Dan Gillmor Shares His 'Insider's View' of Silicon Valley

Once again, Dan Gillmor shows us why he is one of the world's most influential IT journalists, this time directly on Slashdot by way of his answers to your questions. Note that Dan reads Slashdot regularly, just like you. He'll surely read any comments you post to this article, although with his killer schedule he may not have time to post any replies.

How much longer will programming stay in the US?
by georgeha

It's getting easier and cheaper to outsource programming jobs to India, Russia and Singapore (among other nations). How much longer can programmers count on a healthy, US based industry?

Dan:

Hmmm, I have to raise eyebrows at the word "healthy" when you look at today's marketplace. These are horrible conditions for average programmers, at least the ones looking for work. Stars are still in demand, as always.

Timely question, though, as this recent story in Mercury News makes clear. It's definitely cheaper to send work offshore, and it's also getting easier. Whether it's sufficiently easy -- or ultimately all that cheap when companies account for the hassles -- is unclear for the moment, though the long-range trend is not good for the U.S.

The cultural differences, not to mention time zones, are always going to be something of a barrier. I've spoken with folks who have tried to manage international engineering projects, and they tell me it can be hugely difficult.

But the communication/collaboration tools are getting much better. English is becoming a default language of business and technology. And as people outside the U.S. get better technical educations -- even as America keeps killing its own educational system -- we're going to see more and more competition from abroad.

I'm also disturbed by what I'd call a "hire 'em young, burn 'em out, discard 'em" tendency among too many tech companies in the U.S. It sends a terrible message to young people, because it tells them that tech careers are foolish. But this is a chronic American problem -- a short-term mentality.

Future directions of technology
by knightwolf

Currently, most of the industry relies on a silicon based technology, using optics to burn silicon wafers. What technology areas do you see the industry looking into, as well as what are areas the industry isn't looking into that it should? Add to this, what technologies are out there that in your opinion aren't looked at heavily enough? As a last part of this, where do you see most of the innovation. Is it in large corporations, such as IBM, or smaller corporations or startup companies?

Dan:

Last question first: Innovation is happening most of all in universities and small companies. Innovation in larger enterprises does occur, but it often gets squashed or modified in order to preserve profitable business models. This is a gross generalization, of course, and many of you will no doubt point out the exceptions that prove (or disprove) the rule.

I'm not as knowledgable about process techniques as I'd like to be, so the rest of this answer is going to be a bit speculative. But I do know this: Every time I look at what's happening with semiconductors I'm amazed at how "out there" the industry stays.

Silicon-based chips have a long future ahead of them. Moore's Law won't hit the wall for another decade or so, as I understand it. Every time someone outside the industry predicts that progress will slow or stop, these guys laugh and speed it up.

I always try to keep the other part of Moore's Law meaning in mind, too. Chip improvements aren't all about how mega-gigahertz processors will look and perform. They're also about how small things can get; I'm at least as interested in miniaturization's benefits as what we can do on the high end. I heard not long ago about someone who'd found a new use for the Z80, for example, and people will be finding great embedded applications for the 386 in years to come. What does it mean when an Itanium-level chip is just a tiny blip inside a communications device? Beats me, but it's gotta be cool.

Will some new kinds of process and materials replace silicon at the high end and revolutionize the field? Sure. I'm intrigued by quantum computing, and am studying hard to understand it.

Intel's plan to add radios to everything strikes me as one of the most important design decisions in a long time, and I think the move deserves even more attention than it's received. I love the idea that we're not just adding intelligence and memory to everything, but also connecting it all. I'm also getting excited at the potential of OLEDs, which could totally transform displays. Nano and MEMS, too, of course.

One of my worries is that the industry is not focusing sufficiently on complexity, however. I don't think we can afford a muddle-through strategy when everything is tied together and interacting in what are likely to be unpredictable ways.

I also worry a lot about trends in the law, particularly in the area of "intellectual property" -- an expression I'd like to ban from the language.

The patent system is out of control. Yes, the USPTO has recognized some of the problems, but it's still issuing far too many overbroad, non-novel and just plain absurd patents. Congress keeps swiping money from application fees and using it for other programs, thereby making it harder for the PTO to have a competent staff. Courts are getting clogged with patent lawsuits, and those are just the cases that make it into the public eye. When companies are hiring lawyers instead of engineers, innovation takes a hit.

The copyright arena is another worrisome area for innovation (and free speech and research, as /. folks know well). Hollywood is asserting the right to decide what IT innovation will be allowed to enter the marketplace. Jack Valenti told me outright recently that Hollywood was going to do something about peer to peer (translation: control it). It's disappointing to see so many technology companies jumping into bed with the entertainment cartel instead of fighting for customers' rights.

Governments are reining in the Net, more successfully than anyone should want to see. Sure, the Slashdot community will always find a way around the barriers, but if China can block 98 percent of average Internet visitors from seeing what they want, freedom loses. Here in the U.S., meanwhile, we're moving toward having two or at most three ways to access the Net in any given community. That's terrifying from an innovation and free speech perspective.

Media Understanding of Technology
by Dr. Bent

While reading articles about new technology from various mainstream media sources, I get the impression that they have absolutly no idea what they're talking about. It's clear to me that the average mainstream journalist has, at best, a minimal understanding of the techology that he or she is reporting on.

What impact does this have on the public's perception and awareness of new technoloy, and will this lack of understanding dissapear as older journalists are replaced by a younger, more tech-savvy breed?

Dan:

I sometimes get that impression, too. But [defensively] I don't think it's as bad as you believe.[/defensively]

Mainstream journalists are generalists, for the most part. At most big newspapers, reporters frequently change beats. This is done for freshness of approach, and to avoid common problems (such as getting too close to sources) that can affect fairness. The downside, of course, is a lack of depth at times. Staying fresh on technology is easier than, say, politics because so much is new all the time.

It's also important to keep in mind the mission of mainstream news media. We tend to be introducing ideas and news to audiences that may or may not know a lot about the specific subject. I don't excuse outright technical errors (one reason I try to run things by people who know more than I do), but I hold general-news media to a different standard than trade publications that are aimed at people who already know a lot. In my own case, even though I'm working for a Silicon Valley audience in the print edition, I assume that readers are smart but don't necessarily know a great deal about the topic at hand. The online audience tends to be more focused on tech issues.

One of the great changes in my business has been the result of technology. I assume that my readers know more than I do. I also think that's a great opportunity, not a threat to my journalism. When we're in this together, we get better results.

It'll be interesting to see how tomorrow's audience and journalists handle this evolution. My sense is that the combination of traditional journalism, tech-savvy reporters, weblogs, etc., will lead to a wider understanding of the issues.

the cycle of things
by Hanno

We all know the economy is going in cycles, but how cyclic is IT, in your experience? When was the last big downturn, what happened back then and what changed because of it?

Right now, most of "us" IT-workers are facing the results of "new economy" bubble and the consecutive downturn of IT.

Here in Germany, I remember that in 1991 when I finished high school, people told me not to go study computer science because back then, the career outlook was bland and many IT academics were unemployed or received low figures. Then came the internet, salaries and everything else exploded, which was nice while it lastet, yet incredibly surreal.

Right now clients are sitting on every single penny. I know highly-skilled IT workers who are nevertheless unemployed because companies stopped hiring and around us and even some of the former key players of the industry are going bust...

So, do you remember a similar economic situation in IT and how did you experience it?

Dan:

I arrived in Silicon Valley just as the 1990s boom was beginning to happen. But I came here from Detroit, where I lived for about 6 years. Both places know business cycles.

Modern Silicon Valley has always had its boom/bust cycles. They're a natural part of an economic sector as dynamic and fast-growing as tech tends to be. The last time was in the early '90s, and the valley was in a distinctly uneasy mode. It was hard to find jobs. Housing prices dropped a lot -- something that hasn't happened this time, to my astonishment -- and no one had a clue what would happen to bring things back. The Mercury News published stories wondering if the valley's best days were behind it.

Then the valley experienced something that's happened before -- it got kickstarted by something out of left field. The most obvious catalyst was Netscape, both its technology and the subsequent IPO. But the expectations that developed were just nutty. I say that as someone who firmly believes that the Internet is changing everything just not as fast as some hypesters wanted us all to believe. What struck me in the late '90s was the ridiculous idea that somehow technology had eradicated the business cycle. Maybe it will someday (and it might once digital communications and nanotechnology become ubiquitous), but no one with a sense of history should have swallowed the hype.

People who've been here for more than a couple of downturns say this one's as bad as they've seen, maybe the worst. We got so far ahead of rationality in the bubble that it's probably going to take more time than usual to restore robust growth. There's plenty of innovation going on, but we now have a huge overhand of public mistrust of markets -- and people are absolutely right to hold the financial community, some VCs and others who helped inflate the bubble in contempt.

I doubt we'll see another boom like the one that just crashed. But we'll come out of this mess. It'll happen when people trust the markets again, because there's lots of innovation going on. Problem: I fear that anyone who trusts the markets right now -- especially when Bush and his crowd are doing everything they can to torpedo essential reform -- is misguided.

Conflict of Interest
by joyoflinux

Have you ever had a conflict of interest; like, what you should write, rather than what would get you promoted or would be better for your career? How do you deal with this?

Dan:

No one has ever told me what I had to write, or what I could not write, within the context of my beat at any paper where I've worked. Naturally, I've had the normal disagreement with editors over how stories and columns have turned out.

I've been lucky in one major respect here: It's my gig to have strong opinions -- even when they're contrary to powerful interests in the valley, as they often are.

Now, I'm not going to tell you that conflicts don't occur. Of course they do. The best andidote, and prevention, is sunlight. Several journalism publications keep an eye out for ethical transgressions, but they're not widely read except inside the trade. I'm encouraged by the Web's growing influence in journalism criticism, and not just in traditional ways. I think it's great, for example, that people who are interviewed are posting transcripts of the interviews on their websites, to provide context for how they've been quoted.

Are there things I won't write about? Sure. I've been dinged for this, but I won't shoot poison darts at my own company, as a rule, though I did publicly criticize my employer when a division of the company endorsed an anti-Microsoft lobbying organization (while I agreed with the views expressed about Microsoft, I thought the endorsement by the company was not helpful for the journalism we do every day).

Is Apple truly against DRM?
by dpbsmith

I'd really LIKE to believe that Apple is taking a conscious and principled stand against digital restrictions management, as suggested in your article here: www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/4193833.htm

Your article is, however, basically speculative.

Do you have any evidence that Apple really has an anti-DRM corporate strategy? Gateway has issued a limited but significant public statement of support for fair-use rights. Do you have any ideas why Apple has not done anything like this?

Dan:

Indeed it's speculative, but I tried to base this on the evidence instead of the rhetoric.

To answer directly: I don't think Apple has an anti-DRM strategy, though, even if I wish they'd go for it. I do think Apple has a generally pro-customer stance, which is a heck of a lot better than some other companies out there. Perhaps the company is looking for some balance in a situation where the sides are turning the issue into a binary question, i.e., total control or total anarchy. Example of balance: Apple doesn't enable iPod users to copy to other disks (not directly), but it hasn't done anything as far as I know to stop the third parties who make it easy to do so.

Gateway's campaign was terrific. But Gateway is part of the Wintel ecosystem, and there's no question that Microsoft is moving fast toward a Hollywood-friendly regime that's overtly pro-DRM. When Gateway starts selling nicely configured Linux boxes and promoting them in terms of customer choice and digital freedom, I'll be even more impressed.

Any changes in Valley startup culture?
by Infonaut

Thanks for taking the time to field our questions, Dan.

Silicon Valley venture capitalists in the late 1990s turned their money and attentions to bear on creating dozens of companies that never had any hope of turning a profit.

From personal experience I've seen just how powerful VCs are in shaping the development of the IT market through their iron-grip control of individual startups.

Have you noticed any fundamental power shifts or changes in the way startup IT companies are being funded and created in the Valley over the past couple of years?

Dan:

The major change is that hardly anyone is being funded at the moment. VCs run in herds, too.

I'm generally an admirer of venture capitalists, at least VCs who look far into the future and make risky bets. I do not have much respect for what VCs did in the late '90s, when they and their investment-bank pals pretty much shifted all risk into the public markets.

If there's a shift, I'm hopeful that it's back to the traditional risk-taking that helped spur so much innovation. The valley is returning to the idea of building sustainable businesses before cashing in. In the bubble, cashing in was almost the entire point. Good riddance to that.

The other major shift I've seen is the spreading of entrepreneurial risk-taking outside the valley. This is crucial to global progress. I've met smart VCs in other parts of the world, including places where long-term thinking is part of the culture, and they may have an advantage in the end.

Hidden corruption?
by PhotoGuy

I've seen an awful lot of money spent during the .COM boom, in awfully questionable ways. Ways that were just completely beyond comprehension. I've often thought that a better explanation than sheer stupidity, might be that there were kickbacks and other shady dealings going on (you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours).

With so much money having been tossed around, surely there was a lot of corrupt dealings; however, I haven't seen any press or other talk of such happenings.

Is it primarily because these companies weren't public and thus publicly accountable that any mini-Enron's were simply never discovered? In some ways, corruption would be a little more comforting of an explanation than sheer stupidity. I feel like I might be pretty naive in not realizing some of this is going on. What's your take on corrupt dealings, patronage, and such in the industry?

Dan:

You're not naive. I don't doubt at all that there was plenty of beyond-questionable behavior in private companies. But it's difficult for reporters or anyone else to get a handle on how much, and you're exactly right to suggest it's because public accountability brings more sunlight to the process.

Unfortunately, the news from the front pages every day tells me that accountability was in awfully short supply even in the public markets. Too bad the news is coming so late. But every bubble -- every boom -- brings out the financial sharks. It comes with the territory.

This one also brought out the ideologues in politics, funded by the sharks. The result was massive deregulation, which was in general a good idea, accompanied by a deliberate campaign to stop watching for bad behavior. That's why we didn't have cops on the beat, and why even now certain ideologues want to thwart reform. The states pursuing the investment banks are doing the best job at the moment, while the S.E.C. chairman, Harvey Pitt, seems hellbent on proving that he's the corporate lackey many people suspected.

Maybe I'm the one who's naive, but I believe markets need rules, because without enforceable rules no one can have any trust.

Promises, Promises
by gcondon

The IT press has been promising us a variety of malarkey for years - Microsoft innovation, Apple going out of business, Linux on the desktop, flying cars, ...

As I see it, to a large extent this is due to an over-reliance of IT journalists on industry contacts and a highly incestuous meme-pool.

Since industry contacts are driven by their own agendas to poison the meme-pool with hype and FUD, reporters typically serve only to reinforce entrenched concerns in the industry.

This is particularly troublesome given that the IT industry of uniquely reliant upon innovation which has traditionally emerged from smaller players & upstarts.

Therefore, does IT journalism really contribute positively to the industry and, if so, how?

Dan:

Journalism contributes positively to everything. Okay, stop laughing.

I think your premise is somewhat one-sided. It's true that journalists tend to echo the entrenched interests in every field. We also run in herds, for good and bad reasons, and we tend to quote the sources who call us back.

But I also have to say that I see plenty of great reporting, challenging the conventional wisdom and pointing us toward the real future. What fascinates me is that some of the best information, or leads, comes from nontraditional sources (and you're visiting one of them right now).

That's wonderful, because one of the jobs of the journalist is to separate hype from reality. I do this in several ways, including reading everything I can (including Slashdot, where I always spot angles I hadn't considered), talking with as many people as I can and, in general, questioning my own assumptions. I have the luxury of a job where I have the time for all this.

I'll even challenge one of your examples of malarkey. I've been dismissive of desktop Linux, too. For me, Unix on the desktop is called Mac OS X. But the open-source ecosystem doesn't care what I think. It's slowly but surely pulling together the pieces of a desktop environment that will be more than adequate for large numbers of users. Just as we tend to underestimate the long-range impact of Moore's Law, because analog creatures can't really grasp exponential change, I suspect I've underestimated the collective power of the community development process, which is an intellectual barn-raising raised by many orders of magnitude.

Activism?
by Anonymous Coward

IIRC, back in the day you were pretty seriously activist: I seem to remember you at Usenix handing out buttons and carrying signs.

Do you still consider yourself an activist? If not, what changed? Is there still a place for activism in the geek community? What is it?

Dan:

I think you may have confused me with someone else, perhaps John Gilmore, whom I admire but who is not a relative. The last time I can remember carrying a sign was an anti-Vietnam War rally in Washington in the early 1970s.

I guess I'm an activist in a sense, given that I devote much of the column to policy issues such as copyright, competition policy, privacy, etc. I strongly believe geeks need to be much more active. The people who want central control of everything are shutting down innovation and freedom -- and geeks have as much to lose as anyone, maybe more.

Aww, they skipped my question

Ah well, at least there was an Apple-related question posed to him. 10% Apple-related questions... better percentage than their market share, at least :)

Dan is watching...

He'll surely read any comments you post to this article

Dan read's slashdot, and knows the kind of idiot trolls we get on here, yet is still brave enough to put himself up for questioning, good man!

Though I suppose that as an IT journalist, more people will respect him and refrain from posting "Dan is a moron" or something equally immature.

I would wonder how many times, as an IT journalist, he gets shot down or pushed around while searching for information. A lot of the larger IT companies I know are anything but forthcoming, so perhaps idiotic behavior is something he's used to :-)

The future?

What do you think the future will bring?

Re:The future?

What do you think the future will bring?

Tomorrow.

What I'd Like to Know...

What I'd like to know...

What is holding up shipping of new tech toy^H^H^Hitems, e.g.:

Serial ATA Hard drives, Seagate appears to have moved ST380023AS (80G) and ST3120023AS (120G) back to Late November from Late October.

Lagging production of AMD 2700+ and 2800+ CPUs

something else I forgot, too much beer last night...

Is this likely a case of production problems or are manufacturers and distributors trying to clear inventory that's already in the pipe? It seems more items are falling into the vapor category, and I'm not convinced it's production problems. Are there more paper launches in lean times than, say an overheated market like 1999?

Not just the VCs and Investment Bankers

One thing that struck me in one of the responses was that Dan's fixated on trying to find some type of blame for what happened in the internet bubble, and my favorite example of this is where he says that VCs and Investment Bankers shifted all the risk to the public markets, as though that's a terrible thing. But what he doesn't point out is that the markets were screaming to take on that type of risk. Remember, this wasn't a case of a bunch of evil VCs and investment bankers breaking down Aunt Tillie's door in the middle of the night, taking her money, and leaving her with shares in buy.com, this is a case where the markets were paying a risk premium, paying more for riskier plays.

In a situation like that, you have two options:

• Give the market what it wants, regardless of whether that's what the market should actually have in your opinion
• Tell the market how foolish it is for wanting that, and watch other people make money off providing it.

I suppose it really comes down to whether you believe market theorists, who claim that the market is always smarter than any individual. While bubbles can be proven wrong, I think it's hardly facetious to be criticizing VCs for doing what the market demanded of them at the time, since they are chartered with making money for their investors, not making Silicon Valley a nice place to live.

Boom and bust cycles

As a top-flight consultant who has been in the IT industry in one form or another for some fifteen years or so I see this current phase as being a departure from the normal boom and bust cycles that rule any kind of capitalist economic model. It's not going to go back to a time in which any two-bit Perl coder can earn a fat paycheck for knocking out e-commerce systems, because America is no longer a viable place to employ people.

Why? Because there are a dozen or so countries in which labor, even semi-skilled labor such as coding, is far, far cheaper to hire than it is here. There was a time when workers could be paid according to the dictates of the market, but since various socialist "innovations" introduced over the last twenty years have kicked in, companies just can't hire and fire people as and when they need to, and retaining staff is getting more and more expensive... not because of wages, but because of the increased burden of government mandated benefits these people are required to have, despite earning plenty enough to provide for themselves.

In the future I see outsourcing as becoming the number one way in which companies develop software. The only remaining market in the US for programmers will be a small number of inhouse maintainance programmers, and an even smaller number of researchers working for either small startups or large, established players like IBM and Microsoft.

The market is oversaturated, and there isn't going to be another boom, just a slow, steady decline.

You've got a twisted way of looking at things

"There was a time when workers could be paid according to the dictates of the market, but since various socialist "innovations" introduced over the last twenty years have kicked in, companies just can't hire and fire people as and when they need to, and retaining staff is getting more and more expensive... not because of wages, but because of the increased burden of government mandated benefits these people are required to have, despite earning plenty enough to provide for themselves. "

Hmmm. Well you as Mr. Top-Flight Consultant may have enough disposable income to provide for your own healthcare and retirement but that does not mean the rest of the working population does. These systems would not be in place if most people COULD provide these things for themselves. So why don't you stick to the topic at hand instead of veering off into hyper-conservative economic policies that have been rejected due to their inhumane treatment of the citizens of whatever nation got rid of them.

I don't know why you think people exist for the benefit of the market. We're not here to service the economy. The economy, and the government is here to serve us, the people. If that means an extra rule, law or regulation in regards to proper labor practices then so be it. I think the economy will survive. I also don't think anyone wants to go back to nationwide sweatshops just so we can prevent jobs from going overseas.

Re:That's not the fault of the market

only when we see a truly free market will there be the opportunity for massive growth.

The only thing I can say in response to this is...

Laissez-faire in theory is perfect.
Socialism in theory is perfect.
Marxism in theory is perfect.
Trickle-Down Economics in theory is perfect.
Democracy in theory is perfect.

As soon as you insert the human factor, everything goes to shit.

Re:Boom and bust cycles

Jon,

If what you said was true, then Europe would be poverty stricken and starving. In fact, despite crippling taxes, stupidly inflexible labour laws, and crazy unions, Europe is doing OK. (No, I don't mean *well*, I mean OK.) No-one is starving, and these countries have had these same, largely idiotic, rules and laws for 45 years. Sure, they mean higher unemployment and lower secular growth than the US, but they didn't stop Europe from dragging itself to prosperity after WW2.

The IT industry has always suffered periodic booms and busts. In the early 1990s people assumed the market for PCs had gone ex-growth. Whoops.

In the UK in the early 1970s, the country went decimal. There was a huge boom as early computer systems were changed to deal with modern pounds rather than with the ungainly mix of guineas, pounds, shilling and pence. It was the original Y2K problem, and demand soared. Only to decline, and then stagnate for years.

Regards,

Robert

Re:Boom and bust cycles

Because there are a dozen or so countries in which labor, even semi-skilled labor such as coding, is far, far cheaper to hire than it is here.

This is less of a factor than you think for a couple of reasons.

First, companies need to be relatively skilled in order to understand and write requirements to a level of detail such that work can be exported. Even then, in-house acceptance testing needs to be run (unless you like handing out blank checks), and, in most cases, project management overhead quickly eats up any savings in labor cost.

Second, the actual cost of software construction is a minimal portion of the overall system cost throughout the product lifecycle and drops more rapidly each day. You're minimizing a rather small upfront cost when all is said and done. Maintenance cannot be assured, since keeping the project structure in place following the initial delivery of code costs too much to allow that to be an option in the maintenance phase and not having access to the people who wrote the code makes maintenance cost more too.

In short, I tell folks who want to do this sort of thing to consider their best and worst experience with onsite contractors. Then you halve the best and double the worst and ask thenm if the savings is still worth it. Once you look at the entire product life-cycle, most will find it isn't...

Re:Boom and bust cycles

As a top-flight consultant...

Not to argue from a position of authority -- for that would be wrong, horribly wrong -- but I am a Super-Dooper Gold Plus Pro consultant, which implies that you may as well stop reading right now because I am bound by the laws of basic physics to be correct. However, although any explanation is really wasted, I will go further than merely pointing out that you are wrong:

Despite some code I've perused in the past, coding is not really a semi-skilled profession like, say, fry cook.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, offsite contractors are notoriously difficult to work with, even when not overseas. I have seen many of them fired mid-project. This is particularly true when ISVs make the mistake of outsourcing in this way. Ultimately this is because offsite contractors -- particularly larger houses -- tend to have massively different priorities than those who hire them, and are in general in a position to act on those priorities. Not all of my experiences with outsourcing have been bad, but most have.

Anyone who has been downsized recently can testify that there are really few barriers to lightening staff load. Furthermore, even individual firings for nonperformance are really a pretty simple matter, provided such basic measures as periodic performance reviews were implemented by an employer. While anyone can sue for any reason, few of these suits ever get very far. The sole exception would be the civil service.

Finally, of all the industrialized countries on the planet, the US is likely close to the bottom of the list for government-mandated benefits.

Again, bear in mind that I am a Super-Dooper Gold Plus Pro consultant; thus any rebuttal is futile.

a breath of fresh air on desktop linux

I'm pleased to see Dan moving away from his position about linux on the desktop. It's really quite odd how many people dismiss it, not just in its present form, but as a possibility of any kind.

All the arguments against such a thing apply equally well to the creation of a linux distribution. No one wants to write docs, no one wants to integrate all these pieces and make them work, and so forth. Well, red hat does, and so does debian. There's no reason why the same forces that can result in a highly integrated distribution can't also result in a highly integrated desktop.

Also, as more corporations embrace linux, and as hardware vendors like Sun choose to make it part of their offerings, even more force comes to bear on the human interface issues.

It just reminds me of the Metcalfe "Open Sores" articles of some years back, when he dismissed the whole idea of high quality free software outright. How blind do you have to be to do this? What force will make it get worse, or stop it from improving?

Congratulations to Dan for keeping his eyes open on this issue, and for a solid interview.

Hit it right on the head...

"It sends a terrible message to young people, because it tells them that tech careers are foolish. But this is a chronic American problem -- a short-term mentality."

Boy, he hit this one right on the hea....oh, look, a new video game is out. Sweet. Uh, what was I saying? I want a slurpee.

Re:Hit it right on the head...

Yeah, it's a funny comment and all, but it's almost like making jokes about battered wives. Well, not nearly the same, but we ARE talking about the professional futures of many people. You better believe that I would have NEVER considered a degree in computer science if I didn't simultaneously get a degree in something else for specifically the reasons he mentioned.

I'm also a talented musician who could probably scrape by professionally and (when I'm not rambling on at Slashdot) a skillful writer who (with some additional education and breaking the habit of superfluous parenthesis) could probably make a living with that. You better believe that had I not been blessed with these tertiary abilities, I would have NEVER invested the time and money into getting a computer science education.

It's just lunacy for young people to get a BSCS and think they've got it made. A BS is NOT enough to start a career these days. The industry is NOT stable enough to ensure 30 years of employment for your career. The starting wages do NOT always justify a PhD.

A serious change is coming. Whether that means opportunities will open up for BS graduates, or wages will increase to justify PhDs, or the jobs will be sent overseas I couldn't say.

At any rate, it spells very troubling times for your CS kids. It feels like I'm living through an economic catastrophe while people 10+ years older (with ample experience) are buying new cars at 0% APR and mortages with historically low interest rates. I can't even afford new tires for my 93 Ford Escort. It's not funny to me. If not for the opportunity of higher education in the States, I would without a doubt either emmigrate to another country or find an entirely different field. Happy times, happy times.

Bad Bush?

What the hell do you mean in your reply to the cycle of things by Hanno where you say "Problem: I fear that anyone who trusts the markets right now -- especially when Bush and his crowd are doing everything they can to torpedo essential reform -- is misguided.

What exactly has Bush done to torpedo reform?

If anyone else has any idea what he is talking about here please feel free to inform us all.

Re:Bad Bush?

What exactly has Bush done to torpedo reform?

Please review the history of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the last three years. Please note that yesterday evening, after he was appointed to the new SEC "watchdog" panel, William Webster admitted that he was on the board of a company being investigated by the SEC for cooking the books.

Any more questions?

sPh

How is deregulation a good idea?

The result was massive deregulation, which was in general a good idea...

Okay, here's one I don't get, and it's been shoved down my throat a hundred times. How is deregulation a good idea?

When the airlines were deregulated, prices skyrocketed and became more mysterious, new aircraft types became fewer, meals and perks got skimpier, and share value was decreased.

When cable was deregulated, price increase rates shifted from less than 5% per year to 10% or more. The price for extending capacity has shifted to the customer (I was asked to pay a portion of $800 for the cable line to be extended 5 miles down the road, on top of monthly service) and competition is non existant in most markets. And Time Warner, the largest cable provider in the country, is suddenly on the ropes after 30 some odd years of profitability. Similarities can be found in the deregulation of other telecommunications industries.

So despite claims that the opposite is true, deregulation has been proved to increase prices while decreasing competition, innovation, shareholder value and the quality of customer service, and this is a good thing? Need I remind you that the majority of telephone, cable and fibre lines were laid during regulation, as were the majority of communications satelite launches?

There is no impetus to innovate when you're milking your customers dry. A high margin with high sales is an invitation for stagnation. Now, when you have to fight for every customer you have and for every penny to stay alive, suddenly you have a reason to offer more than your competitor.

Re:How is deregulation a good idea?

Deregulation in a competitive market is a good idea, as it allows the competition to work. The sham of pseudo-deregulation (such as what happened with the airlines, etc), is not proper deregulation in that there is still no equal playing field and equal access to all resources to be competed for.

Deregulation doesn't mean no laws concerning behaviour and legal requirements, it means that there are no regulatory barriers that favor one company over any other (and most forms of "deregulation" in recent history still have those barriers, and as a result, are not proper deregulation).

Re:How is deregulation a good idea?

The answer is, like most things, that economics requires a balance.

I've always thought it would be obvious that too much regulation is as bad as too little, and that the sweet spot is somewhere in between, yet I constantly see people spouting opinions about how "government kills efficiency", "the private sector is more innovative", and "privatization will benefit us all". I've even seen sites like that Free State thing a while back that implied that no regulation of the market at all was utopia!

I think that's nuts, nobody, not even the US operates "pure" capitalism, because pure capitalism is a recipe for self-destruction: it puts the benefit of the self above all else. Because we live in groups, we have to bracket and control the free market to serve us, not to rule us. Equally though, too much control can constrict the economy.

This is all obvious, yet New Labour is privatizing everything it possibly can, it's even attempting to get business involved in the NHS! George Monbiot covers this issue superbly - the worlds leaders have a love affair with business, and it's hurting us all. They need to get a balance back.

One answer: Southwest Airlines

When the airlines were deregulated, prices skyrocketed and became more mysterious, new aircraft types became fewer, meals and perks got skimpier, and share value was decreased.

This is demonstrably false. I guess you just don't remember the days before airline de-regulation very well, but it was more expensive and there were far fewer options available to the traveller. The market de-regulation allowed the emergence of low-cost carriers like Southwest, JetBlue, RyanAir, etc. and these have been an outstanding benefit to the average air traveller.

While the major airlines are currently getting their much-deserved comeuppance for overspending and failing to adapt to the changing market, there are several airlines which stand out from the crowd for having managed to grasp key insights into the nature of the changes that de-regulation imposed upon the air travel market and have prospered as a result. The poster-child for this is Southwest airlines, a small airline that realized that the democratization of air travel (prior to de-regulation the majority of Americans had never flown in an aircraft, after de-reg the numbers have shifted significantly towards air travel as a common and preferred mode of transportation) would allow them to efficiently run short-haul flights with quick turn-around and fewer costly perks to the air traveller. By avoiding the hub-and-spoke arrangement of its competitors and running short flights on a common airframe SWA was able to get more flights out of fewer planes. It also cut down its maintenance costs and per-passenger operating costs.

And how exactly is the dearth of new aircraft types the fault of airline de-regulation? If anything, there were too many different aircraft types. One of the things which is killing the major airlines like American or United is the fact that they have too many different types of aircraft: each one requires its own set of maintenance procedures and facilites and a maintenance and pilot staff trained for that aircraft type. Airlines do not exist to keep aeronautical engineers employed. The decrease in the number of aircraft types being flown is a good thing for the air traveller!

Additionally, most air travellers do not really care about perks and meals if they can get from point A to point B cheaper. BTW, what are the frequently flyer programs that have sprouted up in the post-de-regulation world if not the most successful perk program ever?

Re:How is deregulation a good idea?

Okay, here's one I don't get, and it's been shoved down my throat a hundred times. How is deregulation a good idea?

Well, I ran a mom-and-pop ISP and remember all the hype about deregulation with the Telco Act of '96 and the FCC taking a laissez-faire attitude during the Internet boom.

On paper, it looked good...local telcos could get into long distance, long distance could get into local tone, CLECs could spring up and provide competitive service, and the Internet was open to everyone. More competition would spur innovation, and customers would have more choices and lower prices.

But what happened in reality was rather different. As long as services were geared on dial-up, where rates for lines had been in place for some time and all the cards were on the table, this sort of worked.

Then came broadband, with huge capital costs associated with network buildout to provision it. Naturally, the cable companies and ILECs weren't about to risk their own capital to give some competitor cheap pricing on their own expensive network, and a big fight ensued at the FCC.

What basically happened was that cable companies were able to lock out everyone from their networks, while ILECs were able to charge premium prices to ISPs and CLECs who wanted to offer DSL. In fact, the price of Telco resources for DSL to ISPs was so high that it wasn't competitive against the retail price of Telco DSL service itself. Anyone remember SBC's "Project Pronto" where monthly DSL was only $39.95 a month with no setup fee and free DSL router?

Still, companies like Covad and others threw their hats into the ring. Once the markets went south, the ILECs and large cablecos were in the catbird's seat. The rule was, whoever had the biggest cash reserves could endure the war of attrition, and we saw CLECs and weaker cablecos go out of business or get absorbed by the big boys, who, meanwhile raised prices and cut back on service.

What telco deregulation accomplished was the appearance of a more competitve marketplace, and for awhile it sort of worked and whole new businesses sprang up to do business in the environment. But when when broadband hit bigtime, deregulation paved the way for unprecedeted mergers and acquisitions.

You can also see a similar trend in media (ie content) mergers and mergers between media and infrastructure. Look at the big media conglomerates we have now and how it's watered down quality journalism. Let me give you one example. In the early 90's populist talk radio was truly changing the political landscape and scared the pants off the power elite. Ross Perot pulling 20% of the popular vote and firebrand freshman GOP candidates getting elected to the House in 1994 was a direct result of the masses getting information from talk radio. So, what the moneyed media barons do? They bought up radio stations across the country at 2x-3x their real value, canned talk show hosts, and replaced them with their own politically-correct syndicated crap. Today Clear Channel and Infinity own about 80% of the radio stations in the country that idiots tune into to hear what they think is 'alternative' news: Rush, Dr. Laura, Michael Savage, and Art Bell. But the hosts who really upset the apple cart like G. Gordon Liddy, Chuck Harder and Jeff Rense and others are either off the air completely or have a tiny fraction of stations compared to their heyday in the 90's.

Luckily, we still have the net, but I assure you that powerful, wealthy interests don't like this free exchange of ideas and will, if they can, put fences around it, regulate it, co-opt it, and squelch it.

Activism

> I strongly believe geeks need to be much more active. The people who want central control of everything are shutting down innovation and freedom -- and geeks have as much to lose as anyone, maybe more.

That's a strong statement I think many can agree with. I would love for him to have given us some ideas on how we can be 'much more active'. Being a journalist he could probably give some of us some new perspectives. Writing our senators, marching with signs, and voting seems like spitting in the wind next to the powers we're up against. Dan, do you have any suggestions for methods of "geek activism"? Anybody else?

Where do programmers go?

OK. I'll admit it. I am an average programmer. Maybe a little bit better than average at thinking things through thoroughly, designing intelligently... it's that mathematician's aesthetic where you want things to be as clean and orthogonal as they possibly can. But I am slooow. At most jobs I've had there are definitely people quicker than I am, and a few that are slower.

So... should I bail? Dan's comments about average programmers struggling resonates with me... I've been out of work since May. It won't be long until I'm a balding guy in his mid 30's, so if the use-the-young-hard philosophy is prevalent, I'm double-whammied. Seems like the obvious thing to do is check out. But where to go?

Re:Where do programmers go?

I'm always surprised to hear programmers asking where to go when each and every one of us is not only walking storehouse of ideas, but a production factory of software. Look around the world of software, look to what your friends and family do with computers and use those problem-solving brains of yours to make something new. Make it and put it out there and as you perfect it, sell it. Maybe someone should write a self-help book for programmers off the dole, but I really believe that if you are on the internet, you are connected to the world and there are 4.5 billion people in that world. If 1% of 1% of 1% of the world wants something you make, you have 45,000 customers.

The general trends of the last two decades have been personalization and decentralization. Get out of the mentality that you need to be part of corporation or a business to get anything done. Think small, keep it simple and make something insanely great. If the mantra of the hacker is "figure out how it works" then the mantra of the hacker entrepreneur should be "figure out how to make it better". We are all of us hacker entrepreneurs if that's where we put our minds.

In the tech industry there are too many examples to site of people who just did something they just thought was neat (Mosaic, the web itself, Napster, Lotus 123, the Apple I, Linux, and on and on) and ended up pretty well off. The only difference between a famous programmer and a talented programmer is that one of them is famous. If you're unemplyed anyway, what have you got to lose?
___________

Housing market

Housing prices dropped a lot -- something that hasn't happened this time, to my astonishment

YET. Rents are way down here, and foreclosures are up [sfgate.com], which means banks will be dumping property cheap - exactly what this ridiculous housing market needs.

Killer schedule??

What would that look like?

12:00 Pop off Saddam
13:30 Tea with Mandela (note to self: do NOT kill)
17:00 ..

And what would the secretary say: "Your 2 o'clock cancelled. He died of heart attack last night."

Care to comment, Dan? :-)

Focus on personalities?

Dan sez: "Mainstream journalists are generalists, for the most part. At most big newspapers, reporters frequently change beats. This is done for freshness of approach, and to avoid common problems (such as getting too close to sources) that can affect fairness. The downside, of course, is a lack of depth at times."

Perhaps not only a lack of depth, but a focus on the commonalities of all news stories like the personalities. That problem seemed particularly bad during the bubble. There was a lot of focus on Gates, Jobs, Ellison, Bezos and the others when perhaps they should have scrutinized the viability of the company's businesses and products. Instead, most "news outlets" became a direct conduit for company PR and analyst disinformation.

Housing Prices in the Silicon Valley

He was talking about housing prices and why they haven't dropped during this latest crash.

The reason is simple. In the early '90s, the crash was localized and mostly based on military cut-backs. Since the rest of the country was not experincing the bust, interest rates were still high.

Therefore, the housing bust was causeed by 10% unemployment (people having to sell because they lost thier job) with 11% 30-yr-fixed mortgage rates (people unable to qualify for mortgages).

Today, with high unemployment we have 6.5% interest rates since the problem is nationwide. Now, people with decent jobs can qualify for mortgages and the houses are flying off the market and the unemployed/less income are either selling or simply refinancing.

Jack up the interest rates and the housing market will crash.

Yeah. He does read /. regularly

I'm not as knowledgable about process techniques as I'd like to be, so the rest of this answer is going to be a bit speculative

The long version of IANAL

I sometimes get that impression, too. But [defensively] I don't think it's as bad as you believe.[/defensively]

[sarcasm]Where have I seen this before?[/sarcasm]

shady dealings

I don't doubt at all that there was plenty of beyond-questionable behavior in private companies.

I can attest to this.

I joined a startup fresh out of college with high hopes of a multi-million dollar IPO. Unfortunately this didn't happen and money started to run out.

But the staggering amount of money that the company got didn't seem be used very efficiently.

For example...

• We had a VP of Sales who lived in NJ (the headquarters were in NH) and he took a limo to an from the airport every time he was in town.
  
• The company revamped the lobby of the building to look more "professional". Rumor has it that it cost about 1 million. And the end result is that it looks like a strip club.
  
• The VP of Engineering was (and still is) sleeping with the Director of HR. They were both married. (OK, that has nothing to do with money, but it is still shady!)
  

After leaving the company (I was let go), I started to hear all the dirt that stayed behind closed doors. I heard about the VPs taking huge bonuses every month, despite deadlines not being made and revenue not being generated. I even got wind of employees who were friends of said VPs getting substantial chunks of change.

I can only imagine what other monetary blunders and shady deals were made that I never heard about.

Silicone valley

Instead of asking questions about all the computer stuff in silicon valley, why not interview some of the prOn stars from silicone valley about their business.

"Stars are still in demand"

I wonder how one becomes a "star programmer".

Or, failing that, how one fakes looking like one resume and interview wise.

I'm worried about the offshore issue. I'm a somewhat well cultured (I was going to say well-rounded but decided to duck the obvious joke) programmer in his late-20s (English as well as Comp Sci major from the mid90s) but I don't know what I'll do if this career path proves infeasible.

Still, I think the hassle bar is way high for offshore development. They have as many or more really bad programmers as we do, and when combined with a lenghtening of the critical product management/feedback loop, that can be deadly. I just hope enough companies realize that before they get too much in bed with these guys.

The difference between journalists and pundits

I still fail to see what the difference is between Dan Gilmor or John Dvorak or Jon Katz. News reporters generally interview more people over the course of the day than a columnist--look at how many sources cited in a typical column, for example. But columnists can express opinions, (U.S.) news reporters can't. That's both the danger and benefit of U.K. news reporting, where a reporter can label something as crap without being considered (unprofessionally) biased.

Did you try to copy files from a VCD using MacOS?

To answer directly: I don't think Apple has an anti-DRM strategy, though, even if I wish they'd go for it. I do think Apple has a generally pro-customer stance, which is a heck of a lot better than some other companies out there.

That's very generous of you, Dan -- too generous, I think. Let me tell you a little story of which you are almost certainly unaware. I own a Terapin CD recorder; I bought this because it allows me to make digital clips from an analog source (like my old Blaupunkt Video 8 camera, with which I recorded many important events in my life) right in my living room. When I tried to retrieve the MPEG-1 files from a VideoCD I made from tapes of my aunt's 1993 wedding, my iMac claimed that there was a device failure. I didn't believe it, so I booted Windows 95 (a pre-DRM, pre-CD-burning-craze OS) using Connectix's Virtual PC and tried the same thing -- and succeeded. Now, given that the hardware was the same and that the only difference was the operating system, I have to conclude that MacOS is at fault.

Perhaps the company is looking for some balance in a situation where the sides are turning the issue into a binary question, i.e., total control or total anarchy. Example of balance: Apple doesn't enable iPod users to copy to other disks (not directly), but it hasn't done anything as far as I know to stop the third parties who make it easy to do so.

Let me see: Apple makes it impossible to copy some files from a VideoCD using the pre-installed operating system and it is only by resorting to a hardware emulator that uses only the very lowest-level access facilities of the host operating system that I am able to get around this limitation. Er... yeah, I guess that's technically "not stopping third parties who make it easy to do" but I wouldn't call this sort of crap an example of balance or a pro-customer stance. I say Apple is indeed interested in some sort of DRM (think Pixar) but prefers the solution to be a voluntary, software-based one -- rather than a Microsoft-backed, hardware-based one that Bill and Jack imposed by buying a DRM law.

Bio for Dan Gillmor from the IMDB

+ Born on March 6, 1946 in Cambridge.

+ Replaced guitarist, Syd Barrett, in Pink Floyd.

+ He also enjoys flying his planes and owns the Intrepid Aviation Company.

+ Had a few solo albums and also worked with Kate Bush.

+ Close friend of the late Douglas Adams.

+ Hates Roger Waters.

yo dan

--to revisit outsourcing, and also massive immigration as regards "jobs". I know from a silicon valley perspective there still is "work", but on various other forums and irc channels, in the heartland it's hitting home hard, across the board, white collar and blue collar. I think that your estimate -I'll call it "cautious"- is a severe low-ball estimate. My opinion, this entire economy is tanking, and tanking hard. On one semi large forum I visit, they held an impromptu poll, result, 30% current un-or-underemployment, various fields, not just IT, various, software engineers to teachers to construction, you name it, it appears to be worse anecdotally than the "official" numbers promulgated by the government and wall street. I include in these figures people who have a "job", but have had to keep seeking work with the result every new job has resulted in severe pay cuts, often several in the past two years. This jibes with what else I have noted over net anecodtals for the past 2 or 3 years, most generally speaking.

I think a lot-most-companies are still not bingoing that every laid off / fired worker is also a laid off / fired consumer and customer, thus bad begatting bad leading to worse leading to ..well....I think it's going to get most ugly...

Two questions, 1 -are you aware of ANY high level money guys or CEO's who actually understand what's happening and basically agree with my assessment, and if so, who,, and 2- which fields do you think will persevere no matter how "crashed" we become in terms of more unemployment, inflation or actual depression, etc.

thanks in advance should you choose to respond.

Sounds like a song!

Now, I'm not going to tell you that conflicts don't occur. Of course they do. The best andidote, and prevention, is sunlight. Several journalism publications keep an eye out for ethical transgressions, but they're not widely read except inside the trade. I'm encouraged by the Web's growing influence in journalism criticism, and not just in traditional ways. I think it's great, for example, that people who are interviewed are posting transcripts of the interviews on their websites, to provide context for how they've been quoted. ...but trust me on the sunlight.

I have several remarks about this interview

"It's getting easier and cheaper to outsource programming jobs to India, Russia and Singapore (among other nations)."

Question for you all: Do you think that U.S. IT job opportunities are already visibly threatened by out-of-country outsourcing? I mean, I'm having a damn hard time finding a new job. And I say that only half jokingly.

"even as America keeps killing its own educational system"

Amazing how many Americas agree with this statement, regardless of their background, yet we are not doing anything positive about it. Vouchers and SOL testing are band-aids, not cures. Money and complete restructuring (of how and what we teach) are the only solution to the public school system in each state.

"hire 'em young, burn 'em out, discard 'em"

Interesting statement. I agree, but at the same time, why does every job listing (for any industry these days) ask for 5 years of this and 10 years of that, yet the starting salary is ridiculously low? Companies don't care about there employees anymore because they think we're all short-timers. Yet, no company wants to stop and ask why we have become short-timers. Additionally, and still because of the short-timer stigma, companies don't want to train new employees, so switching industries or finding a job right out of college is a nightmare, if not impossible. However, those same companies are not willing to pay for that previous experience. They just know you need a job.

"It's disappointing to see so many technology companies jumping into bed with the entertainment cartel instead of fighting for customers' rights ... Here in the U.S., meanwhile, we're moving toward having two or at most three ways to access the Net in any given community. That's terrifying from an innovation and free speech perspective."

I completely agree. But the number of tech savvy customers is growing with each generation. Customers will fight back in ways that government and corporate America will never be able to control. If all the telecos, tech, and entertainment companies do succeed in using law to control and censor the current Internet, customers will create their own solution, be it hacks or an entirely new Internet. We're smarter than they are, and sneakier. Wireless will be a big part of this.

"I strongly believe geeks need to be much more active. The people who want central control of everything are shutting down innovation and freedom -- and geeks have as much to lose as anyone, maybe more."

I agree and I try to do my part. I write my congresspeople and president. I flame specific companies/organizations and spokespeople in public forums, but with facts and smart conclusions to prove a point about what they are trying to do is wrong and foolish (think RIAA, MPAA, MS, etc.). But how much of our activism is taken seriously by the general public, the media, the gov't? When corporate America funds our politicians, how can we win? I'm not saying our activism is fruitless, in fact we all need to do more. But what can be done differently and taken more seriously?

Re:Trick or troll

Troll Thursday? Crap, and to think I wasted most of it sleeping... Thanks for the warning though...

Re:what is "face time at the soda machine"?

It's a cute way of saying "talking with your co-workers in person". Not necessarily planned meetings (though those work better with personal presence than by video or speakerphone too), but all the unplanned times when you just happen to see someone in the corridor and casually talk about the problems you're working on.