Angry Rage Monkey

Wrong...

To the morbidly obese man in the “man boobs are sexy” shirt: Wrong.

I'm only going to say this once...

The prostate is *not* “the male g-spot.” The prostate is the prostate. It might be ok to call g-spot (if it does exist) “the female prostate,” but not the other way around. The prostate is the prostate, and isn’t some kind of new discovery. Get it straight, I do not want to have to talk to you about this again!

I’m starting to forget what things feel like

MacHeist is almost over, let the grumbing begin

I frankly don’t get the controversy over software bundles like MacHeist.  The gist of the argument seems to be that the MacHeist people are cheapskates who don’t compensate  the developers enough.  Of course the fact that these developers all knew the terms going in and were not forced to join never seems to sway opinion.

The other is that apparently deeply discounting your software cheapens the entire mac software market.  I could provide links, but frankly these people irritate me, so just google “MacHeist” and you should find them easily enough.  However I find myself wonder over and over one thing: Would we be having the same conversation if software developers offered to give away their apps for a week?

If MacRabbit wanted to give away Espresso for free over a three day weekend (or a week, or some other period of time), because they have a brand new piece of software and they want to get people hooked; would people be complaining about how this hurts the software market.  Did it hurt the market because MacRabbit gave the beta out for free?

When Crossover gave away their software last Oct, did that even cheapen the mac software market?

Does Mariner Software’s habit of offering deeply discounted bundles at the point of sale, damage mac software developers?

In my mind the answer is no.  And if you answer no to any of those; then I have a hard time seeing how MacHeist is doing a bad thing.  Back in the day we used to call this HeroinWare (“the first hit is free”).  It provides an opportunity to get people playing with software they might not have otherwise, and get them on the upgrade path.

You get the point so I wont even bring up the issue of educational discounts ;)

Oh Roy...

The Culture of Ownership » Authors Guild, unbelievably, still after Kindle 2

Maybe it was because I was busy, and then sick, that it took me so long to connect the Roy Blount of the Author’s Guild and their recent idiocy regarding text-to-speach to the guy who writes funny and interesting stories and articles (and is a regular on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!).

Every so often you have to come up against the hard reality that people you like and admire (and find oh so smart) may also have some dumb, uninformed, and downright wrong views (IE not yours) on things as well.

Text to speach is a lifesaver for me, even though I don’t have the kind of disibilty he would make an exemption for.  And while I would prefer a real audiobook (and have been an audible subscriber for more than a year now), sometimes they just aren’t available.

But what I find worse is that Amazon caved.  The didn’t even put up a token resistance.  They just aquiesed and pushed down an update that allowed publishers to disable this feature.

I think Blount is failing in the court of public opinion (if nowhere else), but Amazon is the one who has disapointed me the most…