Came on this — the first ‘integrated’ package for the Macintosh — when sorting stuff in my office. I couldn’t bear to throw it out. And although none of my current Macs has a drive that could read the disk, I still have my Mac Plus, which can.
Daily Archives: June 9, 2007
My other roof’s a ski-jump
I love the jaunty look of these houses in Northampton Street, Cambridge. I can imagine Pixar making the one on the right into an animated cartoon character.
Guardian reaches issue no. 50,000
Yep. Today’s edition is the 50,000th. Quite an achievement and one marked by publishing a facsimile of the very first edition. “It is unlikely”, said the blurb, “we would [today] lead the paper with an ad for a lost dog”. The ad reads:
TAKEN UP
A BLACK NEWFOUNDLAND BITCH, and person having lost the same may have her again on describing her marks, and paying all expences, by applying at No. 80 Shudehall or at the York Inn.
NB If now owned in 14 days from the date below, she will be sold to defray expences.
May 5, 1821
The price of the first edition was seven pence, which I imagine was a substantial sum in those days — equivalent perhaps to the £3.95 that I pay for the New Yorker in a newsagent.
Wonder if there will be a 100,000 paper edition of the Guardian ? I wouldn’t bet on it. (Just as well, really — I won’t be around to collect or pay up.)
Babelgum: the poor man’s Joost?
That’s what TechCrunch thinks anyway.
[Aside] Where do they get these daft names from?
Steal this laptop
Richard Charkin is a Big Cheese in Macmillan, the publishers. On his blog he admits to a heist. He posts a photograph of the Google stand at a trade fair (BookExpo America). Then, he continues:
There’s no computer where a computer should be to the left of the gentleman’s arm. You will also notice that there is no sign saying ‘please do not steal the computers’. I confess that a colleague and I simply picked up two computers from the Google stand and waited in close proximity until someone noticed. This took more than an hour.
Our justification for this appalling piece of criminal behaviour? The owner of the computer had not specifically told us not to steal it. If s/he had, we would not have done so. When s/he asked for its return, we did so. It is exactly what Google expects publishers to expect and accept in respect to intellectual property.
‘If you don’t tell us we may not digitise something, we shall do so. But we do no evil. So if you tell us to desist we shall.’
I felt rather shabby playing this trick on Google. They should feel the same playing the same trick on authors and publishers…
Well it’s one way of making your point. And an even better way of getting attention.