ventus available online with CC license

one of my favorite authors, karl schroeder just released ventus under a creative common license. [eg. pdf] see karl's site [recently redesigned] for different download formats.

Ventus is a novel of information apocalypse set in the far future. For a thousand years the sovereign Winds have maintained the delicate ecological balance of the terraformed planet Ventus. Now an alien force threatens to wrest control of the terraforming system away from the Winds...

Jordan Mason, a young tradesman, is thrust into the midst of an ancient galactic conflict when he becomes the only human on Ventus who can locate the source of the alien threat. But will he side with the Winds, who have brutally suppressed technological development among the human colonists of Ventus? Or will he throw in his lot with an entity that may be planning to remake Ventus in its own, deathly image? Ventus incorporates ideas about nanotechnology, terraforming, and information theory in an epic tale of war, tragic love, betrayal and transcendence.

a photographer's notes: images on facebook

if you care about copyrights, especially your rights on your images, you may want to keep them away from facebook.
first their stuff:

No Site Content may be modified, copied, distributed, framed, reproduced, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted, transmitted, or sold in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, without the Company's prior written permission, except that the foregoing does not apply to your own User Content (as defined below) that you legally post on the Site.

now your stuff:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

plain and clear. if you are a serious photographer, your images do not belong in facebook.

[group link: My photos are MINE! NOT Facebook's! Change the Terms and conditions!. so far as i can tell, this group was formed in 2007, and has amassed 87164 members. facebook has not changed its terms and conditions, and i doubt it will.]

recently noted quotes

lock-ins are never good for customers: a business that isn't confident that it can keep your business by providing the best product at the best price is a business that isn't planning on providing the best product at the best price. -- cory doctorow [in defense of complaining]

look, she is nuts, but we cannot give her 10ccs of atheism and send her home. -- tal [house, m.d.]

Don't you have paint to watch dry? -- cosma shalizi

Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity. —- marshall mcluhan

This page was last updated in 1984 by a gifted psychic who foresaw all that is described here. -- mr bunny's hutch

ah, complexity: the mother of all consulting fees! -- marco tabini

you may have an invisible opponent, but you still have to see him. -- sandra jorgenson [iaido 5th dan sensei, mu mon kai]

i paid a life to get these parents. [because i pay a lot more, i get better parents] -- eren yigit [age 9]

properly implementing a singleton requires a number of the tricks shown earlier. -- the ruby programming language

people don't change. for example, i will keep repeating: people don't change! -- house [house, m.d.]

cyborg: do you even have opposable thumbs?
beastboy: most of the time! -- teen titans [fourth season]

why is the notion of a fundamentalist comedian funny, or at least quite odd? -- john allen paulos [irreligion]

the incongruity necessary for appreciating humor is only recognizable with an open mind and fresh perspective. -- john allen paulos [irreligion]

people want interesting clutter. people want clutter that is on sale. -- matthew powell

left to its own devices, the mind runs off in random directions as synapses connect to others that happen to be in the neighborhood. -- jack hart [a writer's coach]

Dear site operators: Here's a quarter, go buy a terabyte from Amazon S3 and stop complaining. -- cory doctorow [17 tips for getting bloggers to write about you]