{"id":3749,"date":"2010-02-08T18:30:33","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T23:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3749"},"modified":"2010-02-08T18:30:33","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T23:30:33","slug":"monday-various-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3749","title":{"rendered":"Monday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I think the most interesting thing about this new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/30\/arts\/television\/30inferno.html\">Dante&#8217;s Inferno video game<\/a> &#8212; which itself sounds pretty silly, a mashup that misses the point of both sides &#8212; is this quote:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We look at companies like Walt Disney, where they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got intellectual properties that feel like their own, but are based on literature from a time gone by,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said John Riccitiello, Electronic Arts\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chief executive. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A great intellectual property can live a second or third time in new media, because it gives you a head start.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Because it underlines that Disney made it big by adapting well known tales it didn&#8217;t originate (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Disney#1923-27:_The_Alice_Comedies\">from the very beginning<\/a>, actually) but nowadays runs for its lawyers anytime someone tries to do the same to it. This is nothing new, but shouldn&#8217;t Mickey Mouse be, you know, out of copyright by now?<\/li>\n<li>The headline reads, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-1248283\/Spam-carbonara-Spam-stroganoff--How-inventive-Army-chef-used-tinned-meat-feed-troops-SIX-WEEKS.html\">After Taliban hit supplies, Army chef serves up 42 days of Spam<\/a>. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsfromme.com\/\" title=\"Mark Evanier\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>You can keep your fart noise generators, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maximumfun.org\/2010\/02\/05\/american-life-iphone-app\">this is the only iPhone app<\/a> I&#8217;d really love to have. If they make it available for the iPad, I may just have to break down and buy one.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;A third of all children aged five to 16 are convinced that the body of one of their teachers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metro.co.uk\/news\/811096-my-teacher-is-an-alien-says-1-in-3-children\">has been taken over by an extra-terrestrial being<\/a>.&#8221; Tell me, can you prove that they haven&#8217;t? (Then again: &#8220;The survey was commissioned by 20th Century Fox to coincide with the release of <i>Aliens In the Attic<\/i> on DVD.&#8221; So, you know, grain of salt and everything.) [<a href=\"http:\/\/gwendabond.typepad.com\/bondgirl\" title=\"Gwenda Bond\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>And finally, I&#8217;m basically just copying this from <a href=\"http:\/\/nielsenhayden.com\/makinglight\/archives\/012164.html\">Making Light<\/a>, but I agree that <a href=\"http:\/\/yuki-onna.livejournal.com\/563086.html\">Cat Valente<\/a> makes maybe one of the best arguments for why we still need publishers in the world of e-publishing:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Funny thing is, if this future came to pass and the market were nothing but self-published autonomous authors either writing without editorial or paying out of pocket for it, if we were flooded with good product mixed with bad like gold in a stream, it would be about five seconds before someone came along and said: <i>hey, what if I started a company where we took on all the risk, hired an editorial staff and a marketing staff to make the product better and get it noticed, and paid the author some money up front and a percentage of the profits in exchange for taking on the risk and the initial cost? So writers could, you know, just write?<\/i><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">And writers would line up at their door.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">I&#8217;m obviously biased, since I work as an editor (for a smaller textbook and professional publisher). But sometimes, there&#8217;s a middleman for a reason.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think the most interesting thing about this new Dante&#8217;s Inferno video game &#8212; which itself sounds pretty silly, a mashup that misses the point of both sides &#8212; is this quote: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We look at companies like Walt Disney, where they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got intellectual properties that feel like their own, but are based on literature from &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3749\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[16,21,35,27,83,11,62,31,43,39],"class_list":["post-3749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-books","tag-food","tag-games","tag-internet","tag-legal","tag-publishing","tag-radio","tag-sci-fi","tag-tech","tag-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}