October 2007 - Posts
Today is election day here in Edmonton. Today is also Blog Action Day. Better together? Let's find out! It should be pretty clear that election day means we're voting for our city mayor, councillors, and school board trustees, but what is Blog Action Day all about? From the website:
On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.
This is my entry for Blog Action Day, and as you may have guessed by now, I am going to talk about the election in relation to the environment. I just heard on the news that the turnout for this election is expected to be an abysmal 20%. Are people really not interested, or is it just too difficult to vote? Maybe a bit of both, but the process can certainly be made simpler. Not to mention more environmentally friendly or green.
There are two major problems with the way we vote now:
- So much paper is wasted. There are forms to organize the volunteers. There are forms to register you. The ballot you fill out. The second ballot you fill out because you screwed up on the first one. The documents with results. You get the idea. Voting today is really not an environmentally friendly thing to do. And don't forget the campaigns either - thousands and thousands of flyers, posters, signs, etc.
- It's too difficult. I worked from 9 to 5 today, and it took me until 6 PM to get back to the area of the city I live in to vote. So I didn't have much time at all considering the polls close at 8 PM. Not only that, but once you get to the voting station you have to deal with three dinosaurs before you even get a ballot. Seriously, why do three individuals have to look at my drivers license in order to let me vote? Isn't one person good enough? I'm not kidding about the dinosaurs part either. I was easily the youngest person in the room by about 35 years. It's great that they are helping out, but they move slowly, have to squint at the fine print on the drivers license, and worst of all they look at me like they've never seen someone under 40 going to vote (and of course they must comment on that too). Just let me get in and get out!
It doesn't have to be this way! We could make elections more environmentally friendly and efficient by getting rid of the archaic system we use now and adopting Internet voting. There are of course examples of successes with Internet voting and concern over potential problems that may arise. I won't get into any of that here, but you can read the very complete Wikipedia entry if you're interested. I simply look at it this way:
- Is the Internet good enough for Revenue Canada and the banks? Yes.
- Would voting over the Internet have a positive impact on the environment? Yes.
- Would voting over the Internet be faster and easier for voters than the current process? Yes.
Good enough for me. I think it's time we moved one of our society's most important institutions into the 21st century. I think it's time we started voting over the Internet!
Here are my weekly notes:
- The RestorAction Charity Gala last night was a major success! The signed Oilers jersey ended up going for $675. I'll have pictures up as soon as I get my camera back from Sharon.
- Tomorrow is Blog Action Day! "One issue. One Day. Thousands of voices." The topic tomorrow is the environment. If you're a blogger you should totally take part!
- Also tomorrow is Edmonton's municipal election. I was out yesterday morning dropping flyers for George Rice, my former principal, who is running in Ward G for the Public School Trustee position. I live in Ward G, so I'll obviously be voting for him! Get out and vote!
- With Al Gore winning the Nobel, I expected the chatter about a potential presidential bid to increase. Didn't expect the commentary to suggest a run is less likely now though! This article and this article explain things quite well.
- Interesting post from Nick Carr on the topic of super-inexpensive storage. The example he uses is definitely not typical, but it nonetheless illustrates that utility data storage (like S3) is really, really affordable. Now we just need other utility services to follow!
- TechCrunch noted that the one year anniversary of GooTube was this past week.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick says that Twitter is paying his rent! Essentially Marshall is finding that stories break on Twitter first. I've started getting the majority of my news through Twitter too.
Music
My favorite song at the moment is The Pretender by Foo Fighters. Such a wicked track! Some other songs I've been enjoying: Hot by Avril Lavigne, How Far We've Come by Matchbox Twenty, Foundations by Kate Nash, and Say Goodbye To Love by Kenna. Oh and Gimme More by Britney Spears, which I commented about this week:
Enjoying Britney's track "Gimme More"...Britney is like Michael Jackson...enjoy the music, ignore the person.
MSDN is touring the country again, this time to talk about strategies for today's web application development. They'll be in Edmonton at SilverCity in WestEd (actually I guess it's Scotiabank Theatre now) on October 25th:
If you are a Canadian Web developer, this free event is for you. We will look at common challenges such as security, accessibility & usability, AJAX, Javascript debugging, using patterns to improve your development process and working with external services. In a nutshell, this is a two-part tips, tricks and tools presentation.
It will be focused primarily on Microsoft technologies (like ASP.NET), however if you develop on other platforms, you can get a lot of value from the event in terms of techniques and free tools for debugging your client side code to load testing your websites. This event is sponsored by MSDN Canada.
I like that they mention right on the details page that tools like Fiddler and the Developer Toolbar will be demonstrated. The page also mentions HTML and Javascript by name! It's not your typical MS-marketing-speak event, that's for sure.
I was on the community conference call where Microsoft solicited feedback on their web-related developer events, and the key point was to go beyond Visual Studio and ASP.NET proper. It definitely looks like they listened!
Tomorrow evening is the 2nd Annual RestorAction Charity Gala, presented by the Youth Restorative Action Project (YRAP) and the Elizabeth Fry Society of Edmonton (EFRY). In addition to comedy, live music, and dancing, the event features a silent auction. One of the big ticket items in the auction is an Edmonton Oilers jersey.
This isn't just any Oilers jersey though - it is signed by the entire team! If that doesn't make you drool hockey fans, nothing will.
Here's the best part: you can make a bid even if you aren't attending the gala tomorrow! To do so:
- Come up with your maximum bid amount.
- Email it to me at mastermaq@gmail.com no later than 3:45 PM tomorrow, October 13th, 2007.
Everyone attending the gala will have the final opportunity to bid, between 6:30 PM and 9:30 PM tomorrow. There are still a few tickets available ($70) if you'd like to attend.
Happy bidding!
UPDATE: The jersey ended up going for $675! Thanks everyone!
Electronic Arts today announced that they have acquired Edmonton's very own BioWare Corp. in a deal that could be worth $860 million USD. More accurately, EA is buying VG Holding, the parent company of both BioWare and Pandemic Studios. From GameSpot:
VG Holding Corp. was formed in late 2005 when esteemed Canadian role-playing game studio BioWare formed the aforementioned "superdeveloper" with Californian shop Pandemic Studios. The union was funded by Elevation Partners, a venture capital firm with rock star Bono on its board, and brokered by then-Elevation board member John Riccitiello, who became BioWare/Pandemic's CEO.
A number of articles today have mentioned the fact that John Riccitiello left Elevation in February to become the CEO of Electronic Arts. So essentially, he has purchased BioWare and Pandemic twice. He must really like their games!
This is a great move for Electronic Arts. I'm sure fans of both BioWare's and Pandemic's games will have some reservations about the deal though. Will EA cause the studios to lose their mojo? I guess we'll find out. Both companies will become part of the EA Games division, but Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka will continue to run BioWare, and Andrew Goldman, Josh Resnick, and Greg Borrud will stay in charge of Pandemic, according to GameSpot. At least for the time being.
The official BioWare press release is here (PDF).
Amazon announced on Monday the launch of an SLA, or Service Level Agreement, for the S3 web service. The lack of an SLA has always been cited as a "shortcoming" of S3, but I don't know exactly how many customers have requested it. Enough for them to offer it I guess:
Basically, we commit to 99.9% uptime, measured on a monthly basis. If an S3 call fails (by returning a ServiceUnavailable or InternalError result) this counts against the uptime. If the resulting uptime is less than 99%, you can apply for a service credit of 25% of your total S3 charges for the month. If the uptime is 99% but less than 99.9%, you can apply for a service credit of 10% of your S3 charges.
The SLA is effective as of October 1st, 2007. Jeff makes it sound like they had planned to have an SLA for a long time, but I'm not so sure that's the case. Doesn't matter now, they have one!
I think SmugMug's Don MacAskill makes a good point:
Everything fails sometimes.
The SLA payment is rarely comparable to the pain and suffering your customers had to deal with.
Very true. From my perspective, the SLA isn't a big deal. I hope it helps Amazon land some more customers though!
Today microblogging service Jaiku announced that they have been purchased by Google. I came across the news via a barrage of Twitter updates this morning, and it wasn't long before everyone started wondering why Google chose Jaiku over Twitter. It seems that most people feel Jaiku is the superior platform technology-wise, but the community at Twitter is better. I'd more or less agree with that statement. For instance, I chose Jaiku to display "my status" on the right side of my website instead of Twitter because the reliability and performance of Jaiku was just so much better. It still is.
Marc Orchant has a great post on the topic. Scoble thinks that Google made the move for Jaiku because of Facebook. He suggests that Google is gearing up to launch some major competition for Facebook on November 5th. That may be true, but I like what Ross Mayfield had to say better (though he too mentions Facebook):
But perhaps the greatest direction they can go with this is lifestreaming.
With Google's savvy around structuring the unstructured, picture lifestreaming evolving into something that infers permalinks for social activity. One day your Google homepage may be a stream of your friends and what they are doing, sharing, and adopting.
Yes! Enough of this manually updating my lifestream already, let's make it update automagically. Even better, give everyone a lifestream by default. That idea gets me excited.
A follow-up post from Scoble highlights that Google has built themselves a "very strong position in the RSS ecosystem" as they now own Google Reader, FeedBurner, and Jaiku (which imports/aggregates RSS feeds). Very good point indeed.
Now the question is - who will snap up Twitter?
I was reading Mashable today, and came across this post on a new website called JihadOnYou. Apparently the site was built over a single weekend - no word on how long it took them to come up with the name. Here's the description from Mashable:
No matter what it is that has made your day a little bit more miserable, simply go to this site, rant about it, and “declare holy war” on it. Whether it be your annoying co-worker, an ex-girlfriend, the loaner car from the dealership, whatever it is, this is your place to rant. Other users then can rate your Jihad to decide if it’s worthy ala-Digg style.
Most of the comments at Mashable discuss the name, which could be described as offensive. To that I say bollocks!
If a word is "politically incorrect" or otherwise offensive, should you avoid it at all costs? My opinion is no. The word "jihad" will continue to carry the connotations it currently does only if we restrict its use. I don't expect JihadOnYou to change the meaning of the word by itself, but every little bit helps. And yes, I realize that jihad is a word with a lot of history.
As for the site itself - it's kinda neat! The about page says "we're here to entertain, not educate" and to that end I think they have succeeded. It's pretty hard to visit the site and not laugh!
Here are my weekly notes:
Record labels have filed over 20,000 lawsuits related to file sharing since 2003, and the first one to go to trial received a verdict yesterday in Minnesota. The jury found defendant Jammie Thomas guilty and ordered her to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of the 24 songs they decided to focus on.
It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to realize that this is an extremely unfavorable outcome.
- The record labels will take this victory as "a validation of its "sue our fans" strategy, rather than realizing it's finally time to try a different model." (Techdirt)
- This case will have absolutely no effect on file sharing. "According to BigChampagne, an online measuring service, the number of peer-to-peer users unlawfully trading goods has nearly tripled since 2003, when the RIAA began legal onslaught targeting individuals." (Wired)
- The record industry needs to stop fighting the inevitable. "Eventually, unless governments are willing to take drastic measures to protect the industry (such as a mandatory music tax), economic theory will win out and the price of music will fall towards zero." (TechCrunch)
The case has potentially set a number of legal precedents favoring the record industry, such as "making available", described by Declan McCullagh in his excellent analysis:
Jury Instruction 15 is more important. It says that the RIAA doesn't need to offer any evidence that rapacious Kazaa users actually downloaded songs from Thomas' computer. All they need to do is claim that Thomas left the songs in a publicly accessible directory where they could have been downloaded. Big difference.
Wired has more:
In proving liability, the industry did not have to demonstrate that the defendant's computer had a file-sharing program installed at the time that they inspected her hard drive. And the RIAA did not have to show that the defendant was at the keyboard when RIAA investigators accessed Thomas' share folder.
Also, the judge in the case ruled that jurors may find copyright infringement liability against somebody solely for sharing files on the internet. The RIAA did not have to prove that others downloaded the files. That was a big bone of contention that U.S. District Judge Michael Davis settled in favor of the industry.
That's just wrong. Is it illegal to leave a music CD out in the open? Of course not, but anyone could come along and steal it or copy it. How is leaving music files out in the open any different? Copying media for personal use is considered Fair Use (though the RIAA is doing everything they can to change that). As I understand it, combining your Fair Use rights with an open Wi-Fi connection (the default setting on virtually all wireless routers) would then make you liable for copyright infringement, if the precedent set by this case holds.
I'm not sure the precedent will be upheld, however. Last December the judge in UMG v. Lindor ruled that the record labels would have to show that Lindor actually shared the files. Demonstrating that she made the files available for download was not enough. Actually, I'm not sure why that earlier decision was not used in this case against Thomas.
Another problem is the fine amount. I think $9,250 per song very clearly conflicts with the Eighth Amendment, which states: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The songs in question are available in the marketplace for less than $1. Furthermore, wholesale pricing has been confirmed by record label executives as being close to 70 cents per track. From that perspective, the fine levied against Thomas is almost surely excessive.
These lawsuits are very clearly about money, not about protecting artists. I look forward to the day when record labels as we currently know them cease to exist. It's only a matter of time.
There is a ton of commentary on this story at Techmeme. That's how I found Michael Geist's post, in which he explains the Canadian context. Definitely worth a read.
Today Microsoft announced that Bungie Studios, the developer of the Halo games, will once again become an independent company. Microsoft will still own part of Bungie, and will continue the long-standing publishing agreement between the two for games developed by Bungie. From the Inside Bungie blog:
Bungie has long been built on creativity, originality and the freedom to pursue ideas. Microsoft agreed, and rather than stifle our imagination, they decided it was in both our best interests to unleash it. We’ll continue to make Xbox 360 games, and we’ll continue to make amazing games for MGS. In that regard, nothing has changed.
It sounds like everyone is happy with this arrangement. Both MS and Bungie seem pretty adamant that nothing will change, and I don't see much reason to doubt them. I would assume that Microsoft will make slightly less money on future Bungie games, but I think they can live with that as long as the studio continues to pump out winners.
This quote from the Bungie press release made me laugh:
“Working with Microsoft was great for us, it allowed us to grow as a team and make the ambitious, blockbuster games we all wanted to work on. And they will continue to be a great partner. But Bungie is like a shark. We have to keep moving to survive. We have to continually test ourselves, or we might as well be dolphins. Or manatees,” said Jason Jones, Bungie founder and partner.
Heh, well we can't have them turning into manatees!
Mary Jo Foley has a good post up with five reasons why the split is a smart move for Microsoft. Her fifth point is the most important, I think:
5. Quasi-independent subsidiaries come up with more interesting ideas. As it has done with Xbox and Zune, Microsoft no longer believes innovation only happens when a unit is physically and psychically locked inside the Redmond headquarters.
I hope that shift in thinking really is happening inside Microsoft. For instance, I'm sure the new Vancouver dev centre will do some great things if they aren't forced to go through Redmond for everything.
For lots more on this story, check out Techmeme.
Microsoft announced today that they will be making the source code for the .NET Framework 3.5 available when the framework ships along with Visual Studio 2008 later this year. From Scott Guthrie:
Having source code access and debugger integration of the .NET Framework libraries is going to be really valuable for .NET developers. Being able to step through and review the source should provide much better insight into how the .NET Framework libraries are implemented, and in turn enable developers to build better applications and make even better use of them.
This is pretty cool news. I think it's great for .NET itself too, as I suspect Microsoft will receive a ton of really useful feedback after developers have had a chance to get their hands dirty. There's literally dozens of ways that this will positively impact the .NET community.
Of course, not everyone is impressed. Already the news has been called a "poison pill" by some, and simply a bad idea by others. Well, you can't please everyone. And when it comes to Microsoft, there never seems to be a shortage of conspiracy theorists.
For more thoughts, be sure to check out TechMeme and also this post from Miguel de Icaza of the Mono project.
Twitter launched a killer new feature last week, the very aptly named "Track." Sometimes when I am thinking about something, I wonder how many other people are thinking about that something at the same time. With Twitter and the new Track feature, there's a way to find out:
You can follow friends on your phone through Twitter, but what about concepts? What if you wanted an update anytime anyone mentioned your name, your favorite band, "NYC," "earthquake," or "Steve Jobs?" In real-time? What if you were attending an event and wanted to know who else was there?
That's what Track lets you do. It's dead simple to setup - just send "track mastermaq" to Twitter, and you'll start receiving all messages that mention my nickname. This is really powerful stuff. In addition to the usual ego-tracking, I am also tracking edmonton and podcasting. It's like a whole new world has opened up!
If you've been holding off on trying Twitter, I strongly encourage you to do so now. Especially if you're in the marketing industry. Where else can you get notifications every time someone mentions your product or service? This is the future, today.
Now if only Twitter was more reliable...
What if you could set the price for an album you wanted to purchase? Wouldn't it be great to have the ability to spend $5 to check out a new band, and $25 for a band you absolutely love? It might happen sooner than you think, with Radiohead leading the charge:
As expected, Radiohead has gone an unusual route for distribution of its seventh studio album, "In Rainbows." The set will be available for digital download from the band's Web site beginning Oct. 10, but with a twist -- fans can name their own price for the purchase. "It's up to you," reads a disclaimer on the checkout screen.
Make no mistake, this is a big deal. Radiohead is obviously a very successful band with a huge fan base which allows them to experiment like this, but dammit someone has to. It might as well be Radiohead. I've written about making the music free before, and I'm glad to now see some action.
Techdirt notes that there is more to the story, in that Radiohead is also offering a "discbox" for $80 USD that contains the album on CD and vinyl, along with an additional CD with seven tracks, plus photos, artwork, and lyrics.
In this case, Radiohead isn't really selling the "music." After all, you can get that for free. They're selling the full collection of stuff that comes with the music. Funny how it's the musicians, and not the record labels, who seem to realize that adding value and getting people to pay for it is a business model that beats suing fans.
This is really cool. Music fans everywhere should be extremely happy about this giant leap forward! There's more great stuff on the story at Boing Boing.
Back in April I wondered why we still teach cursive handwriting in elementary school. The post generated lots of discussion at the time, and it definitely gave me much to think about. On Friday, I started thinking about it again after receiving a response via email from a reader known only as "The Bluebell Wood." It's obvious a lot of thought was put into it, so I asked for permission to publish the response and received it. Here it is:
Being able to write a legible and pleasant longhand is an essential part of rational life. “Word Processing” (an abominable phrase) is no substitute. Marshall McLuhan wrote The Medium is the Message and there is a lot of truth in that. The flow of a pen in the hand over paper while composing sentences is a completely different experience from keyboarding and looking at a screen; physically, and in the tools used, and in the mind as well. There is an effect on the content of what is written; in the same way that seasoned craftsmen in the guilds of Renaissance Italy would say, “It is the trade entering his body” when an apprentice bruised his thumb or some such hurt while learning the use of his tools. Writing with ink on paper is an act by which our peerless English language enters us – through hand, eye, posture, and senses, into our thoughts, affecting the sentence structure and choice of words. Forming well-made letters with the hand while forming thoughts in the mind is not the same as tapping little plastic squares while mechanical fonts appear on a screen and the cursor blinks like a tap that won’t stop dripping.
The practice of handwriting also infuses many desirable character qualities. Regard for the reader in the striving for maximum legibility is foremost; the training and development of the aesthetic sense in the letters, spacing, and overall texture; discrimination in avoiding poor proportions; rectitude in avoiding excessive flourishes; in general the application of what Edward Johnston called “sweet reason” in his classic Writing, Illuminating & Lettering of 1906.
This applies to the slant as well, which ideally is not more than about ten degrees from the vertical.
The clarity and precision needed for good legibility schools us in our thoughts and the sentences which incarnate them.
Why would anyone use cursive handwriting in this digital age? The answers are many: pleasure; rational and aesthetic maturity; participation in a historical stream reaching far, to the very dawn of man; its warmth in personal letters; to improve our thinking; and, as one of your own respondents has commented, “Just because everything can be done by computer doesn’t mean that it should be.” (shermie, May 2/07) (Emphasis added). It is premature to call this a digital “age”; it is barely three decades old, and the common use of fonts and p.c.s has been with us for less than one on hundredths of the ages in which cursive writing has been used, in various alphabets and languages.
The very typeset from which the font in which the question was posed is founded on the Humanist Bookhand and its Italic derivatives, which has been in continuous use for six hundred years, and is still vigorous. It is not possible to participate in the “Great Conversation” without learning cursive handwriting and using it well. In postulating that it no longer be taught, one finds oneself in the position of the man sawing off the limb of the great oak on which he himself resides. It is of the utmost importance to retain this skill. We owe it to children and youth to pass on this priceless heritage.
IT IS NOT OURS TO WITHOLD.
A cursive script was used 3,500 years ago in Egypt, where the priests had a hieratic script with the same relationship to hieroglyphics as our longhand has to printing. Cursive Hebrew dates back to Moses (c. 1400 B.C.) and there are also examples from the times of Jeremiah and Jeroboam II (c. 760 – 570 B.C.).
The pleasure of handwriting has always been with us and it is not going to go away. It represents the distillation of human effort to record images of the mind and heart.
It's a very good response, I think. The font-face I use on this blog is Lucida Sans Unicode, in case anyone was wondering.