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Breaking the law, breaking the law
I’ve been away for a few days, and in typical scatterbrained style forgot to set the video to record a programme I really, really wanted to see – so on my return I downloaded it from Bittorrent. That makes me a lawbreaker, but I’m not entirely sure why. Let me rephrase that. I do understand…
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To mod or not to mod
Computer games and the modding community go together like journalists and alcohol, so it’s rather alarming to see that a games firm is suing “hackers” who modified their legally purchased games. The Reg report notes: The lawsuit claims the ninjahacker.net users decompiled the code to several Tecmo titles, including Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive 3,…
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So you want to be a novelist?
Fancy becoming an author? Then don’t give up the day job. BoingBoing links to this survey of novelists’ advances, and it’s clear that writing books is hardly a licence to print money: The range was from $0-$40,000 for an advance on a first novel. The average was $6363. The median advance is $5000. The median…
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“Don’t rent your music… own it”
That’s the message from MP3Tunes, the latest wheeze from Michael Robertson (the man who founded MP3.com). From the blurb: MP3tunes differs from other online music services such as Apple’s iTunes and Microsoft’s MSN Music Store because it does not use digital restrictions management (DRM) technology, which restricts how a buyer can use the music. DRM…
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I have the internet in my pants
No, really. I do. And when I say “pants”, I don’t mean “pants” in an American “I know they’re trousers, but I’ll call them pants” way*. I mean pants, as in underpants. Although when I say “the internet”, I mean “a web address”. No, not a dodgy web address. The manufacturer’s web site. I have…
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Fun with spam
As ever, the denizens of MetaFilter continue to find some strange and wonderful things on the web. Today’s pick is Spamusement, which offers “Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines”.
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Spam: you ain’t heard nothing yet
Things we know are true: * Spam now accounts for between 60% and 90% of all email. * Spamming is popular because it’s easy and very, very cheap. * In the near future, more and more of us will use Voice over IP (ie, internet telephony) for our phone calls. * Spamming people’s VoIP systems…
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One hand on the guitar
If you’ve ever been sitting in front of your computer and only half-listening to a phone call or family member, this excellent post should give you pause for thought.
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is Gmail coming out of beta?
It certainly looks like it:
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My wife is weeping with delight over my hardness and enlargement
This is just bizarre (warning, language may be unsafe for work): a Japanese adult English textbook titled “Porno smallbook speaking, let’s go!” “Reverse masher… masheress?” “Masher! Help!” “What do you think you’re doing?” Well, exactly. [Via MetaFilter]