Allez Allez - Valley Of The Kings 12''
43 minutes ago
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
Not the smartest move
Former US "Big Brother" winner Adam Jasinski was charged with attempting to sell thousands of oxycodone pills to a government witness in Massachusetts. The ninth-season winner confessed to buying the drugs with his $500,000 in prize money. He faces 20 years behind bars and a $1-million fine for attempting to distribute.@'LA Times'
Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow kicks off a unique publishing experiment
Back in 2003, I was the first writer to use a Creative Commons license in connection with a commercially published novel—my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Tor) was released as a freely shareable e-book the same day it came out in stores. It's now gone through several printings, has made me a fair bit of money, been widely translated—commercially and noncommercially—and it's been followed by three more novels, including the New York Times bestseller Little Brother (Tor Teens, 2008), all of which are also available as free, remixable downloads. Two more novels are on their way on the same terms.I've also published two collections of short fiction reprinted from magazines, A Place So Foreign and Eight More (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2004) and Overclocked (Thunder's Mouth, 2007), both critically well received, award winning and excellent sellers. Finally, I've also done a collection of essays, Content (Tachyon, 2008), and IDW published a graphic novel collecting six of my stories adapted for comics, Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now (2008), under these very same terms.
Free e-books work for me. I've been a full-time writer since I quit my day job as European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a charity that works for online civil liberties) in January 2006. Since then, I've made my living through a combination of royalties and licenses (foreign translations, film options, etc.); earnings from Boing Boing, the popular blog I co-edit and co-own; speaking fees; column writing; and the occasional grant, teaching gig or residency. Mine is the semirandom hodgepodge of income sources that characterizes most of the freelancers I know, as skills, circumstances and capacity dictates.
Still, this business of my giving away e-books is a controversial subject. I encounter plenty of healthy skepticism in my travels, and not a little bile. There's a lot of people who say I'm pulling a fast one, that I'd be making more money if I didn't do this crazy liberal copyright stuff, or that I'm the only one it'll ever work for, or that I secretly make all my money from doing stuff that isn't writing, or that it only works because I'm so successful. Of course, when I started, they said it only worked because I was so unknown.
People want proof that this works—that I'm not deluded or a con artist. But it's hard to prove. I don't have a time machine I can use to republish all my books without the free downloads and compare royalty statements. And the skeptics aren't the only people who claim I've got it wrong. There are also the True Believers. The True Believers are the people who say that I'm a fool to give 90% of the cover price of my books to the publisher and bookseller. After all, I have three or four million people a day who read my blog. I could just self-publish all my material and get it directly into the hands of my readers, and pocket the lion's share of the income.
I'm a contrarian on both of these propositions: that I'm losing money by giving away e-books, and that I'm losing money by using a publisher. I have a nice little Goldilocks gig going—not too hot, not too cold, just the right amount of DIY, independent publishing and just the right amount of professional support and administration from my publisher to sell. But I'm as curious about both propositions as anyone. While it's fun to argue about whose intuition is more correct, I think facts on the ground beat a priori assumptions every time. So I've come up with an idea to get some facts in evidence, while making some money and raising a little hell.
The Way Out Is The Way In
‘The Way Out Is The Way In’selected prints from Jeb Loy Nichols' ‘Jazz Portraits 2009’ exhibition
at The Vortex, London
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
The good news followed by the...
The good news is that following neck surgery Phil Collins can no longer play drums (unless drumsticks "were glued" to his hands! Please someone do that for me.)The other news is that he plans a new CD that will feature covers of 30 songs from the Motown label in 2010 and "wants the songs to sound exactly like the originals"!
Firstly WHY?
Secondly it won't sound like the originals as you ain't no Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder...I could go on (and on).
I am however prepared to say that you might be a Lionel Ritchie (but not with The Commodores!)
@'HuffPo'
The Taliban's Heroin Ploy
Forty years ago, the Vietnam War was partly undermined by heroin addiction among U.S. troops. Surely mindful of that, the Taliban and al Qaeda are now using Afghanistan’s bountiful heroin supplies as a tactical weapon. An internal U.S. intelligence report has concluded that the two groups are targeting American troops in an effort to undermine their effectiveness, while raising cash to pay for new recruits and weaponry, a U.S. intelligence official tells The Daily Beast.
It’s a logical tactic. The drug is plentiful, cheap—less than $1 for a day’s supply—and potent. And while Army officials publicly dismiss talk of any surging drug problem, some privately express concern about the possibility of increased drug use among bored and susceptible young soldiers.
"...Opium poppies have always been grown on both sides of Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, but the region did not become the world's main exporter of heroin until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 brought near-anarchy. Production and refining exploded as the Afghan mujahedin, with the connivance of Western intelligence agencies, traded in drugs to finance their war against the Russians, with results that can be seen in the streets of Western cities as well as Peshawar."
(The Independent 2 October 2001)
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