Unless some new system arrives for promoting new authors, I don't see how self-published ebooks help anything from the new author's perspective. If anything, I see them hurting things.

Vanity press has always been a joke, but it's been useful as a way of differentiating between a novice and an author that at least someone thinks is worth reading. Remove that and it's going to be a mess. New authors will be easily lost amidst the scurf if there are no barriers to publishing. How will reviewers know what to look at? How will buyers know what is the product of a craftsman versus the product of a hobbyist? How will fantasy writers get pictures of scantily-clad elven maidens to use on the cover? Once word gets out that all you need is a text document and Calibre, we're screwed.

Pretty sure that's the definition of painting, not art. Painting is a genre, a subset.

Art is not a thing, not a genre, not an evaluation or measure of aesthetic worth - it's a framework for investigation. The Mona Lisa is 'art' in the same way that the polio vaccine is 'science'. To call a work of art 'Art' is poor usage and leads to poor understanding. Art investigates the internal and human world just as science investigates the external and natural world. Ever wonder why the term Arts and Sciences exists? Yeah, that's not an accident.

Any definition of art requires room for painting, spoken word poetry, photography, dance, etc, etc. And - again, just like science - any definition has to allow for new avenues of investigation. For example, video games, the catalogue of 'things I found at the bottom of my shoe,' whatever. Art doesn't have to be 'good' to be art. That's how Thomas Kincade makes a living.

No, it will be dog slow on ALL platforms.

Us: Hey Adobe, this converted HTML5 stuff is awful!
Adobe: We know! Terrible isn't it? It sure ran nice in Flash though - maybe you should stick with that.

This is borderline retarded.

First, there is no barrier of entry for creative artists. There is no accreditation for writers, painters, photographers, songwriters, etc that is necessary to practice. Can the same be said for engineers, programmers, etc? Can anyone do your job? No. Agreeing to pay anyone $30/hr to write without a formal approval process - how's that sound to you? Stupid? We're in agreement then.

Second, they are creating something with an intangible value. Engineers, etc, all create something with a tangible value, something that - if it works properly - can be measured as worth x because it fulfills a specified need. You are hired because you can produce code or documents or whatever as needed. But so can anyone with the equivalent, measurable skillset. Like it or not, you are to a large degree interchangeable with a thousand others.

A well-written song or novel has no such guaranteed value (it may have no interested audience). Nor does a successful songwriter or novelist (his next work be awful). Nor are the artists interchangeable. This kind of creative work is done on spec because you're only as good as your last piece. And even if what you create is amazing, there's still no guarantee that anyone will be interested.

Can the same be said for a programmer or engineer? If your last project didn't work out, does that mean your skills are in question, your perceived worth gutted, your ability to make a wage practicing your profession gone? Of course not. Your product (code, documentation, etc) has a market even if your current project flops. You still have your measurable skills and the failure wasn't completely yours (giving you the benefit of the doubt). Your profession is collaborative in a way that it isn't with creatives. Songwriters, authors, etc are in control of the entire process in regards to producing a product. Sure, there are session musicians and sound editors etc, but these are paid help. Creatives do everything on spec. If someone takes all the risks, why shouldn't they get all the benefits when it works out well? If you come up with the idea for, and proceeded to write, a piece of code that's worth millions to the world on your own time, wouldn't you expect the same? Yeah, I thought so.

As for the creative types thinking they're better than you, how do they express that exactly? Do they kick sand in your face? Sleep with your girlfriend and brag about it? Laugh at your unicorn poetry?

All that said, I'm completely for this idea. You work it so I get paid $30/hr to write spacegun krazy krazy robot smut novels. I also play the kazoo at an expert level, so I might moonlight to make some extra dough.

The page states the jpegs are 'originals' which is, of course, impossible. The left images have jpeg artifacts, meaning they've clearly been compressed from the original source. Further, they can't be the true photographic originals because in some of the simulated WebP images (really pngs) the same artifacts are not there (e.g. around the football player's head).

In all of the images, the WebP versions are lighter and, for the most part, sharper than their counterparts. The difference in some is quite significant. In the night shot for example, there are red lights at the top and to the right of the structure that are almost imperceptible in the jpeg.

The only image I would consider worse is the final image - it's totally blown out.

Well, yes, but that's the galling part. His career is founded upon divining the merit of works within a specific medium - he's the cinematic peer of an art critic. You'd think he'd need at least a somewhat less juvenile definition of art to be qualified to do his job.

I think you're being far too literal in your reading of Duchamp. What's the difference between 'destroying art' and destroying its conventions / expectations? Regardless, he clearly didn't destroy art - but he certainly changed the way it must be approached (intentionally or not).

Art is analogous to Science; it's a framework of investigation (not an aesthetic designation like Ebert seems to think). Internal and emotional as opposed to external and empirical.

Hold on there Jean Luc, I think they were referring to the list in the first link. (unless wanton boobery is afoot and they updated it to cover their tracks)

Tech cult No. 1: The Slashdot Samurai
Tech cult No. 2: The Sirens of the Singularity
Tech cult No. 3: The High Priests of Wikipedia
Tech cult No. 4: The Temple of Drupal
Tech cult No. 5: The Way of the Warp (OS/2)
Tech cult No. 6: The Open Sourcerors

His "definition" of art is pretty naive.

So he's predicating entry into the category of art on appeal. Art is neither a positive nor negative designation (thus, bad art exists). The definition and evaluation are not the same.

And the idea that participating / winning negates its ability to be considered art is completely arbitrary. There are different genres with different expectations that expand all the time. Most art I can think of already requires participation (also known as viewing, reading, listening, etc) - why should objectives disqualify anything? He gives no answer for that. Pretty weak stuff.