Intel's VIIV nonsense: Victory of what? Dumb marketing drones?

I understand what Intel is up to... they want to put their kit inside set-top boxes, and make intel kit the centerpiece of the new buzzword: the connected home, the "entertainment center", whatever. In other words, they expect people who are sitting on their favourite couch looking at the TV to shell out a few thousand greenbacks more and enjoy Intel's vision of the "connected home", listening to music, watching video, and the like, all from their INTEL-POWERED computer running WINDOWS MEDIA SERVER, to the TV.

There is a problem with this scenario: instead of listening to what the consumer really wants, which is a digital experience free of DRM-infection, they have partnered with the Beast of Redmondia. But it doesn't stop there... they have come up with this meaningless "VIIV" marketing nonsense that leaves people -ok, at least myself- scratching their heads. And if this wasn't enough, the adverts for "VIIV" have started popping up on the web. I've spotted the first today, while visiting AOL's Nullsoft division to download the latest Winamp 5.2x mp3 player.

Want to know what the ad shows? It looks like this:

Intel's advertising campaign for "VIIV"

in other words, an Asian man (or woman, depending on the randomness of your visit) doing the famous "V" sign with his index and middle fingers, with both of his/her hands at once. Which makes me wonder... is "VIIV" victory of... what?. So far, I conclude it's "Victory of the idiotic marketing drones". ;-)

(Just for the record, the flash file shown on the winamp.com page is hosted at this url).

I don't want to spoil Intel's "VIIV" maketing push, but I'll let my blog visitors know that I've been streaming video files, surfing the web, and listening to music, all from my favourite couch and into my TV, not only from my AMD computer, but my AMD64 computer which is running LINUX as well. All DRM-free, with no stupid and dirty tricks to promote the iNTEL brand over another.

How? with the $125 Prismiq Media Player released in... 2003.



There's a nice community of techies and Prismiq users providing peer-help and developing code for it, over here. Too bad the company responsible for it didn't give it the needed resources to fully develop and enhance the product, so it has been relegated to techies.

Look at Prismiq screen on your TV. Windows and DRM-free...

Another look at the Prismiq screen

It's based on the open source FFMPEG open source transcoder, and a NEC risc cpu with built-in MPEG decoder. Full details on the hardware are over here. Oh, did I mention the PC-side server software is cross-platform java so it can be run on Mac OS-X and Linux as well?. An old FAQ can be found here. If you're a techie with a desire to explore -and beat intel's closed solution- I suggest you grab one while you can. Or experience Wintel's "VIIV"ctory ... over your wallet.

Film shows Enron scandal and the dangers of unregulated markets

Just finished watching "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" on DVD. This film shows the true story behind the "Enron scandal". The accounting tricks, the inflated stock price. Andersen Consulting's role in conveniently approving the shady books, the "get rich at all costs" mindset promoted within the company, the role of "deregulation" ideology in pursuing those goals, and how politicians bought it when they thought deregulating the energy markets was "for the better" while the company profitted at the expense of people in California and "moved energy to the desert" to cut supply and increase prices.

It's a dramatic movie. For instance, you can not only hear former Enron chief Skilling calling an investor an "Asshole" during a conference call with investors as one analyst confronted him over the company's murky earnings releases. In another segment, you can hear Enron's "energy traders" cheering after seeing fires on TV below one of California's main power lines "the price per kWatt is going to go through the roof"... "burn, baby burn" you hear them cheering.

This movie, along with "The Corporation" should be mandatory viewing at high school before anyone gets his/her degree. Gives the "Free Market needs no regulation" religious zealots and corporate mouthpieces like the guys at the CATO Institute a very well deserved spanking.

Software patents are Evil. Read this and get scared...

If you are still not convinced that software patents can be EVIL, just see this patent. It seems like corporate juggernaut Symantec has been granted a broad patent that covers something as simple as the delivery and apply of software patches (incremental updaters) over a network, although with a specific method of grouping patches together to make it easier to jump from one version number to another.

I´m not really a legal expert and I'm not accusing Symantec of anything (they applied for a patent and it was given to them). What I´m simply saying is that the SYSTEM of granting patents to SOFTWARE PROCESSES is EVIL and rotten, and has the potential to end up hurting development and hampering innovation.

On a slightly related note and speaking of patents and "patches"... the other day I installed a trial version of RTpatch, and saw the dreaded "patent pending" message on its "splash screen". The trial version I installed (6.5) is a few years old so I don´t know now if the patent has been granted already. I suspect anthing they applied for should be granted or denied by now (the trial was dated 2003).

In a blog entry on Joel on Software, he says that a license for RTPatch reportedly costs $2750 greenbacks (US dollars :) now, but that some years ago the same licence had a cost of $5,000 greenbacks. The price drop for RTpatch , at least the post seemed to imply, was coincidental with the introduction by folks of Red Bend Software from Israel of a competing product dubbed vBuild which, the same report says, sold for $2500 dollars.

Now, speaking hypotetically, what would happen if the folks that make RTPatch one day need new revenue desperatelly, wake up in "trigger happy" lawsuit mode a la Darl McBride of SCO fame, and starts taking everyone who does a "delta patcher" or "binary differential updater" to court, demanding payments for breach of their patented design?. This is pure speculation, in fact, I don´t know if the Israeli software conflicts with RTPatch´s patent, I'm just using these examples to highlight the implications of widespread patent grants covering about anything imaginable. The whole thought of it should scare everyone that has ever written a single line of software.

The potential of software patents to prevent software innovation is amazing, and largely unreported in the mainstream press. How can you be serious that routing you've written doen't step in to someone else's patent?. Are you scared already? You should...