Speed Docking is a highly competitive sport wherein the contender attempts to unpack, plug in and power on a laptop within the least amount of time.
Thanks to Keegan Jones for his cinematography here. I’m calling this one at 39.0 seconds — much better than my first attempt of 47.4.
Over two years ago, Sony BMG made a fateful decision to begin loading its music CDs with software designed to take control of consumer’s computers when loaded into the machine. Sony’s aim was to wrest control of the computer away from the machine owner in order to prevent the copying of the company’s music; but the plan would soon explode into the infamous Sony rootkit debacle.
As Ars Technica puts it, “a rootkit is a program or set of programs that allow a usually malicious user to maintain access to an compromised computer by sinking deep hooks into the OS.” Sony was not merely trying to govern what listeners could do with its music; it was attempting to control what users could do with their computers.
Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy of Homeland Security, issued one of the most succinct responses to Sony’s actions: “It’s very important to remember that it’s your intellectual property — it’s not your computer.” Sony had showed just how much regard it had for the property rights of its customers. But more than that, it had left these customers open to data loss and attack by hackers: “Sony’s application will utterly hose your Vista install… Sony’s rootkit provides a means of entry for other hackers to compromise your system.”
The truth will out, as they say. And in the case of Sony’s little experiment, it outed rather quickly. Less than a month after Mark Russinovich brought public attention to the rootkit issue, Sony stated it would stop distributing the copy-protection software on its music CDs.
The fiasco wasn’t over for Sony. A product recall and multiple lawsuits would soon follow — costing Sony several million dollars (a pittance given the size of the company and the seriousness of the offense) and no small amount of consumer goodwill. But as far as I know, Sony has never apologized for the rootkit decision or promised that such a technique will never be utilized again.
Here at home, I issued a complete Sony boycott. Dramatic, perhaps; but I was steamed at Sony’s utter hubris and contempt for its customers. We probably haven’t followed it perfectly — thankfully, the Transformers soundtrack turned out to be a Warner Brothers rather than a Sony BMG release — but by and large we have kept Sony products out of the home.
Thus as far as I can see, I will never own a Playstation 3. I will never own a Blu-ray player of any kind. (Sony is not the only party behind Blu-ray, but they are closely bound up with its success.) The latter shouldn’t be too hard: with the rise of digital downloads, high-definition DVDs were obsolete before they arrived on the scene. The next movie player I invest in is much more likely to be an Apple TV than anything built around optical media.
Sony items which were already in the home prior to the boycott were allowed to remain. Sony already had my money there, I figured. Discarding them wouldn’t do anything to hurt the company.
So why bring this up more than two years after the event? The reason is this: I like to lift weights, and I like to use my iPod while doing so. The thing with lifting weights is, if you employ any effort in the process, it makes it difficult to keep your face in a neutral configuration. And if your facial expression changes, so do the shape of your ears. (You can try this for yourself.) iPod earbuds aren’t designed to remain in place under these conditions, so I found myself needing constantly to readjust the little white nuisances.
It was time to try new earbuds. Offerings at the Apple store were divided between the $100+ stratum and that occupied by Apple’s own $40 in-ear offering. I’m not paying $100 for workout headphones, so Apple brand it was. Unfortunately, through some quirk of otology, these were even less inclined to remain in place than the standard earbuds.
One of the Sony products grandfathered in after the boycott was a pair of cheap blue earbuds with hooks designed to hang on the ears. Their design is mediocre. Their sound quality is passable at best.
They also stay on my head no matter what I try.
After all this time, wearing a Sony product centimeters from my brain makes me slightly ill — as if the earbuds might try to rootkit my cerebral cortex. But they work, and I’m running with it for now.
You’ve won this battle, Sony. But I still intend to win the war.
So there’s this little Facebook game called PackRat. We think it’s a pretty good time. You can get lost in it for hours without getting bored or tearing your hair out because it’s too difficult. It’s got a great interface, it performs extremely well, and the art isn’t half-bad.
It’s put together by eight people.
When you’re a company of eight people, you tend to interact directly with your users. There’s no PR office. It’s just the developers and artists and CEO using Facebook or Twitter or whathaveyou to talk about what’s up.
You might think folks would look at that and say, Hey. These guys have faces. I can follow the Rails guy on Twitter. I can drop the artist a note on Facebook. I can check out the UI designer’s photos on Flickr.
But something about putting that “Inc.” after a company name changes things. Eight people are alright. But Eight People, Inc., are surely out to get you. They change the product to spite users. Their performance improvements are really excuses to reduce communication. They work to bring out the worst in people and ruin everyone’s fun.
Changes in products happen for lots of reasons, and the upside isn’t always immediately apparent. Sometimes a feature is dragging the system down and needs to be pruned a bit to keep everything rolling along. Often a new feature is part of a larger plan which won’t become apparent until later. And a few features look undesirable at first, but turn out to convey some big advantages as time goes by.
It’s funny how tenuous trust is on the internet. Meet one of your users in person and everyone gets along. But drop the curtain of the internet between you, and the suspicion returns. You’re an Inc. again.
I’ve stuck with small companies over the years precisely because I wanted to keep my face. I wanted to be a human working with and for humans. I’ll keep on following that philosophy whether the internet chooses to acknowledge the difference or not.
But right now, I’m tired of being treated like an Inc.