niks blog

I have been avidly blogging for the past several years. During that time, I have never had the need for implementing a blog disclaimer. As some of you may know, I also blog at my other website, NaanBrotNToast. Over the last few days, my wife and I have had to deal with an issue with one of her friends. Her friend, Angela Smith, requested that her name, her husband’s name, her daughter’s name, and all pictures of them be omitted from a post that had already been published. Furthermore, Google had already cached the post, so the situation was almost out of our hands.

My wife told me about the request and I asked her why Angela wanted us to omit the information. According to my wife, Angela did not really provide any meaningful reason other than the fact that she does not like her name on the web and wishes to protect her privacy.

Fair enough. However, that does not automatically constitute a reasonable request to remove her name from a post that has already been published. I refuse to accept that I should honor someone’s request to omit information about them in the eyes of privacy. As much as I value privacy, I also vehemently value my freedom of speech.

As such, I will now institute a disclaimer on this blog as well. I want everyone to know that I respect everyone’s privacy. However, I believe it is far more important to protect my intellectual thoughts and words. My disclaimer will probably not address every situation, but I aim to have it provide some guidance.

In short, I will NOT be removing/editing names unless a person’s direct well-being may be compromised negatively.

Long live Freedom of Speech!

My wife had the chance to talk to Angela via email and we discovered the true reasons why Angela had requested her name be removed. I will not go into further details, but the reason was acceptable to me. It should be noted that Angela is not the real name of my wife’s friend. And this is to protect her privacy.

A Broken Kindle

I’m not a big fan of illegitimate cartels such as the MPAA and the RIAA. In fact, I despise anyone or anything that supports their actions usurping users’ rights. Lest I forget, I don’t want to leave out the next wave of idiots that are coming out of their shells: Publishers.

E-books are coming

Earlier, I posted about E-book readers being screwed. I have my own opinions on e-book readers and I strongly believe that they will co-exist with paper-based media. However, I think the adoption of e-book readers will not skyrocket like the personal digital media player (i.e., iPod). E-books will gain a strong foothold with voracious readers and commuters. I, myself, would enjoy the prospect of having my daily newspaper delivered to my e-book reader daily.

Like it or not, most people will begin carrying around another gadget to supplement their already growing array of electronic gadgets.

Amazon had a vision, now they killed it

Amazon came out with a great pricing scheme for e-books, $9.99. Most of the e-books that Amazon sold for its Kindle were flat-rate and easy to remember. Publishers such as Macmillan, have basically thwarted Amazon’s noble effort to maintain a strict one-tier price model.

Why? Macmillan wants to make more money and reduce ‘harmful’ effects on sales of overpriced hardcover editions.

Let’s sell for…

Apple and Macmillan have literally teamed up to deliver e-books at a tiered pricing model. In other words, most of the newer e-books will cost $14.99 and may see reduction in price as time goes on. The $14.99 price point allows publishers to sell these new versions at the same time as the hardcovers, but at a price point closer to the MSRP of the hardcover editions.

Let’s screw the customer AND the author

Paul Carr, a noted TechCrunch writer, is an established author and he writes a fairly constructive view of what this new pricing model by Macmillan really means for the author.

For the first time in the UK since 1997, and ever in the US, publishers are able to set – and enforce- their own prices on ebooks. And they will; not to make a fair return on ebooks but rather to cripple their sales in order to protect early hardback book sales. They’ve admitted as much themselves, saying that prices will start high on hardback release, before dropping steadily over time.

What is happening is that publishers like Macmillan are screwing e-books by making the price point artificially high and inadvertently promoting piracy. E-book piracy is not as big as music piracy, but I can assure you that if e-books do not have consumer-friendly pricing, more and more customers will engage in questionable tactics to get their e-books.

Imagine a “Napster” for e-books

Soon we’ll start seeing e-books without any DRM (digital rights management) popping up on popular torrent search engines. As e-book readers continue to increase in sales, we’ll start seeing hackers ‘jailbreak’ their e-book readers and improve functionality.

Ladies and gentlemen. What we are seeing is the birth of e-book piracy because publishers are on a crusade to crush consumers’ rights, all in the name of protecting their pathetic business models.

Long live e-book piracy.

I’ve never purchased any Star Trek games for my PC (when I used to have one) or my console systems (Sega Genesis, Xbox, Xbox 360). However, I’ve always wanted to buy a Star Trek game; but whenever I looked at the description of the game, I realized how lame the game will be.

Many Star Trek games have decent graphics and passable plots. What they all lack is the ability to capture the true essence of the series that Gene Roddenberry had envisioned. Star Trek was never envisioned to be a story about constant battles with other species in the galaxy. Rather, it tackled philosophical and political issues from a very unique and progressive perspective.

I read an article in Kotaku about why there hasn’t been a truly great Star Trek game. I agree with the author that most Star Trek games try to mimic combat activities and promote combat as the focus point of the game. The true essence of Star Trek was never combat. Rather, the soul of the series focuses quite a bit on tackling decisions that influence a person’s character.

If you ever watch Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), you will realize that Captain Picard and his crew frequently obsess over the various actions they could execute rather than the actual execution of their actions. And a truly great Star Trek game will always emphasize the actual decision making process of the series rather than the fighting.

That’s why Star Trek games need developers that understand the actual complexities of decision analysis to code a game that rewards players for making decisions. In every episode of TNG, there are always a set of decisions that the crew of the Enterprise must make. And any great developer will know that capturing those set of decisions for various situations can become a successful formula.

Maybe one day, a proper game developer will step up to the plate and deliver a great Star Trek game that focuses on decisions rather than simple combat.

Google's Nexus One Mobile Phone

Ready or not, the “Google Phone” aka Nexus One is here and it is poised to revolutionize the playing field. So far, no mobile phone has been able to successfully challenge the current ‘king of the hill’, Apple’s iPhone. Maybe the Nexus One can challenge the iPhone, but I think the Nexus One isn’t all that great in the grand scheme of mobile phones. It certainly is a revolutionary step forward in mobile communication sales, but not technologically.

About a year ago, Google developed and released a mobile OS platform known as Android. Unfortunately, Android is NOT an actual device. Rather, it is a technology that is supposed to rival the iPhone’s OS. Unfortunately, due to manufacturer’s own goals, I believe that the user experience on Android is not as consistent as Apple’s iPhone. Each manufacturer is developing their own interface with some consistency across the board. However, the interfaces themselves are also “fine-tuned” by the carriers as well.

I’m not here to talk about the interface, technology, or the innovation that the Nexus One brings to the table. Rather, I want to talk about the lack of ingenuity that the phone is taking, but at the same time how that lack of ingenuity will drive the economy in a different direction.

There are two key factors that will hold the Google Nexus One back:

• Limited 3G capability
• Price of unlocked phone

3G: Only on the Nation’s Weakest Network

Nexus One has 3G, which means it lets you browse the web at fairly decent speeds. However, there’s a catch. You can only get 3G on T-Mobile if and only if you live in an area that T-Mobile supports 3G. So if you’re out in the middle of nowhere, you’ll be stuck with EDGE speeds or, heaven forbid, GPRS speeds (which are painfully slow, worse than dialup).

As technologically advanced as some critics and even Google claim the Nexus One is, it does not even support all GSM based 3G networks in the US. What that means is that if you buy the unlocked phone from Google and decide to use it with AT&T, you will never have 3G speeds – even if your area has 3G with AT&T. The problem is that the Nexus One does not have a 3G chip in it that supports AT&T’s 3G network.

Say what you will about AT&T’s 3G network, but I think it is fairly lame that a neat phone from Google can’t even support multiple carriers’ data services. LAME!

$530 isn’t new

Nokia has been selling almost all of their unlocked ‘smartphones’ for about the same price for over a decade. In fact, you could find other unlocked ‘smartphones’ from other manufacturers ranging from $300 to well above $1000. So when Google markets an unlocked phone for $530, forgive me, I’m not really impressed since Google isn’t doing anything innovative. The only ‘innovative’ action that Google has taken is show the ignorant American consumer that you can buy the Nexus One without having to sign an abhorrent two year contract with T-Mobile.

The other benefit is that if you are an AT&T customer and you don’t like the iPhone, the Nexus One is definitely a worthy alternative. And Google has taken the extra step to make it convenient for you to purchase an unlocked Nexus One, for a price. This is something that Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and others failed to capitalize on. That doesn’t impress me much.

The Model Will Change

Currently, most wireless providers ask force you to sign a two-year service agreement in order to purchase a phone at low prices. Now that customers have the option of purchasing the Nexus One unlocked, you could buy the phone and get T-Mobile without a service agreement. Here’s the best part: if you don’t like T-Mobile after five months, you can dump them with no penalty. Sounds good doesn’t it?

Once this concept catches on with the American consumer, you can bet that wireless providers will change tactics. Rather than rely on your stupidity to purchase phones at insanely cheap prices by signing your soul to the devil for two years, these carriers will force you to sign two-year service agreements on just the plans themselves. For instance, AT&T might turn around and say, if you want early nights and weekends, you have to sign a two-year service agreement. Another example, T-Mobile may introduce free incoming calls. However, that feature is only available to customers who have signed a two-year service agreement.

Basically, carriers will make you sign a two-year service agreement with the purchase of a phone or just for providing you a service. And that is what the Google Nexus One has done to ‘innovate’ the market. So thank you Google for making it easy for me to buy an unlocked phone that doesn’t work on AT&T (in terms of 3G). Google hasn’t really innovated anything. I’ll pass on the Nexus One since my soul is owned by Apple, thank you very much.

I am an ardent supporter of antics that repel the insurgency of the RIAA. The RIAA proclaims to protect the interests of its members and artists from the effects of music piracy. I admit that music piracy is a disease that needs to be dealt with, however, I challenge the RIAA’s approach since it has done nothing but promote the growth of music piracy. In my opinion, unlike the pirates of the Caribbean, you cannot simply ‘attack’ music pirates and expect to win. Music pirates are not as clearly organized as pirates and virtually everyone around the world can be considered a music ‘pirate’ if you aren’t careful.

You can’t stop piracy

I know that many people know this already, but what I can’t seem to understand is why people will NOT admit it. The fact is that there is no way to stop music piracy. There is no need to do a case study on this matter, simply look at historical events in the past ten years:

• Napster was shut down and Kazaa came to the scene, offering much more than just music
• After Kazaa, there came BitTorrent and Suprnova
• After Suprnova came Mininova and PirateBay
• After PirateBay, BTjunkie and others are gaining prominence

Obviously, I left out quite a few websites/software that filled the void, but the overall image is quite apparent. The more the RIAA worked to shut down these illegal operations, other more evasive operations came online and blossomed. In the aftermath of Pirate Bay’s own demise, other BitTorrent websites and search engines are flourishing with activity.

Late in 2009, the RIAA suspended its ill-advised practice of suing individual file-sharers since the lawsuits only brought more sympathy to individuals than the actual plaintiffs. And I think the RIAA learned, to a certain extent, that suing pirates or going after a ‘pirate crew’ isn’t necessarily going to curb piracy. The fact is that music pirates are virtually everywhere and by definition, anyone who listens to music on a medium that they do not own or ‘unauthorized’ to listen to are pirates.

Ok, so let’s assume I’m a bit drastic in my conclusion. Why is the RIAA not investigating what the end consumer demands from the product? And this is where things become quite interesting.

Do you really know what you want?

The RIAA actions seem to suggest that they know the best balance between what the consumer expects and wants versus what makes good business sense. Needless to say, the RIAA is a strong supporter of media rights management aka DRM (digital rights management). However, DRM has always failed to properly empower the end consumer to really utilize the content in a manner they see fit. And some of that stems from our false expectations.

End customers want the same ability and freedom they have had with music CD’s for years. For instance, if I bought a CD, I could let my friend borrow the CD for a few days so that he/she can listen to the album. Can I do that with my rights managed digital music downloads? Of course not!

If the end customer feels that they are restricted, the initial reaction will always be to find a way around the obstacle. And the way around is to download the “illegal” version of the music and have the freedom to do what you please. And that is what we all want.

We all want the ability to do whatever we like with the music we purchase. And that’s now how the RIAA sees the issue.

The RIAA believes that when you ‘purchase’ music, you are, in fact, purchasing a license to listen to the music and are implicitly agreeing to the terms laid out by the music label. Such a move mirrors that of many software publishing companies.

Take a look at Microsoft. They do NOT sell you Windows. They sell you a LICENSE to use Windows on a machine that YOU own. If you have more than one machine, you need to purchase additional licenses because each license allows you to install Windows on only ONE machine. That is how Microsoft manages the rights of their intellectual property on your machine.

And the RIAA along with its members want to take a similar approach with the content that they control.

There is a solution

Believe it or not, there is a solution. The RIAA and its members need to evolve in their approach to making money. Information rights management is not the solution to the problem. And the RIAA also needs to understand that online music piracy is NOT as bad as they say it is. Many artists, such as Radiohead, also agree that music piracy is not destroying the RIAA members’ revenue.

I think it’s time that music labels started to fully embrace technology and the social (r)evolution taking place. Rather than discouraging users, the RIAA and its members should focus on empowering users to discover new music and engage in innovative ways to continue the social evolution. It’s not an easy concept to understand, but I strongly believe that by changing the business model, many music labels will find that they will have far more reach in terms of customers and artists will regain a lost inspiration that continues to elude them.