Last month I was bamboozled asked nicely by my colleagues at Macmillan, Ryan Chapman and Ami Greko, to participate in a group talk at BEA (Book Expo America). The participants, Debbie Stier (Harper Studio), Jeff Yamaguchi (Knopf Doubleday and 52 Projects), Matt Supko (ABA/Indiebound and creator of the Indiebound iPhone app), Chris Jackson (Spiegel and Grau), Richard Nash (formerly of Soft Skull [...]
They blow. FTA:
“You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post [...]
Yeah, those stinkin’ pirates are really hurting the entertainment industry. Killing profit margins, destroying lives—oh, wait: the movie industry raked in a record-setting $9.78 billion in 2008? The best-selling album mp3 album on Amazon this year was composed of music that could also be had for free, legally, under a Creative Commons license? Madness! Madness, [...]
Recently a Texas teacher confiscated Linux OS discs that a kid was passing out in class. She then sent a nasty email to the nonprofit that built and donated the Linux-loaded computer…
“No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful,” Karen wrote in the email that HeliOS, which builds and donates computers for poor [...]
Jo Walton has a fantastic breakdown of possible solutions for life on other planets, based on different takes on the Fermi Paradox by various SF luminaries over on Tor.com. This reminded me of this post which I’d begun to write a little while ago, but languished in the obscurity of my ‘pending drafts’ queue for [...]
Zak Snyder has announced a contest for people to submit fake ads and other, Veidt Enterprises-related promotional material, here. The winning entries will be used as in-story content in the upcoming Watchmen movie. I’m split three ways about this:
The fanboy in me is incredibly excited to see this film. Snyder outdid himself on 300. Watchmen, from what [...]
Typophile has a short rant about Apple’s claims that designers can now use any font when creating websites, using CSS3 specs, and that Safari will correctly render the typefaces:
Apple says: “With CSS3 web fonts in Safari 3.1, web designers can go beyond web-safe fonts and use any font they want to create stunning new websites using standards-based [...]
This morning on DailyKos, I ran across this short article about a woman whose $100 campaign contribution was returned by the Obama campaign because she’s a registered lobbyist. Here’s a snippet, typoes and all:
It’s not often you get told that you are persona non grata and end up praising the person who exiled you. But that [...]