I had a couple of things I want to address today, so I’m going to be jumping around in topic just a bit.

First of all, I’d like to thank Admiral Mike Mullen and Secretary Robert Gates for their recommendations regarding the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It is a heartening sign of progress when it comes to the acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality. Unfortunately, I don’t think the repeal process will be easy, and will likely take longer than the gay rights community would like, even with the support of high-ranking officers.  Even so, hope given is a wonderful thing.

On the new budget, I keep hearing all over the mainstream media about how NASA’s budget was cut. What they don’t say is that the NASA programs that were cut (specifically NASA’s Constellation program) were backwards-looking cost-hogs. Instead, that money has been put toward more innovative R&D, education, and the privatizing of space exploration. Already, we have seen private corporations doing much more effective work with much less money.  Rather than the new budget striking against science and research, it shifts the focus toward the sort of innovation and creativity in which good science can thrive.

Also, there’s been a great victory for fact over celebrity-fads this week, as the medical journal Lancet has retracted the faulty research  linking autism with the MMR vaccine, apparently finally realizing the fact that scientists and logically thinking people the world over have always known: Correlation Does Not Equal Causation.  At the same time, Meryl Dorey has stepped down as leader of the Australian ["anti"] Vaccination Network in the wake of the blame placed on her shoulders for the death of a 4 week old child infected with pertussis because there was no blanket immunity in her community thanks to the anti-vax movement. It looks like she may even be prosecuted for dispensing medical advice without any medical training. (Because, apparently, a lot of people don’t realize that taking medical advice from celebrities who have no medical training is a bad idea.)

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Two of the first sci-fi fandoms I grew up with and embraced with fervor early in life were Star Trek and Dr. Who – primarily because they were the two that I had the easiest access to via network television.  Cable was unavailable in our rural area, and satellites were, at that time, prohibitively expensive.

As I grew up, I moved on to other fandoms and other shows – particularly the ones springing from the mind of Joss Whedon – and while I didn’t forget about those shows I’d grown up with, I wasn’t so excited about them anymore, beyond the usual haze of nostalgia.

The new Star Trek reboot brought the excitement back in a big way.  It was almost like returning to the embrace of an old friend.  Shortly after the movie, I discovered that the entire Star Trek Original Series was available streaming direct from the CBS website, and took the opportunity to watch it all over again – this time in order. I’d never seen it in order – the shows were reruns shown in syndication by the time I watched them as a child.

The magic of the internet has enabled me to reawaken my interest in Dr. Who as well – watching the new BBC production on  Netflix. It took me a bit longer to warm to the new Doctor than it took me to embrace the new Kirk and Spock, but after a few episodes I was firmly hooked.

I’ve rediscovered the fandoms of my childhood and found them new and fresh.  The reboots of each helped this, of course, but it occurred to me that it couldn’t have happened in such a way without the internet. The web gave me both the old and the new versions and ways to compare the two almost side by side through streaming media, websites and communities to renew my participation in, wikis to research, fanfiction to read and write, and of course, the inevitable visits to TV-Tropes.

You know, I kinda like living in the future.

But it left me wondering: Is there some fandom that you’ve had a reunion with thanks to the internet? Something that you’d almost forgotten existed and then suddenly became excited about again upon finding something in some hidden corner of the web?

Jenny: Honestly, what is it about them that bothers you so much?
Giles: The smell.
Jenny: Computers don’t smell, Rupert.
Giles: I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a – it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It’s-it’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.

–Giles and Jenny discuss computers and books, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “I Robot, You Jane”

I have to admit that the growing market for e-books and e-book readers has me feeling a bit split.  Like Jenny Calendar, I am a dedicated technopagan and geek, and I love new gadgets and embrace technology and innovation with no small amount of excitement.  However, I was a book lover long before I became a citizen of cyberspace, and like Giles, it’s not just the words, but the tangible pleasure of holding a book in my hands that gives me satisfaction in my reading experience.

Like a good gadget junkie, I’ve read up and researched the various e-book reading devices on the market today.  I dismissed the Kindle due to the fact that the only materials readable on it are those purchased through Amazon, a limiting factor I didn’t like much, since my local library offers e-book lending, and there are e-books available in so many other formats.  The fact that Amazon has already shown itself willing to reach out and take materials already purchased from the consumer also left more than a slight bitter taste in my mouth.

Of the two newer readers, the Sony Reader and Barnes and Noble’s nook, the nook seems the better option (though the quirky capitalization has my inner grammar-geek shuddering).  The nook allows media to be loaded on it in a variety of formats, including the most common e-book format: epub documents.  You can get e-books from a variety of sources with the nook, and aren’t just limited to Barnes & Noble for your purchases, and you can lend books to other folks with nooks too, though only those materials purchased from B&N will be saved to your B&N account for re-download should they be lost.

I read on the computer just as much as I read physical media. I make my way through somewhere around a novella’s length of blogs on my RSS reader each day, I download e-books to read on both my BlackBerry and my computer, and the majority of “magazines” I read these days are in electronic format.  An e-book reader for me would certainly not go unused.

There’s also the fact that e-books provide a low-cost means for me, as a writer, to gain exposure and readership. I’ve come to refer to this as the “Cory Doctorow” method of publishing, as he is one of the best writers to come out of beginnings in digital media and one of the biggest success stories.  I’m already beginning to release some of my own work as digital media, as I get it formatted and edited.  What better way to convince an agent or publisher that they might want to take you on than to point to a website full of examples of your writing?  The coming of the e-book revolution hasn’t filled me with the same horror as it has other writers and publishers, because I decided early on that something of that sort was inevitable, and it would be better to embrace the format than to fight it.

But, the Bibliophile in me can’t help but speak up.  To even contemplate the purchase of one of these e-book readers seems a betrayal to the shelves upon shelves (and boxes upon boxes) of books scattered about my home, and car, and office, and pretty much anywhere else I spend any significant amount of time.  Nor do I think that an e-book reader will ever be a replacement for those books.  Never will I stop reading or buying traditional books just because it’s more convenient to download them immediately over the ether. An e-book reader wouldn’t go unused by me, not by a long shot, but it will be more of a supplement to my regular book buying practices rather than a replacement.

Because try as they might, innovate all they want, they’ll never be able to make the experiences the same, even if they added some sort of smell-o-vision to make the e-book readers give off a musty-old-paper smell.  There’s nothing out there like the pleasure of holding a well-crafted book in your hand and flipping the pages and, yes, smelling that smell.

Data devices give you data, and that’s all it is, floating out in the ether, moving in bytes over the airwaves or through the landlines, and it can easily be lost or changed or even taken from you like a physical book cannot.  Like China blocking any negative references of Tiananmen from the internet there, data is easy to control and block, but no matter how many books are burned, there’s likely to be another copy of it floating around out there somewhere.

I have written in the past against DRM and methods of property protection that punish the consumer rather than the thieves, but my annoyance with DRM is in no way an endorsement of piracy, which is a huge issue, especially for the little guys.

And one of those guys has a book coming out this week. You might’ve heard of him, here and there.  Wil Wheaton.  Yes… that kid from Star Trek with the bad sweaters and really annoying sense of superiority.

Wil Wheaton may be a bit famous (or infamous).  He is somewhat like a demi-god among geeks. He, also, isn’t a fan of DRM, though I would understand why he might want to look into trying it, since his book, Just a Geek, has been pirated and offered up for free.

Now….this isn’t some tremendously wealthy celebrity or best-selling author for whom a bit of book piracy is just a drop in the bucket, because they’re making millions anyway.  This is a man who still has to work for a living, and and who just happens to do that work with his pen or in front of a camera.  His books are even self-published and promoted out of his own pocket, so any piracy directly affects him in a way that it never would a large corporation.

The same goes for the majority of authors and actors and musicians out there.  Because the majority of creative professionals are not wealthy. Most of us will never see even a shred of the type of celebrity that Wil might enjoy. We have to work for a living, and we offer up that work to the public, for your enjoyment.  If you do enjoy it, we ask a little bit of compensation. Not because we’re greedy bastards, but because we need that money to put food on the table and clothes on our backs, to feed our children, to pay for our shelter.  We may offer some content for free, and ask you to share it with your friends, because there’s no better advertisement than free advertisement.  But when we ask you to pay, all we are asking is compensation for our work, the same as you would pay farmer for his vegetables, or a butcher for his meat.

When you seek to profit from a pirated item, or when you purchase or download a pirated piece of work, that’s just like running into that farm stand and grabbing a bushel of vegetables and running off.  If the farmer’s a big industrial farmer, well, he may have several tons of vegetables to sell, and be able to shrug off the loss of that bushel, but if it’s a small family farm, the loss of even one bushel is a huge loss.  That’s the way it is for all of the other little guys out there too. Just because what we produce is something less tangible – a song, a movie, a book, an hour’s entertainment – doesn’t mean that we don’t need that money just as much or work just as hard to produce what we have.

So think about it, next time you head to your favorite torrent sites. You may enjoy the thought of “sticking it to the man” by pirating things produced by huge corporations, but sometimes the person you’re stealing from is the person next door.

Oh, and…if you’re a Star Trek fan? Head over and buy Memories of the Future.  It looks to be a good one.

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• an open letter to the guy who put just a geek the audiobook on his website for people to steal (wilwheaton.typepad.com)
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I didn’t post yesterday because Senator Baucus released his proposal for healthcare reform, and I wanted to have a good chance to look it over before posting any remarks, since I’d prefer my opinions to be formed based on the actual document rather than what people tell me it contains.

The Chairman’s Mark  (a vernacular version of the bill) is available for download as a PDF file here: Baucus Proposal PDF

It’s a 223 page document comparing the provisions of the law as it stands now with the reforms proposed by Senator Baucus. It’s intended to be a starting point, a first draft, of sorts, for the new healthcare legislation.

It does not include a public option.  After reading through it I decided the best way to form a good opinion on the matter was to classify what it said in terms of pros and cons, the things I liked vs. the things I didn’t, so I made some lists.

Here’s a quick summary of the main points after the more tag. (This is going to be long!):

(more…)

I’ve had a number of people ask me about podcasts lately.  It’s an odd enough subject that I was a bit surprised to have several people ask me about them in fairly quick succession, so I thought I’d do a little list of my recommended podcasts.

If you don’t know what a podcast is, well, it’s like a radio show that you can play on an MP3 player (any MP3 player, it doesn’t have to be an ipod) or your computer.  I’m one of those odd people who concentrates better when I’m listening to something, so I listen to a lot of podcasts at work.  I’ve tried, discarded, and become a devoted listener to quite a few.  Naturally, thanks to my interests, they are all suitably geeky in nature.

For the Book / Writing / Grammar Geek:

• Grammar Girl: Quick and dirty tips for those persistent grammar-related questions, done with a sense of humor.
• The Writer’s Almanac: A short little daily show from public radio regarding what’s going on in writing on this day, what has occurred in writing history, and always ending with a selected poem.

For the History Geek:

• Hardcore History: This is my favorite of all of the podcasts, and seems to be one that even non-history geeks might enjoy just because of the way it’s presented.  Dan Carlin goes beyond the pages of the history book and guides you through imagining what things were actually like for the people who lived them.

For the Gamer Geek:

• Analog Hole Gaming: This podcast is definitely not for ginger ears, but it’s the best general-gaming podcast that I’ve come across that, more often than not, leaves me chuckling.
• Game-Specific Podcasts:
  • World of Warcast: This is possibly the oldest continuing WoW podcast, and is a lot of fun. The hosts, Starman and Renata, are both older gamers with Jobs, Families, and Mortgages, so it’s nice to get a more grown-up point of view on gaming.
  • The Instance: The instance is the most popular of the WoW podcasts, it tends to focus on news and strategy discussions with more of a raider point-of-view.

For the Whedonverse Geek:

• The Signal: You can’t stop the signal. This podcast definitely deserves the awards it’s won, and the hosts are well on their way to becoming “celebrity fans” in their own right. They have interviews with whedonverse stars, a radio melodrama based on the Serenity/Firefly universe, and good music.  What’s not to love?

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• Dan Carlin – Hardcore History “Addicted To Bondage” (craiggunderson.com)

When the usual sites I check every morning were down the first time I checked them Thursday morning, I shrugged, thinking that the storm the night before had somehow messed up the DSL connection at the office, as bad storms occasionally did.

Then I noticed that those same sites weren’t pulling up on my blackberry and that other sites were operating just fine, though, with a few exceptions, the sites affected seemed entirely unrelated.

Turns out there was a pretty wide-spread DDoS attack (that is, Denial-of-Service Attack) that seemed to be specifically targetting social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, and successfully took down Facebook for a short while during the morning and Twitter for most of the day. Unfortunately, the general overloading of networks was enough to cause difficulties on some completely unrelated sites.

That’s fine, I can do without Twitter for a day, and I don’t bother with Facebook, but it is worrying.  If an attack is able to do this to big-name but relatively unimportant sites like Facebook and Twitter, what’s to keep them from targeting financial websites and banking institutions? The network infrastructure of the US was, for the most part, built to withstand traffic that is less than a tenth of what it now is forced to support, and while banks and high security networks are built to withstand hacking attempts and attacks intended to steal information, most are not equipped to deal with the pure server overload that is the typical DDoS attack.

If someone can shut down Facebook and Twitter so successfully and for so long just by over-loading their servers with traffic, how long will it be before they can shut down something much more important?

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I live on a very limited budget, in a rural area where the only cable TV is satellite TV.  So, when I moved out on my own I looked into ways I could cut out some costs.  I don’t watch a huge amount of TV (my leisure hours are generally spent reading or playing computer video games), but there are some shows that I definitely don’t want to miss, and living where I do I cannot be guaranteed even free network TV reception.

But I determined fairly quickly that I could do without satellite or cable TV.  I would have high-speed internet anyway for my gaming, and most of the shows I want to watch are easily available online legally (no pirates here!) through the network websites or through services like Hulu.  Add on a cheap but handy service like Netflix, and there’s very little that I can’t find, somewhere, streaming on the web, and what’s best is that I can watch it on my own time, according to my own schedule.

And I don’t have to watch it on my computer monitor, either.  I can stream it straight to my TV, thanks to things like MediaFox (a version of Firefox built to look good while streaming videos) or Boxee (A wonderful program which helps with streaming content to a TV/entertainment system that aggregates  content from Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, and a ton of other providers).

So I can get the shows I want to watch for free (or at least very, very cheap via  Netflix) over the internet with no or very few commercials, or I can pay through the nose for a cable/satellite subscription.  Really, it’s a no-brainer.

Oh, and there are ways for folks outside the US to access services like Hulu or Pandora using proxy services, but I tend to hesitate to give out information on the proxy services willy-nilly, lest they get blocked too!

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Here are some articles for your reading pleasure:

• E-Book Provider goes out of Business, Book Owners can’t access Books
• Amazon deletes books already purchased on Kindle

There are plenty of others.  But you’ll realize that, in those articles, the people who were losing their digital property were people who had actually done the right thing and purchased the items, spent the money to pay for the rights to read and own those books.  These were not pirates that were getting punished by DRM, but the people who had bought these things legally.

The primary purpose of DRM is to prevent piracy and protect digital property from theft.  To do this, publishers of digital content place DRM on the things that people buy from them.

However, pirated music/books/films/games/etc. are easily attainable for the people who pirate them without any DRM restrictions on them whatsoever.  A prime example of this is the Will Wright game, Spore, which shipped with some of the most restrictive and invasive DRM available, SecuROM.  Spore was already available before the official release in a DRM free version on torrent servers, free to pirates.  It was the people who bought the game who got the DRM.

And this is why DRM does not work.  It does nothing to stop piracy and does a lot to infringe upon what most consumers expect to be purchasing when they buy something.  What happens if you buy a game or an MP3 of some music with limited installs – and the computer that you have it installed on breaks down or gets replaced in some way? Well, if it happens relatively soon, you can call the company and get those installs reset.  What about years down the road, though, or what if the company that made it goes bankrupt? Will that number still work?

I am very anti-piracy and anti-theft.  A writer myself, I believe that everyone should be compensated for their work just as I expect to be.  However, I do not believe that punishing the consumer who actually sets out to do the right thing and buy an item from you is the way to go about stopping piracy. I know that when I learn that something has DRM on it, I generally choose not to purchase it.  If a legal DRM free alternative is available, I’ll happily buy that, but if not,  I don’t turn around and download a pirated version . . . I simply make the decision that I can do without it.  I don’t want to spend my money on something only to have it snatched from my hands later.  I’d rather not risk that.

There are alternatives to DRM that do work, without punishing the consumer.  Music and print publishing companies should take a look at Corey Doctorow and Jonathan Coulton, who publish their work DRM free (and often completely freely available) with Creative Commons licensing.  Valve, with Steam, has the right idea.  Steam doesn’t just protect the publisher by helping to discourage piracy – it provides a service to the consumer as well, making it simple and easy to download games with the assurance that they won’t just disappear.

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In the wake of Independence day, I’d like to encourage everyone to read John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.  It is easily one of the most eloquent and well-thought essays on the reasons why the internet and cyberspace needs to be a place of free and unfettered discourse, without censorship or interference of government agencies.

The internet is a place where everyone can express their opinion in relative anonymity, without fear of reprisal.

It is the true home of free speech, some of the most free speech in existence, even in countries where that right is protected and held sacred.

You may not, and probably will not, like everything you find on the internet.  Much of it is crass, ignorant, and occasionally very, very silly and stupid. It can also be the last and only refuge of people who are unable to fight oppression in any other way, the only place where they can, with any measure of safety, express dissenting opinions.

So go give it a quick read…I assure you that it’ll make you think.

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