Potter reaches cult phenomenon status

Nice article (taken from AP) at yahoo on Harry Potter's history. I am currently reading book 6 that I hadnt come to read yet, to get ready for the release of the final book 7.

In the beginning, "Harry Potter" simply needed a home. Several British publishers turned down Rowling, believing her manuscript too long and/or too slow, before the Bloomsbury Press signed her up in 1996, for $4,000 and a warning not to expect to get rich from writing children's books. An American publisher had bigger ideas: Scholastic editor Arthur A. Levine acquired U.S. rights for $105,000.

"I can vividly remember reading the manuscript and thinking, `This reminds me of Roald Dahl,' an author of such skill, an author with a unique ability to be funny and cutting and exciting at the same time," Levine says.

"But I could not possibly have had the expectation we would be printing 12 million copies for one book (`Deathly Hallows'). That's beyond anyone's experience. I would have had to be literally insane."

Potter reaches cult phenomenon status

Mac or PC ?

glumbert.com - Mac or PC Rap

MACorPC.org

Linux leaders plot counterattack on Microsoft

Interesting story on Zdnet.com:

Leading names of Linux, the world's biggest grassroots software phenomenon, are spending three days debating whether an increasingly commercial open-source community should fight or ignore the world's largest software maker.

Recently, Microsoft has sown dissension by claiming open-source programs such as Linux violate 235 of its patents while striking deals to insulate the customers of two Linux suppliers--Novell and Xandros--from patent lawsuits

news.zdnet.com

Console sales

Interesting article on arstechnica on console sales the past month. Apparently Nintendo is leading the console race by a landslide. Who would have thought !

As you know, Nintendo absolutely owned the first quarter of the year, and with 338,000 more Wii consoles sold in May, the sales show no sign of slowing down. Still, the DS took top honors, with 423,000 units sold. These amounts almost look anomalous, for the sales of every other system are so far below Nintendo's preternatural numbers. As this trend continues month after month, Nintendo's domination is becoming a fact of life. When will it end?

So it seems the public is more interested in original fun family games than the next run of the mill first person shooter, Madden 2012 or Need For Speed XXII. Also I think the ps3 and xbox 360 overlap the PC games market a bit, with similar releases, while nintendo has far more original games to offer. So a Wii is a better supplement for pc gamers than a 360 is. And I am not even starting on the ps3, that console doesnt offer much at the moment, though that might change in the future when better games appear.

Drobo

Scoble has a very interesting demo of this new harddrive device on his site, called a drobo. Basically it's an enclosure for up to four sata drives, and it combines them all in one big safe drive. You can use any combo of drives, and it keeps your data safe. Looks very promising. One big drawback, it's usb 2.0 only for now, and thats a little slow. And it's pricey. An ethernet and / or Firewire connector would be excellent. Also it's not available in Europe yet.

Would love to get one though, since I got quite a few spare disks laying around and with disk drives now being so cheap, I wouldnt mind buying a big disk to stick it in this device. So I am going to keep my eye on these and see whether it gets better.

scobleize.com podtech demo
Review on gizmodo.com

ROFLMAO

ROFLMAO

Charity on That Catholic Show

A new episode has appeared on SQPN.com of That Catholic Show. This one is very funny and has a nice message to boot.



That Catholic Show #4 Charity and Mercy
Make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, it offers far superior video quality than the YouTuby video above.