Category Archives: Technology

Technology focused posts.

Social network patent war?

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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.

The difficulty of science

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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.

Protecting the internet

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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

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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.

Did yesterday’s internet black out save the internet?

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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.