Jay Garmon [dot] Net

Nerd Word of the Week: Jailbreaking

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Jailbreaking (n.) - Circumventing the Digital Rights Management (DRM) on a device to use it in a manner not intended or desired by the manufacturer. The term was originally applied to the Apple iPhone and then extended to any device running the iOS, though jailbreaking or jailbroken can now be applied to most any smartphone or consumer electronics device. (Jailbreaking an Android OS device is sometimes called rooting, as in attaining root access privileges on the phone, though only "we were never in Steve Jobs's jail" Android OS enthusiasts tend to insist on the distinction.) Failed jailbreaks can result in your device being bricked, which is to say rendered useless.

I bring it up because: A federal judge ruled this week that jailbreaking is legal. Specifically, circumventing DRM is legal, so long as that circumvention doesn't then lead to actual illegal activity. Thus, you can break the DRM on your DVDs in order to make backup copies of your movies or convert them to run on incompatible devices you legally own. You can't break the DRM and then use your newfound powers to produce and sell discount copies of your film collection. This ruling now makes it legal to jailbreak devices so long as you don't then use those devices for illegal purposes. Apple, as you might expect, wasn't happy about the ruling and reminds you that jailbreaking still voids your iPhone warranty. Techcrunch thus asks if we're about to see jailbreaking go mainstream, but then answers its own question -- by way of a Harvard Law professor -- that while jailbreaking is now legal, providing jailbreaking software may not be. There's been no firm ruling on what happens to jailbreak developers, but you can bet that's who Apple and friends go after next.

What is Bugs Bunny's official military rank?

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

I am once again snowed under with work, but since today is Bugs Bunny's 70th birthday -- the rascally rabbit debuted in the cartoon short A Wild Hare on July 27, 1940 -- I figured I'd rely on a Bugs-centric Geek Trivia column to fill my usual Truly Trivial column space.

As difficult as it may be for you Merrie Melodies fanatics to accept, Bugs Bunny is not the most artistically accomplished cartoon character in the Warner Brothers stable of animated icons. Using the Academy Award for Best Animated Short as a measure, Bugs is woefully underrepresented when it comes to Oscars on the mantle.

... Bugs Bunny [was] the fifth and final Warner Brothers cartoon character to win an Academy Award, and he’s tied for third amongst his fellow Merrie Melodieans in number of statuettes, as Sylvester has three, Tweety has two, and Bugs, Speedy, and Pepe are all tied at one apiece.

If that seems a grave artistic injustice, Bugs Bunny fans, take heart. The infamous rabbit has one distinction that no other cartoon character can match: an official rank as a member of the U.S. armed services.

WHAT IS BUGS BUNNY’S OFFICIAL MILITARY RANK?

Find out here.

Nerd Word of the Week: High ground maneuver

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:30:00 +0000

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High ground maneuver (n.) - A public relations tactic wherein the guilty party admits fault, but suggests that this mistake was due in part to a larger, universally acknowledged problem. The result is to frame the public debate around the larger issue, rather than the guilty party's specific gaffe. The guilty party stakes out the "moral high ground" of trying and failing to solve a broad, systemic problem. The term was popularized by Dilbert creator Scott Adams.

I bring it up because: Adams outed his high ground maneuver phrase just this week in his analysis of the Apple iPhone 4 "antennagate" press conference. Steve Jobs basically staked out the high ground of trying to fight dropped calls -- a problem every smartphone has -- and admitted that Apple failed to topple this unbeatable enemy. While Apple isn't getting a total free pass, the debate has moved on to how every smartphone deals with signal drops, rather than exclusively about how Apple's iPhone 4 exhibits the problem. That, my friend, is a classic high ground maneuver.

What did a 404 error signify in the Apollo 11 computer guidance system?

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:30:00 +0000

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Today is the 41st anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and I'm too busy celebrating to write an original Truly Trivial piece. Thus, I leave you with one of my old Geek Trivia columns regarding some historically significant computer errors experienced during Apollo 11:

When Apollo 11 set forth for the moon in 1969, it carried with it what were then arguably the two most advanced computers ever built. The Apollo Guidance Computer — two of which went on every manned moon mission — was the first computer to use integrated circuitry and was thus the first modern embedded computer system ever put to use. ...

That isn’t to say the Apollo Guidance Computer — advanced as it was for its era — was error free. The AGC that ran the Apollo 11 lunar module’s Primary Navigation, Guidance, and Control System (PNGCS, pronounced pings) malfunctioned during the first lunar descent. Fortunately, the error codes 1201 and 1202 didn’t faze Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong when they popped up, informing the astronauts of a critical buffer overflow. ...

If the Apollo Guidance Computer had thrown a 404 error, it might have been a different story.

WHAT DID A 404 ERROR CODE SIGNIFY IN THE APOLLO GUIDANCE COMPUTER SOFTWARE SYSTEM?

Find out here.

Nerd Word of the Week: Bacn

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Image by funkandjazz via Flickr

Bacn (n.) - A type of automated e-mail that is less onerous than spam but less wanted than actual, human-generated communications. The classic contemporary examples are Facebook e-mail alerts, which are spam in the sense that they are automated, but desired in that they alert you to Facebook-native content you want to see. It's better than spam, it's bacn.

I bring it up because: Google hates bacn, and it's suggested that's why Google can't build a successful social network. Google is all about the practical, useful, and minimal, while Facebook is a bacn-coated timesink. Google can't beat Facebook because Google is so spam-averse it won't even touch bacn.

What Silicon Valley legend creates "custom" versions of US currency that are totally legal to spend?

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:27:00 +0000

Image by ericskiff via Flickr

On July 14, 1969, The United States Federal reserve removed from circulation any denomination of US currency larger than the $100 bill. While the $500, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000 and $100,000 bills are still valid currency, they are rarely spent, as any such bill that makes it into the Federal Reserve system will be retired -- and these rare bills have collectible value well above their denomination.

Still, some idiots just can't resist counterfeiting large and/or fictional denominations of US money, even though they're almost invariably caught trying to pass these bills off. What's even more shocking are the imbeciles that try to pass these fake notes off at Las Vegas casinos -- perhaps the single most counterfeit-aware group of businesses on the planet.

Thus it's apropos that Vegas gave the most trouble to a legendary Silicon Valley businessman who creates unusual -- but perfectly legal -- "custom" versions of US currency.

What Silicon Valley legend creates "custom" versions of US currency that are totally legal to spend?

For those that know anything about him, it should come as little surprise that eccentric Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak is the quasi-prankster in question.

Wozniak makes a habit of buying uncut sheets of US $2 bills directly from the US Treasury. (Anyone can do this, and the sheets are available from many coin collecting shops, but buying US currency in uncut sheets costs more than the bills' total face value.) He then ships the sheets to a private printing shop, which binds them into perforated coupon book-like pads of tear-off $2 bills.

Wozniak enjoys the private joke of people believing he's handing them counterfeit bills when he offers them his tear-off $2 notes. The custom-bound bills are perfectly legal tender as the gum-binding and perforation process don't alter any of the identifying marks on the notes. It's simply that most people don't have the time, resources, or sense of humor to pay extra to custom-bind their petty cash.

Wozniak particularly likes to use his custom $2 bills to tip waitresses. This practice got him into trouble a few years back at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas, an incident which Wozniak recounts on his blog. Woz didn't end up in jail, but his private joke left him with some awkward explaining to do, and it earned him yet another entry in the annals of the truly trivial.

Nerd Word of the Week: Pseudonymity

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:30:00 +0000

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Pseudonymity (n.) - The practice of using a consistent pseudonym to develop an online persona that is not openly connected to your real name or offline identity. A portmanteau of pseudonym and anonymity. Pseudonymity is different from anonymity in that postings made anonymously online can never be tracked to any single person. Pseudonymous postings made with a consistent, recurring pseudonym held by a single poster can over time accrue their own following, reputation, and online social capital.

I bring it up because: Blizzard just launched RealID over at Battlenet, which ends pseudonymity for anyone participating in the ragingly popular World of Warcraft forums there. This has sparked a privacy debate, as RealID exposes your real name on all your Battlenet postings, and some folks don't want the world knowing how much time they spend in WoW forums, much less what gets said there. Everyone from CTRL+ALT+DEL and Penny Arcade to the Geek Feminism Blog and The Washington Post have weighed in. Many are claiming this is a loss of anonymity, but in truth Blizzard is eliminating pseudonymity, as your posts we're always tied to a consistent username. The move was made to ostensibly cut down on trolling -- in line with Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory -- but Seriously Not Okay refutes that logic thusly:

It is a common misconception that trolling is caused by anonymity. It is not. It is caused by people being assholes.

Some people simply enjoy being griefers, and don't care if they do it under a real name or a fake one. Eliminating pseudonymity or anonymity doesn't eliminate the asshole factor. That's worth remembering as more sites make sweeping changes like as Blizzard just did.

When sliced bread was first sold, it was marketed as "the greatest thing since..." what?

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:00:00 +0000

We've all heard the phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread." Machine-sliced bread was first produced on a wide commercial scale on June 7, 1928 by the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri. The CBC marketed their new Kleen Maid Sliced Bread using a variation on the now-familiar axiom, touting sliced bread as the best thing since another bread-related innovation.

When sliced bread was first sold, it was marketed as "the greatest thing since..." what?

The Cillicothe Baking Company originally marketed their Kleen Maid Sliced Bread as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped".

Apparently, before we found a way to slice bread on an industrial scale, simply bagging bread was the apex of human civilization. As to how the "greatest thing since sliced bread" meme got popular, blame Wonder Bread. The company started offering sliced bread nationally in 1930 and marketed the product using variations of that phrase, leading to an expression which is equally popular, misunderstood, and truly trivial.

Nerd Word of the Week: Unicorn Pegasus Kitten

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:13:00 +0000

Unicorn Pegasus Kitten (n.) - A mythical beast modeled after the chimera that combines the rear legs and wings of a pegasus, the forelegs and head of a giant kitten and the horn of a unicorn. Seriously. The unicorn pegasus kitten, sometimes referred to as the UPK, was created as a parody of conflated internet memes by artist Jeff Zugale at the request of author-blogger John Scalzi (depicted as an orc in the original UPK painting) and actor-author-blogger Wil Wheaton (depicted as a clown-sweatered orc-hunter in the original UPK painting) as part of a fundraising project to benefit the Lupus Alliance of America. The unicorn pegasus kitten instantly became a meme unto itself, with sci-fi songwriter John Anealio already providing its immortal ballad.

I bring it up because: As of today, the co-inspirator of the unicorn pegasus kitten is President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Already his campaign platform has given way to a reign of terror. And unlike in the painting, there is no clown-sweatered spear-toting meme-rider to save us. Hooray!

What highly explosive technology was originally patented on July 4?

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:30:00 +0000

As the Simpsons video above teaches us, there's no better way to celebrate the independence of our nation than by blowing up a small part of it. Indeed, setting off fireworks on Independence Day has been an American tradition since the holiday's first observance on July 4, 1777. Still, July 4th is a date with a long association with explosive events -- even those separate from American residents telling off British monarchs via the indulgent ignition of gunpowder.

In fact, on one particular July 4, perhaps the most historically significant explosive technology ever created was patented -- and no American was involved.

What highly explosive technology was originally patented on July 4?

On July 4, 1934, Leo Szilard filed a patent for the nuclear fission chain reaction, including notes on how to develop a critical mass and goad the process towards a significant explosion. Put more simply, on July 4, 1934, Leo Szilard patented the idea of an atomic bomb.

Kind of puts your paltry little M-80-and-Black-Cat celebrations to shame, doesn't it?

Szilard was a Hungarian refugee living in London at the time, and he gifted the patent to the British Admiralty in an effort to keep it secret and thus out of the hands of Nazi Germany. Ironically, the British initially rejected the patent for nuclear fission before finally accepting it in 1936. In 1938 Szilard emigrated to America and in 1942 he undertook the first controlled nuclear fission chain reaction in an ad-hoc reactor built under the stairs of a stadium at the University of Chicago. It was Szilard that persuaded his friend Albert Einstein to sign a letter to Franklin Roosevelt urging the creation of the Manhattan Project.

If Robert Oppenheimer is the father of the atomic bomb, then Leo Szilard is its grandfather. And it all began with a British patent application filed on the Fourth of July, 1934. Now that's an explosively ironic invocation of the truly trivial.

Nerd Word of the Week: Day-and-Date

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:30:00 +0000

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Day-and-date (adj.) - A term from the film industry that describes a movie which is released in multiple formats simultaneously, such that movie theaters, home video, television and/or online video can all sell the same film on exactly the same day and date. Day-and-date projects eliminate the so-called release window between the different formats and venues. Naturally, the venues that benefit from a preferential release window -- namely, movie theaters -- don't like the idea of home video or online video cannibalizing their audiences. Others view day-and-date releases as a means of combating movie piracy by offering movies in whatever format fans prefer simultaneously.

I bring it up because: Day-and-date isn't just a film issue anymore, as both Marvel and DC comics have announced digital comic book strategies -- the latter just yesterday -- that include day-and-date releases for certain titles. This has comic retailers in a tizzy, which is why Marvel has priced their digital comics as more expensive than traditional comics, and why DC is diverting some of its digital profits to directly support retailers. The traditional book industry is also struggling with the day-and-date issue as applies to ebooks versus physical books, with fans staging Amazon one-star rating protests for books that don't offer day-and-date ebook versions. Meanwhile, Hollywood has found new ways to create day-and-date release conflicts, with some studios forcing Redbox to delay renting movies by 28 days to prop up DVD sales. Meahwhile, Paramount earned kudos for dropping the 28-day Redbox release window. Some see day-and-date releases as the future of all media. How fast we get there remains to be seen.

Besides our own moon, how many non-planets have humans successfully landed a spaceprobe on?

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 13:30:00 +0000

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When it comes to space probes, there are three basic levels of design difficulty: Impactors, orbiters, and landers. Impactors are literally designed to crash into other celestial objects, recording until they smash into another spacerock, which saves flight engineers the trouble of targeting anything beyond a nearby gravity well. Orbiters are designed to enter -- and in some cases slingshot through -- a nearby gravity well, which requires far more navigational calculus. Landers, as you might imagine, require not only reaching another gravity well, but delicately succumbing it to it in such a fashion as to not crush or incinerate the space probe on its way to reaching the target surface.

When it comes to space probe targets, there are also three basic levels of difficulty: Our own moon, other local planets, and other local non-planets besides our own moon. The moon is biggest local gravity well besides the Earth itself. We've been crashing...er, impacting probes with the moon for fifty years, since the Soviet Luna 2 "flyby" in 1959. The moon is in Earth orbit, so hitting the moon is basic crashing one object in Earth gravity well into another. Hitting another planet requires leaving Earth's gravity well and successfully falling into another one -- which isn't so easy with the sun out there trying to turn everything into another Sol-trapped pseudo-comet. Hitting a non-planet besides the moon? That's the really hard trick, as you not only leave Earth's gravity well, but you have to hit a target usually trapped within the gravity well of another planetary body. That's bit like riding a waterfall and choosing which rock to land on at the bottom -- without ending up in the pool of water underneath.

It should comes as no surprise, then, that we've only in recent years been able to land a space probe on a non-planet besides our own moon, and we've only pulled it off a bare handful of times.

Besides our own moon, how many non-planets have humans successfully landed a spaceprobe on?

Humans have successfully landed probes on three non-planets besides our own moon: Asteroid Eros, Asteroid 25143 Itokawa, and the Saturnian moon Titan. The landings were performed by the probes NEAR Shoemaker, Hayabusa, and the Huygens probe, respectively.

(Before you space probe nerds get uppity, NASA's Stardust probe didn't land on comets Wild 2 or Tempel 1, it just collected dust thrown off in the comets' tails. Deep Impact was designed to crash into comet Tempel 1; it was an impactor, not a lander.)

Hayabusa gets extra points for returning material samples from Itokawa (we think), taking it into territory only Stardust and the Apollo lunar surface missions (also landers) have gone before. There really is a fourth kind of space probe after impactor, orbiter and lander -- return lander, a craft that can touch down and then take off again from a target celestial object. That's the sort of mission and design profile generally reserved for manned spacecraft, but the robot astronauts are getting in on the "To space...and back!" business. That's not just an extraordinary technical achievement, it a scientifically significant citation of the truly trivial.

Nerd Word of the Week: Motion gaming

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:30:00 +0000

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Motion gaming (n.) - A subset of video games that use the physical movements of the player as the primary basis for game controls. The concept is a crude implementation of a gestural interface. Motion gaming is often more intuitive for novice players, as their physical movements are directly emulated in the game environment, sparing players the need to abstract the game controls through buttons, joysticks, or other conventional input devices. The Nintendo Wii is the first major home video game console based around the motion gaming concept.

I bring it up because: The power gamers just joined the motion gaming revolution this week at E3 2010, with Microsoft unveiling Kinect for the Xbox 360 (formerly known as Project: Natal) and Sony debuting the Playstation Move for the PS3. Both employ some version of the motion gaming paradigm pioneered by the Wii -- though Kinect does so without a physical controller -- bringing us one inching step closer to the eternal dream of a personal immersion holodeck. Call me when the augmented reality gamer glasses get here.

What were the only two items displayed on both Pioneer Plaques and Voyager Records?

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Image by "T"eresa via Flickr

Twenty-seven years ago this week, Pioneer 10 became the first man-made object to "leave" the solar system when it passed orbit of Neptune on June 13, 1983. Technically, Pioneer 10 has yet to enter the Oort cloud, let alone escape the heliopause, so it's not beyond the influence of our sun. Nonetheless, Pioneer 10 is the first man-made object to carry a tangible human message outside the local planetary system -- the first Pioneer Plaque.

Designed by Carl "Contact & Cosmos" Sagan and Frank "The Drake Equation" Drake, the Pioneer Plaque contained a supposedly universally comprehensible description of the Pioneer probe's origins, including mathematic and astronomic directions to our solar system and a basic depiction of human beings. The depiction of humanity included simplified nude line drawings of an adult human male and female. While Stephen Hawking has of late suggested that we should not tell aliens where we live, the big controversy about extraterrestrial communications in 1972 was that we launched nudie pictures into space.

Thus, while an identical Pioneer Plaque was launched on Pioneer 11 in 1973, the Voyager Golden Records attached to Voyagers 1 and 2 omitted the nude drawings. In fact, Sagan was able to reuse only two items from the Pioneer Plaques when he designed the Voyager Golden Records in 1977.

What were the only two items displayed on both Pioneer Plaques and Voyager Records?

The only two pictograms to appear on every tangible message humans have sent into interplanetary space are a diagram of the hyperfine transition of neutral hydrogen (to show how we use two-dimensional images to represent the most basic states of the most abundant element in the universe) and a pulsar map that shows the location of our sun (to direct alien overlords to the the newest vassal state of the Galactic Empire).

The depiction of of our solar system, the notation of Pioneer probe's course, and -- naturally -- the nude drawings of human adults were all tossed aside when it came time to create the Voyager Records. Ironically, the Voyager Golden Records contain more explicit sexual content than the Pioneer Plaques, including a diagram of human sexual reproduction and images of human sex organs, but those images are encoded into the record itself, rather than visibly etched upon it. The Chicago Sun-Times apocryphally retouched its photos of the Pioneer Plaques to omit the male and female genitalia; the Voyager Golden Records spared them the exercise.

That may be a cosmic morality tale of excess prudery -- nude images are okay for Proxima Centauri, but they won't play in Peoria -- but it's another fine example of the Truly Trivial.

Nerd Word of the Week: Data pig

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:30:00 +0000

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Data pig (n.) - A person who consumes an unusually high amount of data over a network connection. Not to be confused with a bandwidth hog, which is a user that consumes so much network data that network performance is reduced for other users. Data pigs are heavy users that don't cause problems. Internet service providers often (intentionally) mislabel data pigs as bandwidth hogs. Data pigs are usually subscribers to "unlimited" data plans -- plans which increase customer subscriptions, but limit ISP profits -- and thus ousting data pigs is often a net profit gain for service providers.

I bring it up because: The Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG) was announced yesterday as an industry board that will "advise" the US government on net neutrality issues. The need to clamp down on (or profit from) data pigs is often one of the motivating factors for opponents of net neutrality. Moreover, AT&T (a BITAG member) just last week ended its "unlimited" wireless data plan for iPhone and iPad owners, such that they can now charge data pigs more money and hopefully alleviate strain on the bandwidth-strapped AT&T wireless network.While Google is also a member of BITAG and perhaps the world's staunchest corporate advocate for net neutrality so is Comcast, which was smacked by the FCC for secretly throttling peer-to-peer data pigs. We'll see who wins in the end, but in the short term it's almost certainly going to get harder to be a data pig.

What current medical drama is shot in Howlin' Mad Murdoch's old mental hospital?

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:30:00 +0000

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The film version of The A-Team debuts this Friday, hoping to capitalize on nostalgia for the campy and kitsch namesake TV action series from the 1980s. The original A-Team is fondly remembered (by myself as much as anyone) despite the fact that the series was almost defiantly formulaic, to the point that the recurring episode outline makes up a large portion of the show's Wikipedia entry.

As part of that static plot arc, the A-Team would break their pilot, Howlin' Mad Murdoch (played by Dwight "Lt. Reginald Barclay from NextGen" Schultz), out of a VA mental hospital every episode. The exterior shots of that hospital were filmed at the Sepulveda Veterans Administration Hospital in the North Hills, CA, which at the time was still a functioning VA facility. The Sepulveda hospital was controversially shuttered after the 1994 Northridge earthquake and remains out of VA service to this day.

I say controversially because, while the VA stopped using the Sepulveda hospital as a hospital, the Veteran's Administrations today makes an undisclosed amount of money renting out Sepulveda as a filming location. In fact, one highly rated television medical drama uses Sepulveda as its primary hospital set.

What primetime medical drama is currently filmed at Howlin' Mad Murdoch's old mental hospital?

The surgical soap opera in question is none other than Grey's Anatomy, which uses the former Sepulveda VA hospital for most interior shots of the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital. (Exterior Seattle Grace shots which actually have to look like Seattle are filmed at the office building housing the ABC affiliate in Seattle, KOMO-TV 4.)

That the former Sepulveda VA is structurally sound enough to house film crews but was deemed by the Veterans Administration too earthquake-damaged to serve as a hospital is viewed by many veterans' advocate groups with suspicion. Some argue that the Northridge quake was just an excuse to cut VA costs by closing the Sepulveda hospital -- and now that money-first philosophy has led to the VA renting out Sepulveda as a film set. As yet, none of the efforts to reopen or replace the Sepulveda VA hospital have proven successful.

That's too bad, but perhaps there's hope. San Fernando Valley veterans, you have a problem. If no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Team.

Nerd Word of the Week: Spoiler alert

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:30:00 +0000

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Spoiler alert (n.) - A warning given to an audience that the following content or discussion will divulge plot details of a particular work of fiction. The term originated in online forums devoted to discussing movies, television shows, and books; if you have not seen or read the works under discussion, the spoiler alert warns you to proceed no further in the discussion thread lest you "spoil" the surprises inherent in any future reading or viewing experience. Tossing out spoilers without a spoiler alert is considered a serious breach of netiquette and geek civility -- to the point that Wikipedia articles describing many fictional works are required to exclude spoilers or to clearly segregate such content and mark it with spoiler alerts.

I bring it up because: The long-running plot-complex TV show Lost aired its finale last Sunday, and the web has been overridden with dissections of the series resolution. For those of us that have never seen Lost but may wish to view it on DVD or Hulu someday, the appropriate use of spoiler alerts is much appreciated, as was the case with reimagined Battlestar Galactica, The Shield, The Wire, and Sopranos finales before it. Basically, any cult-favorite show that has ended since the advent of Twitter in 2006 has been subject to a delicate balance of fan commiseration and judicious spoiler-alerting, as divulging too much via a social networking post can earn you ire and scorn from the masses, and divulging too little will miss the point. Such is the online geek paradox.

On how many screens did Star Wars appear when it opened on Memorial Day, 1977? (Truly Trivial)

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Tue, 25 May 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Image by Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) via Flickr

Iron Man 2 enjoyed the fifth best opening weekend in US box office history earlier this month when it raked in $128 million according to Box Office Mojo. The all-time champ (for the moment) in domestic opening weekend sales is The Dark Knight, which barely beat out Spider-Man 3's $151 million with it's own $158 million. Clearly, The Dark Knight had the best opening weekend ever, right?

Not so much.

The most successful movie of all time is Gone With The Wind, even though it ranks 103rd on the list of all-time US movie money-earners. That's because you're confusing gross income with tickets sold. Tickets are way more expensive now than they were in 1939 (or in 1999, for that matter). When you adjust for inflation, Gone With The Wind earned $1.6 billion in the US alone. We don't have opening weekend stats from 1939, but you can bet that Scarlett O'Hara had more to brag about than Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark.

All of those numbers go to prove that the phrase "biggest opening weekend ever" is basically useless, suitable only for empty-headed bragging rights..

No fair, you say, Gone With The Wind didn't have to compete with TV. That was a different era. We agree. But the second-place movie on the inflation-adjusted list is Star Wars at $1.4 billion, and I'm pretty sure there was lots of (crappy) TV in 1977. More to the point, Star Wars didn't enjoy one of the huge advantages all these pointless recording-breaking modern movies use to inflate their numbers: wide releases.

Iron Man 2 enjoyed the widest release in movie history, opening on 4,380 screens. The Dark Knight was second, opening on 4,366 screens. Star Wars originally opened in limited release on a number of screens that was a mere fraction of Batman's or Iron Man's opening screencount.

On how many screens did Star Wars appear when it opened on Memorial Day, 1977?

Star Wars opened on a whopping 32 screens on May 25, 1977. If you double that number and then square it you get 4,096, which is still more than 250 screens less than the number of theaters that gave Dark Knight or Iron Man 2 their vaunted opening weekend numbers. Even Avatar, which was limited by the number of theaters that could support its 3D viewing requirements, opened on 3,452 screens.

Star Wars earned $1.5 million its opening weekend, which still earned it the number one ranking despite its limited release. (Star Wars actually appeared on 43 screens during its opening weekend, as theater owners almost immediately added Saturday, Sunday and Monday showings to deal with the unexpected and extraordinary demand.) When Star Wars finally earned wide release on July 15, 1977, it still only appeared on 757 screens. It nonetheless took home the #1 weekend gross for a second time, earning $6.8 million the weekend it went wide. (Wide, in this case, being less than a sixth the number of screens that Iron Man 2 or The Dark Knight enjoyed.)

If you're curious, Star Wars earned an inflation-adjusted (2009 dollars) $54 million on its limited opening weekend, and $238 million in its wide opening weekend. The latter figure is $80 million more than The Dark Knight earned on six times as many screens, and Star Wars did it after already being out in limited release for almost two months.

Any way you slice it, Star Wars not only invented the summer blockbuster, it still outshines almost every pretender who has ever tried to replicate its success. That's not just serious earning power, that's a timeless example of the truly trivial.

I'm a hacker, not a writer. Can you give me 3 to 5 practical tips on becoming a better writer?

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Fri, 21 May 2010 14:03:00 +0000

Like any other skill, the only way to get better as a writer is to actually write. My buddy David Finch just pointed me to this Amber Naslund post on how to go about the actual work of writing, and I agree with most of it.

I always point out that writing non-fiction is RADICALLY different from writing fiction. I write nonfiction almost everyday and at this point, while it all isn't art, I can pretty much hammer out a decent instructional, referential, or evaluative post on almost anything in an hour or so (excluding research). That comes from having regular deadlines for non-fiction work for the last decade.

Almost none of that writerly muscle memory translates over to fiction, which includes things like character, setting, and plot. Dialogue I can handle, because even my nonfiction stuff has a voice and a cadence to it, so giving that to characters is not so difficult. The structural meta-points of fiction? Those I'm still hacking at.

All of which is to say, if you want to write fiction, practice fiction. If you want to write tech articles practice tech articles. Write blogs; practice blogs, etc. You won't get very good at baseball by practicing basketball, other than simply getting in shape. You hone specific skills for specific results.

As to explicit practical tips, here are a few:

Writing is a habit, just like not writing.
If you want to be a writer, you need to set aside time on a regular schedule and write. I'm a big believer in setting regular wordcount goals -- 300 per day is a good beginner pace, at least 3 days per week -- because it's too easy to "try" to write for an hour and just kill time. Having an output goal keeps you (or, at least, me) from dicking around. The goal doesn't roll over, either. If on Monday I feel the muse and blow out 1000 words, I still owe Tuesday another 300. That doesn't mean ignore the muse, but again, this is about a disciplined habit.
For frak's sake, read. A lot.
To continue the athletic analogy, the best athletes watch tape of their rivals to get better. The best writers are also copious readers, and not just of the genre or style they wish to write. And while I own and have read a few "How To Write" books, nothing is so helpful as reading actual writing. There are skills aplenty to be found in almost any successful writer's output. And if you paid for the writing in question, you know at least one thing about it: It did enough right that someone would pay for it. Figure out what that is and see if you can duplicate those qualities.
Join a writer's group, if only for the deadlines.
This is advice I've personally done a lousy job of following lately, but do as I say and not as I do. To completely exhaust the athletics analogy, the best athletes play against the best competition they can find. And they do it often. Having a writer's group not only exposes you to other people's "game," it also gives you someone to whom you're accountable. To completely invert the athlete analogy, the best aspect of Weight Watchers isn't the meals or the guidebooks, it's the meetings. Having to face your peers and explain why you haven't written anything in the last week or month will do wonders in ensuring that you write something every week or month. There's no better managing editor than peer pressure. Trust me.
Don't wait to be inspired.
The final point I'll leave you with is that the muse is a fickle bitch and you can't live your life on her schedule. Inspiration is fleeting and nebulous; writing is a job. Scott Kurtz over at PvP pointed me to this TED talk from Elizabeth Gilbert, author of "Eat, Pray, Love." It's a must-watch for anyone who does creative work, but especially so if you want to write. You write when it's time to write, inspiration be damned. That's what separates the writers from the wannabes.

Ask me anything

Nerd Word of the Week: Silver Age

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Thu, 20 May 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Silver Age (adj.) - Describes a period in comic book history that saw science-fictional remakes of many famous superheroes, most of them in reaction to the publication of Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, a scathing indictment of comic books as endorsing delinquency, sexual deviance and even communism. The Silver Age birthed many inventive new characters and concepts, but is perhaps best known for the campiness and absurdity of the 1966 Batman television series, which epitomized the worst excesses of the Silver Age aesthetic.

I bring it up because: Today would have been Gardner Fox's 89th birthday. Fox, along with legendary editor Julius Schwartz, almost singlehandedly invented the Silver Age with science-fictional revamps of The Flash, Hawkman, Green Lantern and The Atom. Fox in particular was notorious for sprinkling interesting factoids into his comic works, especially from forensic scientist Barry "Flash" Allen, who often introduced these trivial tidbits as "Flash Facts." Moreover, DC Comics has recently gone to great trouble reinstalling the Silver Age versions of many characters -- including the Fox-created Hawkman, Atom, and Flash -- to some less than enthusiastic response. While the campiness hasn't reemerged, the return of these fondly remembered but often outgrown Silver Age icons is viewed by many (myself included) as a move backwards.

Are you sometimes hesitant to tell people you do social media consulting?

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:22:00 +0000

Yes and no. I'm not embarrassed by the work, because I feel I offer a legitimate service in a burgeoning and profitable field. That said, calling myself a "social media consultant" is often like calling myself an existential astronaut -- all the words in the title sound familiar, but nobody knows what it means. My business card says "online media consultant" because that's a more comprehensible term to the average Joe or Jane.

As to whether I think this is a sustainable business, I don't think so. Not because social media consulting is a scam, but because the skill set is propagating so quickly.

In 1995, you could make really good money designing even the most basic web sites, because web commerce and web marketing was so new and so few people could do it. In those days, simply having a web page was enough. Quality and strategy were optional, and while most web consultants got by offering neither, the few that did have a clue survived, thrived, and now own multimillion-dollar consultancies that are slowly being destroyed by WordPress and Google Apps. That destruction has been fueled in part by the average marketer or publisher knowing what a decent web site looks like and merely needing an intuitive set of tools to make it happen.

Replace the word "web" in the preceding paragraph with "Facebook" and you have the current social media consulting market along with its eventual future. I'd like to think I offer some quality and strategy to my clients, but the point is that eventually everyone will be comfortable with social media tools and will be able to do this work by and for themselves. The role of the consultant in social media is ephemeral and the whole notion of "social media expert" as a widespread specialization has at best 2-3 years of life left in it.

Ask me anything

What fictional search engine is the unofficial Hollywood stand-in for Google?

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

I'm on vacation this week so I'm recycling another of my old Geek Trivia columns for the Truly Trivial question this week. Sue me.

[T]here is something of an open-source pool of brands and trademarks that have made their way into various productions over the years, filling in for companies that might not care for the treatment they’d receive in certain Hollywood plots. The prime example of this is Oceanic Airlines, which has of late been made famous by the genre-bending TV drama Lost. ...

Heisler beer, Morley Cigarettes, and Gannon Car Rentals are other shared, unreal brands that have circulated around Tinseltown in unrelated projects. Of late, however, a new product type has emerged on the plot-device scene — the search engine. Even though Google is now a verb, the “Don’t be evil” folks look unkindly on characters using the search engine for nefarious — or at least unlicensed — purposes on-screen. Thankfully, the unofficial fictional brand vault has a budding Google substitute that TV shows can turn to.

WHAT FICTIONAL SEARCH ENGINE HAS BECOME AN UNOFFICIAL HOLLYWOOD SUBSTITUTE FOR GOOGLE ON TELEVISION?

Get the complete Q&A here.

Nerd Word of the Week: Genericide

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Genericide (n.) - The process of a trademark becoming interchangeable with the type of product the trademark describes, to the point that the trademark is almost totally worthless and legally indefensible. Examples include Band-aids, which are synonymous with any brand of adhesive bandages, Zippers, which are synonymous with any brand of interlocking slide fasteners, and Escalators, which are synonymous with any brand of motorized staircase. All of these previous terms used to be defensibly trademarked, but have since become so popular as to defy being identified with any one company. Next up: Google, which is now a verb and may soon be a genericized trademark.

I bring it up because: Velcro was trademarked 52 years ago today, and its still (barely) holding the line against genericide, forcing imitators to refer to themselves as "hook and loop fasteners." We'll see if Google has the same luck.

What geek-favorite card game was invented as an antipiracy measure?

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Image by Márcio Cabral de Moura via Flickr

It's a busy week and I failed my saving throw versus sloth, so here's a reclaimed Geek Trivia for your minutial pleasure this week:

If one day you find yourself sitting down to pen that long-imagined bestselling science-fiction or fantasy novel and you’re looking for one particular trick that will give your speculative story a sense of reality (and lead to shameless marketing opportunities), just throw in a made-up card game or chess variant that everyone in your fake universe knows, enjoys, and plays with inhuman regularity. You don’t have to make up any actual rules for the game, as your devoted fan base (geeks) will retroactively conjure them based on the clues you drop in the prose — even if those clues don’t make any sense.

Don’t believe me? Then explain how it is that I can find “official” rules for fizzbin, a fictional card game that was fictional even in the Star Trek episode in which it originally appeared? ...

Not all fictional games are just for show, however. One hacker-favorite made-up card game actually served a real-life purpose — it was an anti-piracy measure for a classic video game.

WHAT HACKER-FAVORITE FICTIONAL CARD GAME WAS INVENTED AS AN ANTI-PIRACY MEASURE FOR A VIDEO GAME?

Get the complete Q&A here.

Nerd Word of the Week: Ecopocalypse

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Garmon) — Thu, 06 May 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Image by slworking2 via Flickr

Ecopocalypse (n.) - Collapse of civilization caused by widespread and rapid environmental degradation or change. A subgenre of apocalyptic fiction that focuses on ecological collapse. Sometimes referred to as The Ecopocalypse. Also used as a derogatory (and/or ironic) slang term for human impact on the environment.

I bring it up because: The term ecopocalypse tends to bubble up whenever a major environmental disaster, like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, makes headlines. If you're a bookseller, now would be a great time to stock up on some apocalyptic fic with an environmental (or, at least, post-peak oil) bent, such as Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake or The Handmaid's Tale, The Rift by Walter Jon Williams, or S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire.

Jay Garmon [dot] Net

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