Etherplex

Microsoft recently released a new marketing campaign called The Mojave Experiment. The purpose of the experiment is to convince people to buy Windows Vista, even if they think they hate it. The site allows viewers to watch any of 55 video clips of an experiment Microsoft performed.

Experiment Structure

The outline of the experiment is not made clear on the site, but my best understanding is this:

1. Subjects who had never used Vista were selected in some fashion
2. They were asked what they thought of Vista (having never used it)
3. They were shown a 10-15 demo of Vista by a Microsoft representative, though the operating system was presented not as Vista, but as “Mojave”, the next version of Windows.
4. They were asked their impressions of Mojave
5. It was then revealed that Mojave was Vista, and their reactions were recorded

Video Content Overview

I watched all 55 of the videos on the site, and took notes of their content. I numbered the videos from 1 to 55, starting in the top left and proceeding from left to right, top to bottom. The numbers below act as citations using this numbering system. All ranges are inclusive. Here is the overview:

• 9 of the 55 videos are “overviews” - all essentially aggregates of other content in “trailer” format (1, 12, 42-48)
• 7 of the 55 are repeats of other videos in the collection (49-55)

Of the remaining 39 videos:

• 22 emphasize a generic feeling of some kind. In some cases it is that it feels “sexy” (7, 50), or sometimes simply that the user “feels better about it” (13), that it feels high-class, “like a Martini” (14, 53), that it “seems simple” (19), that it has better features than a Mac (no specifics mentioned) (36), and that it is “brown” (5).
• 6 mention multimedia functionality. 2 mention panorama stitching (23, 41), 3 mention DVR functionality (3, 27, 30), and 1 mentions making DVDs (33).
• 4 focus on the “instant search” feature (6, 8, 26, 34)
• 3 emphasize speed other than instant search. (6, 17, 32)
• 1 mentions the sidebar gadgets and says they are “fun” (28)
• 1 mentions task switching (35)
• 2 focus on parental controls (31, 40).

By and large, the non-generic videos focus on application-specific features, like panorama stitching, video/photo editing and gadgets. There is some focus on OS features, including task switching, speed and parental controls.

Analysis

If you search Google for “Vista Problems”, you get references to a collection of problems that are completely unaddressed in any of the 55 videos:

• Peripheral support / lack of drivers
• Security system management
• Poor game performance / crashes
• Comparitively poor video drivers
• Poor response time, even on “Vista Ready” computers
• System configuration

But, these are the problems that created the perception problem that Microsoft says Vista has. Instead of addressing these issues in the campaign (i.e. fix the problem), they instead assert that the problem is not with Vista, but with its users (video 10), and that the people that talk about it don’t know (25), and that “2nd party” information is unreliable (16).  Also notable is what they choose to emphasize: speed, instant search, parental controls, and multimedia editing.  Apple’s OS X (whose anti-Vista ads inspired this experiment) has all of these features (perhaps not panorama stitching), and it could be argued that it outperforms Vista in at least some of them.

At the end of each video, they print two slogans: “See for yourself. Decide for yourself.” It is not clear what this means. My guess is something like “See Windows Vista for yourself, then decide whether to buy it for yourself.” Hoping this meant that free demos of Vista were available, I clicked on the “How do I get Windows Vista?” link and was taken to a generic Microsoft page asking for money.

Maybe they meant “See Vista for yourself, decide whether you think it’s any good for yourself”. In that case, they left out the first step: “Buy Windows Vista.”

All in all, it seems that this is a slightly new take on standard guerrilla marketing techniques. It capitalizes on the falsehood that seeing a trained employee of Microsoft demonstrate use of Vista firsthand somehow imbues the viewer with more knowledge of the OS than someone who has had to install, administer, maintain and work in Vista. As the subject in video 21 asks: “Why do people not like it?” Good question. They didn’t show footage of Microsoft’s answer.

So after it became painfully apparent that:

1. Twitter was an attractive idea
2. Twitter didn’t really fit with the distributed nature of the web
3. Twitter didn’t scale all that well

an obvious opportunity emerged: build a better mousetrap, err, Twitter. And that is exactly what the Laconica software does. Built by Control Yourself, and hosted on their site at Identica, it provides a credible alternative micro-blogging service. But how comparable is identi.ca to Twitter?

Twitter has some trademark features. First, it allows for user control of content: a user can not only post and delete posts, but can mark his or her entire feed as private, which allows for a sort of walled garden. This makes Twitter very appealing to casual users that really don’t like the idea of the entire web reading every update. Identi.ca, in contrast, provides no mechanism to make feeds private, and similarly has no mechanism to delete posted content. Depending on your point of view, this can be regarded as either a bug or a feature.

One of the early promises of Twitter was the ability to deteremine how you received updates. This is a new idea - Twitter allows you to decide to pull data from the service via RSS, HTTP, or the API (in a desktop client like Twhirl), or have the information pushed to you via XMPP (Jabber), or even messaged via SMS to your mobile. This flexibility is quite novel - it decouples how data is inserted into the system from how it is retreived. This is quite different from email, chat, or even other web services like MySpace or Facebook, in that the granularity of control is quite small - I can elect to receive notifications via SMS for updates from my family, but not from old friends from university. Now that Twitter has all but given up on XMPP because of the scalability problems, identi.ca stands alone in its ability to integrate with chat and SMS to provide this decoupling.

Maybe most importantly, Twitter is itself a walled garden. While it gains many advantages from being centralized (like fast updates) it also suffers from problems associated with centralization: poor scalability, single point of failure and data lock-in. Identi.ca avoids these by adopting OpenID (I have an OpenID through the handy ClickPass service), leveraging the OpenMicroBlogging specification, and allowing instances of Laconi.ca to federate together to form a web of micro-blogging services. For those of you wondering why this is desirable, it is in part because the internet is fundamentally a peer-to-peer, federated system. Email, newsgroups and IRC are all decentralized - these are the classic services that define the web. Recently we have started to move away from decentralized services, but the problems quickly emerge. With AOL Instant Messenger, for example, AOL actively seeks a way to monetize the service, and can make life difficult for third party chat clients that don’t support in-client advertising. As a result XMPP (Jabber) emerged as a viable, open, decentralized chat service, which most internet users have adopted without knowing it by using Google’s chat service integrated into GMail. Just as the problems with Twitter’s centralization emerge, we see an open, decentralized alternative emerge, Laconi.ca. This seems to be the natural evolution of the internet.

Is Identi.ca an perfect replacement for Twitter? No - there are enough differences to attract different crowds, but the similarities are strong. Perhaps as Laconi.ca adds features, we will see it become a more viable complete Twitter replacement. You can be sure I’ll be looking into hosting in instance of Laconi.ca at something like ublog.etherplex.org soon.

I’ve been wanting to pick up one of Asus’ EEE PC computers since I first saw one in the middle of 2007, but the features had not really hit the sweet spot for me until they announced the EEE 901 model back in May. Originally, one of the big draws to use EEE for me was that it sported Linux by default, probably mostly because the original models (the 2G Surf in particular) couldn’t run Windows XP all that well.

Fast forward to the more recent models (900, 901): these can run XP just fine. So, it would make sense for Asus to work with Microsoft to provide a version with XP. They accomplished this, but in a sort of underhanded way:

1. It seems that they go pretty far out of their way to make it seem that the versions carrying XP cost exactly the same as the versions carrying Linux. In the case of both the 900 and the 901, pricing for each version was the same regardless of which OS you chose ($549 for the 900, $599 for the 901). Saavy customers will notice however that the Windows version comes with 40% less drive space (12GB vs. 20GB) than the Linux version.
2. The other case that I noticed just today (8 July, aka “release day” in the US) is that, at least in the US, it seems that Asus is releasing the XP version first, and delaying the Linux version “a couple of days”. This isn’t easily visible - any retailer that takes preorders isn’t providing expected shipping dates that I could find. Amazon simply says they will notify me when the product is in stock, with no estimate. Newegg doesn’t even list the Linux models as existing. When I called Portable One to ask them if the EEE 901 was in stock, they said “XP in today, Linux in a couple of days”, which is how I figured out what was going on.

Granted, if it is only “a couple of days”, then it won’t be a big deal for most people. In my case, it makes the difference between having it for a business trip I was planning, but it is obviously not the end of the world. On the other hand, why wouldn’t they be able to do a simultaneous release of both versions unless they were trying to favor one over the other? The model available at release will clearly be favored in the market.

Senator Obama,

As a Software Engineer, I am very impressed by your stance on technological issues. You position is well thought out and reasonable. I wish to highlight the importance of a couple of areas that you don’t specifically mention in your position discussion, but I am sure you are aware of. These two areas of intellectual property are both going through a radical transformation and are vital to maintaining the United States as a leader in research and intellectual property: patent law and copyright law.

I believe that the insistence of the United States on recognizing software patents is harmful to our economy and to the best interests of citizens, researchers and content creators alike. There are many arguments to be made against software patents. The late Phil Salin made an excellent argument based on free speech in 1991 in his insightful analysis “Freedom of Speech in Software”. Ben Klemens centers his argument against software patents around the existing prohibition of patents on mathematical formula in his book “Math You Can’t Use”.

Many arguments exist, but at the end of the day, even businesses that make their money writing software don’t believe software patents encourage innovation. Timothy B. Lee of Ars Technica has a brilliant analysis of Brad Smith’s (Microsoft’s General Counsel) March 2007 defense of software patents in light of statements made by Bill Gates in 1991 on the subject of patents:

“I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique … The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can.”

Bill Gates’ worry came to pass, as an arms race developed among the software superpowers. These patents were not amassed to attack others, but to ensure a software house’s ability to continue writing software even in the face of patents that would stifle innovation and block progress. Microsoft was ahead of the curve (along with IBM) now sporting over 6000 software patents, which is why a system that at one time seemed a threat is now reluctantly embraced, as we see in Brad Smith’s March 2007 article for CNET. As Mr. Smith asserts:

“Protection for software patents and other intellectual property is essential to maintaining the incentives that encourage and underwrite technological breakthroughs.”

As Mr. Lee points out in his criticism, this assertion is patently false: Microsoft created both DOS and the first version of Windows not only by building on previous work, but without any software patents whatsoever (Microsoft’s first software patent was granted in 1988, and Microsoft held only three software patents by 1990, long after their lucrative Windows and Office brands had been developed). Even worse, one could make a credible argument that the vast majority of true innovation in software was accomplished before software patents were in widespread use. Douglas Englebart’s work at ARC developing bitmap screens and hypertext is the basis for the web hypertext that this letter is using. Xerox PARC did stunning work in the 1970s that remains the predominant paradigm today, including Object Oriented programming, graphical user interfaces, the laser printer, ethernet (the basis for the internet), and the graphical text editor that formed the basis for word processors. Indeed, if an argument were to be made on the basis of objective evidence, it would seem that as software patents have increased in prevalence, so has innovation in software decreased.

This patent “arms race” essentially shuts out bedroom and open source programmers who are not simply hobbyists, but actually provide the foundation for innovation across the industry (Apple’s OS X is based on free software, for example). In my short discussion on software patents, I discuss this problem in detail, concluding that “in short, the patent system has been perverted to punish the generous and to benefit the mercenaries” as we see when companies like Microsoft threaten to use patent law against the developers of Free software. Perhaps the answer is not to remove software patents, but perhaps evaluate half-measures that would provide protection for those that give their work back to society as a basis for other work and free of charge.

The other issue I wanted to talk to you about is the area you discuss in the section of your position titled “Protect Intellectual Property at Home”. Copyright is going through a transformative period; the production and management of information is central to more industries today than it was 20 years ago, but we are also developing the means to move information quickly and cheaply - and more people get this ability each day through broadband connections to the internet. We need to develop sensible laws to allow these changes in industry and in information exchange to coexist.

There are industries which have centered their business model around controlling the distribution of data - a service that was quite valuable 30, 20 and even 10 years ago. The service was so important that those industries have amassed enormous amounts of money over decades, which they use to influence lawmaking, often at the expense of the citizens the laws are supposed to serve. The most well known of these laws is the DMCA, which is filled with unintended side effects that criminalize perfectly reasonable behavior. One example of a crime created by the DMCA is copying a DVD to a laptop to watch on an airplane. This is understandably confusing, given that the exact same action with music CDs is not only legal, but has fueled a multi-billion dollar industry of portable digital music players and subsequently the development of online digital music stores like iTunes and AmazonMP3.

I believe that information has value and that value should be protected. Even more so, I believe that we should not capitulate to the whims of an industry whose business model has been largely superseded when making our laws. If an industry’s business model is centered around the strict control of information in an environment where people freely exchange information, no law will enable that business model to succeed. It may turn millions of honest citizens into criminals, but that is not constructive. It is vital that we find solutions to the incongruence between the industry’s business model and technological progress that don’t criminalize reasonable behavior and trap the consumer in the middle of the fight.

The court cases and laws that will determine our future with respect to intellectual property will be occurring on your watch. In fact, some have already occurred. Two well known examples are the Grokster case that the Supreme Court looked at which examined the legality of peer-to-peer software, and the DMCA (signed in 1996 while Bill Clinton was in office) that criminalized actions that would have been acceptable under previous copyright law. More are coming. The main concern here is that we tread carefully; the issue of intellectual property protections afforded by the government is rocky terrain filled with unintended consequences and special interests.

There is obviously much to write on these topics, but I will stop here and leave you with one closing thought. As I was growing up, a wise man offered me a piece of philosophy on life: “Imagine the man you would like to be 20 years from now, and each day, undertake efforts to become that man.” It is not so different for us as a nation. Rather than passing laws to fix perceived ills, we should imagine what future we want for ourselves 10, 20 or even 50 years from now. When we make laws, we should consider them in light of what kind of country we would like the United States to be. I think if we follow this ideal when thinking about intellectual property in the age of the internet, we will make decisions our children will be proud of.

Sincerely,

Rick Dillon
San Diego, CA

I bought a hybrid car back in November 2007 after my 1990 Toyota Corolla got totaled in an accident while I was stopped in traffic. I chose the Honda Civic Hybrid, and my experience ever since has been awesome. The most important feature (other than the electric assist and regenerative brakes) is the feature telling me instantaneous MPG and MPG for my trip so far.
Knowing how many miles to the gallon you’re getting heightens your awareness of how your driving style affects fuel consumption. Sure, hybrids get 10-15 MPG more than their conventional counterparts, but my driving style affects my MPG by about as much. Rapid acceleration is a real killer, but so is high speed. I tend to drive with traffic, which is about 70 mph or so in the right lanes. Since gas here went over $4 a gallon though, the last couple of days I slowed down a bit. Yesterday, I drove to work at just under 65 while drafting an 18-wheeler, and got 48 MPG on a 14 mile commute. Today, I drove at between 60-65 the entire way (no truck this time) and got about 47 MPG. Both of these number are much higher than my typical 70-mph fuel use of 40 MPG.
It occurred to me that many people would probably be willing to change their driving style a bit to save money, but that most cars don’t give drivers the tools to easily understand when the driver is really burning the most gas. If drivers don’t know how their actions affect fuel consumption, it is hard for them to know if they should change their behavior, and how much they should change it.
I’m hoping that all cars (not just hybrids) start including the tools to give drivers the information they need to manage fuel consumption. With oil at $135/barrel and only increasing, this is going to matter to more and more people.

I got into a conversation recently about the events surrounding the liberalization of C-SPAN’s policy regarding the use of their videos on the internet. This initially became an issue in early 2007 when speaker Nancy Pelosi purportedly violated copyright law by posting a video of a committee hearing (not congressional footage, which would be in the public domain) to her blog, The Gavel.

During the conversation, the point was made that C-SPAN does not take any funding from the government, a notion even Wikipedia says is “contrary to popular perception”. Of course, the point is correct: C-SPAN does enjoy the right to film Congress, but is indeed a non-profit organization. Nevertheless, they have a history of guarding their copyright on the videos they produce of events in Congress. In December 2006, Brian Lamb wrote a letter, available in PDF from C-SPAN, requesting a number of limitations be lifted on the footage gathered during House sessions, and also promising to “to make our floor coverage fully available to accredited news media following established pool practices”, read: the coverage will not be made available to the public for reuse without restriction. Pelosi later denied the request.

In a widely reported switch, C-SPAN was lauded for their press release of 07 March 2007 stating a change in their policies. Most coverage of the event makes note of the temporally proximate controversy surrounding the use of C-SPAN video on the speaker’s blog, but few, if any, note Carl Malamud’s letter to Brian Lamb on 27 February 2007, a mere eight days prior to C-SPAN’s announcement. In it, Mr. Malamud makes a compelling argument that while C-SPAN does not take funding from the taxpayer’s directly, “C-SPAN is the primary beneficiary of considerable public largess.” And his point is well taken, and may have directly caused C-SPAN to change their licensing terms. As Lawrence Lessig points out, this all relates to the fundamental question of how we handle copyright on the internet, particularly when it relates to political speech. To leverage outdated copyright laws to stifle political commentary may be a new low. After all, C-SPAN has no way to financially leverage people wanting to see Colbert roast Bush.

This may be more than a year late, but as I had the conversation, I struggled to recall the important events that surrounded the issue, and I thought it would be good to capture them here. In particular, I wanted to document the failure of the mainstream media to capture Mr. Malamud’s role in the license change at C-SPAN.

In his latest post, Steve Yegge pointed out that Emacs’ biggest competitor wasn’t really IDEs, because Emacs isn’t really great because it edits text. Emacs’ biggest competitor is really Firefox, because what makes Emacs great is that it is so extensible, and so it is with Firefox as well (although I prefer ELisp to XML and Javascript anyday).

This didn’t really hit me clearly until I noticed that for many web-related activities like checking mail, updating twitter and posting to my blog, Emacs has solutions (VM for mail, twit.el for Twitter and weblogger.el for blogging), but so does Firefox (Gmail for mail, TwitBin for Twitter, and ScribeFire for blogging).

So, everytime I want to blog or update Twitter, or even check mail, I have to consider what I want to use, which is really dependent on what program I happen to be in at the moment. So, in a way, the race is on: will Firefox get a better extension language and text editor, or will Emacs embed a good browsing capability. Personally, I’d like Emacs to embed Gecko with the upcoming libxul, but we’ll see how hard that turns out to be.

In the last post, I use the excellent SuperDuper! tool to make a
bootable clone of my hard drive. There are some (more advanced)
techniques that can be used that allow bootable clones to be created
on the command line using free tools. I had some trouble getting
clones to work on the command line, but finally worked through the
problems using the technique described below. Most all of this
information is in Bombich Software’s guide.

• Use Disk Utility to set the drive to use a GUID partition table

Macs can boot without this being the case, but since the internal disk
uses this kind of a partition table, it’s good to have your clone use
the same setup. I’m pretty sure this isn’t necessary, but it worked for
me as I was trying to solve some issues with the clones working.

• Ensure the volume’s “Ignore Ownership on this volume” is *not* checked

By default, external drives will set this option when OS X formats
them. This will ruin the clone, as the system will not boot if files
are set to a UID of 99. So, immediately after formatting your drive,
right click on it and open the “Get Info” option. At the bottom of
that panel, *uncheck* the option that says “Ignore Ownership on this
volume”. This will allow the copy you are going to make to boot.

• Clone with a command like asr, ditto, rsync, etc.

I used ditto successfully:

sudo ditto -X / /Volumes/Clone

For incremental backups, rsync can be used as is described on Bombich Software’s guide to backups:

sudo rsync -xrlptgoEv –progress –delete / /Volumes/Clone

• When booting, get diagnostic information with Command-V

During the first boot from the clone, you can hold down Command-V as
the system boots to get more information about the boot process. If
something goes wrong, at least you’ll have some error messages you can
use as a basis for a search on the internet.