a-cubed.info

In this article, which misses one major economic element of the current decline (that the previous high was partly based on the 15-20 years it took music lovers to be able to afford to replace all their vinyl on CD) the following comment comes near the end:

“By mid-2007, when the majors realised that digital downloads were not growing as quickly as they had hoped, they landed on a more adventurous digital strategy. They now want to move beyond Apple’s iTunes and its paid-for downloads. The direction of most of their recent digital deals, such as with Imeem, a social network that offers advertising-supported streamed music, is to offer music free at the point of delivery to consumers.”

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A colleague sent a link to a Japan Today article, which seemed of interest, so I followed it up. The article was indeed interesting, but one of the side-bar adverts was amusingly bizarre. It’s an “Ad by Google” and looks something like this (best I can do in WordPress to duplicate the formatting).

Hot Japan Girl
Thinking of buying?
Compare 100s
of retailers’ prices at
Shopping.com
uk.shopping.com

Back in the summer I suggested to my editor that it would be really nice to be able to have James Burke write a foreword for Pandora’s Box. Having provided suitable words for an approach I left it with the editors to contact his agent and see if he was willing to do so. I received my author copies of the book today and was really pleased to find that James Burke had written the foreword, and there is a quote from him on the back cover:

I.T. has triggered complex social, political, economic and ethical issues that need urgent action if we are to survive the coming decades of unprecedented technological change. This book is a must-read for all those who want to understand the issues or, more important, want to help in their resolution.

In the foreword he calls the book “lucid and comprehensive”.
James Burke’s socio-technical TV programmes and books (particularly Connections and The Day the Universe Changed) were a major influence on my interest in this area, so it’s particularly gratifying to me to have his imprimature on our book.

A relatively standard psychomteric test, so far as I can tell.

My Personality

I got an email from my editor at Wiley on Thursday 13th December to confirm that Pandora’s Box is actually available from Friday 14th December. She’ll be shipping our author copies to us tomorrow and the book is now available for ordering. Amazon, unfortunately, are showing it as “out of stock” but 697,474 in their Sales Rank (hey, it’s a start and must mean they’ve got some pre-orders for it). I don’t think I’ll actually believe it’s real until I’ve got my copies in my sweaty paws next week, but it looks like it’s finally made it!

Yes, Minister has always been tragically true to the reality of UK government. Yet another example of how close to the reality was mentioned today on BBC News 24. In a discussion about the impact of the comprehensive spending review on DEFRA, it was mentioned that “all departments are having to find a 5% administrative saving”. There was an episode of Yes, Minister in which that was the exact source (even the same number) of a battle between the Minister and Humphrey.

A colleague asked me a question about licensing. In this case of learning objects, but linking in to software and other works. In writing my specific answer to his query I found I needed to explain some of my pragmatic views on licensing, and realised that this part of my response was worth preserving and making available to others as well.

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I’ve always liked supernatural thrillers, although they were few and far between until recently. Starting with Laurell K. Hamilton (there were others writing such stuff before her but she seems to have been the first really high profile success – and yes, I’m ignoring Anne Rice here) and her Anita Blake series, there has been a growing sub-genre of urban gothic. It usually posits a re-emergence of some or all of the traditional ghosts and ghoulies into society, either completely openly or partly hidden.

However, being a fan of the supernatural thriller elements in this fiction, I’ve ended up reading a bunch of stuff which has a 180 page supernatural thriller buried inside a 500 page book filled out with kinky sex. I don’t mind the odd sex scene in my fiction. Sex is part of life and including it in fiction can round out the emotional content. However, I find that many of these books are descending into what I’ve decided to dub “Thrills and Moon”, where the sex becomes the principle story and the thriller element becomes a sideline. Here is a list of some of the books in the supernatural thriller category I’ve read, with an indication of how much Thrills and Moon element they contain (all in my opinion of course).

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The UK government has commissioned a review of children’s access to online material. Are we about to see an attempt by the UK government to introduce CDA, COPA or ChIPA-style laws over here, and without the protections of a constitutional guarantee to freedom of speech that led to those acts being substantially struck down by the US Supreme Court?

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