Author: Shawn K. Quinn

The Iranian treatment

A recent Wall Street Journal article chronicles the Iran government’s attempt to block access to Google’s Gmail service and in turn introduce its own email service for its citizens. From the article:

A Google spokesman said in a statement, “We have heard from users in Iran that they are having trouble accessing Gmail. We can confirm a sharp drop in traffic, and we have looked at our own networks and found that they are working properly. Whenever we encounter blocks in our services we try to resolve them as quickly as possibly because we strongly believe that people everywhere should have the ability to communicate freely online.”

I have never been a huge fan of Google; they are a prime example of a corporation starting out and gaining trust during its startup period, then betraying that trust after growing far enough beyond the “small company” phase. I have even put up a video, on Google-owned YouTube no less, which mentions “don’t be evil” becoming a “[beep]-damn joke.” (Said sort of in the heat of the moment, and yes, I even did my own beep-out.) And it was in a different context (a YouTube partner getting hung out to dry), but I still don’t think “don’t be evil” as a Google motto holds much credibility at all. (If you want to cut to the chase, it’s at 1:42 to 2:13.)

It’s not surprising at all that Google will work to restore Gmail access to the Iranian citizens; it’s in Google’s business interest to do so. I definitely would not expect Google to take it lying down.

One thing worse than Google having carte blanche to snoop on the emails of Iranian citizens, however, would be for the Iranian government to have that same carte blanche. It’s also troubling from an anti-censorship standpoint any time a government–at any level, whether national, state/province, or local–tries to stop or reroute the flow of information. If the Iranians want to use Gmail, they should have the choice. There are better choices out there.

It also has occured to me the Iranian government, having become used to its power thirst being quenched by control of “old media (radio, TV, and newspapers), is quite possibly hostile towards the entire concept of the Internet. Technology has marched on, and the era of state-controlled media is rapidly becoming obsolete. There are ways around even the Great Firewall of China. As said by John Gilmore in a 1993 TIME magazine interview, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

So yes, I applaud the opposition of the Iranian government’s pathetic attempt at censorship, but I understand the reasons why Google is doing so as well. Yes, Iranians should be allowed to choose Gmail, however, they should also be aware of the alternatives and the rationale for choosing something else.

Television, football, advertising, and strategy

After probably the most anathemic event to hit any Houston area fan of amusement parks, the shuttering of Six Flags Astroworld in 2005, I would never have expected the scene to feel so empty. Four years and change later, and still nothing permanent has been built on the former site. It’s a huge change for Houston to be without what was once an iconic amusement park; it’s definitely not quite the same city now.

But that’s not what this is about. One typically does not appreciate the full impact of a change until well after it has happened. Such is the case with Pepsi’s decision not to advertise during Super Bowl XLIV, choosing instead to concentrate on social media. Remember, this was the same Pepsi to be flamed to a crisp for changing its logo. Heck, even I reacted on Twitter to what I felt was an absolutely horrible branding move, and I still don’t look at a can of Pepsi the same way.

The full impact of that change was Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper commercials picking up the slack. I didn’t realize how different it was until I saw them myself. (Aside: I really didn’t plan to watch the Super Bowl at all this year; it was my mom’s idea for us to go watch the game at a local bowling alley, 300 Houston, which has television screens above the lanes as well as in the bar area. We had a great time.)

Anyway, it wasn’t until well into the fourth quarter that it really hit me just how big of a change this was. I didn’t realize just how big of a player Pepsi was in Super Bowl TV advertising. Coca-Cola, on the other hand, used social media to complement the rest of their Super Bowl ad campaign.

It remains to be seen exactly how each move will pay off for the respective beverage giants. However, the more I think about it, the more I think Pepsi’s marketing team will be kicking themselves for skipping the Super Bowl this year. I’d expect Pepsi’s departure from Super Bowl TV advertising to be a one-year thing, and some heads to roll once the shareholders realize what has transpired.

On professional sports: what many fans forget, ignore, or don’t know

This goes back to a spur-of-the-moment tweet I made yesterday. I still stand behind what I wrote even though some people almost certainly got the wrong idea:

And for the record… I really, truly, could not care less who wins the Super Bowl. I just hope none of the players get hurt.

A lot of people forget things about professional sports. When an athlete wants a salary that most average people deem inflated if not outright obscene, it’s easy to forget a lot of the cold, hard, unpleasant realities of professional sports.

The first of those is that for the players at the professional level, playing the game is their day job. Not only is it their day job, particularly in the cases of football, hockey, and motorsports, it is one of the most dangerous jobs in existence. And I’ll probably get flamed for this, but I assert that professional athletics is at least somewhat on par with law enforcement for danger level; it’s difficult to be completely objective on things like this, but my educated guess says that most football players have less than half the working hours per year of most beat cops. In particular, the sheer quantity of police officers with 10+ year careers compared to the relative rarity of NFL players with the same tenure pretty much speaks for itself. I would go as far as to suggest most cops who change careers inside of a decade do so willingly as opposed to being forced to do so from injuries. The NFLPA FAQ for those considering becoming an NFL player is rather clear:

The average length of an NFL career is about 3 and a half seasons. Although there are some exceptional players who have long careers that extend 10 or twelve seasons and beyond, most players only stay active for about three seasons. Players leave the game because of injury, self-induced retirement, or being cut by the team. This also means that while players may make more money than most people, they are only making it for an average of three and a half years. To make sure they are successful in the future, players must invest their money well and make plans for another career when they can no longer play football.

I invite comments from anyone with insight from the law enforcement community, or for that matter any other similarly dangerous career.

The second of these is that when rule changes are made to promote safety, that means for the players, this is a workplace safety issue. Without the players, there’s nothing for the fans to watch. I’m not saying the fans should be completely ignored, but there is no game without the players. The so-called “armchair quarterbacks” are quick to call the players all kinds of derogatory names like “sissies afraid to get hurt” when a league makes a safety-related rule change. Most professional sports fall outside the jurisdiction of OSHA; the players’ union and the league are all the players really have as far as who is looking out for their interests. (And in some cases, the leagues eagerly turn a blind eye until the union makes enough noise.)

Another is the perception that most athletes are millionaires. The NFLPA FAQ linked above refutes this:

Despite what most people think, not all NFL players are millionaires! For example in 2000, the minimum salary for rookies was $193,000. While the highest paid players in the league can make $7-8 million per year, most players make much less than that. … This year, the average NFL salary was $1.1 million.

Note that this is the average, meaning there are a significant number of players who make less than this.

I would go as far as to say an NFL player making the minimum salary, who suddenly finds himself playing for an entire quarter of every game from, say, the fourth week on, is probably not being adequately compensated for the risk he is undertaking! (To be fair about it the same could certainly be said of many police and fire personnel as well.)

(Quick aside: the average is different from the median; the former is the sum divided by the count, while the latter is the number of which half the numbers in the set are either above or below. I suspect the small number of multi-million-dollar salaries inflate this average to be much higer than the median, but would need to find the numbers to actually back it up. I believe the median to be a much more useful statistic which would probably go much further towards proving my point in this case.)

Finally, the career of most professional athletes, save for certain sports such as bowling or golf, is short enough as it is, without the ever-present possibility of career-threatening or career-ending injuries. As mentioned previously, especially in the case of professional team sports, there is the possibility of being cut (or, as the rest of us know it, getting fired) by the team. The reasons for an athlete being out of work are sometimes just as arbitrary as some of the layoffs and firings that happen in the corporate world.

So when I say things like that, there’s a reason for it. I do feel the New Orleans Saints played a great game and congratulate the team and its fans on the victory; while I did not really root for the Saints, I am capable of admiring well-played football by any team.

Today’s a great day for sports fans, all sports fans, to pause and give the proper credit to the players that make each sport what it is. Without the players, there would be no game to watch.

Submarine software licenses: the “gotcha” of video codecs

Ben Schwartz wrote a very nice piece about proprietary video codecs, in particular H.264, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4. In essence, those who have purchased software like Final Cut Pro with the idea of using it to make commercial video have fallen into either a carefully laid trap by the patent holders or a simple oversight on the part of companies like Apple who bury things like this well within the fine print.

Ben’s commentary below the relevant license portions says it all:

Noticing a pattern? You have a license to use their software, provided you don’t make any money, your friends are also all correctly licensed, and you only produce content that complies with the MPEG standard. Using video for a commercial purpose? Producing video that isn’t within MPEG’s parameters? Have friends who use unlicensed encoders like x264, ffmpeg, or xvid? Too bad.

But it gets even more troubling for free software users (Ben here uses the term “open-source” but it applies equally):

This last thing is actually a particularly interesting point. If you encode a video using one of these (open-source) unlicensed encoders, you’re practicing patents without a license, and you can be sued. But hey, maybe you’re just a scofflaw. After all, it’s not like you’re making trouble for anyone else, right? Wrong. If you send a video to a friend who uses a licensed decoder, and they watch it, you’ve caused them to violate their own software license, so they can be sued too.

This is probably one of the strongest cases against software patents I have come across. Thankfully the EU rejected software patents as of last time I checked, and hopefully will continue to do so. The US seems to be the only place where one can patent a computer program, clearly outside the scope of what patents were intended for.

Patents should be restricted to physical inventions. It’s absurd to be able to patent not just a computer program, but an entire class of computer programs which do the same thing.

To be fair about it, those who hold the patents have a strong disincentive from chasing down everyone who infringes on the patent. In addition to being cost-prohibitive, it is an almost certain PR disaster. This does not excuse what amounts to legalized extortion.

The problem runs even deeper than “just don’t use H.264 or other patented codecs.” The rather low level adoption of patent-free codecs like Theora and Vorbis in consumer electronics equipment often makes the idea a no-go. Most digital audio and video players will not play Theora or Vorbis files. (Vorbis was designed as an MP3 replacement.)

Making a DVD or Blu-Ray disc that plays in most off-the-shelf players simply cannot be done without infringing upon the patents. Troubling here is that the Blu-Ray standard (and not that it matters now, but HD DVD as well) easily could have been written to allow the use of Theora or even Dirac. The decision to not standardize on a patent-free codec was almost certainly driven by greed; the same corporations which make the devices get most of the patent royalties on H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, etc.

A commentary on blog comments

Mashable’s recent story about two different blogs and comments was definitely an interesting read. It covers the separate but oddly coincidental stories: a Daring Fireball mirror which gives readers a place to comment on entries, something John Gruber himself does not do, called appropriately enough, Daring Fireball with Comments (which I refer to as DF and DFWC, respectively below); and the purportedly temporary demise of comments on Engadget.

I have gotten a few comments form time to time here but it’s never been something I would have arbitrarily turned off. I have always moderated the comments on all three of my blogs (otherwise one would not be able to find the real comments underneath all the spam, and I do get my share of comment spam) but the quantity of comments has never been such that I can’t take a few minutes out of every other day to do so.

Now if this site was at the level of DF, on the other hand, it might be a significantly daunting task. John chose the path of concentrating on the content, rather than spending probably a good hour a day deciding which comments make the cut. And honestly, I respect his choice there, but I also understand that there are people out there who will want a forum to comment on a blog even if it does not offer commenting in place.

I have to wonder about the copyright and trademark implications of DFWC’s design. It is possible but unlikely that DFWC’s creators asked John for permission to copy the DF logo and design. It’s possible and a bit more likely that John is okay with DFWC on the theory that it’s more publicity for him (after all, the links on DFWC copied from internal links on DF go to the original DF, including the membership link). It’s possible but extremely unlikely that John doesn’t know about DFWC yet at all, but if this is the case, he will when he next checks his access logs and notices DFWC in the referring sites.

And there is also the story about Engadget and its temporary comment moratorium. The official word from Engadget states in part:

Luckily, our commenting community makes up only a small percentage of our readership (and the bad eggs an even smaller part of that number), so while they may be loud, they don’t speak for most people who come to Engadget looking for tech news.

It goes on to say that in essence, the downtime will be used for hunting down and banning those who have posted the undesirable comments. And for a site as high-profile as Engadget, this kind of a move is understandable and not entirely unexpected. Hopefully it works out for them.