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The only problem with many of those no-right-click javascript thingies is they assume the right button is number 2. On my system (Linux/X) it's number 3.

That, and as others have pointed out, "view source" or "view page info", and/or disabling javascript makes that approach rather pointless.

Besides, it's not about them physically stealing the images (which they can do with screen shots if nothing else; if they can see it, they can save it). The issue here is about them embedding your image in their website.

Yeah, I've done the switcheroo thing too, though not as grossly as others have. Found someone embedding a St. Patrick's image I had in a very republican type bulletin board, so I slightly modified it. As far as I know it's still there after several months; I wonder if they'll notice...

What's this about every store in town having gamecubes in stock??? Not in this town :-(

The only online places I've been able to locate the darn thing (new) have been toysrus.com and walmart.com (no links, they get enough publicity already). And the former has some scheme going on where you have to check daily for "24 hours notice of our next sale" of cubes. Grr. Don't even talk to me about used ones; darn scalpers for the most part with outrageous prices. Double grr.

As I have a 14yo son who is very antsy to get a gamecube for Christmas, I'm eager to hear from ya if you know anyplace near Central Virginia that has one.

- Pat aka Bloody Peasant

on 00-09-23 13:20 EDT, gattaca wrote:

: it extracts all the formatting information
: and encodes it in a special TNEF block...
: the TNEF part...WINMAIL.DAT...
: serve no useful purpose so you can delete them

I have to disagree. Content can be radically changed by formatting information; the lack of inflection, emphasis, etc. can drastically alter the intended meaning in a message.

- Bloody Peasant

I remember that when Sun first made Solaris x86 available for the Intel platform (for free? Academic sites only?) a colleague told me:

: ... Note that the license for the free version of Solaris prevents us from
: publishing these benchmarks without clearance from Sun.

This was in the context of some home-brewed benchmarks we were running on various machines. This may not be as insidious as others, but one can only speculate as to why such a clause was invoked in their EULA.

- Pat.

Arivanov writes:

: He did not hijack anyone's box. Can you spell the words OPen Relay.

Just because someone leaves their front door open does not in any way, shape or form justify a crime of trespass. The relay was an innocent, if somewhat naive, third party and the owners thereof should IMHO be entitled to triple damages.

Just MHO of course. I don't like spam.

Pat

First off, IANAI (I Am Not An Author) but my Significant Other is. So I think I can contribute something here.

aliastnb asks

: "I'm currently about halfway through writing my first novel.
: After the release of books to the net by such people as Stephen King

Stephen King is a Johnny-come-lately to the world of electronic publishing. There are several publishers already out there that cater to electronic/on-line books, such as New Concepts, EBooksOnThe.NET, Diskus, and so on. Some of them have been in business for several years, and there are many authors who have their works published by these companies. Also realize that the so-called phenomenal success King had with that (60 page) book was mainly because they gave it away. I'll bet the sales receipts would show a lot fewer than half a million copies from paying customers.

: I'm wondering if it might be worth my while to cut out the middleman,
: ie the publisher and release the book online.

The difficulies you'll face with this are:

1. How to get payment for the work, assuming you're not giving it away for free. Shopping Cart type software is almost essential, and thence you get to deal with major credit card companies.

2. Promotion. A good publisher will help you with this, though the companies that do mostly or exclusively electronic works will likely not have as many resources as the titans (big publishing houses based in New York).

I know of some authors who have "gone it alone" and one or two of these have had some modest success. Others have not. YMMV.

: ...I'd like to be able to get some sort of reward for my efforts,
: ie minimise the amount of unpaid-for copies made of the book

Then I would recommend you hunt around for a good electronic publisher.

: and release it to a multi-platform environment - not just Windows
: software but Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc. Are these goals mutually exclusive

No. Most "e-books" are released in HTML or PDF format, which are readable anywhere (just about). There's a palm pilot format too, but that doesn't strike me as a good platform for serious readers; and there's the Rocket Book Reader, but that requires a M$ system and the format is closed and proprietary. The new Crusoe based web pads will IMHO be far better at this sort of thing (and if they are wildly successful, may well create a huge new market for electronic books). Besides, they're based on Linux :-)

Many of the electronic publishers are also dipping their toes in print-on-demand technology. In this way, you could get the best of both worlds. There have also been many (apocryphal) stories going around about big (dead tree) publishers picking up e-published authors after said authors become successful and have a good book or two out there.

- Pat Murphy