@ Inverse Square:
There's taking the piss out of intimidating and oppressive government foolery, and then there's anarchism. These things will allow people to take away what small help CCTV ever was

Er, yes; exactly. I certainly don't regard these glasses as some sort of prank, but as a serious tool to render CCTV even more redundant than it already is.

Anyone noticed that the same Guardian journalist paraphrased precisely the same story today, but under a headline with a rather different slant: 'Stations to get x-ray security'.

Yesterday the message was 'unworkable security withdrawn, mostly', but today's has reversed emphasis: 'new security introduced, with caveats'.

I wonder what happened overnight....

You're missing something, folks: the basic price of the cube & hammer isn't stated (the 'Price' column says 'CALL') - $6,718 is just the premium for having the designer hammer it for you.

Elsewhere on the site, one can buy a vase for $6,400 or a watch for $4,800. It's that sort of webstore....

Xopher (#5): you make the 'same-chapter-in-four-books' thing sound like a failing, rather than the deliberate device it was.
That was an instance of four of his novels' protagonists experiencing the same event, so it's entirely justifiable that it appears in four narrative threads (not quite word for word). It's tricks like that which I find particularly attractive about Moorcock's writing.

And 'one plot'? Exactly - that's the whole point of the Eternal Champion!

I like Neil G's writing, but Moorcock's made me who I am.

Er, Wray doesn't have a village square. Kirkby Lonsdale does, and there was a similar 'orgy' there in 2000, so it sounds as if the journalist might have been confusing/conflating two events. Or faking it, to invent a red-telephone-village-bobby-roses-round-the-thatched-cottage-door stereotype.

Whatever; it's still a storm in a teacup.

Incidentally, Wray is in Lancashire, whilst Kirkby Lonsdale is 7-8 miles away on the Cumbria border, but nowhere near the Lake District. It's safe to go back in the water.

@Agent86, in #59: Funny you should mention jumping from bridges, as that's precisely what people do from Devil's Bridge in Kirkby Lonsdale.

I suspect some people (myself included, initially) are missing the point. It's not a download. A download was not offered. The text of 'American Gods' has been "made available" for online reading, but Harper Collins haven't given away a free Neil Gaiman book for people to keep forever - and never said they would. Neil G. was mocked in comment #26 for talking about "the online reading experience", but that's precisely what was offered.

If we misinterpreted the announcements and expected a download, that's a different matter, and perhaps both Neil G & the publishers could be criticised for not foreseeing & clearly disabusing our expectations. However, I do think all the criticism about Harper-Collins making a mess of e-publishing is misplaced: they haven't published it in a 'take-away-and-read-at-your-leisure' sense, and didn't claim they would.

It's somewhat analogous to a record label making a track from a band's back-catalogue available for listening online, at a lower resolution than CD-quality and not (intentionally) downloadable: it's a sample, not a giveaway.

Just to nit-pick: Fry's column was published twenty days ago. Sadly, I understand that he's broken an arm (presumably his own), and his Guardian column is on hiatus for a few months.

I think Panda hit the nail on the head in #15.

I don't have a problem with advertising, and don't have a problem with BoingBoing's choice of sponsors. The problem is *how* the advertising has been presented recently.
There's a big difference between an ad appearing alongside an article and the article itself containing a "this posting is brought to you by..." message. It's a dangerous blurring of advertising and editorial content. Personally, I trust BoingBoing's writers not to be influenced by ad partners, but the new acknowledgements *look* bad.

How about simply running ads next to articles without mentioning them in the text? Alternatively, if you particularly want to acknowledge sponsors, how about doing so in standalone postings, rather than in postings about other subjects?

#11 - Very well said.
Michael Swanwick's project is indeed an uplifting Wonderful Thing. I rather regret taking the time to read the mean-spirited comments.

#13 - Ordinarily I'd agree about the artifical scarcity - I don't like 'limited editions' - but this is a special case, where it's primarily about the physical object and the concept; the scarcity is the whole point.