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goer.org: Journal

January 22, 2010: Prying Up Rocks, Shining Flashlights

"I can't believe you like money too! We should hang out." - Frito, Idiocracy

With Microsoft's launch of Bing, we finally have someone in the marketplace who is able to match Google dollar for dollar, both on the tech side and on the business side. This is having plenty of ripple effects [cough]. Anyway, one interesting facet of this story is that it is forcing the tech press to pay more attention to how search market share works. Heck, with Microsoft moving so aggressively to win back deals from Google, some of these stories are even turning out to be kind of sexy!

The tech press definitely deserves some sympathy here, because deal distribution stories are a fundamentally a hard story to report.

• They're about boring sales guys, not exciting new technology. It's not a very heroic narrative.
• The effects of these deals are shifted in time. Deals made two, three, four years ago are just having their major effects felt now.
• The effects of these deals are subtle and difficult for outsiders to track. The press only has access to aggregate data from third parties. Only companies with search engines have access to the real, raw, data, and we don't share it.
• Understanding the real importance of distribution deals requires the reader (and reporter!) to make a huge cognitive leap: namely, that almost everyone else in the world is pretty vague on the concept of a browser, or a website, or a search engine. For most internet users, these concepts are all mushed together. Which is why unlike you, 98% of the population can't or won't change their search engine preferences.

I think any techie can relate to that last issue. We've all had our own proverbial "Aunt Ida", a happy, intelligent, fully functional member of society who nevertheless has major trouble getting online, reading her email, etc. So we sort of get that first bit at least. Here's the thing that we all have a hard time understanding at a deep, fundamental level, because we live in the tech echo chamber: everybody is Aunt Ida. We are a rounding error.

So with that in mind, it's good to see more light being shined on this corner of the industry, and it's very interesting to watch the press starting to wrap their heads around this stuff. Still, this process is happening in fits and starts, and in some instances I think we have... a ways to go. Here, for example, is CNBC on the Bing/Apple discussions:

"Got an intriguing email from a knowledgeable source very familiar with search dynamics involving Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo for that matter.

...

Third point: Every time you do a Google search from Apple's iPhone Safari and a user clicks an ad, Apple gets a payment. Microsoft, this source tells me, is willing to throw much more money to Apple to ensure that they displace Google as the default engine..."

CNBC needed secret inside sources to let them in on this? Incredible. But even more jaw-dropping was the report from Search Engine Land. When reading the following passage, keep in mind that Search Engine Land is widely considered to be the premier source for news about the search industry:

"... Becoming the default search provider on 70 million (roughly) iPhone OS devices would be an enormous boost for Bing. (One question: is Microsoft offering Apple money?)"

Headdesk. Oh, well. Until those guys catch up, there's always Kara Swisher...

Posted by Evan Goer on Jan. 22, 2010 at 8:17 AM | Comments (0)

December 31, 2009: Tars Tarkas Lives!

First, it's interesting to compare Robert Charles Wilson's Bios with Avatar. Both stories are about an alien Gaia ecosphere, and both are about Gaia violently rejecting human invaders. But here the similarity ends. Unlike Avatar, Bios cannot be characterized as, "What These People Need is a Honky". No, in the world of Bios, insufficiently advanced honkies (and non-honkies) hemorrhage and dissolve into goo. Take that, imperialists!

Second, there's no doubt that James Cameron's amazing special effects technology is pretty amazingly amazing. I'm hoping it will be licensed soon. After all, if you want a movie with:

• Fantastical terrain
• Giant proud alien warriors
• Nasty multi-limbed beasts
• Nearly-naked space babes
• Swashbuckling adventure
• One brave honky saving the world

Then why the heck are we bothering with Avatar? Onward to John Carter of Mars!

Posted by Evan Goer on Dec. 31, 2009 at 3:26 PM | Comments (2)

November 14, 2009: Marriage is Work

When I was a single guy, I was given to understand that once you got married, your weekend would be taken over by the dreaded "Honey do" list. Fix this, clean that, go to the store for X, Y, and Z, fix this other thing... Sounded pretty scary!

Well, fast forward to today. This Saturday's Honey Do list consists of the following:

• take out trash and recycle
• fold and put away clothes

I get the feeling Sarah isn't bringing her A Game.

Update: After seeing this post, Sarah added "Dishes" to the list. That'll learn me!

Posted by Evan Goer on Nov. 14, 2009 at 9:17 AM | Comments (7)

October 29, 2009: The Gilmore Wire

My wife and I have been flipping back and forth between DVDs of Gilmore Girls and The Wire. Sometimes this gets a little confusing...

Lorelai Gilmore	Life always spinning out of control. Makes poor relationship choices. Hates all authority figures.	Jimmy McNulty
Rory Gilmore	Smart, ambitious, wonkish, and idealistic. Dangerous debating skills. Has a lot of growing up to do.	Tommy Carcetti
Emily Gilmore	Community powerbroker. Enjoys the spoils of playing The Game. A consummate streetfighter; never surrenders.	Avon Barksdale
Richard Gilmore	A businessman above all else. Expects high standards from his co-workers. Not afraid to shiv someone who gets in the way.	Stringer Bell
Paris Geller	Smart, ambitious, and efficient. Extremely direct, almost to a fault. Very annoying, particularly when right.	Cedric Daniels
Sookie St. James	Quirky, funny, and earthy. Loves food. Sometimes a help, sometimes a hindrance.	Jay Landsman
Lane Kim	Trying to escape a miserable homelife. Career choice not accepted by family. Should probably avoid dating boys.	Kima Greggs
Michel Gerard	Fastidious and highly fussy. The best-dressed character on the show. Highly dangerous when crossed.	Brother Mouzone
Luke Danes	Street smart and skilled at crafts. A man of few words. A fine partner, but not fun to be around when cranky.	Lester Freamon
Dean Forester	Means well, but not terribly bright. Torn by family loyalties. A patsy for the more powerful characters on the show.	D'Angelo Barksdale
Taylor Doose	Wealthy and successful community leader. Knows the rules inside and out. Always willing to drive a hard bargain.	Proposition Joe
Mrs. Kim	Has a long memory. Loves raking subordinates over the coals. Not someone you want to fuck with.	William Rawls
Jess Mariano	Impulsive and aggressive, but not really a great fighter. Charming only up to a point. Not as quite as smart as he thinks he is.	Bodie
Kirk	Weirdly charismatic. Always trying out new business opportunities. Desperately needs professional help.	Bubbles
Logan Huntzberger	Young, wealthy, surrounded by an entourage. Loved by the ladies. A narcissist and probable sociopath.	Marlo Stanfield
Omar	Nobody on Gilmore Girls is as cool as Omar.	Omar

Posted by Evan Goer on Oct. 29, 2009 at 9:20 PM | Comments (4)

October 7, 2009: At Least I Minored in PPOWER

Via Timothy Burke, I ran across Course Hero, a Web 2.0 startup whose mission is:

Accelerating and maximizing educational breakthroughs ("Ah-Ha" moments) of students from inquiry to Course Hero Responses via an open, best-of-breed content sharing model.

Or in other words, a site for collecting student notes and papers. Now, Prof. Burke isn't particularly worried about term paper download sites in general. (He has an excellent defense strategy — don't hand out boring, easily-copied assignments.) However, in the case of Course Hero he observes,

"What you find in the folders for Swarthmore is a bunch of junk pulled straight out of specific folders on the server, with the server folder titles on it, most of them connected to the oldest layers of our web presence. Almost none of the stuff in there has got anything to do with actual courses taught here: it’s some old .pdf handouts, some faculty c.v.s, a few papers or publications by faculty. Useless to anyone, especially to some would-be plagiariser at another college who is hunting for a paper to rip off. It’s a lot of noise. But seriously, don’t even try to pretend that this is all coming from user submissions, that’s laughable."

It seems like a bad idea In These Economic Times (TM) to launch a site whose business model is obviated by typing “site:swarthmore.edu {query}” into Yahoo! or Google or Bing. But I'm not an MBA or a VC, so what do I know.

Anyway, I was particularly tickled not by the bad content, but the bad metadata. Here's the landing page for my alma mater:

Harvey Mudd College) is a private university in California. Harvey Mudd College has over 738 undergraduate students. The top 10 departments are CS, ENG, MATH, LIT, E, FOOL, PPOWER, WIN, WMF, and WINW.

What an idiot I was to major in FOOL!

Posted by Evan Goer on Oct. 07, 2009 at 8:04 AM | Comments (3)

September 27, 2009: Videos I'd Like to See

Earlier this summer, the Google Chrome team produced a video where they went around asking regular citizens what a browser was. Turns out that about eight percent of the people know the answer, while the rest have no idea.

Cue mockery, laughter, sadness, feigned outrage, and even the occasional reasonable response.

I've never liked Jay Leno-style man-on-the-street video interviews; it's easy to make regular people with no TV experience look bad. But one thing is clear: this video has legs, and the "8 percent" figure will probably be cited in blogs and articles and conferences for years to come. If this ends up driving home the point that hectoring ordinary people to "get a better browser" is a waste of time, then it's hard to argue with the overall merit of the project. Remember kids: users do not change their defaults. That's why it's all about the Benjamins distribution deals.

Here is the video I would like to see. The scene: a succession of sleek Silicon Valley or NYC webdev offices filled (in no particular order) with beanbags, contemporary art, and twentysomethings with messenger bags. The questions:

1. Why do we have seasons?
2. Why is the sky blue?

Okay, I'll admit that I'm cheating a little on Question #1, since I've already seen the famous 90s era video of new Harvard graduates flubbing that question. Unfortunately I can't find that clip on YouTube or any other major video sites. Chalk this one up to the Vast Harvard Conspiracy (Truth Suppression Division).

As for Question #2, I only have my instinct to go on, but I suspect the results would be equally dismal. Note that we're looking for layman-friendly answers here. References to Rayleigh scattering are admired but not required.

Posted by Evan Goer on Sep. 27, 2009 at 3:40 PM | Comments (7)

August 3, 2009: The Zen of Structured Data

A disciple came to a temple to speak with a master ontologist. "Master," the disciple said, "teach me how to describe all existence!"

The master handed the disciple a pebble. "First, start by describing this small stone." The disciple went away and sat under a bridge by a stream. For six days and nights he struggled to create a taxonomy for the pebble. On the seventh day, he returned to the temple.

"Master," the disciple said, "I have devised the perfect taxonomy for this small stone." He unrolled an entire scroll at the master's feet, covered on both sides with arcane markings, graphs, and code.

The master then struck the disciple on the head with a stick. The disciple was then enlightened.

Posted by Evan Goer on Aug. 03, 2009 at 9:46 PM | Comments (2)

July 13, 2009: Marriage Is What Brings Us Together Today

Photographer credit: Jeff Cylwik

Posted by Evan Goer on Jul. 13, 2009 at 12:36 PM | Comments (10)

May 13, 2009: Perhaps today IS a good day to talk about Star Trek!

Ok, enough waiting — if The Avocado thinks it's time to jaw about Star Trek, by gum, it's time.

• Agreed with Timothy Burke, the movie was pretty goddamn excellent. Consistently exciting and usually very funny.
• I was surprised and delighted that they left Old Spock alive at the end instead of killing him off. As Burke points out, having Old Spock in the universe creates all sorts of problems: he has foreknowledge of all kinds of threatening species and problems that the folks in the 23rd century didn't know about, plus he's a brilliant scientist from 130 years in the future. Frankly, I think these are excellent problems for a science fiction saga to have, and I only hope they don't forget about these problems around the time movie #3 or #4 is ready to go.
• Also, a big thank-you to the Star Trek scriptwriters for not destroying the Golden Gate Bridge.
• The scene in the elevator between Spock and Uhura was excellent. I want to know more about Uhura, and why she would want to deal with the reality of dating Spock — as opposed to the abstract appeal of dating Spock that fandom has been chewing over for forty years.
• Bad biology: The giant red worm/insect is awesome looking, but why is it red? And wouldn't it freeze to death? And why go after Kirk, when it already has a substantial meal?
• Bad engineering: What's with the crazy system of pipes and water in the engineering room? Is this a shout-out to Galaxy Quest? "Why are there chompy-crushy things in here! There's no reason we should have to run through chompy-crushy things! Who designed this? It makes no sense!"
• Bad physics: I'm actually not too offended by the ridiculous black hole physics. Star Trek has consistently treated black holes as magical plot devices, so this is okay. (Though if the black hole was powerful enough to collapse a planet, why did they have to bother drilling to the core?)
• Worse physics: A supernova that "threatened the galaxy?" Oo-kay. And did the supernova happen to Romulus's star or a neighboring star? If the former, there would be no time to evacuate the planet. If the latter, you would have a few years to evacuate everybody. And what exactly a black hole would do to reverse / disperse a supernova?
• Eye-gougingly bad physics: Look, transverse velocity exists, even when you are jumping from a magical flying dragon 23rd century shuttlecraft.
• Loved the TOS sound effects.
• It seems that modern SF franchises subscribe to the "the timeline wants to heal itself" philosophy of time travel. You can make massive changes — kill people, blow up Vulcan, even! — but incredibly unlikely events will conspire to land the entire TOS crew together anyway, in nearly the same state they were in the other timeline. See also the Terminator franchise, where you can't kill John Connor's mom because you'll just end up spawning John Connor, and you can't avert the apocalypse, you can only move it around in time.
• Despite screaming "FIRE EVERYTHING!!!" with gusto, Nero was not, shall we say, the most interesting villain Star Trek has ever seen. I'm not sure we needed a great villain for a movie that's basically about getting the band back together.
• On the other hand: "Hi Christopher. I'm Nero." Hehe!
• If you can get Kirk and Spock on the Narada, why not transport a bunch of armed & armored Starfleet security guards as well? I'm pretty sure "Cupcake" and his buddies could have helped, at least. (In the Star Trek universe, if your enemy is able to transport soldiers over to your ship, you are usually in deep doo-doo.)
• It's interesting to compare the edited trailer dialogue to the lines in the full movie — usually the trailer's dialogue wins. For example, Nero's line in the trailer is, "James T. Kirk was a great man... but that was another life." The full quote in the movie is wordier and not nearly as punchy.
• Also, the trailers' music is better than the movie's music. Unfortunately, the trailer music is not for sale to the public at any price (I checked).
• The final shot before opening credits (Nero's ship crippled, a little trail of hopeful little shuttlecraft creeping away) is brilliant.
• I want to know more about Future Iowa. What are those giant looming barely-visible buildings? What is that giant artificial gouge all about?

Posted by Evan Goer on May. 13, 2009 at 8:15 AM | Comments (8)

April 20, 2009: Sorry, My Amicus Briefs Only Work Against Chaotic Evil

Commenter Harry Lewis, on the Google Books settlement:

The proposed settlement includes a “most favored nation” provision. The parties agree that IF the Authors and Publishers ever come to terms with another party who is scanning books, Google has to get the same deal. That is an anti-competitive provision that will make it impossible for anyone else ever to underprice Google. If the Court adds its signature to the deal, it is sanctifying the creation of a monopoly.

Driven by despair, or perhaps fragile hope, my old classmate Sam Mikes responds with poetry:

The law condemns the man or woman
who steals the goose from off the common
but lets the greater villain loose
who steals the common from the goose.

One thing is clear: Brewster Kahle is going to need all the help he can get if he's going to slug it out with Google. So what are our most prominent knights of the commons doing to assist us in our hour of need? I sauntered on over to Larry Lessig's place to see what he thought about the original settlement in October.

Oops, looks like Lessig's in the tank.

Maybe the EFF... hmm, no. They're a little more measured, but they don't seem all fired up to go after Google either.

Being a Paladin of the law is tough work, I guess.

Posted by Evan Goer on Apr. 20, 2009 at 8:51 PM | Comments (1)