Tuesday, March 22
What do you get when you combine the sociopathic robots and speciesist cops from "Blade Runner," the awkward writing, product-placement-infested future, and bad buddy-movie chemistry from "Demolition Man," the anthropormorphic, possibly dangerous robots from "A.I.," the smarter-than-you computers from "2001," and the really strange interior design and sudden recognition of a hero's bionic limbs from the throne room of "The Return of the Jedi?"
Well, undoubtedly you'd get something better than "I, Robot." Because this movie stinks on ice.
Ok, there's a program called "Ractor" that was designed many years ago, and it was supposed to imitate a person's writing style. It worked by looking at a bunch of your writings and keeping track of simple patterns: it would then start with a random word (from your writings) and start picking other words from your writings, but with the same probability that you would use them. So you'd end up with something that sounded eerily like you, because it had your vocabulary, but the words would be put together in nonsense order.
Thus it is with "I, Robot"; the writers thought they could make an entire movie with ideas randomly stolen from other movies, like the bad guy in "Silence of the Lambs" who wants to make a suit from female skin so he can become a woman. And with as much success.
It's sad, because in this movie there's the grains of some really fascinating questions — what is the nature of the soul, can an artificial entity have one, and how does being perfectly logical conflict with being human?
But instead of taking these concepts and making something interesting, the stuido decided to make a Will Smith movie. Now, I liked Will Smith in "Six Degrees of Separation." He's a good actor. I even liked him in "ID4." He kicked ass and took names in a stupid movie.
Unfortunately, ever since "ID4," Hollywood has been producing "Will Smith movies" made-to-order for him: chock-full of witty sayings and him slouching and punching and dressing fly. Even he seems tired of it. His one-liners in this movie are about as played-out as Arnold's from the governor's mansion ("I vill tierminade da deficit!"), and the first hour of the movie could have been written by any 10-year-old. Might have, even.
Seriously, here's a movie that features such time-honored clichés as:
a) The bald, overweight chief of police who rides Will's ass and tells him he's crazy. "You're crazy! I'm taking your badge! Go see a shrink! Give me a cigar! Feed me that scenery! CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP!"
b) The young jive-talking whitebread wannabe guy who appears for four seconds at the beginning of the movie FOR NO REASON, and then appears for another four during the climax for the sole purpose of being rescued. I'm like, "Who the heck is this kid and why is he... Oh! He's gone."
c) The motorcycle ride of DOOM! Hey guys, I liked it better in "Matrix 2," when it was cool and had a point. Seriously, blink and you miss the motorcycle.
d) That evil corporate chief guy ripped straight from that movie about the computer company that's all evil and the good hackers that infiltrate it. You know the one? No? How about ALL EIGHT ZILLION OF THEM?
e) Will Smith saying, "Aw hell no." Man, that never gets old.
f) The girl who looks just like Sandra Bullock in "Demolition Man" playing the same ambiguously asexual love-interest as she did in "Demolition Man."
g) The cat in jeapordy! Oh, no! Who will save it! Will our hero save it? OH THANK GOD, HE DID.
h) The kindly old grandmama who bakes pies for our gruff detective. But, OH NO, she won the lottery and got one of the bad robots! WHAT AN INCREDIBLE STROKE OF LUCK, THAT WILL'S GRANDMA HAPPENED TO WIN THE LOTTERY AND THE PRIZE HAPPENED TO BE A ROBOT! OH, THE IRONY! Seriously, people, didn't ANYONE at the studio read this?
i) The lovable anthropomorphic robot from "A.I.", except with the
voice of the HAL in "2001," using almost the same words as in 2001: "Will it hurt?"
k) The scene where our hero takes a STRANGELY FAMILIAR drawing that was given to him and then reviews a video clip we'd seen earlier in the movie that looks like the drawing, and then freeze-frames, then ZOOMs in, then HOLDS THE DRAWING UP TO THE SCREEN. Oh! I GET IT! Because the DRAWING is LIKE the VIDEO! The one we saw 10 minutes ago! In this movie! I'd forgotten! Good thing they spelled it out for me!
Seriously, has anyone in real life ever held a drawing up to a screen? It happens so much in the movies, you'd think it was really commonplace. "Hey Bob, come over here and check this out... this Mazda website has the same car I have here in my Mazda brochure! Look, if I hold them up side-by-side, you can see it's the same! No doubt about it, they're both Mazdas! Case closed!"
l) Hey, our hero in 2034 wears old-school Converse high tops, from exactly the year 2004. What are the chances? I mean, they're not the 2006 version, nor that crappy 2002 version. No, they're EXACTLY the shoe that was on the market when the movie was released. THAT IS SOME EERIE SHIT! I wonder if, in the future,
all restaurants are Taco Bell?In summary: I love science fiction. I like Will Smith. I like Isaac Asimov. I like cats. I like movies. I like robots. I even like cops. Yet, strangely, I did NOT like Will Smith as a cat-saving cop in a science fiction movie about robots, inspired by a book by Isaac Asimov.
"It puts the clichés in its movie or it gets the hose again."
Labels: stories
Saturday, March 19
So, I saw "Ray" tonight, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I was blown away by the fact that they apparently were able to use voodoo and/or drugs to magically re-animate the body of Ray Charles and have him play himself. I mean, seriously, he did a good job of being him.
And, also, you know, it's an uplifting movie. Surprise! I mean, here's the story of a kid who grew up dirt-poor, black, and blind, in a time and place when any one of those things could have been, well, crippling. But, he grows up and changes music. Every time another song comes up in the movie you tap your feet and hum along because you know it, and you say, "Damn, that was Ray Charles, too? Dude's got some talent on him!"
Plus, I liked the conceit of blindness as a metaphor for the essential loneliness we all feel. When you see Ray getting jerked around or feeling lost or completely alone or scared because he's blind, you totally identify with him, because we all have those feelings at some point. At the end of the day, we're all alone with ourselves, in the dark. Even the people we love the most can betray us.
And, finally, I'll admit I cried at the end with the re-enactment of the Georgia legislature making "Georgia on My Mind" the state song and formally apologizing to Ray. I lived in Atlanta when that happened, and watching that scene I felt this immense sense of justice, like that even the nastiest things in the world can be reversed, eventually, if decent people just keep acting decently.
But, after watching the movie, I kind of thought this not-so-charitable thought about it: really, everything I needed from it was in the preview. I mean, when I saw the beautiful, incredible preview for this movie, I was actually moved to tears by it, because, like SO MANY previews, it basically summed up the whole movie in like ninety seconds. He's poor kid, he's going blind, his mom was strong, he changed music, he stood up for himself, he met a good woman, he got into drugs, he found the strength to give them up, he triumphed. Aaaaaaaaaand that's a wrap.
It's not like I think the movie was bad in any way, I just think the preview was really, really good. And, like, maybe some stories are better in 90 seconds. You know, like how sometimes a friend will give you the blow-by-blow of a date and you're kind of like, "Was she hot? Did she like you? Ok, we're done here. Nachos?"
The music's good, though. I mean, dang, it's Ray Charles. Ray, man. The man rocked the house. Ray.
Labels: stories
Sunday, March 13
With some notable exceptions (like
Jonathan Schwartz, president of Sun, who also happens to have given me my first contract when I founded Omni Group), most senior executives at companies don't have blogs.
I think I've found out why: because, a lot of the time, you're simply not allowed to talk about what you're doing; even if it's not TOP SECRET, there are other people involved who haven't given you permission to associate their name with yours, and to do so without permission would be tacky at best and grounds for a lawsuit at worst.
So, I could write an entry about my Friday that sounded like this:
Mike was waiting for a call from
, who isn't doing business with us (yet?), but we thought might be a cool source of ideas for our new product,
, because he has so much experience in the area. I mean, he *IS* the
of
!
So the phone rings, but it turns out it's
! From
! He's all, "Can you and Wil have a
with me today at three?" and Mike's all, "Sure!" (because, hey, all we ever do is hang out and drink coffee, so we're really always looking for any distraction).
Mike calls me to wake me up (it's well before noon, doncha know), and tells me about the day ahead. Mike's all, "I hope
doesn't call when we're talking to
! That'd be too funny! I'd be all, 'Oh, could you hold, I have Blur Blur on the...'"
[Ok, you get the idea. I'll spare you.]
Labels: stories
Friday, March 4
I wrote this in 1998. It's funny how much less controversial it seems now. I just read it again and, frankly, I'm still proud of it. So, here it is again, complete and unchanged. Basically, the only thing I'd take back at this point is that I'm not that president of Omni any more.
Wil Shipley, President, Omni Development, Inc.May 5, 1998
Over the last year and a half since I was transplanted into the community, I've occasionally heard Mac developers on various forums cry out, "Why don't I just become a developer for Windows?" This is in response to various perceived injuries perpetrated by Apple, including possibly dropping QuickDraw GX, changing the Mac UI, embracing UNIX, and increasing the price of some developer support options.
Usually, I assume this is a rhetorical question, like a pouty teenager asking, "Well, why don't I just go jump off a bridge, then?" But, I feel that too many innocent observers may have heard this question too often, and asked, with all sincerity, "Why don't all programmers use Windows? The Windows market is bigger, after all."
Lots of small programmers have a vision that working with Microsoft is like being one of those little toothbrush birds for crocodiles -- sure, the crocodile is the one eating the zebras and gazelles, but there's plenty of crumbs left in the cracks between his teeth. The crocodiles don't hurt the birds, as they appreciate clean teeth, and the tiny birds can live very well off the morsels that the 20-foot crocodile deems not worth bothering with, so everybody wins.
The problem with this analogy is toothbrush birds never grow up to be crocodiles -- they spend their whole lives just living off the gunk in crocodile's teeth. Most people don't set out to create a tiny company; they want to create the next killer app, and become, if not the next Microsoft, maybe the next Adobe, or the next MacroMedia. Nobody wants to stay a tiny bird forever, but that means giving up the gunk and going for the big game.
A better simile is that becoming a programmer for Windows is like becoming a dentist for a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Sure, the market is big (lots of seats, lots of teeth), but both Microsoft and the king of dinos are vicious carnivores, and both will snap their jaws shut as soon as share their leavings with you. Rexes don't distinguish between symbiotic birds and predators -- it's all meat to them.
Microsoft is deathly afraid that now they are a huge company they won't have creative ideas. This is a good fear, because it's true: how much has Word changed in the last 8 years? How much has Excel changed? I'm not talking about adding a feature here and a feature there, I'm talking about really changing the way people use software.
Microsoft doesn't know how to innovate any more. The problem is that when Microsoft looks at new ideas, they don't evaluate whether the idea will move the industry forward, they ask, "how will it help us sell more copies of Windows?" (This is an actual quote of Bill Gates in The Seattle Weekly, April 30, 1998).
So, their business model has come to this: wait for young companies to create new products, and if the product starts to be successful, crush the company and take its market. Some examples, by no means complete:
In 1995, Netscape pioneered web browsers, but Microsoft simply bought some code, hired a bunch of programmers to duplicate Netscape's work, and now gives away Internet Explorer. They paid Apple millions to bundle Internet Explorer instead of Netscape with Mac OS, and Microsoft is planning to bundle IE with Win98. Microsoft even claimed (in a letter sent to Wall Street analysts last week) that it'll severely impact the economy if they can't include a web browser in Win98, even though the economy ran just fine before 1995, when Netscape brought the first commercial web browsers to market.
The code Microsoft licensed was from Spyglass, who had written a web client. Microsoft only gave them a couple hundred thousand dollars up front, but promised a percentage of sales to Spyglass. Well, since Microsoft gives away Internet Explorer, they didn't pay Spyglass anything. Spyglass sued. According to PCWeek (April 20, 1998), Spyglass had to abandon that market and moved into embedded applications, which Microsoft moved into as well. So, Spyglass switched to making "integrated offerings for Microsoft products" in order to, in the words of Spyglass VP Mike Tyrell, "not be 'Microsofted' again".
In 1996, Netscape decided the money was really in servers, and started selling their first commercial web server. In response Microsoft wrote their internet server and bundled it, free, with Windows NT.
In 1994, Microsoft started to license compression technology from a company called Stac, which invented the original disk-doubler. But, after Microsoft had looked at Stac's source code, Microsoft said, "Nah, we're going to write our own and crush you. Thanks anyway." Stac sued Microsoft, but Microsoft counter-sued Stac, and Microsoft got an injunction against Stac preventing them from shipping their disk doubler until the suit was resolved. Then, since they had tied up Stac's revenue source, Microsoft just sat back and waited for Stac to run out of money as the legal system slowly cranked away. If you can't guess who won, check out the DoubleSpace utility that ships with Win95.
Perhaps the best example of Microsoft's voraciousness is their dealings with Intuit, creators of Quicken, which was at one point the best-selling PC software of all time. Microsoft first came out with Money, to compete with Quicken. Nobody wanted Money. So Microsoft reduced the price -- offering 'special deals' on Money for as low as $10. (This is a practice called 'dumping', and it's supposedly illegal in America -- it's what we accused Japanese semiconductor makers of doing with memory chips years back when we put a huge tariff on such imports.)
Even at the low, low price, nobody bought Money. So Microsoft made an offer to buy Intuit, which the government, in their very first stirring against Microsoft's monopoly, blocked. Microsoft then started teaming up with banks, paying them to advertise that transactions could be directly downloaded into Microsoft Money, conveniently overlooking the fact that the file format was the Quicken format, and therefore Quicken would work just as well. Finally, Microsoft started giving away Money with subscriptions to MSDN.
Do I have to go on? Microsoft wants total domination of the software market. If you create a mildly successful program on Windows, Microsoft will attempt to kill you. They've already got a stomach full of the severed heads of other innovators just like you.
Yes, the Mac market is smaller. But it's been a long time since Apple had the kind of clout to say offhandedly, "We can't decide whether to become your customer or to put you out of business," as a Microsoft executive said to a friend of Robert X. Cringely.
It comes down to a choice: do you want to support Microsoft, the monopoly whose only goal is to increase their market share; or do you want to support Apple, the company that is trying to move technology forward?
Put this way, it sounds like a moral dilemma, and many people believe companies should be amoral and market-driven. But in truth, it's not a moral dilemma, it's a question of whether you want to help make Microsoft stronger (so they'll be that much more powerful when they decide to crush you), or you want to fight them now.
The beauty is that it's actually easier to succeed when fighting than when giving in. My company made millions just servicing the NEXTSTEP market, which was a tiny fraction of the industry even when compared to the Mac market. It was easier to advertise in a small market, easier to reach customers, and NeXT, like Apple today, was eager to help us rather than crush us. Writing code for Yellow Box is ten times easier than writing Windows code. Three programmers at Omni have written a web browser that has the features of Netscape, IE and more, which runs on Rhapsody, NT, 95, and (soon) Mac OS.
Microsoft isn't invincible. They won't be around forever. Dinosaurs are huge and hidebound, and some global change always comes along for which they aren't prepared. We little birds just have to stay out of their mouths in the meantime.
Labels: business, mac community
Thursday, March 3
Ok, so I spent last week at the Technology, Entertainment, and Design conference. It was really amazing and I wrote a really huge post about it and, honestly, deleted it, because it was the most annoyingly self-aggrandizing thing ever written.
But it's hard to just let this event go by without chronicling it somehow. So I'll say this:
TED is by invitation only, and only 1,000 people get to go each year. I was invited because Mike met one of the organizers at MacWorld and impressed him greatly. I went along as kind of the ugly sister you can't leave home.
The sessions are by scientists and poets and musicians and performers who are all at the top of their game. Let me just give this as an example: David Blaine was there, but he wasn't actually a speaker. He just went so he could perform magic in the halls, for free, for the other attendees.
The attendees are pretty much a cross-section of the smartest, richest, most influential people in America. There, I said it. There's no way now not to hate me for being there, because when you gather that many people together who are that privileged (no matter how well-earned that privilege is), there's something in us that really WANTS to hate them. Grrrr. Stupid rich people! I have to fly coach! With crying babies!
I met four billionaires this week (bringing my life list to 5, squeee!), and let me say this: man, they are really nice guys. Seriously! I'm not just sucking up after the fact: I have no doubt whatsoever that exactly 0 billionaires read this blog.
Now, I know some billionaires are incredibly self-important jerks. But the ones I met this week were pretty much intensely smart people who were also funny and dynamic and interested in a huge variety of things. All of them were self-made men in their 30s, and all of them were made billionaires in the last ten or so years.
The funny thing about meeting these guys wasn't that I was totally awed by, say, their incredible vision for the future of society; it was that I really would like to hang out with them at a bar and shoot the shit. They're just cool people. They have really interesting thoughts and stories and they articulate them well, but they also cuss and drink and leer at girls and act silly. (One of them actually did close down a tiny bar in Monterey with us Friday night.)
It made me think a lot, because Hollywood has presented us with an image of rich people that's pretty stuffy and uniform and bland (c.f. Fresh Prince of Bel Air). But here's my thought: if someone just suddenly gave you a jet, what would you do? Whenever you needed to fly someplace, you'd probably take your jet, because, hey, you own a jet, why not, right?
But you'd still be you. There'd be all these people who hated you for having a jet, but you know you'd still be you inside. You're just you-who-happened-to-be-given-a-jet.
That's the thing about these guys. They get all this attention, but really, they're just smart guys who suddenly were given jets. They're as surprised about it as we are.
Labels: stories
Wednesday, March 2
Why is it that I can play the stereo and talk on my cell phone and have my laptop open in my car without it crashing into a tree, but I can't play Zelda on a $70 million dollar jet during takeoff without dooming everyone?
Also, why don't terrorists just bring bags of phones onto airplanes and covertly LEAVE THEM ON? [Idea for new Stinger missile replacement: strap iPod onto a rocket, launch at jet.]
I'm thinking, if I were designing a jet and one day I discovered, say, during lunch break, that a GameBoy can cause my avionics to fail, I'd, you know, think about redesigning that puppy, instead of just putting in the manual: "Be sure to shut off all personal electronic devices during take-off and landing."
Seriously, do you feel safe then they announce that? Because I've NEVER been to a movie where someone hasn't forgotten to shut off their damn phone. Are we really betting our lives that everyone on the plane has shut off his phone, his laptop, his iPod, and his Palm? What if he has one of those pager watches? Do those count? Noise-cancelling headphones? Those are electronic.
Labels: stories
Delicious Monster
