Month: August 2003

the eyre affair

The Eyre Affair

The Eyre Affair was a fast but enjoyable read: the reviews at Amazon are as good or better than anything I can put here, but I’ll take a stab at it.

The book was recommended by my niece and I just decided to try it without researching it at all. Just as well: I have no idea what I would have made of a book where time travel, alternative history (the US and England are not separate, air travel is by airship since the airplane was never invented, England was occupied by the Nazis but still won the war, though somehow w/o Churchill), and a variety of literary japes (a villain named Jack Schitt?) are employed. The book moves along so quickly, you don’t really linger over the rough bits and the inspired lunacy of the plot and premise amply covers any shortcomings.

Imagine a world where it’s possible to move between fantasy and reality and the characters in books are as alive as we are, within their books and outside of them if they can get out. They can also become just as dead, which rewrites the book — just the copy they were in or all copies if a character were removed from the manuscript version. Mucking with literature is a crime in this not quite parallel world and someone has taken it to the next level by removing, at first minor and then namesake, characters from the original manuscripts of great books (the title of the book should give a clue as to one of the books involved).

the new economy? or just convenience?

Chad Dickerson

I always hear that the two largest financial commitments you make in life are your house and your car. In the past year, I purchased a car online and re-financed my house online.

I bought a car online in 1998 (essentially researched the vehicle I wanted online, got quotes from dealers via email and worked them over until only one was left standing). Chad seems to be hand-waving over a lot of steps here (he never mentions visiting Edmunds.com, for one thing, and who buys a car without doing that?). Did he get a good deal or did he just get a good enough deal without subjecting himself to the Dealer Experience?

I found the online refinancing anecdote more interesting. It’s hard to identify the parts he’s most happy about. Doing it all by email seems convenient: we have refinanced Thistle Dew, our stately home, 2 or 3 times (I’ve lost count) in the three years we’ve owned it, and email played a role in those transactions. But for me the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. How much do you save each month? This is akin to the magic of compound interest: I’ll put up with some red tape and phone tag _once_ to save some dollars _every month_. I’ll go to the mortgage company’s office and spend that hour shuffling papers and making bad jokes in exchange for smaller house payments.

When I read books like The Social Life of Information or Information Rules, coupled with my own experience, I’m skeptical about breathless promises. While I’ll concede there are inefficiencies to be wrung out of these processes, re-jiggering the processes themselves without making any fundamental changes in them is not earth-shattering. And that’s all I see going on here. No disintermediation or other New Economy buzzwords.

class differences and wars

At home with Hitler

Found this while flicking through a copy of Homes and Gardens from November 1938. Shows how not all corners of the UK were against the Fuhrer at that time.

I was struck by this: the prose of the article makes one think that Hitler is just another politician or captain of industry. The mention of a “Fun Fairs” where he hosted the local children is almost too much to believe, as is the fawning praise of his watercolors.

In my final year of university, I wrote a paper analyzing how Country Life magazine, the journal of England’s landed gentry, handled the First World War. It was interesting to read how little mention it got at all, until the summer of 1916, when bloodbaths like the Battle of the Somme were likely to be felt everywhere, in every class and community.

This seems consistent, that people at a certain status level think things can be worked out reasonably. I think that was a problem for George H W Bush and the former ruler of Iraq. He couldn’t really get his mind around the brutality, being fundamentally a genteel and well-bred fellow.

So I just checked out Country Life and found this posting. [text follows, in case the link goes away]

Well, I trust that they have decapitated the two runts of Hussain’s [sic] loins, this whole episode will now end. I remember fighting the last Gulf War and it was not exactly pretty- however if the Yanks had let us fininsh [sic] the job last time that Country would be a rich little oil well with some rather nice places to play a la the old Lebanon.

Oh well, such is life..anyone else think this whole thing is a ridiculous affair and has been organised rather like a village fate [sic] ..most vicar’s [sic] could have done a better job and at half the cost.

Must fly.

TTFN

Evidently, not everyone has gotten the news that the sun has set on the British Empire . . . . it’s obvious the education system isn’t what it was.

I have often wondered about reviving that paper and seeing where else it could lead.

assymetry and disproportionally

Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent: The Blogosphere and its asymmetric discontents

If so many people are doing this, the logic goes, and it is so effective that the only possible response is so strident, and yet they can only punish so few people, the balance of benefit against risk is skewed way over to the little guys. In other words, in an asymmetric conflict, once the monolithic side starts to fight you, it has lost. The only way for the monolith to win the game is not to play at all.

There are two obvious ways to apply this idea: one is to map the RIAA’s strategy of spending their energy prosecuting their customers onto it. It works there. The larger entity fails to see an opportunity and manages transform itself from a benign money machine to the most vilified industry in the West.

But what of the larger, more serious issues? What about Western culture, or more precisely the US, as the monolith under attack from small numbers of terrorists (of whatever stripe: I’m not willing to defame the hundreds of millions of non-violent Muslims by labelling the WTC attacks as being an Islam-endorsed action)? How does the monolith respond and “win”?

I think in both cases, the monolith’s strategy is to treat with the opposition as individuals: what does an individual member of the music-buying public want? I think it’s been established that they want to listen to music they have bought, wherever they are, regardless of format, and they want to be able to buy more in smaller units. They want to hear tracks or songs and program their own entertainment. And it appears obvious they’ll do it, whether the RIAA’s members ever figure out to make money from it or not.

On a much more serious topic, it would make sense to find out what Al Qaeda’s soldiers want, behind the “death to America” chants. A few radical clerics and oppressive governments have combined to focus the energy and discontent of multiple generations on the West, to keep themselves in power. How to go over the heads of those who benefit from the continued hostilities to those who pay for them with their lives should be considered, rather than knocking over suspect foreign governments and occupying them. I have to think we’re doing things the most expensive way, on many levels.

full complement of bikes, or stolen property restored

I got my release letter from Seattle Police today, and promptly went back to the shop to reclaim my wheels. 36 days, not that I’m counting . . . .

And the detective on the case has located the perpetrator . . . . in New Mexico. I have no idea how he tracked him down, but he says from the “interesting” conversation he had, he’s sure it’s the guy. Unlikely he’ll be extradited for a couple of class 2 offenses, so I guess that’s where this story ends.

a pennysworth of prevention

Fast Company | The Dirty Little Secret About Spam

All of this is why there is increasing consensus that spam can be slowed only by addressing its perverted economics: Make senders pay for their messages, and market discipline will rationalize the industry. Today, a marketer can send 10 million messages for free. If the cost per address were even just one penny, “my guess is that most spam would go away,” says Mark Wegman, a researcher at IBM, who with a colleague has come up with theoretical proposals for a cost-based system.

Interesting article. The dirty little secret is that the companies doing the marketing — from the penis enlargement elixir shills to AT&T — are happy with the status quo. The sounds of outrage don’t drown out the jingle of new revenue . . . .yet.

Sales of mobile phone ringtones are set to overtake CD singles


BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Music | Phone tones ‘to beat CD singles’

An estimated £70m USD112,450,207.85 (conversion and emphasis mine) of ringtones will be sold in 2003 – up from £40m in 2002 – according to the MDA, a non-profit trade group.

Music company Universal told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the profit margin for recent Sugababes hit Round Round was larger on the ringtone than the single.

Gee, does anyone still think the kids are interested in buying albums versus individual tracks?