Dana Blankenhorn

Microsoft's Hopeless Cause

I just got finished reading a big, breathless feature about Microsoft's counter-attack on Google.

It's Clueless. And hopeless. It's amazing that 14 years after the Web was spun a company can be this hopelessly stupid.

What's so stupid? It's Microsoft's reliance on advertising, specifically "display" and "video" advertising. Microsoft is talking to big New York advertisers, telling them they should place their money with Microsoft because they do more big display and video ads on Web sites than Google does.

Well, they do. But advertising isn't sales. And all the nifty tools Microsoft has announced to track the impact of its ads aren't sales.  Otherwise we'd buy stuff of billboards, not Craigslist.

The strength of the Web is not how well it can target advertising, or track advertisements. The strength of the Web lies in how it can replicate the entire marketing process -- everything from making the initial connection to the pitch, through the transaction and customer service.

By focusing on advertising, and advertisers, Microsoft is missing the whole point of the Web.

Advertising is just one flashy piece of a much larger process. It happens to be the one piece that the folks  selling goods and services have total control over. Which is why they focus so intently on it.

But it's just one piece, and a fairly minor piece at that.

Many companies spend up to half their budgets moving their merchandise. This includes the ads, finding the place to run the ads, tracking the ads, making the sale, and handling the returns. How much of that budget can Microsoft earn with this new strategy?

Not much.

But there's a far more important point in play here.

The Frame

I recently finished Pete Hamill's 2003 work, Forever.

It's a great novel. Pete Hamill is a master. Hamill ranks alongside Jimmy Breslin as great journalists of the generation which preceded mine. And Hamill is a better editor.

But it seemed to me, in reading the book, that a lot of great stuff was left out. The final product is 640 pages, and it jumps 125 years with barely an explanation. Yet there are hints, in its final section, of stories untold.

They were left out, edited out, because they didn't fit the frame which was the book, the one that had to be sold.

Poison Air, the Atlanta Summer of 2007

It started some years ago.
My beautiful daughter, unable to breathe.
Hands on her thighs, chest heaving, wheezing. Scary.

We took her to the doctor.
Asthma from exercise.
He sold us an inhaler.
Two puffs before practice
    Two more before games
...and she was never quite the same.

But it is what it is, nothing for it, move on.

Then, some years later.
Our wonderful son.
Same thing, same cure.
Inhaler in the kit bag.
Two puffs before practice
    Two more before games
...soon forgotten, lost in the debris.

But it is what it is, nothing for it, move on.

Who thinks of the air, we don't see it close-up.
    It's warm,  it's cold or it's cool, it moves or lies still.
Still, so still in the deep Atlanta summer.
    Hot, muggy, heavy, air sliced like cake into the lungs

We're told it gets bad sometimes.
    The old and the young, be careful.
On Red Alert Smog Days, stay indoors.
    Turn on the A/C, powered by coal,
Smokestacks to the skies, see them for miles, near the college
    Like cigarettes.

Rice Science Whenever: Map Proteins With X-Rays

How do you classify the active sites of proteins, the bonds which can define whether a cell is cancerous?

X-ray crystallography. The diffraction pattern can tell you the precise 3-D arrangement of every atom in that molecule. If you can get the maths right.

After six years of hard work Jiangpeng Ma's team a Rice has gotten the maths right. What this means is that proteins can now be classified, not only chemically but structurally.

More important, the team has mapped an actual protein to its computational system, proving the mathematical model.

Dr. Ma, whose work is shared between Rice and the Baylor College of Medicine, specializes in what he calls "Computational & Experimental Structural Biology & Cell Biology." That means he examines the structure of cells, using both experimental techniques and mathematics.

This means his work crosses many disciplines, which is an important point to think about in this era of hyper-specialization. His lab is affiliated with the physics, bioengineering and computing labs at Rice, as well as two labs at Baylor.

But as with all things, Dr. Ma did not do this alone.

A Sad Day for Computing

Today was a sad day for me.

The launch of Microsoft Vista represents, not the start of something, but its end.

It's bloatware, designed more for the corporate boardroom than for the individual. It does not empower, it controls. In an interview with Meredith Viera on Today, for instance, this was the heart of her concern, controlling what her kids do and securing her system against outside threats. It was the only question Gates could answer.

Sadder still, for me, was watching Bill Gates. He looks old. Yet he's five months younger than I am, and at least a year younger than Viera. But you look at his face and he looks like the weight of the world is on his shoulders, and when you find yourself tasked with the socially-correct spending of $60 billion on all the world's problems that can happen. (Or maybe it's having three kids. What were we thinking?)

More important, however, was that he had to work today at all. While his title remains Chairman, he's no longer either a line nor a staff officer at Microsoft. Yet he must remain the public face of the company because the actual CEO, Steve Ballmer, has become anathema to so many people.

Microsoft and Open Source Politics

No matter how he may have voted in the past, there is no doubt that Bill Gates has a liberal impulse.

It's an open secret, however, that his successor, long-time friend Steve Ballmer (left), is a conservative Republican.

This may explain just how badly Ballmer has mis-read the market and, by extension, the changing nature of politics, in his Novell deal.

For those who don't follow the tech business, Ballmer and Microsoft signed a deal with Novell in which the two sides mutually agreed not to sue one another over patent claims. Then he turned around and claimed that, unless companies were running Novell's version of Linux, Microsoft might sue them for violating its patents.

Now witness the market reaction. Novell backed away from Ballmer's claims. Other Linux distros, like Ubuntu, began using the deal in the market against Novell. They are getting a good hearing. The result could be that Novell, which signed with Microsoft because it is a financial laggard, may be destroyed by its own lifeline.

As I wrote on my other blog today, something quite similar is happening regarding attempts by vendors to add "gotchas" in open source licensing contracts. There is a community consensus on what open source means, thus a market consensus on what it means, and anyone who violates this consensus risks the rejection of its market.

This business story is placed here because it has enormous political implications:

• Microsoft is acting just like the Bush Administration, employing the law and bullying tactics to get its way.
• The market is refusing to go along.

We are talking here about the power of consensus. A commonly-held understanding may have no legal force, and it may have no armed force behind it. Yet it can triumph.

What the Apple Earnings Mean

I took a call yesterday from CBS Radio News, my first in some time.

They wanted to know about the Apple earnings, which blew by analyst estimates. Can this continue, I was asked.

Yes, I answered. And (upon further review) I know why.

For years PC prices have been falling, and the software component of that price has been rising. If you can't find a laptop for under $500 right now, you're not looking. In this environment the premium always charged by Apple becomes irrelevant. People have internalized the idea that Macs are not as prone to breakdowns and viruses as PCs (the "Bill and Steve" ads have been brilliant) so if you can get a Porsche instead of a VW for $100 more it's a no-brainer.

The iPod, meanwhile, is riding up the demand "s" curve all by itself. While everyone else fought DRM as a violation of their rights, Apple embraced a light DRM scheme as a differentiator. As a result Apple dominates the channel for digital downloads, and record labels have lost their pricing power.

Sure, the iPod ride is going to end. But that's not where the big money is. The big money is in corporate accounts, which are now starting to come around, starting with the smaller ones. Every movie or TV show you see which has a scene featuring a computer in it these days has a Mac in it -- Apple pays big bucks for that and it's a wise investment. It doesn't have to compete in that area because the other side is split -- should Microsoft be paying that money, or Dell, or both? Maybe Intel?

The Keynote from Hell

It is normal that, as a ruling Thesis falls, its adherents fall into ridiculous extremism. We have talked about this before.

Well, it's also very relevant to technology, as the so-called Progress & Freedom Foundation shows at its conference this week with a keynote by Richard Epstein that literally equates goods such as copyrights with physical property such as land.

Epstein's Web page describes him as a libertarian. This is a lie. He is a statist, but of a peculiar sort. He prefers a private state, one owned by big business.

How extreme is this? It's a call to make copyright eternal, to make everything patentable and all such claims absolute.

It would destroy the economy, destroy the U.S. tech sector, and transform consumers into the chattals of Disney and Microsoft.

That's the basic idea.

There are two stupidities at work here:

1. Historical Ignorance -- Absolute IP regimes have always been precursors to the end of a society's business leadership.
2. Practical Ignorance -- Such regimes are impossible to police. They push smart people underground, and push innovation into other countries.

Redefining Your Personal Worth

One of the most promising aspects of Open Source Politics is how it makes you re-evaluate the notion of personal worth.

I just wrote this up at my ZDNet blog. I wrote about it in terms of people like Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman, but also companies like JBoss and Covalent. By contributing important concepts and code, by licensing it liberally, these people and companies became rock stars.

UPDATE: Simon Phipps was kind enough to write and point out that this picture originated at Flickr. (Judging by the URL I think he's the one who took it.) You can see a larger version here.

This is a huge change for the software industry, which is accustomed to valuing people by their net worth. It's also a stark contrast to the 1990s, where marketing people and investment bankers were thought more valuable than the people doing the actual work.

But it's also part of a huge societal shift in how we value people and institutions. Give first, then take -- an Internet mantra I began reciting at conferences 20 years ago -- is now seen as the road to influence.  And this creates a virtuous circle, as billionaires and celebrities compete to see who can give the most to others, not make the most for themselves.

This is what Open Source Politics is all about. It's not about making this change happen. It's about observing this change and seeing where it is likely to take us. It's not radicalism, or even idealism. It's an evolving reality.

Who Needs Trade Shows?

Among the great memories of my life are computer trade shows, especially Comdex. Just the other day I was telling my son about one year where I got so excited, the day before the show, that I walked from the Tropicana (where I was staying) all the way downtown and back -- about 20 miles. Then I covered 10 venues, switching to sneakers only on the third day.

But I was younger then. And stupider.

Now I wonder why trade shows exist at all. And so does the industry. Does anyone miss Comdex? I don't. Will anyone miss E3? I won't.