Book meme, birthday fun

May have done an earlier version of this before; the top 25 sci-fi/fantasy books on What Should I read next; liked/disliked/want to read. Annoyingly, doesn't have "wouldn't touch with a barge pole" or "can't be bothered to read" which is why I didn't also do the top 25 contemporary, as while there are some good books on that list, there are some meh and some I just don't care about.

( What Should I read next... )

One thing I didn't know, what should I read next is a Mythic Beasts project. Which means it's chrislightfoot and the MySociety bods. Note the cunning way they've linked to Amazon using their user id as well; go buy something, they get a cut -)

Also, this one doesn't have "read this now", So I bolded Strange & Norrell just to remind people; leant my copy to susannah_banana over the weekend, 'twas her birthday, much fun has been had.

Only, I don't do kite flying very well.

Shark jumped? Livejournal finally gets the ads working

OK, the news post went live a few hours back, I've been reading and messing around. matbowles exists, currently, just so I can mess around with different advert settings. I may also use it just to see how ugly I can get a default layout, but that'll be a side project.

They haven't announced it, but there are new Terms of Service and a new Privacy Policy. (both via no_lj_ads). daweaver has written up an analysis of the changes in LJ's Social Contract, but my principle concern is the impact on the business model.

LJ used to be a Public Commons; free to all, and those that wished to support it financially did so and got extra perks, but we were mostly paying to support the site overall. Now, the site has adverts (and boy are they annoying; log out and trawl around the main site to see them), so I'm not paying to support the site and the services it provides to all, I'm just getting my perks.

So, from now on, I am merely buying a service from them, not supporting a site. So, I switch into annoyed consumer mode rather than site supporter. They've taken away the model that made LJ a great community, and turned it into just another revenue stream. Still, at least free users only see the ads on "sponsored+" journals and not the main site. Paid users (while logged in), never see them anywhere. So at least there is a reason to keep paying that I can see the point of.

/geekery - everyone have a good weekend?