History is Programmed by the Victors

Verrrrrrrrrrrrrry interesting blog post by Mark Pilgrim over here on the future of reading. I especially like the way that Jeff "Do you like my fancy hat? It is made of MONEY!" Bezos' oh-so-magnanimous words from five years ago directly contradict the terms of service that his dream device, the Kindle, bear heavily with it.

You know, I actually thought about getting one of those, but now... no. Not after reading over the TOS briefly. Here's a few choice tidbits.

Definitions. The following terms apply to the Device and to (a) all software (and the media on which such software is distributed) of Amazon or third parties that is pre-installed on the Device at time of purchase or that Amazon provides as updates/upgrades to the pre-installed software (collectively, the "Device Software"), unless you agree to other terms as part of an update/upgrade process; and (b) any printed, on-line or other electronic documentation for such software (the "Documentation"). As used in this Agreement, "Software" means, collectively, the Device Software and Documentation.

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

Information Received. The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to the content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device). Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make in your Device are backed up through the Service. Information we receive is subject to the Amazon.com Privacy Notice.

Changes to Service. Amazon reserves the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue the Service at any time, and Amazon will not be liable to you should it exercise such right.

Termination. Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate without notice from Amazon 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 notice to you and 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.

Amendment. Amazon reserves the right to amend any of the terms of this Agreement at its sole discretion by posting the revised terms on the Kindle Store or the Amazon.com website. Your continued use of the Device and Software after the effective date of any such amendment shall be deemed your agreement to be bound by such amendment.

So basically, if I read that right, they can turn off your service at any time, without notifying you, for breaking rules that you might not have known existed.

It also says to me that they can and will keep tabs on what you read, how you read it, what passages you choose to hilight, or not, what pages get bookmarked, or not... and that has all sorts of nasty potential if they choose to hand that info over to the government, or anyone else interested in your reading habits, no matter what their much-vaunted Privacy Notice might say.

The validity and integrity of a corporate entity's Privacy Policy is inversely proportionate to the level of scrutiny that company is being subjected to at any given point.

At least, that's how I feel on my more distrustful days, and yet like the rest of the people out there using the intertron or making use of credit and debit cards at local shops, I do it anyway... So I really don't have room to bitch, now do I?

Of course I do. It's my blog, so this is my room, and I can bitch here if I want to. Yes, it is something of a hypocrisy, but the alternatives are:

• Pay someone an exorbitant and embarassingly large stack of cash to erase my existence from all databases.
• Drawback: Can't be sure they got everything.
• Drawback: Can't be sure they actually did ANYTHING.
• Drawback: I just handed over an exorbitant and embarassingly large stack of cash that I could've used for other purposes. Oy, I'm a schmuck.
• Start dealing in cash-only for all transactions.
• Drawback: Not feasible for everything that needs to be done.
• Drawback: You start looking like one of those crazy-ass Montana Militiamen.
• Drawback: Your ass gets a dent from how big your wallet has to be.
• Drawback: If someone breaks into your house and makes off with your stash, you sir, are PWNED.
• Become a hermit in a cave and live off legumes and rock moss for the rest of my life.
• Drawback: My wife would kill me for even suggesting this.
• ...Do I need to go on after that one?

...In any case, after thirtysomething years of life, the damage has been done. It's the price of living in the modern world, unfortunately.

However... I digress. The thing that bugs me the most about that TOS is this section:

Definitions. The following terms apply to the Device and to (a) all software (and the media on which such software is distributed) of Amazon or third parties that is pre-installed on the Device at time of purchase or that Amazon provides as updates/upgrades to the pre-installed software (collectively, the "Device Software"), unless you agree to other terms as part of an update/upgrade process; and (b) any printed, on-line or other electronic documentation for such software (the "Documentation"). As used in this Agreement, "Software" means, collectively, the Device Software and Documentation.

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

Notice how the books you buy and the news you read also counts as the "Software" and may be updated at any time?

I get an icy feeling in my gut when I think about that, I really do. When my unholy spawn grow to an age where they can start reading, I want the books they read to be the same ones I read, and I want them to be the same books, if you catch my drift. No massive newthink, no Newspeak.

Call me an old-fashioned Gaia-hating tree-cutting Bambi-killing baby-eating motherless son of an oil-burner and send Captain Planet after me if you want to, but I think that books should be on paper for just that reason. You can't update paper over the intertron to suit the political whims of the time.

I don't think Mr. Bezos has malice in his heart, I really don't... but I also know that given the way that things tend to go, he's not going to be able to maintain complete control over it forever, and one day it's going to become a common, open technology.

One day, it will be how everyone reads their books.

One day, maybe Old Yeller won't get shot. Ender won't rebel against his government masters and keep one last egg. Frodo might decide to give up his foolish rebellious ways, submit to the benevolent rule of Lord Sauron, and just hand the Ring of Power over.

One day, maybe Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn will be ideal, obedient children who do everything their parents and The State tell them to.

Hell, maybe one day, nobody will have ever heard of Fahrenheit 451. That'd be irony for you. It might also be the best way for them to hide what they were doing.

Offend me, please.

There's an old book, written a long time ago by a man named George Orwell. It's called 1984.

I realize that many of my younger contemporaries may not have even heard of this novel. In fact, it shames me to say that a few people my own age, when asked have they heard of this title, have responded, "That was a really weird movie, dude."

I am now going to expound upon my political views, and on the OMG War On THEM. I will not apologize for offending you. I will not avoid offending you, though it is not my deliberate intent to do so.

It is in fact my belief that people need to be offended, every so often. World views must be challenged, or we become complacent, and complacent people are more prone to slide down the path to becoming apathetic. Easier to guide. Easier to intimidate. Easier to confuse.

Easier to control.

Take for example, OMG War On THEM, as I have taken to mentally labeling it. Do I agree that these are very bad men that should not have flown a plane into some of our very tall buildings? Yes, I concur with that statement. Do I think that we should have retailiated against the people and organizations that we found responsible for such a reprehensible act? Yes, I do. Do I feel that all people of the Muslim religion are ticking time bombs waiting to go off? No, I do not. Do I think taking Saddam out was good? Yes, but we should've done it the first time, and not have to be dicking around over there right now.

Then let me make this statement of my opinion: While I do not believe that all Muslims are evil, neither do I believe for one instant that the current leaders of that religion have the best interests of their flock at heart, or anyone else for that matter. They are accustomed to their power, and it is my opinion that they will not hesitate to sacrifice as many human lives as necessary, "infidel" or otherwise, to see to it that said power remains secured, either because That's How The Game Is Played Over There, or more frighteningly, because They Actually Believe Their Own Rhetoric. Honestly, there are days I think that whole region needs to be stuck under a concrete dome for a decade or two until they all sort it out amongst themselves.

If I were to state that opinion on television, radio, or in widely-published print, I would immediately be slammed with lawsuits from known and suspected terrorism-supporting organizations in the United States for defamation, libel, and slander, not to mention religious oppression. And you know what?

The very same government that professes to want to protect us from the howling madmen at the gates would let them do just that, whether it is actually true or not.

We live in a society where it is quickly becoming a cardinal sin to offend someone. The very villains that we are supposed to revile are simultaneously gaming our system against us. Our government, our whole society is waffling, confused, and in a state where we can't catch the Bad Guys because it might offend them... and you know what? They're loving it.

They love it. It makes their job endlessly easier. Rather than taking real action to make things more secure without sacrificing our liberties, we wind up with a bunch of feel-good legislation that simultaneously prunes away at our rights, one by one, until we live in a state of confusion and fear, where we don't know whether up is down, or whether it's day or night.

As Orwell wrote:

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

I wouldn't buy that line if you gold-plated it, offered it at a 1000% discount, and gave me an un-expiring coupon for unlimited sexual favors with the porn starlet of my choice. I don't rightly see why anyone else should either, except that it be their choice to do so. The sad thing is, more and more people are either actively choosing to do so, or are inactively choosing by not choosing.

This is the sinister thing: Not all of the Bad Guys, I think, are bomb-strapping maniacs. Some of them are right here at home, on both sides of the party lines. There are so many fingers in so many pies in so many countries that it's impossible to tell who's really playing for whom, and it's enough to make a professional paranoiac get the quivering heebie-jeebies.

It all comes down to the same thing: Control, either through fear, or through making people dependent.

On the fear side, you have OMG Teh War On THEM, whoever "THEM" happens to be at the time. Stay in line, or The THEM will get you. You're not one of THEM, are you? If you don't do as you're told, you're helping THEM. If you're one of THEM, then you're not one of US, and WE will GET YOU. Remember, We Know What's Best For You, And We Have Your Safety In Mind.

On the dependency side, you have a different tack: Have some free health care. Free housing. Free food. Free cars. Free bus rides. Free this. Free that. You don't have to do anything, you don't have to produce, you deserve all this wondrous bounty, because nobody is better than anyone else, and it's only fair that those who do all the work and produce all the goods and make all the money should share with the less-advantaged such as yourself, right? But all the same, we have to make sure you're safe, yes. You must be safe, but you should already be safe, so you don't need the ability to defend yourself. You should still do as you're told... you only get your Free Stuff if you stay in the lines, if you do as you're told. Remember, We Know What's Best For You, And We Have Your Safety In Mind.

...Do I really need to spell out which side is which, here? Either way, it comes down to control over you and I, Joe and Jane Citizen. To anyone who can look at it objectively, it's apparent, and it's scary, and it's almost farcical, but again, Mr. Orwell gives us another good line:

Until they become conscious they can never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious.

Or, to put it in more contemporary terms, from The Matrix:

Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. When you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of people we're trying to save, but until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it. Were you listening to me, Neo? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?

I can only hope that enough of my fellow citizens decide to unplug.

Please Sir, can I have some more? (plot...)

One thing that has begun to seriously bother me of late, to the point where it has actually influenced my buying decisions, is the quality of story writing in the computer gaming industry these days, or lack thereof in many cases.

Okay, so I shouldn't expect a great deal of plot and intrigue from "Boomstik McShooterGuy 6000," and honestly, I don't. If I've had a stressy day, and I need to blow off steam, well then, I load up one of the many mindless shooters I've got on hand, lock and load my trusty flak cannon or rocket launcher, and go to town, cackling like a mad, homicidal monkey.

However, when I want something a little slower-paced, a little more involved, and a bit less with the twitch-reflexes, there's a dearth of good entertainment, of late. Honestly. I think the last PC game I actually bought a copy of was the Gold Edition of F.E.A.R. and with that, I was still somewhat disappointed as what initially promised to be some good spooky-vision fun basically turned into this:

Oh, look. Another batch of mooks. *BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM*. And another. *BLAMBLAMBLAM* And yet another overwhelming batch of mooks. *BLAMBLAMBLAM* Oh, hey, the music's gone all eerie and shite, and I'm moving into a dark area. Yep, there's the little girl. And there's the super-soldier commander. And ooooh, Spooooooooooooooky HUD flicker, check.. Expositional dialogue, check. Next obscenely ridiculous wave of oncoming mooks, check. *BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM*

Gag me with the business end of an M4 Carbine. I mean, while the game does well setting up the atmosphere, and has a few nice moments where you feel like you've just been zapped with defibrillator paddles, I've yet to see anything that really resembles an o'erweening plotline. It's like they were trying to go for a mix between System Shock 2, X-Files, and Poltergeist with some thrilling military/police drama thrown in for seasoning. Throw in some contrivances like how the elevators always conveniently close behind the bad guys so you can't get out, and your character's ability to go into "Slo-Mo" which isn't "Bullet Time, HONEST," and, well...

The CD has sat on my desk for the past month, untouched save for when I had to go rummaging for some papers my wife needed.

It's a symptom of an overall problem in electronic and computer gaming these days. The field has gotten so competitive that there is a vast amount of pressure from investors to get the games out on schedule, damn the torpedos. Things like plot often get left by the wayside, or if they don't, then more often than not, the game suffers a shortening of duration as bits get cut out to make sure the street date is hit. In some cases, such as with KOTOR II, whole endings get scrapped, leaving the player feeling a bit unfulfilled and cheated. Of course, there's also the opposite problem: Games which are possessed of glorious, intricate plots, and gameplay so frustratingly broken that they might inspire pacifistic, enlightened societies to become revenant hordes, should they be loosed upon so innocent and unsuspecting a people.

It's rare that you find that proper balance between gameplay and plot. Half-Life 2 tried, and came close. System Shock 2 did a bang-up job, and was one of the best I've ever played in that respect. Independence War 2, while the plot was a little loose in a few areas, and the antagonist was more or less Snidely Whiplash in space, remains one of my favorites. There are a few up-and-coming ones that I'm looking forward to on a story perspective: Mass Effect looks promising, and Starcraft II seems like it's going to be another Blizzard megahit. Fallout 3, needless to say, makes me happy in pants.

The problem I see on the horizon for the gaming industry, having grown up alongside said industry, is this: When I was younger, I was a lot more into the twitch-games, where your primary objective was to just blow the everloving crap out of anything that moves and rack up points. As I grew older, I got into role-playing games, both online and tabletop, and my interests moved more toward diversions with some meat on their bones, so to speak. Granted, these days I'm as into MMOs like City of Heroes/Villains and World of Warcraft as your average casual gamer, but they at least try to have interesting story arcs in their multitudinous mission trees.

The current generation is faced with a range of choices several orders of magnitude more prolific than anything I had to deal with, and the competition for their dollars is by logical extension much more fierce. The publishers seem to me to be focusing on fancier graphics, more realistic visuals and physics, more "shock factor," and of course, getting the game out the door and into the waiting hands of the masses. Either that, or they're licensing the unholy everlovin' crap out of anything Hollywood decides to put out, especially if it has to do with superheroes (but that's another rant).

I just hope that along the way, story doesn't totally get discarded. I hope that plot doesn't get pruned away, because to me, without something to tie all the action together, the games of the future are just not going to be worth playing.

Papers, please...

So, this morning I sat down at my desk at $COMPANY_NAME and decided to wake up a little by reading some news on Slashdot.org, and they linked to this article over at CNN, regarding the REAL ID Act.

Needless to say... I was neither amused nor heartened by what I read.

For those who've been living under a rock for the past couple of years, the REAL ID Act is a piece of legislation that was snuck under the rug in 2005, as part of a military spending and tsunami relief bill. In essence, it mandates (even though DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff says it's not a mandate. Honest.) that all states bring their ID and driver's licenses into compliance with a single standardized format, and furthermore that they all maintain and "be willing to" share informational databases between themselves.

According to this act, Joe Citizen has until 2013 to get with the program. That means you and I, dear reader, are going to be put into a database, and we're going to have to fork over at least four forms of ID to get the damnable thing.

But it's not a mandate. Honest.

This ID will be required at all Federal facilities. This includes: airports, government buildings, federal facilities of any kind, and national parks and monuments. If you're from one of the states opposing this, and you only have your state driver's license on you when you go to see any federally funded park, monument, or recreational facility, you will be refused entry unless you also have your passport with you.

But it's not a mandate. Honest.

The estimated costs for this program range over $21 billion. So far, only about $40 million has been set aside. The states are apparently expected to shoulder the rest of the burden, which is in turn going to fall back on the citizens in the form of taxation and/or higher service fees for obtaining the ID than was normal. For example, here in Texas, it currently costs $25.00 to get your driver's license, by far the most common form of identification. Unless the Feds fund this more, it could cost your average Texas citizen over $100.00 to obtain their REAL ID.

DHS Secretary Chertoff was recently quoted in the CNN article as saying that this is not a mandate, but if a state doesn't comply, there would be repercussions, and that the citizens of that state would not have their state-issued IDs accepted for federal purposes. Bill Walsh of the Heritage Foundation, a think-tank that supports this idea, apparently seems to think that if say, a terrorist uses a New Hampshire ID to go and do naughty things, then New Hampshire -- and by logical extension in my mind, its citizens -- should be held responsible.

Oh, right. It's not a mandate. It's coercion.

Your average Tango isn't going to be quite so dumb as to try and enter the country with bad papers, standardized ID or not. This plan also completely disregards the fact that if there are sleeper cells here, they'll already have the proper documentation. Sure, we'll be able to point a finger at the guy's smoking corpse and say, "We know who that pile of steaming giblets is! We know who done blowed up our chill'uns real gud! We should revile him, dig up all his friends and family history, and trot them out on the tee-vee to be humiliated and scorned in front of billions!"

And that'll be great and all, y'know? Media circus, I'm sure. Ted Koppel will be able to afford a new head, finally... but it won't prevent it from happening. Which is what Our Political Heroes say it's going to do.

And trust me, I use the word "Heroes" in only the most ironic sense, dripping with enough sarcasm that you could irrigate fields with it... but I wouldn't want to eat anything grown in that tainted earth, nor reaped from its dark harvest -- I'd be afraid the corn would bite me.

But I digress. This whole setup reminds me of certain Eastern European principalities not too long ago, or at least an initial step toward that. It also stands to disenfranchise a large number of people -- For example, in many cases, you cannot get a passport if you owe child support. This makes sense, as you don't want deadbeat moms and dads whisking away to Acapulco. Many states also disbar you from your driver's license if you're picked up on a drug charge, whether it's deserved or not, or at least slap you with ridiculous surcharges to get it renewed afterward.

If these people cannot get a REAL ID, and cannot get a passport, then technically as far as the Feds are concerned, they are un-persons... and they get locked down, unable to travel by air (at first -- I suspect road checkpoints are going to come later), unable to enter a government building without invasive screening procedures, and I suspect...

...Unable to vote. It's a federal activity after all, and you have to show your driver's license. At the very least, this is another prime example of OPH regarding the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as Constitoilet Paper.

I leave you with this quote from a favorite movie of mine, The Hunt For Red October:

Vasily Borodin: Do you think they will let me live in Montana?

Capt. Ramius: I would think they'll let you live wherever you want.

Vasily Borodin: Good. Then I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman, and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pick-up truck, or umm... possibly even...a recreational vehicle, and drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?

Capt. Ramius: Oh yes.

Vasily Borodin: No papers?

Capt. Ramius: No papers. State-to-state.

More information at www.RealNightmare.org.