29. paul allen vs everyone

paul allen, from forbes' billionaire list

early on when i started this silly little project i did a post touching on tech patent law, concerning apple, google, and htc.  i said then how tech patent lawsuits never fail to entertain, and recent times do nothing but provide more examples to support that.  during said recent times, litigation over patents has been on the upslope and it almost seems that there's more opportunity for business and profit in lawsuits than there is actual innovation or development of products and goods.  to highlight this, paul allen, one of the co-founders of microsoft, filed a lawsuit against AOL, apple, ebay, facebook, google, netflix, office depot, officemax, staples, yahoo! and youtube over four patents owned by his company interval research (and interval licensing, llc).

look at that list.  yep, that's right folks, paul allen just sued the internet.

the patents covered in the lawsuit pertain to things like recommending products or articles to a user based on what they've been looking at and what they're looking at right now.  i'm sure any of you that have ever used ebay  or netflix are familiar with their user recommendation systems.  i was actually surprised that amazon didn't make the list, as its user recommendation system is one that everyone has seen and used.  it's a pretty basic function in most e-commerce systems these days.  microsoft was also omitted from allen's attack, which of course makes sense since he still has active investments in the company.  as for amazon, the only link between them and allen is that they're based in his home town of seattle.  he's not having financial problems (i'm guessing) and is wealthy enough to answer warren buffet's call for the world's billionaires to donate large masses of their money.  so why drop this lawsuit now?

according to a public statement made by allen's man david postman, "interval research was an early, ground-breaking contributor to the development of the internet economy," citing its work with developing companies and technology transfers for patented tech.  he went on, "this lawsuit is necessary to protect our investment in innovation. we are not asserting patents that other companies have filed, nor are we buying patents originally assigned to someone else. these are patents developed by and for interval."

developed by and for interval.  interval research was dissolved in 2000, so it's been defunct for a decade.  neither interval licensing nor paul allen developed or produced these technologies, they just own "the ideas."  this still enables them to file an infringement suit against anyone for actually producing something that's close to it, even 10 years after the fact.  the four patents in question (6,263,507, 6,034,652, 6,788,314, and 6,757,682) don't look like much more than a series of flowcharts and a couple of mathematical formulas to me.  what if someone achieves the same end through different means?  are they legally actionable?  and what impact does that have on the tech and software industries?  mountains of additional money would have to be poured into legal budgets to protect against lawsuits of this kind instead of engineering and R&D, and where do you think they're going to make that money back?  that's right, it'll get passed down to the consumer.  personally i've been both the engineer with the cool ideas as well as the businessman trying to commercialize technology.  with that, in my head having to worry about lawsuits on patents from 10 years ago would get in the way of trying to come up with and produce products people want and can use, which is where it really counts.  a cool idea that can't be materialized, after all, is meaningless in the end.

i mean had the idea when i was 12 that it would be cool if i had some sensors on me that made my video game characters move like i did on screen.  if i somehow patented the idea back then, could i sue nintendo for a piece of their fat stacks of wii money now?

and some folks agree.  in response to the suit, a google spokesperson said that "innovation - not litigation - is the way to bring to market the kinds of products and services that benefit millions of people around the world."  harvard/duke/berkeley super professor vivek wadhwa agrees on that concept, and pushes for abolishment of software patents for similar reasons.

interval wants damages of course (amount undisclosed) and for these companies to stop using these technologies, or start paying them royalties to do so.  i hate to use a phrase that's thrown around a lot on the internet these days, but this whole situation reeks of patent trolling.  the defendants in this case clearly won't stop using these features in their e-commerce systems, which leaves only the option to kick more money over to allen.

that is, if he wins.

28. gaming, society, and politics: medal of honor

super mario bros. (NES)

do you remember video games from the 80's?  that's when i played my first games - the super mario brothers / duck hunt double cartridge on a nintendo my parents bought me as a birthday present my for my 7th in 1988.  needless to say, back then games were completely different, where 8 bit color was high graphics and the A and B buttons on th NES controller were a total enhancement over previous systems.  720 and 1080p flatscreens?  nope, sorry, we had 256 colors in brilliant phosphor on our big screen 25" tv's.  and it was wonderful.

it's been more than 20 years since then.  i'm almost 30.  seeing games explode over the years into complex stories set in visually stunning landscapes, and expanding into the online realm, i am just as into games now as i was then, if not more.  which means that i and people like me view them somewhat differently - not just as distractions, but increasingly powerful multimedia engines that are capable of capturing an audience and conveying thoughts and ideas.  sometimes even more effectively than television or movies.  which means they're going to increasingly cause some controversy.  in that way gaming has become a very broad and easy target for politicians to assault from their soapboxes with constant media coverage.

medal of honor (2010)

the reason i bring this up is recent controversy and almost rage surrounding EA's most recent reboot of their medal of honor game.  for those not familiar with the medal of honor franchise, it's a series of first-person shooter style games that's been highly successful for a little over a decade.  the main backdrop for all of these games has so far been world war II, and puts players in the shoes of allied soldiers, in various scenarios and theaters of conflict.  the upcoming reboot of the series shifts the focus of the franchise to the war in afghanistan, namely operation anaconda, which took place in 2001.  where the controversy arises is that in MOH multiplayer mode, one side plays as the allies while the other side plays as the taliban.  that last part is what people have problems with.  this started from the UK's minister of defence liam fox, who called the game "tasteless" and "shocking that someone would think it acceptable to recreate the acts of the taliban against british soldiers."

the game doesn't actually doesn't have any british soldiers in it.  but i'll let him slide on that for now, since his sentiment is really what was important here.

a report on fox news was a little more local.  this report featured gold star mom karen merideth with the sentiment that "war is not a game," who had this to say:  "we've just come off of the worst month of casualties in the whole war, and this game is going to be released in october. so families who are going to be burying their children are going to be seeing this and playing this game. i just don't see that a video game based on a current war makes any sense at all. it's disrespectful."

you can see the whole fox news clip on ars technica.

medal of honor (2010)

again, this game only allows players to play as the taliban during multiplayer mode, not during the campaign missions.  the reason for this is the same as it's always been.  you need two teams - if one team is playing as the good guys, then the other team has to be the bad guys.  it's been a constant theme in gaming over the last many years.  counter strike multiplayer was counter-terrorists vs terrorists.  MOH: allied assault multiplayer was allies vs axis.  command and conquer's global liberation army was a terrorist faction.  and i don't remember such outbursts during those releases, even for WWII based games featuring nazi factions in multiplayer settings.

hell, you've probably even played cops and robbers as kids.  or maybe cowboys and indians?

point being, there always has to be a bad guy.  and no one at EA is trying to make an argument that the taliban aren't bad guys.  it is extremely clear that the taliban are the bad guys.  and the campaign missions don't go through taliban storylines or have the player plot the demise of american forces.  they focus on tier one operators operating under the command of the national command authority, elite ops and army rangers.  you know, the good guys.

that aside, i can understand where those who share the minister's point of view are coming from.  and i'm not insensitive to ms merideth and other like-minded people.  the wounds of war are very deep, and perhaps too fresh in the minds of people.  but i think that this game is about exploring the experience of the american soldier, not being a terrorist.  EA's team is still proud of the work they're doing, and in response to criticism, EA president frank gibeau had the following:

"at EA we passionately believe games are an artform, and i don’t know why films and books set in afghanistan don't get flack, yet [games] do. whether it's red badge of courage or the hurt locker, the media of its time can be a platform for the people who wish to tell their stories. games are becoming that platform."

"games have been set in afghanistan before. we anticipated this [controversy] when we decided on the concept of the game – this is about being a special forces solider. what’s really important for us is that we partnered with the US military, and the medal of honor society as well. we've gone out of our way to produce the best story for the game."  videos of interviews with the people that consulted from these organizations can be found on the official medal of honor site.

i'm not really a huge fan of the medal of honor series, mainly because i lost interest in the whole military FPS genre years ago, but i still feel that had to put in my two cents in on the criticisms against it.  it's very easy speak out against something without really taking a deep look at it.  in this case, the phrase "play as taliban" is causing red flags without a real look at the context.  EA isn't forcing people to purchase or play this game, so not purchasing it is a completely valid option.  it's true, war is not a game.  but we also have to remember the reverse, that a game is not war.

27. tablets - the final frontier

apple ipad

these are the voyages of the starship ente... oh nevermind.

tablets, man.  tablets.  they're the latest front on which the mobile wars rage.  desktops and laptops have pretty much become commoditized, and even the cell phone war has been a game of "who can beat the iphone," even though in my opinion the droid x does (shh, don't tell anyone, i'm trying to be impartial).  after the surge of netbooks since 2007, they and their cousins the tablets would naturally have to come next.

so, next question - what the hell IS a tablet?  why are they here?  and what do they want with us?  with the release of the ipad earlier this year, the big tech giants aren't exactly in agreement - steve jobs says the ipad and tablets exemplifies the end of the "mouse and keyboard" pc era, while steve ballmer's opinion is basically that the ipad and other tablet devices ARE, in fact, pc's.  this all aside, "tablets," as they were, have been around for a pretty long time.  we all (well some of us anyway) remember running windows xp tablet edition, waaaay back when the definition of a tablet pc really wasn't much more than a laptop with an outward facing screen and some limited pen input.

that definition has changed from then to now.  a lot.  and it only partially has to do with technology, as far as being an evolution from the netbook.  beyond that, the definition of tablet really changed with an evolved definition of the user. you have your business users, home users and tech enthusiasts - the trinity that ruled consumer electronics for so long, and now a new class - the mobile media user.  these users don't want high-grade graphics and cpu power for gaming or power for editing.  they're not concerned with exchange push or being able to open up office to do some work.  they're on the move - watching youtube on the train or tv through hulu on the bus, running fluff web apps and playing low-res, low-power games (that can still be extremely fun).  so all this considered, what is a tablet, finally?  with all the opinions floating around it's far to say that it's a hybrid.  a "netbook plus," built for media consumption.  less than a laptop or notebook, a low-power device running on something like an ARM or intel atom processors with a light operating system, that doesn't have the power to run high-end games and intensive applications.  more than a cell phone, with larger screens for better media viewing and everyday usability.

android-powered archos 5 tablet

and understanding this concept is what will sell mobile units in today's media-hungry markets.  it's why smartphone sales have skyrocketed in the last few years.  apple does, which is why their ipad is at the forefront of the market.  microsoft on the other hand, does not.  at least to me.  steve ballmer's goal is now to focus a big push on getting windows 7 on a tablet form-factor unit, as is their solution to most things - put some windows on it, to make windows a ubiquitous platform for every user.  not because he thinks it's a viable platform, but because he needs to compete with apple.  from the recent microsoft financial analysts meeting:

"they sold certainly more than I'd like them to sell, let me just be clear about that.  We think about that.  We think about that in competitive sense.  And for us, then, the job is to say, Okay, we have a lot of IP, we have a lot of good software in this area, we've done a lot of work on ink and touch and everything else -- we have got to make things happen."

ironically this comes almost simultaneously to killing the their own courier tablet project, which sucks, because that thing looked straight awesome.  unfortunately their mobile game still needs some work, from what we've seen of the windows phone 7.  yes, "make things happen" indeed.  windows 7 tablets were shown off at CES 10 in january on an hp slate, but they have since dropped windows 7 in lieu of  the (probably) webOS platform, which they now own through their palm acquisition.  HP's not alone in that decision - others have also skipped over windows 7 in favor of the android platform for their tablet - asus, samsung, and archos just to name a few.

ahhh yes.  android.  a light OS.  the mobile OS of champions.  the OS that gives google a real shot here in the tablet market.  coming off extremely impressive sales of motorola's droid x and other android devices,  it's clear that they're here to stay, and will continue to go head to head with apple for the tablet crown through the number of manufacturers that are adopting android.  HP may be the sleeper in this war - now that their slate will potentially run webOS instead of windows 7, they'll have ownership of both their hardware and software, which is an advantage that only apple currently enjoys.

but let's not forget that blackberry is said to throw their hat in the ring with their "blackpad" in november.  but we'll see how that goes - i'm not sure how a (one can only imagine) business-focused tablet is going to sail too far.  and there's also verizon and motorola's upcoming tablet - the one i'm really excited about, that integrates fios tv into the tablet experience.

so let the war march on.  the end winner is just going to be the consumer, since increased competition is going to force manufacturers to make their products more desirable versus their competitors.  but until the major clash, apple's tablet throne is still intact.

26. public information is, uh... public?

i don't know whether or not to tag this post as part of my common damn sense series.  but what i do know from this story is that torrents can cause floods.

by now you might have read a story about the recent activities of one ron bowes, a security consultant and former employee of symantec (if not, check it here).  thanks to his handiwork there is now a torrent roaming the interwebs containing information on over 170 million facebook users.  now before you start to panic and check your account for hacks, understand that no private information was taken.  the torrent file, which weighs in at slightly under 3gb, is nothing more than a consolidated list of all public information that are made public by facebook users.  how did he do this?  all he had to do was make a crawler to scour the facebook directory, publicly available at http://www.facebook.com/directory/, which on its own is still kind of spooky to look at.  no hacks.  no cracks.  technically not even a security breach.

so what was the motivation?  back when bowes worked at symantec, he posted something on the symantec blog called attack of the facebook snatchers (which i highly suggest all of you read).  this blog post was about data phishing, and went over the idea of how privacy is an illusion, and that illusion can cause people to be far more free with the information they share.  the spirit of this was to enlighten users as to how public information can be used to exploit you.  that's what he does.  facebook, of course, was not a fan of the post.  in the same vein came this torrent he recently created, which is, in my opinion, in that same spirit of awareness in the digital age, even though it started as a pool of test users for a security tool.  by his own words (i'd link his blog at skull security but it seems to be down):

"Why do I bring this up? Well last week @FSLabsAdvisor wrote an interesting Tweet: it turns out, by heading to https://www.facebook.com/directory, you can get a list of every searchable user on all of Facebook!

My first idea was simple: spider the lists, generate first-initial-last-name (and similar) lists, then hand them over to @Ithilgore to use in Nmap's awesome new bruteforce tool he's working on, Ncrack.

But as I thought more about it, and talked to other people, I realized that this is a scary privacy issue. I can find the name of pretty much every person on Facebook. Facebook helpfully informs you that "[a]nyone can opt out of appearing here by changing their Search privacy settings" -- but that doesn't help much anymore considering I already have them all (and you will too, when you download the torrent). Suckers!

Once I have the name and URL of a user, I can view, by default, their picture, friends, information about them, and some other details. If the user has set their privacy higher, at the very least I can view their name and picture. So, if any searchable user has friends that are non-searchable, those friends just opted into being searched, like it or not! Oops :)"

i've left the link to the torrent out of this because i don't think you really need to have it.  well those of you that do want it probably know how to get your hands on it anyway.  but think about how scary the ease of this actually is.  even though this torrent only contains "public" information, and nothing more than what can be googled for, it can still provide a lot of useful information, depending on who you are and what your intentions are.  the amount of information people voluntarily make public is sometimes nauseating - i've seen mild to medium levels of incriminating photographs, as well as phone numbers.  that's a big one - kind of counteracts that no-call list you signed up for, doesn't it?  it's almost cute that some people think privacy still exists on the internet.

so what's the point here?  as it always is with social networks, make sure you are the one who controls what others see.  the problem in this particular story isn't the bad security man hacking your info, it's not really big bad facebook not protecting users, it's that your public info is in fact, public.  and therefore easily accessible.  don't publicize anything that could remotely come back to bite you later.  given that the facebook service has extended from the chosen social network of twenty somethings to teenagers makes this all the more important.  facebook's response to this whole thing is that they offer a number of controls to allow users to take their name out of the directory, and make their profiles unsearchable by engines like google or bing.  this is too bad for people that fall into the "didn't know why" or "don't know how" category of users.  even though this isn't really facebook's fault, they should go out of their way to make sure that users are fully aware of the privacy controls offered to them.  facebook, as mr. bowes says, "has a special responsibility to go beyond doing the bare minimum."

on top of that, there are reports from gizmodo that large corporations and groups are downloading the torrent, either authorized or not.  this includes computing giants like apple and HP, as well as groups like the united nations and the church of scientology.  i'm not sure how legit this is, but gizmodo's generally pretty good about that.  i'm not really surprised - i mean think about the statistical relevance of a sample size of 170 milion.  their marketing departments must be very happy.

at any rate, hopefully this whole thing will make people re-think the way they share information in the future.

25. microsoft's mobile hail mary - windows phone 7

microsoft's kin two

in mobile device tech, the last two years have generally been the era of two companies - apple and google.  apple successfully took the "device" approach, focusing all of their efforts into the iphone line.  google focused more on a platform rather than a device, tuning their android system the run with an array of hardware behind it.  both companies produced and continue to produce solid products.  but they were not to be outdone by software giant microsoft, who had been talking some pretty big game about their windows phone 7.  you know, the one that lets you hook up to xbox live?  the one that provides office integration and lets you cleanly manage your social networks?  yeah, that one.  so we all held our breath as they released the brand new... kin?

... what?

ultimately the kin one and kin two were a pair of horrible failures.  i mean what can you do when no one wants the product?  what i can say is that they definitely were different than other available smartphones, but at the same time served as an illustration that different doesn't always mean good.  a casualty of a botched project with the creators of what became t-mobile's sidekick, the kin was finally relieved of the twisted misery that was its existence by microsoft last week.  kin has been the latest misstep in microsoft's quest to become relevant in the mobile/smartphone market again, and combined with the lukewarm reviews of the windows mobile 6.5 OS that is currently running on windows-based smartphones, they have no choice but to pick it up.  windows phone 7 is supposed to be their answer, but after two years of development do they have what it takes to compete with the iphone and droid-based devices?

coming off the heels of the kin debacle, microsoft promised that all focus has been shifted to windows phone 7, and that it was going to be awesome.  based on what i first saw months ago on it, i thought that maybe it would live up to the hype.  but what about the timing?  within the last 2-3 months, apple's iphone 4, motorola's droid x, and htc's incredible emerged as the most sought-after smartphone devices in history between at&t and verizon wireless.  windows phone 7 is slated to be available by the upcoming holiday season, after most of us have had one of the aforementioned devices for only 4-5 months.  and while i can't speak for others, i generally will wait until i have an upgrade discount on my mobile account to buy a new phone - otherwise, most smartphones range from $500-$600 at full price.  and i don't know how many people have that kind of spare scratch just laying around.

microsoft's windows phone 7

to combat the timing issue (at least i think) microsoft recently conducted a "technical preview" of windows phone 7 for developers, and while it looks fairly slick overall, it looks like it still needs some work to compete with the heavy hitters.  tech bloggers that were fortunate enough to get hands on with it (you know, the ones that do this for a job, like engadget) have some video of the UI navigation.  it shows that that the touch response is super fast, and scrolling through the "tiles" on screen is effortless.  zoom, much like its competitors' handsets, are controlled by easy pinch movement, and the virtual keyboard gets high marks for accuracy while typing.  the familiar zune music interface is pretty smooth too.

regardless, i still see some issues that will prevent microsoft from converting iphone/droid users to windows phone 7.  first, copy and paste isn't supported.  on its own i guess it's not that big of a deal, since this was already known information from the MIX10 conference in march, but when microsoft's trying to highlight the business focus of the device, it seems like that would be an important function for the on-the-go business user.  it would definitely enhance their office mobile and exchange integration functionality.  second is a lack of multitasking for third party apps.  android introduced this first, with the iphone following suit, which puts windows phone 7 behind on that front.  third, and this is a big one for me, no navigation.  they do a good job of integrating bing and bing maps into the UI, but neither of those provide turn-by turn navigation or gps-style functions.  in an era where a lot of consumers are looking to have one strong multifaceted device, such as using their phone as a gps unit in their car, this might be a problem.

overall, for mainstream users or users that want email, web browsing, and high levels of social integration, the windows phone 7 looks like it would be a solid choice.  for the "super user," however - the user who wants it all, are going to find it a little wanting vs the existing options from apple, motorola, and htc.  but there's still time, and developers have some stuff in hand, so let's see what they can throw together by the holiday release.

the thought of many is that if this mobile hail mary from microsoft doesn't work then they should consider permanently getting out of the mobile game.  the problem is that they can't.  the prevalent trend among tech users, both personal and business, is that an increasing amount of work (and play) is being done on mobile platforms, not seated behind a desk on a pc.  it's the basic convergence of two forms of tech - pc's got smaller and more portable while cell phones became more powerful.  soon the two became one.  and as one of the standards in computing, microsoft has no choice but to extend their brand into the mobile sphere, like apple and google have successfully done.  if the windows phone 7 doesn't fly, they have no choice but to keep trying.

24. iphone's antenna issues - motorola with the burn, new york times with the assist.

apple iphone 4

in what seems like the eternal saga of apple and google's android (for my younger readers, it's kind of like edward and jacob, just for phones), the war continues to play out in the media.  generally the two tech giants have been playing nice, trying to talk up their own product with little to no insult of their competition.  until now.  the most recent shot was fired by team verizon against their, well, fruitier opponent in a recent edition of the new york times.  anyone who opened it up on june 30th saw a full page advertisement (click below for full size), in color of course, of motorola's upcoming droid x mobile device, which will descend upon the public on july 12th.  in this ad, the core features and selling points surround a large image of the device itself, following a traditional "here's why we're awesome" approach.  until the very end:

"and most importantly, it comes with a double antenna design.  the kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like and use it just about anywhere to make crystal clear calls."

the ad that launched 1000 burns

BURN.  if apple and google were playing battleship, the appropriate response here would be "hit."  i wonder if this ad ran on the new york times ipad edition.  hmm.

verizon / motorola / google put a spotlight on apple's most recent public problems.  the antenna in question was to revolutionize (surprise, surprise) antenna design, by having it external, and integrated into the unit's casing.  holding the phone in the so-called "death grip" (tightly on the outside rim) in this configuration visibly causes signal strength (i.e. how many bars you have) to decrease and cause calls to drop.  spencer webb, an an antenna consultant working for apple, says differently - that short bars don't mean dropped calls, and that "full bar" and "short bar" calls are the same in call quantity.  apple claims that it's just a software calculation issue, there is no signal strength issue, and that users will be able to see a fix in the visual problem in the next iOS software update, 4.0.1.  another test run by anandtech did some more quantitative testing on their own, and calculated a difference of 24dB when the iphone is tightly held, which is enough to drop a call if you live in an area where you have consistently 4 bars or less.  if you have 5 bars constantly, then don't worry about it.

by itself, that should have been the end of it, but it was only the beginning of the complaints.  it turns out that a $29 "bumper" is available from apple, and it's almost required to minimize the death grip induced antenna fail.  some users became so irate that ultimately class action lawsuits (this is the first one, but there's more) have been filed against both apple and at&t for this plus a number of complaints, all the way up to intentional, negligent misrepresentation and fraud.  are these lawsuits bordering on the ridiculous?  sure.  i don't see how some of the claims really stand.  do i think that users deserve compensatory damages?  well, yes.  exactly what they paid for the iphone to begin with.  it's called a return policy.  and given that most iphone 4 purchases are upgrades, if they charge you a restocking fee then that's your penalty for blind loyalty.

apple and steve jobs have remained pretty silent on the issue, not addressing customers' requests that apple provide bumpers at no charge to alleviate this problem.  big steve's expert advice is to buy their bumper case or "just avoid holding it in that way."  but every photograph or television spot shows users and steve jobs himself holding it the "wrong" way!  i mean what is a loyal apple head to do??  don't believe me?  check out the compiled gallery here.

i know, i thought the same thing - absolute wonderment.  in addition to all of this, the folks at boy genius report have gotten their hands on apple's troubleshooting procedures on this issue.  reading them over definitely shows a lack of concern for their loyal customer base.  in my opinion, apple should at bare minimum send out free bumpers to current iphone 4 customers to rectify a problem they acknowledge exists.  gizmodo is of the same mind, and has started a petition to convince apple to come around on this one.  cases.com is sending out free iphone 4 "lifegrip" cases, for the cost of shipping, which is as low as $3.39 for first class mail.

this amid even more rumors about iphones for verizon wireless.  give it a rest, with android powerhouses like the htc incredible, motorola droid x (my next digital acquisition) and upcoming droid 2, my guess is that verizon will be trying to foster that partnership before renewing any interest in the iphone.  just doesn't make sense.

23. the great escape (chinese internet addiction center edition)

probably not this cool

while i do always tout that we are living in the digital age, there is a line that can be drawn between "web enthusiast" and addiction.  a web enthusiast may be bored without his or her collection of gadgetry and digital accessories, but it's not the end of the world.  it's not going to reduce them to a slumped neanderthal that can barely function in the world.  an addict, on the other hand, is willing to stay online at all hours of the day, forsaking work, school, and personal relationships for what they find online.  sometimes it's gambling, maybe illicit online affairs, or topping all else, games.

internet addiction may sound strange, but i have seen it happen on a number of occasions.  the first time i did was when i was a sophomore in college, where a few of us on our floor shared an 11am physics class (so it's not like it was even early)  that you generally wouldn't want to skip.  one morning as i'm preparing to make the trek to the lecture hall, we noticed one of our classmates, in the same clothes he's wore for days of course, on his computer.  "you not going to physics today man?"

"no dude i can't.  i have a guild meeting."

i don't care how good the game is or the intensity of your god damn raid schedule - someone with a normal thought pattern would recognize that while you're talking strategy so you can get some experience points and gear upgrades, your school is draining your real life account by anywhere between $400-$600 per credit.  unfortunately for him, this became a pretty standard practice.  he pretty much fell off the face of the earth after that.

the case above isn't even an extreme one.  people can spend upwards of 15 hours online gaming or, well, doing whatever it is they do.  as i mentioned before, online affairs and gambling have become pretty popular pastimes - probably because the internet and network services as a whole, in my opinion anyway, facilitate these addictions in many cases, and almost act like an extension to an existing personal problem.  it's become so widespread that treatment centers are offering programs for internet addiction, right alongside alcohol and gambling.

this seems to be an even more crippling affliction in china, where estimates put the number of "internet addicted" citizens above the 20 million mark, by the china youth association for network development.  and to remedy the situation, their treatment facilities are run like military centers. officially treatment involves chinese calligraphy, philosophy, and a strict military regimen.  not surprisingly, there have been widespread reports of abuse in these centers from beatings to other forms of torture.  in august 2009, a 15 year old, well, inmate, for lack of a better term, was beaten to death by two guards who were sentenced to 10 years in prison last month.

so what do you expect when you take one of these facilities, 14 young men in jiangsu province, some of them addicted gamers (whose primary goal is always to down a boss), a steady stream of work-camp-like conditions, military grade physical training, and possibly abusive guards?  quiet acceptance?  adherence to disciplinary rules?  hell no.  without anyone giving you more details you know this all clearly spells shawshank style escape and revolution.

i imagine it was something like this

the crew of motley nerds found an opening, jumped their commander (yes, commander) and bound him to his bed, then made a break for it.  once outside, they hopped a couple of taxis in the hopes of making it back to taste sweet freedom and online logons.  but as all great escapes go, be it steve mcqueen on a stolen bike or chinese kids packed in a taxi like a clown car, their plan was foiled.  you see, the problem was that they were broke.  and the cab driver was less than understanding.  the cops were called to the scene, and all 14 youths were taken to the local 5-0 station.

but it doesn't look like this shook the parents' faith in the treatment centers and their methods, and thus the people's republic (not to mention the equivalent of a few grand they shelled out).  after picking them up from the police, out of the 14 renegades, all were shipped directly back to the huai'an center.

22. the hollywood whitewash

left: prince dastan from the two thrones, right: jakegyllenhaal

now that it's out, i find myself going back in my mind to seeing the previews for the new prince of persia movie last year.  i recall watching it a couple of times, trying to pinpoint what exactly my problem with it was.  was it because it was just another video game/comic to movie conversion that ran the high risk of being horrible?  well, probably.  hollywood is, after all, completely out of material, and we all remember how fantaaaaastic jean clade van damme was in street fighter.  but that wasn't it.  not totally.  after a while what irked me was clear - the prince of persia (that's persia - a region of land across the sea betwixt africa and asia, just south of europe) was to be played by jake gyllenhaal.  now i don't dislike they guy - he's been in some solid flicks.  donnie darko was really good, and an apocalyptic rabbit will live forever in my mind.  but the casting still just seemed off - in addition to the prince, the main chick, tamina,  is played by british bombshell gemma arterton.  while her bond girl appeal has been augmented some by some artificial brown decently applied to her for the role, it's still not enough to make me forget that she's still "strawberry fields" from quantum of solace, and that "tamina" never existed in the original sands of time game.

ben kingsley sir ben kingsley gets a pass.  for life.  he's naturally half brown, played gandhi, i.e. the mahatma, and is just awesome in general.

the whole thing made me think about the tremendous surge of movies in the last few years based on video games, comic books and anime, which bothers me, and has for some time, for a multitude of reasons.  for starters, it's the repackaging of the nerd culture from our youth (well, my youth anyway) that has been mainstreamed enough to be saleable to the very same type of people who antagonized us for being a part of that nerd culture to begin with.

ugh, i could really get too far into that, so we'll leave that for another post for another day.

but in relation to that recent surge of movies, we've seen a healthy dose of "racebending" throughout, as the kids call it these days, from a splendidly caucasian son goku in dragonaball evolution to the recent whitewash of aang and company in the big screen adaptation of the last airbender, where again, the main characters are recast as suburban-friendly children, without a trace of foreign flair to them.  to those not familiar with the last airbender anime series - aang, the main character, is a young asian boy, in a world that is explicitly based on and rooted in asian and inuit culture.

sometimes i don't mind this, if it doesn't take away from the story too much, but in the case of prince of persia's prince dastan, a detailed description of the hero, including background, is in the damn title.  and it's set in the persian kingdom.  you really can't get around that without people scratching their heads for at least a little bit.  now yes, persians are a little light skinned as far as denizens of brown town go, and a few hundred years ago you would see them as almost white.  but this movie isn't based on middle eastern history - it's based on a video game.  it's not about persians in general, it's about one specific fictional one - prince dastan.

left: ra's al ghul from the comics, left: liam neeson

and as a bonus example, i still haven't forgotten about liam neeson's ra's al ghul in the batman reboot, batman begins.  even for those that don't follow the batman mythos, does "r'as al ghul" sound like anything other than brown town to you?  ra's the immortal and his lazarus pits was the last bastion of brown power in comicdom.  oh yessss, detective.

now before you lay into me if you think i'm being one sided, yes, i will mention that this does happen the other way - kingpin was played by michael clarke duncan in daredevil, and sam jackson plays nick fury but for the majority of the time, there's not too much ground to pose a strong argument to what i'm saying here.  that doesn't bring balance to the force.

in actuality, the last airbender is far worse.  the airbender camp maintains that it has a culturally diverse cast.  while airbender and these other films do technically have a diverse cast, to me, and plenty others, the problem is where that diversity is seen.  minority players are mostly extras or villains, nailing huge roles like "henchman," "musician," and "assassin."  impressive, i know.  but not often are they the heroes or principal characters based on a minority source.  airbender's casting call actually listed that they were specifically looking for "caucasians and other races."  you broke my heart, m. night shyamalan.  not you too!

i know some of you may be thinking that i'm going a little over the top here, and that this isn't a trend but more of an isolated coincidence.  "tushar, you're crazy" says you.

well allow me to retort.

the book 21 was based on was about a group of MIT students that was mostly asian.  enter jim sturgess and kate bosworth, and the asian characters are now supporting instead of main.  wanted's fox was black in the comic, portrayed by angelina jolie in the movie.  akira's live action version will be starring leonardo dicaprio and joseph gordon levitt as kaneda and tetsuo.  and sean farris will be playing kyo kusanagi in king of fighters.  i could go on.


now i get it, on some level.  american movie studios, as all businesses must, cater to their majority markets (usually by betraying the fan base of the source material).  it's been going on since the 50's so no one should really see it as something new.  but what does this say about how hollywood views the masses?  do they think that american moviegoers still won't pay to see a movie unless the hero is flying high the banner of white america?  it's 2010, people. give it a rest.

and to all of the hollywood studios out there - i am of course available and you can contact me if you decide to make an action adventure blockbuster that calls for a suave brown hero that shoots and asks questions simultaneously.

21. IBM spreading malware, google celebrates pac-man in style

i know it's been a while, and yes, i'm still alive.  now that that's out of the way:

i'm sure some of you have had to attend some sort of conference for work or school before.  generally these are pretty dry and full of boring booths and seminars.  but your consolation is usually a bag full of free (mostly useless) stuff and booth giveaways - that's right, the delicious conference swag.  granted, the swag you get isn't nearly as cool as it would be at, say, E3, but there's generally some fun knick knacks in there nonetheless.  living in the digital age, a lot of companies give out USB flash drives as their trick-or-treat offerings.  makes sense right?  small, useful, and most of all, imprintable with your company's logo so they'll never forget who gave it to them.

turns out that last part is a double edged sword.

enter the ausCERT conference, held in australia's gold coast last week.  IBM's giveaways were, as anyone who read the first paragraph can guess, USB flash drives.  these weren't ordinary flash drives though - with these there was a slight twist - they came pre-infected with malware.  here's the real kicker - the whole ausCERT production?  it's a damn computer security expo.  collected in the RACV royal pines resort for this conference was a veritable who's who from the realm of network security - representatives from many antivirus/antimalware companies, the guy who co-invented public key cryptography, up to and including the the chief security officer for cisco.  IBM's message to ausCERT delegates:

"at the ausCERT conference this week, you may have collected a complimentary USB key from the IBM booth. unfortunately we have discovered that some of these USB keys contained malware and we suspect that all USB keys may be affected."

ouch.  the rest of the note went on to explain that any current antivirus/antimalware software would catch and quarantine it, but still, ouch.  i wouldn't exactly consider W32/LibHack-A a value-add software to bundle with a piece of hardware.  when i first saw this i thought it was a marketing ploy, maybe something like an IBM security solution demo on the drive.  until i saw the rest of the note IBM sent out.  after letting the delegates know that they may have infected them, they asked for anyone that had one to (1) not use them and (2) send them back to ibm.

now this isn't new - there have been other companies that have passed out infected memory sticks before, including IBM themselves in 2002.  but still it has to be embarrassing to be a bigshot like them, at a conference that IT professionals go to to hear lectures on the latest and greatest security techniques.  i just don't see how they didn't have some tighter QC, given the situation and their audience.

now from ridiculous to awesome - time to celebrate the 30th anniversary of pac-man, and out of all the tributes that exist on the web, google topped everyone.  by a mile.  google always has a lot of "doodles" to replace their stock logo on their search homepage to commemorate special days.  but today's takes the cake.  their doodle is a pac-man level shaped with the google logo, and it's playable, complete with sound.  if you're reading this and it's still friday the 21st, head over to google and click the "insert coin" button and have some fun.

20. the difference between "pirate" and "jerk"

yes, i know i've been slacking for about a week - but if i'm going to be writing about anything related to consumer technology and/or tech news, the last couple of weeks of available material has been all apple all the time - and i just can't care about it anymore.  enough's enough.

so my process was as follows - start writing a post on the ipad, then stop.  fallout from the iphone 4 fiasco - 1 paragraph, stop.  more about the apple-adobe war, 2 sentences, stop.  apple-cingular exclusivity?  couldn't even come up with a title.  i can't be the only one who's tired of reading about apple in every damn publication and site i get my news from. so i stopped reading the news for a while.  digging through pages of seeing steve job's mug plastered across abso-damn-lutely everything got boring, and i don't want to just be one additional hit that helps apple control the news cycle.  due to the lack of anything else interesting, i took a few days off , and ended up doing some leveling my druid in warcraft instead.  got rake and tiger's fury, so yep, far more productive.

until yesterday.

i read about (and ultimately got) something called the humble indie bundle.  i generally like occasionally seeing what indie game studios offer, and since i loved world of goo, it was worth a look.  it's a limited time offering of a set of five independent games (including world of goo), by wolfire, that are completely DRM-free, work with pc, mac, and linux, and best of all...

... wait for it...

cost only as much as you want to pay.  you read that correctly.  if you want to pay $10, that's how much it costs.  only able to swing a dollar?  well sir or madam, to you, the pack costs precisely $1.  only want to pay a penny?  then that'll be one shiny red cent please.  the pricing scheme did seem a little shifty at first, until i saw what was behind it.  user contributions support the electronic frontier foundation, and the wonderful child's play charity, started by gabe and tycho over at penny arcade.  sounds like a good idea right?  you wouldn't mind shelling out at bare minimum a couple of cents for a set of games that would cost you about $80 combined, would you?

of course you wouldn't mind - you're good people.  but others would, and did, take a different stance on the matter, while taking full advantage of the "no DRM" thing.  instead of paying all of the $0.01 it would have taken to have a legitimate copy, let alone any altruistic motivation, it turns out that key links for the humble bundle are being distributed in forums, from 4chan (though we really should have seen it coming from them) to steam, and many in between.  wolfire estimates about 25% of the downloads have been pirated, not counting anything pulled down by torrents.  just to clarify - these people pirated jacked software for charity that was pretty much given away.  and yes, there is a difference.

i've done a couple of posts on piracy before - mainly because i can understand instances that can be considered sticking it to the proverbial man.  because "the man" sticks it to us.  daily.  companies that publish audio/video media and games are getting a little ridiculous spending their time calculating how many fictitious dollars piracy costs them (while pulling in record profits hand over fist) instead of legitimately focusing their energy on creating a richer experience for the end user.  so sometimes putting them in check is called for.  this instance is completely different.  skimming this game pack off of a forum isn't piracy.  you're not sticking it to the man.  trust me, the man is cushy and comfortable on this one.  you're just flat out being a jerk.  in addition to independent developers, who you're affecting is:

the EFF: a non-profit foundation whose goals are to protect free speech, privacy, and digital consumer rights, and
child's play: an organization with gamer roots that donates toys, games, books, and money to sick kids, their families, and the children's hospitals that are trying to help them.

i personally give to the latter (and should really get more involved with the first), because i believe in what they're doing, making this matter far more loathsome to me.  in my opinion this is digitally tantamount to punching a bell-ringing santa, squarely in the neck, and taking his or her salvation army bucket.  this kind of stuff is depressing, if as nothing else but a confirmation that this particular brand of asshat still exists, and that their numbers show no signs of slowing down.

but i can't be completely mentally bogged down by this kind of selfishness today - there's still some positive news to report.  despite the copies that were ill-got at best, in the three days that this bundle was available, contributors raised $319,000 for charity, which isn't exactly chicken feed.  and before this is posted, the bundle has now been extended for another 3 day period.  hopefully they can collect another $300,000 or more.

for those that need a refresher, robin hood never sucker punched little john for a bag of coin or drugged friar tuck to steal a swig of his ale.

he robbed from the rich.

for more information on the work being done by the EFF or child's play charity, click the following links for their official sites:
electronic frontier foundation
child's play charity

19. adobe and apple and microsoft, oh my!

a lot of you that read anything about mobile tech probably know that one of the sticking points with the iphone and the newly released ipad is that these apple mobile products don't support flash - and on that topic there has been a lot of back and forth between apple and adobe.  concerning changes in legal language for developers and requirements to use native code, the two tech giants bickered briefly like an old married couple, ultimately culminating in a metaphorical divorce, and adobe's final cartman-esque decision of "screw you guys, i'm going home."  after flash CS5 ships, adobe will remove the flash for apple developer kit, and focus on android and other mobile platforms.  there are still a lot of people that don't understand the moves on either side.

to clarify this, steve jobs recently published an open letter of sorts entitled thoughts on flash, concerned primarily, of course, with reasoning as to why apple is so anti flash on their mobile units.  he defines six broad reasons for this: openness, the "full web" argument, reliablity/security/performance, battery life, touch, and quality.  now while i did say some harsh things about him during his lawsuit against htc, and briefly attacked the man for parking his car in handicapped spaces, in this case i can't honestly say i fully disagree with him.  his biggest argument is that html5, h.264 video and other "open" standards are the way of mobile web, and there are non-flash delivery alternatives to flash that provide most of the same content.  personally i've opted into youtube's html5 beta, which seems to be working for me just fine.  i believe vimeo is using html5 video as well, and there seems to be an increasing interest in adopting that platform.

on the security and performance front he mentions that flash is the number one reason macs crash, and cites athat even symantec called flash out as having one of the worst security records in 2009.  in my group at work we can definitely appreciate that - over the last couple of years we've had to apply a number of flash patches around here to address potential security holes and exploits - and we think, one one occasion, stolen information through a flash security hole resulted in one of my friends getting his warcraft account hacked and our guild bank cleaned out.  the security holes aren't limited to just flash though - similar gaps (at least did) exist in adobe air, and i've even read of malware delivery through an acrobat document.  overall in 2009, there were over 10 security issues (most of which could lead to pc hijack) that required patches and zero-day fixes to address.  some may call it improper security control, while others may argue that it's just growing pains now that adobe is large enough to affect a lot of the internet.

adobe's response to the letter was as expected, calling the letter a "smokescreen" and maintaining that apple's decision has nothing to with technology.

none of any of this really surprised me until microsoft entered the fray.  guess which video platform internet explorer 9 is going to support?  that would be h.264.  dean hachamovitch, the general manager for IE, weighed in with his opinion that html5 and the h.264 codec was the future of the web, and did express that microsoft wasn't happy about adobe security.  ouch.  he did say, though, that flash is good for today's web because it's hard for typical people to get to flash-free content.

how must adobe be feeling right now?  the two kingpins in consumer computing both have issues with their product, within days of each other, and announce that one of their major products probably doesn't have a place in the mobile web of tomorrow.  the new flash is, however, adopting h.264, so we'll see how things go from here.  either way, adobe stock has been steady on the decline over the last few days on the heels of this news - still strong, but steadily slipping.  it just looks like kicking them while they're down (good thing adobe still has the rest of their creative suite).  but to be fair, in my personal experience, i have never seen flash work properly on any mobile device.  and in the case of packaging flash for apple mobile, even former adobe engineers have spoken out on how flawed the process was.

it's a shame to see what adobe had once vs what it has now.  when they acquired macromedia and the flash platform in 2005 they had an amazing wealth of technology at their fingertips.  eventually flash dominated in share for any website or app or animation.   they just weren't able to carry it over into the mobile world.  while the entire industry has been going by the code of smaller, faster, lighter" - from desktop to laptop to pocketpc to smartphones -  adobe kept chugging away on iterations of their flash platform for desktops and workstations. they really just failed to keep up with the trends of industry and their competitors when it came to mobile tech.  because if adobe had really focused on a mobile flash platform that worked well when their competitors were ramping up their mobile development, they would have done it.