$40 For Windows 8? Not So Fast.

Just announced: upgrade to #Windows8 Pro for $39.99 bit.ly/MPYuK1—
  (@Windows) July 02, 2012

Whoa. That sounded exciting.

So I decided to see if my crap XP box qualified. I found this: Check your PC for Windows 8 readiness with upgrade assistant

I downloaded it and ran it and got …

What Does $650M Look Like?

It looks like him:

A Strange Team: Kobo + ACCESS

Kobo’s acquisition by Rakuten has brought about its first big change: Kobo Selects ACCESS NetFrontTM BookReader v1.0 EPUB Edition as EPUB 3 Standard Viewer Engine for Its eBook Services

Some background: ACCESS is a Japanese company that has been around for quite some time. Its NetFront web browser was very popular pre-iPhone and was also so far ahead of all other mobile browsers that Jeff Hawkins’ Handspring licensed it. Sony also chose the NetFront browser for its line of CLIE PalmOS devices.

Even The Unpublished Can Be Pirated

BLOG: The Transgression of Brother Willeford

I was reminded again of Charles Willeford‘s Grimhaven.

It’s an unpublished Hoke Moseley novel and if you don’t want it spoiled, don’t click on that link at top.

At Wikipedia, Grimhaven is described thusly:

Grimhaven (unpublished).

Photocopy of typescript maintained in the Charles Willeford Archive at the Broward County Library, Florida; 212 leaves, no date: “NOTE: as per Betsy Willeford [widow of the author]: ‘Ms. of the “black Hoke Mosely” [sic], never published, sold to a small but ruthless group of collectors in the form of Xerox copies. May not be copied in the library by patrons who’ll wholesale it on the Internet.’” Originally intended as the second Hoke Moseley novel.

How quaint! “Xerox copies.”