Wikipedia and the Fallacy of Intentions

Wikipedia is running into strange issues: more slashdot here.

To summarize, a clique within Wikipedia is behaving like despots and risking destroying the whole effort.

This actually is a good proof point for the fallacy of intentions: Wikipedia is great, and these guys have done a great job of bringing Jimbo’s vision to life.  But the fact that you have “non-selfish” intentions (if that exists) does not mean that what you are doing is good.  Durova may have the best of intentions and act like an on-line Stalin.

That’s why businesses exist.  That’s why Wikipedia would probably be better as a for-profit organization that more people (stockholders, employees, board members, community members…) could do something about it than a group of “believers” who really know what should be done and screw up like this.

Finally, legal, DRM-free music off the web

Amazon does not let you buy DRM-free MP3s off their web site if you live in Europe, so no Steve Adey for me.

Deutsche Gramophon just opened their own perfect little shop on the web, though, and they do allow lowly Europeans to get their fill of classical music, DRM-free and ripped to a decent 320.  The only peeve I have is that I am more of an Ogg guy: MP3s, at that rate, tend to sound just as good but are way larger, but that’s OK.

Albums are cheap, too, with old issues priced around EUR10.  I finally got my hands back on Levine’s Carmina Burana, which I had on tape 20 years ago and hadn’t been able to purchase on CD.  I don’t think it was truly OOP, it’s just that I hadn’t been able to track it down again.  Well, I can hear Anderson’s voice in all her crystalline beauty back again!

This has to work.  There is no other way for the music business.  Will the pirates respect that and not flood P2P sites with DG’s back catalog?  In the case of classical music, yes, I believe it should work.  For rock, I remain skeptical.

Silicon Valley and Tinsel Town

I tend to refrain from negative posts because I generally do not find them very interesting, but I do need to get something off my chest.

When I was a VC, I had to interact quite a bit with Silicon Valley (VCs, bankers and entrepreneurs alike), whether as a source of ideas, news, deals, money, you name it.  I of course travelled there quite a few times and loved the weather, the geography and the sense of it being the center of my beloved industry, IT.

Something always bothered me though: as an avowed European player, I always felt quite a bit of haughtiness on the part of the SV people I met.  It was not xenophobia, people in Silicon Valley are *very* open to people from outside the US.  It went deeper than that: if you weren’t part of the Valley scene, you were a bit player and could not understand things as well as people who lived and worked somewhere between SF and San Jose (Jim, Andy, yes, I am talking about you).

I worked out of the Boston office of a large VC fund for a while and it was the same, the difference being that the East Coast VCs actually felt they were better than SV, themselves.

I think this arrogance is exploding on the blog scene, and I think the worst offender is the celebrated Marc Andreessen.  His blog is interesting and Marc is indisputably an industry luminary but sometimes he just goes on and explain how Tinsel Town should be rebuilt on the Silicon Valley image, thus showing to the rest of the world how Silicon Valley has become Hollywood: the same insularity, the same belief they have cracked the code and are the Masters of the Universe whose model can be used to solve all of the World’s problems.  Doesn’t that also remind you of Wall Street in the 80s?

If you want to have a feel where this might lead (beyond the groupthink), read Indecent Exposure : A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street.

Very cheap notebooks

I am getting awfully interested in the awfully cheap sub-notebook segment of the OLPC, Classmate and Asus eee.  As far as I am concerned, the latter is my current choice for the Xmas season, if only because it is indeed shipping.

A couple of thoughts:

* these laptops are so limited in proc power, it seems only Linux can deliver a nice user experience on them.  OK, you can install XP but it sucks on a real laptop so how bad can it get on these toys?

* Could these machines help make 20XX the year of Linux on the desktop?

If you can read French, the ultimate eee blog is here.  This guy knows his sh*t.

A special request

Could This Mortal Coil please record a cover of Steve Adey’s Mississippi?  The song is screaming to be rethought using IWR’s famed reinterpretation skills.

Going off-line

I will be off the grid for about 10 days starting Sunday, so don’t expect any post on this blog for at least two weeks.  I have a few things I need to think about in some depth and being a very slow thinker it will take me as least that much time to make up my mind.

It is not as though I am keeping a regular posting schedule anyway, but I thought that with all of the recent converts (Ubuntu über alles!), I needed to be a bit more courteous to my readers.

Taggé! Mon post égocentrique inutile du jour

If you don’t read French, you are lucky, you can just get on with the rest of your life.

Si vous lisez le français, je vous recommande également de passer votre chemin, car le reste de cet article est une perte de temps pure et simple.

J’ai été taggé. Moi, le psychopathe asocial à côté duquel l’Unabomber fait figure d’amuseur public. les règles:

“Le Tag :
Chaque personne décrit 7 choses d’elle même.
Ceux qui ont été tagués doivent écrire sur leur blog ces 7 choses ainsi que le règlement.
Vous devez taguer 7 autres personnes et les énumérer dans votre blog.
Vous laissez un message sur leurs blogs en leur indiquant qu’ils ont été tagués et les invitant à venir sur votre blog!…….”

Chrisos ne me connait pas assez pour penser à quelqu’un d’autre pour son tag, me voici donc forcé d’écrire 7 choses à propos de moi:

* Je fais plein de fautes d’orthographe en français. Plein. Ca n’a pas toujours été le cas, mais depuis que je suis “bilingue”, c’est l’horreur. Et mon anglais n’est pas meilleur. Pire sans doute. Mon russe est en lambeau (je fais rire la jeune biélorusse qui s’occupe de mon petit dernier à l’école maternelle), mon allemand oublié depuis longtemps, mon breton jamais même commencé.

* Je suis né à Brest, ce qui fait beaucoup rire mes (rares) amis américains et anglophones et particulier.

* Je connais le doux bruit que fait une AK47, suite à un stage “organisation de coup d’état” à Moscou en 1993. Pour cela je remercie Lena, l’amie de mon poteau Polo, qui a bien failli avoir ma peau ce jour-là. Je recommande tout particulièrement aux esthètes le ballet des balles traçantes dans la nuit, quelle magie !

* Je suis entré par hasard dans l’industrie du VC, aussi connue comme la version vie réelle de la série Dallas (on est tout le temps en train de boire des verres et de s’envoyer des méchancetés) . J’avais le choix entre un job de trader obligations chez Daiwa (obligations d’état libellées en euros, marché inexistant à l’époque) et Atlas Venture. Pour leur décharge, Daiwa m’avait fait miroiter la possibilité d’être transféré à Tokyo… J’ai pris un long week-end pour décider (rafting, toujours avec le même Polo) et au bon de 72 heures j’ai décidé d’aller chez Daiwa. Le lundi matin, j’ai appelé Philippe Claude chez Atlas pour lui dire banco. Je ne sais toujours pas ce qui s’est passé cette nuit-là mais, depuis, je vais confiance à mes tripes. Trop, d’ailleurs.

* Contrairement à ce que mon frère André raconte depuis des années, je n’ai pas les oreilles décollées.

* Je n’aime pas les fruits de mer.

*Je vivais à Tokyo au moment où la grande bulle financière des années 80 a éclaté mais je vous assure que ce n’est pas de ma faute.

Comme je ne connais personne d’autre qui bloggue qui n’ai pas déjà été taggé, je ne propagerai pas cette maladie tout de suite. Vous voilà prévenus: dès que j’en attrape un, il prend pour les autres.

PS: je viens de tagger Rys, je continue d’arpenter le web à la recherche de victimes fraîches.

How does it feel to have one’s post read by 20,000 nerds in one single day?

Pretty good, actually.

Anyway, thanks for all of the comments, even the nasty one. Yes, I am a frog and my english is good not very. Yes, I am a clueless noob and I aknowledge I am not worthy of the splendor of Linux. Anyway, most of the comments were very helpful and supportive and I even got a few comments that said ‘That’s exactly how I feel!’ which made me feel a bit less lonesome during the long, dark June nights.

Blonde Redhead – 23

A post about music for a change.

I urge anyone with a taste for noisy/indie pop to go out and buy Blonde Redhead’s latest album, 23.  I just stop listening to it: fantastic melodies, quirky arrangements and weird voices (esp. the voice of the female singer, very high and slightly off-key).  It reminds me of the Lush of Split and the ur-masterpiece of noisy pop, My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless.

This album is my first contact with BRH, so let me know if I am a bit late to the party, as I realize they have been around for some time!

In my thirty something mind, it may also signals the return of 4AD, the fabled 90s label.  For a number of years (ever since This Mortal Coil’s Bloood even), they just didn’t surprise me with the groups they signed and the albums they put out (a consequence of Ivo moving from rainy Britain to LA??).  For a spell in the late 801s/early 90s, I would buy every single album they put out, without an exception, so good was Ivo Watts-Russel’s ear!  The strange thing is, 23 sounds 4AD, and the whole album belong with all of the other great stuff Ivo has discovered over the years.  Great work!

I just can’t help falling in love….

Ubuntu Edgy Eft is impressive. There is no other word for it. Once you get the hang of the basic concepts, the power and speed of the system just shine through, even though I am running it on a fairly old box (7 year-old Dell that initially shipped with a real Microsoft lemon, Windows ME!). It doesn’t hurt that the thing looks good even on the cheapest graphic card I could find when I had to replace the one that the computer came with.

OK, so you have to go to the terminal window for times to times, but I am starting to like it (I grew up with the Command Line, dammit!) and it is faster than opening 12 windows when you know what you want.

It seems there is little I can’t do on it and it even outclasses my new Dell with XP on a few things, like search (with Beagle).

I might just switch even my desktop machine, actually, and leave Windows for Linux pastures, thus just skipping the need for Vista licences and a switch to Office 11 (the ribbon is a freaking pain in the ass to get to grips with): I am a Microsoft fan, but Ubuntu is looking mighty attractive these days.