Gates admits Microsoft sucks

In an Associated Press article yesterday, Bill Gates is para-quoted as follows:

"Gates said he has never been 100 percent satisfied with any Microsoft product, and that the company prides itself on fixing shortcomings in later versions."

So, what he's saying is he puts out products he himself isn't happy with and is psyched to patch up the mess later? I'm certainly glad he's not my carpenter! Imagine hiring someone to do work around your home with an attitude like that? And imagine they had an 800 number you had to call (and be put on hold) in order to get these "shortcomings" taken care of? Or if you had to wait not only for the repairman to show up, but for him to hire someone else to figure out what the heck's wrong and find a solution first before he can even start to fix the crappy job he did on your kitchen or bathroom in the first place? And you couldn't even call another company because your carpenter uses tools and supplies that no other does, and so you have no choice but to wait in line with the million other unsatisfied customers with leaky windows? Wow.

How can anyone wonder why MS is not very well-liked? Would you recommend the plumber who took three weeks to fix the pipes so you could use the toilet and take a shower? I seriously don't think so. Are you thrilled that your roof leaks but it's okay because everybody else's does too?

And this guy got into Harvard? There goes the credibility of that school. And with the amount of rhetorical bullshit he throws around it seem he was right-on in the first place with that pre-law idea...

If only people would stop equating financial success with intelligence and integrity, I think the world would become a much better place.

This statement by Gates is a prescient glimpse at MS's future and explains why it upholds a standard of mediocrity.

Man, Ballmer must be on the verge of having an aneurism after that one... Your golf teammate just sliced another one into the woods, Steve, but it's only a game! Ya-hoo!

The Emancipation of Sony

Sony really did drop the ball. And you can see it on the face of every Japanese person who ogles an iBook. Pride can be a terrible thing, and we all as individuals and groups or companies need to remember this.

Went to the Westchester Mall in White Plains, New York, a few months ago: Apple's store was jammin' with at least 40 people in there, with a constant turnover. Down the hall on the lower level, Sony's little shop of horrors had one middle-aged Oriental couple with the store all to themselves, quietly fingering a Vaio and looking like the Last of the Mohicans. Totally true story.

Sony makes better headphones than Apple, that I can say, and they certainly have some good tech, but what the heck are they gonna' do come this Christmas when Apple releases its own killer video game solution? (You think they ain't workin' on it? Does EA Sports mean anything to you? And I don't mean game console in the traditional sense, but as an extension of the capabilities of the existing Mac line and the under-utilized .Mac server. The Mac does do games now, but not in a big way.)

BASF, Sun Micro, and the likes - Sony should join them as the tech behind the tech, because they are no longer a brand name. Samsung already back-doored them and took away their potential lead in things like TV's and cellphones, so they shouldn't whine too much about Apple, because they got beat long before their resurgence - in their own Asian back yard. Apple can be a convenient scapegoat for them, but they need to face the truth, drop the competitive attitude, and do some good stuff - just plain good stuff, as in both the quality and socially-conscious sense.

Anyone who signs Michael Jackson and slaps on the DRM tighter than Lara Croft's tank top deserves to be sitting on the sidelines watching the second half with Microsoft. You haven't forgotten their DRM horror show already, have you? Focus, now, focus...

And were they high on green tea or something when they brought in former CBS president Howard Stringer? Or are they drinking from the "Bushy Bowl" - to borrow a phrase from Ali G? Bringing in a freaking network television 30-plus year exec from the CBS Eye? Man, it doesn't take a crystal ball to figure out why Sony slid downhill: look at where network TV mentality has digressed. I can't even help wonder if the whole thing was U.S. gov-corp sabotage!

Come on Sony, we loved your Walkman! But you slapped us in the face with your Ivory Towerism and sneaky copy-protection plan, while wasting your time trying to diversify with the acquisition of Warner Records and now BMG. Haven't you woken up yet and smelled the rat in your coffee? Egoistic pride dies hard, buy you are dying with it, dear Sony.

The Solution to Google's Street View and Privacy:

First of all, I don't believe that Google's imagery should be legally restricted from showing faces. What's next, blurring every face in a crowd at a sporting event in Sports Illustrated? Every face at a parade in the local daily? Every face that appears in all editorial news matter? Google Maps is gathering imagery for information purposes just like the news. And what's called news these days is so crummy that to say someone creating mapping software is infringing privacy is ABSURD!

BUT, if they want to cave in, here's one solution that would save practically all of the work of the post-processing face blurring:

It's called the "time exposure." Any image captured where the lens of the camera exposes the film/digital plane in the range of 30 seconds or so records no moving objects. People passing by on the street would not show up at all in a long time-exposure photograph. Yes, if the person is stationary there will be an image, but I doubt few people on the street, even if standing in one place, would never move their head from side to side within a minute's time, effectively doing in the camera what Google's algorithmic-based face recog software is providing, with no extra time or effort. This would at least eliminate 90-95% of face recording I believe.

Again, I think the whole thing is ridiculous and common sense ought to prevail. Heck I think it would be cool as hell to be shown in a Google street view! I'll volunteer to be in all of their images if they want to pay me to show up! Again, common sense here, and even if I was crazy enough to take a piss in public (which I am), I don't think it would be too cool of them to flash me to the world, and I really believe they would agree. Simple cooperation and people not going privacy-surveillance fear crazy should solve the issue on its own. Google doesn't want to show me taking a squirt, I believe! Would you? =;)

What's Next With The iPhone?

Sold out? C'mon, Apple must have just shipped the rest of their inventory to Argentina, Mexico, Italy, Turkey and India to whet demand in these and other countries where they have new contracts. Nice move, though, and nothing sells like "sold out" does. Tell someone they can't have something, even if its poison oak, and they'll line up to get some! Don't you just love marketing?

Okay, 3G seems to be imminent. Probably 32GB of on-board RAM like the Touch. Improved Bluetooth compatibility should be on the menu. And I'm speculating a memory card slot and back massage capability - or at least one of those! Guess which.

It may be premature, but I'm also anticipating an iPhone Nano for the active summer-goer. Same great taste, fewer calories. Something that appeals to the simple phone crowd, maybe eschewing WiFi, camera and any other battery-hogging features, with a screen still three or four times larger than the iPod Nano. (Well, okay, it will still be much more than just a phone in the end, but scaled down from the original - until it's fuel-cell driven!

I may have mentioned earlier a mini iPhone coinciding with the next Christmas season - have you started your shopping yet? - but it probably makes more sense to get it out the door now and build some WOM cred over the busy summer vacation travel season, to prime for the late-fall shopping season. Hamburgers and hot tech on the grill!

Why Yahoo Will Be The Next Google, Sort Of:

The writing is on the wall. The firewall that is. Look for job openings on both Google and Yahoo and you'll see what I mean.

Google actually has the balls to announce on its site that it prefers, almost requires, that its job applicants are graduates of a "big name" college or university. Yahoo's site says in essence that if you have a brain and experience, we don't care if you never left 3rd grade if what you have to contribute is a smart, good, workable idea.

Like with genetics, Google is setting itself up for birth defects like an inbred family. A blue-blooded family, but inbreds all the same. Yahoo, on the other hand, realizes the strength and resilience of the multi-breed mutt, looked down upon by all the purebreds but in the end the strongest, most disease- and defect-resistant of the species. Who is going to survive in the long run?

Google can't get past it's egoist intellect and relate to the masses and they try to cull what they believe is the "best of the best" and figure they can't miss. Yahoo relates to the intelligent common man and values well-roundedness over SAT scores or what school you went to. This is going to have huge implications a short ways down the internet road...

There's no disputing that Google's search technology is far superior to anything going. But look, for example by analogy, how many vehicles have incorporated the Wankel engine into massively successful automobile designs. The engine is only a part of the machine; it is not the machine itself. You don't drive a Wankel, do you? You drive a Mazda or a John Deere or at times a Norton or Mercedes, and soon many military combat vehicles.

Google is trying to build the rest of the car by itself, but you have a bunch of high-level engine mechanics that know and value little of ergonomic comfort, style, handling, simplicity and ease of use. Then they bring in another crew of high-level people for this, but they're all from the same gene pool.

Case in point: Blogger: spell check: both the words Google and Blogger come up as possible misspellings in the composition window: there you have it, a genius that can't even spell its own name (or probably tie its own shoes). We all know a few people like this don't we? The ones who can solve quadratic equations but can't explain a game of hackeysack to a group of 12 year olds. While one group spends its time intellectualizing inside its group of superior minds, the other actually plays the game and lives in the real world, so it knows instinctively the difference between just a good idea and one that works.

Yahoo hasn't put a restriction on where a good idea can come from, so I can only imagine that it's open to good ideas no matter if they come from a Harvard grad or a local polytech. This may lead them to greater innovation from within whereas Google is constantly seeking to acquire from without and then tweak and retro-fit.

I like Google. I like Yahoo, too. But the sooner they realize that one is a technology company and the other is a service company, the better off we and the internet will both be.

Long run, my money is on Yahoo to be a leader in real-world internet innovation and implementation over the next 10 years. Any company that has the wisdom and confidence to see through Microsoft's bully tactics is certainly on the right path for the future.

But I have huge respect for Google at the same time, and they are really living up to their responsibility of being the "defenders of the people" if you ask me, and they are practically the only thing big enough to stand in the way of government corruption and manipulation of our economy, social atmosphere, and quality of life. I see no reason Yahoo cannot coexist and thrive if it gets its priorities straight and starts making huge investments on and off the web...

The Trouble With Recommendations on iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, etc.

OK, Netflix, iTunes, etc: remember that you heard it here first... What's missing from your recommendations and content samples?

Here's the key, folks: FREAKING ASK! All you gotta' do is have a form available if people want to choose to use it, where you input a bunch of your favorites, be they groups, movies, brands, gadgets, soft drinks, WHATEVER! Give the engine something to chew on instead of making it pick stuff out of thin air or based on "averages' or what everyone else is doing, or even based on what you did and bought yesterday. Not to throw that info out, but combine it with the "personal input" and give the machine a fighting chance at being much more relevant. I agree that many of these engines can be irrelevant, and to an extent that's cool because you sometimes see the unexpected, and that's a big part of life, growth and learning. But if you want to know what I like, JUST ASK! Isn't this the idea behind customized search in the firsts place? Then when you want to introduce me to things outside my little world, you'll have a better idea of what I may be interested in instead of basing it solely on what someone else did, or what I did on your site in the course of my visit, or what I bought that may be for me, my wife, Uncle Pete or Little Jimmy.

On a different note: biggest problem with iTunes and it keeps me from buying songs all the time and prompts me to sign off from the site in frustration: the song snippets are too damn short, and they give you only the first part of the song like a machine would instead of someone hand-picking the catchy hook of the song, "the real relation, the underlying theme" - to quote the lyrics of Rush's Neil Peart. You get 30 seconds of inane intro that tells you little of what the song really sounds like at least 70 percent of the time. How can I buy a song when I hear an intro that sounds nothing like the mid-song beat? That's like asking a computer to recommend things to you based on what Louie looked at last time he shop-surfed.

Everybody seems to be dancing around "Yapple"

Well, okay, they sure wouldn't call it that, let's hope! But with one, quick gulp, Apple goes into the ad business while simultaneously improving their own search engine capabilities, starting with their subpar web site search - and think of the features the iPhone picks up as native in the Widget department and beyond! Web integration of Apple mobile devices made easy, while crowbarring away at Microsoft's death grip on Yahoo's throat. Maybe Spotlight could even surpass Google Desktop Search with their heads together.

Talk about going out with style! How much better position can you get can you get, merging with Apple in the year 2008? Microsoft's monetary offer means nothing a few years down the entertainment road. And Yahoo knows entertainment; Apple knows entertainment; and Microsoft knows 'entertainment expense account'.

Imagine an Apple-faced Yahoo grabbing ad revenue from Google via the iPhone and an Apple web portal. The advertisements with the PC guy will have to be replaced with the Google guy! Maybe iChat renamed does give Yapple an actual use!

Hey, it sounds better than Goople, doesn't it?!!