The Iron Yuppie

Great article in the NYTimes a few weeks ago (did I mention I was busy and catching up?) interviewing the creators of Lost. Thanks to the NYTimes stupid archival policy (so you're telling me that news, which is relevant today, is worth less to me than archived documents?), I'll copy it all here.

Despite the efforts of Mr. Lindelof, Mr. Cuse and the rest of the creative team to keep the show from "juming the shark," ultimately the biggest challenge may come from their very success. Unlike J. K. Rowling, who can take comfort in knowing the Harry Potter series will wrap up after seven books, the "Lost" producers do not have such a luxury; as long as the ratings are good, it will run.

The implications for story telling are enormous. "If we knew this series was 88 episodes, we could plot out exactly where all the pieces of mythology were going to land, and we could build very constructively to an endgame," said Mr. Cuse. "But we don't know and we can't know. For ABC, this is a very financially successful enterprise, and righfully their goal is to have it go along as long as they can have it go along."

Mr. Lindelof quickly interjected: "It's the equivalent of, if you get the ratings back for Episode 4 of 'Roots' and you call up Alex Haley and go: 'Look, this is doing huge. Does Kunta Kinte need to be free? Can he be freed in Season 3, or even 4 or 5?' "

YES. I could not agree more. Authors, journalists ... in fact EVERYONE gets to say when something can end. Yet TV is one of the only things where there is no sense of closure. Horses are ridden until they die. I was trying to think of a counter example of this for television and the greatest example is sports. You have 17 or so "episodes" of Sunday football, then the playoffs and then the Superbowl. It's easy to script the marketing, advertising, etc ahead of time because you KNOW how important everything is going to be. And there's limited overhyping random less than meaningful games, which happens all the time, because you know at some point in the future there actually WILL be an important game.

Imagine if TV execs just said, we're going to give this 88 episodes and then be done. Imagine how much better it would be! One could optimize and pre-plan how much salaries, spend, marketing would go on at the start of the series and set it all in motion. And the creative types would love it, because they wouldn't just randomly have to come up with two extra episodes of filler because they don't know what's going to happen next season. Plus, then one could repurpose those creative types and give people something new... which, if I'm not mistaken, is always a good thing. New = positive. If it's still a ginormous hit, make a movie out of it.

While I'm talking about mass media stories, please please please go see Serenity. It's getting 81% and it's really good. And I'm really sad but if it doesn't gross ~$60 M or more, it's probably not coming back. Maybe if the DVD goes nuts.

Ack! I'm sorry I've been gone so long. I've been busy... I mean really busy. But that's no excuse! Anyhow, I'll try and restart.

Let's jump right in with a favorite topic of mine, Google. I was reading the COO of Sun's blog earlier and, maybe because I'm in marketing and I am extra sensitive to this, but jeeeez it reeked of marketing BS. Check this out:

Two of the internet's most valuable brands have clearly achieved that status: Java and Google. Could you imagine a PC that couldn't access Java services? Or how about a browser that couldn't get to Google? My view, either would be a tough sell. Other programming, such as Macromedia Flash, Firefox and OpenOffice are in the same league - along with services such as Yahoo.com, eBay, or AOL.com.

Nice! Google? Totally necessary. Everyone in the world wants and uses them. Java? Not so much. I've done a reinstall on a machine recently (dead hard drive), and I have yet to come across a single site that required Java. I don't even have the Java Runtime on there. It's been over a month and I surf a LOT. In fact, I've only seen one site that did something using Java, and that could have EASILY been done with Flash/Shockwave. I'm not saying Java isn't the bees knees and doesn't have a hojillian people developing for it, but it's not a consumer product (by and large) and I think you're just fooling yourself.

Similarly, I like the comment about OpenOffice being in the same league. Come on. Be realistic. How about this, I'll withdraw my comment if you can point to one person who doesn't a) read slashdot DAILY b) work in the Massaschusetts government office that sponsored the adoption c) work at Sun or d) runs *BSD/*nix AND runs StarOffice. How can you even compare it to Firefox which which has massive popular support and has ads out in the NYTimes and could still only achieve 8% marketshare? Do you think that's going to improve once IE7 is out?

On the other hand, what they're going to do next DOES interest me. AJAX is amazing stuff... how that compares to click-once or Avalon or XUL I have yet to sort out. But Ajax is megacool. I didn't understand his comment about how rich clients is on its way back... doesn't that conflict with his AJAX point?

One other point comes via NetCrucible:Why is Microsoft Afraid of Google?

I have to agree with his point, and this is the biggest thing that people outside of the software industry don't understand. Let's steal this quote:

Let's talk about the "copying" theory first. Five years ago, Bill Gates shook up the industry by announcing a dual-pronged strategy -- all productivity apps seamlessly integrated into the universal canvas of the web, and the "web as a platform". This wasn't vapor, this was what I used every day. Five years ago, I did not have Office installed on my machine. I used an app that combined word processing, IM, telephony, and e-mail in a single universal canvas (with cool contextual side-menu), all running in my web browser. We decided not to ship it at that time, but it had nothing to do with product quality or feasibility.

Now fast forward to 2005. A bunch of people who worked on that project are now at Google, and rumors fly around about "bricking over" MSFT by shipping productivity apps on the web. At the same time, pundits run around talking about "web as a platform", ripping off Bill's 2000 vision wholesale without giving credit. Give me a break. Clearly what is happening is a bit different than Bill laid out in 2000, but the amount that is exactly the same is stunning (almost depressing; where is the originality and creativity?)

Another example is Google Earth vs. Virtual Earth. VE shipped slightly after Google Earth, but do people really think MSFT saw Google Earth and then "real quick like" copied the whole thing in a month or two? The company must really be invincible. Or take Messenger, which has been shipping new releases three times a year. Google just shipped their first version. Please don't say we pre-emptively copied Google.

Why does everyone think that you can just whip this stuff up overnight? Look at Apple's Searchlight technology. Great stuff! Look at Vista's search technology. Great stuff! Does anyone really think that Microsoft WAITED until Apple shipped before being inspired by the functionality and deciding to copy it? Is there any chance that they were both under simultaneous development and Apple, being better at scoping and shipping that Microsoft is, got it out first? Sometimes these opinions one runs across in blogs, articles and open comments about who copied who are just insane. It's like they're talking to hear themselves.

Yeah, this probably covers it for Seattle. (thanks Pirillo) To bad the jerk monorail people can't get themselves in gear.

There has been a realization that I've wanted to put into a post for a long time about the danger of the web that seems to be realized in this piece:

Come Dream With Me: Stirling Engines

The piece is a nice interview of a founder of a company who's building some technology about stirling engines. But it's just a work of fiction. The author discloses this at the top, but if you miss that disclaimer, for whatever reason, you could be under the impression that this was real. There's nothing wrong whatsoever with what the author did, but because the medium has yet to reach that level of distrust in our mind, it's very easy to overlook the disclaimer and move right into the piece. When we see something on the web, it FEELS real. Movies, television and books all feel the same as well, but, in those cases, at least there is some level of market dynamics that reduce the risk of just anyone posting something. The web does not have the same shackles and, as a result, every piece starts out with the same amount of "truth" to it, whether it's on CNN or Johnnyblogger.blogspot.com.

Interesting article on slashdot today about passwords

Too Many Passwords

The fact is that I think we're pretty much doomed for the near term and probably won't have anythnig decent for quite a while. The nearest I can figure is that we're going to have to carry around smartcards embedded in our driver's licenses that give us a unique extremely long randomly generated number as our password and is verified against a central authority. These chips will be inserted any time someone wants a password and then will require a simple pin. If it's stolen, you can log on anywhere and, before the thief ever has a chance to use it, the pin can be deactivated. It seems like that's the only way.

Simple math seems to support this. Today, assume everyone uses 10 character passwords:

94 (characters) ^10 = 5.38 × 10^19 different passwords

Not bad, and it'll take approximately a billion years if you try a million a second to figure it out. But in 18 months, it becomes 140 million years. Then 18 months later, it's 14 million. Then a million. You can see where this is going. And that's if you're not using any specialized hardware. Suffice it to say by 2020, no amount of complexity in your password is going to be enough.

The 'Comeback' isn't coming back (thanks Defamer)

What a shame. I'll admit that it was unbelievably painful to watch, yet it was just so brutal and unforgiving to the star, you had to love it (or, apparently, hate it, which the majority of people did). I'll miss it.

I'm staring at a little bit of corporate marketing right now.

Total Employees: 61,472
Total Developers: 8,000
Total Sales Force: 7,761

Jeeeeez. So basically 3/4 of the company neither produce the product to sell, or sell the product. The worst is that the people who put this thing together tout these figures like they are a good thing. Maybe it's me, but this seems 180 degrees from being a correctly staffed organization. It's times like this that I back Mini-MSFT.

You had best be talking like a pirate today on the International Talk Like a Pirate Day... here be a keyboard to help ye out (thanks Engadget).

My girlfriend forwarded me this hilarious video from the ACLU:

Ordering a Pizza in the New World Order

I've always been kind of surprised that Republicans (note I do not call them conservatives) are so against the ACLU. This seems like exactly the kind of thing Republicans claim they would like to prevent. The problem with the Republican platform on this is that they all think that as long as it's not them, it's ok to do all this profiling. What's that quote... we are all somebody else to somebody else. Just cause you're in the majority doesn't mean this won't apply to you.

One nice thing about being back in LA for a while is the pleasure of listening to Kevin & Bean. I love those guys, and I must admit I'm pretty surprised they're still on the air after at least 20 years. Anyhow, are you aware that this coming Monday is:

International Talk Like A Pirate Day

As I have discussed before, it is critical that we push the research and investments into the piratical sciences. I'm pleased to see this recognition of this important cause.