Oblomovka

2004-07-12»

Aha. So, I've been writing a column for Linux User and Developer, the UK Linux magazine (which also did a fairly well-regarded expo). It's a fun gig. I haven't received payment for the last three months, which sadly doesn't appear to be that unusual in the publishing industry. But you know, why should that stop me having fun?

Some time last week, LinuxUser's pages on the Live Publishing site disappeared. Uh-oh.

I've just called Live Publishing, and their receptionist has instructed any queries to be redirected to Alan Coleman at Unity. Unity "provides constructive advice and effective solutions to all insolvency-related problems".

Uh-oh.

Can't get through to speak to Alan yet. I see the expo wing of the company has merged with LinuxWorld. I suspect that was a bit of a one-sided merge.

The odd thing is that, rather naively, I thought that LinuxUser was a magazine being published by Live Publishing rather than a separate company that could hit the skids all on its own. The LinuxUser pages in the Google cache all say "copyright Live Publishing". I wonder how long it has been this separate, glorious, but sadly a bit cash-strapped institution?

Discuss

2004-07-11»

In December of 2002, I uploaded a screen-captured table showing IBM's estimates for the cost of a terabyte over the next eight years. I couldn't be bothered to convert it into HTML. Eighteen months on, Adrian Furby did just that. This shows there's some "can I have some more"'s law of the lazyweb or something, and that you should optimise for laziness and early public whining instead of planning ahead. I've added it to the page.

I just checked with NewEgg for prices, and with a $61 80GB harddrive, we're four bucks short of right on target. We should be down to a sub-$500 terabyte some time next year.