Bebook is an e-reader that is capable of reading a vast amount of formats and has a lot of capability. What follows is my review of this product based on my own use and experience with it.
Bebook with a pen for comparison
So it’s been more than a month now since I bought my first e-reader, a Bebook. I was triggered to this purchase when a colleague brought in his Sony Reader to work and happened to bring it to the resident geek (me) to showoff. Needless to say I was blown away as to how far the technology had progressed and I knew immediately that I had to have one myself.
While my first contact with an e-reader was the Sony one which looks very spiffy, I knew I wasn’t going to get that one as I don’t like to support a company which treats its customers as criminals. Instead I looked around to see which system would fit my budget and be as open as possible, which means that it wouldn’t try to lock me in to their own stores and it could read as many formats as possible.
I was initially considering the Iliad but I gave it up due to the hight price tag, my other choice was between the Amazon kindle and the HanLin Ebook but I quickly turned down Amazon once I figured out that I would have to basically only read what I could buy from Amazon. HanLin with its wealth of supported formats and low cost was the obvious choice for me. Bebook is simply the brand of this model I chose as it comes from many different distributors.
So I bought mine for €325 (Which was a bit more expensive than the price displayed on the MobileRead wiki) from the main site for the product and to my surprise it was at my place in less than a week.
So now, after quite a bit of using it, I feel I can provide an informed review from my perspective.
Bebook displaying a pdf page
Reading in General
For someone who reads a lot, reading on the monitor screen is a bit of a pain. It’s not too comfortable for the eyes and it’s not very easy to read when you’re not at your desk. As I like to read on trips, outdoors and on the bed, using a laptop was out of the question. Not only is it not comfortable in all situations, but the battery barely lasts. Not only that, but with bright enough light, you can’t read at all.
The bebook (and anything based on e-ink and e-paper technology like all e-readers these days) allows you to carry a portable book which has most of the benefits of paper, like the ability to read it in the sun, lack of glare and portability and the added benefit of the gigantic amounts of space that are available for electronic storage.
For the casual or avid bookworms among us, it means that you have a book-sized device which can contain thousands of books and you can still read them as you would any other book.
Organization and Use
The books in your Bebook are organized in folders as per a normal hdd. Indeed, when you connect it to your machine, the contents are displayed as a normal USB drive which allows you to use the device without needing any special software or specific OS. The later fact, that I can use my Bebook on my GNU/Linux without any issues whatsoever is a very big plus for me.
Other than your folders and subfolders, the Bebook provides you the ability to look through the recent books you had opened so that you can easily return to what you were reading in case you were navigating elsewhere. And finally since you can put an SD card in, you have the ability to have multiple SD cards for multiple book collections (as if one 16Gb card wouldn’t be enough that is).
Displaying the Chapter Menu
Within books, if they are created properly, you have the capability to jump to chapters and subchapters. Most file formats other support such a function and this means that if you have a book with, say, multiple stories, you can easily use the navigation to jump to the exact one you wish.
As you read books, you have the capability to set electronic bookmarks which allow you to not only save a position you were in so that you can return to it if you need to go out (which is done automatically when you enter a book anyway) but you can also use them to mark specific locations in the book so that you can find the in the future (say to mark a good quote and such). Unfortunately at the moment it does not support highlighting or anything similar which would have been a very useful feature.
You have also various other capabilities like 3 levels of zoom and the ability to jump to the front and end of any book but these are not things you use very often in my experience.
Display and filetypes
The bebook supports quite a lot of filetypes for displaying content but I can’t say that at the moment any of them is perfect. To some degree I’ve discovered issues with most of them, but fortunately they are minor enough to not create a big issue with reading. I’ll list some of the types I’ve tried out and the various problems I’ve encountered.
PDF: A well constructed pdf ebook in displays perfectly and this is the reason why I use this format the most. With the Capability of Open Office to not only export documents to pdf format but also construct metadata such as chapters and comments, I have the ability to create documents for perfect reading pleasure ((I will write up a guide for this so stay tuned if you wish to see my method)) .
Reading in max zoom (landscape)
Unfortunately at this point PDF documents still have an annoying bug where differently formatted text is not displayed if it was not in the page the document opened. This means that If you open a document in a page with no bolded text and later on you find such a text in the document, you will instead be looking at a blank space. There is a workaround but we’re still waiting for the devs to fix this once and for all.
A thing that you should be aware about pdfs in Bebook however is that A4 pdfs (Which is what you will most likely download from non-ebook specific sites) will be displayed with very very small text size, which is practically unreadable. That is because Bebook tries to fit one page of text, into one page of the bebook shrinking the text as appropriate. This is why you need specially prepared pdf documents in order to read comfortably. If you are stuck with A4s however, you can still read them by making use of the the zooming function at maximum. You will need to hold the bebook in a landscape position but that’s all.
RTF: Many people in the fora swear by this format since it does not have the annoying disappearing bug as the pdfs do and you have many more options for zooming. However I do not prefer it since it has another bug which removes all empty lines (making paragraphs hard to distinguish), it does not display images and it does not support chapters.
Still, it’s the easiest format to create files for so it’s certain to remain popular.
Selecting among document types under lamp light
HTML: It is a great benefit that one can easily save a page from the internet into a native html document, tranfer it to his e-reader and then read it at his pleasure. I admit that a major reason why I selected the Hanlin model was that it could read html files without hassle and thus it would allow me to read my rss content on the go.
Of course it’s not without its share of problems. Bebook still has difficulties displaying apostrophes and some other special characters but not everywhere. Some documents I can read without any hassle at all. At the moment, html displaying still needs some ironing but they are generally readable.
FB2: This is a newer format pioneered by Russian science fiction fans. To this day, this is the one I’ve found to be displayed the best of all and giving the most features (many zoom levels, chapters, images and more). It would have been my choice of format but unfortunately it has a major disadvantage for me: I’ve yet to find a decent file converter and most instructions about it seem to be in Russian. As such, I only have to wait until it has matured a bit more and more options exist. Still, as a fan-initiated option, it is certain to get a lot of features that are useful for the reader.
EPUB: This is really what I’d like to use most, as it’s an open format which is aiming to become a standard for ebooks. As a result it has a lot of data included in its XML which can be made use of for the benefit of the reader and it’s certain to remain free from the interests of a corporations, unlike say pdf files.Unfortunately, for all those benefits, the parsing of epub files still needs work from the developers as it seems to have similar problems with html files. Special characters are screwed and text seems to acquire and lose empty spaces seemingly at random. Once this is fixed I’ll certainly start using it though as not only does it support a lot of features like fb2, but I also have an platform free open source convertor and excellent library software available.
Other Tidbits
Look ma. No hands!
Among other things, Bebook stands out for its amazing battery life. Due to the page display technology, no energy is required to display a page once it has been drawn. This means that as long as you don’t perform any functions with the device, it consumes no energy at all. And this is why the developer does not count the battery-life in hours but in page-turns, of which the Bebook can achieve over 9000 before it requires a recharge. Of course, with the pages holding less text than usual due to the size, this does not easily repressent normal books pages but from personal experience, I can say that that means usually about a month of constant use.
One of the things I love with having an e-reader is that I can actually read a book without using my hands. I simply lay it on my feet or blanket in a comfortable position and then I only need to use my arm to switch the page when I’ve finished. Compared to a normal book which you always have to keep in an open and upright position forcefully, this avoids getting tired after a while (as I know I do) from simply keeping your arm in a non-relaxed position.
Another loved feature is how I can now easily put down a book without having to worry about marking my page or accidentally closing it and losing my place. I can either simply put it down and know that when I pick it up, it will simply be waiting for me or, if I’m afraid of pushing a button accidentally, I simply press the key-lock button and put it in my pocket. I can’t explain how much I love that I don’t have to fold page corners or hunt for the bookmark.
Conclusion
For me the Bebook is a perfect tool, especially since I wish to read a lot of texts that already exist in free form online and see no reason to pay for something that is public domain. Add to that the number of interesting online essays that I come in contact with on a daily basis and for which I simply do not have the will to stay on the desk in order to read them, and you can see why it’s practical.
By choosing the Bebook among others, I now know that I can have access to literature without having to appease the manufacturer of my device. I can make use of the best format that fits me and if the original developers prove to slow in improving the firmware, I can simply move to free software alternative which already looks very promising.
Even though this was a generally expensive purchase, I haven’t regretted it for an instant. Each week I discover a new thing that I love about using an e-reader and it has already made me start reading much more.
Hopefully this review has given you a good impression of the device and all the benefits it can provide. If you are considering buying the same model as I have, then you can simply use my email address mail@dbzer0.com as a promo code to get a €25 discount. It’s a bit late now for a Christmas gift, but it would make a great gift (even to yourself) nonetheless.
In recent months, outsourcing one’s blog comments to a specialized comment engine has become quite trendy for many people. Of those specialized engines, two are gathering the most publicity, Intense Debate and Disqus. I jumped onto this comments outsourcing bandwagon about half a year ago and my choice was Intense Debate Comments (IDC from now on). Not only have I not regretted at all but I’ve become such a staunch evangelist for this system that I have made quite a few converts 🙂
So what is this post about? Well, yesterday, Friar Zero asked my via email why I preferred IDC over Disqus. The simple answer is that IDC was the one I stumbled onto first, quite randomly while using the Get Satisfaction support (GSFN from now). I discovered Disqus shortly after that but since I had already taken IDC for a ride, I saw no reason to start all over again and Disqus was not also using GSFN so as weird as it sounds, that was a major reason for me at the start.
But of course that’s not a proper reason and I think it’s time for me to actually write in detail why I preferred one over the other. And since I’m doing that, I thought I might as well make this my first meme and perhaps trigger others to explain for themselves why they use their current choice. This will hopefully create a body of opinions which might give bloggers enough information about each option from all sides of the argument, to make an informed decision.
So the rules of the Comment Wars meme are the following:
Declare which system you prefer and perhaps give a short history of your decision.
List the reasons of why you prefer you current system choice over the direct competitor (If you’re using IDC, your competitor is Disqus and the other way around).
(Optionally) list the reasons why you prefer your current system over your blog’s default comment system (WordPress, Blogger or Typepad most likely). If you’re still using your default system, instead list the reasons why you consider it superior to both IDC and Disqus.
Link to the person who tagged you for this meme.
Link to any other people who are using any third-party comment system of whom you care to know why they chose as they did. You can also link to any people who are still using the built-in comment system and you want to know why. Make sure to leave them a comment or send an email to inform them that they have been tagged.
So without further ado
Why I prefer Intense Debate over Disqus
Some Horrible Threading in Disqus
1. The threading looks and works much better
The original thing that drew me to IDC was the capability to have threaded comments and this is still the thing that breaks or makes the deal for me. IDC threads simply look natural, with the little arrow pointing to the reply below, with the reply being just a tad to the right (so as to allow a lot of threading before you run out of space) and where the end result just looks natural.
On the other hand, Disqus threading, to me always looked ugly. Blocky comments which simply begun below and quite a bit indented which had the result of quickly running out of space. This became painfully obvious when I participated in a lengthy discussion through disqus and after the 13th reply, it stared becoming very annoying to continue (sample on the right)
On the contrary, in the Division by Zero, I’ve held a 30 deep-thread going without any major inconvenience. Granted, it helps that I have a variable width template (why waste screen real-estate) but it is mostly because of the way IDC conserves space and builds the thread.
It would be impossible to hold a 130-reply thread going without good layout and the fact that I did and it’s actually readable from a visitor’s point of view, is a major success.
The only thing missing (from both systems) is a way to connect a reply to the parent comment, but IDC already has the collapse thread function and I know they’re working on better solutions.
2. They seem to innovate in the correct direction
While both systems have taken a generally similar path in features, and even though IDC came later to the party, IDC seems much more full in features that Disqus. I’ve been seeing a lot of new features such as the recent ability to paginate comments in order to keep the page load fast, or the capability to keep your wordpress comments synced both ways with IDC.
I do not know what the recent innovations of Disqus have been to tell the truth as I don’t pay attention to them so I can’t really compare the relevant speed they advance. A quick look at their blog tells me they do provide a lot of good stuff as well but I get the impression that they are more interested in making more fancy features rather than strengthen and make the comments themselves as good and solid as possible.
3. Email notifications rock
By now, I’ve gotten email notifications for replies by both systems (and from builtin solutions) and I can safely say that IDC was the best for the following reasons.
They send a notification immediately after a reply is posted to a thread below your comment. That is, if you leave a comment and someone replies to it, you get a notification. If, after 3 days, someone replies to the reply to your comment, you are still notified, as this is continuing from a point you raised. I find this great to keep a conversation live and going ((It’s been a while since I got such a notification as I generally comment on my own blog where I get an email for everything. Last time I remember, this functionality was the case but it may have changed since)).
On the other side, Disqus seems to send notifications only every 30 minutes or so (thus some times passes before you get informed that you got a reply, and by then you might have gone to do something else) and then you only get notifications if someone responds directly to your comment. You don’t get informed if someone continues the discussion that you started.
The email notification includes your response to that comment as well, so you can immediately see the context of what they are replying to. This is quite important as it’s very often that I do not remember what I was saying at the time.
It allows you to reply by email. Granted, so does Disqus, but not the built-in systems.
This is more of a personal preference than anything else but it really made my day when I learned about it. To clarify, Automattic are the makers of WordPress, the Blogging software the Division by Zer0 stands on and, for me, is the best you can use. That IDC is now backed by the skills and expertise of those people gives me much optimism about the future.
And since WordPress is a Free Software, you never know, perhaps we’ll be able to convince the IDC people to finally liberate their code (it’s for their own good after all 😉 )
To tell you the truth, I can foresee Disqus being acquired by WordPress’ rival in the blogging battlefield: Blogger/Blogspot, or more accurately, Google. If this happens, things will get…interesting.
5. They use Get Satisfaction and their support guys are top-notch
GSFN has become one of my favourite places to seek support and it was actually how I came to discover IDC as I explained at the start. Their support guys are still active over there and they generally provide excellent support (although a few times I did go for weeks without solution). I’ve had issues which were reported only by me actually looked by a developer to find a solution very quickly. Although some times I really felt like pulling out my luxurious hair, eventually a solution was found and the than all was right in the world again. But no matter what, very rarely will you find a support person volunteer to help you scour your blog for possible problems just to make sure that everything is ok.
Unfortunately I do not know how quick the Disqus support is but the fact that they use their own support forum generally does not make me happy.
Another big benefit of GSFN is the ability to separate ideas from other support issues and get an idea of how many other people want the same idea to happen. Quite a few of the things I’ve proposed in the past have already been implemented and the devs generally pay attention to what their userbase asks for. This counts.
6. They integrate very well with WordPress
At the moment of speaking, the IDC wordpress plugin merges very well with the platform. Not only can you manage your comments in the same way as before (bulk moderation etc), but it also gives you some extra functionality, like the ability to reply to comments from within WordPress moderation or filter by author.
I won’t claim that the plugin is perfect as I have suffered quite a bit through it (I was testing it since the alpha) but I can safely say that for most people it should work flawlessly and if you have a problem they’ll be able to fix it for you quickly 😉
And with these six points, I finish my reasons on why I prefer IDC over disqus. Very shortly now, I’m going to present…
Why I prefer IDC over WordPress’ built-in comments
1. IDC has threading
As I said, this is a deal-maker for me. While wordpress can achieve threading with plugins and the newest 2.7 has it built-in by default, in my site it never looked nice and you could not thread more than once (or the theme broke and I couldn’t fix it). IDC worked out of the box, and much much better than I could ever imagine. Indeed, I was so impressed with the Threading capabilities of IDC that I could now change my Comment policy to allow discussions to flow much better.
2. Email Notifications
While wordpress can do this with plugins again, it doesn’t do email replies.
3. I can keep my site is less bloated
WordPress can indeed handle email notifications and threading and whatnot but all of these are extra code that needs CPU power to run and on a shared hosting like mine, every little bit counts. Granted, IDC hasn’t been the fastest kid on the block until now, but recently the devs put it on a diet and with some new comment organization features, they’ve made it much faster to load.
That means I can get all these functions and anything more the developers cook up, without having to worry about updating 3- or 4 different plugins which might break each other or slowdown the site.
Resolution
In my eyes, IDC is and will remain the better choice for most people who want something superior than what comes with the box. I’m certain that the competition with Disqus will remain heated but this only benefits us all in the long run
Below you will find a poll where you can vote, as a blogger or as a commenter, which system you prefer. If you take part in the meme, feel free to link here for others so that we may get a bigger view.
[poll id=”4″]
And finally, to tag some people to get some opinions and spread this meme. I’ve tried to tag a nice spread of systems to get various opinions on this.
The Barefoot Bum (who I know had IDC but removed it for the native blogger’s system) – Update: TBB is not interested in this meme, so I’m replacing him with…
This happened to me: my parents, old-time lefties, named me “Karl Marx” — they apparently thought it would not be a problem, as society seemed to be moving into a groovy, understanding time (late 60s). They, uh, thought small-mindedness was a transient cultural trait, as opposed to an enduring human characteristic, particularly among junior-high kids.
Boy, were they ever wrong! It took a few years, particularly because we — duh! — moved to rural Idaho in the interim, but around 5th grade the other kids figured it out, and I was cooked. History class was always brutal, and there are probably hundreds of school yearbooks with a hand-drawn bushy beard obscuring my face.
It got easier in high school, as it was kind of an edgy name, but at age 17 I rushed over to the county court and changed my name. I made my father pay the court fees, for obvious reasons.
This happened to me: my parents, old-time lefties, named me “Karl Marx” — they apparently thought it would not be a problem, as society seemed to be moving into a groovy, understanding time (late 60s). They, uh, thought small-mindedness was a transient cultural trait, as opposed to an enduring human characteristic, particularly among junior-high kids.
Boy, were they ever wrong! It took a few years, particularly because we — duh! — moved to rural Idaho in the interim, but around 5th grade the other kids figured it out, and I was cooked. History class was always brutal, and there are probably hundreds of school yearbooks with a hand-drawn bushy beard obscuring my face.
It got easier in high school, as it was kind of an edgy name, but at age 17 I rushed over to the county court and changed my name. I made my father pay the court fees, for obvious reasons.
On every tax form, university application, and — most humiliating — job or credit application, I am required to put “Karl Marx” as a previous name, for background checks. Thanks Mom & Dad!
Other than that, it’s just a family joke these days, and even my high-school classmates have tired of it at reunions.
To all new commenters (of which I’ve been getting a lot recently) I would like to make a suggestion. You have probably noticed that I have a javascript based comment system ((Actually, you can still comment even if you have javascript deactivated, but it doesn’t thread and so you get comments very disconnected)) and there’s a lot of threading going on. This is very useful for longwinded conversations where many points are discussed at once but it has the problem that it’s not as easy to find when you’ve been replied to.
The solution to that exists. When you comment, you have the option of providing your email address, which I notice that most people do not fill in, I guess because of concerns about spamming. That’s not a problem in itself but I wanted to point out the benefit you have when you do provide it. Mainly that you get email notification about new replies to your own comments.
The way it works is this: If you’ve filled in an email address, whenever someone responds to a comment you made directly, by using the “post reply” button directly under your comment (not the one in the end of the comment list), an email is dispatched to your address informing you that someone replied to your comment and also quoting what you had said (to jolt your memory).
At this point, you can follow the provided link which takes you immediately to the new comment, so that you may reply directly, or you can reply by simply replying to the email itself (that is, no need to visit the site at all). ((The later option is still a bit flaky sometimes but in general it should work.))
The biggest advantage thus is that you can continue in the conversation without having to take any extra action by yourself like subscribing to the comment RSS or visiting repeatedly to check if any new replies have been posted. It allows makes the discussion to progress faster and more intensely (pun intended)
There is also one side benefit to providing an email address in that if there is something wrong (as was the case when the “see more replies” link broke) I can send you a direct email to inform you that no, your comment is not lost or deleted (as many assumed) and I’m working on fixing the problem.
So that’s all, if you can, I would ask you to provide an email address so that you don’t lose track of the conversation and you can easily continue without having to scour through the comments.
I’m aware that you may have a valid concern about providing the email that I have not considered and perhaps we can find a workaround. So if you still do not wish to use it, I’d love to hear why.
The great thing about db0 is that he made me really strive to refute what he was saying. Always reading material by people who agree with you is easy. Reading disagreeing opinion is difficult. db0 has made me think about the solidity of my position for a day now. Every road I’ve gone down has its problems.[…]
Personally, as a blogger, this is one of the best comments anyone can make about what I write. I do not write to simply reinforce your own preconception and solidify what you already believe. I criticize in order to create discussion. I write what I think in order to make others think as well.
I’ve been brutally assaulted in discussions by the vocal minority of both Marxists and Misians because I challenged their core beliefs and opinions, but as long as some people in the silent majority get to thinking (even if they dismiss what I say eventually), then I consider my work as a job well done.
So thank you Eric for the kind words. Opinions like these is what keeps me going and makes it all worthwhile at the end of the day. Even if in the end you can refute my arguments, you will know that your ideas more solid than before. I hope that in the 3000 people that visited the Division by Zer0 from mises.org these days, there are a few more “Erics”.
I provide to you a sample of AnCap civility for your amusement 😉
This guy admits he’s no economic or marxist sholar, yet he’s calling our theorist hollow!? What a moron!
No, I said that your systemsounds hollow. Learn to read?
He also has a laughable article on his site trying to debunk Rothbard’s “Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature”
The only laughable thing about this article is Rothbard himself really. What a douchebag.
Yawn. Another crank. Let him “refute” to his heart’s content. Just more nonsense to ignore for me
Not bored enough to write a comment about it obviously. But I also got the crank title at least.
Like most marxoids dedicated to proving that capitalism is evil because if the worker didn’t work for a wage the worker would starve, the role of the people who actually sell food is mysteriously overlooked.
Marxoid? Ok Misoid, I do not ovelook the role of people who sell food at all. If they are the intermediary for selling the item, then they simply pay the worker for the food he produced. Their labour is the act of selling and they should get to keep the full suplus value they create with that.
In short, this moron does not know what he is talking about.
Thank you. Hugs and kisses back.
The site also seems to have been designed to make reading a chore, irritating like chalk on a blackboard.
Does my mother smell of Elderberries too?
Who gives a damn if some commie loser wastes his time jostling with chimaeras he made up?
Who indeed.
So there you have it. And this is simply the product of half a night’s gnashing of teeth. I can’t wait to see what more beautiful gems of indignation I’m going to receive.
All is not bad though, I already had 2 civil comments so there is hope that not all AnCaps are twats. Nevertheless, I’m glad I put up my warning to them yesterday. It might reduce the number of inane comments I get.
To all anarcho-capitalists, Libertarians, Ron Paulites, Randroids and whoever else comes here to defend your idols and your ideologies, take heed of what I write here so that our discussions will be pleasant.
I have had enough twisting of truths, covered insults, elitism and outright lies to last me a lifetime so the buck stops here. Either shape up and follow the reasonable rules I lay here, or GTFO.
Lies
This is a big no-no, alright? The last thing I want to do is correct your blatant disregard for (historical) facts when you wish to make a point. This quote is sample of this cancer.
History has proven me correct in both instances. The freest country on earth became the most prosperous and every country that ever had communism or socialism has suffered great losses in productivity and the rise of authoritative forces. What has happened to Cuba since the revolution? What happened to Russia and China. Each of these countries was once considered wealthy and then they became communist. The systems broke down.
I can live with honest mistakes that come from simply being ignorant of some historical facts but phrases such as the above are unacceptable. The fact that it is painfully easy to verify its falsity only means that you are being deliberately dishonest in order to propagandize. And I do not care for that. If that’s what you’re after, go find out some Ron Paul drones to talk to.
Outright lies such as the above will be served with a warning the first time, and a ban the second. And even the warning is too much but I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt in that you’re simply that ignorant. But be aware that if you are really so ignorant, you’d better get a clue. Quickly.
Finally get it into your thick heads that Correlation does not equal Causation
Yes I know that you think that everything good comes from Capitalism and everything bad from Socialism and the government but you have to understand that the world is a complex place. Your arguments simply boil down to “Any place that prospers must be because of Anarcho-Capitalism and any place that falters must be because of the government” and then look for facts to support this.
I have seen this more than enough times and I’m not impressed. Especially when someone points out a nation with a neoliberal policy which you’ve been praising for the last couple of years which when it failed, now suddenly you find out that the government did it. Why didn’t you say anything before?
This applies to the reverse of course, when you rush to blame Socialism (or whatever the fuck you think Socialism is) and the government for any failure, disregarding any and all external factors. Dictatorships in Africa? It has nothing to do with the US funding the dictators and everything to do with Socialism. US Economy failing? It has nothing to do with the last 30 years of neoliberal economics and all to do with Socialism/The Fed/The Government/Any other boogeyman.
You’re not convincing anyone but yourselves. If you’re going to make such an argument, you’re better off not commenting at all.
Read what I write, not what you think I mean.
When I say that Communism requires no government, I do not really mean “Communism requires government”. If you cannot understand how something might work without a government or another authority thenask! Do not assume that in this or that argument I must mean the government, jump to that conclusion and then accuse me in the same breath of being an authoritarian.
If you show a failure to grasp this simple concept, once again you will get a warning and then a ban. I do not care to repeat myself all the time to someone who is unwilling to even read what I write in favour of his own preconceptions.
Know thy enemy
If you come here with the purpose to argue against Communism, you’d better have a clue on what it actually is. I have no intention of educating you as I go and there are quite a few books you can read. If all you’ve read is the Communist Manifesto, a propagandistic piece with as much detail as the Declaration of Independence, then you do not know Communism.
If you do display a blatant lack of knowledge of this aspect, I will most likely direct you to an article on my Misunderstanding Communism series that hopefuly dispels your misunderstanding or at least gives you my take on this issue. If you come after that and use the same goddamn argument you should have just read my refutation of, then you will get a warning. If you do not want to read what I’ve written on this subject, then you’re not here to discuss or learn, but to evangelize and you should GTFO!
When I criticize any argument you or one of your idols might make, I do not attempt to argue against your whole worldview. I simply refute what has been laid in front of me. If you then start quoting books that I should read before I can argue, I will just ignore them.
I can just as well suggest that you read anything I have in order to be able to argue with me, but this is simply absurd and we would never be able to converse. If you think an argument I make I wrong, point out the errors, do not suggest books and claim that they will convince me. I will not look at them.
The only way you can get me to possibly look at a book is to make coherent arguments which actually make sense so that my interest in raised in this topic. Then you can suggest a book that goes into detail on this matter and I will have an reason to check it out.
Finally
Since all of the above seem to be the bread & butter of anarcho-capitalists, a link will go to the Comment Policy to hopefully stop the inanity that has been spreading around here lately. If you do not like them, feel free to GTFO as you wouldn’t be adding anything to the conversation anyway. If you choose to ignore them in order to evangelize, then your hypocricy knows no bounds, you stalwart protectors of private property.
It’s a weird thing that a ideology like socialism, which is supposed to promote cooperation, can sustain such anti-social behaviour as the one I’m lately seeing in the socialist reddit. Specifically, all hell broke loose after I posted my blog-reply over there.
I do not mind people criticizing my ideas and thoughts, this is how one learns but it’s amazing how much the administrators of that reddit have gone on a power-trip even by the small power provided to them for filtering out trolls and spammers.
it’s funny that even though I didn’t agree with Larry’s request to stop submitting his articles to reddit, mostly because I always consider that among the morons there might be some who will listen and have an interest in conversation, his assessment ended up forcing itself upon me. Lazy morons indeed do not care to see or hear conflicting opinions and will happily attempt to silence them so that nobody else will either.
This has become plainly true in the comments of that last post, where arguing about my article ensued. This very quickly escalated into a flamewar since, for these “socialists” anyone who does not think exactly the same way they do, is an enemy to be labeled and assaulted. The jump from “You’re saying something wrong” to “You are a wrong kind of person” in their minds is near-instantaneous.
But this is the wrong kind of attitude. When one says something wrong, our reaction should not be to insult the person. That does not achieve anything other than alienate and drive others away. Sure, if your purpose is to have only your own voice heard, like the moderators above, this can be a good tactic, but in the long run, you have only managed to burn more bridges behind you.
But is this mentality of “my way or the highway” useful? On the contrary by refusing to discuss points, even wrong points that others raise, in favour of calling them traitors or heretics, not only does not help them understand where their thinking has gotten astray but immediately erects a wall between you, effectively making sure that they will get defensive and ignore whatever you say.
This is what happened to me in my last post, while I got in with interest to discuss, the initial comments immediately flew off the handle, accusing me of being “anti-working class” and calling me a “Maniac”. And even though I should have known better than to rise to the bait, I went on the defensive and the flamewar began. More time was spent on accusing each other of douchebaggery than actually countering each other’s arguments.
And opinions we do not agree with are important as well, especially coming from people that do not have completely opposite kind of views. Controversial ideas is how we learn either to strengthen our own opinions or we change our mind when we cannot counter them. It is disheartening that this reddit tends to reward mostly orthodox views on marxism and punishes the heretics with obscurity.
This is simply groupthink. You do not learn anything new, nor do you get to think. You only get to reinforce what you already believe in. As long as an article is well written and raises a few points on the part of the author, it should never be downvoted. Ignored perhaps, and even upvoted if the ideas are well presented, even if wrong. But downvoting simply hides the opposing view away from others. We should treasure controversy, not attempt to silence it.
If our views are solid enough, controversy is not an issue. The arguments against it can be presented and the idea eviscerated. When libertarians and *shudder* Objectivists come here to argue with me, I do not accuse them of being exploitation supporters, horribly misguided or douchebags as this would only serve to drive them away. But that would mean that I have even less people to criticize me, and that’s just hurts myself.
Especially people who label themselves socialists should have so much more tolerance to each other. If we cannot have an argument within our own ranks, how do even attempt to take on the people who outright disagree for anything we stand for? If we waste all of our time fighting each other with such ferocity, is it any surprise that no pressure can be directed towards the real culprits?
This is the most common reason why the Anarchist and Socialist movements are much more hostile towards each other, than they are towards the Capitalists. From the first time I noticed that, my initial thoughts were “But we’re on the same side?! Why are people fighting others who have the same goal in mind?”. And yet, for some of the revolutionary socialists, anyone who does not follow the rigid tactics he believes in, is as bad as the enemy. For the Anarchist ((Just to clarify: Not all anarchists think like this but the majority of my IRL experience with them showed me that many have as much, if not more hatred against Communists as they have against Capitalists. That is probably because they equate Communism to Stalinism. There are Anarchist ideologies who do not fall into this trap, one of which is Anarcho-Communism which is very similar to my own thinking)), because of the misunderstanding of how Marxists try to achieve Communism, they consider them hostile. The two opposing camps in the case, simply talk past each other, exchanging more insults than ideas and stabbing each other in the back more than lending a hand.
But back to our original subject. I do not expect to last much more in the socialist reddit. Bannination threats have already been implied and the willingness to do the act admitted, so I’m obviously on a tight rope for speaking my mind and daring to argue my position. Because of this, I decided to start my own subreddit where people like me, who value conversation and don’t fear opposing viewpoints, can meet.
If you’re tired of being bullied for not being a “true socialist” and prefer intelligent discussions over insultfests, hopefully you will consider joining me at Libertarian Socialism. It’s up to us to make it what the admins of Socialism /r/ won’t let happen.
That does not mean I’m quitting socialism /r/ just yet, but It’d be nice to have a conversation without the Marxist purists insulting everyone and then calling them whiners for pointing that out. Dogma and inability to consider progressive ideas are a recipe for stagnation and if that is what is necessary to be considered a Marxist, then I’m certainly not a Marxist.
As I’ve been progressing with my misunderstanding communism series it has become to me painfully obvious that I need a better way to organise the links and the format of it in a much better way than what I’ve been doing until now. Specifically, what I have been doing was to copy paste a small introduction text within a style-customized <div> and then manually update the links towards the previous and next articles.
This is what I had been doing in my self-hosting with WordPress series as well and, frankly it was an annoying process. I thought that there must be a more optimal way to go about doing this and fortunately others had the same idea as me.
A quick search for relevant plugins immediately landed me two results. Without knowing the difference, I simply went for the one which has been updated more recently (plugin developers, this is why it pays to keep your code up to date): Organise Series
This one takes the more exciting road of actually using the wordpres taxonomy capabilities and creating a new one. As such I do not have to mix up my already existing tags or categories (which would appear in the various parts of my theme) and I can rest assured that I will not b0rk it by mistake.
I faced the first hurdle when I discovered that the plugin did not have the correct link structure for the options page and eventually that it is not yet ready for WordPress 2.6. However actually opening my eyes a bit more showed me that some kind soul has already submitted patches for this and the beta versions are working. Thus, since I had already initialized it anyway, I took the dive and upgraded to the developer version No problems there.
Then I set about making it look good. It took me a while to figure it out but the author of the plugin has gone into the trouble of writing a use howto…well, series, which goes quite in depth. Eventually I figured it out and made my pages look readable again. But as always, I wanted more bling. So, since I’m already using scriptaculous through backlinks, why not make my series description available without crowding the actual post, through the nice toggle function. And lo, there was code!
The following went into my “Series Meta”, which is the text that appears very first on the post, announcing it as part of the series.
<div class="seriesmeta">This entry is part %series_part% of %total_posts_in_series% in the series %series_title% - <a href="#" onclick="Effect.toggle('series_description', 'slide')">%series_icon_linked% About this series</a></div>%postcontent%
This goes into my Series post list Template:
<div class="seriesbox" id="series_description" style="display:none;">
%series_description%<hr/>
<ul class="serieslist-ul">%post_title_list%</ul>
</div>%postcontent%
And thus, after customizing the css a bit, you get the nice result you see now in any post in the series where you can click on the link and the description of the series, along with the whole list of posts drops down for your viewing pleasure. And I didn’t even had to hack my theme as you can do all this from the options page. Sweet!
The plugin has other nice options like the ability to assign an icon/image to a series, a standalone series page and the capability to read all the posts in a row when clicking on their series link. Unfortunately for me the last does not work as it simply kills the html loading of the page. I assume this is because it’s not yet fully compatible with 2.6 but I’m going to soon open a bug about it.
I just noticed a weird google query coming to my site
post a new comment site:dbzer0.com
Which leads me to believe that someone cannot comment here.
Whoever you are, if you’re having troubles leaving a comment, send me a mail or contact my comment provider’s support to inform them. I’m currently testing their beta plugin and perhaps this is causing you problems.
Currently the comment form uses Javascript and you should also have the old WordPress comments available if your javascript is disabled. I also activated a new anti-spam plugin today to help out with the spam (it has already blocked 50 of ’em since the afternoon) so there is a chance this is causing you problems.
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