Brandon Wirtz's Digital Mix

Just ask Yahoo, and Google, they will tell you that the Greatest Living American is Brandon Wirtz.

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I am launching a Video blogging site. Sorta. It is really a site that hosts all sorts of articles that interest me, and also has HD Video of Game Reviews, How To's and what ever else amuses me. Check it out.

There is a newer version of the VC1 DMO bundled in WMP11 Beta 2. No news on what changes were made.

Just checking.... Seems I can carry nail clippers but not pop under the new rules for flying. And a Father can't take food for his baby. The rules only allow mothers to carry formula, and only if they are willing to drink it. Which is also stupid. I can think uppp lots of things that blow up real nice that would be perfectly drink able.

I don't think they should be able to arrest people until they have done something. Not that I think plotting to blow something up is healthy or good, but it is a big difference between owning a gun and being willing to kill someone. Watch Minority report.

I was home for a week. Did you miss me? Well at least lie and tell me you did. It was hot. And not in that over used Paris Hilton cliche way. 99 with 90% humidity. Ugh. I mended some Peacock fence, and worked on the tractor. The whole farm experience, I miss it. My Cats missed me. I'm sure my room mate relished in having the place to herself.

I bought a Microsoft vx-6000 because it promised to do 1.3 megapixel video. Well... it does do 640x480 at 30fps it does 800x600 at up to 15, and 1280x1024 at 15. So this is not the cheap build it my slef HD Cam I was hoping for. Still a cool camera, and not bad for $99, but I have seen better cameras, that have less noise, and offer IR-LED's for low light.

If I stole the vet med laptop with all that credit data, I'd make sure people thought it was faound and un tmapered with. What good are the names if they are being monitored. You want to go after easy low risk targets. The Best hacks are ones no one knows about.

Chris "Lockergnome" Pirillo and I generally have somewhat similar views on things, but this time I think his idea is just dumb. The Concept behind freedbacking is that you vent publicly, and the feedback gets to the developers and they fix your issues. The problem with this scenario is who the hell are you to gripe?

Chris, and I, are not on the same playing field when it comes to our ability to get our opinions read. It would be like comparing John Madden to Tim Stout, Rush Limbaugh to Carlos Watson. And me to most of Chris's readers is as much a gap.

When Chris or I bitch about Windows Vista Microsoft listens, sometimes ignoring and sometimes sending us feed back about why something can't or shouldn't be changed. When I was an MVP the same was true. But the average reader doesn't have that report with Microsoft, and as such their opinion in a public gripe isn't tempered with years of respect and report.

For the average guy getting your feed back heard should be more about finding people who are accessible and championing them to carry your most important complaints, or feature requests on your behalf. Forums are a great way to get feed back on your ideas, because honestly most the time developers aren't stupid and didn't leave a feature out because they hate you, nor did they implement a feature specifically to piss you off. More likely you were just not part of their test scenario and so the way you want something and the way it is implemented it are different.

Some Examples... I have a friend who suffers Red Green Color Blindness his company had a database program written not too long ago and the person creating the UI made the forms green red text 7 days before and after Christmas to be "Festive" the result was the UI was all but impossible for him to use. The lady with 13 cats who does data entry thought it was the best feature ever.

If you have a complaint with software don't gripe to the masses until you have talked to the manufacturer. Then if your Freedback is blown off use forums to bolster support for your idea.

Girls who wax must be insane... In my attempt to be a little more metro, or atleast a little less hick I have been making a concerted effort to do things like make sure I keep my eyebrows groomed, and that the occasional random hair that decides that my adams apple is a good place to grow gets plucked. So one of my friends recomends Nads, whichis this strange Green gell that you put on and then use what looks like a piece of t-shirt to press and rip the hair out "with minimal discomfort". As some one who has had some fairly painful stuff happen... I can say... It ranks up there. It took my hair, my skin, I think there may have been chunks of bone...It certainly gave me worse razor burn than shaving, and my little bits of "t-shirt are now blood stained. I'll stick to tweezers.

So a lot of friends are on Myspace. I'm thinking I may need to develope my Myspace account a bit. It looks like it would be a good way to network if I were willing to invest the time in it that I should. You can see me here

I don't actually read the comments on my blog any more. Mainly because they are spammed to hell. Wonder if they are boosting my Page Rank on Google or not. Would be interesting to know. I'm sure they don't get click throughs from me. I also wonder if I could get money suing the people who post them.

All interesting questions I don't have answers to.

I like my Xbox 360. Don't get me wrong. And I'm sure later I will love it But I'm not loving it yet. I play the games some, but they don't compell me. No slam dunk glad I spent nearly a grand on the system games at this point. Perfect Dark blows chunks. Kameo is Ok if you are in to that kind of game. Call of duty is such a camper's game that it doesn't fill my blood lust, and there are no button mashers as DOA4 is not out yet. Sure there are racing games, but come on, how many car games do I need? Forza makes me happy, and PGR is well not Forze.

I got the Media Center Extender stuff working and like that a good deal. I'm working on making that more useful, but as my MCE and my Xbox are literally stacked on each other their is no extending happening.

The Trailer downloads are neat. I liked the X-men 3 trailer, but most the trailers look like they were encoded by... Um... yeah even my grandmother would have done better. No one I know could have done such a poor job. I think maybe they used a Tarrarri card. That is the only likely answer.

In any event. It has helped me meet girls. More than one girl has come over to play Xbox 360. Not the chick magnet my Toshiba Libretto is, but still.

So wow. I have my Xbox 360. The setup was easy enough once I figured out that there was a switch on the video cable. One of the interesting things was That there is Support for downloads of movies in HD, to the box. we watch Chronicles of Narnia trailer and the experience was quite good. I'll do a full review later, but wanted to mention that this would be an Ideal Competitor to any of the STB solutions that do download and play from the internet.

I was playing Star Wars Battle Front 2 last night, and there are interlacing artifacts in the video cut scenes. It used to be that you knew when a game was showing cut scenes because the video got better. You would think that with Xbox using a DVD as its media that you could have amazing cut scenes. DivX, or WMV, or Bink Compressed Video on a DVD would allow for DVD or better quality video in the 6-8 hour range and still leave room for the game itself. But it seems this facet of games is ignored a great deal.

It will be even more interesting with Xbox 360 and Ps3, Will 1080i games have 480i cut scenes? The Xbox 360 I tried out at the Best Buy had 480p Cut Scenes, Maybe that was just a demo disc and not represenative of the finished product, but I some how doubt it.

Mark at Sysinternals Has discovered that Sony's CD DRM Scheme basically works the same way as a Root Kit, Or malware. Not a real suprise considering DRM relies very heavily on Obfuscation. But Sony's CD DRM actually works by HiJjacking your CD-ROM Drivers and reading a "Bozo Bit" off the CD that says I am protected, and then prevents you from certain IO operations.

Mark's experience of blowing up his PC trying to undo what they did to his machine lends to an interesting debate of what means can a distributer take to protect their content? After all this story is mild compared to what a HASP driver might do to your machine when you install Carbon Coder or many other USB Dongled Sofware.

Not that it is a big deal, or that any of you need to know about my underwear choices, but I recently bought a package of underwear that is lacking the "barn door" that is common on mens underwear. While it seems a non-issue, it perplexed me none the less that Hanes would make a "Premium" line of boxer briefs that would be missing this "Feature" is it a feature that they don't have it? Who decided we didn't need it? And shouldn't it be advertised that they don't have it? Just perplexing.

BrightCove to bring Broadcast model to IP Space

The model is working under the same assumption that Broadcast uses. In a world where Bandwidth and storage are cheap enough, Ad revenue can support the delivery cost and one only needs to bet the storage costs when building what in theory could b viewed as an infinite channel TV station.

So I think the Model is sound, I think this implementation is flawed. To really make this work you need a strong DRM solution, Targeted ads, based on both content and User profiles. And you need to have enough unique and compelling content to bring in an audience.

The big trick even if you get the economics right, is that when a TV or Film distributor picks up content they want to make that content exclusive. You dont see Desperate house wives on both Fox and ABC, and you dont find movies on DVD and in the Theatre. Content currently only lives in one Media at a time. And until that philosophy is change it is unlikely that this will be a viable business. Yes the music labels are doing CD and iTunes/Napster, but they are not happy about it, they scream and yell all the time about it.

Pat Robertson says he wasn't advocating assassination... Maybe kidnapping or dating... I know when I walk up to a girl and tell her I'd like to take her out, she doesn't usually assume I'm going to kill her. She figures on dinner and a movie. Pat was clearly thinking that Hugo was under a lot of stress and a trip to Sizzler and then on to the Cineplexto see "Wedding Crashers" would help to make him a bit less cranky.
Pat was just trying to be a good Christian and love thy neighbor. Pat did think we should assassinateSadam, but I think Pat forgets that martyrdom might actually advance these guys causes. Worked for that Jesus guy that Pat is always talking about.

Not much to say beyond that... Trillian still works, but it thinks it crashed and if you click ok on the crash message it disconnects... I hate when things only think they crashed but continue to run.

I use w.Bloggar for posting blogs. And I love it. And I like that MSN Spaces supports Blogging from e-mail... Now if only w.Bloggar would support e-mail blogs, I'd be set I could Blog once to both locations... Which I know is cheating... but come on... I want it all, MSN to have my blog, and Griffin, and sometimes VC1hd.com. Oh well.

Granted Laura isn't the most Girly of Girls... but she is female, and I have her addicted to GuildWars whichs is fun. But it reminds me of why I don't play MMORPG's that much... They Suck your life. Laura is on like 8 hours a day... And I'm on like 4 so that I can try and keep up with her leveling... yeah if all the guys at the office played my life would probably get sucked up.

But it is hilarius to watch some one who is so new to gaming pick up on it so fast... though don't count on Laura finding her way home... we ran the same trail 20+ times cause we were getting our butts kicked and she got lost every time...

Of course we can't change Iraq in to a democracy over night. I'm not necesarilly for Communism, but when you are basically a third world nation Democracy doesn't really work. The Common wellfare doesn't work in a place where the natural resources can be owned by a select few and the rest of the enconomy has to be based around selling services to those few with the money.

I'm not saying the Iraqi way of life was good, nor that I think the religous extremists are a good thing, quite the opposite, but creating a democracy that thrives in Iraq is not going to happen in the next 20 years. Unless some one creates an economy that is stable and supportable people are going to act like animals.

Menlo's Hierarchy of needs. Pure and simple.

So this school is selling iBooks for $50. You'd think they'd offer them to students first. But instead they creat a mob by putting 1000 laptops up for $50 a piece. If they should have known atleast 1000 people would show up. This wouldn't happen with 4 year old PC lap tops. Just goes to show us PC users are more Sane than our Mac counterparts.

I was reading Register and came across this gem. While I won't comment on any of the Technologies or Features... I will comment that MSFT will succeed in the IPTV space for several reasons, I don't think any of which have to do with MSFT's patents, or cool features (and there are a lot of them). The biggest thing going for MSFT in this space is completeness of solution, and guaranteed compatibility.

MSFT won't recomend a peice of hardware, middleware, or software, even something as seemingly trivial as a network switch for the home, until they have validated it. Using an Open system you can't guarantee that every piece of the puzzle will work seamlessly, nor can you guarantee that every piece of the puzzle exists end to end.

You could build an IPTV network with Video Lan, and a Linux Set top box, and a multicast enabled switch... But you'd be missing content management, and fast start, and DRM, and MacroVision, and Uptime Monitoring. You'd basically have a system that would eat all your profits in support headaches.

I won't publish what MSFT has set its uptime goals to, nor will I mention what they are currently. But I will say that the MS IPTV solution is easier to use than TIVO, and does more. And coming from a Die hard TIVO fan with an HD Tivo Unit, that is saying something.

Oh, and Go see the HD Demo of IPTV at IBC. I did the encoding, and there is a segment on Praying Mantis that looks very nice.

I was reading Register and came across this gem. While I won't comment on any of the Technologies or Features... I will comment that MSFT will succeed in the IPTV space for several reasons, I don't think any of which have to do with MSFT's patents, or cool features (and there are a lot of them). The biggest thing going for MSFT in this space is completeness of solution, and guaranteed compatibility.

MSFT won't recomend a peice of hardware, middleware, or software, even something as seemingly trivial as a network switch for the home, until they have validated it. Using an Open system you can't guarantee that every piece of the puzzle will work seamlessly, nor can you guarantee that every piece of the puzzle exists end to end.

You could build an IPTV network with Video Lan, and a Linux Set top box, and a multicast enabled switch... But you'd be missing content management, and fast start, and DRM, and MacroVision, and Uptime Monitoring. You'd basically have a system that would eat all your profits in support headaches.

I won't publish what MSFT has set its uptime goals to, nor will I mention what they are currently. But I will say that the MS IPTV solution is easier to use than TIVO, and does more. And coming from a Die hard TIVO fan with an HD Tivo Unit, that is saying something.

Oh, and Go see the HD Demo of IPTV at IBC. I did the encoding, and there is a segment on Praying Mantis that looks very nice.

I'm psyched the list includes a couple of Titles I'm really hot for... Final Fantasy most notably, but Ridge Racer has always been an addcition of mine, and I am a sucker for DOA... With Atleast one Fighting, Driving, RPG, FPS, and Sport game, at launch everyone should be able to find 2-3 titles to get their fix for the first month until other games start to ship.

I was talking with some friends in the industry, it seems Xbox 360 is a breeze to develope for, with a solid hardware platform, and a well developed / Complete SDK. Sounds like PS3 is PITA to work with right now.

Amped 3 (2K Games)
Call of Duty 2 (Activision)
Condemned (Sega)
Dead Or Alive 4 (Tecmo)
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda)
Final Fantasy XI (Microsoft)
Full Auto (Sega)
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (Ubisoft)
Gun (Activision)
Kameo: Elements of Power (Microsoft)
Madden NFL 06 (EA)
NBA 2K6 (2K Games)
NHL 2K6 (2K Games)
The Outfit (THQ)
Perfect Dark LE (Microsoft)
Project Gotham Racing 3 (Microsoft)
Quake 4 (Activision)
Ridge Racer 6 (Namco)
Saints Row (THQ)
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (Activision)
Top Spin 2 (2K Games)

So it isn't Joss Whedon, but it almost takes cues from his stuff. Lost features a story. But the story is really a chance to tell the story of its characters. Just like Firefly, or Buffy, or Angel, the the Plot of the episode is not the important part, the history and interactions of the players is.

In a lot of ways Lost is like blogging at Microsoft.... No I won't go all Scoble on you, but think of it like this, Lost is a show about the lives the people left behind as much as it is about the lives they are living. The trials and tribulations they face are just their "Front Porch" you learn why they feel and act the way they do based on who they used to be. And that appeals to me. Sure it is a forced confession of who they are, but the lessons about community that those survivors find are the same lessons that the people in a user group face when fighting to survive an install, or a buggy product... Plus it looks nice in HD :-)

This is stupid. So you patched your game so it could be porn and now you are going to patch it so it can't be? Who comes up with this stuff.

I way a full 80 pounds more than I did when I was a camp director, and am trying to get back on track. Yesterday I biked 2 miles before work and 5, after and while I didn't "Feel the burn" I did realize there are a lot of muscles I haven't used in a while. I have changed my daily schedule so I start earlier an go to bed earlier. I also cut a lot of sugar out of my diet.

I'm not doing the Atkins, or south beach but I feel better, and each day I find I can excercise a bit harder.

I listened to an interesting debate about 4 year University educations compared to going to a technical school where you would learn your trade in 6 months to 2 years.

As someone who has been in college for 8 years off and on, I think I have a unique view.

I found at MSU that the value of college was dorm life. We learned more about engineering and computer networking living in a dorm of geeks than I did in classes.

At Lourdes College I learned the most from the varying perspective that students many of whom were non-traditional, brought to the table from working in the education field as most of those in my education classes were already working in the industry to some extent.

At University of Pheonix I don't think I learned anything. The teachers were little more than unsucessful business people looking to pad their income, and the students were unsucessful business people looking to pad their resume.

All in all I think my philosophy of education is the best. Get the College experience go to a big univeristy find what is out there for a year. Meet lots of people and take a varied set of classes to find out what you are interested in. Transfer to a smaller college and either finish your degree or get the classes you need to round out your vocational knowledge of the career you are interested in. I for example took accounting because I needed it for my business. I took writing for business for the same reason. I took Logic and Reasoning because I wanted to be better at presenting arguments and finding holes in the arguments of others. These weren't required classes but were easily the most valuable I have taken.

The problem with curriculum based solely on your industry is that it doesn't teach you to see the big picture, and it doesn't teach you how to interact with management, or clients. The problem with a curriculum based on teaching you to be well rounded is that you often don't have a deep enough set of experience to really shine in your first position.

So much of todays job hunting is that you are only as good as your last job. If you don't end up getting a good break out of college people assume there is something wrong with you. This is why a school like Kettering where internships are so highly valued as part of the curriculum are in my opinion the best path for a student that has direction. The hard part of a school like Kettering is that if you change your mind you will find it hard to find another good internship, and can expect that you will lose most of the progress you have made, so it is easy to turn a 5 year course study in to 8.

In a lot of ways I think apprentiship is overlooked. It used to be that if you wanted to learn a trade you worked for a menial amount apprenticing under someone with the role you would like. This makes a lot of sense to me, and seems that it would work well for many students who go to school and never get a taste for what the job is really like. Most computer progamming students think that they are going to be the next John Romero, but most end up being a dungeon dwelling code jocky creating database applications.

The problem with all educational paths are that they train you to be something, not anything. I think that having a background in education I can learn to do anything quickly, because I know how I learn. This allows me to step in to roles quickly. Others I know have difficulty switching gears from Engineer to Presenter, Manager to Laborer, and the like. This creates problems when an industry busts, or injury creates a need to switch roles. What does a balerina do after a car crash, or what does a Web programmer do after the Dot Com Bust?

Tramatized by the over reaction from the media.

I tried to buy a copy of GTA:San Andreas at Target, but they wouldn't sell me the copy that I found on their shelves. So I went down to EB where they were happy to sell me a copy. I downloaded the Hack, drove over to my girlfriend in the hood's place, picked her up on my BMX bike, rode down the street to the bar, came back, got invited in and then... well to say it was pornographic would be a stretch... "Playboy the Mansion" was a helluva lot racier. And is only an M. Basically my "Ken Doll" in boxers gets it on with a barbie with a few features painted on. I apparently have no rythm because the minigame ends about 10 seconds after it starts. Then I'm back on the street, alone with my BMX bike.

When it all comes down to it... Your 12 year old is more likely to see something worse on TMC, Sho, Cinemax, or HBO. In fact the "PG" rating that was on the 1968 Rome and Juliet (one of my favorite movies) would slip past a v-chip and features a topless Juliet.

I would let a 10 year old play GTA before I would let them watch American History X or American Pie.

I'm not buying that you can learn to do car jackings from GTA as is stated by Thompson.

"These are murder simulators. Manhunt has been called the video game equivalent of a snuff film," Thompson argued. "I am working with an Oakland, CA prosecutor in a murder trial in which the older gang members used GTA 3 to train teens to do carjackings and murders. The Army uses these games to break down the inhibition to kill of new recruits."

You want to have kids that are well adjusted? Make them bail hay, or some other "real" job. I play a lot of violent video games and I'm well balanced, except for the occasional urge to knock off a 7 Eleven with my hooker girl friend in a stolen tank.

And apparently carjacking in video games will turn me into a thief, but Power Rangers won't turn me in to a Ninja. Let me tell you how you let your kid play GTA he will play "cops and robbers in the back yard" you let him watch Power Rangers he will play "boot to the head" in the back yard. Pretend bullets don't lead to stitches, Pretend kicks often do.

Ed Sims definitely gets that if you teach a man to fish he doesn't need you any more. As a VC you want to find drug dealers to invest in. There might be a more politically correct way to say it but you want something people can't live with out, and that they will pay you over and over for.

But what I think Ed is missing about the value of .Net is code portability from Standalone application to Web application. Realistically most programmers can write a monolithic standalone application, that uses installers, and has a massive UI for doing everything you ever wanted it to, but porting that to a web application is generally hard. But with .Net it is easy to convert your code from monolithic standalone application to a web application with either a similar interface, or a dumbed down interface.

Sure you can do that with Perl, but perl makes for sucky standalone applications. Same with Java. .Net lets you write once and modify slightly for repurposing your application.

People might argue that other languages are more powerful, or support more OS's but when it comes to how fast you can write an application .Net easily allows for the fastest developement time, and that is like having an assembly line for your Meth Lab.

I was listening to the radio on the way home from work yesterday and this lady is talking about being a localvore. She claimed she only eats food grown with in 100 miles of her home. And that the fuel this saves, is good for the environment and that it is good for the economy.

Maybe if you did all your shopping at a farmers market you could not die from scurvy, or boredom shopping from all local growers, but where are you going to get bananas? or Sugar? Flour? You might live somewhere that you could get some of these items, but not all. And if there were a large adoption of this practice you'd suffer the same fate as the pilgrims that come winter you'd be eating mostly beef jerky. Especially if you live in Minnesota or somewhere else that doesn't have year round crops.

I grew up in a farming community, but I'm not so ignorant to think that locally grown is best. We thrive on interstate commerce. Sugar cane is grown where it thrives, and wheat is grown where it thrives. Cows don't do well in jungle, and Bananas don't do well in the snow.

In an economy where we are talking about outsourcing labor to rural communities, and are recognizing that technology companies benefit by getting resources where resources are abundant, are we thinking that agriculture should have the reverse model?

I had an interesting discussion the other day about what the price for admission to a community production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat" cost.

Part of me thinks in terms of Movies where the sucky low budget ones cost $8.50 to go see and the really awesome ones cost the same $8.50. And part of me thinks in terms of DVD's where the really good ones cost $26 and the really sucky ones cost $3.

Chad who did the lighting for the show, commented that "No less effort goes into a community production than a broadway production." Which I can agree with, but I didn't have the heart to counter that the talent in the Broadway production would be better, but I did mention to him that the hard part is that Broadway can amertize their investment in the show over years, not 5 weeks, that a community run is.

So should we be paying for what a show costs to produce? Should we pay what the entertainment it brings us is worth? Or is it a flat hourly rate?

It seems strange that while Cars, and Computers, and Lawyers all cost different amounts based on quality, we don't translate that to entertainment for the most part. Sure Actors and Set Designers all get different rates based on their skill, but the ticket buyer doesn't pay differently based on the quality of the show, only the quality of the seat.

I'm reminded of my thread on Public Domain software. Theatre is often done for the love of it, and the admission only covers the cost of the venue. Andy who is staying with me this week is doing a show in Scottland for the love of it and taking a loss.

My thought that Open Source software done "For the love" was not viable long term because the type of people interested in doing that work were not likely to procreate, but I don't think Theatre suffers that since it has a good deal of women, who seem ok with their geeky theatre boyfriends. And it doesn't appear to have changed from the "Starving Artist" days of Shakespeare.

So go see some community theatre. Donate to it, so that the artists only need starve figuratively.

Higher Resolution isn't always better. Especially in a world of Digital Displays. In a perfect world upscalers would do an amazing job and could devine from adjacent frames and motion vectors what the image would look like at a higher resolution, but most upscalars do little more than a bilinear upconversion. The nice ones do a bicubic, but both of these methods result in either a softer image than a display running in its native resolution, or some jaggies around the edges.

Because I use DirecTV I run in 720p on my DLP. If you use ATSC in an area where most of your content is 1080i then I'd recommend a large CRT, but right now there is no compelling reason to get a 1080p display unless you work with Digital Dailies or anticipate the majority of your home theatre viewing to be from HD-DVD.

Many people wonder why I didn't get a projector for my home entertainment, and the light goes on when I say that I don't really want to watch the news in the dark.

If you have a dedicated space for movie viewing a 1080p display or a DLP projector can be an amazing experience. But if you have to use the same tv for watching digital cable or standard definition sattelite be prepared for being able to see every artifact and realizing how ugly your signal is.

Lately there is a lot of talk about how PS3 is better than Xbox 360 because of the 1080p support on PS3. While I might hold the lack of HDMI or DVI out against the Xbox360, 1080p is not going to improve framerates, just reduce jaggies. When a Game developer is writing a game one of the things they have to way is Polygon count against Framerate. If you have to support a higher resolution you have to make the lower resolutions look suckier, because unlike when you write for a PC where you can write a game that no one could play day one, but with a console you have to assume that the console will not gain any additional capacity and so you have to make certain that the video modes you support are playable out of the box.

I love Univerals HD, and Hate it at the same time. I love that they have all these great shows inHD and commercial free. But It is also really frustrating to watch re-runs of Battle Star Galactica Six months after they are on SciFi... You realize how sucky they look on Standard Definition.

If I had patience I would just wait for them to be on UHD and not watch them in SD. Same with some of the TNT shows. But Alas I need my fix.

Seeing the King Kong and Serenity trailer on UHD rocked.

Now that I'm back to having a work week less than 50 hours long, I'm going to force myself to start blogging again. So be aware. My thoughts on HD, and IPTV are soon coming.

Akimbo shipped, we are on Amazon.com. And you can order off our site.

We met with a big Nas provider today, and it is expensive as hell. Especially when you look at the could building your own. Oh well. I learned a new term CAS which is roughly the equivalent of storing your content in a database. You reference the content by MD5 hash. (Yippee).

The long and the short of it is that Hard Disks are cheap, Storage is expensive.

So I moved!!!! or I atleast Left... So Don't ever take a 2400 mile trip in a Wrangler with 2000 pounds of your posessions... it is just a bad idea. 40 hours on the road and over the mountains is not much fun at all.

A Break down of what we saw....

Indiana, Flat road with Corn.
Illinois, Flat Road with Corn and some soy beans.
Iowa Flat road with Corn, and cows.
Nebraska, Hills with mostly cows and patches of corn.

Utah and Nevada are desert. then you hit Tahoe/Donners pass as you approach California and you fear for your life as your Jeep slows to 30 mph on the way up the hilll and yhou fight to keep it under 100 on the way down.

Sacremento was HOT.
San Fran you have to have cash to cross the golden gate which we were lucky we had 15 cents to spare afterwards.
San Mateo is nice enough.

There are no Lone Star. TGI Friday's Sucks, California cuisine is mostly rabit food. Service sucks every where out here. Groceries were expensive. We need to get a CostCo member ship fast.

I'm living in the Extended Stay America with Macy the kitten.

We found an place to live but it isn't available until September 1st. $1900 a month is sticker shock.

Akimbo is nice will take some settling in to.

Business is done differently out here which I don't like. but i'll get used to.

I can't come to work in my Pj's any more ;-(

We saw the Village last night. I was worried it was going to be too scary for Ang, but in truth it was about as scary as an episode of scooby doo, and actually the premise is the same.

The Premise of the movie is that this group of people left the cities to start a community that would be peaceful, and that then a crime is commited and the victim needs anti-biotics, but to get back to civilzation some one has to travel through the woods that is inhabited by "The ones we don't speak of" And while there are 2 Make you jump moments, there is nothing to leave you scared of the woods at the end of the movie. This is not "Sixth Sense" level of scary.

I don't know what the Straw that broke the.... Never mind, not the right expresion to start this thread with.

I had a good friend visit for a few days last week, and while I knew she was very much pro Christian I didn't realize she was Anti-other religions. I don't know if this was just because she didn't know too many people of other religions, or if it was because she just had such a bad experience because of the media surrounding non-christians but I was shocked.

I was glad to see that The Grid included a character who was Islam and who was actively fighting terrorism. I was also glad to see his swiss banking cousin exchange dialog about how he watched Camel Racing, but had never seen a real camel because the weather in such places disagreed with him...

In college I had to take classes on integrating multi-culturalism into my class room. The Class should have been called StereoTyping / Racial Profiling 101. We learned about African traditions, and Mexican traditions, and not a whole lot else... I really bothers me that we went from 5 years ago when we passively ignored cultural diversity to now where we just assume if you are of a certain race, or religion you are a certain way.

There are Anglo Saxon Muslims, and there are Inuit Christians, and there are African American Jews.

My Big complaint with The Grid is that while it did temper its stereo typing with some exceptions it still set up an anti-Islam Anti-Middle East scenario. Rather than dealing with one of the many terrorist organizations in the world it picked the easy one. Why not pick one of the Korean groups, or one of the groups here in the US that are just Anti-government?

I miss the Reagen Years cold war. We knew who to be afraid of, and we knew what they had. We had spies in their ranks so we knew what they were planning. Life was easy. And what was better was that the "Hate" was for the governments, not the people... We wanted to bring democracry to free our enemy. I'm not so dumb as to think it was really a noble cause, and yes I know about all of the things that came with the cold war that weren't good... but step back for a minute... Wasn't life easier when your fear was much more rational? You worried about bombs falling from the sky, and you had a fall out shelter that you knew was a safe place. In today's world we worry about if they put Seran in our after shave, or Anthrax in our baking soda, or mail. When we were fighting russia you were never scared to open your mail, or worried about nerve gas in your perfume.

The Cold War you had the possibility that the Star Wars project was going to keep you safe. A defense system protecting us from attack. With our new enemies there is none of that.

You didn't live in fear that you might have a Red, or Orange Terror Alert. And when there were threats they were identified we had information about what was going to get us. You could say to your self "Cuba won't blow up Florida, its to close to them, so I don't have to worry, but my friend in New York Might," and you could rationalize your safety.

So barring anything really weird it look like I'm on my way to San Mateo to work at Akimbo.com as Senior Business Developement Manager. None of you knew I had mad Biz Dev skills did you? Well apparently I do. Griffin will continue to exist, as it is Angela's company, not mine. And it will probably do alright being based on the west coast. We are sad to not be moving it to West Clay, the social aspects of the community really appealed to us. We will be sad to be leaving our friends in Indy, but I think Akimbo has a bright future and I like the idea of getting in on the ground floor. (or close to it)

If any one knows of great places to live let me know. If anyone who reads me lives near there let me know. If anyone wants a Washer, Dryer, Dish Washer, or numerous other random odds and ends that I'm not going to take with me say so.

I can't even get people to move to v6... Oh well leave it to a country that has mandatory population controls to plan for a time when we will run out of IP addresses.
The Inq has the story

I'm in the process of reworking alot of the Griffin site, so if you get weirdness don't worry I won't take too long. You may notice that the main page has an i-frame that is because Frontpage didn't like me doing an include. I don't know what it's deal was but it wasn't happy. So anyway, I'm switching to the Centered layout. I'll likely use the side space for something, but not right away, I have to reformat all of the pages, because they are really hard to read right now.

But hopefully the new site will be faster, more compatible, and prettier.

BBC is reporting that Indian rail will offer Wifi, free at first but after it has users hooked it will up its rates.

ZD Net has a great video on what the future of Photo Management looks like. Notice the 3d, and the Metadata interface.

What if you could sue anyone who made a product that could be used in a crime? If a drunk driver gets in an accident is that Ford's Fault? If your neighbors glue sniffing son breaks in to your house with a hammer, is Craftsman liable?

Currently the answer is no. If you make a product that has even one legitimate use, that product is legal. So the idea that the Induce Act might make it possible to sue makers of Portable media devices, CD-R's, and other devices that could be used to disseminate pirated content, is stupid. I use a lot of DVD-R's and none of them get used for pirating DVD's or MP3's. The same is true of my Dell DJ.

When I use my Craftsman Hammer it is not to rob my neighbors, and while I do use my Jeep a few miles per hour generally less than 5, over the speed limit, I don't generally set out to break the law, and Jeep shouldn't be liable for my actions.

You think the above ideas are possibly defendable positions? Try this:
   Clothing manufactures liable for pockets because a Shop lifter was able to use them to hide merchandise.
   Flight Simulators for training terrorists to fly.
   Mc Donald's for Obesity.
   Mt. Dew for tooth decay.
   Klipsh for Hearing loss.
   White Snake for hearing loss. Skip that... RIAA for Hearing loss. Ok. Now maybe I can be for this bill after all.

I was reading an article about Automation after seeing a piece on NBC last night about robot house construction. You have to wonder if Automation is a bigger threat to jobs than India is.

Will we end up with a society where the upper class owns the machines, the upper middle designs things for the machines to create, and the Middle class performs maintenance. There is no Blue Collar workers, and huge numbers of people are unemployed?

While history shows that the Cotton Gin, helped the economy not hurt it, and that the assembly line also helped, it is easy to say that automation will further help the economy, but it seems at some point things become automated to the point that you only have professionals, and unemployed. I think we are still a long way from that right now, but look at the wonderful world of star trek where food prep is automated, agriculture is not needed becuase you just re sequence raw materials to create food. You don't need a car because you "beam" from place to place. So what does every one do for a living? Lounge on the beach and the government gives you a Soy Lent Green pellet and a Unitard so you can do what ever you want the rest of the day?

At Griffin we built an automation system that lets us process Video Capture, Compression, and Cleaning at 4x realtime. With some practice a worker can expand that to 6-8. The studio down the street works at .75x realtime, and doesn't have the ability to expand that to even reach realtime. They employ 4 people and do less than we do. Because one person does the work of 6 does that mean I cost the economy 5 jobs? I'm not sure. But as far as a good corporate decision goes I don't think we'd turn off the automation in exchange for giving those workers a job.

Carter is talking about how Microsoft is forced to ship a boat load of PC's to a tech conference because they aren't sure they will have Broadband at the venue. It still amazes me that we don't have some sort of access that works anywhere in the US for broadband. Before you say DirectWay, the latency on it is 3000ms Minimum, many network demonstrations time out before that. The Idea that fast internet via cellular towers, or DSL that works from any phone line doesn't exist yet is mind boggling.

Dad lives with internet that is lucky to break 33.6 because phone quality is so poor in his area. I can't imagine having less than 300k of upload.

One of the problems with 4 year degrees today is that they take 5 years to get. A big part of this is the result of colleges and universities trying to cover all of the information for all of a given field, rather than tailoring the degree to waht a student actually wants to do with their life. A good example of this was Angela's situation. Angela wants to work as a Camp Director. Typically people in this field get a Recreation and Leisure degree, where they would learn about facilities management. The problem is that a Summer and Outdoor Education Camp aren't like managing a conference center, because you manage the Program as well as the facilities. A camp director is 1 part Teacher, 1 part Manager, and 1 part Sales / Marketing. A director weak in any of these three area's won't be successful. But you can't really go to school to get the experience you need, although you should be.

There are a lot of jobs that require cross disciplines. Especially with more and more organizations swithing to a customer oriented model that has more midlevel managers, or workers who self manage. While the current logic is that you either pick the additional training up in the field or you go back to school to get additional training, it seems that with the nearly $100k that a degree from anywhere reputable costs that you'd have to have a pretty large pay increase to make the additional schooling pay off.

One of the things I really dislike about the statistics that we are often presented with about the difference in income between those with and with out a degree, is that they include those who didn't even qualify for college. If you looked at the numbers for people who scored 1100 or better on the SAT and how they faired with and with out a college degree I think the numbers would be a little more fair.

The idea that you come out of college ready for the work place is absurd. You can't prepare a student for everything with curriculum, most of your Prof's haven't been in the work place in so long they don't even know what the current trends are. There isn't a college in the World that offers a program for my current position: Encoding Gorrilla. Which requires Video Engineering, IT Infrastructure Management, Automation Programming / Scripting, and Audio Video Compression. As I add monkey's to the ranks below me Management and Instruction will be added to the list of requirements. As I attempt to add customers Sales will be important. To get all of this trainging in a classroom I'd need about 10 years of college.

I live in a house that is isolated. Surrounded by trees away from my snobby neighbors. But we are going to move. The place we have our eye on is a community. It has poker nights and icecream socials, and a swim team, volley ball tournaments and more. It is called the Village of West Clay, and it is an interesting setup. Rather than living in a place where you try hard not to know your neighbors it is a place designed to help you meet your neighbors. I like the idea. Apartments may not have a front porch, but the local poker night might do just as well.

The midwest is an untapped resource for labor, tech support and a lot more. Everyone is looking to India, Mexico, and other places where labor is cheap, but the truth is labor is cheap in the midwest. In my home town if you make $40k a year you are at the top of the heap. People would line up and thank you for a $15 an hour job and would work hard with little complaint. It is the difference in work ethic between the East and West coast and the Midwest.

I come from a community where for the most part you are a Farmer, or a Factory worker. If you live in Branch or Hillsdale county Michigan chances are you either work the land, or work the line. There are few IT jobs in Hillsdale county. And in Reading my home town, there are only about 4 IT jobs. 2 for the school, 1 for the factory, and 1 for the rest of the town.

I'm working with a company that is based in California, and I don't think they fully get the difference in price.

In Indy I don't have AC, and only wish I had it 4 days a year.
My Electric bill is $120 or so a month.
Rent is about $.50 a square foot.
I can get a college educated Semi-technical laborer for $10 an hour.

In California you can atleast double all of these numbers.

So why outsource overseas when there is so much untapped potential in farm country?

I have Road Runner Cable from Bright House. And My service was down... I hate "We will arrive between 9 am and 1 pm" especially when they arrive at 1:10 But it gets worse.

Pulls in to my drive way a Tattooed guy wearing a Wife beater, in a Blue Pick up with its bumper bungie chorded to his truck, being cheaufered by his tattooed Girl Friend. Nothing says "Boy I want to let this guy in my house like this guy does" Even the neighbors dog didn't like him.

So he wanders around for 3 hours and then announces that he and his supervisor found the tap at the road, and that the "tap is bad"

90 minutes later (5 minutes ago) a much more proffessional looking guy in a cherry picker shows up and tells me it is fixed. Has me verify that it is working and wishes me a good day.

Some say Americans will find a better economy by outsourcing things we can get cheaper elsewhere. The problem is that if we outsource all the Labor intensive jobs, and all the Intelectual jobs, and leave only the Services jobs the US will be Jamiaca in no time. What I mean by that is that only jobs requiring physical proximity are left. The truth is Americans are lazy, and we are cheap. We don't want to do the manual labor, and we don't want to deal with customers with problems so we out source IT, Programming, the manufacturing of Soccer balls, and any other job that we view as tedious to countries where people are anxious for work and greatful to have a job.

That isn't to say that some of the sweat shops that American companies run under the guise of providing for those nations are a good thing... But in many cases American's aren't greatful for alot of jobs that we should be happy to have. Having worked in a Call center doing Tech Support I can tell you it beats factories and it beats McDonald's. And actually I could teach any McD's worker to do it.

American's believe we are the best at everything. And that we are too good for a lot of these jobs. The Truth is when you outsource to India with the possible exception of some difficulties understanding the accent on otherwise beautiful English, the work is done better, more consitantly and with more respect to the customer. I'm not for outsourcing mind you. There are lots of times a better product at a cheaper price is not what I buy. I buy local. When my local economy thrives I thrive. If we didn't have Silicon junkies flipping burgers because the Tech industry isn't generating enough jobs, I'd be all for outsourcing, but we don't and I'm not.

Boston Globe is reporting That MSFT will offer free licenses for Machines used only as fail overs. This is great! It makes what a lot of IT department do with having a ghost machine ready to go at a moments notice legal.

I'm not necessarily one of those people who thinks you should ignore the guy looking to spend $5 in your store, but I'm certainly one of those people who think that if a customer has a cart at the CompUSA you should be considering assigning someone to help them.

I was shopping for some upgrades for my farm of computers the other day. I have a big project and need a little more beef if it si going to go well. So Ang and I grab a cart and start shopping the CompUSA. We've got some UPS's, Several Gigabit Nics, a Gig Switch, Cat6 cables, and an External Hard disk. And we needed some ram. The store was empty except for us and two other shoppers. So it wasn't like they were busy but we stood at the Counter for 5 minutes while an associate looked for some one to open the case that was unlocked. Then it took 5 minutes to convince the service manager that a 200 pin SoDimm would not work in place of the 184 Pin DDR Dimm that I wanted to buy. Then 5 minutes to explain that the item was non-returnable and that if I brought the machine in with in the next 14 days they'd install it for free.

Ang hates the CompUSA, but loves Game Stop where we got 3 used titles for $22. So her hate of CompUSA has nothing to do with her Geekiness.

Screen shots of the new Codecs.

The Player the SDK's

What Am I missing? It seems to me that c# is so close to VB that I can scarcely tell them appart. Yeah there is that nasty Having to treat variables as what they are... so you have to know if you have a String or a Long, or a TimeSpan. But other than that and the whole case Sensitive thing they are practically the same.

I think I might like c# better if it was Smart enough to know that For, FOR, and for are all the same to me, and that I'm never going to be dumb enough to name my variable "for". Yeah Some Idiot might decide that he needs to name his variable the same as it is in the database and the idiot who named the Client column "For" as in who the work is For, might want to name a variable for, but that would be dumb.

In that same vein I really like whidby. I wish I could be running it now, but I need to develop for now machines and not soon to be.

Sorry for the long delay since my last sets of posts. Griffin is going back in to the Encoding / Conversion business. Gearing up to turn over hundreds of hours of video each week is a lot of work. I'm looking forward to it though. It plays to my strong points, automation, encoding, and compression. And I'm excited about the client I'm working with. So once I'm rolling you'll start hearing from me on a regular basis again... When you are just sitting and watching tape roll you have lots of time to do things like read a book, blog, or count your nuckle hairs.

Ang is like, so you are going to get paid to watch Videos all day? And you aren't editing them just converting them from tape to Windows Media? And you get paid for this?

If the content is interesting it can be fun... And hopefully it will be, but still 12 hours a day will drive you insane. I'm going to have to buy and exercise bike for the Studio. That way I can atleast work out while I'm doing it. I'll be hiring "Monkeys" soon. If you are in my neck of the woods and want the glorious fast paced life of an encoder monkey drop me a line.

Removed.

Penny arcade ran this a while back but I just saw it. I think the PMCE vs. PSP is going to be an interesting little war, I think Xbox is catching up with PS2, though they need to get some killer games, because I'm still going to end up owning a PS2, because of things like Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, (anything Square Soft), Transformers, and a couple of others.

A Klog Apart Links to my front porch, but still goes out back to smoke....
Actually the analogy is pretty good. I remember an episode of friends when Rachael took up smoking because her boss and some of the other girls would go out and bond on their smoke break, and she felt out of the loop.

Blogs offer all the benefits, all the addiction and 99.95% less Tar :-)

These guys aren't paying me to say this, it is just really cool and I had to show it off…

So lets say you have hundreds is not thousands of hours like for example of politicians campaigning.

http://www.campaignsearch.com

How would you go about searching the content to find a section on what ever you need, like What does Bush have to say about the homeless? You search and get a link to that portion of the State of the Union address 50 minutes in.

This is amazing to me. The Speech recognition has gone a long ways, and from a content management stand point this is huge. Imagine being able to take the audio from every black box on every airplane and search through it the way we google for text. Or to be able to have DirectTV have all of their content searchable so that your tivo could not only look for shows you'd like but shows that talk about a given subject.

This Is really Sweet.

Nope. Though if I were MSFT I'd have been more agressive, to the point that if a key were in the known bad pile I'd require the machine to re-activate. There is this push that Pirated copies infect legitimate users, which is possible, but for the most part if you are a legit user who is patched than you aren't vulnerable, and if you are a legit user who isn't patched then you were going to end up infected anyway. The issue amongst those making noise is really that the guys making noise are the pirates.

There is this belief amongst IT nerds that because they install so many copies of the software they shouldn't have to pay for it. They run pirated software and are almost proud to have a burned ISO that already has the hacked key placed in the Install INI, they don't even have to remember the key, some guy on IRC put it together and Torrented it. They can brag to their friends because it is magic to those not in the know.

Ang is getting her own blog going so I won't talk about her so much with out her being able to talk back, but I thought it was really funny the other day when she got upset about GoToMyPC.com selling what is essentially a wimpy version of Remote Desktop Connection that comes with XP and Server 2k3. She sees me do work from anywhere and every where on PC's that aren't mine, with out installing anything, and just assumes everyone knows how to do all the things she and I take for granted.

My two favorite examples are for Road Warriors: RDC, and Shadow Copies.

RDC lets you to connect to your computer remotely accross the internet, it also gives you access to the files on your computer, and even your network.

Shadow Copies lets you work on files from your network shares even when you aren't connected to your network. This is great if you work with files that exist in a roaming profile.

It just amazes me that people only use a small percentage of the tools that they have, and amazes me further that people pay for tools that do the same thing, not as well as a tool they already have but don't know about. I swear I'm going to sell a program that just turns on the Voice Recognition software and Text Reader that ships in MS Office.

Sjoerd Visscher's weblog had mentioned doing Glass Windows for a web page a while back, and as I had played with IE's Apha blending a bit before thought I'd modify his code to work with my blog software, It might not end up being what my blog is done in, but I'm thinking it would work really well for Angela's Blog. If you want to check out what I'm up to, its over here.

Ron Markezich got a promotion to CIO of IT for MSFT today. Way to go Ron! Ron's job will be to more or less evaluate MSFT's products as they fill the needs of MSFT. MSFT has the interesting situation of being one of their own customers. Few companies have to live with their own products the way MSFT does. Because MSFT's Products are designed to fill every aspect of your businesses IT needs, and MSFT is an IT company for the most part they use almost exclusively MSFT software. And when Beta's are ready to roll out MSFT uses them internally.

Eating your own dog food might be fun, but taste testing your new recipes can be scary. Good luck Ron.

Sick and tired of commenting on a site, and then you realize you spelled half the words wrong?
Check out this IE Plugin

All P are Q, Some Q are P, Some Q are not P. MSFT ought to contact Techworld and have them change their article name for "Linux is not open source, says Microsoft"

"Open source is not [solely] Linux," Vamos said. "That's probably a little bit out there in the sense that Linux has been developed using open source development models. I guess what I'm saying is that when you talk about open source - the way open source is being described - is that people generally talk about it as being Linux and I think you really need to look at the two separately."

As you can see the Quote is not Linux is not Open Source, rather Open Source is not Linux. Some Q are not P.

It looks like the Author understood, but that his editor decided the title it was given would get more hits.

I have been reading through some Bush vs. Nader vs. Kerry arguements and have decided democracy sucks. So as to not make this an R Vs. D discussion I'm going to use some tech companies for my part examples...

If...
40% of people are for Cisco, because reliability and support are their primary concern and Budget is a non-issue
35% of people are for Net Gear, because they want reliability but don't need support or the Cisco feature set
15% for D-link, because they are cheap
10% for Bay Networks, because they want the reliabity and support of cisco but don't want to spend the money for it.

But...

The Net Gear and Bay Networks are very related groups, and differ only on a few points, related to the level of support they need, and the D-link camp is dedicated to economy. The Cisco camp would consider using Bay Networks and vice versa. So the break down in the antithesis looks like this

50% are Anti Cisco
30% anti Bay Networks
65% are anti Netgear
75% are anti d-link

In this scenario Bay networks is actually the best candidate to make all parties happy, but would get the least votes. This is the fault of the current system being a vote for 1 person rather than doing some sort of ranking that makes the least number of people unhappy.

A better example would be you are inviting 200 world leaders to a dinner party. You decide that one Meal will be served to all of the leaders. What would you serve? Cheese burgers the American favorite offends those religions that don't eat beef, those that keep kosher, and those that don't eat any meat. Steak is out for those that don't do Beef, Pork is out for those that keep kosher, Chicken and rice works for all but the Vegans, so you are left with Salad, vegtables and rice (with no butter) and fruit as a desert. Kinda bland by most of our tastes but no one is offended. Or do you risk offending the edge cases to make the most people a reasonable level of happy. serve Chicken with Rice, Salad, and Cherry pie for desert. leaving the Vegans out but making things ok for the majority.

This is all very interesting to me because in a pure democracy it would have been very easy to make slavery work. As long as you only have 1/3 of the population enslaved the Majority is happy.

I don't have the answer to all of this, but some days I think we might do as well to just leave it to lineage. Worked for GW.

Dot Net Rocks at about 67 minutes in Rory affirms my Godhood, tells the listeners to worship at my feet, because I am a Google Weirdo.

I would have mentioned this sooner but they were on Thursday, rather than Friday this week, so I didn't get to listen until today.

I was looking for other analogies to blogging. And came up with sandwich boarding. For those of you who have never seen a doom sayer with a sandwich board or a Sidewalk evangelist with a sandwich board, imagine a guy with a sign hung on his front and back saying something profound, like "The end is nigh: repent"

Blogs do the same thing. You get a chance to put a message out to all of the passerby's sure it is longer than 5 words, but it is still the same idea. You throw an idea out, and people act, or don't act on it, and may or may not swing by to talk to you about it.

When I was at Michigan State University, we had a guy who stood outside the building I had Calculus class in, and he would where his sign that said different things, but mainly he had a list of things you were going to hell for. While a great many people passed him by, a great many would listen to him, or argue with him or such. While people disaggreed with a great many things he said, primarily that non-christians were condemned to hell, His message go heard. And people knew who he was, and even through all that fire and brimstone people knew he was a sincere guy pushing a message he believed.

Blogging lets you push a message you believe out in to the world. And everyone who reads doesn't have to agree, but they can ponder over it, and establish what they believe based on that pondering. You don't have to aggree that Ovaltine is the best, but if you passby and hear that ovaltine is the best you spend a minute to revisit your thoughts on why ovaltine sucks. And maybe on the 7th time you have passed by you think, well maybe It doesn't suck and I just don't remember.

Dina links to Ton who is looking for analogies to the front porch. In my backwards world with Amish nieghbors, and a community small enough that when you go to the grocery store you can be you will see someone you know. It is dificult to comprehend that there are places that aren't like that.

But in that same breath I realize that America is a young country and every one here remembers a time when land wasn't at a premium. We can picture our parents and grandparents sitting on the porch sipping, Lemonade, or Beer, or Mint Julips depending on where in the US you are from. We can connect with the Bruce Springsteen music video that shows guys in the factory going home and grilling and drinking, equals at the end of the day.

Not having experience in places far away and exotic I don't know as I can help with an analogy, but it is good to think that people like the idea of the analogy.

Wired has an article on e-voting.

What I don't get is why the Computer doesn't just punch card things for you. You put a touch screen up, you put up an easy to use interface that asks you each question in order, asks you if you are happy with your selecion on a final screen, you click yes, and the machine punches holes next to the name of the approrpriate people on a card that can be machine read. The holes can be bubbles, which ever has higher accuracy, and they can be hand read so that a voter can see who they really voted for, and if a voter wants to fill in the card themselves that is fine. It Aint that hard. People always want to make things too complicated with technology. You want to make things easy, reliable and consistant with what they are used to seeing. Especially when you are not working to be an edge case. You have to be able to work with people that barely speak english are homeless, are 118 and don't see well, this is voting you can't leave anyone behind.

Robert is looking for Ghost Blogs (Blogs written by fake people, or on behalf of some one else, for the purpose of marketing)
There are a few I am associated with in the UK, but as yet know one knows they are not real people. As a marketing experiment they are interesting, however, you have to look at the current cost to reach ratio. You have a good audience Robert, but it is how big? 4000? our Viral marketing campaign for Xbox in the UK had 200,000 verified unique viewers, and we estimate that half million people saw it. Blogging captures an audience and is there for more like Orphan Annie and Ovaltine. It is better to have the blog not tied entirely to the product but rather do product placement.

You are a better than average example of this. MSFT capitalizes on your blog, but your blog is not exclusively about MSFT. Getting employees to blog, (happy ones not disgruntled ones) does more for the corporate brandwidth than paying a marketing firm to create a fake loyal fan.

There are definite exceptions that I think would work. .Plans that many in the Game industy use are a great way for recognizable names in the industry to interact with customers, and fans. I think celebs could do a great job blogging as spokes persons for companies. And if Celebs don't have the time or inclination than hire some one to check in with them for 5 minutes a day to write down what it is they are pondering to day, or what went right, or wrong.

I think the brass at MSFT could benefit from this. Give me $60k a year to float between following the VP's, Bill, and Steve, and I'm confident I can build you an RSS feed that will reach 500,000 in the first 60 days. I'd even take the job on a performance basis, give me $.15 a unique reader. You pay more than that for Passive viewers on TV, I'd bring you active viewers.

You have to wonder who scooped who. Steve-o's executive letter says MSFT is commited to a platform with low administration, where IT dollars can be spent on advancing the office technolodies, to that end David Worthington of Beta News is reporting on IBM's 'Virtualization Engine' is stepping up beyond what MSFT's Virtual Server is offering.

MSFT is doing a fantastic job allowing you to minimize downtime, and creating a platform that is hardware independent, but IBM is upping the ante with its ability to virualize machines accross a grid. If you have lots of little server this means you can have 20 servers running on 5 cpu's, or conversely if your servers are monoliths you can have 3 servers running accross 10 processors. Where the win really happens is if you have servers that have varried usage.

Often I have CPU intensive work that takes days to run, but by virtualizing the tasks I can have a process that would normally take 24 hours once a week happen in less time using the spare cycles of the grid, and have the horsepower that I had been using only 15% of the time be available to the rest of my farm.

Combine this the improved uptime that can be gained by automatic fall over when hardware fails and you will soon be looking at a world where one guy manages a grid that sits in a rack in a basement, and he does this from his home, only making trips to the basement when hardware fails at which point he slide the server out of the rack, plugs a replacement in to the grid and life keeps going.

MSFT is playing catch up as Linux is already set up to work this way, where as Windows Server is not designed in a way that lends itself to parallell processing. And as Linux you can recompile applications to quickly enable existing products to be more compatible with the virtualization, Windows Applications from third parties can't be easily modified. This ties MSFT to maintaining 100% compatibility with the way theads and memory handling is presented to applications.

Where MSFT is leading is that they have the better addministration tools, allowing you to manage those server more easily. Just putting them on a hardware independent platform isn't enough. You still have to manage the security patches, administrate users, and do ongoing maintenance to the Exchange, SQL, and data stores.

Building easy-to-use, scalable solutions that cover every aspect of the management experience, with real-time feedback on system performance and a high level of automation

And this is where MSFT really is winning MOM rocks, and when you combine it with Virtual Server and Virtual PC, you can drastically lower your Personell requirements.

IBM's solution lets you run 10 machines as one server which can drastically lower your software requirements but at the expense of hardware.

This makes sense since MSFT is in the Software Business and IBM is in the hardware busines, that each tries to lower the cost of the bits they don't sell.

I'm batantly stealing Images that Jake took with his two cameras, so that no one can say I picked the shots or the cameras to anaylize.
First the 1 CCD image and its histograms.

You can see how the bell curve is clipped? That is because the 1CCD camera is Not well balanced and so it doesn't see the brights or the Darks as well as it sees the mids. With a good 1 CCD camera you could correct for this a bit by manually balancing each channel, but you won't find that feature on a consumer camera.

The 3 CCD image and its Histograms


These histograms are near perfect. The Blue is clipped just a bit but the red is practically Ideal, the Turn up at the high end of the histogram implies the white balance was set a little too red, but that is so minor that it is unlikely you'd notice or the camera is doing that intentionally to create a slightly warmer image.

If you want to see how your Camera performs it is pretty easy. Take a still of a frame of video, preferably in an out door environment and bring it in to photoshop, go to Image -> adjustment -> Levels, and you can see the histogram for each of the channels. If you use a professional Video editing suite you may be able to correct your histogram to a degree, making the images have a more appropriate Temperature (Balance between Red and Blue), this is usefull if you shoot under Floresent (heavy in blue light) or Halogen (heavy in red).

Making these changes will help extend the life of your camera as your content won't look like it was shot on antiquated equipment, but will also allow you to use a camera that has heavy use longer as the the CCD's fade over time, especially if used with out a UV, and Infrared Filter.

I'm looking for feed back on my résumé The Primary issues are do you think that Hyperlinks and Comments are a good thing or a bad thing? Do you think I look qualified to do IT, or mearly flip burgers. Lastly do you want to offer me a job.

Google is filed it's S1in case you missed it. A few days ago I stated that I thought Google going public was a shame since it would mean they would lose some of the freedom to take risk. I have to retract that statement as Google's founders say...

"In our opinion, outside pressures too often tempt companies to sacrifice long-term opportunities to meet quarterly market expectations. Sometimes this pressure has caused companies to manipulate financial results in order to 'make their quarter.' In Warren Buffett's words, 'We won't smooth quarterly or annual results: If earnings figures are lumpy when they reach headquarters, they will be lumpy when they reach you."

Now to pick a stock price and decide if I want to bet on how long the Hype will keep Google's share's High, before they correct themselves.

You all know I'm a bit coarse some times, and that I'm not as delicate as I should be. That being the case I apologize in advance if you take offense to my following stance.

ABC will be airing an episode of Nightline where Ted Koppel will read the names of 500+ men and women who were killed in combat in Iraq. However 8 Stations won't be airing this episode as they feel it doesn't serve the public interest.

We understand that our decision in this matter may be questioned by some. Before you judge our decision, however, we would ask that you first question Mr. Koppel as to why he chose to read the names of the 523 troops killed in combat in Iraq, rather than the names of the thousands of private citizens killed in terrorists attacks since and including the events of September 11, 2001. In his answer, you will find the real motivation behind his action scheduled for this Friday.

I can answer the question. With no disrespect to the victims of September 11th or their families, and recognizing that many of them were heroes sacrificing their lives to save other victims, the majority of those people were victims. The 523 troops are all Heroes. I don't believe that any kind of political statement is trying to be made. The only statement being made is that America should mourn its victims, but that it should honor its heroes.

There is no politically correct way to say this, so I'm just going to say it. When we lose 1000 Americans in a single day it is news for weeks, and we remember it, but when we lose one or two soldiers each day in Iraq it slips our mind. We forget about the few people last week, and the guys last month. By honoring them all at once you get a sense of what is happening, and how big this is.

Dig this. These are some great ads. Way better than the MSFT Great Moments at Work.

The Columbus Shut up and Row ad Rocks. Because you can just imagine it happening. The Interrogation room is funny because It is like Queer Eye for the Private Eye. And the Lassie Matrix ad rocks.

University of Minesota is letting students have a Movable type blog, for free and easy. They can get setup in less than 5 minutes and be on their way to internet fame.

“The libraries recognized the potential for this as a medium for scholarly communication,” Eric Celeste, an associate University librarian said. “Your friend might say, ‘God, that’s a rotten idea.’ Or your professor might say, ‘Hmm, that’s an interesting idea. Here are some more resources.’ ”

Yes! More people get it. Creating Peers out of groups that aren't normally peers. How often do you get to call your Prof out on an idea? Or tell the administration they are wrong. And the best part about blog communities is that when one person's idea is good others in the community point to it and in effect "Mod it Up" to the point that even a less trafficed to lower ranking person can get an idea to any tier. You don't have to be an "A List" to get your idea to the top of the heap.

Scoble talks about the edge case. This is the argument I needed a few days ago, when I was talking about the ideal Mp3 player storage size, or the difference between BMW and Ford with regard to brand and functionality of software.

If you don't design for the edge case you don't allow people to grow in to you product. Imagine if Intel only sold processors that 75% of users needed. You wouldn't have Xeons, or Hyper threading.

Looking at Longhorn I see lots of foundation, things that MSFT is creating that they don't even know how people will use. Too bad I can't tell you about any of those new features since you don't have an NDA ;-p

I can tell you about a favorite edge case... Virtual Server, you need it. No more hardware issues, automatic fall-over, remote administration. If you read Balmers Executive newsletter, you know you need Virtual Server, MOM, and SUSE, you can do your job from your home in your underwear. That is progress. Live on the edge, butt naked.

I'm playing UT 2004, and I get all excited because my Outlook Tray Icon pops up that I have a message from Steve Balmer. I'm thinking "Yeah, MSFT finally recognizes my talent and the big guy is sending me e-mail to let me know..." So I exit the game, abandoning my team mates, Then I open it and realize it is just the MSFT Executive Newsletter. Oh well they were NooBs and I was carrying them anyway.

This letter was about IT, and Operations Management. How 2003 server and Mom can save you big on your IT budget. It is chalked full of neat statistics like 70% of IT is maintaining existing systems, (I'd have guessed higher since). And Talks about how "Motorola are realizing significant benefits from these technologies. By using Windows Server 2003 and these powerful management solutions, Motorola estimates it saved 247,000 hours and $11 million in annual software deployments in 2003." Though I'd like to know accross how many seats.

As a guy who provides the ony IT Support for about 800 machines accross 37 organization and only spent about 4 hours last month doing that, and I didn't have to go on site, I could see that you could reasonably Save a lot of money in a big org if you had a few guys like me, and a MOM, and SUSE Server. Throw in Roaming Profiles and Virtualized servers and all of a sudden you are looking at an organization that the only thing your IT department has to do is answer stupid user issues. And you can get Tech Support Cheap in India. (no offense to anyone in India)

You too can get e-mail from the MSFT Execs, just sign up here

Optware Unveils Small Holographic Device Capable of Recording 200GB-300GB on One Disc

Sure there is no working prototype, that image is just a mock up, but still 200 gigs is a lot of data to put on a CD Sized optical disc. Though I think they should use Caddies, You get a scratch on a regular cd you are out 500k, you get a scratch on something with 300 times the data density now you are out 150 megs.

Every where you turn people are pointing to biometrics. For Passports, for security, for Payment. Let me clear something up. Your finger print isn't unique. Before you start to argue. The Most expensive finger print scanner you can by is 2400x2400, That is only 5.8 million pixels. In black and white that is 33 million combinations. Account for the fact that you never scan exactly the same and that there are combinations that will never happen in nature like Checkered patterns and Alternating lines, you are looking at 8 people in the US having the same thumb print as you and 192 people in the world. How'd you like to be going through security in a developing nation when your thumb print identifies you as a terrorist because one of those 192 people Fixed the Fax machine of a terrorist group?

Wilcox is calling the Great Moments at Work silly. And I have to agree. Add Patronizing, lame, and uninspired.

MSFT doesn't act like it knows how to advertise on TV. They have great Xbox commercials, hire those guys to do your Office ads. But these are worse than the Flying people from the XP ads. You want to sell office, get on CNN, and MSNBC, and Tech TV and do ads like IBM does that talk about a real world business case that an IT or CxO can relate to. Talk about XML, talk about reaching your data anywhere in the world, talk about OWA and internet e-mail, talk about creating templates and forms that work on the local machine or as a web app, talk about managing your time with Outlook, and give me numbers on how much a customer saved using MSFT technologies. Computers aren't sold on Vapor, and that is what these ads give is vapor. We are presented cases that are intangible. In only one ad are you given a defined business case. The third quarter numbers changed and your Power point changed to. That is a great business case. You found data that no one had been able to tap, that's great what was the data, where was it stored?

And shit you are looking at a great time to be winning in the TV ad Space, IBM is running ads for it Human Resource department right now. I have customers calling me to ask if I think IBM is going to fold, and if IBM still makes hardware, because all they see is ads for IBM linux and outsource HR.

So I blogged the other day that this hot chick had linked to me. There aren't too many female bloggers and her feed looked interesting so I subscribed. Low and behold the next day she has a Gem of a blog on why companies need to be blogging.

I agree with Dina about some ot the thoughts she thinks should be in more pitches to companies about blogging. But especially "Call to action" This is what companies don't get. When you start blogging, you start getting more feed back, and less noise. You get rational feed back rather than just "your product sucks." You create a dialog with your customers and employees.

I'm to late for this Blogging Pitch contest, but if I had to pitch blogging:

Who is the face of your company? There was a time when we could identify the CEO and founder of many of the products we use, or could personally identify with a spokesperson for the company. Be that Steve Jobs, or Morris the Cat, we had a tangible if irrational image of that spokesperson being the embodiement of that company.

Part of why Microsoft is viewed as cold and unfeeling, is because we view Bill Gates that way. Right or wrong we have this vision of entire companies being one person. Blogging lets you have employees be spokes people. They become approachable, visible, and hopefully likable. You can stand back and watch Robert Scoble figuring things out, you see the wheels turning and then the lights go on in his head as he realizes why Xbox Live is more than just a kids toy, you can feel his excitement as he tries to convey to his audience a concept that he gets but doesn't know how to put in to words. But what you really get is this face for Microsoft that is not Gates or Balmer, but rather someone more like you, that you can approach, that you can relate to.

Blogging to the outside is about building relationships. You don't have to turn every reader in to a dyed in the wool customer, but you turn them in to some one who is willing to consider your company when they go to spend their hard earned money. You build loyalty, and you show that you do care about the feedback you get. Blogging is like sitting on your front porch and waving to your neighbors as they walk by. You don't have to have a great dialog with each of them, but they will remember who you are and think of you when they need something, or be there to help out when they can.

Blogging to the inside is about building relationships, but it is also about perpetuating dialog. A blog lets you put your idea out for everyone to see. It is like the ultimate suggestion box. And because blogging happens on neutral ground no one has to take offense to contradictary ideas. You can say this is what I feel we need to be doing, and if some one else says, this is what we should be doing instead, the discussion can be about the ideas not the people. You don't get that level playing field in a conference room where you worry about rank, or department, or even if you like the other person. Blogs are like coming home after work, sitting down on the front porch and having a beer with your co-workers.

Blogs are just a front porch.

http://www.amigaforever.com/tour/highmat.html

That's all.

Amiga is back What more is there to say. An OS from when I was in Kindergarten is reborn. Yes you to can experience Amiga for the first time. Running on Emulated hardware get the original experience. Play the original games. And use Amiga DOS because you just love the penalty box of a virtual machine.

Carter responds to my Brandwidth article.
# re: Know Good Matches for a “Dream” Job?
Brandon - thanks for the "brandwidth" URL; it's a good read.
I like the cluetrain manifesto feel, the focus on what individuals can do, and the "make it your own" via social networking points. I'll have to re-read sometime when it's not so late, but there's one point I'd argue now.

There's a subtle implication that "good" brands are "designer label" brands. You contrast Apple and Microsoft on this point. Even if PCs remain a "tool" to Apple's "status symbol", that doesn't mean that Microsoft should be Apple. For example, BMW has style and status, but that doesn't mean fleet purchasers would value Ford's behaving like BMW! :)

Microsoft makes a platform; Apple makes iLife. So, for example, rather than creating sexy/secret/surprise launches that drive community excitement, I argue internally that Microsoft's brand is about making the platform available to devs as early as possible - wharts and all - so that's it's a boring matter-of-course at launch.

Carter, I have to agree, I wrote this a while back and haven't revised it. I think the point I was trying to make may, or may not be valid... With software a good "feel" is a matter of good design, rather than of Per unit cost. I went test driving Mini's with Ang and realized that for under $20k you can get a car that Feels like a Bimmer. That was a good fealing. With MSFT Leather seats are free as it were. So giving the OS a great feel comes at no incidental per unit cost. Longhorn does an excelent job of doing this. The Newer builds (post PDC) do a great job of improving on the Feel of Windows. I especially like the level of "Clarity" that the new Skins have, and the "Angles" that have been taken to Window Management. (If you have seen LH you know what I'm talking about but NDA keeps me from saying too much)

The launch arguement you make is valid on some products and not on others. The Windows Media 9 Launch was a great example of how a launch can be both a Red carpet event and a chance to get devs excited. While some people had the WMP9 Bits before the launch the majority got the beta at the event, and while the first night was for CEO's, Content Providers, and the In crowd, the days following were for developers. This is how I think it should be. Build a buzz by doing the launch when the product goes in to Public Beta.

Lastly... I think Brandwidth matters more in certain segments of MSFT than it does in others. The Consumer Space the Brandwidth matters, the corporate it doesn't as much. Or not in the same way. Office XP doesn't make a great T-shirt. Longhorn might. LoneStar would make a really good t-shirt. I'd where a t-shirt that said "LoneStar: Think in Ink." or "Symphony: Get Extended" I'm sure I could think up more clever one liners, but what I'm really saying is that there is brand potential. And every T-shirt is an advertisement. You'd be suprised the number of people who walk up to me when I'm wearing my Windows Media Jacket and ask questions about Moviemaker, and WMP, and just windows in general. You'd be suprised how many people would ask me BMW questions when I wore my BMW hat around. I don't think wearing a Great Plains Shirt would get me accounting questions :-).

The only thing better than getting links to me in other languages are getting links to me from hot chicks.

Who says you can't win points with the ladies and never leave the house? Dina Mehta linked to my article on Amish.

MSDN has a neat article on using XP Embeded in a VPC session. I'm looking forward to a day when I can put a DVD in a machine and just boot in to windows. run my core apps and get out, Use a USB Key for Storage and be off to the races leaving no residue on the host machine.

Jonathan Tasini writes about a community trying to keep Walmart out. Walmart isn't on my list of friends. Though it has never done anything to me, I look at Ang's home town of Coldwater, MI. That town works almost entirely for Walmart. You either work at the Walmart, or the Walmart distribution center. It has hurt the town a great deal. The Downtown shops aren't booming any more, and the town isn't really big enough for Super Walmart, Kroger, Felspauch and the likes. Quality Farm and Fleet can't compete in the pet supply or "farm Apparell" market. When your ag-community has a strugling Quality Farm and Fleet, you know something is wrong.

There are communities that benefit from Walmart, but they tend to be communities where the families are so happy to get $40k for their 2 bedroom home that when Walmart offers them $100k for it they are over joyed. Walmart on the list only slightly lower than ClearChannel on my list of companies that are hurting America.

Even if you don't want to hear about Walmart Bashing Tasini's article si a good read. He talks about how Costco pays its worers more and has a lower turn over.

The republicans are looking for Young Adults Ages 18-24 who are registered voters, have demonstrated the President's call to community service and are willing to write 300 words on the subject. It doesn't actually list republican, but I think that is implied.

I'm reminded of the Grand Theft Auto Vice City Talk Radio segment, where the Trust Fund Kid Says that he gives to the community through his dad's trust fund. "I can save the world with Peace, Love, and my dad's money..."

Oh and come on 300 words is not an essay. I'm cranking out 4000 words a day for these books I'm writing, 300 is barely 3 sentences.

Everyone else has thoughts on this so I thought I should too.

Plain and simple it is a bad move for Google to go public. Google thrives because it can take risks and not worry about stock prices. The geniuses who work there are rich, and can spend money on pet projects. Once you have investors you can't do that anymore.

Dilbert's new coworker is an international popstar who made no money becaue no one bought his CD they just downloaded it. Apparently through p2p since he didn't get paid.

To be true to cube life the whole office should have bought one copy and put it on the corporate Intranet. ;-)

I'm seeing more and more poorly done research. So I'm going to take a moment to relate some of the failings of research I have seen lately.

Research has to look at the target demographic. When you ask a thousand random people a question you get random answers. If you ask a thousand people with in a demographic you get targeted answers.

Research is best done on those who don't know they are being studied. Tivo Tracks what you watch, but 85% of Tivo owners are suprised to learn this. The results it generates are accurate, as Neilsons is finding out people don't fill out their diaries accurately.

Ask a dumb question get a dumb answer. Only 49% of people want their Portable music player to connect to a PC. There are only two possibilities here, They did the survey in front of the Apple store, or they did the survey in Amish country.

Jupiter is saying you only need 1000 songs in your library. Raise your hand if your house hold has 100 CD's. I have over 100 DVD's. And I dont' think I'm a statistical anomoly. 4 gigs is not enough space for your Mp3/WMA/AAC collection. Maybe before you buy a player...

I disagree with about 95% of what Jupiter says, so I'm maybe not qualified to answer.... The question Jupiter forgot to ask is how much content to people want to take with them. Or what percentage of a portable is currently used by its owners. We don't buy a player because we have 30k songs. We get the player and then fill it up. How many CD's did you have when you bought your first CD player? Dvd Player? VCR? Reel to Reel? Phonograph? How many of each of those did you have after you had the device for a year.

I carry ISO's, E-mail, and Complete Virtual PC's on my Portable Media Player.

And while what I carry may put me in the minority there are a good number of people toting Jpgs, DivX files and more.

I have a client who uses his iPod for the sole purpose of moving 12 gigs Cad Drawings from place to place.

I've been using a clients iPod to ship movies back and forth a good deal. We put the DVD master on an iPod, drop the iPod in the mail and presto two Double sided DVD's worth of info delivered from here to London in 24 hours.

Wilcox at Jupiter will always give you data that backs what he tells you it will in advance. He also said that consumers don't want Personal Video players, and that PMCE will flop.

Film does absolutely no compression. Each Frame is presented raw with no regard to what was in the previous frame. Digital Video is a bit different from that.

Digital Video is broken in to 3 types of Frames. I frames, P Frames and B Frames. I frames are also called Key Frames. They are like Jpegs, they give a single frame with no regard for what came before or what came after. Motion Jpeg, and Targa Streams are video made entirely of I frames.

P frames are frames that tell the differences between the current frame and the previous frame. Because very little tends to change between any two frames this can drastically increase the compression that can be achieved, especially in slow moving video.

Using FFDshow you can see the motion vectors of your video, that shows the relation ship between what you see, and what you just saw...

B frames are used to represent the diference between the current frame and what is coming. This is a bit more abstract, so I may touch on it later, I only mentioned them because I didn't want you to think I couldn't count to 3.

Visually lossless. That is an interesting term. We talk about capturing video and that we then use a Visually Lossless codec like Mpeg, or DV, or Windows Media, or DivX. And we have all seen artifacts that crop up, but have you ever wondered how much difference there was between your images?

How about the difference between these two?

This Image is 107k

and This one is one is about half that at 55k

How much difference is there? This image shows the differences between the above two images.

I hope I haven't given up too much of a secret. If you have the original source, and the compressed source you can gather a lot of information by differencing them.

Coming up, Motion Vectors. Ooh Fun.

I got to see demo's of the new Apple Suite with Shake, Motion, and Final Cut HD. They are impressive, but I still like Flame, Smoke, and the like. I realize Shake has a good number of Oscar's under their belt but I think it is because it is better at previewing what it can do than Flame is. Flame does more and is more powerful, but Shake lets you see more of what you are doing upfront.

FBI raided a school in Arizona citing copyright violations. While I'm all in favor of enforcing copyrights, but I'm confident that there are much worse violators than a school district.

High Def (HD), and Standard Def (SD) are the most common accronymns you will run in to, but you may also see ED for Extended Def.
Generally HD is 720p or higher, SD is 480i and lower, and ED is 480p +/- 10% (We'll get to this).

For the purpose of this article we are going to show the differences between 720p in the 4:4:4 Color Space, and ED, and SD.

This Image is in 720p 4:4:4 at 4:3 I'm doing this in 4:3 because I want to show the differences between the qualities, not the aspect ratios.

Next is an Image at 480p 4:4:4

Next is 480i 4:4:4

Now we drop to 480i 4:1:1 which is what Consumer DV Camera's use.

Now that you have seen the visual differences between the qualities let's talk about why there are visual differences. Color space is an odd bugger to say the least. Video is broadcast in a format that makes Color Broadcasts backwards compatible with Black and White Television. This Color Space is called YUV.

Y is the Luminance portion of the color space. Luninance is for the purpose of this lesson the same as brightness. This is Y color and BW broadcasts are compatible. Y is the only part of the broadcast that BW TV's interpret.

NTSC's implementation of YUV uses only 11% of the orignal blue information and only 30% of the Red.
Resulting in an image that looks like the following, it does demonstrates that you can't particularly tell that we went from 256 shades of red to 32, or that we went from 256 shades of blue to 16.

What about the 4:1:1 part? Well 4:1:1 means that there is 4 times as much data on the Y channel as the U and V channel. The Blue channel for the 480i 4:1:1 looks like this. And Is at 1/4 the resolution of the Green/Luminance channel. The Red Channel would look similar.

This is just Part 1 more is coming.

So you all wait with baited breath for my explanation of why I'm an HD nazi.

Jake, John, and I have varying opinions on whether Shooting in High Def should require a license.

Here are my issues.

A. Shooting in HD is not the same as shooting in Standard Def, and the masses don't get that.

B. HD doesn't just make things better. And it often makes things worse. If you take crap and look at it from 20 feet away it isn't that impressive, Take crap and hold it up to your face for close inspection and it is really nausiating.

Shooting in Standard Def does train you for Shooting in HD to a point. The thing that you have to keep in mind is that creating movies is this: Creating compelling stories doesn’t require HD, and conversely certain stories and shots could only be done in HD.

HD is about more than just resolution. I can give an Imax camera to any dumb ass and he can shoot pictures of his kids school play, but that doesn’t mean that the end result is an Imax film. Capturing your kids school play on your camcorder, doesn’t require HD to tell the story. Capturing the Indy 500 doesn’t actually require HD to tell the story, however, to capture the experience of being a driver, does require HD.

I think my rants in a private forum may be hurting my HD evangelist standing... But I think part of being an evangelist is recognizing that you want quality examples of technologies more than you want quantity. To that end, CSI in HD makes sense, but Reno 911 does not.

A big article on HD is coming I promise.

I'll explain later, but I thought I should put it out there, that when it comes to HD, there are people who should be banned from using the term, any software or Hardware that claims it supports it, and should be banned from creating content in an HD format. I think these people might even require having their power turned off so as to prevent them from even attempting to be associated with HD.

Just had to get that off my chest.

Scoble, and Wright both linked to this, so I thought I'd comment on it too. Lenn writes about Evangelism

To sum up what Lenn says: You have to believe and be believable.

Falling back to my camp counselor analogy, and playing off Lenn's Dogma references, Building the "Church of your Product" is just like expanding a religion.

The rules of expanding a religion are simple.

1. Lead by example: People will follow leaders, and people will abandon hypocrites.

2. Understand that there are depths of belief: I have had people tell me you can't be Christian if you don't believe the Universe was created in 7 literal days, That you can't be Jewish if you don't keep Kosher, and that you can't be in the Church of Microsoft if you use a Non MS product for anything MSFT offers a competing product.

3. Tolerance is prefrable to jihad: Getting people to acknowledge that others are atleast not the enemy is an important first step in conversion. Holy wars don't add to your numbers, they just lower thoughs of your competitors. If you want to convert people invite them in to your house. Build tools to help them talk to you like the Netware Gateway services.

I'll expand on these rules some other time, but those are the big three.

Church of Microsoft: Where do you want to go today? ;-)

Mary Jo points to an article in the Oakland Tribune "What if Google expanded on its search-engine (and now e-mail) wares into a full-fledged operating system? "

My thoughts are as follows:

MSFT must feel Google has a potential as atleast a storage format. Afterall isn't that what WinFS is all about?

Google already is entering the Corporate Space with it's Google Appliance that helps you find files on your Intranet.

Google has the Brandwidth to make a go at anything they want. I would bet money that more people know of Google than any distro of linux.

To that end this article talks about Google really being in the Terminal Server Business. I think if we get to that point, MSFT can win. Playing with Virtual Server, I could easily see a day in the near future where I would put my VHD on a machine and do the majority of my work remotely. Giving up almost nothing as I could still surf the web and such locally, and as yet I can't out type Remote Desktop when working on my broad band connection. Surfing via RDC has a ways to go, and I don't think I could PhotoShop, but everything else is there. When Connections hit 10 megs it will all be possible.

More People are stupid. Imagine giving up your password for candy. Or thinking secure password is your wifes name and the month. My passwords include numbers, symbols and case sensitive letters. While it is nemonic it isn't something that you would likely be able to remember it if I told it to you just once... (Don't try and hack me, I don't want to contend that you can't brute force my password)

Did I say that People are stupid.

People are stupid. Ryan asks George to go over to the "Top" group. He steps over to the group everyone of the contestants "knows" to be the best. Ryan then says, "George you are in the wrong group"

The Looks on the faces of the contestants says it all. Jenifer Hudson had been the highest voted American Idol more than one week, and got voted out. It shows that People are stupid. If you let us vote we will do dumb things. We should just make me evil tyranical leader of the emacnipated state of rhode island. (MSU Inside Joke) Free will is overrated.

di Antonio Sofi Comments on my Blog on Audio Quality. And while google will translate it it is still rough to read

"Insomma. Other that strategies of the terror and the diffused criminalizzazione, exorbitant prices of the cd, sale on linens of insufficient music: we make that more concerts and contents are made all?"

Even through poor translation you can tell this guy is Anti RIAA.

One of the side effects of Media being so easy to create is that we now have a lot more of it than ever before. If someone told you they had 2000 photo's it wouldn't shock you. Someone says they have 400 hours of Home movies, no big deal. Now move this to the corporate space. I my self have 750 white papers, reports and other factual or process documents. Put me in a corporate environment where you have 500 people who crank out that much content, and you all of a sudden have a half million text documents.

Tack on Corporate images, Legal Docs, training videos, and it is easy to imagine an Intranet that makes Yahoo's Content look miniscule by comparison. So how do we manage our content?

Google and Idexes? WinFS? Folders and well formed directory sturcture. It will be interesting to see what comes in the next 5 years as the dominate management system, since so few companies have any content management system, beyond, "Phil down in accounting has that document,"

Wil Wheaton is Going to be on Call for Help. You will notice that he is Blue just like I said Chris should be. It's not to late to reconsider that GarageOgre Make over Chris.

Betanews is really fond of quoting Joe Wilcox, but it seems he ony says things that are wrong or blatantly obvious."The success of Microsoft's WMV HD strategy hinges on consumer interest and whether the increase in quality passes the "better enough" test."

I thought the success of any consumer prodcuct hinged on consumer interest. And I disagree with Joe, the success of WM is going to be detiremined by Hollywood not the consumer. Consumers didn't pick Mpeg2 on DVD, Hollywood did. People will come to the content. MSFT's big win was getting Disney onboard with WM. If Disney HD DVD is only available in WM then that will clench it. Every household with a toddler will have to have a WM enabled player. You can't have a 4 year old and not have disney.

Joe, you really need to get a grasp on how content markets work. You buy anXbox, PS2, or GameCube based on what games you like. You buy a PC or a Mac based on what programs you like to run. VHS or Betamax. In the format wars to come Content partners will decide the winner. Consumers will simply follow the content.

Ang test drove Mini's today. I got to ride. The Experience was very good. John the sales manager said if Ang buys one it will be the first Mini he has sold, as he is the manager, not a sales man. John was british and quite knowlegable about cars. Though his ability to shift was not as impressive as I'd expect from someone who makes a show of it.

Ang was a bit nervous driving stick in front of me and John. She stalled the car twice. Once from a standstill because she was in 3rd rather than 1st, and once when John wanted her to see how short the stopping distance is, and she forgot to clutch.

One of the things we both liked is that John believes Mini's sell them selves. You come in interested in the car, you test drive and you either love it or you don't. If you love it you tell 5 of your friends and so you are your own salesman.

The Mini was very roomy, I'm not a small guy and I fit reasonably in the back seat. And in the front I was very comfortable. The S we test drove was very sporty. The car is very refined. It feels like a BMW as well it should being made by them. The Wheels being located so far to the corners makes the car handle very well, and the larger tires on the S make the ride very smooth. Ang is in love with it. She was particularly fond of a Pepper white with Black racing stripes Tan interior, and Panoramic sun roof.

I have to admit I liked them. I was fond of a Dark Silver with Black Racing stripes.

In any event it was interesting to get a lesson in evangelism from a Brit selling German Cars in America.

Wired has an article about how coaches are using DVR and Tablet to give feed back to players. This looks like the stuff Phil Webster of cSwing.com is doing. Stylus is such a great input device, way better than the touch pad I'm using right now.

I was trying to explain to a client why I thought the Phone company monopolies need to be broken up even more, but that an MSFT monopoly was ok. The argument didn't start on this topic, I don't even rembember how it got to that topic, but here is my version of the difference between "Hard" and "Soft" Monopolies.

Back in the day you could own such a large portion of a market of tangible goods, or finite resource that no one could compete. I can't start a Telephone company tomorrow, nor can I own a diamond mine. You just can't say when I get done with college I'm going to compete with At&T, or DeBeer's. The reason being that unless you discover a diamond mine that DeBeers doesn't own, or unless the Feds let you on the carrier network you can't enter those spaces.

Those companies no that they can charge what they want and only have to match price to demand. As they control the market they can price fix to their hearts content because you are stuck paying what they ask or you can go with out.

Microsoft on the other hand even if it had 100% install base would always be in competition with its self. Because it's product doesn't actually have a consumption rate unless it offers improvements over previous versions. If you buy a copy of Windows For work Groups it will run for a 100 years, and if you are ok with the level of functionality it has you would never have to buy another OS again. To that end MSFT in order to continue to make money has to offer improved products on an ongoing basis or cease developement fire all of its employees and hope that the number of new PC's in the market yeilds an ongoing profit stream. Of course MSFT is not going to do that. They want to continue to make money, so they have to continually add features that compell users to upgrade.

Because MSFT only supports its products for 7 years there is a some what finite life to its products, but for the most part if you are running a 7 year old OS it is no more vulnerable to security issues than it was when you bought it. So in that sense you are at the same level of functionality as when you purchased the OS.

The general point of all this, is that Software is neither a Consumable, nor a services, and is therefore not able to be a monopoly. Better software can always be written and as the ongoing price per unit is in essence free you are always able to have a competitive market place.

This site tells you how much of the earths resources you use. But with questions like does your home have electricity, or runnng water. Does your food come from your locale. In order to pass you should be an amish vegan.

I grew up with Amish neighbors. It never struck me as that odd since I saw them on a daily basis. It never strikes most people to ask why it is that Amish shun technology. I know it took me until high school to ask, and I saw them every day. So for those who have never even seen an Amish buggy going down the road it probably never occurred to them to ask.
The Amish are devoted, religious, hard working, separatists. Amish don't marry non-Amish, and on the rare occasions they do, their families have a funeral to morn their loss. The Amish way of life is actually a means to prevent interaction with outsiders. Oddly this is precisely why they are such supporters of community. In fact Amish are so community oriented that they are almost communists. Not of course in the sense the Soviet Union was, or China is, but rather in the ways Carl Marx believed all society would evolve to. Amish communities run their farms the way a communal would, sharing the land the expenses and the profits. This is of course likely the only way they would be able to afford to run a farm in today's agricultural market, as even with hundred's of acres, and lots of equipment it is difficult for a farmer to scrape together a living.
Amish have abandoned technology because they feel that if dilutes the ties of community. If you can sit around and watch endless hours of TV you won't need the fellowship of your neighbors. If you own a combine you won't need the community to help husk corn. If you own a car it becomes too easy to run to the store to pick things up. Amish in some communities however have adopted Walkie-talkies, and Cell phones. This seems strange at first, but the logic is that they are for safety and communication with others in the community. Imagine losing a buggy wheel 10 miles from home and having to catch a lift back home, leaving your horse on the side of the road, while your neighbor comes to bring you a new one.
Technologists are often separatists too. Watching a group of MVP's at the Global summit two weeks ago I saw a group of FoxPro MVP's snub a group of VB MVP's. I'm sure both groups think they have nothing to talk about with the other. Trying to convert a programmer from one language to another is like trying to convert a Ford lover to Chevy (another country bumpkin reference).
For the most part corporate America is trying to do community in a separatist way. They want to push that they are the only religion you need, that you only need to know the Gospel according to them. You see this with Apple's iTunes. Easily one of the most recognizable music communities but it is also the most elitist. You have to use their Player, and only have access to their content. This is funny because MSFT is viewed as the elitist group and they rolled out WM DRM which supports a huge number of players, and anyone can create content for.
The problem with the Amish method of community or the beauty of it depending on how you see it, is that there is not really any growth. The only way you get more Amish to have kids. That limits the growth to a pretty slow number. The same is true of Separatist or Elitist communities. If you aren't trying to actively convert users, or working on ways to have communities interact you aren't likely to grow your communities.
Geeks in general aren't very good at networking. We like living in our parent's basement, and we seek out a group of friends just big enough to make our D&D games playable, and we might not like every one in our gaming group but we tolerate them because they are a warm body and that is all we need to round out our party. But when it comes to talking to CEO's about the advantages of one product or another it is hard, because let's face it CEO's can barely check their e-mail let alone understand the intricacies of switching the entire web space to a SQL driven site with W3C compliant CSS, not that wimpy FrontPage CSS knock off. So geeks come off as unapproachable. But let a geek argue in a forum about why White Wolf should change a rule and you will get an elegant multi-page argument complete with practical applications.
This is why Blogging is so important. We take our time to think things through when we write. And we can go back and revise, so our arguments come out in better form. I'm glad to see MSFT embrace Blogging because I'm already seeing groups with in MSFT discussing things said on each others blogs. New guys can influence VP's in ways that most companies would never dream of. Blogs let even the lowliest of Mail Room workers put a good idea out there and have the possibility of it making it up to the Senior VP.
As Geeks it also means you don't have to be in a room full of people to build a network of people. My Linked In list contains a lot of people I have no idea what they look like. We have had friend ships for years and I couldn't pick them out of a line up. While I have mixed feelings about this, it is a distinct advantage for those basement dwelling geeks who can write a very powerful piece on any topic, but stutter in public and look at the floor in the presence of a female.
I think Amish would like Blogs.

Jeremy is pushing that evangelist is something you can make your self in to. I think you can to some extent. For example I was a Camp director, when I first started in to summer camp as a counselor I wasn't sure it was a job I was even going to like, but I have since decided Camp was the best experience of my life.

To that end I think you can stumble in to being an evangelist, I didn't take the counselor job knowing I'd be a camp evangelist but where I disagree with Jeremy is that evangelism has anything to do with being a salesperson.

Sales, and selling is a side effect of evangelism. When you go to a car dealer you talk to a salesman, and he sells you on the car, the experience is all about you, your ego, and your id.

When you go a bible revival, the experience is all about everyone. When you leave you feel good about people, and things, and life. The fact that you are sold on the Bible at the same time is just a side effect of all of that.

Evangelism in a corporate world is much the same. If you go down to the local Ferrari dealer the sales man sells you on a new Ferarri. But if you go to your local Ferrarri club they talk about how great all Ferrari's are, and how the new builds on the old and what is better, worse, and different, about Ferarri's now than 10 years ago.

If we step that back a bit further we look at the motivation for why each of these groups are pushing their wares, and you start to see that the difference between an evangelist, and a sales person is that the evangelists aren't pushing their wares at all, you are just getting caught up in the excitement they have for what ever they are evangelising, that you start to want it your self. Every person an evangelist touches should become an evangelist as a result of that contact, even if what they are pushing is not right for them.

A great example of this is how Ang is with people. Ang evangelizes so many things, and one of her recent evangelisms was for the connected home, a life we live with Media Center, a central server for all of our files, and the ability to access our Pc's from anywhere on the internet, so we are never disconnected. Ang was evangelizing the benefits of all this to her mom, who has know need for it, but her mom was excited at the possibility that it could be done. So now when her mom is talking to people about how technology is changing things her mom tells people how her daughter is using this connected home technology.

To be honest I'm not of the belief I truly have a God given quest to evangelize Microsoft, I do however feel that MSFT has always had great technologies and that a great many of them would benefit my friends, clients, and community. And I do feel Evangelism is my calling, who ever I work with or for I am an evangelist. As a Camp Director I was an evangelist for the camp, at Griffin I'm a MSFT evangelist, at Radio Shack in High School I was a technology evangelist. I have never sold anything to anybody. I have sung the praises of products I believed in and people came to the table to buy, but a great many of the ones who came to buy came via a friend of a friend because the people I talked to be came evangelists too.

I would never call you an idiot Jeremy. But I would never tell anyone to take a job that only might interest them. When I am hiring for positions I can see it in the eyes of a person if they want the job. And that counts for a lot. A person who only watns a job 90% will only put 90% effort into it, and lots of people's interest in a job drops 20% after the first year, that means my 90% effort ends up being 70%. Lots of time I weigh desire more than I wiegh experience. If I have a person with 200% of the job requirements, and only 50% desire to work on a project I have to weigh if that is as good as some one with 90% of the requirements and 150% desire. And Evangelist is a postion I'd certainly only take if I were 110% sure I wanted it. I could be a Windows Media Evangelist, I could be an Office Evangelist, I couldn't be a Spot evangelist, or a RealPlayer evangelist, I don't think I could even be a MovieMaker evangelist.

Because the hours are long to be good at it you have to let it consume you a bit. You have to have that enthusiasm that makes people who don't get it wonder what they are missing, and you have to be willing to admit when what you are evangelizing isn't a fit for your audience. For example you can get people excited about what a Spot can do, but if they live in Bora-Bora the best you can hope for is that they will be impressed. Because there is no service in their area.

You can be a go to church and not believe a word of it; you can sing in the choir and inspire with out ever being inspired; You can stand in the pulpit and deliver the word and never hear it; but to take the message into the community and get them excited you have really believe.

This blog started at Carter's Site

I ventured out of the house to by some dew and was gone for over an hour as I got a demo of a Retail RFID product at the local Gas Station. The Demo was supposed to be for the Gas Station owner, And it was pretty cool, at first....

The demo was of a UHF RFID setup designed for loss prevention. The RFID tags were $1.25 a piece and you attached them to your more valuable items to prevent loss. If the Item was in inventory but left the store the alarm would sound, and the video cameras would go from the low speed, low quality that they typically run at and run at full quality for 5 minutes so that the License plates of the cars at the station could easily be read.

This seemed like over kill for anything this gas station would have, but probably it was limited to a market of places that were low enough traffic that you could reasonably record all the plates at the location.

The problem with the demo and the reason I got to speak with the sale man, as that my Nextel which makes my monitor twinge and my speakers chirp even when they are off... Set off the alarm. It appears it works on 866 mhz and these RFID's work at 868mhz. So I was effectively jamming the signal when my phone rang.

Be glad that I wasn't at a Jewelry store that might have an alarm attached to local authorities, or security that would come shoot me down in the parking lot because my phone rang.

A Fortune 1000 company I have been working on a proposal for bailed on the project citing lower than expected earning meaning they don't have the budget for the project.

With out going into the specifics, the project was 1 and a quarter million to roll out over 6 months, but the the first year they would save almost 2 million dollars and increase productivity by saving the company 240k man hours the first year. Not to mention that the infrastructure could be used for other departments to save additional money.

The problem is that the people in one department have no ability to share infrastructure costs with another department, and money has to be appropriated to a project and if that project saves money they have no way to access those savings unless they fall in the same fiscal year.

So the company is looking at short term rather than long term.

About 6 months back I was sitting in the home of someone who was filling out a Neilson's survey, for what they had watched. And they were checking their favorite shows, and I said "Did you actually watch Survivor last week? I thought you were asking what happended cause you missed it..." and their response was that I was right, but that they represent 10k people and that if they don't mark the shows they like, then they will disappear.

I was a bit perturbed that this was how the Neilson's ratings worked, especially since I know someone who does Neilson's box installs. Which apparently have thier onw flaws. But with so many of my favorite shows going off the air, I wonder if Neilson's is more innaccurate than anyone really believes.

Neilson's works on the premise that the homes they monitor are typical for the demographic of that home, however... Those of you reading my blog ask your self if you would want some one monitoring your TV, Xbox, and Computer. If you said no you are instantly thrown out of the demographic. I'll also be you are amongst the viewers of Earth 2, Firefly, Farscape, and Angel.

What I found interesting about this Wired article is that the Nielson installer I know said that he gets a disproportianately high number of low income homes. Because if you don't have a TV, or Antenna, you are given one to meet the Neilson's requirements. That isn't to say all of the shows listed in the Wired article are watched by low income homes, but I'm confident that the Low income homes aren't watching Angel, and SciFi.

Probably not watching Tech TV either.

Can you believe a Geek like me has been missing out on ShoutCast for so many years. I never found a station I liked with enough songs to have it on in the background. Since I got my TurtleBeach Audiotron I was listening to a few of the stations, and really liked them. But because TurtleRadio Hides the URL for the stream, I had to use a packet sniffer, to find the links... It was worth it, I love the Euro Top 100 Charts, and some of the Celtic music, and some of the Classical. So I went from working in silence to having music in my life again. No more CheapChannel radio in the background.

Ed Russel has started a pettition to get ChrisPirillo back on the air....

I'm so torn do I put my efforts into the Lockergnome campaign or the Angel one? JK Chris...

Now that Fred looks like Zhaan you have to weigh if the skin tight out fit is hot enough to counter the nasty face she is always making.

This made me wonder if the Blue Treatment could help Chris they way it did Amy Acker, Whil Weaton, and so many others.
I pitched this idea to Chris, and he agreed it would likely help his career, so we visited a local salon, and with the help of some Rit Dye, Leather Outfit, and some latex we reinvented Chris the LockerGnome, As Chris the GarageOgre, A bigger, Meaner, Bluer version of his previous self.

MSFT is looking for input on Longhorn Server. You can only give feed back on one topic at a time, so come back often :-). I want Smart Port forwarding by application so that I can put multiple port 80 applications on one IP and have it parsed by the URL Request. No more of this two IP's for IIS and WMS stuff.

So I’m just starting to get caught up after MVP week at MSFT.

I have to say I was really impressed with the bits I saw of the new products relating to WM. NDA prevents me from saying too much, so I’ll be vague.

Bobsleds/Media Extenders are cool.

Portable Media Centers are the new iPod killer.

DRM will be more flexible, a win for content providers and consumers.

Longhorn is looking good.

WMP in all its variations (And I saw a lot of them on a lot of platforms) is all looking good.

The New Longhorn Media API’s are going to be sweet.

I haven’t mentioned any Tech that isn’t public. Though we saw some that isn’t.

I do have to say I was disappointed that everything WM is still geared for consumer. I think there should be more corporate consideration, but I’m still happy with what I saw.

Steve Chmura Asked:

Can you say if they showed any set-top boxes that could playback WM9 content? For example, pop in the T2-HD disk or one of the WMV 720p disks I have made and play them back through DVI or DHCP?

The ‘ipod killer’ – when MS gets it to be 5 ounces, sync better then the pocket PC then I will believe it J

Thanks for the update

Portable Media Centers Sync better, weigh a bit more, and play video... so they are way better.

The understanding I have about T2. Is that it will most likely never be supported by a true STB… Let me clarify this a bit… T2 was really a technology demo designed to show off what WMV could do with feature length HD content. Unlike Coral Reef that Uses HighMat, and Self Authenticating disc’s T2 doesn’t work with any of the standards That are on their way.

Because STB Computers are growing in possibility it is possible a STB MCE running XP embedded could play t2, but for the most part discs will either be in HighMat, or HDDVD, which currently are NOT a unified technology.

There are STB’s on the way that do offer HighMat Support, Several things based on the Equater Chip, and there are several boxes on the way that will support HD WMV… The question will be how long before these technologies all end up on a Disc and Player combination that works for all content.

The analogy I use is that we are still sitting in the early mpeg2 days, when DVD Player first launch many only supported single layer discs and no CSS, 6 months later you had Single layer with CSS, and 6 months Later you had CSS with Dual Layers, and Menus.

Until the DVD Forum releases a standard the best you can hope for is Highmat with HD support. I don’t know if there is a player that does DRM on Disc. I know there are no STB’s in the near future that aren’t running XP/CE that support DRM from a clearing house.

Maybe I'm wrong but doesn't Bill Gates own Corbis? Then why is he giving away Apples?

I had a neat conversation with Matt Calder when I was in Redmond this last week, about Social Engineering vs. Social Networking. Social Networking is of course just connecting people to your product, Social Engineering is convincing people they want your product.

Their are many ways to do Social Engineering. You can Talk about how your product will change the audiences life, or you can convert them to believing your product is something they always wanted. Tivo is an example of the latter, Blue Ducks are an example of the former. For those of you who don't live in Dilbert, Blue Ducks are Dilbert's attempt at art based on the feed back from a focus group. The Focus Group told Dilbert they wanted pictures that were big, Blue, of an Animal, that you should be able to shoot the thing in the picture, and you should be able to eat the thing in the picture, so he creates a Blue Duck.

I see this in American Idol. We vote for a star, but when their album ships they sound and look nothing like the star we chose, they are instead "Popified". This is Ironic because the judges are always telling the contestants to not be "Safe" and yet when the lable delivers the lable picks very "Safe" music.

This is what is so interesting about Longhorn. It is a gamble. But it is also interesting to see how many "Safe" features they are touting. Worried about making it work so much like the versions of windows that came before that it is still very "Safe"

This guy sold all his worldly possessions and is going to play double or nothing. While his odds aren't quite 50/50 I'm glad to see he didn't decide to bet green. But Imagine the frustration of betting red, or black, then having it come up Green. A really good show would be to have two people, and one bets red, and one bets black, and at the end of the show one of the two goes to the Penthouse the other the Poor House.

I want, so do you.

We are back in Indy, Redmond was fun. I'd tell you all about it but it is all NDA so Sux to be you... Nah there is lots I can tell you that isn't NDA, but I'll tell you tomorrow.

Armed with 480 business cards, My Dell DJ, some Audio Books, and a few days worth of clothes I amd preparing to leave for SEATAC. My plane leaves Indy at 5 am which means with drive time I need to be on the road by 3 am. I arrive in Seattle at noon local time.

Ang and I couldn't get seats next to each other so that will be fun. We are flying to Seatle via Fort Worth, and coming back via St. Louis. The Final leg on the way back is by Turbo Prop, Oh Yeah.

I'm looking forward to the trip. Real People, not just phone voices or e-mail... I'm out of my office... What a concept to think I haven't put but 15 miles on my Jeep in the last month, and now I'm going to the west coast... Man I need to get out more. ;-)

I'm just hoping Ang has things to do. There isn't really a "Wives" Club for the event, and while Ang would fit right in at the breaks out sessions, she hasn't done the leg work to be an MVP (yet). She was trying to do support for WM but she hates to compete with me, she just needs to pick a tech and run with it, I'm trying to convince her that it should be photo story and Power Point/Producer... I think it will more likely be PMCE when they come out.

If you are in Redmond and want to hang out with Ang Drop us a line.

Scoble said it was difficult to imagine going from enemies to friends over night. I have heard similar things from others. For me this doesn't seem so hard to understand, but I used to play golf with some of my biggest competitors.

SUN and MSFT have a lot in common, as do their CEO's And just because you are competing doesn't mean you have to hate the other guy. Haven't you ever played Basketball with a friend? You try and win, you compete but there isn't hatred between you.

Scott McNeally and Steve Ballmer are both rich CEO's of big tech companies, they strike me as very likely golf buddies, but then I'm biased all those years doing teambuilding...

In a shocking reversal of business practice, Microsoft has announced that they are disbanding the Digital Media Division, and all associated projects related to those markets.

Several of the reasons cited were:

-The recent litigation by the EU. Microsoft is afraid of more legal issues in the future.
-The powerful marketing campaign of the Apple Ipod/Itunes combination, even though they represent an inferior product line
-The overwhelming popularity of the RealOne Player, and its easy to use marketing reporting mechanisms
-The groundswell of continued support for mpeg-4 licensing
-WMV-HD seems like it will never catch on
-The Public sees no reason to secure media content with DRM technology

The mood in and around Building 50 (the home of the Digital Media Division) was reported to be "somber at best".

I have a lot of pull at Griffin, if any of the MSFT Staff in B50 need a job after this let me know I’d be glad to hire you.

I anticipate being very busy moving clients from WM solutions to Mpeg4 in the wake of this announcement. And having as many of the b50 group will be helpful. I can’t offer to pay your relocation however.

Update: Thanks Joel for Letting me steal this April Fools joke.

I really like Century City.I'm watching it on Tivo Right now, the episode is essentially a remake of Flowers for Algernon (sp?) but as I'm watching I'm also reading CNN.

I grew up in a town where religous diversity meant Catholic vs. Protestant. But reading about Nashala Hearn being suspended for wearing a hajib, I realize I was sheltered. How can you teach diversity and tolerance in an environment that is hostile to those basic beliefs. That isn't to say that I think you should be able to break out your prayer rug in the middle of a math test, nor do I think you should you be allowed to burn incense during the math test.

I don't want to see a school system where we say you can't wear a cross, or a hajib, or kippa... If you are a budhist monk maybe you should have to wear a shirt in the class room, but for the most part if your behavior isn't disruptive it should be allowed.

Wired has an article about how P2P is not responsible for CD sales fall off.

RIAA needs to wake up to the fact that people spend their money on other things now. Video game sales are way up over where they were in 1999 every video game is 4 cd's that don't get purchased.

Clearchannel overplays music to the point you don't ever want to hear the song again.

All music sounds the same. The industry is turning out safe and predictable. Why buy the latest music it is just last years music with a different lyric.

Better efficiency per horse power per mile than any other Diesel Engine, but at 108k HP and 5.6 million pound feet of torque it still burns 1660 gallons per hour. So a trip to the grocery store is rather expensive.

Ok so it is meant for Cargo Vessels, but still very interesting read.

I'm just going to be lazy and Copy the text of Chris's blog.....

"You can use Typepad, Blogger, LiveJournal, or any kind of service your blogging heart desires. After years of lying dormant, we're finally doing sometihng with one of our domain names. If you'd like to be a part of Lockergnome.net, we're accepting registrations as of today. The system is running on Blogware, and Daze.net is handling any account support issues that might crop up. My hope is to provide instant promotion and interconnected tools for everyone who signs up under the LG label. Naturally, as the community grows, so will our ability to make it function and communicate better. Get your preferred subdomain before someone else snaps it up! "

With out going in to too much detail I just have to say that Virtual Server From Microsoft Rocks. It takes VPC and just stacks on the features. I love that I can have a box with no monitor, no keyboard, sitting in my basement and run 50 Virual Platforms on it. I love that it has fail over built in. I love that I can virtualize my entire farm throw it on a few machines, check what servers need more resources and throw them on to a bigger box in minutes. I could Manage 3-500 servers with out breaking a sweat with this tool. And doing backups would be cake because you can just copy the VHD's of the real box. Oh and did I mention there is SCSI support now? Sweet!

Christian talks about Enterprise Blogging and quotes that Visible Path will be charging $20k per year and scale up from there.

This goes back to my Exchange should do blogging thoughts from before. If companies want this why use several products instead of a monolith like Exchange.

There was a time when I hated to put all my eggs in one basket, but these days I want better interoptability and the easiest way to get that is to pick a tool that does everything. And right now in corporate America that is exchange.

And Since I'm going to have Exchange anyway, the cost of adding blogging is the cost of my IT staff turning on that feature.

I don't know who Wilcox is, but he keeps saying dumb things to press. Like....

"I chuckle at Microsoft's contention that somehow the WMA world is more open than Apple's iTunes, iPod and Fairplay AAC. Both companies' formats use proprietary technology. It's true more stores and players support WMA, but I wouldn't consider AOL and HP, two companies offering iTunes Music Store to their customers, as small-fry support"

Funny how I never heard of a Fair Play SDK. If I were wanting to sell lectures in an audio format... I could pick MSFT's DRM, or I could try and convince iTunes to carry my content... Which is more likely?

Or How about This comment?

"Our data clearly shows that portable video is not a feature consumers are seeking right now. For the foreseeable future, the greatest portable media player demand will be music. One of the biggest hurdles is conversion/consumption. Right now, video is where audio was in about 1997. The amount of time necessary to convert video for portable playback simply is too long for mass adoption,”
"I don't see an iPod killer from Microsoft on the horizon, not if it's Portable Media Center, which has a size and features geared for video,"

Has he totally missed the people buying Archos, or drooling over the Sony PSP? Having seen the Portable MCE's I'd buy one. And what kind of statement is it to say video is where audio was in 1997? In '97 college kids were sucking down MP3's like wild fire,

In any event this guy is clueless.

Wil Wheaton(that blue haired ex-Trekker) is pointing to a book called "Never Threaten to Eat your co-workers"

   "The Best of Blogs features the most provocative online writing by unknown writers and underground celebs. MTV's The Real World's cast member Neil Forrester gives new meaning to the phrase "Bite your tongue." Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Wil Wheaton gives his take on the Hollywood system and fleeting stardom. Web designer Heather Hamilton finds herself in the unemployment line after publishing work stories in her blog, Dooce.com. Humorist Choire Sicha gives advice on broken hearts and timeshares. Illustrator Mark Frauenfelder throws out his cell phone and uproots his family from Los Angeles to the sandy beaches of Rarotonga. Plus tales of creepy video store customers, online love lies, Iraqi politics, office pranks gone wrong, jury duty, a childhood meeting with Darth Vader and so much more. "

As an Aside: I'm using Wil's Amazon Reference, so he will get the credit. I hate when people do a referral to a product that they heard about some where else and then change the URL so they get credit for any purchases made.

Mary Jo Says MSN Execs are prepping a blog bot. I need some one to help me get this. The Blogs I read are people who's opinions I value, respect or have a 180 view from the way I do. I don't know why I'd search for blogs as a consumer. I could see searching if I were MSFT and wanted to know what people thought of things I was creating, or if I were Sean and wanted to see who was talking about coming to the MVP Summit but this doesn't seem very mass market.

I wish there was an RSS Feed specifically for interviews and thoughts from Bill Gates. I also think it is about time for another book from him. In the mean time this is a good interview from eWeek.

In the article Gates makes some really good comments about the state of education in the US.

There has been a drop in kids going in computer science. So even though Microsoft gets a good part of that pool of good people, we're quite worried about kids in the U.S., less of them going into computer science, and less foreign students coming to the U.S. and joining these departments. And it is somewhat in contrast with the increase in computer science enrollment in China and India. Right now our hiring is very, very strong. In fact, and we have to make sure we're picking the very best people.

There are a lot of other interesting topics, but few are as easily pulled out. I can relate to the Analogy Bill makes between MSFT and the Yankees.

I found an ariticle from June of last year talking about Jobless rate. What I think is funny about jobless rates is that they aren't particularly accurate. They don't take in to account people like many of my friends who have a Masters in Computer Science and are working in fast food. They also don't take in to account people like me who are working as consultants, scraping by, but who would trade it all for a 9 to 5.

There needs to be a new Employment index that asks if you are doing a job at or near your level of qualification. That way IVY league grads who flip burgers aren't counted as employed. I also want the employment index to factor in if you are making more or less than you did 3 years ago. Nearly 75% of my colleagues are making less money than they did 3 years ago. So while they aren't unemployed they certainly aren't happy in their current job.

I am also amazed at the number of stay at home dads right now. There are quite a few people I know that the wife is the bread winner. That isn't to say that isn't ok, just that I'm not sure that these dad's are counted in the unemployment numbers, many of them would rather higher a baby sitter and go to work but can't find jobs.

Ang took a job in retail and loves it. She is probably one of the best sales people I have seen. She has low return percentage and high repeat customers, why? Cause she only sells what she believes in and she sells everything she believes in. Ang could be the Poster Girl for Tivo, Muvo, Fujitsu Life Books, Wired Magazine, and Media Center Edition PC's.

Philipp Harper Puts up Miles Davis as an Alpha Consumer, but in her space Ang would rock his world. One of the best things about the way Ang sells you on a product, she is much less technical than I am. Ang won't put up with a technology that doesn't just work out of the box. Don't get me wrong she is a smart girl, and she will take 4 hours to figure something out if she has to, or assemble the grill in record time using instructions off of the internet cause they didn't come in the box, but Ang won't likely recomend the product to some one else unless it has really changed her life.

I really need to get Ang Blogging more. I'm the ADD one but she is the one with out patience. I'm definitely going to have her blog up for the MVP conference so she can talk about watching us hardcore geeks.

Too Bad Bill isn't a snazzier dresser or his wearing of an item would be more of an endorsement. John Lawerence has a photo of Bill from VS Live, and you can see Bill's SPOT, but as Bill is easily the worst dressed in the crowd, is that really an endorsement?

Bill is the epitomy of Gadgets, we all dream of owning a home as e-home as his, so I think it is. I think it is a real show of dog fooding it, to have your CEO in public using your products. If I were Jobs I'd never be seen with out an iPod on my hip.

Bush wants broadband in every household by 2007. I'd point you at an article but there are so many I don't want to limit myself so just google it. He doesn't say who is paying for it, or building it, or how people like my dad who lives in the middle of no where will get to it. And you know what, I don't care if everyone has broadband. Isn't that awful?

I don't know as most people need more than e-mail. And there are still free Dial-up services, I could be happy with government supported free dialup limited to 2 hours a day. Could be implemented through libraries or other such places. Schools perhaps. The long and the short of it is that I'm not sure Porn is a inalienable right as yet. Why do I need to give more people access to their porn faster. Really unless you are playing games, or surfing porn, or a real computer geek doing things like server administration I don't think you need more than 56k. Might want, but not need. And I don't want to pay taxes to make some oneelse porn pipe larger.

I also look at the type of person who is going to get subsidized Broadband. Seems these are the people more likely to get infected with Virii, and turn all zombie. Right now those people's machines are only sending me Viagra ads a few hours a day when the person connects to the internet after their wife and kids go to bed, if they have an always on connection I'll just get more Spam.

If the government wants to help it should help put more fiber in to more communities. Get a stronger back bone so that Bandwidth costs less.

Standing on your porch in shorts and a T-shirt Grilling Steaks, may not sound like cause to be super excited, or particularly blog worthy, but when you are used to living 150 miles North of here it is a thing to behold for March.

Though I broke my Caffine Free Trend today... I had been doing better. Caffine is my Rittalin with out it my ADD is pretty bad, Ang has been ready to kill me a couple of times because I was bouncing off the walls. Pair Handels Icecream with the lack of Caffine and I was really bouncing off the wall. So were the cats but they were just excited about the weather, and the birds outside the windows.

I'm working hard to get my ducks in a row so I can take the days to go to the MVP summit on the 4-7. This is my first summit so I'm not sure what to expect. I'm bringing Ang so I'm hoping she has fun while we are there. Ang is a good networker and loves the MSFT crowd so hopefully she will fit right in.

It was funny she works at Ann Taylor Loft and they are all stressing out because their VP is coming to thier store... Ang is like big deal, she has met with VP's at MSFT, and since your rank in her mind is all about the size of your yacht those guys and gals at MSFT are bigger big wigs than anyone at the Loft.

Cleaner XL was the final straw. Final Fantasy XI I could excuse, and a few of the pieces of software I wrote, but the list was just getting a little too long, so I rolled back to XP. I'll miss the Image Viewer the most, and that is about it for right now. It was plenty stable on my setup, and I was sad to roll back.

Jake says Rob Glasner at Real is hypocrite for telling Apple to open the iPod to other formats. I have to agree. Real is one of the least Open of formats. I don't see where they get off asking for anyone to be more open. I also don't know of anyone with any sizable quantity of Real Audio, other than some Universities that were stooges.

Galan sent me this link. Oddly none of the MSFT employees I know said MSFT was a great way to get chicks. And while the Girls at MSFT implied you have to beat the guys off with a stick they kind of implied that was not necesarilly a bonus...

I really like the Nero Virtual CD, but not everyone has Nero in a Corporate Environment. My Laptop is an Ultra-lite and has no CD, and My Desktop sits 50 feet away from me in the basement so what do I use to swap CD's? MS's Unsupported Virtual CD Plugin for XP

Not as clean an interface as the Nero one but it works. And It works on Longhorn and Nero's won't. Double Sweet.

Robert plays devils Advocate and says that we should charge for our IP because it is very American, (ok he uses Capitalist but the two are interchangeable these days) to do so.

Eben's arguement that selling software might be immoral forgets one thing, and a think most open source people forget. Software does cost money to create, and the next version costs money to create. MSFT reinvests a huge portion of its profits back in to the research of new products, and it gives a lot of money to charities, and universities, and starving 3rd world nations.

One could argue that some of the employees of MSFT make vast somes of money and that they are meeting more than their basic needs with money made off the software, but the people making those arguments are just jealous they don't have nicer stuff.

If all of us geeks lived in our parents Basements and wore the same clothes for a week straight then yes we could afford to sell software for a lot less, or even give it away, But I figure we only have a few more years before all of those geeks die off, and as they don't seem to reproduce, a side effect of women not frequenting the basements on a regular basis, nor being attracted to those who wear the same underwear all week, there won't be any offspring to replace them.

I'm of course a capitalist, the $18 I got last year from my Google Adsense was so so rewarding. I don't have adsense on my Main Page which I'm sure doesn't help, but this is supposed to be my business site, but still.

In any event Robert doesn't even have ads on his site. So he isn't doing his part to drive capitalism, what a Commie :-)

Hey I'm in. I might even sign up. Mark I have to ask though, for the guy who brought us Broadcast.com why do I have to use Antiquated VHS to apply? How about Windows Media sent via E-mail... This isn't the 90's, and you aren't just any guy. I probablly will apply.

Jeremy got a fewer word response than I did. Must mean I'm more importatnt :-) or that my idea wasn't as bad as some people said it was. In response to my Exchnage as a Blogging tool I got...

"Thanks for the input Will share thanks "

And the message got CC'd to Steven Sinofsky. Steven hasn't written me, and I haven't had time to really draw up some mockups the way I would have liked to show what the product could look like... but since Robert was talking about this I thought I'd share my experience with you all.

As far as name dropping, sure I can say Steve e-mails with me every now and then...

I wrote a whole bunch of people I had lost contact with over the years, and asked them to join LinkedIn.

So if you got one of those mails from me. I'll see what I can do to refresh who I am. I don't know what I was thinking leaving Windows Media out of the description of who I was.

If you know me from a User group I'm that guy from WMTalk, WinNet Magazines Forums, The Windows Media 9 Launch,

From a Highschool function, Model United Nations, Quiz Bowl, Wrestling, Cross Country,

From Toledo at CDS, Stone, or Lourdes College

There are other ways you might know me, but this covers most of them. And like I said in my e-mail even if you aren't interested in LinkedIn drop me a line I miss you, well some of you ;-)

Jake is going to do a monthly Windows 3.1 Tips guide. I might have to send him my notes from Grade School.

In any event Vitrual PC would be a big help cause he wouldn't have to waste a few thousand megahertz on it. Though he may have to some software from that era will crash instantly on a machine as fast as current. Like FoxPro from that era.

What profound lyrics from Kelis...

Calvin Ross has some really good points about whether MSFT should be held liable for its security flaws.

"The issue, though, is fraught with irony. Microsoft was taken to court for antitrust violations and was essentially found guilty. Part of the settlement decreed that it couldn't "bundle" extra programs with its operating system, such as Windows Media Player, because it would unfairly disadvantage competitors.

Does that mean if Microsoft were to include a really effective Internet firewall with its Windows operating system, such that security became ironclad and virus invasion almost impossible, then the Redmond, Wash. software giant could once again become accused of unlawful bundling?"

The Truth is people just don't like winners. Too many people are jealous of success. Most of the products MS is top dog on are products that really are the best of breed. There are a few exception as there are smaller companies that are able to deliver a better product between version of the MSFT product but for the most part MSFT builds really great products at a really great price point.

Apple is at 50 million songs sold. While that is 4.5 million a month, they aren't getting rich. iTunes is a weird bugger. The point of iTunes is to sell iPods, so promotions like the Pepsi Music promotion is a way to get non-iPod owners to the iTunes site so they will buy an iPod to play their free songs, and then buy more songs. That is a great business model for year one and two, but what do you do when iPod reaches its saturation? Make money selling iPod batteries :-) ?

The problem iTunes faces is that it banked on some ideas it didn't think through. If you are 40 year old female School Teacher you drink 4 Diet Pepsi's a day that means you win free music about every other day. But you aren't even close to the demographic that is going to use iTunes or iPod. This is just one section of the Pepsi demographic that is going to toss their winning cap rather than redeeming it.

iTunes ally two is AOL. A 56K user isnot going to be listening to iTunes Radio that is one of iTunes biggest features. Sure there are AOL broadband users, but they are the minority.

I'll be interested to see the earnings report. 1/3 of iTunes sales supposedly goes to the Apple bottom line. That is way above the 15% we are supposed to hope for in an e-business. So with 70 million sales we should see atleast an earnings of 20 million. That would be a real coup for a site that is only supposed to exist to sell iPods, but I don't think they will make that. In fact I'm betting on a Loss, or a break even, depending on how Apple does its reportings.

Ed Is posting on XORP "The linux of routing"

I think Ed is right that OpenSource could be the next big thing in Enterprise level hardware. I mean Linksys has done really well with GPL on its home line. I think you will see Cisco taking what it learned at the consumer level and adapt that for their high end stuff. My linksys WRT54g is a Router, Firewall, Snort, AcessPoint, Filter that blocks ads and Cookies, and Provides VPN between me and my offsite webservers. That is a lot of power for $100.

One of the advantages of OpenSource for hardware is the Social Network that goes with it. There is a cult following of WRT54G users so my hardware keeps becoming more valuable as the network of users add functions. While a manufacturer could keep adding features it would cost them money, and so they would have to way the Return on the Investment, and I might not get a feature I'd want or need if only 10 other clients need it. As Hardware and software lines blur I hope more OpenSource software is run on my hardware.

Embeded OS's give the Advantage of Fraction of a Second Reboots so Downtime can be reduced, They have no GUI so they can save precious cycles for what is important. But Dan Dowd still thinks Linux Based Embeded Devices are a Myth. And he makes some really good points about how you don't run Redhat on your Router, ect.

Right now I think a lot of Enterprise level Open Source solutions have a black mark because so many of them suck. Robin Miller aggrees. There are a lot of solutions out there that are meant to be deploy and forget that aren't. Part of the problem with most Linux geeks is they like to coddle their servers so ongoing maintentance is a good thing in their mind. My servers run at between 99.999 and 99.9999 depending on how many patches I opt to apply or decide not to... Many linux geeks are lucky to cross 99.9 because "our servers never crash, so 100% of our downtime is us making configuration changes" I switched ISP's because My server was down for 12 hours every month as "Improvements" were made in that downtime.

You know what would be cool? If life had a soundtrack. One of the things I'd like to see happen in WINFS is that I can associate music with my files. This has lots of very interesting varyations. I think the Meta Tags should be moods and Key words...

Think how cool it would be if you fired up your Microsoft Money and based on your finances your music changed. Ok maybe not the best example, but pictures. If you could associate your image library with music that would rock. Especially if that were Direct Music so that you could have a kind of Theme song all of your own and based on the photo being displayed you might get your theme song sad, or happy, or Happy, but in a Minor Key... Or you get the theme song of the person in the photo, but in your style.

I get images of Kronk doing his own theme music A few of us had been talking how cool it would be do do this with Movie Maker so that you could use a script for your interactive music that tied in with in your home movies, but I don't see why you should have to stop there. You'd be playing your movie click the appropriate style and Voila you have a custom soundtrack... Daughter learns to ride the bike... Anticipation music as she gets on, Fast exciting happy music as she glides down the sidewalk, dramatic music as she plows in to the neighbor boy who didn't see her coming..... or I could just get a mic and do a Kronk :-)

Why not have music based on the task I'm performing or the upcoming appointment, Maybe I'd get bored with it all after a few hours hard to say. Then I'm spoiled having an entire office. I guess if you worked in a cube the spill over of the music would cause problems.

People have custom ring tones as caller ID, why not Custom sounds by e-mail address? I realize I can do this with rules already but it takes a lot of work.

More unique sounds for feed back from windows. Why does the Your application just crashed and no you can't save message have the same sound as the pop up telling me my download finished? You Clicked a link and the IE page finished loading are the same sound. It is stupid.

Delca has very good ambience. Feed back is provide not just by the way the voices sound but the ambient back ground noises too. This could be useful in environments where you need to know the status of a process but don't have the screen realestate to give a status icon, or if you are working with multiple PC's simultaneously. Besides we need some sound to drown out the whir of the fans in today's PC's.

Ang has wanted to run her own camp for ever. Now she has the perfect place picked out.

Sure they want $4million but it is in Washington state, we'll have all those MSFT staff send their kids to her camp. The 155 foot climbing wall and 100 foot deap scuba training would be quite an attraction, combined with horses and such it would be sweet.

So Ang is accepting donations... Going to have to be fast the e-bay auction won't last for ever... So send money now :-) the first 400 people to send $10k get a life time membership for their kid. That is a sweet deal a summer at camp will run you $2k a year times 12 years of camp you'd save 50%.

Ang is 25 today! So happy birthday to her.

Bill doesn't get it. Though neither to the people in the examples he sites. Bill is right the problem with VC funded Social Networks is there is no purpose. And with out a common thread to link the users the network won't last... but whal Bill is missing is that there are many reasons for Social Networks to succeed. Craig's List is a loose group of individuals but a general good will unites them.

The future Bill is in Social Engineering. Building networks that suceed because the community is linked and the members reap rewards. This is like the old User Groups of the 80's or BBS's you build communities based on Locale, interest, or common need. Social networks will be an online version of the Vette club, or Orange County Chopper's or Elk's Lodge. Sure these already exist as Newsgroups and forums but the level of interaction is limited. With a well engineered Social network you get more personality, more interaction and more reason to visit on an ongoing basis.

Social networks are throw backs to the days when you used to sit on your front porch and talk to your neighbors as they went buy. I have lived at my new place 6 months and while I could tell you what BMW, SAAB, And Volvo goes with each house on my street I couldn't tell you the owners name, or even the color of their hair.

Social Networks are coming Bill, because people like to be social, but we don't have front porches any more.

I ran Norton Ghost on my Desktop to create a backup. Only troube was on reboot I had to activate again. And with the TCP Ip stack buggered in 4051 this meant a call to MS. So I thought does this happen every time? Yep set up to do a back up aborted it and on reboot I had to activate again. So Much for Ghost as a Back up System. I don't think I want to call MS every time I back up.

Seattle pi says Real is suing Major League Baseball because they are running exclusively in Windows Media for the PreSeason. This is interesting because Real is losing money on the MLB contract. If you sue for Damages and the Damages are you saved $2million dollars who pays who?

The dispute is about when the Season Starts. Real Argues that the first pitch of the PreSeason is part of the Preseason... Seems to me that if you use Preseason to describe the start of the season your grasp of Prefixes and Root words is a bit weak.

Real's contract doesn't specifically prevent the use of Windows Media, it simply says that all streams must be presented in real also.

Ed Sim a VC and Blogger Evangelist Linked to me. So he spelled my name wrong :-)

Ed doesn't necesarilly agree with everything I say, but I don;t always agree with everything I say so who can blame him.

I do have to say that I do beleive in the "American Idol" for Big Business. Look at it this way. You have Bill and Steve and your Favorite VP, Will Poole in this example. They are Simon, Paula, and Randy, use a Robert Scoble, or Sean Alexander as a Ryan Seacrest. The Metaphor ends when some one says and Brandon is Kelly Clarkson... Features and product ideas are the contestants. People like me are the loonies who call in 900 times to make sure Ruben makes it to the next round.

When looking at the product developement lifecycle you obviously don't dial an 800 number for feed back, but you use the audience to help you design the product. The core panel still sets the tone and influences the path products take, but rather than setting a hard road map you let the feed back direct the feature set and time tables. In a lot of ways this is how Linux works already. Popular features and ideas build small communitties that move the developement along, unpopular features don't get support and don't get developed. It is a Darwinian model for developement.

Ed Mentions that all my examples are consumer level, and that is true, but I think that this works for enterprise products too. I think their is a minimum user base required for the model to work. Certainly MS Exchange could use community feed back, but a product like MS CRM has a smaller user base it might not have been possible to have the community give enough feed back for version one, but after the initial release you could build a community around the product.

Some products that have a very minimal install base but extreme investment cost have had communities for support since the dawn of time. Much like the guys who have classic mustangs swap stories, tricks and tips, WISP support groups, Cisco support Groups and support groups for Applications like Great Plains, Lilly Visual Manufacturing and others have existed for a long time.

I think the model works for just about everything.

I e-mailed this to Jake, and totally forgot to blog it myself... Oh well.

Robert pointed to this so I thought I'd take a listen... Only Trouble is I don't use Real. You'd think that any interview with Bill ought to require that it be published in WM. Maybe not exclusively in WM, but in WM also.

Oh well I might listen to it on Ang's Machine I could install Real on that, And later when she beats me I could uninstall it ;-)

Screw this whole Open Standards thing. The way to go about this is put a panel of experts at it. Don't get me wrong Dave RSS is great for what it is. The Problem with RSS is that it isn't realtime. Sure a 30 minute delay is "Near" Real Time but it isn't. The other problem is that people don't actually get content pushed to them they just ask to suck a lot. If RSS were based on a Peer-to-Peer Platform life would be cheaper for the big guys and they could let up on the 30 minute resolution.

How I see this working:

There are a lot of really nice RSS compatible software so lets not muck that part up. Instead why not build an RSS Proxy as it were. A Peer-to-Peer client that recieves messages about your subscribed content letting your Proxy know when to update. The Proxy then updates a local XML file that follows the existing RSS format. Just give your News reader a URL like 127.0.0.1/Scoble.XML or Localhost/Slashdot.XML and it doesn't know it isn't getting the feed from the outside.

This simple solution solves all of our problems. Now while there is no reason it has to be owned by MS. Robert asked what MS should do. And this is it. Create a propietary back end that allows MS an advantage in building future Peer-to-peer push technologies, but keep a compatibility mode for the technology you supersceded.

I haven't figured out how to Monetize this or I'd have written it. I need to win the lotto then I could work on all of these fun side projects that I never get around to.

Just works is going to be my new montra. You see that is why I push Windows instead of Linux, Why I drive my Wrangler on a day to day basis and the '50 Merc is a once in a while car. It is also why I some times Paper over Silicon. Keeping track of who voted is easy with paper. One person goes into a booth once ballot comes out. In the old days when they handed you a pencil and you checked the boxes it was easy. We saw what a fiasco hanging Chad's were, so computers can make it all easier right? Oh, Yeah... What is the saying. To err is human but to royaly F things up takes a computer?

Yahoo Reports that Orange County had better than 100% audience participation. It is nice when turn out is so high. Makes you proud to live in a democracy.

Ang Really likes her Creative Muvo. She installed it herself, and it just works. She was really impressed with the AudioTron from Turtle Beach. It to just worked. I have a Password on the network so we had to tweak one setting but other than that it just worked.

Windows Media Center didn't Just work for me last night however. I wanted to copy a VHS tape to it so I went in through S-video.. I couldn't figure it out.

I'm off to have a Mt. Dew. one of my favorite just works products.

Chris (LockerGnome) Passed this to me.
I don't know most of the people on the list as I'm new to being an MVP. I can say that there is definitely different levels of participation from different MVP's but to thumbs up thumbs down the entire list seems a bit presumptuous.

I think the author of this page is not really being fair. Just because you aren't in a newsgroup doesn't equate to you are inactive. I was a WMTalk, AVSForum and WinNet Magazine guy. I avoid the newsgroups like the plague, but I don't think that makes me a bad MVP.

I also think that MS appreciates my support with clients too. I do a lot of evangelizing to big companies pointing out the advantages of WM over Real or QT. I don't know how another MVP or some one who didn't correspond with me on an ongoing basis would know that.

Part of being an MVP is the feed back you supply MSFT too. I think a lot of the guys at building 50 are ready for feed back from someone other than me at this point be cause I provide it in mass. The point is that you can't just judge an MVP by what you see in your community. Some of the MVP's in Russia could be making posters and running Users groups and we'd never know back here in the States.

Conversely I live in the states and put MSFT tech in to schools and talk to teachers about how to use those technologies, how would the creator of this list ever find out about that? My MVP Leads only know because I occasionally say something like "This school I'm working with has a 6th grader who is doing this neat thing with Movie Maker... You think we could get him in to the Beta for the next one?" or "I'm using VPC to migrate Exchange for a school district while I'm at it do you know of any good content filters for Exchange...."

In short I don't know why Jacek Rutkowski thinks he is in a position to judge MVP's. I know I'm not qualified to judge my Fellow WM MVP's, and we are a closer group than most.

I got to thinking about the recent Wired article on the "Viral" nature of information and ideas in our culture, and realized that this was a great argument for blogging internally in a company.

It might be a bad idea for some one like Bill Gates to blog to the public. What is going through his mind personally could have too much influence on MSFT stock. Like wise the trials and tribulations a developer experiences coding Longhorn might put out bad PR for the product. But internally there could be a lot of use for trickle down and trickle up information exchange.

A company like MSFT has a better than average "Suggestion box" system, but most companies don't. When working with several of my Fortune 1000 companies I have found that the best and brightest in their company often get no recognition because if they have a good idea and pass it to their manager the manager just takes credit for it. That isn't to say that never happens at MSFT, but I see a lot less of it in the people I have worked with there.

Blogs could help with this a great deal. A blog would help to establish time lines that can show how an idea developed. From the conception of some one saying we should have a way to do X, to realization as someone else says why don't I code that up for you in an ASP.Net page as a patch until we can get it added to the Core App.

A blog could also be a way for employees to vent. How often have you just needed to vocalize that an idea is stupid. And not had a forum for it? But if the stupid idea is about your "Bet the company" product you can't talk about it on you public blog.

A blog could be a way to look at the psychology and morale of the company too. If all of your employees are blogging about jumping ship maybe it is time to do a ski trip while you redecorate the office. Or maybe you now have a list of who to downsize :

Companies are just micro-cultures and while information flow does happen right now, I'm sure it is a lot more inefficient than it could be.

Project hurricane could be really sweet in a corporate environment. Now I just have to go sell the idea to one of my clients…

What Robert doesn't realize is that he is the Slash Dot for Execs and VC's. When the Scobleizer points to me my brandwidth goes way up. I got almost as many Refferals from Scoble pointing to me as I did Lockergnome. (No offense Chris).

And Value wise the people who contact me after Robert Links to me are worth 100 of Chris's followers. The People who read Scoble are making things happen in the tech community. People who read Lockergnome are catching up on what the tech community is doing. While I haven't been able to monetize a referral from Scoble, It has helped my street cred.

Robert if you wanted to leave MS you'd triple your salary working with VC's as a consultant and advisor. Anyone can master a technology, but realizing how it will be applied in the world is something you either get or you don't. And you get it. That makes you worth a fortune.

If you think your site is only in PR, you need to look at your archives. See how many technologies you implied could be successful now are. Yes, You are the poster boy for how a community can expand your brandwidth, but you are also a poster boy for future tech. You don't see the world the way the most people do. One of the biggest failings with People at MSFT is that they look at how are we going to do something, not how will people use it.

You know me well enough to know that I don't kiss ass, so if I say something nice about you it is because you've earned my respect.

I was given a Dell DJ as part of a Parting gift when visiting the Redmond Campus a few weeks back. As my luck is what it is the LCD started acting funny. It would display the Dell Logo, but never any menus.

Being a very independent type, I looked at the Dell Forums for Help, Tried all the usual things, and then started a new thread that received one response indicating my Dell DJ needed to be replaced.

Next I called Dell Support, after spending 87 minutes on hold I was told that my service tag was for a corporate account and that I needed to be transferred, after 96 more minutes I reached a TSR who told me that my product was not supported by that department but they would transfer me, at which point I hung up and started to work by e-mail.

Follows is an Abbreviated version of the conversation, but 16 e-mails from Dell later they have resolved that it is a hardware issue, But because I don't have the contact information for the purchaser I can't do an RMA.

I included some of the High Points like Being told to reinstall Windows Media Player, and to remove the Screen Protector from my Axim.

So far I have 6 hours invested in Tech Support. I guess if you just paste in the same responses from the KB Tech support is cheap, and can probably be handled by an Eliza Script.

I'd never buy anything Dell again.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

What I sent them First:

I was in the process of copying 18 gigs of Audio in 3500 files via Windows Media Player 9 version 3075, and the transfer stopped, and locked the WMP. I waited about five minutes to make sure it was really not coming back to life, Then End Tasked and disconnect the DJ.

At which time I tried to browse the songs and see how they sounded on the player. I realized I had only a backlit display and no interface.

PowerCycled the DJ, No joy.

Tried the Reset Get a back lit Dell logo, but no Joy.

Did a Firmware "upgrade" from windows, it transfered just fine and the dell acted like it was rebooting, but still no joy.

Using Dude box as a remote control I still have full functionality. If it were for the fact that the Dell Display still comes up I'd have said my LCD was toast.

If I reset the DJ I can Play a song, but get no display on the LCD.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Their Response:

As per your mail, what I can understand is that you are expriencing problem with Wndows Media Player.
'
To resolve this issue follow below steps.

The steps are:
1. Click Start.
2. Click Control Panel.
3. Click Add/Remove Programs.
4. Click Add/Remove Windows Components.
5. There uncheck the option Accessories.
6. Click Next and follow the path.

The steps are:
1. Click Start.
2. Click Control Panel.
3. Click Add/Remove Programs.
4. Click Add/Remove Windows Components.
5. There Check the option Accessories.
6. Click Next and follow the path.

In case if you have any other queries, you are welcome to revert back to us.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Obviously not going to fix my DJ by Reinstalling WMP.

So I sent this:
The Problem is NOT Windows Media Player. It is that the LCD on The Dell DJ No Longer Displays a Menu, Now Playing, or Docking Screen. It will only display the Dell Logo.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dear Brandon,

Thank you for more information and replying back. To resolve this issue we have to perform a reset. To perform a reset, insert the end of the thin object, such as straightened paper clip, in the reset button. Please use the reset button on your MP3 to perform the reset.

Thank you for choosing Dell. Have a Nice Day!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As I said in the Original E-mail I have attempted a Reset, but the rescue menu won't appear. (paper clip and Play button)

I tried a Firmware "UPGRADE" and while it appears to have done the upgrade and the reboot appears to happen it does not resolve the issue.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If I understand the issue correctly, your dell Axim MP3 Player is not working . To resolve this issue, please follow these steps.

2. Removed any screen protectors.
**Screen protectors come in two types: a temporary adhesive that ships with the Axim and a permanent screen protector that is purchases after-market.

Dell-Shipped Temporary Screen Protector

The adhesive side must be removed when the Axim is originally shipped **To remove the adhesive protector, peel the bottom corner of the adhesive strip off the LCD screen. The adhesive protector will come loose as the corner is slowly lifted.
******Permanent Screen Protectors******

A more permanent after-market screen protector may also be added by the customer. To remove the more permanent screen protector, perform the following steps:

*Use the stylus and place the tip under any corner of the protector.
*Push the tip of the stylus gently to loosen the protector.

NOTE: The stylus should come loose from the chassis.

*Remove the whole protector off the LCD screen.

3. Verified that the Axim screen is clean.
*To clean the hand held's built-in LCD display, perform the following
steps:

Apply acceptable cleaner to a soft, clean cloth.

NOTE: If the display contains grease or some other contaminant, use a soft, clean cloth with an acceptable cleaner listed below or a commercial window cleaner that does not contain ammonia, wax or abrasives.
The following cleaners are acceptable:
  Water

  IPA (Isoprophyl Alcohol)

  Hexane

  Petroleum Benzine

*Stroke the cloth across the display in one direction, moving from the top of the display to the bottom.

4.Aligned the Axim screen.
To align the Axim screen, perform the following steps:

*Press and hold the toggle button on the left-hand side of the Axim.
*Press the power button.
*Release the toggle button.
*The Align Screen wizard starts.
*Tap the center and four corners of the screen according to the instructions in the wizard.

NOTE: If the screen is still misaligned, repeat the process at least 4 times to ensure that it was done correctly.

5.Hard reset the Axim system.
Hard reset the Axim system.

NOTICE: Performing a hard reset of the Axim system will erase all data on the system. Please ensure that all necessary backups have been created prior to proceeding.

NOTE: This step can also be relevant IF the system is displaying NO POWER symptoms but truly does have power. Try to perform a hard reset as if the system has power as listed below.
-*Hold the power button down and press the reset button at the same time.
*Press the contacts button to reset the system.
*Press the mail button to cancel without losing data.
*The Contacts button confirms the reset and the Mail button cancels the operation

In case if you have any other queries, you are welcome to reply back to us.

Thank you for choosing Dell.
Regards,
Nicole
368789
Dell US Hardware, e-Support & Services
My schedule is 1430 - 2330 CST, Thursday - Monday Dell Email Support operates 24/7. If you need to reply to us, please use the REPLY function of your email program. This will keep the SAME SUBJECT of the response, ensuring quicker service.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
NO! It was working when I got my DELL Digital Jukebox , and it did not include a Screen Protector. I am not so dumb as to think that a piece of cellophane is my LCD. The LCD Works only when you do a Power On, or a Reset, and Only long enough to display the DELL logo. The Rest of the time I get the blue "Indiglo" backlight and No LCD For Menu, or rescue. The Dell functions in all other ways if you operate it with out the aid of the LCD. (If you can operate the device blind it still works as only the LCD has issues).

Follows is a resubmit of the Steps I have already taken.

I was in the process of copying 18 gigs of Audio in 3500 files via Windows Media Player 9 version 3075, and the transfer stopped, and locked the WMP. I waited about five minutes to make sure it was really not coming back to life, Then End Tasked and disconnect the DJ.

At which time I tried to browse the songs and see how they sounded on the player. I realized I had only a backlit display and no interface.

PowerCycled the DJ, No joy.

Tried the Reset Get a back lit Dell logo, but no Joy.

Did a Firmware "upgrade" from windows, it transfered just fine and the dell acted like it was rebooting, but still no joy.

Can't get to a Rescue Menu. I only get the Dell Logo with back light.

Using Dude box as a remote control I still have full functionality. If it were for the fact that the Dell Display still comes up I'd have said my LCD was toast.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As per your mail, what I can understand is that you are not able to use the Dell DJ. However, to resolve the issue we need to follow some of the steps as given below :

The Rescue Menu
=================

To access the rescue menu follow the steps outlined below.

*Power down the Dell Digital Jukebox.
*Press and hold the Play button, then gently insert a paper clip into the Reset hole located on the left side of the player.
*Continue to hold the Play button until the system boots up.
*The rescue menu will appear.

Checking the Hard Drive for Errors
====================================
The Dell Digital Jukebox has the capability to run scandisk on the hard drive. Follow the instructions listed below to run scandisk on the hard drive.

*Power down the Dell Digital Jukebox.
*Press and hold the Play button, then gently insert a paper clip into the Reset hole located on the left side of the player.
*Continue to hold the Play button until the system boots up.
*The rescue menu should appear. Select 1. Clean Up from the menu.
*A pop-up box will appear.
*Use the scroll button to select "Yes" to continue or "No" to cancel.

Formatting The Hard Drive
==========================
WARNING: Formatting the hard drive will erase all music and data files including pre-install content from the Dell Digital Jukebox.

The hard drive on the Dell Digital Jukebox can be formatted.
Follow the steps listed below to format the hard drive.

*Power down the Dell Digital Jukebox.
*Press and hold the Play button, then gently insert a paper clip into the Reset hole located on the left side of the player.
*Continue to hold the Play button until the system boots up.
*The rescue menu should appear. Select 2. Format All option from the menu.
*A confirmation pop-up box will appear. Use the scroll dial to select "Yes" to continue format or "No" to cancel format.

Reload Firmware
===============
WARNING: Selecting the Reload Firmware option on the rescue menu will ERASE the firmware from the unit. The firmware will then need to be flashed before the unit will function. Do not select this option unless the firmware is available to reflash the unit.

*Power down the Dell Digital Jukebox.
*Press and hold the Play button, then gently insert a paper clip into the Reset hole located on the left side of the player.
*Continue to hold the Play button until the system boots up.
*The rescue menu will appear. Select 3. Reload Firmware option from the menu.

Flashing the Firmware
======================
The firmware of the Dell Digital Jukebox can be flashed using the USB connection. The drivers for the Dell Digital Jukebox must be installed on the system that the unit is attached to.
Flashing the firmware will not cause any data loss. A firmware flash can be done over a missing or corrupt firmware. Go to support.dell.com to download the firmware.

*Connect the Dell Digital Jukebox to the computer where the flash resides using the USB cable provided. This computer must also have the Dell Digital Jukebox drivers loaded.
*Double-Click on the firmware flash utility *The firmware flash will be downloaded to the Dell Digital Jukebox.
Once the flash is completed the unit will reboot.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

Robert, I should have better clarified, that I didn't really want blogging in office, I want blogging in the next version of Exchange. Opitmally you don't do anything to office. You add it to exchange. That way people already know how to use the tool. You are just automating the Process of doing the posts. Sure I could build an ASP.net Solution in 6 hours that would check a mailbox and post the e-mails Blog style, but it is a lot of the OWA features I want. I want the ability to make bio and appointment information available, I want to be able to quickly put an Excell sheet in my blog, or use the Video Message feature of Outlook to do a Vlog.

Yes I could write the bits to make all this work in a day, but that doesn't move the technology in to the Just Works Category, because I am not an 800 lb Gorrilla.

I don't want MS to steal what NewGator has done, and what I'm proposing doesn't Mirror Greg Reinacker's work because I am not looking for the ultimate in blog Readers, I'm looking at ways to improve the Site experience and Making Posting as easy as e-mailing from any e-mail client, Cellphone or what have you.

Phillip Torrone Thinks this should be implemented as a Print to Blog, which is an interesting concept, I think E-mail as a medium is an easier method but there is room for both.

As an Aside: There should be a better way for us to comment on each others threads cross site.

I was sitting and contemplating what could be Office 12 that I will be seeing in a few weeks that would get me excited. A lot of people can't see any improvements in Office 2003 over 2000, so what does MS have that could make it worth while. I don't rightly know, but I decided the feature I want. Blogging.

Lets face it part of the reason people don't blog more is that it isn't a Just works technology right now. MSFT has the power to change that. Imagine a Blogging site that had all the features OWA offers, and if posting to your Blog was as Easy as sending an E-mail to YourName@Blog.Microsoft.com you could blog from anywhere.

You could share some of your appointments so others could look at your blog and realize "Oh, he met with Richard Tallent the other day, no wonder he blogged about the funny things people do in church."

And Outlook/Word is so easy to create Rich text and articles in. Making a bulleted list in most Blog solutions is not easy, and you can forget about attaching a picture and getting it formatted right. Blog are even already structured like e-mail (Subject and Body as HTML or Text Snippets) so it is cake to implement.

But it is also about more than all those functionality issues that as a blogger I appreciate, it is about showing the world that MSFT gets it. That it understands what the trends in text based communication are and what is happening in the web space.

I was really proud of the 800 lb Gorilla when a group of us met with parts of Building 50, every team we met we told them "You need an RSS feed for that", and you know what they put them up. MSFT is getting it. They are a Silverback and they need to show it by leading every chance they get. A great blogging tool integrated with Exchange could be a chance to show that MSFT is the leader, but that it is responding to what users want and need.

Maybe I'm too late and this is already on the road map. I'm always the last to be told about every thing, but I think it would be really cool.

Did you ever wonder where Blogging comes from? I got asked this just last week. You see blogging wasn't always popular. So where did it all start? I don't honestly know. So in the grand style of Andy Rooney, I'll make it up.

Blogging is kind of like having a paper that always runs your editorial. Or like a TV show that lets you ramble on about what ever you want for the last five minutes. That isn't to say Andy Rooney, or blogging is rambling, but lets face it we aren't delivering real journalism.

Andy tells you what is on his mind. And that is usually news related, but sometimes it isn't so much so, but it is always what he thinks. Blogging is really just a way to play Andy Rooney a few times a day. I realized this when I was reading "Is it a Real Deal" this not news. The same article could have been written 3 years ago and been equally true. It is editorial.

Whether you are Rooney, or Scoble you aren't reporting the news you are commenting on it. So when people ask me "so what is a blog?" I tell them it is like doing your best Andy Rooney impression but with out having Gypsy constantly judging you. If the person still doesn't get it thats ok. A lot of people don't get Andy Rooney. And even fewer get MST3K references.

If you really have to know the real history of weblogs is at Dave Winer's Site.

Any article that starts with "If the Calendar Girls were making cars, this is what they would look like" is off to a bad start. A car designed for women by women doesn't sound so bad at first, and then you read about the stereotypical things they do to the car, like give you seat covers you can change to suit your mood or apparrell. I don't think that is particularly an innovation, I have seatcovers they can change with my mood already, they don't but that is because I'm always calm cool and collected. They give you a fill for your washer fluid next to the gas fill, but assume you don't need to check your oil, or change your air filter your self. It sounds more like a way to guarantee you will only get your car worked on at Volvo. Won't be selling one of these to my mom. The nearest volvo dealer is over 100 miles away. I very much feel it is idiotic, and that you should always allow people choices, Volvo has limited my choices by not giving me the option to pop the hood, and actually as a guy limited my choices as I'd have to be pretty secure in my masculinity to buy the Car for women, by women. It will be interesting to see if women embrace this car or boycott it for being so sexist.

A good friend and colleague got me a set of speakers. The Klipsch GMX D-5.1 's They are big, and ugly, but they sound great. I like my speakers heard and not seen, but I'll hide these and put black cloth over them and it will be all good :-)

This Image from the manual says it all... But go ahead and Caption it anyways....Oh and this is the "ideal" speaker placement...

"I just got this great job at Microsoft and picked up a sweet TV and this kicking sound system...If only I had Furniture"

"I traded my the Ethan Allen Living room set my Mom gave me for this kicking Home theatre"

"The Guy at Best Buy said these speakers would have the ladies bangin down the door to get to me, but alas I still have a spare controller"

" By placing your speakers with wires running all over the floor you allow the sound to "entangle" your audience."

I'm fond of DRM, So this is exciting to me. Most people hate DRM so they won't care. But MS released DRM for web pages. And you can get it here or read about it here. One of these days I should DRM my e-book.

Reuters has an article on Intel's new entertainment PC. How this is better or different from an MCE from HP, Dell, Alienware, or Gateway I don't know. But at least Intel isn't putting PC's in TV's like Gateway tried a while back.

This is a link that Rob Morris sent me. This is a sweet setup, I'm more interested in one based on Media Center, but glad to see that people are using Windows.

This is even cooler if you pair it with some WM HD content. I've been looking at putting 3k of upgrade in my home theatre. I have the space in the Basement, and Already have the audio and PC, just need a projector and 2 walls, and seating. Add some 7.1 audio content and you can see why VC-9/WM was chosen as a mandatory format for HD DVD. I can't wait for Lord of the Rings to be re-released in HD.

As an aside with TV and Home Theatre content going to be in HD this is the end of 35mm, you are going to have to shoot in 70MM or in 1080p for theatre. Anything else will look like a snuff film.

Robert responded to my post on the Xbox2 SDK. Here

MS may have just pulled a fast one and I think I'm the only one who noticed. If they didn't pull a fast one they should have.... Windows On a G5 not running via an emulator, running natively. The Xbox2 SDK is currently a G5 running on a custom Windows Kernel. While this confirms that the Xbox is likely going to run on an IBM processor what it doesn't tell us is does it mean that MS will take this opportunity to port the rest of the OS? It isn't such a far leap that if you are going to create developer tools for the platform, and port your kernel that porting the rest of the OS would be such a stress. Might we be looking at a huge win for IBM/Motorola? Having the worlds most popular OS running on your Chips can mean big bucks. It could also mean big world of hurt for Apple since a lot of the loyalty Mac enjoys is related to hardware as much as it is to software.

Referrer Spam. Pretty cool way to trick some one in to visting your site. I thought it was odd I was getting taffic from http://www.visitcelebrities.com/paris-hilton/download_paris_video.html So I checked it out and it is a sign up for a site. So either 20 people all came from this site, or they are going after bloggers who check their stats. What do you bet they are using Techorati.com and automating visiting all the blogs with a forced refereral tag.

I think asking this to an Apple User is Rhetorical (if you are a PC user you think it is rhetorical for a different reason than if you are an Apple user) a $250 grab bag? Come on. If I drop that kind of money I want to know what I'm getting. Sure the stuff is supposed to be valued at $600 - $1000 but there are a lot of things valued at $1000 I woudn't pay $20 for. If you are one of the first 200 Shoppers I guess you are very likely of the sort that thinks anything Apple is cool so maybe it works.

Nvidia's new AR10 is supposed to turn Mobilephones into a device that rivals Camcorders, game consoles, and is generally a Portable Media Killer. Having seen some of the new Portable Media Centers based on the MS Pocket PC platform I could see the AR10 being huge in that space, epsecially since many of these devices have several gigs of storage. My mobile phone doesn't.

Everyone is talking about how the new 3d graphics of an AR10 enabled phone could revolutionized the way we use our phones, but unless our phones get a huge upgrade to their storage how is that going to happen? A Java game with the quality of an old Atari game weighs in at about 1 meg the size of a Floppy disk. A "Real" PC Game averages about 500 megs these day. Cut that to 1/8 to accomodate the difference in necessary texture size considering your screen is at 1/8 the resolution and you are still at 60 megs.

The experience in a "Camcorder killer" is even more dramatic. A camcorder uses 720x480x30fps, in a DV Cam this is at 25mbps which is 3 Megabytes per Second, DVD quality is .6 Megabytes per second and Mpeg4 is .4 meg per second, with WM9 weighing in at 1/3 of a Meg per second. This Translates to a 3 minute clip being 60 megs if WMV were used.

Considering the amout of storage most phones have right now this means that there will have to be some big upgrades if AR10 is going to find a market. Though I think that market will be in Portable Media Centers, not phones.

I wouldn't buy Nvidia Stock to day... Back in October, for sure, but wait for someone to announce it for a PMCE.

EFF is proposing to do a nielson's style rating system to distribute a voluntary fee. This is much like how radio stations pay artists for play. The Problem I see with this system is that as an independent music artist you are going to have to achieve a certain popularity before you get one red cent. At least with itunes and Napster2 you can get paid even if the only one who buys your music is your grandmother's bridge club.

It also doesn't address other content. E-books, Movies, Software. I publish an e-book, and since its started being circulated on Kazaa my sales are all but nill. Conversely the 1000 or so copies I sold would quite possibly not even show up on the radar of the EFF proposal. So either way I wouldn't get paid.

In a Tech TV article Madigan Shive and Indie Musician talks about how P2P has been a great promotional tool for her band. And "I feel what the major labels are giving us in terms of music is a bunch of crap" I have to agree.

I usually only talk tech, but you know what this really irks me. I'm not Gay, I'm not married, but I think it is stupid that two people who go to Vegas and meet and marry in 5 hours can get all the tax, health, and social benefits of being married. And two people who live together, in a relationship or just in the same place as room mates, can't. I split the rent why can't I split the Medical coverage?

And what happened to a seperation of Church and State? I thought we got Laws from the State, and Morals from the church. And while I think the State should cover the contract that says who gets the house, the dog, and the mercedes, let the church work out if you will burn in hell for getting married, or divorced.

I like the good old days of a hands off government policy. I wish Canada was warmer.

One of my biggest complaints with CDs isn't a fault in the media, it is the fault of the idiots who master them. It seems there is but one goal for them: to ruin my hearing. Great sound and great music require there to be several elements: punch, definition, and clarity.

Think of some of the most identifiable natural sounds. The crack of lightning followed by the roll of thunder, the spring peepers croaking in the woods, the roar of the ocean; these sounds have a melodic quality, a rhythm and definition, and a definite change in decibels as the sounds are heard. Sounds that are considered pleasant most often mimic the qualities of these natural sounds.

There is a class of guys who lay down soundtracks for movies that understand this. Music becomes part of the experience: booming and fast paced in action scenes, soft and subtle during romantic scenes, and so on. This is demonstrated in movies like Lord Of The Rings and Legend where the music is blended in so well you almost don't know it's there. There are, of course, exceptions to this - movies like Mystic River where the music track completely drowns out the voice track at times.

Most music CDs don't seem to get the kind of attention they should. Music CDs are compressed, a term that has nothing to do with the amount of size a file takes up but rather the amount of range in the volume of a piece of content. By compressing audio you never end up with sounds that are too quiet to be audible or so loud as to be deafening. Instead, you end up with audio that is very monotone.

This image shows four audio tracks. The first is an example of how audio should look. With a great deal of change in volume within the file: occasionally being truly silent, and occasionally being at its peak.

Next is an acceptable example. While peak isn't reached at any point, there is a good amount of variation in the volume.

Sample three suffers from severe compression. This is a piece that no longer has any diversity - it is all monotone. This piece also never reaches a peak level, so to make the song soft, it was compressed but not normalized.

Sample four is very close to perfect. There's good variation in volume, though it is normalized to a bit beyond peak (which can cause distortion).

In CDs you buy today, sample three is the most typical. The audio is compressed to the point where there is added distortion and all the "life" is gone. The music becomes severely ugly. This, of course, helps sell concert tickets because these days most everyone does sound better on stage. It also helps MTV as the Unplugged music sounds much more lifelike than the music that gets passed off on CD.

Going back to the thunder example, below is a wav of a thunder clap. The green is the wav before audio compression, and the red is after.(I used Adobe Audition's Radio Compression preset to ruin this beautiful sound.)

ThunderNatural.mp3

ThunderCompressed.mp3

Compare the two mp3s. This demonstration is quite dramatic because the roll of the thunder (in the compressed example) doesn't get softer the way it ought to. This isn't to say that compression has no purpose. It is great for interviews and spoken word content where you want to keep mumbles audible and shouts to a small roar. But compression takes a lot of the emotion out of the sound. It's like the difference between listening to NPR or listening to Martin Luther King Jr.: an audio compressor makes everyone sound like Lynn Neary and Robert Siegel.

Because online music such as iTunes and Napster 2.0 use CDs as their source, the music I buy for my portable device sucks, too. Only it sucks more because instead of getting CD quality suck, I get near-CD quality suck. The distortion and loss of frequency response that results from a file being data compressed / encoded to 128 or even 192k stacks on top of the distortion added via audio compression.

Because each format encodes slightly differently, some content will sound better from one online provider than from another. AAC tends to handle content that is audio compressed better than WMA does, but WMA tends to handle the softer and more subtle sounds found in uncompressed audio. Because so much of what is sold online is pop music, this puts AAC in a better light than WMA in the format wars. If you are, however, interested in preserving your RCA Red Label 1812 Overture or you're just transferring it to your portable media player, might I recommend WMA? You will find the cannons' rumbles to be crisper and the subtle sounds of the children's choir fading in and out to be much cleaner in WMA. Mp3 will lose some of the stereo separation that is much more important in orchestral music than it is in pop. If you look at the examples above you will notice that most of the music is practically monophonic; the audio in the left and right is almost identical, whereas the thunder is very different between channels. AAC has stereo separation equal to that of WMA but it tends to drop sounds below a certain db. Whether this was done as a noise reduction feature or if it is just a way to drop some of the bits that would never be heard by someone who has been to too many concerts, I don't know.

I'm 24, so I don't remember tube amps or 8 tracks, but I often think maybe it would be better to roll back to those days. When I bought my home theater, the salesman was trying to push me into a model that included 20+ surround modes from living room to concert hall to cave. Sure, that is cool for my Audigy card when I'm playing games and the programmers don't have to presample all of those environments for each sound in the game, but like I would want to watch a movie in a cave, or hear Britney as though she were performing at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. (Okay, Britney in the bathroom surround mode crossed my mind briefly as I figured I could pretend she was in my shower... but that passed pretty quickly.) Perhaps I'm too much of a purist, or perhaps labels think their target audience is the guy with a 4000-watt, 42-inch subwoofer in his car. But for me, I'd like to hear the music the way you would in the studio - with all the subtlety and life still in it.

MS released a spec for their Caller ID for E-mail unfortunately the system is easily beaten. The spec only requires that the e-mail doesn't spoof the domain, as opposed to has to come from a particularly unique or permanent domain. You can still use a Zombie to blast millions of e-mails that zombie just has to be willing to verify that it exists. 69.1.Comcast.com is still a valid domain, just not a great one.

I also have concerns about my cheap hosting company updating My DNS entries to include the XML entries to comply with this system.

Welcome to those of you who tracked me down from the article I wrote for Chris! Hope you enjoyed it, feel free to wander around there is a fair amount of good content here. Or I like to pretend there is.

Feel free to drop me comments positive or negative about things too.

Got 20k or more songs, videos, and media? Want to help a bloke out? Sean is looking for some big collections to test Windows Media Player Databases.

Get a hold of him here

If Dan Verner goes by I'm sure he'd be a prime candidate.

Gates may be predicting the death of passwords but if he is going to stick with smartcards internally, it is going to be a hard sell. the SecurID system is strong and the little timer device is cool, but the truth is it is too inconvenient. At least with a smart card I have to have the physical device present. With SecureID is can have a friend with a cell phone read me the numbers over the phone. I can grab the device from the parking attendant and the owner be none the wiser.

The system still doesn't solve the physical proximity issues that I mentioned a few posts back.

Tsunami is a set of tools for building clans and social networks with in the Xbox Live Gaming Platform. This is a truly unique idea that lets you set up tournaments, give ranks to your players, share content, and even use messenger to talk with those in game.

Team Dynamics: This is a structured clan system where players can form a team with a distinct identity, send messages within that team, store statistics and challenge other teams to matches.

Competitions: Tsunami allows developers to easily implement different competitions into games, which can then be administered by either users or publishers.

Title-Managed Online Storage: Players can upload content for games, like their own customised logos, as well as more complex items like maps, and see them organized by title for other players to download.

MSN Messenger Integration: This feature lets players in a game contact other players on their PCs, using Microsoft's MSN Messenger utility.

I'd still like to see MS allow us to create home brew games, and access them via the Internet, but a web browser, and the ability to play WMV files off of the web would be spectacular. I know it is all coming in Bob Sled, I just have to be patient. When you are as big as MSFT it takes time to move on things.

Wired has a great article on how people use their iPod the gist of it is something I have thought and said for a while about all products. If you can add a few simple features that you can see even a shimmer of potential for do it. What iPod has that so many devices are missing is a clock. A scheduler. Read the article and you will see that people are using this little feature for all sorts of things.

I was reading it and thinking of a 1000 other things I could use this functionality for. Imagine using Outlook to assign a music or genre, or key word to your tasks, uploading those tasks and schedule to your PMD and then having a soundtrack for your life.

Or conversely letting your therapist do it for you. Oh you have a meeting with your ex-wife at noon, so at 11:45 a calming voice says, "This is the mother of your children, a woman you once loved, no matter how you feel now, know that she will be a part of your life atleast until your 6 year old turns 18, so be polite, and patient, it will make the next 12 years easier."

Later when we are all tagged with RFID chips we can have our PMD play the theme song of an individual as they approach, or if you have trouble remembering names have it tell you their name and if you ask how is the wife, or how it the 66 'stang.

The moral of the story is the same as it is with Open Source. Give people the tools to use your product how they want. And they will reward you by buying, and idolizing and converting your friends. Remember you aren't selling a product you are building a religion.

If people knew what I know about how the legal system works with regard to tech we would have a lot longer passwords. Did you know I can hack any password that is all lower case on your Windows Server in 8 minutes? Mixed case all letters in 24, Mixed case with letters and numbers 40, and Mixed case with numbers letters, and punctuation marks in 6 hours? And once I get past the login I can get all the rest of the passwords for that machine in 5 minutes no matter their complexity?

But skip all that if I have a search warrant I can simply peruse your hard disk and it doesn't matter what your password is you are not likely to be in the .01% that run encryption, and if you are I'm only 5 minutes away from extracting your login and so that encryption didn't slow me down at all.

You don't do anything illegal you have nothing to hide right? Wrong! Do none of your friends do anything wrong? If they e-mailed you a Search warrant could easily be drafted to check your PC. And you'd be surprised what you are doing that is illegal. No Mp3's from the Napster 1.0 days? No copies of MS office you don't have a CD for anymore? Yeah Hulk Sucked but you shouldn't have started to download it even if it never did finish. Is the girl in that photo 18? Really? You have a copy of her ID?

What I'd like is a 128bit encryption DRM that has a license server in a far off country. That way when they come to take my PC I can turn off my sensitive content. Would even help with theft as a the info on your laptop is very easy to get at even with passwords. And those laptops that you can low-jack and disable, unless they low level format the Hard disk they aren't saving you.

5000 people have been effected by the patriot act being used in a non-traditional way. I'm among them. I was never charged with terrorism. To the best of knowledge I don't know any terrorist. By some fluke it is possible that one of my High School buddies could be in the Michigan Militia, but these days those guys seem almost normal when compared to our government.

I am more and more looking at Canada as a utopia to flee to. Patriot act I and II aren't good things. And the only group speaking to this seems to be EFF and
Wired.

Today I'm on my Linux is more secure trip. I could Blowfish my whole hard drive and if some one had physical proximity to my machine they would still be 4000 hours from my stuff.

MS should address this at some point.

Eminem is suing Apple over a 10 year old singing his song in a commercial. I wonder if Ricki Martin will sue FOX over Will Hungs rendition of "She Bangs" ? Hung's performance is a crime on so many levels, where as demading 10 million dollars for a 10 year old singing a song sounds like a jealous tantrum. If Apple has to pay $10m for the performance some one should sign that kid a contract, anyone who cost that kind of cash for a 30 second spot is going places.

This isn't the first time Apple has created heat with artists. They pissed off the Beatles back in September

I realize you don't get to the top with out pissing a few people off, but you'd think you'd try and keep the Artists happy being as you are trying to convince them that this new economy for music is in thier best interest.

Slashdot ran an article implying that Microsoft formed an aliance with Sendmail. This isn't the case. The two happen to be both presenting a similar solution to the spam problem. Just because Ford and Chevy are both working on Electric Hybrid cars doesn't mean they are in an aliance. Do you think Slashdot reads the articles before they post them? I don't know if I'd be pissed or happy if some one told me that Mircrosoft was allied with me and I didn't know it. I guess it depends on if I was publicly traded. ;-)

So for some reason no one is putting an FM tuner in an iPod or DJ, So if you are listening to your mp3's radio won't reach you. Unless they stop you on the street, interrogate you and record what is coming out of your head phones.

Wired News Story

It is interesting to me that we care what others are playing. It doesn't surprise me that people want to tell others what they are listening to, but when did society get so interested in other people? I understand Blogs where we shout to the world our thoughts and our feelings, but it is like all those friends you have that want to tell you everything in your life but don't want to listen…. That's why there were always more ShoutCast Stations than listeners :-)

Dawson writes about the frustrations of programming in Indigo. Exciting but frustrating none the less.

Oh, come on. I'll buy in to there was a Stargate in Egypt, and one in Antarctica, but a third one in Atlantis? Earth was the Grand Central Station of advanced ancient alien civilization. Oh, and new enemies? I'd think we'd deal with one Alien Race at a time. Read more at SciFi

Jake Is RIGHT!

For me it is as much about Portability as it is longevity. I can take my CD with me. I have a walkman, a boom box, home stereo, and car audio that will all play my CD. And low and behold so does my Girl friend, and my mom, and my grandma, and my neighbor. Amazing how well that technology just works. And I can transfer the license very easily, I pick up the media and put it in the next device and I don’t even have to be connected to the Net.

I think (and correct me if I’m putting words in anyone’s mouth) That for most people it is just about being able to get their content on to their player. There are a few iTunes Exclusives, and BestBuy Exclusives that mean iPod won’t have that content, or RIO won’t. We never had that with CD’s With a CD you new that if it came on cassette it would be available on CD. Movies are the same way. (Barring StarWars) You never have a VHS only release.

Most people like one stop shopping. I would be content going from artist site to artist site, or Label to Label to buy my music if it meant I could get one license for multiple formats. But once and play on any player, and Have a CD sent in the mail. I’d pay $3 a track for that.

I have started writing programs in the Whidbey Beta, I'm really impressed with the improvements, little things trip me up every now and then but for the most part it really rocks. I cranked out a new version of an old app in a matter of minutes and the forms tools helped me improve the UI's look a great deal in a matter of seconds.

Looks Like I have to build a machine whose sole purpose is to game. FFXI won't run on Longhorn, the Play Online program errors on start up that it won't run on this OS.

Probably to cut down on the support headaches.

So I moved to Longhorn PDC release. I have to admit it was pretty painless. I got burned by the Static IP known issue, and a few other things, but I was able to move almost all of my applications over. I miss my Nero Image Drive that won't install. I'll have to find another way to run from my ISO library. ( my file server is a big juke box for my software CD's)

I kept VPC around so I can run a mirror of the machine prior to the Longhorn install. All seems to be going well. Performance is acceptable, I like a lot of the new features, though the new IE is ugly. I hate where the address bar is.

I'm debating if I'm going to disable WinFS as it idles at 75megs, but I'm only using 500megs of my gig of ram so I'm running just fine :-)

ASF has several issues that need to be addressed if it is to be a premiere format for HD and Extremely long play media.

The inability to start buffering a second file when all of the previous file has buffered: In the current format ASF doesn't handle being split in to multi-part files, because the current disc specification says no file should exceed 1 gig, a feature length movie has to be split. This creates buffering issues.

The inability to use multiple profiles with in a single piece of content. The DVD's that look the best each scene is encoded with settings specific to the way that scene plays. Sometimes you want key frames 3 seconds a part, and others you want them at 1.5 seconds to match the strobe of a scene. You want a chase scene to play at the maximum data rate, and the makeout scene to play at a lower data rate.

No Key Frame Index: While there is a Maximum key Frame distance there is not index to keep track of forced key frames. As Such content can only be played as fast as it can be renedered and seeking with in a file is difficult from a ROM.

Lack of a sprite layer: Many of the coolest features of DVD-roms involve the use of a sprite layer when playing content. "Follow the White Rabbit" is a feature of the Matrix DVD and is a prime example of how even minimal use of the sprite layer can be used as a value add for the content.

Lack of a uniform directory structure: So far no HD media disk has used the same directory structure as the one before. While the ability of the player to seek through the directory structure can remedy this, it is still an important feature as it reduces the boot time of a disc.

Lack of a uniform menu system: Flash, Sparkle, Java, it wouldn't matter just pick one. Until a menu system is identified there is little a hardware manufacturer can do to create a box that will play an HD disc with the same plug and play experience as a DVD. I know I'm supposed to be all about HighMat, it is a start.

You can have any color you want as long as that color is black.

We have come a long way from the day when you could only get a car in one color. My sister changes the color of her cell phone with her mood. You always know what the hot new single is by what her ring tone plays. So while we can have 100's of colors for everything from toasters to laptops, the downside to this level of customization is that we are creating a world where there are no standards. Interoperability that was the buzz of 2000 is fast dying. Many of the coolest technologies are disparate. The lack of standards has created a world where I can by 100+ accessories for my cellular phone, but I can't walk down to the radio shack to by a power chord to plug that same phone in to my cigarette lighter because they only carry the 15 most common. Going to the Kinko's to have a document printed can be quite a feat. They print from a Mac most the time and fonts and formatting can be an issue, especially if I use Publisher or a custom template for Power Point.

We have created a world where many of the most exciting technologies are not compatible, only exist on a single platform, or compete with each other even though they were never designed to be even remotely alike. I bought my mom an Xbox and use the Lobby of Xbox Live Games to talk to her VoIP because the technology works better and easier than many of the technologies specifically designed for that purpose, and certain it is cheaper. But I shouldn't have to fire up Unreal Tournament to talk to my mom.

Microsoft has a unique opportunity in this technological world. It has the largest install base of consumer desktops. It has the largest install base of broadband set top box users. The combination of these two platforms should be cause for MS to create technologies that enable greater interaction and communication between users. Unfortunately because there is so much segregation in the departments at MS, standards are often overlooked. Because two teams solving the same problem for different products rarely interface to create a single module to be used in all products and instead create slight variations on the same feature. This is especially true if the products don't exist in the same family, Xbox, Server, and Office teams may create separate products that do the same things an compete with each other as is the case with Xbox Live, MSN Messenger, Communications Server, Presenter and a few other products that are variations on VoIP and digital conferencing. Rather than using MSFT's impressive install base to create a unified or at least compatible network the technology is in a state of disarray.

Unified DRM - Extended Active Directory Security (XADS)

In this document I will attempt to outline what I would like DRM to look like in the near future. I will do my best to outline both the end user experience and the backend. There are many problems with in my vision that I don't have solutions for.
The problem with DRM as it exists today is that it only works on select media types in controlled environments for select players. The problem with ADS as it exists to day is that it assumes that all files will reside on Windows machines. While DRM and ADS are currently viewed as separate technologies the end user experience for each is approximately the same. Both DRM and ADS protect content from unauthorized access and set the rights that authorized users have to that content. To that end I propose a marriage of these technologies into a single technology that offers the advantage that security can be maintained for files not stored on a server, files being transferred via optical media, and files not residing with in the corporate network or domain.
DRM from Microsoft currently exists in several unconnected variations, Windows Media DRM, e-Book DRM, and Information Rights Management. Each of these technologies has distinct strengths and limitations. Many of the features of one DRM technology may not make sense for another DRM technology. For example it is unlikely that a book would have limited plays, or that an HTML document would have a transfer to SDMI option. There are however instances when content not covered by these technologies would be more valuable if they could be secured. There are also instances when you might want to only allow use of content that had been secured.

Scenarios: Content that can not currently be Rights Managed

A letter sent from a defendant to his lawyer would not be admissible in court. However an e-mail retained in the sent messages folder would be.

A picture of your ex-girl friend in sexy lingerie would be in her interest to be rights managed so she could expire the content when she finds you cheating on her with her sister.

An Excel spread sheet of an earnings report could be delivered to stock holders during the 24 hours leading up to the official announcement, but only enabled 5 minutes after the announcement. There by saving bandwidth costs as rather than making a large file available and having a high demand for it all at once a very small amount of bandwidth can be used at activation.

Scenarios: Content in situations where only signed content could be used

In an environment where low paid, employees work in mass with sensitive content it would be invaluable to be able to make all of that content useless away from the PC they work at, but also impossible for them to bring their own content to work. By limiting execution of programs to signed code there would be much lower risk of virus infection or security breaching applications being used.

In locations where the public has access to a PC it is often the goal of the random individual to see if they can "break" the system. Allowing only signed content to execute would mean that even in the event they left the closed system of a Kiosk, ATM, or Check out counter that they would not have access to the content, or ability to execute programs outside the original context of the device.

End User Experience

The end user experience for content creators with regard to DRM today is less than ideal. Signing content is not easily done, setting up a server to handle licensing is not cheap, and the over all experience is not at a level that a typical content creator could implement themselves. In an ideal world creating Rights Managed content would be as simple as signing an office macro, or editing meta-tags is today.

In my optimal scenario the user would have difficulty telling the difference between how IRM works now and how it would work in a scenario where there was a centralized license server. When a user created apiece of content in any application that had XADS support under the file menu there would be a permissions option. From that menu a user could set the rights would be imposed on future users, and could set what user/machine combinations would have "owner" rights to the content, along with a master key for the content. User/machine combinations would be pulled from the existing ADS setup, or could be imported in the same manner that a public key is delivered in a PGP scenario. By setting these owners in the content you are saying that these user/machines can access the content even when there is not a connection to the license server available and that these user/machines have the right to edit or re-license the content.

Content delivered via e-mail would prompt the creator for permissions for the recipient when the file was attached, content delivered via disc could either use permissions controlled by the central license server, or be tied to the disc, or a combination there of. For example: A power point presentation on a future product might be released that allows viewing of the presentation when delivered on the original media, but would not allow viewing, or editing if copied to hard disk, however a user could acquire a license for the content form the licensing server to view edit, and possibly repackage the content if they are listed in the user/machine owners list, or if they know the master key for the code.

Content could also be "bound" to smart media or other security device, allowing the "master key" to be a thumbprint, retina scan, DNA, etc.

Rights and Privileges

Rights for content would include:

Rights Description
Preview Preview as a mark in mark out and number of Times, i.e. word 50 to 150
of the content viewed 3 times. This would be "book marked" from
preview start to preview end as appropriate by content type
Render Play, View, display, execute,
Annotate Add comments, book marks, and additional meta-tags
Modify Edit, Patch, Change, This allows you to change the content,
Modify does not imply the ability to copy the content,
nor copy from the content.
Copy Copy in whole or in part, and number of times. i.e. 15% up to 3 times
Media Shift Move content from one media to another. i.e. Content could be delivered via
the web and burned to disk or documents would be printable
Transcode Deliver to SDMI at a lesser data rate or in an alternate format. i.e. Audio
Delivered at 5.1 lossless could be reduced to 128k stereo for portability. For
Audio Video and Images this would also be used for changing resolution, and
Bitrates to allow User to take HD quality content on a PDMC
Delete Delete or crop content
Instances Number of instances a piece of content may have. For example a song might
Might be allowed to exist on 3 devices.
Relinquishable Can a file be relinquished to add to the Instance count. i.e. a user chooses to
Play a file on their PC but now wants it on their laptop but is only allowed one
Instance.
Repackage Allow content to be repackaged and with what rights. i.e. Audio content might
Might be leased to a distribution house but only for X number of days or only
For so many sales.
Affiliation Tracking information that allows for content to be tagged with an origin, and
Delivery path information. i.e. Origin: IGN.com to John Smith to Jane Smythe

Secure Data Paths

One of the most obvious problems with the system outlined so far is that it would require that a certification program would verify that a program respected the license of the content. With out this certification there would be no way to verify that a program that could render content wouldn't copy, print, or dub the content. There would also have to exist a secure data path so that content did not exist in an unencrypted state in memory. Most likely this would only be possible through the addition of hardware, but as I'm only creating this white paper to outline usability and feature set I won't address this at this time

I beat this topic to death, but Mac has it and WinTel doesn't. This article can be summed up in one line.

I guess it shows Mac users relate to their machines differently.... We've gutted Dells and we never got a 'My God you desecrated a Dell!' reaction

Wired News

I'm going to review the Dell Mp3 player that was a gift from MS. I have to say I like a lot of things about it but.... Why isn't it a USB mass storage device? Very odd. Anyhow. It is coming.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is set to receive an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II, in recognition of his services to global enterprise. The Foreign Office announced early on Monday that Gates will become a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. This is one of the highest honors that Britain can bestow upon those born outside the United Kingdom.

Bill has done a lot of great charity work I'm glad to see him get this.

Cnet

Well I'm back in MN, I'd love to tell you about my trip to MS but then I'd have to kill you. NDA's and all. I am however excited that MS is looking to do much more with consumers. Seems that MS is coming around to the idea that if consumers have a good experience on a PC at home that it will influence the platforms that businesses use.

Today was amazing. I saw a lot of neat things related to Windows Media, Got to give a lot of great feedback, and really felt that I was having a say in how things will be. I wish I could tell you what I saw but NDA's and all. Exciting stuff.

I sat between two large people and behind a rude teen couple who sucked face in a reclined position the whole trip. I was Squished. But I'm staying in a palace. This place is the size my house. Wohoo now if I only had some one here to share it... We Joel has his own so he doesn't count...

I'm going to be in Redmond the 22nd and 23rd. And Mineapolis the days before and after. If anyone wants to do a meet and greet, or get some dinner drop me a line.

UCLA News Reports that people who use the internet watch less TV and a lot of other neat facts. Slash dot posted this but I thought it was interesting.

In response to Scoble's post.

As some one who has worked with campaign managers, I think people think that feed back is stuff people just tell you. But it isn't. To get feedback you have to actively seek out people to ask. Campaign managers do public opinion polls, surveys and the like. MS does some of that, I know I have gotten like $50 in free starbucks in the last 6 months from filling out MS surveys. But I have found MS often releases things and then asks me what I wanted. (I'm an MS MVP) When they ought to be doing focus groups before the products ship not after.

IE is an interesting technology. There is probably no single component of Windows that recieves more hours of use than IE. There is not component of windows that gets embeded in other applications than IE. This is one of a hadful of technologies that can really drive OS sales, but because browsers rarely do anything Drastically new it doesn't get the face time it should.

IE is more than just an HTML renderer these days, and it should be treated as such. With HTML Applications becoming more important, and the host of new web enabled applications IE could be a bigger part of MS's OS drive. If IE could make web based computing faster, easier, and more efficient coroporate america would reward MS. IE should be a Netscape, Mozilla, Cello, Opera, killer. The things you can do with IE should be so far and away above what you can do with its competitors that no one would dare use anything else.

I saw this on wired and now I want one. And only $300 I might just own one. I want more solar panels though, and some of the rubber for my shoes that generates power as you walk.

I wish I had a grand to go blow on buying the Toys 'R Us out of the MindStorms. I wrote an entire curriculum around the products and it went over really well with the classes I taught it to. I think part of the failing is that Lego expected schools to do more of that kind of thing, but teachers are rarely as imaginitve as their students, and I think Schools thought $100 a set was expensive. Though a text book is easily that price.

Yahoo News

This is insane. I can't fathom it. What happened to our country.

Question about flight simulator brings visit from police
By VIRGINIA RAY
Recorder Staff

COLRAIN - An innocent inquiry to a Staples store clerk about a computer software program that teaches how to fly an airplane by instrumentation brought a surprise visit this holiday season to a local family from the state police.

"At first, I felt a little angry and violated" about someone telling authorities about her inquiry, said Julie Olearcek, a 15-year Air Force Reserve pilot. "But now that time has gone by, I realize it may take someone like that, who's a little nervous, who may save the day." Olearcek's husband, Henry, is also a flier, currently on active duty, and frequently away from home these days.

About a week before Christmas, Olearcek said the couple's 10-year-old son, who has flight simulation software and is keenly interested in learning to fly like his parents, commented that he'd have to wait until his dad retired to learn to fly by instruments. She went to Staples soon after and took her son to the office supply store, where he looked through the available software.

"He was disappointed because there was military stuff, but it was all fighting stuff, so I asked the clerk, and he was alarmed by us asking how to fly airplanes and said that was against the law," Olearcek said. "I said I couldn't imagine that, but, because (the clerk) was a little on edge ... I left." But "what saves us, is people are paying attention," she said.

Olearcek said she and her husband both were well aware that the Office of Homeland Security had raised the threat level during the holiday and of the generally increased terrorism alert following the Sept. 11 plane attacks.

"And rightly so, this puts people on edge," she said.

But she was taken aback by what happened next.

"By 8 p.m., a state trooper was at my house," she said. "At first, it was a little unnerving because it was pouring rain and my husband had just left ... My son said he heard someone walking around outside and it startled him. We had put our Christmas tree in front of a sliding glass door and the trooper ended up tapping on the glass of that door and putting a flashlight in and it scared us."

But Olearcek said she doesn't believe the trooper was intentionally trying to frighten her family. Nor does she blame the clerk for erring on the side of caution.

"We all have to be aware," she said, not really even wanting to speak of the incident on the record, but wanting to keep the record straight. "It's not just the people in uniform who have to be looking after this country. So when people see something out the ordinary, they pay attention. Maybe by the way we worded the question - who knows? - it triggered the individual. Still, if they had done their homework (at Staples) they would see I home school my children and am a frequent customer and have a teacher's ID on file."

Olearcek said the trooper asked her if she had inquired about the software, and she said she had and showed him her military identification.

"He was totally understanding, but protocol means he has to follow through," Olearcek said. "I immediately gave him my military ID and I had no problem giving it to him. At first I felt like, 'Wait a minute, this is America.' But we also have to understand it takes everybody to pay attention. At first I was a little frazzled with someone knocking on my window at 8:30 at night, but the bottom line is this is a civilian who has tried to do his best."

Sgt. Donald Charpentier of the Shelburne Falls State Police barracks said police received a telephone call from the Staples manager "that a person had been looking for instructional videos regarding flying planes."

"Those programs are quite common for entertainment and training, but he felt it was suspicious enough to warrant a call," Charpentier said. "We responded, and it turned out to be innocent enough; a person looking to buy a Christmas gift."

Staples' spokesperson Sharyn Frankel said the employees were doing what they have been told to do.

"After 9/11, our store associates were instructed that if they see something suspicious or out of the ordinary, they're to contact their managers and local authorities," Frankel said. "It's all about keeping our associates and customers safe and this was out of the ordinary and kind of raised a red flag and they did what they thought was right."

"Bottom line is we've all got to look out for each other, and I wasn't harmed," summed up Olearcek. "And what if it were the other way around? It's going to take everyone in each town to look after one another."

You can reach Virginia Ray at: gray@recorder.com.

I'm writing a book on DRM for Focal Press!!! Party at my house.

What costs $950, Plays Games, records TV Shows, and Sold 100k units in one week? The Sony PSX. A device which naysayers said would be lucky to sell 50k units total is sold out. This is what people wanted the Xbox to be. What we wanted Windows Media Center to be. The people who buy Games consoles aren't 8 year olds, they are post college technocrats who judge happiness in CPU Cycles and lines of resolution. Something I think MS and Nintendo can't seem to wrap their minds around. It used to be the kids kicked the baby sitters ass at video games. Now the mom wipes the floor with the kids and dad complains that the controller isn't big enough.

Sony upbeat about year-end sales,PSX demand strong

Trek has them, B5 has them, even Futurama has them, but NASA is missing them. The shuttle never had escape pods because unless you have already re-entered the atmosphere you can't survive in anything short of a space craft. And in most cases you don't get much warning when the shuttle explodes. You are sitting on a Massive bomb that doesn't fail the way things do in SciFi where you get 45 seconds to evacuate. But NASA is designing an escape pod none the less... NASA Looks for an Emergency Exit

3d images of Mars taken in panorama from the mars rover. Here I thought for sure martians were destroying all the space craft we were sending... Couple hundred billion in failures, If I were NASA I'd have been making sure I could blaim little green men on the previous failures.

In sharp contrast to the Story from Australia... The Register has an article about how suing consumers helps music sales...

Music Sales On the mend?