In an internal memo last October, Ray Ozzie, chief technical officer, who joined Microsoft last year, wrote, "Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges and it causes end-user and administrator frustration."

The trouble with Microsoft.

Windows Is So Slow, but Why? - New York Times

Of interest. I haven't read this yet.

This paper reports initial findings from a study that used quantitative and qualitative research methods and custom–built software to investigate online economies of reputation and user practices in online product reviews at several leading e–commerce sites (primarily Amazon.com). We explore several cases in which book and CD reviews were copied whole or in part from one item to another and show that hundreds of product reviews on Amazon.com might be copies of one another. We further explain the strategies involved in these suspect product reviews, and the ways in which the collapse of the barriers between authors and readers affect the ways in which these information goods are being produced and exchanged. We report on techniques that are employed by authors, artists, editors, and readers to ensure they promote their agendas while they build their identities as experts. We suggest a framework for discussing the changes of the categories of authorship, creativity, expertise, and reputation that are being re–negotiated in this multi–tier reputation economy.

Six degrees of reputation

Robots, androids, and bionic people pervade popular culture, from classics like Frankenstein and R.U.R. to modern tales such as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Terminator, and A.I. Our fascination is obvious and the technology is quickly moving from books and films to real life.

I never noticed this book before, but it was named to Library Journal's Best Sci-Tech Books for General Readers list for 2004.

Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids

Bookmark the Real World
From online or right from your mobile phone!

Add Pictures
Upload or send 'em from a camera phone!

Invite Your Friends
Know where all your friends go!

Flagr :: Sharewhere!

I haven't read this yet, but it seemed interesting.

Earlier this week, the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, held a remarkably interesting conference titled "Panic Attack: The New Precautionary Culture, the Politics of Fear, and the Risks to Innovation." It was interesting not only because I was a participant, but because it looked at how many Western countries are losing their cultural nerve, as evidenced by the increasing cultural acceptance of the so-called precautionary principle.

The strongest versions of the precautionary principle demand that innovators prove that their inventions will never cause harm before they are allowed to deploy or sell them. In other words, if an action might cause harm, then inaction is preferable. The problem is that all new activities, especially those involving scientific research and technological innovation, always carry some risks. Attempting to avoid all risk is a recipe for technological and economic stagnation.

Bill Joy came to mind.

Culture of Fear: Dealing with cultural panic attacks

Potentially of interest, but probably pretty dry reading and absent any distinctive authorial point of view.

This report summarizes a workshop on the technology, policy, and cultural dimensions of biometrics systems.

... fingerprints to facial recognition to DNA ...

This is freely available as PDF.

Summary of a Workshop on the Technology, Policy, and Cultural Dimensions of Biometric Systems

An amazing statistic I hadn't heard before was that a survey by Big Champagne found that DRM-protected files exclusively released through iTunes typically appear in unprotected form on P2P networks 180 seconds later.

Update: This is actually very old news; here is a reference from 2004 which cites Kazaa and 120 seconds. here is a Cory Doctorow talk from 2005 which repeats the 3 minute figure without specifying a network.

DRM-a-go-go

Would these new fees imposed by carriers alter the basic nature of the Internet by putting bumps and detours on the much ballyhooed information superhighway? No, say the telephone companies. Giving priority to a company that pays more, they say, is just offering another tier of service -- like an airline offering business as well as economy class. Network neutrality, they say, is a solution in search of a problem.

Any business practice that even vaguely resembles the airline industry should be met with a hefty dose of skepticism. Obviously, these telco spokespeople have some homework to do. Let me help:

Changes In Demand For Air Travel

Overall, passengers have become more empowered due to transparency in price and service information, and it appears that passengers are becoming more value conscious, demanding choice, and flexibility. However they are prepared to give up frills, choice or flexibility in return for lower prices. This is certainly very evident on short haul routes.

Making sense of the airline business

The key to survival, then, is an economic limbo dance that allows the carriers to keep seats as full as possible while driving costs as low as they’ll go — while knowing too much pressure on either end brings the risk of losing customers and scuttling your business. At this point, travelers are discovering that real, qualitative differences in service are ever harder to find on the shorter-haul flights that make up most domestic air traffic.

Even premium travelers have begun to flirt with low-cost options, and low-cost airlines have won at the expectations game, educating customers beforehand so they’re happy when they deplane.

This article by Hal Varian merits further study:

Differential Pricing and Efficiency, by Hal Varian

The classic prescription for economically efficient pricing---set price at marginal cost---is not relevant for technologies that exhibit the kinds of increasing returns to scale, large fixed costs, or economies of scope found in the telecommunications and information industries. The appropriate guiding principle in these contexts should be that the marginal willingness to pay should be equal to marginal cost. This condition for efficiency can be approximated using differential pricing, and will in fact, be a natural outcome of profit-seeking behavior.

Perhaps we should write to him and ask him to write about this topic in his next NYT column.

I found this data interesting:

Advertisers Climb On Board

Who really gets hurt by 'prioritization' of the Internet

The most depressing thing about the communications revolution is that when at last we have succeeded in making it possible for anyone to reach anyone else anywhere and at any time, it turns out that we really don't have much we want to say.

The Pleasures of the Text

Scruffy hipsters toting six-packs, blinky Web developers arguing the merits of their preferred PDA and an inordinate number of dreadlocked heads packed the gallery beyond capacity to hear three brief, charmingly unpolished lectures.

dorkbot is an informal club of artists, techies and geeks who do "strange things with electricity," according to their motto.

Luke DuBois, a composer and "computational artist," used his application, essentially time-lapse photography for sound, to create a new piece of music out of the 857 songs that have appeared at the top of the Billboard charts since 1958. The result, called "Billboard," is a 37-minute-long drone: each hit song is reduced to its average timbre and key by an algorithm that speeds up the original work without giving it a chipmunk chirpiness.

When Art and Science Collide, a Dorkbot Meeting Begins