Why the Academic World is a Steaming Pile of Shit (For CS Majors)

Ah, school! Teaching me the most worthless things ever! Check this out, actual comment from one of my programming projects:

"Create your own sort. Don't use one that's in the API. (-5)"

Huh... Strange... At my job, what would happen if I re-wrote a piece of code specifically designed to be convenient and save time (thus, money)?

I'd get fired.


This is exactly why Academica is worthless for people in my field: Complete lack of perspective and field experience. If I walked up to my boss and said, "Hey, Boss! I'm going to re-do the work that Sun Microsystems already did for me by re-writing perfectly good API calls because I don't want to feel lazy! Oh, and you'd be paying me for these extra hours!", he'd fire my ass on the spot (and rightfully so).

Here's a cool academic exercise: Write a simple Twitter app (Using the given APIs), then make it work on Android. Its cool. Its relevant. Its academic. Its learning and experience.
Don't make me re-invent the wheel, college... Some motherfucker did that for me so I wouldn't have to. I'm not paying you gobs of money to duplicate the work that others have done before me, I'm paying you gobs of money to stand on the shoulder's of giants and build into the sky.

An Academic Waste of Time and Money: College

I posted a Twitter update and would like to expand on it for a bit...

"On the top ten list of worthless things I have done with my life, college is quickly nearing the top."

I feel like I really am pissing away time and money and getting nothing in return. I wish there was a 'college' for people like me, where you go to a place, socialize, drink, party, network, but none of the class bullshit. The people I've met in college are fucking great, the networking is brilliant, the experiences I've had outside of the classroom setting have taught me more than any parent ever could. But what I'm actually paying for... what I'm actually buying here... I get nothing out of it. At all. The course material is a joke, the professors are comedians, but at the end of the day, I'm left with an empty wallet and not nearly enough laughs to make my night worth it.

If I wanted to sit in a room for a few hours having some idiot recite shit out of a book that will never pertain to any facet of my life: I'd go to church.

Its like going to a comedy club to drink really good beer. What you're paying for isn't what you're there for. I've been told that this is the college experience, this is exactly what it is designed to be, but I don't really buy that. In my mind, college should be there to expand your mind and get you thinking differently about what is possible and how the world currently works, then should work. I've never had this experience in class. Ever. Instead, I've had these grand experiences in my interactions with others at college. Not in a class, but at a party, hanging out playing games, or standing around in a hallway, just being bored. Why do I need professors, grades, classes, or textbooks when they have done nothing for me? I could have gotten the same experience by just hanging out at a college, without the added burdens of paying an ungodly sum of money for fairly good academics (from what I have been told).

Maybe I'm an outlier. I've always been better at learning on my own and teaching myself things. I've done my own research, processed, then came to my own conclusions. I expand my mind regularly with topics outside my comfort zone, I don't need a person biased in staunch bureaucracy telling me what I should learn and what I should not learn. Academia as a whole is frustrating. From my time at college, I've never learned anything truly useful in a class. When it comes to my career (entrepreneurship and technology), college has taught me nothing useful. To this day, in each job I've held, every contract that I've worked on, I have never used anything I have 'learned' in college. When I walk into a tech or business class, most of the time, I end up teaching the professor. I know how that sounds, everyone knows that guy who fights with the professor about everything, but I don't mean like it like that. I end up bringing up new concepts and ideas that are fairly standard practice in the tech industry, but are brilliant breakthroughs in the world of academia. For a tech guy, walking into a modern college course about technology is like walking into a technology museum.

Academia, for the most part, is in its own little world. Business practices, current research, the very latest and greatest that computers and the internet have to offer aren't being taught in colleges. What's being taught in a high-level management course at my college is this: "Employers who want to maintain a stable working environment and want to posses a good relationship with their employees should avoid yelling at or taking things out on them." Yes... that was an entire chapter. For one entire week, my business class discussed why we shouldn't scream at the people working for us. Brilliant.

To sum up plenty of other examples in a sentence: Academia tends to be 10-15 years behind the curve, no matter what the subject.

Sadly enough, I've come this far, so there isn't much point in quitting now. From what I'm looking at, I've got a year left of school. I already have the well-paying job, I have the lifestyle, I have the job experience, I might as well relax as I work my way through the rest of this degree. One thing is for sure, though, I will never view the academic side of college as an investment after my experiences, I will always look down on it as waste of time, energy, and money.

The Power of Human Search

After listening to This Week in Google: Episode 46, I started to think about human-powered search in a different light. Human-curated search engines have been around since the dawn of time, but none of them have ever gained any hugely significant market share when stacked up against the big players (Google, Yahoo, MSN/Bing). Have you ever heard of Mahalo? They are one of the biggest players in this space and they are on the cusp of the unknown in the search world. Gaining most of their popularity through their confident and highly skilled CEO Jason Calacanis, Mahalo is amazingly stable in a business topography that changes radically. With the recent debates over Facebook, Google gaining access to Twitter's data firehose, and now people looking at Facebook for real-time search results, I've been struck with a question that I just can't seem to shake off.

Why hasn't human-powered search ever taken off?


After thinking about this for a while, I've come to the conclusion that the biggest factor against human-powered search engines is that they are all missing one key thing: Humans. If you build a search engine that is entirely dependent on people, you need one key thing to make it work: People! This is what is so innately brilliant about social networks like Facebook and Twitter is that they've gained an enormous amount of active users. Plenty of people posting statuses, recommendations, and location data, all because they want to. Search is just a natural evolution for these services. With a product like Twitter, rolling out search is easy, the service is public-by-default, and people know this. They won't mind being rolled into a search index. Facebook is a more complicated venture. Only the people who want to share with the world should be rolled into the search index. But what about link stats, trends, and general user analytics? Should users be rolled into this non-descriptive, very general, non-identifying trend-graph? That is the question that is currently posing Facebook, and with the recent outcry over their privacy settings (and priorities), they are closely watching what they do with their user data (as they should).  This isn't to say, however, that completely public-by-choice users shouldn't be used to build a people-powered search engine. They should! As a matter of fact, it just might be 'cool' enough to power a search engine that it would force people to start opening holes in their Facebook privacy for just this reason. If there is one thing that is for certain: People want to feel needed, the want to feel like part of a larger movement or group, and a Facebook-Powered search engine would do just that.

Google has noticed that real-time search is the next big thing with their release of Caffeine. Because of this new technology, Google has stated that their speeds have increased by 50% on bringing fresh results to a search query. Google knows that real-time results matter for content (especially news content) and is working to bring the freshest parts of the web to you faster. If that isn't fast enough, Google is also pulling the very latest data from Twitter in real time! When you search for 'Oil Spill', you see "Latest results for Oil Spill" and a scrolling Twitter search starts running on your results page right under that. Google and Microsoft have both admitted that human-powered search results, while they may never replace algorithm-based results, play an important role in what people are looking for and how results are curated.

Human-powered results are incredibly important with breaking news items, restaurant reviews, personal recommendations, and things that aren't conductive to "Just Googling It". Things that are happening right now, or situation-dependent searches are much better answered with a human-component involved. Take the question, "What is a good present to buy a 13-year-old for his birthday?", the best answers are taken from Wiki-Answers, Yahoo Answers, and Yelp. All human-powered websites, built around curating and processing varying opinions, reviews, and suggestions. The big search players have figured this out: Human augmented search is here to stay. I believe that with the boom in user numbers from both Facebook and Twitter, there hasn't been a better time find users that could power an exclusively human-powered search engine, and only time will tell if the world is ready for one to thrive.

SEO: A Fake Science?

Disclaimer: 99% of this post was taken from a series of back-and-forth Facebook comments. The debate was extremely thought-provoking and raises some interesting questions from both sides of the fence. In the interest of the other individual, neither quotes, nor names will be posted regarding the discussion, rather, the general feel and main points of the conversation will be posted. There isn't a clear-cut victor at all, the point of this post is to get us thinking about the internet and how it is built, structured, searched, and consumed. To be honest, I thought about skipping this article entirely, as these are extremely controversial talking points among web-folk. Think about your own websites as you read on.

Recently I was involved in a Facebook debate about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and I align with Leo Laporte in his thinking about SEO. In case you don't know what this is, I'll explain it to you: Search Engine Optimization - These con-men promise you a number one spot on Google searches and the only thing they do is change page titles. There isn't any way to game Google, but these guys con people out of hundreds of dollars at a time with a snake-oil solution.

My position is that SEO is a fake science. Sure, there are a few things to make your site more search-friendly: Change your page titles to reflect your content, put important things near the top, register your domain for more than a year, and build a site map. Guess what? These are all things Google itself suggests when you look up page rank information or use Google's Webmaster Tools. There is no magical incantation to game Google. Not now, not ever. The only way to get top results is to create rich content on a consistent basis. How do you expect to game a constantly changing algorithm? The search algorithm goes through multiple changes every month at the very least. If it were that easy to game the results, you'd only find spam in search results. SEO is utter trash. The only way to rise in search results is to create rich content, bring users to your site, and create this rich content on a consistent basis. This is also known as, the elusive and rare, "Having a decent website you actually put work into." Crazy idea, I know...
From some research on Google Patents, the best way to jump ahead in Google search results is to grow your site organically, there aren't any magical keyword or link incantations or special header HTML one can call on to give your site that search boost to propel it to the top, it just won't happen.
The funny thing is, SEO's make tons of money every day by scamming people out of their hard-earned cash by promising them a number one spot in search results. At one point in time, there were plenty of people making huge amounts of money from astrology, fortune telling, and alchemy. SEO is the exact same 'science'. These internet 'magicians' promise clients huge traffic boosts out of arcane, secretive methods, that are far, far too complicated for the average person to learn. I'm sure we've all heard these stories before.
There are ways to help content become searchable, but a company buying out keywords from linkfarms does nothing to get the top spots from Google. Buying advertising is another thing entirely. Sure, spend thousands on AdWords, it WILL drive traffic, but those aren't search results, those are sponsored positions.
Just like those (at one point) 'sciences' of centuries past, plenty of people put in plenty of time and made plenty of money, bit in the end, was anything really accomplished? No.
Don't get caught up in this same trap.

Even with my beliefs, the fact remails: There are TONS of people out there that build entire careers out of becoming SEO ninjas. To them, its a real job, doing market research, finding keywords, categorizing and saving backlinks, and using all of these at the proper time to avoid being categorized as spam. They own tons of domains and use various page layout techniques and keyword frequencies to get their job done.

But does it actually work? My money says, 'No'. But it does raise some interesting questions about search engines, web design, spam, and risk management. As web designers and construction-workers of the internet, we should ask ourselves these questions:

• What works better? Raising a site organically, or building a site using a highly-organized series of backlinks?
• Does repeating keywords drive traffic?
• Will the new Google Caffeine make old, keyword-heavy content obsolete?
• Do you see keyword-heavy or link-heavy pages as spam?
• Can Google (or any other search entity) be gamed for a significant profit?
• Is it worth the risk? If a site is flagged as spam on Google, you can guarantee the website is losing out on much more than it could ever gain.

Go ahead and post your answers in the comments, and if you want, ask your own questions as well! Questions like this are important to the foundation of the internet and how we think about search and quality content. One thing is for certain: These aren't easy questions to answer, and I don't believe any one person is qualified to answer them, but its the thought that counts.

Google Moves Away from Windows

So, word has been getting around that Google is officially dropping support for Microsoft Windows internally. Computers running Microsoft Windows are going to be phased out for Linux and OSX machines. Honestly... Who didn't see this coming?
Google has stated many times that the default operating system for Googlers is a heavily modified Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu Linux, affectionately named "Goobuntu". While this modified distribution has never been released outside of Google, it is in wide use and support there, and hardly a secret. That said, Windows machines aren't being done away with entirely, Google has stated that employees that really need to use Windows can acquire special permissions to use the operating system. Lets take this from a fresh angle: If all you really know how to use is Windows, you probably shouldn't be working at Google.
Lets think logically about what Google really needs Windows machines for: Windows development. Sure, they have Picasa, Desktop Search, Earth, and a few other cross-platform apps that they need to build and test on versions of Windows, but these things can easily be accomplished inside a virtual environment. The vast majority of Google's focus right now is split between Chrome OS (Linux), Android (Linux), and the web, and if recent trends have shown us anything, its that Google is interested in moving away from desktop applications altogether. Google has proven that they can take big technologies and move them to the web, and that's exactly what they are focused on. Microsoft's mission used to be "A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software.", and Google has taken a much more open stance in theirs, what their mission should be is: "A browser on every device, with every person, using Google products."
If Google were a software company first-and-foremost, this would be a huge deal, but they just aren't. Google is focused on providing platforms and services for other people to utilize and build on. Android development tools exist for every platform, and, from a personal point of view, development on Linux platforms tend to be much nicer than Windows or OSX. By keeping Apple machines around, Google is showing that they will still be developing applications for the iPad and iPhone. This is extremely important. Google doesn't want to limit who can use their products, so having a presence on their biggest competitor's device is a wonderful strategy. Google isn't interested in limiting themselves, and being browser-based is the cornerstone of their ideals.
It does seem like Google is setting a precedent for other companies as well. Showing other technology businesses that they can be free from licensing and closed, bug-ridden software. If one of the biggest technology companies in the world can do without Microsoft Windows, anyone can. This move to make their unreliance on Windows official and public seems like a power play to the rest of the industry, setting an example and forging the first path away from Windows. I'm all for more businesses relying on Linux, it will do huge amounts of good for the open source ecosystem and mentality.
Like I said before, I'm really floored that people are surprised over this, everyone should have seen this coming. Only time will tell if other companies are willing to follow Google's example and give up their Windows addiction.

Original Engadget post

We're Watching You, Facebook.

As you all know, a while ago I deleted my Facebook account, and it was due in part to a few things. First off, the constantly changing and ever-confusing privacy settings. Second, my postings being censored on Facebook. Third, and frankly, the biggest reason: I didn't want to encourage my friends to use a system that would put their data and privacy at risk. Well... Reason number one (and therefore number three) have been fixed. The jury is still out on reason number two, but I feel that with my continued reliance on free and open services, and the fact that I will be using Facebook for links to the outside, free, open web, that the censorship will be minimal if at all.Facebook is in a very precarious position right now, the entire tech industry and all of the major media outlets are watching them and what they do. And they know it. Zuckerberg and the Facebook executive members have come out of the woodwork to explain that they've "Missed the mark." Amazingly enough, another company that shares some of what Facebook is currently going through is Toyota. With the Prius going through numerous product recalls, the most media-laden being a braking problem due to a software bug, Toyota is feeling the consumer-distrust-pinch just as much as Facebook is right now. Although.. this doesn't have to work in the disinterest of consumers/users.
A few people have told me something along the lines of, "If I'm going to buy a car anytime in the next year, it will be a Prius.", and while this may sound absolutely insane, it makes logical sense. Toyota is being watched. By everyone. Each and every consumer, safety agencies, government regulators, factory workers. Everyone that so much as glances at a Prius are doing their part to inspect, double and triple-check the design and safety of the vehicle because of the pressure. You, as a consumer, can be guaranteed, that the Prius is going to be the safest, most inspected, most tested car of this year. Toyota can't screw it up again, it would be a death-knell for the model as well as the global image of the entire company. Toyota is walking on eggshells for a good reason and the biggest winners are the consumers.
Same story with Facebook. They've fucked up; and this time, they've fucked up bad enough to anger their entire userbase, cause a media outcry, and drive users to create worldwide movement to quit the service entirely. If any online service is positioned to lose it all over one more misstep, its Facebook. One more privacy violation, information-leaking bug, or advertising leak, and people will jump ship, and for good this time. This month, Facebook got a wake-up call from its more prominent, and more vocal userbase, and if they want to stand any chance at all at winning these users back (and keeping them), they need to be very, very, very, careful about how they go about changing policies, or introducing new features.
This is why I've decided to come back to Facebook. They really messed up, they got the attention of the entire tech world, and even a good portion of the 'normal' world's media. They can't afford to make another mistake. If Facebook even so much as breathes the wrong way, everyone and their mother will be grabbing the torches and pitchforks to put down this monster once and for all. Facebook is incredibly convenient, but at what cost? For now, I feel a bit safer knowing that the entire tech industry will be holding this service accountable for how they treat their users. Again, they haven't fixed everything, at all. There is still a huge issue with exporting data from the service. Baby steps. They've done a good thing this week, I for one hope this isn't a one-time scenario, I really want Facebook to start being a more open platform. There are some things that I will not change about my decision to untie myself from the platform, however: I will continue to use Buzz, Twitter, PicasaWeb, and other open sites for my content over Facebook. My Facebook page will serve a dual purpose: Aggregation and social connectivity. When I publish content or post images, it won't be a Facebook post or uploaded to a Facebook photo album; Facebook will be getting a link to these other places on the web. While this might be slightly annoying for my Facebook followers, I can't take the chance of any of my content getting locked into Facebook permanently. I won't do it. Congratulations, Zuckerberg, you've won back this user, but remember, as soon as you fuck up again, I'm out and I'll take people with me. We're watching you, Facebook, and you can't afford to let us down again.
Either way, none of this will matter once Diaspora comes out in September, but that's another post for another day.

The Dangers of Relying on "Vendorware"

In my experience, most businesses have a major reliance on Vendor Software. In case you don't know what vendor software is, let me take a quick minute to explain it (If you know already, skip the to the next paragraph). Vendor software is a software package that large businesses/organizations either lease out (on contract) or buy from a software vendor. These software packages can come with bundled software support, so if a problem were to arise, the business could call the software developers and obtain support and backup on a particular problem. This support isn't free, most of the time, and on occasion, not very helpful. The businesses that choose to implement 'vendorware' are usually lacking in staffing, technical ability, or both. Vendor software can give confidence to an otherwise technically-inexperienced business. That is the selling point, at least.
But this isn't to say vendorware is without its flaws. By the very nature of purchased, leased, or contractually-bound software, there are many many pitfalls a business can (and should expect) to encounter.

The Magic of Android

One year ago, no one would have argued that Apple was going to own and dominate the consumer smartphone market while RIM was going to continue to dominate the business world. But that was one year ago... Recent NPD numbers show that Android has pulled ahead of the iPhone in the US, but what does this mean for consumers? If you've used both Apple and Android handsets in the past year, I'm sure you've noticed one glaring flaw for Android: The App Stores don't even begin to compare. The iPhone's App Store has been around longer, has more mature (speaking of software code, here...) applications, and a greater variety of both paid and free programs. While the Android marketplace is still playing catchup, Apple is still king of the apps on this front.
Thankfully, all this is about to change. With the recent NPD numbers and the booming success of Verizon's Droid series, consumers can expect the Android marketplace to start booming, and soon. Why? Android is where the numbers are. RIM is on the decline, and Apple is slowing down. If you're a developer, where do you want to sell? On Blackberry? You app is as good as dead. Want to release to Apple? Sure, you've got quite the install-base, but... Why not Android? The install base is obviously good enough to get started, but you have one killer feature that the iPhone just doesn't have right now: An upward trend. Not only will your app be available to a respectable install base, but your potential customer base will continue to grow. Another thing Android has over the iPhone OS is that: As a developer, you are not limited to a single carrier. Develop an iPhone application that pisses off AT&T? Prepare to get banned. With Android, you are never limited to a single carrier. Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon all have Android offerings (Along with Google's own), and while, admittedly, some are better than others out there, as a developer, you should never fear that you'll be shot down because a single carrier disagrees with what you are doing on their network.
Google is constantly making their Android OS better and better with each release (Apple as well, OS4 looks to be a much-needed shot in the arm for the aging OS3), so there isn't any reason why you shouldn't be developing for a mobile platform. If I had to pick one, I'd pick Android for the pure and simple fact that Google is beating Apple at their own game. Its a great time to be a Googler, and I'm sure there are even greater times ahead.

Why Defaults Matter - Another Look at the Facebook Debate

Not all of us are computer geeks... Actually... the vast majority of us are anything but. Yes, there are privacy settings, and in the case that you have a PhD in Facebooking, you can edit these settings and know exactly how they will function. In a perfect world, we could set, process, and understand each and every one of these privacy settings and know exactly how they will work, regardless of our friends' privacy settings, the applications they use, or the websites we visit that have included Facebook technology.
Facebook's privacy settings have been worsening ever since the company came into being in 2004, and it doesn't look like Facebook's stance will change anytime in the near future. I've deleted my account for a few reasons, but the biggest reason is the same as Leo Laporte's. If I continue to stay on Facebook, even as just a content publisher and aggregator, I'm pushing people to continue to use that service and put their privacy and data at risk. Just my presence on the service is like saying, "No, its ok if you're on Facebook, just use it in this way.", but we all know that won't fix anything. Just by participating, I'm giving more power to the Facebook machine. This is why I've decided to end my Facebook account and move to more open services. Jason Calacanis made many excellent points in his blog post/email and it appears that he will also follow suit. As always, you can follow me here or on Twitter to stay up with the latest.

Dear Facebook, Its over.

I don't think I can do this anymore, and this time, its not me, its you. When our relationship started, it was all comments, groups, and wall posts. It was wonderful, we were madly in love. You didn't need (or support) sparkling gifs, you had no auto-playing music, users couldn't even change the color scheme on the page. You knew what our relationship needed better than I did. And you know what? It worked.
Sadly... you've changed, and not for the best. Over the past few years, I've overlooked your very closed and very buggy chat, your outright theft of "The Like Button" from FriendFeed, your ever-opening 'privacy' settings, your support of apps that steal all of your personal information, and your complete disregard for my private information. I consider myself a public figure on the internet, and you are still creeping me out. I thought we had something special.
Your recent push to share me with your new friends (Pandora, Yelp, Docs) has me confused, and it is just about impossible to get away from them. At first you wanted me all to yourself, it was a fight to get you to play nice with any other websites, but now... Especially with giving everyone access to your 'Like' button, you seem to be interested in more than just me. These things have all led up to my thoughts right now, but they haven't been enough to push me over the edge. Even my friends tell me that I should leave you, but I felt that we still had something to hold onto... Until this morning.

Last night, I was incredibly frustrated with the way you've been treating me, and I needed to vent to my friends. I posted a link to Jeff Jarvis' article on your recent behavior, and my friend even commented on it, asking if there were any others I could run to. You must have seen this and not appreciated the candid honesty because you deleted it. Right off of my wall. Removing the comments, removing the post. I thought it was my Nexus One's Facebook App being buggy (Because that happens sometimes) and not displaying the post. But when I checked with you the next morning, it was true. You had removed the link that I had posted on my own wall. I feel that this could be the final straw. We really had a good time while it lasted, but I'm not entirely sure I want to continue this relationship anymore. I think I've found someone else. Someone that will respect my privacy and leave my posts intact. I'm going away for a little while to cool down and think about things, but I don't think this will work anymore.

The Tipping Point:

Last night, I posted a link to Jeff Jarvis' article entitled: Here's The Privacy Line That Facebook Just Crossed... and got a comment on it pretty soon after it was up. It was listed in my Facebook notifications, even! I figured I would respond in the morning and went to bed.

To my surprise this morning, I find that the links didn't work. The link in the 'Notifications' page and in the email I received (I have email notifications for just about everything enabled) in the Facebook app led to this error message [Content Not Found: The page you requested cannot be displayed right now. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may be broken or expired, or you may not have permission to view this page.]
Strange... Very strange. I went to my computer to check, hoping that my phone was being buggy...

Yep... there is the email... *clicks link*

[This post is not available anymore]
Facebook deleted my post. They removed the link I posted (And naturally, all of the links associated with the post) because it put them in a bad light. I did also link to the same article using a bit.ly link (Fetched from Twitter), and that was not removed. Its apparent that I'm not an important enough target for profile manipulation, and I seriously doubt that Zuckerberg is sitting in his office, picking off links I post about his baby. The most likely scenario is that Jeff's article was flagged on Facebook for mass deletion sometime yesterday. Since this incident, I have re-posted the link to the article and asked others to do the same (many have now shared the link as well). So far, the link survives. This is the final straw. I am seriously considering deleting my Facebook account. With the recent anti-privacy stunts, bugs, and now censoring of anti-Facebook content, this is far from the "Safe Haven" picture that Zuckerberg paints atop his high tower. Starting today, I will be moving over my data/comments/time to other services (Twitter, Buzz, Flickr, Delicious, Google Profile) and weaning myself off of Facebook in the likely event that I will be deleting my account.

If you would like, go ahead and join me on any one of these services, my username is samurailink3 on everything. Facebook was a huge convenience, but this was the final straw, I'm moving on.
Looking to delete your account? Click here.

Didn't learn your lesson the first time, eh?

I wouldn't consider myself an Apple fanboy in any way, but one thing is for sure, they know how to make things simple for their customers. One thing that's always irked me about Microsoft's Windows line... Why all the different versions? Why do I (the consumer) need to choose between Windows 7 Starter, Basic, Home Basic, Pro Basic, Pro, Home Extended, Premium Pro Home, Home, Premium, and Premium Ultimate Home Pro Edition with Sprinkles?

Thanks to Gizmodo for the image

Ok... ok.. so I'm being a little ridiculous here... But even still.. I think I could work with two versions, three is pushing it.. but five?? Why do we need to choose from five different versions of the same product? When you buy Leopard 10.5 for the mac, you buy Leopard 10.5. There isn't a pro, basic, starter, or business edition. Its just Leopard. All of these different versions cause a bit of a headache with Windows XP, and somewhat of a migraine with Vista. What do you want to do with your computer? Take a look at this handy table full of terms consumers don't understand and some terms that only exist in our marketing textbooks!! No, Microsoft! This shit has to stop. People want to use their computers. People don't want to choose between 2, or 3, or 4, or hell.. 5 different versions of the exact same codebase. Its fucking stupid.

I've got an idea.. a brilliant idea. No tech company has ever, Ever done this before. Make a solid product (You've got me there, 7 is a fucking rock), make it shiny (7's got this one down too), then make it stupid easy to buy. How do you go about doing this? Put one version out, put it on every shelf. Don't even put out Upgrade packs and Full install packs. Throw it on one disk, put it on shelves, in schools, in the hands of celebrities (You can skip Seinfeld safely.. don't worry), and make people want it. You'll be the talk of the town! You'll be unique! You'll be pretty and everyone will love you! Oh wait... Apple did that already.

This post is in reply to:

http://i.gizmodo.com/5139306/evidence-of-five-windows-7-retail-versions-surprises-no-one