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| Sunday, March 23, 2003 |
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Live from PC Forum 
| | Now Paul Otellini of Intel is up, interviewed by Esther. Approximate quotage: |
| | The only blessing that will come out of the severe downsizing of the telco industry worldwide, is that as they grow again, and have the means to meet growing demands, they'll do it on standards this time. You're seeing bits and pieces of that unfold today, in emerging markets. The first handset manufacturers to embrace standards will take advantage of the surge of growth and the quickness with which apps can be applied . It's analogous to PCs in the sense that its an industry waiting to happen. |
| | About Linux... Centriono's a desktop. Part of it is a resource issue, and there is no demand on the desktop today. More a resource issue than a philosophical issue. We will put our energy where the market is a driver. |
| | He also said what may limit Linux application is not the chip itself, but the chipset. It's just not there yet, and the gating issues are resources, which are to a large degree driven by the marketplace. |
| | I asked the first questions from the floor, challenging him on the demand issue. He stood his ground, but hinted strongly (it seemed to me) that Intel's relationship with Microsoft is at least a factor to some degree. |
| | Cory asked a great question that Paul Otellini couldn't answer, because he just didn't know the subject. Esther backed Cory, saying the subject truly mattered. Otellini told Cory and the audience he wanted to find out more so he could answer the question. |
| | Larry Ellison, who was going to speak, cancelled. Esther put a very kind spin on it. I take Elison's bail as a total dis. He let everybody down. |
| | Tim Berners-Lee is up there now, talking about the Semantic Web. Tim sounds like a British Bob Frankston, speaking faster than most of the listeners can hear, yet at a fraction of the speed at which his mind works. You want to keep up, and you try to keep up, but he's just going too ... darn ... fast. A little approximate quotage: |
| | How might it not work? Patents. Somebody might come along and say, "Semantic Web? We invented that." Now most companies are realizing how important it is to have as much stuff as possible, down as deep as possible, royalty free. |
| | He says his presentation is up on the Web. Can't find it, though. [Later...] Here it is. |
| | The sematic web is a revolution in the way applications interoperate. it completely revolutionizes the world. |
| | People love a fractal mess. |
| | We'll have a very much larger market if we don't have just one layer. |
| | Esther: I'm much more concerned about people restricting my choices than about people getting rich off of me. |
| | BTW: Craig Burton has moved on from his last gig. Context: Craig is one of the great Unsung Heroes. A huge percentage of what ya'll like about what I say comes straight from Craig. Nobody has had a deeper or more profound influence on my thinking about technology. |
| | Time to go drink & shit... |
Root ptomain server
| | I just like the headline. Doesn't mean anything. If I think of it later I'll put up the picture that inspired it. |
Forumalities
Peace out
| | Some findings, added randomly throughout the day... |
| | Look at all the adword results in a search for peace weblog. |
Go embed yourself
| | Excuse me, but why the fuck are reporters now "embedded" with artillery units and infantry divisions? I guess it's because that's the military term for the practice of allowing reporters to hang with soldiers, and the news services simply leverage the lingo. Sez the VOA: |
| | Embedding is what the Pentagon is calling its new experiment in military openness. An embedded journalist is not only free to interview, photograph, and videotape any of the troops within that unit, he or she lives with them as well. |
| | I wonder if there are embedment officers (EOs) assigned to manage and monitor embedded reporters (ERs)? |
| | Whatever, the result, for those of us hearing and reading News from the Front, is a pointless adjective. "Embedded with" means the same as "with," no? |
| | If anyone thinks that the Pentagon is engaging in this embedding project for any other reason than to help improve its image before the U.S. public, they are being incredibly naive. |
| | That is not to say that there will not be some good reporting come of it. Undoubtedly there will. But it will be the exception, not the rule. |
| | Here's a question: Should the "embedded" adjective serve as a disclaimer for possibly biassed coverage? Is it misleading for a journal or a broadcast service to say a reporter is "with" rather than "embedded with" some cavalry or brigade? |
| | If Bill Shiller is right, the answer is yes. Or a highly qualified yes. |
| | I'd qualify it this way: A frontline journalist's first job is to report as honestly and as completely as possible all that he or she witnesses first-hand. That's a professional obligation that transcends whatever restrictions have always been placed on reporters allowed to accompany troops, no matter what arcane buzzword the military uses to label the practice. If a reporter does his or her job, "embedded" is nothing more than a redundant and extraneous adjective. |
| | As Strunk & White put it, Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. |
| | I don't know a circumstance where consision matters more than in frontline war coverage. So let's lose the "embedded" thing. Unless, of course, it becomes clear that "embedded" reporters are becoming pure propaganda instruments, in which case the adjective will properly be used to subtract value. |
O what a sexy war
Here's a question...
| | Most worrisome is Intel's lack of Linux support for their new Centrino chipset which they've called their "most important announcement since the Pentium." Intel says that 300 million dollars will go into advertising this new product for mobile computing, but Intel isn't making the small investment to provide Linux drivers. When you see that "Centrino" sticker on the computer, you can substitute "Microsoft Windows XP." As a cost saver perhaps we can expect to see " XPino " stickers in the future further solidifying the Wintel partnership. Lets hope this isn't a signal that future Intel products will be void of Linux support as well. |
| | It's clear that those beholden to Microsoft within Intel are winning the battle against supporting desktop Linux. Consequently, Intel has no strategy for the biggest development in the PC business in 15 years. That's bad for customers looking for Intel powered Linux desktops and laptops running Linux. At the same time, it's an opening for chipmakers like VIA and AMD to make sure that those looking for desktop Linux products have a nice selection to choose from. |
| | If I get to ask the question, look for the answer in Linux Journal. |
| | Bonus link: BuzzPhraser, where TechnoLatin is explained. In turn, BuzzPhraser is explained here. |
Advertising 2.0
| | So has anybody been noticing the advertising in BlogSpot banners lately? You'll see two little all-text Google adwords-like ads in there. Greg Green's has ads for book stores. Paulidia has one ad for Dom Felipe Praia Hotel ("Hot Hotel Deals, Wide Selection"), and another for Uniflora that's entirely in Spanish. So is Paulidia. |
| | The other week I helped a friend set up a test blog, just to show her how blogging works. I used Blogspot, and told her she could have her blog free with advertising, or pay for one that didn't have advertising. She said she was sure she wouldn't want advertising on her blog. But when the blog came up for the first time, she looked at the two ads and said "Wait a minute. I like those." Both were for advertisers doing business in her specialty. |
| | I don't know if these are pyRads (Pyra's ad system) or Google ads. (Google owns Blogger, right? ergo...) But I believe they risk achieving a holy grail of sorts: advertising consumers (and I use that term literally) actually want. |
| | Interesting, sitting here at PC Forum, Esther Dyson's annual gathering in Arizona, plumbing Google for stuff that's been said about this subject, and finding something I wrote in 1997. Here's how it ends: |
| | Esther Dyson says the big challenge today is not to add value but to subtract garbage. Most advertising is garbage. It's hard to imagine a less efficient way to communicate, or one that wastes more time and materials. Even direct mail, presumably one of the most personal and efficient forms of advertising, is so unwelcome and wasteful that its nickname — junk mail — is a synonym for garbage. |
| | "Well, how else are we going to get our messages across?" the question goes. "And what else is going to pay for our publication (or radio station, or whatever)?" |
| | The Internet finally gives us a chance to come up with imaginative answers to those questions -- answers that are not just another form of advertising. Maybe the new push technologies give us some of those answers. It is clear that most of them introduce useful efficiencies to the Web. And most of them won't work without some kind of pull on the user's side. |
| | At this point the problem isn't really with push technologies, but with the way they're being covered. The Internet is the best pull medium since the telephone. Treating it like a second wind for the overweight, government-maintained cancer patient TV has become is myopic and delusional. |
| | There is plenty of money to be made through the Web (if not on it). That money will be made by companies who watch what the demand side pulls. |
| | It won't be advertising. Or if it is, it won't look like most of the garbage that has gone by that name in the past. |
Fuck of the draw
| | While checking baggage in Santa Barbara I was told by the inspector that I had "won the lottery." Meaning I was one of the "one in a hundred" selected randomly for a "hundred percent screening." That meant the screeners had to completely empty and examine all of my bags. |
| | On the plus side, the newly socialized baggage inspection system is staffed by friendlly, courteous folks. Credit where due.l |
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