The Actionscript and Flash parts were the main draw for me, but I actually got a kick out of the software architecture and software engineering-ish slides as well. He ended up presenting a nice overview of some of the core of software engineering and development in a succinct and easy to understand way. I would certainly recommend this talk to the folks in the community without formal training, especially as a gateway to finding areas to learn more. I think as more and more experienced developers with formal software training move into RIA development with Actionscript, you’ll start to see the general level of software quality in the community rise (especially if the new-to-Actionscript developers embrace the sharing ethos of the greater community).

I didn’t agree with all of his edicts – especially about commenting, documentation and some of his personal coding guidelines, but those were pretty minor quibbles with a really great talk.

I also have to give him big props for his Flash-movie-as-slide-deck. A lot of times, I’ve seen developers create their own slide software as an intellectual exercise which all-too-often results in presentations that look a lot worse than powerpoint templates. His deck worked well, looked good, and was cool without being too distracting.

At the beginning of the presentation there is a quote from Dune that I hadn’t seen before. I grabbed a longer version of it here from one of his other posts.

‘Above all else, the [architect] must be a generalist, not a specialist. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The [architect] on the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening in his [application]. He must remain capable of saying “There’s no real mystery about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove wrong later, but we’ll correct that when we come to it.” The [architect]-generalist must understand that anything which we can identify as our [application] is merely part of a larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that the [architect]-generalist must look. There can be no permanent catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking yourself: “Now what is this thing doing?”‘
- From Children of Dune by Frank Herbert (1976)

This particular version isn’t battle tested (yet), but it does work.

On a separate note, I like snipt, but I wish they had better mechanisms to allow you to own your snippets without handing over login info to other sites.

Chez Shea dining room.

For years we’ve stood waiting at Matt’s In The Market and pondering what was behind the door at Chez Shea. We knew that it was supposed to be nice, but we never got around to eating there until recently. We were pleasantly surprised at the size (it is quite small and cozy), the environment (similar to Matt’s old vibe when it was smaller, but more romantic) and the staff (friendly, but not to the point of being annoying). I was very happy that I didn’t feel out of place wearing a suit, the other diners (for the most part) were dressed for special occasion meals as opposed to the shorts and t-shirts you sadly see too often in high-end restaurants around here.

The food was good with some touches of excellence, but not enough to be a draw on its own at this price range. If you are into “Big Flavors”, you can skip Chez Shea. The food was fairly subtle but solid; tasty, but not overpowering. Two elements of what I ate remained with me (admittedly these were the biggest flavors in my meal): I had a Hamachi Crudo which came with some sliced Jalapeno that added an interesting kick to an otherwise bland dish; and a Muscovy duck that was prepared two ways, one of which was a Confit Crepinette that was simply amazing.

The menu is fairly standard high-end northwest cuisine: seasonal, fresh ingredients, featuring seafood and northwest game. The menu itself was a little small, but it was ample enough that we were able to find good choices for four courses each. As with many higher end restaurants, the portions are smaller, but we didn’t leave feeling hungry. If we’d skipped a course, we might have left seeking some extra food though. The wine list was good as well, but not extensive.

Overall, we liked Chez Shea, but probably more for the atmosphere than the food. The food was good enough that we’d definitely consider it again for a special romantic dinner, but not so good that we’re already planning our next visit. I would definitely like to come back and try the Bistro some other night. It is even smaller than the restaurant and may be a great “date night” destination.

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1994 was a great time to start a label in many ways. Indie labels were pretty well established as legitimate members of the music industry and there was a good network of college radio stations and magazines that catered to indie label fans. Production costs of vinyl (pretty much dead and not yet revived by DJ and hipster culture) and CDs had come down into the range of reasonable for a small operation. There were still a lot of distribution outlets as well. Labels like K, Sub Pop and others had shown that you could actually survive putting out good music that wasn’t overtly commercial. A ton of great labels started in this time.

1994 was also a crappy time historically to start an indie label. There was an indie explosion for all the reasons stated above. A ton of labels jumped onto the scene and would flame out after one or two releases, but they would be competing for all the same eyes that your labels was. The cost was reasonable, but it was still pretty high if you were doing multiple releases. The cost of a single CD release could easily cost five or six thousand dollars or more depending on the contract with the band and what the label paid for up front. At that cost, you needed to sell a thousand or two discs just to break even. We didn’t know it at the time (although there were certainly inklings), but the whole model of music distribution was about to be blown away by the internet and bad business designs. The larger labels were getting into a funk that was what was allowing the indies to thrive, but at the same time it was affecting the whole business, especially distribution.

In the mid-to-late 90s, there was a wave of distributors failing and dropping labels. Many distros had been doing their own semi-pyramidal schemes. Distros were always waiting to be paid by the stores, but stores were always waiting to pay until they had to (records stores have always been low margin businesses). If there was a release that was doing well, the distro would be selling it as fast as it could. The label would demand payment for “sold” inventory immediately before sending more (the one time in the relationship when the label had any power). The distro wouldn’t have been paid yet by the stores, so it would “borrow” money from less-successful labels accounts to pay the label with a success. The distro would be essentially going into a situation where it was paying money it owed to record label A to record label B while waiting for the record stores to pay it back for the already sold copies of label A’s release. This was a pretty fragile situation. All it took was a big chain of record stores to go under, or the distro to get too extended, and the whole thing would fall apart. When the distros went under, you were lucky to get your unsold inventory back. Chances of even getting pennies on the dollar for your sold inventory were pretty slim. Lots of small distros went under then, but some pretty big ones went down too and they took out a lot of labels as they fell.

The internet was starting to happen as far as digital sales went, but there wasn’t an established mechanism or even file format. There were a ton of start-ups trying to become something like iTunes. Most of them were funded about as well as the labels that they sought to work with. I lost a ton of time and money dealing with these various start-ups promising to become the answer to digital distribution for music on the internet. A lot of them wanted all the digital rights to our music, others wanted per-song and up-front fees to serve our music, others were selling our music or CDs but weren’t ever paying us for them. It was a complete and utter mess.

The hardest part though was that as a label, you had to deal with the gatekeepers. In those days, aside from touring constantly, a band had to build up their fan base via the press and radio. While there was an explosion of music magazines in the 90s (the cost of their production had also come way down), it was a serious amount of effort to track down all the places to get your music heard and then get those places to actually hear it. For years, I made it a habit to walk into any music or magazine store and buy any magazine I saw that I thought would possibly review Unit Circle’s releases. Any time I traveled, I would return home with stacks of free weeklies, zines, import music magazines or just new magazines I hadn’t seen before. I would put the stack on my desk, read through them and then enter their info (and any other info I saw in their pages) into my database. To find radio, it was a lot easier. CMJ tracked all college radio, a subscription to their trade edition was pricey, but it let you know what every college station in the country was playing. Over the years, I built up a database of a few hundred magazines and a few hundred radio stations that would possibly be interested in my releases. The care and feeding of this radio and press database easily took 25% of my time running the label.

When I was preparing for a new release, I would spend weeks putting together promo kits for all the various venues. Then I would send out all the press copies (as early as I could) and then the radio copies (closer to the release). Then I would wait a little bit and try to follow up with every outlet. There was no mechanism to go directly to fans except direct mail which was very expensive and time consuming and only got to the people who had already contacted you. Radio stations and magazines got hundreds of releases each week (I know, I worked at both in the 90s). Getting them to even open your packages was incredibly difficult. For 300 press copies sent out, you’d be lucky to get 75 of them to even send back the postage-paid reply card to say that they received it. You’d maybe get a dozen reviews if the band had any sort of recognition. For 300 radio copies, you might actually get enough air play to make the charts on a few stations. Back then, though, this was all done on paper. To find out if you were charting on any radio stations each week, you had to actually scan the top 30 lists for every college station in the country that reported that week. Every week. Nothing makes you want to rip out your eyes than scanning a few thousand lines of text to check for a couple band names every week. Sending out promotional copies and tracking my recent releases was easily 50% of my efforts running the label.

The one thing that would get you reviews was buying ads in the magazines, but of course that also added to the cost of each release and put the label (and artist) further into the hole. Plus, for all the ads that I ran in all the magazines over the years, I can pretty much say that I saw almost no sales from it directly. I was mostly acting as a benefactor to the magazines to get some good press.

The reviews and radio play you got was your currency though. It was what got you more reviews and radio play. Reviews and radio play helped you convince distributors to carry your releases, actively sell them and get them into stores. The problem was that unless you had a real hit record, getting good press or radio play didn’t necessarily translate into sales, and then you were still dependent on the store to pay the distributor, and the distributor to pay you.

It was multi-directional chain of sucking. In one direction many bands were trying to get the attention of fewer labels who were trying to get the attention of fewer radio stations and magazines to get the attention of distribution sales folks to get the attention of record store buyers all of whom were getting constantly barraged by folks seeking their attention. In the other direction, record stores were avoiding paying distributors who avoided paying labels (some of whom) avoided paying their artists.

About 20% of my time was spent working with the distros. Making sure they were stocked and trying to sell Unit Circle releases, bugging stores to request Unit Circle releases from the distro, packing up CDs to mail to the distros, and bugging the distros to pay me the money that they owed me.

The remaining 5% of my time was the “fun” stuff: listening to demo tapes (which I almost never did because I didn’t have time (sorry bands who sent me tapes)), working with bands, and working on new releases. 95% of what I did was mundane office work and was no different than any other manufacturing business. It was The Office, except that I was everyone from the regional manager, to the receptionist, to sales, to accounting.

Where was the music fan in all of this? No where. Really, they were divorced from the music on so many levels. They bought the record (hopefully) from the stores, they maybe read the reviews (I doubt many folks ever read reviews of bands they never heard of), they possibly heard the music on the radio. From the label perspective though, the music fans were out there somewhere. If you were lucky, you might get a nice note in a mail order envelope, but mostly not.

There was only one way for the musicians to connect with the people who bought their music and that was to tour constantly. It was the only true way to actually build a following then (and it is still the best way now, I’d say). It took years of hard work playing the same cities over and over, slowly building a fan base, earning no money, sleeping on people’s floors. That was what really sold the records and made the band successful because that was the true connection between the people that made the music and the people that listened to it.

Now, we are in a new world.

There still are the places you want to be covered in, but they aren’t the gatekeepers. Musicians can interact directly with their fans, build their fan bases, get their music to new people, and even sell their music all without middlemen. It is still a lot of work, but it is very different work because it is about the direct interaction rather than trying to get the attention of the gatekeepers. The cost of production continues to decline and distribution continues to get easier. Word of mouth spreads faster as well. All of this has changed the equation to put the power into the hands of the actual creators as opposed to the middle men and distributors.

Of course, the downside today is that lowered costs of production and easier access to potential fans means that the competition for attention is fiercer than it has ever been. It is just as easy for an artist to produce quality work and go completely unnoticed today as it was 10 years ago. Instead of not being able to get a label to release their work, they can’t get anyone to come to their myspace page. The new technology lowers the bar and democratizes the process, but it still doesn’t make sure that the cream will rise to the top. A current artist may now spend 75% of their time tweeting, friending people on social networks and trying to get people to hear their music and only 25% of their time actually making music.

At least now though, everyone has a shot.

[Update 7-12-09]
Trent Reznor posted some pretty sage advice about making your way as a new music artist in the current world in the NIN forums.

Watch out for these signs (Apple support didn’t even consider that I had been hacked when I contacted them):
The hackers changed my account ID and my e-mail address to something similar to what they had been before but different. This allowed them to charge two $50 iTunes gift certificates to my card without me being notified (because they had changed the e-mail address on the account).

When I tried to log into my account on iTunes, I got weird errors about my account id or password being incorrect. When I tried to recover my password on Apple.com, I got an error saying that my account ID was not in the system. When I tried to get my account ID, they couldn’t find it (since the hackers changed my e-mail address). Of course, I could not log into the support site to try to report the issue since it requires my Apple ID. Luckily I found the iTunes store form that let me contact support via the web without logging in and they were able to tell me that I had changed my account ID and e-mail address. I was able to log into the new ID that the hackers made with my old password, which was really lucky since Apple support was clueless about what had happened.

Why didn’t Apple notify my previous e-mail address when the change was made? That is a basic security process that many other sites use. There is a pretty clear pattern of fraud here as well, account information is changed and then large purchases are immediately made. Shouldn’t Apple be looking for this kind of thing?

I have contacted support to find out if they have a process for dealing with fraud, but I can’t help but feel that Apple’s security is somewhat to blame here. I’ll let you know what Apple suggests I do.

I also posted the above on the Apple support site here. Please spread the word so that others aren’t ripped off.

On a side note, I can’t help but wonder how my account got hacked. I’m pretty wary of phishing scams, and that kind of thing. I’m always extremely careful with this kind of stuff. The only thing that occurs to me is that the same day my iTunes account got hacked, I created an account on artaculous.com. I used the same e-mail address (of course) and in this case I was lazy and used the same password as my iTunes account. I generally try to avoid using the same password twice, but it does get hard to remember them all without reusing them sometimes. I have since gone and changed every password on every site that I have accounts on, just in case. I’m not saying that artaculous.com is some phishing scam, but the coincidence is rather odd…

I’ll update this post as I get more info from Apple. Please add a comment if you have heard about this scam or have more information or suggestions.

[Update: 6/29/09, 11:26pm]
Of course, I changed all my passwords on every site I could find an account on today. My e-mail is full of account update notices from a zillion large and tiny companies… Except Apple. I changed my Apple ID (Twice!), my password (Twice!), my security question, my mailing address. Exactly zero messages from Apple letting me know in case it wasn’t me. This really is pretty weak security on Apple’s part.

[Update: 6/30/09 9:09am]
One of the iTunes gifts certificates had been sent to a gmail address. I tried to find a way on the gmail site to let them know that an account was being used or involved in a crime, but couldn’t find a way to do it. Seems weird because I don’t think you need the certificates mailed to you to use them, just the code. The second certificate had not been mailed or had the e-mail addy cleared. Can’t Apple track the IP address of whomever uses the gift certificates to track back to the people who hacked my account? Will they bother? Still waiting to hear back from Apple on letting them know that my account was hacked. Would call their number or try to see a genius, but I’m in jury duty right now.

[Update: 6/30/09 2:04pm]
Apple has responded (excerpt):
I understand you are concerned about purchases that were made with your iTunes Store account without your permission or knowledge.

I know it can be discouraging when fraudulent charges are made on any type account whether it’s your bank or iTunes.

I urge you to contact your financial institution as soon as possible to inquire about canceling the card or account and removing the unauthorized transactions. You should also ask them to launch an investigation into the security of your account. Your bank or credit card company’s fraud department should then contact the iTunes
Store to resolve this issue. The iTunes Store cannot reverse the charges.

Basically, they are pushing this back onto me to deal with my credit card company on. Not overjoyed with this, but fair enough, most people thought that was what they would do. I am a bit concerned that they believe that my credit card could also have been compromised because of this. I thought that my credit card info wasn’t exposed. If credit card info is exposed through iTunes and their security is so lax, I’m going to be wary of giving them any info in the future. I’m also concerned that they aren’t saying that they will do anything to pursue the person who did this. I would like to feel that Apple actually cares about this instead of just blowing it off.

[Update 6/30/09 10:36pm]
Found these links with more info about iTunes account hacks:

• Article from The Register on Apple accounts being hacked
• Article from dropsafe – great suggestions in the comments
• Really important article from dropsafe, see the part at the end – Even changing your Apple ID doesn’t protect you because Apple has made it easy to get that info again, so once you are hacked it is easy to hack you again unless you change everything (and it still isn’t really very secure).
• Apple’s security is so bad, there was a class action lawsuit about it

[Update 7/2/2009 9:43am]
Apple (correctly) disabled my iTunes account when I reported that it was hacked. They didn’t actually tell me this though, so I didn’t find out until I tried to use it to update my iPhone apps. What did they need to re-enable it? My billing address. Where was my billing address info stored? In my iTunes account. Since that was pretty unlikely to change after a hack, it seems a pretty weak way to verify my identity. I pointed that out in my return mail, but so far iTunes support has ignored all my questions and comments in my messages to them. I guess that is policy, but also a bit lame. I also may have figured out why the hackers didn’t change my iTunes password. I did find a message from Apple in my spam folder notifying me that my password had changed (from when I changed it after getting my account back).

There was enough info in my account that I’ve had to cancel my credit card, and I’m going to need to be extra vigilant for identity theft moving forward. Since then, I’ve changed my payment method to none in the iTunes store. I may have to enter credit card info each time, but that now seems like a minor inconvenience. I have also changed all my other info to be completely bogus so that if someone does hack it again, they won’t have any useful info on me. Why does Apple need by birthday (not birth date for age verification, but birthday)? I’m going to do the same with my other accounts and would suggest it to anyone else concerned about this kind of stuff.

When I first learned about the DRM mechanism where the player would “phone home” periodically to make sure that you were still licensed to the content, I immediately realized that this was a really fragile way to license media. I’m not talking about subscription content (like Rhapsody), streaming media (like Hulu/YouTube/Flash Media Server) or rentals (like Amazon/iTunes rental), I’m talking about content that is purchased by the consumer. The issue is that there are 1000 ways that the user can lose access to their content without any ill intent on their part. This isn’t an issue if the licenser of their content is still in business and supporting the licensing mechanism. However, even large companies sunset their DRM technology support, screwing over their customers (see Google Video and Microsoft Plays For Sure for example). Depending on how onerous the original licensing scheme is and how it was implemented, buying a new computer, changing the hardware configuration, upgrading system software, the company dropping support for the DRM, the licensing company’s servers going down or just the user being without the internet can cause a user to lose access to the content that they paid for and legally own.

Maybe the user got some warning and could back up their content to some other format (if allowed by the licensing scheme, it often isn’t); but maybe they didn’t see or understand the warning. Then it is too late. Is it the consumer’s fault? No, it is never the consumer’s fault. They purchased digital content with the expectation of owning it forever, just like when they purchased their media as hard goods.

Onerous DRM has been put in place by media companies desperate to avoid piracy, but as it has been written about in so many other places, DRM makes more pirates than it avoids. It makes it more difficult for the people who want to get their content legally by adding roadblocks between them and their purchases and it doesn’t stop the pirates who avoid the whole thing. I wonder how many Plays For Sure customers went to an illegal site to re-download the content that they had already purchased when they lost access to it. I wonder if any of them felt like they were breaking the law at that point. I doubt it. They had paid for something and had been denied access to it. Maybe they were mad at Microsoft, but they were probably more mad at the record labels, because that was the product they purchased. Microsoft was just the store.

I was thinking about this again today when I went to purchase a song off of iTunes and found that Apple had lost my Apple ID. This was the Apple ID that I had spent years buying content from iTunes with. Sure, Apple has moved to make their music DRM free, but I haven’t completely updated my catalog yet, and there is a lot of video that I have paid money for as well that is still subject to Apple’s DRM. While their mechanism still allows me to play my content on my authorized computers (as far as I can tell so far), it will not permit me to authorize a new computer. If Apple isn’t able to fix this problem, what happens to the content I purchased over time? If I can’t access it anymore through no fault of my own, am I in the wrong legally to download it off a file-sharing site?

DRM models have continued to evolve over the years, but I think that the audio model has shown the way for purchased content. It is high time for media owners to allow the people that pay for a full copy of their content to own that content outright, with nothing that could prevent the consumer from having access to the content that they paid for, including transcoding as media formats change over time. Otherwise, they will alientate their consumers as they find they cannot have what they paid for.

note: I avoided mentioning the new licensing models that have sprung up, where when you “buy” a copy of a song or movie the license agreement says that you don’t really own it, which is becoming more common as a way to avoid legal issues when user’s circumvent DRM to make fair-use copies or so that they cannot sue if they cannot access their content. I avoided mentioning it because:
A) it muddies the discussion.
B) I think it is evil.