Lost worlds and ports of call

Category: Uncategorized (Page 17 of 35)

OS Wars

I don’t really want to start an OS war, but in reading through Claire Wolfe’sreply to an essay by Brad over on wendymacelroy.com on Linux vs. Windows, I’m tempted to offer up Mac OS X as an alternative. I guess if you have an Intel machine your only choice is Win or Lin, though OS X now runs on Intel. The second fall-back argument is that Macs are too expensive, and while somewhat true, you do get quite a few items standard on the Mac that are add-ons in the Win/Lin world. Of course, the most powerful argument is that OS X is proprietary, while Linux is free and open-source. True again, but OS X includes Unix and exists in a healthy 3rd party developer environment so you don’t need to rely on Apple software. And it’s a gorgeous OS, far smoother to master than either Win/Lin environment. But that’s just my opinion as a Mac user since 1984.

Blurbed

Via reason’s Hit and Run, a brief story on deciphering blurbs for keys on how to avoid books. My blurbs appeared on three or four books (I remember two by L. Neil Smith and one by Vernor Vinge–though in the latter they cited the publication in which my review appeared, and not my name). In each case I think the publisher pulled my words from a review, and I wrote those words not with a blurb in mind. Culling the essence of a book down to a few sentences is tough work, and sometimes I wonder about their effectiveness. I buy books for the author or story, not from what others say. But do I read the blurbs? Usually, yes, after I’ve already bought the book.

RIP Jim Baen

Jim Baen, publisher and editor, passed away June 28th following a massive stroke. Baen Books website posted a brief notice. David Drake has a longer obituary. I used to buy a ton of Baen paperbacks a few years ago, especially the paperback magazines (I first read Vernor Vinge’s short story, “The Ungoverned,” in one of these), but in the last decade of so none of the writers in their line appealed to me, nor did the covers; I never really read that much military sf. I also remember meeting Jack Vance’s Cugel character in Baen’s editions of some of Vance’s books. Recently Baen also was a force in promoting unencrypted web versions of books from their line, and proved this model as a viable and ethical business model. Quite a few Prometheus Award-winning sf writers appeared in Baen editions, including L. Neil Smith and James P. Hogan, as well as F. Paul Wilson.

Lit crit

Over at reason Magazine, Nick Gillespie asks “what good are the arts?” As an English major in college (well, English and history), I used the time as an excuse to read books that I enjoyed, and more than once had to endure silly Marxist lit crit teachers and students, who sought to fit every book into a predefined model.

(yeah, I realize this is from April. I keep checking reason’s front page to see if they posted an essay on children’s literature that ran in the print magazine a few months ago, but nada.)

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 Anders Monsen

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑

css.php