08.3.2K7: Wanting energy independence isn't enough

Every now and then, I'll open up one of my regular magazines, and in the letters column, I'll discover a letter that I myself wrote, that they were nice enough to publish. It's always a nice feeling to know that someone considers your opinion worth sharing with others, so I always get a measure of pride upon seeing one.

The latest one turned up in Home Power magazine, a magazine dedicated to people trying to make their lives cleaner, more sustainable, and less dependent on polluting energy sources. I've been a fan of the magazines since I discovered it, which was well beyond the point at which it started being published... they just celebrated their 20 years as a publication (almost as long as I have been into alternative energy myself).

But my interest in alternative energy remains a bittersweet irony to me... for, after all these years, I have never been able to practice many of the most desirable of aspects of the movement, that of running a household off of alternative energy sources.

Alternative energy sources are generally considered to be solar, hydro-electric (water) and wind power. Given the right circumstances, any one of these could conceivably power your home, and all the elements in it, allowing you to live "off the grid," or disconnected from your local utility company, if you wanted to.

But the reality is, not too many American homes are going to be found that can really take advantage of these sources. My home is a perfect example: There is no source of running water on my property; There is not enough clearance for me to put up a windmill (which needs to be 30 feet higher than the highest local elements to be effective... and I live near the bottom of a valley); the property is surrounded by closely-packed homes and trees, blocking quite a bit of daily sunshine; and my roofline happens to be oriented almost 90 degrees away from the optimum direction to absorb sunlight with solar panels. Welcome to standard American Suburbia... the one kind of neighborhood that could use alternative energy, but wouldn't have a prayer of creating it for itself.

So I read these magazines, as I have for over 25 years, and I pray that someday I will live on a property where I can actually try some of these things.

Of course, there's another issue, that of cost. Adding alternative energy systems to a house can cost multiple-tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is not the kind of thing that many homeowners can do on a whim, or even with due dedication. Even with government tax incentives, which pay back part of what you yourself still have to spend, most homeowners could not consider such a substantial expense, even to benefit their bottom line. Some could afford it with a second mortgage, but even that can be hard to justify on many people's salaries and credit scores. Even if my property was ideal for solar, for instance, taking out another mortgage to pay for $100,000 worth of equipment could still be out of the question.

So where am I left? The same place the U.S. is at... just out of reach of an energy solution that would help solve our world's pollution burden, and our nation's dependence on foreign fuel sources. Will this ever change? Will houses be better designed... properties better laid-out... costs low enough for anyone who can afford a new car (or maybe a used one) to spring for? I really don't know. Maybe when we're so far gone that we simply have no more foreign oil or clean air... in which case, those solar cells better be able to capture sunlight filtered through miles of smog...

08.6.2K7: "Phantom Loads" reach the mainstream

"Phantom loads," the name given to the effect of household electrical appliances drawing power even when they are off, has been a subject of popularity for years with energy conservationists, but rarely discussed anywhere else. But now, with more of the country thinking about the high cost of energy and our dependence on foreign oil, mainstream news sources have managed to take the next step beyond light bulbs and address phantom loads.

Most people don't realize the amount of energy that is expended by appliances when they are supposedly not running. Items like battery chargers, for instance, keep a constant trickle of power going, even when the batteries stored in them are fully charged. TVs, VCRs and DVD players keep current running to maintain a memory of what you did last... nifty, but ultimately unnecessary. Computers will maintain internet connections through their modems, even when the computer is powered down. Anytime you see an "off" appliance that has a "standby" light on, it's drawing unnecessary power—the "phantom load"—and you're paying for it. (If you have a cable box, you might be surprised to discover that many of them use as much power when they are off, as when they are on!)

Recently I saw a program on CNN's Headline News, describing how homeowners can defeat phantom loads by putting power cores between their appliances and their wall outlets, and turning them off when nothing on that outlet is in use—particularly useful around TVs and computer equipment, which often draw large amounts of power when they are supposedly "off". And just the week before, I heard that a similar article was published in The Economist. Clearly, these conservation ideas that were formerly considered "fringe notions" are now being introduced to the general public, and that should create a much larger segment of the population taking efforts to cut back on their power use.

Okay, so it's obviously late in coming... but it's still a good thing. When combined with other conservation steps, such as replacing standard light bulbs with compact fluorescents, using energy star appliances, sealing cracks around windows and doors, installing programmable thermostats, and simply turning off lights when you leave a room, this country can take a significant slice out of its energy use. These simple steps have reduced our household energy consumption to half of what many of our neighbors use (and pay dearly for).

They are also far easier to do than trying to install your own energy-generating systems, like solar cells and windmills. As much as we might all want to be energy-independent, the cost is still prohibitive for many people. Improving your home's energy-efficiency can give you an immediate return on a much smaller investment, and the knowledge that you are lightening the country's energy load, and slowing Global Warming, today.

Hopefully other conservation methods will also reach mainstream publications and news sources, and we as a country can continue to decrease our energy use en masse, and not one-at-a-time.

08.11.2K7: Subsidizing e-books with ads

On the Mobileread web site, forum members like myself love to discuss (and sometimes, "discuss" is putting it politely) the costs of e-books, usually, why they are so often as expensive as, or more expensive than, printed books. This usually brings up the subject of how much a publisher should expect to pay to produce and profit off of e-books, and what business model will finally get publishers to start releasing e-books with their printed counterparts.

Yesterday, a forum member started a new thread on the subject, suggesting that maybe e-books should be compared to television (with printed books compared thus to movies) as a way to work out a revenue method. Television programs are, of course, not bought by consumers... they are essentially offered to viewers for free, and subsidized with third-party advertisements that earn the broadcasters their actual revenue. (Yes, even cable and satellite viewers get their programs for free... they are paying extra for the cables, boxes and dishes, etc, to push the signal to their doorstep, not for the actual programs.)

I agree that advertising might be the ideal way to sell e-books, for a few reasons. First of all, e-book sales and distribution are much harder to track than their paper-based counterparts, due to their digital nature. This is similar to television, which is harder to track than a movie, due to its broadcast nature, and why advertisers and TV stations set up a system that does not depend on actual numbers, but on projections based on viewer approximations.

TV advertisers use tools like Nielson ratings to assume that X number of people will probably see their ads, and they estimate that out of that number, Y% of those people will probably buy their product. These vague numbers really are all they have to go by, but they have been enough to allow advertisers to basically subsidize television shows, and have made television advertising a multi-billion-dollar business.

E-books have an unfortunate stigma of appearing to be cheap, specifically because there is no physical product. Consumers don't want to hear about money spent on editors, proofers, preparers, websites, etc... they simply expect an electronic file to be practically or literally free. But publishers (even if they are individual authors) need to earn a living somehow, and obviously can't give their work away for free. Advertisers would solve this quandry, essentially subsidizing the author in return for placement of ads in the author's final product.

Another reason advertiser subsidizing would work for e-books is also related to its hard-to-track nature. E-books, being digital files, are therefore capable of being shared, or copied and sent to others in any numbers, independently of the original production, and the author/publisher's cash box. Obviously, in a payment-for-product world, this is not ideal, and has resulted in numerous digital security systems (DRM) designed to prevent file sharing. Unfortunately, this has only resulted in multiple e-book formats, and e-books that often do not work well on some systems, or that cannot be transferred to a new e-book reader once they are locked into the old one. This has turned off many customers to e-books, making it harder to sell in the first place.

But the issue of "extra eyes" seeing e-books is actually what an advertiser wants... more people seeing their ads means more people likely to buy their product. To an advertiser, therefore, e-book sharing and even outright piracy would be a good thing. And the cheaper the e-book, again, the more people are likely to buy it, borrow it, or steal it... until you reach the price point at which the maximum number of people are likely to get the e-book, which is usually pretty much "Free".

All of this boils down to an opportunity for an advertiser to use the release of an e-book to promote their product, and paying enough for the priviledge to allow the e-book to be sold for the cheapest possible amount (or for free), to get it into the most hands. The ads themselves could take many forms, from full page ads in the front or back of the e-book, to banner ads on select pages (like every chapter beginning or end). They could even take the form of product placement within the story (the way James Bond so obviously drinks Smirnoff Vodka and drives Aston Martins. Hey, for enough money, I'll have my hero drink anything you want!).

Will this turn out to be the revenue model for e-books in the future? It will very likely be one of them, though maybe not the only one. On the other hand, if you had the choice of buying your TV programs, or watching them for free, which would you choose?

08.12.2K7: E-book sales are up in U.S. and Japan

Last week, the Independent Digital Publisher's Forum (IDPF) and the Digital Content Association of Japan (DCAJ) both reported a marked increase in e-book sales, with Japan's pace matching the U.S., but its sales far outstripping that of the U.S.

The IDPF presented data collected from 12-15 wholesale trade publishers over the past 5 years, to show a steady increase in commercial (as opposed to educational or professional) e-book sales from $1.5 million in the first quarter of 2002 to $8.1 million in the second quarter of 2007. At the same time, the Anime News Network reported on the DCAJ announcement that the mobile phone sales of electronic books, including manga, grew 331.3% from 1.6 billion yen (about US$14 million) to 6.9 billion yen (US$58 million) in 2006, and the non-phone Internet sales of electronic books grew 69.7% from 4.8 billion yen (US$41 million) to 8.1 billion yen (US$68 million).

There are interesting parallels and differences between the two countries. In Japan and the U.S., the increase in e-book sales is happening at the same time that magazine sales are falling. Although much of the traditional magazine readership has been switching to Internet-based versions of those magazines, part of that group is instead shifting from print-based magazines and manga to portable digital versions, played on PDAs and cellphones.

Both countries are also seeing the biggest increases in the same areas: Mysteries and romance e-books, primarily by new authors, and especially those geared towards women. Japan, being a bit ahead of the U.S. in e-book experimentation, has already tried selling existing novels and best-sellers, then pornography, as e-books, but neither sold well in a market dominated by young women. In the U.S., e-books are read by as many males, but romance novels are being bought in much greater volumes by women. (I doubt there are any reliable figures of porn e-books being sold in the U.S.)

You might not expect there to be so much of a discrepancy between the two countries in certain areas, but keep in mind that the U.S. publishers have been severely dragging their heels about entering the e-book market, and much of the reason behind lower American figures is due to the comparative lack of content in the U.S. market.

08.19.2K7: The dissatisfaction of "FTL" travel... solved

Have you ever had issues accepting a convention, just because it seemed so implausible to you? For years, I've had that problem with the science fiction convention of "faster than light" (FTL) travel.

According to every known convention in physics today, it is impossible to move faster than the speed of light. It is also accepted as impossible to move a finite object to the speed of light (much less beyond), because to do so requires an infinite amount of power. Despite this, books, television and movies continue to show us ships traveling faster than light, using some exotic power source or power field (typical of Star Trek). Or they decide to bypass this problem by supposing a "subspace" that ships can somehow enter, and thereby travel as fast as they need without concern for the limits of light speed, or somehow "shortcut" the actual distance and therefore travel by conventional means as easily as one might cross an ocean (Babylon 5). Or possibly a method to "fold" space, bringing the impossibly far right next to you and as easily reached as stepping through a door (Dune). Or they manage to somehow commandeer wormholes and squeeze from one end to the other, ably avoiding getting compressed into its component particles and emerging from the other end like a squirt of atoms (Stargate)...

To me, all of these explanations have sounded contrived at best, and implausible at worst. I've even used one of the oldest ideas (in Sol and Berserker), the concept of a "time warp" that allows a ship to travel slower than light, inside a double-warped space that is so sped up as to effectively make the slower-than-light travel faster-than-light to those observing from the outside. As it is, I was using it as a mere incidental, a vehicle for the story, and not the central idea of the story at all. But even as I used it, I was not happy with it, because I didn't believe it myself. And I like my stories to be based on real science, not vague pseudo-science or fantasy. (This is also why I've never had a story using a matter-energy "transporter.")

Well, I keep coming back to this cunundrum every once in awhile, hoping I can somehow figure out a method for galactic space travel that actually makes sense. I read magazines like Scientific American, hoping for clues to how it might seriously be accomplished. And I sometimes find myself idly tossing ideas around, awaiting the brainstorm that will signal a plausible-sounding FTL drive system.

Guess what? I figured it out. A plausible method to travel from one end of the galaxy, nay, the universe, in an instant. Without folding or sailing on subspace, or summoning infinite energy reserves from black holes. I know how to do it.

No, seriously!

Okay, seriously... no, I haven't jumped to Proxima Centauri, picked a few flowers, and popped back before breakfast. Yes, we're still talking about science fiction. But I now have a method, based on actual, existing quantum physics theories and observations, explainable within a layman's level scientific framework (in other words, acceptable for fiction writing), and believable in terms of the actual behaviors of the elements involved. In fact, I'm not sure that there are any accepted theories today that actually dispel this method—yet—so I have what sounds like the most plausible FTL system I know of.

And now that I have it... I'm gonna use it! But the key is, I'm gonna use it in a plausible way. I can now write a realistic story, based on realistic physics, and not just a rehashing of the old "sailing the spaceways" story that has been the staple of space travel throughout the 20th century.

It's a new century... it's time for a new space story.

(Want details? Stay tuned!)

08.29.2K7: Bittersweet milestone

Today is already known as the anniversary date of Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans... and now I have something else to remember it by. It's actually two things, one good, the other... not so good.

The good thing is the fact that I have made the final touches on my latest novel, now titled "As The Mirror Cracks." Soon I will be printing it out and mailing it to the U.S. Copyright Office (an organization that hasn't worked out the wonders of electronic files yet, apparently). Then I'll be preparing it for sale on this site, including a format for the Sony Reader.

The bad thing is that today, I received my first-ever spam... on my cellphone. Yes, a text e-mail with obscene content, sent by an anonymous address, just like in regular spam e-mail. The funny thing is, it did not include anything that could attach itself to my phone, nor a link I could click on. Just obscene content. Seems a pretty stupid waste of time.

Unfortunately, this waste of time is also a waste of my money: I have to pay for every text message I receive, as well as send. Obviously, one message isn't worth caring about. But if one spam message becomes five, then twenty-five, then a hundred and five... well, you know where that's going. It's the modest beginnings of the end of text message usefulness.

Computer experts have warned that this was inevitable, especially as consumers adopted wireless phones, Javascript-based operating systems, and built-in web browsers, and did not improve their personal security measures and practices. Hackers already know how to take advantage of these systems, opening cellphone users to the possibility of having their phones hacked into, and phone-tailored viruses that can capture address books, and make illicit calls and text messages on your account's dime, potentially ruining your phone and leaving you liable for thousands of dollars in charges. Almost anyone with a cellphone and an active bluetooth connection is vulnerable, and that means most everyone.

Time to panic? Not yet. But pay careful attention if you suddenly get a request to wirelessly connect to your cellphone by something other than your bluetooth earpiece, and don't allow it. If the request persists, turn off your phone. If you see a text message from an address you don't recognize, think twice before you open it. And if it is obscene, don't respond to it. Instead, take the address down and notify your carrier, and hope they can do something about it.

And above all, be paranoid. Be very paranoid.