Technology – Page 2 – The Daily Brief

Air Force Aims to ‘Rewrite Laws of Cyberspace’

03. November 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Air Force, Technology

Via Drudge, The Wired Blog is Reporting:

The Air Force is fed up with a seemingly endless barrage of attacks on its computer networks from stealthy adversaries whose motives and even locations are unclear. So now the service is looking to restore its advantage on the virtual battlefield by doing nothing less than the rewriting the “laws of cyberspace.”

It’s more than a little ironic that the U.S. military, which had so much to do with the creation and early development of internet, finds itself at its mercy. But as the American armed forces become increasingly reliant on its communications networks, even small, obscure holes in the defense grid are seen as having catastrophic potential.

Read the whole thing.

Let’s see, you’ve spent the past 10 years getting rid of your programmers, networking folks and applications experts, and then turning your networks over to civilian contractors, some of whom were literally learning how to help-desk while on the job, and now you’re surprised that the security ain’t what it could be? I know at least 20 people off the top of my head that the Air Force “right-sized” out that are exactly the kind of folks needed to fix these kinds of problems. Some of them screamed until they were blue in the face that, “We’re doin’ it wrong!”

I’m sitting here doing the “I f***ing told you so!” dance.

Just for Fun – 101 Uses for an Antique Tractor

03. October 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General Nonsense, Technology

(courtesy of Al Past, another IAG Member, and also cross-posted at the IAG Blog)

AF Cyber Command “Delayed”

15. August 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Air Force, Stupidity, Technology

According to the front page of the Air Force Cyber Command’s Website:

8/14/2008 – Barksdale AFB, La. — The Air Force remains committed to providing full-spectrum cyber capabilities to include global command and control, electronic warfare and network defense. The Secretary and Chief of Staff of the Air Force have considered delaying currently planned actions on Air Force Cyber Command to allow ample time for a comprehensive assessment of all AFCYBER requirements and to synchronize the AFCYBER mission with other key Air Force initiatives. The new Air Force leaders continue to make a fresh assessment of all our efforts to provide our Nation and the joint force the full spectrum of air, space, and cyberspace capabilities.

Which makes sooooo much sense considering that the military doesn’t have a cohesive all-around cyber defense policy. Seriously, cyber security measures can change literally from base to base. What drives those measures? You would think it would be a standard set of security practices applied to all and you’d be somewhat correct. However, what you also have to take into account is that almost every base has a different contract company taking care of their network security measures. Those measures may be based on what the contractor is willing and able to do for the price that the military is willing to pay. On some bases, you may have three to five different companies taking care of the various networks depending on the security level of the network. Not only is the security level dependent on the classification of the material on the network, but it’s also dependent, again, on the capability of the contractors.

I remember getting a call when I was in NORAD/USSPACE from a flag officer and he needed me to come over and help him with one of his computers. Since that part of the network wasn’t “owned” by NORAD/USSPACE, I literally was not allowed to help him. I simply didn’t have permissions for that side of the network. I had to file a help desk ticket for him which, according to contract, allowed up to 3 business days before it was addressed. Since he WAS a flag officer, the contractor did put a rush on it, but still.

I’ve been against the privatizing of the military’s networks since they started. Okay, so you don’t have to pay contractors retirement benefits and all the other baggage that comes along with a military person’s life, but if you don’t write the contracts correctly, the military can wind up needing a task completed by the contractor that’s not in the contract and you can’t force them to complete that task without amending the contract which would also mean, MORE money. That’s right, when a new task is added for any reason to a contract network admin or techie’s tasks, they may not HAVE to do it until the contract is reviewed to see if it falls under the contractor’s “scope of support.” And because only contractors can touch the network on some bases, folks in uniform can’t complete the task either. And since we’ve slashed the living shit out of the military’s network specialists in favor of contractors, we don’t have them to utilize anyway.

Which, if I’m being cynical, leads me to believe that someone has finally realized that having a cohesive policy across all the networks that the Air Force “controls” means that every single one of those contracts is going to have to be rewritten and I’m betting that some Senior NCO and their team has done the legwork and given General Lord and his bosses the cost analysis for those new contracts and someone with power of the purse-strings has crapped their drawers when the reality of what a workable, cohesive, policy is going to cost.

That’s if I was being cynical. It could just mean that what we’ve got is working just fine and there’s no need for a cyber command in the first place…and I swear to you I typed that with a straight face…after three tries.

Thanks to He Who Needs No Linkage for the tip.

You want to know the funniesnt thing for me about all this? I’ve got interviews with two contractors in the next week for jobs supporting the military’s network. I hope the question, “What’s your opinion about privatization?” doesn’t come up and I hope to hell I’ve got the good sense to lie about it if it does. I need a job.

The Lost DaVinci

11. July 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, General, Science!, Technology

Or is it just hidden?

There’s some interesting stuff going on over in Italy, related to discovering artworks that have been painted over. Technology continues to amaze me (I’m easily amazed, but even so…).

Seems that once upon a time, DaVinci began a mural – a battle scene. For centuries, common wisdom was that he’d been unsatisified with his efforts, and destroyed the mural, and it was painted over by another artist, Giorgio Vasari. But in 1977, a young art apprentice was inspecting Vasari’s frescoes, and found two words painted near the top of the wall: “Cerca Trova.” The words were practically invisible from ground level. They translate to “Seek: You will find.”

Skeptical colleagues discounted the discovery. Yet they were the only words on the six enormous frescoes that cover the walls today. To Dr. Seracini, it could mean only one thing: The da Vinci mural must still be there, concealed behind Vasari’s paintings. “We are talking about the masterpiece of the masterpieces of the Renaissance,” says Dr. Seracini, “way more important than The Last Supper or the Mona Lisa.”

Da Vinci and those who commissioned the work left no direct account as to why the master gave up on the mural. Whatever its technical flaws, the painting’s inventiveness and savage passion dazzled artists throughout Europe for a half century before it disappeared from view. “One writer at the time says it is the most beautiful thing in existence, twice as beautiful as the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel,” says Syracuse University art historian Rab Hatfield, a member of the Italian commission overseeing the project.

Dr. Seracini, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, wasn’t the first art scholar to be seduced by the mystery of Leonardo’s missing mural. No one, however, has pursued it with such technical acumen.

Not long ago, art conservationists had only a trained eye to guide their work. Today, sophisticated scientific techniques are becoming part of every art expert’s tool kit. This spring in Vienna, for instance, restorers relied on X-ray fluorescence to analyze the solid gold of a priceless 16th Century sculpture. In France, University of Michigan physicists probed the walls of a 12th Century chapel with nondestructive terahertz beams. In Pittsburgh, NASA scientists used molecules of atomic oxygen to wipe a Warhol painting clean of the lipstick smear left by a vandal’s kiss.

Since that discovery in 1977, Seracini has made use of every technological advance to pursue his search for the DaVinci mural. That search will culminate next year, using a portable neutron-beam scanner that is still in development. Seracini is hopeful the hidden DaVinci will be found.

I hope so, too.

source

Tomorrow is FireFox 3.0 Download Day

16. June 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Technology

If you’re already a Firefox user, why not download it right away and help Firefox get that world record? If you’ve never used Firefox before, the worst that will happen is that you’ll kick yourself for never using it before.

Disclaimer: I get absolutely nothing out of this but the satisfaction that comes from passing on a better browser. Seriously.

Apparently “Jun 17” was just an estimate. I searched the Firefox site and can find the May Beta version, but still can find where to download the full version of Firefox 3.0. I’ll let you know when I do.

Big Brother IS Watching You

13. June 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Technology

I would have you know that google-maps and mapquest and all those other lately-developed methods of scoping out and locating a specific address is a god-send, especially for someone making a living marketing books, or in some kind out outdoor sales, or even just scratching a living doing temp-jobs here and there. How easy is it now to drive across country and locate the next gas, or rest-stop, with the aid of an add-on or built-in navigation system? How easy is it now to find the place where you have an interview or a sales call the next day, or to locate every independent bookstore in every town in Idaho or Iowa.

It was great when google-maps even added an aerial view version of their maps; you can zoom in and sort out where features are in relation to each other – and when they went even farther and generated a street-level view? Oh, fantastic! As someone with a propensity to get lost going to a place that I had never seen before – well, that would take care of that, wouldn’t it? I am a visual person, I operate by landmarks I would already know what a place looked like, before I even set out! I would recognize it when I got there! Is this technology stuff great, or what? It did occur to me that this would enable a new and higher degree of on-line snooping. How many of you could resist the temptation to check out the ex-boyfriends’ or that former spouses’ address? (“He lives there ?! OMG, Quelle dump! How could I ever have fallen for someone who lives in a tacky place like that?”) We certainly didn’t resist temptation at one of the places that I worked: we whiled away a small portion of the workday showing each other our own houses, discovered that we all lived in small, agreeably well-kept neighborhoods, in tidy bungalows of no particular distinction. None of us, on this showing, would ever have our domiciles featured in House Beautiful or Southern Living.

But I should have gone a couple of houses farther down the street, upon discovering this feature. Because, most jarringly, whoever did the street level photography in my neighborhood inadvertently captured more than just my house, my neighbors houses, and all of our cars.

They captured my daughter and I, with our dogs on leashes, standing in the driveway of mu neighbor Judy’s house; all three of us, perfectly recognizable to ourselves and our closest intimates, if fortunately just blurred enough to make us unrecognizable to a stranger. There we are, the three of us, with the smallest of the dogs clearly visible at my feet, my daughter in her gym things with the other dog half-hidden behind her. I have a sweat-jacket on, my daughter a pair of red sweatpants and a navy blue pullover – and there we stand, talking to our neighbor Judy. We were all mildly freaked to discover this; it was obviously shot months ago, for the lawns are late summer crispy-brown and there are no flowers in bloom, although most of the visible trees are in leaf. The skies are overcast, grayish with light clouds. My daughters’ new car, which she bought last year is parked in our driveway. We have coats on, so it is obviously cool – and most likely a Saturday or a Sunday morning, since those were the only days that we both went out with the dogs.

We find the creepiest part of this to be that our neighborhood is fairly small, although the street we live on does get a fair amount of traffic – and we thought surely we would have noticed someone driving along, filming through the windows. Surely we would have noticed Big Brother watching our street, especially on a Saturday.

(Cross-posted at Blogger News Network)

Wanna Help Set a World Record?

13. June 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Technology

On June 17th, Tuesday, go to the Firefox Site and download Firefox 3.0. Go there now and pledge to download on Download Day. They’re looking to break the record for most downloads in a single day. It’s simply a better browser than Internet Explorer. I like Safari for the Mac, but Firefox just does what I want it to the way I want to do it.

Adventures in Old Lamps

11. June 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Technology, World

I can’t remember exactly when I discovered that it was not actually very hard, to re-wire table lamps, and do things like replace plugs and swap out one-way sockets for three-way, so that an ordinary lamp could be transformed into a reading lamp. At a guess, I had watched Dad take stuff apart and put things back together… and well, really, it didn’t seem to be anything very complicated. Stripping half an inch of insulation off the ends of the wires, threading them through the lamp-base and securing the bare wires around the little screws in the socket base – this is not rocket science. It’s about as challenging as replacing a light-bulb.

At some point – about the time that we returned from Europe – I discovered that all the little bits that hold a lamp together and attach a shade are pretty much a standard thread. We’ve bought lamps at the thrift-shop or at yard-sales because they have a pretty base – and it’s very pleasing, how much better they will look, immediately upon installing new hardware and a nicer shade. And never mind the wiring – last month, Blondie bought a pair of inexpensive 1930’s era decorative lamps that you wouldn’t dare plug in. The wiring was that crumbly – I swear it looked like one of those pictures of a dangerous example of faulty wiring in a brochure handed out by the fire department. New hardware, new wiring, new sockets, all the way around; amazing how much nicer they looked, almost at once.

I have a whole basket full of those essential lamp pieces, most of them scrounged from various broken lamps. Never know when you will need an essential bit, you see. Some of my favorite lamps have bit the dust, since I took up the carpets and painted the concrete floors in the house. Two weeks ago, the dogs got rowdy and knocked over a pretty little bedside lamp, a blue and white vase-type that I bought in Greece, and in the same week, Blondie sat back suddenly in the rocking chair, and there went a lamp that I had bought in Korea, a blue and white bowl that I saw in a shop in Itaewon and had converted. Not to fear, though – for we salvaged all the parts, the wooden base and top, and the metal rod that ran up through the middle, the shade and the socket.

Last weekend, Blondie, the Queen of All Yard Sales, spied three lamps for sale in a neighbor’s garage – all blue and white painted china bases, all vaguely Oriental in design, in good shape and all three for a mere pittance. One of them most particularly resembled the Korean bowl, and as it was approximately the same dimensions, I thought I would be able to remove the brass base and top to it, and replace them with the wooden base and fittings from the Korean lamp – and I would have something that came very close in looks to it.

Only the hex-nut that held the whole thing together at the bottom was apparently tightened on at the factory by Godzilla himself. Not even with a crescent-wrench could we get it to budge – and Blondie and I tried separately and together, and with a spritz of liquid wrench, that is supposed to make it easy to unscrew anything.

There was only one thing to do. And that was to take it to Pep Boys. Really, any garage would have done, but Pep-Boys was open on Sunday. Where else do you find the strength and the technology to separate metal bolts from the threads they are apparently frozen onto, than at an auto mechanics?

But the manager did look at me and ask, warily, “This is at your own risk of course. It’s not a priceless Ming vase, is it?”

“Five-dollar yard-sale special,” I said, “Have at it.” It took one of the mechanics about two minutes and all the other mechanics came to look, shaking their heads.

The manager did say afterwards that it was the weirdest request that anyone has ever come to Pep-Boys with. That is my home craft advice for the week – bet you never heard this from Martha Stewart. Also, you can, in some places, take cast-iron pots to a body shop to have the rust sand-blasted off them – and I wish I could remember how I came by these two little bits of wisdom.

Confessions of a Wireless Customer Service Rep, 080514

14. May 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Technology

One thing that makes cellular users crazy is the inability of their providers to turn off text messaging. While younger folks are texting at a rate that baffles most folks over 30, many older folks don’t want it, don’t need it and get upset to the point of stroke when they’re told that their service provider cannot and will not remove the ability to accept text messaging from their cellular service. To add insult to annoyance, the cellular companies charge you for these unwanted messages after they’ve told you that the can’t remove the feature.

Very simply, you’re mad at the wrong people. It’s not the cellular companies that make it impossible to remove the text messaging feature, it’s your federal government.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 to be exact.

Now…you may say, “But Timmer, that Act was never ratified.” and you’d be right.

However, the FCC in its infinite wisdom still took the part of The TCA of 1996 which said that telecommunications companies could not restrict telemessaging services and ran with it anyway. The idea being that if those messages were restricted, that would be an infringement on the senders’ First Amendment rights.

There isn’t a customer service rep working for a cellular company today who doesn’t WANT to turn off your text messaging. Believe me when I say that as much as it annoys our customers, it annoys us just as much. We don’t like being told what low-lifes we are or that we’re in cahoots with the texting spammers or what a scam it is. We don’t.

It is nice to be able to tell everyone that you’re mad at the wrong people though, and that word is getting out. Apparently the FCC is getting tired of cellular customers calling THEM to complain about it and there’s hope that by the end of the summer, we’ll be able to turn off those annoying messages for those folks who have no use for little messages on their phones.

UPDATE: The more I read about this issue, the less the above explanation holds water. I’m on my weekend, but I’m going to be speaking with the person who offered this explanation to me come Monday. I’m not going to take it down though. I’m going to leave this up as a reminder to do more research BEFORE I put up a post. Thanks to those of you who chimed in and made me look closer at this.

Confessions of a Wireless Customer Service Rep, 080513

13. May 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Technology

Okay, so summer is right around the corner and if you’re shopping for new cell phones, now is the time to start looking for that new phone that you’ve had your eyes on for the past few months. Prices are coming down on a LOT of phones from all of the cell phone companies.

But…wait…if the prices are coming down on all of last year’s hot models, doesn’t that mean that new models are getting ready to be introduced?

Yes.

So, before you drop $19.95 on last year’s newest and best thing, keep in mind that this year’s newest and best phones are getting ready to be introduced. And no…after a certain amount of time, you won’t be able to return that cool phone from last year to get the newest and shiniest new toy that’s just come out.

Patience. Do some research. Check out the plethora of cell phone blogs and see what your carrier is getting ready to introduce before you jump on all of those inexpensive phones that the cellular companies are trying to unload before the new ones come out.

I know that iPhone has been burning a hole in your brain since it was introduced, but keep in mind that some of the companies that aren’t AT&Cingular are looking to introduce their Google Android Phones in the upcoming year. You all know that I’m an Mac-head. I wouldn’t give up my MacBook Pro for any other laptop out there. However, while I lust after an iPhone as much as any Mac Fanboy, I also know that the Androids are going to be the most customizable communications devices that we’ve ever seen. Third party applications will be the norm on these “phones.”

Remember, most companies give you discounted pricing on phones after you’ve had a phone for one year and then huge discounts at the two year mark. (Coincidently when your contract is about to expire.) If you’ve got a phone that you’ve had for two years and have that huge discount available, do you want to use it for a very cheap phone that’s going to be outdated by the end of the summer, or do you want to use it to bring down the price on a full blown communications device?

Me? I want my phone to be my phone, my iPod to be my iPod, and my laptop to be my laptop. I don’t think any of the comm devices out there or that are getting ready to come out take care of all of those tasks as well as the individual devices do…yet.

Of course, none of these new “all in one” devices are good without the features to support them. Check with your provider to see what the price is on the features that you want/need on your device. Some features are bundled. You can get internet/email/text messaging all for 19.95 with some devices, while others only have internet and email for 19.95 and you have to add an additional texting package. Some devices are less expensive (coughBLACKBERRYcough) but their features are going to cost you more. The sleek “grownup” device may be what fits your look, but the device targeted at the younger crowd, often have less expensive bundles that take care of all your needs.

What do I think of the Sprint “everything for 99.99” plan? I think that’s the last ditch effort of a telecom to increase it’s customer base before they sell to another company. Unlimited talk, unlimited text, unlimited internet and email all for 99.99 simply isn’t fiscally maintainable for very long.

Having said all that, don’t look for the cheap or free or cool phones, look at what you need and then check with the wireless telecoms to find out what the total cost of ownership over a year is going to be. A couple hours worth of research can save you hundreds of dollars in you personal comm budget. And just a warning, if you’re going to start texting anytime soon, or give your teenager the ability to text, make sure you give yourself and them enough messages to last the month. The thing about text messaging is that the more you do it, the more you do it.

Guest Post – Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Amazon.com

11. April 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

(Although the following appears with my name on it, ths is actually a guest-post by another IAG member, who did a lot of numbers-crunching and came up with some recommendations: Michael S. Katz is an attorney, editor-in-chief of Strider Nolan Publishing, board member of the Independent Authors’ Guild, and author of the comedy novel Shalom On The Range Take it away, Mike!)

Amazon.com recently announced a new policy requiring all Print On Demand authors to use Amazon’s own printing company, Booksurge, in order to be sold through Amazon. Many POD authors and publishers are understandably upset by this, as this can only serve to cost the authors money, and cost the printing companies business. But in terms of Amazon’s market share, how much business are we actually talking about?

WHO’S ON FIRST?

Sales of books totaled $2 billion in 2000, at which time on-line sales made up between 7.5% and 10% of that total.1 Amazon and BN.com now account for more than 85% of online book sales.3 Recent data shows that Amazon’s book sales are approximately four times that of BN.com,4 and Amazon has a 70% share of the Internet book market, so this translates into a 15 to 17.5% market share for BN.com.5

Amazon’s total sales in 2006 were $4.63 billion, but this includes books, music, and various other items, including a lot of high-end electronics, jewelry, and the like. Barnes & Noble actually outsold them at $4.68 billion (and they were basically limited to books, music and movies), but their on-line presence had only $477 million in sales. Why are people flocking to Amazon over BN.com?

A LOT TO RECOMMEND IT

A lot of it has to do with programming. Amazon has a reputation for being the best at tracking customer habits, having collected information longer and used it more proactively. Over the years they have collected detailed information about what its customers buy, considered buying, browsed for but never bought, recommended to others, or even wished someone would buy them.10 Amazon uses this information to calculate recommendations that boost sales.

In the entertainment industry, recommendations are a remarkably efficient form of marketing, as they enable films, music and books to more easily find the right audience.9 For example, the book Touching the Void, a tale of a mountain-climbing tragedy, was released in 1988 to good reviews but modest success. In 1998, the book Into Thin Air, about another mountain-climbing tragedy, was released and became a bestseller. All of a sudden, people began buying the older book again. Touching the Void began to be displayed side by side with Into Thin Air, and actually wound up outselling the newer book. How did this happen? Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, attributes this to Amazon.com recommendations. Amazon’s programs note buying patterns and suggest similar books to readers. Some people follow the suggestion, enjoy the book, and post excellent reviews. These purchases and reviews lead to more sales, more recommendations, and the cycle continues.9

Readers’ reviews also stimulate sales, although moreso on Amazon than BN.com. One study (Chevalier and Mayzlin) examined how sales on both sites correlated with number of reviews and customers’ ratings.12 They determined that a good review will increase the number of books sold, although with much greater effect on Amazon than BN.com. A bad review has a greater effect than a good one, based on the assumption that many 5-star reviews are believed to be “planted,” whereas 1-star reviews are seen as more legitimate.12

GETTING FROM POINTS A(MAZON) TO B(ARNES & NOBLE)

How do prices compare between the big two? A study (Chevalier and Goolsbee) collected Amazon and BN.com data for 18,000 different books during three different weeks in 2001. They determined that there was significant price sensitivity for online book purchases at both sites. But the demand at BN.com was much more price sensitive—both to its own prices and to Amazon’s prices—than at Amazon.4

A one percent increase in a book’s price at Amazon reduced sales by about 0.5 percent at Amazon but raised sales at BN.com by 3.5 percent, implying that (based on the 4-to-1 ratio in sales) every customer lost by Amazon instead bought the book at BN.com. Conversely, raising prices by one percent at BN.com reduced sales about 4 percent but increased sales at Amazon by only about 0.2 percent.4 Therefore, a customer lost by Amazon would usually wind up buying the book at BN.com, whereas a customer lost by BN.com would not necessarily go to Amazon. If BN.com keeps its prices right, they can steal away a lot of Amazon traffic.
More »

Round Two of the Great Amazon Imbroglio

02. April 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, Technology, World

Well, this is getting interesting – last weekend the writing world – or that portion of it that doesn’t have a name which frequents the New York Times best-sellers list – was all agog over Amazon.com’s fiat that all books sold through Amazon must be printed by it’s POD subsidiary, Booksurge. (Gruesome details here in my post of Sunday last).

Many of us ink-stained scribbling wretches are being advised to A-remain calm, it is not the end of the world as we know it and B- that Amazon doesn’t own the bloody world yet, anyway so change over all of your links to Barnes and Noble and sit tight.

Angela Hoy at Writers Weekly has the latest development here; yes, a couple of POD firms have caved, given yesterdays deadline to stand and deliver, or else their authors ‘ buy buttons’ be disabled on Amazon’s website. Angela has some shrewd guesses about why and how this is all going down the way that it is, as well as a link to further developments – and the cheery news that no buttons have actually been turned off or harmed in the making of this power-grab/controversy.

The Independent Authors’ Guild forum has been all of a twitter though: what would Ingram/Lightning Source do about this? (Break out the terrible swift sword and start trampling those grapes of wrath, some of us hoped!) How would the various POD firms react ? (Stand tall and tell ‘em “Nuts!”, some of us hoped!) And how would the general public react? A volcanic outburst of rage would be nice, but perhaps a little much for us mere scribbling mortals to hope for. Some of us still have day jobs, you see, Although book-blogger PODdy Mouth has a nice takedown here, including a number that can be called…

OMG Amazon has a actual telephone number for people to talk to a real live human?

Well, OK, probably some poor barely-minimum-wage call center drone, so keep it civil and dignified, people. It isn’t their fault; the guys whose f**king brilliant idea this was are well beyond being reached by a phone call. Maybe not beyond subpoena… eh, call me a dreamer. It goes with the territory, I write historical novels and would like to make a living from it, for f**ks sake! Given that there are so many lawyer-bloggers, perhaps some searching analysis of whatever basis there might be for anti-trust action. All well and good; and this sort of controversy is bread, butter and circuses to the blogosphere.

But I have long predicted that the towers of the literary industrial complex would totter, crumble and fall when a certain technological point was reached – when there was a desktop gadget that would print and bind a nice little paperback or hardbound book. Even if it was so expensive to buy that only places like Kinkos would have them, even if it could only crank them out one or two at a time, even at a cost per unit substantially above that of one of those industrial print shops that could churn out a thousand in a minute – it would mean the end of the literary-industrial complex. Anyone could take their book content and cover file, with ISBN and everything, down to the corner copy place, pay them to print and bind a couple or three or half-dozen copies of your book… and you could mail them to whoever had bought them. Or who you wanted to send them! That’s the future, and according to this release, may be here already, in the form of the Espresso Book Machine. Think of this as Ingram/Lightning Source looking across the poker table with a steely gaze and saying, “raise.”

“It’s always been the holy grail of the book business to walk into a store and get any book,” said Kirby Best, president and CEO of Lightning Source. With the signing of today’s strategic agreement with On Demand Books, proprietor of the Espresso Book Machine, Best sees that goal coming a little bit closer.”

And savor the discription and call me a prophetess: “We’re building a new machine that’s much smaller that can be mass produced, version 2.0,” said cofounder and chairman Jason Epstein. Neller adds that a beta machine, which will be the size of a copier at Kinko’s (3’ X 2-1/2’ for the finishing unit with another 2’ for a duplex printer), will be ready in the fall. If all goes well, a less expensive model will begin leasing in 2009. “The point of this machine is to represent the ultimate in POD,” said Epstein, who sees it as the best way to preserve backlist. If the machines catch on and proliferate like so many Starbucks outlets, the marketplace would become radically decentralized and book distribution would require simply an Internet connection.”

Oh, yeah… definitely we’re into round two. Pass the popcorn.

(Crossposted at the IAG Blog)

(And yeah, my blogosphere cover is now comprehensively blown – I blog under the name “Sgt Mom” and write books under the name “Celia Hayes”. It turns out that someone is already using my real name and has somewhat of a reputation under it. I understand that Elizabeth Taylor had something of the same problem.)

Confessions of a Wireless Customer Service Rep, 080228

29. February 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Technology

B Dubya asked a good question in a comment on an earlier post:

Timmer!
Serious question to an industry insider…
Why is it that cell coverage in the US is so spotty, when Europe and even Arabia are totally covered? What would it take to get the US system on a par with even the third world in this area?

And Occam’s Razor gets applied. While the U.S.A. was busy replacing our old, mostly copper cable, communication’s infrastructure with new, expensive, fiber optic cable in the 1990s, when cell phones were still kinda bulky and sort of a fad, the rest of the world basically said, “Hell, we can’t afford that fiber optic stuff stuff and we’ve got these new cell phone thingies, let’s just put up a whole bunch of cell phone towers instead.” That’s why countries that basically had crap land line service even 10 years ago, now have cellular communications infrastructure that beats ours to hell and back. There are some places in Europe that STILL haven’t switched to fiber and if you use a landline, you’re not going to believe how crappy the sound is. They’re basically still using cable that was laid just before or after WWII.

Add to that the fact that most countries have ONE cell phone provider, often run by the government, that provides one kind of service that everyone has, while we in the U.S.A. have about four big companies and multiple little ones, all competing for coverage and bandwidth, and you have the situation you’re bemoaning. Not all the cell phone companies play nice with one another either. If you’ve got a Brand X phone and are closest to a Brand Y tower, you may get signal off that Brand Y tower, but the Brand Y customers are going to take priority over you and your Brand X phone.

In short B Dubya, the U.S.A. could afford upgrading to fiber optic while many places in the rest of the world couldn’t, so they started building cell phone towers en masse instead of laying fiber. Most of the U.S.A.’s cell phone companies are working hard to play catchup and are learning to play nice with one another because they’re learning that customers don’t care it’s because Brand Y’s tower is down, I’M not getting service where I want it. We should have almost full coverage on all major highways with very few “dead” areas by the end of the decade, but because our companies all are competing for a market that’s rapidly becoming saturated, they’ve been concentrating on covering more densely populated areas first and slowly expanding to suburbia and rural areas. Cell phone towers are cheaper than fiber, but that doesn’t make them cheap. You’ve got to have enough customers paying a bill in an area to justify adding and maintaining a tower somewhere. You also have to have landowners that will agree to let you put a tower on their property.

Rachel Lucas Was Wrong…But It’s Not Her Fault

20. February 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Technology

First, go read this post. I’ll wait. I need a fresh lemonade anyway.

Done? Cool.

First of all let me say that for someone who doesn’t work in the telecom industry that it’s very easy to think badly of T-Mobile after reading that story. Hell, if I didn’t know what was really behind what happened there, I’d be just as peeved. But the whole story isn’t there and I think it needs some clarification.

Okay, so the events that took place happened in January of 2008. Let me double check, yep, by the information that’s provided, that seems correct.

What most people don’t know is that back in December of 2007 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed stricter Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) regulations that all U.S. Telecoms have to abide by. Before those new regulations it was pretty easy for anyone to call in, give their name, confirm the name on the account, confirm some personal information, and they’d get full access to that other person’s account. Since the new CPNI standards went into effect, that’s no longer the case. The FCC decided that only the account owner (the person who’s name is on the acount), or the people that the account owner had designated as Authorized Users on the account, may have access to the account information…which would include access to buying a phone in that person’s name. Apparently in the past, unauthorized folks just called up, ordered a phone, charged it to someone else’s account, mom’s, dad’s, daughter’s, and off they went with a new phone and no one was the wiser until the bill showed up.

If any of those T-Mobile employees had allowed that girl’s dad to buy a phone for her on her dead husband’s account when the dad wasn’t an authorized user they would have been guilty of a federal crime.

I don’t know about the T-Mobile employees, but I wouldn’t be willing to go to jail for anyone, no matter how bad their situation.

I realize that it’s easy to hate cell phone companies, trust me, I work for one and I think it’s absolutely scandalous that they just don’t give away cell phones and forgive every bit of overage that customers accrue through ignorance or apathy. It’s like they’re in business to make a profit or something. (sarcasm…in case you missed it) In this case though, they did exactly what your government told them to do.

Confessions of a Wireless Customer Service Rep, 080128

28. January 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: Technology

There are times when being a Customer Service Rep for Ginormous Worldwide Telecom is downright boring. Changing rate plans, selling phones, adding and subtracting features until it not only meets the customers’ needs but also their pocketbook. Those are pretty standard calls. We also have the folks who call up screaming their heads off because their “phone is broke and I just bought it and…” Nine times out of ten that can be fixed with a simple, “You know, at this point, cell phones are basically little computers. Do me a favor and turn it off…wait about five seconds and turn it back on…is it working now?” “Ummm, yeah, what’s that do?” “It reboots it. If the same problem happens again, try that first.”

Every now and then though I get great satisfaction out of helping a customer that no one else has seemed to be able to help out before. Now a lot of folks call in, over and over and over again, hoping they’ll find some sap to listen to their sob story and credit them back the ridiculous amount of overage that they accrued over the holidays. Most of the time, I’m going to tow the company line an advise them, just like the last four reps did, that those are valid charges and there’s no way we can credit them. Every now and then though, I get a customer who, for some reason or another, no one has LISTENED to before. That happened right before my night ended tonight, and I feel pretty good about it. Earlier the customer had called in and the rep had told him that he had oodles of minutes remaining for the month. However, the customer went over by over 200 minutes when the cycle actually closed out. When he called in to dispute it, he was told, “Those are valid overages.” Once, twice, three times. He wanted to cancel and was sent to cancellations (or SAVES, the folks who do their best to keep the customer) who once again told him those were valid overages and wouldn’t refund him anything either. He cancelled service, pretty much fed up with us. The man was quite tenacious and had a strong feeling that he’d been wronged and called in one last time to see if I could help him. And I could.

Once all was said and done and after I’d simply played with the database a little, it was easy to see that at the time he was told he had oodles of minutes left, he was already over. A little further digging and I found out where that customer service rep had found that oodles of minutes number…from his previous month’s bill!!! That’s clearly our error and I was able to fix it for him, making him so happy that he had me restore his service immediately. Three lines. That’s potential profit the company was going to lose because no one would listen.

And like I said, I got a great deal of satisfaction out of that. Three previous reps AND a “SAVES Specialist” missed the simple fact that we gave him the wrong information from the wrong month’s bill. I’m very much in an, “I SO rule.” mood right now. I’m also disappointed in four of my coworkers, one of them deemed “The best of the best.”

As much as other reps are going to hate me for saying this, if you’re a customer, and you KNOW something’s wrong, keep calling until somebody hears exactly what you’re saying to them. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll have someone on the other end who’s willing to dig a little deeper and say, “Sir/Ma’am, that’s clearly our error, and I’m going to fix it for you.”

Confessions of a Wireless Customer Service Rep, 080125

25. January 2008 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Stupidity, Technology

Working for Ginormous Worldwide Telecom can sometimes be a chore. Especially if you have a sense of personal responsibility.

Right now, cell phone companies sell cell phones at hugely discounted prices, sometimes even giving them away, in return for a commitment from the customer to stick around for X amount of time. If you break that commitment, there’s a fiscal penalty. There’s always the choice to buy a phone at full price with no commitment. People don’t normally choose to buy a phone at full price, they chose to take the discounted price and agree to the commitment.

Right now, cell phone companies sell service plans for X amount of minutes. You can sometimes get drastically reduced rates on your service plans if you agree to stick around for X amount of time. This, it seems to me, is a good thing. If I know I’m getting good service in my area from a company and they’re willing to sell me more minutes for less money, or even the same amount of minutes for less money, in return for a commitment, I’m all about that.

That may change one of these days. If it does, you can blame California.

If this class action lawsuit goes through, and the folks who have filed it win, you can bet that we’ll all suffer for it. There will be no more discounted cell phones and there will be no more reduced-rate service plans. We’ll all pay more because some folks who can’t read a contract before they sign it or who refuse to honor a contract after they’ve signed it, decided that they’re special and the rules that the rest of us live by don’t apply to them.

The March of Technology

29. November 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Technology, The Funny, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Sorry to have been a bit chintzy with the free bloggy ice cream over the last couple of days; I was wrestling with the many-limbed monster that is technology – or at least that aspect of it involved in doing a version of “To Truckee’s Trail” for Amazon’s “Kindle” reader. It turned out that the PDF version that I have, which is the final print version was incompatible with what Amazon has established for their system.

Which was a bit of a facer, because it uploaded and converted and looked – if not perfectly OK, at least fairly OK – but some of the other information I had to load – about which I would never in the world goof up (you know, like my SSAN?) were kicked back as invalid. What the hey? Email to Amazon customer service, expressing bafflement and considerable annoyance. Received an email back, with an option for a phone call to a customer service rep, which was totally surprising. I mean – there’s an option for speaking to a real hoo-man at Amazon?

Well, there was, but the first person I talked to sounded like a cousin of Special Ed, who handed me on to a technician who was about as helpful as one of those terrifyingly crusty old senior technicians, back when I was not Sgt. Mom, but merely Baby Airman… with a completely baffling problem.

You remember – the exchange with the crusty old technician with enough stripes on his arm for a zebra farm, which went roughly like this:

Baby Airman: Umm… can you tell me how to perform this insurmountably complicated and obscure task about which I have not the slightest clue?

Crusty Old Senior Technician: It’s in the manual. (Which is, let me add, about the size of the LA phone book, and printed in eeensy weensy type)

Baby Airman: (quavering slightly) Yes, but I…

Crusty Old Senior Technician: (growling contemptuously) Didn’t you read the manual?

B.A.: Yes, but…

C.O.S.T: Well then, what are you asking me for? Go and read it again!

B.A.: (creeping away in silent despair, racking brains in a futile attempt to figure out task)

So the Crusty Old Senior Technician – Amazon version basically told me the file format was all wrong, contemptuously forwarded a page with a lot of links to discussion forums – none of which really addressed my problem, since I wasn’t really sure what it was, exactly, and I wound doing just as what usually happened back then: some slightly more knowledgeable tech whispering “Pssst! Try this!” and handing me a short and well-thumbed little cheat sheet which told me exactly what I had to know to perform that formerly insurmountably complicated and obscure task.

In this case, it was one of the other Independent Authors’ Guild writers who said, “Oh, just convert it from PDF to Word and upload it again.”

So, within another ten hours, assuming something else hasn’t thrown a spanner into the works ( translation: a monkey wrench into the gears) “To Truckee’s Trail” will be available for purchase by those who are keen on the latest hot technological gadget! Enjoy! And thanks to those of you who have purchased paperback copies in the last couple of months!

Confessions of a Wireless Customer Service Rep, 071014

14. October 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Rant, Technology

Here’s something that completely blew my mind recently. Apparently it’s common practice in some circles for women to carry their cell phones, and I shit you not about this, in their panties right up against their coochie. There’s a plethora of jokes to be made about the phone in vibrate mode etc., but I’m going to leave those alone and talk about why this is just a BAD idea. The cell phone is a small computer with all sorts of chips and electricity running through those chips, not to mention a lithium battery that’s meant to hold enough power for up to a four hour phone call. Do you really think it’s a good idea to keep an electronic device that isn’t made for that part of your body down there? Never mind the fact that it’s not good for your phone, would you put a computer down there? No, you wouldn’t. You would intuitively know that it’s a bad idea. Yet, I’ve learned that there are a LOT of women who do this every day. Don’t even get me started about the fact that you’re going to be putting that near your mouth. And for God’s sake don’t tell me that you wash it regularly, your phone I mean. I assume everyone practices decent hygiene…well at least in this country…mostly.

This is something you couldn’t talk a guy into doing. “You want me to put a cell phone in my shorts next to Mr Happy and The Twins? I don’t think so sparky. I know those things give off some sort of radiation and I’m not about to risk anything nuking my package. Aren’t I worried about my brain then? I’m a dude, why would I worry about that?

Ladies, please, think before you store your cell phone in what, on a good day, could become a warm and wet environment. At the very least you’re risking shorting out your phone. And NO, it’s not covered under the warranty…which quite honestly is the phone call I got this past week which triggered this rant.

World War Two Chat

04. September 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, General, History, Technology, The Funny, War

Ran across this a couple of days ago, via Rantburg – if World War Two had been a real-time, on-line strategy game, this how the chat-room might have appeared:

Hitler[AoE]: america hax, u had depression and now u got a huge fockin army
Hitler[AoE]: thats bullsh1t u hacker
Churchill: lol no more france for u hitler
Hitler[AoE]: tojo help me!
T0J0: wtf u want me to do, im on the other side of the world retard
Hitler[AoE]: fine ill clear you a path
Stalin: WTF u arsshoel! WE HAD A FoCKIN TRUCE
Hitler[AoE]: i changed my mind lol
benny-tow: haha

The rest is here

Occasional Nightmare

22. August 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Technology, World

Everyone has a reoccurring nightmare, so I have always been told. If you are very lucky they are fairly benign, sometimes to the point of making you wonder if they can really be classed as a nightmare, like dreaming that you are stark naked in your place of work. A good few years ago, there was an article published, the result of a survey that revealed that college-graduates of all majors and vintages still had finals nightmares. They dreamed they went in to take a Terribly Important Final Exam, and when they actually began taking the test, realized that they didn’t know any of the answers, or it was an essay question and their mind was a Complete Blank… or that, like my mother’s reoccurring Finals Nightmare, they skipped that class for the entire semester.

My reoccurring nightmare is a peculiar variant of the Finals Nightmare; The Radio Station Where Nothing Works. Either I am walking into a sort-of-familiar radio station control room, where the control board has been subtly reconfigured, where all the board switches which activate and control the audio levels for the mikes, the CD players, the computer (which as replaced the cart decks where the spots, inserts and IDs used to play from) have been changed around… or they have been disconnected completely. Or it’s a completely new control board.

And in a bare three minutes or so before I have to go on the air, I have to figure it all out, or fix it so it does work.

Sometimes it’s the CD players which suddenly cannot be made to work properly. Adding piquancy to this particular nightmare variant is the fact that some of the early broadcast CD-player models used in AFRTS got terribly buggy when over-heated. No matter how carefully the DJ cued up a particular cut, they would reset themselves to another selection, usually the first cut on the CD. Nothing is guaranteed to make a DJ feel more like an idiot than to cheerfully announce the next song,… and have something else entirely go out on the air. I got to the point where I would not announce the next selection on the playlist, unless I recognized the up-ramp. But total nightmare material: not being able to make the darned thing work at all.

Playlist. That’s another nightmare. Not being able to find the next thing you’re supposed to be airing, because the CD/record library is a complete shambles. Or to cue it up in time; see above as regards non-functioning CD players. At least my nightmare has progressed technologically, to the point where I’m no longer afflicted by record-players with missing tone-arms or needles. There was a new element in my most recent radio-station nightmare, though. I can barely read the tiny print on CD cases now, without my reading glasses, and I dreamed the other night of having a playlist with print too small to read.

And I didn’t have my glasses. It sucks to be getting old… but it does beat the alternative, doesn’t it?

At Play in the Fields of Book-Marketing

08. August 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General, General Nonsense, Literary Good Stuff, Rant, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine...

After giving myself a year of trying to get published the old-fashioned way, which involved getting the notice of a literary agent who would be able to attract the notice of a traditional publisher, I finally said “the hell” and took “To Truckee’s Trail” to a POD firm. The truly mind-boggling thing was that everyone who had read the whole thing had two reactions: “Wow!” and “Why hadn’t I ever heard about these people before?” I’ll not delude myself by that into thinking it’s great lit-ra-chure on that account, though. It’s an agreeably well-written story about a minor historical event, and reasonably accurate.

There’s a ton of books like that down at the local Barnes & Noble, along with tons of other books of a suckage so total as to pull in asteroids and small moons. So one may rightfully wonder how on earth the writers of those latter managed to get agents and publishers. The judgment of the literary gatekeepers looks to be pretty iffy, all things considered. By the end of a year I could blow off receiving another rejection letter pretty well… especially those spotty fifth-generation photo-copied ones cut three or four from a sheet of copy paper. (Quelle classy, people. Really.)

After perusing a collection of blook-blogs, including this one, I am wondering if writer-driven publish-on-demand isn’t the wave of the future, or at least a jolly great shake-up to “the way things have always been done”. Sort of like how the news and comment blogs were a shake-up to the news media complex over the past five or six years, which gives cause to wonder if the literary-industrial complex isn’t on the same Titanic-vs-Iceberg track. Writers who have way more experience than I have also been wringing their hands in lamentation at sclerosis of the literary-industrial complex, and venturing all sorts of reasons. Like the torrents of manuscripts flowing upstream towards their traditional spawning grounds, at traditional publishing firms.

Once upon a time, they tell me… there weren’t quite so many people who thought they had a book in them somewhere. Traditional publishers could evaluate and accept submissions in a timely and sympathetic manner. If a manuscript had any sort of merit, it might knock around for a bit… but would eventually find a nice literary niche. Not so now; publishers are drowning in the floods of submissions. I am told that screening them is now farmed out to agents… who have pretty much the same problem. Unless a specific manuscript pushes all the right buttons of that one agent who has to be in just the right sort of mood… frankly, I was starting to think I’d have better luck playing the Texas Lottery. And like any other sane person, an agent would like to have the biggest pay-off for the smallest work possible, so ix-nay on something that doesn’t slot into an easy category, or be likened in one sentence to last week’s big block-buster. Just safe business, after all, but it has the result of narrowing the field and reducing the odds for the next out-of-category big literary wonder. (See above, suckage, and attraction to small celestial bodies.)

Lottery… which reminds me of something else; even getting an agent, and a traditional publishing deal isn’t any guarantee of happily-ever-after. I am told that most traditionally published books don’t make any sort of money. Like Hollywood, the literary-industrial complex really wants blockbusters, and the non-blockbusting writers tend to get treated pretty much like hired-help that can scribble… all the while being reminded that they are lucky to even have agency representation and a book deal to start with. So, a couple of more petty tyrants to appease, and to make the scribbler’s life even more miserable; yes, I think I’ll have another plate of that delicious filboid studge.

Oh, and it seems that the literary-industrial humongous publicity machine only gets into high gear for those few blockbusters anyway; the lesser scribblers have to do their own marketing anyway. May as well do POD, and have complete control, rather than be nibbled to death by the petty minions.

Progress report on “To Truckee’s Trail” to follow.

Way To Much Time On His Hands

27. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Air Navy, Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Good God, Technology, World

A model of an aircraft carrier… made entirely out of Legos.

(link courtesy of Rantburg, the source for all things civil and well reasoned.)

End Run

05. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

The crescendo of the writers’ life waltz, as I have been calling it, is yours truly making a determined end-run around the established behemoths of the literary industrial complex, thanks to contributions gratefully received from fans and supporters… and from Mom and Dad. I have been able to pull in enough to start the process rolling for “To Truckee’s Trail” with those nice people at Booklocker.com. I have sent them the formatted text, and in a short time, they will have one of their contracted artists do the cover, and once I approve it, they will include it in their website and catalogue… and there you go, Sgt. Mom’s next book. It’ll be available on Amazon.com, of course.

It’s not just going to stop at that, though. It just doesn’t. I will be buying a box of copies, to use to generate reviews in various websites and magazines. Once I have a nice collection of kind words, then I will use the cover art and the kind words to purchase advertising space, and to print up some folders or flyers to send to various bookstores. Do you know how many museums there are, along the Western emigrant trail, and how many of them have bookstores? You may not, but I am making a concerted effort to build a list of each and every one, and I’ll know when I am finished. I’ll also know about any independent bookstores anywhere in towns of note along the trail… especially if there is any kind of trail-related tourism in that town. All hail Google, the avatar of the DIY advertising campaign!

It’s been dawning on me, that perhaps the world of book-publishing, or as I have begun to call it, the “literary industrial complex” is beginning a slow downward spiral in the face of the POD revolution, the internet and DIY marketing, and even the availability of quality color printing at Kinkos. All those processes that were once owned by a big publisher because the technology involved was huge, complex and expensive… now they are reduced, pared down and available to anyone who cares. Once upon a time, doing a book on your own used to be called a vanity press, and it cost a bomb, but now self-publishing is within reach. The resulting books aren’t any more dreadful than what is churning out of the traditional publishing houses; so much for the sneering about vanity presses, and writers so pathetically eager to be in print.

It’s been kind of curious, to hang around in the book and publishing blogs, and read what insiders say about it: that agents are harried and harassed, and have only enough time for a tenth of the good-quality stuff that crosses their desks. That publishers are risk-adverse… and like the producers of block-buster movies, want that sure-fire good thing that is just like the last fifteen or twenty sure-fire good things that came down the pike. It’s a crapshoot for writers; even if you do grab the brass ring, and get a deal from a traditional publisher, you’re likely to be treated like dirt anyway… and wind up doing most of the marketing yourself. So, POD looks more and more like a viable alternative.

And I am wondering if the literary-industrial complex is going to start feeling the pinch of competition, and considerable dissatisfaction from the consuming public… just like the major news media is feeling now. Old news stalwarts like the NY Times, Newsweek and the CBS evening news are all beginning to tank. Bloggers like Michael Yon can do news reporting from a war zone, expert analysis comes from someone like Wretchard at Belmont Club, and the dreaded Mo-Toons o’Doom were featured on more blogs than were published in newspapers. The entire news industry looks fair to going down like that enormous spaceship in that old Disney movie that spiraled down into a black hole, emerging in the fourth dimension as something entirely different… what was the name of that flick? Anyway, I wonder if current technology is going to send traditional book publishing in the same direction.

The Long Hot Summer of 1860

22. May 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Media Matters Not, Old West, Politics, Technology

The summer of 1860 culminated a decade of increasingly bitter polarization among the citizens of the still-United States over the question of slavery, or as the common polite euphemism had it; “our peculiar institution”. At a period within living memory of older citizens, slavery once appeared as if it were something that would wither away as it became less and less profitable, and more and more disapproved of by practically everyone. But the invention of the cotton gin, to process cotton fiber mechanically made large-scale agricultural production profitable, relighting the fire under a moribund industry. The possibility of permitting the institution of chattel slavery in the newly-acquired territories in the West during the 1840s turned the heat up to a simmer. It came to a full rolling boil after California was admitted as a free state in 1850… but at a cost of stiffening the Fugitive Slave Laws. And as a prominent senator, Jesse Hart Benton lamented subsequently, the matter of slavery popped up everywhere, as ubiquitous as the biblical plague of frogs. Attitudes hardened on both sides, and within a space of a few years advocates for slavery and abolitionists alike had all the encouragement they needed to readily believe the worst of each other.

Texas was not immune to all this, of course. Of the populated western states at the time, Texas was closer in sympathy to the South in the matter of slavery. Most settlers who come from the United States had come from where it had been permitted, and many had brought their human property with them, or felt no particular objection to the institution itself. In point of fact, slaves were never particularly numerous: the largest number held by a single Texas slave-owner on the eve of the Civil War numbered around 300, and this instance was very much a singular exception; most owned far fewer. Only a portion of the state was favorable to the sort of mass-agricultural production that depended upon a slave workforce. In truth while there were few abolitionists, there were many whose enthusiasm for the practice of chattel slavery was particularly restrained especially in those parts of North Texas, which had been settled from northern states and around the Hill Country and San Antonio, similarly settled by Germans and other Europeans.

One of the subtle and tragic side-effects that the hardening of attitudes had on the South was to intensify the “closing-in” of attitudes and culture towards contrary opinions. As disapproval of slavery heightened in the North and in Europe, Southern partisans became increasingly defensive, less inclined to brook any kind of criticism of the south and its institutions, peculiar or otherwise. By degrees the South became inimical to outsiders bearing the contrary ideas that progress is made of. Those who were aware of the simple fact that ideas, money, innovation, and new immigrants were pouring into the Northern states at rates far outstripping those into the South tended to brood resentfully about it, and cling to their traditions ever more tightly. Always touchy about points of honor and insult, some kind of nadir was reached in 1854 on the floor of the US Senate when a Southern Senator, Preston Brooks of South Carolina caned Charles Sumner following a fiercely abolitionist speech by the latter. Senator Brooks was presented with all sorts of fancy canes to commemorate the occasion, while Senator Sumner was months recovering from the brutal beating.

And even more than criticism, Southerners feared a slave insurrection, and any whisper of such met with a hard and brutal reaction. John Brown’s abortive 1859 raid on the Federal armory at Harper’s Ferry sealed the conviction into the minds of Southerners that the abolitionists wished for exactly that.

When mysterious fires razed half of downtown Denton, parts of Waxahatchie, a large chunk of the center of Dallas, and a grocery store in Pilot Point during the hottest summer in local memory, it took no great leap of imagination for anti-abolitionists to place blame for mysterious fires squarely on the usual suspects and their vile plots. Residents were especially jumpy in Dallas, where two Methodist preachers had been publicly flogged and thrown out of town the previous year. The editor of the local Dallas newspaper, one Charles Pryor wrote to the editors of newspapers across the state, (including the editor of the Austin Gazette who was chairman of the state Democratic Party) claiming “It was determined by certain abolitionist preachers, who were expelled from the country last year, to devastate, with fire and assassination, the whole of Northern Texas, and when it was reduced to a helpless condition, a general revolt of slaves, aided by the white men of the North in our midst, was to come off on the day of election in August.”

The panic was on, then, all across Texas: Committees of Public Safety were formed, as so-called abolitionist plotters were sought high, low, and behind every privy and under every bed, and lynched on the slightest suspicion. Conservative estimates place the number of dead, both black and white as at least thirty and possibly up to a hundred, while the newspapers breathlessly poured fuel on the fires… metaphorically speaking, of course… by expounding on the cruel depredations the abolitionists had planned for the helpless citizens of Texas. When the presidential election campaign began in late summer, Southern-rights extremists seamlessly laid the blame for the so-called plot on the nominee and political party favored by the Northern Free-States; Republican Abraham Lincoln. Texas seceded in the wake of his election, the way to the Confederacy smoothed by rumor, panic and editorial pages.

It turns out that the fires were most likely caused by the spontaneous ignition of boxes of new patent phosphorous matches, which had just then gone on the market, and the usually hot summer. But speculation and conspiracy theories are always more attractive than prosaic explanations for unsettling and mysterious events… and were so then as now.

More here on the Texas Troubles

Log Cabin Days

25. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General, History, Old West, Pajama Game, Technology

Among the books in my tall stack to read, in preparation to revise and polish the current epic is one with the very dry title of “Texas Log Buildings; A Folk Architecture” – which has actually proved to be a bit more interesting and informative than it looked at first glance. I am a sucker for knowing how things are constructed or put together- which is good, especially since I need to write a description of building such a thing as a log building. Little details like how many days it would take to build one, what size it would generally be, and the layout – these little details count.

Previously, the one description of the process that I could bring readily to mind was “Little House on the Prairie” – and it turns out that Pa Ingalls was not building that cabin to much of a standard. He may not even have been all that skilled as a carpenter, but since he was working on it mostly by himself, and in a place where the swiftness of getting a roof of some sort over his family counted for everything – allowances were made.

That was almost everyone’s first and most urgent need, upon settling on a new grant or homestead, that and planting some kind of crop in the ground; building a cabin, to meet immediate shelter needs. This book differentiates very clearly the difference between a log cabin, and a log house. A log cabin was small, twelve to fourteen foot square, windowless, with a dirt floor. They were scratch and hastily put up to use as a temporary dwelling place, whereas a log house was larger, permanent, and much more carefully constructed; even quite elaborate as to comforts. For much of the 19th century, at least in Texas it was a matter of some embarrassment to still be living in a log cabin after a couple of years; rather like living in a trailer would be. In fact, many log houses were covered with siding and paint as soon as their owners could afford to do so. If they had lived in a little cabin before building the permanent house, the cabin was frequently reused as a smoke-house, or a stable.

Pace “Little House” and a whole raft of western movies, I’d always visualized such houses and cabins built out of the whole, rounded logs, with simple interlocking half-round notches (called a saddle notch) cut close to the ends, and about a foot or so of the log hanging out beyond at the corners, rather like a “Lincoln-log” house. This method of construction turns out have been employed by the relatively unskilled and/or those in a tearing hurry. The majority of Texas log structures were built of timbers which had been at least roughly shaped on two sides, and carefully notched at the ends to make a square corner. With the exception of part log, part dugout shelters built in far western Texas, where trees were scarce, most log structures were also raised off the ground on corner piers, to prevent rot and termite infestation, and to take advantage of air circulation.
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Comancheria: Part 3

18. February 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Old West, Pajama Game, Technology

What did a well-known naturalist, a daring mail-coach driver on the hazardous route through West Texas, a fiery newspaper editor, a tireless peacemaker and advocate for the Indians, and an amateur tinkerer/inventor all have in common, besides all being present in Texas in the 1840ies? Frederick Lindheimer, William “Big Foot” Wallace, John Salmon “Rip” Ford, Robert Neighbors and Samuel Walker all served at various times under the command of Jack Hays, the legendary Ranger Captain.

The Rangers of that time were nothing like their present-day iteration… an elite State law-enforcement body. And under Hays’ captaincy, they became more than just the local mounted volunteer militia, called up on a moments’ notice to respond to a lightening fast raid on their settlement or town by Indians or cross-border bandits. They took to patrolling the backcountry, looking specifically for a fight and hoping to forestall raids before they happened, or failing that, to track down raiding parties, recover loot and captives, and to administer payback. There was only one abortive attempt to have them wear uniforms. Ranger volunteers provided their own weapons and horses, and usually their own rations, although the State of Texas did supply ammunition. They were famously unscathed by anything resembling proper military discipline and polish, as the regular Army would discover to their horror during the Mexican War. A contemporary newspaper caricature of a typical ‘Texas Ranger” featured a hairy and ragged creature resembling “Cousin It”, slumped on a horse and wearing a belt stuffed all the way around with knives and pistols.

All that Hays asked of his Rangers was that they follow him… and fight. And so they did, for Texas attracted young and restless males with a taste for adventure, a bit of ambition and no small propensity for administering violence when called upon. They came like moths to a flame, before, during and after the Texas War for Independence; many of them gravitating like a trout going upstream into an enlistment as a Ranger or service in the local militia. During the early 1840s Hays commanded a company of fluctuating size, operating out of San Antonio, which turned out to be extraordinarily effective, and made his name a legend in Texas. Many who had only heard of him were utterly flummoxed upon meeting him in person for the first time. He was slight and short, quiet-spoken and almost shy, appearing to be (and a contemporary sketch and various descriptions conform this) about fourteen years old. In between forays and patrols he drilled his company tirelessly in shooting and horsemanship, copying many of the tricks of fighting from horseback used by the Comanche and other Plains warriors. Meeting the Comanche on anything like equal terms in a fight at short distance had to wait on a single technological innovation, and Hays was the first to put it to effective use.

Until 1844, the Rangers fought primarily with the same kind of weapons that Americans had always used: single-shot flintlock or percussion rifles of various type and design, augmented by single-shot pistols. While such rifles in well-trained hands were punishingly accurate, they were awkward and slow to reload, and nearly impossible to use from horseback in a running fight. Even single-shot pistols took time to reload, time during which an opponent with a bow and arrow could get off any number of accurate shots. But in 1839, motivated by some mad, god-only-knows, pie-in-the-sky, by-god-it’s-crazy-but-just-might-work impulse, the State of Texas ordered a quantity of 180 patent .36 caliber 5-shot revolvers from Samuel Colt’s factory in Paterson, New Jersey. A portion of them were actually issued to certain Texas Navy fighting ships, where they served about as well as expected, but they began to be largely used by the Texas Army… and increasingly by Ranger units, to astonishing effect.

The early Paterson Colts were delicate, and needed constant care and maintenance: loading the cylinder and reattaching it to the barrel was a finicky and careful business. To modern eyes they are over-long in the barrel, heavy and clumsy in appearance. In 1843, they were expensive… but worth every penny to the men who carried them into a fight with mounted Comanche warriors. Being able to fire five shots before needing to reload evened the odds considerably; and Hays’s Rangers usually carried two; it was also possible to purchase extra cylinders, have them loaded and change them out quickly. Colt’s reputation in Texas was made, especially after Hays and a party of fourteen Rangers armed with Paterson Colts charged and routed a party of eighty Comanche, in a running fight along the Pedernales River.

A subsequent design improvement for military use in the Mexican War saw Ranger Samuel Walker working with Samuel Colt on improving the original design. This new design, a six-shot .44 revolver which weighed a whopping four and a half pounds made Colt’s reputation and his economic future secure. Subsequent iterations of the Colt revolver proved enduringly popular in Texas to this day. Traveling there in the early 1850s, Frederick Law Olmsted wrote “There are probably in Texas about as many revolvers as male adults, and I doubt if there are one hundred in the state of any other make.”

For all it’s various shortcomings, the Paterson Colt, and its descendents filled a very particular need— the need of a horse- mounted fighter for a repeat-fire weapon that was relatively accurate at short range, rugged, easy to use, and capable of evening the chances of survival against a hard-fighting, and similarly mounted enemy. In the hands of Rangers, soldiers, lawmen and citizens, a Colt revolver was all that.

Except on occasions where a shotgun was called for, but that’s another story.
(Next: An unexpected peace treaty with the Comanche)

Shuffle in Color

31. January 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Technology

I’m not sure what’s more annoying, the color choices of the new iPod Shuffle or the annoying way Apple waits until everyone buys one kind of something before they give you any sort of choice. Are there really that many people with that much expendable income going, “Ooooh, new shiny thing!” and buying said shiny the moment it hits the shelves? How many teenagers got a plain shuffle for Christmas and are looking to their birthday for a NEW one in color? It can’t be worth it to tease like this constantly. Can it?

In other tech news…something called Vista(?) became available today. If you’re anything like us, you’ll think about it only when you’re ready to buy a new computer. The last time I ran out and bought a new OS from Microsoft was Windows 3.0 and I can’t tell you what a freaking nightmare THAT was.

I’m not all that excited about Office 07 either. What more can it do? I’ve not seen anything all that exciting in Office since 97.

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