On Safari

If you'd noticed the tone of my last couple of posts was a little testy, you'd probably agree that it was about time I had a holiday. So I have!

In keeping with our ongoing efforts to see as much of our adopted country as possible, we took a roadtrip to Wentworth - which is a town built where the Murray and Darling Rivers meet. If nothing else, the trip was a great geography lesson. Based on what I'd seen about the river system on the news, I hadn't expected to find any water! Of course, I discovered the impressive weir system that had been built early last century, which keeps the water in reserve at the upper reaches of the river - enough to accommodate a lunch cruise, anyway!

The trip wasn't exactly a daring trek to the Red Centre or anything, although there are little patches of desert nearby that give you a taste of such an experience, without needing a Landcruiser (or even all-wheel drive, which I'd gladly have swapped at one point for a slightly softer ride).

The Wentworth Services Club is on quite an ambitious scale... it must take up about a quarter of the entire town's area. This is something to do with gambling laws traditionally being more liberal in NSW than just over the border in Victoria. Unfortunately, not long after the club was expanded to take advantage of Victoria's frustrated gamblers, the law was changed and Victorians got their own pokies. The result is an improbably large (but friendly) RSL and motel complex with odd Casino-inspired flourishes. We stayed in one of the 'Presidential Suites' - not a single piece of faux gilt furniture was to be found anywhere, however.

As safaris go, the kill wasn't particularly impressive - amounting a couple of cases of wine, in fact. We didn't even manage a coating of red dirt along the sides of the car.

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Today, I'd like to postulate a set of common assumptions underlying many tech news articles:

1. Anything Microsoft does is evil and monopolistic and anyone who says otherwise is a corporate sellout;
2. Anything any other large software company does is mostly fine, even when it is exactly the same as was done in (1);
3. Anything Apple does is pretty and groundbreaking (even if the same as was done in (1)), although Apple people can be a bit much sometimes; and
4. Open Source is either a 'growing force' or 'about to take over the world' but we wouldn't let our daughters anywhere near Linux people.

By way of illustration, this article in the New York Times about NBC's use of Silverlight to provide online Olympics coverage. The observant reader will note that Silverlight is described as 'proprietary' technology while Flash is not. I bet Adobe are going to be surprised to hear they don't own Flash anymore.

Note to the author: if you feel you have to use pejorative adjectives like that (a need I'd question) at least use them consistently - otherwise you're just being being needlessly subjective.

Next, the article outlines Microsoft's monopolistic tendencies and then goes on to describe the advantages of the 99% penetration enjoyed by Flash, without obvious irony.

Those of you who have a copy of Flash might like to compare the ActionScript it uses with the AJAX used by Silverlight. If you don't have the Flash software, you won't be able to make such a comparison because you can't do anything with Flash content without purchasing it. Yet Silverlight is singled out in the article by a tame professor as "...a way to lock up the content, and it’s not enabling as much innovation as we would like to see." Perhaps the Professor also has a better grasp of irony than I give him credit for.

Geekier readers, meanwhile, will know that ActionScript is proprietary to Adobe while AJAX is a W3C standard - exactly the kind of standard described glowingly in the article as 'a growing economic force'.

By now you've probably decided I'm either a Microsoft stooge (see point 1 above) or something of a pedant - after all, most web users aren't geeks and don't care how the content they access is coded. On the latter I fully agree. I prefer to follow my Father's advice and choose the right tool for the right job and get on with things (though it has to be said he's had less luck with some of his other advice).

Which is why I'm frequently surprised by some of my correspondents when they present their views on such geek esoterica with the kind of blood-shot, spittle-flecked vehemence traditionally reserved for Spanish Inquisitors and Salem Witch-Hunters.

Neither of whom were known for their grasp of irony either.

Scrabble, anyone?

At some point, someone (no doubt with a beard) decided that because digital content could easily be copied, it should therefore be free.

The trouble is that content - good content, at least - costs money to produce. That's because producing content is hard work and people expect to be paid for their work... performers, technicians, musicians, writers... yes, even producers. But if no-one pays for the content, then those people can't get paid. And so they go and get other jobs. Which leaves the rest of us nothing to do on a Sunday night but drink or play scrabble.

And if anyone tries to cite YouTube one more time as an example of a free-content utopia, I will strap them to a chair and make them watch clips from it until their eyes bleed - which should take around 6 minutes. Tops.

The sort of people who push the free content agenda make a great deal of noise about how information should flow unrestricted and say that sharing clips of content in reviews or using content in "mashups" is a fundamental human right. Some can even keep a straight face as they say it (although it's hard to tell behind that beard). What they really mean is that they want to be able to download the content for free off BitTorrent.

I mean who seriously believes that people who won't pay for their operating systems will actually pay for content?

So, my cheapass friends, your manifesto will look a lot less implausible when you can explain why you should ever get paid for anything you ever do ever again when performers, technicians, writers and musicians can't.

In the meantime, stop pontificating about an industry you don't understand.

Although for me, pontificating gets 29 points with a triple letter score on the F...