Via PJ, here’s a great joke about programmers by Nathaniel Borenstein:
It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.
While this is a whimsical example, I think it actually explains why geeks have such strong views on certain issues. For example, on software patents: one of the most common tricks in a programmer’s toolkit is to solve a specific problem by finding a way to solve a more general problem and then treat the particular problem as a special case. For example, VoIP just applies the general data-transmission capabilities of the Internet to one type of data, namely sound. It therefore strikes many programmers as perverse to grant a patent to the first person who happens to file for a patent on applying a widely-understood technology (such as TCP/IP) to a particular application (like voice).
Similarly, geeks tend to be strong support of network neutrality (the concept, if not the regulatory policy) because fundamentally, network neutrality is the principle of abstraction applied to network architecture.
Are TV antennas making a comeback? It may be hard to believe, but according to Joe Milicia of the Associated Press, there’s a mini-boom going on in the antenna business. And it’s not just technophobes who are buying them. 
According to Milicia: “…some consumers are spending thousands of dollars on LCD or plasma TVs and hooking them up to $50 antennas that don’t look much different from what grandpa had on top of his black-and-white picture tube.”
According to the head of an antenna company: “Eighty-year-old technology is being redesigned and rejiggered to deliver the best picture quality. It’s an interesting irony.” The reason is that quite a few people believe HD signals are actually better over-the-air, and with digital technology snow and other interference is less of a problem. “Over-the-air everything is perfect,” said one consumer.
It’s a controversial point, to say the very least. And it hard to imagine the general public returning to the world of over-the-air. Most people, one researcher is quoted as saying, don’t even know they can get HD over-the-air. And many — as Gary Shapiro has pointed out — just don’t care. Still, if there is even a short-term boom in antennas, this is a rare bit of good news for the beleagured broadcast industry.
Perhaps rotary-dial phones will come back next…
Here are two new data points in a discussion Jerry and I had back in September: will the Internet kill TV, and if so what will Internet-based TV look like?
First, Matthew Ingrahm points out Prom Queen a web-only soap opera that’s released in daily 90-second segments and has apparently racked up 5 million total viewers over the last month.
Second, Rob Hyndman points to the TEDTalks video series. As Hyndman points out, there is a long tail of video content out there: shows that individually couldn’t attract a large enough audience to secure a spot on a traditional cable lineup but that collectively could generate significant traffic. As the Internet eliminates the artificial bottlenecks now imposed by the need to organize our video watching into “channels,” the number of different things people watch is poised to explode.
My guess is that our children will have as much trouble imagining a world with only 100 channels as we do imagining a world with only 3. And there’s a good chance our grandchildren won’t even know what a “channel” is.
Jim Henley helps the NYT out by revising their story on Tim O’Reilly’s slightly silly proposal for a blogging code of conduct.
Another sharp insight from Lefsetz:
When you’re a wannabe, when you’re starting out, you give your music away for free. Forget the fact that you want to be paid. The problem is, nobody knows who you are to buy your music. Your free campaign is a way to get traction. Revenue is down the pike!
Kind of like Google. There was no revenue at first. Just the truly great search engine. They got eyeballs, and then they came up with their advertising model. There’s already a business model in music, live, merch and the recorded music sales you can garner, but it pays to look at Google. Google is constantly releasing new products, that are free to use. Google News. Google Earth. Google Video, Blogs and a whole host of other features. You see they want you hooked, they want you to be a member of the club. They’ll figure out how to make money off you later. Funny, but this strategy not only decimated Yahoo, it put a huge dent in Microsoft’s online strategy.
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Via Chris Anderson, Bob Lefsetz provides a reality check to those who think that music distribution needs a “business model”:
I’m positively stunned at the blowback from business regulars about that chap giving his music away for free. Oldsters can’t understand the economics!
I’ll clue you in, THERE ARE NONE!
This is your worst nightmare. People who can follow their dream on sweat equity. Who with their computer and the money from their day job or mommy and daddy can compete with you. It’s like the North Vietnamese, all our military might couldn’t defeat individuals who would fight to the death. Same deal in Iraq.
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During our TLF happy hour last week (you can listen to the “live-from-the-bar” podcast here!), I got into a debate with some of my TLF colleagues about the future of physical versus non-physical media. I was making the argument that the impending death of physical media at the hands of intangible, digital storage has been greatly exaggerated. One of the points I made was that some people just love to “kick the tires” of their media and have something to look at and store on a shelf, whether it be a CD, a DVD, photo albums, a book or anything else. Even though I’m increasingly an all-digital storage guy like most of my TLF colleagues, there are still a lot of people out there who think different than us and prefer the old way of doing things. (I wrote about all this at greater length here).
But there’s another reason that physical media has a future: A lot of people just don’t give a damn about digital technology and the Internet at all. Really, it’s true! Just check out the results from this recent survey by Park Associates:
A little under one-third of U.S. households have no Internet access and do not plan to get it, with most of the holdouts seeing little use for it in their lives, according to a survey released on Friday. Park Associates, a Dallas-based technology market research firm, said 29 percent of U.S. households, or 31 million homes, do not have Internet access and do not intend to subscribe to an Internet service over the next 12 months.
The second annual National Technology Scan conducted by Park found the main reason potential customers say they do not subscribe to the Internet is because of the low value to their daily lives they perceive rather than concerns over cost. Forty-four percent of these households say they are not interested in anything on the Internet, versus just 22 percent who say they cannot afford a computer or the cost of Internet service, the survey showed. [emphasis added]
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Ars has a typically exhaustive review of Windows Vista. The short version: Microsoft has now achieved technological parity with Mac OS X, circa 2001, by implementing features (vector-based graphics, high-level object-oriented APIs, separating UI design from code) that were first introduced by NEXTSTEP in 1989. Interestingly, even if NeXT had patented these technologies, it probably wouldn’t have mattered much because the relevant patents would be on the verge of expiring by now.
Matt does a sensible post on the merit of more liberal immigration policies for high-skilled workers, and receives a barrage of criticism from his readers. Some of them are just economic illiterates who believe that importing too many brown people will destroy America’s middle class. But the really galling comments are those from self-serving engineers like “Dave” who can’t stomach the thought of having to compete on a level playing field with people swarthier than themselves:
Because if you can’t trust business to only use H-1B visas only when there are no other qualified workers and not as a weapon to drive down salaries who can you trust.
As an engineer, I can tell you that when many more visas started to be issued in the late 90’s, engineering salaries stagnated. Even as were told that there was a labor shortage for skilled workers, I knew many engineers who were laid off and could not find jobs. At the same time, the company I worked for more or less stopped hiring American engineers in favor of H-1B applicants.
I’m really tired of someone who has zero chance of losing his job in favor of a cheaper labor lecturing those who are on what a wonderful world it would then be.
Poor baby.
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.