I saw the editorial in Time Magazine by Walter Isaacson about how to save newspapers.
Basically the premise is that newspapers are going under, or cancelling out “good journalism” to save money because fewer and fewer are buying the physical papers but reading the content online for free.
His solution is to get people to pay “micropayments” for reading news-material on the web, a small cost per article or something like that.
Now granted, I agree with him on a number of situations, but I question the methods.
Yes, journalists must be paid to do journalistic work. Naturally.
Yes, newspapers are currently too depending on advertisement companies then their reader because their revenue comes from advertisement. This can create a conflict of interests.
But that’s about as much in agreement as I can be.

I see many problems with starting to charge for online reading of news.
1) It only takes one of two companies to shoot down everybody else. If a few companies doesn’t charge for their content, then people will just go to the free alternatives and leave behind the ones you have to pay for. This is how most online services have worked.

2) Legality. If everybody starts charging, then I’m all but sure that several “gray” providers will pop up. It happens with everything online and it is a problem, but it is also a reality. Gaming, Music and Movie industry suffers from this. Some people spend their free time ripping off content providers and posting it up for free. That would open up for a whole can of “allofmp3” or “piratebay” problems. Charging for content opens up for those doors and the cost of keeping your content yours might prove way to high to be cost-effective.

3) By charging (more) for content, people will likely stop reading a multitude of different providers.
Personally- when I bought newspapers I read perhaps two at the most. Now when I read news online, I read about 8 different news sites. This provides me with a better chance of getting an unbiased picture of events and forming my own opinion. If I were to be charged for the content, I doubt I’d read more than a couple again.
And anybody who’ve seen Fox News for example, knows how unbiased “news” providers can be. I think it’ll hurt.
Now granted, this is also a risk under the current model cause if many providers go bankrupt, you are faced with fewer avenues through the physical medias, but that still mean there are free alternatives online.

4) By charging, you start implying that only those who can afford it, are allowed to read the news coverage. It can quickly create a divided segment where those who can’t afford to go through multiple sites either as in item 3) sticks with 1 or 2 or none at all.

5) Journalism will be much more entertainment then news. One of the arguments was to make journalists dependant on the readers and not the advertiser. Well nice and idealistic goal, but what do we usually see when a content provider becomes depending on its subscribers. Much more populism and sensationalism. It becomes content for entertainment and not enlightenment. These companies will want to attract most people, and well – unfortunately that usually means catering to the lowest common denominator. That will counter the “good journalistic principles” it was meant to promote.

6) Country barriers. If providers start charging online, then they must remember that it is global. I read occasionally US and UK news sites. If I were to pay, would I be allowed to? Or will it be like iTunes where I can only buy from my local store and not from the US or UK store?
The web is global, and the world is as well. But payments aren’t always.

7) Nationally subsidized alternatives. In this country – and many others – we have national supported, public service, channels we already pay for – either via taxes or license fee. Payment we can’t avoid. If we also were to start paying, or pay more, for other content providers, we’re back in item 4. People will leave them behind because they can get their news coverage from the public service channels. It will be a problem for competition.

Now, I do not have the answers – but I would think the way forward would be to offer a split plan. Subscription and free. Subscribe if you want to know more, more in depth articles, forums to talk to the editors and journalists and so on – but keep some content free, if nothing else to lure people into it.
Otherwise it’ll start to spell doom for the majority of content providers in a state we haven’t seen yet. Look at the music industry and how well it fares because they have problems adjusting to a global and intangible reality of the internet – and that is a more physical product which you can keep and take with you. News is much more intangible and fleeting.
Micro transactions on its own? I think it’ll be a big step in bring the industry all the way down, or weed out so we have one or two mega-corporations.

I got a call from one of our clients today that the design of the website we had made for them, was being ripped off almost entirely by a Chinese based company.
And sure enough; entering the url of the offending website into my browser, it was all but an exact copy of the site I had made for the client. 
Strangely enough, in the footer the rip-off artists had entered “copyright” and “all rights reserved” and nonsense like that, but had been so lazy that the HTML header which stated our company as developers was still present .... I mean, how obvious can you get?

This caused much amusement in-house and apparently our client wasn’t terrible worried as well, despite the site selling copied versions of some of their products.

The most fun part for us was however, when we afterwards discovered that the offending website was utilizing resources still located on the original site, such as the CSS files and stuff like that, and also the JavaScript file.
They had been so lazy they didn’t even move those files to their own site.
That meant we suddenly had a measure of control on that site via those resources.

There were many suggestions on which course of action to take. There were suggestions to redirect them to “Free Tibet” sites (it being a Chinese site it would likely have been blocked anyway), to interjecting various forms of scripts to bog down clients, or just redirecting to something plain disgusting or pornographic … or simply change the CSS to display all sorts of things on the website.
But common sense prevailed (it was work related after all, so I didn’t’ want to be too offensive) and I choose to redirect incoming traffic to http://bsa.org as it was the only anti-piracy organization I could think off at the moment.

I wonder how long it’ll take them to fix that, given how lazy they were to begin with. Guess I’ll have to check tomorrow to see. And if they haven’t changed tomorrow, it might be time to interject some snowflakes on the website instead.

Stardock have published a “Bill of Rights” for gamers which is an interesting read and an interesting initative . Could bring some integrity back into the industry as seen from the view of a consumer like me. (Yes, I like to play computer games; it is a good relaxing tool for me)

The list looks like this:
The Gamer’s Bill of Rights:
 1.  Gamers shall have the right to return games that don’t work with their computers for a full refund.
 2.  Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
 3.  Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game’s release.
 4.  Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
 5.  Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.
 6.  Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent.
 7.  Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.
 8.  Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
 9.  Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.
10.  Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.

I do, however, have some response to their list (of course hehe)

1) This should already be covered by consumer laws. Sure some stores try to weasel out of it with "products have been open" and all that - but it is consumer law.

2) In theory I would agree, if it weren't for 2 things.
Gamers themself.
Software is never "done".

Gamers are inherently impatient and want their game now and not later. Just watch game forums when an anticipated game gets delayed. People are ranting up and down demanding release dates.
Secondly - they buy all these unfinished products, so why should developers change their way willingly when the consumers seems to be indeffierent.
Yes, I know we are many who complains about the bugs, but we are also many who still buy the products (although I do avoid some because of bugs myself, I'm speaking generally).

Software is "never" done. Sure it can be more or less finished, but due to the complexity of the software and the machines they run on. Bugs are impossible to weed out. Some players will get hit by more bugs then others which is quite visible. Sure more testing can be done, more quality control etc - but ultimately it comes down to an economical call "can we sell this and will people buy".
And the sorry state is that people buy them :)

3) Depends on the game and the "meaningful" content. If a game was completed fully (as per item 2) then demanding additional content for free is perhaps a bit ..... naive and greedy.

4) Completely agree. I should be the one to decide what runs and when on my computer.

5) Very much agree. And the same goes for recommended. It is an annoying thing when companies understate the specs requiered simply to sell more copies. There isn't much worse then playing a game with frames per minute simply because the specs were understated.

6) Agreed. See point 4.

7) Agreed. Would be nice. Would also mean the need for less discs in this day and age of broadband.

8) Agreed to an extend. The problem is much more complex then this, but I do agree that customers - legal, legit customers - shouldn't be penalized because a large segment of people can't figure out how to behave. This does not mean I do not understand and sympathize with anti-piracy protection. Is should just not be so invasive it causes problems for legit customers.

9) Well - connection to the web could be a means of copy protection, in which case I find the procedure less invasive then many others. A matter of taste, which I see no issue with personally, but then again - I'm on broadband and am always connected anyway :o

10) Oh yes yes yes. The most important point on the entire list in my book. I so hate having to have the discs in the drive.

But all in all, I think it is a good initiative and more power to them for it. Lets hope the industry could start living up to some of it again.

If there is one type of spam I hate to receive more than any other, it is ”hoax e-mail virus” spam.

The reason this lies on top of my “hate-list” or “pet-peeve” list is because it usually comes from more or less trusted sources, meaning friends and family and similar. Thus it’ll sink right through your spam filter (if you have one) unless it is set up very rigiously and thus risking a high amount of false-positive.

The messages are usually very easy to spot, because they often try to seem genuine by referring to a well known news source. Others again are so silly to pretend to originate from said news source, or even from a well known anti-virus source (Symantec for example)

Almost all I’ve seen tell about “this is the worst, most evil and underhanded virus to ever be on the internet, and it is reported by <insert well known news source here>”.

There are also the devious ones which point you to a system file on your computer and tell you to remove said file if it is found, and sure enough – some delete their system file and can’t boot the computer.
It annoys me because people buy into these things. It shows that spam works, and that people aren’t using the same common sense as most of us would use in real life.

If your friend phones you up and tells you that he’s heard of a very contagious disease confirmed by cnn, and that you should phone 25 friends about it…. then I would like to think that few people would actually phone the other 25 people lest they first check it out, or if the friend is a doctor. Yet people do it with e-mails all the time.

I try to defuse the situation with replying back that it is a hoax, however you can easily be unlucky and receive many of these from multitude of your friends (reply all *arrrrgggg*) before common sense have migrated around.

If you ever receive an e-mail about a horrendously dangerous virus confirmed by “CNN”, “Symantec” or whatever and you must SPAM your friends with the message, do yourself a favor. Check it out before sending it, because as all chain letters, it is very annoying having to receive 10, 20, 30 or more mails about the same topic – especially when it is wrong.
It takes less than 2 minutes to actually search and confirm whether it is correct or not, and it will avoid making you look like a fool.

Yeah right. Excuse me while I roll on the floor laughing………. There much better.

Well, apparently the good folk at Gartner have made a study which indicates that the computer mouse as we know it will be gone in a short time into the future (5 years). And it will be replaced by touch screens, facial recognition technology and “wii-type” controllers. Or well – study might be to kind a word; I hope it is just a random person feeling neglected and wanting some media attention (which they are getting for sure).

However this begs the question. The people who have made this study – have they ever worked with a computer. I mean actually worked, and not have a secretary type up all their stuff for them, because how on earth can anybody be that ignorant. Yes sorry, I’m ranting, but I’m flabbergasted.

I work as a programmer (duh), which means I spend large amount of time by the computer each day (bigger duh) and it means I’m navigating a lot of stuff around on the monitor large amounts of the day. And to think, that I somehow would be able to do that by using a touch screen? My arm hurts already. Just imagine all the copy/paste work you do (yes, copy/paste is one of the greatest tools known to man, it rival fire and the wheel), and then imagine having to do that using a touch screen? Yeah, right. I’m about to roll around laughing again.

As long as there is “precision” work to be done, then you need a precision tool for navigation. Just the text work like this piece, and I use the mouse a lot.
And so far I’ve found little which beats the mouse in flexibility and – well – precision and speed. Granted, I wouldn’t want to have to hook up a mouse to my smartphone to navigate that screen, but I rarely need to navigate on such a device like I do on a computer. And I rarely use my phone for 8 hours straight.
Just imagine having to surf around the web for information, doing a little search via search engines, posting a little blog/forum post, downloading some images or buying some stuff from a webshop. Now imagine having to do that for a few hours using touch screens or shaking a controller in the air.

Now the technologies do have their place indeed. But not as a replacement for the mouse – as a complimentary technology for situations where you only need to interact shortly or via screens where a mouse would be impractical; say information screens at the train station or similar. So it is not because I’m against the technologies in any mean, but …..

Anyways, it is a silly study in my book, with absolutely no foundation in reality.
I’ll give up my mouse when the computer can read my intentions, until then I fail to see the mouse being left behind for most of the (office) work on computers – despite how good touch screens, or waving a wii-like controller around in the air, becomes. And facial recognition technology is not *that* good yet.

Some clickity for sources:
BBC NEWS | Technology | Say goodbye to the computer mouse
Computer mouse heading for extinction > News > PC Authority

I saw this video today and it was fun to be reminded of how the Internet looked back in the early days when it was new and fresh. I myself did not get online until 1995, but even then it was a brave new world.

I especially liked about how the interviewed person talked about how there was little aggravation online, not much of people insulting each other for no reason and how the anonymity of the net wasn’t an issue.... boy how times have changed.

Venture into most online communities, and unless they are heavily moderated then there are scores of people enjoying nothing more than to act like twats because they are anonymous.
Anyways – enjoy the film and the trip down memory lane if you are old enough to remember, or see how it was in a time where it was not every day life to just log on via broadband and download movies and music.

 

 

People who tell me useless stuff about my own computer or origin.

Sometimes when I surf into specific pages, either when looking for blogs or pieces of information regarding issues, or when I’m just plain surfing I’ll notice the “You are using Windows Vista” notice somewhere on the page. Or “You are coming from Denmark”, “Your IP is….”, “You are using Firefox/IE/Opera”, “Your resolution is ….”

 Firstly – I know which OS I’m using. I do not need some random webpage to tell me. I know where I live, at least I better because otherwise it is difficult getting around. And my browser, yes, I am pretty sure I know that as well.  Let me rephrase … if you don’t know what OS, Browser or your country of origin is …. Then what the heck are you doing surfing around random web-pages anyway. There are more important things for you to do right now. I do not need web-pages to tell me this.
The IP one is marginal useful, but – well, if I need to find out my IP I do not need it when I surf into somebody’s random blog, but rather when I visit a service which is designed to tell me that.
I mean come on – that is soooo 1995 right there. Get into the new millennium – the web isn’t new anymore.

Sound.

What is up with sound on web-pages or in advertisements? Is there anything more annoying? (well, yeah – there are the adverts which roll over content *WITH* sound)
I do not care that you have a midi file or whatever with *plink plonk* that you think sounds good. And if you want to have it there, then put up a link so I can choose to have sound. Don’t just start playing it automatically, it is annoying and it is horrible to listen at.

Google advertisements.

Granted, they are less invasive then so many other forms of advertisement but why oh why must everybody’s cat and dog have Google advert on their page now. Did somebody sell you a book on how to get rich quick? The only get rich quick scheme which works is writing a book about “Get rich quick schemes”. Many people are stupid enough to buy.

Other advertisements.

Well those I can at least block if I choose and if they are disruptive. Currently – there is one website out online I do not block advertisements on.
These adverts are getting more and more invasive in their constant struggle with us who block them. Sound, roll over content (and often doesn’t roll back so you can’t click content *aaaarrrrgghhh*), movies etc. Thank god for 20 mbit download.

All other things which require me to download plug ins.

Yes yes, I’m sure you can make nice and perdy web sites using Flasssh, Silverlight, Air or what the heck it is called - but I do not want that on my computer. It is not user friendly, it is pointless – it is fluff – it is so you can feel good about yourself and not so you can deliver your information easy and fast. I’ll block it whenever I can, because it is just an added layer to download. On this point I do long back to the days of 28kbs modems, because at least then people knew to optimize a webpage and not plaster it with useless stuff ….. oh - well some of us knew.

Well, I have many more pet peeves, but this’ll have to do for now.

Browsing my site in firefox I noticed a "read i.ytimg.com" in the status bar after the page had loaded in.

Being paranoid, I started scanning the page for links to "i.ytimg.com" to figure out if something was located in the source, but nothing. Then I checked the domain ytimg.com in dns stuffs domain finder and it pointed back to Google and YouTube. Having a number of YouTube videos embedded into some of my posts, I felt more at ease with this mysterious domain and message.

Then I did an ordinary search on the domain, and behold - apparently (many) others have had the same worries/experiences as me.  

So apparently ytimg.com is used by Google for their YouTube service. Phew.

Now, I’m going to start with a big generalization here. The majority of people I know within the it-buinsess are either a-religious, anti-religious or just agnostic, and I expect this holds true for the majority of it-people in our parts of the world.

Then why is it that whenever a discussion takes place regarding various it-aspects, that it bears so many traits similar to religion?
The most obvious issues currently are the ever popular Microsoft versus …. well everybody.

Watching a debate where Microsoft or a MS product is mentioned often turns into an religious anti-/pro-Microsoft bickering match.
“My God is installed on 80% of computers”
“Yeah, but My God can run on 16 MB Ram”
“My God outsells your God”
“My God is free”

Yadda yadda yadda….. and thus it goes. And if people think that – oh, well it is because M$ is the “evil empire”, well – consider Apple.
Its religious following often clashes with pretty much anybody else.
“My God is pretty to look at.”
“My God is easier to upgrade.”

And it has been like this for a loooong time. Remember Quake and Duke Nuke’m 3D?
“My God is real 3D.”
“Yeah, but My God doesn’t look like brown blurry dots.”

But, is it because “we” are non-religious people, and everybody needs to have something fundamental to believe in, so we substitute our religious struggles with (irrelevant) other principles?

Now, personally, I’m lucky that I have few (if any  ) principles, because it makes it so much easier to view the madness around. Sure, I primarily use Microsoft products – however, I also use Open Source products where I feel they are supriour – FireFox being a great example, or this blog-engine. I care little about Open Source vs. Closed Source, as long as the product has superior cost-benefit for me…… meaning what does it “cost” me (time, money) versus what I can get out of it.

It is good to be pragmatic.

I’m going to touch on something which have been on my mind for a long time, and I’ve debated with others – namely piracy and copying of material without the right to do so.

One of the most common arguments I hear when debating piracy with anybody is that “It is not stealing”, and well, I do not know other countries legislation well enough, but in Denmark that is technically true.
No actual physical entity of the product have been removed without paying for it, it is “just a copy”.
Our legislation and society takes its foundation in the days of yonder, where a goat was a goat and if you removed said goat, it was gone. Our – well most of us – ethics tell us that stealing is wrong, because you haven’t paid for it and somebody else is going to lose their stuff.

I am wondering if it isn’t time for a completely new way of thinking. This way of thinking strikes me as completely out of tune with the modern day and reality.

Our world is moving to an increasingly technologistic world, where virtual money carries real life implications, virtual goods are sold for millions and companies base their entire existing on these virtual goods.

I myself am a programmer. My company lives by making software. We basically sell 0 and 1s which on their own hold no value what so ever. It is just numbers – however put together they serve a purpose; whether it is to display a webpage, generate an electronic catalogue or as a gateway to buy physical goods and all such things.
It is however “not real” in the essences of a physical world. You can’t touch a webpage, or another piece of software.  Yet, we sell this and people buy it, and many more people use it – it is creating income (or at least redistributing it :D) from customers to vendors.
Similar, this income is often also handled electronically – it is 0 and 1s moved from one bank account, a virtual place, to another – not physical money actually changing hands, or no number of goats changing owners.
Thus we already have a mindset in our world where virtual goods are worth a bundle of money - If somebody hacked my bank and removed the 0 and 1s from my account – I would have lost no physical goods, yet I’d be a danged lot poorer.

Why then this difference when it comes to copying material without permission or piracy basically?

If a customer takes my software without paying us – my company loses money. If somebody else copy it and uses it, we lose potential money. Now I use the word “potential” because another argument in this piracy debate is that “a copied copy does not equal a lost sale”. And yes, that is also true …. technically.
However it also means somebody wanted the software/music – the 0 and 1s – bad enough they’d break the law to get it. So instead of paying for it, they copy it.

And this is where my fascination comes into play. Suppose a piece of music  – it is much more accepted in our societies to copy the work of the web, downloading the music as a file, then stealing the physical disc it is placed on, even though the value of the disc itself is marginally.
When we buy music we buy the content of the disc as well as the disc, but the disc makes up for a very low percentage of the price – it is the content, the music, which holds the value we pay money for. So why this different perception of ethics?
I think it is because we – as society – are still locked in a way of thinking which is outdated. We no longer live exclusively in a physical world – much of our existence is based on virtual goods and money.

We need a new way of thinking. It was the same which happened once we moved from a barter system to paying with a metal because “somebody” deemed that metal valuable. You can’t eat the metal, it doesn’t grow if you plant it – yet we somehow accepted this metal was worth something which could buy a goat. A goat was no longer a goat, it was interchangeable with metal …. for some.
It was again the same when we switched the metal out for paper. Paper which were valuable because somebody specific had printed some numbers on it. A goat was now interchangeable with paper. It was again the same which happened once electronic cards were introduced. These 0 and 1s on my credit card was now worth something.

Virtual goods are worth something, each and every copy is worth something. Even if somebody never planned on buying said copy but “took” it anyway – that copy represent value, somebody have put value into the copy , others pay for similar copies.

We need a new way of thinking. We need a paradigm change of our mindset, as we have before. I just wonder when society and ethics catches up with reality.