PC's vs. OS'?

I just read this article on CNET.

Apparently, in an email (Page 153) from Brad Goldberg, General Manager of Microsoft's Windows Client Product Management Group, he states that “[Customers] are in the store buying a PC, not an OS.”

Matt Asay then goes on to comment the following:

I wonder if Mr. Goldberg appreciates both the truth and the difficulty inherent in his comment that consumers are looking for a PC, not an OS. To me, he could not more clearly state, "Windows is a commodity. The end of (our) world is near."

I have somewhat divergent opinions about this. On the one hand I do agree that Windows is progressively becoming commoditized. One of the main reasons, in my opinion, is competition. Compatibility has become much less of an issue. Furthermore, as applications get pulled out of personal hard drives and get hosted on the net, the capability differences between OS’ are diminished.

Generally speaking, competition leads to commoditization.

Nonetheless, I think that hardware will inevitably follow software in becoming hosted. We see this with hard drives and processors thus far. At some point, I imagine, most of a computer’s parts will actually reside in some central location. At that point the only thing people will have in their homes are user interface devices (a screen or something) and a connection to the net.

When this happens the choice consumers will face when at the store will be much simpler: “how big of a monitor do I want?” The rest of the hardware upgrading, I think, will be done automatically by the companies that provide users will all the online services used.

At this point the more important decision is: “what OS do I want to run?” Since everything will be hosted, switching between OS’ will be smooth and simple: simply cancel your subscription with one online OS and subscribe to another online OS.

Conclusion: OS’ are becoming commoditized true, but hardware is more of a commodity and as I argued above it could even become a utility. As such, I disagree with the “The end of (our) world is near" statement. In fact, I think the decision on what OS to run will actually become more important, not less. This should be seen as an opportunity.

Outbrain and Google Chatback

Two new widgets have been added to the blog.
The first is the “Google Talk chatback badge” which sits under my pixilated picture and lets readers and random wanderers chat with me if I happen to be online.

The second is just awesome. It’s the Outbrain widget, which I discovered today, and allows readers to rate each of my posts -- Netflix style.

I love this second widget for a number of reasons. Sometimes it’s just cumbersome to write a full comment. Rating something from one to five simplifies the whole process so much. One click and you are done with it. Furthermore, rating is fun! No? I can also see this being helpful to me as I can gauge what users are more interested in, etc. I’m not necessarily saying I would change what I write about; after all, this is a blog about me. Still, its constructive criticism and I’m interested in getting it.

The next step – and we are probably not far from it – is for the data that Outbrain generates to be streamed into one of those “user content aggregators,” like Friendfeed, to begin parsing individual posts instead of whole blogs. Like Google Reader’s Shared Items taken to the next level.

Virtual Walls

“Google Docs is Chock Full of Fail" is a comment that came out a few days ago in response to a blog post about the potential of Google apps. What’s most disagreeable to me is the fact that the commentator appears to be making much more of a personal attack instead of an argumentative response to the blogger.

I am of the opinion that Google Apps is the winning solution. As Vicente Fox stated in his autobiography: “If there is one thing that history teaches us, it is that walls do not work.” The Berlin wall, the Great Wall of China, and the Wailing Wall are all good examples. Microsoft Office is a walled garden, Google Apps is not.

True, Microsoft Office is more developed; it is more convenient for power users; it has functional shortcut key commands; etc. Google lacks much of this, but all of it can simply be copied from Microsoft – sans walls.

To me it seems that Microsoft will be the one hard pressed to replicate Google's collaboration advantages.

Ohh, also, Google Apps is free.

Free, open and online vs. expensive, closed and offline. It's only a matter of time.

Web Users - Customers and Owners

Today I was reminded again of that quote from last week’s economist: “Citizens are not only the state’s customers; they are also its owners.” In a way, it seems to me that the government and many web services share this dichotomy in parallel. The value of many web services is generated, in one way or another, by the users themselves. As such, like the citizens and their government, web users are both customers and owners.

Yesterday I wrote about how, in the case of governments, taxation is circular as money is technically taken and given to and from the same group. Furthermore, I suggested that value is only generated by reducing expenses – by improving efficiencies. I think we can see the very same tendencies in web services; they manifest themselves in downward cost pressures. Many arguments can be made for why internet services are often free. A compelling one, I think, is that it is simply because it is users themselves that generate the value of these services; they are the owners; and it makes no sense to charge the owners.

I’m sure this is not a new idea. What I began wondering though, was whether the cost pressures that manifest themselves in online services would manifest themselves in the government. In other words, is the eventual inclination towards zero taxation? After all, the public sector generally lags behind the private one.

I can actually almost see this theoretical limit as a realistic possibility. The web is, after all, a tool to facilitate communication. Take the web’s capacity closer to its potential and it should have the ability to communicate and mobilize a collective for itself and by itself – a real democracy, no?

Label Cloud

I meant to write this brief thank you yesterday but didn’t get around to it.
Blogger’s labeling system works so long as you don’t use too many different labels. I found that my list of labels was quickly becoming unmanageable.

Phydeaux3 provides the necessary code to customize a cloud labeling system into the Blogger HTML. You can find the code here. Thanks Phydeaux3.

My cloud now sits beneath my blog archive. I like the solution because it’s not only visually attractive, but also very functional – a quick snapshot about the general themes of the things I’ve written about.

e-government

Been doing a little bit of catch-up reading today and I just finished last weeks special report on the Economist about e-government. The report covered and explained how the public sector lags behind the private one in the implementation and efficient use of technology and the internet. Same recurring themes – government has no competition, therefore has no incentives to do things properly and within budget.

Nevertheless, the adoption of technology, and particularly the internet, within governmental organizations is great news on many fronts. As the report mentions, the state using the internet comes hand in hand with the opening of governmental information to the masses. This is particularly important to developing countries plagued with corruption. Openness is perhaps the biggest deterrent to corruption and therefore a great incitement for development.

It was a welcome surprise to read about the progress that the municipal administration of DC has made. Apparently under Adrian Fenty, the new mayor, DC now benefits from a portal that provides citizens a wealth of access to state services. More importantly, in my opinion, the administration seems to understand the importance of efficiency. They are not trying to reinvent technology, as is often attempted by governmental offices, but instead use private solutions to accomplish their goals. Information is hosted remotely and word and data processing is done via Google’s free online applications. All these savings can now be used to invest in what really matters – equal opportunity – education, healthcare and public infrastructure.

It seems that the administration is now handing police iPhones, which apparently turn out to be a cheaper alternative to police radios. I would love to see the police beginning to use communication services like twitter to report incidents.

I think this is all a great message. Arguably the purpose of government is to maintain a standard of living. This requires resources, and resources can be extracted in two ways: more taxation or more efficiency. In business terms: increase revenues or decrease expenses. For a number of reasons, I suppose, greater emphasis is placed on the top line. The private sector needs to focus on both revenues and expenses, but I think the public sector should place a much greater emphasis on expenses. The reason for this is that any increase in governmental revenue (taxes) has a direct and inverse effect on public disposable income and therefore national investments. This relationship does not really exist in the private sector and therefore growing revenues indefinitely is generally seen as a virtuous goal.

In other words, as the economist puts it, “Citizens are not only the state’s customers; they are also its owners.” From a philosophical point of view, since cash taken from tax payers is ultimately spent on tax payers, an emphasis on top line is circular and thus much less important than one on expenses. Only by increasing efficiency (reducing expenses) do governments add value.

Once you begin to account for socio-economic differences within a population, however, people may argue that the above logic is faulty, or at least is incomplete in today’s reality.

In any case, it is my belief that all other things equal, in the long run the nations that grow the fastest are those that invest the most. To achieve greater levels of investment you require greater levels of disposable income. Consequently, it is the smaller more efficient governmental solutions that should triumph in the end.

Tumblr Songs on My Blog

Easylistener stopped working for some reason. Fortunately, for the few of you that read this, I have found a great alternative. I will now be posting songs on my Tumblr site and they will be accessible on this blog via a little widget beneath the avatars.

Special thanks go to Fred Wilson and Daryn. A simple “tumblr songs on blog” query on Google ported me to a particular post of Fred’s, where Daryn pasted the code for this widget.

Thanks!

Cai Guo-Qiang Exhibit

Earlier today I went to the Guggenheim to check out the “I want to believe” exhibit by Cai Guo-Qiang. A combination of montages and two dimensional paintings make up the exhibit, and it’s all quite unique. The pieces that stood out to me were:

- A recreation of life sized clay statues portraying the misery of Chinese peasants under the rule of a harsh warlord. What made this piece interesting was the fact that it wasn’t all about the final product. It couldn’t be, given that the work was a copy. Instead, the montage was about the process of creating these pieces – all of the statues were unfinished. The clay remained wet in some places, in others it was flaking. Other statues were nothing but a wood and metal skeleton waiting for clay to be put on top. In this way, it was as if this montage was celebrating the previous, original work of art.

- An egg shaped lamp made out of snakeskin with mirrors on top. What made this piece unique was that one could look up into the mirrors to observe live slithering snakes sitting at the bottom of the lamp.


- A collection of gunpowder based paintings. Qiang basically uses controlled explosions in conjunction with oil paint to create his pieces. The result is a set of amazing paintings that are unique not only in their “controlled violence,” but also in their very color and texture. Some paintings almost seemed scarred and blistered.

Virtual Reality

I watched Michael Clayton this weekend at the movie theater. Great movie, highly recommend it. In any case, I decided that I wanted to add a little widget that would report the ratings and comments that I made on movies I had recently watched. Enter Flixter, a widget you will find at the bottom right of my blog under my Netflix queue.

This all got me started daydreaming about the future (or potential evolution) of the movie industry. A while back I read an article that compared the growth of the movie industry to that of gaming. Bottom line (and I don’t recall how this was gauged) gaming has grown substantially more than the movie industry.

I found the comparison interesting. This particular article was principally concerned with the growth of MMORPGs (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game), which have received substantial attention in the last few years for the amount of money that they generate and also for the amount of time some people spend on these games. Without getting too far into tangents -- I began hypothesizing that gaming and movies could potentially merge into a new form of entertainment – virtual reality.

This brings me to another piece I read a few days ago: “The 14 Grand Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century,” posted by Wired. The piece basically describes 14 important developments that, according to an important group of engineers, mankind needs to accomplish within the 21st Century. Again, I recommend that read.

One of the challenges, not necessarily the most important one, is the development of virtual reality technology. In plain words they are basically referring to something like the matrix (from the movie Matrix) that could be used not only for entertainment, but also for education and medical purposes.

I certainly understand the value that such technology promises. Fundamentally, I think one of the reasons people enjoy movies, games, and books is because our brains are predisposed to learn. And, as individuals we learn not only from the experiences we personally have, but also from those had by the people we encounter and interact with. Movies, books, games, anything with a plot really, create such an opportunity for third person learning. Virtual reality, therefore, would open up teaching methods that are currently impossible to fathom.

It seems to me that movies and games like MMORPGs are important cornerstones for the development of a real virtual reality. MMORPGs are technically rudimentary virtual worlds. To make the experience more believable, all you need are better (much better) graphics, and something that could be described as a “full-bodied” Wiimote. In other words, if we don’t want to go as far as The Matrix and insert metal directly into our brains, we are going to need a user interface that translates each of our body movements into binary. The Wiimote does this for our hand movements, now we need something for the rest of us.

I think it is fascinating to see a diverse number of companies (Nintendo, Blizzard, Universal, etc) applying and developing technologies, that could hypothetically converge into something else entirely.

Social Globalization

This is a follow up to my Immigration Post.
I’ve been thinking about this question for a while. I thought of it yesterday after talking to one of my coworkers. An article he read mentioned that in 40 years or so almost a quarter of the US will be Hispanic, and that Caucasian people will then be a minority (49%).

My question relates somewhat. What happens when a large percent of a nation’s population has multiple citizenships? Let’s look at the statistic above. If a quarter of Americans in 40 years will be Hispanic one can arguably assume that many of these could have dual citizenship. What happens, say, if 10% of the US citizens are also Mexican citizens? What happens when 25% of US citizens are also Mexican citizens?

I’m picking the US and Mexico because they are convenient neighboring states, but this goes much further.

It has been speculated that the near future will be dominated by three powers: the US, Europe and China. European citizens already share in a common union. It is not crazy to think that they may someday share a single passport. I could be eligible for one of those!

So let’s imagine a world controlled by these three superpowers. After not too long many would have passports to two or all three!

What I am getting at is that globalization, the term, means much more than tighter, more interlinked economies. Globalization is a trend towards unification. It is a grassroots social trend. To exemplify: I know people with five passports. Their children are therefore eligible for potentially ten or eleven passports if an equally multicultural spouse is found.

What is a State if not a group of people that collectively share an identity? When these identities split, as they do in dual citizens, the collective identity that they foster is simplified to a more common denominator.

Note: This by no means translates to lost cultural heritage. In fact, I think the opposite is true. The mixing of national identities naturally borrows the best cultural elements from multiple backgrounds, thus becoming more complex but also more open in the process.

In terms of my previous theoretical situation, if 25% of US citizens are also Mexican citizens then what do you call this group? In the extreme: what if all US citizens are Mexican citizens? The very identities of both states are simplified into a single identity. At this point, does it make sense to have two states? My suspicion is that as this trend grows and solidifies there will be mounting pressures for the unification of bordering countries.

Thus, I can see globalization tearing down the very geographic boarders that we have set up. The result? It is difficult to say, but is it impossible to conceive of the potential elimination of nationalities as we know them?

I would cease to have immigration problems then.

Music Widget up and Running

Well I managed to get a music widget up and running. Turned out not to be Streampad, which I have yet to figure out. I instead turned to Yahoo’s Easylistener which I found quite cool.

It basically picks up the music links that I embed into the blog, but it does more than this; any visitor can use my widget to pull music from other websites to listen to while still on my blog.

Regardless, I will continue to try to figure out Streampad which I have high hopes for. Another company that I think is doing really cool things is MP3tunes.com. They basically let you upload an unlimited number of songs onto their servers. They host all your music into their “lockers.” This is where the cool part comes in. You can upload, and download, music to and from your locker into any computer in the world. It’s a great way of backing up your files! And it’s a great resource to have while on vacation.

Cooler yet is the partnership between Streampad and MP3tunes.com, which lets users access their locker from Streampad.

What has me very intrigued is the “Friends” feature of Streampad. So far all of these music players are walled gardens. One user’s playlist is pretty much isolated from the playlists of his/her friends. I continue to believe that the future of music involves some form of cross pollination between user’s playlists and media.

What I envision is a website that allows you to:
- Upload the music that you have already purchased and stream it to any computer in the world (this already exists)
- Create social webs and linking your playlist to those of your friends (already exists)
- Pull songs (media) from your friend’s playlists onto your own playlist
- Stream songs with available licenses, let me explain…

Every purchased song would have a license. If you don’t own a license, but your friend does, why not stream it from his playlist? So long as it’s idle, you should be able to borrow from friends no? It’s just like borrowing a CD.

This is not the same thing as file sharing. No, file sharing is the duplication of files. This construct does not duplicate anything. You have access to other people’s legally purchased music, but only while its idle. If another friend beat you to the song, well then you best play something else in the meantime. Of course, if you have two friends who own the same license, then you wouldn’t have to wait; you could just make use of the second license.

The result would be this: If you have enough friends, your personal media access would grow exponentially.

Clearly there are issues with this construct – namely the free rider (or free loader effect). Regardless, these are issues that can be overcome. Like with any construct, you can design it to include any form of incentives and disincentives.

Music on my blog

I am trying to figure out how Streampad works in order to post some music onto my blog. As you can see I've already posted one song (Regina Spektor - On the Radio) a few posts back. That was posted directly onto the blog and not through a widget.

I was hoping streampad would pick the Spektor song automatically, but its not. Anyone else experiencing this? I think it might be because I'm hosting the file on google docs.

In any case, I am testing some other things out, namely uploading songs onto Tumblr to see if Streampad can pick it up from there.

Send any suggestions you may have.
Thanks!

Genographic Results are In

The results are in!

After almost two months of waiting my maternal genetic ancestry tests are done. My maternal line is haplogroup A.

A little bit of background; according to the Genographic Project:

“[My] story begins in Africa sometime between 150,000 and 170,000 years ago, with a woman whom anthropologists have nicknames “Mitochondrial Eve.”

Mitochondrial Eve “was not the first female human. Homo sapiens evolved in Africa around 200,000 years ago.” “Eve is exceptional because hers is the only lineage from that distant time to survive to the present day.”

“Mitochondrial Eve represents the root of the human family tree. Her descendants, moving around Africa, eventually split into two distinct groups, characterized by a different set of mutations their members carry.”

“These groups are referred to L0 and L1, and these individuals have the most divergent genetic sequences of anybody alive today, meaning they represent the deepest branches of the mitochondrial tree.”

“Eve Begat L1, and L1 begat L2,” and L2 begat L3

“L3 is important for its movements north.” My “L3 ancestors were significant because they are the first modern humans to have left Africa, representing the deepest branches of the tree found outside of that continent.”

My next “signpost ancestor is the woman whose descendants formed haplogroup N.” My L3 ancestors moved north “across the Sinai Peninsula, in present day Egypt” and came to form haplogroup N.

“Some members bearing mutations specific to haplogroup N formed many groups of their own which went to populate much of the rest of the globe”

“After several thousand years in the Near East, members of [my] group began moving into unexplored nearby territories, following large herds of migrating game across vast plains. These groups broke into several directions and made their way into territories surrounding the Near East.”

“One group of these early N individuals broke away into the Central Asian steppes and set out on their own journey following herds of game across vast expanses. Around 50,000 years ago, the first members of [my] haplogroup A began moving across Siberia, the beginnings of a journey that did not stop until finally reaching both continents of the Americas.”

“Today, haplogroup A is one of the five mitochondrial lineages found in aboriginal Americans./ While haplogroup A is very old (around 50,000 years), the reduced genetic diversity found in the Americas indicates that those lineages arrived only within the last 15,000 to 20,000 years and quickly spread once there.”

Haplogroup A was one of the founding lineages of the Americas.

To review: “Eve” > L1/L0 > L2 > L3 > N > A

In other words, if you trace my maternal line from my mother to her mother, to her mother, and so on, you would first come across Native American’s, then native Asians (who crossed the Bering Straight), then Eurasians, and finally Africans. This confirms a suspicion that my family had; my closest ancestors were indeed Amerindians from Mexico. Amongst the members of my family, we believe that they are Purepechas from Patzcuaro.

If my calculations are correct, then my mother’s, mother’s, mother (my great grandmother on my mother's side) is in fact 100% Native American. This makes me at least 1/8th Native American.

The next step is to figure out my paternal line. My suspicion is that it’s a Viking line.

Immigration

So it’s my birthday and I’m back in Chile. I haven’t written in a while, but for a good reason. Basically the only thing that’s been on my mind as of late has been my immigration problems. And I didn’t want to write about those before the got resolved.

This is what happened in a nutshell.

For Christmas 2007 I travelled to Chile to visit my parents. In order to get back into the states I needed to get a visa stamp on my passport. All you need to get that stamp is work authorization, which I had. So all in all this should have been an easy process, except that it’s me versus the immigration department and we apparently mix like water and oil.

They said two-to-three business days at the US embassy. After this period I had to make a choice. Go back to the States with my other passport, as a tourist. Or wait it out for an uncertain, but predictably prolonged, period of time. I was expected at work so I chose the former. Upon arrival, however, my immigration attorneys “advised me” (effectively an order) to go back. I could not work while in the US because I had come in as a tourist. Fortunately this did not ruin my visa status. So I go back to wait it out.

I emailed the embassy inquiring about my visa and passport. A cryptic one line response comes back; Washington had flagged my passport and put a hold on my visa. In short, people in dark coats are scrutinizing my papers. That was to be expected right? I am after all the exception to every rule when it comes to immigration.

Example: Often times, when I go through customs, I get strange looks from the officers. No fault of my own. I answer the questions that are written on the forms correctly. But these questions are simply not meant for people like me. The forms are filled out somewhat like this: Nationality – Mexican, Place of Birth – Netherlands, Place of Residence – USA, Passport Issued in – Trinidad, you get the idea. The best is when they ask me to fill in ALL the countries I have visited in the last ten years inside a small square box. I laugh and list the continents instead. Save me some time.

In any case, for some reason Washington was suspicious of me… again. Something to do with something I had done in 2006. Perhaps it was all those countries I listed on the immigration paper. Can’t know for certain.

So I try to call. You can’t call the US embassy in Chile. They do not take calls.
So I try to visit again. You can’t get in unless you have an appointment.
So I try to make an appointment. You can’t make an appointment if the embassy is already treating your case.
So I try to send them some more papers and information in an attempt to expedite this issue. I should have known by now. But you can’t send papers unless the embassy requests them.

The place is a fortress. It looks like a fortress and behaves like a black hole. But wouldn’t you know it; they have a beautiful pavilion inside. What does go on in there?

So I sat and waited. Fortunately I had done nothing illegal. I am, after all, an abiding world citizen. After waiting a full month, along comes the DHL courier and drops off my passport. No notice, just business as usual.

I had a chance to compare the US embassy with the Mexican embassy. I strolled in, no worries. Wandered around the building for a while and was attended by the consul himself who was standing by the counter. I imagine the US consul behind multiple biometric security gates a few floors underground.

Today dual nationalities are somewhat rare. In the future things will be different I think. What happens when 10% of a populace has multiple nationalities? I will write about these types of questions in my following post.