The Rememberance

This blog is moving

2006-10-11T11:45:00.000+02:00

please, if you read it, note the new link:

http://compressor.wordpress.com/

and the feed link:

http://compressor.wordpress.com/feed/

My Arcam DV27 is broken again

2006-10-10T17:24:00.000+02:00

After spending 2 months in repair and finally got it's drive unit repaired, i have it back now. DVDs now work, but CDs don't. So i can look forward to sending it back to England again.

Never. Ever. Again am i going to buy so called UK craftsmanship. Give me a good japanese quality control any time over this.

Navizon brings virtual GPS to all - Engadget

2006-10-10T13:25:00.000+02:00

Navizon brings virtual GPS to all - Engadget:
A software only solution that uses WiFi access points to give you location information. I used to work on something like this... Good to see that a completely independent solution is actually hitting the streets.

A9 toolbar quietly shuts down...

2006-10-03T14:35:00.000+02:00

I started up Firefox today, and could not sign in to A9 anymore. To my dismay they actually shut down the service. I was so used to it. Darn. Now i need to switch to Google Browser sync, but that does not give me diary and all the other niceties of the A9 toolbar.

New feature in 10.4.8: Zoom using Scrollwheel...

2006-09-30T12:53:00.000+02:00

From DaringFireball. What a cool feature. Being able to zoom the whole screen and move around with just holding a modifier is, especially given my advanced age and my eyesight, a god send ability. Very nice.

EuroOSCON 2006, Brussels

2006-09-22T16:16:00.000+02:00

I attended EuroOSCON, 9/19 to 9/21 in Brussels. The conference seemed to be a tad smaller than last year, at least I got the impression that there were not quite as many people showing up to the keynotes.
This years conference seemed to be a lot more socially focussed compared to last year, there were not that many pure technical sessions, but lot’s on social impact of OpenSource, OpenData, OpenWhatever....
Session quality on average was good to very good, some fantastic. Only a few were really bad.
Summary: was it worth going. Absolutely. Getting your mind expanded with some new ideas is always well worth your time, IMO.
Highlight sessions (or, stuff you should look up if you are interested at all)
Alex Russel (DOJO) on Ajax on Mobile Devices.
Alex delivered one of the best talks on Mobile Devices, the problems the operators have, and why we should wait 5-10 years before we even think about Ajax on Mobiles, that I have ever heard - or even imagined. I went into there thinking, this is going to be a stupid hacker talk on how to show a Google Map on a Nokia phone with Ajax, but, instead, he blew me, and the audience, away with a superbly delivered talk, with lot’s of facts, data, anecdotes that clearly outlined the problems the mobile industry is in.
Recommended reading/listening for everyone interested in mobile stuff.
Michael Sparks (BBC), Timeshift everything
I reported last year on the BBCs Kamaelia project. This was, for me, just a status update, if you have not looked into it before, and you are interested in language models for massively multitasking/parallel operations, this is for you. The current project they have in prototype, and will have in production as soon as the machines arrive, is BBC Makro, a system that takes the DVBT broadcast from BBC, and records everything they do, all the time, and creates video streams for podcasting out if. I want that at home :)
Tom Steinberg (MySociety.org), A hackers guide to democracy
MySociety.org is a nonprofit that creates community driven democracy sites in the UK. The talk was about the issues arising, and the changes in the democratic understanding that those movements can result in. The sites work by scraping existing data that, in the political domain, is normally very inaccessible (badly formated, not searchable) and presenting it a more approachable format. They then add rankings, ratings, ordering, email push notifications, communication... Due to all that they do out-google the original sources, as they, just due to the format change, climb in page ranking. One of the best things he showed was a site that allowed a voter to ask his representative to “speak up on current issues” via an HTML page. The more people signed up, like “I want to hear him talk as well”, the more pressure this puts on the the politician (the system sends out reminders at certain thresholds).
Robert Lefkowitz, Architecting Babel
From my experience with his talk last year, i did expect a thought provoking talk again, he is one of the smartest, or at least best educated, speakers I have seen on stage in my life. This year he is arguing for source code translation. As english is not really the worlds number one language, and as software crosses further more into non english speaking countries, we are alienating this community by forcing english on them. The current results are forks in open source projects for different languages. Initially, i did not really buy his argumentation, as, in the end of the day, you still need a basis for communication later down the road, and that can as well be english. But, when you consider source code, especially OpenSource source code as the cheapest and most broadly available teaching material for students in the developing world, this becomes more of an issue. This might not go as far as rewriting all compilers etc, but i can easily imagine an advanced babelfish extension for Eclipse etc...

Other stuff
My talk about GData
Due to the fact that i was following a keynote with Q&A in the big room, I unhappily lost 10min out of 40 in speaking time. That did not increase my performance (rushing through stuff is no fun), but i still had probably 100-120 people in the audience and got lot’s of questions during the next 2 days. The feedback was positive, but one really important thing emerged. They liked the idea of GData, but not having it on search is a big mistake. That I was not able to say “yes, it will happen” was conceived as plain stupid (not on my part, but on “our” part as a company). The other thing that came up was aggregation - Google does serve normal feeds, why not have a queryable GData interface on top of those?
Steve Coast, Openstreets.org
Those guys are trying to create free/public geodata information. Amazing project, with lot’s of hurdles. mainly that most users of geodata have the assumption that they need 100% coverage to have it be usable.
Adrian Halovaty, Journalism via Programming
Starts with the statement that journalism right now is broken. There is a decline of newspaper circulation, the mechanism of story selection, and the data story. In journalism you start with structured data, and create stories, and on the way to the public you loose the structure of the data. Contrast that to Wikipedia, Google Base, and Craigs List, which are just frameworks that need data, contrary to journalism that is data looking for a framework. He then demonstrated chicagocrime.org and mysociety.org who are examples of how that structured data can be used in different context.
Jan Muehlig, OpenUsability.org
Jan is the CEO of an usability consultancy. He focussed on the missing usability aspects of open source development and what could be done to fix this by getting more usability experts involved. If someone is interested in usability and knows nothing about it, he should get the slides and read them (they are on the Oreilly website). They do already have some impact and some volunteers, they are working on the Gimp and other projects. The main challenge is getting those experts into the OS community as they are primarily focussing on closed source software. What i really liked was the line “Features do not create a user experience on it’s own”.
Florian Holzhauser, Jabber - not just instant messaging
Florian is a member of the jabber foundation and he gave an overview presentation of what you can do with jabber. Listening to him, jabber is the best thing since sliced bread, and if you do any connectivity at all, you should and could use jabber. It was a talk directed at a different audience. Slides and marketing speech.
Jim Purbrick, The creation engine
Jim is the technical directory for Second Life. This was an interesting talk about how to create community involvement in this virtual world. 2ndLife has 60% community participation, 140.000h of game time get logged each day and 25% of that time is used constructing things. The factors leading to this are: instant gratification, always on creation (you can always build, no special design mode), collaborative creation, culture of teaching (they build a tower of knowledge there...) and share & distribute (by default created items can be cloned and modified). By now, real companies, like American Aparell are entering to sell virtual and real clothing...
Mathias Marten, From Europe to USA
MySQLs CEO talks about the experiences his company made when they moved large part of the operations from Europe to the USA, cultural differences etc.
Mobile Groupware, calamo.org
I attended some sessions about mobile computing, as i am an avid user, and this conference had some good information and sessions. This was sadly not one of them. Badly presented, the premise was the “always on and no cache” promise of mobile communication, the example was a PIM application. This is an OpenSource effort in J2ME, with a few guys working on it so far. They did explain how they work with exchange4linux and other OS collaboration servers, etc, but I doubt the audience, which was small overall, was on their side. This might partly be to blame on the wrong focus (real time collaboration, where this approach might add value, is not best illustrated using a calendar application).
Jim Zenlin, Director Free Standards Group
The title of the talk was: “Why Open Standards Are Crucial to Protecting Your Linux Investment”, and maybe he ever got around to explaining it... But. After 2minutes he was already talking about why the South lost against the North in the US Civil war (no standard rail system), and that Linux is in an open war against Microsoft. And he continued, although he got protests from the audience, with this (quote: “This is my talk, if you don’t like it, have your own session”). I left after 15min.
David Bitton, CEO Wengo, Freedom to call, freedom to code
It was a presentation of an OpenSource success story. They are a subsidiary of the 2nd largest France telecom. Wengo is an OpenStandard/OpenSource Skype alternative. They had 1 million users in the first 8 months, make money for the telco by offering premium services, and hope to have GoogleTalk integration by EoY. Interesting was the quote that he states that internet giants like MSN, ICQ etc are perceived as direct competitions to the telcos. I did not realize they knew... They have more than 40 people working on Wengo, which is rather large for an Opensource project.
Florian Mueller, NosoftwarePatents.com
He is the guy who successfully fought against the Patent Initiatives in Europe in the past. He got frenetic applause, and his keynote just focused on how to successfully lobby for patents. The problem seems to be that the political left embraces the commons based approach already, where the right wing sees all new models as a thread to commercial viability. The very outspoken activist in the OpenSource arena sometimes add to the problem, as their enthusiasm is overreaching (wonder who he was talking about...). He emphasized the need for top-down lobbying, bottom up alone won’t work in the political arena. What is needed are serious studies showing that the new models are in deed creating economic benefits for society.
Damian Conway, The Conway Channel 2006
It was the usual Perl talk, about 2 modules he wrote. I just saw him deliver (lightening talk session in between) the “101 things i love about Perl 6” in 5 minutes, so i was surprised he was back in action already :). I am not a Perl head, the little i know was not enough to really appreciate what he has done there, but some of things were just amazing language additions. The List::Maker had some nice features, i loved the < 4d6 > notation, but Contextual::Return was really neat. It allows for lazy evaluation of function returns.
Adrian Holovaty, Django, www.djangoproject.com
He showed how Django was used to build chicagocrimes.org, which was a very “hand’s on” way of demonstration the power behind Django. Nothing he talked about surprised me as being “unusual” in a web development framework, but it appeared to me as being very very well thought through and executed well. Restless design, no filename extensions, template inheritance, simple presentation orientated template logic. Especially the auto generation of database admin UI is, i assume, a real timesaver. Certainly the framework i am going to use for my personal site projects that i have in mind.

Live with a new MacPro

2006-09-14T16:19:00.000+02:00

I got my 3.0Ghz brandnew MacPro, sporting an ATI 1900XT and 5GB of RAM on Tuesday. I am not going to repeat all the great reviews, i can just confirm most of what was written. Less noise, less heat, more speed.

Reasons for disappointment:

- i used the usual firewire transfer method, which, overall, worked great. Unhappily, i installed a bunch of development software as SUDO user (like ant, to usr/local/bin), and those get, for security reasons, not transfered. So i had to manually reinstall some tools, which was annoying. I made myself happy by comparing that to the transfer agent of another OS i know...

- Parallels Workstation for the Mac, which works perfect on my MacBook and the MacBook Pro from my company, does not work yet with a MacPro over 3GB RAM, and not well with less RAM either. They state they identified the issue and are working on a patch, hope this comes soon.

Beside that, it's all bliss. The thing is just screamingly fast, and mind you, it replaces a 2x2.7Ghz with 4GB of RAM, which was not a slow machine to start with. But working with FinalCut or Aperture is now just so snappy it's a real pleasure...

And the XBOX360 is back again...

2006-09-11T13:15:00.000+02:00

this time it took just a week to ship the XBOX away, and get a new one back. It already survived my Wife's 3 hour Zuma session, so I am very confident this one will last at least another week.

Veronica Mars: Season 2

2006-09-11T09:36:00.000+02:00

arrived this morning (ordered by Amazon.com this time, and DHL dutyfully did it's work, so I did not have to drive 50miles to pick it up at Customs...).

This in turn, if the reviews are any indication, predicts a sleepless week in Wermelskirchen. The first season as of the "i can't stop watching" kind, from all I heard, the 2nd season is supposed to be as good, if not better...

Oh well, there are times in your life where you just have to stand up to the pressure and sleep during office hours.... :)

XBOX360 support...

2006-09-05T09:45:00.000+02:00

So i called in this morning, to claim a new warranty repair. The usual drill, lot's of questions etc. Then he asks me about the free space around the XBox, to make sure it has enough airflow. I tell him, it's mounted horizontally and has around 20cm (8 inch) of space in all other directions.

He starts telling me that this is not enough and he has to note that, and they might not repair it for free because of the heat issues. My wife than took a measurement (as the 20cm was guessing), and it's 35cm, so this was all well.

But excuse me? Where in the freaking manual do they state 30cm as the minimum safe distance?

If they would state that, they would admit to a glaring design mistake in the XBOX 360. Hence, they can not really hold me, or any one else for that matter, responsible for "not enough airflow" if they do not state what the amount of air needed for the system is.

If the XBOX360 really needs 30cm in all directions, to operate in a safe manner, that's a joke. But what really pisses me off, is that i am the one who spend 800$ on XBOX 360 stuff so far, and i have to send the thing in for repair (twice now), and they treat me like i am at fault for their shitty workmanship.

It's about time Nintendo and Sony get their act together. Microsoft seems to need a bit of competition to start appreciate the customer a bit more.

My XBOX360 broke down again...

2006-09-04T21:06:00.000+02:00

Just 6 weeks after it arrived, I am going to call support tomorrow to arrange for another pick-up. This time, the DVD drive broke down. I was in the middle of a gaming session, when i heard a LOUD, cracking noise, followed by: "Can not read the disc..".

I checked the game disc, looked fine. I tried it again, only to have it be eject right away. I try other game disc, i try music CDs. No luck with nothing at all. But the drive got mighty loud :)

So much to me not believing a word of all the "bad quality control" stories so far. The whole XBox360 adventure is turning to a real selling point for a PS3 in my view.

Two defects in less than a year.

My time with a Linux server is over...

2006-09-04T15:23:00.000+02:00

This weekend, i repeated an old geek mistake. I upgraded a fine running server (Ubuntu 5.10) to the latest release (Ubuntu 6.06-1) which is supposed to be a Long Term Support (LTS) release.

As security updates for old releases are not quite as frequent, i though, 6.06 is out for a few months, let's upgrade...

The upgrade went pretty smooth (although i will not start arguing that i expect an upgrade to work like this: pop in upgrade CD, hit a button, upgrade happens, instead of the usual mumbo jumbo you need to do for Linux).

Today i discovered 2 not so nice things:

a) printing in Ubuntu 6.06 is just broken. I mean, the forums are full of reports that printing does not work anymore after upgrading
b) my external harddrive does not automount anymore

The later was a bug in 5.x that they fixed on the way to 5.10, and it's broken/changed/whatever again in 6.06.

The former is just stupid. I spend a whole day trying to tweak it, but it just won't print at all. It looks to me that the Ubuntu 6.06 USB subystem together with a less than good CUPS subsytem just do not like to print against most USB printers.

Too bad, i was used to having a Linux server around. OTOH, i have a spare PowerMac, as i am about to get a new MacPro, so i am going to use that one as the server in the future. This is going to have a bunch of benefits:

a) i can have all MP3's on the server and stream from there.
b) i can rip them directly to the server and everyone will get the benefits
c) i have a server that can actually work with a lot of add on hardware (compared to a Linux box)
d) i have a server that i trust. I never really trusted the Ubuntu box, the lack of care the Ubuntu community and developers exhibit in polishing their systems just makes me distrust the inner workings and the reliability as well.

Bye bye Linux, see you soon in a VM near me.

XBOX360 Arcade games... (2)

2006-09-02T20:17:00.000+02:00

I finally, after 30 minutes, got through to support. This can get solved, but it's not acknowledge in the knowledgebase article 911198, nor in any other document. And all the other people on the web don't seem to have had luck with support either...

So here is the solution:

a) you need another account on your XBox360. A silver account is fine. Most likely you have that, otherwise you would not have noticed.
b) you call to support (can only vouch for the german support, they do this).
c) you wait
d) you continue waiting...
e) when you reach someone, you explain your problem. They verify the "replacement console" story (have your reference number of that incident).
f) then they need your GamerTag. They calculate the amount of points you spend so far
g) and the other gamertag get's that amount of points
h) now wait again, this is supposed to take 10days
i) when you finally have the points on the other account, you buy all the games again

Now, repeat after me: I LOOOOVE DRM. It's good for you. It enriches your life - otherwise you would never ever hear stories like this.

I don't even want to start arguing at how many places Microsoft could do a much better job in this area. It's so obvious, and i just don't have the time. I am just glad that in 10 days, my wife can try to break her high score again...

Can not play XBOX360 arcade games anymore...

2006-09-02T19:14:00.000+02:00

I am not the only one. When you have a defect XBOX360, and you get a replacement unit, like I did, the original buyers account has to be connected to XBOX Live, so that you can play the games you purchased.

Now I understand that this is a security feature to prevent people from copying games around. But..

This completely sucks ass and is another glaring display for the disregard of content providers, Microsoft in this case, to their consumers. I am not the only one (just google for this problem, you get plenty) as everyone who got a replacement unit can not play the games on their secondary accounts or when the internet is down.

Sorry guys. This is a totally unacceptable solution. Have a fucking "reset my account ID" on your freaking website, so the next time i log in, the new XBox will authorize itself again. Or get rid of the DRM system.

This also means, if i buy a 2nd XBox and want to copy the games on it, to play them in another room - let's say I am watching TV, and my Kids want to play. No way, my friends. Unless they use my account.

This is just evil. I get a replacement for a broken piece of hardware, and i loose functionality. I hope Sony does a better job on this with PS3.

So far I was a fan of XBox360 and XBoxLife. This just got a good damper.

Bagels...

2006-09-02T12:13:00.000+02:00

One of the things that are hard to come by in my particular area in Germany, are Bagels. Delicious fresh Bagels. Heck, i would settle for ok, not super fresh ones if I could get them.

The closest place to sell Bagels is in Cologne, that is like 30 miles or 45min by car away.

So I finally decide to bite the bullet and bake them myself. The whole 9 yards, starting with yeast and flour, over cooking them in simmering water etc.

It was not as hard as I thought. And the result was worth it, my family loved it, and yesterdays batch is already gone. So guess what i am doing right now...

NewsReader software for the Mac

2006-08-31T17:50:00.000+02:00

When i first got a Mac, around 15months ago, i started out using Newfire, a beautiful, fast, and no gimmicks newsreader. I was pretty happy with it, until one day, i had a harddisk problem related to an out of control virus checker, which filled my harddrive to the last byte, and Newsfire was the only application that not only got data loss, but a complete trashing of all data related to it. Channels, account info, all gone.

So i switched. As I, by that time, had 3 Macs now, I was looking for a software with online/central synchronization, and I ended up using Shrook. I was pretty happy with it for most of the time, i liked the good widescreen support, and the sync with the server works. Mostly.

This mostly was the really annoying part about it. On my high end dual G5 machine, Shrook would routinely end up eating 127% CPU and more, and always while syncing with the server. When you quit Shrook, it can take 2-3 minutes until the application is finally done, hence this one will always stop my machine from any logout attempt.

Today I installed NetNewsWire, and while i do not like the display layout as much as Shrook, today i have not seen the app use more than 20% CPU, and syncing with the NetGator service is very very fast. If this plays out well across my 3 Macs, I am going to switch. I am pretty sure Shrook is at a dead end anyway - they have not had an update for a long time...

Logitech Support

2006-08-23T12:32:00.000+02:00

I am a long time fan of Logitech and their products. They create, in my opinion, the best set of peripherals for PCs and Mac's alike, with the exception of the keyboard (I am a sucker for ergonomic keyboards, they do not offer one).

I switched to a MX1000 Laser mouse a year ago, and i love it. Great response, very nice feel for me. I bought one for my wife as well, and she is equally happy. But i noticed that i lost a glider on my mouse, so it's now only on 3 gliders, hence touching the pad on one side, and thereby making it harder to move around.

I contacted Logitech support via a web form, and get an email reply that they will send me 2 set's of gliders in the next week, with no charge.

Service. Priceless....

2006-08-21T16:47:00.000+02:00

In my day job, i added introspection support to the Blogger demo application. Now, with more than one service offering GData support at Google, the power of the idea is really beginning to show. Code, that is pretty much identical between Blogger and Calendar can be used to pull and post data to both services.

Visual Studio 2003 SP1: 400+ Bugs Fixed

2006-08-21T09:41:00.000+02:00

Visual Studio 2003 SP1: 400+ Bugs Fixed:
Visual Studio 2003 SP1, which Microsoft delivered this week, includes more than 400 bug fixes to Microsoft's development-tool suite.
Wow. I mean. Wow. I knew that there were bugs in the product, that is just natural for any kind of complex software system. It's also not surprising that there were so many, VS is a very complex piece of technology.

But. Look at 2 things. SP1 means that this is the first service pack for VS. 2003 means that the product was released 2003. Hence it took them 3 years to issue a bugfix release.

Flying...

2006-08-21T09:36:00.000+02:00

Just need to write this down.. On my recent trip to Atlanta & NYC, I had to take a flight at 7:45pm to NYC from Atlanta. The plane was 15min late, so we got in around 7:45pm.

That was not too bad, a delay of 15min these days is like "right on time" for an airline. But, while boarding, a thunderstorm started. We had to wait on the ground for 3 hours until we finally departed.

Instead of arriving at NYC around 12:30, i arrived a lot lot later. When i got my bag, it was 3 times heavier than i recalled... Guess what, the bag was sitting outside during the thunderstorm.

So I arrive at the hotel, unpack the bag and notice a nice reddish discoloration of my belongings...

That was a great night.

Om Malik on the Zune Announcement

2006-07-24T12:09:00.000+02:00

Om Malik on the Zune Announcement:

I love this part:

"Microsoft could argue that Zune would be unique and those others can still do business. But it is also a classic example of why Microsoft is lumbering bureaucratic morass wrapped in a can of conflicts. A modern day version of medieval fiefdoms, perhaps?

Take for instance, Urge which is built into Windows Vista, and is what I guess you could call an almost integrated experience. What happens to consumers when faced with the choice of Zune or Urge!!!

Answer - iPod.
"
I am also pretty darn sure that Microsoft will make this device too complicated, but that is just my personal guess. Microsoft has a tendency to create one-device-to-solve-it-all solutions, and I am feeling pretty sure that this won't fly here.

XBOX360 is back..

2006-07-19T13:12:00.000+02:00

It actually arrived yesterday morning, which proves that the email notification system is out of whack, but it is working again, and i got an extra hard disk in the bargain. I send mine in without my HD (did not want to loose the data), and i got one back with another HD...

Anyway, the system was defect for just 8 days. That's pretty good customer service.

The XBOX360 is repaired...

2006-07-17T18:39:00.000+02:00

one hour after i got the "we received the XBOX" email, i get the "your XBOX system is shipped" email.

That was a fast repair job... I am feeling a bit itchy (like, that could never have worked.....), but i am hopeful to have the system back by weeks end, and maybe even in working condition...

XBOX360: the story goes on..

2006-07-17T17:29:00.000+02:00

Today I received an email from Microsoft Tech Support indicating that my XBOX360 was received in their service center...

Considering that i send it away 7 days ago with UPS Express, i wonder if the service center is located in Timbuktu...

It probably means that the package is now in repair, not just that it arrived... They state they will send me an email again when the repair is done.

Symantec says: No viruses for the Mac

2006-07-16T16:10:00.000+02:00

Symantec says: No viruses for the Mac:
This past Tuesday was Patch Tuesday for Windows XP users like me. There were also a bunch of anti-spyware, anti-virus, and a bunch of other stuff that had me rebooting my Windows PCs a bunch of times over the past few days. So, with my Mac user hat on, I read the following Symantec web-article with great interest: Mac OS X: Viruses and Security that says (in part) Let’s start with the hot-button issue of Mac OS X viruses. Simply put, at the time of writing this article, there are no file-infecting viruses that can infect Mac OS X.

Now this is a bold claim, but my currently felt love for the Mac just does not care :)

Eric Clapton, 7-13-2006 in Cologne

2006-07-14T19:43:00.000+02:00

I went to see Eric Clapton on his "Back Home" concert in Cologne yesterday.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the Robert Cray Band as the opener. Robert Cray later joined Clapton on stage for 2 songs, where the first one "Cruel Love" (I think) was my favourite of the evening.

Both bands were a joy to watch, they showed a lot of spirit. Sadly, the Cologne Arena is not a great sound stage, the sound was just too loud, and therefore sometimes distorted. They deserved better than that. It was a good show, but it could have been a great show with a bit more technical effort.

And, confirming my believes that the majority of Germans are pigs with an attitude, there was smoking inside the arena, and people continued to smoke even after they were told it is not allowed...

XBox360: The good, the bad, ...

2006-07-11T17:37:00.000+02:00

I got my XBox360 the day it was released in Germany. It was always a bit louder and hotter than the once my friends had (at least the small sample of 2 friends i have that also have a XBox360), but it worked fine.

Until last week. I poped in a game, and it just froze. Reboot. Same game. Freeze... Reboot, another game. Hang.. Reboot. Demo on harddisk. Freeze. Reboot, disconnect Harddisk. Hang...

Finally the 3 rings of red indicate a hardware failure.

I called Microsoft the next morning, the pickup service is nice. Now it takes up to 3 weeks to replace/repair the unit. Let's wait if it turns out the ugly or not...

Suzane Burmaz

2006-07-05T22:07:00.000+02:00

As i just learned today, a former co-worker of mine, Suzane Burmaz, died, she was just 39 years old. From what i read in the newspaper, it was a freak accident, a car, that was chased by the police, hit Suzane and a friend, who were driving on their Motorbike. Her friend died at the scene, Suzane was brought into the hospital, never to wake up again. She died on the 4th of July, 2006.

We were just people who worked together at the same place for about a year. I never got the chance, nor looked for a chance, to get to know her better. Now she is taken away from her loved ones, from her friends and co-workers, and many others, for no reason at all.

A senseless dead like this saddens me, and should sadden anyone who hears about it. Rest in peace, Suzane...

Books: 2 good books to read...

2006-07-04T11:13:00.000+02:00

During my recent business trip to California, i read 2 1/2 books, the 2 i have finished were very much worth reading:

Paul Auster: Oracle Night. A novel about a recovering (from sickness) writer, trapped in his own story. I liked it a lot, your mileage may vary.

Giles Waterfield: The Hound in the Left-hand Corner
This is a very amusing book about a british museum. To like it, you need to be able to deal with "formal, upper class dinner style" english, and appreciate british humor.

I am also reading Darknet (late, i know), and i am not done with it. It seems to confirm what we all know anyway: Hollywood is evil, and free culture is in jeopardy. Beside those stereotypes it has a bunch of chilling anecdotes though.

MacBook - the battery is dead...

2006-07-04T11:08:00.000+02:00

Two Days ago, i was sitting outside, working with the MacBook. After 1 hour the battery was dead (ok, i had WoW running in the background, scanning Auctions - so i thought that drained the battery).

So, i plug the Book into the socket. Next Morning, it is still charging. To my surprise, it does not detect the installed battery. Unplug. Shutdown. Remove Battery. Do the reset dance... Put it back together. Nothing.

Spend 5 min on the NET researching it, and figured that the overall consensus is: "DEAD. Just like Plywood". So i call Apple Tech support (not that easy to find that number, is it... ), and they go through all the hoops i just did, again. I am a good boy and do as they ask - that's just the way support works, and you have to go with the flow if you want anything at all from them. The guy is nice, and fast, and after 20 min, he concurs: "Dead, as Plywood". So he puts a replacement in the system.

This morning, 10:02 am. UPS rings the door. Replacement battery.

I mean, i was upset that the battery died. But these things happen. Replacing it in less than 24 hours - that's priceless, for everything else there is....

MacBook

2006-06-09T14:49:00.000+02:00

I got a new, black MacBook a few days ago, and had time to play with it for a bit by now.

When the machine arrived, i added 2GB of RAM and exchanged the Harddrive with a 7200rpm Hitachi drive. After that, i connected my old Powerbook G4, and transfered the contents onto the MacBook, a process that went suprisingly smooth.

I don't have any heat problems, even playing World of Warcraft for longer periods of time does not raise the temperature to more than 75 C on the CPU, which seems to be fine. The machine does not feel hot either, at least not on battery power - which is when it counts for me at least.

The speed is amazing, compared to the old G4, everything feels a lot snappier. Booting is a lot faster, but i don' really care about that too much, as i normally never shutdown my laptop.

So far, i am very happy with the machine. Right now I am writing this entry outside, with a tree behind me in the sun. The screen is ok for that, and certainly better than the G4 screen.

Richard II

2006-05-08T14:13:00.000+02:00

On Saturday, i visited the Ruhrfestspiele and saw Kevin Spacey and the London Old Vic company perform Shakespeare's Richard II. This was an unusual performance for Germany, as the play was performed in English, with "subtitles" floating above the stage.

I have to say, looking around me, quite a few folks were spending most of the play reading those, and that's sad - as it really distracted from the performance. I can understand the desire to see this play, even if the english is not up to specs for it, but if it results on you just being there and reading the text...

Anyway, we had close to perfect seats, 6th row, less than 10meters away from the stage, dead center. From there, it was a very impressive performance, not so much by Kevin Spacey, but by the other supporting actors. The Old Vic company has a couple of amazing people working for them, and there was no point in the play where you felt that Spacey is "commanding" the stage, or playing them against the wall.

On the contrary, there were points later on where you could sense Spacey not being too happy about his performance of the day.

Overall, well spend Euros. I like it when old plays get a "modern" facelift, like this one, without the avant-gard necessity of nudity, blood, shit or anything else added, like it is so often the case with modern German interpretations.

This was thoroughly enjoyable evening in the theater, with a performance well worth remembering.

Backup: Maxtor OneTouch III 1Terrabyte

2006-04-27T15:01:00.000+02:00

Due to the amount of video editing i am doing these days, i needed a bigger external drive solution. The 300GB Seagate i was using just got to small for my needs.

So i got the Maxtor 1Terrabyte drive, and connected it via Firewire 800 to my Mac. The drive can be configured as a RAID-1 solution, yielding 500GB, but i need the space, and to backup that drive, i rather buy a second one.

The speed of the drive is amazing. It's actually 2x as fast as my internal IDE drives (at least per XBench 1.2), makes no noise that i could notice so far, and looks very very cool on your desk :)

So far, recommended.

Back from vacation...

2006-04-27T14:56:00.000+02:00

I spend the last 2 weeks in Sri Lanka, and enjoyed myself tremendously. It was a wonderful trip, with lot's of unique experiences. Well worth the time spend.

Books: American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

2006-03-20T11:22:00.000+01:00

When i was in NYC, i picked up this book while browsing the aisles in a Barnes&Nobles. I am very glad i did, this is one of the best written Novels i have had the pleasure to read in a very long time. I am not going to write a review here, it's easy to find better written ones on the web, but as with all good things, it's also easy to not notice this book - as we all only care about what the mainstream press throws at us.... Here's a link to Amazon to start the research... Highly recommended.

Billy Joel, Madison Square Garden

2006-03-07T11:40:00.000+01:00

March, 4th, 2006

I went to see Billy Joel, live in the Garden. I have never been to the Garden before, and this alone was worth the price of admission. A great arena, with this feeling of history (that they are of course forcing down your throat when you enter, but it's a good feeling).

The concert started 8:20pm and went until 10:40pm. He pretty much played all hit's that i can recall from the top of my head, and, although i heard rumors that his voice is not what it used to be, i can not complain. The performance was probably the best i have seen, although i have not been to big ticket concerts for a while. He had an exceptionally talented crew to work with, and it was just very very well done entertainment.

This was the 10th sold out concert this spring, with concert 11 coming up (already sold out as well) in April. If you are in New York, get a ticket (yes, it will be over a brooker, and it will cost you. But it will be worth it).

Movie: Ultraviolett

2006-03-07T11:33:00.000+01:00

I went to see Ultraviolett on March, 3rd in a decent theater close to Broadway, NYC. That was a big big blunder. I would have left after 45min, when it was clear the movie is not going to be any better, but the theater was pretty full, and i consider it in-polite to disturb so many people - especially if they are all going "Hey dude, that's soooo cool.. they are dead, man....".

The movie features:

a) bad acting. I mean really bad acting. Electra should get an Oscar compared to this.
b) bad screenplay, bad script, bad dialogues... it's just an endless series of "what were they thinking"
c) bad special effects. The movie seems to take pleasure in letting you know that it is a bluescreen movie - you can see the flickering around the characters all the time

Probably the worst movie i have seen in the last 10 years.

Password picking the easy way

2006-02-16T08:19:00.000+01:00

I just love Jeremy Zawodny's blog. Reading his blog makes me always with i would work for Yahoo. Anyway, he has a real nice post about the recent password requirements of their payroll system. Read it and go insane.

Seriously, at the end of the day, you want users to not pick their birthdays etc as the passwords, as they are easily guess-able by pretty much anyone who want's to crack the account. Considering though the sophistication of todays hackers, coupled with the fact how many different accounts i need to have on the internet, i am left with very few interesting choices:

a) just have one password for all your important accounts. Have another password for unimportant accounts (like game related forums etc). That's unsecure in terms of passwords, but at least i do not need to write them down, right?
b) have a different password/username for everything and write them all down. Use a computer to store them. And make lot's of backups. Hopefully they are all secure so that noone can get at them.
c) Move to a remote part of the world without internet access..

Another DRM editorial...

2006-02-02T12:41:00.000+01:00

and surprise, it's against DRM. The voice is certainly opinionated, but he is soooo right. Read it here.

GTA lawsuit: games harming innocent 17th year olds...

2006-02-02T11:33:00.000+01:00

Just read the following article in the LA Times Online. Nice perspective on the issue.

Apple iMac's running Windows...?

2006-02-02T09:20:00.000+01:00

I am reading a lot about the possibility that Apple's new Macs might be able to boot Windows XP, or Windows Vista later. Apple's statement is that they are not doing anything to prevent this.

Somehow I just don't get it. i don't want to dual boot a Mac with OS X into any version of Windows. I mean, get real, if you are a Mac, and you boot Windows, you probably get a CPU cardiac attack.

Dual booting, while the bread and butter of Linux geeks, is just not practical as an everyday solution. What if you need that one windows app to run, and you are in OS X right now? Are you going to write down that information, reboot, start the windows app, type it back in and do whatever you do? Or you partition your drive in a way that you can share that data?

Hogwash. This is just stoneage computing. A cheap thrill, reboot into windows, and then, after 10min of disdain, you reboot into Mac OS X again, thinking, yes i did it. I booted Windows. Later you will wonder why, but for the moment there is this feeling of accomplishment. This is like booting Linux on your Mac. Only less secure, but prettier.

What i want is VMWare or VirtualPC to run Windows in a little window (that way you can easily hide it, when your cool friends come over) to do my accounting, .NET development etc. VirtualPC is a slow dog, barely usable these days even on the fastest Mac out there, and not just due to the emulation, but also due to the random limitation to 512MB of RAM (now, who came up with that?).

That is useful. I could stay in the secure, beautiful environment that i have come to love in the last year, and still do online banking. i can cut/copy/paste between apps and other good stuff.

But dual booting?

Islam jokes create outrage....

2006-02-01T16:59:00.000+01:00

A Danish newspaper printed (in September) a series of 12 caricatures about Islam and Mohammed. To give you a feel for them, let me describe one: it shows Mohammed with a bomb instead of a Turban on his head...

The outrage in the islamic world created by that is unbelievable. 17 countries so far have demanded criminal prosecution or other consequences against the people responsible at the newspaper. All of the countries are obviously Islamist.

Now, i don't personally care for religion in the first place. On the other hand, i do not approve of unprovoked attacks on religion, or discrimination based on religion.

So i am not approving of what the newspaper did. Considering though what else newspapers do, and what kind of attacks other organizations and people (ever been followed by paparazzi ?) have to go through, i think this was rather harmless. But, i can understand that deeply religious people can be offended. The same way that deeply religious christians were offended by "Priest" etc...

Now, i am not even arguing that this is part of fundamental freedom, or that if you are deeply religious, just don't read those jokes, or do not watch the movie.

All i really want is that the same 17 countries that are now demanding consequences based on they being ridiculed in their religious freedom and believes, show the same kind of determination the next time their brothers in believe bomb another school or restaurant?

Why don't we have 80.000 islamic women demonstrate against terror based on their believes? Obviously, they were able to get a copy of a danish newspaper, or at least a truthful account of what was in there, so i am sure that they are fully informed about all the atrocities that happen in the name of Allah? If so, why is there no outcry against those terrorists that misuse the name of God in their very acts? Why, are those Islamic governments so eager to press ahead against the danish newspaper, but so utterly ineffective in suppressing anti-semitic journalism in their own countries?

As long as that does not happen, i find it hard to credit those demonstrators with any kind of honest motivation, or the desire to make the world a better place. This is just another witch hunt, fostered by the hateful Mulahs to burn the "all western people are unholy demons who deserve to DIE" picture.

DOJ asking search engines for query data

2006-01-24T11:08:00.000+01:00

Bush, in his usual, eloquent and distinguished manner, and his administration are really going after porn this time around. Wonder who and what is next? Should i have run a query about Drug abuse? What about me wondering about Bush himself? That data could easily be used for polling data for the next elections, i guess.

Anyway, instead of me rambling, read Jeremy's post.

TV: Veronica Mars

2006-01-22T15:07:00.000+01:00

Based on a recommendation by Dave from Blogography, I bought the first season. This is the best stuff i have seen on TV since WestWing. Very good cast, believable acting, good story line with nice twists. Highly recommended.

Final Fantasy XI on the XBox 360

2006-01-22T15:05:00.000+01:00

I tested the current beta from FF XI on my XBox 360. After a long install, here is my summary:

- the game is not integrated with XBox Live. They use their own lobby system.
- the game is not integrated with XBox at all. No friends, no data from your Gamertag (i had to reenter all my account info, address etc, with the gamepad)
- the Game NEEDS a keyboard
- the grafik is not really next generation, it is ok, but every PC MMORG i have looks nicer
- no good sound system yet. The background music is just not very atmospheric IMO
- the UI is unreadable, even on my 8ft DLP projector
- the NPC text system that is designed to be cute is just annoying

Overall: If you have a PC, play MMORGs there. If you do not have one, buy one. If all that is not an option, wait for another MMORG.

Google Video...

2006-01-10T13:24:00.000+01:00

is, like, hmm... a disaster?

I hate the US ignorance of the rest of the world in general, but the BETA versions of Google, Yahoo and others always exclude everyone. I am used to that. That does not even bother me anymore.

But...

Google.Video really is going the extra step to piss me off. You can go there, with your Mac, and watch previews of NBA videos and other commercial videos. i can not buy them on my mac, and i can understand that...

Then i search for free things. There are lot's of user submissions, things without copyright etc...

I can NOT preview them on the Mac.
I can NOT preview them in my country in the first place.

Why is FREE stuff banned from being distributed freely? I am not even blaming Google (they are probably just protecting they corporate asses from being sued), or maybe i should blame them because they made a mistake.

The end result though is another completely useless Google Beta if you actually live in the another part of the world.

Add to this the fact that i just tried to buy an album from Matthew Ebel (great artist), who is independent, and the independent music store is in the US, and it would cost 7$ to get a 10$ CD to me, the future of democratic content distribution seems to be very far away indeed.

Searching on the web sucks....

2005-12-29T15:29:00.000+01:00

... at least if you are looking for documentation on certain issues. Right now, e.g., i am looking for documentation on how to serialize an XML document using javascript.

Easy, you think? I use "serialize xml javascript" as my search term, and i get a bunch of links. So, wait a minute, my friend, i hear you say, searching does not suck.

Ok, i admit. Searching does not suck, i admit, creating a really evil smile while saying so.... Finding useful information sucks.

And that's not really a fault of the search engine of choice. Example: one article goes to the mozilla foundation, describing what i need for mozilla. Now the problem with this, and so many other articles, is, that they are not really useful on it's own. They:

- have no date that i can find (maybe in the source)
- have no mentioning what version this information applies to

and then start of with "does not support in the moment". What moment? When earth collided with an asteroid to kill of the dinosaurs? Or when Paris Hilton did the car wash? What moment in time are we talking about?

I am not picking on MozillaZine for a specific reason. This is true all over the pages you find whenever you look for information. You get a nice, page ranked, weighted list of information, that is mostly so out of it's context, so completely and utterly useless to you in the present day, that you feel like little Harry Potter entering the library at Hogwarths without Hermine.

Is it so freaking hard to at least DATE your publications on the web.... in a visible manner to the reader?

Movie: The gangs of New York

2005-12-20T19:45:00.000+01:00

I finally was to see The Gangs of New York by Martin Scorsese. I had that lying in the drawer for a long time, but somehow was never in the mood to see it.

This was a worthwhile movie. Daniel Day-Lewis gave a great performance as the butcher, and, as with most Scrosese movies, the pictures were just breathtaking on the big screen. I just wish they would have found a better actor for the main part - i just can not bring myself to like Leonardo or at least objectively admire his work. He is just not good enough to overcome this prejudice i have with him.

Nethertheless, a worthwhile addition to my movie collection.

Intelligent Design is banned ...

2005-12-20T19:33:00.000+01:00

Read it at CNN. This is good news. I don't mind that people disagree about a theory - encouraging discussion and reflection is at the heart of scientific research. But ID is such a poorly disguised religious rights agenda item, it would have been really a shame for the USA as a country to put this in the classrooms on an equal footing.

Maybe, when they actually open up the classrooms to teach comparable religion, they can somehow stuff it close to other extremist propaganda? That way it would end up in the classroom after all, and with the proper setting and comparisons to sparkle scientific discussions?

Anti Virus Software for the Mac OS X...

2005-12-07T11:30:00.000+01:00

Based on an article in MacWorld, i bought Intego VirusBarrier eight months ago. I was a happy camper for this time, the software worked, and no virus got on my system (big deal - there are not that many floating around). But I assume the software did it's job.

Then, one blue moon, they released an update: VirusBarrier X4. Of, course, as a nice citizen, and a former windows user, i upgraded the software - with Virus stuff, you always want to be uptodate....

Now the trouble started. Every couple of scans, the software started to fill my boot drive, eating all the 160GB of free space, until the system shut down. I actually lost data due to this.

That bug was fixed (no help to tech support, who answered 3 weeks after my email, and 1 week after the patch for this - btw, that problem was never mentioned in the patch notes) in a patch.

But, behold, my dual power mac experienced surges of CPU usage.. One process of VirusBarrierX eats up good 170% of CPU and never, at least not in any reasonable time, let go.

So, what am i as a consumer to do? There is a 60$ upgrade, that is eating more time than it's worth, with NO WAY IN HELL to get tech support (funny note: their tech support site states "we support you" ) in any reasonable time frame. I already wrote them 3 times with no answer worth mentioning about the former issue, is this worth it?

Google to the rescue: enter "uninstall VirusBarrier X", find out how to do that, and pretend for the rest of your life that you spend those 60$ in a bar, it was a great night, and you just do not remember any of it....

Now i use Norton Antivirus for 2 days, and so far, my CPU is only used by things i am aware of.

Cardinal William Keeler.....

2005-11-28T18:21:00.000+01:00

talks about the dangers of the modern world... This time video iPods, cell phones etc...
To quote him, is to loathe him:

"Sadly, unwanted pornography often leads to wanted pornography,"

"The danger lies in the fact that there are not safeguards or regulations in place to protect children or teens from being exposed to unwanted pornography."

Now, to directly respond to Mister Keeler:

a) in regard to unwanted porn leading to wanted one, If someone want's it, then let him/her have it. Do not assume there is a way in the world he will not get exposed to it anyhow, and if he/she desires it, that there is anything you can do to stop this.

b) in regard to regulations and safeguards. I might be stupid, but couldn't you just turn that device of? Delete the film? Or, is the lure of the darkside so great that it takes over your iPod?

Mister Keeler is a good example of the christian right movement. They denounce Darwin, they are want to protect you soooo much that you will end up loosing all freedom, and they are, on average, not really giving any indication that they read the new Testament, but are more firmly grounded with both feeds and a gun on the old Testament.

Scary.

Music: Kate Bush - Aerial

2005-11-09T12:03:00.000+01:00

I just got that one today. The first album from her for twelve years, if i am not mistaken. If you ever liked the style, even remotely, you owe it to you to buy this (or at least listen to it once or twice). This is one of the very best pieces of art i had the pleasure to put into my CD player for a very long time. Fantastic songs, i especially like Pi.

Highly, highly recommended.

WS_* specs and a visit from the future

2005-10-24T10:12:00.000+02:00

Don Box's blog pointed me to Tim Bray's post about WS_Trust etc spec bloat. Something to laugh about, priceless....

Although it somehow frightens me that i can laugh about that :)

Things i like about Python...(1)

2005-10-20T14:01:00.000+02:00

I am just on the way back from EuroOSCON, a wonderful conference held in Amsterdam by O'Reilly this year. I sure hope they repeat this event, there were some great sessions, speakers and keynoters (with some notable exceptions, as always).

But, this is called Python, and the reason is that i decided some time ago to get into this language, and started to read the Python Tutorial on the way back in the train. Did i mention train rides are just a fantastic way of travel? You have room, you have power, and for trips like this it's as fast as a flight, considering the time you normally waste at the airport on the way in & out.

So, first bit of nice thing. Python does not have a CHAR type, only String. I find that alone a worthy simplification. And, Python does have a slice operator, meaning i can say name = "Frank Mantek" and address it like name[0:5] to get "Frank";. The slice has defaults, so name[:5] is the same expression, where name [6:] would give you "Mantek" by just going to the end of the string. Strings are readonly objects, so you can not do a name[0:5] = "Vanya". And that is fine with me. Indices can be negative to indicate counting starts from the right of the string, so a name[-6:] gives you the last six characters.

Neat stuff.

This is getting continued when dealing with Lists, you can slice them as well to get sublists, which is really elegant. Lists though can be assigned to, so you could do something like:

a = [0,1,2,3,4, "Ende"]
b = [-2, -1]
a[0:0] = b
print a
-> results in [-2,-1,0, 1,2,3,4, "Ende"]

note that this is different from assigning a[0:1] = b

Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince

2005-10-08T08:49:00.000+02:00

I finished the book yesterday, having bought the english version a while ago. I have to say i am not thrilled. This book is two things. On the one hand a long setup for Book Number Seven, working title, "Harry Potter and the Truckload of Cash". And it's a fallback to the early days, like Book One, where it's endless stories about Kid's and their problems.

It was not a waste of time, but predictable and missing a compelling story arc. In short, a letdown after the last 3 books, for me at least.

Rollyo

2005-09-29T10:28:00.000+02:00

Just got this link forwarded. This looks pretty interesting. Considering that people want to personalize their web experience like there is no tomorrow, and that recommandations from "trusted" sources, like blogs and reputations at eBay are more important these days than the CNN newticker, this might hit the sweetspot for a group on the web.

Lawrence Lessing style...

2005-09-27T19:55:00.000+02:00

Read finally, progress on Lessing's blog and then watched the presentation. Very nice. Very good. I wish i could present like this...

Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 Keyboard...

2005-09-24T21:50:00.000+02:00

I just got that one today, and this is the best keyboard Microsoft has produced so far - and that says something, as i consider their keyboards to be very high quality for a long time.

But, beside the goodness of the keyboard, Microsoft managed to create a slight sting again. They actually shipped software with they keyboard, which is a good thing... The keyboard has a lot of extra keys, i use it on a Mac, i like having the software.

So, I install the software, i go on about my business, define an eject key etc. During the course of the day my mouse starts acting funky. It comes to a point where every left click does something (like start spotlight) - although it should not...

So i reboot. I go to preferences, and behold: There is not just IntelliType (the keyboard software), no, there is IntelliPoint as well.

I found the uninstaller and got rid of that. The software might work fine with an MS mouse, but it sure did not like my excellent Logitech MX Laser.
A quick note to Microsoft: just because I like your keyboards, does not give you the right to take over my system. Please note that and refrain from doing so in the future.

Microsoft reorgs...

2005-09-21T12:18:00.000+02:00

As every year, we have another reorganization at Microsoft. I just read the following quote:

"Addressing criticism that the company had become too bureaucratic, Microsoft made the divisions bigger to make them more agile. "

... finding something to laugh about. Priceless.

Daring Fireball made me laugh today...

2005-09-21T08:56:00.000+02:00

Just read this about the Dell Ditty on Daring Fireball. Really funny for me, as i just decided to replace Dell at any chance i get. All Dells i ever had exhibited serious noice or powersupply issues down the road (and we are talking around 6 different machines owned over 6 years).

Plague on World of Warcraft

2005-09-21T08:51:00.000+02:00

Just read this on Joi's blog: Plague on World of Warcraft.

Now that is funny. Even if this is a bug, the ability of a MMORG to do this kind of online viral infection is just amazing.

Troubling Exits at Microsoft

2005-09-21T08:02:00.000+02:00

There is a very good article on BusinessWeek online about one of the bigger problems Microsoft is facing today. As one of the former MS employees not mentioned, i find this article still to be right on the money. Some of my favorite quotes:

'Lee called the company "incompetent." After the ruling he praised Google, noting, "the culture is very supportive, collaborative, innovative, and Internet-like -- and that's bottoms-up innovation rather than top-down direction."'

'When the project was conceived half a decade ago, it was envisioned as a breakthrough: an operating system that would transform the way users store and retrieve information. But the more revolutionary features have been dropped, and Vista will arrive three years after researcher Gartner Inc. originally predicted that it would ship. Worse yet, they say, nobody has been held accountable. "People look around and say: 'What are those clowns doing?"' says Adam Barr, a program manager in the Windows group.'

and..

' Microsoft certainly is chock-full of smart employees who want to do better. Still, many of them say that jumping through bureaucratic hoops and struggling to link products together is preventing them from being the best they can be. There's a plea for action to Gates and Ballmer to do more -- slash the bureaucracy, tend to morale, and make it easier to innovate. But is anyone listening?

Movie: The Grudge

2005-09-09T09:14:00.000+02:00

A few days ago I was in the mood for a really scary movie. Now, let me paraphrase this and specify exactly what i mean.

Not a lot of blood. No splatterfest. No march of the undead feasting...

I like horror movies more subtle, i am more scared by imagining what might have happened, compared to seeing somebody get skinned alive.

The Grudge, an american remake of an all japanese movie, remade by the original director, did it for me. It was scary, the acting was ok (hey, it's a horror movie, not an Oscar winning Drama with Anthony Hopkins), and the effects were good. The movie got below average scores in IMDB, which is beyond me to explain, but this might be genre specific (Event Horizon scored as well, and that is one of the worst movies I have ever seen :)).

Dare Obasanjo and his stand on MSFT...

2005-09-09T09:08:00.000+02:00

Read his post on MS and why he believes he is not going to be there anymore in 5 years.

Seriously, if you can see all this now, even if you are working on something cool and exciting right now, it won't be 5 years ...

MS was fun when we worked on IE4 and a few projects after. I never worked on MSN, beside a brief stunt on Communities in its very early days, and seriously would not have wanted to be in that division - too many heads leading there that, back then, i did not really really want to work with. Of course, when i left, they were all retired :)

Two things might happen to the MSN culture, which, if i understand Dare correctly, is allowed to exist because they need to ship more often than every 5 years.

One possibility is that they win the web, and beat Yahoo, Google and all the others - just like IE4 did years ago.

Now, excuse the continuation of that post, while I step into the bathroom and laugh myself silly.

The other way, and that's what i am betting on, this might work out, is, that the corporate MS will just give up the fight. It will check this off as a calculated loss, and stop pouring money into a fight they will not win.

And, that is the end, my friends, to the free culture movement in MSN land. Enjoy it for the 24 months it might last.

Top 5 reasons for GoogleTalk

2005-08-31T11:31:00.000+02:00

Stumpled across this via Jeremy Zawodny's blog. That is a funny read.

Google Desktop BETA

2005-08-25T10:09:00.000+02:00

I installed this on my Windows Box, and i am mostly confused. Is it better than the competion on Windows? Maybe, but here is the list of things that I am missing or complaining about.

a) customization. Pretty much everything in the sidebar is "smart" meaning that it will learn what you look at a lot and display this there. Heh? Am i missing something? Yes, i can add feeds to it manually. Cumbersome. Why is there no "import from bloglines"? Or import OPML? Or better, use bloglines notification service. The same is true for all the plugins, as far as i can tell. Now i have to look at news.com headlines all day.... or i need to cut/copy/paste feeds in there. I do not want to do that again.

b) internationalization. I am really tired of US only releases by Google. It's nice to know the weather of Honolulu by default, but heck, i really don't care. Must be me. Sitting in rainy Germany, i want to know the weather of Wuppertal, not Hawaii.

c) Keyboard access. I read that you can use the keyboard to open the search bar.. Ok, on my Mac i do CTRL+SPACE and start typing. Anyone knows how to set this up? I can't find it.

d) UI issues. I can't find it. I mean trying to figure out how to customize the sidebar, keyboard access, what it's searching etc, is not streamlined.

e) Outlook search. Yesterday that was not working. Totally random. Have not tried today

f) GMail indexing. Took 14hours. Wow.

g) Window only. What's up with Google only releasing Windows software. Not that i would use this on a MAC, but on Linux I would. Google is already having credibility issues in the Open Source world, and they are getting pictured as the next big evil after Microsoft. Why, oh why, aren't they releasing this as OSS, so that a port would be possible? That would be a good marketing move, in my opinion. I can't see that this bit of code is actually worth protecting in a close source form.

Or, to rephrase it in a one liner. I am not impressed. No, let's rephrase this: I am very intrigued that the press says this is better than yahoo & msn desktop search.

Movie: National Treasure

2005-08-25T09:56:00.000+02:00

I got this using Amazon DVD rental, and yesterday i saw it. Picture and sound quality are average, there are some really noisy scenes, especially at the beginning. The movie is pure Hollywood at it's worst. It leaves you uninspired, untouched, not caring, but entertained. It's like eating at McDonald's - you are not hungry anymore, but you can't really remember what and why you have eaten there either.

The movie is a clearly riding on the whole Dan Brown conspiracy wave, and steals (of course) from the old Indiana Jones movies. But it does not really manage to pull it off, why the Gates Family is so fascinated with that treasure, is factually explained, but it never really convinced me to believe in their character portraits.

Anyway, one of the weaker Nicolas Cage movies i have seen so far (and i really like the actor). Worth watching if you have popcorn to burn, but there is no reason to choose this one over any other popcorn movie.

It's coffee time again...

2005-08-23T17:22:00.000+02:00

My trusted old Racillio Silvia broke, after over 6 years of heavy use. It's a great machine, especially considering the price tag, a very good entry into the Espresso game.

But, it broke down and is gone for repair now. I took the opportunity to upgrade to an Isomac Rituale. That is, as the coffee geeks call it, a middle of the line machine, with professional brewing parts, sure to last forever, etc...

Ok, I got the machine a good week ago, and am used to it by now. The coffee is a real step up from the Silvia, the machine is easier to use, less noisy, and able to produce coffee after coffee without downtime. You could probably use this in a small cafe to serve customers.

When the Silvia comes back, i goes on eBay. I am glad the machine broke :)

Going to New York for 5 days...

2005-08-12T12:28:00.000+02:00

or, so i thought, i was... I planned to visit my colleagues in New York City coming Monday and Tuesday.

Due to European Vacation it was hard to get a real short term flight for a reasonable price, so i settled for flying out Friday night and returning Wednesday morning.

But, now there is a strike in London Heathrow, and after spending an hour on the phone with British Airways and other agencies, there is just no way I could get to New York City at all. Not just, it would be really, really hard. No, just not at all. There are so many people leaving for vacations from Europe to the USA, that there are several thousand people in front of me for replacement flights.

Therefore, I will be staying in Germany and reschedule for September. First time this ever happened to me in 20 years of intercontinental travel. At least i checked before i went to the airport...

The XBox Rom...

2005-08-12T12:23:00.000+02:00

A friend pointed me to this article about the discovery of the XBox bios inner workings and the flaws in it.

This is an interesting article in so many ways. For one, it falls in the category of "why DRM systems will never be secure". Give me the keys to decrypt and i can always hack the algorithm.

On the other hand, it shows how sloppy in some respects Microsoft engineering has become, i really love this quote:

"Apparently the i386 CPU family throws no exception in this case, Microsoft's engineers only assumed it or misread the documentation and never tested it."

Reading the whole article I really wonder if Microsoft is overall by now just so resource strapped that quality testing is out of consideration, or if the engineers & testers involved just did not care enough (In my opinion, making the XBox easy to hack would be a good thing for the market and for the XBox) about a disabling feature.

Movies: House of the flying Daggers

2005-08-09T10:42:00.000+02:00

I have seen this movie over the weekend. Read more details on the IMDB link. I saw the german version, meaning translated dialogs, no subtitles. I know that you loose something there, but my chinese is really, really not up to the task, and i think i loose even more with just subtitles.

Fine acting, a nice angle on the really old theme of fighting the evil empire. From my standpoint, one of the three the best eastern, probably together with Hero and Iron Monkey.

The mighy mouse...

2005-08-04T12:16:00.000+02:00

Apple, as most probably know, released a 4 button mouse 2 days ago. I got mine today and i have to say, so far i like it a lot. I got another new mouse lately, a Logitech V1000 Laser, and while both of them are fantastic in their own ways, the Mighty Mouse has 2 advantages... On the one hand it's a LOT lighter... less strain on my arm. And i really like the 360 degree scroll wheel. Nice idea.

The Logitech though wins hands down as a gaming mouse. More buttons, higher precision etc...

But, as i travel with my Powerbook, and needed an external mouse to bring along i had to get a new one. I was thinking about the V500 from Logitech, but while cable-less is good at home, on the road i guarantee the batteries will die when you need them the most and you have no replacement with you.... I prefer a cable. The new Apple mouse was probably released with that in mind... The cable is rather short, so using a Powerbook it's perfect, not that much clutter on the table....

iPod Shuffle...

2005-08-04T12:11:00.000+02:00

I got my daughter an iPod shuffle. She is leaving elementary school after summer vacation, and has a rather long bus ride in front of her (good 15min one way). I think the Shuffle is perfect. Nearly indestructible, long battery life and easy to store in your pocket (any other place and it is probably stolen on her first day).

Let's see how this works out for her and if she is able to manage iTunes etc....

Interesting article about Open Source outside of software...

2005-08-04T12:08:00.000+02:00

Came across this one via Lockergnome. This is interesting to me as some of the lesson learns are universally applicable, and it uses a niche technique (OSS in Software) and applies it to something else. I always look forward to see how experiments like this are doing.

Using a wiki to collaborate and design a game together seems like a good way to use Open Source.

One of the interesting observations is number 5, Love not Money....

Movie: The Butterfly Effect

2005-08-02T20:38:00.000+02:00

I watched this movie yesterday (had it lying around for a long time, never got around to before) and i don't even recall why i ever bothered to buy it. But i am sure glad I did. Great suspense thriller with a couple of nice shock effects without ever going into the bloodsplattering orgie some other thrillers feel they need to go to.

Picture quality was not that great, sound neither, you can feel it was not a big budget movie. But, if you have not seen it, and you like movies with a lot of supense, twists & turns that really keep you entertained for 2 hours, it's a good bet you want to make this a part of your collection.

Movie: Elektra

2005-07-30T22:52:00.000+02:00

I just got Elektra from Amazon (DVD rental). The very short verdict: i am glad I did not got a Babysitter to view this in the theater, i am glad I did not buy that movie, and i would be even happier if I would have rented something else.

That was probably the worst comic adaption i have seen from Marvel for a really long time. Uninspired (Sensai looked and felt a lot like the guy in Mortal Combat, the movie), bad script, acting mediocre, and so really unbelievable. But worst of all were 2 things: the blatant attempt to be a Lara Craft knock-off, and the achievement to really make me not care at all about the hero and the other good guys.

Bad movie. Stay far away from it.

Sony Updates PSP to Version 2.0 And White PSP

2005-07-22T17:17:00.000+02:00

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/index.php?action=expand,8642

PSP get''s a webbrowser... as i expected for a while, Sony looks like it will use PSP and PS3 to really enter the living room internet ready with a vengeance.... Wondering how this will effect things like XBox and IPod on the long run. Or phrased differently, i wonder what Apple will do to further merge internet/media/computing in this area..

My Web 2.0

2005-07-01T23:51:00.000+02:00

I just read Jeremy's Post about My Web 2.0. That is a very interesting idea, and fit's well into the complete blogging scheme the web is evolving too.

The thing that scares me about this whole phenomena is, that if we all get our information, our links, our tips for life from a closed circle of friends, how are we broadening our experiences in the future? Right now i read 2 newspapers, some magazines etc. If, in the near future, i decide to replace all this with carefully chosen information sources, linked to by friends, referred to by colleagues, isn't there a high chance of me not knowing who won the soccer world-championship? Or, if you don't care about this, not knowing who won the latest national election? I know too extreme as an example, but you get the basic idea. I do not trust purely web based sources yet, for good reasons, they are increasingly hard to verify.

Microsoft still does not get it...

2005-07-01T23:41:00.000+02:00

I just read a post about avalon express. It contained the following quote:

A lot of our customers do not understand security nitty-gritty’s. And there is little reason they should.

This is the guiding principle that resulted in a world where Windows and it's applications are no longer trusted. It's not because the developers doing this are stupid. It's not because the customer using the application is stupid. But, if you were never told that you should be locking the door when you leave the house, it's no wonder when you get into a rather unpleasant situation sometimes in the future.

The customer needs to understand security. Windows is, and for a long time it has been that way, a system that you could make reasonable secure. You could have updated your SQL database, and heck, Slammer would have never happened.

As long as Microsoft believes that they, and their developers, know better, and therefore do not see the need to educate the customer, to treat him as an equal in the war against Viruses and security theft, they will not have a fighting chance to win this.

Cloudscape...

2005-07-01T23:33:00.000+02:00

I just read this about Cloudscape and MySQL. That is a scary article if you are in the DB business to make money. I am not quite clear what IBM is getting out of this, they probably think that OS DBs don't really threaten the DB2 business... yet.. but i am not quite sure.

Cloudscape looks pretty interesting, i need to check it out in more detail.

Hyperwords

2005-07-01T23:17:00.000+02:00

I read about Liquid Information at Joi Ito"s blog. This is actually pretty cool stuff, although i think something important is missing. And that is this central whiteboard to collect all this information that I create while augmenting information. Something like combining Hyperwords with A9.com, to create something like central research/storage space for me...

Interesting article about RSS, Google and the future of search...

2005-06-23T13:35:00.000+02:00

http://particletree.com/features/the-importance-of-rss

I am not sure if he is 100% correct, but he raises a couple of interesting points about the future of the web itself. If content becomes more and more personalized, which it obviously is already happening, then the value of a more universal search is getting diminished, especially if that aggregated content is not searchable itself.

Nokia 770 Internet tablet....

2005-05-30T08:20:00.000+02:00

Remarkable. Look at this to get the full story. Now i wonder... Why would anyone buy a Nokia device, using an interesting choice of platform to browse the internet? For 350$ you can buy a full featured PocketPC or Palm device, that can most likely do a lot more than this.

The only interesting part is, at least for me, that this is the first move of a major player to introduce Linux into the mobile market. But, given Nokias track record outside the phone business, i can not really create a vote of confidence behind that... Anyone else who bought an NGage ? In that case, the 770 is for you....

We're right and you're wrong. Tim Bray said so.

2005-05-25T08:01:00.000+02:00

We're right and you're wrong. Tim Bray said so.:
I was going to try blogging Tim Bray's keynote at the SDForum Web Services Conference, but it's easier to summarize with the title of this post. Amid all the discussion of WS-* standards, Tim takes the other point of view, saying that Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo, and others are doing it the right way. "The stuff that works on the Internet today will work on the Intranet tomorrow" is his argument. I couldn't agree more. In related news, I got...
Another post that is in line with Adam's Bosworth view on KISS on the web.

iTunes 4.9 to Support Podcasts

2005-05-24T22:16:00.000+02:00

iTunes 4.9 to Support Podcasts:
"Steve Jobs just revealed at the D: All Things Digital Conference that iTunes 4.9 will add support for podcasts. With one click you'll be able to subscribe to different feeds and have them automatically delivered to your iPod without using a third-party app like iPodder."
It's about time! Why Apple didn't add this sooner I'll never know. Speaking from personal experience, having to mess with third party RSS feeders to pump podcasts into my...
This is going to be big. Podcasting is already huge, but make it easily accessible (and admit it, the current ad on systems are not really that elegant) and it will rock the boat...

Installing a Linux server...

2005-05-02T18:51:00.000+02:00

So i bought a barebone AMD 3000+ system to install a Linux server. It's role is going to be to replace the current Windows 2003 server in my home Lan. Meaning, it should be a file and print server, provide DHCP and DNS service for the LAN, and forward all DNS queries outside my little world to the ISP DNS servers.

Ubuntu installed. But only when i disable Software RAID. With Software RAID the partitioning process always fails when it's creating the one or the other partition (seems rather random).

After a few hours of trying i gave up on that. I will probably try again, installing it with hardware RAID this time, just to see if that works better.

But, then again, Ubuntu at least detected and worked correctly with the SATA controller when used in normal mode. Windows does not even know how to spell SATA in it's setup program.

The interesting part, setting up DHCP, DNS and file/print server i need to delay until i have more time.

Tiger arrived today

2005-04-29T17:55:00.000+02:00

and i boldly updated my Powerbook to it. Worked like a charm.

The first thing i did was to remove LaunchBar from the system. Not because I am convinced already that SpotLight does the trick for me in the future, but because I know that with LaunchBar running, there is no reason to try out Spotlight.

I also really like the DashBoard, but i need a way to have a keyboard shortcut to switch to it, like Expose keyboard shortcuts. Ok, after checking the Settings page, i found it. F12 to switch to it, i might have guessed... It helps reading the manual...

Suprised how smooth it went, and that the complete development tools are part of the standard upgrade CD/DVD.

Blogger can drive you crazy...

2005-04-21T18:51:00.000+02:00

Right now, i am again unable to view my blog. Let's see if i can post, and if so, if that fixes the problem.

Me and Linux

2005-04-19T08:46:00.000+02:00

Over the weekend i dual boot installed Ubuntu on a Dell Inspiron 8600. I was on the one hand impressed (installation went more or less flawless, although i expected the install to offer me to create a dual-boot setup) and dismayed at the same time.

This was the first time (have not tried it for 18months) that i was able to even install Linux on one of my machines and have all the major pieces of hardware be supported. But the dismay is caused by several factors.

On the one hand, the setup worked, but is still so cryptic, so badly designed that i would never ever expect the typical Mort user to be able to do this. Considering than Ubuntu is widely believed to be the most user friendly Linux distribution, that's stating that there is still a long way to go for Linux to be a good desktop citizen.

Then i wanted to update the video driver, as the built in one does not really support power management (fan blows constantly, which is rather annoying on a laptop). That's a crusade, to say the least. I will post separately about this when the thing is solved one way or the other.

Now i am off reading Linux documentation....

Tiger bounces before May..

2005-04-12T18:57:00.000+02:00

I just pre-ordered my copy of Tiger for my powerbook in the local Apple store (meaning the German store website :)). It's going to be interesting to see how an Apple OS upgrade actually works, compared to the Windows world, where i know all the odds and ends when something works or does not work.

I am actually looking forward to this upgrade and to check out the Spotlight technology in there.

The Blackberry and Europe

2005-04-07T18:31:00.000+02:00

I just spend some time with an American friend who showed me his Blackberry. I know for some time now how many inroads into the mobile market the Blackberry has made in the US, and seeing the advertisements here in Europe i am starting to wonder how successful the Blackberry is going to be over here. It has a couple of really strong points, and after the demo i got yesterday, i think it is really hard to beat in the smart-phone category.

I need to spend more time on this. Given the fact that there is a good development platform for it available (BlackBerry JDE) it should be fun playing with one for a while to see what you can do on that platform

2005-04-06T12:06:00.000+02:00

The Missing Sync for Windows Mobile Will Be Available in June: "'Mark/Space, Inc. today announced The Missing Sync for Windows Mobile, a substantial update to The Missing Sync for Pocket PC, synchronization software that connects Pocket PCs and Windows Mobile Smartphones to computers running Mac OS X. The Missing Sync for Windows Mobile offers several desirable features over its predecessor, including contacts and calendar synchronization with Microsoft Entourage 2004 and support for Windows Mobile Smartphone..."

(Via Pocket PC Thoughts.)I am already using the current version of this to sync up my PocketPC to the Mac. Beside being cumbersome, one of the reasons i uninstalled Entourage from my Mac was the inability to sync to it without buying another piece of software for syncing. I will wait for this release and then give Entourage another shot

2005-04-02T15:06:00.000+02:00

Shirky: stupid (c) laws block me from publishing own work online: "

Xeni @ Boing Boing Blog
Shirky: stupid (c) laws block me from publishing own work online

Clay Shirky tells Boing Boing:
Welcome to the Copyfight. So, at Etech this year, I gave a talk entitled Ontology is Overrated. I want to put a transcript up online, and Mary Hodder, who recorded the talk, graciously agreed to give me a copy of the video.

When she came by NYC last week, she dropped off a DVD, which I then wanted to convert to AVI (the format used by my transcription service.) I installed ffmpeg and tried to convert the material, at which point I got an error message which read 'To comply with copyright laws, DVD device input is not allowed.' Except, of course, there are no copyright laws at issue here, since I'M THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER.

Got that? I am in possession of a video, of me, shot by a friend, copied to a piece of physical media given to me as a gift. In the video, I am speaking words written by me, and for which I am the clear holder of the copyright. I am working with said video on a machine I own. Every modern legal judgment concerning copyright, from the Berne Convention to the Betamax case, is on my side. AND I CAN'T MAKE A COPY DIRECTLY FROM THE DEVICE. This is because copyright laws do not exist to defend the moral rights of copyright holders -- they exist to help enforce artificial scarcity.

Copyright holders in my position, who want to use Creative Commons licensing to share material, are treated as pathological cases, because we're not behaving in the extortionate manner that current regulations are designed to protect.

I've gotten the copy another way, and the transcript will go up, but this is the state of the world, circa 2005: I can be prevented from copying my own words from my own devices, precisely because I want to share them freely, a use the law is perfectly prepared to regard as irrelevant.
Yes. Welcome to the copyfight. The scary thing is that more and more people are beginning to think it is NORMAL not to be able to do what Clay is upset about not being able to do.

Comment - TrackBack"

(Via Joi Ito's Web.) Wow .. Isn't this an amazing story... I really hope that by the time my kids grow up, stories like this are used to scare my grand children....

2005-03-31T07:44:00.000+02:00

Review: iPhoto 5: "Reviewing iPhoto 5 and Picasa 2, Walt Mossberg writes for the Wall Street Journal, ‘Both programs are packed with good features and have been significantly upgraded in their new versions. But iPhoto is the better of the two — mainly because, unlike Picasa and most other competitors, it totally frees users from understanding the computer’s file-and-folder system.’ [Mar 30, 2005]"

(Via Apple Hot News.)

Again, read this to understand what Apple is doing so much better. I played with both, using Adobe PhotoAlbum for storing/cataloguing images, so i am very eager to see that article... Updated: After reading the article, it pretty much boils down to the fact that you can organize Photo's anyway you want without understanding the underlying filesystem, or even caring about it. Accidently, this is very true for most basic organizing functions i perform with my photos as well. Mainly though, i think this is true because you want to have an organisation method at hand that works on the basic operating system level, and that is, because you basically do not trust your application to perform all functions to your satisfaction on the long run. A sad fact

2005-03-31T07:42:00.000+02:00

Extending Behavior with the Visitor Pattern: "One common problem involves adding or extending behavior after—sometimes long after—you've implemented a class. A similar problem requires you to tack on behavior dependent on the features of a class but that doesn't belong to that class. Both problems have the Visitor pattern written all over them—and if you implement it, you'll find that the Visitor pattern provides excellent results."

(Via DevX: Latest Published Articles.)

Note to self. Read it to figure out if it's good

2005-03-20T13:31:00.000+01:00

the "democracy" that is Europe "So despite the fact that the EU Parliament has rejected software patents for Europe, and despite the fact that there is not a qualified majority of member states supporting it, the EU Council has now endorsed their draft of the 'Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions.'

This struggle continues to astonish me. There's no good economic evidence that software patents do more good than harm. That's the reason the US should reconsider its software patent policy.

But why Europe would voluntarily adopt a policy that will only burden its software developers and only benefit US interests is beyond me.

They call it a 'democracy' that they're building in Europe. I don't see it. Instead, they have created a government of bureaucrats, more easily captured by special interests than anything in the US."

(Via Lessig Blog.)

Nicely observed. As a European i am constantly in awe about the amount of bureaucracy that we are creating to keep ourselves down. Europe embodies the concept of individual impotency, of goverments so concerned with the welfare of their voters, that they make it impossible for them to act at all without filling out a form. Oh sure, we have tons of official sanctions ways of expressing ourselves, like demonstrations etc, but on the large, they are more for show than anything else. On the personal level, most Europeans I talk to feel as powerless and oppressed as a peasant in China

2005-03-19T11:28:00.000+01:00

Microsoft to Lock Down Longhorn?: "'For people who've been obsessed with issues surrounding the broadcast flag on HDTV content, things are about to get even more difficult. Heise Online is reporting that the next version of Windows will have extra-strength DRM capabilities tied into PC hardware. The move by Microsoft is to assure content producers that products they release will be protected against unauthorized copying and distribution when used on a PC. So say bye bye to audio..."

(Via Digital Media Thoughts.)

If need to follow up on this to figure out what's behind that statement.

Updated: This is based on this article. Scary. If the PC world comes to this, it looks very unfriendly to any fair use scheme i can envision. It will also most likely mean that i won't install Longhorn anytime soon.

2005-03-19T11:25:00.000+01:00

Amateurs vs Professionals: "In yesterday's discussion and in Charles Leadbeater's discussion the day before, there was a lot of talk about the rights of amateurs, the 'pro-am revolution' and other arguments about how amateur content and creativity was important. I described how in the blogging world, it's mostly the people who create content who 'pay' in contrast to the professional content world where it is the creator who gets paid. I talked about how Creative Commons was really helpful for amateurs who were more passionate about having their works widely accessible than making money. This is not to say that Creative Commons isn't useful for other things of course.

There was a bit of slippage in the discussion in the afternoon when several people pointed out that maybe I was suggesting that amateurs shouldn't/couldn't become professionals. The point, if I understood it correctly, assumed that most amateurs wanted to be professionals and that somehow amateurs were proto-professionals or professional wannabes. At least some of them.

I think this is a mischaracterization and maybe a reason to dump the word 'amateur'. I think that in the case of many amateurs such as many bloggers, Wikipedians and most open source developers, the amateurs are happy being amateurs and don't feel that they are in any way inferior to their professional counterparts. Many of the heads of open source projects have a day job, but probably believe that they are superior to comparable professionals at Microsoft or other software companies. I doubt that many Wikipedians wish that they could get paid for what they do. There are very few people who prefer professional sex to amateur sex. (I think I got this example from Steve Weber's book.)

My sister pointed this out to me last week by IM as well. I think the answer lies in the mode of production. Money creates a power relationship between the payer and the payee. I think cases where the production is happening in some sort of enterprise or a 'firm' where having a manager and having access to resources allows production to be more efficiently, financial relationships and 'professionalism' seem to 'feel OK.' On the other hand, when working in what Yochai Benkler calls 'commons-based peer-production,' the 'professionalism' is replaced by amateur passion as a primary driver.

I pointed out several times yesterday that I don't want to impinge on the rights of professionals, but I believe that monopolistic professional organizations such as rights collection agencies, the Hollywood lobbies and Microsoft are hurting the ability for amateur artists from participating by creating technology and legislation that focuses exclusively on protection instead of the sharing of creativity. I think it is the role of government to call into question the practices of these monopolies which are the unfortunately byproduct of an unchecked free market economy and prevent the passing of legislature that increases the power of these monopolies such as software patents and extension of copyright terms. Instead, they should be focusing on activities that make it more difficult for such monopolies to form such as focusing on open standards and open source and whenever possible, preventing proprietary standards from being funded by public funds."

Comment - TrackBack"

(Via Joi Ito's Web.)

Joi's posts are part of my everyday read, so i will most likely quote him more often here. He is an interesting guy.

2005-03-18T17:28:00.000+01:00

CNET's Review of the VKB Bluetooth Virtual Keyboard

I actually waited a long time for this to become a reality. Always thought that this kind of virtual extension of a device means ultimately more freedom, mobility and usability. But reading this, i guess i will have to wait a few more years....

2005-03-18T17:19:00.000+01:00

Confusing Consumers Means They Won't Buy: "'The growth of the technology industry is largely driven by consumer spending, but too many choices can slow the adoption of new products and put entire markets on hold, an IDC analyst said Wednesday. A consumer confronted with too many choices might simply walk away from buying or upgrading the product, said Danielle Levitas, a consumer market analyst with IDC at the analyst firm's Directions conference Wednesday.'
A short, but great article..."

(Via Digital Media Thoughts.)