jr conlin's ink stained banana

Every year, millions of people visit Disneyland. (Take your flavor of which Disney* is closest to you, because they are all remarkably similar). Disneyland is safe. It's a well manicured place where you see clean, smiling faces. It's full of music and prescribed adventure. It's expensive to get in. Some things are free, others cost money. There are even parts that are only available to folks that have inside knowledge, skills or cash, making them special.

You're also very strictly controlled as to what is and is not permitted within Disneyland. If you break the rules, you're told to leave and not allowed to return. You can also be denied access to Disney if they please because ultimately, Disney isn't real.

Disney is, quite literally, a walled garden. It's a nice place to visit, but i wouldn't want to live there.

Honestly, i don't even find it that interesting a place to visit, but that puts me in the savage minority. There are tons of folks that love Disney and happily consider the fake veneer of reality that it promotes as a wonderful experience. Personally, i kind of like reality more. i like being able to drive around without a rail making sure i don't go out of my lane. i like going on boat trips where the jokes aren't scripted from 30 years ago. i like looking at real castles, built to hold off more than candy stoked ten year olds.

So, why the downer on the land of the mouse? Because i've been thinking more and more about how we seem to be progressing toward a digital Disneyland.

With the advent of the iPad, there have even been a few articles noting the siren call of the walled garden. Why not? They're safe from bad things, work fairly well, and give you the feeling that you're almost real. They're simple, well crafted devices that are fun, much like the happy little monorail that circles the park. Ultimately, they're not real, though, and no amount of wishing on stars or listening to talking crickets is going to solve that.

A few articles have even noted that "this isn't the way of the future" as a dismissal of folks like me that aren't happily lining up for an e-ticket. i'm not so sure about that. If devices like the iPad and it's soon to be progeny are targeted at "casual" users, doesn't that mean that the "hard core" folks that might actually be interested in doing things that are not within the tight control of the company are by definition marginalized? If less that 10% of a device's audience feels it should be able to talk to programs and devices that aren't sold by the parent company, is it really worth that company's time and effort to provide that feature?

That's the other thing that keeps popping up. You do realize that while Google Voice became a web-app in order to bypass the restrictions that Apple had in place, it didn't work with iTouches, right? Why would that be if it's an HTML5 app? You can easily get a mic that works on a touch. The browser and OS level hooks are the same, why shouldn't it work on a Touch? That's because Google Voice isn't really a web app. What Google does when you request an out-bound call is to call your device and then call the remote number. It doesn't work on the Touch because there's no phone for it to call, and no way for the browser to capture voice input.

The Garden doesn't like that.

This means that if you wanted to bypass the Apple approval process, you only get the most minimal subset of the devices capabilities, which could be pulled at any time. Kind of like sitting in a driving game console, where things can be very exciting, but you really aren't going anywhere. Yes, you could create a rich application experience remotely and have your device be a dumb terminal, but even then, you don't really control things, and you could be blocked by an intervening proxy.

i've yet to get a new phone. Not because there aren't phones i'd like out in the market place, but because no matter what i may pay for a given device, it won't be mine, because my carrier may decide to force a change to my device that will remove functions. i'm well aware that Rogers is in Canada and i'm not, but that doesn't mean that US companies can't adopt the practice. For the most part, i'm still at the whims of the carrier to decide to allow my device to update.

That's not freedom. i'm able to update my laptop and workstation at my whim. i'm able to download, run, or build any application i desire. i can customize any portion of the device to fit my needs or desires. Sadly, i don't see that being a growing trend, in fact, i see the opposite soon taking over.

Perhaps i'm being paranoid again. Perhaps, platforms like Apple won't decide that with the run-away success they have with mobile and semi-mobile, simple interface, single use devices, they really don't need to spend quite as much time working on affordable multi-use machines. Perhaps folks will be interested enough in the suite of applications they buy and use to actually try and replicate them. Perhaps my nieces who look forward to visiting Disneyland for every birthday will learn to look for an amazing taquería with a cracked window and worn wooden chairs.

Or perhaps not.

Only time will tell.

So, needless to say, i'm underwhelmed by the iRoid iPad. It's a bloated iPod touch that is locked down seven ways to Sunday and is a damn expensive handle to the multitude of razor blades that are iTunes, Apps, and various officially licensed "add ons" like a USB port, VGA output adapter, video cables, and other crap.

i expect the really useful things still won't work with anything other than an iPad.

Naturally, it'll sell like hotcakes and will soon be not fitting in the pants and sliding into ironic messenger bags as folks walk out of Starbucks all over the country.

Still, there's one beam of sunlight to this, at least for me, was an article talking about the opportunity this presents, and he's got an excellent point. Webkit is marvelously well suited for porting to mobile devices, and it's included with no holds barred on Apple devices.

Plus, as Google recently demo'ed, it can get you past Apple's App Store insanity.

Now, all that said, it's completely within the scope of reality that Apple starts blocking useful integration points like the GPS, microphone or other bits, but for a short time, they'll be there, and others will have to support it to be competitive.

Shh, stop with the rational arguments against my blind optimism. It's a dream of mine.

Ubuntu is asking what software i'd like to see on Linux. They list things like iTunes, Photoshop, Steam and a few others. They also include "other".

i sat for around fifteen minutes trying to figure out a program that's only on windows/mac program that i can't get on Ubuntu.

Honestly, most of the apps there i can already get "good enough" versions for what i need. i get why they're asking, since they want to have name brands on the platform so that they can get more folks interested in it. Thing is, looking at my windows box, i don't really have a lot of specialized stuff specifically for windows.

i use firefox and thuderbird for browsing and mail; putty for most of my real work; Komodo for editing web pages; gimp and xara (which has an open source version for linux and mac), and rounding out the rest are vlc, vim, openoffice, truecrypt, and a few others. Granted, i'm weird because i spend most of my time programming rather than watching the butt of a digital version of myself, but it's not like i feel less useful on one platform than another. Heck, i could move to a mac tomorrow and be good to go. (Granted, i wouldn't for a whole mess of other reasons, but those are beside the point.)

About the only program i have to use windows for is iTunes, only because that's required by the locked down iPod touch. (Well, mostly locked down. i can use iFuse to mount the iTouch, but i have to goof around with sqlite3 in order to actually get the damn thing to see the music, but otherwise i'm pretty good to go. )

So, what platform only program am i missing?

At lunch today, we discovered that the Universal Word isn't quite as universal as we thought. It turns out that while it can be used as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, prepositional clause, pronoun, and most other parts of speech, it has yet to be widely accepted as an article.

i intend on remedying that.

To that end, i plan on beginning to use The Universal Word in sentences such as:

"Would you please pass me f@ck salt?"

"Yes, i would like f#ck slice of delicious fruit."

"Excuse me, but is this where f$ck 113 bus stops?"

"F^ck quick brown fox jumped over fuck lazy dog."

This, of course, would inevitably lead to the final achievement, where entire complex sentences can be constructed using only the Universal Word such as "F&ck f*cking fƱckers f©cked f•cks."

i predict that this will come as a huge boon to anyone in the IT or telecommunications fields. Possibly also Physicists depending on what just unexpectedly became critically unstable.

So, the big news of the day is that Google is reconsidering whether or not to continue to do business in China. It's getting plenty of coverage and lots of folks are rightly praising Google's move to cease censoring results (which will basically get them blocked by the Great Firewall). Still, i've not heard a lot of folks address the elephant dragon in the room. Would China notice?

China, always one to… uhm… innovate, has lots of carbon smudged innovations, and there are plenty of Chinese search engines to choose from, including Baidu, which according to an article published in July of 2009, controls 61% of the Chinese market. Google's share was only 29%. That's a strong second, but hardly the 72% market share that Google holds in the US.

So, basically, Google China is roughly the Sino equivalent of Yahoo. How many folks do you think would be terribly upset if Yahoo Search were to shut down in a month or two? Probably about the same number of folks that were upset when they did and switched to using Bing.

So, while i'm glad that Google is taking a hard stance against a fairly large bully, but of the currently 298 million Chinese internet users, around 182 million of them, more than half the population of the US, more than any population but two other countries, won't even notice.

So, taking a stand against a country that causes you nothing but headaches, and where you're not exactly rocketing up the charts may not be quite as noble as you'd think. Something to think about, huh?