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Saturday, August 24, 2002

Day 2

Day two of the speakers part of Gnomedex is over. Sorry I didn't get to blog any earlier, I had to leave my laptop charging as I forgot to charge it last night, and I planned on getting it during the lunch break, but instead got involved in a lengthy discussion about hardware with Ed from Miami. I would have missed some of Doc's presentation if I had gone back for it, so I blew it off. :)

Today started out a little later for me. I had been a good attendee and checked out all the vendors yesterday so I slept in a little later today. Got downstairs really just in time to grab a seat and get ready for Phil "Pud" Kaplan from F'd company.com. He had some advice for avoiding becoming one of those f'd companies, including stories of complete cluelessness from his days at a web-design firm. Stuff like charging $20,000 to develop an email form on a website, that the company actually agreed to pay. (avon.com for those curious sorts.) His basic ideas were to "sell your garbage", all of the stuff that people send you, or that you collect with a website is useful to someone, who will pay for it. He talked about all of the stuff people submit to his site that he can't really use, but that people will pay to get access to. He also talked about taking something that is useful to you and understanding that it's probably useful to others too. That's the same idea I had for the Access Database I contributed to Geekmeltdown.com.

Next up was Mark Thompson, the man behind Analog X. He followed in the same vein, talking about how to keep things simple, so that you can admin yourself if you have to. Not getting carried away with the latest greatest tech, but always keeping in mind whether something adds value to your site, and how it brings in revenue. Good stuff for the new, new economy. :)

After lunch was the Doc Searls discussing the future of Linux. He compared Linux to the internet, it's infrastructure, it's everywhere already. It's in embedded devices, it's in servers, and who cares if it's not on the desktop. The desktop is unimportant, it's a platform not infrastructure. He then went into the Hollywood/Congressional attacks against infrastructure and how those of us who are part of the infrastructure, the geeks, need to be activists and get involved in fighting to keep it open, while building the commercial stuff on top of it. He really made clear what is at risk with the Berman bill, the DMCA, the CBDTPA, etc.

After Doc, we discussed something that really is becoming part of the infrastructure, blogging, as Evan Williams talked about blogging and where's it's going. He talked about blogging being what the web is all about, how it unleashes our desire to express ourselves and communicate with each other. He expects to have more than 5 million bloggers in two years, but with that come the new challenges, discovery, and helping smaller groups of bloggers do interesting things together. He envisions "networked publishing", where you can take a topic like the Olympics and pull all the posts about the Olympics from the blogger database and publish them in one place with links to the specific blogs they are pulled from. Excellent concept stuff.

After Ev, it was Leo Laporte with the keynote. It was really more of an evangelical speech but man was it good! Leo really focused on telling us how we are at the bring of a revolution. This is the first time in history that it will be your brain that matters, nothing else. But, as other historical tech advances, it will take time for it to really be incorporated. He compared it to the Gutenberg press which wasn't used to do anything but print Bibles for the first 50-60 years of it's existance. Or the steam engine, which really brought about the Industrial Revolution but not for another generation. "It takes a generation growing up with a new technology before it becomes incorporated" There was no better proof of that than the 13-14 year old kid sitting at the table next to me with his digital camera hooked directly into his iBook loading pics onto the web in real time. When I was 13-14 I don't think I could have even imagined that! (And I'm not that old!)

Leo also talked about how we'll have to fight to bring about the revolution, because we get it, but Congress and other dinosaurs don't get it. We need to both be activists, through blogging and other means, and educators to our friends, families and neighbors. To educate them about the changes and how they're important.

One last thing, he also got asked about his show, and TechTV in general. He talked about how much television execs pander to people, and have suggested to him that The Screen Savers needed "more cleavage". I believe it, it's not surprising but it's completely sad. I can't wait for major media dinosaurs to die. *L*

It was higly motivating and got a well-deserved standing ovation.

More partying tonight. I'm not going to stay out at it all night though, got a long drive to Fargo tomorrow morning!

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More

Well I promised more later, and boy is it later... :)

After lunch we were treated to a talk by Steve Gibson. Now to say that Steve has a different perspective that Rob Rosenberger would be putting in mildly. Some of Steve's main points:

The internet, globally is very robust and impossible to bring down, but locally, one site is very easy to bring down with a traffic flood. (Just look at the number of sites that have been "slashdotted" or "gnomed", and that wasn't by people trying to flood a site!) Hackers and even script kiddies can flood any site they want to using "zombies". We need to teach people to protect their computers from becoming zombified. Steve also claims that the common denominator in every PC he's found zombies running was Kazaa. Much as I've long suspected, you're getting alot more than MP3's when you're grabbing files from anonymous sources. :)

Big round of applause for Steve's response to David Lawrence's question about hacking back at hackers, especially in regards to the RIAA-supported "legal hacking" bill : "They're willing to break the law, I'm not, and it's illegal to hack someone''s PC" (Not an exact quote)

After Steve it was Beth Goza from Microsoft doing a talk about the Mobile industry and a demo of Pocket PC Phone version. Nothing major there, I saw a Pocket PC demo last week, but I do like the features of the phone edition. Not enough to spend that kind of money on it, but I do like it!

Tonight was the party, and well, most of it you had to be here to really enjoy, but it was alot of fun. Just seeing David Lawrence and Leo LaPorte sing a duet of You don't bring me flowers, was worth the conference price in and of itself. *L* Chris was even kind enough to take a few moments and show me his new Canon GL2 digital video cam. I so want one now, it completely rocks, and it weighs like nothing, so you could carry it around all day and not even break a sweat!

Better get off to bed now, we've got more of this tomorrow! Oh and pictures are coming soon. Perhaps in the morning I'll post a few!

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Friday, August 23, 2002

Blogrolling

Blogrolling.com setup a GnomedexBlogroll to list all the folks blogging from Gnomedex, you can see it to the left.

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Morning at Gnomedex.

Got down early to do the stroll among the vendors and demostration stuff. Met up with Dwight, Jim, and Jim's girlfriend, Candi. Found that the site the have been working on, GeekMeltdown.com is up and running. They even have little business cards for it. (I have some for my own site as well, with the logo. Find me and you can have one. :)

First up was Rob Rosenberger, from vmyths.com talking about virus hoaxes and media scares. It was good stuff, makes you really see how the media spreads uninformed information because of who they take as "experts". In the early days, they wentto the local computer store and spoke with whoever was selling PC's about virus and internet security. Not exactly expert information. Now they've only gotten slightly better. We'd do well to remember that the media does not get information from real experts on tech issues. (And other issues for that matter!)

He gave some good "reality checks" to use when someone sends you a virus warning. Consder who it's from, know that if it's a chain-letter, it's probably a hoax, and check the website of any "expert" who is cited. See if they are actually talking about it. He also suggested sending them to the IT people at your business instead of "everyone". He also suggesting not being that person, but some of us don't have that option *L*.

Next up was Ed Ross and Terry Swiers from the Association of Shareware Professionals about being a succesful shareware author. Also good stuff, some of it was geared more toward software developers, but they also talked a bit about marketing a website, which was good. For me the obvious, and learned lesson from that part was finding a good, reliable host. *L*

Lunch is up next. More later...

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Thursday, August 22, 2002

Made it!

Yeah , just got in to Des Moines, only working on a dialup here and haven't had dinner yet so more tomorrow when I can avail myself of the wireless connection for a little while to update you on what's going on around here. I'm off downstairs to find some grub...

See you all later!

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Wednesday, August 21, 2002

I'm not the only one

I'm not the only one taking a deeper look at the rantings and ravings of various tech sites about the Windows 2000 SP3 EULA. Take a look at Fred Langa's new InformationWeek article. The important part of the EULA left out of other reports:

If you choose to utilize the update features within the OS Product or OS Components, it is necessary to use certain computer system, hardware, and software information to implement the features.

That's right, it say's "If you choose" to use the automatic update features, you are giving MS permission to access your machine and your OS. It does not say "we are going to auto-update regardless of what you choose to do", as many have been reporting.

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Mental vacation

My mental vacation started around 2:30PM, for those of you keeping score at home. That was the time that I looked at my watch, thinking "gee it's almost time to go, better make sure I do...", only to discover that I'm still 2.5 hours away from heading out the door. I now await what will surely be the longest 2.5 hours in all of recorded history. :)

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I don't want to go outside, there are scary people out there..

Picked up from Medley, in an article about the Gator lawsuit is this quote:

Terence Ross of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the news publishers' attorney, even told me that he thinks Internet users who configure their browsers to disable graphics (a common tactic to boost the speed of Web surfing) are committing copyright infringement because they are interfering with Web publishers' exclusive right to control how their pages are displayed

Does anyone else find it incredibly scary that there are people out there, in positions of some authority, who think this way? They seriously see the internet as a broadcast medium and are trying to use legal tactics to make sure it becomes that.

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Tuesday, August 20, 2002

Interesting

From Scripting News:

This is so beautiful and symmetric. An ISP is banning the RIAA from its network. Now, let's all of us think of ways we can erase the RIAA from our lives. This could get interesting.

Indeed it will be interesting to watch this unfold. Surely the RIAA, once given power to monitor all internet connections for copyright violations, if it comes down to that, will be after this particular ISP for not allowing them to verify their users as non-infringing. After all, if the copyright battle is really about intellectual property rights, then doesn't an ISP have property rights to their own network, and therefore ultimate say over who can access it? Would the RIAA not need a search warrant, and therefore, probable cause, before hitting this ISP's users? All open ended questions at this point, no? We shall see...

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What can you expect?

While I remain busy finishing up some work projects, I figured I'd drop a line and let you all know what to expect to see around here while I'm gone. First there'll be Gnomedex reports, and pictures. I won't be doing the real-time blogging that others will be doing, mostly because I can't pay attention that well, but also because my laptop battery won't last that long. *L* But you can expect wrap-ups of the days events in the evening sometime. Also, the top-secret site that Geek and Jim have been working on should be going live during the Gnomedex conference. The subscriber stuff will be available on a free preview basis for a few days to give you an idea of what stuff they'll have available to subscribers. My own contribution to the site is a simple Access database that I designed to track PC's, help desk issues, and software installations for my workplace. It'll be available to subscribers to use, or tweak, as they see fit.

After Gnomedex, I'll be off to Fargo/Moorhead to visit Jen, Nathan and baby Amelia. I promise you baby pictures from that stop of the trip!

Then it'll be off to the mountains of Montana and Wyoming for what will, hopefully, be a great photographic expedition. (Internet connection during this leg of the trip is questionable, but should be available, barring any unfortunate circumstances.) Then, midweek of next week, I'll begin winding down through Nebraska/Kansas City, etc. on my way back to Columbus to spend the Labor Day weekend with my wife. I do not expect to be doing much blogging that weekend, as I will be making up for lost time with the woman I love more than anything in the world!

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Monday, August 19, 2002

3 days

Yeah I've only got these 3 days to get through before I head off to Gnomedex Thursday morning. I can tell you, mentally, I'm already gone. *L*

Not that I won't do my job well and make sure all of my loose ends are tied up before I head out for what will be 12 days away from the office, but I find myself just not caring at all about the other stuff that normally goes on around here. It's kinda nice.

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Further Thoughts

I was thinking last night for a little bit about that EULA for Windows 2000 SP3, and some things occurred to me that I hadn't thought of before. Now I'll probably get flamed like hell for saying this, but after I got over the original knee-jerk reaction, I could see why Microsoft is doing this. Remember two important things about Windows, one, only geeks even care about the EULA, and we are 10%, if that, of MS's customer base. Second, Microsoft is in business, and as such, their main goal is to make money, period.

Now, also add in the fact that the other 90% of their market is going to be where MS puts it's efforts, not because they don't care about geeks, but because they know, as well as we know, that to appease us means making the other 90% of their customers unhappy, and those customers will stop upgrading, which is business death to Microsoft! Geeks, on the other hand, are probably already toying with Apple, or Linux and, for the most part, have already decided that they hate Microsoft. If you were in business, how much effort would you put out appeasing a group of people who have already decided to hate you, and that your product sucks? If you owned the other 90% of the market already, I'm guessing you'd spend exactly no effort at all.

So, Microsoft is adding an automatic update feature to the Windows OS. Geeks are up in arms about it. My initial reaction was "no freakin' way". But then I thought about my workplace, and how much time I spend manually updating, installing patches and service packs, and other fixes. I wondered how many businesses, Microsoft's biggest money maker, actually asked for this feature? (I know of a few at least). I also start to think about the home users, the non-geeks out there, who simply want their computer to work and don't have any idea about security and virii. I've heard a number of them complain about having to install patches, and virus updates, wishing that the OS would just do that automatically. Microsoft heard them and is responding. As any good business would!

I also wonder, because there were a small number of geeks who wanted to do this, about those folks who wanted to run a white-hat virus that would automatically patch Windows servers during the Code Red outbreak. What's the difference? Is it just because it's Microsoft doing the updating that you don't like it? How many of these same people use the Google toolbar? Did you notice that it self-updates? Did you scream and cry about how Google was invading your privacy? Or how about your anti-virus product, did you set that up to grab automatic updates? Is it invading your privacy?

Now, I'm not saying that the potential for Microsoft to do some snooping isn't there, but really, do you think they have the time or the resources to snoop on all of the millions of people using Windows? What makes you think you're so special that out of the millions of Windows machines out there, Microsoft is going to target your's and track all of your PC use? I'd be more worried about the DRM potential built-in to this that any snooping potential. But even there, you have to wonder if MS is going to aggravate it's core home customers with DRM. I'm not sure they know either way whether they will be doing it or not, in fact, it's my suspicion that they are simply positioning themselves to have a DRM solution ready when/if the Hollings bill either becomes law, or a negotiated settlement is found. It would make good business sense to be the company with DRM already in place if it comes down that all OS's have to have it built-in. If Microsoft has anything, it's good business planning.

As far as those of you who live in dread and fear of what Microsoft is going to do next, I'll give you a twist on your standard answer for every Windows problem that exists, "use linux". Then you don't have to spend so much time worrying about it. :)

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