Bad Sinatra
Jonathan Schwartz has a problem. Me. I read his blog today, starting with the most recent post and eventually landing on one a few days ago about the resurgence of the thick client. Let me weigh in thusly : what a load of shit this is. When Sun leadership starts moving away from the Google sweet spot and toward god knows what users-love-client-code idiocy, it’s big trouble for the Sun boys. Dave Winer is swimming in muddy waters too with his anti-Lucovsky Google-is-deprecating-SOAP of all things in favor of the Ajax RESTian Web-only API that Mark is evangelizing on Scoble’s show.
First, Jonathan. I went to a Sun press party tonight that was remarkable in its failure to deliver any promised executives. Dan Farber found a few lurking in the rear of the room, but no Jonathan, no Papadopoulos, no Fowler. I found myself longing for the good old McNealy days, when Scott’s Microsoft jabs and hockey jive kept the room moving. A Google party a few weeks ago was in full swing before Sergey and Larry showed up, and their presence almost came as an afterthought. Marc Benioff threw a luncheon to announce the latest iterations of the Salesforce build-out, and instead of playing to the middle of the pack, excelled in a detail-rich deep dive into his company’s mining of its customer base as the evolution of Microsoft’s developer strategy. That’s entertainment, folks.
I thought I would miss the end of the Gang more than I have. Mike Arrington’s flareup with Sethi and his revolving news desk door would have made for a lively session or two, but Mike’s week-later wrap of the Sethi situation blew away the bullshit and out-ValleyWagged Denton to boot. I’ve been pitching in with Jason to tighten up his Cast for the Kids, letting me troll the blogosphere for news bites without having to work too hard or miss the roundtable so much. I spent a great three days or so with Doc, Phil Windley, Kaliya, Dick Hardt, and Kim Cameron among others in the Identity Workshop, talked with Mike Vizard and Dana Gardner intermittently, and watched Robert Anderson and Cori Schlegel cross the line and merge GestureBank with the AttentionTrust only a few weeks behind schedule. And Gabe Rivera chimed in a few days ago in email asking what it would look like if I resurfaced. An eight-foot invisible rabbit.
The thick client: why is Jonathan floating this lead balloon? To get some blogoversy? Probably. His slick sales pitches don’t register, and one of the best guys on his feet in the business seems hamstrung by his day job. He should take a look at what Jon Udell is doing. The new show business is actionable information on demand, spiced with a healthy disrespect for marketing bullshit and strategic kindergarten. Take Edelman’s alliance with Newsgator to provide pre-gamed conversations. Nice: avoid the messy run-up to PayPerPost stench, and go right for the stupid notion that people won’t immediately look not at the approved conversation but at the telltale odor of the missing links. Attention: the “customers” are listening now. Think of the stream as meditation.
Spare me the garbage that we need real code running on the client. If you want to know what a vendor is afraid of, figure out what competitor they’re more afraid of. Is it Adobe with Apollo, eroding Java’s device penetration lead? It’s certainly not Microsoft? If you want to see why I’m so relaxed, go look at CrittendenIV’s post about this five tags bullshit. He mentioned me at the end so it bubbled up in my vanity feed, but there’s no way I can match or even come close to this guy. A star is born. By contrast, Jonathan’s bizarre thesis that the browser is a Winerian locked trunk is a) probably true, and b) so the fuck what. Mozilla forever put the lie to that theory when Firefox jujitsued Microsoft’s market standards into a commodity. Papadopoulos levels about Sun’s difficulty in driving sales in the Web 2 value chain no matter how right they are in their technology bets. Jonathan changes the subject to clients. Why?
Similarly, Dave is changing the subject from god knows what to JSON and Ajax API and for what reason? Dave is one of the most efficient if not the supreme political pragmatist, so why is he bringing up these subjects? Who am I supposed to be scared of? Google? Nope, if the Ajax API and the terms of service around including unaltered adsense are so counter to user interest, that will precipitate a decline in usage and therefore less adoption of Google properties. Seems self-correcting to me: user votes, user wins. Why do we need saving here?
Who, then, is Dave’s competitor? Is he caught, like Microsoft, competing against his own success? RSS won, and Dave did it. I’ll wait while nobody argues with this. Good. Now we live in an RSS world. What to do next? I say it’s gestures, but I don’t care what you think about that. Let’s say I’m right, that the world will move from inference to direct testimony, from links to gesture feeds, from push to accept, from pressure to permission. In that world, do we need protection? Or does Dave need to reinvent himself in this brave new world he launched?
It’s tough to teach an old dog new tricks, the saying goes. But Dave is not your average bear. He’s tough, cunning, honest, and vulnerable. There’s an opening to ignore what I’m saying as personal, but honestly all politics are local, and deeply personal. I’m not counting Dave, or Jonathan, out. But they need to face the music. They’ve outgrown the jobs they invented for themselves, and it’s time to grow again.
Oh, and Microsoft, you guys better step up right now and cut this RSS patent cancer out before we do it without anesthesia.
December 22nd, 2006 at 8:55 am
Great stuff Steve! Especially the last sentence.
December 22nd, 2006 at 10:30 am
I just realized that you write just like Andrew Vachss. If you haven’t read any of his Burke novels, you should. I believe that you would become addicted.
December 22nd, 2006 at 11:22 am
This is one epic post. I had to read it three times - it was that good. So much entertainment and relevant. Where have you been. Wherever it has been keep on doing it. This post rocks.
It is clear that there is a ton of action going on. Keep it coming.
December 22nd, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Ever heard of links?
December 22nd, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Great stuff. You’re right, I have no idea what comes next. The Google API post was meant to be a soft fart, and the JSON post, well, I was surprised so many people paid any attention. I’d love to do the personal podcast player. Maybe that’s what’s next. Let’s do a breakfast asap to discuss.
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:26 pm
Happy Holidays, Steve. Now, what part of what I wrote did you take issue with? And which blog - this?
http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/i_believe_in_network_clients
December 23rd, 2006 at 12:38 am
”
Oh, and Microsoft, you guys better step up right now and cut this RSS patent cancer out before we do it without anesthesia.
”
–
step up right now and cut this ?!
Were that to happen I think I’d go out and buy an X-Box.
I cannot believe that MS would stop going and getting these arsenine patents that they do any more than I can believe that Donald Trump would stop liking money, and …plotting?… [more] ways to make it…
Nor that Rosie O’Donnel would stop being a comedic person, making jokes, even joking about Rich People that aren’t as rich as they might like to be, or perhaps as rich as we think/thought they are/were.
Nor that the Donald would take offense to Rosie making impolite joking? conversation about himself and seeing her words as potential opportunity to make more money for himself.
Battling for top marketshare and making money/ ?maximizing profits? is for Microsoft like breathing air for you and I. And going for any [?even painfully obvious/prior art?] patents are just part of this game for them. I think asking them to stop doing these things, even when we can see that some instances of them appear to be pretty outrageous/ridiculous/ludicrous
to us would be like asking them to stop breathing for 20 minutes. I just don’t see them doing it. Maybe, just Maaayybeee, they’d back off of an obviously ridiculous case like this, if enough people pointed enough fingers at them and essentially said, “Hey!, do you really have to be THAT much of a Jerk?!?”. Maybe. but I won’t be holding MY breath for THAT.
P.S.
is it just me, or when you said
“Microsoft’s market standards into a commodity”
you meant to put:
“Microsoft markets standards into a commodity”
or perhaps better yet:
“Microsoft markets standards into commodities”
I can see that there’s a lot of meat in this piece here
so you are forgiven this slihgt tpyographical slip.
And even though I only really get roundabout half of it,
I can follow much of the sentiment-and-gist of it, and
I must agree with Mike Ferris — It Rocks.
It rocks like a Dennis Miller tirade when he was in his
comedic prime. Although I watch him so little these days,
I cannot say when or if he has left his comedic prime.
In the words of Cartman; That was Sweeeet!
December 23rd, 2006 at 2:28 am
Blowhard: Sounds like you need to go back to Gillmorology 101. That’s where we learned that links, much like Office and the pageview business model, are dead.
December 23rd, 2006 at 7:01 am
“What to do next?”
I’d suggest getting on with filling in the egregriously missing bits of the current web, primarily taking advantage of linked (!) data, not just documents/feeds. Useful whatever format you want to talk about, for fat and thin clients, and I’d suggest something as a prerequisite for useful gesture systems. In short: Semantic Web.
December 23rd, 2006 at 7:32 am
joel has put in some effort to explain what this post means. Here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/23.html
December 23rd, 2006 at 7:50 am
Wow, I can’t understand a thing you wrote. You must be really smart.
Either that, or my English teachers were right when they said smart people can articulate ideas so others can understand them.
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:44 am
Joel Spolsky has a less than glowing detailed commentary on the post here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/23.html
December 23rd, 2006 at 10:12 am
[…] As noted by Joel, Steve Gillmor makes so many obscure references that it is impossible to read his posts and understand anything. I read his latest post, Bad Sinatra, and felt he must be saying something important but I couldn’t make head or tale of anything. So coming in to help us lay people out is Joel with a translation of the post. Thanks Joel, your revised version really cleared the post up for me. […]
December 23rd, 2006 at 11:08 am
I just sent Joel an email:
December 23rd, 2006 at 11:18 am
[…] Today, Joel Spolsky - probably the greatest technology writer in this generation, as well as apparently being one of the greatest managers, developers and entreprenuers - takes a Steve Gillmor blog post and unpacks it for us. His intention at the outset was merely to expose the value of Gillmor’s thoughts, if only he would take the time to do some unpacking himself, and maybe sprinkle in a few links. In the end, he also exposes the damning fact that Gillmor doesn’t even understand what he is saying himself, but is relying on opacity and a hostile attitude to trick readers into believing his unsubstantiated accusations have some merit. Which is too bad, because I think if Steve Gillmor did take the time to examine his own writing a bit more critically, he would eventually strike on pure gold. The man is clearly intelligent and creative. The pundit gets paid by the word I suppose though, so the product gets diluted and then who knows what to think of what he says without taking the 3 hours to unpack it all themselves. […]
December 23rd, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Oh I don’t know…I understood everything except the Sinatra reference and Joel didn’t explain that one!
December 23rd, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Bad Sammy Davis Jr.
Steve Gillmor has a problem. Me. Not really. But, I read his blog today oh boy…
I have to confess, I enjoy Steve’s writing, even though I find it really hard to understand… Anyway, I think I got some of it after three or four readi…
December 23rd, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Whether you understand Gillmor or not may depend on whether you took literature courses in college, and took them seriously. His writing is excellent, high quality stuff, but not easy. You have to actually read it to get it, and it might help to read the sites he reads (which I do, and I write one of them).
My guess is that the Bad Sinatra reference has to do with something I had on SN a while back about “my way” and the silhouette of Sinatra and Sammy Davis I had on one of the pieces he was writing about.
But like all good art, and Steve’s writing is good art (he’ll deny it of course) it’s all in the viewing. I think even Spolsky would admit that one rabbi might see it one way and another, a different way altogether.
December 23rd, 2006 at 2:43 pm
I thought it might be to “more comebacks than…” but Steve says no. I like Dave’s explanation though!
December 23rd, 2006 at 4:35 pm
I just saw Spolsky’s post, funny, complimentary because it’s complementary (or is it the other way around?). Wonderful to see the contrast with another highly stylistic blogger. Where Steve plays the obscurity angle, Joel plays plain & simple. Both styles are painted thick, both usually deal with arcana.
This post in particular reads as a wonderful stream of consciousness, only making sense if you spend way too much time following stories from techmeme. But that’s also the one major criticism I’d lay at Steve’s door - if the reader isn’t familiar with the references, this stuff is gibberish, at best clever-clever Valley illuminati material. If there were links it would be possible to make sense, without having to live in the A-list’s underpants. Links help communication.
Re. “Bad Sinatra” - I took it as saying Jonathan Schwartz is like Sinatra, a popular, iconic singer, known for some classy ditties. But like Sinatra, he’s also produced his share of turkeys. Could well be wrong though - that obscurity thing again, have to have a bit of ambiguity.
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:03 pm
I will say that Gillmor has the best post that I’ve read since I started following the blogosphere. Joel does the total public service. I suggest that we do a open source translation of Steve Gillmor. We rotate the translation among the best bloggers who think that they are worthy of getting it. I will say that Joel did an amazing job. Thank you Joel. Steve your post was great. It was gibberish until I read it a few times. The meanings and gestures were endless and relevant.
Who will be worthy to translate the next post? Who will step up? I hope someone will.
December 23rd, 2006 at 10:02 pm
Ulysses was better. Easier to read, too.
December 24th, 2006 at 12:16 am
It made total sense to me in a single reading. I don’t live in anybody’s underpants. The only acronym I had to look up was JSON because I don’t deal with any sort of web technology on a day-to-day basis. I don’t agree with Gillmor’s assessment but the underlying theme is sound and reasoned. Only time will shake out who is correct. So hurry up and wait already. Stumbled on this post because I usually read Spolsky about once a month and wanted to see what all the brouhaha was about. I disagree with Spolsky’s analysis and conclusion. I also got bored with Spolsky’s deconstruction after the second quoted Gillmor paragraph and decided to just come and read the original.
December 25th, 2006 at 2:54 am
So—like Joel Spolsky provides a Steve Gilmor lexicon? Ahhh! linkless linking through serialized blog chains: shifting from Jason Calacanis’ Weblog to Scripting News->RSS CalacanisCast (Beta)—cross- link TechCrunch—LOOP.
Think Variety c.early 60’s tagging “Rat Pack” meme. Uh, WHO’S Sammy?
IS Joey Bishop on…?
December 26th, 2006 at 11:23 am
[…] Ik begrijp al wat in deze entry bij Steven Gillmor staat. Ik vrees dat ik teveel weblogs lees. […]
December 26th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
you’re kinda being a dick to be a dick; and your writing is overly complex; as for thick clients….they are eating the browser’s lunch…the real problem is the tech-press is browser centered cause of blogs; just like they’ll always be Apple friendly b/c it makes them feel cooler, better than the average computer user. The world is changing, becoming decentralized…all the old metaphors of the web are dead. We just invented decentralized commerce…but you pissed cause your life is filled with boring press confrences. How about writing articles from the soldier’s ppoint of view…none of the people you know, or are big, have a clue as to what the future holds. They’re guessing; and now you’re just complaining.
December 26th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
[…] Joel Spolsky, software commentator grand-pu-ba, took it upon himself to figure out just what the heck Steve Gillmor is talking about in a recent post. Three hours and several decoder rings later Joel comes to the conclusion that Steve is blowing smoke. He then promptly unsubscribed from the RSS feed. […]
December 27th, 2006 at 7:46 am
This post reads like crocodile feces… Everything that was previously consumed and passed on in a jumbled mess.
December 27th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
[…] I mentioned Steve Yegge last week. Another infrequent poster who’s well worth reading is Steve Gillmor. His most recent Bad Sinatra post is a great example. He can be hard to read–especially if you don’t follow tech industry news and trends very closely–but there’s some great observations in the post and Steve’s spot on. rsi_pub = ‘0F6C5351519D1891B9E74DB865E30237′; rsi_site = ‘33C75F5545E0474F2F8B1B1463117087′; rsi_label =’jt’; rsi_new_window =’1′; rsi_width = ‘300′; rsi_height = ‘250′; rsi_color_border = ‘ffffff’; rsi_color_cell = ‘ffffff’; rsi_color_link = ‘000000′; rsi_color_text = ‘000000′; rsi_color_url = ‘808080′; I still hear from IT Conversations listeners that they miss the Gillmor Gang. Steve has a way of inciting (and that’s the right word, I think) conversations among people that wouldn’t happen otherwise and that’s the true value. As much as I enjoy Steve’s blog, I like his interactions with others in venues like the Gillmor Gang even better. Here’s to more Bad Sinatra. […]
December 27th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Fun reading. The style reminds me of a Joyce stream of consciousness. I guess you didn’t get one of the souped up MS laptops.
December 28th, 2006 at 6:08 am
[…] Related posts: Brady Forrest over at ORielly Radar; Steve Gillmor’s rant; and Joel Spolosky’s talmudic analysis of Steve Gillmor Tags: brady forest, google, Mark Lucovsky, steve gillmor, yahoo […]
December 29th, 2006 at 10:25 am
[…] Joel Spolsky demonstrates his exegetic prowess by analyzing a Gillmor missive. […]
December 29th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
[…] Steve breaks radio silence and admits he is a pooka (from Bad Sinatra). […]
December 30th, 2006 at 7:32 am
I think that your posts are (fake) gold. They are worth less than manure.
January 10th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
[…] Gillmor himself is still blogging occasionally. His latest post, Bad Sinatra is fairly characteristic - if you bother to read the comments, notice that you’re reading a conversation involving, among others, Jonathon Schwartz and Dave Winer. I speculate that ‘Bad Sinatra’ describes people who ‘did it my way’, rather than did the right thing….worth a read in any case. […]
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
[…] Read this post first, you may need to read it again carefully, and then a third time over a glass of fine wine. As you know, Steve Gillmor went hiding, see video: […]
January 29th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Steve, missing your podcast man.. where else can we find tech.com commentary in a debate format. Some of those info.nuggests were gold in between Mike Arrington fuzzy voip calls. Jason’s gillmore gang impersonation doesn’t do it justice. bring it forward twisted and new..
April 4th, 2007 at 10:34 am
[…] post — definitely an entertaining read, but actually kind of depressing. The jargon in Gillmore’s post was pretty dense, or so Joel implies, and he claims to have spent about three full hours […]
April 11th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
BRING BACK THE GANG!
May 29th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
There motives are political not scientific.
I think KDE is more installed. We have the resources to do it, yet they are squandered by corrutpion and graft and no-bid contracts.
June 15th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Steve Gillmor is a Discovery Engine
Joel Spolsky, a software innovator in NYny has a very cool post at JoelonSoftware. Joel has launched Steve Gillmor the Disovery Engine, a new wetware platform and posted an operating manual in his blog entry. I’m blown away both by the fact that…