In his blog post Windows DVD Maker Not Managed Code Charles Cook writes

Last week Eric Gunnerson mentioned that he has been working on an application for Vista: Windows DVD Maker. Yesterday he posted a FAQ for the application. The answer to question 4 was disappointing:

4: Is DVD Maker written in managed code?

A: No. Yes, it is ironic that I spent so much time on C# and then spent a ton of time writing something in C++ code. Everybody on the team is a believer in managed code, and we hope we'll be able to use it for future projects.

Given that there is a whole new set of APIs in Vista for writing managed applications - Avalon, WinFX, etc - why has a new self-contained app like this been written in unmanaged C++? Actually writing real applications, instead of just samples, with the new managed APIs would be far more convincing than any amount of hype from Robert Scoble.

I agree with Charles. If Microsoft believed in managed code, we would build applications using the .NET Framework. We do.

In his post Cha-Cha-Changes Dan Fernandez wrote

The Microsoft's not using Managed Code Myth
One of the biggest challenges in my old job was that customers didn't think Microsoft was using managed code. Well, the truth is that we have a good amount of managed code in the three years that the .NET Framework has been released including operating systems, client tools, Web properties, and Intranet applications. For those of you that refuse to believe, here's an estimate of the lines of managed code in Microsoft applications that I got permission to blog about:

• Visual Studio 2005: 7.5 million lines
• SQL Server 2005: 3 million lines
• BizTalk Server: 2 million lines
• Visual Studio Team System: 1.7 million lines
• Windows Presentation Foundation: 900K lines
• Windows Sharepoint Services: 750K lines
• Expression Interactive Designer: 250K lines  
• Sharepoint Portal Server: 200K lines
• Content Management Server: 100K lines

We also use managed code for the online services that power various MSN Windows Live properties from Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Mail to Live.com and Windows Live Expo. I find it surprising that people continue to think that we don't use managed code at Microsoft.

 

There are a couple of contentious topics I tend not to bother debating online because people on both sides of the argument tend to have entrenched positions. The debate on abortion in the U.S. is an example of such a topic. Another one for me is DRM and it's sister topics piracy copyright infringement and file sharing networks.

Shelley Powers doesn't seem to have my aversion for these topics and has written an insightful post entitled Debate on DRM which contains the following excerpt

Doc Searls points to a weblog post by the Guardian Unlimited’s Lloyd Shepherd on DRM and says it’s one of the most depressing things he’s read. Shepherd wrote:

I’m not going to pick a fight with the Cory Doctorows of the world because they’re far more informed and cleverer than me, but let’s face it: we’re going to have to have some DRM. At some level, there has to be an appropriate level of control over content to make it economically feasible for people to produce it at anything like an industrial level. And on the other side of things, it’s clear that the people who make the consumer technology that ordinary people actually use - the Microsofts and Apples of the world - have already accepted and embraced this. The argument has already moved on.

Doc points to others making arguments in refutation of Shepherd’s thesis (Tom Coates and Julian Bond), and ends his post with:

We need to do with video what we’ve started doing with music: building a new and independent industry...

I don’t see how DRM necessarily disables independents from continuing their efforts. Apple has invested in iTunes and iPods, but one can still listen to other formats and subscribe to other services from a Mac. In fact, what Shepard is proposing is that we accept the fact that companies like Apple and Google and Microsoft and Yahoo are going to have these mechanisms in place, and what can we do to ensure we continue to have options on our desktops?

There’s another issue though that’s of importance to me in that the concept of debate being debated (how’s this for a circular discussion). The Cluetrain debate method consists of throwing pithy phrases at each other over (pick one): spicey noodles in Silicon Valley; a glass of ale in London; something with bread in Paris; a Boston conference; donuts in New York. He or she who ends up with the most attention (however attention is measured) wins.

In Doc’s weblog comments, I wrote:

What debate, though? Those of us who have pointed out serious concerns with Creative Commons (even demonstrating problems) are ignored by the creative commons people. Doc, you don’t debate. You repeat the same mantra over and over again: DRM is bad, openness is good. Long live the open internet (all the while you cover your ears with your hands and hum “We are the Champions” by Queen under your breath).

Seems to me that Lloyd Shepherd is having the debate you want. He’s saying, DRM is here, it’s real, so now how are we going to come up with something that benefits all of us?

Turning around going, “Bad DRM! Bad!” followed by pointing to other people going “Bad DRM! Bad!” is not an effective response. Neither is saying how unprofitable it is, when we only have to turn our little eyeballs over to iTunes to generate an “Oh, yeah?”

Look at the arguments in the comments to Shepherd’s post. He is saying that as a business model, we’re seeing DRM work. The argument back is that the technology fails. He’s talking ‘business’ and the response is ‘technology’. And when he tries to return to business, the people keep going back to technology (with cries of ‘…doomed to failure! Darknet!’).

The CES you went to showed that DRM is happening. So now, what can we do to have input into this to ensure that we’re not left with orphaned content if a particular DRM goes belly up? That we have fair use of the material? If it is going to exist, what can we do to ensure we’re not all stuck with betamax when the world goes VHS?

Rumbles of ‘darknet’, pointers to music stores that feature few popular artists, and clumsy geeky software as well as loud hyperbole from what is a small majority does not make a ‘debate’. Debate is acknowledging what the other ’side’ is saying, and responding accordingly. Debate requires some openness.

There is reason to be concerned about DRM (Digital Rights Management–using technology to restrict access to specific types of media). If operating systems begin to limit what we can and cannot use to view or create certain types of media; if search engine companies restrict access to specific types of files; if commercial competition means that me having an iPod, as compared to some other device, limits the music or services at other companies I have access to, we are at risk in seeing certain components of the internet torn into pieces and portioned off to the highest bidders.

But by saying that all DRM is evil and that only recourse we have is to keep the Internet completely free, and only with independents will we win and we will win, oh yes we will–this not only disregards the actuality of what’s happening now, it also disregards that at times, DRM can be helpful for those not as well versed in internet technologies.

I tend to agree with Shelley 100% [as usual]. As much as the geeks hate to admit it, DRM is here to stay. The iTunes/iPod combination has shown that consumers will accept DRM in situations where they are provided value and that the business model is profitable. Secondly,  as Lloyd Shepherd points out,  the major technology companies from Microsoft and Intel to Apple and Google are all building support for DRM in their products for purchasing and/or consuming digital media.

Absolutists who argue that DRM is evil and should be shunned are ignoring reality. I especially despise arguments that are little more than throwing around dogmatic, pithy phrases such as "information wants to be free" and other such mindless drivel. If you really think DRM is the wrong direction, then create the right direction by proposing or building a workable alternative that allows content creators to get paid without losing their rights. I'd like to see more discussions in the blogosphere like Tim Bray's On Selling Art instead of the kind of crud perpetuated by people like Cory Doctorow which made me stop reading Boing Boing.

PS: There's also a good discussion going on in the comments to Shelley's blog post. Check it out.

 

I found out about http://www.google.com/ig/dell via John Batelle's blog last night. It looks like Google now has a personalized home page for users of Dell computers.

During the Web 2.0 conference, Sergey Brin commented that "Google innovates with technology not with business". I don't know about that. The AdSense/AdWords market is business genius and the fact that they snagged the AOL deal from more experienced companies like Microsoft shows that behind the mask of technical naivette is a company with strong business sense.

If I was competing with a company that produced the dominant operating system and Web browser used to access my service, I'd figure ways to disintermediate them. Perhaps by making deals with OEMs so that all the defaults for online services such as search which ships on PCs point to my services. Maybe I could incentivize them to do this if there is the promise of recurring revenue by giving them a cut of ad revenue from searches performed on said portal pages.

Of course, this may not be what http://www.google.com/ig/dell is for, but if it isn't I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't eventually become the case.

 

Web usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, has written an article entitled Search Engines as Leeches on the Web which begins

Summary: Search engines extract too much of the Web's value, leaving too little for the websites that actually create the content. Liberation from search dependency is a strategic imperative for both websites and software vendors.

I worry that search engines are sucking out too much of the Web's value, acting as leeches on companies that create the very source materials the search engines index.We've known since AltaVista's launch in 1995 that search is one of the Web’s most important services. Users rely on search to find what they want among the teeming masses of pages. Recently, however, people have begun using search engines as answer engines to directly access what they want -- often without truly engaging with the websites that provide (and pay for) the services..

I've seen some people claim that "Google is Evil" is the new meme among web geeks and this looks like a manifestation of this trend. It looks like the more money Google makes, the more people resent them. Alas, that is the price of success.

 

The Wall Street Journal has an article entitled The Men Who Came To Dinner, and What They Said About Email which contains the following excerpt

"Email is one of the liveliest niches in tech right now. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all view it as a key to winning new customers and making money off current ones. And so they are innovating with new email programs and services all the time. Since all three companies' email teams are in my neck of the woods, I thought it would be fun to have the heads of each team come over one night for dinner and conversation. The three companies were good sports and agreed, in part because I said I wasn't interested in a shouting match.

As it happened, Google's Paul Buchheit, 29 years old; Kevin Doerr, 39, of Microsoft (no relation to the venture capitalist) and Ethan Diamond, 34, of Yahoo were all on their best behavior. Whatever they may say about their competitors at work, at my table they were gracious and complimentary. Gentle teasing was about as far as they would go.

The evening began with even the Microsoft and Yahoo delegates agreeing that much of the current excitement in the email world can be traced back to last year's debut of Mr. Buchheit's Gmail. The program had a fast user interface with a fresh new look, along with a then-remarkable gigabyte of free storage.

Mr. Buchheit said he started working on Gmail after observing that other email programs were getting worse, not better. Microsoft's Mr. Doerr said that at his company, Gmail was a thunderbolt. "You guys woke us up," he told Mr. Buchheit. Yahoo's Mr. Diamond, then at a startup with its own hot, new email program, said Gmail was the final impetus that Yahoo needed to buy his company.

Mr. Buchheit responded with a victory lap. "We were trying to make the email experience better for our users," he said. "We ended up making it better for yours, too."

The evening wasn't all a Gmail love-in, though. The Microsoft and Yahoo representatives said their many millions of users might not accept some of Gmail's departures from email norms, such as the way the program groups messages into "conversations." The two men also razzed Mr. Buchheit a bit, saying that it had been easy for Google to promise a lot of storage to its users because it carefully controlled how many users Gmail would have by requiring an invitation to get an account."

As someone who has to build services which compete with Google's the last statement in the above excerpt resonates with me. I tend to think that in a number of their products such as GMail, Google Talk and even Google Pack, the folks at Google are practising the lessons learned from articles such as Joel Spolsky's Fire & Motion. In the article Joel Spolsky argues that large companies like Microsoft tend to create technological imperatives that force competitors to respond and keep up thus preventing them from focusing on new features.

Examples of Google practising Fire & Motion are somewhat different from what Joel Spolsky describes in his article but the ideas are similar.  Google tends to create initiatives that are either much more expensive for their competitors than them to provide (e.g. giving users gigabytes of storage space for email but limiting sign ups on the service) or would be detrimental to their market share to compete with (e.g. allowing non-Google clients to access the Google Talk servers). I've had co-workers joke that for every dollar Google spends on some of its efforts, its competitors are forced to spend five to ten dollars. Here is a back of the envelope calculation that illustrates this point.

Email Service	Estimated Number of Users	Inbox Size	Total Storage provided
GMail	5 million	2.5GB	12.5 petabytes
Yahoo! Mail	219 million	1GB	219 petabytes
HotMail	221 million	0.25 GB	55.25 petabytes

Of course, these numbers are off because they are based on estimates. Also I think the Hotmail numbers should be somewhat lower since I haven't confirmed that we've rolled out the 250MB inbox to every market. The point should still be clear though, Google has forced its competitors such as Microsoft and Yahoo! to spend orders of magnitude more money on storage which distracts them from competing with Google in the places where it is strong. More importantly its competitors have to provide from 10 to 20 times the total amount of storage Google is providing just to be competitive. 

This is often the dilemma when competing with Google. On the one hand, you have customers who rightly point out that Google is more generous but on the other the fact is that it costs us a whole lot more to do the things Google does since we have a whole lot more users than they do. The cool things about this is that it forces to be very imaginative about how we are competitive in the market place and challenges are always fun.  

 

It's a new year so it's time to make some more promises to myself which I'll likely break in a few weeks. This time I thought it would help if I wrote them up in public so I'd be better motivated to actually achieve them.

1. Learn a New Programming Language: When I was in school, I got to explore a new programming language every couple of months. I used C, C++, Java, Smalltalk, JavaScript and Lisp while in school. In recent years I've been programming exclusively in C# although I've started toying with JavaScript again due to the AJAX hype. I've decided that I want to learn a dynamic programming language like Python or Ruby. Given that the .NET Framework now has IronPython, I suspect Python is what I'll end up picking up. Since we plan to greatly improve the plugin story for RSS Bandit, I may get some practical experience by building new plugins for RSS Bandit using IronPython.
   

2. Write More Articles: Looking back on various articles I've written it's clear that since joining MSN and getting a new girlfriend my output has reduced. I only wrote two articles last year compared to a minimum of five or six in previous years. I've already tried to start on the right foot by promising an article on my Seattle Movie Finder page for the O'Reilly Network. My big goal is to update my C# From a Java Developer's Perspective article to account for Whidbey (C# 2.0) and Tiger (Java 5.0). The article still gets thousands of hits a month even though its over four years old.

3. Come Up With New Career Goals: When I was in school, my dream was to become a well-known technology guru like Don Box or Scott Meyers then get paid consulting gigs to be the hero that comes in to fix peoples problems and tell them how to build their software. Since then, I've seen a lot of the people who I once idolized end up working in the b0rg cube. In conversations with Don Box, he's mentioned that the life isn't as glamorous as I assumed.

   It's coming on my fourth year at Microsoft and I'm not clear what my long term career goals are anymore. I love my current job; I get the build cool stuff that impacts millions of people and work with a bunch of smart people. However I don't have a clear idea of where this leads. In recent months I've gotten pings from recruiters from AMZN and GOOG, which I've discounted but the funny thing is if I was looking to leave I probably couldn't articulate what I was looking for to a recruiter.

   The only thing I am sure of is that I'm not going to get my MBA after all. My main motivation for getting it was "to do it now before it got too late" but that's enough of a motivator to put in the effort since I don't know what I'd do with it once I got it. 

   It's going to be time for my mid-year review and discussion with my boss in a couple of weeks. I hope I have a clearer idea where I want to go by then.

4. Piss of Less People with my Writing: Whatever. I've already gotten two angry emails from different folks at work about stuff I've written online and it isn't even the first week of the year. Maybe next year. ;)

 

Every couple of weeks while I'm at Microsoft I hear co-workers or executives say stuff that makes me wonder whether we are stuck in a time warp. My current pet peeve  is when I hear someone use the term Software as a Service or even worse the abbreviation "SaaS" to describe Web-based. There are people here who are so disconnected from the real world that to them Web-based software is some hot, new thing that deserves it's own magical new buzzword. Seriously, if you go around saying stuff like "Software as a Service" in 2006 then you are fricking dinosaur.

Another example of the kind of dinosaur mentality I'm ranting against is linked from a post on Robert Scoble's blog entitled Flickr’ing an unusual Mix06 meeting. In that post he links to the following image

At some meeting about a new Web conference coming out of Microsoft, one of the insightful ideas on the white board is "The Web is inevitable and her to stay". Is this 1996? That would have been insightful a decade ago, now it just makes us seem over the hill. Competitors like Google and Yahoo! are already thinking about the next level (e.g. making deals with network service providers to increase the quality of the user experience when visiting their sites, making heavy bets on the mobile Web, and bridging the gap between the Web and television in concrete ways) yet here we are finally admitting that maybe wishing that the Web will go away isn't a winning strategy.

Sometimes it feels like I work in dinosaur country.

 

From the E! Online article Back to the "Futurama"? we learn

Following the hugely successful resurrection of Family Guy, Fox execs are reportedly in talks to bring Futurama back from the dead.

The studio has begun talks to revive the Emmy-winning animated series and produce a limited number of new episodes, thanks to a resurgence in the show's popularity on DVD and in reruns, Variety reports.

Reps for 20th Century Fox have declined to comment on the news, but Variety says initial negotiations have begun.

If revived, it's unclear exactly which network would air the new episodes. While Fox housed the original series, the show found new life once reruns began showing on the Cartoon Network. Comedy Central subsequently snapped up the off-air rights and will exclusively air the repeats beginning in 2008.

The brainchild of Simpsons mastermind Matt Groening and writer David X. Cohen, Futurama debuted on Fox in March 1999. The series revolved around Fry, a pizza delivery boy, who is accidentally frozen for a thousand years. He wakes up in the year 3000 and befriends sassy one-eyed pilot Leela and the cranky robot Bender, who both work for an intergalactic delivery service run by a distant nephew of Fry's.

After five seasons and three Emmys, including the 2002 prize for Best Animated Series, Futurama was shuttered in August 2003.

Should the show make its way back to the airwaves, it would follow in the footsteps of another Fox cult 'toon, Family Guy.

The latter show was brought back in 2004 thanks to robust rerun ratings and staggeringly high DVD sales--the show ranks as the fourth-biggest TV series seller ever. Since its comeback, Fox has produced two more seasons and the direct-to-DVD movie Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story.

First Family Guy, now Futurama. I can only hope that Cartoon Network borrows a leaf from Fox and brings back Samurai Jack.
 

Via Miguel De Icaza I found the post Fear is the mind killer from the Jesus General blog. It states

Our Leader hasn't caught Osama bin Laden, but he's doing a bang up job rounding up brown people.

From the documentary, Persons of Interest:

SYED ALI

"Syed Ali was a partner in a successful securities firm prior to September 11th. Following an unrelated business dispute, one of his partners told the FBI Syed was a terrorist. The authorities stormed his house and found, among other things, a visitor's pass to the World Trade Center and his son's flight simulator video game. Syed was held on Rikers Island for 100 days. He lost his business; family and friends became scared off by the terror allegations. The government dropped all terrorist charges against Syed Ali. He now operates a limousine franchise. Previously a homemaker, his wife, Deliliah, found work as a legal secretary and hospital clerk."

NABIL AYESH

"Nabil is originally from Palestine. He was arrested on September 11 2001 while stopped at a traffic light in Philadelphia. "Where are you from?" Nabil remembers the officer asking him. "Israel," Nabil answered. The officer asked Nabil if he was Israeli or Arabic. "I said I'm Arabic, and they said you're under arrest." Nabil was detained for one year and seventeen days. He was never charged with anything. His wife and children were all deported back to Palestine. After he was released Nabil got a working permit and a job as a contractor. "I am trying to get my life back together," he said, "But it's hard. It was hard for me in jail. Now my main concern is my family." Nabil was re-arrested in April 2003 when police in Syracuse, NY pulled over a speeding car in which he was a passenger. He was held in a Batavia, NY jail and then deported to the West Bank, where he was reunited with his wife and four children."

MATEEN BUTT

"Mateen Butt, 26, came to the United States from Pakistan when he was nine years old. He lives in Valley Stream, New York and was working as a telecommunications analyst on Sept. 11. On Sept. 18 2002, ten officers surrounded Mateen's house at 6 a.m. and took him away in shackles. He was told he was being detained because of an application for a work visa he filed when he wad 16 years old. Mateen was interrogated and asked whether he was a Muslim and attended a Mosque, but he refused to answer. He was detained in both Middlesex and Bergen County. Mateen's experience in prison affected him dramatically. He has become much more religious and no longer feels safe here in the United States. "I don't feel free any more," he said, "I don't have the same feeling." Mateen's mother, Naz, has sold her Subway sandwich shop and the family plans to return to Karachi, Pakistan, a land Mateen has not known since he was a child."

There are a couple more profiles on the site which detail some of the people's whose lives have been changed by being part of the collateral damage in the United States's "War on Terror". Of course, they could have had it worse.

When I read blog posts like Shelley Powers They're Back or Robert Scoble's Microsoft takes down Chinese blogger (my opinions on that), I wonder why I tend to see American bloggers writing angry missives about perceived injustices in faraway lands but never about the oppression by government in their own countries. I guess it's all a case of Luke 6:41 in action.

 

It's another year, which means it's soon going to be time to figure out which conferences I'll be attending over the next few months. So far, three conferences have come up on my radar and I suspect I'll attend at least two of them. The conferences in order of my likelihood of attending them are

1. VSLive: A conference for Visual Studio developers. I'll likely be there with other folks from MSN Windows Live to talk about the various APIs we provide and perhaps give hints or details on some of our upcoming API plans.

2. ETech: I attended this conference last year and found it extremely valuable. There were developers from small and large Web companies talking about technical issues they had faced while delivering services on the Web as well as announcing cool new offerings. The list of speakers is great; Danah Boyd, Joel Spolsky, Kathy Sierra, Sam Ruby, Jon Udell, Simon Willison and Ray Ozzie. I don't plan to miss this one. 

3. MIX: This is a Microsoft conference that will focus on our hip, Web-based offerings like IE7, Windows Media, Windows Live!, as well as "Atlas", Microsoft’s new AJAX framework. Given that I'll already have lost a week of work by attending ETech and I won't really be learning anything I can't find on internal websites by attending the conference, I'll probably miss this one. Of course, if my workload is light and/or I'm told I'll be speaking I might end up attending.
   

If you'll be at any of these conferences and would like to meet up to shoot the breeze about mindless geekery, holla at me. Also what other interesting Web geek conferences are out there?