Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- Happy Hour Discurso: noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter)
- Hilarious and Crazy Signage, Part 13 – Some are (I’m pretty sure) PhotoShopped, but there are a few chuckles here.
- Brooks is wrong on Beck—very wrong [White Coat Underground] – Very good summary, and the far right might best be known as the party of denial.
- General Who Set Up Gitmo Slams What It Became : Dispatches from the Culture Wars – Money graf: “‘If we treat them that way [as they might treat U.S. prisoners], then we become them.'”
- In Case You Forgot: IE6 Still Holds 25% of the Browser Market – Thank God it’s only that high. Yeesh.
- Press Release from Fred Karger: ‘Maine Marriage Campaign Probe Gets Ok’ – Some folks don’t have the courage of their convictions. Given that the death toll of gays-by-gay-bashers vs. gay-marriage-opponents-by-gays is wildly lopsided, I can only consider this moral cowardice.
- Apologies Are a Sign of Strength : Managing : Idea Hub :: American Express OPEN Forum
- Six health care lobbyists for every member of Congress: Chris in Paris
- New images of Mercury released today! [Starts With A Bang] – WOW! Pictures from freakin’ MERCURY!!!
- It must be hard to be an atheist in Alabama – If your morals cannot stand to be tempted by a simple statement, they aren’t very well grounded to begin with.
- Night Of The Loving Dead – Calling to mind Twain’s comment about the “lightning” and “lightning bug”.
- Amazon Clarifies When It Will Remove Kindle Books [Trust Amazon] – “So the real problem here, which this clarification doesn’t resolve, is that Amazon doesn’t sell ebooks on the Kindle store. It sells licenses to ebooks.”
- Excreted Tamiflu Found In Rivers; Flu-Resistant Superbirds Coming Soon [Drugs] – Kaiser and the CDE have been recommending against casual use of Tamiflu unless the recipient is in identifiable danger. But, of course, the same “I want it! I want it!” “Sure, you can have it” mentality that has led to prescription of antibiotics for viral infections is screwing things up with Tamiflu, too.
- Electric car batteries with 500-mile range on the way? – This could definitely be a game-changer. If they can do it.
- Amazon Settles Suit With Teen Over Disappeared Orwell Book for $150,000 – Huzzah! Trivial to Amazon’s bottom line, but an important principle.
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Bad decision by Amazon. The problem with IP is that because there is nothing physical, people assume there is no loss. What actually happens is the copyright holder loses a sale.
Amazon did not have the right to sell ‘1984’. It effectively was stolen property. Amazon made good their error, plus a goodwill gesture of $30.
Their removal of the book was not ‘Orwellian’. There are plenty of places the book can be bought legally. No one in the US or EU will attempt to stop you reading it.
It’s Orwellian to the extent that something that you feel you “own” can suddenly vanish, perfectly legally. Along with (at first, at least) any notes you had attached to it.
The other problem with eBooks in this case is not just that people under-estimate or disregard the actual IP behind those files, but that they continue to treat them as electronic analogs to “real” books, while in fact there’s a wide array of rights and privileges you have with an rBook that you do not have with that eBook you just “bought” (licensed). People will be unhappy about this until either the grok the difference, or the difference is removed by the vendors.