Mission Accomplished

Well, it took a couple of years, but today "Iraq throws open door to foreign oil firms". What's good for General Motors is good for the country. It's why we fight.

Never let it be said that the Iraq war hasn't accomplished anything: amazing profits are an accomplishment. They're a huge accomplishment.

Amazon not sure if DRM exists

Audible.com, a subsidiary of Amazon, is "agnostic" on the topic of DRM (Digital Rights Management). I wrote them to ask them to follow through on their pledge to remove DRM if people complain, and this is the response I got:

Hello from Amazon.com.

Audible is DRM agnostic -- our primary goal is to offer a great customer experience. Audiobooks purchased on Audible.com can be played on over 600 AudibleReady devices, including Kindles, iPods and most other MP3 players, Tom Toms and other GPS devices, Sonos and other in-home systems, and all PCs and Macs. Unlike DRM-free MP3 music files designed for songs, audiobook files must deliver a unique multi-hour listening experience. Customers have recognized and appreciated Audible's unique listening experience since the company's inception in 1997. Audible is committed to maintaining and improving the features that drive this experience. [Paraphrase: Shut up.]

Audible recently announced that it is working to provide the option of DRM-free spoken word audio titles on Audible.com for content owners who prefer this method and are committed to working with Audible to maintain a great customer experience.[Paraphrase: We're thinking about it.]

Thanks for your interest in Amazon.com and Audible.

Sincerely,

Customer Service
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/

So, being agnostic, they presumably do not deny the existence of DRM, but they have no evidence it exists? Maybe they are just so tied up in the "customer experience" that they haven't thought about it. Well, if there's anything worse than annoying, dangerous and abusive DRM for the customer experience, I can't imagine what it might be.

The highest camp of all

Even before the Internet we had annoying catchphrases injected into our daily conversation by advertisers. The Massengill douche commercials of the 1980s were masterworks of shameless campiness, at once implausible, ridiculous, and full of emotional weight. The "not-so-fresh" catchphrase caught on massively, with everyone discussing the commercial, and most importantly, repeating it. Again. And again.

The settings for these commercials are some waspy paradise like Montauk or Kennebunkport: one is invited to imagine a young Jacqueline Bouvier talking to her mother, receiving the feminine wisdom passed down, woman to woman, generation to generation. The sailboat, the American flag, the beach at sunset, comfy sweaters: the goal is visual distraction from the subject matter. An earlier commercial in the same vein doesn't have a catchphrase, but is altogether more heartwarming and cuddly.

Advertisers love to use the "introduction to the mysteries by the wise parent" trope: although (and perhaps because) it basically never happens. These are the types of conversations that parents never want to have (but guiltily feel they should) and children never want to have (but later feel they should have had); the male equivalent is the father-teaches-son-to-shave commercial. In reality, we all figure this stuff out alone (guided by television), so using a television commercial to pretend otherwise is fiendishly manipulative.

This last example predates the other two, with no focus on any "natural" qualities: instead it stresses "Effectal", a magical substance with close ideological (if not chemical) ties to Retsyn. This a more typical example of a Madison Avenue "two Cs in a K", with the actors mouthing the stilted advertising messages created by marketing interns. It shows none of the genius of the above commercials, but the stop-action daisy invasion is beautiful. My favourite detail is where they toast the efficacy of the product by almost touching the bottle to the box.

Not your PayPal

Sometimes the best service can be ruined by greed. I find it particularly insulting how PayPal continually defaults to direct debit from chequing instead of paying through my credit card. I've been burned by this, trying to make a purchase quickly and realizing after the fact that I've just hit my bank account instead of my credit card. I have repeatedly set my primary method of payment to credit card, yet PayPal continually and consistently ignores this preference and requires me to override chequing at every purchase. This practice is misleading and dishonest, and illustrates the lack of respect that PayPal has for its customers.

When you set it back to credit card, PayPal tries to convince you not to, stopping you in your tracks:

Paying with your bank account offers the highest level of PayPal protection and security, plus these advantages:

• No Fees -- Payments made using your bank account don't accrue interest fees
• Instant Payment -- Bank account payments are processed instantly
• Convenience -- Paying with your bank account means that your payments always go through -- instantly.
  Note: Sellers with Personal accounts cannot receive credit card payments. Any PayPal user can receive bank account payments.
• Safety -- Your bank account information is kept safe through the highest grade commercially available encryption and is extensively covered against unauthorized use

Do you still want to make this payment with a credit card?

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. PayPal tries to muddy the waters here, raising the spectre that the recipient might not be able to get the money. Um, if they have a personal account you can't even send them money with a credit card, so there's no danger of them not being able to receive their money. They also try to give the impression that using a credit card might delay the payment, when actually they use the credit card to guarantee the slow bank account transfer. They even flash the terrorsafety card, implying that the terroristsmafia will get hold of your credit card number, when in fact the merchant has no idea which method you're using. (If the merchant were able to find out, they'd probably avoid PayPal like the plague.)

See, this is how PayPal makes money. They withhold 2-3% from what they pay the merchant for the transaction whether it comes from your credit card, your bank account, or your PayPal balance. So of course they want to take it from your bank account – ACH fees are much cheaper than credit card settlement fees. But don't worry about poor little PayPal. They also make money from foreign exchangefees, transaction fees, and float.

If PayPal provided some incentive to use direct debit over credit card (like, maybe, a discount) that would be another story, but instead PayPal presents bogus benefits of direct debit that just don't make sense. Because they cannot legitimately convince someone to forgo thirty extra days to pay to have the money sucked immediately out of their bank account, instead they engage in this sort of chicanery.

Believe it or not, I use PayPal quite a bit because it is convenient. As annoying and opaque and arbitrary as they can be, they almost always beat the banks for immediacy and limited hassle. For example, they make foreign exchange relatively cheap and easy – heck, they make it simple as hell. But the little touches sometimes colour the whole experience, and I think PayPal suffers from contagion from its prematurely sclerotic and abusive corporate parent.

Undiplomatic behaviour

Gregory Levey, a columnist for Salon.com, spins a good yarn about his time working for the Israeli government as a speechwriter in his book "Shut Up, I'm Talking: And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned in the Israeli Government". He gives a great view of the other side of politics and diplomacy, and tells a couple of really funny stories. I was a bit jealous of his experiences, though not so much when he described daily life in Tel Aviv.

Sold out

Although it is my sincere hope that things in the United States will change after the fall election, recent news is not encouraging. Although the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives had as recently as March displayed the unprecedented existence of a spine while upholding the rule of law and the 4th amendment rights of Americans, on Friday 20 June they gave AT&T and other lawbreaking telecommunication companies a free pass for helping the executive branch to spy illegally on US citizens. They also opened the floodgates to domestic spying on a new and breathtaking level. They sold us out to the telecom lobby: Nancy Pelosi got $13k (good to know our worth); Barack Obama "opposes" telecom immunity (but won't do anything to stop it); wholesale spying, that he thinks is just dandy and we can trust him to use it responsibly once he's elected.

Although it would be hard to surpass the evil of Cheney/Bush over the past eight years, the amount of power being concentrated in the executive branch is frighteningly corrupting, and it continues to expand. Mother Teresa would be tempted by that amount of power. I don't trust anyone to wield absolute power responsibly, and I'm not supposed to have to: that's why the US has a constitution, at least in theory. I guess that's really just a quaint historical document now, and we'll be at the mercy of whoever gets elected. That's not the way it's supposed to work, folks.

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." - John Adams [1772].

No intervention

Undeveloped land keeps becoming more and more scarce, and as the search for petroleum, hardwoods, and other raw materials continues, the very poorest people are the ones who suffer.

"Such a potent image leaves very little room for any doubt. In such circumstances do we need to know the details of the dispute to have any doubts that what we are witnessing is wrong?"David Vitters

1940 in science fiction: Slan

I picked up A. E. Van Vogt's Slan at the library. Classic scifi can be fun, and although it did keep me engaged, man this was bad. Since it was his first novel I guess I should cut him a break, but his narrative style was just terrible... he produced some of the most stilted prose imaginable: this guy was to smooth narrative as Jack Kirby was to life drawing.

And all through one almost endless week a snug-fitting, leech-shaped metal monstrosity hugged inch by inch over the surface of the ship, straining with its frightful power the very structure of the atoms, till the foot-thick walls of the long, sleek machine were ten-point steel from end to end.

Slan Chapter 12, ¶ 13

Here he exercised remarkable restraint by leaving two nouns desolate without the comforting presence of powerful adjectives. Elsewhere he also showed off his shiny new verb actuate with the insistence of a four-year-old showing off his shiny new wagon.

But seriously, it's pretty easy to take potshots at atom-age scifi, which was marketed mostly to teenagers and didn't exactly have a great deal of critical editorial talent applied to it. The ideas in the book certainly were groundbreaking at the time: nuclear energy, genetics, and even information science. The Library Journal says "essential for all libraries" and although that's a bit of a stretch, it's a worthy read for a true scifi fan.

Tales of the City

I've read Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City almost as many times as I've read The Lord of the Rings. At times it was a vice, honestly... it seemed like every semester in university the week before final exams I'd dig into these volumes instead of studying. Alternately silly and tragic, the books now span thirty years. As much as I sometimes malign the cultural accomplishments of the boomers, these books chronicle some of the best stories of the generation.

The latest volume, Michael Tolliver Lives, brings us up-to-date with the San Francisco clan, and is flavoured with not a little of Maupin's current love life (it feels by far the most autobiographical of his books) and is once again focused mostly on the title character. His writing has lost a fair bit of its satirical sting, but the depth of characterizations has improved, as has his subtelty. The sympathy with which he depicts his characters' internal conflict is more moving than ever. And although he leaves it open ended, this book feels like closure, which makes me rather sad – but honestly, I'm very pleased because I never even expected to see it written, and by all indications Maupin never expected to write it, either.

Nobody does it better

When it comes to being a successful post-imperialist power, the United Kingdom is the out-and-out winner. Despite centuries of malfeasance, The United Kingdom has rebranded itself as a charming, cuddly nation of quaint historical quirkiness – bumbling bobbies and rambunctious royals, pushing prams and riding double-decker buses, carrying brollies and wearing funny hats, powered by tea and crumpets, bangers and mash, and the occasional haggis. James Bond has provided the most compelling model of masculinity for two generations. Brittania rules the cultural waves, providing an aspirational brand the likes of which the world's middle classes can't get enough.

The US ought to study these techniques. The days are quickly passing in which the US can exercise its droit de seigneur on the territories, people, and resources of the world and brush aside its ill will through well-placed slaps and tickles. The United States needs to learn to capitalize on the emotional weight of its chief cultural exports: the hamburger, the Internet, film, software and music, and car culture – and it must not allow anything to cheapen them.

It would be a good start to avoid spouting hypocritical insults at emerging superpowers, keep the welcome mat out, and make friends with the neighbours. Once it has stopped making enemies, the charm offensive can begin, and the US could one day attract the world's attention in a good way.

Delicious Carbon for Sale or Trade

Although Canada's conservative "new" federal government is locked in a Bushian nightmare of climate doublespeak and bad science, the provinces are doing much better. British Columbia (where I have the privilege to reside) started its carbon tax yesterday, the first in North America. Today following bilingual talks between the Québec and Ontario cabinets (reportedly held 60% in French) were followed by an announcement of a cap-and-trade carbon emission reduction scheme much like those used in Europe, to be implemented by January 2010.

Even if the reactionary do nothing federal government and the oil-producing rednecks of Alberta (our esteemed prime minister's spiritual home) won't do it, the rest of Canada will – or at least 75% of us will. Canadian federalism works. It's a proud day here in our fair country.

Halting State

I bitched all the way through the first half of Charlie Stross' Halting State about how bored I was, and how I really didn't get it. Although the setup was slow, once the men from ONCLE came in it took off and went someplace I really didn't expect.

I'm not much of a gamer, and there are few games I've gotten sucked into (Ultima XII and The Sims, that's about it), but the vision of a future with pervasive mobile gaming woven into real life rings very true, and sounds very compelling (I mean fun). Stross delivers with new ideas in a fun setting (Scotland after independence from the UK) with logical progressions of the current geopolitical environment. My only complaint is that his usual characters pop up with new skins and do their usual mating dance, but that's pretty minor and wouldn't catch your attention unless you'd recently read Singularity Sky. My final verdict is that I highly recommended this highly technical and groundbreaking book.

The ever-growing list

I'm reading Stasiland, a book of stories about the East German intelligence apparatus that engaged 2% of the population to spy on itself. It's sad, engaging, and absurdly funny at turns.

If, by the mere fact of investigating someone you turn them into an Enemy of the State, you could potentially busy yourself with the entire population.

[The definition of "enemy" becomes] "Too wide," he continues, "to be properly carried out. Within available resources I mean."

Stasiland, pp 200

Which makes me think about various terror watchlists compiled in recent years, with no clear criteria for inclusion or exclusion, which grow longer and longer, and thus mean less and less. When you watch everyone, you watch no one: the Stasi compiled the most pervasive surveillance state so far, but even so they failed to predict its own fall.

So one would assume that list keepers have learned this lesson (let's give them the benefit of the doubt on their competence and intellectual capability). So if these lists are ineffective in detecting or preventing terrorism, then what exactly are they for?

---

Of course, one must also never underestimate the power of stupidity: always assume incompetence over conspiracy. It's hard to credit these clowns with carrying out anything successfully.

Tools by tools no longer cool

For a while there I thought that Microsoft was going to take everybody down with Visual Studio Team System. They'd take their superior IDE and debugging environment, add testing and fix their crappy version control system, and they'd own the world. "Nobody else will be able to deliver everything in one package," I thought. "They'll undercut everybody else until they own the landscape, and then they'll milk us like the clueless cows we are."

I even chose Perforce for a version control system. I looked at CVS and decided it was crap; Subversion was still not there, and everything else was just not good enough. "Microsoft uses Perforce," I thought, "and how wrong could they be?" (At that point I was still in fear and awe of Microsoft. Hell, I even thought Longhorn was going to rule the world.)

How different the world is suddenly. Yes, Microsoft has a beautiful IDE that permits you to smoothly debug Windows software. But who can afford to run web software on Windows? It is simply murder on a business model. And desktop software on Vista? Yeah, right. As a result, Team System is terribly quaint all of the sudden. Trac, Subversion (or Git if you're really cool), and BaseCamp are really all you need for web development, so why would you bother administering a SQL server database and a domain controller and an exchange server and a project server and a team system server and buying CALs for all of the above and along with the hardware to run it -- all for tens of thousands of dollars? And if you want to do truly distributed development between a core team, external contractors, or even (gasp) a wide community, Team System won't even do it. And there's the rub: that's the way software is built today.

Yesterday I saw an ad for Perforce: they're giving away a 2-user version, "No questions asked." Whoop-tee-doo, who cares. They can't even give that away. Microsoft versus Borland versus IBM was like a tyrannosaurus fighting a triceratops and a pterodactyl. It just doesn't matter.