Zigurd Mednieks's Blog, page 4

Telirati Blog #4 Ubuntu vs. CyanogenMod - The Battle for the Future of Popular Open Source Distributions

The productization of CyanogenModCyanogen released a "one click" installer for their version of Android. You can find it in the Play store here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.cyanogenmod.oneclick

This is the biggest Android news of the quarter, other than the release of Android 4.4. This is a big step toward productizing aftermarket ROMs for Android. There are hundreds of thousands of users of aftermarket "ROMs" - operating system builds - for Android devices, but this step will open a market of tens to hundreds of millions. Updating an old device, or switching away from OEM bloatware is now as simple as using an app.

Google has good reason to celebrate this development. This is how Google can keep users of old devices happy without taking on a big, messy job themselves. Google has a new, big competitive advantage.


This can only happen with an open system. Apple can't do this. Microsoft can't do this. It's one more reason Android can do things other operating systems can't, and why Android can access markets other OSs can't. 

But there is another side to the popularization of aftermarket Android ROMs: CyanogenMod and similar products are going to be instantly propelled into the first tier of open source OS distributions, and will have a profound effect on the future of open source software.

Open systems: security,  privacy and convenienceWe want to get our work done as quickly and easily as possible, we want to keep our work and our personal communications secure, we want to be free from commercial and other intrusions, and we don't want to expend more effort than necessary to have this. For many of us the answer has been Ubuntu, especially if our work is software development.

Open systems are likely to play a larger role as critical deployments in governments and industry around the world grapple with whether they can trust closed commercial products.

The drive toward mobile devicesThe dynamics of open source have played out gradually over several decades, and largely in the world of PCs, since PCs were the most congenial devices for the broad distribution and use of open source software.

Now Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical are driving Ubuntu toward relevance in the mobile device market. They have to, or Ubuntu is stuck on PCs and, perhaps, low-cost PC-like devices. The latest and most visible manifestation of this drive is the attempt at crowdfunding Ubuntu Edge, a handset product made to work with Ubuntu's phone variant.

Whether that was a wise move or not, the result would have been a pocketable device that could be used like a desktop computer when needed. That's very attractive. My work-on-the-go bag would become very light compared to lugging a Core i7 laptop running Ubuntu.

But most people don't need desktop functionality in their phone, and CyanogenMod is built for that great majority of mobile device users. Moreover most deployments that would use an open source distribution will rapidly become dominated by the use of mobile phones and apps running on mobile phones. This is where CyanogenMod will have a profound impact on open source software: It is likely that CyanogenMod or other aftermarket Android "ROM" will become the mainstream kind of open source software used in both critical deployments that require open source software and consumer use of open source software.

Can Android be enough for everything?Traditional Linux distributions come with a wide variety of productivity software including mature desktop productivity suites, image editing, video, and music applications. In many cases, mobile apps lack maturity and features by comparison with these tools.

But it would be wrong to expect that desktop document creation will remain superior to what one can do on a tablet or other mobile device. It is likely that novel collaborative features will emerge on mobile devices simply because they are mobile and contextual, and because high volume and large demand will pull highly competitive products into the mobile market. The workplace itself is likely to shift away from people sitting in cubicles facing computer screens, toward enabling people to be moving around interacting with each other.

Before Linux distributions began making the transition to mobile, Linux based OSs, like other PC OSs, was open to any kind of development toolchain and any runtime environment for applications. Ubuntu carries this forward into mobile devices. You can develop Ubuntu touch applications with any tools you prefer. Some Linux-based mobile open OSs favor the Qt toolchain, and some rely on Web apps and a Web runtime to provide app sandboxing.

This is in sharp contrast to Android, which is very much a Java operating system, with a VM that processes Android-specific bytecode. The Android development toolchain that looks familiar to Java developers, but the base classes diverge from Java standard base classes. If you are writing an Android app you are writing for this environment and, with the exception of a few cross-platform toolchains that claim to provide Android compatibility, with the Android Java-based toolchain. While there are many open source apps for Android, the open source developer community hasn't yet focused on Android.

Obviously, commercial software can fill in for open software for many purposes, but Android needs more open source software to provide assurance of privacy and security.

The future of open source distributionsIs the future of open source personal and institutional mobile software going to come from the traditional providers of open source software, such as Ubuntu, as they go mobile, or will it come from Android-based open source distributions like CyanogenMod?

Open variants of Android are carried on the momentum of Googles' prompt-enough release of Android in the Android Open Source Project, by Google depending on aftermarket ROMs to fill in gaps Google themselves cannot fill, and by Google's need to simplify Android porting to mobile hardware so that OEMs can keep up with Android updates, especially security updates. Corporate deployments of Android may find aftermarket OS distributions more amenable to their mobile device management frameworks and regulatory compliance requirements. Big high-value problems, big volume, and pressing individual needs are addressed by Android-based open source distributions.

Other open solutions sprang from the need to modernize and embrace mobile, or the market would run away from the traditional PC-oriented open source OS. Privacy and security will probably have a positive effect on both PC-based and mobile open source distributions, but, so far, that effect has been slight. These OS market entrants and their OEM and carrier partners will have to build compelling ecosystems and features to drive growth.

You will have a choice:
Mobile versions of familiar open source OS distributions like Ubuntu TouchOpen versions of Android, and perhaps, other mobile platforms, like CyanogenModOpen platforms like Mer-derived Sailfish with Android compatibilityOpen platforms that depend on Web apps, like Firefox OS, and TizenOur prediction is that CyanogenMod and perhaps other similar Android-based products will bring fundamental change to the way open source software is used and perceived. Linux distributions that don't want to be left behind in what is likely to be a revolutionary change in their market will have to be nimble and offer unique advantages of their own. Open source application developers will have to grapple with Android's Java-based runtime as a new market for open source applications software. Customers who may not now be aware they are part of a revolution in open source software will come to shape that market with their requirements.

Telirati Analysis #3 Jolla and Android Compatibility

Image source: JollaFinnish mobile handset company Jolla recently announced they have completed implementation of Android compatibility for their Sailfish operating system, and that customers can expect several key applications to run on Jolla's handsets at launch. Here, we'll look into what to expect from such a capability, how it might be implemented, and where this implementation might have come from.

Jolla is one of several companies making Linux based mobile handset operating systems. Most of these systems rely on a Web application runtime. Some, like Jolla's Sailfish and Canonical's Ubuntu, support Qt-based applications and other Linux app development and runtime technologies.

Qt is a cross-platform SDK and runtime for application development. But neither Web apps nor Qt have anything like the number of existing applications and developer mind-share as Android. Even if Jolla's products are successful, I doubt I'll be writing Qt Mobile App Programming soon.

Finding an attractive app platform is a problem. At one time, I had been working on a solution. I was the CTO of a company that was started around an approach to Android app compatibility I designed. At that company and others, it turned out to be a long road to both implementation and customer acquisition, and I left there in February of 2013 to focus on my Android software development consultancy.

When I was working on this problem, I kept a close eye on the competition. One competitor was Myriad Group. Myriad might have been a formidable competitor. They were already in the business of licensing technologies like MMS stacks and J2ME app runtimes to mobile handset OEMs, and they had lots of experienced engineers. But they also had several declining legacy product lines. At the time I characterized Myriad as "A drawer full of falling knives."

In an environment where most of their products were declining, and the company shrinking, I knew it would be challenging to create and launch a new product, so, despite their many advantages, I though I could beat them. In one key technical aspect I did surpass them: Their Android compatibility technology was based on a Java VM they implemented, called Alien Dalvik. Which is a horrible name since it wasn't Dalvik at all. Their technology required recompiling, or post-processing and re-signing apps. This is a huge bottleneck. (Whereas the approach I was working on used the Dalvik VM and ported it and the Android foundation classes to other target OSs.)

Myriad demonstrated their product on Meego while the engineering team at the company where I was CTO was only starting to productize a proof-of-concept implementation.

That was 2 years ago. So one would expect Myriad to have all the kinks worked out and I expected to find Myriad's executives quoted in the Jolla announcement, since Sailfish is derived from Meego and Mer. But, mysteriously, no hints about where Jolla got their compatibility technology in Jolla's press release, and even less at Myriad's site where there was no press release corresponding to Jolla's announcement.

Jolla may be trying to preserve an advantage as long as possible by keeping the source of their compatibility technology hidden as long as possible but it may also be possible they rolled their own. I hope I can get a demo of Sailfish and this compatibility technology soon. This is what I will be looking for:

Do they use the Myriad Alien Dalvik VM? Or, did Myriad abandon that approach and use Dalvik, which would enable them to run apps "off the shelf" with no conversion or SDK changes.Is it Myriad's technology at all, despite Myriad being far ahead at one time?How well is launching, installing, and switching among Android apps integrated with the native environment? Do they provide AppWidgetHost capability in the OS desktop?How did graphics stack integration dovetail with the move toward Wayland and Mir, and toward compatibility with Android GPU drivers?How developer friendly is the implementation? In theory, Android compatibility on non-Android Linux-based OSs could enable some fine hacks, like running the Android SDK on the same OS as an Android runtime. Will they grasp these kinds of opportunities?
Android compatibility is the most straightforward solution to market acceptance for new operating system entrants, and it is possible Jolla has the first working example in a soon-to-be-shipping product.

Telirati Blog #3 Jolla and Android Compatibility

Image source: JollaFinnish mobile handset company Jolla recently announced they have completed implementation of Android compatibility for their Sailfish operating system, and that customers can expect several key applications to run on Jolla's handsets at launch. Here, we'll look into what to expect from such a capability, how it might be implemented, and where this implementation might have come from.

Jolla is one of several companies making Linux based mobile handset operating systems. Most of these systems rely on a Web application runtime. Some, like Jolla's Sailfish and Canonical's Ubuntu, support Qt-based applications and other Linux app development and runtime technologies.

Qt is a cross-platform SDK and runtime for application development. But neither Web apps nor Qt have anything like the number of existing applications and developer mind-share as Android. Even if Jolla's products are successful, I doubt I'll be writing Qt Mobile App Programming soon.

Finding an attractive app platform is a problem. At one time, I had been working on a solution. I was the CTO of a company that was started around an approach to Android app compatibility I designed. At that company and others, it turned out to be a long road to both implementation and customer acquisition, and I left there in February of 2013 to focus on my Android software development consultancy.

When I was working on this problem, I kept a close eye on the competition. One competitor was Myriad Group. Myriad might have been a formidable competitor. They were already in the business of licensing technologies like MMS stacks and J2ME app runtimes to mobile handset OEMs, and they had lots of experienced engineers. But they also had several declining legacy product lines. At the time I characterized Myriad as "A drawer full of falling knives."

In an environment where most of their products were declining, and the company shrinking, I knew it would be challenging to create and launch a new product, so, despite their many advantages, I though I could beat them. In one key technical aspect I did surpass them: Their Android compatibility technology was based on a Java VM they implemented, called Alien Dalvik. Which is a horrible name since it wasn't Dalvik at all. Their technology required recompiling, or post-processing and re-signing apps. This is a huge bottleneck. (Whereas the approach I was working on used the Dalvik VM and ported it and the Android foundation classes to other target OSs.)

Myriad demonstrated their product on Meego while the engineering team at the company where I was CTO was only starting to productize a proof-of-concept implementation.

That was 2 years ago. So one would expect Myriad to have all the kinks worked out and I expected to find Myriad's executives quoted in the Jolla announcement, since Sailfish is derived from Meego and Mer. But, mysteriously, no hints about where Jolla got their compatibility technology in Jolla's press release, and even less at Myriad's site where there was no press release corresponding to Jolla's announcement.

Jolla may be trying to preserve an advantage as long as possible by keeping the source of their compatibility technology hidden as long as possible but it may also be possible they rolled their own. I hope I can get a demo of Sailfish and this compatibility technology soon. This is what I will be looking for:

Do they use the Myriad Alien Dalvik VM? Or, did Myriad abandon that approach and use Dalvik, which would enable them to run apps "off the shelf" with no conversion or SDK changes.Is it Myriad's technology at all, despite Myriad being far ahead at one time?How well is launching, installing, and switching among Android apps integrated with the native environment? Do they provide AppWidgetHost capability in the OS desktop?How did graphics stack integration dovetail with the move toward Wayland and Mir, and toward compatibility with Android GPU drivers?How developer friendly is the implementation? In theory, Android compatibility on non-Android Linux-based OSs could enable some fine hacks, like running the Android SDK on the same OS as an Android runtime. Will they grasp these kinds of opportunities?
Android compatibility is the most straightforward solution to market acceptance for new operating system entrants, and it is possible Jolla has the first working example in a soon-to-be-shipping product.

Telirati Blog #2 Did the Internet Cut Crime?

(Image from The Economist)

In a recent article and leader  on the mystery of declining crime rates, The Economist enumerated both some good candidates for reasons why crime is on the way down, such as ageing populations, crime-deterring technologies, and data-driven concentration of police resources, and and some likely false claims, such as that high rates of incarceration reduce crime.

One factor that went unmentioned was culture. Violence, and crime in general, are driven by culture, and if crime is down, the culture of violence and crime are receding. The statistics show crime is receding globally, and that stymies the ability to say it is due to bans on lead paint, guns or no guns, smart policing,  burglar alarms, or prisons, since those vary widely across places where the drop in crime is universal.

If crime is cultural, and the drop in crime is nearly universal, the finger points to the Internet. Are we benefiting from a global electronic culture? Has the Internet been a civilizing influence, even on America's culture of violence?

It is difficult to even form a hypothesis of how this effect operates: Are people better able to compare their societies globally and do they therefore aspire to better societies? Or does global person-to-person communication and connection mitigate violence and crime? Nevertheless, because most other influences can be discarded as non-universal and therefore probably incidental, the Internet is a likely suspect in the case of the missing crime.

Is this just coincidental? While the end of the Cold War coincided with the commercialization and globalization of the Internet, the Internet had only a small influence on liberation of Eastern Europe. Universal desires for a middle class lifestyle emerged in China before the Chinese people had widespread Internet access. Retrograde culture, such as religious fundamentalism, thrives despite the Internet. If we don't know that the Internet is an influence for good, what signs can we look for to indicate if that theory holds up?

There are big places in the world where the Internet still has only a modest reach into society. Less than half of Brazilians and Russians are online. Only a small fraction of the population of India is online. We can observe these societies for signs of influence: Will the culture of violence in Russia be mitigated? Will Brazilians hold their leaders to higher standards due to improved transparency? What kind of middle class will develop in India? Crime remains a serious problem in these places. Will it drop as the Internet penetrates farther into these cultures?

We take the Internet for granted. Yet most of the population of the planet isn't online. Most of the influence the Internet will have on people as they are first exposed to it is yet to happen. Seeing how the Internet affects the cultural aspects of crime is one way we can measure the influence of the Internet and determine how strong that influence is.

And yet, this universality and global reach is under threat: China has put itself behind the Great Firewall. The US and others' national intelligence apparatuses have unleashed cyberweapons and created a market in security exploits filled with ethics-free "green hat" hackers. Pervasive surveillance destroys trust and threatens the free market in services across borders. In order to continue to reap the benefits of the Internet, it must remain free and global, and we can screw that up if we try hard enough.

Meanwhile, as we look for reasons why crime is down we have to consider that the Internet may be the common factor.

Telirati Blog #1 Take a Long Walk On a Short Pier

Although +Guy Kawasaki has assured followers on Google+ that Motorola is capable of making the kind of hardware he became familiar with at Apple, and that the people of Motorola can stand toe to toe with Googlers, I remain sceptical. My skepticism was renewed with the ad shown above.

This ad is a teaser, a placeholder, meant to maintain interest until the X phone is ready. But it feels desperate. At this point in the development of smartphones, what can an OEM with a rocky past do? Is it really possible to make a phone that is a true game-changer?

The problem is that any new phone has to be made of the same parts available to competitors, and some of those competitors have the advantage of vertical integration and technology leadership in some domains such that they can deny the best technology to their competitors.

The advantage can't come from a new version of Android. That will be available on Nexus and other Android phones soon after it is revealed.

In short, it is extremely difficult, to the point of being unlikely, to make a mobile phone product that is so distinctive as to set the industry in a new direction. It can be good. It can be competent. It can't help but have better branding than the obnoxious red and black evil robots of the "Droid" branding. It can be a combination of every optimal product management decision one could make. It can be the right response to what Apple is likely to do with a cheaper iPhone. But is it worth the expense and management distraction of doubling Google's headcount with the people who ran Motorola right through the bottom of the top ten OEM list? Yes, household names like Yulong, ZTE, and Lenovo sell far more phones than Motorola.

In other words, Google, which has built a stellar valuation by keeping their headcount low and effectiveness high is carrying around what amounts to a cultural poisoned chalice - a company that has a high headcount and dubious effectiveness, operating in a market that punishes the slightest error harshly, that currently has a shade over 1% market share, and that competes with Google's valued partners that have demonstrated effectiveness in the mobile OEM business.

Motorola is a problem to be managed and eventually solved with a spin-off. That being the goal, there is nothing wrong with polishing Motorola's image. But if the real Google starts to believe that, as the tagline says, that Motorola is "a Google company," that is the first large-scale error Google would make. Google has made plenty of mistakes, but none of them has cost Google more than what amounts to pocket change. So that tagline "a Google company" is redolent of wishful thinking, brand dilution, cultural entropy, and an unusual triumph of marketing over realism at Google. It is the opposite of what shareholders bet on when they bet on Google.

The larger picture surrounding the issue of Motorola is that Google needs to maintain and evolve OEM relations to solve issues like delivering timely updates, especially critical security updates through an OEM process that, due to the way it developed, has encrusted Android with bloatware and other hindrances to quick software updates. If Motorola only succeeds in annoying some other OEM partners, that's not going to help.

Good luck to Motorola, and to +Guy Kawasaki and +Dennis Woodside. They have a difficult job that has defeated other very competent management teams. May Moto be worth what Google paid to acquire them. But as for being "a Google company" their goal should be to become something someone else would want to own.

Telirati Blog #0

This post marks the renewal of the Telirati blog. This blog is available at Telirati.com and by following Zigurd on Google+ and other social media sites where it is cross-posted.

Telirati Newsletter #53

In this dispatch, I give a very postive review to .NET, which was, at the time, the best archiecture for multi-tier Web applications, and which, if Microsoft had executed on the potential to use .NET to tie desktops to Web services, could have enabled Microsft to dominate Web applications.

Four years later, Microsoft still can't seem to unholster the .NET gun, which could make Google's JavaScript hacks look pathetic compared to the level of desktop integration that mail, calendars, and search that employed .NET could provide.

Telirati Newsletter #53: What C#, .Net, SOAP, and NGWS Really Means

Microsoft holds some kind of world record for inept naming schemes for what is really pretty simple stuff. The whole COM/ActiveX nomenclature swamp, for example. It all refers to various levels of interface conventions in the COM distributed component system. (And you thought DCOM was the distributed version, eh?) That’s it. Now that you understand that, be assured the Microsoft nomenclatura have been working overtime to bring you the next deluge of impenetrable labels. Which is why you should turn to your trusted chronicler for the Magic Decoder Ring:

C#: A computer language. Who needs a new one? You do, trust me. And C# is a good one. As good as Visual J++, but without the lawsuits. Better than Visual C++, which is encrusted with macros and declaration obligatos that impede the coder and obscure the result from others understanding it. Better than Visual Basic, as much as Java is better, adding strong typing and removing the legacy compatibility that invites mistakes through lack of historical awareness.

.Net: It means many things (and that’s Microsoft for ‘ya). But the one we’ll focus on is that it means a common set of class libraries for all languages that enable creation of a desktop user interface, access to databases, access to other important Windows APIs, as well as a common set of class libraries and architecture for creating Web server applications. It may also mean support for Windows code associated with Web pages that enables code to “animate” Web pages behind the scenes. This aspect of .Net means Microsoft has finally unified the class libraries, and, implicitly (when you consider support for Java-style reflection and COM in the class libraries), the execution environment, for all languages for Windows programming. Halleluiah! But this is more than convenience for programmers: it represents the recognition that the class library, and not the API, is the platform. Pop-quiz for would be Microsoft-busters: Is .Net part of the OS, or a common library used by applications? Who maintains it? And who directs the architectural direction? Bzzzt, time’s up, thank you for playing, Judge Jackson.

NGWS: Next Generation Windows Services. This is stuff built using .Net that makes building Web sites easy. One of the most important aspects of it is that it enables easy outsourcing of Web site functions, like credit card processing, user identity management, chat support, call-center integration, etc. It represents the productization of distributed component interfaces.

SOAP: A common underlying protocol for distributed component (object) systems. Whew! And you thought this was going to be a simple newsletter. Again, trust me, you need it. The old way of making COM talk to CORBA or other distributed component systems involved gateways that were supposed to translate interactions. These presented scalability bottlenecks. They were always implemented by COM bigots, or CORBA bigots, or some other bigot who thought the other guys’ architectures were secondary. And, though I’m sure those who toiled in the gateway vineyards might differ, they never worked as well as one would want. SOAP puts interoperation where it belongs: in a common, standardized, Web-oriented protocol based on XML. It makes finding out about distributed component interfaces an XML application. And it makes software that does not employ distributed component systems, such as legacy database and transaction processing systems, able to play in a distributed object world through the use of XML.

What does it all add up to? It adds up to the fact that Microsoft gets it. It will be easier to make architecturally sophisticated and interdependent Web sites with Windows programming tools, Windows 2000 servers, and services from Windows-oriented B2B sites than with any other family of tools, OSs, and Web services.

Yikes! Does this mean Microsoft has a good shot at being the dominant force in Web-based systems? Does this mean that the loosely integrated Oracle/Solaris/Java way of making big Web systems might be overwhelmed? It sure does. Has Microsoft behaved virtuously? It has: SOAP is a benefit to all, though it does have the effect of bringing into relief the fact that COM is by far the most widely deployed distributed component system (marketing studies indicating CORBA and COM are in some kind of parity only take into account large IT projects, and ignore the fact that COM is vital to the operation of every Windows desktop).

Does it mean Windows CE will topple Palm with a startling burst of Web-oriented distributed applications that take advantage of the multi-platform execution environment in .Net? Ah… no. Not real soon anyway. That will have to wait for the deployment of real mobile wireless Web access at attractive prices and I don’t mean WAP.

One thing to understand is that while Microsoft has shipped some dodgy stuff, in the form of an over ambitious windowing environment built on top of a creaky DOS foundation, Microsoft has generally prevailed on the merits. Even Windows 95 was better than Apple’s development torpor at the time, not to mention Sun’s desktop user interface strategy. Oh, sorry, they didn’t have one. Allegations that Microsoft out-markets its competitors will have to come up with an explanation for the goofy naming conventions: perhaps a New World Order conspiracy to lull the masses into paying no attention to Microsoft’s plans for world domination. Well the Orbiting Mind Control Satellites are powering-up again, this time to turn all those Visual Basic zombies into tools of Web domination.

More seriously, those who fail to notice that Windows 2000 is very nice product indeed, and who fail to see the parallels between Microsoft having gobbled up the desktop, from school-child’s learning toy to engineer’s CAD station, based on products that are cheaper and easier to buy and use, will fail to see that complex multi-tier interconnected Web sites would benefit from the same formula. Sun won’t vanish tomorrow, but if Sun does not come up with a direct response to the PC server challenge, Sun will soon enough be marginalized, just as minicomputers and mainframes have been. And those who think this is a bad thing, and who would step up their efforts to crush Microsoft with the tools of state, will only deny the economy of the benefit of a significant productivity gain. If Microsoft’s potential to make Web development more productive is considered in the same light as a new vaccine or a more-efficient electric generator, keeping Microsoft down qualifies as equivalent to cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Copyright 2000 Zigurd Mednieks.

Telirati Newsletter #52

In this Telirati newsletter the question of when to follow and when to lead is addressed.

Telirati Newsletter #52: Imitation, Flattery, Competition

The Telirati do not do product reviews. In this case, examining some of Microsoft’s new products indicates company direction. Mostly, it is the right direction.

Microsoft is revamping MSN. You may not like the result, which is a customized browser with plenty of Internet dumbing-down, like big colorful buttons you can hit two drinks after your friends hide the car keys. But this is what was needed long ago as AOL was carpeting the U.S. with disks. The new MSN is exactly what one expects from Microsoft: aggressive pursuit of a market leader with a high-quality implementation of a flatteringly similar idea.

The main lesson here is that marketing strategy is mainly a question of when to follow and when to lead. If you follow, your results will be predictable. In a growing market, achieving results similar to those of a market leader is a good thing. So, while pabulum content and icons-for-morons might annoy you, you don’t have to read it and you can still use your unmodified browser at MSN sites. Embracing AOL-level customer intelligence and extending the idea to a very well-done Windows/IE-oriented implementation will, no doubt, be to Microsoft’s benefit.

Microsoft has another large initiative in the works: enabling digital publishing of music and books. This encompasses a range of products from the new Pocket PCs to the new Media Player software to a digital document reader called, obscurely enough, “Reader.” Here the mix of imitation an innovation is more problematic. Like many electronic book technology providers, Microsoft has included “digital rights management” (DRM) technology in its software. That’s fine. Publishers can choose to use it, or not. Microsoft’s Media Player incorporates similar capability for music.

The problems with DRM are twofold: For Microsoft, the problem is that the goal of popularizing Reader, their new Media Player, and Pocket PC is in conflict with the goal of getting content publishers comfortable with electronic publishing. Here, imitation flatters only past failures. Past electronic publishing initiatives foundered on over-protective content protection, and so, it seems will current efforts. Without an aggressive move to break out of the copy-paranoid mode of previous electronic media publishing attempts, aggressive following will only lead down the path of similarly tepid results.

Digital Rights Management and other content schemes are inconvenient, brittle, and contrary to the notion of being secure in one’s own computer. DRM enables bits, including executable bits, to be hidden from a computer’s owner. This should be alarming to anyone who takes the security of electronic documents seriously. On the one hand, Windows 2000 offers excellent security features like an encrypted file system that can probably put documents out of the reach of anyone except the most elite code-cracking resources, and the fact that the extent of national security code-cracking must be kept secret effectively prevents the abuse this capability in garden variety corruption. This is good. But then Digital Rights Management creates an infrastructure for snooping. This is very very bad. A trusted system cannot serve two masters. Your computer can be trusted by you, or it can be trusted by content publishers.

Content publishers are deathly afraid of rampant illegal copying. This has driven them not only to demand dumb and dangerous content protection technology but also to supporting dubious laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Invoking the DMCA, which was supported by Microsoft, has put Microsoft in such worthy company as the Church of Scientology, and it has pitched Microsoft against worthy outfits like Slashdot in a public relations fiasco over what was supposed to be an act of magnanimity on Microsoft’s part in releasing a specification for Kerberos extensions. One could, one has, and one no doubt will go on at length about the evils of the DMCA, but the down-side for Microsoft is that sticking to the same old recipe will yield the same old results, and, on top of it, cause much embarrassment and loathing.

In telephony, (once again, that pesky topic sneaks in) the question is in how to crack the stagnant CPE market. Small and medium business CPE is a large but torpid trade where market-share shifts with the speed of molasses in January. Here, using the same recipe, which is to say traditional channels and promotional tools, not only limits your market to current established boundaries, it limits your ability to make headway in that market to what appears to be a speed limit of about 0.5% per year. At that rate, most startups will starve before they reach a viable sustainable market share. Aggressively following established leaders into the conventional telephony channel has proved to be a quagmire for telephony servers, convergence products, and other novel CPE.

The answers have to be comprehensive and bold. In order to get Pocket PCs and digital media distribution off the ground, two approaches can break the logjam: One is to make large amounts of public domain and freely distributed content available, and the other is to lead the publishers by distributing paid content with less-intrusive security measures like watermarks that would still enable detection of industrial-scale piracy without inconveniencing, or reducing the privacy of, the consumer. This may not seem particularly bold, but it does mean scaring rather than seducing content publishers. Unless publishers fear commercial irrelevance more than they fear digital distribution, digital distribution will remain stifled by heavy-handed content protection. But this is the only way forward. Unless Pocket PCs break away from the past, they will follow a predictable path into obscurity.

In telephony, breaking out means developing products that are consumer friendly, have features that truly deliver value – screening nuisance calls, for example, because telephone companies will never respond with an equivalent subscription service (Caller-ID helps, but it is not a cure), and, especially, it means finding and exploiting channels that are different from established telephony channels. Where are the established player not? They are not selling direct. They are not advertising on the Internet. They are not selling superior customer relationship management capabilities to e-commerce startups. They are not linking their products to B2B portals. They are not creating features that antagonize the telephone companies by serving the individual rather than the telemarketer. These are the places telephony ventures must go in order to crack open a valuable but heavily encrusted prize. In telephony, especially in CPE for small and medium business, aggressive following, much less tepid and timid following, will not get you far.

Copyright 2000 Zigurd Mednieks.

Telirati Newsletter #50

In this number, I kick sand in the face of Y2K alarmists, having successfully predicted nothing would happen. The meanstream media was wrong about Y2K, and blogs like Slashdot got it right, presaging the current "discovery" of the blogoshpere by the mainstream media by nealry 5 years.



Telirati Newsletter #50: Why Too 'K?

No accidental nuclear war. No food riots prompting the imposition of global government implemented by U.N. zombie soldiers in black helicopters. Did you even get a fax dated 1900? Y2K went more than just OK, it went swimmingly OK. But then, this was predictable (and predicted in the newsletter entitled "Why Tu Que?") Before returning to rubbing it in, let's look at why this was so predictable.

First, and most important to those of you in the computing and telecom industry: the number of mission critical systems is vastly overestimated. Most systems hardened against failure and operated by a team of operators that wear their pagers proudly to display their importance are not actually mission critical outside of the mission of enhancing the significance of the people operating them. By contrast, the small number of actually critical systems were long since well taken care of, if there had been any Y2K concern over them in the first place.

Corollary to this rule are the fact that Russia, Nigeria, Mexico, and other chaotic places are chaotic for reasons like cleptocratic government, organized crime, and other forces far more life-threatening than any computer bug. It is unlikely that the balance of chaos in these societies would be upset by anything less substantial than a few planeloads of AK-47s and a coven of spies. Computers, as powerful as they are, are not up to fomenting revolution, and their relative lack of importance is viscerally known to every banana republic strongman with the wits to live through next week.

Second, expectations of Y2K were driven by a singularly unreliable transmitter: the "mainstream media." If there is one lesson to learn from Y2K it is that independent, non-traditional, and largely Internet-based information sources are at least as good as the so-called "mainstream press." Yes, kooks use the Internet as their trumpet, but they are easy to spot. Instead, the calm that pervaded independent Internet news sources like NewsMax, StratFor, the undeservedly maligned Drudge Report, and the non-traditional computer-oriented sites like Slashdot indicated that there would be no significant trouble. This illustrates that the "mainstream" press has been disintermediated as an effective way to get the most important news fastest. It now picks up and retransmits things we already know to the unplugged and generally apathetic, while retaining its other function as spin amplifier for views sympathetic to the journalistic subculture of people who have never made an actual functional work product and sold it. Hence we see the spectacle of formerly respectable institutions such as the New York Times and BBC proclaiming the non-millennium as if it were the millennium if only to avoid contradicting the political objects of their toadyism who have stood for dumbing down the calendar.

It is far too much to expect the traditional press to comprehend and accurately portray facts such as that computer systems of any non-trivial complexity have dozens to hundreds of bugs that can cause them to stop functioning. Increased taxes would not fix this. Regulations would not fix this. More social workers would not fix this. A lawsuit would not fix this. One could blame it on white men, but those were antediluvian times when white men with short hair wrote code. Nobody would get the connection, since everyone who relies on the mainstream media knows that most programmers look and act like Jaron Lanier (who invented virtual reality in the lab just down the hall from where Al Gore, who must have at the time sported a similarly Rastafarian haircut, was inventing the Internet). It is therefore impossible for most young reporters who have been to journalism school in the last 20 years to write a concluding sentence to a news item accurately describing the danger, or lack of it, from the Y2K bug.

Then there is the minor point that it wasn't actually the millennium. The new millennium, the next thousand years after the first and second thousand in the Western calendar's numbering scheme, begins at the end of this year. The first year of the new millennium is 2001. If one is really serious about immanentizing the eschaton, which is not a task to be taken lightly, one would make sure not to martyr oneself and appear before the higher authority a year early. Oh faux pas! Which only goes to show that the average fanatical zealot can get the calendar right when a certain prodigal Rhodes scholar cannot, or chooses a path of ignorance on purpose. Should one be more worried about the end of this year? Probably. But even if you think the world is done on the granularity of millennia, it is a bit arrogant to suggest that you will be walking the earth when the End of Days does arrive. Even the fieriest millennialist may have to concede that Bill Clinton makes a pretty lame antichrist. He's smart enough, but the ease with which he is distracted from his job does not exactly fit the profile of "working like the devil."

There are however, some serious pitfalls to avoid. While there is no orderly or competent New World Order, there are thousands of little Pol Pots in bureaucracies all over the world that would take advantage of any opportunity to regulate your life in accordance with their pet theory of society. Some boondoggle monger got the U.S. President to stand up and spend a considerable amount of credibility on asking for government money for an anti-cyber-terror squad just as the FBI was admitting there was literally not a single incident of Y2K cyber-terror that stood out from the normal level of cracker jiggery-pokery of port scans and spammers shanghaiing mail servers. Resisting such cyber-pork swindles will be a tiresome but constant and important chore for cyber citizens that want to keep the golden goose out of the kettle of the government chef.

Watch your wallet around government men. Don't trust the big media companies. Do listen to your own judgment based on data you collect yourself. Go forth and prosper in the New Year.



Copyright 2000 Zigurd Mednieks. May be reproduced and redistributed with attribution and this notice intact.

Telirati Newsletter #49

Four years ago, the specter of content protection stalked the PC. Four year on, it's still out there, threatening to turn the magic of a general machine into something more like television.



Telirati Newsletter #49: Content protection: diabolical, or just evil?

First, we start with the good things about content protection: (let me know if you come up with any).

OK, now let’s get into what is wrong with it:

Content protection is the end of personal computing. This may sound a bit apocalyptic, but it really only means that the reasons the personal computer is popular could all be extinguished through content protection. The personal computer became popular because it was completely under the control of the individual who owns it. Subsequently, in the name of orderly corporate computing environments and other supposedly worthy causes that control is eroded. But, still, you can purchase a computer, a completely general machine, capable of any function, programmable to any purpose, and control it completely and utterly.

The attractions of this total control range from those based in the philosophical freedom it gives to create forms of information processing that authorities cannot control and that can embody seditious intent, to the rather more mundane blessing of getting one’s work done no matter how inefficient one’s IT department is. Everything from the free choice of digital music formats to the world-shaking possibilities of anonymous digital cash depend on the individual being able to completely control and trust a computing machine.

What happens when you destroy this trust? The PC industry, as it is currently constituted, dies. Forget, if it makes it easier, the moral dimensions of content protection. Content protection is directly inimical to the foundation of the industry and the attraction the customer has to its product.

Content protection is also equivalent to key escrow. Remember key escrow? That cold, clammy feeling of the spook’s hand on your shoulder all the time? Content protection, which must enable your computer to keep secrets from you and rat you out is literally identical to key escrow in its ability to enable Big Brother to take up residence in your computer. Perhaps even worse. The presence of hidden software, undetectable execution and storage, and use of network connections without computer users’ knowledge of such communications can turn the PC into an instrument of surveillance. Content protection is, in fact evil.

But is it diabolical? Yes, if the criterion of diabolism is that it can make intelligent people act against their self-interest. Microsoft, for example. Microsoft is in the process of flushing tens to hundreds of millions of dollars down the toilet in the name of content protection. How? By failing to see that Windows handhelds need a killer app. Well maybe they see it, but they don’t have the will to pursue it.

The killer app, of course, is digital media delivery. Windows handhelds, with the high resolution text and powerful media player, are potentially a very attractive platform for delivery of digital audio and books. So far so good: an application has been connected to product features. Somebody read up on how the Mac’s bacon was saved with desktop publishing. But Microsoft has left out a key ingredient: creative destruction.

If you are old enough, you might remember that desktop publishing destroyed several industries and professions: Page composition workstations, layout service bureaus, and several other crafts and their tools went extinct, or were decimated, by desktop publishing. Almost all publishing today is desktop publishing. Apple was big enough, and the conventional page composition industry and service infrastructure was small enough and invisible to the wider public, enough so that it could be wiped out without much outcry. Microsoft has a bigger challenge.

If Microsoft really wants Windows handhelds to take off it will do this: Instead of playing footsy with the content publishers, seed the content directly. For music, this means allying with a Napster-like service or adding unattended file transfer capability to Windows Messenger, NetMeeting, or some other utility and feeding it with an alliance with MP3.com or the like. For books, it means directly funding one of the sleepy and underfed public-domain electronic library projects and making sure they can deliver in a Windows handheld-friendly format that takes advantage of the new high-resolution text display technology. Or an e-learning initiative like the one in Cambridge Massachusetts that aims to teach an MIT-level computer science education in one year – free or low-cost college courses in the palm of your hand. In all these cases, however, someone’s ox ends up as the main course of the luau.

The music industry has demonstrated that they are bastards of the first water. Book publishers, while more gentlemanly, nonetheless will not be cheered by a flood of public domain reading material packaged in the hottest new format and delivered by a super-slick Web site. And universities in the U.S. have spent the last two decades raising tuition far faster than costs in general. But the fact is, if nobody gets pissed off at you, it is a sign you are not delivering value. What do you expect? To be able to create sufficient value out of thin air to motivate people to spend $500 on a new and untried tool that already has a history of dubious utility? No, unless take the value out of some other industry, you don’t have a killer app. If you don’t have the will to destroy, you will never create anything big.

The question is: What is it worth? Does Microsoft really want to succeed with handhelds, or are they a hobby? Does Microsoft remember what made PCs an unstoppable force in the first place? Or do they really think they cannot be replaced by a system that respects the customer more than it respects slimy payola-dealing record companies? Is content protection a concept so diabolical it can cause the downfall of an enterprise more illustrious than any that came before, and do it far more surely than a bunch of DoJ pinkos?

The other side of the same coin is that actors, musicians, and authors and others sometimes act as irrationally as makers of digital media hardware: Before there were record labels, almost all musicians had day jobs as music teachers. A small number of elite musicians were subsidized by sponsors. Now, a small fraction of a percent of musicians make a living by selling records, supplemented by commercial sponsorship of concerts, and the concept of “elite” extents to The Backstreet Boys. Even if the “worst” were to happen and record companies went out of business, the effect on musicians would, in the context of their total population, be almost undetectable. As horrible as it is to contemplate that the world might never have heard of Brittany Spears, it is not outlandish to suggest that the diffusion of commercial activity now concentrated on both the deserving elite and the manufactured pop icons out onto the whole real world of music-making might be a net benefit.

Then there is the danger is that the idea of intellectual property could be fundamentally damaged. Laws granting limited protection to intellectual property have fostered an era of wealth creation that was impossible in a time when land and minerals were the only defensible form of wealth and value. Some people believe that intellectual property is so artificial as to be immoral. Some even believe all property ownership is immoral. The record, however, shows that people take care of what they own far better than any form of collective stewardship has ever done. So when abominations like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act do the equivalent of loosing vicious dogs in the neighborhood in order to protect a single lot from trespass, the reaction is to shoot the dogs and hang the landlord. Some time ago we reached a sensible and fair balance between absolute and eternal control over a work of art or literature and the public good of eventual free dissemination. Modern efforts to enlist government in oppressive and unfair schemes that directly contravene established doctrines of fair use only strengthen the hand of radicals who would overthrow property in general. These bad laws also create needless conflict between the nature of the Internet and the personal computer on the one hand, and intrusive laws that create thought-crimes and sneaky and brittle protection technologies on the other hand. This conflict is bad for commerce as a whole.

Far better to let change happen. Far better not to subject the legal traditions of patent and copyright to artificially created stresses since they face sufficient natural challenges. And far better for the shareholder, the musician, and the author for Microsoft, or Palm if they are unwilling, to take up the challenge of digital media distribution in a post-Time-Warner era. Such are the risks and rewards that will create the next great wave of wealth.



Copyright 2000 Zigurd Mednieks.