Two Slashes

A day or so ago, Gizmodo ran an article explaining some of their beliefs of why Windows Vista isn’t bad.  It’s their site, and their beliefs, but I’m not crazy over the arguments they picked, and decided it was worth at least a mild post about.

1. It’s more secure than Windows XP.

Excuse me a moment while I laugh, then point out that Windows XP has more security bulletins (at least, as far as I’m aware) than any other platform, be it OS X, Linux, Solaris, or anything else.  Then let me point out that XP also has the largest market share.  Make sense yet?  Notice the correlation?  I thought so.

I’ll give Gizmodo credit for actually acknowledging that little tidbit in their article, but there’s no reasonable way to compare the security across all of these platforms.  So what if there are fewer bulletins?  For example, if I code a CMS for a site, and that site is the only one with that CMS, is it necessarily any more secure than a common platform like Drupal or Joomla?  It could have all the holes in the world, intentional holes even…but the fact that it’s one site in the shadows means that there’s probably only a handful of people in all the world who would even attempt such a pointless endeavor.  Those holes would remain, my CMS would have no security reports – so by all means, I’m coding the most secure platform, right?

There are some things that can be compared…but the “amount of security” is not one of them.

2. It’s the best-looking Windows yet.

This is a matter of opinion.  While I’m not a fan of the Fisher-Price stock blue Windows XP theme, I’m not a fan of Aero either.  The transparency is a little much for my taste, and I prefer a full Start button to something that makes me feel like I’m trying to predict the future with it.  And most of the other stuff, like the 3D task switching, is just overkill.

Instead, I prefer Windows XP (*cough*) with this theme (though I use the alternate version with the actual start button instead).  It’s a lot cleaner looking, and it looks professional and sleek enough to me to at least not look like I’m messing with some virtual preschool toy.

3. Games work just about as well as under XP.

This one’s a tough one, because it really depends on the game and the system configuration.  Some games experience drags on one or the other, others need to be hacked to work on one or the other platform; all in all, it’s a real mess.  But in my case, I’m fine with Hover! and a 486.  (Nobody ever said “gaming rig” meant top-of-the-line specs.  And if they did…well, they should be forced to play Hover! for a while.)

4. Vista Media Center is a fantastic DVR.

Not everybody’s even hopped on the DVR bandwagon yet.  First, you need to teach people how to make their clocks quit blinking 12:00am.  Then, you need to explain to these same people why using their computer over a subscription box or the cable converter gives them an advantage.  Good luck with that.

My dismay with the lack of intelligence among people today aside, there’s also the issue of lock-in here.  There are plenty of great and reliable alternatives that AREN’T Media Center, and have a lot more expandability (namely MythTV for the experienced, and MediaPortal for the faint-of-heart).  One also has the benefit of working under…Vista.

If I had to recommend a DVR, I’d actually probably end up recommending a Tivo over a PC solution for the people who can’t read manuals.  I did just suggest MediaPortal, but Tivo at least has the benefit of being dumbed down and friendly enough that anyone with a moderate English vocabulary or the ability to recognize a thumbs-up or -down could pick up the remote and start using it.  And people can understand and recognize a Tivo box much faster than they will a PC sitting in the entertainment center.

5. The sleep mode works.

Funny…I’ve only ever had one problem with a computer sleeping while using Windows XP.  And you know what the funny part is?  It’s a hardware problem, an issue on my motherboard designer’s part that causes the Ethernet jack to disable itself (and an issue easily circumvented with a separate LAN card, I just haven’t bothered to put one in).  My laptop’s actually sitting here, also in a state of slumber, awaiting me getting back to updates.

If you need further proof still, I’ve been kicking the power button to my Gateway Mini-PC for the past hour now.  And I can still see it lighting up in my management console.

6. Built-in search is better and more useful.

Perhaps if Microsoft had thought to default indexing to ‘on’ in XP, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.  Not that it matters; a properly-organized work environment means you’ll still be able to find things faster than that search box.

7. User Account Control is useful for some people.

Wait…what did they say?  Let’s look again:

7. User Account Control is useful for some people.

That’s what I thought.  And the problem is that they’ve just shoved their foot in their mouth.  Yes, UAC may be useful to some people…but most often people get too annoyed.

Microsoft tarnished their “plug-and-chug” image as far as usability was concerned when they implemented UAC.  What I mean is that rather than people have their all-authoritative power that they’re used to, with nobody and nothing asking them what to do, suddenly the computer is the boss.  “Are you sure you want to do this?”  “Are you sure you want to delete that?”  “This wallpaper looks nice, so you’ll need administrative privledges to change it to something else.”

Understandably, there’s going to be the phase where everyone hates it, then slowly warms up to it and the idea that it “helps”.  Right now, this is the hate phase, and everyone’s turning it off.  OS X does something similar, requiring the user to enter their password as additional confirmation…but the users are over it because there’s no setting to turn it off.  (If there is, please correct me.  But my voyages through the cat-flavored fruit haven’t turned up any.)  Microsoft, perhaps the checkbox should have waited?  Or been included only for enterprises?)

If you want all that in a nutshell, I’m actually commending Microsoft for this move.  But the implementation…it’s missing something.

8. Drivers support isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be.

Wow.  Finally an argument I don’t have enough experience with to debate completely over.  Why couldn’t Gizmodo have brought this up sooner?

I actually think the driver support is backwards at this point.  I’ve purchased “Vista-only” devices before, and had to hack them into submission for use with XP (namely, a Pinnacle remote control).  I understand that Vista’s the newer, shinier consumer sibling in the Windows family, but too many people are complaining and stalling their move to Vista to warrant products with no compatibility on older platforms.

9. It’s not any buggier than XP.

Once again, this is a matter of opinion in relation to the level of mishap you’re willing to accept before something becomes buggy and unusable.  And it’s already known that the biggest issues come from driver bugs - the more people using those “bugs” the merrier.

10. Vista is not slow if you have enough RAM.

Alright, complaining about this one is probably a little overkill, especially given that Microsoft has finally realized that free RAM is wasted RAM, and decided to stuff it with the morsels you might need to use the most.  Some of the slowness can be alleviated by turning off things like Aero…wait, did I just suggest turning off bloat?  Alright, that’s it.  Vista needs to get on the StairMaster now and lose some weight.

I tend to agree more with the complaints they brought up, including the painfully slow file transfers from h*** and the requirement to categorize every wireless network you see as something like “Home” or “Work”, .  But those are common and heard just about everywhere anyway, so it really wouldn’t be missed if Gizmodo hadn’t bothered at all.

For a computer science major, software developer, and someone who generally is known to stick with everything needed to get stuff done…it’s nearly 1.5 years since Vista was released, and I’m still running on the previous generation.  And for once, I would rather wallow in the history than leap into the future.

It’s a funny thing, how I tend to perpetually suck myself into discussions of P2P problems and flaws in reasoning. But it’s just too tempting to poke fun of the very people responsible for the evolution of file-sharing in the first place.

Wired has a blog article discussing the definition of distribution – what constitutes giving files to other people – and frankly, it’s not so much a definition as an utterly faulty assumption that every available share will be scoured, ripped off, and offered up again.

“You don’t have to prove actual distribution. You need to prove there’s works in the share folder, and that is distribution,” said Joseph Geisman, MPAA’s chief intellectual property attorney, as he described the so-called “making available” concept.

Why shouldn’t you have to prove distribution? After all, I find it very ridiculous to assume that just because something is made remotely accessible, it is accessible publicly; to even pretend this is a legitimate argument requires looking at each situation on a case-by-case basis and examining how each is configured. For example, I (and yes, I will admit it) keep a remotely-accessible share of my music and software backups via Samba. However, here’s the rub: It’s only available to anyone on MY Hamachi network, and considering I highly doubt anyone will be joining that anytime soon, I think it’s safe to say that I’m sharing only with myself.  (It’s not the KaZaA share folder, but I doubt they’re going to be making that distinction anytime soon.)

According to the MPAA’s definition above, that’s still enough to be prosecuted – even though there isn’t a soul in the world with a copy of anything I have. It’s cases like this that demonstrate indirect proofs aren’t enough to determine the intent to share.  My collection is shared – with the protections necessary to keep it to myself – and by that vague monster of a definition, I would still be looking at the same fines as anybody else, even though nobody else has access to them.  (Obviously a security breach would be different – but I wonder if proving that would help much in this case.)

During the Thomas trial, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis instructed jurors they could find unauthorized distribution — copyright infringement — if Thomas was “making available” the copyrighted works over a peer-to-peer network. The jury decided her liability in five minutes.

Here’s another problem: We’ve got so many technically-challenged people involved with these cases (judges, juries, lawyers – everyone; yes, I realize we need people who will be impartial but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a brain or any knowledge of how what they’re talking about works) that all it takes is a scare marathon compliments of the **AA lawyers for them to decide guilt in less time than it takes to boil pasta.

“It is a distribution by putting works in a shared folder. You can deem that copies are being made. That goes for the indirect proof,” Geisman said. “Having it in a shared folder is indirect proof of actual copying of another user.”

The only thing this indirectly proves is that our legal system needs an infusion of intelligence and competence to match the times if we’re going to see these parades of pointless lawsuits end. Perhaps the money they pay to the lawyers should instead be invested in other things – like the artists, studios, and various audiovisual studios that provide the content for them to rip off. I mean, there’s obviously a problem if even the artists would rather download (or promote an alternative means to paying for music).

Perhaps Trent Reznor and his OiNK comments (previous link above) are the best way for the double-A’s to get a clue to revamp their business model:

“If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now.”

Fine, I’ll discuss something else next time.  But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Wow…did I actually just post my fourth thing in five days?  I…why, I think I’m in shock!  Hopefully either I can fall into the habit of posting more often (preferred) or anyone out there doesn’t get into the obsessive habit of checking for new stuff more often…well, at least let the RSS feed do that for you.

I paid $350 or so for my first useful* laptop (I say that with quotes for a reason, see below) during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school, with my first MP3 player just a short while before that.  I’ve only had possession of a personal cellular telephone for a year.  I’ve had an account with AOL since the second grade (which, although I personally refuse to use the AOL client anymore, I still have).  And I’ve been really only establishing my online presence (with forums, websites, and the like) since the end of middle school.

Why do I tell you this, seemingly randomly?  I was perusing through the New York Times website today, and came across an article discussing the recommended ages children should be introduced to the very same technologies I just mentioned.  And obviously there’s some disagreement between what the article suggests and what I believe to be more appropriate, or I wouldn’t be bothered enough to write about it.

For ages 0-2, I can generally agree with the author.  I don’t see a reason your kid should be messing with anything electronic with more complication than making noise or blinking lights.  They’re way too young to understand cause-effect scenarios, and I certainly don’t foresee anybody’s newborn being able to “Press Enter to Continue…”

Sure, maybe all the fake toddler-toys are probably 1/4 as mind-stimulating as they’re advertised to be, but are they really ready to play online games?  No offense, but it seems to me like they want to train the next generation of WoW addicts from an early age; they’ll be more tolerant to the obsessive clicking and typing and random key-pressing it takes, and their vision will already be so screwed over from staring at the screen that they’ll have a 6000-strength glasses prescription by the time they’re eight.  Pardon me, but how about giving them their Playskool MP3 boombox thingy and sending them out to the sandbox?  And suggesting a Wii as a console for kids still trying to figure out why the cat doesn’t go in the washing machine, and that Hot Wheels are more collectible when the wheels aren’t on the other side of the room?  I really don’t need any more bologna-in-the-CD-tray service calls, thank you very much, so I’ll just say “That’s stupid” and continue on my merry way.

Moving towards the second half of the article, I really disagree more with their thinking.  For starters, explain to me why six-year-olds are eligible to be playing games that require interaction with people you don’t know but are connected to instantly?  I fail to see one instance where they won’t be talking to strangers at some point.  (And even if the parents are paying attention, can you really be certain that crazyboy2834 isn’t this guy (potentially NSFW)?  Your son/daughter claiming that it’s the friend from down the street doesn’t count.)  I have a brother that fits this age bracket, and I’ve watched him play similar games.  If someone sends him a friend request, his instant reaction is to accept it…no questions asked.  “But wait, that’s not Kyle?”  Stranger danger, indeed.  What happened to responsible parenting?

I can see maybe a shimmer of reasoning behind giving a twelve-year-old a cell phone…but only a shimmer.  Why, even my high-school-age siblings failed to understand why text messaging wasn’t included in their plan (it is now) and managed to rack up a rather exorbitant bill.  The point is, if you give them something that has the ability to do more than you pay for, it’s going to come back to bite you.  If you really need to give them the phone, get the blasted unlimited messaging plan…$30 per month is a lot more reasonable than $600 (trust me).  Perhaps towards high school would make better sense here.

High school would also be a prime time for these kids to get laptops and other “considered-essential” devices, not as they’re herded off like cattle to college.  Not only does this free the family computer from constant use by the IM- and MySpace-crazed teen, but it gives parents (as if they needed it) yet another thing to take away for groundings.  And has the benefit of teaching them about how to take care of more expensive equipment earlier on.

And I scoff at this comment:

In fact, cellphones are now more or less mandatory for children at this age. Besides providing a social advantage, phones can reduce parental stress in a crowded mall, get children in touch for homework help, serve as a call to dinner — and be withheld as punishment that really works.

Parenting skills for this age include reading phone bills. Lori McCoughey of Mahwah, N.J., a mother of two, saved $200 a month by switching to Verizon’s friends and family plan. There are also pay-as-you-go plans like those from Tracfone (www.tracfone.com). For $50, you get a working LG 225 camera phone, preloaded with 100 minutes. A meter counts down the remaining time.

If parenting skills require reading bills, why must you suggest a pay-as-you go plan on a cell phone, which defeats the entire purpose of reading bills?  It might reinforce and encourage the idea of having your child budget their usage (especially if you add a specific amount per month, and refuse to add any more until the next) in preparation for giving them access to your “big-person”, post-pay plan, but really I can’t see a prepaid phone as being anything more than a cash-cow and waste of time otherwise.  But “serving as a call to dinner?”  Although I’m pretty sure I can see through the poor language there, how is ringing your offspring anywhere near a reinforcement of the “personal nature” of dinner?  (Yes, I realize this is America, where ‘dinner’ is another word for vegging out in front of a television with McDonald’s, but cut me some slack.)

Of course, even my recommendations are just that, recommendations.  In reality, the parents should be capable enough to judge whether their kid actually has a need for the technologies of tomorrow, a need that outstretches the desire to “fit in” – because there’s always going to be someone else without it, and a lesson in not getting everything you want is perfect fare.  Nevertheless, any parents who take tips from that article and apply them probably could use a little help as a parent themselves.

Parenting is about guidance and helping a child to prepare themselves for an adult/parental role, not stepping in and going “Here’s a shiny new electronic toy that I bought; go have fun.”

*Useful in this sense refers to the sense that it could be used for more than running Windows 95 or browsers with the rendering support of an 1800s cash register.  My real first laptop was a 486 obtained long ago from one of my father’s co-workers, with a failed battery and a garbage-picker’s heaven of data left on it.  As most people know, I particularly enjoy older/restored computing equipment and so I keep this machine around for occasional use.

In accordance with my parents’ work, they often get recommendations for this service or that to make the redundant tasks a lot easier, or the company as a whole decides that everyone should be using this or that, and guides everyone into transitioning.  Such is any business, really, but for the sake of my post, I digress.

It was with one of these recommendations that I was stopped this morning by my mother asking me if their business PC had IE 5 or greater and “something called JavaScrip” (yes, she missed the ‘T’) installed.  This being a crappy XP rig running (and forever to my shame) AOL 9.1, naturally, it did.  She proceeded to go through a few more steps before the site decided she needed to install several random ActiveX controls to continue – something that never happened.

Running any of these sites through Firefox, or any other alternative browser, you’ll quickly find that they’re not particularly keen on you even visiting them with the “filth that isn’t IE.”  At times, they’ll even make up excuses (like the one displayed here about how JavaScript is a requirement, even though the error message is being displayed using a short user-agent-checking script) just to make sure you turn around, fire up Internet Exploder, and come back riding a piece of Swiss cheese.

You see, at least from my experiences playing with and setting up all of these services for my parents, I’ve found that there’s one thing they all have in common:  They all require Internet Explorer for “compatibility reasons” and each site comes with more effluent to install than AOL itself.  To be honest, it’s quite irritating having to diagnose issues with these, because they have a tendency to go AWOL (not to be confused with the ISP?) all the time.

Let’s take that “compatibility” notion for a moment, mix in the required ActiveX, and analyze it further.  Do you really want to know what a bunch of these controls are for?  Image uploading (and resizing), mere basic text editing…I could go on forever listing this stuff, but essentially it’s all things that could be taken care of in any other manner of more portable, usable manner…and without all of the bloat.  Heck, some of these are even uglier than Windows ME!

It’s pitiful that everyone needs to resort to some client-side browser helper to provide functionality that has long since been capable by more portable methods, such as the use of a Flash or Java applet.  With either of those, there’s plenty of room and cross-platform compatibility to spare, and it wouldn’t tax anything more than it already is.  Flickr, for example, has an excellent upload and management system; while I’m not expecting every little feature of Flickr to show up on in a business tool, it’s at least worth pointing out that there are working, real-life examples with the kind of portability and scalability that these costly services should be striving for.

One would think that, with the growing market share of Firefox, Safari, and Opera, and increasing presence of nearly-fully-capable devices like the iPhone and other smartphones, businesses aimed at enterprises and the employees of those corporations would be falling head over heels to make sure that their platforms worked on as many devices and from as many points of accessibility as possible.  But apparently I’m thinking wrong.  Web 2.0?  Maybe for the personal side of life…but as far as I’m concerned, work is still a version behind.

At this point, the phrase ‘net neutrality’ is like an outdated fashion statement:  everyone knows about it and nobody really cares anymore.  And while it certainly plays an important role in the evolution of the twenty-first century, it’s been sent to the back of the bus to sit with the dot-com blowouts.

Why?  As far as anyone can speculate, the new idea for making sure ISPs can overstuff their networks is to limit how much the customer can use them, rather than get funding to expand them from the corporations who are most likely to be transmitting across it.

The concept of enforcing bandwidth quotas can be rather laughable, especially when there are (seemingly absurd) $5+/GB overage charges.  Considering that ISPs will swear up and down that their heaviest customers are heavy downloaders, they repeatedly argue that these fees will only apply to this clique.  From a pirate’s perspective, think about it:

• The average MP3 folder (via torrent, newsgroups, whatever) for a single album ranges between 60 and 130 MB.  Assuming an average 100 MB per album downloaded, that’s 10 albums for $5 (or whatever the overage charge is).  I dare anyone to beat that with music acquired from the store as far as quantity goes.  (Though this does raise a question in cases such the newer NIN albums.)
• Usually, rips of feature films run between 700-1300 MB depending on a few factors.  That’s between $5 and $10 for a movie; if the downloader is willing to suffer the (potentially) lower quality, $5 is perhaps not unreasonable.  For hour-long TV shows, it tends to be 350-700 MB per episode, so the cost incurred in getting that full season on DVD can instead be split between your download overages and the new hard drive you get to store all of your ‘acquisitions.’
• Some of the most popular/expensive software suites also happen to be some of the smallest downloads.  The more software crammed in per GB, the better that $5 looks.

Sure, it angers the people who think unlimited means unlimited (I would like to believe this, but it’s never going to happen.) to know that suddenly they’re being reigned into reality, but the reality is that the gray areas are still the more-approachable, cost-friendly bretheren of walking the thin white line.

During school, when I’m only doing my schoolwork and light browsing, I tend to use approximately 150 MB per day (out of the 2 GB per 24 hours allotted per residence hall resident).  So, taking my 150 MB and multiplying it by 7 for a full week, I’ve already covered 1050 MB.  So, for my example, take that as the usage of the heaviest user in the house.  Let’s add in a little more for the rest of the typical family, and the Time Warner-suggested 5GB-per-month quota is going to be gone within two or three weeks.  And they’re the light end of the spectrum.  (I’m a little stupid for taking my usage and using it in a fictional example, but let’s not go there for now; the point is that these people claim that such limited requirements will satisfy most people, but any connection with more than one or two people using it is going to have major quota collisions.)

Even more pathetic is the practice of combining the higher-cost, higher-level quotas with higher speeds; I see this not so much as extending the timespan over which that quota is used as shortening it – people with more bandwidth tend to either use it in the course of their work, or feel it is going to waste and put it to use doing something – and in the process rendering the extra quota cushioning useless.

Of course, this all comes in the middle of the transition from print and televised media to Internet-based streaming media, and at a time where (at least, I see no reason why this isn’t true) telecommuting is starting to become a real substitute for the people looking to save their $4+/gallon gas.  (I can already see the argument boiling in peoples’ heads over whether it’s more cost- and time-effective to drive to the office or telecommute and get their work done from home.)  Isn’t it great that everything’s closing in all at once?

Side note:  If you really want a kick in the pants, I suggest you try searching for “at one point, google was“.  You’ll get a kick out of some of the results you get (and yes, it’s safe for work).

I remember a little more than a year ago; Digg, chatrooms, and the blogosphere in general were all abuzz with what sounded like one of the biggest undertakings ever, a cool achievement of the same caliber as Dana Hanna’s ‘An App A Day’.  The entries were in, the votes were counted, and development was starting out…

If you know what I’m talking about already (perhaps from my description, or obvious title), then kudos to you.  But for the uninitiated and clueless, I’m referring to My Dream App.  Essentially, the premise was that a group of well known (OS X) developers got together and took requests for applications common users had that they would like to see commercialized…with the expectation that the winning ideas would get a portion of the proceeds.  When everything was said and done, the apps to be developed included a cookbook/meal-planning application, a weather applet for the desktop, and (most useful) a simple way to synchronize files between multiple machines.

To go on a tangent for a moment, even though MDA was Mac-only, I still believe that the concept for MDA was excellent, and it really highlighted some of the community’s issues with Apple’s operating system (or the people using it…yeah, I’m evil).  Of course, there were the ideas that would have required a lot of development and research (research that I know for a fact is underway at several different unnamed universities simultaneously), but quite a few things that would have brought OS X more even with Windows came up just the same.

Now, fast-forward a little while to give the developers some time to get well into their projects, with the usual little bloggy updates to keep people interested in the applications informed of their progress.  The sad part is…it’ll be one year next month since the last update was posted.  And none of those apps have moved (at least, to public knowledge) from the position indicated by the latest posts for them on the development blog.  Add this to the fact that there were even brief hints at a second contest being run, and it seems as though what once was a thriving project is now collecting dust in the corner.

WWDC was earlier this week; and sure, there were a few announcements in the form of the iPhone 3G and confirmation of OS X 10.6 being named “Snow Leopard”, but it lacked any real innovation.  10.6 is a security release, the only real updates for the iPhone are upgraded connectivity and the iTunes App Store, and the quote I can’t get out of my head about how iTunes is the next ‘killer enterprise app.’  (Thanks, Justin, by the way, for making me sit through it. )  While I suppose it’s not always up to Apple to be the primary innovator, if the people commisioned to do the job can’t, it certainly seems like the entire gig has lost some of its luster.

Generally I’d let bygones be bygones and let the curtains close on something that so obviously won’t be collecting too much more attention.  But for some reason, I feel like the entire experience was just the result of me falling asleep in my swivel chair.  And now it’s time to wake up from My Dream Nap.

To start, I’d just like to point out that it’s almost guaranteed that I’m not alone in writing an opinionated piece on the new Plurk service, but I figured it was at least worth commenting about, especially when you take into account the contents of my previous post on Twitter.  Even more interesting is that a great majority of the discussion on Twitter in the past day or so is “Plurk is good/bad/in need of help/”.

I decided to give Plurk a try for myself and see what, if anything, set it apart from my now-established Twitter account, or similar alternatives like Pownce or Jaiku.  And to be frank, I don’t think there’s too much going for it; just about everything Plurk has developed concept-wise can be replicated with the Twitter API and a few lines of code.

Your “home” page is taken up mostly by a large horizontal timeline showing recent ‘plurks’ (even more obnoxious than ‘tweets,’ I realize) made by anyone you’re following updates from.  Unlike Twitter, there are two stages of followers, fans and friends.  Fans get the updates posted by that other person, but without the harassment of a ‘Can I be your friend?’ e-mail.  Friends, of course, is self-explanatory.  The timeline is supposed to be ‘realtime’ in that you can click a plurk and see all of the responses…but for all that effort, Plurk pops up a small notification box that there are new replies and plurks for you to look at rather than just adding them.  (Why not just add them and color-code them according to freshness from the last page reload?)  The timeline is also poorly-responsive; it takes a few seconds to scroll over on my machine, and no doubt it will be even slower as people and plurks add up.

One of Plurk’s minor benefits is that they follow the unwritten “microblogger” rule – that is, 140 words maximum – but you can use one of their ‘predefined’ verbs to save a few characters and make sure the verb gets a colorful highlight.  Of course, this only helps if you find yourself constantly nearing the edge and looking for any way to get your character count down, or if you can be bothered to navigate the menu with your mouse.  Plurk’s commenting system threads the responses together, at least, to make for some slight semblance of organization without all the click-throughs (Twitterers, meet Quotably), which makes it a tiny bit more organized.  But this also means you fall out of the conversation entirely if you aren’t following the initial poster.

Plurk also finds a major shortcoming in the way some of the site features (well, not even features, just extra smiley faces and the like) are locked until you establish your presence on Plurk by way of the Plurk Karma system.  Essentially, Plurk will analyze your participation once a day, and assign you a value from 0 to 100 based upon your interactions with the site and other users.  Making new friends or posts, or even uploading a profile picture all affect your Karma score.  Now, it’s an interesting way of getting people involved, but when it requires you to post nearly constantly to change the Plurk logo (yes, logo), I think it’s safe to say that there’s too little thought put into it.  Emoticons aren’t a big reason people are going to stick around…

Plurk also lacks an API and any semblance of SMS support (for the moment, at least), which means that you have to keep the page open or sign up your IM account (thankfully, they at least offer more than Google Talk).  And speaking of IMs, any updates to the timeline also get IMed to you, including responses from people you’ve never met, so if you’re following anyone who gets a lot of attention, your IM client will be getting a bit of attention too.  You can turn them off with off and on commands, post plurks, and respond to the nine or ten most recent comments on other plurks, but there’s really no use otherwise.

I’m sorry, but a headless dog does not a microblogging site make.  Plurk, it’s a great shot…but you’re going to need to offer something that can’t be replicated in thirty seconds on Twitter.  Oh, and lose the comment about emo-ness on your homepage.  Emos never share their emoness.

In the meantime, you’re welcome to befriend me on Plurk, but don’t expect any activity until (updated as of June 3) as Plurk has joined Twitter and Pownce at Ping.fm or some other multi-updater.

Alright, the emo joke might be a bit over the top, but I’m not the only one.  There are plenty of tweets about it, if only I hadn’t lost the URLs.