The Unending IM Network Clusterfuck

I didn’t realise just how bad it’d got until my brother innocently asked today, “So how does this AIM work? Does it just do what Skype does?”

My response:

Yeah it’s almost the same as Skype. Skype’s just the new kid on the block in a long line of instant messaging networks. People in NZ use MSN Messenger a lot. Before MSN, ICQ Messenger was really popular. AOL started their own, called AIM, and then bought ICQ and merged those two networks. There’s a Yahoo Messenger too. Oh and Google’s one, GTalk. All the networks support text messaging, voice chats, and video chats, but only amongst people on the same network.

You’ll find heaps of Kiwis and younger people on MSN, heaps of Americans and old timers on AIM/ICQ, an occasional straggler on Yahoo, people who use GMail are often on GTalk, and a growing bunch of people are on Skype. AIM and Skype seem to be the most common for business purposes.

If you start chatting to enough people online you end up needing an instant messaging client that knows how to talk on all the different networks. Otherwise you have to install every damn separate client and it just becomes a mess of different programmes.

For now you’ll do alright with AIM and Skype. Those two cover the most people. But you can guarantee you’ll know people on MSN. Oh, and let’s not forget Facebook chat, the newest kid on the block. *sigh* It’s all a fucking mess.

This hyperconnected world teaches us something about our own exceptionality: that it is illusory. Amongst a group of ten you might special, talented, a shining individual. Amongst a thousand you might still hold some vague unique appeal. Amongst the tens of millions who potentially make up our socially connected few degrees of separation these days? You are ordinary – likely less than.

Bit of a kick in the nuts really, if you grew up in a much smaller world, as most of us did.

What good then to take from this? There’s people just next to you, in the same room, town, city, who know you and care. There’s still local uniqueness to share and enjoy. And no matter how big the world gets, no matter how many potential people to know out there, you’ll still have the same number of good, close, unique, special friends. Maybe spread around the world, maybe different accents, customs, but they’re still your small, personal, caring circle.

So fuck the need to be something truely special. You already are to those who matter. Unless you’re kind of a dick, of course.

On Beenie Man

Where should the line be?

This recent fuss over Beenie Man at The Big Day Out has raised the issues again of what levels of bigotry should be tolerated, at what point that tolerance becomes tacit approval, and what should be done about it.

It seems the debate should most likely be framed in terms of how best to reduce the bigotry, to educate the hateful, to change minds. If not that, then the lesser goal of simply avoiding offense? To hide the bigotry away so as to not upset?

The latter would be putting makeup, concealer, over the scar. The former would be to heal the scar. But not all scars can be healed. So perhaps both goals should be potentially on the table, case depending.

In the case of Beenie Man, it is my understanding that considerable pressure has been put on him in the past to renounce his violent, homophobic lyrics. That pressure paid off, at least superficially. Although beneath the surface it appears his bigotry still simmers.

Will more negative reinforcement provoke more progress towards acceptance on his part? Will letting him off the hook after his largely transparent concessions allow his latent bigotry to fester? And what of the offense to those he’s claimed should die, should we tolerate his remaining hate?

I can only answer the last question with any authority. It would offend me greatly, as the defense and support of Beenie Man within the NZ music industry already has.

From what I can see, the support of Beenie Man seems similar to the famous issue of the South African rugby tour during apartheid. Many were deeply opposed to the tour on various grounds, yet many supported it, believing (amongst other things) that sports and politics were separate and one should not interfere with the other.

Beenie Man has repeatedly said that he will not perform his homophobic songs, and thus for many the issue is settled. His politics have been separated from his music, so the reasoning would go. And I think that argument would carry weight, were it also true that he had honestly renounced his anti gay stance – he has not. The cat’s out of the bag – we know what he really thinks and we know he still largely thinks it, if not now publicly saying it.

But what of the other questions? Will uninviting him teach him a further lesson with positive results, as it has done in the past? Or would modified tactics – embracement and encouragement, positive reenforcement rather than negative – now be the most effective.

I don’t believe I can make any informed attempt to answer those questions. Common sense and gut driven beliefs are so commonly wrong on these issues. My own personal appeals to such would be as empty and insulting as those of the various NZ music industry personalities who have already spoken their minds. On such matters I think there is a wealth of wisdom available in the social sciences, and would prefer the insights to come from there, not from industry personalities whose grasp on dealing with bigotry is no more authoritative than my own.

So yes, all that I can say is that Beenie Man’s lyrics, his continued belief in them, and the NZ music industry’s support of him are offensive and hurtful to me personally, and knowing that I am not alone in that, on those grounds I don’t believe that Beenie Man’s presence or performance in NZ would be a good thing.

hatoyama’s jeans

W3C and WHATWG – The Damage Done

The lead author of XHTML had some very strong words to say on the state and direction of W3C now that it’s been taken over by browser implementors.

I’ve had a fair amount of vitriol to say about the topic in the past. I recall when Hixie first announced WHATWG. His rationale stunk of “It’s too hard! Let’s polish the turd instead!” There were various words thrown in to try and convince himself and others that the intentions were more noble, but at the end of the day it was the single most visionless and backward thing I’d seen come from a browser implementor (excluding Microsoft’s output, of course). And then all the other browser implementors jumped on the bandwagon, covering up their nearly audible “Luxury! We could churn this out!” with transparent proclamations about how it was a better direction. Sure, better direction for implementors, but not for the future of the web.

In the past few months I’ve seen almost universal praise and excitement about HTML5 about the web. I’d given up hope that anyone was still seeing the bigger picture and the greater goals that once existed within and around the W3C. So it’s very comforting to see someone of such authority still shouting about the tragedy.

Fantastic flatting advice in my apartment’s rule book:

Cooking devices and eating utensils used by other person must not be washed. If you once wash them used by other person, it becomes bad and wrong habits.

I wish I’d applied this rule all through my flatting youth.

And here I am on WordPress. It’s all feeling rather cyclical. A long time ago I started a blog – plain old hand edited HTML. Eventually I gave up hand editing and started to use Blogger. Which turned out to be less than satisfying after a while, so I built my own rather basic blogging system. Then it all got rather out of hand.

Now here I am back at a hosted blog service, having migrated from a hand edited static HTML blog. I think this time round I’ll try and keep things a little more low key.

So Apple’s iTunes Store is going 100% DRM free for music. Contrary to general public consensus, I think this isn’t the best outcome and find it a touch disappointing.

Why, you might ask? Because DRM is not inherently anti-consumer, and stood to potentially benefit all parties if executed correctly. That the implementations have never converged upon anything that’s been broadly satisfactory to both consumers and producers (or rather, the middle men) is an industry failing — no, the failing of multiple industries — to come together and intelligently work it out.

It is entirely technologically possible for DRM to be designed and implemented in such a way that does not restrict the consumer from doing all the things that they should fairly be able to do, and at the same time provide the producers greater security, visibility, and control over their distribution. It could have, and should have happened.

But what we’ve ended up with is impassioned consumer backlash (albeit from a not representative minority) due to the implementations failing to allow consumers the freedom they fairly expect, industry non-response, and now the complete failure of the technology to stick.

I don’t know enough of what’s happened behind closed doors to know who is ultimately to blame, but I suspect it’s a combination of the music industry making unrealistic demands (expecting stronger security than can be achieved this early in the game), and implementers failing to defend the consumer’s position strongly enough. Had greater concessions to fair use been made, at the temporary expense of control and security, we wouldn’t now be seeing industry wide capitulation. By wanting too much control too soon, the music industry has lost their chance at any at all.

Disappointing. But perhaps the upside is that some lessons may have been learned, and if they get a second chance the same mistakes might not be made again. Wishful thinking?

Apple’s new iPhoto makes me happy. It’s so fun playing with new pieces of emerging technology. Not that face recognition is new, but its entrance into the consumer market is relatively recent. I know at least Google beat them to the punch, with its inclusion in Picasa. Although I’ve yet to be able to take Picasa seriously on other grounds (aesthetics, editing functionality, the lackluster Picasa web offering).

I think this is one of the things that Apple have a real (and rare) mastery of — taking emerging technologies, simplifying them, and delivering them to the consumer in an easily digestible form. When others try they more often either expose too much of the technology’s workings, fail to accurately identify its core benefits (and strip away the chaff), or simply fumble the interface.

Apple’s continued success is not, to my eyes, based directly on better technology (although they have a pretty good track record for innovation too), but on understanding the consumer and delivering desirable products that achieve the most natural fit, rather than putting the onus on the user to adapt.

Hopefully this new face recognition toy will stick with their trend of getting these things right! Can’t wait to play.