Science, Technology, Copyright + More

Social network patent war?

2012-02-28T09:09:00.001-08:00

Today the first salvo has been launched in what will likely be a brutal and bloody patent war in the social networking world. Yahoo! has decided to go after Facebook with several patents which were bought from Friendster a now long defunct social networking site. As I've mentioned in previous posts companies that start suing over patents likely have lost their competitive edge. However, I think this is going to have long reaching impacts.

Facebook will likely try to find something they can use to counter-sue Yahoo! Which I believe will open a huge can of worms. A large number of companies have put forth effort into creating social networks and there are companies that are built on top of those networks. Essentially, this is an entire ecosystems of companies and products that interconnect and work together. Until now, it has been rather peaceful except for a few angry words tossed back and forth.

I'm not really aware of what patents are out there for these types of sites, however, it is likely that all the major companies are going to be scrambling for patents. Some of the companies involved have already been in patents wars, Google for example. I don't think Google is going to sit by and allow other companies to attack them the way that Apple has gone after Android. This would be an extremely foolish business move so, I think it makes sense for Google to actively defend (attack) competing firms by acquiring patents and aggressively targeting firms that may be infringing.

Apple has also tried to get into the social networking side of things with their Ping network. Based on their previous patenting strategies, it seems likely that they have built their own war chest of patents and we know how Apple likes to use them.

Yes, much of this is simply speculation. However, as the entire ecosystem of social media and networks have developed into a huge new area of business and marketing, we need to be aware of how these could impact us. Systems that allow access to multiple different social media accounts could be shut down using patents to enforce the use of each platform. I use tweetdeck and I know other people that use Hootsuite they essentially work in the same way (results may vary), but could a patent derail their use? I don't know at this point, but i'm not happy about the prospect. I've mentioned before my distrust of Facebook, which is why I use tweet deck and sign in using Incognito. An all-out patent war could seriously disrupt this growing environment and reshape the way we use these networks.

Entitlement for copyright owners

2012-02-27T04:39:00.000-08:00

Business Insider had an article today about Reddit's FIA. In my article in the Urban Times last week I addressed some of these issues before he wrote this article. However, he raises points that I don't mention there and I feel that it's extremely important to discuss them.

First he says that the law would make the internet "Hugely Difficult to monitor." This raises a few questions. What does he mean by the internet? I helped define that in FIA, which I defined it as any data network including the web, social networks, FTP, peer to peer, email and a slew of other things. If he means this; then do we want the web to be easy to monitor? He trots out the case against it as child pornography of course, which I addressed in my Urban Times article. It's a powerful argument because it hits upon two competing sets of social norms, rights of privacy and abhorrence to child abuse.

The use of child porn is a technique that is designed to end the conversation and shut down dissent. It places supporters of privacy in a position that is not congruent with their belief system. Additionally, the connection between copyright and child porn mixes different issues and seriously different belief systems. This difference is extremely important as there have become two different competing sets of norms. The incumbent belief that copyright is stealing, and the one new that has been developed by Web Kids.I strongly suggest reading the previous link as it provides powerful arguments for the changing sets of norms that my generation and younger entail. (I'd be on the rather old side of that generation).

Using a somewhat bad analogy, we're using the "internet superhighway" and like the real highway people don't want everyone driving by to know what you have in your car. Even if you aren't doing anything illegal, do you want the cops to know that you have 5 cases of beer in the back and are going to be floating down a river all day? Probably not, cause they have no reason to know what you're doing. Now, our data is similar to those cases of beer. Using encryption puts that into the back of the trunk where a cop is required to have justifiable cause (in the US) to inspect it's contents. The person looking at the data would know the general direction your going and some of the ways you're getting there, but nothing more. Yes, it makes it more difficult to identify bad stuff, but it's difficult to do that on a real highway too. Just ask boarder patrol, and they have the right to inspect whatever they want.

Second, he essentially argues that copyright owners should have their content monitored by others. This is a huge subsidy for the copyright industry that will be paid for by other services. I'm going to use a physical world comparison, it doesn't work perfectly but it works reasonably well. Let's say that YouTube is similar to a Wal-Mart, or even Amazon.com. The author is arguing that YouTube needs to monitor as soon as the video is put on the web to ensure it is not infringing on copyrighted material. This would be similar to requiring Wal-Mart or Amazon.com to search for patent infringing technologies.

Why does this analogy work? In both cases these rights are state sanctioned monopolies. In both cases they are protecting a manifestation of an idea. Something that needs protection because it is extremely easy to protect. However, in Patent suits things are extremely different. The owners of the patent are required to sue companies that infringe on the patent. Wal-Mart and Amazon.com are both protected from the suit.

If Apple was allowed to sue Wal-Mart for the fact that an infringing technology is being sold there, Wal-Mart would have to bear the cost of policing their inventories for infringing material. In addition it would be in their benefit to be overly caution and remove potentially infringing products before anyone can see them. Part of the cost of owning a patent is the cost of policing products that may be infringing. By removing that burden from the copyright industry we are reducing the cost of the ownership of copyright and placing it on services like YouTube. This stifles innovation in services like YouTube because they have to include the extra cost of policy copyrighted material. A competitor to YouTube has a huge hurdle to overcome before they can even open.

Finally, he argues that the bill supports file sharing. I don't think that it does other than being based off of a different set of norms. I'd argue that the bill supports innovation over old business models. You can disagree with me on this, however it's been shown in several studies and some anecdotal evidence that increasing legal access to copyrighted content reduces pirating. If it is easier for a company to create interesting ways to provide access to content while paying the copyright industry then everyone wins. However, as Falkvinge puts it, "I don't care about industry profits." Realistically, I don't care about most companies profits, because I'm only dealing with the company to buy a product or service I want at a price that I believe is reasonable. If all the legal sources that are available to me to watch a show or listen to a song when a person wants to, it is not unreasonable for them to look for it elsewhere and then try to find it legally later if they liked it.

If the company is making bad choices for their business, why should the law change to improve their business model's chances of surviving? Anyone that supports free market capitalism should be horrified by this sort of industrial policy making. Essentially, these companies are being faced with disruptive technologies and working to push the government to protect them. It's similar to what has happened with the auto industry in the US.

In closing, FIA represents a dramatic change from the current norms and aligns more directly with a younger generation. This generation does not understand why companies prevent them from viewing content that they want to see. While being an open generation on Facebook, they also understand the importance of protecting the data that has been given to companies. They choose what information they share and with whom. They want an open internet so they have the ability to innovate like their parents generation. They believe that it should be a fundamental human right to have access to data and communicate with whoever they want. An industry that is not innovating should not have the ability to destroy the internet.

The difficulty of science

2012-02-23T05:06:00.001-08:00

As reported in Science Insider yesterday, apparently the faster than light neutrinos may have been caused by a loose fiber optics cable. To me this also begs the question, were other results impacted by this loose fiber opitc cable?

This is where the difficulty in science lies. First, CERN had to admit that there was a faulty detector which could have caused the result invalidating what likely was the greatest finding in physics recently. Secondly, they are going to have to run the same tests again to make sure the results were bad. Finally, a bunch of other locations invested in their capabilities and will be able to test the results for themselves too. I think the last two are important. At one point Fermi lab indicated that they had seen faster than light neutrinos but it was beyond their capabilities to reach the required level of statistical significance.

I think that this does show an important factor within science. First, scientists have the ability to referee themselves on important earth (speed of light) shattering results. It indicates that the system works. Secondly, it shows there is integrity in scientists, as something like this essentially will make careers and set this group up for the rest of their lives somewhere. As they admitted what caused the error and are working to correct it in testing, it indicates they care more about the results than about their career. Although, lying about this after finding it would have ruined their careers just as quickly.

Why is that important though? Let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Most scientists are trained in a very similar fashion. You are taught the basics during high school, moving to more advanced topics in college and finally many become experts by pursuing a PhD. All are taught about the idea of falsifiablity of hypothesis and theories as the cornerstone for scientific progress. Of course there are debates of if this is how things actually work in science, but typically it is. There are points where a major shift in scientific discourse but this can take a long time and must answer questions of the previous scientific perspective and answer questions the other perspective could not. A perfect example of this is Newtonian physics and Relativistic physics. Newtonian physics gives you Force = Mass x Acceleration, it's not really fully accurate, but it works well enough for daily activity. Under certain circumstances it's simply wrong. That's where Einstein came in and fixed it. It took a while for the shift of acceptance for this theory, but it's now the prevailing theory.

From a scientists point of view their incentives are oriented towards yearly output of papers that are accepted into high quality peer reviewed journals, such as Science and Nature and whatever is the best in their field. There are no incentives for making hoax theories. They would lose funding and eventually be jobless.

I think that this error at CERN can bring that into the discourse over topics such as evolution and climate change. It's indicative of the ethics that prevail in science today and that when theories are wrong work is done to find out why or how. Once that has been answered, new theories are suggested and eventually accepted. Understanding how this works will make topics like climate change and evolution less threatening.

Anonymous a "stateless" terror organization?

2012-02-22T07:55:00.000-08:00

According to the Wall Street Journal the NSA is seriously considering labeling Anonymous a stateless organization. The Atlantic has some good discussion about this topic as well. I think this is something we should all be seriously concerned about. This has the serious problem of becoming something beyond scope like the War on Drugs or the War on Terror. These both allow the US to pursue military objectives in countries across the world for various different reasons. The War on Drugs mostly impacts the US, Mexico and large chunk of South America while the War on Terror allows the US to do the same in the US, nearly all of the Middle East and parts of Asia such as Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Now the US government is afraid that Anonymous was going to eventually target the US electric grid. This seems out of the scope of Anonymous for a few reasons, one they outline as that people's lives depend on the electric grid. Additionally, there's serious problems since Anonymous is much more dispersed than some of the other organizations that the US has focused on it will be difficult to determine something that was actually caused by Anonymous or something that some one claims was conducted by Anonymous.

It is likely that someone could claim to be a part of Anonymous and that they did an attack against something as serious as an electric grid but it will be difficult to prove that they did. Especially when there is a great deal of IP spoofing (this is a way of making a computer think your IP address (where you are on the physical internet connection this comes from your internet service provider) is a different IP address) going on and people will claim to be part of a group when they aren't. I think that this will open a large can of worms.

Additionally, it brings up other concerns one that may impact me directly, will the NSA start looking at bloggers that are sympathetic to the ideas of Anonymous, using the web as a protest tool. If so then I've been overly sympathetic. That's not all though, during the SOPA/PIPA protests Anonymous sent out tweets with links that turned people into Low Orbit Ion Cannon (a software program) that commits Distributed Denial of Service attacks (brings down a web page). Essentially, even without being a part of Anonymous you become part simply by clicking a link on Twitter.

Are these people now linked with Anonymous and liable for any action the group does? These are serious questions that really need to be addressed if an announcement is made that Anonymous is a "stateless" organization. This also makes it very important to understand what protesting on the internet is allowed and what is not allowed. Sure Anonymous does steal information, but the information they steal seems to be fairly unsecured and not encrypted. It's time to have a real talk about all this means.

Protecting the internet

2012-02-21T12:39:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in my blog post from yesterday, the internet is extremely important. We all know that. It's fun to use it's become an incredibly important part of our economy and will continue to grow in general importance. In some ways Thomas Friedman is correct in the book the World is Flat, the internet has increased the ability for people all over the world to compete in the same way. However, where he goes wrong is that he assumes that this flattening and economic importance will protect the internet.

Unfortunately this isn't the case. We, the users of the internet, will have to continually work to protect the internet from special interest groups that seek to control its use. We have seen this in the US with SOPA/PIPA and with ACTA in Europe (And now Trans Pacific Partnership). A small group of companies in an industry that isn't really able to innovate is attempting to dominate the manner in which the internet is being used. Unfortunately, despite these efforts, there are already more agreements in the works. The most recent in the US is a bill being pushed by our dear friend Lamar Smith from Texas. Yup, same guy that did SOPA he's pushing a law that will require all ISPs to collect data on their users and store it for over 6 months. In addition websites are going to be required to collect similar data. The goal of the bill is to prevent child pornography.

This type of law is also being considered in Canada and there was a recent protest where a twitter user was pretending to be Vic Toews. This has rather upset Mr. Toews an MP there. However, these bills essentially destroy any sort of privacy on the internet. In many cases web companies simply hand over data to law enforcement agencies and governments without any need for a warrant or a court order. Twitter is one of the few companies that puts up a fight about user data. As users we really don't know how often our data is being handed over to any sort of governmental organization.

In addition to these individual laws and treaties China and Russia want the UN to become a governing body over the internet. I think this is a very interesting idea, however with the two countries that are pushing this change it also has cause for concern. Both of these countries really work to control the access of information for their respective peoples. A treaty at this level may make it more difficult for individual country's industries really impact laws relating to the internet and freedom. I am going to be watching this very carefully.

As users we need to be aware of these sorts of developments and make sure that we are active in protecting the thing we all love and use on a regular basis. The internet.

The importance of the internet

2012-02-20T08:39:00.000-08:00

To all my loyal readers, I really apologize for my lack of posts this month. I've been busy with finishing my Master's thesis, which I finished on Friday. I'm currently hunting for jobs, and will be able to post more diligently. Hopefully, I'll get back into the groove I was in before I finished.

The Urban Times asked me to tweet some reasons why I love the internet. I think this was a great idea, it really got me thinking about how I use the internet and interact with the world. There are so many different levels possible to use the internet. In some ways, people look at the internet as something bigger than it is, and other times as less than it is.

For example. the RIAA and MPAA assume that Google is the end all be all of the internet. They act as if the internet is directed by and for Google. However, this isn't the case, Google has to keep up high quality services and constantly be on the look out for new rivals. If Bing or some other search engine was significantly better, people would migrate to that service.

This brings up a larger point. In many cases it's really simple to see the internet as simply websites and how we interact through these websites. Either through consuming content (many news websites), creating content (blogging and YouTube) or sharing and interacting with each other (Reddit, Twitter and Facebook). However there are many other routes to enjoy the internet. Gaming, discussion boards about specific topics, chatting through instant messaging programs and voice calls through Skype and other competing services. That doesn't even touch upon the myriad of IRC channels and other systems users enjoy that I'm completely ignorant of the workings of and use of.

The problem with copyright activists and congressional leaders that are trying to restrict the internet, is that they don't understand the different levels these things interconnect. Most likely they are concerned with the static pages of websites that link to content. It is through their ignorance that they do not understand how these laws would impact the highly fluid world of social media and content creation.

Memes are an important tool to remind us that we do not create content in a vacuum. Someone starts it with a picture or some turn of phrase and it catches on and some one remixes it and reuses it. However, that initial picture someone still owns. At the same time, the idea is like a dirty joke. It goes from person to person and no one really knows who created it. In the end we all own the joke or meme. Preventing the freedom to share, recreate, remix and reshare would destroy not the internet, but our culture. Our ability to share is what makes us human.

The internet has extended that ability to thousands of new people that had never been connected before in new and exciting ways. That is why I love the internet.

Crowd Source Legislation

2012-02-01T08:03:00.000-08:00

Crowd sourcing, is a name for a group of people taking part in something from all over the place. One of the first initiatives like this is open source software, a more recent version is Crowd source funding for businesses. These started as initiatives to give micro loans in Africa and other developing countries. More recently, websites like Kickstarter have allowed everyday people to help get new ventures starting (I plan on writing more about this later).

So what's the deal with the legislation? Well, essentially, this is building upon the momentum Reddit and other websites generated during the SOPA/PIPA protests. Members have decided to create something like an internet bill of rights. The idea is the create a better balance between content holders, private companies, governments and users. In China there's a great deal of censorship and Google and Twitter have both announced censorship based on the location of the user. This type of censorship would have killed the Arab spring before it happened.

OK? but that's not going to effect me in the US. Well, we don't know that. Yes, we have provisions against free speech, but that's against governments censoring speech. It's difficult to know what a private company will censor when this speech is in a quasipublic/private space. Facebook routinely censors groups and speech on their site. Additionally, look at what's happening with MegaUpload.com and their users. There was legitimate use on the website and the Department of Justice doesn't care. The EFF and the hosting company are working to find the legitimate data held on the site.

One of the goals of the act would be to reduce the ability of sites to censor speech. It's clear that this is an important goal of the act. Additionally, there are programs, like TOR, that have been developed to allow people behind censorship to circumvent it (See my post about how TOR works). However, there could be penalties for people that use TOR in the US to help people circumvent the censorship. These types of ideas are what the goal of FIA is.

If you're interested in taking your anger at SOPA/PIPA into a new direction and potentially become more involved in our government check it out here: http://www.reddit.com/r/fia/

But that's US based stuff. Yes, sure it is. It seems like most of the users interested are from the US. Many of the users involved would like to see this become a treaty instead of just a law. In that case involvement from many different countries would be ideal and requested. Additionally, there is no reason why this type of legislation should be restricted to the US. These ideas are universal.

Ethics in Politics?

2012-01-31T11:37:00.000-08:00

"Who put the question mark there, you all know he'll read whatever is on the prompter!" Mostly a quote from the movie Anchorman. The point is, should that question mark be there or not? In the US, the STOCK Act, designed to prevent insider trading by Congressmen, is moving forward for debate in the Senate. This type of law, even if there are debates about the need for this specific law because it should already be illegal, really drives the point home. Clearly, this is something that the majority of us would consider unethical. In business ethics courses (heh), this type of action is typically considered a big no-no and at many work places is considered very bad as well.

A personal example for me came from working at Verizon Wireless. My first co-op rotation there I was an equipment engineer, where I bought equipment and work with companies to build cell sites. For a Sophomore in college this was pretty awesome. I was buying stuff that was worth something like $40,000 like it was nothing. Pretty cool stuff right? Well, I started to deal with vendors and learned that no vendor was allowed to buy any of us lunch. Not even lunch. If anything was worth more than $25 as a gift, we had to return it.

Now, if you put this into perspective of what insider trading or campaign contributions, we can see where there's an ethical problem. I was making $16/hour at the time, so $25 bucks was almost a quarter of a work day's salary. Pretty big deal. Insider trading has made congress members a much higher return on their salary than that 25 bucks was for me. The perks provided by Lobbyists are even worse than lunch. They'll buy you lunch, but it won't be at Primanti Brother's, it will be at some place that's $100 a plate plus wine, then take you golfing later.

So where does this disconnect come from? If this is something that I knew was wrong when I was 20, why don't these Congress members understand that at 50 and older? One of the problems are social norms, if everyone is doing it, why aren't you? These social norms can be extremely powerful, as teenagers we were always warned about peer pressure to do drugs and stuff, cause drugs are bad, m'kay? The problem would become when everyone around you was doing this, and it was the only way to survive the situation there are powerful urges to conform.

Once someone has conformed, these social norms become their own self reinforcing type of "ethical" behavior. This begs the question if the end justify the means? Well, we also need to be aware if the ends are justified at all. I think in many cases, the ends are so influenced in both conscious and unconscious ways, that we don't even know what the ends the politician set out to achieve are any more.

This is why it is important to have independent watch dog organizations and an independent judicial system. It is also why it is important to get money out of politics. Once money is out, the choices aren't captured by the interests of the people paying you. Independence allows impartial review and a manner to determine which course is actually best for the whole.

Americans prize their rights, however, rights are threatened whenever there are powerful interests that want to limit those rights. Despite the fact that I talk about the US on here a lot, these ideas are transnational, and all citizens need to work to remove the influence of money from their political system. There are ways to do it. For the US Lawrence Lessig has proposed one idea in Republic, Lost and Reddit is working on their on PAC and Free Internet Act as another solution.

When I finish with my thesis I plan to become active in both Reddit activities and I suggest you look to find something similar.

Creationism coming to a school near you in the US

2012-01-27T05:53:00.000-08:00

While the UK has effectively banned the teaching of creationism in sciences courses through an application of incentives, the US is going the other direction. Recently, Indiana's Senate Panel just OK'd the teaching of creationism in science courses. It's not completely confirmed yet, it still needs to be ratified by the full State Senate, but this is a step in the incorrect direction.

I'm not saying this because of any religious beliefs on my side, which I'm against creationism as a whole, but because it will have a massive impact on any scientific future for these students. None of these students will have the proper understanding of biology to be a doctor, biologist, virologist, biomedical engineer and the list goes on. These are just professions that they are being directly impacted on. The secondary professions will be most of science and engineering professions.

Why? Well as Neil de Grasse Tyson argues, the moment you start saying God did it, you're useless in the lab. Not because you can't research or you're religious, but because that means you've lost the burning desire to know "why?" A researcher needs to have a desire to explain what has been unexplained. To investigate the how and what of making things work.

This can also have a chilling effect on entrance into science based universities. Essentially, these students, to the universities point of view, would have had no biology what so ever and the rest of their scientific education may be suspect as well. If creationism is allowed in biology, what sort of impact could this have on their physics and chemistry courses?

Will this ultimately pass in the larger Senate? I honestly don't know. Should it pass, I hope that there will be an injunction before this is instituted and a case to determine the constitutionality of this law. While the law is likely written to be rather aspecific on what religions it is not supposed to be from, it is obvious to most observers that this is based on Christianity. Essentially, this would be a state endorsing a religion. Thus many people could object to this including Muslims, Christians that don't support the Young Earth Creationist view, Hindus, and of course atheists.

Now, if you want to send your kid to a private school to learn about creationism then go ahead. That's why there are options. But I know if I ever have children, they are not going to be educated in a public school system that allows creationism to be taught next to evolution.

Continued fall out from MegaUpload arrests

2012-01-23T10:06:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I discussed some of the actions taken by the hacker community and the impression that the MegaUpload arrests were related to SOPA. After some time we see that this arrest didn't happen over night, you could argue the announcement and the timing was done poorly. However, I think that we should be paying attention to the ramifications of these arrests. Torrent Freak is reporting that there has been a massive response from the Cyberlocker companies. These cyberlockers were similar to MegaUpload in that a user would be able to upload a song and then anyone would be able to download it or stream the video. Now these companies are removing the search capabilities from their website and are restricting users to only their files.

While, what MegaUpload may have done may be illegal, the impact of the arrests is a foretelling of the impact of a law like SOPA. Internet companies argued that SOPA would be a job killing bill that it would kill innovation and break the internet. I think that this action clearly demonstrations that they are correct. For instance, Torrent Freak mentioned that several companies are shutting their doors and others are changing their services. Since it's space based service, it is likely that each of these companies only has a few employees. However, they make a good chunk of change. MegaUpload was making several million and their competitors were likely making millions a month.

All of that money is going to be gone by next billing cycle. Not a single one of those companies where users were paying a premium will pay them another dime. Ad revenue will dry up, MegaUpload made almost a million alone since 2007 on ads. All of this money was getting put back into the economy through the purchase of servers, software and other equipment. It allows employees to buy stuff and was making a positive contribution to the economy.

From the different companies there was obviously innovation occurring. MegaUpload never allowed duplicates on its servers and when a duplicate was uploaded it would find another version of it and supply the link to the end user. Infringing content would just have the link removed, not the actual content. This would make searching for the real version difficult for copyright holders as it would be a game of wack the mole where the content would appear here, then with another link and so forth.

What other solutions could have been reached? I think there's plenty of space here for further innovation for a business model. As users are using sites like this for personal storage and for video streaming, users are paying for content as well as clicking and viewing ads. Clearly there should be a way for the content owners to make money off of it as well. However, I have yet to read an article or a comment about the content industry approaching any of these companies, other than through DMCA, about working to pay some sort of royalty or set up a license agreement.

I think that a way to bring the balance back from the power being exclusively in the hands of the RIAA and MPAA (I'm just going to type RIAA from here on out), companies like Pandora.com, Spotify, Last.FM, MegaUpload (or any of its competitors), Google/YouTube, Vemeo and anyone else that uses licensed content should form their own consortium. Let's just call it Content Users and Managers of America or CUMA for sure (I couldn't think of anything really witty there (it doesn't have to be just of America)). CUMA would provide a counter balance to the RIAA in that it provides equal footing and a way to combine the might of the end users. There are demands for these products, but the products simply do not demand the price premium they used to demand. Since these products aren't able to demand the premium and the RIAA thinks that it should, they are overcharging as there are freely available alternatives which people flock to. Essentially, the RIAA needs to realize that for the websites allowing people to access the are getting paid pennies (if that) for a single view on a website. So for most sites, they can make more money if they don't pay licensing fees. Lowering licensing fees is something that CUMA would be able to work for, to put it inline with expected ad revenue. This would allow for broader innovation in the market and reduced piracy.

It's obvious from the amount of money that MegaUpload made that people are willing to pay to be able to watch as much content as they can when they want it. I feel like a broken record here (ha HA!), but people are willing to pay for content if it's easily accessible.

I expect additional fall out from this. If SOPA or some similar style bill ever passes, expect this type of reaction to occur in other segments of the online industry. Online content is one of the places with a great deal of innovation and killing it would be a shame when there are possible solutions to this problem without resorting to industrial policy making and picking winners.

Update: I just saw this article Looks like MegaUpload has figured out a way to allow musicians to make money off of free downloads for original works through their site. This is some seriously awesome innovation.

The Government Strikes Back

2012-01-20T05:56:00.000-08:00

The internet had thought it won a great victory with the black out of some seriously major websites, however it was a short lived victory as the Fed and its allies the vicious RIAA and MPAA have regrouped and launched a stunning counter attack destroying a rebel outpost on Hoth... errr Actually, The US government has shut down MegaUpload.com and arrested several employees for copyright infringement. You may remember MegaUpload for recently being involved in a dispute with Universal over a YouTube video. Where Universal issued false DMCA take down notices which required YouTube to take down the video. However, this video wasn't infringing and MegaUpload sued Universal for the false claims. The interesting thing about this video is that it's about all the legal ways you can use MegaUpload. The video is essentially an attempt by the company to show that there are legitimate uses for their services which, I'm assuming, was an attempt to get them into the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA.

To me, this action really shows that the US government doesn't need SOPA to pass for it to censor the internet. It already has the ability to do so. SOPA would just put a rubber stamp approval on the actions that the government is already taking. This should be a wake up call. Yes, we had one with the joke of hearings for SOPA previously, however this is a slap in the face of the internet. It's basically saying, sure we heard you, but you know what? you don't matter.

Sure it might not be as easy as it would have been with SOPA passing and it's not breaking the internet the way that SOPA would, but it's still happening. As much as I hate Maddox, he's right in his post about SOPA. We really have been pretty complacent, myself included. Yes, I've written a bunch, signed petitions and emailed my senators and congressmen multiple times, but big deal. Right now this is a hot button topic, but this isn't going to go away. No one spoke up about the NDAA because it didn't impact your ability to read Reddit or surf wikipedia. That law is as bad or worse than SOPA depending on what you think of freedom and civil liberties.

When I got home last night and saw that MegaUpload had been shut down, I was miserable. It made me feel completely impotent. That I was unable to impact the way the US government acts in any meaningful way. At this point, I'm not really sure what to do about this. If any other government would be doing this the US would be up in arms (perhaps literally) and would put a stop to it. Our government is doing this in our name and it's horribly depressing that I can't do anything to stop it.

Maddox is right. SOPA only failed because we were paying attention and we were able to get the tech giants behind us on it. SOPA will rear its ugly head again and we might be sleeping. The empire has struck back and we need to decide what we are going to do about it. Are we going to get some ewoks and take it down or are we going to keep signing petitions?

Anonymous has decided to fight back and has launched a large number of attacks on internet websites. As citizens that are deeply concerned with the MegaUpload action we need to ask ourselves, is this an appropriate response? Is this a way of protesting and assembling in an online space? Should anonymous be locked up for doing this? I think that this is a type of protest. Anonymous is as frustrated as I am and have decided to do something in response. It's obvious that they felt like this is a direct attack on the internet in response to the SOPA protests and the "abuse of power" the internet displayed in taking down websites to protest SOPA.

It also begs the question, what will these website attacks actually accomplish?

What are some of your thoughts on this?

Update 1: I just saw that some 9,000 Hackers have joined Anonymous

Update 2: Apparently Anonymous is using a link that directs users to a Low Orbit Ion Canon DDoS tool that uses the users computer to attack a website. This is an interesting tactic as it will make it very difficult for agents to determine who was malicious and those that were ignorant of what they were doing. Thus making the tool a more effective protest tool. It will be interesting to see what the ramifications of this new tactic are. I think it will be used again in the future and will make it as "easy" as signing a petition to join a DDoS without having to do the hard work of setting up the LOIC on your computer. Interesting.

Did yesterday's internet black out save the internet?

2012-01-19T07:12:00.000-08:00

I've seen a lot of commentary about how the web may have been saved because of the internet's "abuse of power." How parts of the internet shut down for a day. I'm sure this impacted a great deal of people, may have actually hurt our economy a little bit. However, one day of action won't save the internet.

I'll agree it made a huge impact as support for SOPA/PIPA has plummeted. Yes, this round of attack by the MPAA and RIAA may have been twarted, but this is just the beginning of the fight for the internet. Ars Technica, has an excellent write up for a plan for how to address some of the concerns of copyright holders in a much better fashion. A manner which would not destroy the internet like SOPA/PIPA.

However, I think that this is a case of industrial policy legislation that is picking winners. In several blogs and posts at the Urban Times, I have written in favor of using some policies to enact changes of behavior. However, in these cases it's because a novel technology isn't being adopted that leads to benefits for the social good. In the case of copyright holders, these policies aren't for the common good, but are being put into place to protect an aging business model that is not innovative. The policies I recommend are to help innovators compete against the status quo.

Data has shown that increasing the availability or decreasing the availability impacts the rate of piracy for television shows. Which indicates to me, policies should be striving to push companies to increase access to copyrighted material, not to go after pirating website. The responsibility for dealing with pirates should be with the copyright holder. They have the means to actually reduce piracy through reducing the amount of licensing fees and increasing accessibility.

We should be pushing our government leaders to put initiatives in places that require massive concessions from copyright holders, if they abuse their copyright position, including losing that copyright. Subscription services like Spotify and Pandora allow users to get access to content either free, with ads, or for a small price. However, these services don't allow users to access everything. This leads to frustration. If I was able to listen to whatever on Spotify, there'd be no reason to pirate.

What does this mean? Well, we can celebrate the change in positions of congressional members, however this isn't over yet. OPEN act may be the next step in this battle. Free internet should be our goal, free as in speech not beer. However, people are willing to pay and I think in this case, business models need to catch up with technology.

Which bill is worse NDAA or SOPA?

2012-01-17T09:11:00.000-08:00

I was posed this interesting question by my friend Jurriën, which bill is worse the most recent NDAA or SOPA. What is the NDAA? Well it's a yearly bill called the National Defense Authorization Act, however there were some incredibly important changes to this years bill. This years NDAA turned the United States into a battle field and gave the US government the right to arrest anyone for any reason. It also includes provisions for allowing the indefinite detention of any US citizen. Something like this has already occurred with the PATRIOT Act, which allowed the President to go after so called "enemy combatants." Most of these prisoners are currently being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

What does this bill mean to you and me? Well, the basic argument is if you're doing nothing wrong it won't impact you. However, I see in this bill the potential to return to McCarthyism at it's worst. Only instead of Communists we'll be seeing terrorists everywhere. Likely it could eventually lead to oppression of anyone that appears to be Arabic, Pakistani, Afghan, or similar skin tone. This type of power is ripe for abuse and might be extended to fight the "War on Drugs" as many of those groups are essentially terrorists in Mexico.

What about SOPA? I've written about that fairly extensively, but tomorrow we're going to get to see a preview of what life might be like under SOPA. Tomorrow Reddit, Wikipedia, imgur and many other smaller websites are going to black out all of their content. Nothing will be readable as a protest against the law. In addtion, the Senate counter part PIPA (Protect IP act) is up for a hearing on Jan 24 so be sure to contact your Senator.

Both laws I think are going to be abused by the US government and by agencies that are given additional powers. In many ways they are similar in that they restrict our Constitutional Rights as Americans. We will lose our 6th Amendment right to a trial by jury and our 8th Amendment Rights, which prohibits excessive, cruel and unusual punishments. Based on this, Chris Hedges has sued Obama over the passing of this bill. This might have a good chance of succeeding in overturning the law.

SOPA/PIPA aren't on the books yet. I think that we can prevent these two from passing and will for a time save the internet. It will take a lot of continual effort and we will have to remain vigilant against surprise sessions where they attempt to pass the laws.

I worry that the NDAA will not be revoked in its current form and will be used to dramatically harm US citizens. Additionally, I fear any attempt to link SOPA/PIPA to national defense which would surely pass. So at this point, NDAA is worse only because it has passed. Once SOPA/PIPA pass, the three combined could be a nightmare for us, but a dream come true for dictators around the world. What could we say to future Saddam's when they are able to point to US law and say, you can do it why can't we?

What is the right to assemble online?

2012-01-16T04:47:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the long delay in posts. I've been a little busy and I've had some trouble coming up with topics as well. So, if there are any topics you'd like to see written about feel free to shoot me a message.

In the US we have an amendment to our constitution which ensures our right to assemble. This amendment is important because it allows us to protest governmental action and activities we do not like. We do not always like the way that this right is being expressed, such as the Westboro Baptist Church protesting fallen soldiers, gay suicides and a range of other things. It also protests our right to counter protest the WBC.

In the case of a protest over a company, it's possible to protest in front of their headquarters or in front of individual branches such as Bank of America. In many ways these tactics are effective because it drives media attention do to it's location. If someone is protesting a bank in small town America, such as my home town, Grove City, PA no one is going to care. You might get a piece written about it in the Allied but it's unlikely to attract the attention of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette which is only 60 miles south. Even if some how it did make the news in Pittsburgh, it's unlikely to remain in the news, which that's something a protest in Pittsburgh would actually be able to do.

Why does this matter? Well, for a company like Amazon.com much of it's physical locations are in small town America. They don't have large presences in many major cities. How do you effectively protest a large internet based company? How do you protest a company when the people that want to do the protesting are scattered throughout the world?

In the past I've written about LulzSec and Anonymous, these groups still operate and have had some interesting ideas about how to protest. The first is what is called a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, where a company's website is overwhelmed with requests for access to the site and it kills the server. This would be the physical equivalent of creating a lined of linked arms across the doorway to the company's headquarters or branch. Typically, these sort of attacks don't last very long because IT departments have become very good at finding the sources of these attacks and stopping them.

It is not possible to respond by moving across the street to continue protesting where people to see you. It is also not possible to post ads in the area as a form of protest. However, it is possible to buy ads on Google or other such sites that will display something if you type Bank of America, however, I'm not sure if this is effective or not.

Another type of protest employed is the internet petition. I've signed plenty of them, but it's fairly obvious that these are as worth as much as the paper their printed on (which is to say none). These really just make you feel better, without much work.

At this point, I think that when it has come to massive protests online, Reddit has created the blueprint. Redditors have worked extremely hard to protest SOPA. This has included call your senator day, getting websites to agree to an internet blackout day, where sites will completely black out all content. This is a representation of the impact of censorship that SOPA will enact.

However, this type of protest isn't really possible for all types of government or private business action. While the denial of service attacks aren't very effective, they do raise awareness and have lead to other types of attacks, such as hacking and the release of data that users thought was secure. Despite the fact that it is theft of data, these actions have done more to change company behavior than any other type of internet based protests.

Is that the future of assembly online? I don't know. It's easy to block websites that act as a rallying point, so it will be important for people to actually meet to do their protesting as protesting on the internet doesn't really have the same impact, unless something big gets leaked. We do need to define what is acceptable as a society for online protesting. DoS might be a way to allow protests.

More Megapixels, More Image Quality?

2011-12-30T12:39:00.000-08:00

We have experienced the increase of the megapixels ondigital cameras during the past few years, I still remember when 0.5 megapixels was thelargest image size we could find meanwhile nowadays we can find cameras with24.3 megapixels and the megapixels will continue to increase as the cameracompanies keep telling users that largest megapixels translate in better imagequality. Personally, as an amateur photographer and researcher in the field ofimage processing, I think that most of the time an image with more than 6megapixels is a waste of memory and camera resources.

Let me start explaining the reasoning camera makers use toconvince user that more megapixels is better: Printing quality. As you know, agood printing quality is achieved when the printing resolution is equal orhigher than 300 PPI (pixels per inch) and, therefore, if you want to print alarge image with good quality you would need to have a large image, for examplewith a 2 megapixels image the largest print size at 300 PPI would be of 14.7 cmx 9.7 cm (5.8” x 3.8”). You can do the math yourself, but in the page ofImagine 123 you will find a tableof the image size and printing sizes you may have. The camera makers tellusers that with larger pixels they won’t just be able to print in larger formatbut also they will obtain more detailed photographs since you will have morepixels to represent the objects in the image. I don’t say this claim iscompletely false, but you need to consider other aspects that aren’t asstraightforward as the concept “bigger is better” and this discussion has beenin the air since some years ago as you can see in this cnet news note from 2007.

If we accept as a fact that most photography enthusiastsdon’t print their photos in large format, then the camera makers just have thedetail in the image as the only reason to offer users more and more megapixelsevery day. But, it is really true that more megapixels are synonym of moredetail? My answer is yes for just few cases but most of the times is a big no.Let me explain you my reasons:

First we need to consider the sensor of a digital camera, itis an array of light sensitive elements and each pixel will correspond to asmall area of the sensor, meaning that the information in each pixel is the sumof the light arriving through the lenses into the pixel area. Now, if we keepthe size of the sensor constant and we increase the megapixels the resultingpixel size will be reduced and therefore less light will arrive to each pixelincreasing the effects of electrical noise in the sensor degrading not just thesensitivity to finer tonal gradations but also the quality of the image in dimconditions. As an example, I took two different photographs using my camerawith 6 megapixels (2816 x 2112 pixels) and a 7.18 mm sensor and one of thecameras of the HORUS system with just1 megapixel (1024 x 768 pixels) but a 8 mm sensor, i.e., more than twice largerpixels. You can see how there is more noise in the image captured with the 6megapixels camera despite the fact that there are more pixels to represent thesame object. You can see the completepictures in my blog.

My camera

HORUS system camera

The noise is not a problem in highly illuminated scenes, that’s one of the few cases were bigger is better, but for dim conditions the camera makers try to solve the problem using clever image processing methods, for example increasing the gain of the light sensor and using filtering algorithms to reduce the noise, most of the times reducing also the image size. As you can imagine, the image processing will end up with an altered image and for purists this could be a downside of using cameras with large megapixels.

At the end, maybe professional photographers will fully exploit the advantages of large images, but we must keep in mind that the image quality is not completely determined by the megapixels of it, we also must take into account the camera’s optics (lenses) and especially the sensor’s size and sensitivity and, therefore, we shouldn’t trick ourselves into the “bigger is better” mantra of most of the camera makers and sellers.

Go Daddy and SOPA

2011-12-30T10:29:00.000-08:00

Today Mashable wrote an article arguing that it's time to give Go Daddy a break. Since it was recognized that Go Daddy was a supporter of SOPA Reddit and the rest of the internets have been lambasting Go Daddy for it's stance. Go Daddy has responded to the internet three different times, each with a strong change in its tone. First, it responded with a very caviler attitude as if there was nothing that the web could do against them for their SOPA support. Once there was announced an official domain move day of December 29th and thousands of domains fled Go Daddy, the company changed their stance from Supporter to "no longer supports" SOPA. Once the 29th hit even more sites moved from Go Daddy which has forced Go Daddy to officially oppose SOPA. However, even this hasn't placated the internet and members of sites like Reddit are calling for more domain name changes. Mashable things enough is enough. The point has been made the company has changed its stance.

The author, Todd Wasserman, doesn't seem to understand why members of sites like Reddit would be so upset and still out for blood. Sites like imgur are moving from Go Daddy, even though the official stance has changed and the boycott domain change day has passed. Should they still change? I think they should. What Wasserman doesn't understand is this is as much an emotional response as a logical one.

The initial response basically marginalized the most active users of the internet, which include many domain name holders and entrepreneurs. Effectively saying to their clients, you don't matter to us you pay us and we'll do what we want to the internet. These are technologically savvy consumers that really understand how the internet works and have an expectation of how they should be treated on the internet. This was akin to kicking a hornets nest.

The slow response to the internet's concerns allowed users to find additional information about Go Daddy's involvement in SOPA. It was discovered that Go Daddy actually helped write the bill and was exempt from it. This represented a betrayal of the highest order. A company that has gotten rich on the back of user created content from start-up companies, blogs, video sites, etc, was helping to destroy the very content that made it rich. Talk about a Judas move.

When the company then switched to doesn't support SOPA, this just further angered communities like Reddit, because it didn't go far enough. Internet users wanted the company to condemn the bill with all the force it could muster. However, it took a half measure approach and did nothing to actually make users on happy. Content owners want to be sure that their domain registrar was as against the bill as they were. Otherwise, all of their protests and content could easily be cut off while Go Daddy continued to profit off of the users content.

So, should the full reversal after the boycott have helped placate the internet? I don't think so. The company was disingenuous in their initial responses rebuffing serious concerns from the most savvy of their users. These users were able to explain to the less savvy the actual hazards of a domain registrar supporting SOPA. The half measure changes showed that the company was only bowing to pressure and likely could have changed positions as quickly as it had once the boycott was announced.

Making an example out of Go Daddy makes it known to other large companies that bills like SOPA are completely unacceptable and support of them will not be tolerated if you're a web based service or company. Should the internet relax on Go Daddy? No, not until they begin making campaign contributions against the bill's supporters, actively works to lobby against it through transparently working to write bills to fully protect the internet from future legislation like this. Changing its stance seems some what opportunistic and I know I need more action than a statement. Working to oust members that support it, would be putting its money where its mouth is.

If I made video games, this is how I'd deal with Piracy

2011-12-25T07:22:00.000-08:00

Piracy is something of a real issue. It can impact the livelihoods of artists as well as the big companies. However, the methods that companies go to when fighting piracy are extreme and infuriate end users. The people that listen to music or play games for the love of music or video games.

My friends over at KMBOD have written in the past about how horrible some of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems are on video games. These systems require continual verification that the game has actually been purchased. In some cases it makes the game unplayable or extremely difficult to play. In some cases the user must be online the entire time regardless of the type of game the user is playing. It makes sense for the game to be online if you're playing multiplayer games, but if you're playing a single version of the game why would you need to be online? Why should the game suddenly crash if you get disconnected from the internet? These types of things anger the gaming community and drive them away from specific titles and potentially entire publishing companies. Some publishing companies are Electronic Arts and Valve.

I don't think that DRM is the right system to use. For one it's easy to get around if you really want to and many players kind of look at DRM as a challenge something they should get around and publish online as a community service. It's not just video games that do this, but also DVDs, Blu Ray and CD's. In fact in the US it's illegal under the DMCA to circumvent DRM.

So what would I do instead? Since there are a fair number of pretty easy distribution channels for video games now. There's Steam, EA's origin and a few other ones that I'm not really aware of. There's also buying it from Amazon, Best Buy, Game Stop and a bunch of other stores. So access to the game is pretty easy. Price might be an issue, but for good games people are willing to pay a premium, just look at the sales of Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3. Huge blockbuster games. These changes are mostly for First Person Shooters, but similar type changes could apply for other types of video games, such as RPGs or strategy games.

Despite the ease of access people still pirate because they want to try before they drop $60 on a game. So what I'd do is make it as easy as possible to access both legally and illegally. I fully believe in the try before you buy model. However, for copies that weren't installed from a CD or downloaded from an online distributor like Steam the game quality would be diminished. For instance many gamers complain about the number of frames per second for a game. Video is shot at 60 fps and the human eye can't see much faster than that, but we can tell the difference if it's much slower than that amount. In the illegal versions I would make the game run at 30 fps, but it would initially start at the 60 fps and over the course of a minute or two and have a little note flash that if you buy the game you can get the full 60 fps.

Another feature that gamers complain about is the perspective within the game (field of view FOV). They describe it as feeling like your playing with your head in the monitor. basically it's restriction on peripheral vision. Again I would start the game out with full vision and then slowly move the POV into the "monitor" restricting the view and giving the paying customers an advantage over the pirate customers.

I would also make the user do less damage than their paying counter parts. This would reduce the number of kills and make the player less effective on the playing field and more likely to die and less likely to kill. Finally, the last thing I would do is to have a little pirate flag next to any player that didn't legally purchase the game so all of the other players would know when some one hadn't bought the game. In games where kill counts matter this could cause users to be banned from servers and reduce the ease access for playing.

None of these things would ruin the game to the point that some one wouldn't want to play it. What it would do though is push people towards paying to be able to compete at the same level as everyone else.

Good men are hard to find

2011-12-24T05:15:00.000-08:00

This week my grandfather, Paul Joseph Kapsar Sr., passed away. He was a good man. He was honest, caring and willing to help those in need. His service was beautiful and I'm extremely grateful I was able to come back to be part of the service. He's had a serious impact on my life and the way I look at things, because he was honest and respected honesty. He respected hard work and was never afraid to get his hands dirty. We need more people like my grandpa. People that are reliable and that you can trust to do the right thing.

Despite all his great qualities society never rewarded him the way that it rewards the cut throat businessmen. My grandpa didn't pass away a rich man in money, but in life. I feel that in many ways he was significantly better off than those that are willing to compromise their morals and ethics to make more money or to get reelected.

I think that we need people like my grandfather in positions of authority. Why? He was ethical and would have come up with a balanced approach to dealing with the economic crisis rather than the brutal or over coddling approach of the republicans or democrats respectively. He would not be a supporter of SOPA or of the recent changes of the NDAA which limit our freedoms. He was a vet and cherished everything that came with protecting the United States.

His passing has made me realize the pitiful state of our country's leadership. The republican primary is a contest between who is willing to go lower. Gingrich is willing to destroy the check and balances of the Constitution. Romney doesn't open his mouth without lying about his opponents or Obama. Perry is one of the biggest bigots on earth. The only republican willing to stand beside his ethics and moral positions is Ron Paul and his economic policies would be disastrous. Lamar Smith the guy pushing SOPA, will vote for a bill even whenever an argument pointed out how flawed the bill was, and he agreed with the argument.

Our financial sector things that they are entitled to whatever type of bonuses they are getting handed out and decry free loaders that get unemployment, when they have been given more government money than all of the American People combined. It would have been cheaper for the federal government to give money to the home owners to buy underwater houses than to save the banks.

Our country is experiencing a moral bankruptcy which seems destined to drive it into the ground. The future is made all the darker when a great man like my grandfather has passed away.

Billions and trillions

2011-12-18T04:13:00.000-08:00

One of Carl Sagan’s books that I really like is “Billions and Billions”, where he wrote about the importance of exponentials, the connectionbetween hunting and football, the true size of the universe, the decline ofour planet, government and even abortion. Though I read it in English, I once, in a friend’s house, found a Spanish translation of the book and I was surprisedwhen I realized the translated title: “Miles de Millones”, which means“Thousands of Millions”. If you are a native English speaker you might bethinking “Why were you surprised? A billion is a thousand millions, in otherwords it is 10⁹”, and that is the main reason I decided to writeabout this because in most Spanish speaking countries the term “Billion” meansa million of millions, i.e. 10¹², and probably now you understand mysurprise.

Historically, the term billion in English was first used todesign 10¹² following the French numbering system and it was introducedin the 15^th century[1]. Nowthat meaning is part of the denominated long-scale system where a trillion is10¹⁸, meanwhile in the short-scale system, used in most of theEnglish speaking countries, a billion is 10⁹ and a trillion is 10¹².Surprisingly, the short-scale meaning was introduced also by France in the late17^th century eventhough they officially use the long-scale system nowadays. In the past, Englandused the long-scale system for a long time but they changed to the short-scaleone, meaning that when reading old documents from England you must be carefulabout the meaning of billion and trillion.

If you are used to the exponential notation, then this wholediscussion might be pointless since you use an unambiguous way to describelarge quantities that doesn’t need the confusing terms billion and trillion. Inthat sense, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) suggests toavoid the use of billion or trillion since their meaning is language dependent and Ithink that scientists that publish or communicate their work should be aware ofthis language ambiguity and avoid it or at least be clear about the scale theyuse. As a recent example, we have the news about the MIT camera that is able tocapture video at the speed of light, wherethey use in the title the sentence “one trillion frames per second” and theyeven use the word trillion over all the official website of the project, Icouldn’t find a footnote or an explanation of the scale they are using and,therefore, after my first excitement about having a camera capturing data at 10¹⁸frames per second I had to use my common sense to realize that they are talkingof 10¹² frames per second since their results have time lengths ofnanoseconds (10^-9 seconds) and hundreds of picoseconds (100 times 10^-12seconds). I’m not saying that their results lost importance because the cameraworks just at 10¹² fps, that’s still very impressive if we take intoaccount that most of the video cameras we had commercially don’t go furtherthan 30 or 60 fps and that the fastest video camera I have worked with has amaximum frame rate of 1000 fps. I’m just saying that at first I imagined theamount of data captured and the transfer and storage capacities needed to workwith it but later everything looked a little bit smaller because my referenceframe was using the large-scale system.

In a globalized world, where communication between peoplefrom different countries and languages is a common thing, we need to havestandards to communicate our ideas unambiguously and we must try to alloweveryone to fully understand the information we are sharing with them, eventhough their common sense should be enough for them to understand us. Sincethere is not a chance that we have an standard meaning for billion and trillionin the world, I invite everyone to avoid their use or at least to give anexplanation of the meaning of those words in their work.

[1]Smith, David Eugene. History of Mathematics. Courier DoverPublications. pp. 84–86. ISBN 978-0486204307.

SOPA hearing today

2011-12-15T11:20:00.000-08:00

For all of those interested in protecting the Internet today is the last day to try to prevent congress from passing SOPA. This law, would censor the internet. There have been a lot of people talking about this law on both sides of the argument. Chris Dodd president of the RIAA is pushing heavily for this law. He argues that if China has the same ability to control content in China, then the US should have the exact same authority. In a previous blog I argue that this is the biggest killer to internet innovation. Effectively this would create a Great FireWall of the US.

Opponents of the law have started a censorship the internet campaign. I tweeted one of these yesterday. Effectively it blocked out parts of your writing in simulation of the final impact of the law. In addition to these campaigns a few other big hitters have come out against the law, including the Writers' Guild of America. This group understands that copyright laws shouldn't dictate the future of the internet and it's openness. In addition yesterday the EFF posted an open letter from internet leaders arguing that SOPA would crush innovation. I strongly suggest reading this letter. It's written by the people that created things like IPv6. These people know what they are talking about.

We users have had a blessing in disguise with the MegaUpload and Universal Music Company DMCA Take down issue. Effectively, they took down legal songs using a copyright provisions in addition to taking down videos ABOUT the discussion.

So what are some of the key problems with this bill? It requires DNS level blocking. Which could potentially break the internet. It takes down entire domains if there is a single alleged copyrighted material online. It can block payment to sites through requiring Master Card and Visa to shut down payment for the site. All of these have to happen within Five DAYS. Nothing gets done in five days in any business.

There are additional problems with these laws and our foreign policy. Recently Hilary Clinton gave an extensive speech on net freedom and how repressive regimes are censoring the internet and killing free speech. So, our international rhetoric is completely out of line with what we're doing internally. Furthermore, this is going to create problems with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has decided to institute a policy framework which is effectively the opposite that everything SOPA stands for. Finally, this has a negative impact with the #NoDisconnect policy that the EU has recently pushed for.

If you want to keep up to date with the comments being discussed in the hearing today. Follow @EFFLive as they are tweeting comments from congressional leaders about the problems with this law. Additionally, please contact your congressional leaders today (scroll down to the bottom) about this issue.

Watch Live Stream Here: http://www.keepthewebopen.com/sopa

Additional Reading:
Internet Blacklist vs. Constitution - EFF
SOPA and Educators - EFF
Recent SOPA amendments - TechDirt
DC Decided to Regulate Hollywood to prevent innovation - TechDirt

MegaUpload and the DMCA

2011-12-12T08:41:00.000-08:00

We've recently had a perfect example of the dangers of giving copyright holder more powerful weapons in their war on "piracy." Megaupload works as a service where a user can upload content and allow other people to download it or share it at a later point in time. A good amount of the material is, in fact, copyrighted. There are versions of Game of Thrones and plenty of other videos. This services has totally legitimate uses though. There are competing services that you can use, something like DropBox or GoogleDocs which works in a slightly different manner. The users is required actively share the files. In Megaupload the uploader doesn't have to actively share the file it can be accessed by many people.

MegaUpload would be a sure fire target if SOPA or Protect IP gets passed. What would happen is that MegaUpload would effectively be blacklisted from the Internet and cease to exist if they can't fix the problem within five days. Additionally, any payments they would receive can also be blocked. This of course isn't anything new, but recently Universal Music decided to use a DMCA take down notice to remove a MegaUpload video from YouTube.

This happens on a regular basis. These companies have programs that look for copyrighted material and then any offending material is issued a take down notice, which YouTube is required by federal law to comply with. There's just one problem in this case. MegaUpload claims to own all of the copyrights to this song and video. Universal was issuing a false take down notice. As a result MegaUpload is now suing Universal.

What can we take from this? Well, that giving the authority of content control to companies that have an incentive to silence material that is harmful to their business is a bad thing. In this case, we have a company abusing state authorized power to censor a music video about another company. We should expect this type of behavior to continue if these copyright holders are given additional authority to censor the internet.

It appears that not only are record labels abusing their authority, but the DHS had seized a website, Dajaz1.com, for over a year without any sort of recourse. Particularly troubling in this case is that the blog did contain copyrighted material, but it was given to the blogger by the record labels and artists.

As users of the internet we all should be extremely concerned about what is happening on the internet in the name of Copyright. Freedom of culture is something we all enjoy and relish, however actions by Universal and the DHS severely threaten our cultural freedom and ability to have public discourse on the usage of technology. MegaUpload was using famous pop stars to stake a claim that they are a legitimate company. Using a law in an illegal manner was trying to silence that conversation.

Are patents going to impact how doctors treat a patient?

2011-12-08T06:46:00.001-08:00

Today Ars Technica reported on a case before the US Supreme Court and how the court is assuming that the usage of scientific data, which has been publish, is a valid patent. This is a pretty scary scenario. What do you mean? Well, the patent is related to how the levels of some chemical impact the dosage of a drug. That's it. If you have level X in your blood you should have dosage Y. The patent holder created a device to test the level of the chemical in your blood which then suggests a dosage level. The Mayo clinic developed their own test and have been administering the test on their own without paying anything to the company. The arguments in the court essentially assume that this is a valid patent.

Should this patent be valid though? Seems like something that could be patented. Based on what is considered patentable, this should fall under mathematical formulas. Essentially, this is a matter of correlation and basic regression analysis. During a drug trial you can determine a correlation between the impact of a dosage of a drug on the current level resulting in a lower level of the chemical. This is really how all medicine works. If you can reduce costs by creating your own tests and administering it yourself then that's great. Hospitals should be encouraged to do this if they are large enough.

This is what Doctors do. They read literature about the medicine the condition it's supposed to impact and what sort of connection there is with the dosage levels and the response rate within the patients. Every doctor has to use a test to determine the level of a chemical or some condition. This can be the pulse (irregular heartbeats), blood pressure (pressure cuffs), blood sugar (A1 test) and the list goes on. In each case the doctor is able to assign a proper dosage prescription based on the study of patients. If a doctor was required to pay a licensing fee for each and every case of this our currently exorbitant costs of health care will seem cheap. Like when we used to complain about $1.50/gallon for gas.

The other problem with patenting something like this is that it's likely to be highly unenforceable except for when a large institution like the Mayo Clinic. Individual practitioners will be safer than large clinics, but they could be impacted as well. If they are required to use an extremely expensive proprietary testing methodology rather than have the ability to use any testing method it will drive up prices and may put doctors out of business.

If the court rules on this as if these types of patents are valid, we will need to push to have patent law changed again. The last change moved things in general, in the right direction but a lot more work needs to be done.

Latest Story on Urban Times

2011-12-07T10:30:00.001-08:00

http://www.theurbn.com/2011/12/book-review-race-against-the-machine-how-the-digital-revolution-is-accelerating-innovation-driving-productivity-and-irreversibly-transforming-employment-and-the-economy/

Data protection, anonymity and copyright

2011-12-06T12:49:00.001-08:00

I talk a great deal on this blog about data issues, privacy and ownership, anonymity and copyright, however is there a clear connection between them? Should we care about who has access to our data, who we are and control over our access to data?

I think that these issues are so connected that we need to do something about how they are managed at a federal level. Currently, it's rather easy for governments to request data from internet sites. Some times they require warrants or court orders other times the companies simply hand over the data. Savvy users understand how their data is collected and used by companies. I'll be the first to admit that I'm learning about this as I'm going. It's not easy because some times it's really inconvenient to really protect your data. The more sites that are connected together the more likely one of your accounts are to be hacked. Linking sites also creates other problems. Specifically Facebook and Google. Twitter isn't as bad, but it easily could be.

Why are Facebook and Google bad though? First Facebook is the worst by far. Both Zuckerbergs have made statements proclaiming privacy a bad thing.We can see this erosion with the creation of Facebook's OpenGraph and seamless information sharing. We've all see the increase in the amount of information that our friends are sharing. Such as Spotify and articles they've read. Which now no longer click through, but end up going to some app from that company. All of this information is being stored and sold to customers with your name on it. Effectively you've lost your ability to view websites freely without it being stored on multiple servers by multiple companies at the same time.
Google comes in a close second with their privacy problems. They aren't any better with Google+ as they require names at this time. We also don't know what Google does with the information that you give them when you link accounts together. By giving access to Google when you sign into another website Google is learning more about you which will likely be used to adjust your filter bubble.

Without anonymity or at least pseudonymity it's significantly more difficult to control access to your data. Putting a buffer between you and the people that are interested in learning about you as a person can protect you from a lot of bad people. However, whenever there are discussions about anonymity or pseudonyms some one almost always makes the argument that it will increase the safety for child molesters or terrorists.

The Copyright industry is one of the most vocal advocates of this tactic. In fact, this is one of the arguments being used for SOPA. They argue that if you don't have anything to hide then you have nothing to worry about. Well, I don't buy that argument. People have privacy fences for a reason around their yard. Why not do the same thing for your data? Being anonymous doesn't mean your bad, it just means your being safe.

Anonymity makes it more difficult for copyright holders to come after people who download movies without buying the movie. They want to know if your downloading it regardless of the fact that you might actually own the movie in some other physical medium and are using the digital copy as a back up. They also don't really care if you go out and buy the movie after watching it. In fact the Swiss government came out and said that buying a movie or song after downloading is extremely common.

Based on these three points, I believe that everyone should be pushing leaders to increase the ability for users to be anonymous on the internet. This will protect users data from identity theft, allow users better control over their data and decrease the impact of the filter bubble. We must accept the fact that people may use the freedom in unethical ways. However, this doesn't mean that it's unethical for people to be anonymous online and doesn't mean that they are unethical. It means that we need to define clear laws and procedures to deal with unethical or illegal activities in these systems. Without these guidelines we are likely to have no control over our data.

Phone Trackers

2011-12-04T12:36:00.001-08:00

A few days ago news came out about a company called "Carrier IQ" installing data on phones that will report usage to carriers to improve service. Initially, it was reported that this software was a keystroke logger, which would have been nearly as bad as this, but apparently it doesn't actually track keystroke. What's a keystroke logger? Well, it's a pretty common way to get access to information. Essentially, it tracks every since keystroke you make while typing and stores it as well as the software you're using. So, if you get this type of software onto the computer of, say, a business competitor, you can get access to all the information related to a given product. You'd have to get it on the right computer and you'd probably get some information you don't care about. How would this impact you as a user? Well, if it had been on there, basically every single email, text, website or instant message would have been logged and sent to whatever company cared about it.

In the video above a developer walks through the functions of Carrier IQ on an HTC device. It appears, in this case, that CIQ can, in fact, operate as a key logger. However, there are some additional points of concern with this bit of software. First it reads a great deal of information from incoming and outgoing data. It's indicated that SMS information goes to CIQ BEFORE the user is notified that an SMS has come through. An additional point of concern is the fact that CIQ is able to get information from HTTPS, at least over WiFi. This should be a serious concern as the point of HTTPS, the stuff your bank data is sent with, is supposed to be encrypted and is the safest way to handle data.

I checked my phone and it's not on the Samsung Galaxy. If you rooted your phone, then you are safe. Otherwise you should be aware your location and other data may be set to your phone manufacturer or your service provider.

Richard Stallman, the founder of GNU/Linux license, noted that these types of applications are created when users aren't able to actively see what's going on with software. It's a loss of control over your data that is really the danger here. I agree with Stallman, but don't go as far, that we need to have more transparency with the software that we use. Users should be able to have more control over what is going on with the devices they purchase. Users should be outraged that data can be tracked with no method of stopping the tracking. This is a huge invasion of our privacy and these companies should be fined heavily for this.

I have no reason to trust Carrier IQ or any company that uses this software. I'm disappointed in HTC. Apple does have it in some of the earlier versions of iOS, however it only operated during diagnostic mode. It has also been indicated that, unlike what the video claims, that this software isn't on Nokia devices.

Al Franken has called for Carrier IQ to explain how this software works and what it does. I think there needs to be a call for something a step farther and that is a patch to allow users to turn off the program and remove it as soon as possible.

As consumers we need to be aware of the fact that companies are trying to use software and technology to control and track our behavior. Currently we still feel outraged by this and at times feel that we should be reaping the benefit of firms collecting our data. However, unless something changes this will become the norm and we won't feel like our privacy is being invaded. It will become, that's how it's always been.

Further Reading:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/carrier-iq-hit-with-privacy-lawsuits-as-more-security-researchers-weigh-in.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

http://www.androidcentral.com/carrieriq-qa

Today's blog is on the Urban Times

2011-12-01T23:49:00.001-08:00

http://www.theurbn.com/2011/12/government-and-innovation/

Owning your data

2011-11-30T05:27:00.001-08:00

Yesterday Facebook and the FTC came to an agreement on privacy settings. This will require Facebook to undergo privacy audits twice a year by a third party firm. In Europe Facebook users are already able to download their data as I mentioned in a previous post. I think we're living in an age where users will need to be well educated on the impact of the privacy policies of websites on the users personal data. However, how can we do this? I personally never look at the privacy policy on a website. Why? Because I don't really trust them. Effectively, just by going to the website I agree to these policies and effectively whatever is stated in the privacy information I'm bound to. However, I have to go to the website before I can read it, thus creating a catch-22.

If I did disagree with something written in the privacy policy, I've already agreed to accept their terms and if they said "we're going to steal all your cookies and sell them for profit" and I object to that it's too late. They already did it.

This puts us users in a bind. We enjoy the benefits of cookies. We don't have to always remember our passwords, we automatically get logged into our favorite websites. Personal settings pop up as soon as we log in. There are plenty of benefits from using cookies. We lose all of these as soon as we use services like Incognito from Google Chrome. Some of my readers have commented that they have switched to using an Incognito window, but it's much more of a pain to log into Facebook and they have actually started using the service less. In terms of Facebook to compensate I use TweetDeck which pulls my news feed from both twitter and Facebook. However, it doesn't get everything including messages from friends, which is annoying, but not the end of the world.

To deal with these privacy issues, the EU is proposing a pan-European standard for privacy policies that a website has to get approved. Companies like Facebook are actively fighting against this rule. I think that this is a great step. I know a lot of people don't like new government regulations. However, in this case the public is woefully uninformed and find getting informed on these topics cumbersome. A lot of money is being made off of people's ignorance. Now, many people would say that's their fault for not properly investigating this topic.

There are a few resources out there to help with getting a better understanding of how to protect yourself. The EFF has an entire section of their website devoted to privacy issues. The ACLU has a Technology and Liberty section which includes topics like privacy.

So why should we care about this? If you aren't doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about. I'm sorry, but this is a really naive way of looking at privacy issues. Some of you readers out there have fences in your back yard. Many of them are called privacy fences, if you aren't doing anything wrong why do you have a fence? Others will have a safe to store valuables and important documents, why do you need a safe, if you aren't doing anything wrong you shouldn't need a safe.

Putting this into a physical context highlights the absurdity of the not doing anything wrong argument. It also highlights the differences between privacy in the physical world and in the digital world. It's really easy to understand how to increase your privacy at home build a fence, better curtains better locks, bars on your windows etc.. Fixing privacy on your computer is much more difficult. Security experts have tried to make things as simple as possible by using names like Virus scanner, Firewall etc. Most people don't really know how to use these properly.

Adding a Firewall to your computer can make using it difficult and clunky. Services that you use frequently suddenly stop working correctly and it's not always obvious why at first. There needs to be a movement within security companies to make everything as simple as possible for the broader population. There should be advanced settings for the people who really want to control their data. Basically we need the firewall to turn into a fence for most people but with settings to turn it into the Berlin Wall if an advanced user wants it.

All users need to understand the risks, just like they need to understand risks of burglary, they shouldn't need to be a security expert though.

Other potential resources (I have no idea if they are any good, I just searched for privacy resources)
http://www.privacyresources.org/
http://epic.org/privacy/privacy_resources_faq.html
https://www.privacyinternational.org/article/ephr-privacy-resources

AT&T deal is most likely dead

2011-11-25T10:28:00.001-08:00

We all should be extremely happy that this deal failed. Even those that don't live in the US. Two major US agencies were investigating the eventual impact of a merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. From a consumer point of view what would have been the impact of the merger?

Well, there could be benefits, for instance T-Mobile users will get access to a much larger network. They will have higher quality signal connection in more cities and in more areas through out the US. T-mobile has one of the smaller network area coverage of the 4 remaining cellphone providers in the US. (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile). AT&T users may get some relief in large cities like San Francisco and New York. It is likely that the combination of the two companies' networks will increase the total capacity in a given city.

AT&T and T-Mobile claim that not only will these things be better for the customers of both providers but there will also be an increase in investment in the network. However it really doesn't seem to be the case. Based on their own documents they show that it would actually reduce the yearly investment in the cell networks for the new network overall, reduce the number of employees and likely increase the prices of cell service.

Why is this expected? Well, if the networks are combined there will likely be a reduced need for RF Engineers. These guys are effectively the "Can you hear me know guy" from Verizon commercials. They both design the interaction between the cell sites and look into where the coverage, how much capacity there is for calls/text/data in a given area and if there will be dead spots within their expected coverage area. If a group of engineers for both T-Mobile can cover all of NYC and there's a group at AT&T to cover the same area, well some of them will have to go.

What about the investment though? Well, if capacity suddenly increases in areas that are cramped for capacity, then there will be less investment. Additionally, if there is excess capacity in areas that don't have the growth potential for fully meeting that capacity the new merged company would be stupid not to redeploy those areas that have less capacity. This means that AT&T could potentially go a few years without actually buying new equipment to meet capacity demands.

Why would prices go up? I wrote an article about how monopolies at the Urban Times. Effectively, when there are not pressures driving a company to lower prices to attract more customers prices will rise or stay the same. Which will be significantly higher than the costs of the company. With only two other competitors, which most people assume Verizon would buy Sprint, there is little pressure to innovate and keep prices low. Additional the cost of switching keep prices higher too.

Because of these reasons it's a very good thing that the US government stepped in to prevent this merger. It also indicates that the government is still willing to step in and act in the best interest of the people. In fact, the collapse of this merger could be a good thing for T-Mobile users as the company will get a settlement of $4 Billion. This should be invested in their network and will increase their ability to compete. Another reason we should be happy for this collapse, is that T-Mobile is a very innovative company in terms of adoption of new types of cell phones. T-Mobile has also had excellent customer service compared to the other cell phone providers.

Today's post is on the Urban Times

2011-11-24T02:01:00.001-08:00

http://www.theurbn.com/2011/11/choices-in-pursuing-innovation/

This article is about using a strong understanding of the technology base of a firm to determine where the best chances of success in a new technology are. It discusses the Innovator's Dilemma, Dynamic Capabilities and Technological adjacencies. All three of these ideas are critical for firms to understand movement into a new market.

Economics, Philosophy and Science

2011-11-23T05:28:00.001-08:00

The Occupy Wall Street movement has spawned a great deal of branch protests. It has increased our awareness of economic, educational and governance issues. We have seen a series of aggressive police actions and amazing responses from victims. Historically, universities have been a sites of unrest. Berkeley had it's riots in the 60's, there's the famous Kent State shooting picture and there are many other examples. What do much of these have in common? The state has used it's authority and power to overly aggressively clamp down on protesters. However, violent protesters can't be accepted, but non-violent protesters cannot be met with force. It's part of our heritage to protest the government.

However, it's important to understand what we're protesting and why. It was clear from the beginning of the OWS movement that most of the people didn't really understand what they were protesting. Very broad general things like Wall Street making too much money or the fact that no one has gone to jail. I think it's important that for protesting to be effective the leaders and a majority of the protesters need to be well educated on what it is exactly they are protesting.

In this case the protesters needed to be educated on economics and philosophy/morality. Why economics, those guys are like the bad guys man? Well, sadly, to have an actual conversation with these people you need to speak their language. You don't have to actually accept their assumptions as true or accurate, but you need to be well educated on the topics. Additionally, if you are well educated on economics, you'll know there are different capitalist perspectives on economics that indicate that a more equal society is a safer and happier society. Using evolutionary economics, policies can be crafted to help protect economies from crashes. In addition, being educated in slightly beyond the basic supply demand curve, it will help prevent the wool from being pulled over our eyes. This will also allow more members of our society to enter public discourse and understand and speak intelligently about the topics that impact all of us. People will actually understand what socialism and communism actually mean.

In addition to a good economic ground work, we also need to understand some basic philosophy. People are accused of moral relativism, we need to know what it actually means (morality is flexible based on the situation) and how that impacts people's actions. We also need to know when our leaders are behaving morally, immorally and what sort of freedoms we should be giving to people. Our country is founded on the philosophical ideas of the enlightenment. The US government was founded on rights, which all people should have regardless of sex, race or whatever. This includes speech and protest. If these are within our rights, then we need to protect them from people that believe it is their right to physically assault you when you exercise your rights. Morality and ethics can also drive our legislature to define laws based on humanist principles to ensure living wages and the right to live for all people. Or at least the need to create the social mobility claim to have in our society. Decreasing costs of education reduces the initial burden after school which allows people to take more risks, which may allow them to move from one social strata to the next. These should be done for moral reasons and because education and research has been shown both neoclassical economics and evolutionary economics to be a huge driver of sustained economic growth.

We also need a strong scientific foundation, which will provide a healthy dose of skepticism for government and data published by any group on either side. It gives the tools to decide if we should accept these data or open our tool box and figure out where the flaw in the data is. Science is the driver of current economic growth. It is what allows the next big break through at the platform level. We've had several platforms, coal, steel, rail, and we're currently on the silicon platform/computing platform. To develop new platforms we need to continue to drive to the frontier of science.

Our founding fathers embodied these ideals. Jefferson was a philosopher that wrote his own version of the bible. He and Franklin were both accomplished scientists. All of them believed in the rights of the people that exist not because they are given to them by the government, but because they are natural rights all people have. It is important that we acknowledge these rights and make sure we are educated in these topics to ensure an actual debate over the problems we're facing as a society. Without being educated in the importance of these topics we'll begin to argue based on the best sound byte and not on the content of the message.

In closing, all people need to become literate in these topics to provide the best foundation for an argument. Without being able to speak the right language, you'll sound like whining children that's wondering like a child lost in the woods, or out of your element if you will. With these tools, anyone can talk coherently and powerfully against the very things our own government protests in other countries.

Feds need warrant to get phone data

2011-11-21T13:09:00.001-08:00

In a victory for cell phone users everywhere, A court says that the feds need a warrant to request phone data which includes location. We should be celebrating this victory even though it isn't a total victory. This case will most likely go to the US Supreme Court. The Federal government is not going to give up on this easily. Especially since there have been other rulings that have ruled in favor of warrantless mobile phone tracking. So it's still unclear what the end result of all of this will be.

Additionally, this may also have implications for some of the other tracking that the government is doing. Apparently, the governments don't need a warrant to install GPS tracking devices onto cars. Which the police argue saves tax payers money. It raises serious privacy concerns though. What is the limit to the number of people the police can track at a time? Can they simply track anyone closely related to a crime even if they have nothing to do with any sort of crime? With polices officers required to track individuals this puts an obvious limit on the number of people the police and other law enforcement agencies can track. They are limited to the usefulness of the tracking and the number of officers they have available to track. With the GPS tracking they have the ability to simultaneously, continuously track any individual associated with a crime or a suspect of a case. This gives them a huge amount of data on people that may not have done anything illegal and shouldn't be tracked in the first place.

With this data agencies are able to construct a network of frequent activities for the prime suspect and any other people they consider interesting. If these suspects go to a known drug hide out it can implement additional people in a crime that wouldn't have been obvious without the tracking. It could allow for an increased ability to crack down on crime. However, it can also send up a great deal of false positives and implement innocents.

Should we be concerned with this type of tracking? Definitely. The purpose of requiring a warrant, in a historical context, is to prevent the government for arbitrarily searching the house of a person. I find the ability to be remotely tracked terrifying. Just because I don't have any thing to worry about doesn't mean I'd want the government to have the ability to track me on a whim. I feel it's important for there to be a check on the law enforcement. I think it's clear from the UC Davis pepper spray incident that there's a sense of unlimited power within many of our police forces. Warrantless tracking through cell phones or vehicles are incredibly similar.

The job of the court and our constitution is to protect the people from the excesses of the government through the actions of law enforcement. We need to work with our legislation to push for laws to address these issues if the courts don't make the action in the manner to protect the fourth amendment and our privacy.

Innovation and government regulation

2011-11-18T03:16:00.001-08:00

Yesterday during a short twitter discussion the topic of US governmental policies killing new business starts came up. With the 140 characters I wasn't able to property address the issue that was raised. It is extremely clear that SOPA is an innovation killer, because it effectively requires everyone to have a copyright lawyer on staff at the start of any sort of web company. If you have pictures, video, commentary or whatever on your site you'll possibly be the target of some copyright holder. This policy isn't in place and appears, for the moment, to be killed. I expect this law to be resurrected in a year or so. Despite the face that the EU adopted a resolution against SOPA.

Let's look beyond SOPA though, what other policies are in place that seem to prevent job growth? One of the biggest ones right now is tax levels for people making $250,000 or more. Politifact did an analysis of Congressman Boehner's claim that taxing millionaires hurts small businesses and prevents hiring. They found this statement to be False. Of course this does depend on the definition of a small business, which Politifact expresses is difficult to define. One metric that I'm aware of is based off the annual sales, where sales over $500,000/year moves you out of the small business area. This may not be the best amount, but let's say your company has sales of $3,000,000 a year and has enough profit to pay you $1,000,000 of that a year. This tells me that you aren't reinvesting and trying to continue to grow your firm, probably aren't paying your employees very well. Additionally, at this amount of sales it is likely that as an entrepreneur you've had to get capital investment in one of several ways, loans or from venture capital. A bank wouldn't care if you were getting paid a million a year, but there's no way a VC would allow you to pay yourself that if they weren't getting a good size chunk of money too and you were still planning on reinvesting in the future enough to get a huge IPO. Now, if you've built this company from the ground up to this level on your own, then you aren't paying yourself that kind of money. You would have to be re-investing that money back into the firm to get new equipment hiring the best people, etc.

Another way for companies to get started is through spin-off from another company, bootstrapping themselves to get going or spinning-out of a university. I have an article that will come out soon in the Urban times that addresses some policies that can help with the creation of Spin-outs and start-ups. In the US, we still have the best policies for this. The EU as a collective and European countries are modeling many of their intellectual property laws and funding methods off of US policies. A few examples are a very similar law to the Dole-Bayh law from the 80's to allow universities to own IP and to give it to their employees if they wish. The creation of technology incubators - this was a truly American innovation, innovation prize contests and national seed funds. The continual reinvention of these policies in the US allows us to create more new companies than European counterparts from a variety of sources.

Are there other policies that hurt the creation of companies? Yes, sure. I'm sure there are some pollution regulations that negatively impact the survival rate of firms. However, from a purely economic perspective this regulation is forcing the company to internalize the cost of the negative externality. Which the company should innovate to reduce the amount of pollution they are creating or buy equipment that reduces their costs in other ways. Innovation to reduce pollution should reduce the cost of raw materials, because they are being used more efficiently and in lower quantities. Every company wants to be able to reduce the amount of raw materials they use. In the next few years we will see greener companies, not because they have a desire to be sustainable, but because it's more profitable. The regulations the EPA puts into place requires companies to internalize negative externalities, which from both a evolutionary and neo-classical economic perspective is expected from the market and when the market fails then and only then the government needs to step in.

There will be regulations that are industry specific that may slow the amount of innovation and creation of firms, but some of that is surely death by a thousand paper cuts (too much paper work) and the inability to figure out a way to acquire enough funds to get the company going. Compared to European countries the US is the leader for ease of firm creation and the EU is still playing catch up in that regard.

Today's article is posted on Urban Times

2011-11-17T00:03:00.001-08:00

http://www.theurbn.com/2011/11/tensions-in-technological-change/

Biggest threat to internet innovation

2011-11-16T05:07:00.001-08:00

Regardless where you live, the largest threat to the internet is the US Congress/Department of Justice and close second may be the UK court system. In this post i'm going to focus on the US congress and DOJ because what they are doing is fairly ridiculous. The US Congress is currently considering a bill called Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA, critics like to call it the E-parasite act. This act, according to various sources, this bill amounts to online black-listing. It's also being called the Great FireWall of America. This is a complete disaster in my opinion. The internet is one of the fastest growing parts of our economy. Anyone can start up a web based company. It doesn't have to be anything fancy at first, but over time you'll get more sophisticated.

The EFF notes three extremely popular sites that are in the cross hair of SOPA. Etsy, because there are simply too many little shops that could be selling illegal material. For instance, the US Supreme Court Ruled that you couldn't resell AutoCAD, the likelihood of that happening might be low, but what about a screen printed shirt with some band logo? That's just as illegal. Another site is Flickr, which is pretty obvious because it's so easy to claim a picture as your own. The last they mention is Vimeo for the same reasons. I would also expect YouTube to be on that list as well.

So aside from a black list what does the actual bill do? What legal censorship isn't enough for you to be outraged against this bill? I mean we're talking about Turkey and Pakistan level of censorship of sites here. It's not unrealistic to expect facebook and Google to get black listed with this law. Facebook could get hit if some one quotes stuff illegally or posts video with copyrighted material on it. Since you're able to post and stream through facebook, it might raise some questions over copyright.Google of course links to a huge amount of copyright material that a user can get illicitly.

Ok, what else is there you really want to know? The rights holders can request payment processing companies (read Visa, Mastercard and ad companies) to block payments to your site. For some people that will mean no more YouTube money, for others it will be a death sentence. Does the court get involved with any of this? Nope. The companies have 5 days to respond to a payment stop. Which means even if you are in the clear, if a request happens, you likely won't get paid. Check the EFF's break down for more details.

But this is 'Merica! Surely something like this won't happen. They'll take our jerbs! Yes, they could in fact take away your jobs. Is anyone fighting against this? Yep. Google, Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, Michelle Bachmann (Yes the crazy lady), Ron Paul (Yes the crazy in a different way guy) and a small list of Congress members from both sides of the aisle are banding together to try to kill the bill. They are arguing that the bill is too broad and doesn't appropriately address the problem is trying to "fix."

What do most Americans feel about copyright legal action? As a whole they are against it. In fact most only think that a small fine of a maximum of $100 is appropriate for a downloaded song. Many have indicated that as more legal alternatives have appeared users have been less likely to use the illegal versions. Of course this is self reported data so it could be skewed, but even if you add 10 points it's still showing that legal alternatives are best deterrent for illegal downloading.

You can email your representatives here. I strongly suggest you do. The more voices that speak out in protest the more likely at least a few people will hear. Personally, I don't think the US government should even be talking about copyright right now. They need to be working on jobs.

Review: Republic Lost. Or the hand book for OWS

2011-11-14T08:45:00.001-08:00

I just finished Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig last night. If it's not obvious by now, I'm a big Lessig fan. I find his work extremely interesting and relevant to the changing world. It is a bit dry to be honest, all of his writings deal with how society, the market and laws interact.

In my opinion this book should be the handbook for anyone interested in the Occupy movement. I'll explain why in a few steps. First, he mentions various different cases of inequity which are highly promenient in the US. He specifically addresses the 99% argument and does it a great deal of good. He fully explains what it means to be in the 99% in a way that has been missing in the dialogue. He actually says that the 1% isn't the biggest problem it's actually a much smaller percentage, but the 1% can cause a lot of damage as well.

In the book he systematically explains how and why money is a problem in the system. In many cases it's not that there is quid pro quo corruption going on. More that it seems like there is corruption going on because of the money involved. As an outsider it's hard to trust a system where the Teachers union (or wall street or exxon) can say I will give $1 million dollars to any candidate that supports tenure (or bail outs or deep water drilling). This is an implicit threat because if you don't support these topics your opponent will, because it will give them campaign donations. As donations play a huge amount of time for a congressman (30-70%) anything that makes it easier to get money the congressmen will campaign to support.

There have been studies that question if these gifts actively change legislative voting behavior, but many quotes from former congressmen explaining that there is a sense of obligation to the donor. This isn't a tit for tat type exchange, Lessig argues it's more of a gift economy. Like what buy a round of beers for your friends, you don't want money for it, you want them to buy you the next round. The fact that you bought instills (in most people) a sense of obligation to buy the next round. This analogue is perfect in fact, as Lessig argues that congress is dependent on these funds like an alcoholic. This is an illicit dependency as he shows that Congress should be "dependent on the People alone."

Lessig builds an extremely will supported case that donations impact the legislative process by impacting what congressional leaders allow debate on. Even if it doesn't impact votes, it impacts what is considered important by the congress. This is one of the ways that congress seems out of touch with regular people. I believe Lessig builds a strong enough case to demonstrate that something must be done. He actually has a few suggestions on how to deal with the problem.

The first is the old fashioned way of trying to build support through congress to enact real campaign reform. Lessig doesn't believe this is realistic and gives it about a 0% chance of success. His next idea is to get about 300 well known people to run as super candidate to force the issues. Have these people run in multiple different districts (it's legal) and garner enough attention to force the politicians to say they will vote for reform. Do this in enough state and in the right states and it might work. He calls this a kind of political terrorism. He gives it a 5% chance of working once you get started.

His next idea is to have one of those types candidates run for the of president making the promise to hold congress hostage until the reforms are made, BUT resign as soon as the reforms are completed. He argues that this is required for people to honestly believe that the changes would happen and for congress to actually enact the changes. There would be no negotiations other than making sure all the normal people get paid and services don't impact most business. He also gives this one a 5% chance of working.

The final suggestion is to push for a constitutional convention. This would require 38/50 states to OK the convention. He, at length, describes all the potential problems and legal issues with the convention, which matter once the ball gets rolling. In addition to this he suggests creating about 300 shadow conventions where regular people are given the opportunity to make constitutional amendments. These could then be the basis for what is sent to congress.

In total, if you are part of the OWS movement you need to read this book. It will help give more firepower for your arguments against the 1% and it will give some guidance on what the first priority should be. I agree with Lessig that until we get money out of the system no other reforms are possible. We will not have a function government until the People are the only thing the government relies on for choices of legislature.

Today's blog is on the Urban Times

2011-11-13T14:01:00.001-08:00

http://www.theurbn.com/2011/11/how-technology-evolves/

Router = Computer

2011-11-12T04:23:00.001-08:00

According to the online magazine Techeye.net an ADSL modem/router is considered by a German court. The dispute is over if a user is allowed to install software that changes the ADSL modem's firewall settings. It was actually a battle between two companies, the company that makes the router and the company making software for the router. I think that this ruling has some extremely interesting implications.

First, by defining a router as a computer it opens the door for a HUGE number of devices to be defined as a computer. Most of us wouldn't think of a router as a computer. It's a switch, it has a very specific purpose of deciding which packet gets through to the network at a given time and to prevent congestion on the network. In this case, it has the additional function of pulling out the high speed data from the phone line as well. It does have a user interface, but it's typically restricted to a web browser. This is hardly something the average user would consider a computer. Which tells me something about the judge in the case - he understands technology and computing. The US and rest of Europe could use more judges like this.

Second, since a broad range of devices are now considered devices, at least in Germany, it could force companies to open up their hardware to user software manipulation. I see a few areas where I think this will cause major companies problems.

The first would be video game consoles. If a router is considered a computer there is no way that a company could argue that a video game console is not a computer. Consider the following, you are able to install software video games onto the console, you actually interact with an operating system, you are able to browse the internet and of course play games on the console. These are all things you are able to do on your PC. There are more restrictions on the console than the PC of course. Now, let's say a third party company wants to come along and create something that will allow you to increase the functionality of the software or the machine in someway. In Germany, the user should have the right to do that.

The second would be cell phones. It's pretty obvious that cellphones are computers and this ruling would just cement that. I think this will cause more problems for iOS than for Android. For two reasons, first Android already allows third party app stores onto the devices which increases the control of the end user over the computer. Second, Apple controls what software can be allowed into the app store thus controlling what a user is able to install on their computer. The German ruling basically says that a company cannot stop a user from installing software onto their computer if they want to install it. Apple and the App store are directly controlling what a user can and cannot install onto their device. I would not be surprised if this type of control is challenged in the German courts.

One other implications could be that as you own the computer user may be able to stop companies from remotely installing software onto their computer they don't want on there. For instance, in the US it's not uncommon for Verizon Wireless to push software out to specific devices without notifying you. You are giving implicit consent by using their networks. However, if the same thing happened to my PC from Comcast there would be a law suit. Since phones are in a weird quasi state of rights in the US there isn't the same sort of feelings. However, I believe as the gap between PC and phones close and the desire to control what goes on the phone and what doesn't increases there will be lawsuits over installing and deleting software from your computer.

Unintended consequences of knowledge management regimes

2011-11-10T08:39:00.000-08:00

There are several consequences of the differences between the US (and the west) and China (and other autocracies). First, with one of the major assumptions of neoclassical economics out the window, it calls into question basing economic policy on neoclassical economics. Second, with a monopoly structure for intellectual property several different economic incentives have been created. Finally, the differences in IP management between the countries creates tensions at several different levels. I'll discuss each of these points in more detail.

First, if one of the major assumptions for economic policy includes non-rival, non-exclusive knowledge, it's difficult to understand why there isn't more competition in many markets. However, as we know it's not really possible for any firm to pick up any sort of technology and start to produce a given product. Because of this difficulty regions and areas tend to become experts at specific types of technologies. However, even in the case of China the freedom of access to IP makes it easier for firms to produce specific products. The problem still lies in the fact that you still need tacit knowledge to actually make the product. A patent is supposed to give you the information you need to produce the technology. However, the actual patents are difficult to read and not likely to be possible

Second, with a monopoly structure in place for intellectual property it gives very different incentives for owners of intellectual property. First, for people who actually produce a product, attacking products that are similar for infringement can be a very lucrative proposition. It prevents other companies from becoming competition. Apple is currently using this tactic to go after Android through Samsung and HTC. With a full monopoly technological progress can actually come to a standstill. An example of this is with Xerox copiers. With the monopoly in place Xerox did not innovate and kept prices extremely high. As soon as their patent ran out the competition came in and almost took all of the market share from Xerox. They introduced lower priced products and a wider more personal product range. Without the monopoly in place other companies could try to move into the market space earlier and drive innovation from the beginning of the market. Finally, with reduced ownership of IP there will be less patent trolls like Intellectual Ventures.

Third, the IP management is causing issues between firms and the Chinese government. The firms do not want to give up their IP because it's how they are able to make their money. Some of these technologies are so easy to copy it's impossible to make a profit without protection. In theory pharmaceuticals should be perfectly copyable based on the chemical properties of the drug. If the pharmaceutical companies didn't have a chance to recoup the investment on a drug (500 million - 1 billion per drug) there would be no innovation. The differences present problems for trade and agreements between countries. The US and China have had serious disagreements over how IP should be managed.

Basically, the differences in how IP is understood impacts a countries policies economically and in trade. It is important to understand exactly what's going on with these issues. Our governments are pushing for different levels of control over IP both in patents and other forms of copyright. As some one interested in policy, it's important to understand what types of policies we should be pushing for. I don't think there's any true right answer for the IP problem. In different situations policies should be adjusted. We cannot have a stagnant IP regime when technologies are evolving as fast as they are.

Are democracies or autocracies better with technology Management?

2011-11-08T12:42:00.000-08:00

According to neoclassical economics knowledge is a non-rival (I can use it without preventing you from using it) and non-exclusive (available to everyone) resource. This has two impacts on their economic theory. First, the actual impact of research and development is excluded from economic growth and is ignored. Second, that any company should be able to pick up and produce any technology. Both of these points are relatively ridiculous. For two reasons. First, we know that research leads to the formation of new companies. Second we know that most companies cannot produce any product and many companies that produce products outside their expertise fail at it.

From a neoclassical perspective democracies are terrible at sharing knowledge and technologies. Democracies have a slew of laws that regulate access to technology form monopolies for specific technologies if they have something called a patent. Additionally, there are other contracts that can get in the way of sharing of knowledge in a way that is neoclassical. Non-disclosure agreements and non-compete clauses. If you aren't allowed to discuss a specific technology with other people, it prevents knowledge from spreading and being shared to other companies. If you aren't allowed to compete within the same industry after you leave a company, it prevents you from using that knowledge in a positive way at another firm.

These laws have been put into place in our democracies to ensure proper protection of technologies for firms. It's designed to prevent the spreading of tacit knowledge from company A to company B. As a company this is incredibly desirable. Without these protections some research would be worthless to conduct. Knowledge spill-overs would cause prices to fall to cost or lower as firms compete for market share. It's great for consumers, but bad for firms.

So what happens in China? Well according to Make it in America, China requires many firms to hand over their Intellectual Property to the Chinese state. What ends up happening after this is that the Chinese government sells the information or gives the information to one or more Chinese company. These companies tend to be made up of former employees at the company that made the product before. This allows tacit knowledge transfer to the firm and a fast ramp to compete directly with the inventor of the technology. The knowledge is freer in China than it is in the US because of this. This increases competition and may be impacting the cost of goods like solar panels.

In a way this type of behavior forces companies to compete based on the actual costs of the technology. This is what is expected in the neoclassical theory. All prices will eventually drop to the marginal cost of a product with near zero profits for the producing company. In a perverse way, this is a "freer" market than ours because it comes closer to the non-rival non-exclusive knowledge base.

In my next blog, I'll discuss this topic more.

China, Technology and creativity

2011-11-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been away for so long. I've been hanging out with my Awesome wife! She gave a talk in Ireland, which I went to for most of a week. It was a good time. She then came here to Eindhoven for a week and had an interview. So that's why I haven't been updating. Sorry faithful readers.

At a party on Saturday, I got into a fairly active discussion with 4 PhDs and myself. They are all engineering PhDs, so they understand research and how technology works rather well. We got into a discussion on if China was going to actually really over take the US in scientific research. I said I think it's likely, but there were many arguments against that likelihood. I didn't really get to finish my argument on why it's possible. So, I'm going to do that now.

Basically, some of the core arguments against China being able to overtake is us lack of creativity. China is a country of followers, not a country of creative leaders. Another argument was the lack of high quality education and research centers in China. I'll address the second argument first and then discuss the first argument.

Americans know that we educated a lot of foreigners at our universities, 2008 was an all time high for the number of international students. In fact my roommate at one point explained to me that one of the groups at the University of Texas was comprised entirely of Chinese students. They conduct their meetings and research all in Chinese and, in fact, leave the US speaking worse English than when they arrived. But why are they leaving? The link above notes that there simply aren't enough H1B Visas or green cards for them all to stay. Effectively we're throwing out the people we educate. Over time enough good scientists and engineers will be sent back and will start teaching in China. China has big ambitions and has been creating universities as fast as it can. Using an evolutionary perspective, we can see that it's likely they will continue to create variation and students will be selecting the best universities. One of them is likely to start producing more science and better science than another. This will lead to the best students and best researchers going to that school. One or two could become the Chinese version of MIT, Berkeley or Harvard. I think it's clear that education won't hold them back. Eventually, they will have several universities in the top 200 list according to the Times Higher Education ranking.

The second argument is a little tricker to argue against. The Chinese aren't creative enough to create radical innovations. First, I'm sure that the Chinese I know would object to this blanket statement. However, let's assume for the moment that's it's some what correct. There's a culture that doesn't reward creativity and rewards conformity. I can think of two countries that have similar types of culture that have been creative and are excellent centers of research and innovation, Japan and South Korea. Now are they as good as the US at innovation or research, No. However, they have had some great innovations and do great research.

When it comes to patent research there's something called a Triadic patent. It's a patent that is filed in the US, Europe and Japan. Europe and Japan have higher standards for patents than the US and are more difficult to acquire. Why does this matter? Well effectively Japan is the only country in Asia that would fit better with the European countries in terms of GDP per capita, protection of IP and research.

Both South Korea and Japan have a few companies that are on the leading edge of their respective fields. Samsung is in a huge number of different areas and is the world leader in many of them. Japan has Nikon, Sony, Toyota and a few other big companies that are on the cutting edge in research, design and innovation. So, I don't accept the argument that the Chinese couldn't be creative.

Another point I was trying to make, is that over time as a country becomes the center of manufacturing and incremental innovation on a product, it's likely that they are going to be able to create the next radical innovation in that field. There are two things that support this. First, in a book by Andrew Liveris, the British CEO of Dow Chemical, there is anecdotal evidence to support bringing manufacturing back to the US along with the R&D that goes with it. The other argument is based on the research of Cesar Hidalgo of MIT that shows through network theory, that to become a leader in technology you have to build your way through a series of other technologies. It helps explain why it's so hard for countries to pick up creating semiconductors. However, as a country develops the technological capability to work within a type of technology they are likely to create innovation and changes in that technology.

China has effectively been given the ability to manufacture just about everything through outsourcing. They have the technological capabilities to build and design new technologies. China also has the resources devoted to it. They created a five year plan where they are going to invest $1.5 trillion in 7 science sectors. Because of these factors I believe that China is a real threat to US and European leadership in research and technology. For any one to dismiss China because of cultural reasons or technological capabilities is making a mistake and is likely to be surprised in 20 -30 years when China becomes a leader in at least one field, likely more than one.

Technology Theft

2011-10-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

Apparently in the Steve Jobs bio there's discussion about how he plans on destroying Android because he thought Google stole his idea. Well, yea, a phone operating system is genius, it's just difficult to get a critical mass for a given operating system. There's the problem of lock-in and network effects, which impact the likelihood of a given person adopting a new technology. That's also why Google followed Apple's lead with creating the Android Market. It's also why Apple is suing every single major Android phone manufacturer. However, Jobs shouldn't have been that upset there have been a lot of dead cell phone operating systems like Palm's, many mobile windows and most recently the beautiful MeeGoo from Nokia.

Cell phones aren't the only place where this sort of "theft" happens. Typically, it's more considered technological borrowing by taking from one technology type and applying it to another. This happens when some technological limit is hit on a technology. This technological theft basically allows the engineer/designer to overcome some inherent limitation in a technology. An example of this was the effort that allowed proper planes to compete with jets for an extended period of time. They use super chargers and similar technology to allow the plane to fly at heights and speeds they shouldn't normally be able to fly at.

However, this borrowing can lead to major legal issues. Which is why it's fairly common to see licensing agreements between major firms that involve thousands of seemingly unrelated patents. This is so they can avoid any sort of legal issues if they have to use a technology the other company owns.

Other types of theft are really common, such as in software. Look at how much Facebook has taken from both twitter and google+.

What should we do about technology theft? Well, we need to deal with the patent problem first. However if we address that issue I think that technology theft is one of the best things that can happen. It's a way that drives improvements of subtechnologies that make the larger technologies more efficient. It's a way that technology evolves through selection process.

On a side note, I get to see my wife tomorrow, so I'm probably not going to be blogging much for the next week or so.

Where good ideas come from

2011-10-25T11:47:00.000-07:00

Last year I bought a book after listening to a segment from NPR that my dad had sent. In it they interviewed to different authors, Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson, I ended up getting both books. To my dismay the Kevin Kelly book, What technology wants, was in my opinion painting a technology deterministic world that ultimately was unrealistic and absurd. I stopped reading it and never finished it, which is something I almost never do (I would equate him with Clay Shirky in being overly optimistic about the role of technology).

The second author's book was significantly better. It's called Where Good Ideas Come From and it has some really great ways to generate new ideas and how he believes ideas are formed. Below is a short talk of his animated by RSA animation.

The short and simple is that I completely buy his approach to generating new ideas. In his book he discusses using a piece of software (DEVONthink) while doing almost all of his reading . I've tired to do this with a similar program in windows called Evernote, but it's difficult to remember to do it. I feel I need to get better at it. I had a great idea for a blog two days ago, never wrote it down and totally forgot what it was. Helaas pinda kaas (Dutch for "too bad peanut butter"). In some way the book is a big ad for DEVONthink, but that's not really the important part. The important thing is how these different ideas come together and lead to new and fully formed ideas. A tool like DEVONthink or Evernote (There's also OneNote as part of MS office) allow you to increase your ability to find things and create new ideas.

I effectively use websites like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and the books I read in this fashion. Many of my blog posts come about from the different news stories I read to which I put my own spin on them and add additional commentary. Typically by combing ideas from multiple different sources. I love when my friends point me to new sources of information or stories I'd be interested in. One of my blogs, What is the value of a patent, was written because someone sent me the "When Patents attack" story by This American life. I was able to combine the ideas presented in that story with my knowledge of patents that I've learned at TU/e to write an interesting blog that's more than either story.

Yes, my last two blogs have basically be book reviews. However, I figured that as a public service announcement to let people know how I come up with my topics. I think it's important that other people try to create their own content and share what you know. If you don't feel comfortable writing, shoot me an idea and let's see what we can make of it.

Internet and Social Media books: A comparison between Lessig and Shirky

2011-10-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

Recently I've read two books related to the internet and to some extent social media. The first book I've mentioned and quoted repeatedly, Code 2.0 by Lawrence Lessig. The second is a book I just finished called Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky which is about how as the internet has evolved and grown we have been able to create our own content instead of simply being passive consumers.

Despite the fact that Code 2.0 was originally written in 1999 and then updated in 2006 and Surplus was written in 2010 I feel that Code is still more relevant. Some of this can be attributed to the approach of the authors. In both cases the authors discuss specific websites and how they impact social interaction between different actors. As side from arguing that the free time and the increased ability to create, Shirky focuses on social connections and ignores other considerations related to content creation. He oversimplifies the skills required to create new content and ignores vested interests ability to prevent content creation.

Lessig on the other hand, creates a framework where it is possible to analyze the interactions between the various actors that interact on the internet. He looks at the market forces, social forces, regulatory forces, and social norms that interact with the internet in different ways. In this way Lessig is able to create recommendations to improve the interaction with the various forces acting on the internet. His goal is to create a safe internet that allows privacy, transparency, great places where economic exchanges can happen and required controls to prevent abuse of the internet.

There are some other differences between these books. Shirky reminds me of Thomas Friedman's the World is Flat. It's an incredibly optimistic view of the internet. Effectively the author can't find anything wrong with the social interactions that occur on the internet. He isn't concerned with the privacy issues with sites like Facebook, hacking issues both white and black hat and censorship at any level. He ignores these issues and looks at the community aspect. Which is fine, but he should at least mention these factors as they can seriously impact the quality of a community that's being created. Lessig has a much less optimistic outlook and in fact believes that the internet will allow the government unprecedented access to our personal information and control over the information we control.

I think that these two books represent well the different ways that people look at the internet. I personally have a Lessig outlook. This maybe for a few reasons. I've read a few of his books, I can be cynical and I don't have endless optimism for any technology. I think that the internet is an amazing thing. That people are creating more content, but it's going to take some time before it gets to the point that Shirky is dreaming of. One of my friends over at KBMOD things that within a few years everyone will have a YouTube account the way that everyone has a Facebook account. I'm skeptical of this. I think there's more time required to be effective at being a YouTuber than being a Facebooker. Which will decrease the number of people that are willing to take up a hobby. Facebook takes about 10 seconds to update, with YouTube you have to feel comfortable in front of a camera or talking over some sort of content. I think it'll happen over time, but I think there will be something of a U shape of users. I think older generations that have more free time will pick it up.

I think both books have a positive outlook on the internet and social media. They both think that the more connections that happen the more connections that can occur. Overall, I personally think that if you're interested in the different forces interacting in the internet Lessig's book is for you. If you're interested in a rosy outlook on the positive impact of the internet then read Shirky's book.

Is software a technology?

2011-10-23T12:16:00.000-07:00

I saw an interesting comment on r/technology today, r/technology is a subreddit devoted to all things technology, where the author complained about too much web/software related articles were being posted on the site. As the site is user driven the choice of the content can be influenced by questions and comments like this. In fact it can change the shape of the entire community and how they interact with each other. For instance r/fitness tested text based submissions only with no external links allowed. This fundamentally changed the discourse in that community. Anyway, this made me sit back and think about if software or websites should be considered technology in the way that a computer or keyboard is.

According to the Google dictionary the following is the definition of technology:

tech·nol·o·gy/tekˈnäləjē/

Noun:

The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, esp. in industry: "computer technology"; "recycling technologies".
Machinery and equipment developed from such scientific knowledge.

I believe that software could fall into the first category of technology. Wikipedia says: Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function.

Again this could easily be applied to software. Specifically because of the word techniques. However, I think we need to tread carefully here because both of these definitions would also include all of mathematics as a form of technology. Why does this definition matter? Well, you are able to patent technologies, but you are not able to patent mathematical algorithms or techniques. If some one was able to prove that P=NP in a mathematical proof then it couldn't be patented. However, if you put that same proof into a piece of software it suddenly becomes patentable, and then make some one very rich.

I think there's another fundamentally cognitive difference as well. Despite the fact that people say Android phone technology or Apache web server technology, it feels different than when you say internal combustion technology. I think the main difference is the physicality of the combustion technologies over the technology that has been developed to create phone OSes or webservers. It requires manual labor and a set of tools and skills that are all physical entities whereas with the software, anyone with a computer can learn how to program. That doesn't mean that there won't be a set of people that are better at it or more likely to pick it up than other people. I'm basically self taught in both SQL server and VB.Net.The fact that software can be copied perfectly an infinite number of times also changes how it should be treated.

I think that these differences means we should actually treat software differently. I think that it is a technology, but a technology more related to mathematics and logic than other sciences.

Communication in Science

2011-10-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

I watched this great TEDxRotterdam talk today the guy who gave it wrote an article on a case of homosexual necrophilia activities of a duck. He happened to observe it in action. He basically happened to be in the right place at the right time and is trained as a biologist. For that article he won the ig noble prize, for science that makes you laugh then think. These types of awards are great methods for scientists to communicate with the general public. It shows that scientists can really have a sense of humor.

Another great example of this was a panel discussion at The Amazing Meeting, a James Randi event, which had two really well known scientists, Bill Nye and Neil de Grasse Tyson as well as two less well known scientists (to the general population) Pamela Gay and Lawrence Krauss. (Link to the video it's an hour long) In the panel they discuss the future of space. At some points it gets rather heated between de Grasse Tyson and Krauss, but it's great to see serious scientists with a sense of humor discuss something they are passionate about. All of them make some seriously excellent points. They discuss how we're at a turning point in the space program and how the shift to commercial space flight will change the space industry. The point they are the most serious about however is saving the James Web Space Telescope. For those of you unaware, this is the replacement for Hubble, as I mentioned in my NASA blog. As a side note we need to save this.

The point they were making though, is that there needs to be an adjustment in how NASA works and how scientists interact with the larger population. If scientists aren't able to articulate why a specific study needs to be done, for it's own sake, then in some ways they don't deserve to do it. The added benefit is that most of these endeavors do have additional positive externalities in the form of spin-off firms. Which is pretty awesome.

However, the important thing to take away here is that there needs to be an improve method for scientists to communicate complex ideas to the general public in a way that gets people reading about it. Independent bloggers like me certainly help, but there needs to be a larger push by general scientists. I'd love to have my advisers here at TU/e blog. They study extremely interesting topics and I'd really enjoy getting to read them. There are some "rock" star science bloggers like PZ Meyers but he also discusses a lot of controversial topics that a great deal of people don't like. He's an atheist and is extremely vocal about it. Another blogger is Ben Goldacre who studies bad science and attempts to debunk it (his TED Talk).

I think that Google Scholar will do great things for opening up access to materials written by scientists. I for one try to take advantage of it. I use it to search for documents if I can't find them on the university system and surprisingly I have a really high hit rate. Copyright restrictions limit it.

So how can you help? I suggest sharing articles you find interesting. I try to do it as much as I can. I love when I find a really interesting article posted on facebook or twitter.

The trouble with experts...

2011-10-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

I wrote two blogs in September about technocrats and how as experts of science and technology they some times think they know what's best for the larger population. The problem becomes when these scientists start to venture outside there area of expertise. They start arguing about topics with a voice of authority on a topic they know little more than a lay person. The difference may be that they pick it up a little bit easier. However, they are also some what blinded by their own knowledge of other topics and not listen to a knowledgeable person.

I'm picking on scientists right now, but the truth of the matter is this happens all the time. There's a well known (in the US) and depressing example of this during a climate debate in the US congress. During a hearing Rep John Shimkus called a bishop to testify, where he read a passage from the bible where god said he would never flood the earth again, he then went on to say that god decides when the end of the earth will happen, so he's confident that global warming is a fraud (see youtube video). The scary thing is that this guy is the chairman of the subcommittee of environment and economy. The bottom line is that he feels he's an expert of the bible and of religious matters and is using this in a context that he's not an expert.

These are just two examples but they bring me to my main point. There's a greater difference between acknowledged experts and self appointed experts. Scientists have degrees and go through formal training to become experts. Congressmen also typically are well educated and are voted into an expert position by their constituents. If they are experts or not is clearly up for debate, but at least they have been accepted by at least one community as a whole.

Then there are the self-styled experts. I think the two most obvious ones are leadership gurus and social media experts. I follow a few of each on twitter and some of what they have to say is really frustrating. For example the leadership gurus typically have some trite quote from some one. Something along the lines of "When a window of opportunity opens don't pull down the shade" (literal quote not sure who it's from). First of all, this is an incredibly easy thing to say, but horribly difficult thing to do in practice. In the entrepreneur literature I've been reading one of the biggest indicators of entrepreneurial behavior is the ability to notice when there IS a window of opportunity. The second is having the means to take advantage of it before it closes. In the case of academic spin-offs this can be measured through the resources the university has on hand for an academic to start a firm. This is in terms of technology transfer offices, incubators, equity stake investments, licensing and venture capital. Sadly, the skills to identify these windows can't be taught at a seminar. They can only be taught by being surrounded by people that are already able to find them. The ability to exploit them comes from being in the right place. So, if you want to leverage your opportunity as best as you can then you need to figure out how to put yourself in the right position to take advantage of it. See how fun it is to be trite!! The fact is you can control that, it's not easy, but it's possible.

The second group, social media experts, are equally frustrating but for different reasons. The first is that their focus on social media blinds them to fact that in many cases it plays a very small role in day to day business operations. For example, many social media experts say that if a firm doesn't do social media then they are going to fail. That's insane. Many firms the end customer never deals with. There are tons of suppliers that don't need to care about social media at all. An example of this is a company that supplies chemicals to Intel to make semiconductor chips. Most likely a firm like this doesn't have social media, because it never deals with random people.. Now, if you are a firm that does deal with the end customer, we the consumers, then yes you should have some form of social media. That's not to say that some of these supplier companies don't have them because they need to deal with environmentalists or some other protest group.

The other problem with these social media experts is they very easily start to move into other aspects of business. If you keep within your social media bubble I have no problems with you at all. In fact, you're doing something that I am really bad at. You're what Malcolm Gladwell would call Mavens. You're connectors, you have a great deal of contacts that listen to what you say. In social network theory you'd have many structural holes. This is a good thing for you as a person. However, when you start to believe you're an expert in other topics that's when things get dangerous. I read two articles in the past two days that really irritated me. The first article discusses a five step plan to save Google from Google+, it really shows that this guy doesn't have any understanding of how Google itself works. He basically calls for splitting the company and firing the management group. Google made 9.2B in revenue with over 2B of that as profit. He says Google needs to innovate. Google is cutting bad unused apps and getting back to the core business with plans to work on innovation. While the author is an owner of a small start up, he doesn't really know how large companies work and bases his comments entirely on social media aspect of Google.

The second article was on an unofficial facebook blog which argues that Google is done because facebook came up with some algorithm that focuses on keyword correlation. The algorithm is an iterative process and gets better with time. Pretty innovative, but Google's been doing this a long time. Every time they've been challenged in terms of search Google has stepped up to the plate and kept it's dominance in results.

The final point I'd like to make is that social media experts clearly understand the importance of social capital. You can see this from the amount of retweets they send out, the thank yous and the use of Klout. All of these tools indicate an understanding of the need to scratch some one's back to have them do it back. However, they apparently aren't able to understand how to extend this to firms. I believe that Google has a great deal more social capital than Facebook. I would say that Google and Apple have about the same level of social capital where neither company can do wrong in the eyes of a large portion of the population. I'd argue that Facebook, on the other hand, has as much social capital as Microsoft in the late 90s and early 2000's. No one trusts them. They have had a virtual lock-in on the market since Myspace couldn't keep up with their innovations and borrowing of ideas. Now that there are new platforms opening up its obvious that Facebook has the most to lose. Google will make missteps as they develop Google+ into a different platform than Facebook. For a service that is as young as it is, I'm surprised it hasn't made more.

So, you ask, what gives me the right to comment on these people, are you an expert? I don't know if I'm an expert, but I've been trained to look critically at arguments like those presented by the social media experts. I understand business strategies and environments that allow people to create new firms. I would argue that Google+ is effectively a case of corporate venturing, where Google created an internal start-up that produced Google+. So, in the end, yes I think I have the proper insights to address these points.

Ubiquitous Free Wireless Combined

2011-10-19T01:55:00.000-07:00

One of the people I follow on twitter posed an interesting question. What would happen if there was free broadband wireless all over Europe. I sent them my 140 character answer but felt really unsatisfied by that. I'm going to devote some blog space to it over the next few days because I think that there would be a lot of changes. I'm going to break this into a few section. I haven't worked out all of them but there will be government, business, computing and social changes. This structure loosely follows some of the structure within Lawrence Lessig's Code 2.0. He also argued there were four structures that impact community building on the internet. It is written in the US context, but can be applied in other countries.

I'm going to start with Governmental changes.

One of the first things that will happen will be further encroachments on the ability for users to be anonymous and use pseudonyms online. Initially the requirement to login will be used to track which areas have the highest user rates and things like that, but this could be an incredibly powerful tool to prevent copyright abuse from users of the network. IP addresses would go out the window as an enforcement tool of nearly any online abuses. For instance, the safest place to download a movie from the internet would be on the train. You'd be changing IP addresses frequently and it would be very difficult to track a single user from one IP address to the next.

To deal with these problems there would have to be strict oversight to protect users of the network from invasions of privacy from the government and third party users of the network. Currently, the US government has a significantly heavy hand in collecting data from ISPs, Cloud data and social networking data. This includes both European and US data. This would need to be prevented.

Paying for and managing this network would need to be determined as well. One route could be to put a tax on advertisements that are displayed in a IP address range. Since IPs are distributed through regions this would be technically possible. Google just announced they made $9.7 Billion and nearly all of that is from ads (99% was from ad revenue in 2008). Putting a modest tax on this revenue will help pay for this network. Assuming that this infrastructure would need to be rolled out and continually upgraded I would expect at least $2-3 billion annual investment is required. I'm basing this on how much Verizon Wireless and AT&T invest in their network annually. This of course would change based on the amount of capacity required (a lot) and what technology used (WIFI, Wi-Max, LTE) for the network.

Since, this will effectively kill the business model of the telecoms, like T-mobile and KPN, they could be used to help manage the network. Governments and the like aren't the best at managing these networks these old companies would be the best suited to manage it. That or create an organization that is based on former employees.

Finally, the network would have to be net neutral. Otherwise, it would effectively be government censorship if there was a reduction in access to any portion of the web. This means that the internet would be free as in free beer and free as in free speech. This would ensure the most positive results from the free internet on the business side and improve ability of users to participate in democracy.

Biggest changes? Management of the network, increased privacy concerns, paying for the network and copyright owners influence on data controls.

Part II Business

In my previous blog I discussed some governmental issues with ubiquitous free high speed wireless internet. In this piece I'm going to discuss the impact on businesses. I'll start with some really obvious impacts and then move into some that may be more interesting.

First, this would effectively kill the current business model for telecoms. Not just internet providers but it would also have a massive impact on telephony and television providers. Internet providers would basically go out of business unless the governments that implemented the network hired them to manage the networks and perform the upgrades required to ensure expected performance. It should also be expected that net neutrality should be the norm as the internet is free as in free beer and as in free speech in a situation like this. This would impact telephony in a similar manner. With free internet phones could be designed to work on wifi (or whatever the network type is) and use services like Google Voice (which is popular in the US and free). These services provide a telephone number as well. Further more skype communication or similar type programs could become the norm as they are free and easy to use. The impact on television would be a continuation of the current system. With Netflix and Hulu driving usage to the web. Without easy access pirating will be the norm and extremely easy.

In the US Starbucks is extremely popular for two reasons, gigantic flavored coffees and free wireless internet. I think in the Dutch context free wireless internet would spur an increase in the amount of business meetings that happen at cafes. With the slow service which is designed to encourage conversation and being social, it would be a great way to work remotely from outside of home. As it stands there aren't that many places, at least in Eindhoven, that have wireless internet like that. I think it will spur sales at restaurants.

The broadband movement is already increasing the number of people that can work from home and be educated at home. I think there will be some differences though. Mostly because of the freedom that is allowed with the wireless connections. You are able to connect everywhere and anywhere. I think this will create more flexible schedules. I'd be able to work nearly as easily on a train as I would be able to in the office. I would be able to get on a train at the time I'm supposed to be at work get there for some meetings and finish up around the same time just on the train.

I think that there will be more business models based on highly interactive advertisements and user driven actions out in the "wild." I've seen a lot of the QR codes outside of buildings as it is, but I think there will be an increase in the number of these. Users will be more willing to activate them because they are going to get the data from them significantly faster than previously. This will drive traffic to these sites and potentially new jobs from the different types of videos/ads that could be created with them.

I think this will also be something of a technological discontinuity. Broadband at home encourages one type of behavior, but I think there will be very different interactions with broadband everywhere. In the long term there could be a slew of different devices that will take advantage of the continual connections. Clothing could be that could measure the current weather conditions real time which could be uploaded to get real time weather information. We could collect data at levels we've never seen it before. This is just one usage of the informational sphere we'll be living in. There will be a huge number of new applications that will radically shift the way people think about knowledge, information and computing products. Predicting the next wave of technologies based on the wireless web is difficult. It's likely to be impossible.

Part III Computing

In my last two blogs, Government and Business, I've discussed some of the impacts on our society of ubiquitous high speed wireless internet. In this post I'll look at the future of the computing industry. I think that this industry will go one of two ways, or perhaps both at the same time. The first route is obvious and is already happening, the second route will probably begin as a backlash to the first route.

The obvious route is cloud computing. As I've said we're already going down this route. The best example of the speed of this transformation is the Amazon Kindle Fire (all three different links). Basically, we will be using less powerful, but still growing in abilities, equipment and pushing the more processor intensive applications out onto a server in the cloud. This will most likely be owned by some private organization. Amazon's Fire is a great example of this because it provides the ability to browse websites at a much faster rate than what's allowed under current network speeds. Even with high speed internet this may continue because it'll fit the website to your screen and make it even faster than over the high speed network.

However, many people are skeptical of cloud computing. There is a sense of a loss of ownership. You become locked in to a specific firm to provide the required services. End User license agreements change frequently and your true ownership of the data and information you place on their servers can change unexpectedly and in ways that aren't in the favor of the users. Additionally, it's been acknowledged by both Google and Microsoftthat all data in their cloud servers are subject to the US Patriot Act. This raises privacy concerns for the EU and firms using cloud services.

I think that these concerns will drive another type of cloud computing. I think it'll be something like a personal cloud. It will be similar to working with both a desktop and a laptop at the same time and remoting into the desktop from the laptop, but it will be done seamlessly and transparently. The ownership of the data will be clearly yours and the power will effectively take a phone or low power table and turn it into a fully powered desktop computer. This way the cloud won't be out there and will be easily controlled by the end user. You don't have to worry about the Patriot Act or a company going under, changing rates and other issues like that.

Both of these changes will create disruptive changes within the computing industry. The Kindle Fire is on the cutting edge of this. I fully expect Amazon to create additional applications that will run on the Amazon cloud system. There's no reason not to expect this. It will shift how apps are developed. It will also change who is in the game of creating computers. Dell, for example, will continue to have a major hold over both servers and personal computers, however as we move away from laptops to tablets and phones over time Dell is going to fail in this market. They have been unsuccessful at every attempt to enter these markets. There will be a shift in the players in the market.

These systems will only work with ubiquitous internet connection. They will become more effective as the network speed and capacity increases. Users will become more willing to use the systems as the reliability of the systems increase.

In my opinion these changes will fundamentally change the way that we look at computers. The way we interact with computers and how we feel about the usage of computers. Today they are everywhere, but in the next few years I expect them to become more prevalent as we are able to offload high power demanding applications off of our phones and onto powerful servers.

Part IV Societal

This is the last post I discussed the impact on the computing industry of ubiquitous high speed free wireless internet. In this post I'll discuss some of the societal changes. In some ways the societal changes may be smaller, at first, than we'd anticipate.

First, we've seen how much people have jumped on playing with their phones in public spaces. I fully expect this trend to continue and in fact to increase. Simple to play games like Angry Birds will become more advanced and will likely look better. People will do more work on their phones and will likely begin using video calls in public. Which will be annoying, but it's going to happen.

There may be a wave of apps that will try to increase the amount of social interaction of players. This doesn't mean that we'll have an increase of in person social interaction, but will likely be an increase of virtual social interaction. Which for some people is significantly better than what would happen otherwise.

I think that the ubiquitous internet will have a mixed impact on the ability to do work. As it is a lot of people already spend a great deal of time working from home off the clock. This will likely increase, but I think there will be a trade off. As people will, hopefully, be able to work while commuting more easily on trains and buses. People will begin to work in more places like cafes compared to the amount that currently do.

There will be other changes as new devices and applications are created to take advantage of the high speed internet. Many of these changes will happen as these devices are developed.

I would like to be completely optimistic that the greater the amount of internet will lead to a larger amount of user created content. That the increase of wireless internet will increase personal engagement in political and social activities, but I don't think it will. I think that there will be a small increase because there will be a larger number of people that weren't able to do it before are able to do it.

I think that a high percentage of engagement in social networks, content creation and other types of engagement will take some time to occur. I think it's because of a mind set. A lot of people have no desire to become involved in these types of things. I would like to imagine that these changes will happen over night. However they will not. People will need time to understand how to exploit this infrastructure. It will take time for unique social experiments to develop using the network. Some people will understand immediately how to create new tools for the new environment, but it will take many established firms time to fully exploit it.

It will also take people time to adapt to the change. It's not obvious in what ways the average user will exploit this technology. In many ways it will just increase the amount of general web browsing going on, in other ways video viewing will increase as well.

In this series I've looked at how our government, business, computer and social environments will change based on ubiquitous free wireless internet. It will have immediate changes and longer term changes that currently fall into the realm of science fiction. Device makers and app developers will have a new world to exploit because of increases in computing power locally and remotely. Creating novel methods of using this power is what will drive the next phase in our economy.

Ubiquitous free high speed wireless: Society

2011-10-18T10:13:00.000-07:00

This is the last post I discussed the impact on the computing industry of ubiquitous high speed free wireless internet. In this post I'll discuss some of the societal changes. In some ways the societal changes may be smaller, at first, than we'd anticipate.

First, we've seen how much people have jumped on playing with their phones in public spaces. I fully expect this trend to continue and in fact to increase. Simple to play games like Angry Birds will become more advanced and will likely look better. People will do more work on their phones and will likely begin using video calls in public. Which will be annoying, but it's going to happen.

There may be a wave of apps that will try to increase the amount of social interaction of players. This doesn't mean that we'll have an increase of in person social interaction, but will likely be an increase of virtual social interaction. Which for some people is significantly better than what would happen otherwise.

I think that the ubiquitous internet will have a mixed impact on the ability to do work. As it is a lot of people already spend a great deal of time working from home off the clock. This will likely increase, but I think there will be a trade off. As people will, hopefully, be able to work while commuting more easily on trains and buses. People will begin to work in more places like cafes compared to the amount that currently do.

There will be other changes as new devices and applications are created to take advantage of the high speed internet. Many of these changes will happen as these devices are developed.

I would like to be completely optimistic that the greater the amount of internet will lead to a larger amount of user created content. That the increase of wireless internet will increase personal engagement in political and social activities, but I don't think it will. I think that there will be a small increase because there will be a larger number of people that weren't able to do it before are able to do it.

I think that a high percentage of engagement in social networks, content creation and other types of engagement will take some time to occur. I think it's because of a mind set. A lot of people have no desire to become involved in these types of things. I would like to imagine that these changes will happen over night. However they will not. People will need time to understand how to exploit this infrastructure. It will take time for unique social experiments to develop using the network. Some people will understand immediately how to create new tools for the new environment, but it will take many established firms time to fully exploit it.

It will also take people time to adapt to the change. It's not obvious in what ways the average user will exploit this technology. In many ways it will just increase the amount of general web browsing going on, in other ways video viewing will increase as well.

In this series I've looked at how our government, business, computer and social environments will change based on ubiquitous free wireless internet. It will have immediate changes and longer term changes that currently fall into the realm of science fiction. Device makers and app developers will have a new world to exploit because of increases in computing power locally and remotely. Creating novel methods of using this power is what will drive the next phase in our economy.

Ubiquitous free high speed wireless: Computing

2011-10-15T04:41:00.000-07:00

In my last two blogs, Government and Business, I've discussed some of the impacts on our society of ubiquitous high speed wireless internet. In this post I'll look at the future of the computing industry. I think that this industry will go one of two ways, or perhaps both at the same time. The first route is obvious and is already happening, the second route will probably begin as a backlash to the first route.

The obvious route is cloud computing. As I've said we're already going down this route. The best example of the speed of this transformation is the Amazon Kindle Fire (all three different links). Basically, we will be using less powerful, but still growing in abilities, equipment and pushing the more processor intensive applications out onto a server in the cloud. This will most likely be owned by some private organization. Amazon's Fire is a great example of this because it provides the ability to browse websites at a much faster rate than what's allowed under current network speeds. Even with high speed internet this may continue because it'll fit the website to your screen and make it even faster than over the high speed network.

However, many people are skeptical of cloud computing. There is a sense of a loss of ownership. You become locked in to a specific firm to provide the required services. End User license agreements change frequently and your true ownership of the data and information you place on their servers can change unexpectedly and in ways that aren't in the favor of the users. Additionally, it's been acknowledged by both Google and Microsoft that all data in their cloud servers are subject to the US Patriot Act. This raises privacy concerns for the EU and firms using cloud services.

I think that these concerns will drive another type of cloud computing. I think it'll be something like a personal cloud. It will be similar to working with both a desktop and a laptop at the same time and remoting into the desktop from the laptop, but it will be done seamlessly and transparently. The ownership of the data will be clearly yours and the power will effectively take a phone or low power table and turn it into a fully powered desktop computer. This way the cloud won't be out there and will be easily controlled by the end user. You don't have to worry about the Patriot Act or a company going under, changing rates and other issues like that.

Both of these changes will create disruptive changes within the computing industry. The Kindle Fire is on the cutting edge of this. I fully expect Amazon to create additional applications that will run on the Amazon cloud system. There's no reason not to expect this. It will shift how apps are developed. It will also change who is in the game of creating computers. Dell, for example, will continue to have a major hold over both servers and personal computers, however as we move away from laptops to tablets and phones over time Dell is going to fail in this market. They have been unsuccessful at every attempt to enter these markets. There will be a shift in the players in the market.

These systems will only work with ubiquitous internet connection. They will become more effective as the network speed and capacity increases. Users will become more willing to use the systems as the reliability of the systems increase.

In my opinion these changes will fundamentally change the way that we look at computers. The way we interact with computers and how we feel about the usage of computers. Today they are everywhere, but in the next few years I expect them to become more prevalent as we are able to offload high power demanding applications off of our phones and onto powerful servers.

In my next blog I'll discuss some overall societal changes.

Ubiquitous free high speed wireless: Business

2011-10-15T04:39:00.000-07:00

In my previous blog I discussed some governmental issues with ubiquitous free high speed wireless internet. In this piece I'm going to discuss the impact on businesses. I'll start with some really obvious impacts and then move into some that may be more interesting.

First, this would effectively kill the current business model for telecoms. Not just internet providers but it would also have a massive impact on telephony and television providers. Internet providers would basically go out of business unless the governments that implemented the network hired them to manage the networks and perform the upgrades required to ensure expected performance. It should also be expected that net neutrality should be the norm as the internet is free as in free beer and as in free speech in a situation like this. This would impact telephony in a similar manner. With free internet phones could be designed to work on wifi (or whatever the network type is) and use services like Google Voice (which is popular in the US and free). These services provide a telephone number as well. Further more skype communication or similar type programs could become the norm as they are free and easy to use. The impact on television would be a continuation of the current system. With Netflix and Hulu driving usage to the web. Without easy access pirating will be the norm and extremely easy.

In the US Starbucks is extremely popular for two reasons, gigantic flavored coffees and free wireless internet. I think in the Dutch context free wireless internet would spur an increase in the amount of business meetings that happen at cafes. With the slow service which is designed to encourage conversation and being social, it would be a great way to work remotely from outside of home. As it stands there aren't that many places, at least in Eindhoven, that have wireless internet like that. I think it will spur sales at restaurants.

The broadband movement is already increasing the number of people that can work from home and be educated at home. I think there will be some differences though. Mostly because of the freedom that is allowed with the wireless connections. You are able to connect everywhere and anywhere. I think this will create more flexible schedules. I'd be able to work nearly as easily on a train as I would be able to in the office. I would be able to get on a train at the time I'm supposed to be at work get there for some meetings and finish up around the same time just on the train.

I think that there will be more business models based on highly interactive advertisements and user driven actions out in the "wild." I've seen a lot of the QR codes outside of buildings as it is, but I think there will be an increase in the number of these. Users will be more willing to activate them because they are going to get the data from them significantly faster than previously. This will drive traffic to these sites and potentially new jobs from the different types of videos/ads that could be created with them.

I think this will also be something of a technological discontinuity. Broadband at home encourages one type of behavior, but I think there will be very different interactions with broadband everywhere. In the long term there could be a slew of different devices that will take advantage of the continual connections. Clothing could be that could measure the current weather conditions real time which could be uploaded to get real time weather information. We could collect data at levels we've never seen it before. This is just one usage of the informational sphere we'll be living in. There will be a huge number of new applications that will radically shift the way people think about knowledge, information and computing products. Predicting the next wave of technologies based on the wireless web is difficult. It's likely to be impossible.

However, I think that in my next blog on Computing, we'll see the largest changes.

Ubiquitous free high speed wireless

2011-10-15T03:12:00.000-07:00

Technological Adjacency

2011-10-14T08:38:00.000-07:00

Two days ago I talked about Technological convergences, yesterday I discussed how firms can enable technological convergences. Today I'm going to talk about technological adjacencies. First though, why do we care about these? There's a couple reasons. One at the micro level, specifically you, understanding how technological adjacencies work can help you determine different industries that your skill set applies. Does understanding ceramics only help in making durable dishwares or can they be used in the semiconductor industry too? It turns out they can be. Ceramics are great insulators and are used on many different types of tools for manufacturing semiconductors. A step above, at the firm level, being able to produce ceramics can allow a company that used to only make dishware to move into creating other types of technologies, like for semiconductors. This shift can eventually open up an entire new market to allow for continued growth. However, as I mentioned yesterday, this doesn't always work and can leave a company weaker than it was before the shift into the new industry. Finally, technological adjacencies can help spur regional and national growth.

Companies aren't the only thing that can be viewed to have specific capabilities. Regions and countries typically have specialties Pittsburgh used to be the major hub in the world for steel. However, steel collapsed in the 70's and 80's there. Now Pittsburgh has turned itself into a medical and biomedical hub. Because of the steel industry Pittsburgh already had two world class universities and a number of great universities. After the crash of steel these became the main drivers of the economy. The firms that were created helped to rebuild the area.

As I mentioned above technological adjacencies are fairly simple to find after the fact. They are difficult to see ahead of time. It's difficult to know what is a good bet and what is not a good bet for a company. This is why it's important to have an R&D branch that is allowed to explore the adjacent technology spaces around your major technologies. If you don't do this then there could be some great markets your missing out on.

Enabling Technological Convergences

2011-10-13T09:02:00.000-07:00

In my last post I discussed technological convergences. I didn't really discuss anything ground breaking or earth shattering. We all know these things happen. Even if we never really make a note of it. What's a more interesting question though is why do some companies, like Apple and Blackberry, succeed and others like Microsoft and Rio (early MP3 maker) fail, either in creating technologies that converge or create technologies that then fail.

One of the first reasons is the culture of the company. To create a totally different product that will shake the core business firms may have to do something called "corporate venturing." This is where a company decides they are going to take people that normally work on the major product and put them into a different area and seclude them and allow them to create a new product. Whatever sort of leadership structure develops, develops. It really doesn't matter if this matches the rest of the firm. Essentially, these people are put into a position where they are starting a new company. Apple famously did this with the original Macintosh program. It was called a skunk works area. Of course recombining the two portions of a company creates huge problems, but good management can figure out how to deal with this.

Another piece required for a firm to successfully move into a new product space is the ability to identify the market need. This one is pretty obvious, but it still needs mentioning. In many cases it's really obvious that there's a product space and that some one should fill it. When companies don't move into it there must be some sort of reason.

One of those reasons comes down to firm capabilities. Every firm has something at its core that it's best at. I would argue that Microsoft is best at taking advantage of a virtual monopoly of a platform and moving into new directions within that platform. Internet Explorer and the Office Suite are the best example of this. Microsoft has also tried to do this with servers and other peripheries. Which is why Microsoft has had difficulty moving into other platform positions. They have failed (or mixed results at best) over and over again with phone OSes because it doesn't rely on their dominate platform.

Another company that is an R&D powerhouse in energy but has failed at anything outside of their major focus is Shell. As a major energy company you'd expect Shell to be moving into other types of energy production to make massive amounts of money in the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. You'd actually be right. They have tired and failed. Aside from having a failed solar industry Shell has a moderately successful Wind program. Between the two it actually makes sense why solar failed and wind is doing well.

First, wind is closer to extracting material from the ground than making energy from the sun is. Now hang on, I know, but Shell has to maintain offshore oil rigs in tough conditions. Understanding how to build a wind farm out in the ocean has some similarities. Shell doesn't actually make the windmills themselves, they buy the windmills and put them together to harvest energy. Shell was trying to make solar panels. Intel would be a significantly better solar panel producer than Shell. Why? Because solar panels are semiconductors. You make them with similar machines the technologies are adjacent to each other.

What's technological adjacency? It's whenever you are able to use your current skills and apply them with some research to a related technological field. I'll discuss this more in my next blog.

Technological Convergences

2011-10-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

Convergences happen in all different ways. They happen in books or book series, where a good author can plan to have plotlines converge in a specific time and place. In the case of the series I just finished, the Malazan Book of the Fallen, the author was able to get two totally unrelated characters meet in really unexpected ways. It happens in films too, Crash and 21 Grams are two great examples of this. This happens in technology as well. Most of the time, we as consumers never even see it happening. When we look back though we realize it was incredibly obvious that it would happen. Two great examples of this happened with cell phones.

MP3 players have been wildly popular since they came out in the late 90's. Napster and easy to rip CD's made them incredibly useful and provided hours of great listening. Around the same time cell phones were becoming smaller and more popular. No unexpectedly, phone manufacturers decided that it would be useful to put a music player onto the phone. These were clunky and really only used when people didn't have a better MP3 player. Apple had created a great MP3 player and realized, like the phone manufacturers that users only wanted to carry one of these devices. This is one of the reasons that drove them to make the iPhone. Great interface and good music experience. At this point they already had the music infrastructure and the loyal fan base to be sure of a high number of sales.

Around the same time as the MP3 boom businessmen were starting to use Portable Digital Assistants (PDA). This was a replacement to the calendar and phone book. It also provided a few applications that allowed some work on documents. It could also be used to schedule emails when the PDA was synced with the computer. It was obvious that this would be a great device to connect to some sort of network aside from plugging it in. Blackberry used to make two way pagers and figured out a way to send emails and other useful data over the pager network. This was one of the earliest smart phones. Eventually Microsoft and Palm got into the phone manufacturing game for the same reason. People didn't want to carry two device a PDA and a phone. If you put them both together you'd have a better product and would sell more.

These two technologies converged on a similar product, smart phones. Both types of phones had a very different set of users initially. However, since the iPhone there has been a further convergence of these phones into general purpose phones. Blackberry, while still catering to the business side, is shifting to compete directly with the iPhone because business users want the apps that the iPhone has. Palm has vanished from the market being unable to compete and Android has appeared as the first PC based OS. Android is a distribution of Linux, it doesn't run well on PCs but MS and Apple are moving in a direction of merging mobile OSes and PC OSes (sure it's a Mac, but it uses Intel so there's no different besides the OS).

If we look back at these convergences, aside from new competitors and firm failure, they appear to be pretty obvious. Why wouldn't these companies move into these market spaces? I'll discuss some of that in my next blog.

Scientific Standards

2011-10-11T11:20:00.000-07:00

One of the problems with scientific research is the fact that retractions happen. They have been on the rise recently as well. There have been some high profile instances which have had some serious ramifications. one of these cases was in the prestigious Lancet from the UK and it involved a sample of 12 children and has caused the vaccine autism connection. In the graph below is a break down of the reasons for retractions. We need to be aware that mistakes do happen, but real fraud is completely unacceptable.

Rise of Retratctions

Despite the fact that no science is frivolous, not all research is worthy of being published. There need to be scientific standards for quality work to be published. Without this standard, the respectability of science will go out the window. The only solution right now is peer review. Which involves a pair of credible scientists independently reviewing the same article. Between the two scientists they are expected to find fraud, mistakes, biases and ensure that the research really contributes in the manner the researcher(s) claims.

These standards have additional impact. The number of papers published by a scientist can impact the location they work, the amount of money they get from grant organizations and credibility within the scientific community. These standards are the only thing that keeps science from turning into pseudo science like the anti-vac movement.

Innovation, Science and Money II

2011-10-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

In my last blog I discussed some of the budgetary cuts occurring in the US and how these cuts are going to impact the future of science. I want to spend some time explaining why this is the case. I mentioned something called Path Dependency, what do I mean by this? Well it's a pretty simple concept, once you start down a policy path your choices are constrained by your previous choices and the results based on those choices.

This type of path dependency can be seen in scientific and technological changes. For example, if a piece of technology has three parts each one can be improved independently. If each one can be changed in one direction, from a 0 to a 1 each change could impact how likely a specific technology would be selected by consumers. Each change could lead to a local optimal, and could prevent the technology from becoming a global optimal. Additionally, these changes over time, with further research, could lead to radical different technologies. This happening from changing a single feature from on or off. Basically, it's an evolutionary process.

Policy works the same way. There's a paper written by Mustar et al (2008) that discusses the policy choices in France and the UK. The objective of the paper was to investigate the impact of policy choices on the creating of academic spin-offs. Some of the results lead to additional technology incubators in the UK and in France. However, the number of academic spin-offs in France actually decreased, however in the UK they increased significantly.

These differences came about because of previous policy choices. For example, France has laws related to civil servants and starting a new company. In France all professors are considered civil servants, so there is a history of professors not starting companies. There's a lack of culture for entrepreneurship in France for increasing the number of academic spin-offs.

This is what I meant by path dependencies. Decreasing the amount of money going into meaningful academic research will have an impact in other ways. In the US there has been an increased push for increasing the number of companies being started. Scientific research can be turned into new companies through academic spin-offs. Decreasing the funding at two of the biggest funding agencies will decrease the number of academic spin-offs.

References:
Mustar et al 2008 http://www.springerlink.com/content/68282r1460889062/

Innovation, Science and Money

2011-10-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

The death of Steve Jobs has really shaken the technology community. It has really made people do a lot of thinking about innovation and the impact of technology based companies on the economy. The Economist notes that the American work force is on the decline and the high tech companies aren't making up enough jobs. That now companies like Apple and Google employ less than a third of what companies like GM used to employ. These high tech companies don't need as many employees. Additionally, it's a different type of work force that are required in the US. Apple outsources manufacturing because they are really concerned with driving down the cost of manufacturing and maximize profits. This is good business.

In a long article by Peter Thiel, co-founder of Pay Pal and a venture capitalist, he discusses what he calls the end of the future. Where he claims that we've been in an innovation slow down since the 70's. He also argues that scientists and technologists aren't living up to the claims they are making. He argues that in a lot of ways we've been technologically stagnant. Politicians have been making the same promises on energy since the 70's and that we've been slowing down are rate of increase of production for food barely keeping up with population growth. I think that he does make some good points, but he definitely goes a bit over the top with his statements. He's looking at things only within the national and regional context and is ignoring the fact that there have been cultural changes that have driven a change in how companies innovate.

Historically, companies don't find value in doing basic research. If you look at the history of research labs within industry, they hire researchers to do incremental and radical innovation. However, this research is carried out within a scientific paradigm which was created in basic research.

In fact we've seen a decrease in the amount of R&D being spent by companies. This has lead to some of the stagnation in innovation that Thiel mentions. To combat this and to reduce the risk borne by the company they have been doing more and more contract research with universities and have increase the amount of money they spend with universities.

Thiel also mentions that the government might be able to help but doesn't see it ever going to happen when you have to justify the expense by cutting something else. Since he's a libertarian he feels that the budget must be balanced. However, our politicians are cutting budgets to the largest scientific funding agencies in the US. My wife sent me an email with some of the funding cuts, National Science Foundation is getting cut by 2.3%, in fact it's 14% below the budget requested by the administration. The National Institute for Standards and Technology's budget is getting cut by 9.3%. Both of these agencies create a large number of jobs. It's been shown that one research job creates several other jobs. Cutting these budgets will reduce the amount of research which can be conducted. This will impact the number of researchers, impact the quality of education at universities and slow down the ability for universities and firms to exploit new research.

It typically takes 10 years for research to be monetizable. Cutting funding now impacts employment now and future employment. In fact, these changes will have a long term lasting impact. These choices create a path dependency within our society. Without proper funding we'll be passed by some one that feels research is paramount.

Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

Since September 17th people have been having a live in protest on Wall Street in New York City. The protests are attempting to bring attention to the inequities between Wall Street, CEOs and the rest of the US and world. There has been a media blackout since it started until recently. The Daily Show has covered it twice (Here and Here). There were two reasons for this. First the media didn't know how to deal with the protests. They act differently, the people protesting aren't grandmothers yelling about the government, instead it's a bunch of hippie like people that are protesting corporations. Another problem was that there was no cohesive voice coming out from the movement. However yesterday there was an actual list of "demands" released. Basically these demands explain the need for changes at all levels of government and how corporations behave towards both workers and the environment.

The protests are in their third week now. They have been growing every week. Initially, there were only a few hundred protesters now it's been reported that up to 20,000 people have started to protest in NYC. The occupy movement has spread from only being in NYC to Boston, LA, DC, and several other cities as well. While the Daily Show is right that these protests are very similar to the Tea Party protests the problems they hope to address the end goals and the means are very different. Both groups also had a lot of uninformed people, for example you had the old lady saying keep the government out of my healthcare when she had medicare (government healthcare), and here you have people just saying they want Wall Street to take less money. These protests have gone beyond just the hippies, unions in NYC have also joined the protesters as well as more "responsible" people from other walks of life.

I think these protests could eventually make a difference. I don't think it will happen in time for the next presidential election. The changes that they are demanding are structural changes that require socio-economic changes. They require complete changes in our ethics and our goals in lives. These are not changes that happen over night. There are some changes that we can do that will have immediate impacts though, and these aren't popular among policy makers. We need to get money out of politics, we need to limit how politicians can make money off the laws they pass and we need to use public funds for elections (as well as have elections on the weekend or a holiday). Removing the money by creating public funds will eliminate the leverage that lobbyists can use on politicians. Preventing politicians from making money off the laws through stock purchases will prevent tit-for-tat behavior with lobbyists as well. Making it easy as possible to vote will increase the immediate participation in the government.

The reaction to OWS in NYC has been horrifying. The cops have been brutal towards the protesters and really show that the indignation our leaders displayed during violent responses to protest are just words. If US politicians cared about freedom and democracy they would support the protesters. Protesting is part of being American. It's part of our constitution because it drives conversation and it drives democracy. Protesting is a form of participation. If we aren't able to participate we don't have a democracy. Arresting 700 people for going to the protest isn't acceptable. Pepper spraying women that were corralled is not acceptable, it's not how a democracy deals with protests. The right way to deal with these protests is to invite them into the conversation and really take a look at what they have to say. We aren't doing that in the US. The 99% don't have the same voice as the 1%. As can be seen from Fox News, that 1% is trying to divide the 99%.

Remembering Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

This post will piss a lot of Apple Fans off. I'm going to say that now.

Steve Jobs was a great designer. He built a company up twice based on maximizing control over the hardware, design and the software. He was able to do this an incredibly well. He was able to use this skill to dominate the early computer industry. However, under more competition Apple faltered as it relied heavily on a single creative driver. The designs that Apple created were radical design, these designs in a way constituted a type of radical innovation. The components within the computers themselves weren't radically improved over the competitors, the design was what made it special.

This is the same for the iPod. By the time the iPod came out there were already many MP3 players and many of them were doing very well. What Apple was able to do was make it simpler to move music onto the device and interface with the device itself. This is the radical portion of the iPod. I feel that this is exactly what happened with the iPhone as well. They created a radical design for the interface, but in many cases didn't even have legacy features.

Apple does a great job in marketing what any other phone maker would have expected as a normal feature. Even some of the biggest changes, like the fantastic screen it's an incremental innovation. As a consumer I fully expected some of the newest phones to have amazing screens.

One of the things Jobs did best was to get people to buy the newest version of Apple's phones. The iPad was also a very similar type of innovation. It's a gigantic iPhone. However, the reason it worked so well was the fact that iOS was able to scale up and work well on it. In the end I feel that Jobs was able to use cases of Radical Design innovation with incremental technological innovation a loyal consumer base to turn products into massive success.

However, Jobs has also turned Apple into one of the largest patent trolls in the world. With the level of control that Jobs had over Apple, it seems unlikely that he would not have initiated the litigation. Jobs did remember how they lost the PC war in the 80's and 90's. I think that Jobs is attempting to use patent law to control the market. There were no software patents during the initial PC battle, however there are software patents now and Apple has been patenting a great deal in order to control how devices are marketed and developed.

Finally, I think that Jobs was what Jim Collins called a level 4 leader. Similar to Lee Iacocca (of Chrysler), Jobs was able to control Apple through sheer personality and create a great company. However, he doesn't like dissent and would probably pull a George Lucas and change the original Star Wars trilogy.

Jobs did have a vision of what devices should look like and how they should work. He was excellent at creating great designs. He will be remembered for saving a trouble company, bringing design back into mobile devices and forcing a huge number of companies to compete in the mobile market space.

The ACTA has been signed

2011-10-05T09:51:00.000-07:00

For those of you who aren't aware the US and many other countries have signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or ACTA. This law provides a legal framework for nations across the world to enact something similar to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This framework gives additional control to law enforcement and copyright holders. Something also abnormal about this trade agreement is that the US claims that it doesn't need congressional approval. I find this extremely odd, as it's part of the charter of the legislative branch to approve trade agreements. Additionally, as I'm not a lawyer, I don't understand what's inherently different in the ACTA from the South Korean Free Trade Agreement, which has been stalled since Bush II.

At this point the EU hasn't signed the agreement yet. France and Germany have both enacted some already strict laws in regard to the number of strikes an infringer can have before they lose internet connections.Of course there are some serious issues with the approaches that are used to accuse copyright infringers. most of them deal with how to identify a suspected infringer. At this time France's first three strike infringer doesn't know how to do that. Additionally, in Germany, where a legislator wants a 2 strike law, the same legislator has already violated this before the law has gone into affect.

I believe that these cases really indicate that legislator really don't understand how the internet and copyright works. It's clear from the DMCA that they don't and neither do judges. However, I think that Judges are starting to seriously figure out what's going on with copyright and the controls that are being put into place. Recently in several districts judges have severed joint cases of copyright cases, because most of the IP addresses, which are typically associated to a region or city, were outside the jurisdiction of the court they are being tried in. Additionally, some judges are noting that IP addresses aren't people and other people could be using the IP address. Even more recently a judge writes that in the DMCA suggest if you own a DVD it's ok to rip it.Which is something that the DMCA is trying to prevent. DMCA was design to prevent circumventing the copy blocking technologies. It made it illegal.

Overall, the ACTA is a huge blow for advocates of reducing or eliminating copyright. I seriously hope that if this trade agreement does have to go through the US congress that it will be rejected. It's a law that doesn't take into account the current technologies and what culture really means.

Fortunately, not all governments support the ACTA. In fact Brazil has created an interesting framework that is the antithesis of ACTA. It is designed to support privacy, encourage usage of Creative Commons copyright(left) protection and have true net neutrality.

Amazon's Silk

2011-10-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

Interesting read on Tech Dirt on Amazon.com's Silk browser. They note that it's a copyright infringement suit waiting to happen. If you're too lazy to read the article, basically Silk will copy whatever website you go to onto it's servers so it can send you a compressed version of it. For instance if a website that you're on has a 3mb picture they'll send you a 50kb picture instead. This does a few things. First, it will help relieve congestion on cell networks because smaller pieces of information are being sent. Second, it will save you data if you don't have an unlimited data package. Finally, it could violate copyright. Why? Because it's copying everything from a website and then sending you the information from a different source. Not only that, but it is effectively altering the picture they are sending you. I'm not sure if there have been any copyright cases based on compressing the quality of a picture, but for all intents and purposes it's altering the picture. It probably should fall under fair use, but you never know some one will probably try to sue over that.

There are some other issues to consider too. The browser has predictive capabilities based off of aggregate users actions. This is actually fairly similar to what Facebook is doing, but there are no implications for ads with Amazon (at this point we don't know if they store individual user statistics). The example they give on the website, is if you go to NYTimes.com and a high percentage of users then click on the business section Amazon will pre-load this information into their severs. This could have an impact on big websites' server loads as well. They could potentially be hit twice for a lot of visits to their site. If Amazon predicts incorrectly, then it will hit the server at least twice.

Another interesting consideration is related to ad revenue. Let's say users of some website like, I don't know KBMOD.com, always visit a YouTube account after reading the front page, let's go with InfiniteSadd, which would then auto play the video that's on top. This of course have the ad pop up on the bottom. Now the question I have is in these situations would this count as a click, or would the ads start to filter out views and click throughs from Silk? The situation, I presented is unlikely as there's no direct link from KBMOD to InfiniteSadd's user profile. But's easy to image that it could work that way.

I'd really like to know more about the user statistics that Silk will be collecting. Since the browser is going to be on their Fire device (who knows could also be an update for older Kindles as well), Amazon will know who is browsing what you are browsing and may actually keep that information in your account to predict your behavior better. I don't see any reason why they couldn't collect that data. I would imagine that it's very technologically feasible to use a larger aggregate dataset for websites you don't frequent, but for your most commonly visited websites for Amazon to have enough usage to figure out where you're going to go next.

I think the browser is a great idea. However, I can also see this turn into another way for Amazon to better target your recommendations. If you are on your Fire and they see where you go, then they will also know what other products you might be interested in that you haven't bought through Amazon before. If they know what interests you then they can put those into your "Silk based recommendations." Now there hasn't been any talk of that yet, but since they are selling the product at a loss they need you to buy a decent amount of product to get a return on their investment. I've seen two values, $50 and $10 losses.

Keep your eyes open for news on this, it could be a copyright and privacy issue before long.

Facebook dirty filthy liars

2011-10-02T14:28:00.000-07:00

Facebook has patented the ability to continue tracking users after they have left their website. Despite this Facebook repeatedly claimed that they were not in the business of tracking their users. However, Facebook's business is knowing their product as well as possible. You are their product. They are extremely interested in knowing everything they can about you. Why? It's really simple. The more they know about their user's online browsing activities the better they can customize ads for you. I imagine that they will create some pretty sophisticated models to determine who will click what sorts of ads. The more people click the more accurate the ad targeting will become.

While individual users do have a web "fingerprint" as the EFF puts it, people will typically browse the same types of websites together. For example people who play fantasy football will be going to yahoo! sport (or some other competing service), they then visit sites like espn, sports illustrated and probably a few sports blogs to try to figure out the best way to get an edge in their game this weekend. Facebook will take this data and aggregate it for a larger set of data. As there are 800 million facebook users and millions of players of fantasy sports, this data could be extremely useful for Facebook to use in placing ads. From these data they may be able to determine which sports team you're interested in, which players are on your fantasy team, and then display ads for jersey's from that team or for a specific player. They will also be able to figure out which ads will have an higher likelihood of someone with your browsing profile to click on.

Facebook will then be able to set a premium for ads that they do this with, or they will earn more money from the number of clicks a given ad gets. This of course is why Facebook has decided to collect this data. Some of it seems harmless enough. It's not that big of a deal that Facebook is getting my fantasy football information, why should I care? Well, you don't just use the internet for fantasy football, you use it for banking, shopping and a plethora of other activities. Do you know what data facebook is collecting? I certainly don't. From the patent it is unclear what protections they are providing on the data they are collection. It also doesn't say what data they will be collecting when you visit a third party site.

As a personal precaution I have started to use Facebook in a separate instance of Chrome using the Incognito function. This prevents my browsing history from being saved and deletes many cookies. I have also taken to deleting all my cookies every time I close my browser. I don't do it myself Chrome does it for me. Additionally, these settings are available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox. I suggest that you look into doing similar safety measures to prevent Facebook from getting information from you that you don't want them to have.

Finally, the other thing that isn't really discussed in many places that mention the ads, this data is also being provided to law enforcement agencies. Now of course there's the whole if you aren't doing anything wrong then you don't have to worry about anything. However, this worries me regardless because I'm losing my control over what information is going to the government and companies. I don't like that. Patents like this one and cookies that record our daily activities are changing our private life into our public life.

Future of Employment II

2011-09-30T07:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I talked a little bit about the future of employment. Apparently this isn't the most interesting topic. However, it's important. The Slate series ends with some startling research that shows even scientists could eventually be replaced. I think we are a long way from those things happening. In my opinion the first things that machines will do in R&D is replace humans in the creation of incremental innovations. In fact, to some extent computers already do replace humans in some of these things. Computers do a great deal of CPU, DRAM and Flash designing. Typically, these are incremental innovations. They are building on a current technology and making improvements. Humans are required for the radical innovations, such as a new chip set, calculation methodology or what have you.

Even some advanced R&D work could easily be improved by computers. Researchers have to read a great deal of papers to keep up with the state of the art in research. As the slate series points out, this is a form of data mining and lawyers are currently using automated programs to find specific words. There's actually a branch of Science and Technology Studies that focuses on word analysis. They use similar programs and dump a few papers into it and figure out what verbal connections between the papers exist. This is a way of creating maps of knowledge. You are able to see through citations and similar word usage that a specific theory is prevalent or not. How would this apply to R&D? You could put in the materials that you're using the problems you're seeing and a bunch of papers that might be related and see what comes out. It could give you new materials new designs things of this nature. For this to work though, it's a ways away.

What does mean in the long run? That no position is safe. I don't think this will happen in our life time though. People are much too conservative to leave everything to computers. They just simply won't be accepted. Even by our generation there's too much distrust. It's going to take one or two more generations for there to be enough trust in computing and technology to allow more control to shift to them. Sure some companies will be on the cutting edge with accepting these changes, others will be laggers.

If computers can do everything why do we need any jobs, isn't the guy from CNN is right? I disagree. People will always want to work. People need to work. I'm not saying this because I'm hoping there won't be a robotic take over or anything, but because people will not allow it to happen. In general people like to feel in control. Even if you aren't the bus driver, knowing that it's a person that you can relate to makes you feel like your more in control. Leaving everything to computers requires a level of surrender. Many people will simply refuse to give up that level of control. We won't have fancy automatically driving cars for this very reason. People love to feel in control of where they go. It doesn't matter if they would be safer, save money and get places faster. They would rail against the change because they loose control.

Would we leave the future of our economy in the hands of machines? You could argue that some companies already have. For instance take the May flash crash on Wall street. This has been attributed to high frequency trading following logical algorithms, it wiped about $1 trillion in wealth, most of it was restored.

In much of my research on academic spin-offs and technology incubators there is an important component related to tacit knowledge. Know how of the inventor of a technology. This is something that we'd lose if all of our work was robotized. There's no difference in that than outsourcing. In developmental economics and innovation theories the ability to create copycat technologies is a precursor to developing their own technologies in that field. I think this is something we must keep in mind when discussing the reality of full automation. Without tacit knowledge and hands on experience with the devices and machines building the product it's very difficult to develop improvements on either.

I think that we'll have many legacy jobs hanging around for a long time. Simply because we need them to continue growing economically. Otherwise, we'll stagnate and keep producing the same technologies.

The future of employment

2011-09-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

I posted this Slate series a little bit ago on my facebook and twitter feeds. It's an interesting read about the future of robotics in the work place. Most people think of robots only in the automobile industry. However, they are in nearly every major industry now. All new semiconductor fabs can be run with only a handful of people over seeing the production of the product. The author notes that robots are making headway into pharmacies and other professions with menial tasks being a large component. In pharmacy computers also help ensure patients aren't on conflicting medicines, with medical records in the computer it can easily flag potential issues. You could argue that this isn't robotics it's automation, personally I don't see much of a difference. You use a machine to make a task faster and automated, it doesn't matter if there are moving parts or not.

This isn't the only recent discussion on the longevity of jobs. CNN had an opinion piece about 3 weeks ago discussing if jobs were obsolete. Which if this is the case we will have to take a serious look at our current capitalistic system. As an evolutionary economist (or at least having some training in it) I can see that this perspective is somewhat accurate. Between these two articles it really indicates that in the near future we'll have a great deal of mechanized labor through robotics and computer programs. We will need dramatically less and less people employed in the western societies. This will even eventually trickle down into the developing societies.

My roommate argued that we should stop creating pointless jobs. That we should create a system that supports these people that continually fall out of the labor pool through job type elimination. This would take a complete reworking of our society to make this sort of change happen. Also, for a huge amount of people this freeloading kills them. We hear anecdotal evidence about some old fart at a company that is forced to retire and then within the year is dead. Whether we want to admit it or not, for the vast majority of people employment is tied to self worth. There's increases in suicide rates when people aren't able to work and cannot support their families. Depression is also higher among the unemployed.

There are further problems with this future. The CNN article discusses how we should be ok with just a white collar work force. I completely disagree. When I worked at Samsung some great ideas came from the technicians fixing our tools. The greater the variety of knowledge sets the higher the number of ideas. Sure a great deal of them may be really crappy, but the ones that end up surviving through the competition end up being better ideas. Make the workforce more homogeneous would reduce this affect.

I don't have an answer to this. We need to be realistic and try to understand the fundamental changes that our economy is going through. If we see that jobs are in fact going the way of the dodo we basically have to throw out all free-market economics. Why? Because there's no one to buy anything except an elite few and they just do not have the buying power to keep an economy of this size going. We will have to evaluate our morals, ethics and goals in life. It will not be easy.

Accessibility to Copyrighted Content

2011-09-28T11:08:00.000-07:00

Torrent Freak had this article today that discusses how the amount of piracy in Sweeden. In fact, it discusses how it has dropped with the introduction of Spotify. This isn't the only case where access to material impacts piracy. Hulu (US only) has introduced an 8 day waiting period for new Fox episodes, this has lead to an increase in the amount of pirating of Hell's Kitchen. If people are going to pirate Hell's Kitchen, HELL'S KITCHEN!, then why wouldn't they pirate just about all Fox episodes? Limiting access drives people to pirate.

Why are people willing to use Spotify over other streaming services? For one, it's free with ads, but people are also able to share. They are able to share legally too. I am able to access music, which my friends on facebook have shared, from friends back in the US. From people that I only talk to on an irregular basis. My friends are able to share with me, where before I would have had to ask them for music and either bought it or download it. Since, I've decided to forgo using Apple products I'm limited by what is on Amazon or other music sites. Not all of the songs that my friends listen to are on those services. They like a lot of indie music.

I think that it's time for copyright holders to wake up to the fact that people don't really want to illegally acquire music. Sure they'd like to pay as little as possible, but they are willing to have ads, visual or audio, to listen to the music they like. The other good thing about a service like spotify is the fact that on your phone, if you pay, you can access your music there. Access is the important thing. If I've bought something once I should be able to access that product on any device in any manner that I want.

The differences in ability to view copyrighted material drives piracy. If copyright holders want to reduce piracy they need to increase accessibility for users. Users are willing to put up with a great deal of things if they are able to easily access content they want. Copyright holders, like Fox, should figure out a way to include online viewership into their rating system. People don't want to be forced to watch shows when they are on TV. They want to watch shows when they are able to.

Frivolous Science? Pfft

2011-09-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

Today I saw this post on Reddit. Long story short this guy was asking the r/askscience subreddit why we do research like the CERN experiments, as it has no practical use. There are several reasons. I've mentioned some of these on here before, but they can always be mentioned again. First, research that we conduct now that is interesting only to a small subset of people may be applied for other things later. Second, furthering our understanding of the world isn't frivolous. Third, in many cases basic research must be completed at universities because industry will not pay for it.

Some examples, bird migration research that told us a lot about birds historically probably wasn't very interesting to much of the scientific community. However, it's become more important of late. One of my friends commented to me about how in Europe during the Avian flu, migration patterns became extremely important for predicting where the next could be. There are further uses, those migration patterns are being used to determine where to place wind mills, because we don't want to put a wind farm in the middle of a bird migration path. The slaughter would be horrifying. Finally, changes in migration patterns may represent a shift in local climates. If birds take longer to migrate south, it indicates that the weather isn't changing as fast as it used to. Over time this data could indicate a trend and we should look for further evidence of climate change.

In 2009 there was a rash of articles that questioned the importance of scientific research in some cases. This isn't really new, even at that point there'd been the infamous McCain bear comments. Even scientists make fun of some of the more obscure types of research with the Ig Noble Awards (One award was given to a research that only cracked the knuckles on one hand to test for arthritis differences (there wasn't any)). Despite this, some of this research is interesting and could be useful in the future. Take the recent finding that fish are angry in boring fish tanks. This research is pretty much useless unless you're a fish fan. However, it also shows us that we clearly don't understand animals as well as we think we do. Even popular stories about the memory span of gold fish was shown to be wrong by the MythBusters. These examples indicate that many people don't understand the importance of research and that even scientists don't. However, even seemingly pointless research can illuminate our understanding of the world. People love to know nearly pointless facts. This also ties back to the my first point above, we never know when something seemingly useless can suddenly have an importance beyond the scope of the original study. It may save lives. That finding about fishes could help build better large scale aquariums where it is safer to interact with dangerous fish, like killer whales and sharks.

My final point is that some basic research will not be conducted by industry players. There's no guarantee on any return on some scientific investigation. However, it can be incredibly important for the advancement of industry. Quantum computing could be the next big thing for computing, however it's being researched by a combination of industry and universities. Most of the money and risk is on the university side though. Our understanding of particle physics helps us understand how quantum computing can help. Eventually we may be able to use this neutrino finding, if it pans out, in communication systems. There's no reason why we wouldn't be able to use the spin of a neutrino to transmit information.

Seemingly frivolous research is an important part of the scientific process. Enjoy it.

On Being the Product

2011-09-26T13:18:00.000-07:00

Today I've read and reposted a few articles (another) about users being the final product for several companies. These of course are facebook, twitter, google (in various forms including plus), yelp and the list goes on. Personally, I think that the claims that we are only the product is a bit of simplification. There is no doubt that we are the product, however, it's also a matter of to whom are we the product? For instance, my blog, which I post on facebook, twitter and Google Plus allows others to be consumers of my content. The people who are my friends, followers or in my circles are able to consume my content. We are not merely products to companies, but we are products for other people as well.

We consume what are friends put out there. We have habits an manners in which we'd like to be able to consume that information. However, we're running into a bidirectional problem. We're losing control over what information we're sharing and we're losing control over how we consume this information. In Tom Anderson's (of myspace fame) post about the changes in facebook, he mentions something called seamless sharing, where you have to do nothing and it's instantly shared. This, to me, raises all sorts of privacy concerns. In this TED talk the speaker addresses the problem of filtering algorithms in google and facebook.

I think it's very obvious that Facebook still realizes that we're consumers of the information. For without our work as the product, posting links, pictures and statuses, there'd be no facebook. However, without us as consumers reading various different posts and clicking related links there'd also be no facebook. The product we are to non-fellow consumers comes down to our network, what the people in our network are interested in and whatever information that is automatically shared with facebook through our web browser.

We need to be aware that this trend is going to continue. We as users and consumers need to fight to get control over our data and the right to control what we share when we share it. This gets back to my points in my earlier blog posts about pseudonyms and truly being anonymous on the web. If you are interested in knowing at least some of the information that you've shared on facebook over the years in some countries you are able to download a copy of your facebook history. I haven't done so yet, but I plan on it. If it is not available in your country, try to get the rights to your data.

While facebook is using you as a product, you still should have the right to demand the information they have on you and are selling to 3rd parties. Being the product isn't fun, however, it's nothing new. We've been the product for years and have never really complained. The difference now, is that the information about your personally has never been better and is only going to get better the more you give them. For free.

They've gone PLAID!! or CERN finds faster than light particle.

2011-09-24T06:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, CERN has claimed that the speed of light has been broken by Neutrinos. What is exactly does that mean and why is it a big deal? First why is breaking the speed of light a big deal? According to the theory of special relativity, the speed of light is the maximum speed that something can accelerate to. Because of the famous equation E=mc2 it would require an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object beyond the speed of light.

What is a Neutrino? A neutrino is one of the particles that make up other particles. It's part of the building blocks of atomic theory. Neutrinos carry no charge, so they are different than the electron. Since they have no charge they are able to pass through matter. Neutrinos also require very special detection mechanisms. Neutrinos also have mass.

This is why it is a big deal to have detected the speed of a neutrino at greater than the speed of light. Either the neutrino always has traveled faster than the speed of light or they were somehow able to accelerate to a speed greater than that of light, which requires infinite energy under our current model of physics. Since we're talking about a particle accelerator here it can be assumed that the collision created the neutrino, thus we know that it is impossible for infinite energy to have be entered into the system.

Now that we understand what is going on, what is at stake here? A particle that is able to accelerate to a speed faster than the speed of light completely shifts our understanding of subatomic particles. Actually, it obliterates it. We will have no clear understand of what is going on at these particle sizes.

Could this be the greatest finding in the 21st century? Yes. All physicists believe it would be. Are people just accepting these findings? No. There is a great deal of skepticism, and it's not just from the broader community. The scientists that are presenting the results are basically issuing a challenge to the scientific community to show that they are wrong! Based on their findings these results are in fact statistically significant.

Are other scientists going to test these results to verify it? Well, there are only two other places in the world that could have the capabilities to test it. Fermilab in Chicago and a Japanese lab that was damaged by the earth quake and tsunami. However, Fermilab's equipment isn't sensitive enough to detect the difference in the speeds. Basically, the speed difference is so small it is within the margin of error for the detection equipment.

What's this all mean to me though? Well, for us non-physicists life goes on as normal. We can't suddenly travel faster than light. However, this is a case of good science at work. We should seriously pay attention to what happens here. This type of science happens all the time at a smaller scale. For evolution this type of science is happening. Some extraordinary claim is made, which requires extraordinary data to support it, then is tested by other people. IF the claim withstands additional scrutiny the claim is accepted. In some cases where the claim is so extraordinary that the people making the claims don't really buy it, then it is the duty of the scientific community and the larger community to give them the support they need to determine the validity of the results.

Here's some comments from British CERN physicists Brian Cox.

Technocrats and Technology II

2011-09-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

In my previous post I outlined some of the problems facing the energy sector in terms of determining the best course of action in the wake of the Fukushima reactor disaster. One of the solutions was to create a group of experts to determine the best mixtures of technologies and sources of energy. However, there are clearly flaws with this methodology. First, there's the problem of trust in these experts. Second, there's obviously a lack of input from the general public. Third, there's problems with selecting technologies themselves.

As I mentioned yesterday, experts can claim many different things and using the right language can make something that's incredible sound credible. When these experts put out information or opinions how can we trust it? Can we be sure they aren't on the pay roll of big oil or big coal? If these experts are university professors how can we be sure they aren't part of some global warming conspiracy? I think that it's obvious there will be influences from oil and coal. These are to be expected and the goal should be to actually welcome them into the discussion. We should attempt to include them, however we need to give them the same weight of opinion with their obvious bias as any other expert on the panel. The difference is that we want it to be known that they are going to be rooting for oil/coal. Why? because we can more easily critically analyze their economic data knowing for sure where it comes from. This goes the same for a scientist that is heavily pushing solar or wind energy. We should know that they support it so we can have an honest discussion.

Public participation is a huge problem as well. Without proper support from local groups, agencies and governments a promising energy program and be killed. "Not In My Back Yard" (NIMBY) is always a hugely successful counter attack to many of green energy programs. People don't want to have giant windmills over looking the beautiful landscape or oceanscape they cherish. Understanding these concerns and getting input into the the process from the public can lead to greater social acceptance of a plan. Also, making it clear who the information is coming from also will improve the tone of conversations. Without the clarity of information sources public opinion can quickly turn from a project.

Finally, what technologies should we use? Public opinion and vested interest in legacy technologies is very difficult to overcome. Especially when a technology like solar energy is more expensive than coal power, and has less consistent energy profiles. Of the solar technologies how do we select which technology is the best? How do we pick the right nuclear power plants? There are many different technologies out there competing. There is not a clear which technology a government plan should invest in. We are likely to pick a loser technology. However, we still need to choose something. I have mentioned it previously some ways to select technology. I'll discuss more of that in my next post.

Technocrats and Technology

2011-09-21T04:19:00.000-07:00

On my way back from Oktoberfest, which was awesome, my fellow car passengers discussed the decision by Germany to phase out nuclear energy over time. We all felt that this was an incredibly stupid long term decision. We agreed that it was a knee jerk reaction to the nuclear disaster at Fukushima. However, this raised some other questions about how to enact energy policy choices as well as other technology/science policies. We mostly focused on energy as that was the topic of interest, but it really does spill over to most scientific/technology policies at a national level.

The obvious solution to most engineers is to set up a panel of experts and have them come up with the best choices for energy sources. There are some flaws to this line of thinking, sadly. First, who selects these experts? Let's use the US as a model country in this regard. There will be a huge battle over what experts should be included in the panel. If it has to be split 50/50 between experts selected by the Republicans and Democrats we'll most likely have a group of lobbyists for the Oil and Gas industries from the Republicans, and a mixture of wind and solar experts from the Democrats. Nuclear energy maybe completely left off the radar. Even though there are tons of technologies out there that are hugely safer than the Fukushima nuclear reactors.

Additionally, nuclear energy has a stigma associated with it due to Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and now Fukushima. It doesn't matter that coal is as destructive or that oil and natural gas extraction causes almost immediate negative impacts in the local environment. Why? Because these are huge job creation industries and also have been legitimatized over the course of the past 100+ years in many regions. For example in Pennsylvania, where Three Mile Island resides, coal is a way of life for many people. It has been an occupation that many people have been doing all their lives. There are nuclear facilities in the state still, but they are viewed with much more skepticism, lack of trust and fear by local residents.

Many engineers are something of a technocrat, where they believe that technology can solve a huge number of issues and that technology experts should be making many policy decisions related to technology issues. These technocrats are viewed with skepticism from the broader public. In many cases there are huge debates over the sources of the data and the reports which accompany many of these technology experts. In the case of GMO, even when the public is given information from both sides it is not trusted. Why? because people have lost faith in their governments and believe that there are scientific conspiracies to enact practices that are dangerous.

In my next blog I'll discuss some more issues with these topics. I'll go into some detail of cases where large differences in views were eventually over come.

Productivity Gains from Fiber networks

2011-09-15T07:39:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a bit of a random post based on a seminar I went to today before a meeting with two of my professors. The idea is that an increase in internet speed will lead to productivity gains at corporations, which of course will lead to a growing economy. First, why do we care about this? Well, in small countries like New Zealand and the Netherlands as well as South Korea and Japan where there is an extremely high broadband penetration there is discussion of using public money to build fiber networks. What's the difference? Broadband basically means anything faster than dial-up internet. If you have DSL, aDSL or cable, you have a broadband connection. What I mean by penetration, is that a high number of users in many different areas have access to broadband connections. This means there are enough providers that the majority of users are able to access the internet at high enough rates to be able to stream videos and download pictures at reasonable rates. What is fiber though? Fiber optics, because that's what it is, are networks that use lasers to communicate information rather than electrons. On a cable line there are changes in voltages that indicate a one or a zero, whereas with fiber it's either a light on or off (one or a zero). This is able to be transmitted at a much higher rate.

Based on productivity data and information about different firms the study indicated that the largest productivity gain was seen in the shift between dial up and broadband. It also indicated that firms that used fiber and firms that used broadband did not see any difference in productivity. A follow up study indicated that if there was any difference it was related to size and to industry. This basically showed that there is no reason to subsidize fiber. That the government should not try to force telecoms to lay down fiber networks and that individual firms will that require fiber should pay for the investment themselves. The study also indicated that there may not be the applications, for firms, that require fiber networks.

Personally, and the author agrees with me, I think this leads to a chicken and the egg problem. If there is no fiber network how do you create an application with a wide enough audience that requires fiber when there are few customers to use it? It also puts a large burden on firms that require the network, especially if they are a smaller firm. Larger firms would be better positioned to afford the cost of the fiber line to their office as well as the equipment to utilize it. Although, in many cases they will have to worry about their old equipment from the broadband system they used.

In all, I felt it was a very interesting talk that discussed various problems with trying to get the government to subsidize the creation of a broadband network. The author also suggested if you are trying to stimulate the economy by building the network, there might be better targets for the subsidy dollars.

I'll try to post next week. I'm heading to Munich tomorrow morning.

Technological Layers and Layer Ownership

2011-09-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

This ars technica article outlines in extraordinary detail what is at risk in the smart phone wars. It discusses the various different layers involved with the smart phone industry. These layers are extremely important. Control of a layer allows you to move into another layer and can help you extract monopoly rents* from those layers as well. My friend Sean was complaining about bloatware** earlier today that comes a computer supplier. They are actually attempting to get into a different layer. If a PC company is able to provide support which can allow them to get money from a customer on a returning basis, monthly or yearly, they can help ensure return purchases on more expensive purchases as well as getting a lot more money out of first sale. Additionally, the manufacturer may also be using the bloat ware they install to subsidize the cost of the product you bought. If a third party asks to have software pre-installed the manufacturer could ask for money to put it on, which may be passed to you as a consumer, so you could get a computer at a slightly lower price.

Ars Technica, isn't the only group of people that views this phenomenon as a stack with different layers in it. This is actually an economic model as well. Which was used in the original Microsoft EU case explaining how these different layers can be leveraged to foreclose on a new market.

Another way of looking at this is in a traditional manufacturing sense. When you are making a car you have many different suppliers. You have paint, tires, batteries, steel, etc... There are several different ways to make it cheaper for you to produce a car. You can become vertically integrated, with a very high production level, where you make the steel, tires, paint and the full car. If you were extremely good at producing steel you would be able to get the steel at cost whereas traditionally you would have to pay a higher cost so the producer could earn a profit.

We can see this same sort of thing happen within IT. There is serious concern with corruption of content and content providers, like Comcast, purchasing a wide range of companies. If they control the material and access to the material they could control what people can access and impact society in a serious manner.

I don't think that Comcast is going to be able to significantly impact the smart phone layers as they have with TV. However, a company like Google or Apple definitely could. Google is actually attempting to get into every single layer in this market. They tried to purchase wireless spectrum (they are also installing a super fast network in Kansas City), they are going to purchase Motorola, they have an OS and they are an app provider.

I think that other technology companies are aware of this. This is part of the reason why Google is being attacked on all sides. While until Google gets a hold of Motorola, they will be mostly in the top most two layers, OS and Applications. Google is clearly trying to move into every layer possible. This will allow them to have the greatest likelihood of a customer going onto a website and click an ad to give them money.

To prevent this, almost everyone is suing Google or some aspect of their technologies. Google is trying to get around this. They want the control.

I'm going to be gone for a little while. My brother is coming into town and I'll be in Amsterdam for the next few days and then Munich this weekend. Hopefully I'll have a post up Thursday or early next week.

Further Reading: The New ICT Ecosystem by Martin Fransman

*monopoly rents means higher prices from controlling the market. It allows a manufacturer to sell a product for a higher price than they would be able to do under a competitive market. Microsoft is able to do this with Windows. However to protect themselves from other OS providers undercutting their prices, MS sells the same OS at lower price points. They give discounts to students and charge a lower price in poor countries. This allows them to increase their monopoly to new markets.

**excess software which slows down a computer or smart phone.

Antitrust and Cell Phones

2011-09-10T08:07:00.000-07:00

In my last three posts (one, two and three) I have been discussing the risks of antitrust for Google. With Android Google controls what applications are installed as the base as well as the search function. In South Korea apparently this is a big deal. Which took me the points of IE and WMP in my last post. Most people use the default programs on their computer or phones unless they have some external reasoning to use a different product. In the case of iTunes and WMP it was the iPod which drove the usage away from the default. However for many people that don't have an iPod there isn't much point is using anything else. Especially if you only play CDs on your computer or you have a very small MP3 collection.

There are, of course, other factors which may drive users to other products, such as seeking the ability to play lossless files instead of MP3s. On computers, in my opinion, it is much easier to take control over the device and install other applications or systems to replace the default. You just need to know how to find the program you want and install it. With phones this is much more difficult. I think that the Google Search functionality is going to be the first of many of these investigations.

For other applications that serve the same function as the search, it may be difficult to acquire a different app. At the app store for whatever phone you're using, there's a gate keeper (is there a confused keymaster too?). In the case of Apple they reject applications that duplicate a program which comes preinstalled on the phone. I'm fully expecting that these rejections will eventually become the target of some antitrust investigation. Google is better than Apple in this regard, however there is control over what goes into the app store. Interesting note there are at least 4 Bing search apps in the Android market place.

Google does allow third party app stores on Android. I think that this is a really smart move. This will actually prevent some future antitrust investigation that I think Apple will have to face. There will be a market of app market places that cater to different kinds of needs or may be phone company specific. For instance Samsung has their own app store on my Galaxy S. I would not be surprised if Steam, EA and other digital content providers are already planning on creating app stores for the phones. While some of the major game developers aren't creating games for phones yet, I believe that will change in the future. With Windows 8 going to be used for PCs, Tablets, and phones why wouldn't larger game developers created stripped down versions of their games to be played on phones?

However, I've wandered a bit from my initial point. While phones are different than computers in some pretty significant ways, they are small computers. They are more powerful than the computers I grew up with. Google will need to be aware of this and will need to evolve how it deals with the android system. The controls put on users in phones will eventually be forced out of existence by law suits and users demanding more freedom over their phones. Eventually, phones will require as much freedom as a PC, especially as we start to bridge between the two platforms.

Google's Anti-Trust problems III

2011-09-08T12:48:00.000-07:00

In my last two posts (one and two), I've been discussing the current problems as well as potential problems that will be facing Google in the antitrust arena. Yesterday I mentioned I was going to discuss Windows Media Player (WMP) and how this pertains to Google. However, I realized I need to go one step back first. First, we need to look at what happened with Netscape and Internet Explorer (IE). Initially Netscape was THE internet browser. It was the browser to program websites to be displayed on, IE wasn't even really on the radar. Also, at this time with the web, these programs were being sent out by CD, it would take an extremely long time to down load this application. Why? because it was over a telephone line. A modem that was getting about a tenth or less of the download speed you have now with whatever your broadband connection is. That and your mom would probably pick up the phone to call some one while you were trying to download the software, or while playing War Craft 2 against a friend.

Since the medium of delivery for the browser was over CD it was a level playing field for both browsers to compete. You'd get one in the mail for whatever browser, Netscape, IE, AOL, etc. However, Microsoft realized the importance of this market. They figured out a way to leverage their desktop monopoly to foreclose on the browser market. They started installing IE onto all of their operating systems. Then went as far to integrate everything together to ensure market dominance. It worked because of slow connections and the fact that people are lazy. If something already works they will use it.

Flash forward about 5 years. MP3s have gotten popular through Napster and other digital Peer 2 Peer file transfer systems and the next big market is music players. Winamp was a major player at this time and WMP was not really any sort of competition for it either. In Windows XP WMP got a major over haul and was at least able to compete with Winamp. Microsoft decided to bundle the software in the same manner they had done with IE.

This is where the story changes though. The EU filed suite against this claiming this was anticompetitive. At this time the iPod had just come out and there was no reason to expect the product to come to the PC. It seemed like it was a long way from happening. Plus, even if the iPod was going to PC it was still going to be a niche market. So, the law suit. We all know now that because of the pace of technology and the fact that there were other factors involved with the selection of the music player it prevented market dominance of Microsoft. Without the requirement for iTunes with the iPod who knows what player would have won the market.

How does this relate to Google though? Well, looking at the search engine suit from Korea I mentioned yesterday, I think this has some pretty significant implications. Using a platform to control the method in which you use other functions can be shown to be anticompetitive. Google search engine is the first for mobile phones, however, I see no reason why it will be the last.

More on this topic in my next blog.

Google's Antitrust Problems II

2011-09-07T10:05:00.000-07:00

I think that I started this discussion at just the right time. According to cnet, South Korean officials have raided a Google office over anti-competitive practices relating to Android. They claim that it's anti-competitive to force companies to use the Google search engine with Android if they want Google applications and the Google logo on the device. Personally, I'm not really sure how this is anti-competitive, or at least why Google is being singled out for this. Apple does the same thing, as does Nokia and Microsoft. When I still lived in the US, I remember Verizon forcing Bing on me and changed my default internet settings on my Blackberry (granted Korea couldn't go after that one) but the idea to me is bizarre.

However, this is a great way to discuss how Google, in a broader sense, is at risk for antitrust action from many national governments. In my last post I explained the idea of market foreclosure, which Microsoft used in an attempt to capture a monopoly in the server market as they had in the PC market. South Korea will most likely be arguing that Google is using a captive audience to force their search engine on their users. In the bigger picture, I think this sort of tactic will likely be used for other markets. For example, Google is using their large market share, and the social capital they've gain from being a trust worthy site, to build email products, then office suites, map and geolocation services (with recommendations), and of course blogging sites like the one you're currently reading. Since I have a google account, from way back when Gmail first was created, I've gotten all these additional features for free. i haven't had to do anything and they just appear as services that I can use.

Even if I'm not logged in to Google and I go to Google.com there's a huge selection of services that I can use without logging in. However, they become more powerful as soon as I log in. Google is using their monopoly of search engines to leverage users to use other products they've created. Let's say Yahoo! decided to try to create an office suit in the same manner as Google and basically try to emulate Google in every way with all of their products. I'm sure that some of the users there would take advantage of the free document services. However, I also believe that Yahoo! and Google cater to different portions of the market. Yahoo! has become the defacto home page to an older crowd than Google. Which could mean that the users of Yahoo! may not want the same products. I have a Yahoo! account, which I only use for Fantasy Hockey and Football. I never use it for email, I never search the web using Yahoo! I only use Google. Why? Because it gives me the results I want.

So, now that we understand that Google has been leveraging their search market share to move into other markets what kind of impact does that have? I think that it will actually prevent other people from using other services out there. However, I think that with internet systems there is no real reason to keep with one product family over another. It's a matter of trust. I think that people trust Google more than other companies, which is why they are willing to use them for other products. I couldn't imagine people using a Facebook Docs the same way that people use Google Docs.

In my next post I'll discuss more of these implications of these topics. I will also compare some of the Google products to Windows Media player and how something that seems like a big deal today, may not be a big deal in a year or two. Technology moves so fast.

Google's Anti-Trust problems

2011-09-06T07:32:00.000-07:00

When Google announced the planned acquisition of Motorola Mobile investors weren't exactly thrilled (see here here and here). Most of those investors are concerned over a lot of the issues i discussed in my last few posts (here and here), patents and potential issues with Android's future. There are also discussions online about different types of antitrust and privacy probes that Google is being subjected to.

Some of these privacy probes are from the EU, such as the German probe into the Google Maps cars connecting to open networks and keeping records of these networks. Another recent issue comes from Google Ads itself. Where Google was advertising for illegal pharmacies. This one Google settled for $500 million, which may have been an effort to keep away antitrust investigators or at the very least prevent their attorneys from being distracted.

In the previous article it notes that European regulators are looking into Google's ad practices to see if they are being anti-competitive. This could be a legitimate concern. Google has been purchasing a large number of ad related companies recently. However, in the long run I don't think that purchasing of companies will make that much difference as it's very easy to get into the internet ad game. New companies will be springing up on a routine basis.

I think that the EU will eventually look at Google in the same manner they looked at Microsoft in 2004. They were using an economic analysis tool called foreclosure. It's a fairly simple manner of looking at markets and market share. Let's say you have a monopoly in some market like desktop operating systems. You also know that the desktop market isn't the only market out there, there's another market related to servers. What are servers? Well they serve different functions but some of them are webservers, so when you go to a website that has some animation or data to be pulled there's a webserver there that is connected to the website. This webserver pulls the required data to be displayed and in many cases actually creates the desired images. Other cases are for databases. The computer is extremely fast and can handle a massive amount of data processing at a time. Facebook for example uses a large number of them.

So, you already have control over the desktop market, and you want control over the server market. You can make it easier or harder for your desktop machines to connect to another machine. Basically you control the language in which that happens. You can make it easier for competing operating systems to decode your language. If you want to make it easy to connect a windows desktop to a linux server, you basically give the linux OS guys the lanugage and words to use to make the connection happen. If you don't want them to connect you make it very difficult so they have to create their own rosetta stone to figure out how to connect to your machines. (I know this isn't a very technical way to describe what's going on here, but not everyone is computer literate that reads my blog)

Through this leveraging of your monopoly on desktop computers you can push your way into another market. In some ways Google is doing exactly this. In my next blog I'll discuss a little bit more about what happened with Microsoft and how Google is attempting to foreclose on other markets using their search engine monopoly as a starting point.

Google's Motorola Future

2011-09-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

According to Eric Schmidt of Google the purchase of Motorola Mobile is also it's own foray into physical products. This is promising but it's also dangerous for Google. While 98% of Google's revenue comes from ads as of 2008, the majority of its revenue stream is free of a great deal of risk from patent infringements. This is double true because the majority of Google's patents are related to search and locating data. The products that it produces that people use on a regular basis have been designed around open standards which enables them to get around patenting and use licensing instead. If any of these technologies are accused of patent infringement Google can pull up the original source code, the version and the date. While this may be more expensive than the patent examiner finding this during the patent examining procedure, it still can save Google millions of dollars in patent suits. However, it hasn't prevented them from having to pay a good deal in licensing fees despite this as I mentioned in my previous post.

Why is this a risk for Google? Well, every one of those patent lawsuits that were targeted at Motorola is now directly targeted at Google. Google is sitting on a huge pile of cash. Enough cash to outright buy Motorola. Additionally, any lawsuit that is directed towards an application of Android on a Motorola phone that Google will eventually be selling, is going to be directed towards Google now. Previously, when there was something infringing in an application on Android most of the risk was shifted towards the manufactures of the phones and away from Google. Google does have to pay Lodsys/Intellectual Ventrues for one of their patents which allows things to be purchased through apps. Like using the Android Market place. Google also has one other lawsuit related to Android at this point, which is related to a Java Patent. This is kind of an ongoing lawsuit, which Oracle has had to remove a blog post from a former Sun employee praising the use of Java in Android.

There's got to be some sort of potential for payout for Google to take this risk though. Yes, I do think there is. Despite the fact that Google is going opening itself to direct lawsuit battles with Apple, it also allows its engineers another outlet for creativity now that Google has shuttered Google Labs. Engineers from the Motorola Mobile side will be able to have more freedom and the engineers that work in Google will be able to play more with Android to make a more superior product. Google will have direct control over their handset opposed to farming it out to HTC like they did with the Nexus One.

Are there any other risks besides the ones you've mentioned already? I think there's one big one. Anti-trust case. Google is already in the cross eyes for an investigation. In my next blog I'll discuss the case against Microsoft which the US and EU handled and then how the precedence could impact Google.

Google's misstep with Patents

2011-08-31T10:40:00.000-07:00

Google has been in the news a lot recently related patents. Why? Well, I think they've managed their intellectual property in a naive way. Not an incorrect way. Just one that wasn't keeping up with the behavior of competitors and trolls in the market place. To date Google has 782 patents, for a company that has produced as many innovative products as it has, this is not very many. Google has been around for 13 years now, founding in 1998. Comparing Google to Apple, looking at patents filed after 1998, is not a good comparison. Apple has filed and received 2600 patents. Sure they've been busy working on products and had an established market already. The iPod had already come out by then. Regardless, this indicates that Google has made a major misstep in regard to patents.

I fully applaud Google's efforts to minimize the number of patents they own. It's clear from a glance at the patents, they have focused their patents on the ability to search for data as well as data management. They are sorely lacking when it comes to most software. This is most likely why Google has licensing agreements with companies like Intellectual Ventures. To combat the growing web of lawsuits surrounding it's handset manufacturers and developers Google has been on a spree of both purchasing patents (1,000 from IBM and 12,000 with the purchase of Motorola Mobile) and propaganda against software patents.

Motorola will give Google the patent expertise and experience at defending its patent claims as well as a huge number of patents it will need to defend. I believe this will create a great change in the way that Google deals with intellectual property in general. I'm not entirely sure this is a good thing either. Google may take the route of IBM which both patents things specifically so that other companies can't patent them and publishes technologies in obscure journals which can be later used to invalidate patents as a form of prior art. However, Google could easily take the route of Apple. This would be extremely bad in my opinion. The route where Google continues to invest in new technologies but patents everything and then makes it difficult for other companies to use that technology. Google has the innovative capabilities to become a huge patent troll.

I think the only good that would come out of that is if Google went after patent trolls.With open source technologies some of the problems with software patenting does go away. As anything with an open source license is technically released into the public and becomes part of the prior art. Unfortunately, that's also a huge problem with open source. It would be impossible for a patent examiner, who typically has 3 days to approve a patent, to actually find a given software technology which is already being used as open source.

Overall, I think Google is currently attempting to address its misstep with patents. I think that Google will push for patent reform for software patents. I think that with a large enough group of people, including billionaires like Mark Cuban, there could be a significant change in the manner in which software patents are issued. Gaming companies, search engines, and software developers need to work together to address this issue though.

Adoption of a new technology

2011-08-30T02:21:00.000-07:00

Based on my previous series we can see how disruptive technologies can impact the economy. What we don't know is how these technologies are selected by the users. This in fact is a matter of great debate. In some cases looking back it's obvious as to why a specific technology won over the other. However, during the standards war, or beginning of a new market, it's unclear which technology will win. We've seen this play out repeatedly over the past few decades. The VHS victory over Betamax is an important case. I also believe that this example can play an important role for any new platform developer.

What happened with VHS and Betamax? They both were created in the 70's (VHS 1976 and Betamax 1975), as a method to record video. Each had a different method and were competing standards. By a standard, i mean a products that achieve a specific result using a type of technology. In this example there are two technologies that achieve almost the exact same end result using incompatible technologies. Which is why we have a standards war. Both products are attempting to capture the same market segment.

About the technologies: Both products were produced by huge companies, JVC for VHS and Sony for Betamax. Betamax had the higher quality, however you had to pay for this quality. The Betamax was smaller than VHS. Betamax was sued by the MPAA in an attempt to prevent people from recording TV programs to watch without buying them. Betamax won.

So why did VHS win over Betamax? Well, in this case it's well known that pornography producers selected VHS over Betamax because of the price difference. It was easier to produce a product at a high enough quality that they could sell.

What does this tell us? As a platform locking in content is extremely important. Since this was the first technology porn could play a huge role, now with several legacy video recording methods and the internet porn's sway on the future standards for video storage is much diminished. In fact during most standards wars they would most likely sit out until the standards are decided.

I believe that Google actually learned from this example. They saw the benefits of content on the platform from the success of the Apple App store and worked to create a viable app store before the release of their initial product. They held contests and ensured that there was a vibrant app development community before the release of anything. While this did nothing to close the gap initially between iOS and Android app stores, it helped give people reason to adopt their product.

Disruptive technologies and long term impacts IV

2011-08-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

In yesterdays post (click here for the first in my series) I discussed some of the long term implications mostly related to the software industry. However, these ideas relate to some of my previous blog posts about innovation in that post I talk about long waves and these paradigmatic type technologies. Where we need to be aware that these disruptive technologies can interact with society on a number of different levels. In the case of video game consoles, while a pretty big industry, it's not a big chunk of our overall economic output. Even with in video games, you could argue that different types of coding methods have revolutionized how writing video games occur, so you can make these steps as small as possible, or as large as you can think of like the semiconductor based transistor. The transistor has lead to a huge shift in how our economy works.

The problem with new technologies is that we never know ahead of time what the impact of a disruptive technology will be. For instance, of the renewable energy sources we can't tell which one will have the most long term impact. However, these are all disruptive technologies. If enough solar, wind, wave, and geothermal energy were produced we wouldn't have a need for coal fired plants. This would create a massive shift in our economy. It would destroy a lot of mining companies, would shutter many power plants and put people out of jobs from the mining companies and the power plants. Of course changing from a poisonous energy source that we are rapidly depleting to a fully renewable resource is completely desirable. However, these disruptive technologies will have farther longer term impacts that we think of initially.

These new energy sources may eventually have lower energy costs than we currently experience under the coal/oil/gas regime. However, this extra money is typically spent on other goods. Which should be cheaper as energy costs are reduced. In many industries, the biggest expense is on energy. Reducing that will significantly shift the cost of these products. Unless, of course, the companies keep the higher prices to keep up profits. These lower costs should make it easier for new companies to enter with a lower price point which will keep innovation moving forward.

There difficulties with adopting new technologies. There are a lot of socio economic reasons to minimize the adoption of a disruptive technology. In my next blog I'll discuss some different theories of how new technologies are adopted.

Disruptive technologies and long term impacts III

2011-08-25T07:50:00.000-07:00

As I discussed yesterday, disruptive technology's impact can be mitigated by extensive networks. So how do these networks form? Well, they can be formed by movement of employees, which can lead to an exchange of tacit knowledge as well as increasing the likelihood for a collaboration. For instance, my roommate's employer has asked if his former professor would like to collaborate with them. This would lead to a direct knowledge flow from a large university in the US to a public-private research organization in the NL which would then diffuse to that organization's partners. These networks can help reduce uncertainty through an ability to acquire additional skills sets which are not currently possessed within an organization.

The networks can be built through previous collaborations, suggests of a previous intermediary organization, such as a publisher in the video game sense. Or there could be other forms of collaboration such as licensing technologies like the Quake/Unreal engines in video games. This allows for a full knowledge transfer of technology from one organization to another through formal methods. However, the reason for adopting one technology over the other could come down to a single employee which used to use one or the other technology at a previous job.

Now, how do these impact long term innovations and economic growth? I haven't talked about that at all. It's not exactly straight forward. In some ways, as you can see from the network diagrams yesterday, these disruptive technologies have clearly lead to an explosion of growth within the video game industry. This is most likely why it's over a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Extensive networking and collaboration at the beginning of a new generation of technology is good for the console maker and the consumer as it leads to a faster ramp of video games. See the graph below:

So, these networks help expand the options for consumers and lead to growth in the industry. Disruptive technologies are really good for the economy. Otherwise, we'd see a steady decline in prices and demand for products as people will already have them. In the example of video games, there are other drivers forcing the continued evolution of console technology, such as competition with the PC gaming platform, as well as continued expectations of better graphics and better game play. While there are a lot of people that scoff at the consoles, they do drive expectations for better graphics. People get tired of the same visual representation of their football teams. They want to see the graphics improve, the physics engines improve. Basically they need a continued improvement of technology to meet these expectations. These in turn help push the boundaries of PC games as well.

This is a fairly rosy picture of this march forward. There's no concern for intellectual property, any licensing that is being done is obvious. I don't expect this to continue. Which brings us back to the software patenting issue. We all know it's a horrible thing.

References:
Vaan, Mathijs de, "Interfirm Networks and firm performance in the face of technological discontinuities" 2010 Druid conference

Disruptive technologies and long term impacts II

2011-08-24T07:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I discussed how disruptive technologies can drive our economy through creating new opportunities. However, it can obviously have some very negative impacts at the firm level. Let's look at consoles again. First, as most of us are aware, there are only three major console manufacturers in existence. There have been a pretty steady number of console makers since the 90's however the players have changed. Sega and Nintendo were the biggest players when I was young, however this shifted to Sony and Nintendo in the mid 90's with the N64 and Playstation. The console makers are only half of it though. Without publishers, like EA, game developers, like Bungee, the gaming industry would die.

The people impacted by the changing in consoles are not just the console makers themselves, but also the publishers and the developers. In fact, it could be argued that the different platforms (consoles and PC) make it as difficult or more difficult for the developers. Some games the console makers want specifically for their console only. This cuts into the potential profits of a game developer. Additionally, there are difficulties of learning how to program for the new systems. Not all game developer or publisher is going to get early access to the new console. This makes it very difficult for them to actually compete with other developers, which do.

In a pretty cool paper (Vaan, 2010) that looks into the survival rate of developers and publishers after a disruptive change, they investigate the role of a networks. Below is a time series of network changes. Which show that the closer you are to the center of the network increases survival rate.

Network of video game developers (Vaan, 2010)

These networks are important outside of the video game industry as well. In my next blog I'll go into more details about the importance of networks in surviving new technologies.

References:
Vaan, Mathijs de, "Interfirm Networks and firm performance in the face of technological discontinuities" 2010 Druid conference