[LINK] Best-Selling Author Refuses $500k; Self-Publishes Instead

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of David Boxall
> Sent: Saturday, 26 March 2011 8:02 PM
> To: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Best-Selling Author Refuses 
> $500k;Self-Publishes Instead
> 
> 
> On 23/03/2011 11:40 AM, Jan Whitaker wrote:
> > At 11:18 AM 23/03/2011, David Boxall wrote:
> >>>> Forever is a long time to earn royalties. So it makes sense for
> >> forever to begin today, not tomorrow.
> >>
> >> ...
> >> Copyright last how long?
> >
> > 70 yrs past the author's death, ...
> So they're hoping for either a change to the law or immortality. :)
> 
Already organised:

Quote/:
[http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2048138,00.html?xid=rss-
mostpopular]

2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

On Feb. 15, 1965, a diffident but self-possessed high school student
named Raymond Kurzweil appeared as a guest on a game show called I've
Got a Secret. He was introduced by the host, Steve Allen, then he played
a short musical composition on a piano. The idea was that Kurzweil was
hiding an unusual fact and the panelists — they included a comedian and
a former Miss America — had to guess what it was.

On the show (see the clip on YouTube), the beauty queen did a good job
of grilling Kurzweil, but the comedian got the win: the music was
composed by a computer. Kurzweil got $200. (See TIME's photo-essay
"Cyberdyne's Real Robot.")

Kurzweil then demonstrated the computer, which he built himself — a
desk-size affair with loudly clacking relays, hooked up to a typewriter.
The panelists were pretty blasé about it; they were more impressed by
Kurzweil's age than by anything he'd actually done. They were ready to
move on to Mrs. Chester Loney of Rough and Ready, Calif., whose secret
was that she'd been President Lyndon Johnson's first-grade teacher.

But Kurzweil would spend much of the rest of his career working out what
his demonstration meant. Creating a work of art is one of those
activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It's an act of
self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don't
have a self. To see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped
by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot
be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial
intelligence.
/Quote 
continue at :
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2048138,00.html#ixzz1HhLd
I6Vr