Rubénerd!

Jeremy Zawodny, one of the tech bloggers I respect the most (and one of the first people I added to my Bloglines account all those years ago) has posted a list of possible scenarios and outcomes of a Microsoft Yahoo merger. I'll try not to blatantly plagiarise his material, but suffice to say he says the following are possible:

1. Microsoft does buy Yahoo
2. Another suiter (or suitors) will make a bid, forcing the price up for Microsoft
3. Yahoo outsources it's advertising and search business to Google
4. Yahoo gets in on the DoubleClick deal and dominates visual advertising
5. Yahoo rejects the offer outright, back to the status quo

I know what is good for their business probably doesn't correlate with the outcomes I'd like to see, but if I were given the chance to choose the outcomes I'd prefer, I'd arrange them in this order:

1. Yahoo outsources it's advertising and search business to Google
2. Yahoo rejects the offer outright, back to the status quo
3. Yahoo gets in on the DoubleClick deal and dominates visual advertising
4. Another suiter (or suitors) will make a bid, forcing the price up for Microsoft
5. Microsoft does buy Yahoo

Yahoo is in trouble and does need help with their core search and advertising businesses, but I look at their track record on acquisitions and how much respect I see they still have with most people, and I can't help but think a merger with Microsoft would do them any good.

Microsoft desperately wants to whip Google and they see Yahoo as the easiest way to do it, given their failure rate and return on investment on all their online ventures, but what's in it for Yahoo? A possible clash of business cultures? Disillusioned workers who don't want to work for the evil empire? The dropping of services?

Personally I see Yahoo as more of a diversified internet services company, not a services company that's dominated by search with other services on the side such as Google. This is why I'm very concerned with people who simply cite Yahoo's slipping market share for search and conclude that they're failing. Flickr for example is one of the most respected, if not the most respected, photo storage and sharing sites, and I don't know of any nerd or heavy computer user who doesn't at least have a del.icio.us account.

Mmm, Swedish meatballs.

Anyway with Jeremy's list as a starting point I've compiled my own short list of possible outcomes:

Google and Yahoo enter a partnership

Either as a delay tactic against Microsoft, or using it as a "white horse defense" against a hostile takeover.

eBay and Yahoo merge

Skype and auctions somehow integrated with search and existing services such as Flickr could be quite interesting, and their business cultures are far more compatible. eBay does has far less cash though, it would have to be a merger not a takeover.

Yahoo is purchased by News Corporation

Replaces Google as the default search on MySpace. Shudder!

Yahoo is purchased by Time Warner

I've always said merging Time Warner with an IT company would be a brilliant idea, they really should do it one of these days. Heck, it's not as if they've ever tried before.

Yahoo's goes bust

Their share price and market share continues to slide, and they eventually go into Chapter 11 Microsoft and Google swirl like vultures to pick up the pieces

An angel investor

The Flying Spaghetti Monster swoops down with his noodley appendage and provides investment just in the nick of time.

You can read Jeremy Zawodny's original post here.

ASIDE: Within five minutes of this post going live I received a message from Vannesa Choi in Taiwan saying that I can filter out a lot of Rails related results by specifying eRuby specifically instead. I still get lots of Rails results, but certainly much less than before. Xie Xie :)

I've been learning Ruby for a while now and have started moving from Perl to it in recent months as my primary tool for solving most of my day to day problems (alas, just with computers, real life is the next step!). With all I've picked up I've now decided to use Ruby in web development and replace my PHP powered sites other people have coded over to an eRuby FastCGI powered site I code myself (I got part of the way through a similar project a few months back, but life got in the way again and stalled it!). What was the quote that Google put on it's Google Code adverts? "Computer Scientists don't adapt other people's code, they create their own!"

Anyway the problem I'm having with finding quality documentation online for Ruby web development is the exact opposite problem I had when I first learned about CGI using Perl back in 2004: there's too much of it! But in an ironic twist, just as the sailor stranded at sea in a lifeboat can't drink the water despite it being all around her, all the documentation I'm finding is all about Ruby on Rails! Even the O'Reilly book on Ruby proudly proclaims it to be the language that powers Rails!

Virtually every search I perform for Ruby development in books, online or even talking to people, whether it's for MySQL connectivity, FastCGI or sessions always brings up Ruby on Rails but not Ruby! I don't want the triple chocolate sundae with nuts and fudge, I want the wholesome Ruby goodness you can only get from eating the plain but smooth vanilla ice cream. From the tub. With a spoon. In my pajamas. That's a funny mental picture.

Now don't get me wrong, there are some good websites on Ruby web development such as Hiveminds in the UK, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm fed up with seeing what appears to be an excellent page detailing an aspect of Ruby web development only to discover that they're talking about Rails! Argh!

I guess one could ask why someone who wants to do web development in Ruby doesn't want to use Rails, and I could spend all day typing here explaining why, but Hiveminds puts it very eloquently:

One of the most troublesome of the Rails drawbacks for me and the reason that I decided to go with eRuby is the that Rails was taking up all my time with Rails problems and troubleshooting. I was learning a lot about using Rails but not much of the Ruby programming language. Someone suggested we go with CGI instead and while researching this we found eRuby.

eRuby is a much easier way of using, learning and getting the power of Ruby on to a website. With eRuby deployment is a easy as uploading your files to your web server. This is to say deploying an application or webpage is no harder in eRuby than it's counterparts like PHP or ASP. I honestly believe that if Ruby popularity is going to increase that eRuby will be the reason. Unlike Rails eRuby has a very shallow learning curve and does not require a lot of effort by web hosting companies to set up.

Now just in case you've got the wrong idea, I personally don't have anything against Rails and have even used it myself for a few projects, but for most of what I do it's overkill and when I'm looking for just Ruby material it can get tedious when you get superfluous information. But I am weird right?

If you haven't been following the latest Apple controversy surrounding the update to the iPhone, essentially a bunch of users have been hacking their devices to allow them to be used on other mobile phone networks and if said users updated their phones to the latest 1.1.1 version of the software provided by Apple it caused all sorts of havoc. It's been a pretty hot button issue because it raises several questions:

• As the owner of an iPhone, should I be able to do with it as I choose?
• Should I be able to use other carriers?
• Seeing as unlocking phones is not illegal under the US's DMCA laws, is Apple pulling a swifty doing this?

And herein is why I could probably never bring myself to own an iPhone, at least in the context of American or European use. As a user increasingly of open source and open standards based software because I'm paranoid about future-proofing myself, I see what Apple are doing to this device and it really rubs me the wrong way.

I know Apple are under contract obligation with AT&T in the United States and other mobile phone companies in Europe, but to me they brought it upon themselves. What I want to know is why did Apple feel compelled to launch this device with only one company in each market. I dismiss all the arguments about the extra functionality needed to get Visual Voicemail working and so forth as pure BS, and I know they get a cut from each iPhone contract that is signed with respective phone carriers, but it still doesn't explain why that would mean they have to limit themselves.

To me they are seriously damaging not only their reputation but also any prospects for stellar future sales by doing all this nonsense. Nokia have even started an advertising campaign leveraging on the iPhone's ridiculous terms of use and closed nature by saying they're open.

As a consumer and an owner of mobile phones since I was in primary school, the concept of phone locking also really irks me because I've never had to put up with it before. I've had half a dozen phones with Singapore Telecom, Maxis in Malaysia and Vodaphone in Australia and none of those handsets prevented me from using other SIM cards in them when I went overseas or even locally. To me locking a phone reeks of pure greed, arrogance and lack of respect for customers.

It will be interesting to see how all this negative publicity affects the iPhone not only in the markets where it's currently available but here in Asia where the closest we can get to one are the videos on Apple's website. Will people think twice now before buying one? Will it be as successful in future markets?

Asia is the world's largest mobile phone market and people here get new ones almost every other month. Phones here are like disposable fashion accessories, or at least in Singapore, South Korea and Japan. If you piss off people here with ridiculous prices or vendor lock-in, it won't be long before a mountain of second hand iPhones flood local eBays and garage sales as people move on to the next thing.

Don't get me wrong I think the iPhone itself is a beautiful device and I can't wait to get in iPod Touch soon for that very reason, I just wish stupid politics wouldn't get involved. It's a crying shame.

EDIT: Screenshot of the iPhone site from my Nokia e61i. Irony anyone?

The fact is the "iPod Classic" is still technically the best iPod, but it has the outdated interface. The "Touch" is a glorified Nano.

- My post on Twitter just before I went to bed at 03:25

Just finished watching the live text and photo feeds from Tom Krazit on News.com, Ars Technica and MacDailyNews of Wednesday's Apple music player product launch.

From the features I typed up in my last post that I did and didn't want to see, it was really a mixed bag. It's great that Apple released the iPod Touch with the same interface and features as the iPhone; including the WiFi connectivity of which Singapore has a bountiful public supply; but my worst fear that they decided to use flash memory came to pass!

What was that image of Saber using an iPod I used in my previous post? Let's make it FULL SIZE:

As they did with iLife 2008 by bundling the older version of iMovie because they knew the newer version wasn't that crash hot (you can hear my rant on Rubenerd Show 225), Apple have kept the iPod Classic line going with hard disks despite the launch of a newer flash-based iPod Touch. I can't help but wonder if the iPod Classic is really just to give the excuse that they're still providing decent storage without actually having to provide it at the high end.

Despite the attractive WiFi functionality in the new iPod Touch which as I said above would work fantastically in Singapore, I think I'll have to side with Frank Nora and keep my iPod Video and Nokia e61i for the time being.

I can't help but see though, the price for the 16GB iPod Touch is the same as the 8GB iPhone. It makes you wonder if they're really just using the Touch as a stepping stone to convince people to move over to their phone, and with it their data plans with their approved carriers that they receive commissions from. Why buy just an iPod when the iPhone is the same price?

Okay, okay it's almost 03:00 here in Asia, I'm off to bed.

In the criminal justice systems of the countries I have lived in (and given my server logs, most probably yours too) it's not only accepted that you are innocent until proven guilty, it's the law.

DRM, or digital restrictions management is a series of technological measures implemented by paranoid corporations to protect them from the biggest evil force in the world: consumers. Give a consumer the freedom to use the content in the way it was originally intended to be used and they'll end up just ripping you off and not use your technology to use said content right? Horror of horrors!

This arrogant position of most media companies will be their undoing eventually, but in the meantime it just bugs me that they're taking advantage of consumers and taking away our rights that are written in law and unwritten in common decency.

Steve Jobs from Apple even admitted that he wouldn't be using DRM in iTunes if media companies were reasonable. I'm a tad skeptical, but at least he said that instead of nothing.

Now there seems to be some legitimate reasoning behind DRM. By theoretically preventing the copying of media they can protect themselves from piracy. The problem is DRM is rarely used for this purpose; instead of protecting themselves media companies seem instead to be using it so they can re-sell you the same content over and over again. Why let someone buy media to play on their TV, their portable media player, their phone and in their cars when you can sell it over again for each one?

But the part the really boils my blood is that by using DRM companies are sending out a clear message: they don't trust us with their content. They assume we're all out to destroy them, and that we have nothing but malicious intent. They're treating us like little kids; it's beyond contempt.

DRM: Guilty until proven innocent!

NOTE: After I posted this I thought I may have not been clear enough as to what I meant by "data independence". I am referring to data independence between physical software, not the established field of research dealing with data in DBMSs. Whoopsie ;)

One issue (amongst others) that many people would no doubt know I feel strongly about about after reading this blog is the issue of data independence.

From what I understand, data independence deals with how easy it is to move your data from one software program to another while maintaining its integrity. Whether you are moving to another program written by the same company or a different one altogether, moving your data should not only be possible but also painless; in a perfect world of course.

Date independence is important for several reasons; the most obvious is probably the fostering of competition in the software market. Competition, as with any industry in a market based economic system, forces software producers to improve their products, lower production costs and in turn not get too greedy in charging for that software. If people can easily move their data from your software to a competitors then the onus is on the current producers to keep their software at the cutting edge to keep their customers.

Another reason which is gaining more traction as the software industry matures is the idea of future proofing. It is dangerous to assume the software we'll be using years from now will be able to open all our files; whether the company creating our software will cease to exist in the future or whether they themselves will allow future versions of their software to be backward compatible are chilling possibilities. By ensuring from the beginning that you are using software that allows easy transfer of your data you have more leverage to use that data with other systems now, and more likely in the future.

There is also ample evidence that data independence also fosters collaboration. The HTTP protocol on the web itself uses (x)HTML and variants which allow one coded page to be used on a multitude of devices, operating system platforms and software. No matter whether the website you generated was creating in DreamWeaver, Frontpage, GoLive or... nano... other programs can easily access that information. The recent explosion of the RSS and Atom XML standards are also examples of this.

Of course freedom for the consumer is rarely what corporations want! By using open standards and allowing for data independence many companies believe they will have to work harder to keep existing customers because the ability of consumers to move from their system to another is too scary. The Microsoft Office suite (sorry, the Microsoft Office System) and it's proprietary "standards" have been and still are a classic example of this paranoia: if they allowed for native support of other formats and allowing for more data independence, they would have to work hard to make their software not suck, and their market share wouldn't help to defend their position anymore. Screw that!

However, I am of the belief that promoting data independence can actually help your bottom line; del.icio.us for example still leads the social bookmarking space despite their ability from very early on to export media to move to another service. Steve Gillmor on a 2004 episode of The Gillmor Gang argued that data independence can actually be a value added feature in itself and the security people feel using such services would keep them coming back for more.

This the puts open source software at a tremendous advantage; but that's for another post ;).

I'd be really interested to hear what James Ross and Dave Winer would have to say about this issue, or anyone else. Have I got thie gist of this? How easy is it to implement data independent measures in your programs? Is it really economically feasible?

And the Rubenerd award for the fugliest car of the year goes to: the Toyota FJ Cruiser mini SUV!

If you love SUV's but hate their thirst for oceans of expensive premium petrol and the dents they leave in your driveway when they're parked there for more than 5 minutes at a time, you'll love the FJ Cruiser! Comes with two doors that look out of place, rear windows that end in an awquard place, and bodywork lines that don't have a place! You won't want to be seen in any place or place this car in any place when you have the FJ Cruiser!

Seriously though, who designed this car? Surely you couldn't get this Toyota in Asia... could you?

I can't imagine how any rational parent these days could be against legislation to criminliase the act of smacking children in all the states in Australia. Smacking is an antiquated, crude, mentally-scarring and ineffective method of persuasion that teaches children that violence is the answer to problems... sound familiar in this world we live in at the moment?

My parents didn't smack me; and I sure as hell wouldn't ever smack my kids if I were to have any; but apparently some people think physical abuse in this day and age is socially and morally acceptable:

Smacking ban too extreme, Family Association says.

he foundation's chief executive, Joe Tucci, says while there has been a decline in support for physical punishment, there is obviously still a large section of the community using it.

The Australian Family Association says a ban on smacking children is going too far. The Australian Childhood Foundation says it would like physical punishment against children to be banned. But Australian Family Association spokesman Damien Tudehope says the current laws are adequate.

"We have some concerns about introducing laws which have the potential of turning parents into criminals," he said. "Certainly we don't advocate any circumstances where it's appropriate to leave permanent marks on children and to use discipline in a way where it becomes an assault on children. "But to introduce laws which mean the Government has a role to play in deciding who and who isn't a good parent, we think that's going too far."

Oh okay, so legally we protect people from harassment in the community, but hey physically abusing children who haven't even fully developed is all well and good. Come on people, grow up yourselves.

Ourmedia article by User:publik

I'm sitting here at the uni typing away at some work, and the lack of features in Windows XP that I'm used to in Mac OS X and my FreeBSD with XFce box are really starting to get to me!!

What do I miss? No system wide spell checking, something not Internet Explorer, no virtual desktops, no Expose.

Now just to be fair, I was brought up on Windows 3.0 and 3.1x, right up to 2000 before I was the first (and still only) person in the family to dump Windows.

Technorati tags:  windows xp, crap, mac os x, linux, xfce, unisa, university of south australia, expose, virtual desktops, spell checking

The version I knew was "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security will achieve neither", but this passage seems even better. :)

It's a real shame that Australia is following the way of the United States in terms of "national security". The way I see it, if we radically alter our lives by making them more complicated and difficult, the terrorists have won already.

I remember listening to Lawrence Lessig give a talk on IT Conversations about copyright law and how a restrictive change can be implemented very easily, but it can take a very long time to undo. I think the same applies to this as well.