Twitter has jumped the shark

Or: Oh, how the mighty have fallen

I have been a big fan of twitter for many years. I have sent nearly 1400 tweets since I joined the site more than seven years ago. Unlike FakesBook, Twitter had transparency and was completely public.

Was

For the last few years, however, something has become increasingly rotten in the State of Denmark. I have started to see more and more “censorship”, for lack of a better word. It all came to a head a few months ago when Twitter banned Milo Yiannopoulos, apparently for mean things that his followers said (??).

When Donald Trump won the election, I thought that things would improve at “Big Bird”. I was mistaken. Recently I read a story titled “Twitter Initiates Mass Purge Of Prominent Alt-Right Accounts Following Trump Victory”

The real problem is that Twitter’s grievance/abuse standards are applied arbitrarily and unilaterally, which reeks of Political Correctness and Editorializing. Nothing says it better than the following graphic – sorry about the bad language, kids; grown-ups say bad words sometimes.

Image from Twitter. Oh, the Irony…

There is still time to right the ship, so to speak, and to return to the days of *real* tolerance and free speech (including the bits that you don’t like), but given that the leadership and management hasn’t changed, that is not likely.

The writing is on the wall, if you pardon the pun; Twitter’s stock price is not doing well. It occurs to me that once the good folks at “Big Bird” see the tweet containing this story I may well be next for the chopping block. That’s OK. In fact, I would be honored, and it would just prove my point. I have I have already started an account with a competing service called GAB.AI. See you there.

Twitter, wise up, or go out of business. Your Choice

The Un-personing of Milo

Or: Twitter, your slip is showing

I discovered Milo Yiannopoulos online last year. He’s an irreverent, unflappable, vibrant contradiction in terms — a British Gay Conservative, who writes for Breitbart news, and speaks out on the stupidity of political correctness and the insanity of third-wave campus feminism. While I am sometimes concerned by his excessive swearing (it doesn’t bother me, but it makes it difficult for me to share his ideas with friends and family who may be easily offended) I enjoy his style of writing and unabashedly self-promoting YouTube videos highly enjoyable. I find his ability to state the blindingly-obvious-but-politically-incorrect quite refreshing, including:

• Why atheists are wrong, privileged and touchy
• Why gay marriage is a bad idea
• Why Islam is bad for women and gays

In particular, I love his sense of fun, particularly the way he can poke fun at liberals while taking cover behind what he calls  “gay privilege”. This allows him to get away with many things that straight people would be pilloried for.

He is currently in the middle ot a series of speaking engagement at US universities, which he cheekily dubbed “The Dangerous Faggot Tour“, which clearly showed that too many of America’s Colleges, far from being bastions of free speech had an aversion to it when a Conservative speaker says something that challenged their preconceived beliefs — in particular, one rather obese young woman who had a meltdown at one of his talks, then when it went viral, tried to assert that she had a right to privacy after misbehaving in a public place. I will not link to her, just Google “Trigglypuff” if you want to know what I am talking about.

Naturally, his unique brand of mischief-making did not go unopposed. Twitter, in particular, has made it obvious that they’ve got it in for him. Some months ago, Twitter “unverified” him. Verification is a process by which a Celebrity can protect themselves from impersonators by having their “genuine” account identified by a blue checkmark. Milo’s response was to put a red cross where the blue checkmark used to be.

Twitter’s official story was that he was “harassing” other Twitter users. This was strange, as many far more offensive speakers remained verified; I am sure that the fact that all of these miscreants were liberals and Milo was a conservative had nothing to do with it. Yeah, right.

Any road up, the “unverification” did not hurt Milo; his following and his stock continued to go from strength to strength.

Ghost. Busted.

Things came to a head, however, when he wrote a bad review of the new old movie “Ghostbusters”. Like most, this one panned the movie, which has gone on to become an almighty flop. He did not attack any of the actors personally. However, others did so, and a series of vitriolic tweets aimed at Leslie Jones, resulted in her making a complaint to Twitter. She complained, and Milo was banned from Twitter.

Milo’s account was “permanently suspended”, and all of his tweets, past and present, have been removed. Leslie Jones has said that she is leaving Twitter, but thus far, her tweets are still up. To quote Ariana Rowlands: “Twitter will permanently ban popular conservatives for jokes but will leave up ISIS accounts actively recruiting terrorists, and does not equally apply its rules and their punishments” (Source)

The saddest thing about this whole mess is that Twitter loses, Leslie Jones loses, Sony pictures loses, and the only person who wins is… Milo.

And so I concluded with a couple of open letters: one to Leslie Jones, one to Twitter. Enjoy!

---

Dear Leslie

As Milo so eloquently put it. You are the star of a Hollywood Blockbuster movie. Act like one. You are now a public persona, and will reap the benefits – and the brickbats- that go with it. Some are warranted, some are not. It doesn’t matter. But getting upset about mean things that people say to and about you reeks of insecurity, not Star Quality. Free Speech requires a Thick Skin; “Mean Tweets” does not equate to Harassment. People have opinions. They will call you ugly. They will tell you that you look like a man.They may or may not be right. *It doesn’t matter*. You have a block and a report button; use them- or even better, you can retweet/repost them publicly for all the world to see. Sunlight, after all, is the best disinfectant.

Finally, I would advise you to observe the golden rule. Your tweets about white people are every bit as racist as the ones aimed at you. You don’t get to launch arrows at others and then go running to Mommy when a hail of arrows comes back at you.

---

Dear Twitter

One of the reasons that I am on Twitter but not on FakesBook Stalkbook Facebook is because of your transparency. But that transparency is disappearing; lately I have seen more and more left-leaning bias creeping into the platform. Conservatives are censured in a way that liberals are not. Hashtags like #KillAllWhiteMen are considered acceptable, while #KillAllBlackMen would not be. To most well-balanced minds, both are equally racist and should be treated the same way.

The reason for this is simple: A lack of clear bright-line rules that apply to all people, all the time.

• No Direct Physical Threats. Insults whether warranted or not, are not threats or harassment.
  
• A clear reporting, complaints. grievance and sanctioning procedure.
• Clear definitions for what sanctions will be employed and under what circumstances.
• Sanctions for those who mis-use the complaints procedure for nuisance and censorship purposes.
• A mechanism for warning sanctioned users as to exactly what they did wrong, as opposed to the usual woolly statement like “you breached our community guidelines”.
• A clear explanation as to why someone was sanctioned and a clear and transparent presentation of the evidence.

Clarity and transparency are crucial here; anything less will be rightly perceived as editorial bias. When you removed Milo’s checkmark, others whose transgressions were far more egregious remained unpunished. This kind of bias is becoming obvious; it has already led yo your demise, and if left unchecked, it will lead to your eventual demise as a platform and as a commercial enterprise.

Holding Milo responsible for what others have done is wrong on so many levels. Hold people responsible for what they say, but is is wrong to hold them responsible for the actions of others. We have seen some of the vehemence and death threats that angry people (mostly feminists and liberals) have aimed at him; they remain unpunished while he is banned. Please explain this discrepancy.

Your shabby treatment of Milo has done you no favors and won you no fans, while his following has gone from strength to strength. When you ban someone like him, you deprive us of the diversity that we find most enjoyable about your product. It you want to know the real reason why your stock price is taking a dump, that’s it. Remember, Conservatives are wealthier and more generous than liberals. And when they leave, they take that money with them.

Godless and Kingsley

Hollywood, it appears, has an aversion to God. Or originality. Or both.

The Smart Money refused to have anything to do with Mel Gibson, only to find itself flummoxed by the runaway success of “The Passion of the Christ”. Since then there have been many “Christian” movies to grace our screens lately. including offerings such as Fireproof (not impressed), Courageous (Very good) and God’s not Dead (OK, but faintly nonsensical in places). Most of these were small/medium budget movies, and all made a health profit at the box office.

I recently had occasion to watch “Exodus: Gods and Kings”. This film billed itself as a fictionalized account of the Book of Exodus, but it took a lot of liberties with scriptures that are considered fundamental to three of the world’s major religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam:

• Moses was reputedly about eighty years old when he returned to Egypt to liberate the children of Israel. The Directors chose to cast him as a young man.
• Moses’ brother Aaron, who acts as the speaker for the reticent Moses, is not mentioned at all.
• The producers went to great lengths to attempt to explain the plagues of Egypt as natural phenomena wherever possible
• Moses’ repeated warnings and entreaties to Ramses — and the Pharaoh’s hardness of heart — are not mentioned at all.
• Most of the top-billing cast were played by white Americans. Wassup wid dat?
• When God finally showed up in person, it was in the form of a petulant, vindictive little boy, constantly sneering and plotting revenge, that I found fundamentally unbelievable and incompatible with the scriptural character of God. There is nowhere in scripture that God takes joy in killing.

I came away feeling like I had watched a big-budget historical documentary that was trying to prove the non-existence of God. I wasn’t offended in the least, I just didn’t get the impression that I had come face-to-face with the living God of the bible. Whether this is a due  to an error of the filmmakers or a fault in my theology I cannot say.

What I can say is that the producers of this film have taken a diabolical (no pun intended) liberty with the source material that seems almost like a calculated insult to the world’s three biggest faiths. The result fell between two stools, and ended up being neither accurate nor particularly enjoyable.

The best thing that I can say about this movie is that I didn’t pay a penny to see it — it was an in-flight movie. Afterwards I watched the “Shaun the Sheep” movie, wonderful chuckle-fest that was just what I needed to wipe the ghastly taste of this truly bad excuse of a biblical tale from my mind.

A high-tech book-burning

Or: When Feminists attack!

This post is for the grown-ups. It deals with a serious subject, and I exhort the kiddies to stop reading now.

I recently heard of an interesting case regarding one Vincent Vinturi. Mr. V is a blogger and an author, who has written several books that are available on Amazon, on subjects as diverse as Masculinity and Meditation. His latest book, “Overcoming Last-Minute Resistance”, is a treatise on how to persuade a woman to have sex with you.

See, I told you it wasn’t for kiddies… You! Stop reading now! Or it’s off to bed with no supper for you..!

*ahem*. Where were we? Ah, yes… it appears that that some people consider this book to be a “rape manual”. They are, of course, entitled to their opinions, but they are wrong. The premise of this book does not fit into the definition of rape. The book deals with the subject of turning a “No” into a “Yes” – by definition, a rapist would simply proceed without asking the question.

To be clear, like most men, I take a clear and unambiguous stand against rape. It is serious, and should be treated as such. But what I have seen of this book doesn’t advocate rape in any way. But broadening the definition of rape, along with the epidemic of false rape accusations, only serves to trivialize a very serious matter.

From a cursory glance at the table of contents, the book advocates separating those women who are genuinely not interested in sex from those who are as quickly as possible. Far from advocating rape, it is about finding out what a woman actually wants, as opposed to what she says she wants.

Here is an excerpt from Vincent’s Amazon Biography that says it better than I can:

“My work is not about ‘picking up girls’. It’s about *mutual* seduction and becoming an attractive human being without the lying, manipulation and misrepresentation that’s polluted our interactions and taken all the frolicking out of our brief time on this earth.”

In a perfect world, men and women would say exactly what they wanted and proceed from there. But grown-ups know that the world does not work like that, and a good thing too – the mystery and games make it a lot more fun. The elephant in the room that women love to play games; everybody knows this. It’s part of the delightful chase that we call “romance”. Some women talk about sex but are really not interested in doing anything about it. They’re called “teasers”, and that’s OK. Others are interested, but not in you, or not tonight. That’s OK too. But there are others who are interested, but shy, or just playing hard to get. They say “No” when they mean “Yes”, and it takes a wise man to tell the difference between “No, I don’t want to”, and “No, I want to be chased and seduced“.

The feminist solution these days seems to be to require men to ask for permission at every stage of intimacy. This is ridiculous. Not only does it completely ruin what should be a spontaneous and fun act, but it places even more burdens on men who already have to run the gamut of more than 150 points of rejection. This book claims to address that very subject, and aims to help men understand the difference.

One Sara C Nelson, a British Blogger/journalist disagrees. Had it ended there, there would have been nothing to see here, but for some people it is not enough to merely register one’s disagreement with a dissenting opinion. Ms. Nelson (for some reason the “Ms.” appellation always brings to my mind the image of an overweight woman with short hair, comfortable shoes, several cats and no boyfriend)  works for The Huffington Post. She mobilized her employers, who then accused Vinturi of being a Rape Apologist. Not content with that they then left a bunch of fake one-star reviews on Amazon. But wait! there’s more! They then persuaded the publisher to remove the book from its shelves.

What is surprising to me is how a Blogger/Journalist in one country (the UK) can get a book she has not actually read banned in another (the US). Here in the US, free speech is protected, and a cornerstone of free speech is tolerance for dissenting opinion. I find it troubling that someone can get a book banned simply because they have decided that nobody else should be allowed to read it. I am disappointed with Amazon for allowing this to happen. It may even be libel.

I have no dog in this fight. I have no need for the lessons in this book. Mr. V does not need my help; he is selling the book directly from his website. But this kind of childish politically-charged censorship of dissenting opinion does not sit well with me.  I will get in touch with Mr V, ask for a sample  of his work, and see for myself.

Watch this space.

Mind the Store

It would not be entirely unfair to paint me as an Android fanboy. But the word is loaded with negative connotations — perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I am a fan of open standards.

While I like Apple products, their “we-know-best” attitude sometimes leaves me less than enthused. This is perhaps the reason that I have been sporting an Android-based phone for over two years — first a Motorola Droid X2, then a Samsung Galaxy S3, both through Verizon, (damn them, but that’s another story).

Over those two years I have probably spent over $100 in the Android Market, now known as the “Play Store”, much to my annoyance (the earlier name was far more apt, in my opinion). I love the ecosystem that allows a programmer to create something, sell it for a a dollar or two and still make a fortune.

There are, however, three glaring flaws in the Play Store that I have encountered — besides the name, of course — that need to be addressed:

1: You cannot mix credits and cash.

I recently received a credit from a developer as a “Thank-you” for helping to test their game. I was purchasing a $2.99 game and had $2.79 of that credit left. The obvious thing to do would be to use up the credit and charge the remainder to my card… but that is apparently too much to ask – the Play Store’s payment system does not allow “split-payment” purchases.

2: A fifteen-minute refund window is way too short.

A play store purchase may be refunded within fifteen minutes. This makes sense for a quick-download, short-attention-span game like Quell or Cut the Rope, where a quarter of an hour is ample time to ensure that the program works properly on your device, but this is not the case for some “big” games that use a stub program to download gigabytes of data before the game can be played. By the time the download is complete, the refund windows is long gone. Solution: Let the developer decide on the length of the refund window.

More than two hours after purchasing the game and it *still* hasn’t finished loading…

3: You can no longer set an individual app to auto-update.

This used to be possible, but with recent updates to the play store, the only option is the global one, which is NOT what I want. Interestingly, the option is still there on my Nexus 7 tablet, but has disappeared from my phone.

 

 

The strange case of Verizon Wireless and the lost hour

I woke up this morning and picked up my phone. On the screen was a message about Verizon updating my phone. There was only one button , and no way to avoid the update.

When I rebooted my phone, “universal search” (the feature that allows you to search the web and the phone simultaneously) was gone, presumably as a result of the recent Apple/Samsung lawsuit. There was a custom padlock screen showing on boot. This is Verizon’s way of saying that your warranty is voided, though it could also mean that you are card-carrying paid-up member of the phone-hacker community.

I could have lived with that, but root was broken as well… and that is unacceptable. In order to un-break it I had to re-root the phone, a process that involves downloading a Rooted Rom Image and writing it to the phone. I then had to install an OTA Blocker Program ($2.99 from the Android Market) to prevent Verizon from pulling this kind of stunt again.

Everything is now back to normal. The phone works as it did last night, root works, and the boot padlock has gone away.  The whole procedure took me just over an hour; that was an hour of my life that Verizon and their controlling ways have stolen from me and I will not get back.

Don’t get me wrong; OTA Firmware updates are a great idea. That’s how security problems are fixed and new functionality is added, and if you have not rooted your phone, unlocked your bootloader or installed a custom ROM (which would be 99%+ of us), my advice would be to accept the update. However, I have a problem with updates that are more about control than progress, and I have an even bigger problem with updates being rolled out without giving the user a chance to refuse them or delay them to a more convenient time. Microsoft’s habit of auto-rebooting your computer after installing automatic updates – and losing any unsaved work left on the machine – is also unacceptable, for precisely the same reason.

I also have a big problem with useful functionality being retrospectively removed from a phone to keep someone else happy. It’s one thing to shut down a store selling fake Rolex watches, it’s another to roam the streets tracking down folks who bought them and tearing the watches off their wrists – and that is effectively what this is. For some reason, we have somehow surrendered our property rights in the digital realm.

Verizon, I pay you for a phone and a monthly fee to use it on your network. If I want to tinker with my phone, as long as I do not defraud anyone or abuse the network, I should not have to fight with you in order to do it. That should not be your business.

I am your customer.

I am not your product.

You would do well to remember that.

Is eBay… eVil?

I just got an e-mail from our friends at eBay that I felt was worthy of mention. It is a change to their terms of service. Normally these things are just small changes or adjustment, but this one had two things that raised my eyebrows:

The User Agreement contains an Agreement to Arbitrate, which will, with limited exception, require you and eBay to submit claims to binding and final arbitration, unless you opt-out of the Agreement to Arbitrate by November 9, 2012. Unless you opt-out: (1) you will only be permitted to pursue claims against eBay on an individual basis, not as part of any class or representative action or proceeding and (2) you will only be permitted to seek relief (including monetary, injunctive, and declaratory relief) on an individual basis.

Hmmm…. looks like a fairly transparent attempt by eBay to avoid class-action lawsuits. While I am no fan of class-action lawsuits where the lawyer gets $10M and I get a voucher for $0.89 off my next purchase, I don’t like any thing that takes away my right to join one. I also have a bug problem with  compulsory-arbitration clauses. Not only are they unconstitutional (Amendment 7: “In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.“), but there is something of a conflict of interest; if the arbitrator is being paid by eBay I question their ability to come to a fair and unbiased decision.

You don’t need to take any further action to accept the updated eBay User Agreement. If you choose not to accept the new terms, visit this help page for further direction.

And the link points to… TERMINATE YOUR ACCOUNT! That’s not “further direction” that’s “Grasshoppa, time for you to leave…“.You can opt out of the agreement to arbitrate without opting out of the updated user agreement, but they don’t exactly make it easy. Rather than giving you an “Opt-out-of-it-now” link, you are required to opt-out in writing by a specific date. They don’t exactly make that information easy to find, either – so in the interest of public information, here it is.

Sincerely,

Braden Dong, Senior Counsel
Marcus Morissette, Privacy Counsel

Ah. Written by the lawyers – why am I not surprised? Something smells funny here, and the whole thing seems very very sneaky.

Of course, this is all academic to me; earlier this year I decided to top selling things on eBay, since they seem to have become the buyers’ friend and the sellers’ enemy.

But it seems that every time they change their terms they become a little more… evil.

Thanks a lot, Apple!

The iPhone has been out for five days now, and I hate it already.

No, let me back up a little. I don’t hate the iPhone. But I am very annoyed with Apple right now.

You see, when the iPhone came out last Wednesday, Apple released a new version of iTunes. On Friday night Apple’s software update program informed me that the new version – numbered 10.7 – was out and that I should upgrade to it. Seeing as I was running 10.6.3.25, I figured that this was a minor update, so I upgraded. And that was when the trouble started.

You see, I prefer to keep manual control of my library, rather than leaving it up to iTunes to keep track of everything. It’s not that I don’t trust iTunes (I don’t, but that’s not the reason) but because I like to know what is going on. So I use a program called iTunes Library Updater Utility (ITLU) to keep my library up-to-date by removing files that I have deleted and inserting new songs into the library. I have been using this program since 2008, and it has worked flawlessly with iTunes versions 7, 8, 9 and 10… until the new version of iTunes broke it.

I also use a program called iSyncr to synchronize my Android phone with iTunes. Actually it is a suite of programs; a server running on the iTunes PC and two running on the Android (one for wired access, the other is a wireless add-on) I have been using this for about a year, and it has worked flawlessly, keeping my 32GB micro-SD filled with music, and passing the playcount and ratings info back to iTunes. Until iTunes broke that too.

I didn’t realize this until this morning, when I tried to sync my phone with iTunes and it refused to connect. Realizing what the problem was, I had to:

1. Download the previous version of iTunes. I used oldversion, but later found out that the older versions are available from Apple.
2. Uninstall iTunes – the old version would not install over e newer version. Fortunately the uninstallation did not remove the library.
3. Replace the iTunes library with the saved pre-update backup that iTunes took last Friday
4. Install the old version of iTunes.

The good news is that everything works again. The bad news is with the library file replacement in step 3, all of my changes over the weekend have been lost. Podcasts that I had finished are now marked as “new”, and a whole lot of ratings changes that I synced over the weekend have been lost. And that’s an hour-and-a-half of a Monday morning that I will never get back.

 Thanks a lot, Apple

Galaxy SIII – Second Sight

I finally got around to activating the phone today.

First things first; the phone is big. It is one of the biggest phones I have ever seen. I thought that the DX2 was a big beast when I bought it, but this monster makes it look small by comparison. Someone called it “a small tablet with a built-in phone”, and that’s not far from the truth. Folks with small hands — such as Her Ladyship — might find it hard going, but even for me, it feels a trifle over-sized. Oh, and did I mention that it’s big?

The upside of this is that the screen is huge — and exceptionally clear, thanks to the high-resolution screen (1280×720 up from the DX2’s 960×540).

Things I like:

• It is fast. Of course it is never entirely fair to compare a heavy-laden year-old DX2 with a brand new SIII, but the latter boots ICS far faster than the former ever booted Froyo or Gingerbread. The new phone takes less than twenty seconds from the beginning of the animation to the lock screen, another  fifteen or so for apps to settle down to the point where it is usable (according to Usage Timelines). The DX2 takes a hundred seconds to get to the lock screen and another ninety seconds to get settled. This tells me that the DX2’s much-ballyhooed dual-core 1GHz processor is not being employed to its fullest potential…
• The camera comes up in less than a second (and even better, it can be invoked from the lock screen) — the DX2 took at least five, and I lost a lot of beautiful shots because of it. The camera quality is also excellent – blows the DX2 into the weeds.
• Four shortcuts are accessible from the lock screen. Now I have to figure out how to customize them.
• The accelerometer works when the screen it turned off. This means that pedometer apps like accupedo will work on this phone, unlike the DX2, where it quit working as soon as the screen went black.

Things I don’t:

• The screen is a grease magnet – far more than the DX2. After a couple of hours of loading and setting up apps, the screen is filthy. Good thing my T-shirt is clean…
• The automatic screen brightness setting is a little dim. There should be a setting to fix this, but I cannot find it.
• Power button placement is annoying. I am used to the power button being on top. Instead it is on the right side (where the volume control is on the DX2). This means that it is easy to accidentally switch off the phone when trying to change the volume while watching a movie in landscape mode. I’ll probably get used to it, but it’s still annoying.
• Get rid of the shut down/reboot confirmation! I already made two presses to get here, I don’t have to do a third..

More bone-headed moves from Verizon:

• 4G is so fast that I don’t need Wi-Fi, but once a day phone begs me to switch to Wi-Fi, with no way to turn it off. This is particularly galling since I have an unlimited plan. (**Fixed**)
• Stupid, lame-o, non-replaceable Verizon boot animation — the DX2’s Droid animation was far cooler. For Heaven’s sake, the boot-up sound is at least five years old! (**Fixed**)
  
• Major Bonehead move. Of all six of the US carriers offering this phone, only Verizon had the audacity to demand a locked bootloader. For the average consumer, this is no big deal, but for those who want to exercise control over their phones — such as backing up/restoring apps and data, or removing/hiding bloatware — this is a big issue. Coincidentally, much of the bloatware on the machine is supplied buy Verizon, and most of them — including wireless tethering, GPS and visual voicemail apps — represent cash cows for Big Red. This seems to be another plank in Verizon’s new “how-can-we-screw-you-today?” strategy. (**Fixed**)

The good news is that I have succeeded in rooting my phone, but I should not have to resort to hackery in order to gain control of my phone! Verizon obviously prefers consumers to customers.

Love the phone. Love the unlimited data. Somewhat less much love for the carrier.

There is an elephant in the room

More than two years ago, there was a battle royal going on between Amazon and the book-publishing industry. The fight was over who gets to set the price. The general consensus among authors at the time was that Amazon (who wanted to sell e-books at a discounted price of $9.99) was evil, and that the Publishers (who knew the writing business best) should set the price.

At the time, In a blog post entitled “When Elephants Fight” I opined at the time that the publishers should not be allowed to set the price, because they would push prices up and blame the resulting drop in sales on “piracy”

Two years on, e-book prices have gone up, but that has not affected me. Although I have purchased two Kindles since then (and run Kindle software on several other devices), I have not spent more than $3.99 on a Kindle book.

Oh, and the DOJ has hauled half a dozen of the major publishers, along with “Co-conspirator” Apple, into court.

As Jim Carrey once said: “I’m sick of being right”