Cheerful Curmudgeon

I am intrigued. I just received a “movie shipped” notice from Netflix, telling me that I will receive my disk tomorrow, the day after a federal holiday during which the US Postal Service does not work (or so I thought). I will be pretty impressed if the disk really does arrive as promised. Stay tuned….

Do you remember when I predicted that Google Chrome would take over the world replace Microsoft Windows, Apple OSX, and Linux? Here is the next step, to be released for CES which begins January 8, 2009.

If all you want from your computer is to read your email (Gmail) and surf the web and use the other applications that Google provides, it is just seven seconds away. No, that is not a typo. In less time than you have spent reading this article, you will be able to boot your computer and be doing useful stuff.

Of course, you could use this system for web-based applications other than Google’s, but how many people will bother. I wonder how long it will be until you can get a free, ad-supported computer with this operating system pre-installed.

You might have noticed a bit of “uncertainty” in the economy these days. I was fascinated to see these two articles show up within 24 hours of each other:

We do not know who is right, of course, but I am an optimist and strongly biased toward Updegrove’s view.

I believe that we live in a plentiful universe, that there is more than enough of everything to go around and our challenges are in distribution and not in production. We have, for instance, more than enough food to feed everybody; we just need to get the food from where it sits to the mouths of the hungry people. I believe that we are bright enough to solve this problem.

I also believe in the basic generosity of human beings. Innumerable projects have been accomplished through the donated time of unemployed and under-employed people. People with full-time jobs and plenty of money also donate their time, of course, but history proves that unemployment does not transform normally generous people into the selfish animals which Keen predicts.

Open source software is good for everyone. The programmers get to do stuff which they enjoy, learn new technologies, and bask in the warm fuzzies of seeing the works of their hands thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated. The companies which use open source software see lower costs and (hopefully) higher profits. And last but certainly not least, the people who use open source software get to enjoy a much wider choice of solutions to their problems than would exist if only commercial software were available. With all of this goodness in a naturally abundant universe, we are certainly going to see new bounties in the open source software cornucopia.

I hate paying money to be abused. Here is this morning’s tale of woe regarding customer “service” at the Anthem insurance company.

A few weeks ago, I received a letter telling me that the co-pay on my Zetia would increase dramatically and that I should switch to a statin instead. That is patently ridiculous advice, though, because I am also taking a statin (Lipitor). Were my cholesterol controllable with only a statin, I would not be taking both a statin and Zetia. So I just called the member service phone number and had this conversation:

Me: What is the process for appealing this increase in my co-payment?

Anthem: There is no appeals process.

Me: To whom would I send a letter appealing this increase?

Anthem: To our Grievance and Appeals department.

pregnant pause while I wait for more useful information to be offered — none was

Me: And what is the mailing address of the Grievance and Appeals department?

Anthem: You can send your letter to: Anthem, Grievance and Appeals Department – MO, PO Box 33200, Louisville, KY 40233.

I bit back my sarcastic questions about why she had told me that there was no appeals process. For what I pay for health insurance, why do I expect that I should get an honest answer to a simple and straightforward question?

Internet TV—broadcasting live television over the internet instead of using radio broadcasts or the cable television infrastruction. Almost everybody has heard of it. Some people talk about it as the Next Big Thing in television. Many people figure that it will not happen for a long time for a wide range of business and technical reasons. Did you notice that a new player quietly entered the internet TV market this week?

Netflix posted New content to watch instantly on Wednesday,

Today we announced an agreement with Starz Play that adds around 1,000 choices that you can watch instantly today, and will add another 1,500 by the end of the year. Movies include “No Country for Old Men”, “Ratatouille,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” “Superbad,” and more. You can see all the newly available choices here.

If you click the “here” link, and look near the top, right corner, you will find “Live Starz TV Channel” quietly nestled in there. (Click on the images to see full-sized versions.)

Click the “Live Starz TV Channel” link and, without any fanfare, you are watching a live Starz movie channel.

How long until Netflix offers more of the Starz, Encore and MoviePlex channels? How quickly will HBO, Showtime and the rest want pieces of the action? We have always known that Netflix was positioning itself to deliver movies over the internet. Now we can see that its goal is to deliver all TV content, not just movies. Netflix already has a solid subscriber base and delivery infrastructure. It looks like we consumers will soon have a third alternative to cable and satellite providers.

As reported this morning in Slashdot, you should read and carefully consider Google Chrome’s end user license agreement (EULA) before using Chrome. It’s hard to read in the teeny tiny box that Google provides so I am reproducing the entire text below the break. I am certainly not a lawyer but I am a paranoid, grumpy old man so here is my take on some of the things in the EULA:

• In sections 4.3 through 4.5, you agree that Google can “without prior notice to you” make Chrome stop working, deny you access to your files, and even put an upper limit on how much you use Chrome.
• In section 5.1, you agree to truthfully tell Google who you are and to keep that data up to date. Sure, Chrome has its “incognito mode” which hides your browsing habits from members of your family but Google will always know who you are what what you are doing.
• In sections 6.2 and 6.3, you agree to take full responsibility for everything done under your account, even if your account was broken into by a third party. Furthermore, you agree to notify Google by visiting an obscure web page if you become aware of any unauthorized use of your account. You’ll remember that, right?
• In section 17, you agree to let Google display advertisements anywhere it wants to, not just on Google’s web pages.

Edited 9/3/2008 10:20pm: As Ars Technica points out, the problem highlighted in the following two paragraphs is not a problem. Google is amending the EULA for Chrome and the change will be retroactive to cover all of us who have already downloaded and installed Chrome.

Those are only obnoxious. It gets worse. If you use Chrome to “submit, post or display” anything you create then section 11, Content license from you, should be particularly interesting.

• In section 11.1 and 11.2, “you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services” and “You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships.” You just wrote the next great novel using Google Chrome and Google Docs? Guess who can publish it at will: Google. Worse, if you use Chrome to display some confidential information, even if those data were password protected on an SSL encrypted internal web site and labeled “Company Confidential,” Google has the right to “publicly display and distribute” that content.

You also give Google free reign to install software on your computer.

• In section 12.1, you agree that, “The Software which you use may automatically download and install updates from time to time from Google.” You trust them to always distribute software which is which is good for you, don’t you?

This is not necessarily bad. By using Google Chrome, you are using some very costly and valuable services. Something has to pay for that software and, in this case, that something is advertisers.

When you deal with a company, you should always remember that company’s core business. For instance, Microsoft is in the business of selling software licenses so it should be no surprise when it tries to sell you new operating systems and new versions of Outlook and Office. Google is in the business of selling advertisements so you should fully expect that it will do everything in its power to collect data from you which will let Google bring more, and more effective, advertisements to your computer screen.

(As promised the Google Chrome Terms of Service follows.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Google released Chrome today and you will see “Google Chrome is a browser” if you visit the Chrome web page. Do not be deceived, though. Chrome is not designed to replace Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari. Chrome is designed to replace your operating system and virtually all of the software that you use every day. Chrome is the key to letting you do all of your computer stuff on the web instead of on one computer.

Think of the advantages. If you edit your grocery list on your home computer and want to print it at work, you are stuck. You cannot print that grocery list until you get home again. But if you edit your grocery list on the web, you can get to the same document and print it from any computer anywhere in the world. Similarly, if your hard disk dies, you can still get to your stuff if it is on the web. All you have to do is switch to another computer and keep on working. I could wax rhapsodic about the possibilities for way more paragraphs than you want to read but I’ll spare you.

Google wants to make this transition so easy for you that you will wonder why you did not make the switch yesterday. Chrome will take over your whole computer and hide all of the confusing gunk of Windows or OSX or Linux so you do not have to worry about it any more. You will be able to simply do your work or read your email or stare at your videos or whatever strikes your fancy. And if you are on a Mac today and on a PC tomorrow, it will not matter one bit because everything will look exactly the same.

Does this seem a bit far fetched? Take a look at how your computer appears if you use Internet Explorer to read the news. (Click on the picture to see it larger.)

That looks pretty normal. You can see that you are running IE because there is lots of IE stuff on the top and bottom of the screen and the news is in the middle. Now here is the same web page in Firefox.

That is pretty much the same experience. You can see that you are running Firefox instead of IE because the stuff at the top and bottom is different but the browser stuff is still there and the news is in the middle.

Now look at the same page in Google Chrome:

Now that looks different. Where did the browser go? It vanished in much the same way that your operating system vanishes into the background. As you are reading the article, are you really aware of whether you are using Linux or Windows or OSX? Of course not. But you see Firefox or IE or Safari all the time because it intrudes on your life so boldly.

Chrome is not a web browser. It is the platform on which your application software runs. Reuters picked this up when it reported,

Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Chrome was designed to address the shift to using software from within a Web browser rather than as locally installed computer applications running inside Microsoft Windows or some other operating system.

“I think operating systems are kind of an old way to think of the world,” Brin told a group of reporters after the news conference at Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters.

in Google sees new browser displacing desktop software.

Does this sound familiar? Pick your poison:

1. Microsoft Windows + Microsoft Outlook + Microsoft Exchange + Microsoft Office
2. Google Chrome + Google GMail + Google Calendar + Google Docs

Is this good or bad? That is the $64 question, of course. Google’s web-based applications carry no license fees and ought to be highly reliable. But they come with advertisements and the implicit agreement that you trust Google to manage your data properly. Naturally, Chrome will also run other applications, just like Microsoft Windows runs applications which were not written by Microsoft. But by providing one platform which runs identically across all computers, and which is written and maintained by the same Google which provides all of those whiz-bang applications, you can bet that Google is assuring a first-class user experience if you settle comfortably into the Google environment whole heartedly.

Which do you want on your computer? Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX or Linux… or Google Chrome?

Many, perhaps all, of us assume that our privacy is respected and protected in most aspects of our lives. This notion is so ingrained in our society that I never gave it a second thought until this week when a court ruled that Google must turn over data on YouTube users to Viacom. Within hours, a friend on a mailing list wrote,

This boils down to the public being ruled against (victimized) in a court case where we – the people – have no representation.

Our constitution does not guarantee our privacy, though it’s amendments support several specific aspects of privacy which were reflected in the Bill of Rights. The University of Missouri at Kansas City Law School has a good article exploring The Right of Privacy. I particularly like this quotation from the bottom of that page from Justice Brandeis’s dissent in Olmstead v. U. S. (1928),

The makers of our Constitution understood the need to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness, and the protections guaranteed by this are much broader in scope, and include the right to life and an inviolate personality — the right to be left alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. The principle underlying the Fourth and Fifth Amendments is protection against invasions of the sanctities of a man’s home and privacies of life. This is a recognition of the significance of man’s spiritual nature, his feelings, and his intellect.

The notion that our video viewing habits are “private” is very recent and short lived. Broadcast television is only about 50 years old and the very nature of the broadcast medium assures a high degree of privacy to the viewers. TiVo, now 11 years old, brought the issue into the limelight when people realized that TiVo (the company) collects information on the viewing habits of its customers. Pay-per-view cable television, which began way back in the 1980s, somehow escaped much of the brouhaha though the PPV vendors obviously know exactly who is purchasing and, presumably, watching every single video.

Additionally, the notion that we can borrow a video or book and enjoy it in privacy is only a few generations old. In the past, people would view “borrowed” materials from libraries. At least here in America, over the last several generations, libraries have developed a culture of protecting patrons’ privacy. In many instances, this culture is so in-grained that the libraries meticulously destroy patron borrowing records to assure that the data cannot be accessed and misused. As we move to “borrowing” material more often from for-profit entities, we move away from the librarians for whom patrons (us) are a primary focus.

Google, for instance, has fiduciary responsibility only to three sets of entities: employees, stockholders, and (paying) customers. Except as it impacts those entities, Google has no real interest in protecting the privacy of YouTube viewers.

Does this matter? Clearly, it does. Does it matter enough for people to change their video viewing habits. I doubt it. I think the vast majority of people will grumble, sigh, and go on with their lives and won’t really miss this bit of privacy-lost.

The key take-away from this court case is to remember that, as a YouTube viewer, you are 100% empowered to protect your own privacy. You are not a victim. You get to choose what you watch, where you watch it, and whether (and how) you hide your identity when you watch it.

To be specific, assuming that you want to watch that Viacom-produced and copyright protected clip from The Colbert Report

1. You can watch the live broadcast, or use your personal video recorder to time shift the broadcast, or watch the clip from Viacom’s ComedyCentral.com web site, or watch the clip on YouTube.
2. Assuming that you want to watch the clip on YouTube, you can watch it on your own computer in youor own home using your own internet connection, or you can use a public computer, or you can use your own computer connected to a public Wi-Fi network or your neighbor’s Wi-Fi network.
3. Further assuming that you want to watch using your own computer on your own internet connection, you could choose to hide your identity by using any of a wide variety of services which make you more or less anonymous on the world-wide web.

You have almost certainly enjoyed the “hospitality” of an airline as you waited… and waited… and waited for a delayed flight. Maybe you were on the plane, wishing that you could get off and sit somewhere more comfortable. Maybe you were in the airport, wishing that you a) had news of the plane’s whereabouts and b) had a more comfortable chair to sit in.

Although the airlines try to shift the blame for these delays away from themselves, the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress concludes that

The Vast Majority of Flight Delays Result from Systemic Problems in the Airline Industry

According to the DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the top reason that flights were delayed – accounting for almost 40 percent of all delayed flights – was that other flights arrive late, creating a cycle of delay that leaves passengers distressed and airlines in deeper financial difficulty. Other top reasons for delay point to a system under strain. Circumstances within the airlines’ control, such as baggage handling and fueling account for 29 percent of delayed flights, and problems within the aviation system such as air traffic congestion and disruption from non-extreme weather conditions comprise another 28 percent. Accounting for less than 6 percent of total delays, extreme weather was a tiny and declining reason for flight delays in 2007.

The emphasis is mine and highlights the fact that the airlines are directly responsible for 69% of their own flight delays. These delays have nothing to do with general aviation or user fees or government funding or air traffic control. The delays are simply the result of poor management decisions such as scheduling more flights to take off simultaneously from an airport than are physically possible and scheduling flights so close together that minor delays daisy-chain throughout the day.

You can read the whole Joint Economic Committee report here: Your Flight has been Delayed Again.

For a change, American Airlines is making a good business decision. Instead of whining about how it cannot run profitably, it is doing something about its bottom line: raising its prices. There has been lots of news coverage about the $15 fee which American Airlines is charging for the first piece of checked luggage. Good for them. It’s not personal; it’s just business.

When a business is losing money, as most airlines are doing, the business gets to do at least one of a very few things:

1. Increase revenue
2. Reduce costs

The airlines have reduced costs, sometimes admirably and sometimes ruthlessly, to such an extent that anything even vaguely resembling customer service has largely vanished from the entire industry. Everyone I know who flies commercial airlines dreads the experience.

For the last several years, the airlines have been trying to increase revenue by a) waging a price war and hoping to make up the difference in volume of tickets, and b) pleading with the US government for more tax relief. With luck, yesterday’s announcement marks the beginning of a new airline industry phase, one in which the airlines charge enough for their products that they can

• safely transport passengers,
• in comfort,
• while fairly compensating their employees.

Yes, it can be done and charging a fair price for the product delivered is a key piece of the puzzle. Here’s hoping that they improve product quality while raising prices. It’s about time.