November 2006 Archives

Here is my latest book haul...

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There's just so many ways of looking at that haul.

Fantasy fan: "Hey, good collection. But who the heck is Joyce Carol Oates?"

Lit-types:"Going the right direction with Oates, but still hung up with sensational fiction with Palahniuk. You'll get there. Cut down on the bloody genre fiction will you?"

Non-fiction fans:"Explain the string theory when you're done with Hawking!"

Once money is poured into an endeavour especially when it comes to security of any sort, it always falls sort of expectations.

Thinking of course of all the DRMs - the DVD encryption with DeCSS is perhaps the most famous, Audible's DRM, iPod's encrypted songs, all sorts of other stuff.

So it comes as no surprise when I read that the new British passport with state-of-the-art biometrics security has been cracked.

This is of an entirely different scale - it actually affects people who don't watch DVDs or listen to iTunes music.

I'd give a penny for a Briton's thoughts right now, as she stands in line to collect her passport after reading this article.

I have just joined Second Life after reading about how IBM actually built something in it and had Sam Palmisano (IBM CEO) join in the game and gave a speech. Sheesh. There's also a guide on how to join Second Life from within IBM intranet. Go figure.

So I joined, but I've not gone in yet.

All this got me thinking about how we spend our time online, either browsing the net or participating in forums, wikis, reading blogs, etc.

However, as envisioned by Neal Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash, we are approaching a future where we will have online avatars and spend our lives online in a virtual world. In Snow Crash that alternate reality is the Metaverse, where people have essentially two lives, one in the physical realm, and one virtual, but both are 'real' When you make money in real life, the resource is used to sustain you in real life, to ensure your continued existence.

Nothing less in the virtual world, where you earn money (either by slashing monsters or by some form of commerce), which you then use to sustain the continued existence of your virtual self.

Now it can be argued that you can log off, and pretend that the virtual world isn't there. But imagine for a second that your actions in the virtual world actually affect your real world. Case in point, let's take as an example in Second Life, that you're a bona fide fashion designer, and everyone in SL wants to buy your creations. Now of course money flows into your coffers in the virtual life, allowing you more freedom financially to do things in the virtual world. Now suppose we take the transaction to the real world, there is no reason why you couldn't see it to a fellow SL gamer in real life for cold hard cash. In fact, Linden dollar, SL's in-game currency, can actually be converted into US dollars. Cold hard cash, revenue from the virtual environment.

With crossovers like this, how then is virtual reality any less real then real life?

Here, it's hard not to see the potential of such a world, if fully realized and fleshed out. At present, there's no compelling reason for a virtual reality presence. These places are still for gamers at large. Online virtual realities are not widespread the way Internet surfing is for most people, and there isn't a dominant online world with which to support these users - Second Life is one of many, together with other worlds ranging from EverQuest, Worlds of Warcraft, Eve Online...

Of all on offer, I'd say Second Life is moving more closely towards Metaverse than the other incarnations of online realities, simply because Second Life is more like an online real life, rather than a genre based reality. Not everyone will want to be an elf when buying merchandise for your real life - it's not congruent. Second Life will probably not *be* Metaverse of our future, but you bet your ass one will be, looking at how things are going now. Especially when your company starts writing a guide to join on online virtual community.

In the future our children (or even ourselves) will look back to the mid 90's to now and see how primitive we all are now - typing at screens which display flat data, rather than roaming in the virtual landscape.

I was working on PoP and entered a keyword search - a name I pulled out of thin air. I do that in my haphazard mind, especially when I have to come up with dummy data for testing. So I picked the word 'Oswald'.

Before I continue, let me explain. PoP allows you to key in a keyword, and it searches Amazon for related books. And I keyed in 'Oswald.'

And this is what I got from PoP:

Do you see what I see?

A very interesting article has been posted in The Age, a publication in Australia, here. It is an incredibly interesting read. It does seem a little high on emotion, but largely it's accurate. I didn't know about Malaysia being a net importer of oil by 2011, but it does raise some concern on my part. As should every Malaysian, should the trend continue.

I've been reading a couple of things that made me think (as you know, is an activity I seldom indulge myself in) for two consecutive days. The first was yesterday.

“Bangsa Malaysia means we do not evaluate someone by his skin colour, race or religion,” Najib said when closing the Johor Umno Convention at Persada Johor here yesterday.

“It does not question the special rights of the Malays, our quota or anything of that sort.”

What?

That's not the end of it.

“But if we can focus on the concept of Bangsa Malaysia being a state of mind, then we can avoid polemics.

“If we try to define it, this could raise more questions and hot up the debate. If we were to amend the Constitution, the country would be in disorder.”

Uhm... we don't want specifics in case people would ponder deeply into the status quo?

Did I take it out of context? Read it yourself.

And today it was this:

WHY do some consumers buy pirated copies of Microsoft products?

It is not because they cannot afford genuine software but because they do not think it is worth paying for, said Raveesh Gupta, business group leader of the information worker division at Microsoft Malaysia.

It is not worth paying for because it is too expensive, and there are cheaper alternatives. The fact that it is too expensive *is* a freaking reason. In fact, this will tie in to something I will talk about soon, a lot of things in Malaysia is automatically more expensive because our exchange rate is so weak. There are plenty of incentives for companies and the government to keep it that way, but as a citizen we're really getting the short end of the stick. Yes, we are getting benefits from the profits the government is making with the exchange rates at it's current level. But in the long run, the quality of our everyday lives are affected, and that flows back into the economy too.

So yes, the fact that someone in the States can pay USD$289 for Microsoft Office 2003 Pro Edition, while the Malaysian counterpart (who earns the same level of pay, but in RM) pays RM1070 for the same damn thing, does influence the tipping scales a just a wee little bit.

The sooner these companies that target consumers here recognize this pricing disparity the better (I said recognize, not realize, there is a difference).

Microsoft is not the only one guilty of this of course, and I recognize Microsoft's initiatives in bringing in Malaysia-only versions of Windows in an effort to keep the price down, but really:
1. Who'd really use this, potentially difficult to support edition of the software
2. For those of us who use the 'normal' version, it's still pretty damn high.

I've been listening to podcasts since earlier this year, after a lull period of not being able to listen to my audiobooks. Being passionately involved in all things IT (although, I have to stress, that I'm Not A Nerd^TM), I have taken to listening to TWiT, which is pretty damn high on popular podcasts lists all over the internet. I'm not an incredibly huge fan of Leo Laporte, but have since developed an appreciation on how good a radio personality he is. TWiT isn't incredibly technical, but has a pretty good coverage of the latest and most popular tech news stories. Plus him knowing a good crowd of influential and important people in the tech business does a lot to make me pay attention.

However, I have, over the months and countless TWiTs, developed a slight overdose of Leo and friends, especially when there are countless spinoffs and even the friends of Leo having their own podcasts, which I must say, talks about basically the same things.

For instance, Leo has his whole TWiT network. His Security Now and This Week in Law are the only other TWiT spinoffs I'm mildly interested in, others are simply a sensory (in this case, auditory) overload. His guests in TWiT itself, such as John Dvorak, Patrick Norton, Robert Heron, and others have their own podcasts or IPTV shows. And what do they talk about? More of the same.

I've since sampled a couple of other tech podcasts (not much, admittedly, there's only so much time in a day when I commute), but I did discover a fabulous podcast, which is very different than TWiT, called IT Conversations. Hosted by Doug Kaye, this show is diverse, sometimes covering interviews with prominent individuals in the IT world, or recordings of talks in seminars or expos that are incredibly interesting. It was TWiT itself that introduced me to Kaye, and for that I'm incredibly grateful

I have recently finished two IT Conversations of note. One was an interview with Joel Spolsky, whose blog, Joel on Software, is one of *the* blogs for programmers, ISVs and a generally good read. This interview was fascinating to say the least, and it was wonderful listening to one of the more successful ISV operators and hear his thoughts on a variety of topics.

Another, I just finished today called What Teens Want from a Web 2.0 conference (something or other). In fact, it was this very podcast that inspired today's post. It's a recording of a talk in this conference where 5 teens were interviewed on what they do daily on the online world today, and what they wanted to see from companies on the forefront of Web 2.0 applications development.

The teens were generally talking about how they never buy music anymore, and how ipods, google, myspace and instant messaging are an integral part of their lives. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. It was funny and enlightening (I'm getting conscious of my superlatives now - I really wanted to say *incredibly* enlightening). The gem was probably the part where the host asked one of the teens on stage how he would spend 100 bucks online.

Host: Say you wanted to buy something online. Like a CD player.
Teen (puzzlement): A CD player?

I laughed for a long time driving home. :)

I won't stop listening to TWiT, but it's good to have an alternative listen. IT Conversations = highly recommended.