Ads for Livejournal, OpenOffice.org Tetum, Cory Doctorow, Antimonopoly, Taxing Times, Ditmar, Geoff

[tcpip]

Livejournal is going to have ads. I'm sure I remember Six Apart saying they wouldn't do this when they bought it. For my part, I've joined no_lj_ads. Their proposal is quite sound; ads for those who want them; noone else.

EDIT

Six Apart have changed their records. They had a contract which said no ads. Then they changed that to 'principles'.

End Edit

I have just put a proposal to OpenOffice.org to establish a project for translation into Tetum. I think this is a very worthwhile project given that is the majority and official language of Timor Leste. Given my current work with, god help me, MS-SQL Server and MS-Access databases I can see myself contributing somewhat to the development of OpenOffice.org Base this year as well. I'm also interested in seeing if OOBase and MySQL can talk to each other better.

Was fortunate enough to see Cory Doctorow this week with caseopaya, imajica_lj and claudine_c. Also managed to exchange brief conversation with lokicarbis. Cory's presentation was on why closed-source and proprietory formats for entertainment were both dangerous for users and bad business. It made a lot of sense, albeit he could be a little cavalier with his history when it was not central to his point.

This Friday's entertainment will be an evening of Antimonopoly at Prosper Australia. Even when I'm having fun and politics at the same time gaming gets involved. Oh, I should point out they've formally employed me as well to launch a campaign among academics and the general public for (fairer, simpler, efficient, productive) tax reform. On a related topic I finished my tax and saw my accountant yesterday. All as expected; I owe the Australian government a modest amount (a few thousand).

Congratulations are due to valeskah1 whose SF/fantasy journal Ticondero has won a Ditmar for the past year. My decision to write for it was evidently well-timed. I have just sent off my fourth review for the year (Shade's Children by Garth Nix) to said journal.

Comments

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

I've seen a comment from Six Apart/LJ about not running on good will. But if they don't have my good will, I will not keep paying for my account.

They have changed their contract unilaterally and then used this change - therefore they've lost an awful lot of good will from me. They may not run on good will, but they sure as hell can't run without it...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

They don't run on good will; until SixApart took of the account-type page on their stats page (last year) they were grossing $2.5 million USD per annum through paid subscriptions.