mitch wagnerresponds tomy earlierposton palladium. he makes some interesting points. first, he points out that speculation is all anyone should expect when microsoft makes sweeping and generalized marketing pushes. that’s fair enough. he also defends the propensity of some tech journalists (he is a tech journalist) to be skeptical of microsoft’s trustworthiness. he bases his defense on the fact that microsoft gets sued constantly, and it is the job of journalists to be skeptical and vigilant anyway. this, too, is something i can ack.
but, it still seems like most of the reporting is “we don’t know what microsoft is planning, and we don’t know whether they can pull it off, and we don’t know for sure if it is a conspiracy. but at least we know that it is called palladium, and it is probably bad for the fish.” mitch does a good job of explaining why that is the general buzz. and i can’t really fault anyone for responding this way. but i hope that people reading the reporting are not misled into thinking that there is something more substantial than that.
speaking of vigilant journalism, dave weighs in on the reportage outagethat left us blind to enron and worldcom. he mentions blogs as filling some of the deficiencies of bigpubs. dave is a living example of this; he was one of the very few voices during the past five years who regularly expressed his beliefthat the “new economy” was fundamentally a fraud.
so i would not begrudge mitch the right to be a vigilant journalist. but i think that some people, and especially the gpl politicians, cross the line into territory that is completely counterproductive. as an example, read the so-called “tcpa faq“. it’s a shameless piece of fud by a self-proclaimed open-source economist. you can summarize the entire faq as “tcpa will eliminate privacy and freedom for everyone but the boogey man, and will destroy puppies and the gpl.” it is a great read for a student of rhetoric, because it illustrates all sorts of specious reasoning constructs. it reminds me of a joke that some friends and i used to make aboutthings like communism andgrandiose distributed object frameworks (like forte used to be). we would ask “how could a conceptual framework so riddled with flaws attract so many adherents?” then we would shrug our shoulders and say “who cares? it keeps them busy and out of my way.”
but it’s not exactly as easy as saying “flypaper traps flies, and i">
mitch wagnerresponds tomy earlierposton palladium. he makes some interesting points. first, he points out that speculation is all anyone should expect when microsoft makes sweeping and generalized marketing pushes. that’s fair enough. he also defends the propensity of some tech journalists (he is a tech journalist) to be skeptical of microsoft’s trustworthiness. he bases his defense on the fact that microsoft gets sued constantly, and it is the job of journalists to be skeptical and vigilant anyway. this, too, is something i can ack.
but, it still seems like most of the reporting is “we don’t know what microsoft is planning, and we don’t know whether they can pull it off, and we don’t know for sure if it is a conspiracy. but at least we know that it is called palladium, and it is probably bad for the fish.” mitch does a good job of explaining why that is the general buzz. and i can’t really fault anyone for responding this way. but i hope that people reading the reporting are not misled into thinking that there is something more substantial than that.
speaking of vigilant journalism, dave weighs in on the reportage outagethat left us blind to enron and worldcom. he mentions blogs as filling some of the deficiencies of bigpubs. dave is a living example of this; he was one of the very few voices during the past five years who regularly expressed his beliefthat the “new economy” was fundamentally a fraud.
so i would not begrudge mitch the right to be a vigilant journalist. but i think that some people, and especially the gpl politicians, cross the line into territory that is completely counterproductive. as an example, read the so-called “tcpa faq“. it’s a shameless piece of fud by a self-proclaimed open-source economist. you can summarize the entire faq as “tcpa will eliminate privacy and freedom for everyone but the boogey man, and will destroy puppies and the gpl.” it is a great read for a student of rhetoric, because it illustrates all sorts of specious reasoning constructs. it reminds me of a joke that some friends and i used to make aboutthings like communism andgrandiose distributed object frameworks (like forte used to be). we would ask “how could a conceptual framework so riddled with flaws attract so many adherents?” then we would shrug our shoulders and say “who cares? it keeps them busy and out of my way.”
but it’s not exactly as easy as saying “flypaper traps flies, and i
Mitch Wagnerresponds tomy earlierposton Palladium. He makes some interesting points. First, he points out that speculation is all anyone should expect when Microsoft makes sweeping and generalized marketing pushes. That’s fair enough. He also defends the propensity of some tech journalists (he is a tech journalist) to be skeptical of Microsoft’s trustworthiness. He bases his defense on the fact that Microsoft gets sued constantly, and it is the job of journalists to be skeptical and vigilant anyway. This, too, is something I can ack.
But, it still seems like most of the reporting is “We don’t know what Microsoft is planning, and we don’t know whether they can pull it off, and we don’t know for sure if it is a conspiracy. But at least we know that it is called Palladium, and it is probably bad for the fish.” Mitch does a good job of explaining why that is the general buzz. And I can’t really fault anyone for responding this way. But I hope that people reading the reporting are not misled into thinking that there is something more substantial than that.
Speaking of vigilant journalism, Dave weighs in on the reportage outagethat left us blind to Enron and Worldcom. He mentions blogs as filling some of the deficiencies of BigPubs. Dave is a living example of this; he was one of the very few voices during the past five years who regularly expressed his beliefthat the “new economy” was fundamentally a fraud.
So I would not begrudge Mitch the right to be a vigilant journalist. But I think that some people, and especially the GPL politicians, cross the line into territory that is completely counterproductive. As an example, read the so-called “TCPA FAQ“. It’s a shameless piece of FUD by a self-proclaimed open-source economist. You can summarize the entire FAQ as “TCPA will eliminate privacy and freedom for everyone but the boogey man, and will destroy puppies and the GPL.” It is a great read for a student of rhetoric, because it illustrates all sorts of specious reasoning constructs. It reminds me of a joke that some friends and I used to make aboutthings like communism andgrandiose distributed object frameworks (like Forte used to be). We would ask “how could a conceptual framework so riddled with flaws attract so many adherents?” Then we would shrug our shoulders and say “Who cares? It keeps them busy and out of my way.”
But it’s not exactly as easy as saying “Flypaper traps flies, and I don’t have to eat it, so who careswhat it tastes like to me?” The problem is that we have a lot of smart people wasting their entire lives worrying about what bad stuff might happen, rather than thinking about what good stuff is just waiting to be unleashed by human creativity. Like I said, that is fine for most journalists, but it is not a good strategy for computer people hoping to advance the industry. It would be easy to write all about why the so-called TCPA FAQ is a poorly-done propaganda piece. But I think it is more interesting to discuss the pitfalls faced by people who lack positive vision in this industry. That will be the topic of my next essay.
August 10th, 2006 at 7:11 am
[…] Tons of buzz about e-books. I posted awhile back about my belief that e-books are stalling because of lack of publisher protections. Washington Post, on the other hand, suggests that e-books stalled specifically because vendors spent too much time trying to make publishers happy. The Shifted Librarian figures that e-books are not really a replacementfor paper books anyway. Mitch Wagner is still saying that users don’t want e-books either (at least not until the technology improves to provide a more pleasant experience, perhaps in a year or two). Jon Udell is saying much the same thing,and adds that content publishers will have to be more creative to sell their content in the future. Which is where Tim O’Reilly comes in. Tim’s business is book publishing, so he has some credibility when talking about the perspective of a publisher.Tim doesn’tspend much time talking about reasons that e-books are stalled, but instead points out that e-books are an independent information delivery mechanism, and will have some interesting possibilities independent of paper or audio books. This kind of fits in with what Udell is saying — as publishers get better at taking advantage of the new modality, just selling a PDF file with the paper book contents won’t cut it anymore. From my own personal perspective, though, it’s almost impossible to get the titles I want whenever I look for e-book or audio book versions. I have purchased a few e-books, and enjoyed reading them on both PocketPC and laptop. I am sure that the experience will get even better when the TabletPC devices become available, but for me the technology is not the limiting factor. Audio books are a good example, too, in my opinion. Audio books are quite useful for cases where you need to have your eyes occupied on something other than reading (like driving). I’ve purchased and “read” many audio books, and the technologyworks just fine. My experience with audio books got better when I bought a variable-speed tape player (so I could read faster), but again technology was not a limiting factor. The biggest factor limitingme from buying more audio books and e-books is simply that nobody is willing to sell me the ones I want. And I think that the reason there is so little book content available electronically is the same reason that so few audio books are available as MP3, and the same reason that so few music CDs are available as MP3 — publishers are scared. Personally, I would love to see publishers start to compete for my dollars based on taking advantage of e-book specific capabilities. But I would be happy just to see them compete for dollars based on existing content. I would love to get all of my books (paper or audio) and music digitally, even without technology advancesor content specialization. But the content has to be available for that to happen. […]