MyVerbalOutlet

Amazon and one of the largest book publishers got in a fight last weekend over what the pricing on ebooks should be and as a result Amazon stopped selling the publishers books directly and only allowed sales by third parties.  Buying books from Amazon is very convenient and they usually have the best price on new hardback books. Amazon’s pricing on new hardbacks has enabled me to order several  in the last few months that I would had to wait on paperback copies of otherwise. For this I love buying books from Amazon.

I have been an avid reader since the 6th grade; I love books. As someone who makes their living through technology I have been fascinated by ebooks and ebook readers. Amazon’s Kindle platform and Apple’s upcoming iPad are very cool devices. I however will not be using them as ebook readers anytime soon for several reasons.

1. I love books. I love holding a book in my hands.
2. I reread books I love. I have several series of books I have reread many times.
3. When I buy a book I own a physical copy and no one else can tell me what I can and cannot do with it.
4. I am not dependent on a third party corporation or reader to be able to read what I have purchased.

For ebooks to be attractive to me they would have to have the following attributes.

1. Be cheaper than the print books.
2. Be available within a reasonable time frame of the books release.
3. Be unencumbered by formats that restrict my use of the ebook on the platform of my choice.

Here are some articles with commentary by some of the authors that were effected by Amazon’s actions over the weekend.

Charles Stross: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/01/amazon-macmillan-an-outsiders.html
Cory Doctorow: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/29/amazon-and-macmillan.html
John Scalzi: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/01/30/a-quick-note-on-ebook-pricing/

I listened to the Herding Code podcast number 69 today and it was bad. The guest Scott Bellware was ostensibly talking about the difficulties of working with what he called “HTML specialists” and everyone else calls designers. However he talked in such generalities and used such vague examples that he made no sense whatsoever for almost a half hour. Once he started talking a little less like a consultant trying to flim-flam his audience it almost became listenable. I hope in the future the Herding Code guys try and elicit more concrete examples from their guests instead of letting them ramble on.

Today is the big Apple press event where all the rumors say Apple will be introducing a tablet computing device. What I am hoping to see is iPhone OS 4 and an updated iLife suite of software. I am reserving judgement on the tablet until I see Steve Jobs demo it.

Scott Guthrie wrote a very good article on about how to have a reasoned technical debate in response to the recent Web Forms / MVC flamewars that have been happening across the internet. Although I fall into the MVC camp it was good to see the Microsoft VP of the Developer Division try to calm people down. I believe Scott was trying to explain that both technologies are valid approaches to web development and that choosing one over the other for a project is not a reason to engage flamewars.

I have seen a lot of trashing of MVC by Web Forms adherents lately.  Web Forms advocates arguments break down into two categories reasoned opinions and FUD.  Here are some of the reasoned arguments I have seen.

• they are already comfortable with the Web Forms page lifecycle
• they don’t want to lose their investments in server controls that they have purchased or developed

Here are some of the arguments that just seem like FUD to me.

• Web Forms are better for larger projects
• Web Forms are more productive

Developers that have a lot of experience with Web Forms and a large investment in doing development using the Web Forms model and aren’t interested in MVC should stick with Web Forms. These are valid reasons for sticking with mature technology that isn’t going away anytime soon.

The other arguments however fall into the FUD category. Having just deployed a good size site built on ASP.NET MVC it works just fine for large projects. My team was definitely more productive using MVC than we would have been using Web Forms. Developers who are looking for more control over what is output to the page and a more agile development style should learn more about MVC.

When it comes to debating the merits of Web Forms and MVC the MVC camp is just as guilty when it comes to the religious wars that technology debates seem to turn into. Those who have made the switch to MVC really can’t understand why someone would stick with Web Forms and the limitations they impose on the developer. MVC developers see the page lifecycle and server controls as limitation while Web Forms developers see them as benefits. So what is really going on is developers trying to protect their ego’s by denigrating the choices others have made. This is basically a variation of the Emacs versus vi text editor wars.

It was nice to see someone of Scott Guthrie’s status in the community telling everyone to use their heads and try and use reasoned arguments and not go around blowing your stack at people who happen to disagree with you.

Update: Ian Cooper has written up a fantastic MVC or Web Forms comparison following up on Scott Guthrie’s article. Ian Cooper does a really great job summing up the argument for MVC and where Microsoft web development practices are going.

I have become quite a fan of word games recently, mainly Words With Friends on my iPhone along with the classic Scrabble.  I got sucked into playing Words With Friends and that motivated me to pickup Scrabble. My son who is almost ten years old loves playing Scrabble with me. We used to play board games together more but then we got out of the habit as he outgrew little kids games. I have really enjoyed the family time we have shared playing together. If you are looking for something to do with your kids as a family during a the very cold Midwestern winter, board games are a great option.