View 483 September 10 - 16, 2007 (original) (raw)
Monday, September 10, 2007
General Petraeus has testified, and what he said needs comment and analysis; but not tonight.
I have just returned from the beach house. Here is an announcement (but see below; cancel this transmission):
If you sent me mail between Thursday 6 September at 0900 PDT and Sunday, 9 September at 2000 hours (8 PM) PDT, I do not have that mail. If you sent it and I answered it, I have neither your mail nor my answer. If I sent you mail, I do not have a copy of it. In short, for that period I have lost all the mail. (It will eventually be recovered, but not for a while.)
If you have recently sent me a subscription notice and you have not received a welcome message, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. YOU ARE NOT ENROLLED. Please send me a notice. If you paid by subscription to Roberta's mail, that is not lost, but the NOTICE TO ME that you subscribed is lost.
What happened is that Orlando, the t42p IBM ThinkPad, died Sunday evening. It's not serious: it's a "fan error." Attempts to reboot get the process started, there are words on the screen, then "fan error" and the system stops. I am certain this can be repaired and easily.
I have had adventures trying to read the hard drive. It's intact, but attempts to read it with Windows XP or Vista have failed. That story will be in the (delayed!) column; it amounts to the fact that the disk has an active partition and Windows isn't smart enough to get past that. I can go in with partition magic and change that disk partition status (I think), but I have decided that I'd rather just leave things alone: I'll put the drive back in the machine, get the machine fixed, and peel off anything I need. Eventually I'll export all the mail for that period to a disposable pst, and import that pst into this system, and I'll have all the mail.
The most important file on that machine was done Saturday: the final submission copy of INFERNO II. Of course I saved that off onto a thumb drive, and I have transferred that to other machines; and I had already sent a copy to Niven and another to our agent in New York. So we that file. I don't have the "Inferno Record" file that records day by day how many words I wrote the day before and whatever happened to affect my work. But I have that up to Thursday, and eventually I'll recover the entries for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so it's hardly a problem.
I am sure there's a clever way to use a USB drive case to get at the files on that disk, but I have spent a couple of hours trying and it's just not worth the effort.
So that's where we are, and why the column will be late.
(Column was delayed but I am fully recovered, with all mail and data restored.)
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I have many thoughts about Petraeus and his testimony. If we intend to win that war, he's the right general. Heck, if he wants to be emperor I may well join in the cheering. Note that 60% of the country now trusts the military more than the Congress and President put together. We live in interesting times.
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Let me be clear: I have an external USB case for the external drive. Windows sees the drive at the device manager and Disk Management level, but it will not assign a drive letter to it, so I can't access it. This is because it is a boot drive, and Windows doesn't seem to be able to cope with it.
Sigh. (and that too is fixed; see the column.)
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Cancel Previous transmissions. I have access to the drive, through an external cage. I am copying the files now. It was something Eric Pobirs said that was the clue. The story will be in the column, and it's interesting. Anyway I have all the data.
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From Michael Capobianco, President of the Science Fiction Writers of America:
In light of recent events, I want to make a few things clear about where Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) stands.
SFWA isn't about to retreat from the fundamental principles on which our organization was founded. SFWA stands for the author's rights. The most fundamental author's right is the right to control who can make copies of his or her work. This includes the right to license works through Creative Commons, give them away, license them to publishers for money, or any other creative use that an author can devise. The author is the one that gets to choose how and when, no one else.
Many of us believe that it is inevitable that e-books will become the predominant way to buy and read books in the not too distant future. It may take many years or there may be a sudden sea-change. As yet, e-books represent a relatively small presence in commercial publishing, and we don't yet know how soon or how rapidly their popularity will grow. Most authors retain the copyright to their works and license them to publishers for a limited amount of time, and can sell and profit from them again. We're sf writers, our business is looking forward, and so we're doing our best to anticipate a future where e-books dominate the landscape, and to ensure that we'll still be around, telling stories -- and paying our bills -- when they do.
It is my firm belief that artistic endeavor can only flourish on the web and elsewhere if the creators control their work. Take away that control, and you cripple the potential of the future.
The current state of the law makes it far easier for copyright infringers to upload works illegally than for authors to protect their works from illegal distribution. Companies seeking to make a business out of providing user-provided content must be proactive, or they become repositories for these illegal copies.
We're at a tipping point. Who will own and profit from the content that drives the brave new digital world to come? Will it be corporations like Google, which is already showing its hand, making agreements with publishers and libraries that deny authors the right to choose? Will it be scribd.com and its ilk?
Or will it be the men and women who create the content: the artists and musicians and writers? I can assure you that SFWA will be in the forefront of the fight.
Michael Capobianco, President, SFWA
He has my entire support in this. I expect to see further developments including the founding of a new anti-piracy committee equipped to act for members.