The General Babblings of Chris Wild
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Arts | The name’s Bond – Junior Bond
Charlie Higson writing stories about James Bond before he was a spy… Spy Kids anyone? I’m not sure about this as an idea for a prequel but I’m sure the book, which was release yesterday, will sell bucket loads.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Hobbit was ‘not a diseased human’
So was JRR Tolkien correct? Did we once really share the “middle earth” with hobbits? 🙂
A judge has rejected a bid by Californian nu-metal band Linkin Park to trademark its name for use on posters, leaving shopkeepers free to sell unofficial posters of music and show business personalities.
In a landmark judgement which means the band cannot sue suppliers of unauthorised posters, Judge Richard Arnold said on Tuesday that unlike merchandise such as CDs and books, a famous name appearing on a poster was purely descriptive
This is just plain wrong… surely a bands name is it’s trademark, and the trademark laws are there to stop people exploiting and passing off your mark. If this allows anyone to sell unauthorised material about Linkin Park to which they do not recieve royalties from then that must be wrong! The problem is that if a photograph is the property of the cameraman regardless of subject, then mixing photos and band name gives out a false impression. Many people will buy those goods thinking there are legitimate Linkin Park merchandise!
I read this article by Michael Gorman the other day; Library Journal – Revenge of the Blog People!, anyway It’s pretty annoying. The guy who appears to be someone high up in american library mawotsits (president-elect of the American Library Association) is basically condeming all blog authors to the world of terrible writers. Now I agreee there are some bad ones out there, and I also accept that my skills in this area may or may not be the best when compared to high paid journalists or authors, but then that’s kind of the point isn’t it.
We go to places we want to read, about things we want to read about. If we don’t like it, we won’t go back. So quality or lack of it, is something that will filter blogs out, because no one will read something they don’t want to read. A bit like newspapers and books. A lot depends on the bloggers target audience. I have no idea whom mine audience is; I just type it in as it comes out of my head and give little consideration for who’s reading it, but then that’s why I started doing this, to get and idea of what it is like to blog. And although I don’t really that this whole process serious, I do take umbrage and snotty nosed gits like Michael Gorman lumping all blog writers into the same hole.
It is obvious that the Blog People read what they want to read rather than what is in front of them and judge me to be wrong on the basis of what they think rather than what I actually wrote. Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs. In that case, their rejection of my view is quite understandable.
**Smoking Gun Entertainment Group plc – Start of Trading on Ofex**
Well after a tormentuous year, Smoking Gun finally listed on Ofex
this morning. Lets hope that this is the start of up and up…