Eye on Winer

Here’s a big problem with Dave, he thinks that if he had a paw in developing something, he gets to decide what it is, what it isn’t, and how it “should” be used. Here’s the reality: once the genie is out of the bottle, consumers will decide what things are, what things aren’t, and how they’re used. Just as “irregardless” is now officially a word despite the belly-aching of many a grammar nazi, podcasting will become what consumers want it to be. Dave can protest all he wants, but it will be just like blogging: the market will drive it.

Hence the immense silliness of his post, titled (idiotically enough) “If it’s not MP3, is it still podcasting?“:

if you’re not using MP3, you’re probably trying to make podcasting into a replay of previous media.

Now we have video iPods… transporting an AVI via RSS attachment not a ‘podcast’? If not, why not? MP3 is a blown format… it’s inferior to a lot of other formats, and it’s protected by patent (hmm… double-standard, dave?) which drives up the price of using it in a second-hand sort of way. OGG? AAC? Not thusly encumbered.

But here’s the rub: if I go out and write a new proprietary format and a proprietary player to play it which sends back all kinds of metric data to allow the targeting and monetizing of my audio distribution… and the only difference between Dave’s version of “podcasting” and mine is the format and the player, well, guess what? I’m still podcasting… Dave will hyperventilate, stomp his feet, call me (and everyone who uses my new system) names, and flame like crazy… that’s just what he does… but it won’t change the fact:

The podcasting genie is out of the bottle and Dave no longer has an ounce of control over it.

So Dave takes a pot shot at Audible including this wonderfully classy and professional line “2. They’ve decided to change the term podcasting to mean ‘the shitty DRM-based service that Audible provided before podcasting wrecked their business.’”

Mitch Ratcliffe has a good explanation of what’s going on in which he pretty much pins Dave down and makes him look like the self-aggrandizing fool that he is:

If Dave doesn’t want to allow something to thrive outside of his narrowly defined world of what he “invented”—the ultimate personal NIH syndrome—then, sorry, but that’s progress.

Dave, of course, not one to like the firm application of the Real World to his personal snow globe, calls Ratcliffe’s piece “all invective and personal attacks” which is so patently false as to be laughable.

I don’t understand how anyone can support this guy.

Dave Says:

Something really stupid. When people disagree with you, they can’t just disagree, they have to say you’re a bad person, or you’re lying or you’re flaming or whatever.

This from a man who throws around the world “flaming” like it’s an indefinite article. Sometimes I wonder what Dave would say about himself if he could take a third-person perspective on his own actions. I bet he’d have some pretty unkind words.

Dave whines:

The “Long Tail” makes me want to barf. I’m not in anyone’s tail. I’m a head, a heart, if I must choose an organ, kidneys or lungs. Anyone who calls bloggers a tail of anything has his head up his ass.

Could this maybe be because being in the “long tail” means that he’s not as special as he thinks he is?

Readers come through when I’ve been slacking, to wit:

Hi,

I thought I’d give you a heads-up on another ‘brilliant’ post by Dave:

http://archive.scripting.com…

He stated that 80% of the electorate is pro-choice (no link, of course). He also stated that “there’s no doubt that Miers is pro-choice”.

I did a quick search on Dave’s favorite search engine and came up with this link that shows the complete opposite of what he said about the country’s sentiments on the abortion issue:

http://www.zogby.com/…

Anyway, keep up the good fight.

[name redacted]

Thanks for the mail! Keep it coming!

I missed this email from a sender who wishes to remain anonymous, but I thought I’d post it anyway. In reference to this post:

Can you spot the circular logic and rank hypocrisy in this paragraph, from Dave Winer on Saturday?

I’ve been back in the Bay Area for about a month now, I left because this is a company town, and the penalty for not being onboard is exclusion. It still is that way, only more so. I’m hoping I can exist here, outside of the context of this bad blood, enjoy the weather, and be picky about who I spend time with, and only work with people who aren’t scared of a strong idea or two, or in knowing what someone really thinks.

Sooo…. Dave is against “exclusion.” And his solution is “be picky about who I spend time with, and only work with people who [match some criteria].” And… exclude the rest, right?

Isn’t Foo Camp’s “No Bozo Rule” simply just “being picky” and “only working with people who [match some criteria]” ? But Dave was against it then! I thought Winer favored inclusiveness? That must be why he so routinely would ban people from his Discussion Group section of Scripting.com before he finally just had to turn it off.

So confused…

Thanks for the email.

So Dave wants for the buck to stop at the Bush administration.

Then Bush takes responsibility.

Now Dave wants something else.

And here we see the problem with demanding things simply because you’re a partisan and hate someone else… when they actually give you what you want, you’re forced into the intellectually dishonest practice of moving the goalposts.

Not that Winer has any problems with being intellectually dishonest.

Problem is, of course, that Dave says he just wants it “to work”… and this has been the best FEMA response in history. I Wonder if he complained as loudly about the response to Andrew in 1992.

Because this post will not likely last for very long, I’ve reproduced it:

I could only watch two minutes of Meet the Press before the disgust came back. Russert is doing what he always does, tries to twist the soundbite into an admission of hypocrisy. New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin doesn’t have the lawyer’s gift that former prosecutor Rudy Giuliani does. “Is it really racism?” Russert expresses doubt, asking over and over for proof that decisions were made on a racist basis. The answer is in another question. If the dying tax-paying grandmas were white do you think they would have been allowed to die? I don’t care if a Republican actually said out loud that he or she hates blacks, the actions speak for themselves. We live in a sick country with a sick governing process, and that sickness definitely includes the press.

Is it really that unfair to ask for proof of racism?

And why is it that Mayor Nagin is permitted to cry racism? Does he hate black people, too? There are two levels of democrats to be pointing the finger at in line before the Bush administration… why is it so important to skip those two levels and lay this at the feet of the president? Just so he can call Bush a racist?

Well, I guess whatever he needs to do to feel like he’s justified.

Then again, if Dave thinks the country is so sick, I’ll his one-way plane ticket out of the country, so long as he never comes back.

How many damn times must Dave beat the dead horse of “Bush Knew!” (or “The Federal Government Knew!” or anything of the sort)? What good does that do anyone right now?

Would he chastise his neighbors for not checking the battery in their smoke detector while the fire department was still battling their house fire?

Same thing here.

This is not just a disaster for New Orleans or Biloxi or Mobile or even the Gulf Coast. This is a national disaster. It’s everyone’s disaster. In much the same way that the Tsunami brought a lot of people together and 9/11 became a collective affront to the entire nation, this has struck a blow with everyone.

Of course Dave obviously realizes that, to an extent anyway, because he’s claiming ownership, too… but it’s clear that he’s really into placing blame with the Bush administration for anything wrong in the world. Why can’t we, at the very least, let the disaster END before we start pointing fingers?

After all of his bluster about how worthless the president is, now he echoes a NYT Op-Ed saying the president showed up too late. Too late for what? What was he going to do, spread his arms and part the flood waters like moses?

Then there’s this. Good lord. People die every day. That’s not to say that this is not a tragedy, but if you follow his ‘logic’ we should never do anything but sit around and morn the continual loss of life that is happening constantly all over the globe.

Yes, sports events are continuing. Classes are in session elsewhere. Commercials are running. There’s something on TV besides news coverage of the flood waters occasionally. The damage to the economy is already going to be great — if everyone in the country stops what they’re doing to grieve, it’ll be even worse and the country will be in no shape to help New Orleans.

And to say that this is worse than 9/11… to even sit around and draw comparisons… is simply foolish. They’re two entirely different things which have, and should have, entirely different effects on the national psyche. This was mother nature, not Osama. We knew she was coming. We’ve known this was coming for a long time. That doesn’t make it any easier, but we know that we are not under seige in random parts of the country for simply being prosperous. They’re not better or worse… just different.

And, in case he forgot, things DID go on right after 9/11. The same things. Commercials. Sports events. And so on.

In short: Dave Winer has his head up his ass. As usual.