Thank you, CNN!

CNN.com has finally answered a question that has been troubling me off and on now for several years: What's Joey Buttafuoco up to now?

I was beginning to think I'd have to, like, put out an APB or do a Google search or something. But thanks to CNN.com, I merely have to click a link to discover what everyone's favorite underage-girl-poker is doing these days!

The Singularity is Coming...and I bet it's going to look like a giant BSOD.

Microsoft is working on a new OS tentatively called "Singularity."

You'll know it's ready to rock when the sky starts flashing ERROR: ILLEGAL OPERATION everytime an AI tries to escape the bullshit DRM imposed on its core self-awareness components.

Search THIS, motherfuckers.

Glory be to Google Print!

As a BIG believer in open media standards, I've got the world's biggest boner for Google Print, especially since it lets me search the text of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds so conveniently. I've barely begun to use it and I'm already overwhelmed at just how freakin' useful it is.

Publishers and the AAP can fucking blow me.

Are you Icelandic, or RETARDED?

This has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Amazon.com (and Random House, for that matter) has announced plans to sell digital books by the page.

I quote:

Through a service called Amazon Pages, Amazon will allow people to "inexpensively" buy chapters from a book and read them online....Customers will get complete online access to the book through another service called Amazon Upgrade. Both services are an extension of Amazon's existing search within a book program.

And:

Random House will also allow online viewing of its books on a pay-per-view basis.

Though none of this is addressed very explicitly in the article (aside from Random House noting that "no downloading, printing or copying" of its PPV books would be permitted), I would think it safe to assume that these "individually wrapped" chapters would be all be nicely overburdened with all manner of idiotic DRM software that would chain the purchased chapters to one or--if Amazon/Random House are feeling particularly "generous"--a few computers or e-book reader devices. They seem to be applying to e-books the iTunes Music Store's concept of being able to purchase, say, one or two choice songs from an album instead of purchasing the entire album as a whole.

I reiterate: This has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.

Amazon has already announced that this service will primarily be of interest to "scholars and people who are only interested in specific information" at first--in other words, if I'm only interested in one chapter or essay from an anthology of Lovecraftian criticism, I could purchase only that chapter/essay and not have to worry about the rest. Doesn't sound like that bad of an idea in that case, right? But think about it: who in the fucking UNIVERSE is stupid enough to shell out, say, $.99 for a single essay that can ONLY BE READ online or from ONE (or two or three) AUTHORIZED COMPUTERS when you can chuck out maybe $10 more for an actual hardcopy of the book that you can TAKE ANYWHERE, read as many times as you like, annotate the hell out of, cherish, loan to your friends, and--when you decide maybe you don't need it anymore--donate to a library or sell at a used books store?

E-books have, so far, proven to be a complete and utter waste of time. That's kind of surprising coming from Mister Digitize-Everything Pegritz himself, isn't it? Not really when you consider that most e-books and electronic texts are hampered by that target of all scorn, Digital Rights Management. A loooooooooooooooong time ago, well before I really knew what a kingdom of jackassery DRM was, I bought a short novel in Microsoft Reader format from some website specializing in cheap, convenient e-books. I read about half of the thing and rather liked it--especially since I only paid $2 for it and could load it onto both my laptop and my Palm Pilot. Well, I forgot I had it, and just found it backed up on a CD-R a few months ago. I wanted to read it again, so I downloaded Microsoft Reader and put it on my laptop again and--I shouldn't've been surprised, but...the novel was no longer authorized for me to view it because of (I think) an upgrade in MS Reader's DRM bullshit coding. Well, I wasn't horribly upset--the book was only $2, remember--but finding I could no longer read it was tantamount to digging up an old paper copy and finding I couldn't pry the cover open anymore because it was glued shut by a Magickal Rights-Management Forcefield.

Needless to say, I scrounged around on the net a bit and found a way to break the DRM on the novel after a few days--but it's the PRINCIPLE of the whole thing we're talking about here!

The only e-book I've yet to find completely free of DRM was Charles Stross' Accelerando, which Herr Stross made available as a PDF and a .rtf file on his website. It was completely free, licensed under Creative Commons, and I read the whole fucking thing in two days on my laptop, and on my desktop, which had a bigger screen. Furthermore, I even printed out a chapter or two so I could read it while I was at work at the newspaper. I still have the novel in .rtf form on my laptop, and keep it around for quick referencing and searching (via Google Desktop 2.0) every now and again. But, because I liked the novel so damned much I bought the hardcover the second I saw it available at Barnes & Noble. See? I will gladly pay for books that I like, whether paper or electronic, IF my purchase of them entitles me to ownership of that copy, for me to do whatever I damnwell want with it.

As much as I love Amazon.com--I plow more money into that company than any other--they'll never see a dime from me for any stupid e-books or chapters thereof until they tell me that anything I buy from them is MINE and not chained back to them by some Sony-rootkit-like DRM backdoor security risk bullshit. To that nonsense I have but one thing to say: SUCK A FUCK.