By Doug Thompson

The iPad doesn’t excite me as much as it should, considering that you’ll be reading this column on one within a few years if anybody’s still reading me at all.

This is the first “cool” device I’ve seen that passes the real test, at least for men, on whether it might replace the printed newspaper product: Can you take a seat in a restroom stall and read from it?

Pardon the crudity of that remark, folks, but you know there’s truth there. The device passes a similar test for women: Can you put it in a purse? It would have to be a good-sized purse, but it passes.

I’m not fascinated because the iPad is, at heart, a $500 laptop that you don’t have to fold out. The revolutionary thing here is that the keypad is touch-screen. It makes the device simple and elegant — which really is what’s important.

Aircraft designers have a saying — What looks right, is. The iPad looks right. The only reason I’m not thrilled is because I’m still a gamer. I want horsepower. The video card in my desktop’s not much smaller than this gadget.

However, I’m also a reader. I’ve seriously considered downloading audiobooks into an iPod. The only thing that’s stopped me is, I don’t own an iPod. I’ve also read quite a bit from books on the Internet, although I can’t claim to have read an entire book yet. If I get an iPad, I will.

Try finding Percy Scott’s “Fifty Years in the Royal Navy” at your local library. For that matter, try lugging around “War and Peace” in print.

My biggest intellectual accomplishment is still probably reading the unabridged “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Any one of the three volumes in the version I read were thicker and weighed more than this gadget.

I’m sure the usual “mainstream media is dying” announcements will come with this new device. Don’t count on it. People say the iPod killed the music business. Clearly, it did not — it’s killing the CD manufacturing business. Those two are not the same.

I’ve said for a lot of years — about 20 years, now that I think about it — that if anybody ever found a way to make something people can read that removes the need for a printed product, it will relieve my business of its biggest expense — producing and distributing a physical product.

Let’s assume that the newspaper industry is a dying concern led entirely by a bunch of hidebound, irredeemably stupid dinosaurs. OK. Steve Jobs of Apple is not one of them. The generation that will succeed him is not either.

Guess what, folks? These harbingers of a new age want to make money.

They’re not going to make as much money as they want just by selling hardware that costs less than a PlayStation 3 when it was introduced.

They’re going to want to charge for content. They’re going to want content you consider as something worth paying for.

I’m not implying that content I produce is worth paying for. This publication is not called the “Free Weekly” for nothing. However, I can reliably produce. Let’s take a quick look at how much stuff I pour into the Web.

Besides this column, there’s about half the editorials that run in the paper every week. There’s a column of mine every Sunday. There was a blog during the last regular legislative session, and could easily be one again someday. There’s the last episode of “Arkansas Week,” where I appeared on the panel.

Here’s a bulletin folks. I took less than an hour to write the column you’re reading now. This old stegosaurus outproduces just about any blogger you can name. And that’s just the stuff I do for a living. Look up my guide to using cavalry archers in “Medieval Total War II” sometime. Long before that, there was my guide to the Mongols in “Age of Empires II: Age of Kings.” There’s quite a few history forums that have my musings on them, and a few comments on other things.

I do this for work. I do this for fun. I do this a lot.

My Facebook page is largely neglected — mainly because I’m too busy pouring content everywhere else.

The iPad doesn’t scare me at all.

Please, please, please, Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear. Please don’t throw me in the briar patch.

By Doug Thompson

The health care reform package reminds me of what a very good friend of mine once said about the Alaskan oil pipeline.

When that pipeline opened and every caribou in Alaska didn’t fall down dead, the environmental movement took years to recover from the lack of a disaster.

Health care reform passed (barring some unexpected development after this column was written Monday.) Hundreds of millions of people will not lose their health insurance. The problem with the theory they would is that the insurance industry largely wrote the health care bill once its minions concluded they couldn’t stop it.

Guess what? People who are rich, have good insurance, or both will still get to see the doctor they want, too. I’m anxious to see if there’s a run on prescription medicine as great as the run on 9mm ammunition after President Obama’s election. Obama’s presidency did more for the civilian gun industry than any single development since Samuel Colt’s perfection of the revolver.

The nation’s already drowning in public debt. Taxpayers won’t suffer any practical difference, at least in the short term, of having some more water in the lake. Our head may be farther from the surface but we’re already underwater.

Oh, there will be a backlash. I expect the Republicans will make gains in the elections. There will not be revolution, however. To be blunt about it, I think most people are already glad this awful debate is over. After you’ve dreaded something long enough, you just want it over with. That’s human nature.

By the same logic, I don’t expect any great outpouring of relief and gratitude either. Democrats are saying that the Republicans went too far and the backlash will fall on them for trying to scare people.

I think both sides better get their surfboards out and start paddling. I haven’t seen so much bipartisan lying about any one issue since the early years of the Iraq War. Neither side covered itself with credit in the health care debate.

I’m no fan of the Democrats’ bill, but health care insurance costs in this country are a severe, rapidly-growing problem. Blanket license to commit malpractice without costly lawsuits was never going to cure it. Look at your tax returns from the last five years. Now look at your health insurance rates. Which is devouring your paycheck faster? Something had to be done. In the end, many Americans know this.

The bill itself may stink, but it gets the U.S. government deeper into the health care business. Like it or not, health care for every American is something your government is now involved in.

My e-mail folder is not the best place to gauge public opinion in Arkansas. However, I am the editorial page editor for Northwest Arkansas Newspapers, and Arkansas in general and Northwest Arkansas in particular is no friendly spot for the Obama-Pelosi crowd.

My “in” box was not filled with letters proclaiming that the “sky is falling” on Monday morning, the day after the vote. For the record, it wasn’t filled with “a new era is dawning” either.

Google News is about as scientific in its story selection as my e-mail, but it is based on the news most web-browsing Americans are clicking upon, if you don’t set up any preferences, highlight anything or personalize your search in any way. I don’t. Google News’ lead story was something about Obama planning to sign this bill on Tuesday, followed by the Middle East, the Greek debt crisis, some new type of phone coming out and a “Dancing with the Stars” update.

Note the lack of dominance in the news once the blasted thing actually passed. Health care hadn’t lacked for headlines to this degree for weeks.

There isn’t a dead caribou in sight.

Health care costs were ruining this country before health care reform. I’m not confident this bill will get a grip on costs. The biggest effect, I expect, is now everyone will have to pay into the system. The costs that was borne by the paying customers will now, I hope, be accounted for. If health care reform will just help us get a clearer picture, that will be worth something.

By Doug Thompson

Ubisoft, a French company, bungled things even more badly than expected with it’s new, burdensome software designed to prevent illegal copying of their latest computer games.

The incident opened up yet another carnival of “intellectual property” debate articles, all of which missed the key point entirely. The offerings concentrated on the equally absurd claims of industry and their enemies, the people who make copies. Both sides preach like the right is on their side and that some grand moral issue is at stake.

Hey, both camps, here’s some reality:

PC users are really, really tired of people putting crap on our computers that we don’t want. This would be true even if the junk that people keep adding didn’t degrade and eventually ruin our machines’ performance.

Industry, our computers do not belong to you. Computer owners pay billions of dollars for anti-virus protection and billions more to fix the problems caused when that protection fails. Many of us — particularly serious gamers — spend still more money and a whole lot of time to clean off the unwanted programs that corporations like you pay to pollute us with. You even pay computer manufacturers to have junk installed into our machines before they are shipped. You can’t update a program without having to clean out more of that garbage you stow away on it.

Now, Ubisoft, you insist that I install a program on my machine that will require a working, adequate Internet connection to your server just to play “Assassin’s Creed II” or “Silent Hunter 5.” Then you can’t maintain a working connection. You blame hackers for crashing your system. That’s like blaming thieves for robbing a stagecoach with nobody riding shotgun on it. You knew your system would be attacked and you were caught flat-footed.

The ultimate insult to injury here was when one of your managers posted helplessly on the company blog that the problem could be fixed right away because he couldn’t do anything “on a weekend.”

You knew your countermeasure provoked great hostility among the “hacktivists,” who vowed to fight you, but you were too cheap to pay some techs overtime to react to it?

I’ve never illegally downloaded a game in my three decades of computer gaming. I’m also one of the select few people who played the hard-core simulation “Silent Hunter 4.” I was also interested in “Creed.” I didn’t buy either this week because I knew — absolutely knew — you’d foul this up.

I play “Mass Effect 2” with a constant Internet connection and have no problem. Electronic Arts’ approached the problem far differently. You can play the game without the connection, but if you want “extras” or “goodies” like a whole additional character or a hovercraft that’s coming out later this month, supposedly, you have to choose to join up to the “Cerberus Network.”

I do, but it’s my choice. I’m not forced.

A little politeness without the demand that I turn over my machine — my property — goes a long, long way. So does competent upkeep of the server. I’ve played ME2 almost every day for more than a month. I failed to get on the server a grand total of once. I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep one night. The server was down for maintenance in those wee hours.

Now, for the other side of this problem.

First off, I refuse to call you counterfeiters “pirates.” You may like to think you’re free-spirited folk full of daring, but you’re really just a bunch of wise guys who are driving video games to consoles like the Xbox 360 because PC games are easier to crack. My PC gaming world is a smaller place thanks to you jerks and the people you help — on purpose or not — make illegal, free copies.

You’re driving me to downloaded content. I prefer to have something — a box, a CD, a manual — when I spend $50. Thanks to you, I’ve tried out “Steam,” which I had to subscribe to if I wanted to play “Empires at War.”

I liked it. In fact, I liked it a lot. Someday soon, there won’t be PC games in retailers. It will all be downloaded. When that happens, we can thank the counterfeiters.

The devil take both sides.

dougthompson

The U.S. Supreme Court’s deci- sion on corporate free speech has united the citizens of this country like nothing else since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Read “The Numbers” at http:// blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/. Long-time readers of this space may recall that the author is Gary Langer, who works for ABC News. He’s one of the best number crunchers who can speak plain English.

“The numbers” in this case are absolutely staggering: 80 percent of Americans oppose the ruling, including 65 percent who “strongly” oppose it. I won’t steal any more of Langer’s thunder, other than to say that the near-unanimous public rejection of this ruling cuts across all partisan and political lines.

This is the one where the Supreme Court decided that limits on corporate spending in political campaigns violates the free speech provisions of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This deci- sion would be massively unpopular at any time, but the timing is incred- ibly poor.

The last presidential campaign set records for the amount of money infused into it. The public is weary of corporate bailout where business interests seem to prevail over all else. Wall Street bonuses — which really need to be permanent salary since they are expected all the time and because that’s really what they are — have burned up whatever patience the rest of the country has

left. And now this. Corporations have gone from

being equal “citizens” like real peo- ple to what is widely perceived as more equal than others. The mas- sive spending on advertising to block health care reform bombards people every day. Now they’re told that corporations aren’t free to spend enough.

The greatest threat to mainstream media is not the Internet. The great- est threat is the professional news management services, the public relations and lobbying firms who are well paid, well staffed and have no other mission but to control the message. Now they’re unbound.

This is not good.

I don’t know what to do about it. I’m not sure there is a legal rem- edy. There has to be a political one. People are going to have to fight fire with fire, which means there will have to be corporations formed to fight other corporations.

Let’s disregard the issue itself, though, and look at the outrage.

People are up in arms about something. Don’t even take heed of what it is.

Are they going to do anything about it?

If the whole nation is roused up about it and there is a unanimous view that this is a very bad thingand there are no political con- sequences to that — that will be a very bad sign for the republic.

left. And now this. Corporations have gone from

being equal “citizens” like real peo- ple to what is widely perceived as more equal than others. The mas- sive spending on advertising to block health care reform bombards people every day. Now they’re told that corporations aren’t free to spend enough.

The greatest threat to mainstream media is not the Internet. The great- est threat is the professional news management services, the public relations and lobbying firms who are well paid, well staffed and have no other mission but to control the message. Now they’re unbound.

This is not good.

I don’t know what to do about it. I’m not sure there is a legal rem- edy. There has to be a political one. People are going to have to fight fire with fire, which means there will have to be corporations formed to fight other corporations.

Let’s disregard the issue itself, though, and look at the outrage.

People are up in arms about something. Don’t even take heed of what it is.

Are they going to do anything about it?

If the whole nation is roused up about it and there is a unanimous view that this is a very bad thing

It’s going to be an interesting year. It is highly possible that people can be this upset about political con- tributions and will stand by while those contributions are funneled in to the 2010 elections — and do nothing.

Now that’s a scary thought.

Speaking of money and scary thoughts, note should be taken that Moody’s, the bond rating service, has announced that the end of the U.S. government’s AAA bond rat- ing is in sight. The best guess is five years or so from now unless some- thing serious changes.

Note that all these bailouts and stimulus packages haven’t exactly restarted our economic engines.

Some economists will tell you that its because we didn’t spend enough. I’d argue that we spent it in the wrong places, such as saving moribund companies like General Motors. The idea that the U.S. car industry is dying is a myth. What’s dying is U.S.-owned car companies. Toyota may have taken some well- deserved bumps lately, but they’re nothing compared to the gross mis- management the U.S. car industry has suffered for decades.

Stimulus spending is supposed to jump start us, not keep the dead walking. It would appear that the revival won’t come in time or strong enough to save our debt rat- ing. We’ll see.