Updated: Amazon and Hachette finally reach deal; Hachette will set its ebook prices – The war appears to be over between Hachette and Amazon, and whatever the state of their relationship, readers get the return of Agency Pricing. Yippee.
When the new ebook terms take place in early 2015, “Hachette will have responsibility for setting consumer prices of its ebooks, and will also benefit from better terms when it delivers lower prices for readers. Amazon and Hachette will immediately resume normal trading, and Hachette books will be prominently featured in promotions.”
See that “responsibility for setting consumer prices”? Yep, that’s the return of agency ebook pricing about two and a half years after the Department of Justice first sued Apple and publishers for conspiring to set ebook prices. Obviously, neither Amazon nor Hachette is offering very specific details about the contract they agreed on, but the public disclosures about the deal make it sound similar to the one recently reached between Amazon and Simon & Schuster. — Gigaom
Amazon, Indies, Barnes & Noble Unite for E-tax Fairness – As anyone who orders goods online in the US knows, states have different laws for the collection of sales tax for these internet sales. Although consumers are supposed to pay “use tax” in many states when they are not charged sales tax, the onus is on the consumer to do so at tax time. The push for federal law covering internet sales tax is currently sitting in Congress, and it looks like it’s headed for a showdown between the newly elected Republican majority (forget about it) and the democrats (definitely). This may be one of the few issues on which Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and independent booksellers agree, so it will be interesting to see what, if anything, happens to the proposed legislation in Congress this year.
Last year the Senate passed the Marketplace Fairness Act by a wide margin. It would force online retailers to collect sales tax if they have $1 million or more in gross sales annually. Part of the reason for the push is that if Congress fails to act during the lame-duck session, the act will die. –Publishers Weekly
Africa, Uncolonized: A Detailed Look at an Alternate Continent – Talk about world building. Swedish artist Nikolaj Cyon has rendered what we now know as the continent of Africa as he believes it would be if Europe has never colonized it. What such a historical shift that requires is pretty fascinating to contemplate, because the effects of colonization are global in scope and centuries old in historical sweep. It’s really a provocative undertaking.
To arrive at this map, Cyon constructed an alternative timeline. Its difference from our own starts in the mid-14th century. The point of divergence: the deadliness of the Plague. In our own timeline, over the course of the half dozen years from 1346 to 1353, the Black Death [3] wiped out between 30 and 60% of Europe’s population. It would take the continent more than a century to reach pre-Plague population levels. That was terrible enough. But what if Europe had suffered an even more catastrophic extermination – one from which it could not recover? . . .
Cyon focuses on Africa — or rather, Alkebu-Lan — which in his version of events doesn’t suffer the ignomy and injustice of the European slave trade and subsequent colonization. In our timeline, Europe’s domination of Africa obscured the latter continent’s rich history and many cultural achievements. On the map of Cyon’s Africa, a many-splendored landscape of nations and empires, all native to the continent itself, gives the lie to the 19th- and 20th-century European presumption that Africa merely was a ‘dark continent’ to be enlightened, or a ‘blank page’ for someone else to write upon. –Big Think
Microsoft fixes ’19-year-old’ bug with emergency patch – Oh, Microsoft. Finally fixing a 19-year-old vulnerability that was only discovered a few months ago. According to an IBM researcher, “The bug can be used by an attacker for drive-by attacks to reliably run code remotely and take over the user’s machine.” No biggie, right? Anyway, I hope you PC users have updated your software with the relevant security update.
The bug had been present in every version of Windows since 95, IBM said.
Attackers could exploit the bug to remotely control a PC, and so users are being urged to download updates.
Microsoft?has addressed the problem?in its monthly security update, along with more than a?dozen patches to fix other security issues, with a further two to be rolled out soon. ?–BBC News
Teen readers to remix classic literature into ‘drum and bass anthems and comic strips’ – This is so cool. Waterstone’s Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman is undertaking a project to engage teenagers in reading by getting them to rework some famous works of fiction into other forms of media, including music. The website for the project is www.projectremix.co.uk and some details are below:
The competition, entitled Project Remix, will see teenagers work with a list of 24 works, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
The primary literature will also include contemporary works, including The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, Geek Girl by Holly Smale, and Blackman’s own bestselling Naughts and Crosses.
Readers will be tasked with remixing their chosen text into one of five categories: creative writing, comic strip, cover design, trailer, or music. –Telegraph