I should start out by saying that I’m not a big fan of television. It is the pacifier of the masses. Got a bunch of people liable to complain about a long wait? Put on a TV with something mildly entertaining on it and they’ll sit quietly, hypnotized by the images on the screen. Even if the sound is off! That’s why we see televisions in so many places we’re required to wait, from airport gate areas to doctors’ waiting rooms to restaurants.

My Relationship with the Boob Tube

Keep in mind that I grew up with television. We had one in each bedroom and in the kitchen. We weren’t wealthy people — most of those televisions were black and white — but we were thoroughly hooked into TV. We watched the Today show every morning at breakfast before school and game shows at dinner. I clearly remember seeing first-run episodes of I Dream of Jeannie and Gilligan’s Island. (We weren’t allowed to watch Laugh In — that was for adults.) Every Saturday morning, we were glued to the family TV watching cartoons like Scooby Doo. I remember the birth of Sesame Street and other kids shows like Electric Company. I was introduced to Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood at a neighbor’s house.

I was fifteen when we moved from New Jersey to Long Island, NY, and I got my own room for the first time in my life. Although my sister got a TV almost right away, I didn’t. I got a stereo instead. I got tuned into rock — the real stuff that’s probably considered “classic” now. I clearly remember sitting in my bean bag chair — this was the 70s, you know — near my stereo reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy while a Connecticut-based rock station introduced me to Yes with a 45-minute commercial free segment of Yes music.

I didn’t need a television. With books and good music, I could cook up my own fantasy world right in my head.

I got my own television — a 12″ black and white — right after graduating from college and moving into my first apartment. I was 20.

I got my first color television — a 20-inch Sony — as a Christmas gift when I was in my 30s.

My husband and I now have a 36-inch JVC we bought about five years ago, just before flat screens caught on. At the time, it was the largest television you could buy that wasn’t a projection TV. We bought it to better see the letterbox movies we occasionally rented or watched on various movie channels.

To this day, I’d rather sit in a comfortable chair with a good book than watch the crap that’s on TV. Better yet, I’d rather go out and do something — fly, work in the garden, take a hike, ride a bike, go for a drive, or hang out with friends — than watch TV.

There are exceptions, of course. I really love Jon Stewart on The Daily Show: a dose of reality wrapped in a package of laughter. The Colbert Report is a bit over the top sometimes, but usually worth sitting through. Boston Legal is my favorite fictional show — outrageously funny while clearly making social statements about current events. Other than that, I like informative shows on the Discovery, Science, and History channels, as well as PBS. Shows that can teach me something interesting or make me think.

I watch all television via DVR. For those of you not familiar with the concept — my mom wasn’t — DVR stands for digital video recorder. (TiVo is a DVR device.) It’s build into our satellite TV box and makes it very easy to record the television shows you want to watch. Once recorded, the shows sit on a hard disk and can be easily accessed and watched any time you like — even if the DVR is recording something else. But best of all is the 30-second fast forward button, which makes it easy to skip the commercials.

My TV Problem

I do have a problem, however. If you put me in a room that has a television on and it’s within view, I will get sucked into it. It with grab and hold my attention, turning me into just another one of the TV watching zombies around me.

You know what I mean. You’ve been to restaurants or waiting areas where there’s a TV on. If you’re facing it, you’re watching it. It’s as simple as that.

How can you help it? All those pretty colors flashing about. News channel screen titles and scrolling news tickers grab your attention even with the sound off. You see the pictures, you read the text. Why are the police following that white Blazer? What’s with the yellow tape around that wooded area? Why are they taking that man away in handcuffs? Who’s the guy with [fill-in-the-blank famous celebrity]?

In my case, even if I don’t care about what’s on the screen, I’m still sucked into it. The only solution is to sit with my back to it. But then the person I’m with might be facing it and I can clearly see him or her being sucked in. This makes normal social interaction — like conversation — difficult. It’s as if your party of two or three has just been joined by an invited guest who is demanding the attention of the people in your party.

Think I’m kidding? Exaggerating? The next time you’re in a restaurant or airport gate lounge or other place with a TV on, watch the people around it. How many of them are staring at the image like zombies? How many of them are preferring the onscreen image to conversation with their companion(s)? I’m willing to bet it’s more than 50%.

The universal pacifier.

Enter TV-B-Gone®

I read about TV-B-Gone in Make magazine. It was presented there as a project, but for those of us not comfortable with a soldering iron and circuit board, it was also available for sale.

TV-B-Gone is a universal remote control with just one button: an On/Off button. With it, you can turn virtually any television off (or on).

According to Mitch Altman, inventor of TV-B-Gone:

You can use TV-B-Gone® to control access to television for philosophical or practical reasons, or simply to have fun!

Mr. Altman echos my sentiments about television on the Responsible TV Watching page of his Web site:

How much of the TV that you watch do you really like a lot? If you could choose whatever it is that you’d like to be doing right now, anything at all, what would it be? Was your answer, “Watch TV!”? Whatever your answer was, my wish for you is that you have time in your life to do it. Please make time in your life for what you really like. Better yet, please make time to do what you love. Wouldn’t that be great? Don’t know what you love? Try out a few things, see what happens.

Me, my life got so much better from watching TV less. As a result, I had enough time to invent TV-B-Gone®! My idea was to give others a similar chance – so I created a fun way to get the message out there that turning a TV on or off really is a choice. Anywhere, anytime. Please, go out there and choose.

If you do visit the Responsible TV Watching page, please be sure to check out the links at the bottom of the page. If you’re an avid TV watcher, they may open your eyes to many alternatives.

Anyway, when I read about TV-B-Gone, I had to have one. So I coughed up the $20 plus shipping and bought one.

It looks like the keychain you might have with your car. You know, the kind with buttons to lock and unlock the door and open the trunk. There’s just one button on it and, when you press it once, a flashing red light inside that lets you know its working. Pressing the button twice activates it in stealth mode so the red light doesn’t flash.

You use it by pointing it at the TV and pressing the button. The TV-B-Gone then takes up to 69 seconds to run through all the codes commonly used by television manufacturers to toggle the power. When it gets to the code that activates the TV you’re pointing to, the power goes off (if it was on) or on (if it was off). Pretty simple, no?

Of course, there are some limitations. It won’t work with every television. You have to be line-of-sight with the TV’s remote control receptor thingie. There’s a distance limitation; closer is better. But overall, it’s an effective device for playing practical jokes.

TV-B-Gone in Action!

I took my TV-B-Gone with me on my recent trip to Florida. I wanted to test it out in a variety of settings.

I had no success with the televisions in the gate waiting areas at Houston Airport (IAH). I think it’s because I was too far away. In today’s paranoid world, I didn’t want to be obvious because I didn’t want TSA to come down on me for using a suspicious device. (Perhaps I’m more paranoid than they are?)

I did manage to turn off the TV in the waiting area just before I boarded the plane. It was interesting to see the faces of the people who had been watching it. They went from blank stares to confused stares. Nobody said a word.

A few days later, while having lunch with my parents at a St. Augustine restaurant, I got real satisfaction. We were seated at the counter of the rather small restaurant. There were four — count ‘em! — televisions within sight of my seat. One was tuned to some sport channel that appeared to have some kind of log-cutting competition. Another was tuned to CNN. A third was tuned to something else — I couldn’t see it clearly because of the way my seat was angled. And the fourth, a small TV close to the first, was turned off.

I should mention here that no one was watching the two TVs closest to me (log-cutting and CNN). Well, no one other than us, trying to figure out why anyone would compete in a competition that used chainsaws to cut through logs.

I whipped out my TV-B-Gone. A moment later, CNN was turned off. I aimed it at the log-cutting competition. The TV next to it went on. It was apparently some kind of security monitor because it showed images from various locations around the restaurant. In trying again to turn off the log-cutting TV, I turned the security TV back off. That’s when I realized that I probably didn’t have a straight shot to the log-cutting TV.

We continued waiting for our lunch. They were taking their blessed time about it. In all fairness, they were kind of busy.

One of the guys who worked there noticed that the CNN TV was off. He picked up a remote and tried to turn it on. Wrong remote. He tried with another. The TV came back on.

I waited a few minutes and turned it off again.

We’d just gotten our food when the same guy came back and noticed the TV was off again. I clearly heard him say to himself, “What is it with this TV?” He went through the same sequence of trying to turn it on with the wrong remote and then turning it on with the right one. It was tough to keep a straight face. I was seated at the end of the counter and the guy was less than 4 feet from me.

I turned it off again just before we left.

Later, the same day, at Houston Airport, I happened to walk though an area of terminal E that used about 50 televisions to create a display of moving colored lights 15-20 feet over the walkway. How unbelievably wasteful! I activated my TV-B-Gone as I was walking and managed to shut off four of them at once. Later, when I had to walk though the same area because of a gate change, I killed another four on the other side.

Is This a Cruel Joke?

When I bragged in Twitter about turning off the 8 televisions at IAH, @Miraz sent me an @reply message:

Doesn’t turning off TVs annoy the folks watching them? I’d be pretty peeved.

Well, in the case of the 8 TVs with moving colors, I don’t think anyone missed them. They might still be off for all I know.

And my observation of the people in the gate area a few days before didn’t reveal any anger. I think it’s because they weren’t really watching what was on. They were looking at it. Sucked in because there was nothing more interesting (to them) to look at. Or because they have the same TV problem I have.

It’s actually interesting to watch the reactions. It proves, in a way, that they don’t need the television on in front of them. Maybe when the TV goes off, they’ll actually engage in conversation with the people they’re with. Wouldn’t that be special.

But I wouldn’t try my TV-B-Gone in a sports bar. You know the kind of place. They have a bunch of TVs showing whatever real sporting events are on. (I’m not talking about log-cutting here.) Guys are drinking beer and watching the game. They’re shouting at the TV about the plays and the calls. They’re absorbed in what’s going on in front of them.

Get caught turning off one of those TVs, and you’re likely to get a black eye.

And I wouldn’t turn off a TV displaying breaking news about something that really mattered. Or the TV in a doctor’s office if it were displaying content that was keeping kids quiet.

You have to be responsible with your practical jokes.

Related Post:

• [Mostly] Unmissed Words

I’m listening to NPR (National Public Radio) this morning. They’re reporting on the Pope’s private meetings with sexual abuse “survivors.”

While I certainly don’t mean to take anything away from the situation — children and young people molested or sexually abused by Catholic priests they trusted — the term survivor seems a little extreme as a label for these now grown people. The first definition of survivor in the dictionary that’s part of Mac OS X is:

a person who survives, esp. a person remaining alive after an event in which others have died : the sole survivor of the massacre.

And that’s how I usually think of a survivor. Consider the phrases Hurricane Katrina survivor, cancer survivor, Titanic survivor. Surely you can come up with others.

But the dictionary goes on to offer the following alternative definition for survivor:

the remainder of a group of people or things : a survivor from last year’s team.

or

a person who copes well with difficulties in their life : she is a born survivor.

Indeed: either of these definitions would apply to these unfortunate people.

What do you think? Is the term survivor an appropriate label for these people? Can you come up with a better label? Perhaps one you heard or read in the media? As someone interested in words, I’m curious.

About two weeks ago, I went on a little shopping spree at Best Buy. One of the things I walked away with was a Nikon CoolPix S550 compact digital camera. I needed it (yes, really) to replace the 2-1/2 year old Canon PowerShot I kept in my purse. The PowerShot had become unreliable (to say the least) and, although it has several features I really like, it had to go.

Yesterday, while weeding through the stack of paperwork that came with the CoolPix — including both a full-length manual and Quick Start guide in Spanish — I stumbled across the registration form. “Return this card to register your purchase and enter our $100,000 Give Away VI,” the yellow folded sheet proclaimed. So this morning, as I sipped my first cup of coffee, I began to fill out the form.

Where they get the idea of calling this a “card” is beyond me. It’s a sizable sheet of paper, folded in thirds, with registration form fields on one full side and a third of the other. There are 30 questions.

I began filling out the form with basic information like my name, address, and e-mail address. They’d need this information, I reasoned, to contact prize winners. I also provided basic product information, such as the date of purchase, model purchased, serial number, and place of purchase. Then I answered questions, via check boxes, about the features that influenced my purchase decision and the other similar products that I owned or planned to buy. This is all basic market research stuff.

Next they asked about my skill level as a photographer (I checked “advanced amateur”) and computer skills (”advanced”). But I paused when I reached question 15: “Would you be interested in a digital camera course?” I would, but I didn’t want Nikon trying to sell me one via annoying e-mails or mailings. Still, I checked Yes.

More marketing questions followed. Is the camera for business or personal use? What business am I in? What kind of computer do I use? What other brands did I consider?

Then came the big departure from questions about the camera. The questions started getting personal. How many people in my household? Ages? Genders? What is my occupation? My husband’s? What’s our household income? What level of education did I complete? What credit cards do I use? Do I own or rent my home? How many magazines do I subscribe to or buy at newsstands each month?

Finally, the list of things we might do — 64 of them! — with check boxes. You know the options: Shop by catalog/mail, donate to charitable causes, have a dog, have a cat, own a CD-ROM drive, tennis, sailing, power boating, foreign travel. The list goes on and on. This is basically a check list so they know who they can sell your information to.

And that’s what these registration forms are all about — a way to get you to voluntarily provide personal information so they can sell it to others, who will then bother you by stuffing your mailbox with dead trees (as Miraz would say) or filling your e-mail box with special offers and links to their Web sites.

To confirm this, there’s some fine print at the very bottom of the form. It looks like it’s in about 6-point type; I needed my cheaters to read it:

Thanks for taking the time to fill out this questionnaire. Your answers will be used for market research studies and reports. They will also allow you to receive important mailings and special offers from a number of fine companies whose products and services relate directly to the specific interests, hobbies, and other information indicated above. Through this selective program, you will be able to obtain more information about activities in which you are involved and less about those in which you are not. Please check here if, for some reason, you would prefer not to participate in this opportunity.

If I’d finished the questionnaire — which I did not — I’d check this “opt out” box. But would that really protect my information?

So I decided to save the 41¢ postage — you didn’t think they’d cover that cost, did you? — and just shred the damn questionnaire.

Do the forums on your favorite Web sites get your blood boiling? Or simply frustrate you beyond belief? Well, join the club. You’re not the only one who feels this way. But there is something you can do about it. Read on.

A Brief History of Today’s Forums, from My Seat

I’ve been participating in an online community since the late 1980s. And no, that isn’t a typo.

I ran a computer Bulletin Board System (BBS) with message boards connected to the Fidonet network back then. Fidonet was a cooperative effort to gather up and distribute groups of messages posted on BBSes all over the world. Each night, in the wee hours, my computer would use special software to exchange the messages posted by my system’s users with those posted by others. They would, in turn, exchange with others. Like any true network, the content was distributed quickly and efficiently. Because there were so many Fidonet BBSes back then, I seldom had to make a long distance call to get new content. The distribution was as wide as the popularity of a topic — WRITING, I recall, was quite popular and would typically collect 300 or more new messages a day. Other topics might dribble in 2 or 4.

It was kind of cool. You’d log onto my BBS, The Electronic Pen, in the tiny town of Harrington Park, NJ. Perhaps you lived nearby. Or maybe you liked the other people who frequented the place. I might get 20 to 50 callers a day, connecting via 9600 baud modem on my two phone lines. You’d post a message in a local message board — that’s one that wasn’t part of Fidonet and could only be read on my BBS. Or perhaps you’d check out one of the Fidonet message bases. It would be full of messages from people all over the country. You’d read and reply to them. At night, your message would travel in a package with other new messages to another computer. Depending on scheduling and the willingness of BBS System Operators (SysOps) to do multiple connections in a day, your message would reach all the other BBSes that subscribed to that message base, usually within a few days or, at most, a week. If someone responded directly to you, you’d get that response a few days or a week later. Yes, it was slow. Yes, it was primitive. But it worked and it was free.

Fidonet was similar, in many respects, with the much more widely distributed Usenet newsgroups. Usenet was on the Internet, though, which was still in its infancy in those days. Few people had Internet e-mail addresses; instead, we had accounts on America Online or CompuServe or Prodigy or eWorld. (I remember, in the early 90s, exchanging e-mail with someone on CompuServe from my AOL account — it was a huge deal. Not only was I able to connect with someone in another network, but the exchange of three messages took less than 5 minutes!) Each of those systems had its own conferences or message boards, too.

What all these things had in common — Fidonet message boards, Usenet newsgroups, CompuServe Conferences, etc. — is that they enabled a large group of people from all over the country or world to come together and discuss topics. They were the precursors of today’s Internet forums.

The Death of Courtesy

The one thing that could always be counted upon in Fidonet message boards and Usenet newsgroups was flame wars. A flame war erupted when someone posted a message that was unkind toward another participant. Sometimes it was a minor rudeness that could have been avoided by the inclusion of an emoticon (i.e., smiley) and the “injured party” blew things out of proportion and escalated the situation with a ruder response. Other times, it was intentionally rude or belittling, resulting in a response that was equally so. Other participants would take sides, and soon the entire board would be filled with nasty comments going one way or the other, with a few non-partipants trying in vain to retain order. It was ugly, to say the least.

I have vague memories of filtering software developed so local SysOps could prevent offensive posts from leaving their systems. I was fortunate that my BBS was so small that none of the offenders originated there.

Flame wars were much more prevalent on Usenet than Fidonet back then. And they were virtually unheard of on AOL or CompuServe. Why do you think that is? I think it’s because of anonymity. Usenet was part of the Internet and the people who participated there were quite removed from the responsibility of a SysOp or network administrator. They felt freer to say whatever was on their mind. All Fidonet users could be traced back to a specific BBS with a SysOp who could reduce privileges on the user’s account and spread the word that he was a problem user. It was even easier on the fledgling AOL, CompuServe, and other online services; they knew exactly who you were from billing information and could cancel your account at any time.

Fast-forward to Today

The Internet has spread to almost every corner of the globe. Millions, if not billions, of people use it daily to get information and communicate with one another. The small online services that couldn’t compete — such as eWorld and Prodigy — are gone. Even the larger services are now Internet based, accessible to more than just members.

The nationally or internationally distributed message boards became dinosaurs. Information was readily available on Web sites. Communication was through e-mail. The once centralized information exchange became decentralized once again.

But since communication among users is an excellent way to build content for free, many Web site administrators have created their own forums for discussion. Anyone who has been using computers since the 80s will easily recognize a forum as today’s incarnation of local message boards on BBSes.

In today’s anonymous Internet world, where the vast majority of users prefer to hide behind an alias or cryptic user ID, these forums are populated by people who simply don’t care about the feelings of fellow participants. Most of them are rude know-it-alls who get more satisfaction out of blasting a fine point in someone else’s post than actually contributing helpful information.

As a result, many of these forums, which are often relied upon by large companies to provide technical support to their customers, are a frustrating mix of information — which may or may not be correct — and personality clashes. Their value is questionable — I’d go so far as to say that most of them are a complete waste of time.

Clash of the Nerds

By far, the biggest problem on today’s forums is the irresponsible and rude voicing of opinions that may or may not be relevant to the conversation. While I’m not saying that people shouldn’t voice opinions where appropriate, it’s the way that this is done that makes it a problem.

For example, someone in a forum might say that he’s had a lot of good experience with Product A to solve a specific problem mentioned in a forum. A proponent of competing Product B might come forward and accuse the other person of being stupid for using Product A, or that Product A is for morons. He won’t provide any facts to back up his argument or, if he does, the facts will be, in reality, more opinions. His purpose is not to provide useful information to other participants or even to answer the original question. His purpose is to bash Product A and the person who suggested it as a solution.

It’s the rude accusations that make this so distasteful, not only to the victim of the flaming, but to the innocent bystanders who agree with him or the people who have just checked in to learn something of value. And while this seldom gets out of control on well-moderated forums — like those managed by employees of a large company depending on forums for support — it’s common among poorly moderated forums.

A few weeks ago, I was a victim on a helicopter-related forum hosted by a Canadian helicopter magazine. I’d decided to try the forums after reading, in a recent magazine issue, that they’d be better moderated. I posted a question about helicopter helmets in one topic of the forum, then posted about the availability of a co-pilot seat for ferry flights in another topic. Here in the U.S., it’s relatively common for helicopter operators to offer flight time, for a nominal fee, to other helicopter pilots interested in building time. I had some long ferry flights coming up and was hoping to fill that seat to cut my ferry costs. Well, you’d think that I’d asked these guys to cut off the head of their first child. A bunch of them came down on me like I was some kind of evil monster. One of them even had the nerve to use the contact form on my Web site to send me a nasty message. (Some people really do need to get a life.)

I quickly decided that I’d made a mistake — not just in posting the message in the forums there, but for joining the forum in the first place. It was pretty obvious that there was little or no moderation by the magazine’s staff, despite the assurances that there would be. It was also obvious that the guys on the forum had not progressed past a high school mentality. They were unable and unwilling to see more than their own points of view. Although a more mature person could have expressed an opinion calmly and reasonably, this was clearly beyond their capabilities. Instead, they simply lashed out rudely, bashing me for suggesting such a thing, and painting me as some kind of evil witch trying to suck money out of poor, unemployed pilots.

All because I offered flight time in my aircraft for less than the going rental rate.

I contacted the forum administrator and told him to delete my account and any message I’d posted. To his credit, he complied within 24 hours. I’ve learned my lesson and won’t be back. And I probably won’t be joining any other helicopter forums, either.

But how many other knowledgeable, mature, and responsible people have been so turned off by the behavior in that forum to avoid it? And what about other similarly run-amok forums?

Could it be that the majority of people who participate in forums are those nasty, opinionated jerks hiding behind their aliases so they can get a sick thrill out of bashing others with conflicting opinions?

Could that be why forums suck? I think it’s the main reason.

My mother taught me that if I don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Why can’t forum participants remember this “Silver Rule”? They’ve obviously forgotten the Golden Rule, too.

Where’s the Information?

Forums run by big companies to supplement (or replace) true technical support may be moderated to prevent flame wars, but that doesn’t mean they’re perfect. Most of them are designed in such a way that the information you need is virtually impossible to find. As a result, you’re forced to create a new topic to ask a question, then monitor that and hope it gets a response.

Is that good technical support? I don’t think so.

The forum flaws that make it tough to find information can be broken down as follows:

• Non-existent or poorly designed search feature. How frustrating is it to go to a forum and see a list of threads but no way to search them? Or a search feature that results in too many results? Or none at all? Or can’t narrow down results by date? Or product?
• Forum categories that are too broad. A well-designed forum is separated into categories or topics (both terms are used), each of which contains topics, subtopics, threads, or posts (again, a variety of terms are used). Imagine, if you will, a software support forum with just two categories: Windows Support and Mac Support. Now imagine that all the questions are posted as hundreds of individual threads in either one of those categories. How likely is it that you’ll find support for the Product A printing problem on your Mac? Won’t you, like many of those before you, simply start a new thread with your problem? And how long before it’s buried and you can’t find it?
• Threads that wander off topic. Imagine a forum thread with the subject line “Can’t Print with Product A on my Mac with HP LaserJet 2100TN.” Sounds pretty specific, no? You’d expect to find a discussion of that problem, wouldn’t you? But what you may find is (1) a Windows user claiming that Product A doesn’t work well on Macs, (2) a comparison of Canon and HP printers, (3) complaints about the same printer not working with Product Z from another manufacturer, (4) questions about Product A and PDFs, etc. In other words, anything remotely related to the topic. And once the discussion starts to stray, it can go anywhere. How useful is that for product support?

Personally, I have a problem with forum-based technical support. In most cases, the company is relying on its users to help each other. This is virtually cost-free support for the company — even cheaper than sending scripts and telephones to India or Pakistan. The quality of this “help” is not what I’m paying Adobe or Apple or Microsoft the big bucks for when I buy their software. When I have a question, I need an accurate answer quickly from someone or some resource that knows the answer. I don’t have time to screw around with support forums that may or may not answer the question for me.

Is the Information Accurate?

The scariest part of depending on forum information for support is the accuracy issue. Is the information on a forum accurate? Will it do more harm than good?

Perfect example: I visited a number of photographic forums to get information on how I could clean the CCD sensor on my Nikon D80 digital SLR camera. This isn’t a hugely expensive camera, but it did cost $1,000, which ain’t exactly cheap. Dust on the CCD is a common problem and there’s no local resource for me to get it cleaned. I wanted to see if there was a do-it-yourself solution, what equipment I needed to get it done, and how I could do it myself. What I found were dozens of different answers to this question, ranging from never clean the CCD yourself (!) to rub it with Solution A on a cotton swab. Some provided a detailed equipment list that varied from one person to another. Others provided step-by-step instructions that varied from one person to another.

With all this conflicting information, how was I to know which solution was correct? Obviously, I couldn’t know. So rather than put my relatively expensive equipment at risk of permanent damage, I decided to get it cleaned professionally, next time I’m in Tempe, 80 miles from my home.

(And in case you’re wondering, Nikon tells U.S. owners not to clean it themselves. But that’s just because Nikon is eager to avoid liability if it’s damaged during cleaning. In Japan, Nikon supposedly sells a cleaning kit with instructions. I’m not in Japan and I don’t read Japanese.)

Examples like this can be found on any forum. One guy says one thing, another guy says the opposite. Who’s right?

I personally believe part of the problem is a subset of the same sick jerks who start flame wars. In this case, they’re spreading their “expertise,” which is neither accurate nor reliable. They want to be seen as experts, so they spread their opinions as facts. Will you be foolish enough to take the advice of one of these people? I hope not.

Of course, the problem is even worse when incorrect advice is offered on a poorly-moderated product support forum.

What You Can Do

As a member of an online community, there’s a number of things you can do to make forums better:

• Ignore the trolls. If there’s a jerk in a forum who’s saying stupid, nasty things, ignore him. I know it’s difficult, but it is possible. And guess what? If everyone ignores him, he will go away. These people thrive on conflict. They’re safely hidden behind their online handles, so they’re not worried about repercussions. They’ll say whatever they want, whatever will get the most rise out of the rest of the community. They’re doing it for attention. Don’t give them any and they’ll go elsewhere to get it. (Possibly to a local school where they’ll shoot innocent kids; but that’s a social problem I’m not going to address here.)
• Rat out the trolls. If the forum is otherwise well moderated but there’s just one or two jerks trying to bring the discussion down to their level, contact the moderator privately, via e-mail or feedback form, and complain about the offending party. Use facts to support your complaint. If the forum moderator cares about the quality of the forum, he’ll do something about. If he doesn’t, then it’s likely you won’t want to be part of that forum anyway. Let it go.
• Don’t fan the flames. If you see a conflict brewing in a forum, don’t pick a side and join in. You’ll only make it worse. Instead, if you know any of the people on either side, you might want to contact them privately and urge them to drop it. Or see the first two points here for what’s likely to be better advice.
• Back opinions with facts. Got an opinion to share in a forum? Great! Lots of forum participants are looking for feedback from people with more experience or knowledge. But don’t state an opinion unless you can back it with facts. A statement like “Product A sucks.” is far more likely to get you in hot water and start a flame war than “I don’t like Product A because I’ve had a lot of trouble getting it to work with my printer and could not get any assistance from the developer to resolve the problem.”
• Search before you post. If you’re in any forum where you expect an answer to a question, search the existing topics and threads before you add a new one. Your question may have been answered elsewhere in the forum. If the forum’s search feature is well-designed and functional, you may get an answer within minutes of arriving on the forum — rather than the time it takes for you to write out your question and wait for a suitable response. This also makes it a lot easier for others to find answers.

If you’re a forum moderator, there’s a lot more you can do to make your forums the best they can be:

• Use the right software solution. A forum’s design depends, in part, on the software used to present the forum online. Choose software that gives you the options you need: search feature, categories/subcategories, threading, moderation, spam protection, etc. (Unfortunately, I don’t have any suggestions; I gave up running forums a while ago.)
• Design the forum with appropriate categories and subcategories. This will help make it easier for forum visitors to find the discussions they’re looking for.
• Make sure the search feature works. There’s nothing more frustrating than using a search feature that doesn’t find appropriate results. If your search feature doesn’t work right, you’ll get lots of repeat postings.
• Moderate. I cannot stress this enough. While the free speech argument is very compelling, are you operating your forum as the soapbox for the masses? Or do you want to maintain some kind of order? Ban the trolls, delete inappropriate messages. If someone’s post is not in line with the purpose of your forum, it should go. You have the power and I think you have the right. But don’t advertise your forum as a place for all opinions if you’re going to delete the opinions that don’t agree with yours. You’ll find yourself under fire very quickly. Instead, on an opinion-based forum, enforce courtesy among commenters to keep things civil. We can all learn from other people’s opinions, but not when those opinions are rudely shoved down our throats.

What about Blog Comments?

If you’re a blogger with an open comment feature on your blog, you may recognize a lot of these points. You don’t need to operate a formal forum to experience the nightmare of trolls and flame wars. You might already have them on your blog.

All of this advice applies to bloggers and blog commenters, too.

What Do You Think?

Use the Comments link or form for this post to share your views. Just remember to play nice…

I don’t have enough time to give this the attention it deserves, but I did want to mention it here. I know a lot of pilots and other people interested in aviation visit this blog. If you’re one of these people, this should interest you as much as it interests me.

Tomorrow’s Aeronautical Museum (TAM) is a non-profit organization with the following mission:

The mission of TAM is to encourage youth involvement in aviation as an alternative to drugs, gang violence and other self-destructive activities. The program offers elementary, middle, and high school students the opportunity to work one-on-one with qualified tutors, mentors and aviation staff five days per week. The program requires that students maintain above average grades and stay out of trouble. We have concluded that their newfound interest in aviation and relevant historical events improves their overall academic performance as well as their behavior in school.

TAM does this by offering flight school programs that are partially funded by corporate contributions and the contribution of member “angels.” From the Aviation Angels information page:

The Aviation Angels is not just a fundraising and expansion program for Tomorrow’s Aeronautical Museum but is a pact of community supporters and advocates from all walks of life who feel passionate about giving youth their rights to achieve and succeed.

Today’s youth is faced with many hurdles such as gang and domestic violence, and many other types of dangers which prevent them from reaching their full potential. The Aviation Angels is a group of advocates that want to help bring these children of tomorrow to a higher ground utilizing tools such as Tomorrow’s Aeronautical Museum and other types of positive programs that will enrich their lives.

The Aviation Angels is also a coalition not only in a sense that the more members who join, the more funding of programs to help these kids shine but most importantly your membership allows us to expand the program to other communities and offer more scholarships to help the youth succeed.

I became an angel this morning with a tax deductible contribution of only $50 — less than my husband and I might spend for a nice dinner out.

I learned about TAM in AOPA’s Flight Training magazine. TAM students recently broke two records:

• Jonathan Strickland of Los Angeles soloed both an airplane and helicopter on the same day at age 14, becoming the youngest black pilot to do so. On one of his flights, became the youngest black pilot to fly a helicopter internationally or fly a helicopter on an international round trip.
• Kelly Anyadiki of Inglewood, CA, at age 16, became the youngest black female to solo four different airplanes on the same day.

While these records may seem strange or even arbitrary, they mean a great deal to their record holders. Any time a young person achieves something special, he or she gets a sense of accomplishment that encourages future great things. This can also encourage peers to work harder and achieve. Even without record-breaking results, participants in TAM’s programs can help otherwise underprivileged kids get a good, positive start in life by helping them understand how important education and discipline are to get ahead in life.

Anyway, I urge readers to visit the TAM Web site and learn more about their programs. And if you have $50 to contribute to a good, tax-deductable charity, I hope you’ll consider joining me as an Aviation Angel.

The other day, while I was down in Surprise, AZ, doing a bit of “analog shopping” — that’s the kind of shopping where you physically walk into a store and look around and maybe buy something but maybe don’t, as opposed on online shopping, which is how I usually buy things other than food or fuel — I suddenly realized that most people don’t have any idea what the area around their homes, schools, or businesses looks like from the air. Right now, I can’t remember what triggered that thought, but I do recall that it hit me hard — hard enough to remember, anyway. I told myself to give the idea some thought and blog about it.

Chances are that you are one of the people who haven’t seen your local environment from the air and you probably don’t think that’s a big deal. Most people haven’t. And that’s what hit me so hard: that the pilots of small aircraft are a minority, not just because they fly, but because they’ve seen so many things from above.

The View from My Seat

I started flying in 1998 or 1999 (need to check my log book to be sure). Back then, I spent most of my flight time just thinking about flying. I was taking lessons to learn how to fly and didn’t have much time to admire the view. But the time I could fly, the view had become second nature.

So yes — I know what a subdivision looks like from the air. And a school with ball fields. And a park and a town pool. I’ve seen all kinds of backyards, from perfectly trimmed, walled-in plots of grass or decorative rock to sprawling, weed- and junk-filled patches of desert. I’ve seen small downtowns, both dead and alive. I’ve seen where the pavement turns to dirt and what lies five miles beyond. Or ten. Or fifty.

I’ve seen desert lakes and rivers winding through canyons. I’ve seen dams along the Colorado and canals stretching as far as the eye can see. I’ve seen, from the air, natural wonders, like the Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, the Little Colorado River Gorge, the Grand Falls of the Little Colorado River, and Rainbow Bridge. I’ve flown beside red rocks in Sedona and Monument Valley buttes. I’ve peeked into open pit mines from above and have felt as small as a speck flying down the emptiness of Death Valley. Recently, I’ve flown over Alaskan glaciers blanketed with fresh, pristine snow that went on for twenty, thirty, or forty miles without so much as a footprint to disturb it.

I’ve seen so many things from the air — often from 500 to 1000 feet up — that when I’m on the ground, I can often envision what the place might look like from the air.

That doesn’t mean I’m bored with the view. While I’ll admit that spending 20 minutes to cross an empty valley in some of the more remote areas of Nevada and California can get pretty dull, there’s always something interesting to notice along the way. Perhaps it’s a deserted homestead, half blown away by wind or covered by sand. Or some ATVs speeding along a transmission line road, sending up a cloud of dust that reveals their position. Or maybe it’s just an odd rock formation, jutting out of the otherwise flat terrain like the ruins of a half-sunken ship.

I wish I could share these images with others, but it’s tough. When I fly, my right hand is always on the cyclic. Cameras are designed to be used with the right hand. Although I’ve become pretty good at taking photos with my left hand, only a small percentage of those shots really show what I’m seeing, without glare and reflections from the cockpit bubble. And sometimes the interesting things I fly by go by very quickly — too quickly to snap a photo. Like the Indian cliff dwelling I passed on a flight from Howard Mesa to Scottsdale at least a year ago; I was in too much of a hurry to circle back and see it again — or get the GPS coordinates. I haven’t found it again.

I write about many of my flights in this blog. If I have photos, I share them. If you’re new to this blog and want to read a few of my better efforts, be sure to check out these:

• Page to Havasu by Helicopter
• Breakfast in Winslow…No, Page…No, Marble Canyon
• The Winslow Loop
• Wrath of the Hassayampa

There’s more, but I’ll let you find them for yourself. Clicking the Flying link under Blog Topics in the sidebar will get you started.

But neither the words nor the photos can truly share the experience of flight or the view from above.

Why I Give Rides

When I first started Flying M Air, I depended on ride gigs to generate income and help cash flow. I soon learned that, in general, giving short rides at a carnival or airport event is a lot more trouble than it’s worth.

First there’s the bother of setting up the event, making sure the landing zone is close enough to the action to be visible to attendees, but far enough away to be safe. The approach and departure routes, which are often the same, need to be clear of obstructions. I need to be able to point the helicopter’s tail away from where people might be waiting or walking when I set down. The insurance paperwork and fees are minor concerns after that.

But the hard part is the flying. It’s grueling work, sitting in the seat for hours on end with a takeoff and a landing every 10 to 15 minutes. With three people on board, we’re usually close to max gross weight and, on a hot day with a crosswind or tailwind, just getting off the ground is challenging.

Once we get off the ground and start on our little tour of the area, though, it’s worth it. More than half the people I fly on rides have never been in a helicopter before. At some events, more than half my passengers are kids. I have the unique opportunity to introduce these people to helicopter flight. And as they chat among each other in the helicopter and ask me questions, I get a glimpse of what they’re seeing through their eyes.

And that’s why I do rides.

While people do some quick math and think I’m making a fortune on every rides gig, the reality is very different; I can usually net more money doing a few trips to the Grand Canyon or Sedona than I can at a rides gig — and that flying is easy.

More Stories and Photos to Come

I’m doing a cross-country flight in mid-May with another pilot. We’re flying from Wickenburg, AZ to Seattle, WA. This will be my longest cross-country flight to date — previously, my longest flight was from Wickenburg to Georgetown, CA. Because that other pilot will be doing most of the flying, I’ll have my door off and my good camera ready. I plan to take lots of pictures and write about the flight in detail.

I’m sure that much of what I have to show and tell will appear here.

Those who know me well, know that I am not a religious person. In fact, I’m about as unreligious as they come.

In general, however, I’ve never been against any religion. I see it as a way that people fulfill social, idealistic, and spiritual needs in their lives. If they want to believe that the earth was created as it is today in seven days by a supernatural being seven thousand years ago — or any of the other ideas and themes of their religion — that’s fine with me. (Just don’t teach these religion-based ideas in public schools with my tax money.)

Sam Harris’s Letter

Lately, seeing what’s going on in the world and the political influence of America’s religious conservatives, I’ve begun to doubt whether there’s a positive value to religion in society. No book has helped fuel my doubts more than Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. This tiny, 96-page book was written as a letter to devout Christians, pointing out the inconsistencies in Christian beliefs and how some of these beliefs negatively impact today’s world.

The main gist of Harris’s book is the fact that some policies promoted by Christian politicians and their backers are causing far more harm in good. He cites many examples. The ones that stands out in my mind are those related to sex education and their affect on the population, both home and abroad.

Consider, for instance, the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is now the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States. The virus infects over half the American population and causes nearly five thousand women to die each year from cervical cancer; the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that more than two hundred thousand die worldwide. We now have a vaccine for HPV that appears to be both safe and effective. The vaccine produced 100 percent immunity in the six thousand women who received it as part of a clinical trial. And yet, Christian conservatives in our government have resisted a vaccination program on the grounds that HPV is a valuable impediment to premarital sex. These pious men and women want to preserve cervical cancer as an incentive toward abstinence, even if it sacrifices the lives of thousands of women each year.

He follows this up with some statistics from studies that show how the “abstinence-only” approach to sex education in 30% of American sex education programs simply does not work. American teens may be participating in “virginity pledges” for eighteen months or more, but they’re having oral and anal sex instead. American teenage girls are also four to five times more likely to become pregnant or contract a sexually transmitted disease than teens in the rest of the developed world. Why? Could it be because they weren’t taught about condoms? Or worse yet, because were taught that birth control is “sinful”?

Mr. Harris drives the point home with this statement:

The problem is that Christians like yourself are not principally concerned about teen pregnancy and the spread of disease. That is, you are not worried about the suffering caused by sex; you are worried about sex. As if this fact needed further corroboration, Reginald Finger, an Evangelical member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, recently announced that he would consider opposing an HIV vaccine — thereby condemning millions of men and women to die unnecessarily from AIDS each year — because such a vaccine would encourage premarital sex by making it less risky. This is one of many points on which your religious beliefs become genuinely lethal.

I’ve done some research into this statement about Reginald Finger and, unfortunately, can’t find the New Yorker article where it was made. But you can learn more about his views on this issue on Bionity.com, Wikipedia, Time Magazine, and Dr. Finger’s Web site. It’s clear from these sources that Dr. Finger is very interested in abstinence education, but whether he would oppose an HIV vaccine, as Mr. Harris claims, is extremely difficult to believe. Surely no one would go to that extreme in efforts to stop people from having sex.

More Than Just Sex

Of course, the book isn’t just about the sex education issue. Mr. Harris goes into great detail on a number of other issues, including the Bible as the word of God, morals as defined by the Bible, and the clash between science and religion, including the conflict between evolution and intelligent design. He also writes a bit about atheism and the Christian view that atheists are “evil.”

Mr. Harris presents all of his arguments calmly, with many examples and quotes from the Bible. At no time does he become offensive — he remains quite reasonable throughout. Still, I know that what he has to say will trouble most devout Christians who read it. So although I think he hopes to reach these people, I doubt that he will succeed. Instead, he may reach the more moderate Christians who can look objectively at their beliefs and see how they might cause problems in today’s world.

My Thoughts on Extremists

I agree with much of what Mr. Harris says, but not all of it. He makes some very strong statements near the end of the book about Muslims that I find difficult to believe:

The idea that Islam is a “peaceful religion hijacked by extremists” is a fantasy, and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge…most Muslims are utterly deranged by their religious faith…

Maybe I’m naive, but I still like to think that most people want to live their lives in peace. So, unlike Mr. Harris, I cannot generalize like this about Muslims — or Christians, for that matter.

I see parallels between members of the Christian and Muslims faiths. Just as there are Christians who make God and the trappings of their religion part of their lives, I believe there are Muslims who do the same with Allah and the trappings of their religion.

Both religions have extremists. In America, we use the politically correct terms “Conservative Christians” or “Evangelical Christians” to describe these people. We also use the term “Radical Muslim” to refer to Muslim extremists. (Funny how we drop political correctness for the Muslims, isn’t it?)

But do these people control either religion? Do they speak for all of their fellow believers? I’d like to think they don’t — that there are reasonable members of both faith that know which parts of the Bible or Koran shouldn’t be taken literally in this modern world.

I Recommend It!

I recommend this book for anyone who is alarmed by the growing power of the religious right in America. It will help arm you with the facts and background information you need to:

• argue in favor of sex education programs that include birth control information, thus reducing unwanted pregnancies (and their social and economic impacts), abortions, and sexually transmitted disease
• fight back against the proposed teaching of intelligent design in public schools
• allow vaccinations to protect your daughter from HPV and, possibly, cervical cancer
• enable government funding to continue efforts to find cures for AIDS and other diseases — yes, even through the use of stem cells

If you are a true believer, I urge you to consider Mr. Harris’s arguments — and the arguments made by others like him — and look objectively at how your beliefs affect America and the rest of the world. While neither Mr. Harris nor I am saying that you should give up your belief in God and the values of your religion, you need to understand that some of your religious beliefs and values cannot be imposed on others without drastic consequences for all.

Got Something to Add?

I’ll leave the comments open for this post — at least until things start getting out of control. Remember three basic rules:

• No stating “facts” unless they are facts that can be backed up. (You can link to articles.)
• No nasty comments directed at me or other commenters. If you think we’re stupid or we’ll rot in hell, keep it to yourself. Just state your case without getting personal.
• Remember, what you say here really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. So don’t let the discussion get your blood pressure up. It ain’t worth it.

I will delete comments that don’t follow these rules. If you have a problem with this, read my Comment Policy to learn why.

Related Posts:

• The Rise of Idiot America
• Born Again into a Living Hope?
• Some Thoughts on Religion
• Congressman Says He Doesn’t Believe in God
• “Kingdom Coming”
• Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays?
• Reason Triumphs

Last month, I put up a poll to get your opinions on the U.S. presidential candidates. Here are the results:

I watched the results change from day to day as people voted. Clinton started out in the lead, then Obama took a strong lead. That lead melted somewhat to get to the March 6 results. Similarly, McCain and Huckabee took turns leading the Republican race (although neither had more votes than the top Democrat at any time). I admit the Huckabee results surprised me. I really didn’t think he had such a following, especially with the kinds of people who might read this blog.

Earlier this week, the deck was shuffled slightly when Huckabee dropped out and McCain cinched the Republican nomination — well, with delegate votes, anyway. I decided to refresh the poll accordingly. Here it is, for your voting pleasure.

Please don’t get POed because I took Ron Paul and Mike Gravel off the poll. I did it for practical reasons. Neither of them will get the Republican nomination, so neither of them are seriously in the running.

As for Ralph Nader — get real. This guy runs every four years and the only thing he manages to do is take votes away from the Democrats. He didn’t even get 1% of the popular vote the last time around. GlassBooth.org doesn’t list him; I can’t see why I should. If you feel that strongly for him, choose Someone Else in the poll.

Many people have been asking me who I prefer. It’s a tossup between Clinton and Obama. (I can’t, in good conscience, vote to put a 70+ year-old-republican in the White House; we really do need a change.) If you’d like to debate this, I created a post just for commentary: 2008 Presidential Election: State Your Case.

Meanwhile, cast your simple vote here. And if you do choose Someone Else, take a moment to let us know who (and possibly why) in the Comments for this post.

And yes, you can expect this poll to be revised when the Democrats finally choose a final candidate.

On Saturday, I received FAA form 1800-31 in the mail. Titled “Airport Activity Survey (by Selected Air Carriers),” it’s headed up with the following description as part of its Paperwork Reduction Act notice:

Submission of this form is voluntary. The purpose of this collection is to capture passenger enplanement data to be used to allocate Federal funds to eligble airports. The public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour and 30 minutes per response.

The form requests me to enter the names, states, airports, and airport identifiers for all airports where I picked up passengers for on demand commercial operations. For each airport listed, I need to provide a count of the passengers I picked up.

To gather this information, I’ll need to go through my aircraft logs for 2007 and look at each flight conducted. If it was a revenue flight, I need to note where I picked up the passengers and how many passengers I picked up. I then need to tally these for each airport and summarize it on the form. Ninety minutes sounds about right for this chore.

Although this task is voluntary — frankly, I don’t think I bothered last year — I’m looking forward to doing it this year. It might be the bean counter in me — once an accountant, always an accountant. But there are two good reasons why it interests me more this year:

• A line-by-line review of my log books helps me to remember individual flights. I’m in the process of drawing together material for a book about my flight experiences and I’m sure I’ll be reminded of a few flights that are interesting enough to write about.
• I’m curious to learn which airports I did the most business at last year. I’m pretty damn sure it wasn’t Wickenburg. Hell, I picked up more passengers in Buckeye in one day than I did during a whole year at Wickenburg.

Not Wickenburg? you may ask. How can that be? Aren’t you based there?

Yes, I’m based at Wickenburg. But sadly, very little of my business originates here. The vast majority of my revenue comes from flights out of Deer Valley, Scottsdale, and Sky Harbor, with the big revenue charters originating in places like Page and Yuma. Try as I might to market my services here in Wickenburg, the population simply isn’t interested. I’m probably too costly for most of the fixed income folks who live here, while the folks who don’t worry about money would prefer a pickup from a turbine helicopter based in Scottsdale. (How’s that for ironic?)

I’ve actually gotten to the point where I don’t bother marketing much in Wickenburg anymore. Sure, my original tri-fold brochure is still out there. Why not? I have about 10,000 copies of it left. It emphasized my Wickenburg tours and, when I realized that my market was in the Phoenix area, I had it redesigned to emphasize tours from there. The leftover copies of the original are in my hangar, slowly making their way out into brochure racks around town.

And this year, I pulled the plug on my local Yellow Pages ad.

I’m even in the process of turning off my local phone number, preferring my cell phone for all communications with current and future clients.

It’s odd, in a way. I’m the only aircraft charter operator based in Wickenburg. The town has a very nice little airport that recently got a bunch of funding from the Federal Government that added 1000 feet to its runway. But when finally given the opportunity to set up an office on airport property, I turned it down. I, like many other business owners (or potential business owners) here, have learned that dealing with the Town can be a nightmare of bullshit politics conducted by men who get their kicks controlling this insignificant corner of the world. They have no regard for the future of the airport — a fact they’ve made clear by allowing housing on three of the airport’s four sides, including less than 4000 feet from the approach end of Runway 23. Why would anyone in their right mind put up a building or hangar or anything else at an airport that’s likely to be closed in 10 or 15 years due to residential encroachment and the accompanying complaints? Or, for that matter, sign a land lease agreement that can be cancelled at any time on the whim of the Mayor or a Council member?

So my business languishing, as far as Wickenburg is concerned, but doing quite well everywhere else. And that’s unfortunate for Wickenburg. Not only is the Town losing out on sales tax revenue generated by my scenic tours, but FAA Form 1800-31 will not indicate Wickenburg as one of my major operating airports.

And if the only charter operator based in Wickenburg has more passenger operations at other airports, then how many passenger operations will be recorded for Wickenburg’s final tally? And how will that affect future airport funding?

I’m learning not to care.

This morning, I reviewed an interesting comment left in this blog’s Guest Book. It had been held for moderation, which means I have to review and approve it before it appears online.

Nasty for No Reason

The comment was one of the nastiest I’ve ever read. The person who decided to try to ruin my day told me that this site was like a garage that needed clearing out — or something like that; I didn’t preserve his words for posterity. He told me I should delete anything over six months old. He said he’d come to find information about my books but that he wasn’t willing to use the “convoluted” (his word) methods needed to find content here. He finished up by saying he was an editor — imagine that! — and that he now has no interest in any of my books.

Whew!

He evidently forgot to mention the problem with his eyesight that prevented him from seeing links clearly marked “Books” and “Articles” in the NavBar at the top of the page. He also appeared to miss the note in the description of this site — which appears “above the fold” on the Home page — that clearly said support for my books had been moved to Maria’s Guides. And that Search feature at the top of the site navigation column — I suppose the label “Search This Site” isn’t clear enough. And I guess I couldn’t expect him to scroll down on any page of the site to see the list of books supported with the links to content related to those books.

Convoluted? The only way I could make this site easier to navigate is to take control of his computer while he’s online here and guide his mouse to the link he needs.

He probably spent more time wording and editing his comment than he did looking around the site for the content he evidently wasn’t so interested in in the first place.

I deleted his comment, as I do with any other nasty comment that serves no purpose other than to rudely criticize me or someone else. I think that if he had presented his opinions more courteously, I would have given them some real consideration. But since his comment was obviously posted as a personal attack on me, I threw it away with the rest of the crap I encounter online.

On Bottom Dwellers

But it reminded me that there’s a lot of bottom-dwellers out there, looking to bring other people down to their level. The Internet is full of them and the worst thing you can give any of them is a keyboard and a form to fill in with their rude and destructive comments. I know bloggers who have turned off the commenting feature on their blogs because of the amount of crap like this that they get. Other bloggers let it run rampant in their comments, letting it feed the other bottom dwellers lurking out there until there’s nothing mature or civil about their blogs. As we’ve seen in the past, that can quickly get out of hand.

What these bottom-dwellers clearly do not understand is that my blog is mine. I decide on the design, I decide on the content, I decide on how long to keep blog posts, I even decide whether a comment is appropriate on a post. If he doesn’t like my site, he can go somewhere else — there’s enough content out there for everyone. As my mother would say, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

More…

A quick look through my archives offers some other thoughts on related matters:

• Site Comment Policy (April 2, 2007)
• Blogging Courtesy (April 15, 2007)
• The Nerve of Some People (June 21, 2007)
• Quick Note to Commenters (February 1, 2008)

As the print publishing industry suffers the pain of ever-higher costs and competition from other media, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about electronic books or ebooks.

You’re probably familiar with the concept. An ebook is roughly defined as text and image content — like you’d find in a traditional printed book — that’s distributed as a computer-compatible file or series of files. So rather than read the book on paper, you’d read it onscreen.

Recently, Sony and Amazon.com have been pushing their versions of existing titles as ebooks for their Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle. This is the most basic idea of an ebook — take the text found in the original book and reformat it for use in an electronic device to make it portable. Project Gutenberg has been doing this for years, with a huge team of volunteers transcribing out-of-copyright works to plain text format readable by almost any electronic device. (I have a handful of classics on my Treo 700p so I’m never without something interesting to read.)

Pros and Cons of Ebooks

A properly prepared ebook has numerous benefits over a traditional print book:

• Ebooks don’t require paper to produce, so they’re “greener” than paper books.
• Because ebooks don’t require paper, they’re less expensive to produce and ship. (Note that I said less expensive, not cost-free.)
• Ebooks are much more easily corrected for errors or changes in the content.
• Ebooks can be extremely portable, depending on the type of device they are designed for.
• Since ebooks are less expensive to produce, they should be less expensive for readers to buy.

Likewise, print books still have a few benefits over ebooks:

• Print books are generally easier to read, “thumb through,” and refer to, especially for those of us who learned to read with just paper books.
• Print books don’t require a computer (or reader) or the expertise that goes with using such a device.
• Print books can be read almost anywhere.
• Print books are properly formatted for their content and the reader can consult an entire page or two-page spread at once.

So while I think the time has come for ebooks to rise as a serious method for distributing information, I don’t see printed books going away any time soon.

Dawn of the Ebook Revolution?

Although the idea of ebooks has been around for quite a while — and there are several failed ebook readers out there to prove it — a number of technological developments have made ebooks more popular than ever:

• The ever-increasing adoption of the Internet and World Wide Web as a tool for finding information.
• The ever-increasing speed of Internet connections, making it possible to get more information — including information in more advanced media formats such as audio and video — more quickly.
• The ever-decreasing size and cost of computers. Smaller, less expensive computers make computers more attractive as a device for reading ebooks.
• The ever-increasing computer savviness of readers. Not long ago, the “average” computer user didn’t have the technical know-how to download, open, and navigate the pages of an ebook.
• The development of electronic publishing platforms, both local (such as portable document format or PDF) or onscreen (such as Safari) and digital rights management (DRM) to protect copyrights.
• The development of devices such as the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle — both of which are considered “successes” — as well as the improvements to those devices and new competing devices.

As more and more readers adopt ebooks as a medium for reading content, more and more content will be made available in ebook format. Imagine a snowball rolling down a snow-covered slope. The ebook snowball has just started its roll.

Print Publishers Jump On Board — Sometimes in Attack Mode

Not willing to miss out on their piece of the ebook pie — and perhaps glimpsing the demise of print publishing in the distant future — traditional print publishers have begun offering books directly to the public in a variety of ebook formats. They see their competition not only from other ebook publishers, but from the Internet itself.

Interestingly, rather than concentrate on creating an electronically published product that will appeal to readers, some publishers have been concentrating on efforts to discredit their Internet-based competition. For example, one of my publishers cites the ideas set forth and expounded on in Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture by Andrew Keen as a testament for why content published on the Internet should not be trusted or relied upon. Although I have not yet read the book — and frankly, after seeing what a jerk Keen seemed to be during interviews on various talk shows, I’m not anxious to read it — the book apparently claims that “Web 2.0″ has put online publishing in everyone’s hands and too many people are trying to pass themselves off as “experts.” From the book jacket:

In today’s self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented.

Well, that’s certainly one way to look at it. And while the folks quoted on the back cover of the book tend to agree with this view — as my publisher does — there are quite a few highly respected people who don’t. Author Kevin Keohane wrote “Unpopular opinion: everyone’s an expert on the Internet. Is that such a bad thing?” for Communication World earlier this year. In it, he argues that “Keen ignores the fact that for every recognized expert, there are a dozen other passionate experts who have just as much information and insight.” Other critics all over the Web point out the holes and problems of Keen’s arguments.

To my publisher, it becomes more important to get the work of its professional, highly trained, and well edited authors into the electronic publishing world to compete with the “amateurs” out there than to produce the ebooks that people actually want to buy and read. It doesn’t seem to take into consideration that many of its “expert” authors — including me — are completely self-taught, just like the “amateurs” also providing online content. Even the editors, in many cases, began their careers doing something other than editing books. What makes me an “expert” is the 70 books and hundreds of articles under my belt. But back in 1992, when I hopped on this publishing roller coaster, I was no more an expert than today’s bloggers writing how-to pieces on their Web sites.

So my publishers have jumped into the world of ebook publishing by republishing their printed books both as as PDFs and online-viewable documents. And, in doing so, they’ve made several major errors that are losing readers and sales.

What’s Wrong with Most Ebooks

There are several problems with the way my publishers are republishing my work, but to understand what the problems are, you need to have a good handle on how the work is being republished.

One of my publishers is currently republishing my work in two formats:

Safari, an online content distributor, reproduces each page of a printed book by reassembling smaller images to build the book’s page. Imagine this: take the page of a book and use a paper cutter to cut it into a dozen squares. Now take those squares and shuffle them up, and place them on a grid, in the proper order to rebuild the page. This is what Safari does electronically.

There are multiple problems with this approach:

• You must have an active connection to the Internet to read a book.
• If your connection is slow (512 Kbps or less), you have to wait while each piece of a page is loaded and placed to read the page.
• If you have a monitor less than 20 or 24 inches, you probably will not see the length of an entire page onscreen. That means you need to scroll and you need to wait while the rest of the page is assembled.

This is obviously not the best way to read a book. In fact, I fail to see why anyone would read a book this way. I have a free subscription to Safari and still buy the books I want to read. All Safari does is help me choose the one that’s likely to be best for me.

There are other problems with Safari that authors don’t like, but since they’re related to sales and royalties, I’ll leave them for another article.

My publisher also republishes my books in DRM-protected PDF format. This also provides readers with a page-by-page view of the printed book. And it also introduces multiple problems:

• As I write this, Adobe’s DRM doesn’t work with the latest version of Adobe Reader. It doesn’t work with Preview or any other PDF reader software either. So readers are forced to use a specific version of Adobe Reader software.
• The DRM prevents book buyers from copying the book to another device. So if you bought the book from your desktop computer and started reading it there, you can pretty much forget about copying it to your laptop to read while away from your office.
• Although you can scale the book’s page size to fit your screen, if you don’t have a big screen, the print size might be too small to see. That means a larger scale and vertical scrolling. You can’t see a whole page at once.

Oddly enough, neither of these formats take advantage of electronic publishing features that would enhance the books. Other than hyperlinking table of contents entries on Safari and enabling search features on the DRM-protected PDFs, the ebooks are identical to the printed books — right down to their black and white screenshots — but presented onscreen instead of on paper.

Do the Pirates Have the Right Idea?

For the past two or so years, I’ve been suffering the heartache of having the electronic versions of my books appear as unprotected PDFs or CHM files on pirate Web sites. The PDF version, when printed, reproduces the entire book, from the [ignored] copyright page to the last page of the index. You have no idea how violated that makes me feel, especially when my ebook royalties from these same titles are so dismally low.

Interestingly enough, the CHM version of a book, if available, is a better product than the original book. Sure, it’s not formatted the same way, but it contains all the content — including the screenshots — and has the added benefit of being searchable and containing hypertext links to other book content. Like the PDF version, it’s portable in that it can be copied to and read on any computer. This makes it possible for the reader to put the book on a laptop and take it on a trip, to read during a long plane ride or consult when working offsite and print books are not available.

Readers Revolt

Recently, a reader e-mailed me with some comments about the ebook version of my Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard book. Although she didn’t blame me, she was angry about the purchase and the product she received. She didn’t like the DRM limitations, especially since she doesn’t like to use Adobe Reader. And although she’d bought the ebook version to save money — there was a special deal going on at the time — she didn’t feel as if she’d saved enough money to make the purchase worthwhile. She concluded in her message that she’d never buy another ebook from that publisher again.

And that reminded me of something that most publishers seem to have forgotten these days: we’re creating a product for our customers. How can we expect to sell a product that our customers don’t want?

The Way an Ebook Should Be

These two developments — pirated book formats and ebook reader feedback — got me thinking seriously about the whole ebook situation. I realized several things:

• Ebooks should be designed to be read onscreen. (Duh.) That means a landscape (wide) layout rather than a portrait (tall) layout. The entire page should fit on a screen so scrolling is not required. Type should be sized so it’s readable even when the page is viewed on a relatively low resolution screen (for example, 800×600 pixels).
• Ebook formats should take advantage of all commonly-used technology available. That means including color images (which are often too costly for printed books), hyperlinked references, and possibly even multimedia content such as sound and video. Imagine having an ebook with live links to additional content online! Why not?
• Ebooks should not be protected by DRM. Readers hate DRM because it limits their access to the content. For a reader to get the most from the ebook experience, he should not be held back by limitations and the frustrations of poorly designed DRM software. If you buy an ebook, you should be able to read it on any of your devices that support that format.
• Ebooks should be priced low enough that anyone can afford them. I believe that most people want to be honest and will not steal content. But people don’t understand why an ebook costs the same (or nearly the same) as a printed book when there’s no paper, printing, or shipping costs. They’re right — ebooks should be cheaper! (They should not, however, be free because a great deal of effort on the part of authors, editors, and layout folks goes into the book.) Fairly pricing an ebook will encourage people who want to read it to pay for it rather than possibly obtain a pirated copy.

And this is where I’ve apparently locked heads with my publisher. I don’t like the way my books are being republished as ebooks. I don’t like dissatisfying or upsetting my readers. I don’t want my readers going to another publisher’s ebooks and authors because my publisher can’t produce a product that meets their needs at a price they’re willing to pay. And I’m not the only author who feels this way.

Thinking Outside the Book

Simply put, my publisher cannot think “outside the book.”

They insist on regurgitating printed books in primitive and inconvenient electronic formats. They insist on sticking to the same price points when the average reader simply doesn’t believe that a paperless book is worth as much as one printed on paper. And they wonder why the books don’t sell, why the authors are angry, why the readers are staying away.

I believe that to succeed in today’s publishing world, publishing organizations need to stop thinking of books in terms of paper and print-friendly layouts. They need to think about the best way to disseminate information to the people who are willing to pay for it. They need to provide quality content in a format that’s convenient for readers. If that’s a printed book, fine. But if it’s an unprotected PDF with hyperlinks to internal and online content, publishers need to accept that — and make their ebooks the ones readers look for when they need information.

What do you think?

I’d love to get feedback from authors and readers about the ebook situation. Use the Comments link or form for this post to share your ideas. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

May as well conduct our own poll here. There are currently 6 official candidates. Tell us which one you’d vote for if the election were held today.

I’ll release a new poll each time a candidate drops out or is added, so if you vote on this poll and then see that you can vote again one day in the future, it’s likely that I’ve released a new poll on this topic.

As usual, you can use the Comments link or form for this post to share your comments with other readers. No bashing anyone, please! Let’s keep it civil.

In a previous post, I mentioned how I could not decide between Hillary and Barack. In the same post, I warned hardcore Republicans not to try to turn the comments into a Democrat-bashing party because I’d simply delete off-topic comments. I also promised to give them a chance to state their case.

That’s what this post is about.

What are your thoughts about the candidates? Which do you prefer? Tell us what you think, even if you want to talk about people who are no longer running.

I’ll start the ball rolling with a statement that’s sure to get under a few people’s skin:

I’m voting for a Democrat because I’m tired of seeing religion pushed in our school systems, I don’t think marriage is more important than the current situation in Iraq or the country’s debt, and I’m tired of being lied to by the government.

I’ll add a few more controversial things, just to keep the subject hot:

• I’m glad Mitt Romney dropped out. He gave me the creeps and I don’t think he was in touch with reality. Besides, with FIVE sons, you think one of them could be in Iraq where people are still dying daily?
• I liked John Edwards the best, but I guess the haircut really turned a lot of people off. And he really was a bit too angry about big business and lobbyists.
• I don’t think Huckabee is serious. At least I hope not. But I admit that he was great fun on all the television shows he appeared on.
• It’s a pity Bloomberg didn’t run. He’d certainly fix up the country’s financial problems.
• I think Guiliani was a bad joke. He was running on the same platform George W used to get in in 2004: fear. Fortunately, a few of us have woken up since then. And honestly: if the guy was dumb enough to put his terror command center in the only building that was ever attacked, what other idiotic mistakes would he have made on a much grander scale?
• I like McCain, even though he’s a Republican. If he wasn’t a Republican, I might even vote for him. But, as I said elsewhere, I’m not interested in any Republican in the White House for another four years.

Okay folks, the comments are yours. Just remember three basic rules:

• No stating “facts” unless they are facts that can be backed up. (You can link to articles.)
• No nasty comments directed at me or other commenters. If you think we’re stupid, keep it to yourself. Just state your case without getting personal.
• Remember, what you say here really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. So don’t let the discussion get your blood pressure up. It ain’t worth it.

Have fun.

About two weeks ago, I wrote one of my typical flying posts, where I described an unusual flying gig. In the post, I described how I was hired by a company to help them find some lost items in a remote area.

Do I sound vague? It’s because I apparently have to be.

The post was read about 330 times. That’s all. It was Dugg twice.

Yet that was enough for at least three people to track down my client in their remote location, trespass on their private property, cause a nuisance for workers, and put themselves at risk of harm in a work zone. One of these people actually showed up twice.

Why? That’s what I want to know. Apparently they thought they could get some kind of reward if they found the missing items — which aren’t even missing anymore!

One of the trespassers told my client he heard about the lost items on this blog. My client found the post, read it, and then called me, asking me to remove it.

This is my client. I’ve worked for them on three occasions and would like to work for them again. Obviously, I did as they wished. I was ashamed and embarrassed that they had to call me about it.

And that’s why other pilots won’t be able to read about this unusual flying gig.

Is this going to happen again? Am I going to have to remove something I wrote about because readers thought my coverage was an open invitation to be a nuisance to someone else?

Do you know how many things I haven’t written about because I was worried that something like this would happen?

Or how many times I purposely kept details vague — or even lied about them — to prevent people from doing something I would have to regret?

I don’t know who caused this problem — other than me, of course — and I don’t want to know. But I hope the people who bothered my clients are reading this and I hope they have enough sense to stay away from my client’s private property in the future.

I’ll start this piece right now by declaring that I cannot, in good faith, vote to put another Republican in office. But rather than go into a laundry list of why I feel that way, I’ll get on with what I really want to discuss: which Democrat should I vote for?

(And if you feed a desperate need to use this post’s comments to bash all Democrats in favor of Republicans, please don’t waste your time — I will delete such comments. I’ll give you an opportunity soon, in another post, to civilly state your case.)

I’ve been watching the race for president — both sides — pretty closely. And even though it’s down to just two Democrats, I really can’t decide which one I think would make a better president.

And yes, that’s what it all comes down to. It’s not which one I like better. This isn’t supposed to be a popularity contest. It’s more like there are multiple applicants for a job and the American people need to decide which one would do the job better. Sure, you might prefer one of them as a beer drinking buddy, but since drinking beer is not one of the duties of the president, who cares?

I didn’t really do my homework other than to visit GlassBooth.org, which I recommend to anyone interested in seeing how their opinions stack up against the candidates’. I figured I’d wait until some candidates dropped out. After all, in the beginning, we had 10 candidates on each side! My most recent visit to GlassBooth.org tells me that Hillary is slightly ahead of Barack in matching my views (75% vs. 74%) — still too close to call.

But the other day, while flying, I listened to a handful of Slate podcasts. One of them, titled “American Idols: International Edition: Foreign Press Fails to Make Fun of U.S. Election System Shocker!” included a quote that really hit home:

At Germany’s Spiegel, Gabor Steingart lays it out: “Barack Obama is the man of hope. Hillary Clinton is the woman of secret fears. He inspires. She reassures. He is inventive. She is reliable. He seems soft. She’s hard as nails. He’ll win if the sun’s shining. She’ll win if there’s a storm brewing.”

I realized that this is exactly how I feel about the two candidates.

I believe that Hillary has the experience needed to do a good job as President. (White House time as First Lady does count!) I also think that having Bill Clinton around to help is a good thing. And I think it would be a great thing to have a female president. But, at the same time, I worry about her motivations and her ability to get things done facing the rabid (and unearned) hate that Republicans seem to feel for her.

Barack seems to have plenty of charisma, which is certainly a nice thing. And I think it would be great to have a black president. But I worry about his experience and what seems to be softness. Is he too idealistic to handle the reality of getting this country back on its feet? I think the Republicans and their media outlet, Fox News, will make short work of him, forcing him to struggle constantly to maintain his image and get anything done.

Because I’m registered as independent, I couldn’t vote in the Arizona primary. So I allowed my fellow liberals to make the decision for me. That was okay. And whoever turns out to be the final Democratic candidate will also be fine with me. I think either of them would be a good leader.

But it’s interesting that it took the quote of a German journalist to clear my mind about this.

Between Hillary and Barack, which do you think would make a better president and why? Use the Comments link or form to share your thoughts. Just remember to keep it civil.