Tim Xu

Emotions can be quite the wild animal. I’d spent a month at Yale, happily enjoying my new life, making friends, growing close to people who I’d not known a mere month ago, and having a generally easy transition into college life. I still talked to my friends from high school on AIM and such, but I didn’t really think about the fact that I was two hundred miles away from the kids still stuck in high school, and even farther from some of my peers.

Then I went home.

I went home for my high school marching band’s annual home competition, to help out as an alumni, and to see everyone again. When I got home and saw my brother, I felt an upwelling of emotion hit me. It’s almost like the feeling you get in a really sad movie when that heart-wrenching moment happens near the end. In my obliviously frenzied life at college, I had forgotten how much I missed him. My parents, too, escaped my emotions while I was away. I’d forgotten what it was like to be able to speak freely and openly about my life without fear of prejudice or misconception.

And then I saw my friends, especially the few I shared my greatest passions with. These were the people who shared my love for the band program and the group of teenagers bound by it. The people who I spent countless hours talking and laughing about the one thing that permanently brought us together. The people who grew into themselves alongside me, who helped shape me into the person I am today. The people who crossed my mind too few times throughout the first month.

So we talked. We talked about our lives in college or high school, we talked about the band, we talked about each other and ourselves. We laughed like we were still part of the same group; we felt our kinship reignite with each hug and each smile. And when I sat on that old, creaky gray chair again, I watched, with pride, the legacy I helped leave. I watched the kids enjoy high school like I did, enjoy each other like we did. I remembered, if only momentarily, our proudest moments over the years. I remembered our shared joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures. And I realized, again, that I didn’t love the program for what it gave me; no, I loved the program because of the people within it, the people who gave me far more than any of them know.

And that’s why I felt that same upwelling of emotion after it was all done. Driving alone through the darkness after saying my last goodbyes, I felt it. In the frenzy to start a new chapter in my life, I had forgotten what it felt like to be with the people who defined the last. When the day ended, as we scattered to our new lives across the country, I really missed it. We’re confined now to sporadic days over the course of the years during which we can come together and relive a special time in each of our lives. And so I missed it.

We created something special in our four years in high school, a part of which will always be in my heart. And as for those few with whom I truly shared this love of mine, I know you feel it too. Our lives are diverging, traveling on paths spread too many ways, but our hearts, or at least the small part that will always remember, still travel together.

I miss you guys.

As printed in my column “Technophiliac” in the Yale Daily News.

I download music illegally. I tried to be legal, to buy my CDs and use the online music stores legally. I want to support the bands whose music I enjoy. But the very thing the music companies use to protect themselves from piracy – Digital Rights Management (DRM) – pushed me into the murky waters of the black market.

Here’s the scenario: I went onto the iTunes Music Store and clicked “buy” next to a song. The word itself suggests that I’m buying that song. A legal, market transaction. A full transfer of ownership from the big boys at Warner Bros. to me. I want to put the song where I want it, play it when I want to, have full freedom and full ownership over my 99-cent property. But that’s not what actually happens. Thanks to DRM, what I’ve got is essentially a rental. I can only burn it seven times, have it on five computers, and I can only play it with an iPod or through iTunes.

To the casual observer, this seems only annoying, and certainly not deal-breaking. Most Yalies I talked to expressed indifference, saying it has no immediate effect on their online purchases. But I argue that DRM isn’t just annoying; it’s absurd and dangerous, even. Time is the greatest factor here. How long do you expect your purchase to last? I assume it’s forever, as is the case with every other good on the market. But that’s just not the case. For example, what if I stop using an iPod? Gadgets and trends change rapidly, and in ten years, I could be running around New York with another mp3 player in my pocket. It’s also not unimaginable that I’d be on my sixth computer in fifteen years. The moment any of those happen, I lose the song I purchased. At 99 cents a pop, that’s not spare change.

Worse, still, is the fact that the DRM-driven music is so tied to the seller. If a store shuts down its servers, like Wal-Mart did a few days ago, all of its customers are suddenly left with locked music that cannot be unlocked. Basically, DRM has made it so the music I buy isn’t really mine, but rather some convoluted entitlement to use the music where and when the music company wants me to. It’s not my property.

The music industry defends the use of DRM as an anti-piracy measure, a way to prevent people from uploading the files back onto the Internet and sharing it with others for free.  Yet the measure isn’t a complete, blanket protection. CDs are all-too-easy to rip into shareable files. Even the DRM itself isn’t
perfect.

Most Yalies interviewed agreed that circumvention is terribly easy. “It’s easy to get around it,” Charlie Sharzer ‘12 said. “You just burn a CD and load it back onto your computer.”

But the fact that DRM forces users to circumvent it seems to defeat its purpose. It’s clear that the industry is not handling anti-piracy correctly. Rather than building satisfaction with customers, they use DRM to shackle them, which signals a paranoia and a lack of trust and respect for the customers.

The bottom line is that DRM does not work. It has not prevented those who pirate music from pirating it, and it has only annoyed the legitimate costumers. That itself should signal to the music industry that enough is enough. DRM is dead.

Tomorrow (or today, if you’re gonna be a stickler) is going to be extremely hectic. Classes are the same as every Monday and Wednesday, my heaviest days by far, but still not that bad. But it’s the various events that follow that make the hecticness.

After my Literature section in Harkness Hall, I have half an hour to walk half a mile to my faculty advisor’s office. I’ve heard that he’s a nice guy, so I’m looking forward to this meeting. Afterwards I have only fifteen minutes to return to where I was, for an Economics Discussion Section in Harkness Hall. From there, I go straight to Linsly-Chittenden Hall on Old Campus, where, at the Maya event, I’ll grab my pizza dinner. If I’m still hungry, I can grab a quick bite back in the suite before heading off to the Yale Daily News building for the journalism training workshop.

I’ll have to leave that one slightly earlier in order to make my way to Payne Whitney Gym for Intramural Table Tennis. After that, I finally get a breather back in the suite, before heading over to Phelps Gate for a two-hour long game of Frisbee Golf with the YPMB. When that’s done, or before then, I’ll collapse somewhere near the vicinity of my bed and sleep until 9.

Why does everyone schedule everything on the same date?

I have been on this beautiful campus for exactly a week, and it still does not cease to amaze. It’s been a breathtaking journey, day by day, through halls rich in history, courtyards and paths beaten by footsteps of the brilliant men and women who came before us. Each day is a pleasant, unassuming voyage through an almost surreal, magical environment.

Sitting down for breakfast in Branford’s Dining Room, I’m surrounded by the smiling façades of the former Masters, illuminated by several chandaliers hanging from an arching ceiling covered with dark, rich wood. I then take a walk across Cross Campus, the rather large and imposingly stunning Sterling Memorial Library to my left, and the bustle of construction on Calhoun College to my left. A few large trees provide a pleasant shade from the hot morning sun, and their gentle swaying adds a symphonic element to the soundtrack of footsteps and conversations. There’s a few boys playing a quick game of two-hand touch on the grass in front of Sterling.

As I approach Commons, there’s a modern sculpture and a much older-looking memorial. Its gold-gilded inscription is clear even from a distance. “In memory of the men of Yale, who, true to her traditions, gave their lives that Freedom might not perish from the Earth,” it reads, along with a date attributing the memorial to the brave men who fought in World War I. I enter the rotunda, a beautiful domed vestibule with a rich blue ceiling from which are hung many more chandeliers. I pay little attention to the inscriptions on the wall, the names of every Yale student who gave his life in defense of his country. The moment of tranquility is broken quickly as I exit the rotunda and face the busy corner of Grove and College Street. Dozens of students race across the wide intersection as drivers wait patiently for an opening to continue.

A short walk later, I find myself reaching into my backpack for my notebook and laptop. Davies Auditorium is a large, modern lecture hall with comfortable, cushioned chairs and small retrievable platforms for note-taking. Professor Mark Johnson takes the floor and takes us through the beginning of modern chemistry, from Lavoisier to Newton to Dalton. He lectures with energy and humor. There must be over a hundred students sitting in the lecture hall, but it’s to be expected for General Chemistry.

After class is dismissed, I walk down College Street back to Vanderbilt Hall, my version of home at Yale. I have a moment of solitude at my desk as I organize my notebooks and peruse the news. Nobody liked McCain’s speech. The Mets won. Soon, I get a call from a friend, inviting me to lunch. I accept and leave Vanderbilt, nearly forgetting my keys on my desk. I briskly walk across Old Campus, under towering trees swaying and rustling to what seems like a perpetual wind. A few minutes later, I’m surrounded by chaos: lunch at Commons. I manage to make myself a sandwich and grab some yogurt before sitting down with a few friends. I have gotten over the majesty of the cafeteria. I no longer wonder if this is what Harry Potter sat down to everyday at Hogwarts.

After lunch is Introductory Microeconomics with Steve Berry. The lecture hall is absolutely packed. He’s a brilliant man and a wonderful professor. He mixes his own brand of humor and irony into a lecture introducing us to the basic concepts of economics and, specifically, microeconomics. It’s enjoyable, but I harbor a secret hope that some people decide not to show up next time.

Next thing I know, I’m walking down Elm Street with another friend, empty backpack in hand, towards the Barnes & Nobles that serves as the University’s bookstore. Minutes later, I emerge with a strained back and 400 dollars poorer. I figure that it’s the price we pay for education. We visit a mutual friend in Swing Space. We pass by the club soccer team practicing on a patch of grass, shaded by more rustling trees. Swing Space is far away from the center of campus, but it’s air conditioned, has an elevator, and each room has a little kitchenette. It feels comfortable, and the Calhoun upperclassmen don’t mind it. We stay for an hour or so, before heading back to Commons for dinner.

This time, we’re there early and the place is deserted. There are many portraits lining Commons, all but one with dark backgrounds and old men with an array of facial expressions. The only one with a light background is George H. W. Bush. The dinner is rather delicious: turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy. I get some yogurt again.

Slowly, night falls over New Haven. I spend some time in my suite, deciding between studying and watching TV. I end up doing neither, and heading over to a friend’s suite to hang out. We talk about what classes we’re shopping, what homework we have, and just have random conversations about random things. I meet friends of friends who become new friends. We relax in rooms, all of us not eager to begin doing the ever-increasing pile of homework. There’s a party in a suite upstairs. It’s crowded and hot, but we stay anyway to socialize.

Almost without realizing, it’s 1 AM and I’m outside of Lawrence Hall with a few friends. They say they’re hungry. I agree. Ignoring the effects to our health and our weight, we make the short journey to Yorkside pizza. It’s almost closing, but we each get some slices anyway. It’s good, but not as good as A-1 pizza.

A few minutes later, I’m alone in a shower, washing off the day in preparation for the next. I try not to wake up my sleeping roommate as I remove my contacts and prepare my cell phone alarm. As I lay in my bed, staring up at a ceiling I can’t see, I reflect on the day that just passed. I don’t consider what mark I may leave on this 300-year-old university. I don’t consider what mark it may leave on me. Rather, I just sit and appreciate the wondrous beauty of a campus and a university I have just begun to explore.

In fact, you shouldn’t really give guns to anyone. But that’s beside the point. I went to the movies earlier and saw Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express. Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and, especially, Robert Downey, Jr. were pretty hilarious in Tropic Thunder, but they really can’t compare to Seth Rogen and James Franco in Pineapple Express. If you haven’t seen the trailer, the film’s a classic Apatow about a pair of stoners who are on the run from the drug lords. This eventually involves a laugh-to-tears chase scene and guns. Lots of guns. I’m not going to elaborate more – go to the theater and check it out for yourself – but it really verifies what we’ve seen already: movies make stoners seem like the funniest idiots ever. It’s like America’s Funniest Home Videos on crack, literally, for two hours. So, kids, don’t do drugs. Just go to the movies and watch stoners beat and shoot each other silly. Hey, maybe it’ll give you a natural high.

In exactly twelve hours, I will be sitting in the cabin of a small commuter plane on the tarmac of Newark International Airport. After a short, one hundred minute flight, I will layover in Toronto for three hours before boarding a Boeing 777 direct to Shanghai, China. Once there I will stop in Nanjing, where my father’s family is, then in Xi’an, where my mother’s family is, and then finally in Beijing, where family friends have secured tickets to several less-than-population Olympic events. I’m sure it’ll be bustling and crowded, but it’s still exciting to attend the Olympic games. I’ll be back on August 14th, tired, jet-lagged, and ready to watch the more exciting parts of the games on TV.

In fact, I name them after Greek Goddesses. My main hard drive is named Astraea, goddess of justice. My flash drive is named Iris, the messenger goddess. My external hard drive is split into two partitions: the Time Machine partition is named Soteria, the goddess of safety and preservation from harm and the storage partition is named Eos, the goddess of dawn. The computer itself is named Rhea, the mother of all gods.

It’s not that I’m a fan of Greek mythology or even that I’m more than superficially interested in them. They just have cool names, and it’s certainly less boring that “Macintosh HD; Storage; Flash Drive; Time Machine.” Plus, it’ll confuse everyone, which is always a plus.

Microsoft is, arguably, one of the most powerful companies in the world. Its operating systems drive 90% of the world’s PCs and millions of smartphones. Its video game console was the top of the generation for over a year. It’s one of the oldest and arguably most trusted names in home computing. It commands billions of dollars of cash revenue. Why, then, is it slowly becoming irrelevant? Windows Vista was a failure, ignored by NIST and by the enterprise. At release, it was a bloated, buggy operating system that most computers weren’t ready for. Windows Mobile has slowly lost ground to Blackberry and Apple’s iPhone OS. XBOX 360 has fallen to third in monthly sales. Its attempt to revitalize MSN with the Windows Live system has failed to produce any significant headway against Google and Yahoo! It’s baffling that such a large company with so much money and engineering talent should be falling behind its competitors. That said, how can Microsoft get back to being the clear leader it was ten years ago?

1. Drop the old technology.
Microsoft’s products are mired in the past and old technology. Vista remains on the NT kernel – released in 1993 – and still uses NTFS – also released in 1993. Microsoft just can’t expect to compete with faster, more secure, and more modern alternatives in Apple’s Mac OS X, which runs on a modern HFS+ file system and is based on an open source UNIX core. Windows Mobile looks and feels like ancient technology next to recent offerings from Blackberry and the iPhone. Internet Explorer consistently falls behind the competition in modern speed ratings. Microsoft needs to re-evaluate its product refreshes and make them more significant and more innovative. Each step forward must be a real step, not a crawl. What Microsoft truly needs is to:

2. Take some risks.
Microsoft’s offerings are frequently too conservative. If the XBOX 360 hadn’t been released a year early, it’d be competing with Sony’s PS3 for last place. Ultimately, it suffers from being the middle child. It’s not as family-friendly or as affordable as Nintendo’s Wii, yet it’s not as technologically advanced as the PS3. It falls into the netherworld of being neither, and thus has been last in sales for most of 2008. As for Windows, there really is only one solution. Start over. Microsoft has plenty of money to either hire a new team of experienced engineers, or break off a small piece of its Windows 7 team to begin a new operating system based on new technologies. It’ll have to maintain a legacy system to run NT processes, but the core of the operating system must be new. Microsoft spends too much money and too much talent trying to wrangle a modern operating system out of fifteen-year-old technology. Take a risk. Start over. It’ll only make Windows better.

3. Tame the OEMs.
Microsoft relies on OEMs to deliver their overwhelming lead in the home desktop market. Yet it was OEMs that created most of Vista’s problems at release. The Vista Capable fiasco tore down customer confidence and set Vista back severely. Apple’s Mac OS X can promise the smooth and powerful experience it’s known for because it controls the specifications for the machines that run the operating system. Microsoft’s traditional issue has been a wide range of specifications. However, a quick glance at the websites of popular low-price OEMs such as Dell or Gateway shows that the minimum machines match the minimum machines released by Apple. Intel Core 2 Duo chips and 2 GB of RAM are commonplace even among $400-$500 products. Microsoft needs to work with the OEMs to establish a minimum. Place restrictions in the license in terms of technology. Microsoft has the power of the license, and it needs to use it in way that doesn’t trap the OEM, but makes it mutually beneficial. The success of the OEM is tied to Microsoft’s success, and Microsoft must make that clear.

4. End the over-extension and establish focus.
One of Microsoft’s major problems is over-extension. It has attempted to push itself into too many markets, many of which are now dominated by focused competitors. Mobile phone OS is dominated by Symbian, Mozilla Firefox is rapidly eating away at Internet Explorer in the browser market, Nintendo’s monthly sales far outstrip XBOX 360’s, Google is the clear winner in online search, and the list goes on and on. Microsoft is not the leader, nor is it even second, in almost every market outside of the desktop operating system. Microsoft needs to focus its efforts, and maybe trim down its offerings in failing markets. It doesn’t need to be in the media player market. Expand the Zune into a multimedia portable console and bring it in line with the XBOX 360. It may be difficult to dump one of Microsoft’s many tentacles, but Microsoft needs to slim its offerings and focus them.

5. Cater to the niche.
Mac OS X has done remarkably well among the technophiles, the bloggers, the ones who make their voices heard on the internet. For the average user, the price, availability, and familiarity of Windows make it the attractive choice. However, with the growing ubiquity of the internet, more and more average users are beginning to turn to the internet for information, and once there, they run across the posts and articles written by the blogosphere. Microsoft needs to create hype and buzz among that niche. It needs to release attractive products that are attractive to that population, because they are gaining more power and influence over average consumer.

Microsoft ultimately needs to get off its crumbling throne and revitalize their business. They are slowly falling behind technologically and are in danger of losing relevancy in the fast-paced world of technological innovation. Microsoft has the money and the power to reverse their direction. They just need to be unafraid of failure.

Barack Obama’s somewhere in the Middle East, taking with him most of the national media. Meanwhile, John McCain lands in New Hampshire for a campaign event and one reporter shows up to meet him. The McCain campaign, in a typical GOP-style response, begins slinging the mud, criticizing Obama’s inexperience and naiveté concerning foreign affairs. Of course, they ignore Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s recent endorsement of Obama’s withdrawal plan, as well as McCain’s own gaffe concerning the terrible struggle along the non-existent border between Iraq and Pakistan. However, aside from McCain’s own shortcomings, why is the media seemingly obsessed with Obama? Is it because he is the frontrunner in this very young race? Is it because the media’s liberal bent has become full-blown bias? Or is it simply because such a journey for the presumptive Democratic nominee will be a ratings bonanza?

It may be all of those, or none of those. However, it is possible to look deeper and extract a more sinister reason behind this unprecedented media explosion. A look at election projection blog five-thirty-eight’s data reveals that Obama is in line for a modest victory, with relatively few states in the mix. A further look reveals that many of those states, including Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, New Mexico, and Iowa, were states that President Bush carried in 2004. Of the six states listed as “tipping point” states with a percentage above 10%, only one went to Senator Kerry – Michigan – which has 17 electoral votes. The five Bush carried combine for 39. If those were the only states that switched sides in November, Obama would win 273-264.

Of course, several other Bush states are beginning to lean towards Obama, including Virginia and Iowa. Michigan remains the only Kerry state with a significant chance of voting Republican. With the youth of the campaign in mind, it appears likely that Obama is a lock for the Presidency in November. At that thought, the media panicked.

Anyone who witnessed the lengthy Democratic campaign knows that the media drove themselves bananas hyping the race, switching sides and playing all the tricks in the hand to extend the race. They reaped the benefits with each passing week with ratings through the roof. Naturally, they want the general election campaign in the fall to be the same. However, Obama has taken the lead firmly and has refused to make a mistake. McCain has made plenty, but the media has ignored them. They want to bring Obama down a notch, to give McCain the chance to draw even, to make the race more exciting, to rake in more cash. This offers an explanation as to why all three major news networks and their anchors have packed up and traveled halfway around the world to accompany a presumptive nominee. They want to apply pressure on him, and then be there when he makes that critical misstep.

By focusing the lens of every major evening news program on him, by drawing the attention of the world onto this one man, they hope to put unnecessary pressure upon Obama’s shoulders. Obama must calculate every move he makes, every word he says, because at any given moment, the world is watching. They then hope that he cracks under this pressure, makes a McCain-like gaffe, and then jump on it. With this level of attention, a misstep by Obama would make the front page of every major newspaper in America. To the eyes of the public, the air of inevitability surrounding the candidate will disappear. McCain will be back in the public eye. The race will appear close again. The media can then go on repeating the same “historic” story ad infinitum and hyping up the general election, earning millions and millions of dollars in the process. Tearing down Obama would be the first step to levelling the field for McCain and the ailing GOP.

While the reasons for the media’s absolute frenzy surrounding Obama’s trip overseas may never be known, and certainly may be as simple as a ratings opportunity, it is clear that McCain is running out of time to stay relevant. If Obama emerges from this trip unscathed, he will have gotten a tremendous boost, in terms of media exposure, for free. Obama’s fund-raising and online presence far outstrips McCain’s, and the political mood is already straying far away from the GOP. I, for one, would rather see Obama elected by a modest margin, but I admit that it is unlikely to happen. November can’t come soon enough.

After spending the good part of the day taking Digital Disease’s design and making it my own, I’ve finally finished the basic structure of this page. Some parts still have to be done, like the About page, a new blurb for the “About” section to the right, and new Projects and Contact pages, but the hard part is done. It took six photoshop documents, several attempts of trial and error with css and the design elements themselves, and many trips to google, but it’s done.

I started this site not solely as a blog (I’ve started and stopped two already…I wouldn’t be surprised if this one died as well), but as a personal website. I felt that, going into my adult life, it was beneficial to me to have such an online home. I also wanted to nab the domain under my name before any other “Tim Xu” does. You can never be sure when you’ll need a domain for yourself. In the end, the most important parts of this site is the yet-to-be-finished Contact page, along with networking links on the sidebar. Those will be up soon.