Eclectic Echoes

Exporting Jobs

As reported on CNBC a new study by Forrester Research Inc. predicts that 3.3 million jobs will be move overseas, predominantly to India, by 2015. The sectors exporting jobs will include Computer Programming and Support (472,632 positions), Business (348,028), Management (288,281), and Office (1,659,310). Forrester predicts that as the trend grows, increasingly complex and knowledge based positions, traditionally safe from export, will be vulnerable for moving overseas. They do offer some advise for hot jobs for the short run, mostly the service sectors, and within services the financial service sector looks to be hiring most aggressively. Other possible hot jobs include health care, real estate, and security. Ironicall the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that from 2000 to 2010 software engineering, computer support and systems administartion will add about 1 million jobs to the economy. 

The question then is how to we create more jobs domestically to replace those being exported?

It seems smaller community centric business’ tend to create and maintain jobs better than larger corporations. Local business’ also tend to provide more personalized services and understand their customers better. Large business’ can also do these things, and in fact hire far more individuals per company, but they tend to shed jobs faster and in general tend to contribute less to the local cummunity overall when examined on a per employee basis. So why have politicians and people in general courted large companies as much as they have instead of supporting local business’ more?

O’Reilly’s Andy Oram just yesterday published some interesting opinions and thoughts on the subject of falling employment. He also asked how can we reverse the trend, and offered some starting points for ideas.

WBMC

And now for something completely different, the World Beard and Moustache Championships

Making it’s first appearance in the U.S.A. the WBMC will be appearing in Carson City, Nevada on November 1st. Get out and support your favorites. Competitions occur in 17 different categories (!?) Be sure to check out the schedule, categories and gallery of contestants at their website.

Thanks to Xuliland for the link…

P2P Groups Unite

Six P2P software vendors have taken a page from RIAA and formed the P2P United lobbying group. The group is taking the offensive against RIAA and is looking to educating Congress about the merits of P2P software. P2P United’s formation comes just a day before a Senate subcommittee hearing on file sharing.

“‘It is long past time for the ‘Tyrannosaurical’ recording industry to stop blaming and suing its customers to cover up the industry’s own glaring failures to adapt yet again to a new technology, one that should have already been making millions for it, and for the average artist,’ said Adam Eisgrau, P2P United’s executive director.”

RIAA’s Amy Weiss praised the group for publishing a code of conduct for it’s members adding “But, let’s face it, they need to do a whole lot more before they can claim to be legitimate businesses.” RIAA also announced the settlement of 64 individual suits with file traders and the reciept of 838 affidavits for it’s “Clean Slate” amnesty program.

P2P is not going to go away, neither are MP3’s and other similar formats, the sooner RIAA accepts this and embraces the new technologies the sooner they can capitalize on it. While there is a lot of resentment against RIAA they can still come out of this better off in the long run. Right now RIAA is doing more damage to itself and sales by targeting it’s traditionally strongest audience with legal campaigns, while the indie labels are growing in number and strength—in part because of the adoption of MP3’s and liberal downloads, and in part because of the backlash against RIAA.

In an ironic side note on a recent Google of RIAA the sole sponsored link on the results page was for P2P-Tracker “Free: Identify 260+ PSP Apps | Reduce Risk of RIAA Action | www.assetmetrix.com”

A list of RIAA related articles here…

CERT: Clarify Recent Vulnerabilities in OpenSSH

I guess CERT has gotten quite a few inquiries regarding the recent Advisory for OpenSSH issues—CERT has issued an email to clarify exactly what issues there currently may be in installations of OpenSSH in the wild.

In the clarification email the referenced the following vulnerability notes:

VU#333628 - OpenSSH contains buffer management errors

VU#602204 - OpenSSH PAM challenge authentication failure

VU#209807 - Portable OpenSSH server PAM conversion stack corruption

I didn’t notice the email’s info on the CERT front page or the Vulnerability page but the OpenSSH vulnerability advisory (CA-2-2003-24) has been updated with the patch information for OpenSSH 3.7.1p1. For those folks not on the CERT advisory email list, read the extended version of this entry to see the full email.

Received: from canaveral.indigo.cert.org (canaveral.indigo.cert.org [192.88.209.169]) by <<This has been removed>>
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 18:24:55 -0400
Message-Id: <CA-2003-24.2@cert.org>
From: CERT Advisory <cert-advisory@cert.org>
To: cert-advisory@cert.org
Organization: CERT(R) Coordination Center - +1 412-268-7090
List-Help: <http://www.cert.org/>, <mailto:Majordomo@cert.org?body=help>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:Majordomo@cert.org?body=subscribe%20cert-advisory>...
Subject: CERT Advisory Notice: Clarifications regarding recent vulnerabilities in OpenSSH

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

CERT Advisory Notice: Clarifications regarding recent vulnerabilities in OpenSSH

The CERT/CC has received queries regarding several recent OpenSSH 
vulnerabilities.  We are sending this message to help ensure that administrators 
have not overlooked one or more of these vulnerabilities.

There have been several recent vulnerabilities affecting OpenSSH. They are

VU#333628 - OpenSSH contains buffer management errors
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/333628

    This issue addresses two releases of OpenSSH to resolve multiple 
    issues in the buffer management code. It is unclear if these issues 
    are exploitable, but they are resolved in version 3.7.1. Note that 
    there are other additional flaws in the buffer management code as 
    reported by Openwall GNU/*/Linux in 
   http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/JARL-5RFQQZ. These four additional 
    flaws are believed to be relatively minor, and are scheduled to be
    included in the next version of OpenSSH.

VU#602204 - OpenSSH PAM challenge authentication failure
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/602204

   Under non-standard configurations, portable versions of OpenSSH 3.7p1 
   and 3.7.1p1 are vulnerable to a remotely exploitable vulnerability.
   Exploitation of this vulnerability may lead to a remote attacker 
   gaining privileged access to the server, in some cases root access.

VU#209807 - Portable OpenSSH server PAM conversion stack corruption
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/209807

   There is a vulnerability in portable versions of OpenSSH 3.7p1 and
   3.7.1p1 that may permit an attacker to corrupt the PAM conversion
   stack. The complete impact of this vulnerability is unclear, but may 
   lead to privilege escalation, or a denial of service.

Please check the vulnerability notes for resolutions and additional details.

Thank you.

CERT/CC Contact Information

   Email: cert@cert.org
          Phone: +1 412-268-7090 (24-hour hotline)
          Fax: +1 412-268-6989
          Postal address:
          CERT Coordination Center
          Software Engineering Institute
          Carnegie Mellon University
          Pittsburgh PA 15213-3890
          U.S.A.

   CERT/CC   personnel   answer  the  hotline  08:00-17:00  EST(GMT-5)  /
   EDT(GMT-4)  Monday  through  Friday;  they are on call for emergencies
   during other hours, on U.S. holidays, and on weekends.

Using encryption

   We  strongly  urge you to encrypt sensitive information sent by email.
   Our public PGP key is available from
   http://www.cert.org/CERT_PGP.key

   If  you  prefer  to  use  DES,  please  call the CERT hotline for more
   information.

Getting security information

   CERT  publications  and  other security information are available from
   our web site
   http://www.cert.org/

   To  subscribe  to  the CERT mailing list for advisories and bulletins,
   send  email  to majordomo@cert.org. Please include in the body of your
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   subscribe cert-advisory

   *  "CERT"  and  "CERT  Coordination Center" are registered in the U.S.
   Patent and Trademark Office.
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   NO WARRANTY
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   Engineering  Institute  is  furnished  on  an  "as is" basis. Carnegie
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 6.5.8

There followed of course the obligitory PGP…

Commercial MP3 CD Collection

Another indie record label, Go-Kart Records, has embraced MP3’s in a really big way. The label owner was recently interviewed on O’Reilly’s openp2p.com. They are releasing on November 4th an enhanced two disc CD set called Go-Kart MP300 Raceway. The disc is full of 300 songs from 150 bands all in MP3 (at 192k rate) format. This is the first commercially sold MP3 CD. The price is a whopping $9.99. The CD also features a browser interface (through your browser…whoops that d–-n Eolas plugin issue again) to select songs to play on the computer through a virtual MP3 player interface. Of course you can also access the songs with WinAmp or any similar MP3 software, and download the songs to any MP3 player. The browser interface also includes links to all the bands and the labels websites and key bio information etc. The CD’s will not play in most standard CD players, but will work in any MP3 capable CD player and personal computers. The label is including info sheets with detailed instruction to burn the MP3’s to a standard audio CD.

According the info pages, Go-Kart is a label representing the punk and hardcore genres. The MP3 collection will feature bands such as Anti-Flag, Bouncing Souls, Avail, Dag Nasty, and Virus Nine. Not my type of music to be sure, but I’m glad to see the first MP3 CD collection released by any label. Now if RIAA would open it’s eyes.

FCC, FTC, Bush & Do-Not-Call List

Looks like everybody is getting involved in the Do-Not-Call list. President Bush today signed the bill drafted and passed last week by congress giving the FTC the authority to enact and administer the list. A court in Denver blocked the FTC from enacting the list on issues of free speech last Thursday. In the mean time the FCC has stepped up today to enforce the list while those legal issues are ironed out. A Denver appeals court denied a request from telemarketers to block the FCC from enforcing the registry. Today the Supreme Court refused to block that decision. The FCC will begin enforcement of the list on Wednesday, right on schedule.

For the Exotic Coffee Lover

Firebox in England offers a unique coffee for that hard to buy for coffee lover all of us know—Weasel Cofee.

“…Weasel coffee has been eaten and regurgitated by rare Vietnamese weasels! Honestly! As you can imagine, the weasels’ gastric goings-on radically alter the taste of the coffee and the result is a stronger, smoother, heady flavoured coffee that will appeal to serious connoisseurs of the mighty bean.”

Don’t worry if you are in need of a unique tea, they have you covered there as well with Monkey Picked Tea. Remarkably the English company reports:

“The monkey-picked leaves produce a pale, golden tea that’s so fragrant and delicious it’s best served without milk. Or sugar. Or biscuits. Or cake. The point being, drinking Monkey Tea should be viewed as an important spiritual event, not to be sullied by crass diversions.”

I think I’ll pass on the coffee, but the tea might be worth a try sometime. Of course neither of these is available from Firebox for delivery outside the U.K.

Update 10-10-2003:

The local community press (Mystic River Press) had an article on a similar coffee from Indonesia that I can actually get locally—in fact the only place on the East Coast to get it is right in Groton (10 min away). Seaport Coffee Roasters has obtained 5kg of kopi luwak straight from Indonesia. Kopi luwak is an Indonesian version of mongoose—or in this case the palm civet, a member of the mongoose family—processed coffee. It will be available for sale starting this Monday. I know Joe roasts a beautiful coffee, and we have enjoyed his coffees since coming to the Mystic area in April. In the Mystic River Press article he calls kopi luwak caviar for coffee drinkers. I will let you know how it tastes!

I am also trying to get permision from Mytic River Press to post large excerpts or the entire story about kopi luwak coffee here. If anyone else knows of a store or resource for kopi luwak or any similar coffee from elsewhere please contact me.

Magnatune: We Are Not Evil

Magnatune is a record label. But they want you to know they are not evil. Guess what… they’re right. A record Label that gets it. Magnatune allows you to listen to hundreds of MP3’s from their artists, share them swap them whatever!, they also have genre-based MP3 radio. If you like what your hear, buy the CD album.

50% of the purchase price goes straight to the artist and—You Decide The Price!

They recommend 8$ for an album, but the drop down price selector on the purchase page supports $5—$18 per downloaded album. All the music is also registered on FreeDB. They also offer licensing for commercial use. Genre’s include Classical, Rock, Electronica, World, New Age, and Metal.

So far I’ve listened to samples of Andreas Haefliger (Mozart Piano Sonatas), James Edwards (Baroque guitar), Ehren Starks (piano and cello), Kourosh Zolani (hammer dulcimer), Michael Masley (hammer dulcimer) and Paul Berget (modern interpretations of Renaissance Lute). All of them were very good. Yeah I have some er, Eclectic tastes in music.

To qoute their “The Big Ideas” page:

• all music should be shareware. Just as with software, you want to preview, evaluate, and pass along good music to others—in the process of buying it.
• find a way of getting music from the musician to their audience that’s inexpensive and supports musicians. Otherwise, musical diversity will continue to greatly suffer under the current system where only mega-hits make money.
• musicians need to be in control and enjoy the process of having their music released. The systematic destruction of musician’s lives is unacceptable: musicians are very close to staging a revolution (and some already have).
• creativity needs to be encouraged: today’s copyright system of “all rights reserved” is too strict. We support the Creative Commons “some rights reserved” system, which allows derivative works, sampling and no-cost non-commercial use.

Man they really do get it! RIAA are you listening?

Can You Raed Tihs? Microsoft Link

In another chapter on the the “Can You Raed Tihs?” story, Microsoft’s Kevin Larson, a cognitive psychologist, dissected the main hypotheses on how we read at ATypI’s Vancouver Typography conference.

“Kevin supports the ‘parallel letter recognition’ model. People don’t he says, recognise whole-word shapes. Instead the recognise each of the letter components and then make a series of best-guesses on the information returned to assemble, first, phonemes and then words.”

In case you are not aware, recently a story spread through various email groups, weblog groups and geek news sites such as Slashdot on this topic. Although there are a few variations one common version of the letter is:

“Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. ceehiro.”

The claim is that letter order does not matter in reading, that we can read fine even with the internal letters scrambled. This has been hailed by chronic mis-spellers, but as far as physiology, cognitive psychology and typography go it is meant to be important as a support of one hypothesis of reading method over another. This text would support the hypothesis that Kevin supported in his talk at ATypI: we read all the letter forms of a word simultaneously–in parallel— then assemble those letters into phonemes and words. Interestingly, the internal letter order is randomly scrambled and shorter words are either less scrambled, a function of their length or entirely free from scrambling.

In response to the original story being circulated, the linguistics department at University of British Columbia came up with a counter-example:

“Anidroccg to crad cniyrrag lcitsiugnis planoissefors at an uemannd, utisreviny in Bsitirh Cibmuloa, and crartnoy to the duoibus cmials of the ueticnd rcraeseh, a slpmie, macinahcel ioisrevnn of ianretnl cretcarahs araepps sneiciffut to csufnoe the eadyrevy oekoolnr.”

What the UBC Linguistics group did was to apply a highly ordered and drastic rearranging of the internal letters. This counter-example would tend to disprove the parallel letter theory, at least as far as has been openly discussed. Of course to argue or imply that any aspect of human learning and behavior is as simple as has been discussed recently—one model or the other–is to make a gross oversimplification. 

I really would like to see a transcript of Kevin’s presentation at ATypI, as he supposedly tore down and supported aspects of each of the three most common hypotheses of reading, but he supports the parallel-letter-recognition—phoneme—word model as the accurate one. I want to see if or how he meshes the models, as I feel that that is more likely what is happening for most readers. That he argued against aspects of all three of the predominant hypotheses would suggest to me that he too believes it is a synthesis of the methods.

My personal belief is that reading is an extremely complex function. There are many factors that can affect both the legibility of text and our ability to comprehend and retain the message that the symbols on the page or screen represent. Typography, physiology and psychology have all dealt with these issues as a whole and in isolation for many years. Not only how you learn the language, but also what type of learner (visual vs. auditory vs kinesthetic) you are can have a large impact on how you actually read, recognize and translate the symbols on a page or screen. I do believe that word shape (external outline shape and internal whitespace and contrast) are critical to reading. Of course, my training may prejudice me towards that belief.

In typography there are many techniques that can be employed to destroy legibility of words and passages of text without destroying individual letter legibility. Similarly there are highly effective techniques which subtly (or not so subtly) change the word shape and internal word contrast to force a reader to slow down with an increase in retention.

I don’t discount the letter—phoneme recognition hypotheses entirely. My guess would be that we mix those two models by reading the word shape and the letter forms simultaneously. When we recognize the word shape, either by memory or by context, we move on. Otherwise we assemble the letters into phonemes and words, again using context and experience as a guide. If that fails we switch to a serialized reading of the letters of the word, this being most common for extremely long words and completely foreign words.

This theory can be observed by watching young children first learning to read. Having observed my own son, just now learning to read, he has recognized many words well before he had knowledge of the alphabet. He recognized the word by it’s shape. His recognition of the words held even when presented with the same word in fonts of diverse style and size. However if the word is presented to him in an ALL CAPS form there was no recognition. This supports the theory of word shape recognition, at least in a pre-spelling child. 

As he has learned to spell he is learning the individual letters of the word shapes he already knows. When presented with a series of words–a mix of words he recognized before learning the alphabet and new words–he instantly will read out the known words without pausing to spell it, but he must spell out new words. As these new words have been learned both the shape and the letter form construction are added to his memory, and soon are he is able read them instantly as well. Of course he is still learning.

It appears that he is synthesizing the use of word shape and letter by letter spelling into his reading. As he gains more experience with the spelling and recognition of phonemes and is able to marry that to his initial learning of language—phonemes—the phoneme into word method of reading will replace letter by letter construction as both a more efficient and more “natural” method of reading. Word shapes however will remain as a key part of reading, which makes sense as it arguably appears to be the most efficient method.

One thing that is striking is the fact that no matter which hypothesis or mesh of hypotheses are supported, the one thing we all seem to agree on is the fact that reading is a highly contextual excersise.

You may also want to look at my other entry on this subject.

Added 10/01/2003

There is a new entry detailing snopes link for this meme along with other links—especially look at the post by Matt Davis of Cambridge

Verisign Sued Left and Right

Verisign must be feeling a bit like Microsoft right now. It seems like everyone is lining up to sue them over their dain-bramaged SiteFinder service. ICANN may or may not have a lot of teeth when it comes to enforcement, but if they do, I wish they would step in about now. I already told you how GoDaddy filed suit over SiteFinder. Now there are at least 3 seperate suits being brought against Verisign over the SiteFinder service and it’s wildcard DNS implementation. One of them is a class-action lawsuit filed by Ira Rothken on behalf of a California e-mail software provider. Of course Verisign is no stranger to lawsuits in connection to it’s regitration and DNS services. It currently has lawsuits against it from various registrars over it’s sending of misleading domain expiration notices to other regitrar’s clients and the Domain Waiting List service.

Software Patents From Inside Antarctica

Tim Bray is the author of Ongoing. He is also the founder of a company called Antarctica that develops and implements visually rich information systems, mostly ways to present dense information webs in accessible, visual ways. In large part to secure funding, he has applied for patents on some of the software that Antarctica has developed. He offers a unique perspective on the process, the PTO and the patent system as it is. It is worth a read for people from all sides of the patent argument.

One interesting point he concludes with:

“Conflict of Interest The people in the system with the worst conflict of interest are the patent attorneys and various flavors of intellectual-property expert, who are always willing to argue passionately and at great length about the importance of securing patents, and how this is an essential part of any business strategy. They seem to really believe what they’re saying, but when I listen to them my mind’s eye just can’t help seeing the fat envelopes stuffed with carefully-itemized five-figure legal bills crossing my desktop.

“A cynic would say it’s a self-perpetuating system whose costs greatly outweigh its benefits, and that we’re hopelessly stuck in it. But then, I’m a cynic.”

ATypI Between Text & Reader

The ATypI 2003 conference wraps up today. It looks like it should have been a fun time for all involved. I thought when I was still in Idaho I might have been able to make this. The Keynote speaker was Robert Bringhurst, whose book The Elements of Typographic Style, I would dearly love to add to my collection. In conjunction with the conference, Microsoft, Adobe and Fontlab held two different workshops for creating OpenType fonts, and there was what I am sure was an awesome workshop for 6—7 individuals on a traditional letterpress. Wood and metal, one piece at a time, building up the words and lines. Adobe was also showing an upcoming release of Illustrator that adds Unicode and OpenType support. The list of panels and forums covers the spectrum of typography: from typographical history, to the re-emergence of the letterpress as an art-form; from Arabic to Hebrew to Chinese typographies; from digital font creation tools to hand lettering and carved letter forms; legibility to marketing.

While many of the programs really interested me, I would really have liked to see the program by Kevin Larson of Microsoft. Kevin has a PhD in psychologist from UT and his research was—word recognition and reading acquisition. His work for Microsoft is on ClearType and reading technologies. In his program he says that word recognition is not done by word shape, but that we perceive each individual letter while reading words. It is the letters that are the basis of our recognizing the word. If that is the case I’m sure there is a whole lot of allowance for context in the recognition of words from the individual letters. Hopefully Kevin’s presentation will be made available at some future date. I would love to read it. Of course this still does not necessarily put the meme running around the net in any better light—it only emphasizes that our brains are able to reconstruct, fairly seamlessly, data from context far better than we often allow for. 

Another paper I would like to see, would be from the discussion of the future of type in the design of Information and Communication Technologies, e.g. the web, cellphones. The focus appears to have been on type’s possible role to humanize these technologies, especially when, so often, the technologies have poor visual designs. Yeah, we all missed the boat badly on HTML Language and even on CSS. We really all need to get things right soon, because as WaSP and others have found, it’s going to take anywhere from 3—6 years to bring around the moment and change the way enough people are doing things with the technology.

The auction looks like it was filled with treasures and each attendee received a 48pt type cast of the conference mascot. The organizers put together some great informational material about Vancouver and if you’re visiting there soon maybe take a peek at their Restaurant Guide (non-printing PDF)

“However, do not be tempted to eat at Assam on Denman Street. This may be the worst Indian restaurant in the world: it should be demolished, and the ground where it stood sown with salt.

“…but if you want a great coffee you should go to Caffé Artigiano (763 Hornby Street). This place serves some of the best tasting and most beautiful coffees in the world.

“If you’re in Yaletown, try a Japanese green tea flavoured latte while listening to Finnish pop music in the deeply surreal Don’t Show the Elephant (1201 Hamilton Street).”

I hope for all involved it was highly successful and stimulating.

For Squidd: Cubs Make the Playoffs!

After a 14 year dry spell the Cubs have made the playoffs!

This is actually for two people, a pair of old friends who are the perennial butt of jokes by this time of the season. They love their Cubs. I’m sure you know someone like them. Before spring training they are hyped about the new signings and talking about the batting and pitching strengths, the infield the outfield even the coaching. During Spring training they start saying “this could be the year” or even “this is the year” as spring training progresses they become even more optimistic. By the end of the pre-season they are telling everyone how this year will be different. At the break if the Cubs are up so are they. If the Cubs are down they are still up, after all they’re the Cubs are only xx games back, so what if they lost –– and –– to injuries, there is still half the season left. We wink and smile all season when they’re talking about the Cubs and the playoffs, let alone the pennant. Occasionally we even shoot a friendly jab—“Yeah, they still have 20 games to blow their lead.” Year after year though the moment comes when the Cubs are mathematically eliminated, no matter how stellar their performance. Those cub fans of course would be sore for the next few days, but then it always comes out—“next year.” It’s as if it’s part of Baseball.

Well Squidd and Lloyd, this year at least, you were right. To tell you the truth I hope they go all the way. There are a lot of Cubs fans out there who have been waiting a long, long, long time—the last time the Cubs were in the World Series there were only 48 states and WWII had just ended. The entire “Baby Boomer” generation was nothing but a twinkle in the eyes of returning soldiers and sailors. Now those same Baby Boomers are starting onto Social Security! Almost 60 years from the last Series appearance, and almost a century from the last Pennant win! Just to refresh your memory a bit— the last time the Cubs won the pennant Oklahoma had just become the 46th state, and Henry Ford had just launched the Model T. If they make it into the Series, Chicago and the Cubs should offer any Chicago residents who were alive for the last Pennant win a free ticket to one of the home games—and make it one of the home games that will definitely be played—just in case Chicago sweeps it. But one thing at a time–Congrats on ending 14 year’s of no playoffs at all, especially after last year! Now go whip Atlanta’s a––.

Oh, Squidd and Lloyd– if you ever get out here, or are in NY, let me know, I owe you a beer (or two).

W3C Forms PAG to consider Eolas mess

The W3C has formed a Patent Advisory Group (PAG) in response to the Eolas mess. The group’s mission to evaluate the issues that the Eolas patent court ruling will bring to the web. So far they have (another) mailing list, a home page and a FAQ—which doesn’t really have any new answers, but then right now no one really does.

The only noteable–although not new information–from the FAQ:

“Q. Does W3C plan to ask the community for help in identifying prior art?

“A. This is under consideration, and was successfully used in the context of W3C work on P3P patent infringement allegations.”

More Eolas patent background and articles on this site.

via Zeldman

Microsoft Patent Victory

I find myself once again in the unusual position (for me) of cheering for Microsoft when it comes to an IP issue. One more of the many IP suits involving Microsoft has been settled, and it was determined by the court that Microsoft did not violate Hyperphase’s “patent”. The Judge granted Microsoft’s motion for dismissal. An earlier Judge on the case had a great sense of humor. I wish I could find more complete transcripts but there are some excerpts at the Corp Law Blog.

These are strange times...at least as far as Microsoft goes

Gates says 'Roayalty Free'

Microsoft's patent woes continue

Microsoft lobbies for repeal of patents for software!

WayBack Machine tags my 404

Hmmm… Someone out there was obviously snooping around the Internet Archive Wayback Machine for an old iteration of this site. Out of the blue I started seeing 404 errors for a couple of images, and some flash banners that I hadn’t seen in almost 5 years. No I won’t put them back up there even if I thought I could find them—which I probably could, I still have the Jazz carts—I refuse to revisit anything from MicronPC.com. Micron Electronics was great, MicronPC was even pretty good, but by 1998 MicronPC.com came into being— all downhill from there and it was a fast and bumpy ride.

Strange what comes across your error logs.

Senate passes Do-Not-Call Legislation

The House passed the bill 412—8, the Senate passed it 95—0, President Bush says he will sign it. 51 million phones out of 166 million land line phones and 150 million cell-phones, in the US are signed up. But, wait a minute, a second Judge (this time in Denver, CO) has blocked the Do-Not-Call list on the basis of free speech. Saying that the FTC is discriminating between charitable speech and commercial speech, the FTC is possibly violating the telemarketers right to free speech. Rep Tauzin quipped that “We should probably call the bill ?This Time We Really Mean It Act? to cure any myopia in the judicial branch. The bill leaves no doubt as to the intent of Congress.?

I wonder exactly how fast a constitutional ammendment could be passed?

Other questions:

Do (should) corporations have the all the same rights as individual citizens (e.g. free speech )

Is it an issue of free speech when the system is paid for largely by the consumer ?

how is this different from prohibiting solicitors in an apartment complex or eek business complex.

Of course I also have to ask, why can’t Congress move this efficiently on other issues, many of which have far greater importance than stopping telemarketing scum from interrupting our evenings.

Full story at MSNBC found via /.

EU Software Patents Vote

The EU voted yesterday on the Software Patent issue. This is just the first step of many towards an actual law, but it has been hotly contested with large scale demostrations, political intrigue and even threats by the EU commissioner. The result is not as clear cut as many would have liked to see, but in large part it appears that the EU Parliament has made a stand against the BSA and liberal patents of processes, business methods and software such as we are plagued with in the United States. There were so many amendments proposed, and they were all vote on in a very short period of time, so it may take a few days (especially with translation issues) to get to the bottom of it all. At this point though it appears that:

• No pure software patents allowed-Article 3, which allowed that all software by definition was patentable, was killed
• Business Methods can’t be patented
• Algorithms and data processing can’t be patented
• A patented technique is allowed to be used without authorization or license if it is needed to create or ensure interoperability or to maintain standards—as you can imagine this one was strenuously opposed by some multinationals…<cough>Microsoft<cough>.

So it looks like key amendments were made to protect the EU from descending into the quagmire that is U.S. Patent law. Everything isn’t terribly rosy—the draft needs to navigate through a convoluted process to become an actual law. The EU Commissioner may make good on his threats to withdraw the directive in it’s entirety and achieve patent “harmonization” through a renegotiation of the EPC which would not require the Parliament’s approval, and would in essence bypass—from my understanding of it—the input and wishes of the general population. Of course it’s not like anything like that ever happens on this side of the ocean…

How fast can you pass a bill?

By this time tomorrow there should be a bill signed by the President that explicitly gives the FTC the right and authority enact the “Do-Not-Call” list. A bill passed the in the House with a vote of 412—8 this afternoon and a matching bill is expected to be passed in the Senate before close of business today. The goal is to get it on the Presidents desk today so that it can be signed into law immediately. That would allow the Do-Not-Call to be enacted on October 1st, right on original schedule. Rep. Tauzin said “Fifty million Americans can’t be wrong”

Now if we can enact a similarly tough anti-spam law. Maybe the FTC could set up a Do-Not-Spam registry just so Congress can guage American feelings for that law.
Full story on CNN and Yahoo.

Yesterdays story about the court decision.

GoDaddy Suing Verisign--DNS primer

Got an email from GoDaddy (who I use to register and manage a couple of domains) this evening explaining in pretty good layman’s terms why they have decided to sue Verisign—also recently known affectionately as VeriSlime. In a nutshell they are suing Verisign over the “SiteFinder” service which as they (rightfully) claim misdirects, misleads, costs ecommerce and visitor supported sites and damages attempts to combat spam. GoDaddy has a separate suit to stop the Verisign Wait Listing Service, another highly controversial scam that Verisign has been operating. I really wish ICANN had more enforcement powers or sharper teeth. Well actually I wish we had followed the vision of Jon Postel.

GoDaddy’s press release and the actual legal complaint are PDF and available here.
For some commentary on the “SiteFinder” hijacking scheme:

• All your Web typos are belong to us
• Verisign DNS change broke my HP printer
• The Power To Bind
• Internet Architecture Board report on implications of SiteFinder
• Delegation Only
• ICANN advisory, and request for Verisign to voluntarily suspend SiteFinder service
• Verisign says, go stick it in your root server to ICANN
• A Verisign internal letter: Users ‘vote with their mouses’ for SiteFinder

Someone recently asked me in an email why the big deal over the Verisign tactics. I’ll address that in an essay(rant) this weekend.

Kazaa Sues RIAA for Copyright Infringement

Sharman Networks, makers of Kazaa file sharing software and network, has filed suit against the RIAA for copyright infringement—the RIAA aparantly used the copyright infringing “kazaa light”—and violating it’s network terms of use agreements. RIAA’s puplic comment called Sharman’s “Newfound admiration for the importance of copyright law” ironic and “self serving.” Hello, kettle? This is the pot…we think you’re using copyrights in a totally self serving manner
Spotted at Fark

Federal Do Not Call List Blocked by Court

A federal court in Oklahoma thinks the FTC overstepped it’s authority when it established the wildly popular national do not call list. The decision comes just a week before the list will go into effect. To date approximately 50 million phone numbers have been added to the list. The court action was prompted by a law suit filed by the Direct Marketing Association (and other marketing groups). The DMA some how thinks that the list violates free speech and discriminates against them as an industry. The FTC has only said that they have received and are reviewing the court ruling. The U.S. Representatives in large part responsible for the legislation allowing the FTC to establish the list, Reps. Tauzin and Dingell, said they were “confident this ruling will be overturned and the nearly 50 million Americans who have signed up for the do-not-call list will remain free from unwanted telemarketing calls in the privacy of their own homes.”

Can the telemarketers really be that out of touch with reality? Sorry guys, but I won’t shed any tears for you—I personally supported the legislation that made unsolicited commercial telemarketing a federal offense punishable by 50 lashes with stripped Cat5e cable. Unfortunately, that bill never made it to the floor for a vote.
via Reuters

Excellent use of Director

or–Another Cool Site That Will Be Crippled By Eolas’ Ridiculous Patent

My 3 year old loves to spend time playing on the computer. One of his favorite things to do on the computer is visit one of three sites—Playhouse Disney, Noggin, or Sesame Street. All three of these sites are very well tuned to their audiences, and all three rely heavily on Flash and Director based content to provide interactive games and learning activities. For the most part they all do an excellent job of it too. A few of the games at each site even provide me a bit of entertainment even when my son isn’t around. Tonight we found a new one–ScribbleVision—at Noggin that, although in concept not extremely complicated, was pulled off very well and really had Johann very excited. Although it has a few minor issues, they were not enough to put us off playing it for a good 40 minutes.

The concept behind the game is fairly simple. You help one character (Moose A. Moose) find his cohort by coloring in 2—3 items from a “coloring book page”. After these items are colored to your satisfaction you press a button and see Moose travel in an animated scene with the items you just colored as an integral part of the scene. There are a total of 5 scenes: horse and carriage, boat, train, planes and rocket ships. Johann has done a number of computer coloring book activities and felt at ease with the interface instantly. The controls however did frustrate him–and my wife and I–a little, because they were a little more sensitive. We were rewarded, though, when we saw our polka-dotted horse, its mane and tail trailing in the wind, pulling the carriage being chased by a rainbow-striped dog. Of course, they also have added sound effects. 

As I said, it was good for 40 minutes of our attention even with it’s over-sensitive controls—that’s a long time for a toddler. The programmers at Noggin have an excellent concept and near perfect execution. A bucket fill option and tweaking the brush controls, i.e. the mouse, to make it a bit less taxing, would help our 3 year old enjoy the game even more. Johann loved the activity even with these issues, but did grow frustrated at times with the controls. If you have a toddler through early grade-school child or just love fun uses of Director and Flash check all three of these sites out. You will need to have the Macromedia Shockwave(Director) plug-in installed for the Noggin ScribbleVision activity, and the Flash plug-in for all the sites in general.

Oh, and Mr. Doyle—it’s the loss of sites like these that will really make me curse your patent. Right now my son can open the browser, go to the site and play these games and activities without needing me to do it for him. He takes great pleasure in being able to “Work on the computer net” like his daddy. If plug-ins cease working, that’s going to get quite a bit more complicated. Obviously, there are other means of instilling independence, self-esteem and confidence in a child, but in todays world, I don’t want any opportunity for reinforcing what my wife and I have worked hard to instill in our son to be thwarted–or for our son to be deprived of any educational activity that helps make learning fun. “Daddy, who broke my net?” Hmmm…

edited @ 12:30 on 2003-09-24 for grammatical clarity.

Topographic Maps online

If you ever need topographic maps, or just need to look up topo information about someplace your going to visit, then you will love Topozone. What MapQuest did for driving directions, Topozone is doing for users of topo maps.

Sometimes (often if your not in a big city) it can be a royal pain to get topographic maps of a specific area—let alone be able to preview them and make sure they are recent. Topozone lets a user display a map online from any USGS map. They have the entire USGS collection of topological maps online—an interactive topo map of the entire United States! You can get a map area by place name, decimal degrees, deg(degree)—min(minute)—sec(second), or UTM notation. You can zoom in and navigate around the map window just as in MapQuest. Really nice.

You can add topomaps to your own site with their extremely generous licensing program, e.g. up to 100 maps on one non-profit site, annotated or unaltered for the price of linking the map back to Topozone. They also offer fee based services such as creating custom topo maps for download such as a 10 ×15 mile, 1:50,000 scale map centered on Mystic Pizza. You can also have any map you use online printed as up to a 36” × 44” waterproof map through their partnership with myTopo.com and or MapCard.

This is a sample that is the topo closeup of one of my favorite birding spots.

EU Vote on Software Patents

The European Union parliament is set to vote Wednesday on the issue of software patents. From what I have been following in the English speaking news and the—admittedly biased—portals at the FFII and EFF, this is going to be a very close vote. There have been a whole raft of amendments proposed—some good, some bad—and a wide range of political maneuvers and intrigues. Science, small business and technical organizations have been weighing in with opinions, most opposed to software and business patents. The original proposal was Drafted for the European Union by the BSA a predominantly US organization of the major software publishers—e.g. Microsoft, PeopleSoft, Inuit. Interestingly the BSA’s European Policy page does not mention patents at all, only their support of strong uniform copyright protection for software across Europe.

So why should you care? Especially if you’re in the U.S.? A look at the patent situation in the United States for an example of how “well” software patents work. Eolas v Microsoft (local links below) is a prime example. Software innovation is rapid and incremental. It is practiced as efficiently by small teams and independent programmers as it is by large corporations. Anyone may obtain the skills needed to practice programming art through self-study or generally available public and private institutions. Beyond any educational expense and the cost of a computer, there are no other costs to begin. In fact the direct roots of most of todays highly successful programs and web sites began as college projects or after school projects in the dorms, e.g. Yahoo, Google, Real Audio, web browsers (all of them). The sheer number of software patents that exist has become a problem for new developers as almost any new software is bound to infringe on some patent, or at least could be argued to infringe—which is enough to create a legal issue. That software patents actually impede new development in the field puts them squarely against the intent of patents—to promote new development through limited monopolies granted in exchange for public disclosure. 

The current global problem with patents (indeed all intellectual property rights) is the disparity between different nations. The issues seen in the US should be enough warning to other nations that software patents should not be adopted worldwide, but rather that efforts need to be made to eliminate software patents in the United States. In fact the adoption of software patents and business methods patents in the EU goes directly against the interests of EU citizens and companies—business method and software patents have a 20 year history in the United States whereas in the EU and it’s member states they have not been allowed, recognizing them at this time will only lead to a larger amount of EU citizens and companies having to pay licenses and legal costs to United States companies, even when those EU firms only operate with the EU borders. This will place the European software industry at a severe disadvantage. It flies in the face of the EU’s goal “to become the most competitive and knowledge-based economy in the world.” 

So why would the EU seek to enact software and business method patents, if they clearly do not support EU industry and goals? One clue might be that the original proposal was prepared from a proposal created by the BSA, an alliance of major software companies most of which are headquartered—as is the BSA— in the United States. It is in their interest to expand the patent system of the United States around the world, and if they can bring the EU in line with the United States, how hard will it be to have WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) enact a more globally unified patent system based largely on the policies of the US and the EU. The BSA member companies are large—many are “global” companies—with large patent portfolios in the United States. The BSA and it’s member companies are well versed in political lobbying in the United States…

My comments on Eolas v Microsoft:

1. Microsoft lobbies for repeal of patents for software!
2. Microsoft vs Eolas Patent update
3. Microsoft v. Eolas-A New Twist?
4. Eolas Claims Willing to Settle!

And a couple links here about the wonderful US patent system:

1. Another Amazing and Obvious To Anyone Skilled in the Field Patent Awarded
2. Microsoft’s patent woes continue
3. The patent office has lost it’s marbles

Oldest Genital Fossils in Scotland

When you are hit by this headline, what do you do?

The sub-heading lead wasn’t much better than their title–or my paraphrase of it— but it did at least clear up a bit of confusion:

“Scientists have discovered fossils of the world’s oldest genitals — belonging to 400 million-year-old insects — in ancient rocks in Scotland.”

Oh before the petrified “daddy-long-legs”, the previous record holder for oldest genital fossil— a 100 million year old ostracod (related to shrimp and crabs). Aparently this was a New Scientist Scoop from September 3rd.

Eolas Claims Willing to Settle!

According to a report in BusinessWeek, Eolas founder Mike Doyle says his company is willing to sell Microsoft a license.

“Microsoft has been representing to the world that they have no choice but to remove technology from the browser and disrupt the Internet,” Doyle said in an interview Friday. “And I want to make it very clear that that is not the case. Microsoft has had in its power the ability to settle this case, and to the extent that they’re refusing to settle, it’s their decision.”

Doyle distanced himself from some earlier comments he made, that led many to believe Eolas would be unwilling to license it’s patent to Microsoft. He said of the earlier comments that he was speculating on the hypothetical, but that Microsoft has capitalized on those remarks to spread FUD. Eolas attorney Jan Conlin reiterated that Eolas was open to settlement through licensing.

Microsoft’s response is that it would consider buying a license if it believed this patent was legitimate. MS representative Jim Desler called the Eolas Patent invalid and said that Microsoft believes it will win on appeal. He further commented that “…and we will certainly not pay for technology on the terms they’re seeking.”

Of course there are even more unanswered questions than there were before. Have any licensing offers been extended by Eolas ? When? Under what terms? Why has Microsoft not disclosed any of this to at least the W3C members—or has it–considering they pledged to keep all members informed of developments. The issue is muddier now than ever, and it still leaves plug-in developers, web developers, and corporate and end users without any hint of a resolution to what is a major issue for the next few years of web use and development.

Even if I believed software should be patented–which I don’t–I still believe that the Eolas patent should never have been issued. I would be interested in finding out how “reasonable” any terms Eolas has offered MS are. Microsoft has previously paid for licenses to other patents that MS had vehemently argued were invalid. They have also paid licenses for other IP–SCO Unix licensing for instance–well before the underlying legal argument requiring the license has been settled. I am not suggesting that MS should in fact license the patent, only that it would be consistent with their past practices in this area.

As a matter of principle, I would like to see Microsoft continue the legal battle and succeed in invalidating this patent–as I would like to see all software patents invalidated. As a matter of practicality though, if Eolas terms are in any way reasonable, then obtaining a license to end this debacle now might prove to be the most affordable course to take. As I commented in my original entry on Microsoft vs. Eolas, “if the appeals process fails, Microsoft will offer to pay, and probably pay dearly to get a license from Eolas.”

For more background here see:
Microsoft lobbies for repeal of patents for software!
Microsoft vs Eolas Patent update
Microsoft v. Eolas-A New Twist?
also worth checking out:
IE, Flash, and patents: here comes trouble
Does Microsoft want to lose the plug-in patent case?
Saving the Browser

Enter The Ping-Pong Matrix

This is too funny! I don’t remember where I found this one, I think it was from a mail list for VFX and animation. Enter the Matrix and Crouching Tiger meets Live Theater and Ping-Pong. Definitely worth a look especially if you like ping-pong, martial arts, live theater or VFX. Anyone know if there is a larger version of this somewhere out there ?
Requires Macromedia Flash- It’s flash embedded video.
Yes another of the fine embedded web objects that the Eolas patent covers….

Gates says 'Royalty Free'

…and the trumpets sounded, fire and brimstone rained down amidst a great gnashing—ok a bit over the top. Still for Bill Gates to embrace royalty free protocols and standards even in the smallest way is a major event. Maybe the days of embrace and extend protocols and standards are finally over. In New York Bill promised Microsoft’s full support for XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI as well as a number of other standards and protocols currently under development.

Bill was in New York promoting web services across all operating systems right beside IBM. The web service demonstration showed an application connection between a Windows 2003 server, an IBM WebSphere server running on Linux and a Linux hand held device. I applaud him and Microsoft accepting that, especially in networking and the web, open standards are beneficial, even if they do level the playing field. Bill even had a sense of humor when the press questioned his use of the phrase “royalty-free” responding: “I can’t believe I just said that.” Read the Wall Street and Tech report of the event for more…

Captain Kidd, Block Island

Don’t know where exactly I stumbled across this, but today is Talk Like A Pirate Day…ok…sure. No harm in a little fun. But it did make me think about some of the local lore, so I decided to look into it online. Seems the Connecticut coast—or at least this part of it—likes to talk from time to time about Captain Kidd and buried treasure.

Captain Kidd, in fact did visit the area in the 1680’s as a buccaneer and again just before his capture and return to England. It is known that he stopped at Block Island and tried to use the influence and friends he had in New York to gain a pardon from England. His efforts fail