February 2006 Archives
This is how conversations go:
For the record, the iTune Music Store link is to Pet Shop Boys - What Have I Done to Deserve This
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unspoken truths
Yesterday after reading a few rants about how nobody seems to want to make money off their work I remembered there was a site that really seemed to be the poster child for the profitless Web 2.0. But try as I might, I couldn't remember the damn URL. I tried Google. I tried my Google search history (No...you can't see it). I tried my del.icio.us bookmarks. I tried e-mailing Scott. Nothing. Nada. Bupkis.
"I guess it couldn't have been that great."
Then today at work I was going over it in my head...it had this stupid iTunes uploader thing which was horribly broken, as was their del.icio.us importer (turns out that you can totally XSS hack this place), and I read about it one one of the more popular design blogs. Well, that was the only hint that Scott needed. 15 seconds later he had it. Riffs. It's marked "Alpha" because "Beta" is so 2004.
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php will always have a place in my toolbox
Back in July of 2004 I noted that I would need look at subversion. Less than two years later, that time has come. All of our rails, php, and perl code at work is in a subversion repository. We aren't using the http interface, as I just haven't bothered with the authentication/apache configuration. It's RHEL 4, so it shouldn't be a big deal, but it's just as easy to not do it and use svn+ssh. The TextMate subversion integration is pretty slick, as is the OS X Finder integration, in case you are looking for good OS X subversion tools
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National Geographic Style Manual
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where have all the conservatives gone?
So, with the exception of the last few posts, I've kind of run out of blog steam. So I decided a change in venue was the solution. Tonight's post is brought to you by Woodstock's, their free wireless, and Sierra Nevada Best Bitter.
I've posted most of my political rants to a small group of unfortunate blokes via e-mail. There is also the fact that on the political front I'm getting outrage fatigue. I look around and wonder where all the conservatives went. Although, even as the idea that "Bush isn't a conservative" gains steam, he is entering lame duck territory. This means one of two things are going to happen over the next two years; a) a Republican is favored to win the 2008 election and a new cult of personality forms around him/her or b) a Democrat wins and the cult dissolves and suddenly we have half a country full of 'limited powers for the federal government' conservatives. The first option would suck and the second would be funny if not for the fact that nobody will see how stupid willfully blind the conservative base has been for the duration of the Bush 43 administration.
Anyway... The Diggnation Google Hate-a-thon for 2006 continues, although a split in the dynamic duo is forming. Alex is still strongly in the "Google is out of ideas" camp, while Kevin is starting to loose his grip on the hate. I'm almost done with The Search which goes into great detail about what Google plans for the future. Kevin and Alex would do well to read it. They are a bit too focused on what Google keeps pushing out of their lab doors. Let it go guys...there are much bigger things to worry about.
Speaking of things to worry about, Apple is facing an anti-trust suit. Isn't an Apple monopoly a contradiction in terms?
Mr Slattery called himself an iTunes customer who "was also forced to purchase an Apple iPod" if he wanted to take his music with him to listen to.
I guess he missed the "Burn to CD" feature in iTunes. All jackassery aside...a monopoly? Really? So soon? Yes, yes...almost a billion tracks have been sold by Apple via iTunes. Big. Freaking. Deal. Seriously, that is but a pittance off the offline music market. Did Apple engage in illegal business practices by killing Real's attempt to get a DRM formatted song onto the iPod? Apple would not doubt argue that Real was the one breaking the law, given the sorry state of reverse engineering laws in this country and probably win on that front. If Real thought they had a shot at defending themselves against the DMCA they would probably still be selling tracks for the iPod today. Which reminds me, if you do think that technology laws are completely broken, do join or donate to EFF because they help fight this nonsense...even if their site search is powered by evil.
Flickr, where I post all my photos online, has introduced Community Guidelines. I read them and I did like the fact that it started off with stuff they want people in the community to do and put that don'ts second. The bit about not being creepy is classic.
Don't be that guy. You know the guy.
Awesome. I wish all community-based sites had something like this, written with the same puckishness and plain language. Yeah, I'm looking at you digg.com, dailykos.com, and all the other community sites where I turn off comments (if I can) by default because the people who post comments on your sites are inane, mean, and generally just a waste of bits.
So, Bill Gates has come out and said that Microsoft is going to compete against the iPod.
"I don't think what's out on the market today is the final answer," Gates said, speaking to a group of minority students. "Between us and our partners, you can expect some pretty hot products coming out over the next few years."
I think that's great, with a large exception which I will get to. Microsoft will not phone this one in. If they have a team as talented as the XBox team working on this they will give Apple stiff competition. That's good for us consumers because it means that innovation should be driven by the competition between the two.
That being said, one major caveat is DRM and consequently, interoperability. I don't want to worry too much about the technical details on a product that doesn't even exist yet, but one could safely assume that any hardware from Microsoft will focus on playing DRM WMA files. Will Microsoft rely on "partners" (read: future Microsoft targets) for music and/or video content? Would they be so bold as to license FairPlay from Apple and leverage the fact that almost 1 billion FairPlay protected tracks are already out there? Would Apple and Microsoft be willing to do a cross-licensing deal where Apple would support WMA+DRM and Microsoft would support AAC+DRM?
Now, here I am thinking how cool that would be for "the consumer" while all my EFF friends (current and former) are screaming at me that DRM is, almost by definition, consumer unfriendly. I understand and I may be a bit of a defeatist here, but DRM is not going away...especially if it stays close to the usability of FairPlay. We will never be able to attack both sides of the DRM equation (the consumer who wants content and the producer who doesn't want the content floating around "unprotected") unless the producer side goes too far in their restrictions and they clearly haven't. Yet.
Of course, it's a moot point because the chance of an Apple/Microsoft cross-licensing deal is about as good as me having a post-30 growth spurt and making it to the NBA. Neither side will want to give away the lock-in card. Microsoft will talk a lot about choice, probably in terms of services that provide content. But it's a bit like Henry Ford saying that you could have a Model-A in any color you wanted because every service they talk about is selling you WMA files. Apple doesn't even talk about choice because they are the market leaders and don't have to.
While we're in the realm of things that will never happen, what if Microsoft and Apple got together and standardized on input/output? Imagine being able to use all your accessories on either piece of hardware. Apple and Microsoft would have enough sway over the market to make this the de facto standard and then maybe vehicle manufactures could do better integration without having to worry about being tied to one company. One can dream...one can dream.
But enough speculation about formats and specs. Lets turn to what the "conventional wisdom" will likely be.
"It's Microsoft, of course they will crush Apple. Again."
There is no doubting that Microsoft is every bit the 800lb gorilla that everyone makes them out to be. They came extremely late to the console game, took their lumps, and have made a very strong showing with the 2nd version of the XBox. So, yes, they can "do" hardware. But for this to be a complete comparison one must put Apple/iPod in the place of Sony/PS2. The problem there is that Apple doesn't seem to be as stupid as Sony and they will fight to protect their own status as the 800lb music selling gorilla.
"Microsoft will not fail like Creative/Dell/et al."
Perhaps. Nobody can know for sure though and there certainly is a long line of "iPod killers" heading to the dustbin of history. Some, myself included, would argue that the iPod killers fail because they only take into account the hardware for the player and they don't understand that part of the iPod's success is rooted in Apple's digital hub strategy. Microsoft at least has a digital hub strategy.
All we have now is talk from Microsoft. In the "old days" we would call this FUD and see it as an attempt by Microsoft to undermine Apple's sales. Apple has such a dominating lead right now that I doubt this announcement even really registers with consumers looking at buying a music/video device, be it an iPod or anything else. Nobody is going to wait for Microsoft on this. And by "nobody" I mean "any statistically significant segment of a potential market" and not "Warren S. Taylor."
Even after it comes out Microsoft will have their work cut out for them, but if anyone can make a run at it, it's Microsoft.
In a recent post on our unofficial and informal work blog, Institutional Knowledge I used the phrase "here be dragons." When Scott saw it, he gave me that look to indicate that a) I had horns growing out of my skull or b) he, as usual, had no clue what I was talking about. So, I thought I would do a little digging.
The first instance I remember reading was on Mark Pilgrim's excellent post on thwarting the bad actors of the internets from abusing your site and bandwidth. He uses it in reference to Apache's Rewrite functionality. Now, Mark is a sharp guy, but he probably didn't come up with that himself. He's too snarky for that. So, off to google I went and what did I find but more snark!
That English mapmakers formerly placed the phrase "here be dragons" at the edges of their known world has somehow become general knowledge... and here is the list of all known historical maps upon which these words appear:
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Get it? It's an empty list. Har har. But, at least I know I was using it in the proper context now.
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another rails beta book. w00t
Hello, and welcome to my nightmare. As you may remember last year I put up some stats about my music library. Out of 22,709 tracks only 21,617 1,092 were rated, a measly 4.8%. You'll be happy to know that I've brought that number up to 7.1% (or 1,607 out of 22,602). [Update note: Yeah, about that math thing...sorry.]
I thought you would want to know.
