William Shakespeare, circa 1595, read as an eBook from BlackMask.com

All I remember from Western Civ class about King John is that he lost much of England’s holdings on the continent, thereby gaining the moniker “Lackland,” and that he was forced by his nobles to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede. In Shakespeare’s history, this latter event is not even mentioned. The play is much more concerned with the succession, and the murder of his nephew Arthur.

As a story, it seems rushed (even for a play). John’s faults are portrayed through a flurry of failed diplomatic maneuvers and battles in France. His excommunication, and murder of Arthur seem more an inevitable consequence of his other failings than crimes in and of themselves. His ignoble death, too, has the air of inevitability about it

Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Penguin Books, translated by Lucia Graves, 2004.

This is a good thriller set in Barcelona, and touching on love, idealism, power, and books.

The story starts out feeling like a literary mystery, perhaps with a touch of magical realism ala Borges’ Library. However, it rather quickly becomes a mystery involving an author, a boy who gradually falls deep into a story that involves him and his friends in a recapitulation of history.

J. K. Rowling, 2005, Scholastic Press

Christ, I read this back in July, and am only writing about it now.

I’m hoping that JK knows what she’s doing. It seems like Order of the Phoenix was an awfully long book for what it did to advance the plot arc. After reading Half-Blood Prince, it almost feels like Order should have had half the material of Half-Blood, so that the next book won’t be rushed.

So with no further ado, here’re my SPOILER FILLED predictions for the next one:

• McGonnagle is given the temporary Headmaster position at Hogwarts.
• We will learn that Regulas Black managed to gather up, and disable pretty much all but one of the outstanding horicruxes (horicruxen?).
• The remaining horicrux was being kept at the Black Residence at the time of Regulas’ murder. This horicrux is none other than the locket which Harry & co. failed to open during their time at 12 Grimmauld Place.
• Kreacher manages to get this locket into his “nest” during his artifact rescuing efforts.
• Mundungus Fletcher, during his wholesale looting of the place, gets the locket, and sells it to someone. It ends up in the hands of the Malfoys.
• Dobby finds out about this through some house-elf channel or at a SPEW meeting or something, and the news is duly reported to the Order of the Phoenix.
• Draco Malfoy can’t handle being a Death Eater, and/or the experience with Dumbledore on the Tower gives him severe doubts. Before the senior Malfoys recognize the horicrux for what is, Draco goes to Snape for help/moral support/inspiration. Snape obtains the horicrux.
• While the Order is trying to destroy/deactivate the horicrux, Death Eaters (sans Voldy) pounce on the location, and a battle ensues. Neville somehow fumbles something, causing the explosive destruction of the horicrux, and probably taking out Bellatrix Lestrange as well.
• Snape betrays the worst of the Death Eaters, and the Order of the Phoenix destroys many of them and sends a batch to Azkaban.
• Harry has his showdown with Voldy, and it’s not going well, but Ginny dives in to take the fall for Harry, and their combined love (and magical forces) defeat Voldy.
• Book ends with Snape teaching the Defense Against the Black Arts class, and Harry teaching something like Divination.

In the not-so-distant future, the average person will find information falling into one of three categories:

1. Forbidden Information (circuit diagrams, satellite ephemeris, “intellectual property,” etc.)
2. Purchased Information (“Entertainment,” music, movies, games)
3. Pushed, Mandatory Information (advertising, propaganda)

Forbidden information, while available to some small group in order to perform their jobs, will be increasingly restricted under the twin guises of Intellectual Property and Homeland Security. Within twenty years, it will be illegal to design even simple circuits outside of sanctioned workplaces; similarly, computer programming will require licensing and security clearances.

Purchased information will be controlled by The Almighty Google Corporation (TAGC). Even information that people are permitted to create on their own will only be sharable to the world through a Google-controlled mini-payment system. Purchased information will also be inextricably meshed with Mandatory Information — to view your cousin’s wedding pictures, you will be obligated to view advertising from banquet companies or wedding registry providers, or perhaps even a Public Service Announcement on the evils of divorce.

The twist on all this is that bandwidth will be free. TAGC will have the world blanketed in a high-speed wireless network. You’ll site down in an overpriced coffee chain, open up your computer, and immediately be connected to virtually unlimited bandwidth so you can download as much Entertainment as you can afford. TAGC will, of course, use you location and search histories to inform you that you’re only a mile from a franchise of your favorite Bagel place, and it’s nearly lunchtime, and if you go now, you won’t get anxious and depressed later, so you can quit taking Paxil (that is why you were searching for information on the side-effects, isn’t it? Admit it. You sent a Gmail Message to your doctor on the subject too). What’s more, on the way, you’ll pass a Multinational Flower Distributor Outlet on the way, and you might want to keep in mind that you had a bit of a spat with the significant other (based on the frequency of the Gmails the other day, and the mood-assessor’s analysis of the vocabulary used), so this would be a good opportunity to patch things up — we would have recommend the Fancy Chocolatier across the way, but your significant other has been searching for diet information, so better play it safe…

I occasionally get asked about Space Trader, a great game for the Palm originally by Pieter Spronck. Several years ago, I helped him write some of the code that was released as version 1.2, way way back in October of 2002.

Evidently, version 1.2 doesn’t run on the Treo 650. I don’t even have a Palm development environment at the moment, so I haven’t had a chance to fix the code that crashes it. But never fear! It’s Open Source, and someone going by the name of DrWowe fixed it. In addition, it looks like Pieter has fixed a few outstanding bugs (that all look like they were in code I wrote… how embarrassing).

Read all about it at:

http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t=55952
http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/p.spronck/picoverse/spacetrader/STDownload.html