The World According to Mitch

I want to start this article by stating that I do feel sorry for Joel… but I have no sympathy for him.

If you are unfamiliar with the case, here is the article written by none other than Joel Tenenbaum about his case: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jul/27/filesharing-music-industry.

To summarize: Mr. Tenenbaum downloaded music using one of the myriad file sharing programs that create peer-to-peer networks across the Internet, and allow you to download music (or videos, documents, and software) without paying for it.  This is, of course, illegal, and tantamount to walking into a music store and stealing CDs and DVDs… with the exception that on-line you are much less likely to get caught.

I want to be clear, in this article I am not taking anything for granted; I am not assuming anything, filling in blanks, or making accusations.  If I state that Mr. Tenenbaum stole that is because that information is written in his article.  In the header of his article he does not say ‘I am accused of…’ he says ‘I shared music.’  Where I am speculating, I will call that out.

I first became familiar with this case because it was in the Toronto Star yesterday.  I read the article with interest because I have heard for years of people being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America, but had never heard of one first hand.  I suppose before I realized the true nature of the crime I was guilty of downloading music from time to time, and suppose that this could just as easily have been me as him.

Actually that is not true… Had my parents received a letter from the RIAA telling me that I had been caught and to settle it after they chewed me out at full volume they would have told me to take my attorney’s advice and to make the best settlement possible.  Let’s assume that as I am not a teenager living under my parents’ roof the letter would have come to me, and I would have immediately contacted my attorney (my father in this case) who would likely have chewed me out at full volume, asked me if I had done it, and then told me to make the best settlement possible.  Somewhere in there he probably would have called me a *** and told me I should have known better. 

Four years ago (when Joel’s parents got the first letter) I was not in the best financial shape – mostly unemployed and going through a divorce, most of my expendable income at the time went to… well, food and rent.  I would have had to negotiate the best terms possible, and then borrowed the money.

Joel did not do this… although he claims he did try to settle for $500, which at least shows good intent.  However the RIAA did not accept this settlement offer; <speculation> they may have wanted to make an example, or to show that there were real consequences for pirating music.  Five Hundred Dollars may be a significant amount to a college student, but it is not a punishment for breaking the law… at least not one that the RIAA was willing to accept.  They, being the injured party, have that right.

The article spends a lot of time portraying this as a David versus Goliath conflict, which might be a little more believable if in this case the David had not been raiding the camp of the Goliath and contributing to billions of dollars of losses.  He laments the fact that the RIAA has a tremendous legal team; should we feel bad about that?  If I had over the course of fifty years grown a business worth billions and then a new technology allowed people to steal from me nearly unchecked then I would throw whatever resources I had against the perpetrators in a (mostly vain) attempt to stop them.

Since the advent of music piracy over the Internet (I know piracy predates the Internet, but doubt that the RIAA was losing real market share to people dubbing cassettes) I have heard the recording industry portrayed as the evil giant out to make money.  Isn’t that what industry is about?  ‘They charge too much';’ or ‘music is the public domain!’ or such.  I agree that music is not cheap to purchase… but nor is it cheap to make.  When recording artists demand huge contracts for their product then they are no longer creating art for art’s sake, they are producing a product that happens to be creative.  However that does not change the fact that they still own their material, and we as consumers have the option to NOT buy them.  We can listen to them on our favorite radio station, we can go to clubs and bars and dance to them; we can even often listen to them on-line.  But stealing them should not even be a consideration.

Of course since music is not necessarily something you can touch let’s put the same argument into a different context, but with very similar intent:

I love cars.  However cars are much more expensive than they used to be… I can’t afford a car now, but still want one, so I am going to steal one.  I also have friends who like cars so I am going to steal one today, give it to my friend tonight, and steal a new one tomorrow… and am going to continue doing this until I get caught, at which point instead of taking responsibility I am going to stand up for every man and show the car companies that they cannot push us around.

Does that sound absurd?  Exaggerated?  The only difference is that because a car is physical you can only steal it once… Steal a song once and you can replicate that to hundreds or thousands of people who suddenly don’t have to buy it.

So the Recording Industry Association of America, representing recording artists, starts suing people.  Apparently (according to the article) there have been 40,000 people contacted, most of whom settled.  <supposition> The ones the RIAA are going after are likely some of the biggest offenders… if I steal (sorry… download and then share) a hundred songs then I am probably not even on their radar.  However people I know… people I speak to merrily boast that they have downloaded tens of thousands of songs at no cost to them!  I was sitting at a cafe speaking with a professional consultant on Monday who said ‘yeah I am glad my daughter downloads all of her music because it gets so expensive to buy it!’  I was in shock.

It happens for software too by the way… people look at me and say ‘yeah I download all of my software… but don’t worry, I paid for my operating system.’  They assume that because of my affiliation to Microsoft that I care about pirating Microsoft’s product, but would gladly condone stealing from Adobe.  ‘But software is so expensive!  Do you know how much Microsoft Office costs?’ Yes I do… and you have alternatives… if you are a student or only use it for personal use purchase the Home and Student Edition at a fraction of the cost.  You don’t get all of the applications you get in Office Pro, but you probably don’t need Access or InfoPath.  If that is still too expensive for your tastes then there are Shareware and Freeware applications that do just about everything that commercial applications do.  ‘But they are not as good and don’t have all of the features!’  If you want the best bread you have to pay the best baker.

So Joel is in court… I believe today is Day 3.  His article, like the lawsuit, is meant to shock us.  ‘How it feels to be sued for 4.5 Million Dollars.’  I am sure it feels terrible… however chances are if it goes to judgment the judge would not grant the whole amount, and if they did then he likely could never pay it all anyways.  Of course, if past acts and lack of remorse are any indication then he might just steal it.

My opinion on this case is clear but that does not mean that I do not feel sorry for him, and by all means invite you to feel sorry for him too… but do not for one minute make the mistake of seeing him as the victim here; he perpetrated a criminal act, and was unlucky enough to do it against a very large organization with both the will and the means to pursue it vehemently… the RIAA may look like the Goliath here, but they are the victim in this case… the wronged party seeking justice.

I suspect that this case will become one for the books… Joel was fortunate enough to get pro-bono help from professors at the Harvard School of Law.  I suspect that with them on one side of the table and the RIAA’s high powered attorneys on the other it will make for interesting (in one sense… let’s be clear that no court case has ever been riveting to watch except on TV) litigation but in the end I suspect it will still come down to the fact that Joel stole and enabled others to steal from the record companies.  the settlement or judgment will likely be a fraction of what is being sought (that’s how it works).  If Joel were to write a book I can’t see it being much more interesting than the article, and anyways the RIAA would probably sue for proceeds. If there is a confidentiality clause we may never know what the real figures are.  However I hope that it finally convinces people that ‘sharing’ is stealing… as serious as walking into a store and taking it.

If you either post or watch videos on-line then you know YouTube… but how about SoapBox?  A couple of years ago MSN started a competing service to YouTube which I have found very convenient.  I don’t use it often – I have posted precisely six videos on-line, and four of them were shot (and posted) the same day  (they are all linked to from my blog or Facebook page). 

I posted them on Soapbox instead of YouTube… but not because of loyalty to Microsoft. I did it for convenience; when I click on Publish in Live Writer (the application I use to write and post blog articles) it asked me ‘Do you want to store these videos on Soapbox?  I did.

Yesterday I got the following e-mail (in 18 languages!):

Attention Soapbox Users,

MSN will no longer offer Soapbox, the user generated video service within MSN Video, as of August 31, 2009. Beginning on July 29, you will no longer be able to upload videos to Soapbox. People who have uploaded videos to Soapbox will have until August 31, 2009 to download them. Please make sure you download your videos by this date if you would like to keep them. We will have a notice running in the Soapbox service to remind you to download your videos. It is our goal that you download and keep all of the videos you uploaded that are important to you. Online video is a key part of the MSN experience and we will continue to offer a rich experience on MSN Video. We will also continue to invest in delivering great customer experiences, while keeping a keen eye on our business objectives during this tough economic climate. Thank you for your support of MSN Video. More details and download instructions are available at: http://video.msn.com/shutdown.html

Thank you for using Soapbox.

The MSN Video Team

I came to the video world late in the game… My first digital camera took lousy video and it wasn’t until the end of 2007 that I bought a decent one.  I record video sparingly and am far from an expert; however I found that recording any videos – from ‘I’m a PC’ commercials to my wedding ceremony to my tae kwon do belt tests -  can produce large files that are unruly.  It was only when I realized what a great job Camtasia Studio (www.techsmith.com) does of editing down those files – including resolution, bit rate, and cutting off bits at either end, not to mention great editing functionality – that I really said ‘Ok, I can now start working with videos.  Between Facebook and Soapbox I suppose there are now about a dozen videos of mine on-line.

I am not saddened that Soapbox is shutting down… possibly slightly inconvenienced, but not as much as if I had dozens or hundred of videos.  I guess I will have to find another service that I can use to smoothly integrate videos into blog articles though, and that will take a little research.

Thanks for they time Soapbox… and thanks for the ample notice for me to take action!

M

I have noticed of late a trend… a plethora of articles listing the contents of one’s laptop bag.  Far be it from me to miss a writing bandwagon, so here it goes!

Laptop Bag: Firstly I should mention that I switch laptop bags with boring frequency; at present I have the Ogio VP Messenger which was a present… yes, it is branded Windows 7.  However the reason I am so fond of it is because it is TSA-friendly; the main laptop pouch folds out for airport screening.  You can check it out at http://www.ogio.com/product.php?product=637.  It is probably my third or fourth Ogio laptop bag, and I am on my second Ogio golf bag (I gave the first to my father).  They make a great product!

Laptop #1: My primary laptop is a Dell Latitude 6500, and as you can probably imagine it is pretty tricked out… 8GB RAM, 250GB hard disk, and so on.  As it is my primary workstation I needed to be sure that it would do anything I needed… fast.  http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop_latitude_e6500?c=ca&cs=cabsdt1&l=en&s=bsd

Laptop #2: I usually carry my netbook in the same bag; A Dell Inspiron Mini 9 with 2 GB RAM and a 64GB Solid State Drive.  I like being able to pull that out and work on a plane, in a cafe, or wherever I might not need the full system.  It also supports Bluetooth so I can tether my phone to it for Internet connectivity where there is none.  It has its own neoprene case… the side pocket is replete with USB keys of sizes from 1 GB to 16GB.

Power: Back to the laptop bag proper, I have two power supplies – one for the E6500 and one for the netbook.  I wish they were the same but alas… no.  When I am traveling on car trips I also carry with me the car charger kit for the E6500; on a recent journey from Toronto to Montreal this paid off when my project manager called me and asked for urgent modifications to a series of documents; I sat in the parking lot of a Rest Area, plugged the laptop into the lighter plug, tethered my cell phone for connectivity, and worked for three hours.  If this kit were 90W instead of 60W I would carry it exclusively… but it is not powerful enough to charge the laptop while using it, and it is relatively heavy so it is often left in the car.  (I do have a spare 6-cell battery for my laptop which I would take if I knew I was going to be unable to charge for extended periods, such as on older aircraft)

Because power jacks are often sparse I took to carrying my own power bar with me, and was delighted to find the Monster Outlets To Go Power Strip with USB (http://www.monstercable.com/productdisplay.asp?pin=4646).  It is compact and folds into itself, has three 3-prong jacks, plus a USB port for charging my phone.

Speaking of power I never leave North America without a universal prong adapter… I found myself coming back from Asia on an Air France A340 from Paris which supported neither the North American jacks that I am comfortable with, nor the asian jack which I had gotten used to over the previous month.  Rather than watch their bad movies for the duration I purchased the World Travel Adapter (SWA1.1) by Swiss Travel Products (http://swisstravelproducts.com/index.php?site=productview&product_id=3) from the on-board duty free shop, and have been very happy with it – in several countries.

Mice: I have two mice in my laptop bag… an Arc Mouse (http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=112) which is what I use most of the time, and a wireless notebook presenter mouse (http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=085).  I love the Arc Mouse, and only wish it were Bluetooth capable.  I also prefer the black one to the red, but Gingit ate it… sigh.

External Hard Drives: Depending on where I am going I usually have between 1 and 5 portable USB hard drives in the bag, plus a mini-USB cable or three.  Right now I have four drives in the bag for different purposes.  The mini USB cable also serves to charge my phone when I am on the road.

Networking: Two years ago I came across a Linksys Wireless-G Travel Router which I understand is no longer available; it comes in handy for several purposes, whether I am in a hotel room with a single Ethernet jack, a conference room where I want to share Internet, and a dozen other ‘I never would have thought of that!’ moments.

Headset: No frequent air traveler wants to be without noise eliminating headsets… I smiled when I read David Pogue’s article ‘What’s in Pogue’s Travel Bag? Literally.’ in the New York Times recently (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/technology/personaltech/25pogue-email.html?_r=1).  We agree on the Panasonic RP-HC500, which I picked up at Fry’s in Kirkland, Washington about two years ago… I have never looked back!  Unlike David though I carry mine anywhere… you never know when you will find yourself working in a cafe with higher than average noise levels!  (I used to carry the Microsoft LifeChat LX-3000 headset & microphone, but decided it was extraneous, with a built-in microphone on the computer)

I should mention that I also carry a cute little speaker which I connect to my laptop for presentations requiring sound, or for my Zune when I don’t need the privacy.  The ShoX mini speaker (http://shoxmini.com/) really does provide great sound quality!

Camera: My digital camera (Canon Digital IXUS 96015) is usually in the bag in its own case with an extra SD card… I remember getting to Hong Kong and realizing I didn’t have a camera; it was one of the best investments I have made, having since taken nearly 6,000 photos and 100 videos, many of which have found their way into articles here.

And then… Every professional presenter likely has them, or should – a package of lozenges.  They have saved me on a number of occasions – most recently in Bracknell, England where I showed up but my voice didn’t!

A couple of extraneous cables (RJ-45, one proprietary cable for my secondary cell phone), pens, post-its, business cards, and a few stickers to give away.  All in all my bag weighs in at about 25lbs, which is probably more than I would carry if I were taking the bus or walking… but as it is usually from the car to the office, or else attached to a suitcase on wheels, I don’t mind.  My netbook case is less than 4lbs and is easier to grab and go when I don’t want to lug the whole thing… also when I am not traveling many of these pieces stay on my desk. 

It is easy to get carried away and carry more than you need; it is equally easy to shed items that may not seem immediately necessary, but turn out to be indispensable.  My experience has helped me to balance what stays and what goes, and when… as long as I am willing to lug it, who would argue with me? :)

The World According to Mitch did not start out as a blog, but as e-mail blasts.  When I decided to blog I started The President’s Blog at www.mitpro.ca.  However when I stepped down as leader of that group in January, 2007 I needed to find a new home for it.  For two years mitchgarvis.com hosted The World According to Mitch.  Now as that server is retiring I have the opportunity to move to my new location… www.garvis.ca.

The content is being ported over from the old home, slowly… but it should be done within the week.  I have done my best to set up the RSS feed so that if you are a subscriber then you will not experience any interruptions. 

I hope you like the new look… and expect a few more changes coming soon, thanks to the great folks at Telligent… the makers of Community Server, and the new Telligent Community 5.0, which should grace our site shortly.  I fell in love with the platform three years ago (Community Server 2007) and now, four versions later, keep loving the improvements!

As for the theme, I will keep playing until I find one that I like; if you know me you know that I am more about substance… just look at my wardrobe!

I am sure you (like me) spend a lot of time in e-mail threads.  Occasionally it can be embarrassing if you are not up to date.  As I was composing an e-mail to a colleague a few minutes ago I noticed the following warning bar across the top:

I was relieved that I caught this, else I could have embarrassed myself by seeming out of date.  I closed the message, and found the more up-to-date messages, and replied appropriately.  I know that this is a little thing… but those are often the ones that make the difference!

<Edited July 14>

Since May I have been telling people that they would have to wait for details of the new Microsoft Office 2010 applications coming down the pipe.  Yesterday the veil was lifted, as the beta program was made available to a wider audience.  With that I would like to share some of my favorite improvements in Office 2010. 

BackStage

In Office 2007 we were introduced to the Ribbon Toolbar, as well as the Office Pearl which replaced a great number of menus.  The BackStage in Office 2010 is the new iteration of the Office Pearl; Click on the Office button in the top-left corner of your window and the back-stage appears, allowing us a host of tools to configure both your document and application.  As this screen shot from my Outlook shows our top-level choices include account settings, automatic replies, mailbox clean-up, manage rules and alerts, and because Outlook 2010 is designed to work with Exchange 2010 including Unified Messaging, we can manage our voice mail from here, should you have that configured.  We also find all of the options we traditionally found in the Office Pearl (or previously in the File Menu), such as Open, Save, Print, and Options.

One of the greatest complaints I have heard about Outlook has always been performance… depending on a number of factors (including but not limited to the size of your mailbox/profile) it could be relatively slow, taking at times anywhere from 20 seconds to over a minute to connect to my Exchange Server.  That has certainly not been the case with Outlook 2010, connecting in under five seconds every time I load it up!

Speaking of loading it up, the Splash Screen on Office 2010 programs have the familiar minimize and close icons in the top corner, which can be helpful in some cases.

64-Bit… Welcome to the Future!

In Barcelona in 2006 Bill Gates announced that the future of Microsoft was 64-bit.  The problem as many of us saw it was that most – if not all – of our applications (especially on the desktop) were still 32-bit, and the subsequent release of Office 2007 as a 32-bit application did not change that.  Many of us hopped on the x64 bandwidth early on, and most of us found our way back to the more comfortable x86 operating system, at least for the time being.  The announcement that Office 2010 would be released in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions offered hope… and in this writer’s experience the 64-bit version delivers on the performance, while the 32-bit version still shows great improvements over its predecessor.  (My 32-bit Dell Inspiron Mini 9 has a Windows Experience Rating of 1.5 and still performs admirably).

Customize your Ribbon Toolbars!

I point out that the now familiar (and hopefully comfortable) Ribbon Toolbar has been expanded across the Office suite, including to Outlook.  As was the case in Word and Excel three years ago it took me a little while to get used to it, but now that I have been using it for a few months I am definitely loathe to return to legacy menus.

I want to be clear that this is not something that I plan to do… For years applications have offered the ability to customize menus, but I have generally found that the toolbars are very intuitive as delivered; also I tend to uninstall and re-install, reformat, and redeploy on a very frequent basis, and even if I could export and re-import my custom toolbars every time I do that (yes you can!  Woot!), I doubt that I would ever bother.  However the ability to do that does give me as a deployment guy ideas about standardizing Just the Fact, Jack toolbars across departments and organizations!

Reviewing in PowerPoint

As a writer I spend a lot of time editing – and more importantly having others submit comments for me to edit – my own documents, as well as those from others.  As such I spend a lot of time in the Review screen in Word, and have always been disturbed by the limitations of same in PowerPoint.  While there are still some functions that I do not see in PowerPoint 2010 I am extremely excited by the improvements.

While on the subject of PowerPoint I should mention that I am not a big fan of fancy transitions in my own slides… however I have looked at some of the new transition options available in PowerPoint 2010 and am very impressed.  I still doubt I will use them much…

Office on the Web

This is one of the features that I have not yet gotten my hands on, but am nevertheless extremely excited about.  Having used Outlook Web Access for years, I am looking forward to trying Word and Excel in the same fashion.  There will be, I am told, three ways that users can access this functionality:

• Consumers will be able to access the tools via their Live accounts (there are apparently over 500 Million of us with Live accounts… wow!)
• Enterprises can offer employees their own applications from their own SharePoint sites; and
• Web providers will be able to offer customers the applications.

The one issue that I am not (and seldom am) clear on is how licensing for these tools will be set up, but with Google apps growing in popularity look for terms to be extremely competitive.

Open Document Compatibility

Recently I helped a friend install her new PC, and when I pointed out that her Office 2007 Home and Student Edition allowed her to install the application suite on up to three PCs, she told me she was considering installing OpenOffice instead; that is the suite that her company uses, so many of her documents were in that file format; she did not want to have to convert them all.  As I much prefer Microsoft Office (and not simply to toe the line) I was pleased to see support for the Open file formats in Office 2010… load and save your .ODT files seamlessly.

Conclusion – Two Months On

I have been using parts of Office 2010 since mid-May.  As with any pre-release version there were some bugs that have frustrated me, but overall I have been extremely pleased with what I have seen.  I have been an Office user since Office 95, and am glad to see real improvements version over version… I have not seen any component that I feel is a step backwards.  Look forward to hearing more about the steps forward as I continue to dive into the applications!

I can hardly believe that it has been nearly two years since my last interview with RunAs Radio… but when I sat down a few weeks with Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes I checked their Past Shows list, and sure enough the last show aired in October, 2007.  A lot has happened since then.  Listen to us discussing virtualization in the Enterprise, revolving around System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, and how it can integrate all of your virtualization hosts into a cohesive, centrally managed unit!

http://www.runasradio.com/default.aspx?showNum=116

Let us know what you think!