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With sales expected to triple over the next three years, the publishers and Apple, Inc., whose iPad readers are a major competitor in the ebook market (along with the Barnes & Noble Nook and Amazons various Kindle models), were feeling huge market pressures.

The competition was primarily coming from Amazon, which had offered electronic versions of books for an initial price of $9.99, far below the list price of new hardcovers, now approaching $30 or more. Amazons customer base, which appreciated the lower cost of versions that, after all, did not have to be printed on paper or sold via physical stores, snapped up the electronic books by the millions.

So, the Justice Department alleges, publishers like Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Penguin, along with others, conspired with Apple to seize control of the ebook market from Amazon and drive up prices on downloadable versions.

Some of the publishers have settled with Justice without admitting liability, while Apple and others are fighting the conspiracy charges.

The DOJ says the companies feared that Amazons low prices would cause consumers to demand reductions on the cost of all books, and eventually lead Amazon to sell content directly to readers, bypassing traditional publishers and aiding Kindle sales.

The publishers and Apple argue that Amazons market dominance was leading to it becoming a monopoly, driving competitors out of business by selling below cost.

But the DOJ says retailers were being denied the right to set their own prices by the conspiracy. That seems right: Consumers, not cartels, deserve to benefit from lower-cost methods.

Its not only the bottom line, its the last word.

The Times Argus of Barre, Montpelier (Vt.), April 20, 2012

Ben Cohen is doing his bit.

More:
New England editorial roundup

Jason Mraz may have set the world alight with the white-boy rap The Remedy (I Won't Worry) and the summery pop of 'I'm Yours' but his latest album 'Love is a Four Letter Word' is doing a pretty good job of extinguishing any flames of credibility that he once had. New York Daily News have described the release as being packed with " the emptiest bromides this side of a Tony Robbins infomercial" and other reviewers have been less than kind.

Mraz's breakthrough single 'I'm Yours' was released in 2008. A lot has changed in four years and Mraz may well find that he struggles to find an audience for his new material. According to the New York Daily News, Love may well be a four-letter word, but his album is only a one-star album. A review from Associated Press is kinder, though opts for description, rather than critique of the album. Writing for The Guardian, Caroline Sullivan acknowledges Mraz's obvious musical talent, saying "Lyrically, Mraz may be all fluffy towels and soft blankets, but he pairs his words with a variety of genres that show him to be a cracking musician."

The rest is here:
Jason Mraz - Jason Mraz's Four Letter Word' Met With Lukewarm Reviews

SHAWN McCARTHY OTTAWA From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Published Tuesday, Apr. 17, 2012 4:14PM EDT Last updated Tuesday, Apr. 17, 2012 11:18PM EDT

The federal government is asserting its control over pipelines including the proposed Northern Gateway oil-sands project taking from regulators the final word on approvals and limiting the ability of opponents to intervene in environmental assessments.

In proposed legislation unveiled by Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver on Tuesday, the Harper government will clear away regulatory hurdles to the rapid development of Canadas natural resource bounty.

Ottawa is aiming to reduce the number of projects that undergo federal environmental assessment by exempting smaller developments completely and by handing over many large ones to the provinces. It will also bring in new measures to prevent project opponents from delaying the assessment process by flooding hearings with individuals who face no direct impacts but want to speak against the development.

At a Toronto press conference, Mr. Oliver said the proposed changes are aimed at providing quicker reviews in order to reduce regulatory uncertainty and thereby create more jobs and investment in Canadas booming resource sector.

We are at a critical juncture because the global economy is now presenting Canada with an historic opportunity to take full advantage of our immense resources, he said. But we must seize the moment. These opportunities wont last forever.

Resource-rich western provinces greeted the proposed changes warmly, saying they are eager to take over environmental assessments. Mr. Oliver said Ottawa will only transfer authority for project reviews to provinces that have similar standards as the federal government.

Provinces in central and Atlantic Canada were more cautious, wanting to know more details before drawing conclusions.

Environmental groups and some aboriginal leaders said the government is sacrificing environmental protection for development, and is intent on railroading all opposition to its vision of rapid development of oil sands and other resources.

A key flash point is the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would carry oil-sands bitumen to the British Columbia coast for export to Asia by supertanker. The Harper government has insisted that it is a national priority to expand pipeline access for energy producers to access fast-growing Asian markets.

Read more from the original source:
Ottawa elbows regulators in quest for final word on pipeline approvals

April 17, 2012, 11:57 AM PDT

Takeaway: Words page and section breaks often confound users. They often enter them when they dont mean to, creating structural problems that the user doesnt know how to eliminate.

Other than styles, page and section breaks probably cause the most confusion and trouble for the untrained user. Documents end up with unwanted breaks that play havoc with page numbering, formats, and printing. Users dont always realize that theyre the problem - they inserted the breaks, whether intentionally or not.

You can create a new page at any time by pressing [Ctrl]+[Enter]. Or, click the Page Break option in the Pages group on the Insert tab. (Page Break is on the Insert menu in Word 2003.) Unfortunately, manual page breaks (also known as hard page breaks) cause trouble because they dont flow with the documents structure. As you add and delete elements, you might find manual page breaks no longer appropriate. Fortunately, theyre easy to delete. Position the cursor at the beginning of the next page and press [Delete]. Or, click the Show/Hide option in the Paragraph group on the Home tab to display the page break element, highlight it, and press Delete. Manual breaks are probably the easiest break problem to find and resolve.

Manual page breaks might be easy to insert, but theyre seldom the best way to break. Sometimes the break really belongs to the text. That happens when you want a break to occur before or after a specific paragraph of text. Consequently, you could end up with an unexpected page break thats all but impossible to get rid of, unless you know its cause. To access these options, click the Paragraph groups dialog launcher and then click the Line And Page Breaks tab.

Word enables the Widow/Orphan Control by default. This option prevents a single line from appearing at the top or bottom of a page. The remaining options, which youll apply as needed, follow:

These options are almost always preferable to a manual break.

Section breaks can be more troublesome than page breaks, because many users dont understand the nature of sections. A section lets you control formatting as needs change. For instance, you might want to print part of or an entire page in landscape in the middle of a document thats using portrait orientation. To do so, youd insert a new section for the landscape components and format that section as landscape. The sections before and after would remain in portrait. To access section breaks, click the Page Layout tab.

Originally posted here:
Troubleshoot page and section breaks in Microsoft Word

Earlier today, the Associated Press's Stylebook sent out the following tweet:

YES: This is wonderful news!We now support the modern usage! [Insert cheeky use of "hopefully" here!] Because among the ranks of the Grammar Rules We Knowingly Break Because Those Rules Are Stupid, the long-standing edict against "hopefully" has long held a place at the top. "Hopefully," the law of grammar has informed us, should be used only in the most literal sense: to describe something that is done in a hopeful manner. Used in the way the majority of English-speakers use it -- as a proxy for hope -- the word is, we are told, simply wrong.

As the AP put it in a previous tweet:

Got that?Do not use it.

The anti-"hopefully" mandate has been a bad grammar rule in the manner of all bad grammar rules: It doesn't track with the way people actually use the language. The ruleis completely out of touch with those it's meant to regulate. And while grammar guides, by nature, will always represent a tension between the vernacular use of a language and the normative use of it ... still, when everyone's just ignoring a rule, that rule demands amendment. We talk about language being a living thing; implied in the clich is the idea that, for living things, "growth" and "life" are pretty much the same thing. And the best way to let language live -- to let it grow, to let it flourish -- is to rid it of obsolete rules, just as the AP has done today.

So: Yay! The change is a small thing, but it's a reminder of a broader truth: that language evolves -- just like the Internet itself -- as a product of end-user innovation. Top-down guidelines and regulations can be valuable; but they are valuable only insofar as they reflect people's habits and assumptions. Language, like any good technology, must be responsive to the people who use it.

More From The Atlantic

Original post:
Grammar Regulators Concede to the 'Modern Usage' of a Word