More on the iPhone NDA

Chuqui 3.0: iPhone NDA: Doing more harm than good:

This is stupid.

I can only think of two reasons the NDA is still in place

In the interest of fairness and not burying this in an update to a posting people won’t see, I wanted to note that I heard from someone I trust on this with another perspective:

there are companies that won’t download the SDK because they have to sign the NDA. If they sign it, they have liabilities.

If the NDA is lifted, the those companies have full access to that information.

That is an interesting angle, possibly obscure to some folks, but I see where it’s heading. Is it worth messing up all of the other developers? I still think there is a tradeoff here I don’t like.

She also goes on to note a couple of other things:

his has been the leakiest NDA that I’ve ever seen mind you… too many people think ‘hey, anyone can download it so f*ck the NDA’. and that’s just incredibly wrong.

well, the best way to handle that would be having a private mailing list/forum that ensures NDA covered participants only.

you’re probably way more familiar than I am about the internal issues there though.

The first one is a serious issue, and bluntly, the people who F*ck the NDA are a big part of the problem here — the abusers who violate it and leak stuff are a huge reason why Apple’s pushed so hard to clamp down on everyone. the honest geeks get screwed by the ones who play their games.

And for what it’s worth, Apple has at times run private lists and forums for beta/NDA setups. I used to run them on lists.apple.com (and its predecessors) as lists, and back in the mid-90′s I built a site around Web Crossing that ran private forums for various projects to support the nice Developer Support people.

The problem is that validation of NDAs and keeping the subscription up to list is somewhat labor intensive and honestly, a lot of project groups just weren’t that into it. It was sometimes a challenge to convince them they actually needed people monitoring the public lists (yet another time I almost got my butt fired, and would have gone willingly over that issue…), and so over time, the folks who thought this stuff was important more or less lost a war of attrition and it all faded to black. But there was a time from about the mid-90′s to the early 2000′s where a bunch of this stuff was going on behind the scenes, and the technologies exist there today to support it, if there were people willing to do the non-technical aspects of it.

But it has to be noted that the non-technical aspects of it aren’t trivial, so it’s not necessarily an easy call, especially for a large project like the iPhone.

But, you know? records of a developer’s NDAs do exist. And if you were to, say, move subscriptions to the customer database and interconnected it with the developer data, you could create a subscription system that knew what NDAs were active and showed what private lists could be subscribed to. Which sounds simple, but it took something like four years to finally get things like New Music Tuesday integrated… Speaking of times I almost got my butt fired…

iPhone NDA: Doing more harm than good

iPhone NDA: Doing more harm than good:

To download and use the SDK, developers must accept a nondisclosure agreement that prohibits discussion of any of this “confidential information.” Since the platform targeted by the SDK—the iPhone OS 2.0—was released July 11, the NDA has become a source of frustration for the growing development community. Here’s why.

Dear Apple:

This is stupid.

I can only think of two reasons the NDA is still in place. Neither puts Apple in a good light:

1) the person responsible for dropping the NDA went on vacation and forgot their iPhone.

2) Apple is using this as a quiet hammer to limit developer’s ability to talk about problems with the new iPhone, MobileMe, the App store, etc, etc, until Apple fixes the worst of the problems.

It’s pretty clear that 2.0 was a subset of “the real 2.0″ and that stuff was left out and not really ready for prime time, and OS 2.1 seems to be adding most of the functionality that should have been in 2.1, and hopefully pushes all of this out of “you’re really beta testing our stuff, we just didn’t mention that” mode.

But really, either someone is asleep at the wheel, or someone’s trying to do damage control, and both are bad. In fact, they’re just creating a different problem, one maybe harder to fix later. And it serves very little useful purpose.

Mistake, time to fix. But they probably won’t.

Update. for more on this topic, see this second post by me:

Chuqui 3.0: More on the iPhone NDA:

In the interest of fairness and not burying this in an update to a posting people won’t see, I wanted to note that I heard from someone I trust on this with another perspective:

Earnings call takeaway: New products in September

Earnings call takeaway: New products in September – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW):

We had a good time speculating what new products/changes to the product line will appear in September (or in the 4th quarter, more accurately) in the liveblog and the press has joined in that speculation today. ZDNet thinks that products will be brought out at lower prices, so that Apple can drive volume and gain marketshare. Over at eWeek, they are guessing everything from a shift in microprocessors, to low-cost portables aimed at schools to revamped AppleTVs.

The general thought (or wish) in our chat last night centered around new MacBook Pros, lower priced Airs and revamped Minis or other headless Macs.

My personal speculation is that while I expect current line products to drop in price a bit (not a huge drop, but a drop), and think it is high time for a MacBook Pro redesign, I’m going to guess that new displays are part of the “transition.” The Apple Cinema Display line is not only overpriced, it is long-in-the-tooth when compared to products in its pricepoint (or even lower pricepoints). OLED displays could be expensive, and it would certainly be technology that no one else is pushing.

the one thing missing from the various speculations on this is timing. September/October is the prime time for the christmas/holiday selling season; it’s after back to school has finished, and before the holiday advertising blitz starts in early november.

To me, that means consumer, which doesn’t mean it won’t be a Macbook pro refresh, but I’d see that as more of a Macworld/January announcement. I also would tend to discount anything really revolutionary (i.e. tablets, or “macintosh touch” because the geeks would drool, but the consumer market would take a lot of selling and time.

So think macbook, apple TV, ipod. Things where you can get a big impact on announcement and sell quickly and easily to geeks without a long convincing process. The geek toys are probably going to come out in January, not September, when Steve can make a bigger splash and the selling cycle won’t be so compressed or frantic.

New and interesting uses for webmail…

For the last couple of weeks people at work have heard me muttering in the halls about “those damn geeks”. I’ve been chasing down and cleaning up after a group that’s been using the webmail system as a distribution system for — stuff. Mostly warez cracks and video, from what I can tell.

Since this seems to be fairly widespread and flying under the radar at most sites I’ve talked to about this, I thought I’d give it some wider visibility and go into some of the details.

I want to emphasize this part:

Let me say right up front: no system cracking involved here, no security issues, no hacks, no cracks, no leaks, no bugs. They are simply using these systems as designed, not doing anything to penetrate or compromise the system.

Nothing was hacked in any way, this is purely (in its way) a social engineering hack taking advantage of free webmail sites all around the internet — I saw at least 15 involved from my investigation.

I’d noticed some changes in network usage on the site the previous couple of months; bandwidth usage had doubled in both May and June, far beyond what I thought normal given the growth in new users we’re seeing. It didn’t seem too serious, though, so I stuffed it in the back of my head to investigate at some point.

Early July hits and I look at the numbers again — and in the first 7 days of July we’ve used 10X the network bandwidth we used in all of June. We’re talking orders of magnitude change, for no good reason.

That’s generally a bad thing. So I went looking….

What I found was both fascinating and a little depressing. It was a group of people based in Poland that have turned public webmail systems into the equivalent of a Bittorrent network.

Let me say right up front: no system cracking involved here, no security issues, no hacks, no cracks, no leaks, no bugs. They are simply using these systems as designed, not doing anything to penetrate or compromise the system.

Here’s how it seems to work: when they have a package to distribute, it is packaged up into pieces small enough to be attached to and sent as emails. Most webmail systems allow attachments up to about 10 megabytes. Files were split up and encoded in MIME as standard packages, although the details of name and type seemed to be ignored (lots of powerpoint files, in theory).

Then accounts were created on various webmail sites. In my sample of addresses, I see over a dozen different sites being used. The person doing all of this then emails the files to that mailbox, where they sit. Now, anyone who wants that set of files only has to get the access information for one of those accounts, log in via IMAP and let his email system download them. It looks like any given package is stored on between 3 and 8 different webmail accounts.

Account creation seems to be semi-automated. All accounts are of a similar format, a semi-random “word”, followed by a 1-3 digit number. Passwords use the same format (but are never the same), ditto the “from” address and the “return-path” in the headers of the emails. Sometimes the files are stored in more than one account on a single webmail (another reason why I think this is at least semi-automated), but generally, it’s sent to 4-6 webmail accounts on 4-6 different sites.

It looks like the actual account creation is manual, or semi-manual, because some of the sites involved use CAPTCHA on account creation and that isn’t stopping them. I don’t think this setup is sophisticated enough to have cracked CAPTCHA, so there are people involved in the setup. I think the account naming, and packaging is automated, but people are involved in the account creation and uploading. Once someone downloads the emails, there seems to be another script to put it all back together again, because it’s not depending on the MIME data in the message to do naming or decoding — in fact, that stuff is set up to (at least casually) make the content itself look innocent.

There’s obviously a web site somewhere that tells you how to access the mailbox to get the content, but I haven’t gone looking for it.

If you think about it, this is a pretty nice hack. With Bittorrent being scrutinized by many ISPs, they’ve set up a fairly low-tech, under-the-radar way of distributing “stuff” without easy detection. The original distributor only has to upload the files once, and then the rest of the resource costs are borne by the mail systems — the webmail site pays the network to upload the files into the system, pays for the disk to store them, and pays for the network to distribute them back out.

Needless to say, I spent some time shutting all of this down. We ended up with a couple of hundred accounts that I closed out. All told I identified and closed a couple of hundred accounts that accounted for over 200 gigabytes of disk storage, and the network bandwidth they were starting to suck was going to be measured in terabytes, and we’re a fairly small webmail site right now. One can only wonder what they’re doing to some other sites….

The group is based in poland. 99% of the access of these files also came from Polish IP ranges. Fortunately, once you know what to look for, it’s fairly easy to find these accounts, given the standardized naming, the limited IP range they’re coming from, and the exceptionally large average message size. The latter is the easiest way to identify them, no “real” webmail account (at least on our system) has an average message size > 5Meg. Even accounts where users are parking files in their Imap for storage tend to have no more than a 1 meg average storage size.

This group spent some time experimenting with the site, evidently to see if we were paying attention. The earliest record I can find of them accessing the site is in April. In June, they ramped their volume significantly, and in July, they opened the floodgates (and I found it four days later, fortunately). It’s hard to tell from the outside if this was them experimenting to see if we’d catch them and then ramping up when they felt safe or if this is a new network that was finally ramping up as they finished building it. Either way, it’s clear there’s a lot of network being used on a lot of webmail systems globally by these guys.

How to stop this? No easy answers. They aren’t really “doing” anything we don’t allow, it’s more of a Terms of Service on content issue with policing. If the account creation was fully automated we could possibly plug that hole (and probably should on general principles; CAPTCHA might not stop this but it can’t hurt, but some of the webmail sites being used have CAPTCHA enabled and it didn’t stop them). On the other hand, there’s no reason we should feel the need to let them pass around warez on our dime — and they only have to use network to upload it once, and then the webmail sites pay for the bandwidth to accept and then deliver it as often as it gets downloaded, plus disk storage and the typical overhead of backups and etc.

What it really goes to show is that people will find interesting uses for any publicly available technology, whether or not you intended for them to be used that way. It also, I think, means we should be aware of what those possible uses might be and see if we can influence our systems to discourage the ones we don’t like. For instance, a 5 megabyte limit on attachments might have discouraged these guys, but doesn’t seem to significantly impact “normal” users — I found very, very few emails on the system that large.

One of the things I’ve been pondering is ways to automate finding or setting alarms for this kind of “non-standard” behavior; quotas solve some problems, but not this one. I wrote a script that finds these accounts with really large average message sizes. It seems to me something that automates that process, or ways to monitor or rate-limit network usage on a per-account basis would be another way, or simply looking at accounts with the highest network usage.

Things that definitely don’t help this kind of problem: quotas, looking for accounts at or close to quota, accounts with large number of log-ins, or even usage from many different IP addresses. None of those were true. I also didn’t see any significant sign of multiple simultaneous users. The things I think of as “obvious” signs of abuse are missing here, it’s a different set of parameters that become visible once you look.

One option I’m just starting to investigate is coming up with some kind of “typical” network usage per user, sort of a capacity planning number — and then if the system deviates from that significantly it gives you a hint you need to look in more detail. I want to avoid having to monitor at the per-user level to the greatest extent possible, and find metrics at the system-usage level that might tell me if the system is within expected usage ranges or not.

In reality, there’s nothing “wrong” going on here other than the sheer size of the operation and the costs it involves (and the fact that most of the content is likely illegal). technically it’s pretty simple and straightforward — a nice hack — to shift the cost of distribution off to others in a way that’s (in theory) low-key enough to not be noticed, at least until they get greedy in resource consumption. If they hadn’t spiked usage in July like they did, I might not have gotten around to chasing them for a while.

My ultimate take-away, though, is that the users “use cases” for a technology are rarely the same as the developers. Sometimes the users innovate in really interesting and positive ways, sometimes they distribute warez — but either way, people are going to see opportunities in your technology and that should be part of the discussion in designing those technologies.

My suggestion: if you run a webmail site that allows users to create accounts, you might just want to look and see what you find. Might surprise you.

Oh, for what it’s worth, I’ve held off posting on this for a bit because I gave advance warning to the other sites I found involved in this. Of the 15 or so abuse@ accounts I sent the details to (including accounts, IP ranges, Received header data, etc, etc), one responded immediately and started their own search and destroy operation — they happened to be one of the larger “white label” webmail, so that’ll shut down any number of the domains involved.

But three of the webmail sites had their abuse@ addresses bounce as user unknown. One sent me email letting me know he was on holiday for a few weeks (in italian). And from the rest, including the two Polish ISPs where all of the upload activity intiated, total silence. Ohwell. Kinda sad, but hey, it’s their network bill, if they don’t mind paying it, I shouldn’t complain… And I just did a check of our site to see if they took the hint, and I see no sign of them creating new accounts now or doing any kind of activity, so I think they’re gone. Well, for now. I’ll know if they come back…

breaking the 200 barrier… (with a bullet!)

With everything going on, I was wondering if I’d ever get past the 200th bird on my birdwatching life list. I set myself two goals for birding in 2008: 200 species, and to be the first to discover a notable bird in the area.

The latter is really a function of luck, time spent birding and a bit more luck; and I’ve come close a couple of times in the last year, but it’s never been confirmed. It’ll happen when it happens.

But I’ve finally been able to do a bit of birding again, and I’ve now shot past 200 species. I’m now thinking I might amend the goal to 200 species for the year and see what happens.

Bird # 200 was, of all things, a Barn Owl. There’s a Barn Owl in a box at Don Edwards EEC; I went out there on the 11th to see if I could find the Wilson’s Phalaropes (no luck because I was limited in how far I could walk out after them), and realized I’d never logged the owl onto my list. Looked i the box, it looked back and blinked. Done.

Leading up to 200 included a couple of nice birds: 199 was Snowy Plover, down in Bolsa Chica (yes, I’m spending a LOT of time in SoCal these days, and birding Bolsa Chica on the way out home most trips; it’s a nice place to visit and a good break after the fun of Southern Cal right now). 198 was Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher, a bird I’ve missed multiple times, even when Bob Power has pointed it out — yet when I was reworking my photo library, there was a bird from 2006 labeled “sparrow” that I saw at a glance was wrong; a close look showed it to be a Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher, so I added it to the list retroactively.

Also added to my list via photo evidence were Gila Woodpecker and Northern Cardinal from a trip to Tucson in the 1990s, and Rhinoceros Auklet from 2005 and a trip to Victoria at Odgen Point, those made 201, 202 and 203. Today I added Wilson’s Phalarope and the Ruff out at EEC for 204 and 205, and I could have added a Pacific Golden Plover, but my ankle just wasn’t up to the walk. The walk out to island 4 wasn’t bad, but it stiffened up watching the ruff, and the walk back got pretty brutal; still, it’s slowly improving.

Nice to know that despite everything going on the last few months, at least one goal is accomplished…

On the way back from SoCal yesterday with the first batch of Dad’s “stuff” to be sorted and organized, and with the key estate issues taken care of (at least this round), I hit Bolsa Chica again and got some really nice Snowy Plover photos, as well as some least tern chicks, and got to watch a black skimmer on the hunt again. Fascinating, weird-but-beautiful birds, the black skimmer.

Some quick notes on today’s birding trip:

I headed out this morning to Don Edwards in search of fame and fortune, or at least a Wilson’s Phalarope. Starting out around 10, I walked out to Island 4 and back, running into numerous other birders out searching for same or better.

It was a very successful day. The Ruff continued on Island 4, living most of the time on the far side of the island but popping up into sight every so often; while I was there, it came into full view three times, and popped it’s head up once more, over about 30-40 minutes.

Other birders reported the golden plover continuing on island 5, but my ankle was already complaining, so I gave it a pass (sigh. but right decision for me).

there was a Wilson’s Phalarope at the eastern edge of Island 4, another on island 3, and a third in the shallows on the S side of the berm across from Island 4, but not great numbers. I found two ruddy turnstones on Island 3. Walking back towards the parking lot near island 2, I had a sparrow fly past me. I chased it a bit before it flew off into the brush, and it looks (I think) like a moulting juvenile Savannah

From talking to the other birders, the black tern had been a no-show that morning. I’d stopped to rest the ankle near Island 1 on the way back (about 12:30ish) and noticed a tern out on the algae mat out beyond island one. It was only there for a minute or so, but I got the scope on it and it was a black tern (much darker underwings than forsters, and much different flying habits, it was flying maybe 1-3 feet over the water and dipping in to skim, much like a black skimmer, rather than the plunge dive; very distinctive once you see it). It flew off to island 1 and I thought it landed near the pelicans, but I couldn’t find it, but it was definitely there for a very short period of time.

In the reeds of the marsh between the EEC and the pond I spent some time trying to coerce the marsh wrens to come into view; one finally did, but there were four or five in the reeds. While doing that I had another bird fly through and perch; my initial thought was warbler, when I got my binocs on it, the face seemed more like a kinglet, but it had bright yellow on the chest. Coming home and researching, I realize now it was a female common yellowthroat, so my first guess was pretty close (I was initially thinking yellow-rump but no yellow on top or back).

A couple of birders reported a peregrine playing around near island 1; I didn’t see it, the terns did and weren’t happy.

Other birds seen included canada geese (which seemed to be migrators, not feral, and not terribly friendly), snowy and great egret, black-crowned night heron, one great blue heron, white pelican, a few mallards and a couple of pied-billed grebes, double-crested cormorants (lots of blonde younger ones), turkey vulture, lots of stilts and avocets, two really, really, REALLY cute baby stilts still in down on one of the islands (3, I think), one practicing catching bugs, one practicing swimming, yellowlegs, dowitchers, red-necked phalaropes (50+), western and least sandpipers (my brain cramp of the day: “least sandpiper. that’s a lifer. yeah, right. it’s semi-palmated I need.. gah). swallows, anna’s, and the usual cast of characters.

the golden plover, by reports, has moved onto island 5 and evidently went to sleep there, so it may hang around. the ruff is definitely hanging around, and well worth going and looking for; patience is needed because of its tendency to wander the far side of the island. When I was there, it’d make an appearance every 5-15 minutes for a bit. The black tern is around, look for the tern that isn’t acting like the Forsters — it tends to fly much closer to the water and swoop/skim rather than dive/plunge.

(and Ruff is 204 on the life list, wilson’s phalarope 205, and black tern 174 on the year list…. finally over 200….)

Apple’s Joswiak dishes on missing features

Macworld | iPhone Central | Apple’s Joswiak dishes on missing features:

When asked about cut-and-paste support, something that many iPhone users—ourselves included—have clamored for, Joz said that the feature simply didn’t make—if you’ll pardon the expression—the cut on Apple’s priority list for the latest software release. There’s nothing against cut-and-paste, Joz claimed, it’s just that other features were determined to be more in demand.

I think Joswiak and Apple are being a bit disingenuous here, but for all of the right reasons.
There’s a deeper issue that needs to be examined here, but it boils down to a few key points:
1) Once you implement something, it’s really hard to throw it out and replace it with something better; Apple’s more willing to do this than most companies (think, for instance, the “new” iMovie in iLife ’08 — and the whining that happened; personally, Apple was right, IMHO, but that’s a different blog entry — but most of the whining came from folks who honestly should have moved to Final Cut Express long ago and were pissed when Apple took iMovie back into being a “my mother can use this” entry level app)
2) One of Apple’s core values is “do it right”.
3) Something as core as cut and paste isn’t shipping until it passes the “Steve test”; and Steve is not big on “well, it’ll do”.
4) it’s easy to do cut and paste badly on an iPhone. Or even do it in a “hey, this doesn’t suck” way. But doing it the Apple way?
Basically, I think the real reason this doesn’t exist is because Apple knows once they implement it, they’re stuck with it, and so they’d rather not do it at all until they do it right.
And they’re right. It’s a lot easier to fix “we don’t have cut and paste” than “damn, but cut and paste sucks”.
but it’s a lot easier politically to simply say “hey, there are other priorities”. to a degree, he’s right; the priority he’s implying but not explicitly bringing forward is “we want to make sure it works like an Apple product and doesn’t suck” first.
And that’s why Apple sold a million of these buggers already; because they are careful about core functionality and compromises, and the geeks know it. Few companies are willing to play the “better to not do than do badly” game, much less Apple’s “… than do so-so” standard.
As an aside, since the Xbox 360/Netflix agreement has brought it forward again:
this is why Apple hasn’t done a PVR or PVR software for the Apple TV. There are so many factors out of its control — anyone who’s hooked one of these bastards up understands — that building a PVR that “works like an Apple” is somewhere beyond difficult and towards impossible (which is why so many of us would love something like this; it solves a problem nobody’s really solved, even Tivo, where interfacing to random cable boxes in random ways is still a bit of a horror show)
FWIW, I like the Xbox/Netflix deal. It’s impact on Apple and iTunes is less than most people think, because it really comes down to whether you prefer a subscription model (netflix) or a pay per view model (Apple), and neither model really matters for online video until both platforms fix the “there’s no freaking content” problem — the amount of downloadable content on Netflix is still a tiny proportion of it’s library, and bluntly, Netflix’s real value is in its library, not its technology. Which is why, everytime I talked to someone in the iTunes group when I was at Apple, I used to harp on “we have to buy Netflix” until they finally told me to just shut up… But iTunes with a subscription and PPV model and Netflix’ library depth and an Apple TV is one hell of a business proposition… Still is, but Apple never showed any significant interest in it, even though some of us wandering the project and its peripheries thought it was a killer combo.
But that’s ultimately why I haven’t bought an Apple TV (or a Roku) — neither gets me access to much of the content I want, which is the library beyond the last 3 years of hit movies. Talk to me when I can stream, as, Big Chill or Season 5 of M*A*S*H to my Apple TV on PPV prices.

Blogging Jumped the Shark?

Has Blogging Jumped the Shark?:

Wow. Jason Calacanis is leaving the blogosphere. I relate to how he feels; this stuff takes a lot of time and thought and you have to have the nerves of a stand-up comedian to keep doing it everyday. His blog was a good read and he will be missed.

I bet Jason will be back though in some manner or other and soon. After all, he is the Brett Favre of blogging

Sorry, Ted, but no.

Saying Blogging has jumped the Shark because Jason’s giving it up is like saying television is dead because the guy who’s selling Oxy-Clean at 2AM wants to do “real acting” on Broadway.

Jason never blogged. He shilled, whether it was Mahalo he was shilling or Jason. I stopped watching his act long ago; in fact, I’m amazed at how many people still follow him given the lack of any interesting content. Mahalo was the Time-Life books of the blogosphere, nothing more.

And now, after years of doing the Cal Worthington thing (a reference for you Socal folks), now he wants to be taken seriously and get personal and intimate with his readers. or something like that.

More power to him. Too bad he didn’t try that when he started. Now, at least for me, it’s a bit too late to really give a damn. He treated the blogosphere like a marketing opportunity, not a community or conversation, and now he finds what he’s doing hollow and shallow?

Gee. Count me as stunned — that he noticed.

This is like Larry the Cable guy deciding he needs to get some legitimacy and taking on King Lear. I sympathize with the intent — but I’m not going to buy tickets….

(and one of my favorite “calling bullshits” on this — Tony Hung:

Deep Jive Interests » I, Too, Call “BullShit” On Jason Calacanis:

But let me join the chorus of doubters, nay-sayers, and “haters” (who Jason calls out on as a ‘reason’ to stop blogging) in calling BullShit on his “official” reason, above.

)

and anotehr good rant, from Matthew Ingram:

Jason’s long goodbye: Give me a break » mathewingram.com/work |:

is giving up blogging because he craves something more “acoustic and authentic.” That part stretches believability to the breaking point. If anything, an email newsletter is a step backwards into megaphone and pulpit land; which makes sense, I suppose, since I have a hunch Jason much prefers the one-way pulpit to the two-way blogosphere. And when Jason promoted his new email list on FriendFeed, he said it was an “insider” list and was for: “insiders only, please — no casual folks.” Seriously, who talks like that? Not even Jason could be so totally without even a stitch of self-awareness.

honestly? Jason’s convinced me he’s so full of himself that he could be that un self-aware of how he presents himself to others.

Concerns About Bernier. And Everything Else.

KuklasKorner : Canucks and Beyond : Concerns About Bernier. And Everything Else.:

I don’t have anything to add except that the rumors out of Vancouver yesterday speculated that Bernier was only traded because the Sabres believed they were about to lose him to an offer sheet. (The theory being—as I understand it—that Vancouver indicated to the Sabres that they were intending to sign him for more money than the Sabres would choose to match, so the Sabres acquiesced to a trade in order to get a better deal—what amounted to an extra draft pick).
image
True or not, I have no idea. All I know is that the Sabres capitalized on their storage of picks pretty quickly after losing Bernier, and the Canucks are almost-certainly better off because of his signing

Alanah follows up on my post on Bernier from the Canucks view. To get some more perspective on this, I’ll give props to Daniel Robitaille, who posted this as a comment on my previous article:

I thought this quote seen in this morning’s Globe and Mail was very telling for the probable cause of his apparent decrease in value in recent months:

“For his part, Bernier admitted he must get in better shape and improve his consistency after three years where he has flashed goal-scoring potential, but also suffered setbacks.”

As to the timing of the trade, I’m not sure it was offer-sheet based. If you look at the timing of things, as soon as the Sharks lost out to Chicago on Campbell, they went and finalized a deal for Dan Boyle — and as soon as that was approved, Rivet went off to Buffalo. As soon as Rivet was headed off to Buffalo, Bernier went to Vancouver.

The sharks were clearing depth by moving Rivet (and salary, but they weren’t tight to the cap); the Sabres were clearing cap room by moving Bernier and getting picks back. And both of those deals were clearly set up and on hold for the triggering event, which was the Boyle deal. so to some degree, Steve Bernier was traded from Buffalo to Vancouver by Doug Wilson. Indirectly….

It seems to show just how intertwined things in the league; Buffalo and San Jose are talking about trading Rivet, if San Jose can make something else happens. To make roomf for Rivet, Buffalo then goes and talks to Vancouver, and then everyone sits and waits, and it either all happens, or we never hear anything.

One rumor I read today that Kyle McClaren was being shopped. I have to wonder if that ended when Rivet moved, or if Wilson has another trick up his sleeve. My guess is the former, but you never know.

One curious aspect I don’t think we’ll ever know is how much Buffalo knew what San Jose was doing, and how much Vancouver knew what Buffalo was doing based on what San Jose was doing… were these deals done in the sly, or did everyone know it depened on Boyle moving? Neither team, clearly, was in the Boyle sweepstakes…

Canucks Trade for Steve Bernier

KuklasKorner : Canucks and Beyond : Canucks Trade for Steve Bernier:

Vancouver Canucks General Manager Mike Gillis announced today that the club has acquired right wing, Steve Bernier from the Buffalo Sabres in exchange for a second round Draft pick in 2010 and third round pick (Los Angeles’ selection) in 2009.

“Steve Bernier is a highly regarded young player who’s enjoyed success early in his career,” said Gillis. “With his right-handed shot he will be a great addition to our top six forward group and an asset to our power play.”

Alanah just posted a pointer to this. I find it — curious.

Steve Bernier is a young player with good talent and a lot of potential, yet when the Campbell trade was made, the Sharks considered him expendable. His problem: games and shifts where he played without intensity. It got him sat a few times, but at his age, that’s not unusual, and very teachable.

Even recently, Bernier was being touted as a key cog in the Buffalo future.

And now he’s off to Vancouver for a 2nd and a third draft pick?

Alarm bells are going off here. When a player starts becoming the pass-around pack, unless it’s Mike Sillinger, you have to wonder why; especially when teams say nice things about them and then trade them.

It’s more alarming when the value for that player is decreasing, and let’s be blunt: a 2nd and a third here mean’s Bernier’s stock isn’t exactly peaking. And (sorry, Alanah), when these things happen and the player is being moved to teams lower in the pecking order? Vancouver isn’t Buffalo or San Jose; this isn’t Brad Stuart going to Detroit.

So I have to wonder what is happening with Bernier, that teams not only find him expendable, but now in Buffalo, moved him for mid-level draft picks. It’s little more than a salary/depth dump here; maybe they’re freeing up room to make a signing of some sort, but Steve Bernier shouldn’t be a player that’s moving around for draft picks — at this point in his career. Or moving around this often.

If he goes to the Canucks and becomes the Bernier I think he can be, Vancouver gets a bargain; he wouldn’t be the first player to be traded into the right organization, or get his head on straight (think Brad Boyes). On the other hand, he also wouldn’t be the first player to get bounced around a bit and then fade to black, never to be heard from again (think Jeff Jillson).

Canucks fans, however, should see this kid as a project, not a solution, because Ottawa dumping him off makes me believe they decided his negatives outweighed his positives. Steve, if you read this — don’t be Jeff Jillson. Get back in the weight room…

(historical sharks scuttlebutt: both Boyes and Jillson were sharks prospects who, if rumors prove correct, earned their way out of the organization by not being committed to the Sharks idea of “game shape”. Boyes is rumored to have basically taken a summer off from his weight training and coming into camp in poor shape, Jillson, I was told, arrived in camp something like 15 pounds overweight. Boyes bounced around the league a bit, grew up, got his act together, and is a pretty good player today. Jillson — well, not so.

The biggest complaint I’ve ever heard about Bernier is he loses focus and his head isn’t always in games. that’s eminently trainable, if a player wants to be trained. But now, two teams have basically decided not to wait for him to mature. Canucks fans should be a bit careful about their expectations for the kid. I sincerely hope he makes the Sharks regret he came back into the west, but he’ll have to prove it)

(update: buffalo, not ottawa. my bad…)

Looking at Sharks 2009…..

So the dust is settling, and the new sharks roster is taking shape, and I’m finally back at a point in my life where blogging seems not only possible, but interesting. Been an interesting three months.

So now we can start to look at the Sharks for 2008-2009 and see if this is a better team. Is it?

First, coaching: I like the hiring of McLellan, but it’s not without risks. Sometimes a really top-notch assistant coach is — a top-notch assistant coach. He could be the next Bruce Boudreau or John Anderson, but he could also be Dave Lewis or Wayne Cashman, two guys who tried to make the leap to NHL coach and found out they made damn good assistant coaches. Or he could be Kevin Constantine, who’s a pretty damn good coach, just not at the NHL level.

So the move is not without risk, but the Sharks aren’t afraid of taking risks, and I think this one makes sense. I’m a lot happier with the idea of bringing in a new voice that has some ability to relate to younger kids than to bring in a “safe” retread who overplays veterans and doesn’t grow his players. I think it’s a good hiring, and I’m looking forward to seeing how he fills out his assistants.

A while back, I wrote about what I thought should be (or would be) changed in the roster offseason. A few highlights and lowlights:

Two for Elbowing: Picking up pieces and an update on Michalek – The San Jose Mercury News Sharks Hockey Blog -:

the Sharks are a damn good team, but it’s clear changes need to be made for the team to get better.

I’d like to see Nabokov backed off to 60-65 games next year (his going to the world championships notwithstanding). Rest him a bit more, keep him a bit fresher.

If that means bringing back Boucher, or someone else, so be it.

And so it is.

Core group (do not touch under penalty of death):

Thornton
Marleau
Pavelski
Mitchell
Grier
Clowe
Setoguchi

Not coming back:

Curtis Brown (Sorry, Brownie, but I think it’s time).

All of which happened. I honestly felt a top six forward would go — I’m happy that McLellan and Wilson think this group can be kept together and improved without being swapped around.

Players I expect back, but which aren’t “no trade under any cirucmstance” types (as part of the right deal? sure):

Tomas Plihal
Patrick Rissmiller
Jody Shelley
Marcel Goc

I want to see come back:

Jeremy Roenick

Rissmiller was allowed to leave, Shelley is back, as far as I can tell, Plihal and Goc are still unsigned. Plihal will be, Goc, not so sure. If of this crew we lose Rissmiller (like him, replaceable) and Goc (like him, somewhat disappointing), I don’t think the sharks miss a beat. No game changers.

So where does this put the Sharks?

Thornton-Cheechoo-Michalek
Pavelski-Marleau-Clowe
Grier-Roenick-Setoguchi
Shelley-Plihal (probably)-Mitchell

and two black aces to be named. Goc maybe one of them.

It’s kinda hard to complain about this roster, especially if they play to potential. So I won’t. you can see why Rissmiller wasn’t kept, when guys like Setoguchi and MItchell and Plihal are having to fight for third line time?

Now the fun begins. The Defense was the thin spot on depth last year. I thought going into the season it was good enough. I was wrong. This year, it’s looking a lot different:

Core group (do not touch under penalty of death):

Douglas Murray (what an improvement this year!)

Matt Carle (struggled at times, but seems to be growing into it; I’d hate to give up too soon)

M-E Vlasic (wow; at his age?)

Craig Rivet

I’d like to see back:

Brian Campbell (but not for Phaneuf money; if someone wants to pay him that, be my guest. he’s missing that “punk brat” aspect to his game, which keeps him a rung below Phaneuf on the ladder. But $25m over 5 years? sure. Just not $30 over 5.

hint: I expect Campbell to stay. He seems happy. He likes playing 30 minutes a game. Why screw it up?

Not coming back:

Sandis Ozolinsh: thanks, Sandis. for everything.

Alexei Semenov: ditto. Neither of these are NHL caliber in today’s NHL.

Kyle McLaren: love his guts and drive, but his knees are problematic. I think it’s time to consider an upgrade.

So one of my “untouchables” goes away in Matt Carle, but we’re getting (if rumors are true) Dan Boyle in return. We lose Brian Campbell, but for the money he’s getting, I hope Chicago enjoys his play. Carle was a lot more expendable to me than Vlasic, so I’m happy.

So our D now looks like:

Rob Blake-Dan Boyle
Vlasic-Rivet
Murray-lukowich (rumored coming from tampa)

McLaren

Again, not much to complain about here. Blake/Boyle/Lukowich instead of Campbell/Carle and either Semenov or Ozolinsh? It’s a more veteran crew, but I like what Blake brings to the team in intrinsics, even if we’re giving up some youth to get it (indirectly, because losing Campbell makes bringing Blake in and getting Boyle possible — although I get the impression Wilson was going to bring Blake in anyway).

This is a team that’s now completely oriented towards the next two season. Yeah, after that we’ll have to see about bringing youth in and reloading, but that’s wilson’s problem later. This team needed to be about “NOW OR ELSE”, and now it truly is.

In retrospect, two problems last year:

no backup goalie to take the load off of Nabby and limit his playing time a bit. I don’t think this really hurt the sharks, but I don’t want my goalie playing that many games.

The defense was too young and too thin; trying to patch in with Semenov and Ozolinsh was the red flag, and that proved to be true.

One thing I can guarantee: Doug Wilson will do something completely different than this, and when he does, I’ll go “wow, I never would have thought of that” and like it. Whcih is why he’s GM, and I’m a blogger…

Well actually, Wilson’s done pretty much what I expected; couldn’t re-sign Campbell, went and got Boyle. I have to admit that Rob Blake was one of the guys I thought would be great on the Sharks — only I never thought he’d leave the Kings, so I didn’t really consider it an option. Fortunately, Wilson did, and Lombardi (if you ask me) mis-stepped here. but more on that later. But thanks, Dean. I expect Detroit will send you flowers for helping us (not).

I can’t see how Wilson could have handled this better, given things not under his control (campbell couldn’t be forced back without seriously overpaying him, which the Sharks don’t do). I’m really happy they didn’t move Marleau, I’m really happy they didn’t make any “make a splash” moves at the draft and overpaying to do so. It’s all a very solid, methodical, well-thought out strategy.

So far, a great offseason. And what it ends up doing is sending a big message to the players: no excuses. Now, it’s up to the players.

Can’t wait for camp.