Google IO 2012

By the way, the Google IO 2012 registration dates were announced a couple of days ago:
https://developers.google.com/events/io/register

I'm really looking forward to it. Hopefully I'll get the ticket (if I'm lucky enough).

I went to Google IO for two years before in 2010 and 2011.
The last year registration was crazy, thankfully I got my ticket with preregistration invite.

Google did many things right for the registration process this year: there will be no preregistration, everybody will get the change to try to register, they rised the ticket price and they do not allow the tickets transfers (which should hopefully reduce number of tickets being resold on eBay, etc.)

To me the Google IO experience is more than just attending the sessions,  after all you can watch the sessions in the comfort of your home for free. The free hardware is a plus, but it doesn't really matter, I would attend the conference without this as well.

To me Google IO experience is a good boost of creative energy that gets me charged at least for few months after the conference. I could say that it kind of brings the best of software engineer in me (true story, not a cliché).

See you at Google IO!

P.S. keeping my fingers crossed

The Digital Content Problems and Thoughts

Stumbled on the this article today:
http://conversation.which.co.uk/technology/digital-download-legal-rights-after-death-amazon-itunes-apple

"As it stands, the rights of iTunes and Amazon customers look pretty shaky when it comes to passing on downloads. If you buy a music track from a digital store, you’re essentially buying a license to play that track – a license granted to you only, which isn’t transferable upon death."

I guess that's why I still buy paper books and miss the old-style music media (CDs, tapes). The product that you can actually own, exchange and share freely with your friends and family.

The modern media distribution channels like iTunes or Kindle for example, in my humble option, promote somewhat egoistic thinking in many ways. Try to give your music collection or books that you have in one of your electronic DRM protected collections to your friends and family, good luck with that.
As this article points out you actually don't own what you buy, you can't transfer the ownership, such as give the book or the music album to anybody you want (it's not like giving the paper book).

In case of Kindle, Amazon controls you library and can delete any book at any time, as it did previously already. And if you die your relatives could not inherit what you have collected.

In many ways the content ownership and distribution got so much distorted by having so many "middle men" that the both ends of this system the content author and the content consumer are not getting the best deal they could.

Eventually I think, something has to change and one of possible ways the change might happen is with cutting off the "middle men" and by establishing the direct channels between the content authors and the content consumers.

I really hope it would be DRM-free, you own what you buy and you are free to use it however you
want with authors permission.

Vim thoughts

One of the frustrations of getting used to Vim editor, is when you get back to the "real world" (browsers, editors, IDEs, etc.) the navigation with h,j,k,l buttons doesn't work, instead they all require you to use "arrow" buttons. IMHO the "h,j,k,l" navigation is so freaking awesome.


Update (02-14-2012):
Vlad, sent me the link to Vimium http://vimium.github.com/ - the Crome extension. Still, as I type this post I have to use arrow keys to move the cursor.
Also need to figure out how to do the same kind of thing for the terminal app, the mail app, etc. ....well, pretty much for every app that uses scrolling and navigation. I wish there was some global setting on Mac OS X to allow to do just that in one single change.

Random Act of Kindness

I went to the Fresh Fields grocery store today and while at the register I
realized that I forgot my wallet at home. I started to move my stuff back to
the basket explaining the situation to the cashier. She smiled and offered to
pay for everything, saying that I can bring money back later (it wasn't like
$20, the total was around $140).
The fact of receiving such trust from the person who doesn't know me at all was a really awesome
experience.
I found myself thinking, that with all the negative energy pouring out from the news, radio, TV,
magazines, sometimes we forget that there are a lot more nice people around.
I took the cachier's name and the phone number and of course
brought the cash back in an hour.
Trust, after all, is such a fragile thing, so when you get it, you really
don't want to ruin it.
... still thinking about what happened today ...