Copyright issues irk me. So do Patent issues. Only a few other issues get my blood boling hotter. It is stupid that internet radio has to play royalties when normal radio does not. None of those royalties will ever make it to the original performers, so why in the world should those taxes-to-a-corporate-not-government-entitiy be mandated anyway.
If the US Congress wants to do something good for the people, they’ll rewrite the patent and copyright laws. Let us share to our hearts content and let the business world work out how it is going to make money. They’re good at it, so don’t worry about them. Bands will be fine, they can do concerts and actually work for a living. The music itself shouldn’t be a product, but an experience to be shared.
From digg:
National Public Radio has filed a motion for rehearing over the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to drastically increase royalty rates paid out by nonprofit and Internet radio stations. NPR’s not happy, and the organization is kicking butts and taking names.
read more | digg story
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Another great installment of the Ender’s Shadow series. Still focused on Bean. I’d prefer a little more about Peter. I always imagined his story as being more interesting. Perhaps the next books will give us a little more.
Ender wrote Civilization altering books together called, “The Hive Queen and the Hegemon” which I thought these new novels would shed light on. So far I haven’t read anything that would have made these books so impressive. At least from the Hegemon side of things.
I’ll just have to wait and see how the world turns out under Peter’s eventual rule. I hope card, in the end, makes a connection between this series and the original Ender series in some for or fashion. I miss Jane.
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William Thomas Kisner
Originally uploaded by FlipSide3.
My old roommate Tom and his wife Marie just had themselves a kid! William Thomas Kisner was born on 3/5/2007 at 9:45 a.m. 5 pounds 13oz, 18 1/2 inches.
Now Katie has a friend to play with… and torment!
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gw350
Originally uploaded by FlipSide3.
It was a few weeks back, before I actually beat factions, but Cantha celebrated its new year. I actually ended up spending the final day event with some of my Guild/Alliance members. Here’s a group photo after we got our fancy new Lion Masks.
We also got mini-piggie pets. It is the Year of the Pig after all!
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Once upon a time during my high school days (and a little beyond) I read Christopher Pike books. I read a lot of them. I started with one called Chain Letter.
These first books could all be categorized as teen whodunit murder mystery novels. Conflict and relationships were all hormone filled teenage fair. At that point I wasn’t much of a reader, so at the very least I was reading.
Thing is the subject matter of the books changed. I attribute it to the popularity of R. L. Stine’s monster books. All of Pike’s books began to take on supernatural bents. He even wrote a sequel to Chain Letter, turning a normal mystery into a twisted zombie romp. I’m a big fan of sci-fi fantasy, but honestly my favorites of his were the straight up mystery books. No monsters or magic please.
My bestest friend Becky was an avid reader at the time and still is. Her taste in books was a little more evolved than mine. I lent her one of Pike’s books, involving a ghost solving her one murder or something. I think she read the whole thing, but even if she didn’t it was fairly evident that she thought it was laughable.
I now know what she was thinking. The TACHYON WEB is Pike’s foray into science fiction, but is really the same old teenage fair. No murder mystery, more mis-adventure. The plot was predictable in every possible way. Plot holes abound, and far too many things worked out a tad too perfectly.
I actually skimmed most of the book, and missed out on nothing. I enjoyed reading Pike again if only for nostalgia, but without the murder mystery the story seemed pointless. I can’t recommend this book to anyone, but I did enjoy it for my own reasons.
Time to move on to something else.
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