Apple’s iTunes in iCloud ‘won’t launch in the UK this year’ – Telegraph I am spittingly furious about this. Fucking PRS shitehawks, screwing the consumer once again. I have bought and paid for my music. There is absolutely no reasonable argument that says I should not have access to it wherever I damn well please, because shockingly, it is *mine*. I have already paid their members what they are entitled to when I bought the fucking stuff, and I find it infuriating that they somehow believe that they have the right to get in the way of my use of their product past that. (Why yes, I do really, really want iCloud.) It's not as if it's remotely meaningful – I *can* (and do) already do everything iCloud will let me do, just less conveniently. Yet PRS want someone else to give them money in exchange for making my life more convenient a third party making my life. They very embodiment of the standard music industry practise of getting between artist and consumer and making things worse for both while skimming the money off the top. How is that related to what their artists do? PRS are playing territory marking office-politics type games on matters that are unrelated to the actual rights in the music, and everything to do with ownership of products. What's next, are they going to GPS tag all my CDs, to make sure I don't carry them outside my house?
Amazon.com now selling more ebooks than print books In the UK, they're only selling more ebooks than hardbacks, but in the US, it's only taken 4 years for ebooks to pass print, so I imagine it'll be even quicker here. Still: if your business depends on dead trees, it's time to start thinking about switching. And when I say "time to start thinking about", I mean "if you don't have a plan in place already, you're probably fucked".
On TermKit | Steven Wittens – Acko.net This looks interesting. He's right – while I need the power of Terminal a lot of the time, there is absolutely no reason why it has to look and behave like it did 20 years and more ago.
WARNING: This is Horrifying. « Kelly Sue DeConnick Go here, read what Kelly Sue has to say (and she's right it is horrifying), and then I defy you not to put your hand in your pocket and sponsor a good cause.
Why I have left Twitpic, and why you should too. If you are a photographer who likes to maintain any kind of control over the licensing of their images, or even if you just don't like corporations whose default assumption is that they should have all the rights to do as they please forever and ever, including profiting off their users creativity without sharing that profit with their users, you should probably stop using Twitpic.
Anonymiss Communications "Anonymiss is an Anonymous operations group. It’s focused on women’s issues in the emerging economies, amongst other things. Anonymiss is partnering with regional NGOs, bloggers, and human rights organizations to leverage resources and get results. Grab a stick, get in the game. Fellas welcome." Interesting business.
Above 49: Those Other Indie Games Have heard brilliant things about Fiasco, and most of the others here sound like top rate stuff as well. Must give them a look.
Even Robots Can Be Heroes – ScienceNOW Robots running an evolving algorithm have been shown to spontaneously develop altruism as a beneficial strategy. One in the eye for objectivists or selfish bastards – it turns out thta evolution can, in fact, produce altruism, and that it works better than selfishness.