Reading Lamps and Smoking Jackets

[deluxestogie]

Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. David Quammen

In this rambling narrative, David Quammen discusses theories of species extinctions on islands and in isolated fragments of "nature". He jumps back and forth from a travel log of his modern travels to exotic locales, to the histories of various theories of plant and animal speciation and extinction during the 19th century and through to the 20th. Back and forth.

Sometimes the historical and theoretical debates become tedious to read. But the implications of his explorations are startling. I found the book generally depressing, because all of the magnificent, unique creatures and places across the globe—the ones featured in today's charming, wildlife documentaries and films are already toast. There simply are no wild places left anywhere on earth. Even the great national parks are fragmented, human-altered landscapes that look like what we imagine to be "natural".

If you are interested in the subject, I think it's worth a read. But it's not a casual, comfy book.

Bob

 

[johnny108]

Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. David Quammen

In this rambling narrative, David Quammen discusses theories of species extinctions on islands and in isolated fragments of "nature". He jumps back and forth from a travel log of his modern travels to exotic locales, to the histories of various theories of plant and animal speciation and extinction during the 19th century and through to the 20th. Back and forth.

Sometimes the historical and theoretical debates become tedious to read. But the implications of his explorations are startling. I found the book generally depressing, because all of the magnificent, unique creatures and places across the globe—the ones featured in today's charming, wildlife documentaries and films are already toast. There simply are no wild places left anywhere on earth. Even the great national parks are fragmented, human-altered landscapes that look like what we imagine to be "natural".

If you are interested in the subject, I think it's worth a read. But it's not a casual, comfy book.

Bob

We are doing what we can with our seed collections.

 

[BarG]

Here's a book I'm rereading, I read it a long time ago but circumstances in recent times reminded me of it so I ordered this copy since my original is long lost. A first in a series, but the following books were written written to appear as more fiction. To my knowledge this is a more accurate account of Richard Marcinko.

 

[deluxestogie]

Gosh. My son handed me his copy of Rogue Warrior to read—when he was in high school. He's now 47.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Back in about 1991, I recall my satisfaction with having finally read the very last Dune novel—Chapterhouse: Dune. I knew that it was the very last, because Frank Herbert had died several years earlier. He had not wanted to write a sequel to the original Dune, but the publisher/marketeers browbeat him into those.

And then came the prequels, written by his son, Brian, together with Kevin Anderson. With my completion of Navigators of Dune, I am now caught up to 2017—over a dozen and a half novels beyond Frank's work. (Only 4 more to go, for now.)

The true challenge of writing excellent Science-Fiction (or Fantasy) is known as "world building"—initially creating a unique world. Frank created the unique world of Dune, plopped it into a shocking (future) history of mankind, and a galaxy of habitable and barely-habitable planetary systems. [It was all so bizarre that his original Dune manuscript was rejected by numerous publishers.] Once you have built a new world, with its own version of reality well defined, then sequels (and prequels) are temptingly easy to write.

The quality of all the Dune prequels is reasonably good. Good enough for me to keep purchasing them over decades. They are quite readable, move at a rapid pace, and always tinker with some edgy philosophical issues.

I found this particular novel, Navigators of Dune, uncomfortable at times, mostly because of the friable state of the world (our own world) today. In this Dune narrative, the major players (various factions, families and enterprises) repeatedly justify their vicious attacks against one another as being required for the benefit of humanity. That sounds too familiar.

I will give this particular prequel a B+ (for the benefit of humanity).

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

This novel has been waiting patiently on me for a number of years. It was published in 2015 to great acclaim (Pulitzer Prize finalist, etc.). After completing a marathon of the last 5 Dune novels, my stack of books to be read had finally dwindled to just this one.

It is a fictional recounting of an historical Spanish expedition to explore (i.e. look for gold) the region from the Florida panhandle westward. The historical expedition turned out to be a catastrophic endeavor. It's official "history" was written by one of its handful of survivors—a mid-ranking officer. Like all official history, that document is thoroughly sanitized, in order to show its author in the best light.

The fictional accounting, The Moor's Account, by Laila Lalami, takes a different perspective: that of an enslaved North African who is brought along on the expedition by one of the Castilian hidalgos who had hoped to find wealth. Our fictional author (the Moor) promises in this "first person" account to accurately narrate everything that transpired. (The Moor is a person who was actually a member of the historical expedition, but who is simply mentioned in one short sentence in the official history, stating that he was there.)

The atrocious behavior of the Spaniards toward the Native American Indian tribes they encountered should come a no surprise to anyone familiar with the history of the Spanish Conquest. But to read of it in the guise of a first person account of a participant is at times shocking.

Although I was not overly impressed with the quality of the writing, it is an engrossing tale reminding us of the human nature of the interactions between the powerful and the weak.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

If you use any technology, the theme of this book may sound familiar. It addresses the cycle of intentional rot that seems to eventually afflict every piece of software or hardware or web service (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc.) that we rely upon for participating in the modern world. The sordid stories in this book are all true. Lots of big names and enormous companies. If the title alone is not enough to interest you, then you are a truly content person.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Just a side-note to the Cory Doctorow book review.

Back in the 1960s, at time when all TV was free—assuming you had access to a TV set—several companies began to offer a paid service known as "cable" TV. Sceptics asked why anyone would pay for TV shows that they can already watch for free. The reply was that, since customers would be paying for the cable service, there would be no need for advertisements. Yay!

Bob

 

[DaleB]

Just a side-note to the Cory Doctorow book review.

Back in the 1960s, at time when all TV was free—assuming you had access to a TV set—several companies began to offer a paid service known as "cable" TV. Sceptics asked why anyone would pay for TV shows that they can already watch for free. The reply was that, since customers would be paying for the cable service, there would be no need for advertisements. Yay!

Bob

Yeah, I remember that (albeit from the 70s). I think the biggest selling point for cable back then was probably HBO, way back when HBO actually showed movies. I think we were all probably naive back then about the trajectory things would take. I have often said that the "entertainment industry" will not rest until we pay for every single thing we see or hear, each time we see or hear it (and with all the commercials and ads intact). It's why streaming is replacing physical media for music and video. It would not surprise me in the slightest if physical media for movies, music, and books were completely discontinued before I depart this planet.

 

[deluxestogie]

And don't forget software. Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away...a consumer (you and me) could purchase a game or photo-editing software or a suite of office applications (e.g. Microsoft Office), and actually own them. Now, nearly all of that is a subscription. Buy now, pay now—and pay again and again.

Bob

 

[DaleB]

And don't forget software. Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away...a consumer (you and me) could purchase a game or photo-editing software or a suite of office applications (e.g. Microsoft Office), and actually own them. Now, nearly all of that is a subscription. Buy now, pay now—and pay again and again.

Oh, yes. Please don't even get me started on that stuff. I have perpetual licenses for Eagle (circuit board and schematic software), Microsoft Office 2013, and a few otehr things that I'll never upgrade because doing so would put me in the pay-every-year mode. I've been fighting that by migrating to open source software wherever possible, but things will only get worse. A lot of stuff now isn't even software you can run on your own machine, it's a subscription to a web based app. I'm glad I retired before that stuff came back to bite my former employer in the hind end, which it absolutely will.

 

[deluxestogie]

When Microsoft Office365 (their "cloud-based" version of Office) first came out, I was offered a "free trial". Between 2000 and maybe 2015, I had spent around $3000+ for MS Office products and their continually newer versions. The instant that I cancelled the Office365 free trial, it permanently broke all of my purchased Office applications. At the time, I thought it was a bug, though I now suspect it was intentional on their part. My response was to delete all of my MS Office versions, and start using OpenOffice instead, for writing, spreadsheets, drawing, etc. All of my books, starting in 2019, were created using OpenOffice.

All of this sort of corporate misbehavior (now nearly universal) is recounted in detail in the Doctorow book (which he created using OpenOffice).

Bob

 

[DaleB]

Yeah, I had to remove and re-install my Office 2013 from CDs after “upgrading” to 365 for work. That’s a mistake I didn’t make again.

 

[44Smokeless]

LINUX...the roll your own open source software...complete with substack forums full of helpful people, sort of like this place.

I still remember, I think, Sandy Berger, Clinton NSA Advisor, being hounded for refusing to trust a gov't issued microsoft Intel computer, instead using an Apple system, which at the time were still good enough for military satellites, and other things. The good ol' days of reclocking a macintosh, hackintosh

 

[DaleB]

I've always felt that Windows has no business in the data center, and Linux has no business on the desktop for about 90% of users. Of course that's shifted over time, to a degree. If you're managing an enterprise, even a small-ish one, it's hard to beat AD for accounts and access.

My last gig involved building the infrastructure for a new UK bank, from scratch. There were less than a dozen people using Google apps with Windows, Chrome, and Macbooks when I joined. We dumped the Chromebooks early on. Since we had people scattered across six countries on two continents, including developers who insisted on Macs, MS 365 was the answer for nearly everything employee-facing - access control, email, security, meetings, documents, even the phone system was done with Teams. The only missing piece was single sign-on for the Macs, for which you need Jamf (or Kandji, but... Jamf.) There was not a single physical server anywhere in the enterprise. Everything business related was Linux in AWS. Even what little physical network infrastructure we had is now gone, from what I hear, since they've given up all of the offices they had leased.

For someone like me who spent four decades building and running networks and data centers for companies, it's crazy. I feel like I had a long, productive career at buggy whip and top hat manufacturers. I was very lucky to be able to just call it quits and retire when the London based bank decided that all of their US employees were too expensive, and they could hire people in Belfast and Vilnius for half the money or less.

 

[deluxestogie]

career at buggy whip and top hat manufacturers

With regard to the tech monopolies' planned obsolescence, I have, over the decades, mastered dozens of computer languages and database systems—as well as teaching college courses on a number of them. Oops! That one's dead! Oops! There goes another one!

Ring around the rosies,
Pocket full of posies,
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down!

By contrast, my study of human languages still feels somewhat meaningful. They have no mega-corporations attempting to profit from inventing new ones, while abruptly discontinuing existing ones.

Bob

 

[DaleB]

The one thing I never did for a living was programming. I did teach myself C to do a lot of work with PIC microcontrollers. There were times over the years that I questioned my choice to avoid software, but it wasn’t my passion. The last half-dozen or more years cemented my confidence that I’d made the right choices. The constant “squirrel factor” of new languages, then entire new systems, and finally the move to Agile and the other flavors du jour of work flow made me glad I had stayed with hardware, networking, server infrastructure, telecom, and whatever else came along.