It's interesting how the brain works...

In my previous post, I included a reference to a presentation I saw that included a clip from a movie. However, I couldn't remember the name of the movie.

What really surprised me was how I eventually found it. I guess it's a working example as to how the brain works, and how some connections between neurons are stronger than others.

1. First, I knew that the movie was about work. I went to IMDB and did a search with the word "work" in the title. No luck.
2. I tried hard to remember the name of the main actor in it (or at least a movie he was in). I couldn't do it.
3. However, I did remember that there was a geeky character in the movie who was played by the boss in the TV show "News Radio" (for some reason, that association I did remember). I searched on "News Radio" and found the character played by the actor, and then clicked on the actor's name to see other things he was in. "Office Space" eventually showed up.

So, I couldn't remember the movie's name or the main characters in it. But I could remember a very minor character was from a different TV show and used that to find it out. Amazing!

More on Digital Rights Management

I wonder if Sun will be successful in the following.

I completely agree with the following quote from the article.

"Today, they're based on the concept that you license content to a device,
but our belief is that if you're going to do any licensing, it should be based
on the identity of individuals," Edens says.

One issue that my friend, Chris Heller, points out is that DRM solutions are hacked pretty quickly. I think much of that is due to what's behind the quote above, especially knowing that the least common denominator is devices that aren't connected to the internet. In other words, there's a lot of incentive for cracking the DRM solution, because once you've cracked it, you've basically allowed yourself unrestricted access to everything out there.

Now, imagine if the concepts behind HTTPS and Encryption are used. You want a movie? Sign onto a web site and download it. As part of the download process, the file is encrypted using your user information (thus making it specific to you). When you use it your user information is used to decrypt the file. If somebody else takes that file and somehow figures out how to decrypt it, they have only cracked that single movie (and not all movies using that DRM solution). The economics of it are much less compelling to spend the time and energy for hacking the file.

If they can fix DRM in this way, then I think there are other opportunities for generating revenue that are too difficult to go after today. For example, imagine I'm creating a home movie and want to spice it up with a small clip of Arnold saying "I'll be back" in the terminator. If the rights were based on users, I could purchase the clip with a certain set of rights included in it (and potentially pay to have those rights upgraded for other uses). Pinnacle Studio has a rudimentary version of this with some of their effects and clips that you can include in a movie you're creating, and then unlock it.

Right now, it's merely too difficult for people to do it, but I'm sure there's a huge market for it. Another market potential is business presentations. I was present at a very compelling presentation on HR processes that used a clip from "Office Space" to illustrate potential problems (it really drove the point home). Instead of incorporating the clip into the presentation, she had the DVD at the right place on her laptop and unpaused it (not the most efficient means of doing this, but it worked for the presentation, but not when the presentation was distributed to customers).

I believe that if this issue can be solved, there will be an explosion of legally used media. Things are getting closer with the Tivo Desktop (which isn't supported by DirecTV... ARRGH), the trend toward using flat panel displays for both computers and video, and the Media Center Edition of Windows XP. The holy grail is to have a media computer that is your database of all media: TV shows, Music, DVDs, Pictures, Home movies. Using Ethernet, you can stream that content to any device at home (This works pretty well for my hacked DirecTivo... when I don't have access to the TV connected to the Tivo, I use my laptop or desktop machine to watch my recordings... works very well, except for one intermittent issue).

Here's a synopsis of what I would love to do with my media...

1. Put all my DVDs on my home computer and stream them as I want to any TV in my house. I'd like to be able to categorize them on my hard drive and navigate using a menu.
2. Allow me to watch media from either of my DVRs on any TV or computer in my house.
3. Allow me to copy or burn media from either of my DRVs so that I can watch programs when I'm on the road.
4. Allow me to better synchronize and share music across my devices (where my home computer is the primary repository). These devices include laptop computers, my home stereos, my MP3 player, and either of my cars.
5. Use media in home movies that I create. The media I create is relatively simple to share (especially since I have a media extender), but the media I've purchased is problematic (especially ON the media extender).

Tivo's contribution to the new economy...

More on the previous posting.

Tivo has made the exact same contribution to the entertainment economics. Prime Time is essentially the corresponding limitation in shelf space that a brick and mortar store has. Most people had limited time each day where they were available to watch something, and the television stations had to program to those time slots, which meant that there was limited choice in shows.

Although Cable and Satellite TV has increased the number of channels to choose from, Tivo has broken the time barrier. This means that a program's draw is not limited by the time in which it's aired. Instead of focusing on 18 hours of programming per week, a station has 168 hours of programming available. With Tivo, a show airing at 3am has the same opportunity to be watched as one airing at 9pm. This means that cable channels who want to steal market share can take risks that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to take.

I believe my own watching patterns bear this out. Now that I have Tivo, my watching patterns are completely different than they were before (in other words, now that I have more opportunities for choice, I watch a completely different set of shows).

What's even more interesting is that I've recently started watching very well written and well executed original programming on USA Network, TNT, the SciFi Channel, TLC, the History Channel, and the Science Channel.

With the exception of two shows (that are currently on summer break), the fiction I watch is on USA Network, SciFi, and TNT. I'm completely hooked on:

1. The 4400
2. Battlestar Galactica
3. The Closer
4. Alias
5. The West Wing

What's really surprising to me is that the first 2 were around last season and I missed out on both of them. Fortunately, USA ran all the original season of the 4400 prior to this season premier and I was able to get caught up (again a wonderful thing from Tivo). It's surprising to me that these 3 shows have enough funding (but I believe that Tivo and other DVRs had a big impact... otherwise, DreamWorks and the other large studios producing some of these shows wouldn't be able to make their money back).

On the Non-Fiction front, I'm currently hooked on the following:

1. MythBusters
2. American Chopper
3. Biography
4. Modern Marvels
5. Nanny 911
6. Extreme Makeover Home Edition

I used to be hooked on What not to Wear, but it's been pushed out by the other items on the list.

Now, as a parent, I could also talk about how Tivo has allowed me to (1) give my children more choice over what they watch, while at the same time (2) give me more control over what they watch. Can you guess whether Dragonball Z or SpongeBob is set to record on my Tivo???

More on the new economies shaping the Entertainment Industry

The following Wired Article provides more background on the meaningless analysis discussed in this blog entry. It's a very well written analysis of the new economies driven by the internet (and provides an explanation as to why the analysis is limited).

Microsoft has done something right!

I just checked out the IEBLOG. Although there are many things that drive me up the wall about Microsoft, this is extremely well done.

As a former product manager at PeopleSoft, I wish I had done what they're doing for my products. It's very powerful to be able to provide a view into what's going on with a product, and unfortunately, documentation simply doesn't cut it (especially a software company that warrants to its documentation... if you don't want to support it, then don't document it).

What do I mean? Well, there are lots of features that we added to our products that we didn't do a good enough job of educating people on (even internally, where there were over 3,000 developers using our features). A blog would have been a great way to get the word out to both customers and internal folks (Chris Heller set up a few rogue blogs including one for me where we provided tips and techniques, but it was never sanctioned).

What's also great about this blog is that it's extremely readable. When going there, I half expected it to be chock full of acronyms, code snippets, and other things that lay people won't be able to understand. I really like the explanation of RSS feeds. It's clear, concise, and doesn't assume that you're an expert.

Great Job, Guys!

The Dreaded API

Application Progammatic Intefaces written by individual companies are a bit of a joke. I mean, think about it, in the cut-throat U.S. business market does it make sense to actually allow other companies to twiddle around with your application? Not really. However, companies usually get forced (by a large customer with lots of money to spend) to create some mechanism that seems to allow the big customer to "twist the knobs" themselves. In essence its a sales gimmick.

Don't get me wrong, I've written two ODBC drivers for different companies. But ODBC is a standardized API. That means more than one company had input into the design and specifications. Both sides of the API were discussed and agreed upon by companies that were actively persuing the needed integration. The implementing developer (that's me) just has to follow the conventions put forth in the API. The result is a somewhat smooth integration with another application that uses the said API (ODBC in this case).

In the case I'm ticked about, a company decides to add a marketing bullet point to the sales presentation and ends up creating a load of work for its development (maybe not, keep reading) and support organizations (definitely). The result is typically an API that either is extremely restricted in its usability (because of the narrow definitions imposed by the big customer) or the API is just a mirror of the internal structure of the original application without the glue that holds it together.

The API that really irks me is the latter, the big bloated beast that no sane developer in their right mind would attempt to use. In essence the company in question has had the development team save a lot of their precious time (because they are actually not charging for this feature) by exposing the internal data structures as the API. The result is a little like buying a Ferrari that comes completely disassembled and without instructions. You may only have wanted a means to tweak a single part of the application (font color) and you end up having to rebuild the whole application piece by piece.

Meaningless Article...

You know, I just don't get it. I came across the following article that talks about the music market and after reading it, realized that because they didn't include all the data, that it has no useful information.

It talks about who has the largest share of the music market, but excludes online music and excludes international consumers. It states that people over 30 have a larger percentage of the market, but also states that younger consumers are buying their music online. So, what's the point?

I believe this is a classic case of somebody doing something the same way for many years and not adjusting to changes. This seems to me to be the way that the entertainment industry (especially music) operates. If you want a really long rant, ask me about how I feel about how difficult it is for me to use the music that I own legally on the different devices I have. I would have to spend most of my blog writing time censoring my language....

Isn't this an oxymoron?

Protect the Intellectual Property in your COBOL Source Code with the Redvers Cloaking Device

I know, a cheap shot, but you've got to admit it's pretty funny ;-)

Application Software - On the WRONG track!

Does anybody notice that application software is getting more and more complex and difficult to use?

Software companies are in such a rush to get new products and features out, that basic computer architecture principles seem to be ignored. What seems to be even worse is that software companies don't even seem to be embarassed by it (otherwise, it wouldn't be so easy to see in press releases and literature).

What am I talking about? I'm talking about simplicity and re-use. I'm talking about looking at the overall architecture and finding ways to make it easier to understand, implement, use, and support.

Take, for example,. the following article. I've extracted a couple of relevant Chuck Phillips quotes from it.

"We have a lot of BI products and we'll be doing a better job of packaging it"

Phillips said that a product developed from its Applications division called XML Publisher, which he expects to be available across all Oracle's applications soon, will deliver a flexible infrastructure for a range of enterprise reporting needs.

So, what Chuck's saying is that there are a lot of products that exist and they'll be adding a bunch of new products. So, why do they need to have so many products? Also, what is the implication of taking a product developed by the applications and moving it to the underlying BI infrastructure?

Based on my time in an ERP company (and seeing this sort of thing play out either through acquisitions or through rogue development projects done by the wrong people at the wrong place in the architecture), you can do the following translation:

Many Products = Several different infrastructures that don't share a common architecture and don't work well together

I have a corollary adage:

The supportability of your environment is inversely proportional to the number of different infrastructures that are part of it.

PeopleSoft customers who are struggling with the budgeting module prior to budgets 8.8 are also familiar with the reprecussions of this adage. There was one infrastructure for half of the application, and a completely disparate one for modeling the budget. This caused many problems for PeopleSoft customers and required a complete rewrite of the budgets module in Budgets 8.8.

This is why I would be wary of the hype surrounding SOA and composite applications. Until software companies can apply solid software architecture techniques within their product suites, I wouldn't trust them to provide an infrastructure for making disparate products/architectures work well together. I actually believe that these companies are embracing SOA and composite applications as techniques to allow them to try to dodge the architecture issues that they already have.