Live from Austin!

The liver is not supposed to be a user-replaceable part; that’s why the casing is sealed. Officially you’re supposed to replace the entire CEO and ship the old one off in a box.

I just watched The Year of the Sex Olympics . It’s a UK TV drama made in 1968, that was easily 30 years ahead of its time.

(Spoilers follow.) Continue reading »

“A large Pakistani flag flaps in the wind atop a tree-covered mountain…
In the past two years the army has twice failed to defeat the Taliban of Swat.”
– BBC News, 2009-05-23.

The Taliban of Swat

(with apologies to Edward Lear)

Who, or why, or which, or what, are the Taliban of Swat?
How did they get where they are today?
Were they funded and trained by the CIA, or NOT,
     the Taliban of Swat?

Do they issue demands? Do they boast to the press?
Are their writings in Urdu, or Arabic, or POLYGLOT,
     the Taliban of Swat?

Are they slow to recruit? Are there entrance exams?
Or will they accept any brainwashed religious CRACKPOT,
     the Taliban of Swat?

Is the Pakistan weather a pleasure to them,
Or do their black turbans result in their heads getting HOT,
     the Taliban of Swat?

After the bombs that they make detonate,
Do they bury their victims, cremate them, or leave them to ROT,
     the Taliban of Swat?

Do they pay for their murderous terror campaign
By trafficking heroin, crack cocaine, or POT,
     the Taliban of Swat?

Do they hate and fear the USA?
Are they hostile to Disney? Do they long to burn down EPCOT,
     the Taliban of Swat?

Is Al Qaeda’s jihad one which they also back?
Did they aid the attack on the Islamabad MARRIOTT,
     the Taliban of Swat?

Will the picturesque northwest of Pakistan
Ever again become a vacation SPOT,
     for the Taliban of Swat?

There’s a meme going around: in 15 minutes, come up with a list of 15 books that “will always stick with you”. Since lists on their own aren’t all that interesting, I’ve added some notes about why I’ve chosen these books.

1. “The Man Who Folded Himself”, David Gerrold.

   One of the great SF time travel novels. Take one ordinary guy, a time machine, and the many-worlds hypothesis, and watch everything go completely nuts.

   I nearly chose “When Harlie Was One”, another Gerrold book which is probably better from a literary standpoint, but the plot doesn’t quite stick in my head the same way, perhaps because I read it in a single sitting because I couldn’t stop.

2. “Ubik”, Philip K. Dick.

   Not Dick’s best novel, not his most striking, but one of the ones which is most typical of his writing, and one of the first I read.

3. “The Chain of Chance”, Stanislaw Lem.

   I’d love to say more about why this is great, but the less you know about it, the better it is. Don’t even read the blurb.

4. “1984″, George Orwell.

   Also known as the UK/US government instruction manual, 1984 onwards.

5. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”, Douglas Adams.

   All of it. And the radio show scripts, if that’s not cheating.

6. “Obedience To Authority”, Stanley Milgram.

   Probably the most terrifying book in the world.

7. “Computer Lib / Dream Machines”, Ted Nelson.

   There’s a reason why this sells for outrageous sums second hand. Every page is full of wit, insight, and ideas. It set the direction of my academic and then my professional life.

8. “Alice In Wonderland / Alice Through The Looking-Glass”, Lewis Carroll.

   If there’s anyone who hasn’t read this: What is wrong with you?

9. “Getting Things Done”, David Allen.

   I don’t adhere to GTD religiously, but elements of it have been incredibly helpful to me. The only personal organization system that has actually worked somewhat for me.

10. “The Phantom Tollbooth”, Norton Juster.

    Like “Alice in Wonderland”, a book for kids that is smart enough to be entertaining to adults as well.

11. “The Book of the SubGenius”, Rev. Ivan Stang.

    The other face of religion in Texas. I bought copies for friends the first time I visited the USA.

12. “Principia Discordia”, Mal-2.

    While Subgenius is entertaining, I think that ultimately, Discordianism is the better religion, or the more long-lasting joke, depending on your point of view.

13. The complete short stories of Philip K. Dick.

    While Dick’s novels are often great, I think it’s in his short stories that he really shines as an author.

14. “The C Programming Language”, Kernighan and Ritchie.

    The first real programming language I learned was C. K&R set my expectations for programming language books; I look for the thin ones, not the doorstops.

15. “The Transparent Society”, David Brin.

    I was persuaded. I think this is our only viable choice. The way I live has changed accordingly.

I am cheap. I don’t think I go quite as far as being a tightwad, but I’m frugal. I buy generics at the supermarket and drugstore, and when I order from Amazon, I always choose the free shipping option, even though it sometimes drives me crazy waiting for the item to arrive. I don’t mind spending money on functionality, but I find it tough to spend extra for luxury.

Today, however, I did something I found difficult: I paid the extra money for seat upgrades for our trip to the UK later this year. We traveled that way on our last trip, and the 8 hour flight across the Atlantic was vastly more pleasant than the couple of hours in cattle class between Austin and Chicago.

I don’t want to risk arriving in the UK with my back in spasm, and having a miserable time for the next couple of months (including a 12 hour return journey). Another issue is that we’re only going to be there a week–so the less jetlagged we are on arrival, the better. There’s a third bonus, however: by going with British Airways, I managed to avoid Chicago O’Hare, Newark, and JFK. It’ll just be a short 1 hour hop in cattle class to Dallas, then the whole of the rest of the journey will be spent in relative luxury. I plan to settle down comfortably with the Kindle and read a book or two, then sleep a little after the 3-course dinner.

It’s more than I’ve ever spent on travel before. Last time the upgrade was about a 20-30% premium, this time it about doubled the price. Alarm bells rang at American Express, and I had to call them to confirm that yes, it really was me buying plane tickets. It then took six attempts before they could persuade their security system to let me complete the purchase. It seems they know my spending patterns pretty well.

My initial thoughts about the Kindle DX:

The price seems surprisingly reasonable. The iRex with an A4 size screen was over $800.

I’m not convinced that textbooks are workable on an e-book reader. You don’t read textbooks linearly. (Or at least, I never did.) The ability to flip around between marked locations is limited on the Kindle 2, and I’m guessing it will be on the DX as well.

On the other hand, the size and weight benefits are hard to deny. However, I never used to carry multiple textbooks around with me. Maybe American students’ habits are different?

It wouldn’t work for me as a general purpose device for reading novels as well as PDFs, because it won’t fit into a shoulder bag or reasonable size backpack. With a screen that big, it’ll be scarily easy to break by banging your bag against the corner of a table, unless you get some kind of metal hardcase.

Newspapers? Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see the ability to display text in multiple columns as that big of a win. Consider that most people under the age of about 50 get their written news from the web, where a single column for the stories is the rule. We went through all the madness of trying to make electronic pages look like newspaper pages ten years ago; it didn’t work as well as a simple clickable table of contents. I bet the newspaper guys think going back to multiple columns is a great idea, though. As for diagrams, the existing Kindle can display those fairly adequately, it’s mainly being held back by the content producers failing to include them.

What about magazines, which generally require color? If I’m going to be spending a big chunk of cash on something with an A4 screen, I want to be able to read Scientific American on it without compromises.

Overall, I’m more skeptical about this than I was about the original Kindle. I think I’d advise waiting to see what Pixel Qi come up with, not to mention the CrunchPad.

As the promised followup to my review of the Kindle 2, I’m going to go through some of the common objections to the Kindle that I see reposted every time it gets mentioned. I have no financial stake in Amazon’s success; it just annoys me to see the same misconceptions crop up time and time again. Continue reading »

In case you haven’t been paying attention to the Chrysler saga, here’s a brief summary of some recent events.

March 17:

Chrysler Chief Executive Bob Nardelli today called for a second round of funding for the company’s financial arm that would enable sales to customers who otherwise can’t qualify for loans.

In an interview with CNBC, Nardelli also said he wants "some kind of decision" from the president’s task force on the auto industry by March 31 on Chrysler’s request for an additional $5 billion to fund operations.

April 21:

Top officials at Chrysler Financial turned away a government loan because executives didn’t want to abide by new federal limits on pay, according to new findings by a federal watchdog agency.

April 30:

Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection Thursday and announced it will temporarily halt most of its vehicle production while it completes a deal with Italian carmaker Fiat designed to revive its tattered fortunes.

Obama said Chrysler Financial, the arm of the company that makes loans to buyers and to dealers to finance their inventories, will be merged into GMAC Financial Services, once General Motors Corp.’s finance arm. The new GMAC will get government support. Chrysler’s base of dealers would also be pared down.

So, how’s that bonus now Mr Nardelli?

May 5:

Whoever replaces Chrysler Chairman and Chief Executive Bob Nardelli will have to oversee a complex rebuilding of Chrysler with Fiat engineering and U.S. government money – and might not earn more than $500,000 a year doing so.

I guess that’s why CNBC named Nardelli one of the worst American CEOs of all time even before he took over at Chrysler.

I bought an Amazon Kindle 2 earlier this year. I’ve now read several novels and a bunch of short stories on it, as well as two magazines and a newspaper. I feel I know the device well enough to be able to review it.

Mobile phones are all about bling. Fancy cases, custom screensavers, custom ringtones, and so on. The iPhone has upped the ante as far as bright candy-colored animated buttons, slick animations, and throwaway gimmick applications. Reading a book, however, is all about forgetting the object, forgetting the real world, and being drawn into the text. So ultimately, the ideal e-book reader would be one you barely noticed.

The Kindle is a pretty good design. It basically works as a book, which means you shouldn’t expect any "wow" moments. In fact, it’s easy to examine it and think "So what?" Many people have done just that. But I’m going to leave the naysaying for another article. First, I want to talk about what it’s like to live with and use a Kindle.

The device itself is about the size of a trade paperback. Here are a couple of pictures of it sitting with a paperback copy of Philip K. Dick’s masterpiece "VALIS":

As you can see, it’s about the same size and thickness, and that’s including the protective case. To compare the Kindle to another familiar object, it’s about the same size as a regular DVD case, plus an extra centimeter or two of height.

On the other hand, the Kindle is a bit less than twice the weight of the trade paperback. The metal back probably doesn’t help, but it does mean that the device feels solid and substantial, and not like a piece of cheap flimsy plastic.

Putting it all together, with the extra weight and familiar size, it still feels like a book. Sitting and reading with it therefore feels immediately somewhat familiar and comfortable.

Of course, that’s a comparison with a single trade paperback of typical size. Here’s a different comparison:

That’s the complete Hitchhiker’s Guide in hardback, and a copy of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest in paperback. I’ve also got Infinite Jest on the Kindle; guess which is more comfortable to curl up in bed with?

The main attraction of the Kindle is the screen. It uses e-ink, which means that the screen basically looks like laser printer output. To be more precise, the Kindle screen has about half the resolution of a low end laser printer, but uses shades of gray to antialias the text and make it smoother. There is no glow or flicker at all. The background is gray, and the print is dark gray; overall, it has slightly less contrast than a well printed paper book, but still looks very good.

Here’s a photo of a yellowing Harlan Ellison paperback, next to the Kindle screen. I’m not sure exactly why, but the Kindle doesn’t seem to look good in photos. In real life, the two are about comparable in readability. The paper has slightly better contrast, but the cheap printing tends to mean the letterforms are a bit irregular.

You’ll notice I’ve put a dark vinyl skin on my Kindle. The pure white of the casing is one of the few design errors Amazon have made. Because of the way our eyes work, it makes the e-ink screen look darker and less readable than it really is. That’s why if you see a Sony e-book in your local Borders, you might think its screen looks superior. (The bright lighting in the store also helps.)

Some have questioned why the bezel around the Kindle screen is so large. It turns out that there’s a good design reason: it makes the device more comfortable to hold. The space at the sides of the screen is almost exactly the width of my thumb. I can hold the device in one hand, gripping with my thumb, without touching the screen. To flip to the next page, I simply need to roll my thumb slightly, thus clicking the next page button. This means that it’s actually easier to flip to the next page on the Kindle than it is with a paper book. In addition, there’s no risk of accidentally flipping two pages at once.

A related issue that worries people about the Kindle is that the screen refresh is slow compared to an LCD. Also, the entire screen blinks while it refreshes. Well, I’m glad to say that after a very few hours, it becomes a non-issue; you simply don’t notice it any more.

The first reason is that the "blink" isn’t like an LCD flashing; there’s no light emitted. Secondly, the refresh happens significantly faster than I can reliably turn a page in a paper book. And thirdly, you subconsciously learn to time your button click so that the refresh happens while your eyes are moving from the bottom of the screen back to the top. Honestly, I’ve been jolted out of the flow of reading more often with problems turning pages in paper books.

Of course, it’s not good enough to be able to do the things that a paper book does. Technology needs to offer some advantages, so let me outline a few.

First of all, you can change the text size. The picture above shows the second smallest size, which is about the same as a paperback. If you have poor eyesight, you can flip to double size without needing to buy a special large print version of your books. That’s probably one of the reasons why Kindle ownership seems to skew towards older readers.

I don’t need large text, but a feature I do find myself using is the built-in dictionary. If I hit a word I don’t know, I can highlight it with the cursor to get a brief description, without leaving the page. (The definition appears in a bubble at the bottom of the screen.) Clicking enter gives me the full Concise Oxford American Dictionary entry, if I want it. When I’m done, I can hit Back to go back to where I was.

Now, obviously I have a paper dictionary sitting on my bookshelves. I could go look up words from paper books–but I hardly ever did. I never wanted to break my reading session, go find the dictionary, and leaf through it to find the right definition. As for the idea of carrying the dictionary around with me when reading–no, that wasn’t going to happen. So Kindle will probably lead to my actually learning some new words.

Another feature I use a lot is highlighting. You can use the cursor joystick to swipe across some text. That text automatically appears in a text file you can read on your computer, complete with the title of the book you read it in, the author name, and the place in the book. If you view your highlighted text from the Kindle, you can jump back to the actual page.

Annotations work much the same way: Move the cursor to the spot and start typing, and you get a footnote marker in the text which will lead you to your note. The note itself appears in a computer-readable text file, again with the author and title and location.

These features absolutely rock my world for book club reading and personal study. I’m currently working through a book on US history, annotating and highlighting as I go. When I’m done I’ll pull the text into an outliner, and use it as an instant first draft of some revision notes. Similarly, when reading last month’s book for the book club I’m in, I swiped bits I particularly liked, and jotted down notes here and there, then e-mailed the file to my BlackBerry to act as discussion crib notes. So again, there’s a real convenience gain over jotting in a notebook or on an envelope used as a bookmark.

Ah yes, bookmarks. Say goodbye to those. When you want to stop reading with Kindle, you can just put it down and forget about it. It’ll power off automatically after a few minutes of no page turns, flipping the screen to a picture of a famous author or illuminated manuscript. When you pick it up and push the switch to turn it on, you’re right back where you left off.

You can even close the book you’re reading and go back to the menu and read something else, and next time you open the same book, you go back to wherever you were last reading.

What if you page back to an earlier point in the book to revisit something earlier? Push the menu button, and there’s an option to jump you straight to the furthest point you’ve read to.

If you still really, really want a way to drop multiple bookmarks, then the annotation feature will do the job. However, Kindle is primarily aimed at the kind of text you read from start to finish in a linear fashion. If that’s what you’re reading, you never have to think about bookmarks, never have to deal with lost bookmarks. The right thing happens automatically.

Having said that Kindle is aimed at linear reading, it does nevertheless have a search feature. I haven’t used it, other than to verify that it works. I imagine I might find a use for it when I’m done with my history book and want to go back and see if I missed noting any good stuff about Thomas Jefferson.

Books can also have a table of contents, allowing you to click an entry with the joystick and skip to the appropriate part of the book. There can be cover art too, though the grayscale screen isn’t going to wow you with that.

You might be wondering about battery life. The e-ink screen uses no power to maintain its display, so the only time battery is used is when you push a button. I go over a week between charges, even with heavy weekend reading.

One thing that does eat battery is the wireless networking. For that reason, I don’t tend to use the Kindle for web browsing, and turn off the wireless unless I’m expecting to receive something. Even with wireless on, though, a battery charge will last you for days. The charger is barely larger than an AC wall plug. It’s USB, so you can also charge from a computer, or a universal USB charger. The cable for the Kindle is a standard micro-USB cable. Ah, if only Apple were as good about using non-proprietary chargers and cables…

Buying books is easy. You go to Amazon, log in, find something interesting, and hit the 1-click button to buy it. In less than a minute, it appears on your Kindle. You can also order stuff from the Kindle itself, but I’ve generally found that the experience is better with the full Amazon web site rather than the cut-down pages served up on the device itself.

Another killer feature is the free previews. When I see any moderately interesting book that has a Kindle edition, I hit the free preview button. Amazon sends me a chunk of the first chapter. If I read that and decide I want to read the rest of the book, I can order the book straight from the Kindle. The full book replaces the preview, and inside a minute I’m back to reading.

According to rumors, Amazon is getting 10% of its book sales as Kindle editions. Amazon say that Kindle owners buy 2.6x as many books at Amazon as non-Kindle-owners. I don’t doubt this, as I’ve found that the Kindle has gotten me reading more. The conveniences I’ve described may seem slight, but when you add them together, it seems to me that the Kindle is better than paper. I find myself increasingly reluctant to buy paper books–especially when they’re hardbacks, lengthy works, or (worst of all) both.

The Kindle does have some downsides. Yes, the initial cost is pretty high, as it’s still very much at the early adopter phase right now. You have to read a lot of books to make up the money in savings, so don’t look at it from a cost-saving point of view; it’s all about convenience.

There’s not much snob value either. If you’re the kind of New York hipster who has to be seen reading the right books, the Kindle won’t appeal to you.

A related issue is that the selection of e-books available isn’t fantastic. It annoys me that there’s nothing by Lem, very little by J.G. Ballard, not enough Harlan Ellison, no Jeff Noon, only one book by Michael Marshall Smith, and so on. It’s rather like the early days of CD or DVD; and as was the case with those new technologies, the selection is getting better all the time.

But that said, there are already more wonderful books than I’ll ever have time to read–so perhaps it’s time I get back to my comfy chair. In a while, I’ll be writing a second article, dealing with common objections to the Kindle, and whether they stand up.

After a recent Independent article on the dark side of Dubai, there were a few people who thought the article was unfairly bashing the jewel of the United Arab Emirates.

Well, now the US’s ABC news has gone public with video recordings from neighboring Abu Dhabi. They show a UAE police officer torturing someone:

A man in a UAE police uniform is seen on the tape tying the victim’s arms and legs, and later holding him down as the Sheikh pours salt on the man’s wounds and then drives over him with his Mercedes SUV.

Apparently there’s some cattle prod insertion too, and the victim’s genitals are set on fire. The identity of the torturer? Confirmed as Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, developer behind the Al Hekma Tower in Dubai. He apparently carried out the torture because he felt he had been short-changed on a delivery of grain for his ranch. You might wonder why he had the sessions video taped; allegedly that was just so he could enjoy them later.

What do the authorities have to say about it? The Minister of the Interior, Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, says “all rules, policies and procedures were followed correctly by the Police Department.” The fact that the Minister is the perpetrator’s brother doubtless has no bearing on his conclusions. Perhaps someone can take it up with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sheikh Abdallah bin Zayed Al Nahyan; or perhaps even the President, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan; or the Crown Prince, Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

The government of the UAE isn’t exactly the same set of people as the Al Nahyan family; that would be ridiculous. For example, Sheikh Falah Zayed Al Nahyan keeps a lower profile, allegedly spending his time on more leisurely pastimes like acting as chairman of the racing and polo club and demanding gay sex from strangers in hotels and beating them if they refuse.

In all, the Al Nahyan family seem to be just the sort of stable, civilized gentlemen we should be selling nuclear reactors to, yes?

Update 2009-05-03: 25 more tapes have surfaced