Some time in the last year or two, domain names asking a simple yes-or-no question have started popping up.¹ The earliest examples I can think of would be Is it friday? and Is it Christmas?, neither of which have a hard-to-guess URL.

While an almost absurd amount of minimalism (coupled with unorthodoxly large font sizes) is typical, such sites have become somewhat less devoid of content recently. One such example, Are the iPhone APIs public yet? by Peter Hosey, even goes so far as to detail the provided answer in several paragraphs. An RSS feed alerts you when the answer changes (which, by now, it has).

And then there’s MORE. Uru, and the inevitably coupled Cyan Worlds, has been a rather tragic story especially for us more involved fans, and the most recent (vague) prospect has been MORE. With the indefinite hold of that, fellow fan vid has been asking “Is it MORE yet?”.

You can question, as I do, the effect (or lack thereof) this may have on much of anything. If the goal is the change the answer to the question, whose responsibility is it to do so?

Well, I have taken it on my responsibility to at least pose the question at a more public, permanent place. Is It MORE Yet?, in addition to giving a straight answer, also encourages visitors to do something about it, even if it is so little as to read or reply to vid’s thread.

After so many years, it is easy to give up hope. I personally find, as a hidden gem on the site suggests, that the goal isn’t quite as clearly defined as “just bring Uru online again”. But I’m also interested in everyone else coming up with their own answers.

1. Has anyone coined a term for these yet? ↩

Sometimes stories are best told without any dialog or commentary — it’s what I loved so much about the first half or so of WALL•E.

And it’s what makes Carlos Lascano’s short film so mesmerizing.

Via Scott Stevenson

As CNet reports, the Copyright Royalty Board has failed to push through with its increase from 9.1 cents to 15 cents of royalties for each song downloaded from online store. Whether Apple’s threat to shut down the iTunes Store played any role (or how serious it was) will perhaps never be answered, but it’s not hard for the masses to side with Apple on this one. Songs are hardly cheap at this point, and who would want the prices to further increase?

Some not-so-good news in the same article, though:

The board also set the same rate for CDs and established a 24-cent rate for ringtones.

So for a medium that’s typically shorter and lower-quality, and generally of little artistic merit, you pay almost thrice the rate in royalties as for when you get the actual full song. It doesn’t justify Apple’s absurd 99-cent ringtone pricing (that’s on top of the purchase of the song itself), but it explains part of it.

With such prices — and attempts to increase them, even while the necessary technological infrastructure keeps getting simpler and cheaper — , is it any wonder people have a hard time sympathizing with the complaints of piracy?

Via David: Peter Norvig’s Presidential Election 2008 FAQ, or “FF00FF”¹.

Nice and largely neutral overview, with a mix of the obvious (”What is this election about?”) as well as otherwise hard-to-find gathered answers (”How honest or dishonest are the[ candidates]?”; “Who can best reach across the aisle?”). As an informed voter, you owe it to yourself to at least skim over this before making your decision come November 4.

1. after the combination of red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) RGB colors in hexadecimal — the color used as background for the headings ↩

Ahhh, now this is good news.

GOG.com has made deals with publishers to redistribute classic computer games online at a relatively low cost ($5.99 or $9.99), DRM-free and modernized to be compatible with XP and Vista. Already among the promised titles: Fallout 2 and and Freespace 2.

See, this is how you fight copyright infringement: not by demonizing (RIAA lawsuits), not by abusing (DRM; copy protection), but by offering a fair legal alternative.

(Via AppleNova)