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I’ve been having a showstopping issue with my Logitech DiNovo Edge Mac Edition.  To put it simply:  it’s impossible to drag-and-drop with the included touchdisc.  Sure, it works for a few seconds, but the drag gets suddenly dropped–without any warning.  I’ve got two keyboards and three macs, and the same issue on all of them.

There’s a thread about this on the support forums where a bunch of people are complaining.  The issue manifests itself with a brand-new, out-of-the-box Mac, so it’s not like it’s difficult to reproduce.  It’s a software issue with Logitech’s LCC software–I might even consider reverse-engineering it and releasing a patch if they don’t fix it.  This is a $150 keyboard, which has consistently garnered 4.5-5 star reviews.  It’s fantastic–except for this showstopping issue.

I’ve contacted Logitech both via online e-mail support and phone support.  The e-mail people gave me a few old software versions to try, and when that didn’t work they said to call phone support (presumably, because they didn’t want what the phone support people were about to tell me in writing).  The phone support people said “there is a conflict” between my software configuration and the keyboard software, totally ignoring the fact that the issue manifests on an out-of-the-box Mac.  That’s a standard one-liner to avoid fixing the actual problem.

In this case, however, I’m a software developer, and I know how to test this stuff.  It’s definitely an LCC bug (probably triggered by OS X 10.5.8, which changed some keyboard drivers around).  Instead of owning up to their mistakes, Logitech prefers to run me around between support departments.

Not cool.  Suffice it to say, that’s the last Logitech keyboard I’ll ever buy.

I have absolutely no connection to the news industry.  I have a rather intense bias against reporters, based on some prior unfortunate experiences.

However, I think that paid news is in our future, and people will like it.  In particular, I support micropayments, although other models might work too.

Huh?

First of all, I’m in the minority.  Lots of smart people don’t like paying for news.  A new story about why paying for news is bad shows up in my RSS reader every day.  I get the (false) impression that the only people who support news paywalls are industry insiders.

Let’s be clear:  you can’t put “what you do now” behind a paywall and expect people to pay for it.  That ain’t going to happen.

But “what you do now” sucks.  The state of reporting (at least in tech) is absolutely, totally awful.  And I’m not just talking about “mainstream” outlets like NYT, WSJ, etc.  ”Tech” blogs are just as bad.  Take this snippet from Torrentfreak, a news site dedicated to “the p2p community, copyright issues, piracy and free culture“:

One of the downsides of Trackhub might be that it currently runs on Google’s App Engine platform which is based in the US. Unlike most existing trackers Google does keep logs and it is therefore advised to use the secure (https) announce url if you value your privacy.

If you are a software developer, or understand anything about networks you just did a silent W…T…F… as you read that.  I read it about four times to make sure it was as dumb as I thought on the first reading.  Let’s enumerate some of the many fails:

• “Unlike most existing trackers” implies Google is a tracker, which it is not.  It’s a computing service provider, like a datacenter.  This betrays a total lack of understanding of Trackhub, the product the author is reporting about (which is not affiliated with Google, in the same way your Macbook is not affiliated with the power company)
• Https does not protect your privacy from Google, the company running the datacenter.  Because you’re connecting to a tracker, it doesn’t even protect you against third-party eavesdroppers.  Security != Anonymity; that’s cryptography 101.  This is covered in different ways about 5x in any computer-related degree.  So far I’ve heard this speech in: Networks class, Discrete Mathematics, Analysis of Algorithms, Network Security… Anybody with a bachelors in a computer-related field knows this.
• For torrents to work, you have to give random people your IP address and let them download stuff from you.  Period.  Presumably a blog dedicated to torrents would understand the protocol.
• Why is it bad that Google is hosted in the US?  There are some record-keeping laws requiring you to hang on to logs for a few years, but these are the same in most developed countries.  The usual complaint about US datacenters is that they’re subject to PATRIOT act searches, etc., which violate some EU data safety laws, or so I’m told.  But P2P cases seem to always involve warrants and subpoenas, which any civilized country complies with, and I’ve never seen any p2p cases as a result of PATRIOT-style powers.

Of course this isn’t just to pick on Torrentfreak, mainstream press is even worse.  My point is that so-called “industry” blogs get it dead wrong on a regular basis.  Reading them is like tearing my eyes out.

What I’m proposing is simply this:  I’m perfectly willing to pay for somebody to write if they know what the heck they’re talking about.  I would totally pay for Apple coverage by a former Apple employee, or anybody with a CS degree, really.  I’d pay if somebody put together a comprehensive list of iPhone rejection letters and categorized them, maybe ran some stats on average review times.  I’d pay if car salesmen wrote about how to buy cars.  I’d pay biologists and physicists to write readable summaries of their own academic papers.

Too hard, you say?  I don’t think so.  Not all technical people can write, but some can.  (I’d like to think that I’m halfway decent.)  And there are nontechnical editors who can say to that scientist: “I don’t know what this list of words means.  Can you rework your article to explain them?”

Consider this list of recent stories:

• Google Voice rejection.  Did anybody do any “journalism” apart from posting the FCC letters and making snide remarks in the corner?  Why can’t somebody put a theory together about the large section Google redacted from the public record?  I’d pay for that.
• iPhone 3GS.  Can’t somebody dig up the contract with Cingular?  Or any of the three-dozen international carriers?  Or for the last-gen phone?  I understand that Apple’s an impenetrable wall, but surely there’s  a pissed-off exec willing to talk at one of the carriers.  I’d pay for that.
• What the crap happened at the Tannenbaum trial?  I’m not a lawyer, but it sounded like that Harvard guy was nuts.  Can I get a lawyer to weigh in on WTF was really going on?  I’d pay for that.
• Can I get a lawyer with a technical bent to blog about tech rights issues, like what sort of file sharing you can be prosecuted for, what wi-fi hotspots you can connect to (encrypted, unencrypted…), exactly what rights you have taking laptops across the border…  I’d pay for that.

The simple fact is, I want to read news that’s written by somebody that knows more than I do, instead of written by somebody that knows less.  When I read tech news, I consistently find that I have a better grasp on what’s going on than whoever wrote the article.  That’s absolutely no help.

Now, some thoughts on implementation:  the Kindle is demonstrating people will pay a few bucks to get the NYT on their device.  Which is really cool.  We certainly have the technology to try some other models, like per-article fees a la iTunes, or even (my favorite) a few bucks per hour of reading.

But wait, you say–p-p-p-p-piracy!  Yes, piracy.  But if iTunes has demonstrated anything, it’s that if it’s easy enough, a lot of people will pay.  Sure, you can write an FF plugin that caches the NYT.  But if somebody iTunesed the news industry, I think people just might use it.  (I’m looking at you, upcoming Apple tablet…)

Lots of people pirate movies and music because they’re mad.  Mad at a system that has “release windows” and files lawsuits and treats people like criminals and scum.  News does none of that.  And insightful news… the real “hard work” kind… people actually like it.  The only people mad at that is the company who got scooped.  And I’m willing to pay for that.