| Tuesday, November
6, 2005
Subject: Starbucks & Haida Bucks
Re your note about Sam Bucks and her Coffee Shop: she
should take heart from a similar dispute between Starbucks and the Haida
Indian Band. Starbucks got scalped.
http://www.lanebaldwin.com/hbc/news.htm
Roland Hill
Score one for the good guys...
=======
Wow.
I normally could care less about football and such,
but this is an outstanding article on the science of the game, the best I've
ever seen - engaging even for a confirmed non-fan like me:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/magazine/
04coach.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx
=1133853482-NGdCjFaoJQYaXlojmzhihw
- Roland Dobbins
==========
Subject: MS Office XML standards not acceptable
Microsoft has taken some steps to open up the XML
formats used by MS Office. However, their open licenses are not open enough.
The OpenDocument format is truly open. Anyone may
contribute suggested features; anyone may write software that implements the
OpenDocument standard. This includes Microsoft, by the way.
The indispensable GROKLAW site explains the ways in
which the MS offerings are nonfree:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051129101457378&query=Microsoft+Office+XML
Microsoft's offerings are not an acceptable
alternative to OpenDocument.
Currently Microsoft benefits from massive lockin:
there is a nonzero cost to migrate from MS products to other products. No
one but Microsoft benefits from this. It is understandable that Microsoft
would like this to continue, but that is not a good reason why their
customers should stay locked in.
A customer using OpenDocument can choose from multiple
products that are compatible. This means competition based on the merits of
the products, and that's a good thing for the customers. Microsoft is able
to write useful software, and they can compete in the OpenDocument market if
they wish to.
-- Steve R. Hastings "Vita est" steve@hastings.org
http://www.blarg.net/~steveha
===========
Subject: Still More On The Christmas Movie
Doctor P.
It appears that the Christmas lights to music video is
probably real. One of the friends I sent the original link to began to
search the web and found this site:
http://www.wonderlandchristmas.com/
run by another another guy (one of an apparently large
number of people who do this as a hobby) who provides details of how it's
done, where you can buy the controllers, how long it takes to set up, and so
on. He also provides a number of videos of other displays, some of which
don't really answer Mr. Hellewell's observations and a couple
http://www.wonderlandchristmas.com/av/videos/dbrown-open.wmv
http://www.wonderlandchristmas.com/av/videos/annalisa-bells-f.wmv
that seem pretty clearly to be videos of actual
displays.
Also a better video of the more spectacular of the two
sent to you by, I believe, Mr. Isaak:
http://www.wonderlandchristmas.com/av/Wizards.wmv
And a second by the same gentleman:
http://www.wonderlandchristmas.com/av/Jingle.wmv
Tim tmorris@advnet.net tmorris@stclaircounty.org
============
Subject: Amazon and the future of
literature
Dear Jerry:
I am in the process of making a deal with Amazon which
will make them the original publisher of some of my fiction. Their new
service publishes original previously unpublished fiction and non fiction.
These pieces are supposed to be between 2,000 and 10,000 words, but that
isn't a hard and fast rule. Some have been a bit shorter and a few very much
longer.
Signing up for this is part of my continuing
experiment in Electronic Publishing. I could publish and sell them myself
through Francis Hamit Electronic Publishing, but the minimum price there (at
least to get it on Amazon) is $ 1.95) Amazon has a one size fits all price
of 49 cents and there is some really good material there. Amazon deals only
with authors and their agents for this and their contract is simple and easy
to read. The authors' cut is 40 percent. So, to simplify matters that's 20
cents for every buyer. A thousand buyers would net you $200, which is
certainly more than you get from most literary magazines and contests. From
a career standpoint it may be a good strategic decision to be published by
one of these publications. (In science fiction the list is limited and they
all seem to have "we're the only game in town" attitude. Your artistic
freedom is heavily constrained by the gatekeepers, who impose their own
notions about subject matter, language, and style. They are also overwhelmed
by the sheer volume of submissions, so what really gets read is the first
page or two, by an intern and not the person you sent it too. (I am sure
there are exceptions to this rule and I am equally sure they will write in
and protest.)
Amazon Singles is providing something unique. There is
an editorial review but they are most interested in selling products, rather
than establishing or maintaining literary standards of various kinds. And,
while they reserve the right to edit from grammar, spelling and so forth,
their inclination seems to be to put it out there and see what works. This
is a luxury you can never attain in print, where physical goods are consumed
in the production of the text. Here you submit it, they approve it and then
you go directly to the customer.
And the customer buys something and can then write a
review of it. Feedback systems like this are the best way to assure quality
product and presentation. Amazon has about 50,000,000 customers around the
world. If you got really lucky with a story and got a one percent Direct
Mail response, then that would be half a million copies downloaded and sold,
for about $250,000 gross and $100,000 net to the author. For a short story
or the like.
It sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? One of the
things I learned long ago when I was a consultant was that you actually have
to get your hands in the mix and work the problem sometimes. My first effort
for this program is a very long story called "Sunday In The Park With
George", which runs about 24,000 words and covers a single day. It is
mainstream with psychic overtones, so it does not fit into any of the
traditional categories. There are only about five publications that would
take it on because of the length. So , as a piece of experimental fiction,
this gets it out there for people to read and enjoy. How many will remains
to be seen.
My next effort with them will be a novel serialization
of one of my Civil War novels and that will happen next year. It will be
delivered in multi chapter chunks over all of 2006. Amazon has already
started doing this with other authors.
I am sure that the authors who have chosen to do this
are avoiding the parts of the process that have become too onerous. Everyone
is concerned with whether or not a particular piece will sell. But, as they
say in Hollywood, "no one knows anything" Authors now have a way to product
test their creations in a venue that goes far beyond the lonely virtual
outposts of personal web sites.
So look for "The Shenandoah Spy" a historical military
intelligence spy thriller about the early career of Belle Boyd, on Amazon
early next year. I have a few rewrites to do first. The long story should be
up shortly. I'll be interested in what people think of that, too.
Again, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am an
Amazon stockholder and I do business with them in other ways that this one.
My experience with them to date tells me that they are good people who want
to do the right things. That includes a scrupulous respect for authors'
copyrights. I think there are a lot of people out there who need to get past
this notion that a large company is automatically one which will use its
power to cheat people out of their due. Amazon knows better. That kind of
thing is never good for business in the long run.
Oh, before everyone starts submitting wildly to Amazon
Single, let me add that you have be an established writer with titles
already in their system to be considered.. I sense a small staff at this
point, that does not want to be overwhelmed.
I'll let you know how this goes.
Sincerely,
Francis Hamit
This is good news. Jim Baen has also announced
a new short story market. It is now barely possible for short fiction
writers to make, if not a living, at least significant income from a year's
output. This is a far cry from when the Saturday Evening Post paid Stuart
Cloete $4000 for a short story in 1948, of course. Stuart was able to live
for a year on that while he worked on Rags of Glory which hit the best
seller list. But it's very good news indeed.
I do very little short fiction, but I may
think about again. Legacy of Heorot started as a short story idea, but we
developed it into a novel, largely because a really well done short work is
almost as much work as a novel, and pays so very much less; but this may
change such things.
I am working on a near-future (50 years or
so) novel in which there is space travel, but the bureaucracy has pretty
well maintained control so that anarcho-tyranny is the rule; I wonder if I
can do it in parts? Serialization with a vengeance... Anyway, this is
good news.
================
An old friend from BYTE
Peterborough asks:
Subject: questions on ID
Jerry, someone passed on to me some comments you made
about ID. I am not really a big ID proponent or anything, but why do you and
others persist in saying it's not science? I am asking sincerely. I went to
a lecture given by Behe sponsored by First Things, and he had models and
charts from molecular biology showing how complex different life forms are,
and how even the light sensitive spot was incredibly complex and could not
have functioned as an early eye, and other IDers have mathematical models of
the tiny probability of life elements having evolved by chance. Why aren't
these models science? And why isn't ID useful in exposing the shortcomings
of Darwinism. For example, isn't punctuated equilibrium rather a lame excuse
for the fact that the fossil record for 150 years has not brought to light
the transitional forms Darwin said should be there if he were correct?
Carol
It's not science. It may well be truth.
Unless you define science as all epistemology, and
that's too damned deep a question to get into.
Science consists of making falsifiable statements,
then testing them; those that are not falsified are accepted as "truth" and
the more unsuccessful effort put into a statement the higher the probability
that it really describes reality.
But with miracles and intelligent design there
isn't any operation you can go through to get repeatable results. That
doesn't mean there are no miracles -- in my own life events so improbable as
to be impossible had enormous effects on my life -- but they are not
science, and can't be studied by science. Same with intelligent design.
It should be taught as a SUPPLEMENT to science,
because it is a good thing for people to know that science is merely a
useful tool; it is not the only source of knowledge and wisdom.
I am impressed by Behe, and certainly there is no
harm in showing that Darwinian selection leaves enormous gaps, but Sir Fred
Hoyle showed that years ago, and while he thought in terms of Intelligent
Design I guarantee you most people wouldn't like his explanation of who was
doing the designing. I do note that the Darwinians have computer models that
show that at least some "irreducibly complex" systems can be generated by
random processes (although their likelihood remains low). The fact that
something might have been generated by random processes isn't proof that it
did, but it does change the nature of the argument.
I don't insist that ID not be taught as science,
because I don't think it matters much. Science is enormously useful, and
given a fair chance will win support. But I do think it is a better lesson
to show there are limits to scientific investigation, and questions that are
quite meaningful and important that science cannot answer; whether that's
taught in a science class or elsewhere doesn't matter so much so long as
students understand it.
ID is an alternate explanation to Darwinian
selection, but I have not seen it generate falsifiable predictions; and by
my definition of science at least, if it can't generate falsifiable
statements that can be tested, it isn't science. And again I point out that
there is more to wisdom than science.
==
Subject: FW: Christmas 1960
Not about me, obviously, but still a good story.
The Big Wheel
In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six
hungry babies and just 75 cents in my pocket. Their father was gone. The
boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two.
Their Dad had never been much more than a presence
they feared.
Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the gravel
driveway they would scramble to hide under their beds.
He did manage to leave $15 a week to buy groceries.
Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no
more beatings, but no food either. If there was a welfare system in effect
in southern Indiana at that time, I certainly knew nothing about it. I
scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best
homemade dress. Loaded them into the rusty old 51 Chevy and drove off to
find a job.
The seven of us went to every factory, store and
restaurant in our small town. No luck. The kids stayed crammed into the car
and tried to be quiet while I tried to convince whoever would listen that I
was willing to learn or do anything.
I had to have a job.
Still no luck. The last place we went to, just a few
miles out of town was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been
converted to a truck stop. It was called the Big Wheel.
An old lady named Granny owned the place and she
peeked out of the window from time to time at all those kids. She needed
some one on the graveyard shift, 11 at night until seven in the morning. She
paid 65 cents an hour and I could start that night. I raced home and called
the teenager down the street that baby-sat for people. I bargained with her
to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a night. she could arrive with her
pajamas on and the kids would already be asleep. This seemed like a good
arrangement to her, so we made a deal.
That night when the little ones and I knelt to say our
prayers, we all thanked God for finding Mommy a job. And so I started at the
Big Wheel.
When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter
up and sent her home with one dollar of my tip money--fully half of what I
averaged every night.
As the weeks went by, heating bills added a strain to
my meager wage.
The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of
penny balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to
work and again every morning before I could go home.
One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to
go home and found four tires in the back seat. New tires! There was no note,
no nothing, and just those beautiful brand new tires. Had angels taken up
residence in Indiana? I wondered.
I made a deal with the local service station. In
exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would clean up his office. I
remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to
do the tires.
I was now working six nights instead of five and it
still wasn't enough.
Christmas was coming and I knew there would be no
money for toys for the kids.
I found a can of red paint and started repairing and
painting some old toys.
Then hid them in the basement so there would be
something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning. Clothes were a worry
too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boys' pants and soon they
would be too far gone to repair.
On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking
coffee in the Big Wheel. These were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a
state trooper named Joe.
A few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the
Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine. The regulars all
just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and then
left to get home before the sun came up.
When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on
Christmas morning I hurried to the car. I was hoping the kids wouldn't wake
up before I managed to get home and get the presents from the basement and
place them under the tree. (We had cut down a small cedar tree by the side
of the road down by the dump.) It was still dark and I couldn't see much,
but there appeared to be some dark shadows in the car-or was that just a
trick of the night? Something certainly looked different, but it was hard to
tell what. When I reached the car I peered warily into one of the side
windows. Then my jaw dropped in amazement. My old battered Chevy was filled
full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes. I quickly opened the
driver's side door, crumbled inside and kneeled in the front facing the back
seat.
Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box.
Inside was whole case Of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10! I looked inside
another box: It was full of shirts to go with the jeans. Then I peeked
inside some of the other boxes.
There was candy and nuts and bananas and bags of
groceries. There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables and
potatoes. There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and flour.
There was whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items. And there were
five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll.
As I drove back through empty streets as the sun
slowly rose on the most amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with
gratitude. And I will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones
that precious morning.
Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago
December. And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop....
Steven
==========
Talin answers his
critics/commentators:
Again, there were a number of interesting comments to
my essay on copyright.
I should mention that normally I am not such an
argumentive sort - most times I am content to let other people believe what
they want to believe, as long as they offer me the same courtesy. Which is
why I find it so curious as to why I am so passionate and vociferous about
this particular issue, when there are many other equally important issues in
the world.
OK first order of business - lets dispose ot the
strawmen, please: I am not out to "destroy intellectual property". All I
want is the same rights that I had when I was growing up. If I buy a book, I
want to take it anywhere, read it anywhere, sell it to a used book store
when I am done with it, and so on.
For example: One of the first science fiction novels I
ever read was Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. I bought the paperback version in
1973, when I was living in Australia. I've saved those copies all these
years, battered and worn as they are, because they have the cool Chris Foss
cover paintings, which the US edition never had.
By contrast, If I were to buy a DVD in Australia
today, and take it back to the US, it would be worthless - because the
region coding wouldn't allow me to play it on a US player, and even if I had
an Australian player, it wouldn't be compatible with US TVs.
Now, what's particularly interesting about this is
that there is no law that prohibits me from watching an Australian DVD in
the US, provided that I have the equipment to do so. However, if I attempt
to purchase, or even invent, such equipment, I will have broken the law,
specifically the DMCA - because such equipment bypasses the "access
controls" on the DVD.
Take another example - suppose I buy a digital copy of
Shakespeare's works, which is protected by some sort of DRM. The work itself
is in the public domain, but effectively it is under an eternal copyright,
since the act of copying would require bypassing the access controls, which
is against the law.
In other words, we have the nonsensical situation
where it is illegal to possess the means needed to perform a legal act. As a
result, without changing the copyright laws themselves, the *effective*
scope of my rights is reduced and narrowed.
And it gets worse, because as media and media players
get smarter, the publishers can keep coming up with new and fancy ways of
restricting my ability to use their content, and these restrictions will
have the force of law - because even though the restrictions themselves
aren't laws, they have the law behind them. And make no mistake - although
the publishers claim that such power is needed to enforce their copyrights,
they won't stop there. They will "add value" by restricting and narrowing
the way we are allowed to use their products. Its human nature to grab as
much power as you can, especially when your job is to "increase shareholder
value".
Who here can say that they have never photocopied a
page from a textbook in school? Who here has not lent a book to a friend?
Who here has never borrowed a book from a library? The media companies want
to create a world in which you can't do those things, and they are using all
of their powers to twist and distort the development of technology to insure
that those kinds of acts will be impossible.
What's odd about this is that I would expect Jerry's
readers to be the last people on earth that would be comfortable with the
idea of unelected individuals making up new laws for themselves.
By the way, when I say that I want the same rights
that I always had, I should be clear - that includes the right to break the
law and be punished for it. You heard me right - I believe that one
cornerstone of democracy is the ability to make one's own decisions and
accept the consequences, even when society disapproves. If I felt strongly
enough about something, I would be willing to take my lumps for it. What I
will not abide, however, is to be preemptively restrained from making that
choice.
Although it would not be ideal, I could live with just
having the current copyright law enforced as-is. In other words, if I could
do all of the things that the law permits me to do - make parodies, quote
excerpts, sell to a used book store, etc - that would be all right.
Now, on to specific points raised:
Talin said, "Currently copyright controls the ability
of someone to copy, distribute, and modify a work. I would change that to
just "distribute and modify". In other words, you can make all the copies
you want, you just can't give them to someone else."
How do you police that?
Same way we police it today. The police don't go after
people who make private copies of CDs and DVDs. They go after people who
sell or give away such copies.
The reason that I want to "take the copy out of
copyright", is that restricting copying is already unenforceable.
What's to stop the purchaser from handing the legal
copy to a friend for their use? What's to stop them from doing that with the
original?
That's not copying, that's distribution. If you make a
copy, and then give either the original or the copy to someone else, thats
distribution. (There's no distinction between the original and the copy)
Now, under "right of first sale" doctrine, you are
allowed to re-sell a book after you have finished with it. However, you
aren't allowed to sell copies of the book - and I presume you would be
obligated to destroy all of your private copies when you resell the work.
Talin said, "I figure if you don't care enough about
your work to spend a dollar and the time it takes to mail a letter to the
copyright office, then why shouldn't others be allowed to use it?"
So, owners of property should be required to
continually prove they own said property.
Prove? No. Assert an interest in? Yes.
Under the current copyright law, any work that you
create is copyrighted, whether you intended it to be or not. If you want
something to be placed into the public domain, you have to take an extra
step to do that.
However, not everyone cares if their work is protected
under copyright for "life of the author plus 70 years". A lot of times
people create things, and then move on to other lines of work. They no
longer care whether anyone copies their work, or makes money off of it, but
at the same time its way too much work to go back and put "public domain"
over all of their past work.
A lot of times companies who create software go out of
business, and the assets of the company are sold to pay the creditors, and
the IP of the company, which is worth nothing to the creditors, just sort of
gets dropped on the floor and forgotten.
For example, I have long wanted to have the right to
re-publish my own games, which I did as work for hire back in the Amiga
days. My friend even hired a private detective to try and track down whoever
was the successor-in-interest to the company, and failed to find them.
(Actually, the story is more complicated than that, but I won't go into it
now.)
My point is, that there are a vast number of works out
there which cannot legally be copied, despite the fact that no one has an
interest in them. Admittedly much of it is not worth saving, but if someone
wants to preserve something from the document shredder of history, and no
one else is willing to or cares, then they should be allowed to preserve it.
The office to handle this would require tens of
thousands of employees.
All you would need is a database with the name of the
author, the title of the work, and the last registration date, and a web
site where the public could run searches on this database. I bet the Library
of Congress could do it quite easily.
Talin said, "Maintain or even expand the scope of fair
use for educational, political, and other purposes."
Fair Use, like backups, has been misused. You
purchased one copy of an original work - one.
What you are talking about is not Fair Use, but right
of first sale. Fair use has to do with the ability to make derived works -
parodies, critiques, reviews, excepts, etc.
Talin said, "I would like to see things like TiVo
thrive and not be sued into oblivion."
The only thing I would like to see added to TiVo is an
automatic wipe of the recorded program after it is viewed. Like the
original, you get to see it one time and one time only.
What on earth would possess me to purchase such a
crippled device?
Now, on to Peter's comments:
There's nothing new here; publication has always
required copying, and the copying tools required for legitimate publication
have always allowed illegitimate copying
What's new is that, in a narrow technical sense,
"reading" the work requires "publishing" it. Imagine, for a moment, if the
only way you could read a book was to make a copy of it. (Interesting idea
for a story, there...)
> I would call the various DRM schemes as essentially
disinventing the personal computer
This is logically equivalent to saying that law
enforcement disinvents personal responsibility.
This analogy makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Look, I can write an MPEG decoder in any computer
language. I can convert that video stream into a million different data
formats, from Quicktime to Morse code.
The only way you can stop me from creating an MPEG
decoder is to take away my ability to program. To essentially roll back the
personal computer revolution, and instead put the power of computers back
into the hands of the "high priests".
Do you wish to make it illegal to impose such controls
over the use or redistribution of intellectual property? Be careful how you
answer; you're on the verge of destroying all industries based on
intellectual property.
First of all, I don't accept the conclusion of the
second sentence from the premise of the first. Microsoft and Time Warner
have managed to do just fine without the DMCA.
As far as the first sentence, it depends on what you
mean by "impose". What I want is for my ability to use a copyrighted work to
be determined by my elected officials, not dictated by some private party.
Anyway, I'm not worried. The fact is that
cryptographic DRM built on secure operating systems will be deployed within
the next several years, and it will be totally effective.
Eh? What evidence do you have for this statement?
I'm not sure where to begin to refute this argument,
because there are so many ways to do so:
1) All forms of DRM that I have ever heard of control
*use*, not *copying*.
2) One does not need to interpret the bits in order to
copy them. You can copy encrypted bits just as easily as any other kind.
3) Anything that I can see or hear can be recorded.
4) Are you planning on making it illegal for people to
write operating systems?
There is nothing that you can do, technologically,
that will prevent me from infringing your copyright. In other words, once I
decide to break the law, all bets are off. If you make a DRM video player,
I'll go to the device driver level. If you lock up the device driver, I'll
modify the hardware. I'll snoop the packets on the wire; I'll make my own
chips and replace yours (Making ASICs and FPGAs is not all that hard, as I
learned recently from a friend who made her own Amiga, including making the
chips.)
Here is the irony: The only thing that your
technologies can do is restrict my *legal* use of the work. As long as I
decide to stay within the law, you can box me in further and further, until
I have no rights left at all.
And the double irony is, that by doing so, you
increase the incentives for me to break out of the box.
-- Talin
Many years ago my friend Phillippe Kahn asked
me what would be a good licensing agreement for Turbo Pascal. I told him
"Just like a book." He thought about that and when Turbo Pascal went to mass
market that was the licensing agreement he put on the package. Treat this
just like a book. One person uses it at a time. And so forth.
I completely agree that we are not trying
to send the police after the school teacher who copies a work to use in her
class, and while I would encourage her to buy copies rather than Xerox short
stories, I sure wouldn't want to make that a criminal act. On the other hand
if she started selling copies to other teachers it might be time to do
something about it.
I don't claim to have all the answers but
I think this discussion is very much worth while, and eventually I will boil
it all down and feed it to some relevant Congress Members and their staffs.
That may or may not do some good.
===========
Subject: Sucks dead bunnies
Dr. Pournelle,
Just read the Byte
column.
Do you remember when you started using "sucks dead
bunnies"? In my experience in the USAF, the term is "dog balls", not "dead
bunnies", with alternate words starting with D and B being substituted when
in mixed company (or when writing a column for an online magazine I
suppose.) So I was just wondering...
Sean
I think Alex first came up with it. It would
have been at least 20 years ago since I was working from downstairs then (we
had not built the big upstairs Great Hall and office). BYTE copy editors
called to be sure I wanted to say that, and the decision to leave it had to
go to the Editor In Chief since it was considered contrary to the BYTE style
manual.
=======
Rat brain flies jet.
I have major problems with the ethics of this kind of
thing:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/07/rat_brain_flies_jet/
-- Roland Dobbins
Shades of Cordwainer Smith!
And see below
TOP
CURRENT
VIEW Tuesday |
WARNING
