Ari Pernick, who works at Microsoft, says I still don't have a clue about what .NET MyServices are. That's true. But, when I saw the Longhorn video a year or so ago that Microsoft was showing around, which made a big deal about .NET My Services, the implementation looked an awful lot like what MSN Groups look like today. Yeah, I'm not properly separating the platform from the implemention. Wet noodle applied to hand. It all is moot anyway. Until we see .NET My Services used by Microsoft's own Internet division (er, MSN) why would any self-respecting developer start using that platform on his/her own sites?

Oh, and unfortunately most users look at things like implementations to decide how good an underlying technology is. Rightfully or wrongly. If the HTML produced is shit (and MSN's is) then why would I believe that the underlying technology is gonna help me produce great HTML? If Microsoft wants developers to adopt its technologies, it's gotta do a better job of showcasing those technologies to the outside world.

Oh, and if the W3C can't get one of its largest members to use its own standards (er, recommendations) on every site it produces, why should the rest of us give a fuck about what the W3C thinks or says?

Ahh, Alain reports that Google is getting spammed for the word Dave: "Nah, the folks at bungi.com are pulling a scam and I'm surprised they haven't been pulled down yet. They have tons of external sub-sites and a database with which they link all over the place to leading back to the target page. This causes their PageRank to be unnaturally high. Supposedly the new code change that Google just enacted was supposed to kill this kind of stuff but they must be doing something more than that." --Alain Breillatt

TaraSue on religion. Her beliefs on the subject are pretty close to my own. It's scary how religious our nation is getting. The "God Bless America" crap is way outta hand. It's offensive to me the way people push their religion on a public stage. Of course, I used to be an evangelical Christian. I used to do that crap. So, I guess I deserve it back now.

By the way. The courageous thing is to believe in nothing. Try it sometime. It really is hard.

Why is that? Your human mind is a pattern recognizer. Ever think about why you can look at a tree and within a micro-second tell "hey, that's a tree?"

What happens when your mind sees something it totally can't explain? Why, it hates that. Drives it nuts. I was looking at white noise the other day on my TV set. My mind was seeing all sorts of patterns in the white noise that simply were not there. My mind was FREAKING OUT cause it couldn't see a pattern that it could recognize. So, it calmed itself by putting a pattern there.

But, is it courageous to tell everyone else "hey, I see a tree here" when none exists, or to admit to the world "my mind is freaking out cause I can't see a pattern?"

We will only go forward as humans when we admit we can't see a pattern. Until then, we'll have wars: "you asshole, that's not a dog you see there, that's a tree and we must kill all people who see a dog there cause we know your thought patterns are wrong."

Politicians just go where there's concentrated votes and money. The masses are asses. Thanks to Mr. Fricke, one of my teachers, for teaching me that.

Tara Sue won't get elected. She just pissed off 80% of the electorate.

I am happy to be part of the growing 20% who say "I don't see a pattern in there, sorry, and I ain't gonna give into my brain freaking out about it."

Found this over on Zeldman: Usability on Apple's campus.

This is the same as the font problem that Dave keeps making fun of.

Many computer people only test their stuff out in default user mode. Obviously Apple's test team didn't test much on their old OS. It'll continue to be a problem for this industry. It's a human problem. We're lazy.

But, I am disturbed that a page like this comes up as the top link when I search for "dave." Scary. There's gotta be better "dave's" than that.

As the Google turns: Alain Breillatt has an interesting discussion of why Dave Winer is going lower on searches on the term "weblog." I think he's pretty close to nailing it. Man, wouldn't it be a hoot to get a look at Google's source code? I'd rather see that than see Microsoft's source code. By the way, looking at my rankings, I agree with Alain that the title tag is of high importance. Google also seems to look at your URL and other places on the page, as well as what sites say when they link to you. I guess I should change the name of my site if I wanna be known as a weblogger, huh?

Chris DeHerra has a new Website up about the Tablet PC. I'll definitely be watching.

Dan Gillmor, today, writes about a bill that would help consumers of music and videos keep their fair-use rights. Most excellent!

Marc Canter is into video.

I've been thinking a lot about Marc and what he's trying to do since he keynoted the Web Builder conference a month ago that I planned.

Marc is dreaming of a day when we'll all use video as regularly as we will type on the screen.

As much as I'd love to see such a day (and, when I was an evangelist for Winnov back in the mid 1990s I pushed hard for such a vision) I just don't see it happening soon.

Why? Well, the best most consumers can afford is DSL. I just got a DSL line yesterday. I get 386kbps down, and 128kbps up. Now, that might sound like a lot, but it isn't enough to serve video out from my house. It +is+ enough to serve hundreds of blog readers, though.

OK, we need a lesson in bandwidth. If I put up a 128kbps video on my home server I can only support one person watching that video at a time, due to constraints on my bandwidth.

Now, Mark is dreaming of a day when we all have a megabit of bandwidth (or more) to our desktops.

Yeah, right.

But, assume that day comes and I have a megabit and you have a megabit and my mom has a megabit and Dave Winer has a megabit.

Well, that still will only let me serve out 10 concurrent video streams at one time.

Hey, I have a stupid Weblog and even I got 1000 hits last week in one day.

What would happen if I got Slashdotted?

Now, I'm sure Marc is gonna argue: "well, your video would be sitting on a high-speed server with a gigabit of bandwidth somewhere."

Well, that ain't gonna happen anytime soon either. Why? Cause I can't afford it. I can afford $49 a month. Most consumers are barely able to do that to get 80 channels of video on their cable TV system.

The bandwidth to support video just isn't cheap enough. Yes, it's getting cheaper, but my average weblog home page is only about 20kb. Each download. So, while you're downloading ONE SECOND of video at 128kbps (which only gives you a tiny picture at 320x240 at 15 frames per second at best) six or more people could have downloaded my entire home page.

So, where am I going?

Video only works if you have a very limited number of people who'll view it and that'll be true through at least 2005.

I don't see the compression algorithms improving more than 50% over the next few years. If there were a way to compress the video better, the mathemeticians would already have found a way.

Can we use some sort of P2P system to push around video? Sure, but the RIAA is gonna keep real innovations in that area from happening for years and it still won't be as reliable as plain old test.

Now, where is video useful? One to one. I can share my 128kbps upload with one, or maybe two other people.

How would I use this? Well, I'm getting married on November 2. One of my new brother in law's lives in England. He can't make it to the wedding. It'd be really great to have a video link so that he could watch the proceeding (heck, the casino where I'm getting married has permanent video cameras already).

One problem. My new brother in law doesn't own a computer.

But, assuming he did, it'd be a relatively simple thing to build a video feed to him via NetMeeting or some other low-cost videoconferencing software.

Another problem? How many times in your life do you get married? OK, I'm on my second one in 37 years. Most of the rest of the time my face just isn't all that interesting to people on the other side of the world.

I found that after using video in NetMeeting for hundreds of hours I got bored. Heck, even video sex gets boring after a while. Especially when it's a grainy, blurry, video at 320x240 at 15 frames a second or less. We expect more than that due to TV and the computer just can't deliver.

Yeah, big companies like MSNBC and CNN can use video. They can afford the bandwidth (and they already paid millions of dollars for video equipment and studios and lights).

Yes, there is demand (look at the high proliferation of camcorders nowadays at various events) but we just aren't willing to pay the price. Most consumers don't understand why their video needs to be compressed either.

Anyway, there's a whole lot of mountains that Marc has to climb to bring us a video world.

I ain't gonna bet against him, though. He's led us out of the wilderness before, but if he pulls this one off it really will be a miracle.

Um, who said that .NET MyServices (formerly known as Hailstorm) had nothing to do with MSN? Well, then, explain this article on CNET. I always saw Hailstorm as a way to put interfaces on technology developed for MSN. Look at the MSN Groups and then imagine programmatic interfaces onto the calendar, chat, file storage, and other things there.

Developers and corporate types have a hard time getting excited about this stuff, though. Why? Cause the data lies on Microsoft's servers. I know that scares the heck outta me. Even if I could get over my fear, I'd expect that the interfaces would be as controllable as your average bank ATM. As long as everything looks and works the same you're OK. But I don't want my site to look like MSN (and I want my site to work on browsers on non-MS systems. So far, I look at MSN and it isn't built using W3C standards. Until they start supporting standards, I can't even consider .NET MyService types of things for the sites I build.

Hey, I finally met Glenn Fleishman for breakfast. He's as interesting and nice in person as he comes across on his weblog.

Oh, you know that picture of Bush that everyone is sending around via email? The one where he's reading a book upside down? Turns out the photo was faked. I hate when people send along hoaxes via email.

Oh, did I mention that Iran's own government doesn't want Googoosh to perform and kept her off of its stages for 21 years? Now Googoosh lives in Canada and is being kept from performing here. I don't see how this will help the war on terrorism. If anything, it helps the government of Iran (by pissing off Iranian/Americans who could be helping to support Bush).

Googoosh concert cancelled due to singer's visa problems. She's Iran's most famous singer. Why we're keeping singers and artists out is beyond me. Yeah, I was supposed to go to this concert. Oh well.