Day Two: Testing the River of Life World

So far tests are running about as I expected. On the Bit Management Contact browser, it works ok minus the expected case sensitive file errors. I'll fix those. One tester sent me his Flux Console output and that IS VERY HELPFUL. BIG THANKS!

I published one comment from an Anonymous source which I normally won't do, but will make an exception in this case. Please when you send feedback, include the name of the browser you are using. One of the reasons for completing and fielding ROL is to provide a shake test for the VRML/X3D browsers. As we understand where this world won't run outside of BS Contact, we'll have a pretty good idea of where and why we aren't achieving the cross-browser playability that is so critical to the success and growth of standards-based 3D content on the web.

Many thanks, Folks! If you want to keep up with this, go to my other blog,

http://3donthewebcheap.blogspot.com

where I'll discuss the technical issues. Lamammals is a personal rant blog.

New Version of River of Life Is Posted: Please Test

The new version of The River of Life world is now posted at this link.

There are usually some problems with a fresh release (caps in titles, etc.). If you load the world and find these, please post them to me here. I'll be testing as well. This world is encoded in VRML97. I will convert it to X3D once this version works.

Note that the world was built by hand using the Bit Management Contact browser. I have not tested it on other VRML browsers lately. If you do, let me know how that goes. The worlds have been through Chisel and are error free to the best of my knowledge. There are still warnings and non-conformance messages given the tight restrictions of Chisel, but other wise it runs.

One favor: please don't pilfer the sound files. Those are samples under fair use and this is a not-for-profit world. All of the artists are listed in the credits.

Thanks!

A New Song Fer Ye

I'll make a proper recording of this song, but for those who like them rawer, this is a raw as I get: one voice, one guitar, one mic, all real time.

This is my comment on war, not the politics, but the sad reality of it over the generations for me.

My Son's Time To Go

len

No Cure for BitTorrent

I was having a conversation with a younger developer about the resurrection of one of the more popular copyright infringement sites using Bit Torrent. He said it can't be stopped and seemed proud of that stating it was like cancer: remove it one place and it just pops up somewhere else.

Two thoughts come to mind. One was the pirate radio stations off the British Isles many years ago. They thought they were untouchable. The British Navy made stink of that belief monitoring their last broadcast even as the fresh holes in their sides were filling them with water.

The second is, well, I know a little something about cancer. Not to be cloying, but the truth is it is treatable in very many cases and types. It is just, well, the treatment isn't pleasant. I wonder if that is what is in store for the Bit Torrent sites trading in pirate intellectual property. Perhaps it is a cancer and it may be time to make it clear that the treatment or cure is... well, unpleasant for the host. Even if there is no cure for some cases, it can be driven into remission and even where it can be cured, the poison applied is well, unpleasant.

The millenials believe this piracy is making musicians "competitive". It's probably time to take the poison back to their servers and provide them with an experience that is... unpleasant. Hardware isn't free yet. Something that leaves it hairless as well might be the right cure.

Emergent Controls in First Order Systems

From time to time I comment on control emergence in cybernetic systems transitioning from first order to second order. In the current parlance, there is the term 'crowdsourcing' and quite a lot misdirected effort to support it as a serious study of research. On the other hand, some of the research does tend to support the model of control emergence.

Good. It may also create some good data for planning such efforts although that seems to be a contradiction in terms. It isn't really. One can sum it up as we once did at a former employer's work site with a scrawled banner on a wall:

We build the tools to build the tools and sell the tools we build.

Not as mystically satisfying as "crowdsourcing", etc., but much easier to present to the investors.

Ravings From A Microsoft Junkie

Oh it is so sad. For so long I've been a Microsoft junkie consuming the twinkies of the uber-toolkit vending machine slobbering over gridviews, popping providers, and storing my procedures where the kids won't find them.

But even junkies have pride.

1. Save As HTML should save HTML. Period. Take out the MS processing instructions. Do yourselves a favor in the document office wars: punt to making extremely easy systems extremely reliable. There is ALREADY ENOUGH INFORMATION IN HTML 1.0 for long lifecycle support. Don't piss in the soup. CLEAN exports and imports are to stressed out
junkies what water is to aspirin.

2. CSS must work in IE exactly like it works in Firefox. It must work in ASP controls. Why do I need TWO style namespaces?

3. The Ajax Controls are hosed in namespace aggregates. Unpredictable Crapware Wastes Days. Days turn into weeks. Weeks turn into lost dollars. Junkies don't have enough time for thisjunk AND other junk. If switching between the design view and the XML source view regardless of container states can cause bindings and controls to disappear without error, crapware is too kind a word. If there is an error in the design view, that same error must be indicated in the XML view. Well-formed XML is not enough.

XML/Design Mode: It is valid or it isn't. If it is the design state is valid. If it isn't, it says so.

That's how synergy from dual-representation editing works. Otherwise, it doesn't.

4. The choice to support a polyglot for web application development is a commercially practical one, but the inability or unwillingness to implement a subset that is common to all web systems normatively, that is a failure to negotiate. Don't *be* the friction. Be the grease.

Clue: Too Much Stuff. Even for junkies.

ps: the C#/SQL Server stuff is good s**t.

The Millennials

Somewhere out on the flatlands of the web I was grazing on a press blurb about the so-called millennials, a term Gen-Xers prefer to describe themselves. It said they are not that well-liked by their bosses. The article described their high expectations, fast production and technical skills coupled to their inability to stick with an employer without quick promotions and senior salaries. The comments warned the baby boomers to get "out of our way".

Umm... glad to do it.

When a generation's most notable contribution to culture is the concept of "the starter marriage", that says it all. History skips right over them. Why? For all their ambition, ultimately, they're bland. As my wife says, "no staying power".

My Generation Looks At The World at 50+

Mine was a generation beset by the woes of our parents winning WWII then thinking we had the moral obligation to right all wrongs. The problem of Kennedy saying we would fight any foe of democracy is we thought we could, should and did in VietNam. Some learned the limits of power and went on to build the Internet. Some believed we lost because we didn't use our power and went on to launch a war in the Middle East disguising lust for power with lost ambitions of Camelot. We learned out politics from MAD magazine and our religion from pop music. "What me worry?" and "We are all outlaws in the eyes of America" colluded in a mash-up of sentiment, carelessness, and greed.

Today we stand at the front window of our homes watching for our children to return from wherever they have gone just as they once watched at the window for us to return from work. We are burying our parents and their friends and watching our 401ks wishing we had bought Microsoft in the 1980s and sold Digital at the same time. Black music is considered the only American music just as black music has become a cesspool of racism and sexual violence so we turn to country music, a music we used to laugh at, just as it became the cesspool of bigotry and stupidity.

All sides are angry and no one trusts a generation who tells them they might want to trade the SUV in for a hybrid while that generation pursues office politics through affairs designed to get rid of the starter spouse and move up to the two decades older but much richer target on the radar. The ownership society stripped the middle class and emerged triumphant from the Reagan-you-are-American-you-deserve-to-be-rich years to give Mafia funeral retirements to the generation of peace-and-love-and-CafeOle-with-a-gin-chaser geezers. We are beset by gay tastes and gay politics with which we may say we are comfortable but we aren't and never will be. We've watched the front office emptied of competent if out of style men only to be replaced by incompetent women in comfortable shoes and told to make them look smarter than they are even as they tell us we must step aside while they take their turn at corrupting the new hired kids with illusions of responsibility masking opportunities for predation.

We became our parents as they watched and now we try to make sure our children don't become us just as they are buying Pink Floyd and Beatles t-shirts because 'you had better music than us'. Maybe the music IS the legacy of my generation that counts and remembering who the Hudson Brothers were is one way to mark the point when it all went downhill to a disco thump with white line fever. I hope it is enough.

We discovered too late that peace is the time between wars and that we can't trust those who want to fight them for ideals or those who want to fight them for profit. In the end, we see how little difference we actually made except to notice we haven't blown up the world yet.

"Peace and love and all good things have a price, I know that's so.
But I didn't know how bad I'd feel now it's my son's time to go."

Blood Tests

Back in for blood tests today. The lymph nodes in the neck are swelling so there will be another CAT scan next week. Not to worry too much though. The blood tests looked good and it's still very early in the game. It's a bit of lousy karma for a singer given I have a scheduled performance in a week at church (You Raise Me Up) and two new songs ready to record as soon as I can do it.

The job is high presssure but that's ok. It is great fun to lead a team of good folks doing something worthwhile with the code. I'm bringing the laptop home and working late hours but it is fun. ASP2.0 is probably better but I could debug a response.write statement just looking at it. The easier the framework tries to make building a web page, the harder it becomes to debug it. I may be (no I am) old fashioned but stuffing the pipes with too much ease usually has the opposite effect. (For you non-geeks, ASP is a Microsoft application design toolkit).

In general, I am fine. The lawn is mowed, the bills are paid, and Dr Who is back on Sci Fi. I will release a new version of the River of Life 3D world soon.

Getting up happy about the day is such a change from the last few years of work. I have to hope it lasts a few years on balance and on account.

Blessed By This Love

Sex is a hunger
Of the blood
For the body
For the love
Is the body that feeds

Bind me up
Bind me up
To the heart that can heal me
To the one who will love me for always

Let it shine
Let it shine
On our own peace of mind
Love me darling
Love is what we are made for

If this is love then carry me
Oh hold me closer now now I see
The light in you it shines in me
The light in you it shines in me
Oh blessed blessed blessed be
By this love blessed be
By this love
Be blessed by this love
By this love
Be blessed by this love
By this love

len bullard july 4, 2007

Stefania Finds Sam

Stefania finds my song at www.bewitched.net and writes:

"My family and my boyfriend think that I'm crazy for bewitched...when I'm a little bit sad I watch bewitched and I become happy..I don't know why!"

Bewitched became the story of a deep and eternal love of a woman of so much power she could make of the universe what she willed but she willed the universe to choose by choosing first what she loved and then what she would do to protect her love. When an all powerful being protects love, such is the path of chivalry where the choices of love are clear and faultless.

... and Liz fit that to a bill.

You Want It Bad

He tells you that it is the last thing
You tell him but its not the right thing
Its seldom what you want
Its never what you need
You can't keep it but you want it when you see it

And you want it
You want it
You want it
You want it bad

You want it
You want it
You want it
You want it bad

It caches out on the wrong word
It makes a noise in the night now
It's basically what takes a bad day
And makes it something that you're cool with

And You want it
You want it
You want it
You want it bad

You want it
Know you want it
You know you want it
You know
You want it bad

It blisters white hot coals on the soles, y'all
Goodness gracious
You walk through fire like you reall don't care
It scares the blood inside
It keeps you up at night
Torments your soul until you're scared of dieing
But you know you want it
You want it
You want it bad
Because you want it
You want it
You want it bad (repeat a face)

A Gig With the Vampires

A diagnosis from the oncologist, two days at the new job and a gig among the vampires. So far, so good.

The oncologist gave me a new name for the cancer with the same prognosis. It is a mix of news as expected. The cancer is a form that is incurable. Apparently far worse and more aggressive forms will go away for good and always if the patient can survive the treatment, but every attempt gracious and offensive has been turned back by this one on every patient they've tried, bled, and put back on the street. Like a bad haircut, it can be lived with but unlike one, you can't outgrow it or cut it all out. The good news is it is slow to grow, can be treated with smaller doses and until it gets to a certain stage of symptoms, they don't treat it at all.

So I feel fine. Really. I have a nasty cut on the neck where they took a lymph node(I have more and won't miss that one), and later this week, they will punch two sizes of needles through my pelvic bone (big ouchie) to take some bone marrow. If things go as expected, I go back to work and stand around for the rest of the day, then go to my son's bacaulaureate. Not too bad really.

The new job is fun two days in. UAI is a small company that builds public utility web software. It's good looking stuff too. After years of big and small teams in mostly big companies, a small privately owned outfit is a fantastic change. I won't be able to say much about my current project, of course, but it isn't a stretch of the imagination as much as it is old fashioned software engineering and after the last nine years of being too near the smell of sulphur and ashes in purgatory, I feel very liberated and hopeful that this is exactly the right place to be. My dharma, artha and kama feel well-adjusted.

I played the Bluebird in Nashville on Sunday night. I went with my best bass playing buddy, Steve Weber, a guy who's incredible talent is on almost every song I've recorded since I was twenty. The Webelo and I had a fun time driving up and back. It was a beautiful day on I-65 driving the hills up to Abergavenny. Just perfect for the heart of the American South in springtime: sweet sunny hot and blue.

The Bluebird? I think the vampires took over since the last time I was there. Now I know what happened to the Sunnydale crew after Spike exploded and Buffy left for Italy with the Immortal. They've 'gone country'.

The Bluebird on a Sunday night is a strange experience and has been since I first played there over a decade ago: very small, very crowded, full of tourists and impossible to get even a bottle of water if you are a songwriter instead of a high tipping tippler. Well, at least they used to bring us water.

Over the years, the room has changed not at all but the staff has quite a bit. When the announcer said that I had played at the "Ray Acooof TheAtre", (Roy Acuff, NERD!!), that he and his wait staff worked their days at major labels in Nashville and that he personally owned a 'artist management and publishing company' (who doesn't dude?), and that at the end of the night, HE and HIS STAFF would vote one of the ten performers off the regular roster (in the days when Amy ran it, if you could pass her audition, you could play there once every six months forever), I knew that the sad truth is there is very little country left in the home of country music.

And really, that is NOT a good thing.

I'm not a country songwriter; I'm a folk rocker who cut his teeth on the soft sad with JohnPaulGeorgeANDRingo and on the sharp blade with Skynard and Hank. Still, I like any songwriter bar if they treat the songwriters with respect and help us find our way to the stage and to the van afterwards. While once upon a time, we all needed a place to show off our songs, to be discovered, to find management and a label, to get demos financed and so forth, anyone can own the gear, hire a lawyer and put out a CD. We used to write for the radio but now we write for the web and frankly, there just ain't that much we need from The Majors these days.

Yet, something strange happens when any establishment becomes an institution in its own right. The Bluebird is a converted sewing shop in a small strip mall on Hillsboro Road. Despite the fact that possibly many millions of shekels have been made there, they've not changed the carpet or the photos on the wall in all those years. In other words, it has become a cash cow for the career-aggressives who exist in any moderately successful business and take over a hot scene for their own personal pursuits. And then it becomes grotesque.

Rather sad. The Webelo and I played our set of my three original songs and split quick back to the Rocket City. You see, I need Nashville about as much as it needs me, so as much fun as I have there, I'm not looking anymore. I just don't need a "Destination Mall" with sixty five clothes horse shops in bright white and overhead lighting with a book store with six aisles of self-help books and only once shelf with old computer science titles and no Radio Shack. I mean.. really.

All the good stuff in my life is right here, downstairs, getting ready for school
tomorrow and being chastized by my ever suffering sweet baboo who keeps me going and loves me. And she is very good stuff.

Thanks to Tim Bray for the very kind words on his blog and the email it prompted to my inbox. Many thanks to all of you. The news I got got my attention and it has spun me around. Like a car flipping end over end in the air in a crash stunt in a movie, I watched the world spin around me then came down on all four wheels in the middle of the road still doing the limit a bit banged up but in the right direction.

And you know what? I am not alone. It's all good.

Oh Happy Day!

Happy news for my friends and others. The diagnosis for the cancer is chronic lymphatic leukemia. That sounds bad but it is one of the most treatable and people live for decades with it. I'll find out about the treatment this week as I continue to traverse the co-pay food chain (One Doctor = One Fact. Repeat Until > BlueCross || Death). :-)

On Friday, I was hired by a local small software firm as a senior application developer applying web technology. I am looking forward to this in soooo many ways. Exciting!

I seemed to have turned a corner and things looks wonderful. Death notices get your attention, yes they do. Every day is a better day now. Sounds dramatic, but it is oh so true.

Off to the Bluebird in Nashville now to play at Songwriter's Night. Life is... good.

The Secret of the Christ

Many thanks to you who sent messages of faith and support. I'll be fine. Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (NHL) is very treatable. National Hockey League (NHL) isn't. There is no cure for hockey. Pick your acro-numbs wisely.

We’ll be ok regardless. We have each other. This is the great mystery and the secret of the Christ.

The church says it is a great mystery that God became a man and God died for mankind. They couch it in ceremony, tell you you need an intercessor, preach miracle and destiny and faith.

God cannot die, so God cannot give up life. God can give life. God gave Jesus a life as a man and whatever anyone believes, it was a man that died on the cross because only a man can die willingly. When the man rises, that is the gift of God.

Life is God’s gift to man. The death of the Christ is a man’s gift to God.

To serve others in selfless love was the example made and followed and this is the secret of the Christ. For two thousand years since that death, men and women have walked this earth humbly or proudly but giving of themselves to relieve the pain and suffering of others because of the man who died on the cross. The secret of the Christ is not a secret and not a mystery. What we will do for each other, we have done for God. That we will do this is the great mystery and that God knows this is the marvelous faith. From God comes love, to God goes love and to each other, all that love can bring or needs is given.

Be well. I love you. Take that as meant, not as others might think it means or ever makes of that less than it is or more than it is.

What love is, that is a mystery.

Diagnosis

Sitting here working at the keyboard about a month ago, I noticed a small lump beneath the skin on my throat. While having a check up, I mentioned it in passing to my general practicioner who recommended antibiotics. When the lump stayed, it was off to the ENT. I thought those were the tree beings in Lord of the Rings. It turns out they are Ear Nose Throat specialists.

Today I was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma, a form of lymphatic cancer. There will be a surgery next week to take the seriously swollen node for a biopsy to determine the stage and type, but cat scans reveal other nodes in the throat and chest, and the needle aspirant says its NHL.

Rats!

Not my year, I guess. I am about to get acquainted with procedures I've seen done to others so I've a fair idea what is coming. So far I feel fine but do me a favor and keep a good thought for my family.

If the quantity or quality of the posts here go down, that is the reason. If they go up, well, mirabile dictu.

I've good doctors so please don't send 'the Aunt Martha lived to be a hundred with this disease' stories. That has a way of being very depressing.

Life among the mammals is a struggle for many things, life itself being one among many. And so it goes.

improbabletrivia

Some days here at Casa LaMammal, we play trivia games. Being compleat geniuses and patriotes, we like to ask questions only a compleat idiote would bother to know. This is where we find out just how good your memory is, how bad your TV habits are, or if WikiPedia and Google really know everything not worth knowing. After all, that is why we call it 'trivia'.

Be warned: these are tricky.

Where did Peabody go to college?

What was Peabody's first job after graduation?

What was Peabody's second job after graduation?

Why did Peabody adopt a boy?

Where did Peabody find the boy?

Where was the boy living when Peabody decided to adopt him?

What was the recommendation accepted by the judge for Peabody adopting the boy ?

What is the name of Peabody's boy?

What did Peabody give his boy on his birthday?

What did the gift do?

Why did Peabody give his boy this gift?

Where did Peabody and his boy go on their first outing?

Whom did Peabody and his boy meet on their second outing?

What did the boy call Peabody?

What is the name of the series that starred Peabody and his boy?

Languagesdontfailpeoplefail

Google is still insisting titles in this blog need to be in devanagri script. Since I didn't change any settings, they must be having a true Sanskrit-moment at headquarters. Weird. As long I add no spaces or other delimiters, the titles remain Engfish, but one wonders.

Eliotte now insists VRML isn't dead. It failed. Languages don't fail. People, companies, investments, initiatives all of these fail. Languages work or don't work. But if the metric is adoption, then it is just a 'size matters' metric. Here are some notable failures by that metric:

1. The Macintosh. All profits to the contrary, it is very much a minority platform. It is the classic loser of the desktop wars.

2. Netscape/Firefox/Mozilla. Huge embarassing failures. Despite the technical excellence of Firefox, it still can't chart better one in five, but like the dead newt, it's getting better.

3. SVG. It couldn't get a hearing in Congress with Jimmy Hoffa's body in its trunk.

4. XML. Where is that XML browser that was going to liberate us all from the tortures of programming in the DOM with innerHTML?

5. Ruby, Python, PHP, and a host of other open source minority languages. Javascript, on the other hand, claimed a place front and center and never gave it up.

It's an easy game to play but a game it is. Let's try looking at the more interesting points.

1. There has never been a time since VRML 1.0 that a viable VRML viewer wasn't readily available. There are more available now than when VRML was 'winning'.

2. The VRML is Dead or Failed meme originates in the States. Americans will declare 'mission accomplished' without ever checking to see if they really have and they will declare failure and loss as soon as the first trendy pundit tells tells them they are losing two points of market or mindshare. Webheads are lemmings.

In fact, the uptake and application of VRML and now X3D in European universities and markets have been wildly successful. That is why the Intergraph Corporation had to go to France to buy the French Homeland Security applications when Ingr had VRML experts on their own staff. They declared it dead, refused to support internal efforts and got caught with their pants down. Ooopsie.

3. The idea that all successful computer science originates in Silly Valley and that if the Americans don't use a language, it is a failure is the height of American zenophobia and arrogance not to mention a bit of ignorance.

4. Just a bit of Googling (if you can get it to quit transcoding) will show you some wildly successful applications of VRML. The same bit of Googling can show you some wildly impoverished American companies and professors. IBM among others are spending a very considerable amount of investor dollars to convince the world that we need open standards for 3D on the web when we already have them. The indirection is there to hide their own ambitions to obtain encumbered IP and licensing advantages through Second Life. I understand that. That's business. It's sleazy but it is altogether American business practice these days.

Languages work or don't work. People fail.

The latter case is possibly more disturbing because it means American professors in otherwise respectable universities are educating a generation of students in the politics of failure. Maybe that is not the right thing to do. Maybe a computer scientist should look as the applicability of a technology, become conversant in the means and uses of scene-graphs and leave the political analysis of failure to the marketing majors where learning to lie early and often is required if it isn't a natural talent.

VRML and The MAC: Which Failed?

Elliotte Harold decides that VRML failed because it wasn't on the Mac. Jason Osgood claims it was because of XML.

Why is it on the web that people who don't do this kind of work, don't use a language, and aren't a part of the community that does get to decide that a technology is dead?

I say go to web sites such as www.octaga.com and look at the work being done in X3D. Osgood, you gave up too early. Your's is a common complaint among those who did. Is XML uglier than classic VRML syntax? XML is uglier than almost any alternative syntax. But it comes with millions of lines of supporting code so while you are in a vocal minority, you are also in a very small one. As the song says, "you made your move too soon".

If all X3D is is a transcoding, I would agree. It is an ugly transcoding. On the other hand, significant improvements were made in the VRML design that you overlook including much improved nodes, a much better object model, a much better API (SAI) that supports AJAX.

Blaming the standards group for making your move too early is like blaming your parents for your last failed relationship. They may shape your decisions but they don't make them for you. You turned on it early when it disappointed you, and you won't look ahead or give those who stayed the course credit for what they have achieved. That's mean-spirited and not just a little self-immolating.

If VRML had failed, it wouldn't still be the single largest supported format for all tools combined when importing and exporting. If VRML had failed, companies like Octaga and BitManagement wouldn't be doing multi-million dollar 3D projects today. If VRML had failed, worlds built ten years ago wouldn't still be running in browsers built in the last two. If VRML had failed, the US Homeland Security department wouldn't be using it in HLS projects for training emergency responders nor would it be a US Navy approved standard.

What VRML could not do as has been pointed out so often is make 3D designers out of web page builders. It couldn't make real-time 3D as easy as document design. What it can do and is doing is provide a royalty-free unencumbered means to create 3D on the web and off. It saved a information space for use by those who cannot afford Maya but can master tools such as Flux Studio because they have the time and are willing.

You are missing the point, Elliotte, because you need a whipping post for another project that isn't winning mindshare as fast as you want it to. Like so many I've talked to about Open Office, you don't want an open unencumbered royalty free means to create and maintain information, you want to beat Microsoft. You want to hurt them. You want it so bad that you'll tell any story you have to and make the point on any back you can find. You are a better man than that.

X3D/VRML is succeeding. Do your homework and look at the URIs. Look at the projects. Look at the software. I don't want EVERYONE to use X3D. We learned in VRML that too few have the talent and that ensures just as you find in SecondLife that a lot of the 3D is terrible. If they want to try, we provide the tutorials for free, software for free, and guarantee the lifecycle. That is all that can be expected. If they can't make a go of their business or their relationships, that's life. The world will let you die, it will let you starve, it will let you lose. All a standard can provide is a chance to live, to make money, and to win at the business or hobby or art that you choose, but if you don't, it can't.

If you don't need 3D, don't use it. If you do, look at the costs of building it and maintaining it because it is by nature one of the highest cost content types, so if you do use it, figure that out fast because you will burn your customers just as the early wysiwygers before HTML and XML burned customers with closed encumbered systems that died without even a chance of rehosting. Then take another look at VRML/X3D and ask if the only metric for winning in some markets is surviving. Osgood has an axe to grind. Elliotte, you have a cause and may you get what you need, but don't do it on the back of a worthwhile effort that has done everything necessary to succeed with its values intact and its content still wrling a decade later. There aren't too many pre-dot.bomb standards that can make that claim and those that can did because their real users kept them alive. Don't insult them because you didn't.

Caveat vendor.

It's the Network, Stupid

I do tire of the 'but where are your patents?' question for starting a Web 2.0 business. Complexity barriers and web 2.0 are antithetical. Then there is the 'how much ad revenue can you generate? Isn't that impossible in today's market?"

That is a better question. Not to be dull, but:

1. The VC approach relies on the Buffet Complexity Barrier to Competition. Thus, the VC looks for IP or other secret sauce. The VC wants a quick return because the heart of this and hedge fund investing is quick turnaround investing in the 4 for 1 range.

Say vig.

2. There is no complexity barrier in ANY content market. The music industry can explain this one to you, but essentially it is an 'any idiot can do it' market. So the content industry relies on the promotion or amplification of talent and the keiretsu of managed acts and events. Think of this as the control of resources for resources.

Note that recently Sony/RCA/Columbia Music announced and implemented a blogging policy. They don't accept CD submissions. They want musicians/composers/bands who blog and sign up on their VOX site. It is the single most interesting change in the music business in 100 years. The gates are finally blown open. That doesn't mean the politics aren't still there. They are possibly worse but they are finally accessible. This is the music industry recognizing the need to support the resources for acquiring resources at network speeds.

3. When a technology emerges, one can ride the wave until it becomes common and by that point must be large enough or well-connected enough to sustain operations to repay investors. Otherwise the churn is exactly as has been described elsewhere regardless of the size or age of the operation. Ask any mid to lower level employee of a stable company purchased by equity investors. The cruelty and the cost-cutting are legendary.

This is the result of squeezing for vig.

On the other hand, it is not impossible or even incredibly risky to run a content-based business if one takes the network or keiretsu approach. It is very hard work for those who do not have a good network of contacts for the production of the content with access to the customers for content of a given type. That is the key:

content has a type based on the associations of the customers.

Until you identify a content-type network, you don't have a Web 2.0 business. This isn't just figuring out the abstract network, but the actual members of more than one instance of it.

There is no dominance possible because by its nature such networks are quite flat. What you look for is reach. This isn't a hard idea because it is a matter of identifying the connectors, the information sinks, the producers, consumers and modifiers, then providing useful utilities that speed up or reduce the work load for every component that can effectively use a computer form or page. You don't necessarily produce content: you hook up those that do and then compete fairly for those services. VCs hate this idea. Customers love it. The money is made in maintenance and it is dammed good income if you survive.

You can also produce the content, but that is a separate business. It is not of necessity NOT a Web 2.0 business, but that is a topic for a different blog. See my other blog.

The hard part is building it to the point of getting the exponential or power law effect. A LOT of little pieces have to be assembled first and those without subject matter expertise are advised to get people who have it and to be sure that their expertise is reasonably global but immediately local. That is where the real risk is. Some content markets are entirely local by the very business rules for processing the content.

All said, it's the network, stupid, meaning, until you have identified an organic content network, meaning a network of information trading relationships, all of the cpm figuring you do, the ad relationships and so on, are so much dreaming. It isn't about getting rich quick. That is the way the Mafia does business and they are mostly sloppy, ineffective and culturally insane. Earn it by product for value. It's old fashioned but stable and grows proportionally to sane returns.

We don't all want to be pirates.