Primarily because the costs associated with an e-book are significantly different than the costs associated with a hardcopy book. If a publisher releases a novel in both an e-book format and a hardcopy format, with a hardcopy print run of, say, 100,000 copies, and both books sell 5,000 copies a month, the publisher…

Right up there with this one, which I found on the Net some years back.

In a similar vein, I have an Ikea corner workstation for my computer — not this one, but its predecessor; it doesn't have the outer side panels on the hutch, but it does have the bottom shelf on the right side above the desk surface (with a whiteboard/magnet surface above it). I set my Motorola Xoom on its Otterbox…

That's the 'Microsoft Minute'. (cartoon from User Friendly)

Number 612, here.

Every time I read something about yet another piece of idiocy he's spewed, I'm reminded of the joke that the difference between Rush Limbaugh and the Hindenberg is that one is a huge flaming Nazi gasbag and the other is a dirigible...

Actually, looking at the way the armor panels are angled at the corners of the turret, my first thought was "shot trap".

Yes, it consumes five times less power than a flash drive, but if you look at the specifications, what they've built is optical DRAM — if you cut power to the memory device, the data goes away. Flash memory doesn't. So this will be useful for operating memory in processing devices, but not for long-term storage; this…

I have to agree; that comment from Mark Cutmore is just going to pack more coaster addicts into the ride.

None of those are even close to under-the-bottom-shelf beer.

From Sung-Hui Yao by Chang Te-Hsiang, "On the day Hsin-Wei [April 17, 1056] the third month in the first year of the Chia-yu reign period [March 19 - April 17, 1056] the Director of the Astronomical Bureau said, `The Guest Star has become invisible, which is an omen of the departure of the guest'. Originally, during…

That is an example of what was referred to as a "Galloping Goose", one of a series of seven railcars built by the Rio Grande Southern Railway in the 1930s and operated as a cost-savings measure where the cargo and passenger demand would not justify the expense of a full train. That one is, if I am judging the picture…

The lintel.

A whole lot easier than looking for the two small squares — I just unplugged the second CAC reader from the USB socket on the front of my computer here at work, and it's got the two little square cutouts on both sides of the plug.

It's not very long — only a couple miles — and it's tight enough that you rarely get up past about 25-30, but when I go up to Julian from San Diego, I always turn off to go up Wynola Road, which brings me around the back way into Julian. But the switchbacks, the trees overhanging the road, and the fresh mountain air…

More that a privateer was an officially-sanctioned civilian auxiliary of a country's naval forces; whether they were considered to be a 'pirate' depended on the relationship between your country and the one issuing the letters of marque. As the US was not then at war with either Britain or France, a privateer…

Also, if you've set up a hanging rack for your kitchen pans, you may have an extra S-hook from that. I have a GRUNDTAL shelf from Ikea, using S-hooks from the same line (they come in two different sizes in packs of five), and I've got an extra that's not in use. And the 5-packs are cheap enough ($2.99 for the 7cm and…

That was a detail that I really appreciated them taking the time to do right — the way an arrow bends around the bow when it's shot — so that I can forgive them the conceit of being able to split an arrow shaft all the way down its length. And the seams splitting on her gown is another detail that it would have been…

The publishers also provide editorial services, so that an author's work will get picked over and proofread, and may or may not get edited to clean it up, before being formatted as an ebook for distribution. Without a publishing house, an author would have to pay to have those services performed (simple spell-check…

Amazon pulled a book from Kindles in the past because it didn't have the right to be selling it. This move by IPG is a revocation of their granting Amazon that same right; it's not retroactive — IPG is telling Amazon "You can't sell our ebooks any more", not "You never had permission to sell our ebooks". Anything…