Category: Culture

Collateral Damage

The US Government yesterday shut down popular file storage site Megaupload (I can’t link to it because the site is down). The Feds have a very well written, 72-page indictment indicating the illegal activity that was going on there and the fact that the stuff pretty well knew that they were making their millions by selling files they didn’t own. That aspect of the case will be covered in court, and, whether or not you agree with the circumstances, it’s not what I want to cover here.

The problem is, of course, that there are tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of users who used Megaupload for perfectly legitimate, legal storage of files. As of yesterday, all their access to those files is gone. Work documents that groups were collaborating on, family photo albums, insurance records, and other valuable documents, now completely unavailable.

Continue reading →

Stop PIPA and SOPA

I have the regrettable honor to live in the congressional district of Lamar Smith, sponsor of the more regrettable SOPA and PIPA bills. Here is the letter I sent him this morning:

Dear Sir,

SOPA and PIPA are bad laws that fundamentally affect the freedoms enjoyed by Americans. I do not want to see the USA using the same techniques as China and Iran to control our citizens. Moreover, I have worked in the Internet industry—previously, as an engineering manager for Yahoo!, and currently as a software architect for Rackspace hosting—and I can tell you that these laws, if passed, would create huge burdens on providers while actually doing very little to stop piracy.

I encourage you to drop your support for these laws. No businesses have ever been successful in the long term by using the legal system to repress competition, and these acts will simply NOT stop the mechanisms used, nor the motivations for, sharing illegal content. The solution to intellectual property infringement is NOT to place a huge burden on businesses to enforce someone else’s rights, and I, for one, am appalled as the loss of freedoms that have occurred in the USA to such an extent that such laws could even be conceived.

Yours sincerely,
Glen Campbell

Pile up the photos

PhotoPile.me is a really cool site that lets you view all of your Instagram photos at once. Ok, maybe not all of them, but a nice big pile of them that’s really quite striking. Here’s mine (click through to see the live site):

Very cool (at least if you use Instagram).

Remembering Steve

Steve Jobs passed away yesterday, and the tributes from the world were immediate and overwhelming. He’s been called the greatest inventor since Thomas Edison, a visionary, and even Bill Gates said that it was an “insanely great honor” to have known him. It’s hard to imagine another individual whose life has touched the world in quite the way, or to the same extent, than Steve Jobs.

IBM may have made the “personal computer,” but it was Steve Jobs who made the computer personal. Personally, I cannot imagine how the world would be different without the effect his singular vision has had on how computers and machines interact with each other. He was perpetually pushing us to “think different” and to do things better than we ever imagined. The list of his successful products are being listed all over the web.

But I’m also interested in his failures; if ever there was a person who learned from his mistakes, it was Steve Jobs. Do you recall the “Cube,” the beautiful but feeble Macintosh? He learned that beauty was not enough to make a good product; it also had to have performance.

The original “iPod Phone,” made in conjunction with Motorola, was a joke. With a crappy user interface and limited to only holding 100 songs (can you imagine?), this worst seller forced Jobs to confront the real problems in the phone business, resulting, ultimately, in the iPhone, the “smart phone” that changed the entire industry.

The Apple TV was, and still is, one of those “little projects” that Apple still plays with. It has its enthusiasts, but it’s never really caught on in the wider populace. Yet Apple keeps tinkering with it, convinced that there’s “something there.” Will Apple ever get it right?

So much product development consists of tiny, incremental changes. Much of it is based upon user feedback; this is good, but users don’t think outside the box. They don’t imagine things in a vastly different way than they already exist. When all personal computers had a command line and a 24×80 character display, Jobs envisioned (with the help of Xerox PARC) a fully graphical user interface in the hands of every single computer user. While the iPod wasn’t the first music player with a hard disk, it was the first to offer an online store, with the full participation of record labels, where users could simply purchase and download music as opposed to ripping MP3′s from their CDs. When every computer “had” to have a floppy disk drive, Jobs sold the iMac without one. (Side note: when my wife and I got our MacBook Airs, she insisted on getting the plug-in CD drive. We’ve never used it.)

The world is a better place because of you, Steve, and we will miss you.

Google+ Encircles the Technosphere

Google Plus

Google Plus has launched, initiating a flurry of interest among the bleeding-edge technophiles of Silicon Valley (the metaphorical one that spans the globe, not just the literal one in California). It’s ignited a frenzy of commentary and participation not seen since, well, not really seen before—few services have started with such furor and immediate adoption.

Some of those A-list technophiles have given up their blogs, simply redirecting their personal domain to their Google+ profile page. Others have claimed that Google+ is the “Facebook killer,” and still others are ambivalent. In reality, of course, much of this is hype, and one of two things will happen: either Google will continue to build out G+ so that it truly is competitive with services like Facebook and FriendFeed, or else people will come to their senses, retract their statements, and write cautionary blog posts on the dangers of getting caught up in a feeding frenzy.

Some commentators add additional hype, claiming that Google+ is “not a social network” and that Google’s announcement emphasized “sharing” and not the “social network” nature of the site. This is, of course, baloney. Google Plus is nothing but a social network at the moment; it has no other features beyond those required to connect people together and group them. This is better known (in some circles [see what I did there?]) as a “social graph,” which is exactly what Facebook and LinkedIn maintain on their users.

What’s really important about Google+, however, is what it’s missing, rather than what it has, at least for the time being.

Continue reading →

It’s not all about the code.

Programmer

While in California last week, I had lunch with a colleague from my days at Yahoo! In fact, I was the manager who hired this person, and I’ve watched him mature from a “wet behind the ears” (but very talented) n00b to a highly-skilled, valuable engineer.

One of the things that indicates maturity in a software developer is the ability to interact with others, to provide feedback when necessary, and to seek advice when it’s needed. This individual had been the technical lead on a project and was having his own problems working with some of the more junior members of the team. The junior members appears to be somewhat intimidated when asked about their work by the older team member—this is not uncommon, since a junior developer is often unsure of his or her work and feels self-conscious about showing it off.

In addition, if the team leader simply “drops in” and asks how things are going, it’s often likely that the junior programmer’s code is not in a set state for demonstrating. For example, the programmer may have been trying to isolate a bug, and has just put in a dozen or so lines of bugs, trying to determine which path the code is taking—not exactly the best time to show it off to your leader!

Continue reading →

How to lose friends and piss off customers

Continental FAIL

I have been a huge fan of Continental Airlines since the early 1990s. I have flown hundreds of thousands of miles on them, and I’ve encouraged friends, coworkers, and family members to fly them, too. For years, they had a stellar on-time record and a great frequent-flyer program. But, more importantly, they always treated me well, personally. They at least acted like they cared about me and my problems.

The first time I ever flew First Class was when a Continental gate agent took pity on me arriving, wet, grouchy, and late, to a flight at Newark International. She gave me a complimentary upgrade and it helped me to relax and look forward to the weekend.

I lived in Europe for five years and all of my trans-Atlantic flights were on Continental. When my wife had to go to an unexpected funeral, Continental helped to arrange the last-minute travel.

Today, the airline managed to reverse twenty years’ of good will in a matter of minutes.

I’m booked on a return flight from San Jose to San Antonio, with a change of planes in Houston. My father (who lives in Beaumont, TX) went into the hospital yesterday morning with some broken ribs and a subdural hematoma after a fall. I talked with my brother (who lives in Houston) and he offered to put me up for the night so that I could visit my Dad in the morning. I have tickets for the Houston Astros game in Houston on Sunday afternoon, so it seemed logical that I could stay with him and drive back with my wife after the game.

Continue reading →