Archive for the ‘Rambling’ Category

It was announced that the U.S. Government was going to change the anti-piracy notices on new DVDs and Blu-rays to include not one but two unskippable 10-second notices to further harangue the people who didn't steal the discs, telling them  not to steal.

Obviously, this is either a mistake or part of a larger scheme. Of all the people the studios and government might want to harass and shame, why pick on the only people still giving them money? Why make legal movies and TV shows even harder to watch, and pirated products (which have no notices, no commercials, no previews, no time-wasting menu graphics that are keeping you from watching the damn movie you paid for) even more attractive?

It's almost as absurd as the "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" video — also unskippable — before some movies, which, in a fit of almost crippling irony,  may be using music from Dutch composer Melchior Rietveldt without his permission. (Also? If I could click on the car and get one without taking yours away? And you keep yelling at me not to when I haven't? I just might, now.)

The studios can't be that stupid, so I assume the studios have decided that DVDs and Blu-rays are simply no longer cost-effective and streaming is the way to go and therefore they're going to lower the demand for discs by making them increasingly unwatchable. Future changes may include unskippable half-hour documentaries on how piracy leads to record profits for movie studios  the complete downfall of civilization into a brutal, post-apocalyptic wasteland, "Don't Steal, Dammit!" frames inserted every five minutes into movies, "shame placement" programs where anti-piracy diatribes are written into the actors' dialogue, and a point-of-sale rollout program where, after purchasing, an agent follows the customer from the register to their car yelling in their face the whole time, "You gonna steal that? Huh? You gonna pirate it? Answer me! I can shoot you, you know! I can totally shoot you, you legal owner, you!"

Later programs will instruct cashiers to physically rip purchased Blu-rays from the customers' hands and spit on them.

I wish them luck in their new, ineffectual effort. It'll give me more time to get some reading done.

It was announced today that Tor Books, the largest science fiction and fantasy publisher, will from this point on publish its ebooks without DRM restrictions. This means that once you buy the book, you can convert it and read it on any platform. Kindle, Nook, ebook app, whatever. This is a huge deal. It's also the direction the publishing world is going.

Baen Books, about which I have unabashedly gushed for decades, has been selling non-DRMed books since day one, in multiple formats. In many cases if you buy the hardback of a new series, you get a CD containing all the rest of the series. You can even get all those CDs for free here, by permission. And they've prospered.

What prompted a big company to do it? Couple things. One, I believe the saner heads — if not the upper management — wanted it and finally presented the case. DRM doesn't prevent piracy. Any book you want, you can find a pirated copy if you try. No, DRM only annoys the legitimate buyer, who just wants to read the book she paid for how she wants to. Two, there's a huge public outcry against DRM. Three, J. K. Rowling, who probably counts as a Big Six publisher all by herself, finally released the Potter books in ebook form and without DRM. Not much of a danger for her, since she has a built-in, worshipful audience who wants to shower her with money and because people willing to get pirated copies already got them the weekend after each book came out.

And four, and this is a big one: the publishers are fighting Amazon and Apple for control over pricing. And if they can't win that, the least they can do is take away either of those companies' monopolies on their products. Buy a Kindle book with DRM and you have to read it on a Kindle or Kindle app. But without DRM, you can read it wherever you like.

So hooray for Tor! Now we just need to work on all the other problems. As someone who has been reading ebooks since they existed, and someone who has paid my actual cash for the thousands of books on my iPhone and Kindle and computer, I have only a few requests.

Pricing: I don't expect ebook prices to be absurdly low. You're a business, you have to cover your overhead, and successful books need to help cover the losses from less successful books. I get that. But don't expect me to pay hardcover prices, especially when no major retailer sells hardcovers at full price. Personally I'm comfortable at the $9.99 – $12.99 level for new releases. Remember, that seems low to you, but I'm paying for something that costs you nothing to replace, whereas I can't resell it myself. Procuring and editing and presentation still may be a substantial percentage of an ebook, but there is no print run. You can't tell me the 20,000th ebook sold cost you as much to produce as the first. You get a bestseller and ebook sales quickly become all profit.

Also, drop the price as soon as the paperback comes out. When the paperback has been out for months and the ebook is still hardcover price, it makes you look either incompetent, greedy, or contemptuous of ebook readers. Pay attention.

Quality: Proofread the damn things. The number of typos I've found in New York Times Bestseller books is staggering, much less the midlist books.Sir Terry Pratchett's "Snuff" was rife with errors. This month's "Sacre Bleu" by Christopher Moore has a duplicated page. The retailers can't fix them, only the publishers can, and unless there's an embarrassing outcry, for the most part you don't. You don't want to be in the position where the pirated copy is more attractive and dependable than the retail one. Yes, there's extra copyediting and that's another non-profitable position you have to fill, but reputation is important for a publisher.

Availability: Get me the ebooks when the printed book is published. Mostly this happens but occasionally there's a lag. The novelization for "The Cabin in the Woods," available in paperback last week, was available as an ebook in the U.K at the same time but not in the U.S., where it still shows a June 19 release date. I'm assuming this is a clerical error — and Titan, usually a company I quite like, is looking into it — but it's annoying. A few years ago Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, HarperColins and Hachette announced they'd be delaying their ebooks for four months after the print release, undoubtedly pleasing book pirates everywhere. How is that working out for them? (Oh, right, it's part of a price-fixing lawsuit against them now [PDF]).

The regional problem is a bigger one. If a book is released in the U.S., it might not be available overseas, even though the Internet goes everywhere. This gets really frustrating for readers who want to hand you fistfuls of money, but can't. However, regional rights are both more complicated and a significant source of income for authors, and existing contract can't be changed, but maybe you could look into speeding up the sales of those rights so a book can drop worldwide on the same day?

See? I'm not asking for much. I want a fair price for a quality product I can read on any device I like, when I want to read it.

Tor's off to a good start.

In the clash between my resolutions:

1. Blog every day.
2. Only blog if you have something useful or funny to say or share

#2 seems to be winning.

The latest in DC's new "We totally respect women, you bet" line of comics, "Helen Keller: Unleashed" is both inspirational and wicked hot!

Remember, a beautiful and confident woman shouldn't have to be ashamed of how she dresses, or chooses to splash about, or carries on all her conversations with Anne Sullivan while one or both of them is dressing or undressing. Don't be a prude or a hater. And don't miss the pivotal 12-page water pump scene!

Next month: "The Diary of Anne Frank."

He defied conventional reasoning and made the unconventional commonplace and obvious.

He proved that technology could be beautiful.

He demanded that technology be easy to use and as foolproof as possible.

He had a simple, unbelievably complicated goal: "“I want to put a ding in the universe.” And he did just that.

As I write this with my finger on the glass of a small, elegant, handheld device that holds every song I like plus my favorite shows and movies and the entire fricking Internet in my pocket, I thank you Steve, for your crazy geniusness.

Thought of a fun media-spin project I'd like someone to do.

First, film some poor people in a run-down area. Get some interviews, shoot some driveby footage of dingy houses and trailers, get some charts showing income levels, unemployment, the tanking economy, etc. Edit it together into 5 or 6 minutes of compelling video.

Now create two different documentaries, with different voice-overs, opening and closing sequences, music, etc, but with the identical 5-6-minute video in each one. One documentary talks about how Americans are struggling against adversity with courage and determination, the other talks about how much of our tax dollars go to lazy welfare cheaters and unemployment racketeers.

Easy bet both would be convincing, and it would be a cool demonstration of the power of media spin. Go for it.

The Internet: Wow! Google launched a new social media service! Yay!

Google+: Yes, we're just in time to save you from Facebook's privacy violations and Twitter's treacherous shortness. Look, you can assign different people to different "circles" and then, when you post stuff, you can control which of your social circles gets to see what! Isn't that cool and way more non-evil than Facebook?

The Internet: It really is! Thank you, Google! Um, what's this Profile thing?

Google+: To use Google Plus, you have to create a Google Profile so we can connect all your Google stuff together in a not-at-all creepy way. No big, you can choose how much of your private information other people can see.

The Internet: Thank you, Google! …Wait a minute. We have to provide our real names?

Google+: Yes! This is a social network and we want the name that you commonly go by in daily life, so it's easier for people to find you.

The Internet: What if our real names aren't the ones we commonly go by?

Google+: No problem! There are little fields for nicknames and others names, just use those.

The Internet: And those will be displayed instead of our real names?

Google+: Of course not. Your real name will show up anyway.

The Internet: But I want my non-real name to be the one displayed!

Google+: So use it! But keep in mind that it's a violation of our TOS, and if it gets flagged your account will be immediately suspended without warning, and oh by the way that might also affect your access to other Google products so it's a good thing you don't use any of those.

The Internet: How would it get flagged?

Google+: By someone flagging it. Anyone, really. Or if you make a change to your name in your profile and it doesn't look right.

The Internet: What kind of name wouldn't look right?

Google+: Any name that doesn't fit in a one-first-name/one-last-name style or just sounds, you know, weird.

The Internet: Huh. Who decides if a name sounds weird?

Google+: An ill-trained and overworked Google employee with a book of English baby names. His name is Nick, you'd like him. But it's not a big deal, really. We want everyone to feel comfortable joining us!

People who fear stalkers, sexual predators, abusive exes, criminals they've arrested, violent bigots, or others who might do them physical harm: Can we use fake names?

Google+: No.

People who fear reprisals from family, friends, and/or employers over controversial religious, political, or sexual opinions: Can we use fake names?

Google+: No.

People who fear harassment, arrest, or death from oppressive regimes for political dissidence: Can we use fake names?

Google+: No.

People who have already built up a substantial following and reputation with a pseudonym, pen name, stage name, avatar or entertainment personna: Can we use fake names?

Google+: No.

Women who have a more pleasant online experience when they're not being hit on all the time: Can we use fake names?

Google+: No.

Teenagers whose parents don't want them using real names online to avoid being targeted by pedophiles: Can we use fake names?

Google+: No.

People in and outside the U.S. with names that do not fit in the first name, last name format: Can we use our actual names?

Google+: No.

People with real, legal names that just sound weird: Can we use our real names?

Google+: Almost probably!

+Lady Gaga,  +Snoop Dogg, +Soulja Boy, +50 Cent: Can we use fake names?

Google+: Of course! We want everyone to feel comfortable joining us!

The Internet: How do we prove our name is actually our name?

Google+: Nothing could be simpler! Just provide a government-issued ID and we might very well believe you!

People without ID depicting the name they want, people in countries where electronically transmitting an ID is illegal, and people who simply don't want to share ID with an online service without guarantee of how and how long it will be stored: Any other ways?

Google+: Yeah, whatever, give us a link to your Facebook page or something.

The Internet: But couldn't people just make up whatever fake name they wanted as long as it sounded like a normal North American white Anglo-Saxon name and you wouldn't care?

Google+: Probably. The point is, the system works.

The Internet: Couldn't you just require our real names to sign up, but let us choose what names are displayed? You could even let us choose which identities would be displayed to individual circles, which would make Google+ an even more amazing and useful social network.

Google+: Sorry, what? We were busy telling our advertisers about the incredibly targeted information we can provide. But hey, thanks for commenting. Google wants to hear your feedback. As long as we like your name.

Dad and I were never what you'd call close. Didn't talk a lot, didn't spend a lot of time together. He wasn't much of a hands-on father, and I was either out with friends or reading in my room or using half the furniture in the house to support my wildly optimistic, rapidly-growing, 300-foot-long Hot Wheels racetrack. He was there for the important stuff. Taught me to drive, was there when I needed him, mostly shook his head at whatever new scheme his son was cooking up next. Virtually all of my memories of him include him sitting in his chair in the living room, smoking, petting the dog, and watching the world go by our window. One of the very few pictures I have of him is this one, from a posed group photo at his job at Coca Cola.

Dad was not very social either, not very talkative or open. But sometimes someone would call up and he'd answer the phone and his face would light up. Soon some other middle-aged guy would stop by and they'd talk for hours. Afterward he'd just say he knew the guy from "the service" and let it go at that.

He never told me war stories. I knew he'd been in the Korean War and I'd heard him mention Pork Chop Hill before, but he never brought the subject up around me. Until one day he heard from a buddy that there was a book on the subject and he was mentioned in it. By that time I was accomplished in hunting down wanted books for myself from the network of bookstores up and down the East Coast — this is very, very pre-Amazon — and we managed to get a copy. And he was, indeed, mentioned.

The Battle of Pork Chop Hill is actually two infantry battles fought while the various aggressors in the Korean War were negotiating an armistice. The U.N. won the first battle, but only after two days of heavy fighting with lots of casualties and an unbelievable amount of firepower thrown around. The Hill was near an outpost near the Main Line of Resistance, but didn't actually have a lot of strategic value. On March 23, 1953, a Chinese battalion took the hill. U.N. forces fought to regain it but lost half their men before pulling back.

Dad was in Company F, 17th Infantry, under Captain Monroe D. King. King Company made it to the trenches on the hill but got shelled in ten-minute blasts off and off. When they got there, well…

From "Pork Chop Hill: The American Fighting Man In Action, Korea, Spring 1953" by S.L.A. Marshall:

First man to enter the Pork Chop works, Cpl. William H. Bridges, saw two Chinese rise from among the rocks beyond the parados and fire directly on First Platoon with submachine guns. He yelled, "Watch out!" and dove for the trench. The burst cut down five men close behind him.

Pvt Rudolph Gordon made the trench almost at the same moment. Turning leftward, he started for the second bunker down the line. Three grenades came at him from behind its far wall. They fell short. He and Bridges grenaded back. But protected by the bunker mass, the Chinese grenadiers played African dodger, revealing head and shoulder just long enough to heave their potato mashers.

Within the perimeter which the group formed on the knob were three small, partly collapsed bunkers. Eight or nine of the worst-spent men took shelter under their sandbag walls. The others moved into nearby shell craters. The holes were not deep enough for good cover. Using spoons, knives and bayonets for the work they lacked the strength to wield the small entrenching tool they tried to widen and deepen them. The only other activity was an endless cleaning of rifles and carbines, done with toothbrushes, the standby equipment of the soldier when nothing else will free his grimed rifle. Kuzmick set the example.

The others followed it, though their response was trancelike. Since early morning they had been without water. Faces caked, tongues thickened by the dust shower which plagued the hill, under lashing by the guns and mortars, they no longer talked to each other. Nor did they move from their places except when shaken loose by an exploding shell. From the foreground, an almost constant bullet fire rained upon the knob. Occasionally, a grenade came sailing in. Yet they saw not a single human target, and therefore made no attempt to return fire. In the end that perhaps mattered very little, since most of them no longer had sufficient strength to raise weapon to shoulder and aim. Than this, there is no more moving entry in the record of King, that young Americans too exhausted to fight may still obey such group discipline as their enfeebled resources permit. It was to be their portion for four hours.

"We lay there and took it," said Corporal Bridges. "There was nothing else to do." To the few who endured it, the earlier trials of the day seemed nothing compared with this final test. Hit and harassed, endlessly cleaning weapons with no valid hope of again using them, they still held ground. The earth and rock banks which they had raised above their small craters were creased and scattered by the bullet storm. The enemy artillery, which had ranged widely over Pork Chop, now concentrated against this one small area of defiance. The embankments caved in. The sandbag walls were flattened. Repeatedly, the men were buried under the dirt shower. Weapons freshly cleaned were refouled. Again the toothbrushes were plied. In this way continued the monotonously deadly round. At the end, fourteen had survived it, sick and shaken but relatively whole-bodied. Seven were Americans, the others ROKs.

The book reads like a love letter. Marshall wrote as if all soldiers were gods, using fiercely overblown prose that raises those men to unmatchable deities. And maybe, for that time, they were. Dad seemed quietly proud that we'd read it, even as he told us to forget about it. I think he was glad we knew, but was even gladder we found out from someone besides him, if that makes sense.

My dad acted bravely, both in actions and in endurance, fighting for his country. But 33 other men in King Company who acted just as bravely never came off the Hill.

To my knowledge, I have not lost any immediate family or friends in combat, and in that I know that I am extremely fortunate. Dad died of lung cancer decades after the war, long after seeing his grandchildren born. But today, for his sake, I honor the brave men who fought shoulder-to-shoulder with him those two days in 1953 and never made it home.

According to some enlightened nutbars, the Rapture is due to hit tomorrow and people are panicking. Well, I say panicking. In fact, a very few people are smug and looking skyward, a few thousand more are selling those schnooks post-Rapture insurance and pet-housing, and the rest of us are shaking our heads and cracking Rapture jokes.

But the fact remains that someday all hell will break loose. If not Rapture, then nuclear war or asteroid attack or zombie outbreak or giant mutated lizard or just plain economic collapse. There's no way to know for sure what will happen before, what will happen then, and what will happen after, but things will change and you will change with them or you will most surely die. Are you up to the challenge? Are you ready to face directly into either the confirmation or utter denial of everything you've ever believed in?

If you're the person I think you are, you're not only ready but eager, and you've got front-row tickets as well as back-stage passes to the cast party after the invasion. But there will be strange and trying times, so here's some tips on how to spend your last days on Oith.

1 ) If you have warning, max out all of your credit cards and sell your stocks short. Buy everything you've ever wanted, pick up a complete collection of all the movies produced between 1953 and 1986, buy a car with your Discover Card. Why not? Borrow stuff from everybody you know, just so you can roll on it. Or stock up on ammo, non-perishable food items, chlorine tablets, and hand-cranks to recharge your iPod, just in case.

2 ) Or take your newly-gotten gain and buy a lot of land. Fence it in, a real fence, the kind that'll bring a tear to the eye of an Arizona lawman. Build two entrances, one heavily guarded main gate and a small, hidden, back gate. Build a huge, well-lit, well-guarded, luxurious-looking house in the middle. Build a small, comfortable, hidden house by the back entrance. Live in the small house. Mount three fully automatic machine guns facing the big entrance. During the riots and insurrections of the End Days you'll be able to sit back, free from worry, and spend your time idly gunning down the rampaging crowds that try to break in. Guaranteed hours of fun for the whole family!

3 ) If you need to go out for supplies during the violent times, wear a Kevlar suit and cover it with wiring. Put some highway flares on your chest and back with duct tape and run wires from them to an old garage door opener. Keep that in your hand at all times. Keep your eyes wide and glaring. Go about your business, no one will bother you.

4 ) Learn to give really good oral sex. Whether you're male or female, if there's the slightest chance that you won't be the local tribal chieftain then you'd better learn to dive down there with a smile. There won't be many renewable commodities that you can lay hands on in a hurry, but if you follow my advice you'll always be welcomed.

5 ) When the sun goes nova do not look at it directly. This can cause irreparable damage to your eyes. Take two pieces of cardboard, 8" by 8", and paint them black. Using a needle (ask your parents for help) make a pinhole in the center of one of the pieces. Now hold them up so that the sun's explosive force will go through the hole onto the center of the other card. In the split picosecond before you burn away screaming into a puff of greasy ash you'll be able to see the image reproduced perfectly on the second piece of cardboard. Do not use smoked glass.

6 ) Take the time now to learn how to tell groceries by touch alone. You may have to spend quite a few months scuba-diving in supermarkets for sustenance, and this will let you scoop out the good stuff before everybody else. Lock yourself in your closet and memorize the feel of fruit juice cans, the distinctive shape of packaged ham, and discover the foolproof way to distinguish tuna fish from cat food.

7 ) Just for fun, get three friends and four different colored horses and ride through the streets in flowing robes and serious expressions.

8 ) If things threaten to get nuclear you have two choices: A. Move to where the bombs won't hit, or B. Move to where they will. Your preference would depend on your attitudes towards Armageddon, post-holocaust living and the afterlife, and are entirely up to you. If you move to where the bombs are sure to hit, try to go with style. Move to ground zero. Paint an X spreading out from your house. Invite friends over for the Big Blowout. If you know the bombs are coming, go out there with a bat and see if you can set one off before it hits. Take some friends and a blanket and try to catch one.

9 ) Plan for your food supply. Watching for good sales at Publix won't cut it in an aftermath situation. Instead, raise bunnies; they're fairly cheap to feed, don't take up much space, breed like, well, rabbits, and they make good eatin'. Leave the eyes in, though. Best part, man, really.
Also, and I'm just saying, you might want to look up which parts of your neighbors are edible.

10 ) As much as circumstances will allow, nail anything you can get it up for. Since radiation of all wavelengths will be thrown around like hairspray when the End happens, fertility might be an iffy thing and generations of the future may depend on whomever had the forethought to spread his seed from here to Tierra del Fuego. Think of it! Legions of your sons and daughters, marching under your guidance and tutelage! Your features will become the standard of beauty, you will rule as the literal father of the country. Hey, if nothing else it's a good line to use tonight.

So this morning I pull on to the I-4 on-ramp from Saxon in Orange City, and as I'm getting up to highway speeds I glance to my left just in time to see a sports car — a silver, Corvetty-looking thing — wedged tightly in the trees some 50 feet up the bank. I immediately think two things: I hope no one's hurt, and that would be a cool picture. And then I'm on the highway.

There follows a few miles of mental gymnastics. My two thoughts stay with me for several miles. Did anyone else see that? Have emergency crews been called? Nothing was moving, so either the person(s) involved is out or already gone and the car is still there. Should I go back and make sure? Should I go back and get a picture?

I pulled off at the next exit and went back.

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