technology

It's long past time for not only judges but lawyers and politicians to be educated…

This entry was posted in copyright culture media patents politics technology and tagged Google+ law modernworld on by (updated 4644 days ago)

It's long past time for not only judges but lawyers and politicians to be educated on the modern world of communications and intellectual property. There is far too much muddle-headed thinking and a complete lack of proportion and common sense.

If a judge can't look at a case like Paul Chambers with some reasonable context and immediately dismiss it, they should instantly removed from the bench. Similarly, a prosecutor that would even bring such a case should be fired.

#modernworld #law

Reshared post from +Jeff Jarvis

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Where are the judges fit for the internet age?
Nick Cohen: Twitter and Facebook are having a transformational effect on the nature of secrecy and access

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Fully autonomous vehicles are still quite a few years out, but the many of necessary…

This entry was posted in cars technology and tagged autonomous cars Google+ on by (updated 4648 days ago)

Fully autonomous vehicles are still quite a few years out, but the many of necessary pieces are appearing in cars now. The next big step is integrating all of those signals to build smarter control algorithms.

We also need more precise GPS data which will be enabled by the next generation of satellites that are going up over the next couple of years, assuming LightSquared doesn't mess it all up first.

#cars #autonomous

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Five Reasons The Robo-Car Haters Are Wrong
.autonomous_left_rail {
clear: left;
float: left;
font-size: 0.9em;
margin-bottom: 30px;
margin-left: 0;
margi…

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Excellent news for the web! Now we need to go back revisit the pantent granting process…

This entry was posted in copyright patents and tagged Google+ on by (updated 4647 days ago)

Excellent news for the web! Now we need to go back revisit the pantent granting process and get examiners to outright reject patents that are either obvious, vague or duplicate ideas that have already been produced.

Reshared post from +Tim O’Reilly

It's so great to see the Eolas patent struck down. We had firsthand knowledge of this case at O'Reilly, since +Dale Dougherty and +Pei Wei, who worked with us on GNN back in 1992 and 1993, have testified repeatedly in this trial over the past decade or more. Pei's work with Viola (see http://viola.org) was clearly prior art, but it took till now for the court system to catch up with that obvious fact.

The current patent system is a terrible tax on invention, as it requires real inventors to spend time in court rather than focusing on making real things happen. We must remember that the patent system was supposed to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts," not to enrich people who know how to work the legal system.

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Texas Jury Strikes Down Patent Troll’s Claim to Own the Interactive Web
TYLER, Texas — After threatening web companies for more than a decade, Michael Doyle and his patent-holding company Eolas Technologies — …

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Apparently, Elon Musk has decided he wants to be the next Steve Jobs. 13

This entry was posted in cars technology the business and tagged Google+ on by (updated 4726 days ago)

By opting to go with a unique, proprietary charging connector, Tesla Motors will be forcing buyers of its new Model S electric sedan to also use its proprietary home charging station or rely on being able to hunt down a public version somewhere, assuming anyone installs one in a public place. Tesla will offer an adapter that will allow drivers to also use stations with the J1772 standard connectors that virtually every other automaker has opted to use, but that increases the hassle of charging on the go.

A charge connector doesn't need to be pretty, it needs to be functional, durable and above all safe. The J1772 connector is designed to withstand upwards of 10,000 insertions without getting loose. I have a feeling the Tesla unit may not last that long.

Being different to do something better is good. Being different just to be different, is just different.

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Bucking Trends, Tesla Goes It Alone on Plug Design
A new home charger from the electric-vehicle manufacturer will adapt to, but not conform out of the box, to SAE J1772, the prevailing plug and charger standard for E.V.'s in America and Europe.

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Steve Jobs proves himself to be a huge hypocrite 6

This entry was posted in culture patents technology and tagged Google+ on by (updated 4726 days ago)

In the 1994 interview clip below where he discusses the Macintosh, Steve Jobs quotes the line from Picasso where he says "Good artists copy, great artists steal." Jobs then goes on to say, that "we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

As I said in a previous post about Jobs being one of the great leaders of our time, virtually none of the great products of his career were done first by Apple or Pixar or Next. Jobs just applied his sense of style to edit and refine.

Apparently Jobs only believed that permission to steal ideas applied to him. In a widely reported quote from the authorized Walter Isaacson biography that will be released on Monday, Jobs lays into Android

"“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

The iPhone is a great product but it's not perfect and Jobs attitude toward Android is deplorable. We can only hope that Tim Cook sees the stupidity in this approach and finally backs down on this ridiculous patent war.

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Protecting the powerful at the expense of the masses

This entry was posted in america ministry of truth politics technology and tagged an informed public gags politics power the powerful transparency unions on by (updated 4388 days ago)

Over the past decade in particular but for some time before that there has been an increasing movement to protect the powerful in our society at the expense of the common people. This movement has accelerated dramatically in the past year at least in part because of the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case that essentially freed corporate interests to spend as much as they want on political campaigns while individuals remain shackled by campaign finance laws.

We can see the initial effects in places like Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan where newly elected republican governors and legislatures have moved rapidly to bring in legislation to strip public sector employees of collective bargaining rights and here in Michigan to dissolve local governments and school boards and replace them with private sector “emergency financial managers.”

However, the problem goes well beyond that into many other sectors of society. For example a company called Medical Justice that aims to protect doctors from frivolous malpractice suits sells them contracts that they can use with their patients. Doctors using these contracts force patients to sign them before providing treatment. These contracts are meant to provide a shield for the doctors from public reviews of their work. According to these “anti-defamation” contracts patients can either be prohibited from posting online reviews of their doctors or the doctors are given the right to edit or delete online postings from patients.

While bogus reviews from disgruntled employees or others with a grudge are always a potential problem, no such contract will do anything to stop it. Anyone can set up a blog or go on Facebook, Twitter or some other site and make negative comments. Doctors are ill-served by paying for such contracts and any patient presented with one should refuse to sign and go find another doctor.  If a doctor is truly providing bad service the public should know about it and the doctor should either improve or go out of business.  DoctoredReviews.com has an excellent response to this whole subject.

Another prime example of the powerful trying to gag the ordinary is pointed out by Seth Godin. In Iowa the legislature is moving forward with a law that would make it illegal to record activities at industrial farming operations without the owners consent. The reality is that many of these operations treat animals very poorly in the pursuit of higher profit margins. While there is nothing wrong in general with profit, the food produced by these farms is often of lower quality (taste and nutritional value) and more susceptible to contamination from pathogens like e-coli.

When public health is at risk, the idea of government banning anyone from showing what goes on these facilities is extremely troubling but unfortunately entirely consistent with politicians that have been funded by the wealthy and powerful.

Godin goes on to explain that public transparency is almost invariably better for business than gagging the public. Republicans like to go on and on about protecting free markets, but they really only care about one side of the equation.  A truly free market requires that both buyers and sellers be informed about the true value of a product and be aware the total supply and demand. Without this knowledge, one side can easily manipulate the other to their own benefit and that is never a good thing for the long-term health of a market or a society.

Regardless of whether the market is for medical services, chicken or labor, both sides of the supply demand equation must be educated and free to take their products/services or money elsewhere.

Flawed TV ratings behind move to block TV streaming to tablets

This entry was posted in media technology and tagged broadcasters internet nielsen ratings streaming television time warner cable on by

Recently Time Warner Cable made a new iPad app available to its subscribers that allows them to stream live TV signals directly to the tablet and immediately a number of networks jumped on TWC and demanded that their channels be removed from the app. Now, you might be asking yourself why any TV broadcaster would want to reduce the size of its potential audience? While the networks make noise about licensing restrictions, the truth of the matter is something completely different and it poses a threat to the whole revenue stream of mainstream media.

The TWC app is actually quite restrictive in how it lets users stream content. In order to watch anything, users have to be at home on their local network, meaning that you can’t watch your shows when you are traveling or just standing in line somewhere. Time Warner’s argument is that this limitation means the iPad is just like any other TV in the house showing content.  The networks argue that their licenses with cable companies only allow feeding shows to TVs over the cable and not over WiFi.

The real problem however is not the type of device being used to view shows or how the signal gets there. It’s about the fundamentally flawed way in which traditional TV viewership is measured.  Broadcasters make their money by selling advertising during programming. The prices charged for ads are based on how many people watch a show.  For decades, AC Nielsen has provided the ratings numbers that everyone in TV uses to set ad rates. For nearly as long, everyone that uses Nielsen numbers has known that the survey results which are based on surveys of viewers are highly inaccurate. Unfortunately they tend to err on the high side which meant that advertisers were probably paying too much for advertising time.  However, since everyone was using the same numbers all broadcasters went and advertisers went along with it.

Now however, the advent of internet broadcasting turns the whole ratings game on its head. Unlike traditional broadcasts, internet streams can be counted precisely. A quick check of server logs can reveal exactly how many times a program was watched and for how long. The result is a far more accurate measure of ratings that is likely to be substantially lower than traditional measures. Rather than embracing the new technology, and finding ways to make money off it, broadcasters are shunning it in order to protect an old unsustainable measurement method.

Of course the old guard won’t be able to maintain this facade for long. Just as the music and publishing industries have had to evolve, it’s only a matter of time before traditional broadcast channels go away.  Viewers increasingly watch what they want, when they want and where they want. More accurate measurements of viewer engagement will mean allow some programming to flourish while other material fades away.

President Obama and ISS crew talk about R2

This entry was posted in technology and tagged discovery international space station iss obama r2 robonaut 2 on by (updated 5004 days ago)

Robonaut 2, better known as R2 finally arrived at the International Space Station last weekend after sitting packed aboard the space shuttle Discovery for more than four months. R2 is the first humanoid robot to make it into space and at this point he is still very much experimental.

The astronauts have moved the crate holding R2 into the station, but the robot hasn’t been unpacked and set up yet. That will be happening sometime in the next few weeks at which point the crew will start testing R2’s performance in micro-gravity and the engineers from the Johnson Space Center and General Motors will tweak the control systems. For now, the engineers on the ground have sent up a set of task boards that will be used for testing, but eventually R2 is expected to handle some of the more mundane tasks around the station like keeping the air filters and hand rails clean.

The other day, president Obama called the ISS to talk to the combined crews of the station and the shuttle and halfway through the discussion turned to R2. Check out the video above.  BTW, R2 has no legs at this time, just an upper body that is mounted on a pedestal.

Apple goes too far with subscription money grab 4

This entry was posted in business movies music technology and tagged apple extortion subscription on by

You have to give Apple credit for chutzpah. Last week they announced a new subscription system for content available on iOS devices and they are trying to grab revenues that they have no legitimate claim too.  I love Apple design and I prefer to use Apple computers and iPods over any competing brands. However, I have avoided being drawn into the iOS ecosystem which includes iPhone and iPad. Apple simply exerts far too much control over these devices for my liking.

When Apple introduced the App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch several years ago they set up a system that allowed both paid and free apps. Aside from a one-time $99 to join the developer program, developers could create and distribute apps through the store at no additional cost such as hosting fees. Developers that opted to charge for their apps would split the revenues 70/30 with Apple. This wasn’t an entirely unreasonable split since Apple provided the distribution servers and credit card processing. It’s generally been acknowledged that Apple makes little or no profit on this deal since its costs were roughly comparable to its 30% of the take. A fair deal all around.

The new subscription system allows publishers to distribute apps such as News Corp’s “The Daily” and charge a recurring subscription fee for content, just like a newspaper or magazine sub. Apple insists on take a 30% cut of this revenue which is OK if it is handling data distribution and credit card processing. However at the same time that the subscription payment system was announced, it declared that any and all purchases through apps must be handled through its in-app payment system and the subsequent 70/30 split.

This is actually very problematic for many companies. For example, Amazon offers a free Kindle e-reader app for iOS devices (and Android and Blackberry as well). Kindle users can buy books directly on their devices but on other machines, the app sends users to a mobile browser to search for books and make purchases on the Amazon web site. The books can then be downloaded through the app from their library.  Nowhere in this process is Apple facilitating anything. They are not serving data or handling financial transactions, Amazon is bearing all the costs of distribution. So why does Apple deserve any payment.

This actually started when Sony submitted a reader app similar to the Kindle App that also tried to bypass the in-app purchase system and Apple rejected it. Apple subsequently told Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other distributors that they could no longer get away without paying Cupertino its due. The situation gets even worse for streaming media providers like Pandora, Rhapsody, Netlfix and Hulu.

Those companies spend a lot of money on licenses and a distribution backbone independent of Apple.  Apple provides no service to them other than then customers that bought its products and want to use a variety of services. However, Apple already profited handsomely when it sold the devices. If Apple wants an ongoing revenue stream from media streaming it needs to get off the pot and open its own service.

Being forced to pay Apple 30% of gross revenue for the privilege of access to its huge customer base is just outright extortion on Apple’s part. Most of these companies are money losers already losing such a large chunk for no reason would make then totally unviable. If they raise prices to pay off Apple they will also have to raise the price charged to users on other platforms like Android and Blackberry because Apple also mandates that media distributors cannot charge its users more than any other platform.

The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice have apparently opened a preliminary anti-trust investigation into the new Apple practices.  Unfortunately it seems unlikely that the feds will end up doing anything of significance to Apple. Given that, people should stop buying iOS devices until Apple backs down on this issue. The money grab needs to stop.  Apple should not be paid for doing nothing.

Al Jazeera English now available on Roku

This entry was posted in media middle east politics technology and tagged al jazeera cable news middle east roku on by (updated 5013 days ago)

For those looking for  more intelligent and thoughtful coverage of what is really going on in Egypt, Al Jazeera English is the place to go. Unfortunately, there isn’t a major cable company in the United States with the guts to carry the Qatar-based channel.

However, thanks to modern streaming technology viewers can bypass the gate keepers at KableTown. If you have a Roku hooked up to your TV, add the Newscaster channel and you will now find Al Jazeera English listed as one of the available programs.
Roku rocks!