Abso-fucking-lutely. (via Warren Ellis)
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…to say that when I grow up, I would like to be at least half as much of a badass as John Scalzi is.
That is all.
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I was a huge fan of Hulu on Boxee, and as a result of Hulu pulling out, I have really stopped seeing Hulu as a viable source of content for me, since I’d much rather watch programming on my large television screen than on my computer. Instead, I’ve been using services like iTunes on my Apple TV, completely sidestepping the content providers’ ad-revenues. I prefer the lack of ads and the better quality (and yes, quality on iTunes has gotten better, to the point that I now consider BitTorrenting these shows to be more of a hassle than using iTunes, a revision on my previous position, despite the fact that the shows are still DRM-infested. If I want to send something to a friend, I’ll then go through the trouble of firing up the ol’ BT client), but it does come at a monetary price. The ads on Hulu are a smaller price to pay—it’s a fair trade—but I do take a huge exception to Hulu telling me that I can’t use my TV for watching their content—that I HAVE to watch things on their terms, only on the device they want me to use.
As someone working in a similar industry, and facing similar problems, I understand the content providers’ hands being tied, in terms of their being dependent on the business model that things like Hulu potentially cannibalize, and I also understand that change at large corporations is not easy—it takes time and planning to turn a big ship around. But honestly, I can’t see how Hulu on Boxee hurts their bottom line: they’re still getting ad impressions, and in extreme cases like mine, where I don’t have a cable subscription at all to begin with, ad impressions via Hulu on Boxee are not cannibalizing ad impressions on the broadcast networks.
While my case is probably the exception for now, as less tech savvy people start to realize that things like Boxee are out there, and are very easy to use, that situation will change. It’s untenable for me to pay a cable company for a slew of channels I don’t want, when the specific content I do want is individually available for me online. As the economy gets worse, and people start cutting down on their expenses, alternatives like Hulu on Boxee may very well become the norm. Content providers would be well served to work with outfits like Boxee, instead of flat-out shutting them down. The long term benefits are evident, but the network execs need to start looking beyond this financial quarter—or this season’s ratings—to be able to see the forest for the trees.
Boxee has now implemented what amounts to a work-around to the absence of Hulu on their software, and I applaud them for it. Time will tell if the fight they’ve got coming will be one they win. I sure hope so.
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Megan Messinger has posted a good piece on Tor.com outlining the recent minor shitstorm that George R. R. Martin has started by essentially telling his detractors to back the fuck off, and let him write his books in peace, and at his own damn pace. Since the rampant sense of entitlement so prevalent in today’s society—and in fan communities particularly—is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, I couldn’t help but chime in in the comments section.
Additionally—and I say this as a creative professional who generally pans the idea of the “creative genius” stereotype that is commonly ascribed to creative types—creativity is not a spigot that can be turned on or off at will. Some are better than others at channeling their thoughts into a cohesive work on a regular basis, others truly struggle with it (I’m very much in this last group, fwiw). Again, it’s the height of arrogance to sit there as a consumer and pass judgement on someone else’s inner world.
Go check out the rest of it at “Fed Up? So Are They“ on Tor.com.
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16 February, 2009
On the new Facebook Terms of Service.
posted by Pablo Defendini at 10:25 pm permalink
They blow. FTA:
“You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.”
Yikes. Guess this will be the last post I repost onto Facebook. As for what’s already there: meh. I’ve long operated under the assumption that if you put it online, it’s not private.
UPDATE: Facebook has since gone back to their old ToS, and have apparently initiated a conversation with the community:
Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and transparent. We believe that if we want to lead the world in this direction, then we must set an example by running our service in this way.
We sat down to work on documents that could be the foundation of this and we came to an interesting realization—that the conventional business practices around a Terms of Use document are just too restrictive to achieve these goals. We decided we needed to do things differently and so we’re going to develop new policies that will govern our system from the ground up in an open and transparent way.
Let’s see what develops…
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After two years of wallowing in a closet, due to lack of vertical space at my homes, the zombie print (first, second, third, and final step) has found a new place to live, albeit a temporary one: the new Tor.com office in the Flatiron Building. Nice, no? I’m really happy that it’s not folded away ina closet somewhere anymore, even if it’s just for a little while.
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A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Publishers Weekly about Tor.com‘s comics content. The piece featuring the interview has now gone live—just in time for Comic Con! If I remember correctly, I think I may have been misquoted at the end where I talk about “…the creative-commons inspired Cory Doctorow-ish kind of ethos,” but it’s more of a mash-up of things I did say anyway, so no harm done. Anyway, go check it out.
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There’s a fascinatiing conversation going on on Tor.com right now about the Espresso Print-on-demand book-making machine and its implications for readers. Check it out here.
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Warren Ellis does some thinking out loud regarding social networks and micro-blogging:
So, are people rolling their own private microblogging networks yet? And knocking together mobile pages and writing/hacking desktop apps to work with their private microblogging networks yet? It would seem to me to be the obvious outgrowth of the Twitter phenomenon: ambient communication for secret societies.
I would love to have a private Twitter network for just my friends. Apps like TweetDeck serve to compartmentalize tweets, but not to compartmentalize the whole network.
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My reaction to the announcement that Universal has bought the rights to Isaac Asimov’s seminal Foundation, and plans to give it to Roland Emmerich to direct into oblivion:
I see nothing but ‘train wreck’ written all over this. Emmerich is a competent filmmaker, churning out big-budget genre spectacles of debatable quality like Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. But both of these movies are nothing more than shallow, star-and/or-effects-driven affairs, and The Foundation Trilogy is anything but. The only slightly intellectually engaging movie of Ememrich’s that comes to mind is Stargate, but even then Emmerich struggled to convey the intricacies of that movie’s relatively complex plot.