zhasper.com

Back when Scoble was at MS, I couldn't read his blog at all - I found it far too one-sided and boring.

More recently, I've resubscribed. I still disagree with him on a lot of things, but I find him to be more interesting and balanced now.

I've finally had the difference explained to me - and the explanation comes from Scoble himself:

But, anyway, this is something I’ve noticed since leaving Microsoft. When you’re up at Microsoft all you think about is how to work with Microsoft stuff. Conversations like the one Jon is participating in seem normal and commonplace.

Then you get out of Redmond and the conversations are very different. I’ve never had someone ask me how to blog from Word outside of Redmond.

Well spotted!

I've been away on holiday, so I've slipped behind in the blogosphere a little.

I only became aware last night that there's been a flap over a potential cannot-be-easily-disabled startup sound in Vista. People are in a tizzy over the thought that there might be a sound they can't control - although as arstechnica and Scoble, amongst many others, have pointed out, Macs have always done this, most gaming consoles do this - it's really not a new idea at all, so why the flap?

I personally think everyone is missing the point here.

Scoble has spoken to "Steve Ball, group program manager for the Windows Audio Video Excellence team (basically, the team that builds the stuff that plays audio and video in Windows)" who says:

The current plan ... is that there will be a pre-wired sound that plays when the system is ready for you to logon. This is the plan of record for quite a few months.

You can do other things with your attention and your eyes during cold boot without feeling like you have to watch and wait.

To me, the issue isn't that there's going to be a sound alerting me to the fact that the computer is ready to use. The issue here is that MS confiently expect that the Vista boot process will be so long that the vast majority of users will have drifted away and won't notice that it's ready.

Wow, talk about a quality product.

Tiger boots on my 4+ year old laptop, an old 866mhz jobbie with 512mb of ram, in around 60 seconds. On the newest Intel iMacs, it boots in something like 20 seconds.

Given the choice between an OS that boots before I can lose interest, and one that assumes i'm going to be away getting some coffee while I'm waiting and will need an audible alert to tell me to come back - I'll choose the former, thanks.

Scoble said it, James Kew called me on it.. and it's true.

The entry I was responding to starts with "Steve Rubel has yet another way you can fire Microsoft." I missed the entire rest of that paragraph until "Or, except if you play video games.", concatenated those, and responded to that.

Even after Scoble's capslock key got stuck in his comment here, I still didn't understand what I'd done. By this point I'd actually read Steve's article (I read his blog too), as well as having a quick look at the eplatform site - but I still didn't get it!

That's some a-grade stupidity.

Rotten strawberry, indeed.

Robery, I'm sorry.

The below was originally a reply to a comment from Scoble to one of my earlier posts; however, it's something that's been irking me in a more general way for a while, so I'm reposting here.

The more typical context in which I come across this kind of thinking is when people ask "Do you understand what I'm saying?". Well - perhaps. I can't actually know whether or not I understand what you're saying. I can know of what you're saying seems to make sense to me - but I can't know whether or not my understanding of what you've said corresponds with what you've said.

Much more useful would be for the communicator to ask the communicatee a question - "So, based on what I've just told you, if you encounted what would you do?". This has two benefits: the communicatee is forced to apply their new knowledge, thus helping them to remember it. Also, the communicator is able to gauge from the communicatee's response how well the message has been communicated, and if it hasn't, what needs to be adjusted...

Saying "Do you understand what I'm saying" is just a cop-out, as is what Scoble wrote:

(here commenceth my reproduced comment)

READ WHAT I WRITE, not what you think I write

Sorry Robert, that's not possible. I exist outside of your head; I don't have any way of knowing exactly what you intended to say. All I can do is interpret the things that you did say, based on what I know of the world and the language we're using to communicate.

That said, I'm always willing to admit that my interpretation of what you said was wrong and revise my opinions based on more information from you...

Right now though I'm not sure which of the many things I mentioned above is wrong though, let alone what you actually intended to say.

At a guess, I'm guessing you're talking about your response to Steve Rubel's post about eplatform?

But - I didn't mention the thick vs. thin clients issue at all - I was talking about one of your other comments that you made just after the link - so that can't be it.

Sorry, I'm really not sure which bit you think I've misunderstood - so I have no idea at all what I'm meant to understand by it :(

Yet again, scoble opens his mouth and nothing much falls out.

It's almost amusing. Just over a week ago, Scoble was saying:
The past week taught me a lot about how important it is to always keep respect for the truth.

The one difference between me and the other guy, though, is that when the facts show that I'm wrong I'm willing to admit such and correct the post

Now he's repeating the oft-circulated rumour that if you want to play games, you need a windows machine. This is galling on it's own - but even more so when even Microsoft release games for the mac!

Oh well, he's been called on this one. I'm sure he'll now correct his post, now that he knows he's wrong.

While we're on the topic of scoble, he's also happy that with Vista he can happily surf the web and not have to worry about spyware. I'm pleased for him - that's something I've enjoyed ever since I first switched away from Windows in 2000.

He's also wrongly blaming his son's iPod for his woes with DRM. Earth to Scoble, earth to Scoble - that's not a feature of the iPod, that'a a feature of DRM. I suggest you get used to it - MS is embracing drm that will prevent your DVDs being played in full-quality unless your monitor is "licenced" to view that DVD.

Scoble, of course, loves pointing at anyone who makes a comment that is in the least negative about any competitors product. Scoble loves doing this even more than ID/creationism proponents love to misquote anyone who expresses doubt about one particular suggested evolutionary mechanism. Scoble thus links to this as "The Tao of Mac blog is asking if OS X is becoming crufty.". It's a good question, actually, and I think most mac zealots will agree that the answer is yes.

It's not a question anyone is asking about Windows though - it became clear a decade ago with the launch of Windows95 that windows was, in fact, hopelessly crufty.

Scoble also links to this response from the MSN Virtual Earth team talking about some of the lessons they learned after the release of VE:

International Coverage Most functionality in this Beta release of Virtual Earth, including the map coverage, is for the United States only. Yes, we could have released the beta as Virtual USA, and renamed it in the near future when we begin rolling out coverage in more countries, but getting products renamed here at Microsoft once they are public is a little tricky; the brand police would be on us like a starved pit bull and no one wants that.

I don't entirely buy this: Google already has high definition coverage for large parts of the world - I still think it would make sense for them to have waited until they had a product that was at least remotely comparable before release... but at least their addressing their critics.

(I'll note that the mean reason I think of it as Virtual USA has nothing to do with the level of coverage - it's the fact that their search doesn't recognise any cities outside the US).

Enough rambling for today..