Free eBook: Ultra Mobile Computing Buyers Guide

Free PDF Report. Ultra Mobile Computing Buyers Guide.

To all the websites, companies and visitors that I’ve learned so much from in the last few years, here’s something back. The 5-part, 11,000 word, 28-page Ultra Mobile Computing Buyers Guide as a single re-flowable PDF file.

Steve Paine — aka Chippy — is the expert on this sort of thing. He’s molested more portable devices than I have ever seen in person.

This is the guide to have if you’re looking to buy something portable.

Note: Right-click Save As… didn’t work for me. I just clicked, it opened in Adobe Reader, and I saved it to disk.

Previous instances of Chippy here:

I Am Internationally Persecuted!
Gigabyte M528 MID Preview
Want Hot Tech News Today?
Live jkk & Chippy!
Asus e900 Versus MSI Wind
CeBIT 2008: An Exciting MID Shown

Where’s The Next Free Charlie Huston eBook?

Free eBook By Charlie Huston!

It’s well into November already. This one is supposed to be a free PDF:

But there’s no sign of it as of today.

R.I.P.: Gerard Damiano

Gerard Damiano: pornographic film director and writer

Gerard Damiano directed one of the most famous, or rather infamous, films of the 1970s and for a while made pornography intellectually chic. Deep Throat (1972) reached a wider audience than any other pornographic film before or since. Its impact on US culture was such that its title was used for the Washington Post’s confidential source in the Watergate affair and subsequently became a widespread term for secret informants.

No. I’ve never seen it.

Deep Throat was made during a time of dramatic changes in social and sexual attitudes. It had a degree of humour — with fireworks going off and bells ringing at the climax of its sex scenes — and its plot was more imaginative than many films within the genre, with Linda Lovelace playing a woman who cannot get sexual satisfaction until she discovers that her clitoris is in her throat. Damiano wrote and directed it, composed the music and acted in it.

It reportedly cost around $25,000 to make and grossed anything from $20 million to $600 million, according to various estimates, making it one of the most profitable films ever made. But it remains a hardcore sex film, and it was financed by the Mafia. Damiano reportedly had a deal giving him a share of the profits, which would certainly have run into the millions, but was forced to sell his interest for $25,000.

The film was banned in many places and was the subject of a protracted series of obscenity prosecutions in the US. Damiano and Lovelace were granted immunity from prosecution in return for their co-operation with the authorities. Co-star Harry Reems was convicted, his case became a cause celebre and his conviction was overturned on appeal. However, the debate over free artistic expression was muddied by the Mafia’s involvement.

Emphasis added by me.

I heard a rumor about the throat while I was in high school. Now this obit has confirmed it.

Lovelace, of course, eventually claimed she was drugged up and coerced into it.

I remember the controversy regarding Reems at the time.

As incredible as it will sound, porn film makers back then kept telling anyone who would listen — and that meant mainly reporters and talk show hosts — that they represented the next wave of Hollywood. That soon, all movies would feature explicit sex scenes — of all kinds.

The Next Doctor Who Will Be Black

Let’s see the London bookies take that bet, baby.

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #382: Tech

Trippin’ With Trip: One Man’s View Of Carnage To Come

Two items of note:

“Many startups are starting to fold.” He contends that “almost every” VC funded open-source company is struggling and will run out of funds within the next 6 months. He also says that “many VC funded Web 2.0 companies are shutting down … the Web 2.0 fad is now coming to an end.” He has a similarly dark view on the prospects for software as a service start-ups.

Emphasis added by me.

Yep, the Internet is going to start becoming a poorer place. Entire vast sites will begin to just disappear.

And then there’s this hell:

Apple, he says, is going to start selling iPhones via Costco at $149 starting in January.

Wait. What? That makes no sense. If he said it was the iPod Touch, I could believe it.

The Topic Of Covers … Again!

The Book Design Review is something I should have linked to a while ago.

I want to point out a particular post: Outliers

Look at that cover carefully.

If you didn’t notice what’s pointed out here:

But this can’t be final. Look at the kerning in the title. This can’t be final…can it? A reader asks “rs is outlying?” Could be, but “success” seems pretty poorly kerned as well…

— then don’t do your own cover!

Previously here:

eBooks: The Issue Of Covers, Again
Free eBook: Password Incorrect
Book Covers: Murder
Book Cover: What?!
eBooks: More About Covers
eBooks: A Cover Test
They Don’t Write These Anymore

Quote: Writer Stephen King

Stephen King

How long you let the first draft of your book rest – sort of like bread dough between kneadings – is entirely up to you, but I think it should be a minimum of six weeks . If you’ve never done it before, you’ll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience. It’s yours, you’ll recognize it as yours, even be able to remember what tune was on the stereo when you wrote certain lines, and yet it will also be like reading the work of someone else, a soul-twin perhaps. That is the way it should be, the reason you waited. It’s always easier to kill someone else’s darlings than it is your own.

Lots of other great writer quotes at Quote It Write

— via Twitter from littlebrown

I Vow You Bastards Will HANG!

New York pets hit by credit crunch

All you greedy sociopaths, I will witness your hangings.

All you bastard NYC landlords who disallow pets, the same goes for you.

Before we ever indulge in our self-destruction, I’ll make sure we purge ourselves of your kind!

WHY Freedom Of Speech MATTERS, Dammit! Part Three

Blogger jailed for 20 years over poem that mocked Burmese dictator

A young blogger and a writer who disguised an attack on the country’s dictator in the form of a love poem have received heavy jail sentences, in the latest blow to opponents of Burma’s military dictatorship.

Nay Myo Kyaw, a 28-year old man who blogged under the name Nay Phone Latt, was sentenced to 20 years and six months in jail by a court in Rangoon.

The poet, Saw Wai, received a two year sentence for an eight-line Valentine’s Day verse published in a popular magazine. Even the lawyer representing the two men, Aung Thein, has been sent down for four months for “contempt of court” during his defence.

Emphasis added by me.

Let me show you how it’s done in America.

Senior General Than Shwe: You fat ugly bastard. What venereal-infected cunt spewed out your mutant form? Is there any way we can shove you back in? With a face like that, do you sometimes mistakenly wipe it instead of your ass after taking a shit? Drop dead, motherfucker!

Come and get me, Burma!

Oh, wait. But here I am safe in America. That’s unfair, all of you say. Ohhhkay…

President Bush: You fucking incompetent waste of human life. You’ve destroyed New Orleans, you’ve murdered countless innocent Iraqis, you’ve mocked and subverted and just about destroyed the ideals of this nation as embodied in our Constitution, and you’re still hellbent on Mission Accomplished by doling out unaccounted trillions of dollars to all the pinstriped whores who line up to suck your impotent dick which even God Himself could never again make stiff. Please do the right thing and shoot yourself dead the day after you leave office. We shouldn’t have to bear the expense of a trial for your war crimes and waste perfectly good rope hanging your traitorous motherfucking ass.

Come and try to give me twenty years.

Previously here:

WHY Freedom Of Speech MATTERS, Dammit! Part Two
WHY Freedom Of Speech MATTERS, Dammit!