Perplexed looking for a guide

Wednesday Feb 14, 2007

Digital Rights, RIAA & Open Source

I'm sitting here at 1:00AM trying to futilely guess when the winter storm is going to hit, and wondering if my plane to California will leave tomorrow morning, as scheduled, in the evening, or not at all. The later the storm hits, the greater the chance that my flight will leave, more or less on time, so here I sit reading the paper and waiting for the snow to fall. Why not just go to sleep you ask? You know the old proverb, "A watched pot never boils."? Perhaps the longer I watch for the snow to fall, the longer it will take to start falling and the better my chances are.... or perhaps I'm just over tired.

One article that caught my eye, was about Steve Job's latest missive urging the music industry to eliminate the digital rights management for music. Among Steve's arguments is that (1) the music industry already release music without DRM (CD's), which can be easily ripped, (i.e., the cows are already out of the barn) (2) this is better for the consumer, because then any player can play music purchased from any store, (3) any DRM system can be cracked by smart people, so promise to the music industry to protect their music from illegal copying is specious.

While all of these are true, I think it misses the key point. By making it easier for consumers to use their music wherever and however they want, you lower the barrier of entry to using digital music, and thus you've increased the size of your potential market. You make up for any loss due to illegal copies by the vastly larger number of customers to whom you can now sell. As a minor point, you've also become one of the "good guys" to consumers. That's always a good thing.

In essence, this is the same basis we have used for open sourcing Java, Solaris, and the Sparc architecture. By eliminating artificial barriers to their use, we increase the number of users of our technology, a percentage of whom will actually purchase something from us, i.e., hardware or services. I think the customer also feels better about this, since they are paying for products and services that have real value. Fundamentally, exorbitant technology licensing fees try to monetize a market position, without providing an real value for the license fees. (Is $200-400 for an OS exorbitant?) Both hardware and services are things that provide real value to the customer.

It's great that Sun has invested tens of thousands of hours great engineering into Java, Solaris and other technologies that we have now released into the open source community. What engineer wouldn't want to be able to share their masterpieces with the widest possible audience, and create a community around their work? At the same time, we understand Java, Solaris, multi-core and multi-threaded processors, etc. better than anyone else---we both invented them and have more experience using them. Use Sun's technologies to make your world better, and if you need assistance using those technologies advance your organization you know how to reach us.

It feels good to be part of a company that charges for things that deliver value to the customer and tries to eliminate barriers to the technology's use. Now where is that storm?

Posted at 11:45AM Feb 14, 2007 by rezippel in Sun | Comments[0]

Saturday Oct 14, 2006

Simchat Torah

It's a couple of days early, by our synagogue had our Simchat Torah service today. The portions of the Torah are read in series during weekly services. This week we finish the Torah and start at the beginning, so we read the last few lines of Devarim (Deuteronomy) and the first few lines of Bereshit (Genesis). My sons are young, so to keep the interested (with all the singing and dancing) we explained the readings. Turns out, one of the favorite movies is Prince of Egypt so they were fascinated by Moses' last days, as well as being very sad that he actually died. But the very next moment, we have the creation of the world, and the usual discussion about on which day the big bang occurred; and how could there day and night before there were stars, etc. At anyrate, I was amazed at what interest there was in the bible sections... First, their hero from a Disney movie followed by science, with singing and dancing, and cookies to finish it off. Why wasn't synagogue like that when I was young?

Posted at 01:22AM Oct 14, 2006 by rezippel in Personal |

Tuesday Oct 03, 2006

Smoot wins Nobel Prize!

As one of those MIT alumni who lived on the Boston side of the river, I walked across the Harvard bridge at least four times a day for too many years. And, of course, know all too well that it's 364.4 Smoots plus an ear. When I heard that George Smoot and John Mather won the nobel prize today, I was excited to think about how the next painting of the smoot marks would be changed this year. Before, getting too wound up in this I thought to check the references a bit, and discovered that George Smoot wasn't the LCA freshman whose height was used to measure the bridge, but it was Oliver R. Smoot (could he be a relation?). While Oliver didn't win a Nobel prize, his career was most appropriate. He was chairman of the American National Standards Institute from 2001-2002 and President of ISO from 2003-2004. As for George Smoot's Nobel wining accomplishment, the image of the background radiation from the big bang that he produced, when explained to a layman like me truly inspires awe. In many ways, it is the photograph of creation!

Posted at 11:08PM Oct 03, 2006 by rezippel in Personal |

Tuesday May 30, 2006

Advertising is Evil

I came back from a long business trip a couple of weeks ago, and what struck me was all the advertising I kept running into. It was on the walls of the airport terminal, on the coffee bug I picked up, on the TV monitors in the waiting area, etc. I thought I might get a break when I got on the airplane, but no, even the in flight shows included commercials!

When I got home, I played with my sons for a bit and then they watched a TV show. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they were more in tune with the commercials than real content of the the shows they were watching. After they went to sleep I watched a Red Sox game for the first time in quite a while. Not only were there commericals during the breaks in the action, but even during a pitch you could see the advertising on the stands behind the batter. I was pretty fed up. I hadn't realized how good I had it locked up in a conference room for a week drinking coffee, Dr, Pepper, and eating strawberry licorice and cookies.

I don't mind seeing a mind seeing an ad every once in a while. Sometimes they inform or are amusing, like the current Apple ads. But more often then not they are annoying. Afterall, that's why God invented Tivo---to restore a balance with the evils of adverising and commercials.

But then it hit me. My last refuge from commercials and advertising was the library. There are never commericals there, just books and people reading them. But today, the library is being replaced by the Internet (see the May 14, 2006 NYTimes article in the magazine section). And what's the portal to the Internet library? It's Google. And Google is constantly inserting advertisements around the results of my search.

And when you look at business plans for startups these days, it seems the most common approach is that by using this nifty new technology they invented, they will create a unique community that can be used for targeted advertising (which of course, we will make unobtrusive but which the users will find irresistible). Isn't there a way to provide real value to your targeted community? Is advertising the only way to make money these days?

Posted at 01:37PM May 30, 2006 by rezippel in Personal | Comments[2]

Thursday Apr 27, 2006

Web 2.0 and the Participation Age

I got a chance to congratulation Jonathan on taking on his new CEO responsibilities this week and I don't think I had gotten the word "congratulations" out before he asked me where my blog was. Now that I think about, I believe he asked me that question when I interviewed for my job several months ago. I think it's a bad idea not to have a good answer for your boss when he asks a question three times, so...

As way of introduction, I work for Greg Papadopoulos, EVP and CTO of Sun Microsystems, and have the title of VP of Technology. So I'm helping Greg with some of the advanced technology projects and am having a ball with all the smart people around here.

I've always prefered to discuss problems and ideas with others rather than to sit in a corner and write about them. For me, the adreline rush of intellectual combat has been the fuel for my best ideas. Nothing get's me going more, than saying "that just can't be done." So blogging gives me an opportunity throw out a couple of wild ideas and watch them be attacked. What a great opportunity for me learn.

Here's the first....

Web 2.0 and the Participation Age

There has been a lot of discussion in the press and on the web about the new way to build web presences using AJAX, mashups, different scripting languages and the latest technobuzz-de-jour. The results have been some pretty cool web sites, but I claim we are just making it easier to create the sort of web sites we always wanted to create, but never had the time or energy to build. Google maps and the mashups based on it are great, but didn't we all know that that was what we wanted the first time we used Mapquest? Surely, there is more.

Jonathan and Scott have been talking about the Participation Age since before I joined Sun and I've missed lots of what they've said and thus don't really know what they're talking about. Nonetheless, I believe they are right. We are at the beginning of a new era of global participation. I believe we have the technology to create it. But is the technology and systems being created today helping to create a global participatory world, or is it hindering it?

Google and the wide availability of information on the web has minimized or eliminated the time we spend in libraries. When I was a student, long, long. ago you went to reading rooms not just for the books and journals that were available there but also to talk to people, see what others where reading, get help on problems etc. It was the place where students could participate in the creation of new science. Why is it so much more valuable to go to actually go to college than to sit at your computer and watch the course lectures, do the problems sets, and read the papers that come from those universities? It's because participation in the process of "doing science" not only teaches you facts, but also increases your sophistication about science and begins the development of your scientific "taste." You beome not just a more knowledge scientist, you become a more sophisticated scientist. (This probably holds in all fields, (e.g., the Socratic method in philosophy), but my experience is in science.)

Just as importantly, the participation of many people doing science is not additive, it is multiplicative. That hand-to-hand intellectual combat not only increases the energy each participant puts into doing science, it increase focus, strips away irrelevant issues, and sharpens our definitions and understandings of the problems. More so than we would do on our own.

Now what does that have to do with Web 2.0? I don;'t see Web 2.0 focused on creating a place for participation of individuals, nor do I see concern for creating places where different services can "participate" or "interact" in a multiplicative fashion. Think about all the Google maps based mashups. Are they multiplicative combinations of services or are they additive collections? I claim they are, at best, additive.

When you were younger did you ever meet with some of your friends to figure out how to put together a really great date for someone you were especially fond of? A couple of friends were really movie afficando's, a few others new all the music and comedy acts in town, some else new about the restaurants, others the romantic walks in the city. And you knew that your special-some-one liked sunsets, zydeco, raspberries and champagne. Didn't you come up with some great evenings that way? That's multiplicative participation.

Each of those bits of knowledge, restuarants, moves, geography, etc are available as web services of one form or another today. But how do you create the multiplicative, creative mashup that you and your friends, a plate of nachos and some beer could produce? Is that Web 2.0? is it even part of the agenda? I think it should be. I think that when are able to create places where services can participate, and where people can truly participate, we will get the muliplicative effect that will define the participation age.

There are not many companies that have the breadth of technology and the depth of talent to create the infrastructure to support the (multiplicative) participation age. Certainly I think Sun does. I wonder if a business focus on ad revenue leads to linear thinking and precludes the creation of non-linear, multiplicative places. What does need to be changed to support the Participation Age? There are certainly technology challenges, lots of them (dueling web sites??). But not just technology challenges.

What do you think?

Posted at 11:15PM Apr 27, 2006 by rezippel in Sun | Comments[1]