why i'll never go e-book

I Finally Got a Kindle and I Love It but I Am Scared of Fascism | The Awl:

Having learned all this, I went along and had a closer look at the current Kindle License Agreement. There is some simply petrifying stuff on there. For starters, you don’t “own” Kindle books, you’re basically renting them.

Unless otherwise specified, Digital Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider.

They can change the software on you whenever they like:

Automatic Updates. In order to keep your Software up-to-date, Amazon may automatically provide your Kindle or Other Device with updates/upgrades to the Software.

That is how a totalitarian state would go about confiscating books, if they wanted to. There is nothing in this agreement to stop Amazon from modifying the Kindle software to make it impossible for you to read any of your own files on the device. Such a step is not actually forbidden to them by this agreement; they are under no obligation to protect any data you might be storing on there. That’s not to say that there aren’t laws at least in some states that might allow you to sue for damages; I’m just saying, there isn’t any promise made by Amazon to protect your data or preserve its readability.

They can also change the terms of the deal or simply shut down Kindle service entirely, anytime they like:

Changes to Service. We may modify, suspend, or discontinue the Service, in whole or in part, at any time.

Or they might decide to shut your account down:

Termination. Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. In case of such termination, you must cease all use of the Software, and Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Service or to Digital Content without refund of any fees. Amazon’s failure to insist upon or enforce your strict compliance with this Agreement will not constitute a waiver of any of its rights.

Keep in mind these are your books that you bought or collected. Can you imagine a bookseller or publisher asserting rights over the contents of your bookshelves in your house? That’s basically what we’re talking about, here.

the end of "arts" on tv...

Bad move, A&E : Pharyngula:

The A&E Channel has a new show coming up: Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal. Sounds awful already, doesn't it? But it's worse than you think: they're looking for disturbed kids who think they've got magic powers, and then they're flying in "professional psychics" to coach them in dealing with their awesome powers, i.e., indulge their delusions, get off on feeling superior to unhappy kids, and collect a paycheck for psychic child abuse.

Yes, they've gotten that horrid: training kids to either be charlatans or self-delusional, for money.

[...]

I mentioned that I have cable…but there's almost nothing on. The quality has been on a steady decline for years; cable stations like A&E, TLC, the History Channel, and the Discovery Channel were all set up with the noble goals of providing good educational/informative programming, and they've all sold out to provide little more than dreck ala Psychics with Serious Mental Illnesses Hunting Hitler's Ghost While Driving A Big Truck with Their Freakish Family. It's cheap, it's easy, the 'talent' they hire are all boring nobodies with only their disturbed personalities as a selling point — these are modern freak shows, plain and simple — and audiences eat them up.

Bravo's decline from being the arts elitist channel it was 25 years ago is among the most disturbing (and no more West Wing reruns, so the channel is now exclusively "reality" programming), although TLC's descent into HG-lite is pretty bad, too.  I keep resisting dropping the cable (well, satellite), mostly because we're too far out to get a decent digital tv signal over the air and I'd hate to not have the news available the next time a "9/11" level incident happens, but aside from "Scrubs" reruns, there's almost nothing we watch when it comes up that we haven't already already got the DVDs for (or acquired through some other means).

Still, there's something odd going on - there's something rather comforting about dealing with (2)57 channels and nothing on in terms of *NOT* having to make a choice.  There's a mental "investment" that happens when one picks out a CD or picks out a DVD - a mental commitment to watch/listen to the whole thing (and actually paying attention to it), and if you can't do that, you feel a guilt pang about putting it in.

That investment doesn't happen with radio or TV - you don't mind talking over it, you don't mind muting it for a minute, you don't mind walking out of the room and walking back in.  "No problem, no guilt", as someone else out there is watching it, too.  it is background noise without commitment...and I'm not sure I want to give that up.

As much as we'd walk out of the room and walk in, go get coffee, take showers, flip back-n-forth to Today Show for weather, leave when we're ready to go, etc., during The West Wing repeats in the morning, we'd NEVER do that if I were to actually put a West Wing DVD into the same TV at the same time of the morning.

That's kinda why it helps that I've turned my many prog-rock DVDs into a "video jukebox" - rip them to AVI or WMV, separated by song, and playlists that randomize them.  Rather than a concert video that I feel I have to watch all of, or what's the point, I can enjoy the music without commitment, without the need to be in the room all the time or else feel like I'm missing something important...like MTV back in the good ole days.

i love history...

Prince William Engaged | The Onion - America's Finest News Source | American Voices:

Marianne Rizzo Senior Solution Architect

"She knows that being decapitated for not producing a male heir is part of the deal, right?"