Agoramancy? A Sunday afternoon ramble

I don’t know about you, but I spend a fair amount of time looking at things that emerge from open source communities, be they free-as-in-freedom or free-as-in-gratis. At least one of the reasons I do so is to try and figure out what happens next. Agoramancy? Who knows. [For those who care about these things, the word “agoramancy” yielded precisely one result via Google.]

I used to track something called LiveSupport, which lately became CampCaster. If you get the chance, go there and take a look. Alternatively, I’ll save you some of the bother and quote some of the interesting bits from their site:

  • Never heard of Campcaster? Here’s the elevator pitch: Campcaster helps you run your radio station. Do automated broadcasting and live studio playout in one system: schedule your broadcasts from the comfort of your own home with the Campcaster Web component, or do dynamic live shows with the Campcaster Studio desktop application.

    What’s the big deal about this release? We’ll cut to the chase: Campcaster 1.1 is the first release that is stable and feature-complete enough to be used in production systems. Indeed, the Campware implementation team will be helping to roll it out to multiple radio stations in Sierra Leone later this month. Other major radio stations are starting to adapt Campcaster to their needs: Austria’s Radio Orange is adapting the playout system to work with its digital archive, while in Hungary, a network of independent radio stations is integrating Campcaster’s storage server into its IKRA project, a generic public website engine for radio stations.

    “Awesome! Where can I get it?” you ask. The first thing you should know is that Campcaster only works on Linux. We recommend Ubuntu Dapper or any other Debian-based system.

    If you have an Ubuntu or Debian system, then just click here for installation instructions. Otherwise, click here to download.

This gets very interesting. In the lead-up to Y2K, despite everything the consultants did to raise FUD amongst the billpayers, many Eastern European and South Asian countries stood their ground. Houston, we don’t have a problem. Why? Because they computerised too late. The advantage of No Legacy.

When you look at the countries that are really making use of opensource, a similar pattern emerges. People who find lock-in a luxury too far. The infinitesimal cynic in me sees PL 480 equivalents where people are forced to use lock-in products and services, where governments set vendor locks in concrete. But then I remember 1974 and Daniel Patrick Moynihan writing what was then the world’s largest cheque ever, for $2.2 billion, and then presenting that cheque to Mrs Gandhi to clear the PL 480 residues.

Back to the point. See what the CampCaster site says:

The first thing you should know is that Campcaster only works on Linux. We recommend Ubuntu Dapper or any other Debian-based system.

If you have an Ubuntu or Debian system, then just click here for installation instructions. Otherwise, click here to download.

Is this the shape of things to come? Only Linux. With a recommended distro. But possible with other distros. Only Linux.

Linux is definitely becoming more and more mainstream, and we will see variations on this type of announcement all the time.

Take The Venice Project as an example. For years people have been telling me that there’s nothing they can use to watch TV on Linux, even though I showed them magazine articles that said they could, and even tried to show them the software. Tried. And failed. But that was in the past.

What now? What does the Venice Project say about this? I quote from their site:

  • Does The Venice Projectâ„¢ work on the Mac or Linux?

  • We’re working hard on a native Macintosh Intel version and expect it to be available in the next few months. Currently the application works fine under Bootcamp but not under Parallels; it needs to access the graphics processing unit (GPU) for some of its operations, and Parallels does not support that at the moment.
  • A Linux version is also in the works.

Folks, we’re heading fast towards a world where Linux, OSX and Windows will coexist. Where the market will force people to make substitution-level interoperability something “normal” and to be expected. Where industrial-strength design coexists with elegance and coolth.

And I for one am looking forward to that new world.

A coda. You know, when IBM sold their PC division to Lenovo, I heard rumours that they did it because the management were sick and tired of the fights between their Linux guys and their Windows guys. I dismissed it as the fiction it was. But now I wonder.

Some quotes I really liked

Found these in a completely different context (a discussion group about Prediction Markets); thought that they were wonderful descriptions of the “provisionality” of blogs. See what you think.

Richard Feynman:

In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth.

Niels Bohr:

Never express yourself more clearly than you think.

Nurdling

I’ve been watching a lot of cricket these past few weeks, while listening to music and reading at the same time. See? I’m learning multitasking. It must be the time I’m spending with my wife and Generation M children.
While watchening the cricket (I have no word to describe the half-listen half-watch that every child of mine has done with television when young) I heard a commentator use one of my favourite words.

“….and Dravid nurdles that past Smith”.

Nurdle. What a fine word, Mr Pockheel, as H*Y*M*A*N  K*A*P*L*A*N was wont to say. [An aside. If you haven’t read the two Leonard Q Ross/Leo Rosten books on the classroom adventures of Mr Kaplan, find the time somehow. They are just incredible, particularly for people who like some humour in their linguistics. I’m reading them for the 9th or 10th time. Rosten is fantastic.]

Nurdle. Now with an entry in Wikipedia, I’ll have you know.

Nurdle. Defined as: to score runs by gently nudging the ball into vacant areas of the field. There’s something bucolic about it, conjuring sounds of willow on leather amidst an aroma of freshmown grass.
While on the subject of nurdling. The commentators almost nurdled some truly useless cricket trivia past me while I was dreaming of nurdles, trivia that I love:

Name the five cricketers who’ve done the treble of 200 wickets, 4000 runs, …. and 100 catches. At Test level of course.

A word about spam

Of late I appear to be getting over a couple of thousand spam comments a day, all ably blocked off by Akismet.

In the past, I used to go through the blocked items, just in case some legitimate comments had been suppressed. And I would find one or two a week.

Since early December, I haven’t had the time or the energy to do the blocked item check; I’ve just gone for the delete unseen.

It is possible, as a result, that I may have deleted legitimate comments. If you have been the victim of such a deletion, my apologies.

Do let me know, by writing to [email protected]. I have so far been loath to implement any other form of spam filter, especially one based on your entering Dali-clock-esque words. Your comments will help me make that call.

Simple questions

I used to smoke. And it didn’t matter how hard I tried to rationalise or defend my smoking, it all boiled down to one question.

Would I be happy to see my children smoke?

The answer never changed, it was always No. I should have learnt more quickly from that.
Sometimes we need simple questions to break through our own sophistication and sophistry.

Two examples.

Over the years I’ve regularly found myself in senior management meetings where everyone opines with great wisdom and knowledge about the merits and demerits of a particular application. And over the years I’ve learnt to listen quietly and come in at the right time with a simple question:

Have you actually seen it?

More recently, as I’ve seen the kerfuffle about the iPhone, I’ve been tempted to try the same device out. I shall wait for a time when I am surrounded by Blefuscudians, one group arguing that Jobs is God and the other claiming he missed the opportunity to bring peace to the Middle East and solve global warming by signing up with Cingular-soon-to-become-AT&T.

And then I shall ask:

If I gave you a working iPhone, would you refuse it?

That should sort out the detractor wheat from the chaff.

This is important. Innovation, as Michael Schrage says, is what the consumer consumers, not what the innovator “innovates”. The secret of the iPod’s success is its, well, success.

Why did it succeed? I am not alone in fighting for vendor-independent devices and software platforms. I know many people who believe in what I believe, yet use iPods. So why did the iPod succeed?

I think people want freedom in their devices and in their software. They also want simplicity and convenience. And they want to be able to afford it. And they want it to have it, to have style.

People are pragmatic. They trade some freedom for some convenience and some coolth.

But only up to a point.

There is a minimum amount of freedom people will insist on having. When the trade-offs come close to that amount, people will push back.

What Apple needs to do is make sure that they never get to that push-back point.
And in a strange kind of way this is good for all of us, an each-way bet. Because a market opportunity is created. A variant of The Threat is Stronger than The Move.

Let’s say someone comes up with a phone that’s better than the iPhone. Better in freedom and convenience and style and coolth. That’s good for us.

My guess is someone will come up with that freer-simpler-cheaper-cooler phone. My guess is that someone is Apple. But even if it’s someone else the customer wins.
Innovation is what the customer consumes.

Try naming ten people who have non-iPod personal music players. The chances are you will name a few. Less than ten. Who use their phones as their music-playing devices.  Go figure.