Ideas & Analysis

Discussions of various issues including suggested solutions to problems and pure speculation

Novel Compression Schemes

I’ve been selling my writing professionally since I was an undergrad, now literally forty years ago. I’ve had to do remarkably little selling. My first story and first article both sold to the first places I sent them. I’ve never had a publisher turn down a computer book proposal. (Granted that selling books to a publisher you co-own is rarely a challenge.) My fiction has been a mixed bag, but in general a story either sells quickly or not at all.

All changed. This is the toughest market for novel-length SFF since, well, forever. I’ve just spent two years writing Ten Gentle Opportunities, and now the selling begins. This is a new thing for me. I’ve historically considered tireless self-promoters to be tiresome self-promoters, and now I are one. I hate to go that way, and if there were another way I’d already be taking it.

It begins this weekend, when I have a chance to pitch to a major SF publisher at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference. The pitch happens in a time slot literally eight minutes long. I have eight minutes to make a bleary editor hungry to read my book. No pressure.

The primary challenge is to summarize the novel in synopses of various sizes, from 5,000 words down to…140 characters. Various markets and agents prefer synopses of various sizes, so they’d all better be right there on the shelf, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

This is harder than it looks; nay, it’s diabolical. The story itself is insanely complicated to begin with: One of my beta testers described it as “a Marx Brothers movie with twice as many Marx Brothers.” That’s just how I write, as anyone who’s read The Cunning Blood will understand. I have a mortal fear of not giving my readers their money’s worth, and a venial fear of being boring.

The way to write synopses of five different lengths is to start with the longest one, and write each one from scratch. In other words, don’t write the longest one and then try to cut it down to the next smaller size. This is like trying to turn hexacontane into propane by pulling carbon atoms randomly out of the middle; sooner or later the molecule has too many holes and falls apart.

It’s work, but it works. I finished the 300-word synopsis earlier this morning, and then set my hand to the gnarliest task of all: the “elevator pitch,” AKA logline. I get to summarize a manic 94,200 word story into 140 characters. I’ve actually been trying and failing to nail this for literally six months, since I finished the first draft. I first thought it would be easy, as I used to write cover copy for early Coriolis books. Heh.

The solution, as I said, is to start from the beginning. Each time I wrote a synopsis from scratch, I was forced to take two more steps up the ladder, and look down at the story from a little more height. You literally tell it again, each time with half the words you had last time. In the process, you get a clearer sense for what the story is about, and what the major themes are. Finally you end up with something you can say in an elevator between two adjacent floors:

A spellbender flees to our world with ten stolen nuggets of magic, and a crew of AIs helps him battle a repo spirit sent to retrieve him.

Will this work? Dunno. I guess I’ll find out this weekend.

Why I Like Old Software

Apr 5th, 2013

by Jeff Duntemann.

11 comments

I still use Office 2000. I still use Visio 2000. I still use InDesign 2.0. I still use VMWare Workstation 5. Hell, I still use Windows XP. Am I lazy? Am I cheap? Am I nuts? No, no, and hell no. Every piece of software I use is the result of a calculated decision and a certain amount of research. I am by no means averse to paying for software, and I do so regularly. But I don’t always upgrade, especially if the upgrades cost money and/or deliver 80% of their value to the vendor. By that I mean software designed to win what I call “pip wars” (feature-comparison charts on review sites) or place new restrictions on installation and use ostensibly to limit piracy. (Mostly what anti-piracy features do is massage titanic corporate egos.) There are loads of people who will stand there drooling in wait of the next major release, money in hand, never suspecting that the largest single reason for the upgrade is to keep the revenue stream flowing.

The longer I use my Old, Old, Software, the better I like it. Here are a few reasons why:

It’s already paid for. The longer I use it, the more hours of use I get for my buck.
By and large, old software (at least pre-2002 or so) doesn’t activate. The benefits of activation flow entirely to the vendor, at least in circumstances where the benefits are not entirely imaginary. Most of the time, they are. Activation delivers nothing but annoyance and occasionally downtime to the end user–and in doing so, trains many otherwise honest users to be pirates.
Old software is smaller and faster on new machines. Bloat is real, even if it’s not the result of fighting pip wars somewhere. Office 2000 seems almost supersonic on my quadcore, doubly so on my quadcore from my new SSD.
Old software respects the skills I’ve developed over the years. Most of the changes I’ve seen across major upgrades are gratuitous, and don’t add any value over the old versions. UI changes in particular had better deliver spectacular new value, because while I learn them they slow me way down.
Tutorial books on old software can be had for almost nothing. I routinely buy books on early-mid 2000’s software for $5 or so…books that had original cover prices in the $40-$50 range. Many of these books are unused remainder copies that are essentially new.
The argument I hear when I make this point mostly cook down to, Isn’t it eventually obsolete? That depends on what “obsolete” means. Backward compatibility is usually retained, because people rebel when it isn’t. (Windows 8? Are those peasants carrying registered torches and pitchforks?) The only significant thing that Word 2000 doesn’t do is handle docx files. I bought Atlantis to convert any docx files I might need to keep on hand. (Atlantis also creates extremely clean epubs.) Word 2000 is weak on PDF skills, so I bought PDF Xchange Pro to handle that, and as a bonus eliminate any need for the exploit farm we know as Adobe Reader.

I do upgrade software when I see a need. Windows XP eventually replaced Win2K here, even though it activates, because it had certain things I eventually judged useful. I’ve purchased InDesign three times, because I make money laying out books and the new features were useful, but I stopped when Adobe added their uniquely paranoid activation. (Interestingly, I haven’t felt any compelling need to upgrade since V2.0, and I’m interviewing Scribus.) I dumped Dreamweaver when I wanted to move my Web pages to CSS, because Komposer did CSS as well as I needed it to, for free and without activation. It pains me to say it, but with Delphi pricing now up in four figures (and encumbered by activation) I’ve moved all my Pascal programming to Lazarus 1.0.6.

This last issue is important. Open source has changed a great many things. I used to pay for email clients, including Eudora and Poco Mail. Since I discovered Thunderbird, I’ve stayed with Thunderbird. Why? Email is a mature technology. I’m not sure there’s much innovation left to be wrung from it. This is less true of Web browsers, and I now use Chrome most of the time. But man, what’s new in word processing? What? Lemme think for a second… Hang on, it’ll come to me…

This is a key point: The basic mechanisms of computing are mature. There has been time for the slower dev cycles of open source to catch up with commercial software. The action is out on the edges, in speech recognition, automated translation, vertical markets of many kinds, and niche-y mobile apps. We’re still seeing some useful evolution in Web browsers, but there’s damned little in releases of Office past 2000 that I find compelling. Most of the new features are UI tweaks and useless gimmicks.

Old software still has fizz: The best we could want already is!

Rant: The Real Problem With Clerical Celibacy

Mar 12th, 2013

by Jeff Duntemann.

3 comments

Black smoke. I guess we try again tomorrow.

I had intended to post a couple of pertinent entries during Pope Week, as some are calling this, but got involved in a new book proposal I’m working on. I genuinely expected that we’d have a new pope by now. Not so.

Anyway. I haven’t done a rant for years. Here ya go:

I’m reading a lot about clerical sexual abuse being rooted in clerical celibacy, as though it were obvious. This is not a new argument, nor does it have much grounding in reality. Abusers abuse not because they’re celibate but because they’re abusers, and I don’t think the Roman Church has any more of them than any other large organization. We pay the scandals more attention because the Church and its people ought to know better. We’re right to demand higher standards of conduct from church people than we do from politicians or TV reality show stars. Marrying off every priest and bishop in the Roman Catholic Church would not stop sexual abuse. I’m honestly not sure what would, though we need to continue the search with everything we’ve got. No, we need to eliminate mandatory clerical celibacy for a deeper reason: It selects for dualists.

The more I read of Church history and theology, the more I distrust ascetic theology and its real-world implementation, monasticism. Monastics make much about being “in the world, but not of it.” Excuse me? If you’re in the world, you’re damned well of it, because God gave you a meat suit and put you here. You will be of the world until you’re no longer in it, and what happens then is a whole separate discussion. Deal with it.

The deeper meaning of the mantra “in the world but not of it” lies in a theological system that arose in Persia in ancient times. Spiritual reality to the Persians was an unending war between Good and Evil, with the two being a pretty even match–hence the term “dualism.” There was a high, all-good God who had little to do with physical reality, and a grouchy creator God who had brought physical reality into being and trapped immaterial souls in material bodies that suffered and committed evil. Cooked down to essentials, this meant Spirit Good, Matter Bad.

Dualist thought of this sort crossed over from Persian mysticism into Christian theology several times in Christianity’s early centuries. Some of these threads were eventually declared heresies and suppressed, while others (especially the Great Dualist, Augustine of Hippo) became mainstream, to everyone’s sorrow.

I see dualism very clearly in the emergence of monasticism. Monasticism is more than just living off by yourselves somewhere. Nor does it describe a community simply working toward self-discipline in a systematic fashion. (In our dreams!) Early monastics were powerfully driven by the dualist assumption of Spirit Good, Matter Bad. The human body was a bundle of yukkh that not only had to be controlled but also humiliated, starved, and as often as not beaten and tormented through physical pain. Until Vatican II every Jesuit was given a little whip called the disciplina, and part of the Jesuit Rule specified that a Jesuit must beat himself with the disciplina every night. (Former Jesuit seminarian Garry Wills recalls this vividly in Why I Am a Catholic.) Because Spirit is the only godly part of a human being, torture of the body in the service of God was no big deal. Diocesan clergy certainly had a role in the torturing and execution of heretics, but it was monastics (particularly the Dominicans) who systematized it and made it a science. And over the centuries monastic thought seeped into diocesan thought, until clerical marriage was formally forbidden throughout the Western Church in the eleventh century. (It had been forbidden locally in some areas since the time of Leo the Great, circa 450.)

Monasticism isn’t about torture anymore, but its dualist view of the cosmos remains: Matter is of no great consequence, and the human body is simply a temporary vehicle for a fully spiritual soul. All physical desires are at least suspect. The world is a vexing source of temptation that cannot be redeemed and is best ignored. Sex, in particular, is fallen and unnecessary for anyone with a spiritual inclination. This attitude goes back to Paul, who thought the world was about to end and saw marriage as nothing better than a means of avoiding sexual sin until it did.

Some modern writers (including Garry Wills, whom I otherwise admire) think that clerical celibacy is a good thing because it focuses clergy on matters spiritual. My experience with married priests and bishops in the Anglican Communion (most but not all of them American Episcopalians) and many in the Old Catholic Church points in an entirely different direction: Finding peace and balance with the physical world is not surrender or even accomodation. It is part of our task as Christians. If God created the Universe, the Universe is sacred and cannot be dismissed as unimportant or (worse) evil. Married clergy have a sense of groundedness about them that is not impossible for the celibate, but harder work to achieve and tougher to maintain. (Those who succeed are spectacular clergy indeed, however rare.) This may not be due to marriage itself, but perhaps to an attitude that the married, to succeed in marriage, must maintain: The Other matters as much as the Self. Life is not just me and God hanging out in a private garden. It’s me and God and everyone else sharing a God-given world that must be consciously shepherded for the use of all.

Obviously, not all celibates are dualists, nor are all dualists celibate. That said, celibacy, especially when pre-emptively imposed on all clergy, tilts the graph toward dualism because dualism considers sex unnecessary and the physical world as less important than the spiritual. Those who are willing and able to embrace celibacy are more likely to lean in a dualist direction, with a preverbal if not fully perceived impression that the physical is sundered from the spiritual and the two parts set against one another.

No. Give me a priest who dances with his (or her) spouse, who will raise a glass to the health and success of all present, and who understands the rocky road on which Carol and I walk because he (or she) has walked that road too, with a loved one close at hand. Give me a priest who faces the east at dawn and shouts, like Patrick, “I arise today by the power of Heaven!”

I want a priest who celebrates the unity of all creation because all creation is of God, and all men and women are of this, His singular, glorious and undivided creation.

Score! The Phone-Inside-A-Tablet Concept, Now From ASUS

Feb 25th, 2013

by Jeff Duntemann.

6 comments

I don’t know where my ideas come from, so don’t ask. However, I do get ideas. Most of them come to nothing. Every now and again, however, I score.

Back at Clarion in 1973, I wrote an otherwise dorky novelette entitled “But Will They Come When You Do Call For Them?” in which I predicted something very like the World-Wide Web. It was over twenty years later that I realized I’d been scooped by H. G. Wells, who published his idea of the World Brain in 1937. (I’d never heard of the World Brain until I read about it on…the Web.) Hey, if you’re gonna get scooped, get scooped by the best.

In 1993, I got an idea for something I called The All Volunteer Virtual Encyclopedia of Absolutely Everything. It came out of the Information Superhighway fever (remember that?) and did not postulate HTTP, which was a new and obscure protocol at the time I was doing my research. Functionally, however, it was Wikipedia, or at least Wikipedia minus its idiotic Not Notable fetish.

Jim Strickland told me that I came very close to describing Second Life three years before it went live, with my “RAD Mars” concept piece in the final issue of Visual Developer. I think there were other stabs at that concept abroad at the time, so I don’t consider it as big a score. Still, it’s a score.

Which brings us to a news item I ran across this morning while I was scanning the World Brain. (Or the Universal Data Engineering Project, as I had more humbly named it in 1973.) ASUS has unveiled the Padfone 2, a smartphone that plugs into a 10″ “dumb” tablet. Pull that animation around–it’s very cool. The PadFone 2 is the newest rev of a product announced last spring that I missed somehow. (2012 was the second-worst year of my life. I missed a lot.) Here’s another detailed description from Engadget. The ASUS PadFone product line is the first real-world stab at a concept I described here on Contra back in 2008. That was in the thick of the netbook era, post-Kindle but pre-iPad, and the notion of a general-purpose touchscreen tablet was still obscure. What I wanted was a dockable display into which my smartphone plugged, with storage and network communications on the smartphone. And dayum if that isn’t more or less precisely what ASUS offers in the PadFone.

So forgive me if I sound like I’m gloating. I’m gloating. This may be the most accurate technology prediction I’ve ever made, and I made it almost five years ago.

Back in 2008 I considered patenting the idea, but only briefly. A patent would have cost me $10,000 and more time than I had to spare right then. Worse, I consider the idea only half a notch more than obvious, and when people patent the obvious it makes my blood boil.

I am a big fan of ASUS, and I own a much-loved and much-used Transformer Prime. I wish them no ill, but guys, put that patent application down. I thought of it five years ago.

Hypothesis: Reason vs. Anger

Jan 28th, 2013

by Jeff Duntemann.

5 comments

I’ve been developing a hypothesis in the back of my head for some time now:

Evolution developed anger as a countermeasure to reason.

That anger and reason are forces in opposition is obvious to anyone with an IQ over 75. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m trying to explain is how anger came to be. And with so much else in my recent research, it all comes back to tribalism.

We evolved from killer apes, and from killer apes we inherited a peculiar but very effective survival mechanism: the tribe. Tribes are an interesting piece of biological machinery. They’re actually genetic amplifiers for what we now call “alpha males,” and the idea is to select for the genes of the meanest badasses in the neighborhood, so to better compete with the badasses living on the other side of that hill over there.

While we were killer apes and primitive hominids, it worked very well. Evolution is always trying new things, however, and a few tens of thousands of years ago something new appeared: abstract thinking. On an individual level it was a big win. Hominids who could think their way through a sticky situation would leave more children than hominids who just followed their killer ape instincts. But on a group level, it tended to erode the much older tribal mechanism. Let me demonstrate what I mean with thirty seconds of drama:

[Foot Soldier:] Boss, out on the front lines, we’ve been thinking. Ten of our guys took a spear in the guts this week alone. The yukfoos have some newfangled spear-thrower thingie that works way better than bare hands. If we keep this up sooner or later we’re going to run out of foot soldiers.

[Tribal Leader:] Nonsense, my friend! The yukfoos are pure evil! If we don’t fight them to the last man they’ll steal our women! They’ll steal our food! They’ll slit our throats! They’ll destroy everything we stand for! Get out there and kill! Kill! KILL!

[Foot Soldier:] Yeah, I keep forgetting! Arooo! Ngrglar! [Runs off waving spear.]

[Tribal Leader:] Damn, that was close. [Turns.] Hey, Jeeves, run down to the village and drag me up a woman, willya? See if you can find one I haven’t had in awhile. If her husband objects, just slit his throat. Oh, and if anybody down there has any meat, grab it while you’re at it. Cut off a chunk for yourself if you want, but bring me as much as you can. Man, I haven’t eaten for an hour and a half!

[Exeunt omnes.]

There’s nothing worse than tribal foot soldiers who begin to think about their situation in the abstract. They might just quit the game, run off and start a new tribe somewhere else, or possibly sneak back with one of the yukfoos’ spear-throwers and nail the tribal leader through an eye socket. This would bode poorly for the continuing success of the tribal mechanism. So the blind watchmaker tries lots of things, and what works is a way to amplify tribal loyalties and cloud the emerging rational mind. This new countermeasure is anger.

From my readings in ethology and anthropology, it seems like anger is a fairly recent tool in the kit compared to the tribal mechanism. Animals seem blase about killing, as do most of the newly contacted primitive tribes that Jared Diamond studied decades ago. It’s very much a “nothing personal, Mac” kind of thing. What we call psychopaths may simply be throwbacks. They don’t get angry. They don’t even get worked up. When they feel so moved, they don’t think about it. They just kill. The possibility that they themselves may die in the attempt doesn’t seem to bother them.

Anger makes it possible to bypass abstract thinking in ordinary people and make them do stupid and damaging things, ideally directed against other tribes. It can be triggered by a number of things, sexual jealousy in particular. Still, nothing seems to rev it like the notion of Us vs. Them.

Killing members of other tribes is now illegal in the developed world, but tribal leaders still stoke the fires of tribal anger to keep their omegas outward-facing and loyal, and damaging opposing tribes whenever possible, through the ballot box if not through the eye sockets. The end result is that the tribal mechanism remains very much alive, and very much at work transferring wealth and sexual opportunity up the turtle pile to tribal leaders at the top. Why anybody plays the game is a puzzle, unless it really is genetic and those who do it really can’t help it.

Note well that this is a hypothesis. I’m not a sociologist, psychologist, or anthropologist, and I have no idea how one proves such things. I’m guessing it can’t be proven at all. But man, that’s how it looks from my window.

The Adobe CS2 Copyright Conundrum

Jan 26th, 2013

by Jeff Duntemann.

No comments yet

People have mostly stopped talking about the link page that Adobe exposed a few weeks ago, allowing the download of an activation-free copy of the entire Creative Suite 2. The page is still there, still wide open, and you no longer even have to sign in to your Adobe account to get it. What they’re up to remains unknown, though the firm has said many times and in many places that the downloads are for customers who already own the software. Adobe turned off the CS2 activation servers late last year, for reasons that remain unexplained. I’m thinking that they did the math and realized (duhhh!) that activation has its costs, and just cutting off paying customers who legitimately need to reinstall will only make those customers hate them, and very likely turn them into pirates.

I’ve said this for years: There’s no better way to teach honest people to be pirates than by “grabbing back” the use of content (software, ebooks–1984, anybody? music, anything) that they’ve already paid for. It’s untested in the courts as best I know, but to me this is very clearly fraud.

So the mystery remains. This morning, a backchannel friend (“backchannel” means email or texts relating to something on Contra) pointed me to all the original used copies of CS2 that can be had on eBay for as little as $40 or $50. He asked if it would be legal to buy one of those copies, which are original CDs in their original packaging, and then download the activation-free images from Adobe and install them.

Good question, and with a lot of questions pertaining to copyright, subject to interpretation. Big software firms have furiously fought the First Sale doctrine on software, and have pretty much won on products that are pure downloads without any physical media. They can deny activation on used software, and claim that it’s their right to do so. Adobe is very fussy about transferring ownership of their licenses, which is one reason I have not upgraded my 2002-era copy of InDesign 2.0. I consider this a sort of “hardass tax” that firms like Adobe seem willing to pay: They don’t get money I would gladly pay for an activation-free product.

Here’s the real question: If I have the original physical CDs for CS2, is my use of the activation-free download images legal? I don’t know. Could Adobe come after me (or anybody else) in court for doing so? There is some way-thin chance that they might, but it would open the gates of Hell upon their heads.

Will I try this? Still thinking. When I come to a decision I’ll let you know.

CS2 Flies In From Adobe’s Left Field

Jan 10th, 2013

by Jeff Duntemann.

19 comments

Colds are like…well, you know what colds are like. Right now, everybody has one. I’ve been climbing out of this one now for about six days, and the top is not yet in sight. At least my flu shot worked, or I could have been in lots worse shape. If I’ve been quiet, that’s most of it.

But something remarkable happened yesterday that still has a lot of people scratching their heads. Michael Covington and several other people alerted me to the fact that Adobe had opened a download link to an installable instance of Creative Suite 2 that didn’t require activation. Rumors were thronging like Illinois mosquitoes that Adobe was just turning it loose. This is outside of type for them, let’s say.

The truth is subtler: Adobe is shutting off CS2’s activation servers, and once it does, people who have legitimate licenses to CS2 will not be able to reinstall it after a hard disk crash or whatever. So they’re providing an activation-free instance to those customers.

Why, then, did they put the download links to the installer files right out where anyone could see them? The links have been live for several days and were still live this morning, though the server has been choked here and there by activity that suggests more than just CS2 atavists clicking on the links. One would expect at very least a requirement for users to log into their Adobe accounts to get the install suite, but not so. Any code monkey could suggest four or five other ways to do it that would not present all of CS2 on a platter to the whole world.

Adobe insists that they’re not giving CS2 to everybody. So what’s really going on here? I’ll hazard a guess: They’re afraid of the Gimp, and to a lesser extent, Scribus. I think they’ve been afraid of both programs (and a scattering of others) for a long time. At some point, a bean counter probably did some spreadsheeting and realized that activation support on a long-tail product isn’t worth what it costs, and told the techies to shut it off and send the phone reps home.

Faced with that decision, somebody there may have gotten clever enough to realize that people were leaving the CS plantation for cheaper realms. The Gimp is good enough for most Photoshoppish work, according to people I respect, and if I didn’t already own InDesign 2.0, I’d probably be laying out books in Scribus. I think Adobe may be quietly trying to get more people hooked on the CS product, which is a huge revenue-generator for them. Photoshop is probably the most pirated non-OS in software history, and I wonder if they’re just making CS2 easier to pirate and looking the other way to pull a little pressure off CS6, while allowing the curious to give Creative Suite a go. There are legal reasons why they won’t admit to a strategy like that. Furthermore, as many have said, never attribute to cleverness what is better explained by incompetence. It may just be a booboo. If it is, it’s one of the longest-lived booboos of its sort I’ve ever seen.

I won’t post the link here, out of respect for Adobe’s copyrights. Trust me, you won’t have to flatten your nose to find it. I have only one more point to make: I’d like to buy that software. Yes indeed: Adobe, I’ll give you money! I won’t pay several grand for CS6. But I’ll pay a couple hundred for CS2. Alas, the product is not for sale. So what could be a revenue generator for Adobe is just another gift to the pirates, with people like me who’d like to remain legal looking on enviously.

I respect their copyrights. But still. Dumbasses!

SATA as the New Thumb Drive

Dec 30th, 2012

by Jeff Duntemann.

No comments yet

I’m giving a webinar next month to a publishers’ group on the challenges of ebook piracy. So I’ve been taking notes and making sure that things haven’t changed much over the past year. One thing that surprised me a little came through on the backchannel (that is, email comments from people who for whatever reason don’t want to use Contra’s comment system) in June, concerning the resurgence of “sneakernet” piracy. I posted a link to a piece on TechDirt indicating that only 15% of music acquisition is done through all P2P technologies together. The bulk of piracy happens between friends, off the Net, where Big Media can’t see it.

What’s interesting came in through a backchannel correspondent whom I didn’t know and haven’t heard from since: Much or even most of the in-person file trading is done by treating entire high-capacity SATA hard drives as thumb drives. He saw my post on the Thermaltake BlacX case with a 2-drive SATA toaster dock built into the top panel. He has one too and wanted to see how common they were. He and his friends swap files by copying entire SATA drives onto blank drives via toaster docks, whether built into cases or standalone. I’ve had a 1-slot Ineo toaster dock since 2010, but it gathers dust now that I have the BlacX. I do my monthly off-site backups by copying everything onto a pair of 750 GB SATA drives using the docks on the top of the BlacX. I keep the backup drives in plastic flip-top cases made precisely for that purpose.

The correspondent (known only as “Don”) pointed out that there are now 2-slot standalone toaster docks that can clone drives from one to another without requiring any connection to a computer. Here’s one example (which even looks like a toaster!) and another. They’re evidently sector copiers and do not send files individually through a file system. Don and his friends get together and watch movies while popping SATA drives into and out of the docks.

I asked him if the drives ever fail by being plugged and unplugged so often. After all, internal SATA connectors are rated for only 50 matings. (ESATA connectors are rated for 5,000.) He hasn’t seen it happen so far, and if it happens, new drives are only $60-$80.

My experience with thumb drives goes the other way: I’ve had more USB ports fail on me than thumb drives. SATA drive connectors are really just etched PC board edge connectors, which can get scratched or dirty. (This is one reason I keep my SATA backup drives in plastic boxes.) I think with careful handling, drives should go a lot longer than 50 plug/unplug cycles.

Every time I think piracy can’t get any scarier, somebody comes along and says “Boo!” even louder. I keeping wondering what’s next. My hunch: Seedboxes, which still don’t entirely make sense to me. Once I figure them out, I’ll report back in this space.

Does Steampunk Really Humanize Our Gadgets?

Dec 19th, 2012

by Jeff Duntemann.

3 comments

Bill Cherepy (and a couple of others since) sent me an interesting link to a piece on Boing Boing arguing (I think) that steampunk makes our gadgets more human. It’s a headscratcher, since I don’t think the article text supports the author’s contention. However, it’s an idea worth some thought. I actually agree, if for different reasons:

Steampunk gadgets are comprehensible. Most of the tech in our modern phones and computers is black art, even to guys like me with considerable background in electronics. Electric, mechanical, and chemical tech circa 1900 was accessible to anyone with an ounce of brains and some willingness to study.
Steampunk gadgets are reproduceable. At home. In your basement. Sure, it would take a little research and pratice, but with nothing more exotic than a lathe and basic chemistry gear you could build most of what we connect with steampunking. Dare you to do that with an iPad.
Steampunk gadgets are personal. This is going to earn me some heat, but I think it’s true: Steampunk thingies are in-your-face, not on-your-friends-ist. One of the charms of the steampunk idea is that people interact face-to-face. This keeps trolling to a minimum and fosters at least superficial courtesy, which certainly beats the slobbering hatred that now dominates Facebook.

All that said, I admit that the majority of what I see under the heading “Steampunk” is a species of fantasy, be it of the supernatural (vampires and zombies) or just wildly off-the-edge assumptions of what 1900 technology could accomplish.

The big turn-off I found in cyberpunk was its coldness. Granted this was cultural and not really necessary, but when I played at the edges of cyberpunk years ago it stopped me in my tracks. Cyberpunk was cynicism writ large, and steampunk is optimism gone nuts. Given that cynicism is cowardice (it is, in fact, the fear and loathing of all things human) you can guess where I’m much more likely to tell my tales.

The 50-State Distributed Mosh Pit

Nov 23rd, 2012

by Jeff Duntemann.

1 comment

Black Friday is almost over. I haven’t been out of the house at all today, as crisp and gorgeous a day as it’s been. Given how much I dislike crowds, I’m surprised I didn’t spend all day in the upstairs closet.

Multitudes obviously feel otherwise. News at 11.

Today’s Wall Street Journal ran a short piece that pretty much nailed it for me: Black Friday “Doorbusters” Don’t Always Hold Up. The money quote:

An analysis by pricing research firm Decide Inc. and The Wall Street Journal of this year’s most-touted Black Friday deals found that many of the bargains advertised as “doorbusters” were available at lower prices at other times of the year-sometimes even at the same retailer.

So people were camping out on the sidewalk since the last turkey-gasp yesterday–and sometimes earlier–for nothing.

Nothing? Maybe not. Carol and I have a theory: Black Friday has become a species of entertainment. It’s not about getting a deal. It’s about the crowds, the rush, the experience. As my business partner Keith Weiskamp said way back in 1994: “The critical app of the Internet is other people.”

Bingo. The whole point of Black Friday is to do the Shop Dance in public, even if you don’t bring anything home at all. It’s like a rock concert with a 50-state distributed mosh pit and so many people screaming that you can’t hear the music. Music? You mean there’s music? Hey man, feel the energy!

Yes, retailers are feeling the energy. They’ve fired up their spreadsheets and they’re hard at work trying to see if anybody’s actually paying attention to the price tags. Increasingly, they’re not. Hard stats indicate that the best prices for jewelry and watches happen in October, and for big-screen TVs at the beginning of the year. The point is to perpetuate the meme, raise prices a little each year, and keep people dancing.

Now, commerce is what makes jobs happen, and jobs are good. Money seems to work best when it moves quickly. So far be it from me to object. (Black Friday is the best day of the year for plumbers, by the way, but not for the reason that first crosses your mind.) If national flash crowds are hip and you’re a hipster, go for it. If you’re of my general temperament, a better strategy is to read a book–or maybe write one. (NaNoWriMo is still at its fevered peak.) I start my Christmas shopping this Monday, from right here in my chair, with an egg nog at my elbow and a quad core at my command. Some goods have to be handled to facilitate reasonable decision-making, and I’m budgeting time for that too, ideally when everybody else is at home reading a book. When?

I’d tell you. But I’d be lying.