Category Archives: Culture

These posts will deal with Copyright and other cultural topics

Patent threatening how websites protect users

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I just found this article on Ars Technica about a patent troll, TQP, that threatens the very way encrptions occur on the internet. In fact, this patent based on the single picture, is extremely dangerous. The article claims that the company has sued hundreds of companies, including 100 in the past 12 months. This type of behavior needs to stop. Effectively this patent could be used against any website that uses even the most generic encryption method. The patent is based on a pretty generic frame work and likely is significantly overly broad.

Historically, I’ve had serious issues with many software patents especially when it comes to web services. This one looks incredibly bad and hasn’t made it to any sort of trial yet. One of my problems with this patent is the fact that it uses a very generic “encryptor/decryptor” block, which as long as there’s a counter and psuedorandom number generator involved in the method to use it, could be impacted. This seems like a rather logical method for transmitting and setting the encryption key.

I personally think that anything that targets a user ability to protect their data is the worst of the worst. In the world we live in today, exploiting something that was likely given to the general community without a second thought then a method to “apply” it, is wrong, because it was given to the general public to ensure our data was protected.

That’s one of the most beautiful things about the open source movement. These technologies which can benefit users in many levels, business, personal, government and the interface between the three, are developed because they solve a problem for that community. In many cases these technologies are created by businesses, but by license mandate are required to be given to the community for free. Should this be considered a waste of money by the company creating it? Should they be able to make money off of it? No and Yes. Here’s how they can make money off of the technology they give to the community: use it to provide secure services to your customers. If the customers are using a platform that you don’t own, ensuring that they are able to access their information they are giving to you is in your best interest.

This is one of the reasons we need to support the EFF initiative to modify software patents. Check that out here: https://defendinnovation.org/

Apple and Quality

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I know I’m not always the biggest Apple fan on here. But there’s one thing I have to admit, they typically come out with a really well put together product. If they don’t, they are fairly quick about providing a free solution – such as the case for the iPhone with the antennae issues. However, this version doesn’t seem to be along the same lines. There’s the issue with iOS maps, which is pretty terrible, but there’s also another problem with the sapphire lens selected for the camera causes a purple tint and light flaring. Their solution is to simply point the camera away from the light and that this is normal behavior.

This type of quality issues in a product like this leaves a lot to be desired for some pretty obvious reasons. For a lot of people the cell phone is their only camera. I almost never take pictures, but when I do, it’s on my cell phone. If the pictures are defective by “design” then this is going to be a huge problem. I’m sure that the Instagram filter won’t look right when you add that to the picture as well.

I think that these two issues are starting to indicate a trend with Apple for the beginning of a decline in the perfectionism that most users associate with Apple products. To some extent it was never there the way people like to think that it was, but there was a lot of perfectionism that went into the designing and material selection for the phones.

You could argue that the tint is similar in defect type to the antennae issue, but I think this is different because the camera is such an integral part of the phone. Apple has been developing cameras for years whereas the antennae issue was related to a new skill set, an external antennae.

The next concern for Apple fans, is that the phone is their core product and they really dropped the quality in some ways. Without proper maps, the quality certainly suffers, users are used to the correct maps at a touch of a button, not seven. Will these issues prevent iPhone fans from buying this phone? No, I don’t think so. I think it might push some people away if they were on the fence about getting the same phone, again. I think the larger risk is in the long term. If Apple continues to produce the same products but continues to have quality issues with some expected features on a phone then Apple will begin to lose customers in droves.

For the iPhone6 Apple needs to come out with a different feeling phone, if they do, any issues like camera or whatever will be masked by the fact that it’s totally new. People will flock to it again. If Apple doesn’t come out with a new feeling and has issues, I think that will give more people pause about the whole company. We’re a year or two away from the iPhone6, so that may be premature. Customers and analysts aren’t friendly to stagnating firms. Apple surely doesn’t want to be in that group.

Complexity and politics

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I’ve been reading a book called “Rethinking the Fifth Discipline” which is something of a treatise on organizational theory and complexity. The Fifth Discipline, is about creating a learning organization. Where the organization has naturally built-in processes that encourage learning through challenging mental models. What’s that mean? Well, anytime we approach a problem we have our own set ideas about what’s right and wrong with the problem. This leads us to develop specific solutions based on that perspective. When working in an organization these frameworks, perspectives or mental models can lead to conflict. Developing a method of resolving differences in these mental models is paramount to allow a company to move forward.

One of the ways to resolve these differences is to expand everyone’s perspective of the problem. To allow some of the scope to expand to generate a bigger picture. In other words, allowing people to see the forest for the trees. We know that we have a dead tree in the middle of our forest, and our actions to get that tree out may have negative impact on the rest of the forest. If one of the solutions was to burn down the dead tree, there could be some serious implications to the rest of the forest if we did that without really thinking about it. Working to resolve the differences may highlight the fact that we’re in the middle of a drought right now and that burning that dead tree would likely cause the entire forest to go up. This of course would be the worst thing we could do.

This way of viewing problems has several names, including complexity theory and systemic thinking. I believe that we have a serious lack of system thinking in our government today. There are two areas that have struck me as the most obvious and these involve the courts. The first is the continued assault on women’s rights in many different states. These state governments are slowly picking at pieces of reproductive rights of women when choosing to have an abortion or not. In some cases, the ruling is extremely narrow and seems to intentionally avoid looking at the full system of problems. The one shining light example against this is the ruling that has kept open a clinic in Mississippi. The judge realized that if this law was allowed to stand it would have closed the only legal clinic for abortions.

The other area that is a cause for concern is the recent PA ruling on Voter ID requirements. While on the face it seems like it’s fairly straight forward. I mean why shouldn’t there be a law requiring you to show a proper state ID, but then why isn’t a voter registration card considered a valid ID? Couldn’t this resolve the issue? The other factor that doesn’t seem to be considered, is the systemic efforts to make it more difficult to acquire state ID throughout the country, such as Wisconsin closing DMV locations or reducing hours – by the way Wisconsin’s voter ID law was ruled unconstitutional.

Through taking a systemic view the efforts in total indicate an effort to reduce or control the ability of the electorate to vote. While the law itself may make sense on the surface, viewing the entire system displays the total efforts and would indicate that a different ruling should be considered. This is the similar type of issue that there is with the Citizen’s United ruling. With a very narrow focus and inability to look at the full system a ruling that has dramatically changed our political landscape is seen to make a great deal of sense.

The Philosopher CEO

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In my group at work, we have been accused of having a group of philosophers and a group of doers. This is typically mentioned with some serious disgust. As if having a group of people thinking about how the business is run is a bad thing. I think part of it stems from the idea that this means that they aren’t doing anything productive or value added for the company. The perception is incorrect of course. The “philosophers” are actually a process improvement methodology team that provides course development, course training, mentoring for Lean Six Sigma certification, continual guidance for projects in flight and manages projects themselves. There are only two of them. That’s a tall order to be honest.

But the idea of a philosophy group really got me thinking. Would it be a bad thing to have a group that looks at the ethical, moral or sustainable behavior of the company? I lump sustainability in with the morality and ethical question, because in a lot of ways sustainability is not looking to be a social issue and is another way of looking at the ethics of recycling and energy usage. I’ve talked about morality and MBA’s specifically in my last post. Singling out the MBA crowd might not have been the fair as there is no reason why engineers couldn’t behave in unethical ways, there’s no requirement for engineers to take ethics courses.

Why does this matter? Well, we’ve seen a huge number of seemingly unethical choices coming out of companies. In some cases they may have been selected in a harmless way. For example the new MacBook Pros have a glued on battery, the choice may have been made to reduce the amount of time it takes to secure the battery. Putting a fast acting glue on the battery may have accomplished this, while screwing in the battery would take more time. This selection could have been made without the consideration of the repairability or replacability for components within the laptop. However, since this is Apple I’m talking about here, I find this unlikely. The next question would be, was this choice unethical? From a sustainability perspective it could be construed in that manner, which iFixit does do just that. The computer also lost its environmental certification by using the glue and some of the other design characteristics. This design also continues with Apple’s decisions to make it more difficult to upgrade or do anything with their product once you’ve bought. This increases the number of times you have to purchase their products and exasperates the throwaway culture of many other products.

Consumers are also starting to become more aware of the unethical behavior of companies. We’ve seen this with the recent banking scandals, we’ve seen this with the investigation into Foxconn and we’re likely to see it moving forward in other sectors. We’re starting to hear about more unethical behavior in the ag industries, in regard to their treatment of animals or in the case of Monsanto basically suing farmers when seeds of their crops land in their field. The increase in consumer awareness through the increased usage of social media and other social networking tools is going to significantly increase both information and disinformation about these topics.

It is likely that there will be an increase in the number of watch dog organizations in existence and more reliance on government agencies, like the Consumer Protection agency in the US now. The banks have argued for a long time that these regulations are unnecessary as they can regulate themselves. We do know that profit pressures can prevent ethical behavior and encourage unethical behavior. Perhaps it’s time that every organization has an Internal Affairs organization similar to what the police have. I do not believe that these organizations are perfect and can become corrupt (or have the appearance of being corrupt), but I think that they can be useful.

Penn State is going to have to set up an organization like this. I think for the University this was going to be required for them to even have a chance at ever regaining their credibility. The records for that group need to be wide open for everyone to view. I think this type of office needs to be in any publicly traded company. It will ensure greater transparency, allow watch dog groups and consumers to choose the actual ethical companies and these groups would be auditable. This could be a certification process similar to ISO9001 (a manufacturing document control quality system), where the members of the team are given ethics training in a wide range of topics including morality and then are expected to train the employees of the company, CEO included.

By creating organizations such as this, companies can greatly clarify how their behavior is ethical and moral. Once several large companies create agencies like this other companies will be shamed into doing it as well. Thus increasing the number of Philosopher CEOs out there.

Colorado, guns and society

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Horrible tragedy has struck Colorado. We still don’t understand what caused this man to do this. This is also the second piece on mass killings and guns that I’ve written in the past year, the Norway tragedy was only a year ago. There was some discussion after that about the ease of access of weapons in the US, but with the alleged gunman in Colorado using an AR-15 there most certainly will be discussions of re-instating the assault rifle ban that lapsed early in the Obama administration.

Let’s first take a look at some of the history of the US before moving onto anything else. The Right to Bear Arms comes from the bill of rights amended to the constitution of the United States. The reason the founding fathers created these rights stems from the injustices the colonies experienced under British rule. Preventing gun ownership caused hardships for the colonists as they were fighting with the Indians, protecting their live stock and hunting for food. Distances were much greater at the time, so you needed to be able to fend for yourselves. The founding fathers also were revolutionaries, obviously, as they had just overthrown Britain. Jefferson, in particular felt that the citizens had the right to overthrow their own government. The ability to overthrow the government is predicated on the ability to fight against the government. The right to bear arms is paramount to this capability, hence it is an essential right in our Constitution.


A lot has changed in the past 200+ years. Weapons technology is at a level that our founding fathers never imagined. Our explosives are smaller and more powerful than theirs. The sheer number of people would be mind boogling to them, as we have stadiums that can hold more people than all the population of Philly in 1776 and Houston has nearly as many people in the city as all of the 13 colonies did in 1776. The amount of damage we can inflict and the number of people that can be impacted as exponentially increased.


What has not kept up with our ability to kill and our population are our institutions. Organizations like the NRA push for looser and looser gun laws as they feel that is an unalienable right. However, they do not take on issues that lead to increases in gun violence such as prohibition of drugs (increases violence) or mental health concerns. In the United States we look at mental health issues as something to be kept quiet and to have a mental disease is to be stigmatized. These prevent people that require help from seeking the help that they need. Plus, the cost of mental health care is extremely expensive. In many cases insurance companies don’t want to pay for the cost of seeing a psychiatrist or will limit the amount of treatment a person can receive. Addressing the actual problem will do more for protecting gun ownership rights than any glib quote such as “You can take my gun from my cold dead hands” we need to understand the underlying root cause of the massacre and fix that. 


The other concern that we should all have in regard to controlling weaponry is the importance of having access to weapons when overthrowing a dictator. In the past 2 years we’ve seen many types of revolutions. Ranging from the completely peaceful to the extremely violent in Libya and Syria. In each country access to foreign weapons are making the difference for the rebels, but for the rebels to even reach the point where the international community stepped in to help them, required weapons to start the civil war. Whether we like it or not, that is the reason why the founders included the right to bear arms in our constitution. 


What we need to do as a society is to look at where our values stand. Do we feel that we should treat addiction like a crime, or like a mental health epidemic? The need for gun ownership can drop once drug issues can be dealt within our legal system instead of requiring extralegal remedies, such as killing the person that is taking your turf. Looking at how we deal with bullying and other mental health issues can prevent another Columbine or Aurora from happening again. I’m going to close this post with an interview with Marilyn Manson in Bowling for Columbine. Regardless of what you think about the man himself, or his shock rock, he is an extremely articulate speaker and asks us to look in the mirror when these tragedies happen. Our society causes them, our society can fix them.