The Substantially Similar Weblog

Pete, an old high school friend and biology-project partner, recently discovered my email address and we reconnected. It occurred to me that the next generation may never experience reunion with long-lost friends: they’re all on Facebook and Myspace from middle school on up, so how will they ever lose touch in the first place?

Peter wrote to ask me the name of an Amiga game we used to play in the late 1980’s. I knew immediately which game he was asking about: Mind Walker. I remembered it as a fantastic surreal action/video game exploration of the human psyche. I think it was probably more Freudian than Jungian. Only a few games stuck with me at this level — another one was Weird Dreams. (The problem with Weird Dreams was that it was impossibly difficult to get past the level where you have to smack Dali-esque statues with flying fish. If anyone ever did, I’d like to know what happened next.)

This review gives a good summary of Mind Walker:

You are a physics professor gone mad. Your course of action? Delve into your Mind, to inspire “Ideas” by tracing “Paths of Coherent Thought”, with the help of your split ego. Then through opened-up Tubes, enter your Brain, to retrieve “Shards of Sanity”. Finally, put them back together in Subconscious.

I remember Mind Walker as having amazingly spooky and captivating graphics. Then I found this screenshot:

Oh well. I’m sure it actually was impressive at the time.

This discovery reminded of times when I’ve rediscovered a favorite food from childhood — for example, a certain type of cookie — only to find that it really isn’t very good at all. Just kind of sugary and low-quality chocolate. It’s also like going back to watch the original Jurassic Park again. The amazement is gone.

Actually, even though the Mind Walker graphics aren’t as impressive as I remember them, I’m sure it was still a great game.

Anyone have screenshots from Weird Dreams?

Not to be missed: well-known enfant terrible James Grimmelmann is guest-blogging on PrawfsBlawg. His opening commentary on the relationship between law practice and computer science:

Practicing lawyers, like practicing programmers, are professional pragmatists. Both must make their cases (and case mods) out of the materials they have available; both starve or eat steak depending on whether their creations work. The day-to-day practice of law is unlikely ever to require much high theory. We can mourn that fact because it means that they look at us with suspicion, or celebrate it because it frees us to chase Truth and Beauty—and it will remain a fact either way.

Aside from the fact that I don’t eat steak, I think this is correct.

Via a commenter on James’ entry, I learned that the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals is implementing a wiki (the entry page could surely use some more content). Surprisingly, it was not Posner but Easterbrook who spearheaded the effort. This is a very interesting development, but I expect it will be quite a while before any other circuit takes up the idea.

Finally, I have been meaning to write about this New York Times story describing Jonathan Coulton’s success as a musician breaking with the traditional distribution /promotional channels (via 43 folders, a productivity blog that is still on my “probation” list). Unfortunately, slashdot beat me to it. I first re-discovered Jonathan Coulton during his guest episode of the Show with Ze Frank. In any event, the article is well worth reading:

More than 3,000 people, on average, were visiting his site every day, and his most popular songs were being downloaded as many as 500,000 times; he was making what he described as “a reasonable middle-class living” — between $3,000 and $5,000 a month — by selling CDs and digital downloads of his work on iTunes and on his own site…

Coulton realized he could simply poll his existing online audience members, find out where they lived and stage a tactical strike on any town with more than 100 fans, the point at which he’d be likely to make $1,000 for a concert. It is a flash-mob approach to touring: he parachutes into out-of-the-way towns like Ardmore, Pa., where he recently played to a sold-out club of 140….

In total, 41 percent of Coulton’s income is from digital-music sales, three-quarters of which are sold directly off his own Web site. Another 29 percent of his income is from CD sales; 18 percent is from ticket sales for his live shows. The final 11 percent comes from T-shirts, often bought online…

Many of us who believe in Web 2.0 (the concept, not the buzzword) have come to accept the wisdom of crowds like an article of faith. The Frontal Cortex describes a Columbia University sociology experiment that might undermine our dogma (apparently I missed it in Science):

In our study, published last year in Science, more than 14,000 participants registered at our Web site, Music Lab (www.musiclab.columbia.edu), and were asked to listen to, rate and, if they chose, download songs by bands they had never heard of. Some of the participants saw only the names of the songs and bands, while others also saw how many times the songs had been downloaded by previous participants. This second group — in what we called the “social influence” condition — was further split into eight parallel “worlds” such that participants could see the prior downloads of people only in their own world. We didn’t manipulate any of these rankings — all the artists in all the worlds started out identically, with zero downloads — but because the different worlds were kept separate, they subsequently evolved independently of one another.

This setup let us test the possibility of prediction in two very direct ways. First, if people know what they like regardless of what they think other people like, the most successful songs should draw about the same amount of the total market share in both the independent and social-influence conditions — that is, hits shouldn’t be any bigger just because the people downloading them know what other people downloaded. And second, the very same songs — the “best” ones — should become hits in all social-influence worlds.

What we found, however, was exactly the opposite. In all the social-influence worlds, the most popular songs were much more popular (and the least popular songs were less popular) than in the independent condition. At the same time, however, the particular songs that became hits were different in different worlds, just as cumulative-advantage theory would predict. Introducing social influence into human decision making, in other words, didn’t just make the hits bigger; it also made them more unpredictable.

I don’t accept this one study as proof that the entire user-centric content rating system is a failure (or random), but it does highlight some of the perils of a “winner takes most” mode of cultural evolution.

I was a long-time hold-out user of standalone RSS aggregators (SharpReader for Windows and Straw on GNU/Linux, both of which have been somewhat stagnant over the last couple of years). I’ve finally thrown in the towel and switched to Google Reader. It was a great decision.

The key factor is mobility. I check email and blogs from my personal laptop; our kitchen computer; my office workstation; and, perhaps most significantly for Google Reader, from my cell phone. The Google Reader cell phone app is quite good (handy “keyboard” shortcuts, efficient presentation), and allows me to catch up during time that is difficult to use for other purposes: waiting for the train, standing in line at Starbucks, on the elevator.

The only real downside is the lack of offline support (although I don’t think it would take a rocket scientist to create it), but this is far outweighed by the mobile functionality. As “access anywhere” becomes more important than “offline access,” I predict we’ll see more users of all applications make this sort of switch.

As usual, Ed Felten offers a well-conceived analysis of the Cablevision decision from a technologist’s perspective (for a lawyer’s perspective, see William Patry). The money quote:

The question, in other words, was who was recording the programming. Was Cablevision doing the recording, or were its customers doing the recording? The customers, by using their remote controls to navigate through on-screen menus, directed the technology to record certain programs, and controlled the playback. But the equipment that carried out those commands was owned by Cablevision and (mostly) located in Cablevision buildings. So who was doing the recording? The question doesn’t have a simple answer that I can see.

This general issue of who is responsible for the actions of complex computer systems crops up surprisingly often in law and policy disputes. There doesn’t seem to be a coherent theory about it, which is too bad, because it will only become more important as systems get more complicated and more tightly intereconnected.

Agency, intent/scienter, and responsibility are indeed tricky issues with software and the law. I’ve experienced the problem in my own practice. Although it arises particularly frequently in copyright disputes, it is also common in patent and trademark cases (and of course contract disputes inasmuch as clickwrap-type agreements are implicated). I don’t have any coherent theory to propose, but a more uniform framework would certainly introduce some predictability into these sorts of cases (and thus perhaps avoid litigation).

Update: Mike Madison also has some interesting comments on the case.

Dear Lazyweb:

Is it really impossible to find a full-sized USB keyboard with a built-in trackpoint mouse device but no touchpad?

The logical manufacturer would be IBM/Lenovo; however, the current Lenovo keyboards either provide no built-in pointing device or have both a trackpoint and a touchpad (“UltraNav”). I’ve checked in all the regular places: eBay, Pricewatch, Amazon, Froogle, craigslist, etc., and no one has a keyboard with just a trackpoint. I’m sure I’m not the only one with this simple request.

This eBay auction is the closest I could find. That keyboard is “French Canadian,” which might not matter, but it is also a “SpaceSaver” model with no numeric keypad and is generally more compressed than I need.

On a related note, it is next to impossible to find a Touchstream Keyboard anymore, another brand I was interested in.

I often run into this sort of problem. It undermines my faith in the web as approximating a perfect marketplace.

Via DRM Watch, Netflix to Offer Streaming Movies Online. My initial reaction: eh.

Netflix’s streaming service will differ from existing online movie services like those from Amazon, Movielink, and Apple iTunes. Those services offer rentals of movies for a fixed time period (e.g., 24 hours) or downloads-to-own, known in Hollywood jargon as ESL for Electronic Sell-Through. In contrast, Netflix will let users pick from a catalog of available films and let users watch any of them for up to a fixed number of hours per month, according to their subscriber level, such as six hours per month for entry-level subscribers. The service will launch with a catalog of about 1,000 titles, the same number as are available on Movielink’s rental service.

The video delivery scheme that Netflix is using is a streaming-only technology that senses the user’s Internet bandwidth and adjusts the video quality accordingly; thus it is analogous to RealNetworks’s Rhapsody music service.

Limiting the catalog to 1,000 titles undermines Netflix’s key selling point: enormous selection and a long-tail business model. I could probably find those same 1,000 titles at any Blockbuster Video. So all I’m saving is a trip down the street? In return, I get something I can only watch on my computer (with Windows) for a limited number of hours? Apparently, if I want to watch the same scene a few times, or with the director’s commentary (is that even available?), I’m using up my six hours per month.Even cable movies-on-demand is a better service.

Don’t get me wrong — I love Netflix as a DVDs-by-mail service. I also think the Netflix web interface and collaborative filter is pretty great, although the third-party Netflix Queue Manager Bookmarklet is a definite improvement. Based on this initial announcement, I can’t think of a single reason why I would prefer the online streaming version of Netflix. Usually I have the foresight to figure out what I want to say 24 hours in advance (the delivery time for Netflix-by-mail) and having three DVDs at once gives me sufficient options in case I’m unsure. Ultimately, I suspect Netflix just wants to send the message that it’s in the Internet-delivery market, which ultimately of course will decimate its existing business model. I just wish it had a more impressive first offering.

Are there any cell phone interface design principles? (Google’s answer is inconclusive.) I would think a multi-billion dollar industry would have developed some best practices at this point, but it seems like each new phone is designed by monkeys jumping on typewriters. Maybe eventually they’ll get it right, but I’d rather not wait until infinity.

A persistent flaw that has always puzzled me across nearly all models is the “shut down sound” feature. If you are shutting off your cell phone, do you really need a distinctive musical reminder? Did the designers of this feature ever consider that, in many instances, the user is shutting off the cell phone because they are in a silent theatre or a business meeting? Who are these designers, anyway? Of course you can always turn the volume down first (or probably better — just silence the phone and keep it on), but that is not going to be the first inclination for most users.

I was reminded of this flaw last night at a Counterpoint Concert that was being recorded for VPR radio broadcast. After the chorus director reminded people to turn off their cell phones for the recording, a symphony of shut down sounds followed shortly thereafter.

Cell phone gripes aside, the concert was great — particularly the performance of They Called Her Moses.

On a related note, see this petition regarding cell phone user interfaces and software. Joel on Software also has some nice observations on this topic.

Via tikirobot: CalTrain goes WiFi:

The train reached 79 mph while testers watched streaming video, composed e-mail and completed a large file download at broadband speeds…

The service apparently will be free.

So when will Boston get a similar service for the subway or commuter rail? Given the MBTA’s dismal performance lately and inability to implement new technology (e.g. e.g. e.g.), I’m not going to hold my breath.

I’ve been doing some overdue hardware upgrades on my little server/community ISP. 500GB drives have dropped to the $200 range, and while they’re not necessarily the cheapest per gigabyte storage, it’s a so much more efficient use of space and electricity that it seems a waste to buy a smaller capacity drive. So I bought two internal 500GB drives and one external 500GB so I can have a backup some place other than the backup server in my basement, in case the house burns down or someone decides to break in and steal all the computers (note to thieves: please don’t do this).

Since I’ve been burning through hard drives (literally!) at a rate of about one every six months, I decided to do something about the temperature in the case. The CPU has been hovering dangerously around 60 degrees celcius for a long while, and the drives well into the 50’s — except the one drive with its own personal fan, which is happy to hang out in the 30’s. (I’ve got three more hard drive fans en route).

In any event, I’ve never bought a CPU fan before, so I just picked out a random one that seemed better than what I had. Little did I know what I was getting. When I took the new fan and heatsink out of the box, I was reminded of Crocodile Dundee: That’s not a CPU fan, mate. This is a CPU fan.

Pictured below is the TITAN TTC-NK15TB/SC(RB) I bought for the low price of $31. Although this image doesn’t show the Japanese anime decoration on the top, it captures the size. The old fan/heatsink combination was about 20% the size of this one, and not nearly as shiny.

I realize for all you case-modder/overclocker/slashdot/gamer types, this is probably a puny cooling apparatus, but for me it was pretty exciting. Now my hands are apparently permanently covered with blue thermal grease, and my CPU is running at a cool 40 degrees.

Oh, well, here is the top view:

Of course, no one ever sees that, except the person installing it.