Open Source and Economics: How the Hold Up Problem Explains the Flash Wars

The surprising aspect of open source is not its existence, but its success. People do things for free all the time. Among other things, there is no shortage of people willing to share their videos on the web. However, despite the availability of free videos, viewers are often willing to pay money to watch films made by professionals. Professional producers of films in turn usually make full use of copyright laws. In contrast, in many software domains, open source solutions are preferred. The important question about open source is therefore not “Why do people contribute to a project like Apache?” but rather, “Why can’t companies create proprietary products that can beat Apache on the market?”

I have no interest in seeing Rubicon (the show on AMC that’s on right before Mad Men), but the opening credits are absolutely gorgeous (created by Imaginary Forces).

via Comically Vintage

Google and Verizon Near Deal on Pay Tiers for Web

Google and Verizon, two leading players in Internet service and content, are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.
Such an agreement could overthrow a once-sacred tenet of Internet policy known as net neutrality, in which no form of content is favored over another. In its place, consumers could soon see a new, tiered system, which, like cable television, imposes higher costs for premium levels of service.

Remember when everyone used to talk about how the Internet was a level playing field? Where a website by John Q. Public was as easily accessible as a website by Corporation X?
Well, it looks like those days are over.
Don’t be evil, right Google? Fuck you. And fuck you too, Verizon.

NPR: Light, Fuel-Driven Car Goes For 100 Mpg X Prize

Warehouse space was cheap, so the retired race car driver hired a team of winners from the world of racing and set up shop to build a car that gets the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon. The team, called Edison2, entered its vehicle, dubbed the Very Light Car, in the X Prize competition, and it’s the last remaining four-seat sedan in the competition.

I have to agree with my father. I’m always amazed and excited, not by new technologies that emerge, but by the refining and perfecting of existing ones. Do we have to move beyond fossil fuels? Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean stories like aren’t exciting.

I understand that when transitioning from any one technology to a new one, there’s bound to be ideas from the former that get absorbed into the latter. Sometimes these ideas are valid and logical and sometimes they’re intended to be temporary, a bandage, to be used until something better is thought of.

Sometimes we get comfortable with our bandages and never take them off. I won’t go through all the ones we’re familiar with in the computer world (folder, page, desktop, below-the-fold). To the defense of these bandages, they do a pretty decent job most of the time.

But some ideas just feel olde tyme-y.

Case-in-point: the page-turn effect.

In 2009, Microsoft filed a patent for the page-turn gesture in digital interfaces. It’s the same gesture Apple currently uses in their e-books on the iPad.

Then last week, Gizmodo posted a video from a UI firm demoing a page-turning Windows 7 interface for tablets.

People, we’re better than this. If we’re going to move beyond the printed page, we need to move beyond the printed page. It’s important we preserve certain aspects of the analogue world in computer technology. This is especially true for the multi-touch world we’re jumping into right now. The inertial scrolling on the iPhone and iPad aren’t just there for show, they make the interface.

Thirty years ago, we went from analogue to full, digital abstraction on the desktop computer. Now we’re at a point in computer evolution where we’re bringing the analogue back into the interface. We’re physically interacting with our machines beyond mouse clicks and keyboard taps. The danger in this is taking too many of the inefficiencies of the physical with us into digital.

Buttons that de-press, lists that rubber band when you reach the end of them, screens that smoothly transition between zoom levels – these are all welcome effects in digital. But with page-turning, there’s no value add when you shoehorn it into digital. It’s like giving cars a clip-clop horse trotting sound effect when you drive.

I actually hope Microsoft enforces their patent and makes Apple remove it from iBooks so that Apple can create a better gesture.