BilmBlog500

Trying to order something from Ikea, it only tells me after I've entered by billing and delivery addresses and my e-mail that the item I want isn't in stock and can't actually be ordered. Yeah, right. Adobe Flash Player sends out notices around every two days that they have a new version they need for you to install. All of them do the exact same thing, so you can never tell one update from the rest, it's like groundhog day and you just install Flash Player over and over again every single day. They tell you, no need to restart in order to install the update. But like a mini-Ikea, they only tell you when you're midway through the update "oh, by the way, be sure to close all the programs that might be using Flash." Wouldn't it be better for them to tell you at the start of the process? I've had a lot of good karma with the NY Times bestseller list, with books that have placed several spots higher than the Nielsen Bookscan ranking of actual reco...

Updated twice, final 4:07 EST. The New York Times Week in Review section reprinted this Pat Bagley cartoon from the Salt Lake Tribune, which is one of the few comparisons in the TSA debate that I don't find utterly false. In fact, I find it rather funny. In the midst of all of its columnists telling us to take our pats and shut up, their Sunday Outlook section has a column by Jeffrey Rosen that dares to flat-out call the current regime unconstitutional. And Rosen is not a hypocritical Republican, he's not some immature person for Ruth Marcus to yell at, he's a long-time legal affairs writer, a professor at George Washington School of Law, legal affairs editor for The New Republic, often published in the Times as well, check out his GW bio here . Click here to find the 2nd quarter earnings release from Barnes & Noble. Same store sales were down a relatively modest 3.3%, loss was $12.6M, with the expectation that the lion and lamb will lie next to one another and s...

The Kindle will soon be available in Best Buy. The Wall Street Journal is said to be starting up a book section for its Saturday weekend edition. The NY Times had actual science fiction novel reviews in the paper a Friday back and may do this on a regular basis. The column is from actual sf writer Jeff VanderMeer, and this is the seriousestish coverage of the field from the Times in years. The Kobo reader is rolling out a desktop computer app. Not doing the usual linkage because I am still on the road and these filtered in from different places.

I'd give the Kindle 3 slithy toads. This seems a good day to write about the Kindle. I boarded a crowded Amtrak train to head down for a Charlaine Harris signing in Newark, DE, and while I was reading my Kindle I noticed a man across the aisle reading a Sony Reader. Whatever is the world coming to? So first, why do I have a Kindle, and not a Sony Reader? Well, I am a Mac person. The Sony Reader requires you buy stuff at the Sony Store, and they haven't made it easy to sync purchases on a Mac. I tried once to see if I could go to Sony's web site and at least check out the offerings and didn't even find that very easy to do. The Kindle, you don't even need a computer since you can shop wirelessly from within the Kindle. It also offered a feature that I found very tempting, that you could email your .doc files to your Kindle and have them show up there wirelessly for a ten cent fee. Some people think it's silly to pay to send your own files to yourself, b...

Once upon a a time there were the Big Three: Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein. Andrew Wheeler, a much better blogger than I, offered some reflections on a look back in the NY Times Book Review at a week that saw two of them on the list. And now there are none. Those halcyon days of my youth when science fiction writers appeared on the list have been replaced by days in which fantasy writers appear. The sf writers that do, like William Gibson, often get that way with the help of a critical establishment that claims they no longer write sf, which was a very hard thing to do with the Big Three. Of the three, Clarke was the one I knew the least. I read lots of Asimov; the Foundation Trilogy was one of my first purchasers as a new member of the SF Book Club some 28 years ago. I read lots of Heinlein. Rather less, much less even, of Arthur C. Clarke. But his work on 2001: A Space Odyssey leaves me enough in his debt all by itself, and those 2001 royalties helped pay for my salary at the Sco...