1.0

fb — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 08:02:54 +0000

Good thing about LWN is that I come here to read about Calibre, and learn not only of its history of security vulnerabilities but also of why I should not use Google Play.

The history with Google Play linked through "One should not have to worry about things like having one's books deleted as a consequence of crossing a national border." only makes me appreciate my Kindle even more.

The Kindle gets bashed (in some portions of the internet) because of Amazon's use of the kill switch on Orwell's 1984 some years ago, but honestly I find it the perfect /trustworthy/ reading device (ok, short of having a "Debian/Ubuntu for e-readers") as it can spend its entire life with the "Airplace Mode" ON with books being copied through USB.

Troika

johill — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 07:54:24 +0000

That's interesting, the link also says unavailable for me (from Germany) - do they do something with geoIP? That's odd though, I've bought many ebooks on amazon.com (and in fact my kindle is still registered in the US)

Calibrating Calibre 1.0

fb — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 07:47:57 +0000

Thanks for pointing this out. I mean it, truly appreciated.

I used Calibre for a while some years ago, and probably would install it again without much thought should I need to perform conversions between e-book formats.

Calibrating Calibre 1.0

drag — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 04:07:35 +0000

I haven't looked at Calibre in a couple years. It totally scared me away from it due to the author introducing trivial local root exploits into any Linux system that installed it.

http://lwn.net/Articles/465311/
http://1337day.com/exploit/16889

I am still too scared to install it, unfortunately. Which is a shame because it does actually tend to do a decent job at managing ebooks if I remembered correctly.

Troika

ghane — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 02:09:06 +0000

Maybe they ran out, and are running "cp" for more copies?

Oh wait, Amazon like Jon better than it likes you? :-)

Troika

happynut — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 02:08:46 +0000

Its available for kindle at amazon.com, but not at amazon.ca or amazon.co.uk. Follow Corbet's link; it worked for me. Since you said "a pound a page" I'm assuming you checked amazon.co.uk...

Troika

Cyberax — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 23:58:59 +0000

Amazon says it's 'unavailable for purchase' :(

Troika

corbet — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 23:02:18 +0000

Amazon has Kindle versions of Troika and a few of his other novellas.

Calibrating Calibre 1.0

nix — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 22:35:34 +0000

As an aside, calibre's internal mtp implementation is (a Python binding around) the existing libmtp project. Calibre is quite good about using existing libraries where possible. I just wish it had the same attitude to existing user interface elements, because its UI is quite thoroughly confounding, though thankfully one can just use its command line for conversion jobs.

(And where oh where did you find Alastair Reynolds's _Troika_ in ebook form? Nearly all his recent novellas are available only in murderously expensive hardcover form as far as I can see: yes, he's good, but not worth nearly a pound a page.)