While Eric's still in the South Pacific, we'll point out that his latest column in the just-relased first issue of Jim Baen's Universe second year is about the relationship between drm-free ebooks and the opacity of the book market.
It starts:
In my last essay, I approached the question of so-called online piracy from what I called a "negative" standpoint—by which I meant that I was content with knocking down the arguments advanced in favor of DRM. In this essay, I want to turn the problem around and approach it from a positive standpoint, by examining the many ways in which a non-DRM approach to electronic publishing can help the situation of authors and publishers."
Read the rest of it (and the new issue of Universe) here. http://baens-universe.com/articles/salvos7
(The article is free, the rest of the magazine requires subscription to read more than the first half. You know the principle, "Hey Kid! Come'ere! Try this! The first-half's free!)
–Loyal Minions
1634: THE BAVARIAN CRISIS – snippet 19:
Grantville
There wasn’t any more chaos or racket than was customary in a grade school, but it was seven o’clock in the evening rather than the middle of the day. Keith Pilcher paused in the corridor. There were tutoring sessions in the library; after-care in the gym, and some group was holding a meeting in the cafeteria. There were third-quarter parent-teacher conferences going on in some of the classrooms; in the art room, there were high school girls conducting craft projects for the children whose parents had to bring them along to the conferences because they couldn’t find, or couldn’t afford, sitters. There were no pipe cleaners; no one was manufacturing crayons yet; but the paper mill in Badenburg now collected the water with which the Stones’ dye works cleaned out its pots. Colored construction paper had made a comeback and there was plenty of glue.
(more…)
PYRAMID POWER – snippet 29:
“Then we’d all better get out of here,” said another voice, nearly startling Liz out of ten years growth.
“Uncle Fox!” said Thrúd incredulously.
A flame flared in the darkness. Liz found herself looking at an impish grin that dominated an otherwise handsome but scarred face. “Liz, I presume?” he said coolly. “And my little Thrúd.” There was considerably more warmth in that.
(more…)
THE MIRROR OF WORLDS – snippet 4:
The Corl champion raised his mace and screamed. He started toward Garric with a springy step, which for a Corl showed unusual caution. Normally a catman would charge headlong, even though in this case it meant he'd be rushing into ten thousand human soldiers.
"I do not fear your weapons, beast!" Klagan shouted; which meant he did. He had reason to.
(more…)
1634: THE BAVARIAN CRISIS – snippet 18:
Magdeburg
“We will open the normal school next fall.” Mary Simpson, sitting in the conference room of the Magdeburg offices of the Leek family’s new down-time IBM corporation (manual typewriters and mechanical adding machines), put only the slightest emphasis on the word “will.” “Teacher training is a project that we just have to get started.”
(more…)
PYRAMID POWER – snippet 28:
Jerry slipped on the horrendous mixture of grease and mead, lost his grip on the two-by-two, and fell onto plaited walrus moustache’s head. The heavy oak table went over.
Liz rolled across the floor, seeing Jerry wrestle with walrus-moustache, who must have been three times his size. And then Heimdall sat up.
(more…)
THE MIRROR OF WORLDS – snippet 3:
Garric, once ruler of the Isles, faced the largest city of the Coerli. The catmen called it simply the Place, because its ten thousand residents made it unique among a race which generally grouped itself into hunting bands of a dozen or two. When the Change merged eras, it'd wrenched the Place to within twenty miles of Valles, the capital of the Isles.
"Coerli, send out your champion!" Garric shouted. He was the only human who was fluent in the catmen's language, though he'd set scores of clerks and army officers to learning the patterns of clicks and hisses. "Send him to fight me, or send your Council of Elders to surrender!"
(more…)
1634: THE BAVARIAN CRISIS – snippet 17:
“There is no reason why I should not go now. There are many reasons that I should go now.” Veronica Dreeson looked at her husband. Not mulishly. She did not want to look stubborn. She wished to look calmly determined. She wanted an expression of serene dignity. Her prematurely wizened face strained with the effort of assuming one.
(more…)
PYRAMID POWER – snippet 27:
Liz realized the error of her ways about ten seconds after entering Vallhöll’s smoky and noisy halls.
For starters, the place was enormous. It looked bigger than ten O’Hare’s put together, and full too. The only answer as to how dark-ages architecture stood up to these demands was by magic, because there was no other possibility. It had looked big from outside. From inside it looked, if not like a sea of people, like a reasonable sized lake.
(more…)
THE MIRROR OF WORLDS – snippet 2:
Three bodies lay just ahead, two middle-aged human males and a catman. They'd been hacked savagely by swords or axes: one man had been disemboweled and the Corl's head clung to his shoulders by a scrap of skin–its spine was cut through. No weapons were in evidence, but the catman's muzzle was bloody.
"We don't have to worry about what's behind us, now," Karpos said. "Hold up before we check on what might be waiting inside, right?"
(more…)