I'm about to leave for a long weekend but before I do I wanted to put some brief follow up thoughts to the whole Identi.ca thing.  In doing so I wanted to make the point that I'm not actually trying to bash the program.  Anyone who goes to the effort of writing a program, putting up a server, and sharing it all with the community deserves praise.  But that doesn't mean we should ignore the flaws in that system. 

With that said, here are some things I didn't cover yesterday...

Wanting To Believe

Without quoting anyone specifically the general sentiment from those who were praising Identi.ca seemed to be...

"Its lacking features but I'm sure they'll be implemented soon"

The irony here is that an open source project is less likely to implement features quickly.  Say what you will about the monstrous amounts of money being pumped into startups the reality is that millions of dollars goes a long way towards implementing features quickly.  An Open Source project relies on the free time of the people involved which is a recipe for slow implementation. 

But people want to believe in this so they twist the facts to fit their desire.  It never ceases to amaze me how easily people can convince themselves that what they want is the likely outcome even when every logical factor is stacked against them. 

I love this spec so much that I'm just about to start reading it

One of the things that surprised me the most is that people were willing to jump right into supporting the openmicroblogging.org spec even though they obviously hadn't read it.  Had they done so it would have become clear that (a) it doesn't account for a lot of the basic Twitter features and (b) it is incomplete with many of the links pointing to non-existent pages. 

(For the record, yesterday I thought those non-existent pages were just down because the servers were over run but now that its been 24 hours I'm assuming they just aren't there at all)

In recent years people seem to have strayed from the concept of approved standards because the approval process takes so long.  But it pains me to see us having gone so far in the other direction that we are encouraging others to put up servers based on a protocol that's completely unvetted.

Happy Days Really Aren't Here Again

Even more shocking to me is the fact that people are giving this credit for things it doesn't solve.  If you want a decentralized Twitter this doesn't seem to solve your problem.  Sure, other people's servers might stay up, but you still won't be able to post to yours.  So if your problem is that you can't post during server outages this really doesn't solve that problem.  In fact, given Twitter has multiple servers while anyone implementing this will probably only have one, it might just make your problem worse. 

This product is great, just don't click on that.  Or that.  Or that. Or that...

The most interesting part of the reaction to Identi.ca is that half the time I tried to click on a link and I got a message asking me if I wanted to download a file with an unrecognized MIME type.  I'd think this was a configuration problem on my side if those same links didn't work the other half the time.

I can't be the only one who had this problem so my question is: Why did no one mention this?  I couldn't find it once in all the blog posts about the service. 

Again with the Open Source

This is a reiteration from yesterday's post but it really bugs me.  Open Source is great.  I personally learned a lot from people who made open source programs available.  But when talking about actually USING an open source program the fact that its open source is only valuable if there's a team of people dedicated to working on it. 

Despite what some advocates would have you believe 99.9999999999999% of programmers wouldn't go anywhere near open source projects because (a) they program all day and don't feel like doing it at night, (b) there's a huge disincentive at the outset because you have to learn someone else's code backward and forwards, and (c) coordinating efforts between other programmers who are doing something part time is a huge pain. 

The point about learning someone else's code is the most potent of these issues.  You can't just jump in and start coding on a big project.  Doing even the simplest thing requires you know every subsystem you'll be interacting with backwards and forwards.

So when ReadWriteWeb says...

Can it work, work it scale? At least it's open source so the development community doesn't have to play armchair quarterback for a black box like they are with Twitter.

Or Ewan Spence says...

I suspect that with an Open Source code base they’re going to get a lot of eyes looking over problems and tweaks

They're being naive.  Twitter's has experienced programmers whose full time job is to sort out its problems and look how far that's gotten them.  Finding code bugs in a large program that you aren't intimately familiar with is next to impossible.

As far as program functionality goes, the truth is that a good plug-in framework is way more useful than open source is. 

I Could Go On All Day

I don't want to belabor the point anymore but hopefully you see what I'm saying.  There are a lot of questions  here with seemingly no answers.  The blogosphere seems to think appending "Open" to the name of something instantly makes it either Golden or destined to be Golden but that really isn't the case at all.

Maybe this will take off and maybe they will implement every feature that Twitter has but until they do it seems premature to consider this a viable Twitter alternative. 

P.S.  To anyone in the U.S., enjoy your holiday and remember: No explosion, no matter how cool, is worth the loss of a limb.

Well ok, maybe a REALLY cool one but lets face it, you can't afford those kind of Fireworks.  If you could you'd also be able to afford someone to light them for you.  

So Twitter has some competition, sort of...

Identi.ca is a new microblogging service that launched today - but it's not just another also-ran. The service is an Open Source, CreativeCommons framework for a distributed network of federated microblogging services.

If you've become interested in the paradigm changing model of communication popularized by Twitter but have been frustrated by Twitter's frequent down time or other shortcomings - then Identi.ca could be for you.

Sounds very exciting doesn't it?  All your prayers have been answered you disenfranchised Twitter lovers.  But wait, there's more...

Coming "Soon"

Identi.ca just launched today but lists a number of features it says are coming "soon," including SMS, URL shortening, cross posting to Twitter and other services, a more AJAXy interface and much, much more. Exciting.

There is no "replies" tab on Identi.ca, but Twitter users will already be accustomed to that, right? We hope that functionality will come to Idneti.ca quickly.

What now?  But...But...I thought this was the deliverance? 

OK, all joking aside, this is something I've mentioned before and something that happens to be a really big pet peeve of mine.  Open Source is not a feature unless you actively plan to use the source to improve the product.  Otherwise it's useless to you. 

The only reason this half baked offering is getting any press attention at all is because its Open Source.  If not for that it would be laughable.  Not only is it inferior to Twitter in every conceivable way but its built with basically no resources so if everyone does rush to it you can expect it to crash faster and more often than Twitter does. 

Oh, and on that note, if everyone rushes over there one thing they won't find is an API.  That's right, dig a little deeper and you find this isn't really even as "open" as Twitter in that it doesn't have an API (support for the Twitter API is another "planned feature"). 

So basically its just like Twitter it just lacks everything you love about Twitter.  

The one thing I will give it credit for is that its the first product (if you can call it that) to demonstrate a model for a federated microblogging service (meaning others could put up their own compatible microblogging services and exchange messages between them).  But since the site only seems to be coming up sporadically for me I can't look into that to see how effective their model is. 

So while this could be the start of something significant right now the offering is pretty weak.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm an advocate of Open Source but if these initiatives want to succeed than they have to create products that can compete in the marketplace with closed source options. 

Otherwise they're just wasting everyone's time. 

So after all the $199 hoopla it turns out the price of the 3g iPhone is...no different than the price of existing iPhone's now. 

AT&T retail stores will be open at 8AM local time on July 11th, so be “iReady!” Existing customers who don’t qualify for an upgrade will have to shell out $399 and $499 for the corresponding iP3G model. Customers who don’t want to extend their current contract will pay $599 for the 8GB and $699 for the 16GB model.

Now let me say that I don't have a problem with them announcing $199 as the price even though that price requires a 2 year contract.  That's just marketing. 

But I do find two things a little disingenuous...

1.  They framed this as a price drop which it isn't.

2.  They waited until now to reveal how much it would be for those not eligible for an upgrade.  Since that group includes every existing iPhone user I think this counts as "stringing your existing customers along"

I think its debatable where the line is between good marketing and flat out lying but Apple's definitely right up against it with this (if they didn't cross it completely). 

I love my iPhone but as someone who hadn't owned an Apple product before this I'm constantly surprised by Apple's shoddy treatment of their customers. 

Addendum: Kudos to VentureBeat for catching this, the new iPhone 3g data plans don't include any text messaging.  Read about it here.

Michael Krigsman writes a post for ZDNet about Feedburner's recent 3 day outage.  For those who aren't bloggers Feedburner is a service operated by Google that allows you to track information about your RSS/Atom Feeds such as how many subscribers they have, what those subscribers are clicking on, etc...

In his post Mr. Krigsman says...

FeedBurner blog site statistics have been down for over two days with no word from Google despite numerous complaints from users. Does Google’s lack of response suggest something we don’t know?

...

In my view, Google’s cavalier attitude toward FeedBurner suggests that perhaps the service has been demoted to second-tier status despite the fact some FeedBurner services remain working. If so, that’s bad news for users. Google, any comment on this?

To be honest, I was surprised this issue didn't get more coverage in the blogosphere.  Such blatant mistreatment of customers, particularly vocal customers like bloggers, usually creates more of a storm than this. 

I don't know for a fact what is behind Google's lack of response.  But it reminds me of an issue that I don't think gets near enough attention and that's the fact that Web 2.0 companies, with their ad based revenue models, have no incentive to listen to their customers. 

Because unlike businesses in the past their money comes from a third party giving the consumer no pull.

Our lives are becoming more and more dependent on companies that don't answer to us in any way.  I actually posted on this a few months back.  At the time I said...

This is one of the biggest problems and least discussed consequences of Web 2.0's new "Advertisement Based Economy".  By being an intermediary between you and the service you are using the advertising company is preventing you from having any hold over the company that is actually providing you with a service.  Because of that you lose the ability to hold them accountable for providing that service poorly. 

It actually adds a lot of credence to the idea that nothing comes for free.

So the question is, what can be done?  People certainly don't want to start paying for something that is currently free and web sites have no reason to listen to users while the people with the ads are providing all the funding.  What needs to happen is the middle man (a.k.a. the advertiser) needs to start advocating for the user.

I still wish a system like this could be established but I'm less and less optimistic as time goes on.  Google's complete lack of not only contrition but response of any kind shows just how complacent people have become in regards to this. 

It makes me wonder though, with people relying more and more on these services and starting to put important data into them (Google Health for example) how long can this type of behavior be tolerated?  I have to think the consumer will stand up and complain at some point.

A couple weeks ago I posted on the oddness of Facebook being honored for its business acumen.  At the time I made the point that Facebook had made some impressive technical achievements but had not yet proven itself as a viable business and certainly didn't deserve to be honored as such. 

After thinking on it for a couple weeks I came to the conclusion that the business community just gets enamored with tech companies.  Something about the creation of new business models makes them abandon any rational analysis of a company's actual performance or future chances of success.

That theory is what's on my mind after reading the news that Marc Andreessen has joined the board of Facebook (as reported by Techcrunch)...

Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, Opsware and Ning and the former CTO of AOL, is adding a new notch in his belt: he has joined the board of directors of Facebook, two sources close to the company confirmed to us (speculation about Andreessen possibly joining the Facebook board started last month on the Boomtown blog). The company should be announcing it shortly, perhaps this week.

I have a lot of respect for Marc Andreessen from the technology perspective and the guy is a master at selling companies for more than their probably worth.  But a business man who builds for the long term he is not. 

In fact, Netscape's downfall was largely due to the fact that he and Jim Clark squandered their resources at the same time they were taunting the biggest, most aggressive company in the IT industry.  The end result of which was to take a company that was already profitable and on its way to long term success and effectively bury it.

That makes Mr. Andreessen seem like an odd fit given Facebook's insistence that it's in this for the long term. 

Even more bizarre is the fact that he's founder, chairman, and a full time employee of Ning which is a direct competitor to Facebook.  This isn't like Eric Schmidt of Google joining the board of Apple even though both companies make Cell. phone technology.  Facebook does one thing, Ning does one thing and they're both the same thing.  Its ridiculous.

I bring all this up to again point out the bizarre nature of Silicon Valley funding.  No company in any other industry would dream of pulling a move like this particularly when they had no profits and no viable plan to eventually turn a profit. 

Addendum: I stick by what I said in the post above but in thinking it over I wanted to add a couple things. First, Andreessen was 22 when Netscape was founded and only 28 when it was acquired by AOL so it’s a little unfair to hold a lot of what happened at Netscape against him. Second, though he’s famous for turning huge profits on companies that aren’t that successful it should also be mentioned that he makes more of an effort than most to stay involved in those companies. He stayed on after Netscape was acquired by AOL and he remained chairman while Loudcloud/Opsware was changing hands.  That should all count for something.

Whenever I see a Steve Gillmor byline I always think back to the above cartoon (excuse the poor scan quality, I don't have the books with me right now and had to go off an old scan I gmailed to someone a few years back). 

For those who don't know Steve Gillmor is a man famous for posts that contain sentences like this...

Imagine (not for long will it be ephemeral) an information bus that orchestrates the signaling of text, rich media, calendar, communications, transaction, and group location status under a social graph umbrella based in part on user-controlled behavior aggregation (gestures).

Honestly, I'd kind of come to terms with the man.  Don't get me wrong, I still think its immoral to write in a way that purposely tries to make others feel dumb so that you can appear smart.  But people who I respect seem to like him so I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. 

Maybe he's doing it on a sub-conscious level or something. 

Which is why I decided to comment on a story he posted yesterday where he said...

As Bill Gates closed the door for the final time Friday on his ex-office (Ballmer takes over Monday) the rhetoric about continued one day a week doesn’t match the reality.

Now that looks a lot like he's saying he didn't realize Gates wasn't the CEO any longer but you have to assume he knows that.  But if he comes back and tries to defend himself its going to look like he's covering.

So I jumped in and tried to illuminate what I think he meant for him.  I said...

I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume by “(Ballmer takes over Monday)” you meant to imply that Gates was somehow “shadow running” the company from his position as Chief Software Architect since I can’t imagine you’d be so stupid as to not realize Ballmer has been CEO for years now.

But something went wrong and the post didn't show up. 

Now I was on my way out the door at that point and didn't have time to retype it so I just let it go.  Then I checked back a couple of hours later and...it was there.  Not only that, there were no posts criticizing Mr. Gillmor's writing style.

That's when it hit me...he's moderating the posts.

Now I realize there are trolls on the Internet and if someone is posting just to cause trouble I have no problem with people moderating those comments.  But moderating for any reason (like in this case where the purpose is clearly to silence his critics) is rude and disrespectful.  The people commenting that his posts don't make sense have the right to their opinion and don't deserve to be treated as undesirables because of it. 

I always thought Mr. Arrington (Techcrunch founder and CEO) had a little more respect for his audience and its disappointing to find that he doesn't.

P.S.  Just to end on a bright note here are a couple other comics that I sent in the same e-mail.  I'm a big Calvin and Hobbes fan and these two are my personal favorites...

Duncan Riley of The Inquisitr writes a post on the "bitchmeme" phenomenon of Techmeme entitled "Techmeme and the Noise Problem".  In it he says...

Bitchmeming about Techmeme has long been a favorite past-time of bored early adopters over numerous weekends in the last year. The arguments are usually similar, and revolve around variations of Techmeme is to focused on reporting news from large companies and/ or ignores small startups, and that it is dominated by a few sites while others don’t get a look in.

To be honest, I don't really think this is a problem.  In fact, I'll go even further and say I think trying to "fix" this would be a problem. 

(In fairness Mr. Riley makes the same point in his post and I'm really just elaborating on what he said.  But he said it in a way that was awkward to quote because it required combining two non consecutive paragraphs which, when done, made it look like he was making an entirely different point)

The important thing to remember here is the definition of a meme tracker.  It's a tool that tracks topics across a certain community segment.  For Techmeme to do what Mr. Riley is asking it would have to actively supplant the community's judgement for its own.  At that point it stops being a meme tracker and becomes just another news site. 

Meme Trackers, as the name implies, track the community.  If Bitchmemes arise it's because that's what the community was interested in (whether they want to admit it or not). 

On that note there is a solution to the problem outlined above and it's a simple one.  It's called the Inquisitr, or TechCrunch, or ReadWrite Web, or any other site that's covered by Techmeme and can publish news on small startups.  Its a cyclical thing, if Techmeme is failing the community its because the community is failing Techmeme.  If you run a web site dedicated to the tech industry its your job to hunt down interesting startups and make a post that gets other Techmeme covered sites interested. 

The true irony of Techmeme is that its probably the most "Web 2.0" site out there.   Everyone loves to go on and on about the community on Twitter or on FriendFeed or on whatever the A-List decides to love next but all those sites are individual focused.  You have your individual Twitter page, or FriendFeed, or whatever.  Techmeme may be the only site out there that's legitimately community driven.

The Quick Aside Point: When I first saw the quoted post I went in a completely different direction based on this quote...

I’ve been a Techmeme fan for a long time, and I still religiously visit the site daily, although I have found myself using it less and less as writing here at The Inquisitr has allowed me to move away from pleasing someone with a Techmeme headline, to writing about what I love or am interested in, Techmeme headline or not be damned. I’ve also had the privilege of meeting Gave Rivera before and as well as being a great bloke, he’s smart as well…and I should know, I’ve tried multiple times to get a Techmeme clone scripted without any success.

I'm not sure it justifies its own post but I did want to point out how amazing it is that Techmeme has persisted through all the other tech industry fads.  It has lived through Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, et al. and is still going strong.  In a community as fickle as tech blogs that's pretty darn amazing. 

The REALLY out there Aside: Wall-E Rocks!  That has nothing to do with the rest of this post but we just got back from it and I felt the need to say it. 

Those who might think I've given up my "no politics" stance need not worry.  The title is just a little bit of sensationalism to perk everyone's ears up on this lazy Saturday.  It could just as easily say John McCain up there. 

The reason I used Obama is because the inspiration for this post is a quote by Robert Scoble in his most recent post entitled "The changing power in Washington DC".  In it he says...

Interesting to have been in that room, though, talking about tech policy with one of Barack’s advisers. He told me that Obama is going to make tech (both the policy of, and understanding of) one of the key differentiating points between Obama and McCain. To me that mattered more than who was raising money for the candidates, even as that story swirled all around us.

Now first lets address the Obama issue.  Regardless of what people might tell you no candidate gets an issue all to themselves.  If Obama unveils an "online plan" then John McCain will have one three days later.  That's the nature of politics. 

So this really isn't about one candidate its about the nature of Government itself. 

That being said, and with as little intended offense as is humanly possible, the above quote is profoundly ignorant of what I think are the realities of the world we live in.  Government involvement is not a good thing.  Ever.  Sometimes it's a necessary thing and that is why Governments exist in the first place but its  never preferable. 

Why is that?

Because Government exists to restrict freedoms.  That's their job.  If you get drunk and then hop in your car you are a danger to others around you so Government makes laws to prevent it.  They restrict your freedom to drive based on your intoxication level because of how dangerous your intoxication makes you to others.  But they are restricting your freedom because that is what Government does. 

So the question becomes whether there's something so dangerous on the Internet that it requires the restriction of people's freedoms.

Because there is a danger in Government intervention itself and that is Government's inevitable need to over restrict.  The FCC started as a service that simply assigned frequencies to people so they wouldn't interfere with each other's broadcasts.  But its now grown into an agency that concerns itself with everything said and done on any of those airwaves and which actually doles out punishment for saying things that the Government doesn't approve of. 

If you remember nothing else from this post remember this: Once Government turns its attention to something it will continually place more restrictions on that thing. 

This trend is so inevitable that it even has a name, the "slippery slope".  Anyone who studies history knows that this "slippery slope" has brought the end of almost every form of Government in history.  Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Government is as close as we have to absolute power in this world.   

So my question becomes why do people like Robert Scoble want Government involvement in the Internet?  What do they think it will accomplish other than to restrict it? 

Sadly, I appear to have gotten my answer in a quote further down in the post... 

I asked Ross to get Obama online to demonstrate he’s willing to use online media to listen to his supporters and have conversations. I also encouraged Ross to bring Obama out to meet with other bloggers so he could explain his tech policies and how they are different from McCain’s.

So really this comes down to plain old self importance.  They might as well create a lobby entitled "Bloggers so desperate to feel important that they're willing to bring down the Whole Internet to get attention"

Addendum: For the record some will cite "net neutrality" as a reason for Government interference but honestly that, like many things in politics, is a made up issue.  No ISP is ever going to impose bottlenecks because its too good of an opportunity for their competitors to steal market share.  The only way "net neutrality" is an issue is if every ISP imposed those bottlenecks and that is an anti-trust violation and already against existing laws.

Gizmodo  has what has to be the saddest defense of Windows Vista that I personally have ever seen.  In an article entitled "Ten Reasons Why Vista Isn't That Bad" they give the following list of what I will generously call features...

1. It's more secure than Windows XP

2. It's the best looking Windows yet.

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

4. Vista Media Center is a fantastic DVR.

5. The sleep mode works.

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

7. User Account Control is useful for some people.

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

9. It's not any buggier than Windows XP.

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

Now the thing to notice about this list is how little there actually is.  3,5, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are all basically disproving an extreme negative (rather than listing a positive).  6 is available on XP and 1 isn't all that accurate (XP can be as secure as Vista if set up right).  4 is only available in the very expensive premium edition which leaves 2 (visual appearance) as the only real good thing that can be said about Vista. 

They then go on to list several negatives which I think are all fairly significant...

1. Things aren't where they used to be.

2. File transfers are slower than on XP

3. Wireless networking is a pain.

4. Lots of balloon notifications pop up on the taskbar.

5. Folder view in Windows Explorer doesn't remember your settings.

This, to me, is basically the issue with Vista.  It really isn't any better than XP and in some ways it's decidedly worse.  Which is why the discontinuation of Windows XP by Microsoft (now scheduled for Monday) has been weighing so heavily on my mind. 

At first I was really angry about it but now that most manufacturers have announced they will continue to offer a downgrade option it is less of an issue.  That said I still find that, on principle, it bothers me and I think that says a lot about my current relationship with Microsoft. 

I've seen a lot of articles that discuss Microsoft and the challenges they face in the future but from the standpoint of one of their corporate customers their biggest challenge is winning back my trust.  Because they don't have it now and I often find myself actively looking for ways to avoid the Microsoft solution these days. 

The reason for that is largely that the company has gotten to the point where they simply don't seem to care what I think anymore.

This XP decision is the perfect example of that.  They released a new OS which offered very little and which no one was interested in.  Then, rather than just accept that, they chose to force their customers into buying it.  The message is very clearly "you will do what we say whether you like it or not" and honestly that's not a message I'm comfortable with.

The true irony though is that it didn't even work.  The path they chose was so anti-customer that their own distributors chose to reverse it (albeit for a small handling fee).  So not only are they the bad guy but they're an incompetent bad guy at that. 

So I ask myself, if I weren't already locked into Microsoft products would I really be doing business with them?  If someone came up to me on the street and asked if I wanted to do business with an incompetent company that doesn't care what their customers think would I really say "Yes"? 

Of course not and that is something the people at Microsoft should think long an hard about. 

Mike Elgan posts "The Mouse Is Dead" on Earthweb today.  Its the perfect example of why people who haven't actually looked at the design issues involved shouldn't judge the mouse.  In his article he suggests a few "mouse replacements"...

1. Apple's giant trackpad with multi-touch.

Available on MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops, this pointing device represents a body blow to the appeal of using a mouse with an Apple mobile computer. The new trackpad is superior because in addition to pointing and clicking, you get gestures, which adds a whole new layer of control.

2. Gaming pointing devices.

Remember when everyone used to play games on a PC using a mouse and keyboard? Neither do I. Console gaming has re-set the bar for gaming input devices, and now even PC games seem to call for joysticks, yolks, steering wheels and other non-mouse input devices.

3. "Brain-reading" devices.

Like the mouse between 1963 and 1981, these devices are still in the lab. But one company, Emotiv Systems, plans to place a $300 headset on the market by the end of this year that lets gamers control some aspects of games with thoughts alone (go here for the demo).

4. Apple iPhone and the "iPhone Killers."

This newest category of cell phone boots physical keyboards and phone pointing devices (like BlackBerry's "pearl," toggle switches or the tracking sticks on some handsets) altogether in favor of full-size touch screens. Although people tend to see iPhone-like devices as replacing keyboards, they're getting millions of people used to the idea of controlling an entire operating system with a touch screen.

Now a few of these I don't think are even worth of mentioning.  Most serious gamers still use a Gaming mouse and the "Brain Reading" device is a helmet which no one is ever going to wear so I think you can safely rule those two points out.

But what I wanted to focus on is Touch.  I'm bullish on Touch interfaces and  have been working a lot with TouchScreens from Elo Tech lately.  I've deployed about 8 of them serving different purposes around the campus at this point (mostly as Timeclocks/Kiosk applications). 

But here's the thing, Touch is not effective as a mouse replacement.  This is for a few reasons...

1.  Accuracy goes out the window with Touch.  Here's what I mean...

Anyone who has accidentally clicked on a link while using their iPhone can attest to this fact.  Touch is great with alternate interfaces where everything is made really big but it sucks for day to day use because the finger just isn't accurate enough.

Some might suggest that Multi-Touch fixes this by allowing you to size screen elements and that is partially true.  But while Multi-Touch might fix this particular problem it still means you're having to use 3 gestures and both hands to do what the mouse now does with one click. 

2.  Touch creates a problem when dealing with multiple angles.  This doesn't become apparent until you actually try it but if you touch something on the screen while right in front of it and then stand up and touch the same thing while looking down on it you'll actually be hitting different parts of the screen.  Because your viewing angle of things on the screen changes while your finger (which is outside the screen) stays essentially the same.  This happens every time you change your viewing angle and it makes touch ineffective for anything but relatively short uses.

The mouse is on the screen just like all the other elements so it doesn't suffer from this problem. 

3.  Range of motion is tiring.  Notice that, when you use your mouse, you are really only moving your fingers and your wrist.  The reset of your arm is pretty much at rest.  Now pretend to use a touch interface and watch how quickly your shoulder and upper arm get tired from all the gesturing, reaching, etc... 

The truth is there are a lot of issues with a touch interface that simply make it unusable with current systems (which were all designed around the mouse).  Someone may some day find a way to design an OS based around touch but until that happens the mouse is here to stay (and since I don't see a dramatic shift to an OS that no one has even invented yet happening in the next few years I think its safe to bet against Mr. Elgan here)