Amazon Kindle: Strike Two

Last month or the month before, I wrote in general about the reasons I don't use an eBook reader like Amazon's Kindle, in a response to the controversy surrounding Amazon deleting eBooks remotely (which they weren't authorized to sell in the first place). Aside from that silly mess, my main gripe is that you must pay full price for a book, you can't buy it used, and you can't sell it secondhand when you're done, or even loan it to a friend without loaning out your $300 Kindle, and if you do, obviously you yourself can't read on it until your friend is done. It's a mess.

Now there's a new controversy around the $300 device (and yes, I love going on about how expensive the bloody thing is). If they get stolen, Amazon has the technology to see who stole it, and even to shut it down completely, but in the name of good business (as in, the thief paying for books), they're protecting the thieves' personal information, until ordered to release it by court order.

Talk about stabbing customers in the back, eh? $300 for the device, $25 for books (or whatever hardcovers cost these days, I know they vary), and if it gets stolen, even though they know who did it, they're just going to leave you hanging like that?

Enough's enough, people who have had this happen really need to lawyer up and sue Amazon. They're charging an insane amount of money for a service, basically encouraging theft ("if you steal one, you're just as good a customer as if you'd bought one"), protecting thieves, thereby encouraging it more, and basically they're obstructing justice. Sure, they comply with a court order, but if they know who has your Kindle and they're not telling you, they're an accessory, and at the very least, they ought to replace the Kindle, if it is such a big deal to them to keep the thieves' business.

Seriously, if your Kindle got stolen and Amazon won't help you, call your lawyer. At the very least, file a claim in small claims court. It's under five thousand dollars. If Amazon doesn't send a rep, they forfeit the case... at least, I believe that's how it works. And if they do send a rep, that rep's gonna have a hell of a time explaining to a judge why they're protecting a criminal and, at the same time, why they won't compensate you for your stolen property, when they make millions of dollars, and they're profiting from a crime against you.

...And this is coming from a fan and loyal customer of Amazon.com who has spent probably a few hundred dollars there on books, music, movies, games, Microsoft Points cards, and other stuff! But hey, I gotta call 'em like I see 'em - and this is bullshit.

Amazon vs. 1984

Just yesterday, I wrote about the growing trend of Xbox 360 gamers artificially enhancing their Gamerscore, and Microsoft going into their machines and resetting their score to zero. Before that, however, and certainly more popularly, Amazon.com is catching hell for remotely deleting books from their own electronic book reader, the Kindle. What's worse, the book in question is none other than George Orwell's classic story of totalitarian government oppression, 1984. Sure, they refunded peoples' money, but is that enough? Amazon, some customers, and the owners of the distribution rights to 1984 seem to believe so. Others disagree.

First of all, this is not about censorship. 1984 is, as a novel, but that is beside the point. (Fahrenheit 451 would have been a much better platform to cry wolf on, had it happened to digital copies of that book, as it's about firemen who burn books.) No, it's just a matter of copyrights. Amazon, like any book seller, has the rights to sell new and used copies of virtually any book they like, from Dr. Seuss to Stephen King and from cookbooks to the Kama Sutra. (A note for young people trying to sneak into R-rated movies and play M-rated games, your local Barnes & Noble has far juicier content, including stuff you can't even see in movies and video games, and they won't stop you from reading it.) Their first copyright problems surfaced a few years or more ago when they started letting you read the book right on their web page. Not all books qualified, but for those that did, you could look at the first few pages. Some let you read a random page, up to however many pages. In any case, however, the rights of the copyright owner were always respected. And that's all this is. They thought they had the rights, and between that and learning they didn't, they sold so many copies. Remotely deleting the books, while distasteful, was just an attempt to avoid copyright infringement, which could have made them liable for millions of dollars. If I, or any of you reading, were in Amazon's shoes, you would have done the exact same thing.

Now, I've always been leery of "eBook readers" like the Kindle. You pay a couple hundred dollars for this thing, and all it can do is read books? Where's the benefit? The books still cost roughly the same. And you can't loan or give the book to a friend when you're done. You can't buy a used eBook for half the price. An eBook reader presumably takes batteries; that, or it has a rechargeable power supply like a cell phone. An eBook reader is discreet; without seeing the screen, you can't tell a person reading de Sade from somebody reading Shakespeare. On the other hand, though, you give up any claim to any kind of distinguished look you might have earned from reading classic literature if you're reading it on a screen, you look no better or smarter than somebody reading John Grisham or Nicholas Sparks on an eBook reader, so that goes both ways. Personally, I'm used to paperback books. I don't like hardcovers; they're too big. I barely tolerate the Harry Potter paperbacks, which are nearly the size of hardcovers. (Speaking of which, Book 7, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" finally came out, last week, after 2 years exclusive in hardcover. While I did read spoilers, I have actually held out and have just started reading it.) I have tried to read eBooks on a laptop computer and on a modified Nintendo DS, and it just did not work for me. The one advantage I can think of is that with an eBook reader, you can set a digital bookmark which will not fall out. While a Kindle might combine the portability and ease of use of the DS with the large screen of the laptop, I'm not about to spend $200 or more to find out.

So, what am I saying? Should I have to spell it out? $200 (or more!) for an eBook reader, plus $9.99 for a book that's inconvenient to read that can be remotely deleted... or just $9.99 for a book they can't take back, with the option to get it less secondhand, and/or resell to get some of my money back? (Amazon has a flat shipping rate for sellers of $3.99 per book, and I know it doesn't cost half that, so I'm guaranteed at least $2 back if I sell it for just a penny.) And considering that a book is still the best value in entertainment (though Oblivion on the Xbox 360 is quite a contender; I've got 85+ hours into that sucker and I still ain't halfway done), that ain't bad. eBook readers just screw it all up. This issue though, it's nothing, at the most it's just icing on the cake, or rather, the final nail in the coffin.

Music Mysteries #1

There's nothing like a good mystery, especially when it's about something cool, like music, more so if it's about a band we like. I'm sure there are a lot more, but I'm going to look at three of varying degrees of importance.

1. November Rain
The most interesting music mystery I've found is the secrets of the "November Rain" video by Guns n' Roses. A brief history lesson, if you don't mind: In the mid-1980s, Guns n' Roses exploded onto the rock scene with "Appetite for Destruction", still considered a great album 23 years later. Between that and the lesser-known "GnR Lies!" album, Guns n' Roses rose above most hair metal bands (though not enough to be pretentious). That changed with their double album, "Use Your Illusion", volumes 1 and 2. Three videos were done for the double album that were a little different than the other videos, and they were sort of linked, though it wasn't clear why. The strangest one was "November Rain".

Summary of the November Rain video: Tossing and turning in bed, Axl Rose wakes up from what seems like a terrible nightmare. He takes a drink of water and settles back down into bed. We see a symphony playing in an opera hall, and then a wedding, Axl Rose marrying real-life girlfriend Stephanie Seymour. Immediately after the kissing of the bride, guitarist Slash gets up and leaves, performing a wicked solo in the desert. As the couple leave, the newlywed bride looks unhappy. There's an afterparty, which is washed out by rain. Back in the opera hall, Axl, who was playing piano, changes the tune, and Slash gets up on top of the piano to jam. All of a sudden we're back in the church and there's a funeral - for the wife. A quick shot of the open casket shows nothing wrong, makes you wonder how she died, and why. The video ends with Axl crying over her grave, and the ominous note, "Based on the short story Without You by Del James".

Here's where things get interesting. Del James is a friend of Axl's, and as it would come to turn out, they worked together on the video. "Without You" is a short story about a band which is based on Guns n' Roses. Problem is, James' book, "The Language of Fear" was never published widely. After a run of just a couple hundred copies, the publisher went out of business. eBay was new then, and the few existing copies of the book went for hundreds of dollars. For the better part of 15 years, the meaning of November Rain remained a mystery. Axl wasn't saying anything, and the people making a killing on eBay weren't about to threaten their own livelihood by letting others in on it for free. To know, you had to pony up the cash and buy the book, read it, and then hope to make some of your money back. Every few months I'd search for it, and always come up empty.

Well, finally, somebody broke the silence and posted the entire short story online, including Axl's introduction he wrote for the book. The story follows a band called Suicide Solution and its crazy vocalist Mayne Mann, based on Guns n' Roses and Axl Rose. The band's success story mirrors that of GnR - crazy hair metal band puts out a rock ballad which changes everything for them - GnR's was November Rain; Suicide Solution's was Without You. In the story, Mann is newly married (like in the video) but the band is on tour. Mann calls his wife and asks if she'll come along for the last leg of the tour. She says no, she has a life of her own (she's a model or something). Last show on the tour, Mann's got a couple groupies in his bed, and there's a knock at the door. His wife thought to surprise him, but got a surprise of her own. So she went home, put "Without You" on on the stereo, and blew her brains out. Mann gets home, sets the place on fire, and plays along on the piano as his home burns around him. It's a really cool story, actually, and it's told from his point of view.

But wait, Stephanie Seymour didn't blow her brains out in the video. She was clean in the casket - it was an open casket funeral. But here's where things get interesting. Watch the best quality copy you can find of that video, and freeze-frame on the open casket. You'll notice there's a mirror installed. You can only see half of her; the other half is behind that mirror. Funeral homes can do a lot for a corpse, but sometimes damage is too extensive, and that's why we often have closed-casket wakes and funerals when the deceased died a violent death. However, for celebrities, public figures, open-casket is ideal, so they have reconstruction technologies which will pass a passive examination by grieving relatives. The mirror clearly indicates only that half of the body (most likely the face) was able to be reconstructed at all.

So there you have it. The November Rain mystery solved. There was more to the story than the video let on. The wedding and funeral were not on the same day. They were shown as such to illustrate the importance of the two events and to show that what happened in between doesn't matter (as much). He cheated on her with a groupie or a pair of groupies, and she blew her brains out. (Like Axl's worth it! But that's another matter.) And somehow, "Estranged" and "Don't Cry" tie in as well.

At some point I'll do #2, and it concerns a more recent band, though a significantly less important one.

Today, the Harry Potter saga comes to an end

"Will you be with Harry in the end?" Yeah, it's cheap marketing, but I like it, for some reason...

First of all, I would like to start by saying that the spoilers I linked to previously turned out to be correct. I apologize for any part I played in ruining the ending for anyone who read it - but then, to be fair, you had to be looking for spoilers to find it, as was I. Personally I think, from what I've seen, the end of Potter 7 is a letdown, especially since Rowling said two major characters would die. A lot of us were thinking two of the "three" - Harry, Hermione, and Ron, that is. It seems a lot of Rowling's grim foreshadowing was overhyped, but then I have not actually read the book - and eagerly await its paperback release. (Jen confirmed the ending, went to Walmart and skimmed it.)

But, unlike so many other authors, I didn't come here to talk about the end of the Potter saga, but rather the beginning. The year was 2001, and if I remember correctly (memory is so often replaced by technology these days) the first three books were out. I didn't take them seriously at all. The fad that was the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was fading, and Pokemon was just starting its rise, or perhaps at its peak. Off in the peripheral sights was this popular childrens' series that I heard about, inadvertently through the Church, ironically. This was when they started protesting the books. I was curious, but not curious enough to read a kiddie book. The first film had just come out, and while it looked interesting, I had no intention of seeing it.

One day at work - well, at a temp job I was working between jobs, actually - a guy was being fairly generous with some bootleg DVDs he had. Nothing he had really interested me, but I saw he had the (then) new Harry Potter movie. He loaned it to me, on 2 discs, with the promise I'd bring it back the next night. I was still living at home at this time, and my mother really had no interest in it. I tried to copy it to my computer, but couldn't figure it out. (I would later come to understand that it was a Video CD, and all I had to do was copy the big .DAT file over, and rename it to whatever.MPG, maybe join the two and compress with something like Divx.) So I tried to watch it with Windows Media Player, and miraculously, it worked. The film held my attention from the start. When dinner was ready, I could barely pull myself away. I took supper in my room, and when the movie was over, I wanted to watch it again. But not in the same night.

I returned the movie as promised, and on the next day off I got, I went and saw it in the theater. Big mistake, or at least the timing. There was no fewer than three grade-school classes on field trip in there, kids in second, third, fourth grade giggling at every scene. Lucky for me I knew mostly what was going on. I'd just wanted to see it in the theater, better quality and all.

Naturally, I have another story, for when it came out on DVD. We still had our very first DVD player, which is its own story (in short, we won it in a drawing at Hollywood Video for renting one several months prior). I had bought the craptacular Planet of the Apes remake, with Mark Wahlberg, and it would freeze up now and again. It was explained to me that movies were starting to come in the dual-layer format, and the first-generation DVD players could not handle that. So we needed a new DVD player. I also needed a new Playstation - my first one was starting to go out. So I dropped $250 on the new PlayStation 2, which also served as a DVD player, and I was assured it would play the dual layer discs. For years, our DVD player was a PS2. I bought the remote and everything. Barely a month went by, and Sony dropped the price to $200. I was mad, until I went into Best Buy, where I bought it, and they told me they guarantee low prices, and gave me $50 in store credit. Another month went by, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone released on DVD, and was included with all DVD players, including the PS2. In other words, had I waited 2 months, I would have paid $50 less and gotten a free Harry Potter DVD. I ate the difference that time, simply buying the Potter movie separately.

Since then, I've bought each movie (widescreen edition, as always) near the time they come out on DVD. I missed Chamber of Secrets (the second one), still burned by the theater experience with the first one. With Prisoner of Azkaban (Potter 3) I wised up and caught the midnight showing. And Jen and I saw Potter 4 (Goblet of Fire) together.

But let's backtrack some, shall we?

After seeing Potter 1 in the theater, I wanted to read the books. I had all three read by the time Chamber of Secrets came out in theaters. After Goblet of Fire came out in paperback, I bought it and then read all four books. I read and disliked Order of the Phoenix (Potter 5). Unlike the first four, it was not a page-turner, and was very dark, which is fine - but not so much for the Harry Potter series. At one point, I intended to read the four again, but only got the first three, quit partway thorugh Goblet. I very much enjoyed Half-Blood Prince (Potter 6). Now that the spoilers are on Wikipedia for Book 7, I'm not sure how much I anticipate it. Oh sure, I'll get it, but will it top Potter 6? Sure, I'll enjoy it, but will it be an ending worthy of such a great saga? Only time - a year at least - will tell.

I lost my books (perhaps left them behind) when I moved to North Carolina. Since then I've found the first two in the standard paperback size. I'm hoping to complete the collection in that size, actually, because they're so much easier to carry. And they look a little more professionally done, less like kids' books.

All in all, the Potter saga has been an enjoyable experience so far, and I'm sort of kicking myself for having not discovered it until later. But that's fine, better late than never, eh? If you're looking for a start, a way to "break in" to the excitement, rent "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" on DVD, and watch it. The movies are pretty good as far as book-to-film adaptations go, especially the first couple. If you thought the first one was flat - well, its primary purpose was to introduce the characters. If you thought the first one was at least decent, but it left you undecided, check out "...Chamber of Secrets". Those two should give you an accurate reading as to how you'll take to the series. After that, 3 is a little darker, and 4 is a little more expansive, but it's really much of the same - which is not a bad thing if you find yourself liking the series.

Why I don't care about Potter 7 spoilers

Note: No spoilers posted here. Linked, perhaps, but I don't endorse any as real (and am not in a position to).

The first and primary reason is simple: For me, the book isn't coming out for at least another year. I don't read hardcovers; they're too awkward to hold. The price has nothing to do with it - I would pay that price for the paperback if I could. I just want something I can comfortably hold and maybe tote around with me.

And the second reason is that with Half-Blood Prince (aka Potter 6) the major spoiler was out the day it came out. At first it was a shock, but then it was like "oh, ok..." and when I got to read the paperback, it was still a good read.

Now with all the excitement over potential spoilers - which, it hasn't even been verified that any are in fact real - it's hard to find a good source of information, even with Google. A semi-authorative site like Wikipedia or the major Potter fansites aren't going to carry spoilers, real or fake. I've been searching, and everything conflicts.

The following are not spoilers, but an either-or analysis of how I'll probably react.

Harry lives/dies/becomes evil. Harry's fate is the most important spoiler of all. J.K. Rowling has said a few times that she doesn't want to continue writing Potter books and that this is "the end of it". If Harry dies, that would be a smart move on her part. Kill off the possibility of potential sequels, official and fan-written. Although if she either comes up with more stories to tell (or needs the money), the franchise is guaranteed to earn big bucks and that could be open. If he lives, it'll be like "yawn... what's the big deal". Most of us, I think, expect Harry to triumph over Voldemort and restore peace to the wizarding community. I don't like the theory people toss around about Harry going over to the Dark Side. This isn't Star Wars and he isn't Anakin Skywalker. Where Anakin was good, but had that dark streak, Harry is pretty much pure. Him allying with Voldemort or becoming the new Dark Lord just doesn't make sense.

Now, the following link, may contain spoilers. Doing some Google searching, I found an article which not only has statements about what will happen - but what appear to be photocopies of the last chapter as well as chapter lists. Again, I'm not endorsing this, but it's the most reliable site I could find in 3 pages of Google searching. I realize that's not very deep, but I don't care to find the spoilers THAT badly.

Gryffindor Gazette

And the book will be out tomorrow, after which time the fake spoilers will fade away and we'll all know what really happens. Heck, anyone can ride down to Walmart and peek in the book themselves and see what's what.

PS: Comment moderation is enabled, so don't post spoilers. They'll be deleted. A link with a warning, sure - as long as the link is valid (actually has spoilers, no adult stuff, no warez, minimal if any advertisements).

I can't recommend these books enough

For the past few months, I've been reading an amazing series of fantasy novels (as of yet incomplete) called A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. If you have not read the series, abbreviated ASoIaF by its fans (henceforth as well), let me be the first to recommend it. I myself heard about it on a message board, where the book was actually being bashed. One topic was attacking the writing style, which seemed fine to me. There were a couple of good posts as well, but they were in the minority. The name sort of attracted me, and I was looking for something to read, anyway.

I went to Barnes & Noble and checked out the first book,A Game of Thrones. I provide the Amazon.com link for reference only. Amazon actually charges double the retail price, which is only $3.99. If you decide to buy it, buy it from a real store. I figure it's so cheap because if you read AGoT, chances are you're going to continue on to A Clash of Kings. ACoK is actually the weakest link in the four currently published books, but neither is it a bad book. It's got some good stuff, and at that point you'd be a fool not to read A Storm of Swords, the best book in the series (and at that, only a little better than AGoT, the first one). The fourth, A Feast for Crows, is the oddball of the series. The fourth book Martin wrote was too long, deemed his publishers, so rather than split it at the middle, he split it by characters (read on to learn why this is significant). He then scrapped the rest and started on it anew. We're still waiting for A Dance With Dragons, the forthcoming fifth volume.

A Song of Ice and Fire is written a little differently from other books I've read. First and most simply, there really is no clear good and evil, as with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series - and just about every movie ever made. The world of Ice and Fire is mostly seven kingdoms which are united - at the beginning of the story, anyway - and each Kingdom and some other places have Houses, or noble families. At the beginning, all are sworn to the Iron Throne at the city of King's Landing, but that changes before long. There are a couple characters who are mostly evil and a couple who are mostly good, but everyone else is in between, out for themselves. As you read, you'll find yourself taking sides with one of the Houses. My House of choice is actually House Targaryen, which starts off being portrayed as the bad one. The Targaryens ruled the land for nearly 300 years, but a sort of mutiny took place 15 years before the start of the books; the last Targaryens, in exile.

Secondly and a little more complicated, each chapter is dedicated to a character's point-of-view. Not all characters get a POV chapter, and some get more than others. It's hard not to root for House Stark at the beginning - both parents, the two daughters, and the middle son (of 3) and the father's bastard son are all POV characters. House Lannister, perhaps the most central House in the story, has only one POV character but adds one in each of ASoS and AFfC, so by the end, we've seen parts of the story from the point-of-view of 3 Lannisters. I believe the younger Targaryen rounds out the POV characters. So characters are seen not just from one, but often more characters' points of view - exclusively. Each POV is slightly affected by opinion as well as experience. Characters many miles apart often don't know what's going on elsewhere, sometimes have things wrong. We hear nothing at all about events not witnessed by POV characters unless they hear about it. So you could say parts of the story are left out, but you don't miss it.

So what's it about? That's actually hard to say. I can't even talk about what happens in the fourth book without spoiling the first one. None of the books are stories in their own right (except maybe the first one, if you ignore the rest) so even though they all have names of their own, it's all one story. But it's also several stories, because of the POVs. I went over (briefly) the regional stuff. But as for the first book - a Lord Stark and two of his sons come across a dying wolf mother and her litter. The older boy notices that the male-to-female ratio (including birth order) is the same between their family and the wolf litter, so each Stark kid takes their corresponding wolf, including the bastard son, Jon, who takes the albino runt. Early on, Jon joins the Night's Watch, a group sworn to defend a massive continent-spanning wall of ice in the North. Robert, the King, asks Lord Stark to serve as his Hand (essentially, high advisor), and Stark soon discovers a plot of treason. After that - spoilers. But basically we end up with a lot of political maneuvering, backstabbing, and eventually war.

3,880 pages (for all four books) and having read it, it just seems like a lot less. But Martin isn't even halfway done with the story. But from what I've read, I can confidently say that this beats Lord of the Rings. Easily. I prefer the Harry Potter books to the Lord of the Rings simply because the former is so much more fun to read. I prefer Ice and Fire to Potter, but it's a similar kind of read (being a world you feel a part of), just much, much darker. Ice and Fire isn't being made into a movie as far as I know, but HBO did buy the rights, and it's assumed that they're going to make a live-action TV series - but not confirmed. If you've read and/or seen Eragon, you've actually seen some of Ice and Fire's plot. I'm not so sure the author plagiarized all the people some say he did, but he did lift elements from a bunch of fantasy novels - including Ice and Fire. Eragon borrows a character name and a plot point (not going to say which one, it's a spoiler) from Ice and Fire, maybe a little more. It takes the most from the original Star Wars (1977) movie.

If you're looking for a real good read, I urge you to head down to your bookstore and pick up a copy of A Game of Thrones. It's only $3.99, so you really can't go wrong by trying it. You don't even have to be into fantasy - I wasn't.

The only complaint I have is that now I'm looking for something similar in the fantasy genre and it looks like Ice and Fire is about the best out there - so if I continue to explore fantasy, it'll be strictly downhill until the next ASoIaF books come out.