Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Cory exists on an ephemeral list that I call “Smart People Who Do Smart Things That I Respect”. It’s a list I keep meaning to actually write down. He’s on it primarily because of his activities in the Free Software and Free Culture realms. He also seems to have fairly sane political views, which is a cherry on top for eligibility for The List. I’ve read a lot of his non-fiction stuff and it’s all smart, concise, and accessible. In short, I like him. After I finished Burn, I dove back into Aldiko’s Creative Commons section, and came up with this. Like movies, I tend to stay pretty ignorant about books until I’m actually looking for something to read, usually just gravitating to genres and authors I know I like and picking something up on the spur of the moment. That is how I found Someone.

The book bounces around in time, back and forth from Alan’s childhood and the “present day” of his adulthood. Present Alan has just moved into a new house, filled it with shelves that he’s filled with books and other curios, and intends to sit down to write a book. He never gets to the book though, derailed by the abuses of nefarious neighbor Krishna, infatuation with the classic girl-next-door Mimi (who has wings), the techno pipe-dreams of anarchist friend Kurt, and the arrival of his Matryoska doll brothers Edward, and Frederick. They show up on his doorstep early on in the story to report that Gregory (the smallest of the set) is missing, and they fear that their psychotic brother Davey has returned from the dead to seek revenge. This is particularly distressing for E and F, because without G, they cannot eat.

From there, the story runs away with Alan as he tries to solve the mystery of Gregory’s disappearance and deal with the repercussions of Davey’s return. It’s well crafted, entertaining, and the weirdness soon falls away and you come to accept the realities of this world. The flashbacks to Alan’s youth where he meets his first love are particularly endearing and heartbreaking. As are his interactions with his brothers.

The one major complaint I have about the book has to do with the parts involving the creation of the wireless mesh network with his cyberpunk buddy Kurt. The project serves as a means to bring the two together and to move their relationship forward, but the technical explanations of things feel heavy-handed and out of place. It could be that they are talking about things I understand already, so the information covered didn’t add anything for me, but it really felt like a kludgy delivery. It was almost as if Doctorow finished the story and then said to himself, “But wait! I’m known for all my techy and free culture stuff! I have to stick that in there somewhere!”, and then proceeded to bolt on those pieces after the fact. If I were king, I would have kept the concept of the mesh network project since it was genuinely interesting and served as a good engine for moving the story forward in a number of ways, but ditched the overbearing technobabble exposition. It just didn’t add the to story. In fact, the first instance of this happens relatively early, before I was used to the weirdness of it all, and the two together were almost enough to drive me away. I’m glad I didn’t stop as I really enjoyed the rest of the book. I fear though that many people will get to that point, their eyes will glaze over, and they will miss out on a really great tale because they put it aside prematurely.

Bottom line, go read it, and try not to get too hung up on the oddly placed techy details. 4/5

The movie follows Kristen, who is captured by police and sent to The Ward early on, after an unexplained and intriguing chase through the forest that ends with her burning down an isolated farmhouse. Once captured, we follow her and her far-too-pretty to be believable ward-mates as she tries to unravel the mystery of what happened to Alice, a ghost that is haunting the ward. Her “friends” seem to know something about what is going on, but are reluctant to help.

Most of the horror stuff that Carpenter is known for (as either a writer or director) tends towards the slasher-flick. The obvious example of course is Halloween and its many descendants. The Ward, on the other hand, is much more psychological thriller than slasher, at least until the very end. Up until the last fifteen minutes or so, there’s the constant sense of wrongness and building dread, but not much in the way of big scares or gore. The story is interesting, the characters easy to get involved with, and the pacing is good for the most part. I found the final confrontations with the ghost of Alice to be a little formulaic though, almost boring. Luckily, the denouement of the story and final scenes more than make up for any mis-steps that lead up to them.

I’d give The Ward a strong recommend for fans of horror or psychological thrillers. I gave it 4/5 for my Netflix rating.

I just finished reading “Burn” by James Patrick Kelly. He’s apparently a fairly well known Sci-Fi author, but I’m not familiar with his work. It’s a quick read since it’s fairly short, a novella really rather than a novel. It follows Spur, a firefighter living on the idyllic planet Walden.

Walden was founded with the intent of following simple lives modeled after Transcendentalist philosophy. Unfortunately, a sort of war was broken out between the Transcendentalist State and the previous settlers, called Puk Puks. The Puk Puks don’t seem to attack people, but rather they fight by setting fires in the unnaturally quickly growing forests that now spread over Walden.

I was skeptical at first, the premise seemed so contrived, but the writing really drew me in. The characters are interesting, their interactions and motivations believable. Kelly creates a rich and believable world without overdoing descriptive exposition and I really began care about the characters.

I just wish there were more of it. The story ends abruptly, leaving me wanting more. There is so much more story to be told here, but Kelly leaves it to us to imagine. I really enjoyed it, and would recommend it to anyone who wants an enjoyable quick read, not just Sci-Fi fans. I’ll give it 4/5 stars, losing a star for ending right when I was really thoroughly sucked in. I will definitely be seeking out Kelly’s other work though, maybe he’s written more about the Thousand Worlds, and I can get a pseudo-fix that way.

You can buy the book from Amazon, or get the eBook for free from Kelly’s website. I read it on my phone (also for free) after discovering it in the Creative Commons section of the store in the Aldiko Reader.

Can something be awful and awesome at the same time? I felt mildly ill through most of the movie, but I still loved it. It’s a nice tidy indictment of both ultra-conservatives and out of control government, all tied up in one tidy, blood-stained bow. I think what surprised me the most is how often it switched from being shockingly graphic one moment, and subtly human the next. Though well crafted overall, it’s not perfect. Like so much of Smith’s work though, the flaws almost make it more enjoyable.

If you have a problem with graphic violence, this is not a movie for you. I generally don’t have a problem with it, but even I had a hard time stomaching some scenes. I think it was the plausibility of it all that really got to me.

In the end though, I’m glad I watched it and gave it 4/5 stars.

The best part is that this little anti-feature of the “Dolby-digital optical out” on this TV isn’t documented anywhere, except in a FAQ buried on Samsung’s website, which you cannot find using their own search engine, only Google knows how to get there. If I want 5.1 from the PS3, I have to go back into the attic and run a TOSLINK cable, or buy a new receiver that speaks HDMI and totally rearrange things.

Thanks DMCA / HDCP! Isn’t our ownership society wonderful? I know it’s improved MY life by forcing manufacturers of consumer electronics to cripple the things I buy. I rest easy knowing my substantial inconvenience has helped prevent the “pirates” from getting unlocked copies Megamind with surround-sound intact out onto the Internet. Oh wait, THAT’S NOT TRUE! My substantial inconvenience has achieved absolutely nothing! Hooray! *Goes away muttering….*

First off, I’m a supporter of Lessig, the Creative Commons and the general “copyleft” movement, and I’d like to point a few items that you seem to be overlooking. I hope you will give the points I raise some real consideration.

First, I want to point out that in all of my reading and listening to Lessig, he has advocated reforming copyright, not eliminating it. Until that reform happens, the CC licenses are a way to enable people who believe that their work should be Free will be Free in the current climate of effectively infinite copyright extension. While Bob’s Photography may theoretically benefit from copyright extensions, it’s doubtful that they do in practice. I would love to see some examples to the contrary, but with the rare exception of the work of truly noteworthy artists (Ansel Adams comes to mind) the commercial value of a photograph beyond 14 years after it was taken (the original period laid out in American copyright law) is going to be vanishingly small. As a result of this, I don’t see this “it helps small business” argument as a sound support for a law which also has the effect of locking up truly significant works of culture indefinitely so that they may only be built upon by the corporate entities which control them. This greatly decreases the value of those works to the society as a whole. An additional side effect of this is that any works for which the copyright status is unknown are, in the current climate, likely to stagnate and be forgotten to history if the authors or their heirs are unreachable to gain license from them. Would you rather that the brilliant work of some unknown artist be lost in the sands of time because the law frightened someone enough that they chose to leave it out of their project which would have preserved it? Or that the TV series you loved in your childhood is never released on DVD because licensing for the music it featured cannot be obtained?

Add to this the new abundance that Brandon mentions above, and you have the fact that each individual creative piece is worth less than it used to be. This is simply a fact that creators need to come to terms with. Ideally, they will not only come to terms with it, but learn how to exploit this new abundance, this new ease of distribution, to drive new revenue streams. You can see a number of articles about how this can be done at http://www.techdirt.com .

In this new sea of creative output, attention is worth more than any one individual work. Your name as a good artist has more value than any single image you can create. This is why I support the concept of CC-attribution licenses. When I create something I want as many eyes on it as possible so that my name will become recognized. I can then take that reputation and use it to leverage revenue from things that are actually scarce, like my time and talent, rather than try to force artificial scarcity on something that by nature is abundant. Obscurity is a bigger threat to you individual prosperity than the CC ever could be. Zach Arias is a great example of a photographer who has leveraged his reputation to create new revenue streams that have nothing to do with selling his photos. I have no idea what his opinions on IP law are. He has though, intentionally or not, learned how to leverage the value of “free” to create what seems to be a respectable income.

IP law is, and always has been, about creating an incentive to create and enrich society. In the past, creating was expensive proposition, with tremendous up front costs. The best way to encourage people to create despite these costs was to grant an artificial monopoly on the commercial exploitation of those creations. However, we’ve now begun to realize some (arguably) unintended consequences of those monopolies within the new context provided by modern technology. The biggest of these is that the system has been abused and modified over the years by monied non-natural legal entities who have the sole goal of extracting value from the creations they control indefinitely. As a result, these laws are no longer serving to enrich our culture, they serve primarily to enrich those entities instead. Unfortunately, this attitude of feeling like one is entitled to profit many times over for a single piece of work has become the norm in many industries. The music industry is the most absurd example, whose party line seems to be that they deserve to get paid for each and every play a of a song, regardless of the circumstance.

In the end, there are only two groups who truly benefit from IP law as it stands. The first are the corporations. There are examples all over chronicling how they have locked up cultural artifacts to the detriment of new creators. The second group are the lawyers, who are able to play both sides against each other and profit, while adding no value whatsoever.

I’ll leave the response to the anti-corruption bit for another post….

Also, this may be the linkiest post I’ve ever posted.

Wewt.