Global POV: At the Intersection of Technology and Culture

Politics

Springtime for San Diego

The Internet changes peoples' perspectives on many things, their lives, opinions and apparently buildings. The New York Times has an article this morning describing a kerfuffle that the US Navy is having because a barracks built in '60s at the San Diego Naval base looks like a swastika from the air. But nobody could tell until Google Earth. The base is part of a no-fly zone, so commercial air travelers wouldn't have seen it and I guess astronauts kept it to themselves. It's pretty clearly visible in Google Earth however.

Unfettered access to information will cause these little glitches from time to time and I think that it's a good thing. As embarrassing as it undoubtedly is for the Navy, it's entertaining for the rest of us and more importantly, it helps us see the world from a different perspective.

Posted on September 27, 2007

Geller, God and the DMCA

A battle has been smoldering behind the scenes in Web 2.0 companies--inappropriate use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to force material to be pulled from a website. There have been many recent cases of this. Earlier this year, noted fake psychic Uri Geller (remember the bent spoons?) used the DMCA to force Youtube to take down a video critical of Mr. Geller, mostly by showing him up as a fraud.

The DMCA was passed in 1998 and was supposed to make things easy for web site owners--if they were hit with a DMCA request to pull down an article and complied promptly, they were given a shield against being sued. This was supposed to be used for copyright infringement only, but people like Mr. Geller have found that it's the easiest way to force a site to remove a bit of content that may offend for other reasons.

Most recently, the Rational Response Squad (they were the same people that went after Geller) got into it with the Creation Science Evangelism ministry group over the same issue. Youtube happily complied with the Creationists DMCA-based demands and removed an expose video posted by the Squad. Now the DMCA doesn't require the content hoster to do any detective work to prove or disprove the truth of the DMCA claim, they just have to react to it.

The problem is that the DCMA, like so many other areas of intellectual property law, benefit those who can pay lawyers and by default, protect the copyright owner primarily, the hoster second and the poster, dead last.

Posted on September 26, 2007

Intellectual Property

I'm sorry I broke your iPhone--not

Apple has announced that its upcoming iPhone software update this week may inadvertently break phones that have been modified to "unlock" them, freeing their owners from the restriction of using AT&T's less-than-sterling network.

Apple claims that the disabling of hacked phones will be a result of fixing damaged phone software and not as a deliberate attempt by Apple to fight back against hackers.

Yeah.
Right.

It's unfortunate that Apple isn't honest enough to admit whose side they're on here. Clearly they've been pressured by AT&T to "do something" to stop the bleeding of unlocked iPhones. Please note however, that unlocked iPhones are still bought from Apple and the users pay somebody for network charges, but tthey pay market rates which are competitive. Any product that uses technology to lock in a pricing scheme is fair game for hacking. Viva le free market!

Posted on September 25, 2007

To Catch a Virtual World Thief

I have an article in Business Week this morning discussing Second Life and the broader concept of intellectual property on the Internet. The article is here.

Posted on September 24, 2007

Intellectual Property

by Suzanne

Clowning around in airports

TSA's Bibliophiles

Wired reports that airport screeners want to know what you're reading. Privacy advocates obtained database records showing that the U.S. government routinely records the race of people pulled over for extra screening along with offhanded answers to routinely asked questions about the purpose of a trip. The Identity Project, which published a report about its investigation into the Homeland Security's data vacuum called the government's border screening program a "surveillance dragnet". The government stores passenger name records (PNR) for years and PNR's typically contain destinations, e-mail contact information, special meal requests, payment information and frequent flyer miles.The Identity Project is funded by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's John Gilmore. A Privacy Act request filed by the Project asked for data stored for five individuals. Among them Gilmore who's reading material "Drugs and Your Rights" was including in a report. It also noted that he had small flashlights with marijuana leaves on the side.

The TSA becomes more surreal and airports become more circus-like as they continue to encroach on the private lives of Americans to protect our national security. When airport guards feel that it is their job to read and report on the choice of reading material of Americans, it's time for us all to be quiet and watch their antics--send in the clowns.

Posted on September 21, 2007

Security

Master Chief.jpg

Master Chief, Mario and the Mouse

Microsoft's long-awaited Halo 3 comes out next week. One of the fascinating parts of this story is how a single video game can enhance the brand of a company like Microsoft, whose reputation as a consumer entertainment company was weak at the best. Halo made the XBox. And this is not a fluke. Sonic the Hedgehog made Sony gaming. Super Mario brothers made NIntendo.

It's interesting to note that these brands are all still thriving, even though the original games are in the past. The iconic brands of a video game have taken on a life of their own in the digital age. Donkey Kong, Mario and Luigi and even Master Chief will probably be around in some form for decades, maybe even longer. Microsoft is already making plans to merchandise the Halo brand, long after the game is done.

Brands are big business. In the Digital Age, nothing else has as much long-term financial worth as a recognizable brand. Just as the Mouse has made far more money for Disney outside of the original silent films (in 1928), so will these video game brands be the gift that keeps on giving, into the unforeseeable future, on computers that haven't even been thought of yet, invented by scientists who are not even born.

Posted on September 20, 2007

Intellectual Property

If I stole it...OJ takes another stab at celebrity

Q: What does OJ Simpson have in common with Richard Nixon?
A: They both tape themselves

Sorry that wasn't funny, but it is kind of bizarre, isn't it? Two people, beleaguered, besieged and more or less hated by a lot of people who allow, no--encourage, tapes around themselves. Why would they do this? (funnier answer: They're both Dicks)

I can only assume that unpopular, yet famous people long for vindication more than anything (other than not being in jail maybe). I knew that politicians often take refuge in the idea of historical reputation wiping, but I guess all celebrities must console themselves that way sometimes.

It's interesting that as sensors pop up everywhere, people willingly invade their own privacy and tape themselves (or allow themselves to be taped). I suppose that it's similar to the invasion of the reality shows. If OJ goes to jail for real on these theft charges and the main evidence is that tape, how ironic (and stupid) will that have been? You can hear OJ here.
---
Okay , here are my favorite OJ jokes:

How do you find O.J. on the Internet?
Type : slash...backslash...backslash...backslash...escape

What did St. Peter say to Nicole Simpson when she got to heaven?
Your waiter will be along in a minute.

Q: What did O.J. ask after acquittal?
A: To be moved to Arkansas.
Why?
Because he heard that everyone has the same DNA there.

Q. What's the difference between John F. Kennedy and Nicole Simpson?
A. We're not 100% sure who killed JFK.

Posted on September 19, 2007

Pop Culture

Confused and crazy

AOL is moving its Headquarters and senior executives out of Virginia and back to New York. It was only 7 years ago since AOL, in a ballsy, clicks sticks it to bricks approach, bought media mastodon, Time Warner and moved the New Yorkers down to Virginia to be part of the burgeoning Northern Virginia tech scene.

Having been one of the burgeons, I can attest to what it meant to have AOL drag a big conventional company like that down to our level--it was cool. It validated that we all ought to be billionaires because we were different. AOL stock made literally hundreds of millionaires in the DC area; you could see them buzzing up and down the toll road in their little Ferraris, Porsches and Lamborghinis. XOLers provided funding for some of the stupidest startups ever to squeak out an elevator pitch. I know because I was foolishly involved with a few of them.

Now they've thrown in the towel and they're slinking back to New York with their tails between their legs. They have decided that they are an advertising company and as such, they belong in New York with the rest of the advertising companies.

For the record, AOL was a sucky company. They catered to the stupid and unaware, the newcomers to the Internet. Their business model was a bigger version of the street vendors that sell New York maps and if possible, the Brooklyn Bridge to skyscraper gawkers in the Big Apple.

Although they've been on a buying spree lately, history tells us that buying companies is not the same things as assimilating them into a smooth, working business machine. They have a new, unproven management team, a jokey brand and no real product to speak of. Hundreds of years from now, their company will be remembered as being responsible for the hundreds of millions of CDs and floppy disks scattered throughout the world. With a legacy like that, they will need to work hard to create a workable business model. Money alone can't always do it and to be honest, a little humility goes a long way--I don't see any so far, but keep your eyes crossed, following the future moves of AOL is the business equivalent of watching Britney Spears getting out of a low-slung car.

Posted on September 18, 2007

Business

It's a love hack baby

The more popular the computerized device, the quicker it seems to get hacked.

Apple's much ballyhooed iPhone was released 3 months ago with some reasonably draconian lock-up measures to protect their relationship with AT&T. iPhones do not allow 3rd party applications to be loaded, for instance; they also are "locked" to the AT&T network, forcing iPhone users to enter into a service contract with AT&T wireless (formerly Cingular), ranked at the very bottom of wireless providers for customer service as well as being notorious intimate with the U.S. government.

However, less than 100 days after release, there is a thriving market in hacked phones. Wired has a story about unlocked iPhones being sold on eBay and Craig's List. MacWorld has an article explicitly explaining, step-by-step, how users can unlock their phones themselves.

What I can't figure out is did Apple allow some back doors so that they could take the sweet, sweet AT&T deal and wink-wink, empower the users or did they just screw up?

It could be either. I am afraid that i believe the latter. If true that they just messed up, it leads to an interesting implication that maybe you just can't lock stuff down anymore. Oh, would that that were true. But that might be the case. The complexity of modern software coupled with the need for frequent updates, means leaving emmentaler-sized holes in computer gadgets. Perhaps we'll get to the point when "locked" device are not only rejected by the market, not just for being unfriendly to the customers, but because it can be easily hacked?

Posted on September 17, 2007

1 Comment

chips and fish.jpg

Chipping away at Cancer

I don't really believe this, but spread the word anyway. There is a report out that implanted RFID chips can cause cancer. The report claims that the FDA and Verichip, the company that was formed to "chip" people, ignored studies showing a higher-than-normal incidence of cancer in animals. The tumors may be coming from the injection itself or they may be coming from the chip--who knows?

I don't really believe it because it seems that everything causes cancer: cell phones, relay towers, microwave ovens, milk, you name it. It's difficult to test for long-time carcinogenic tendencies. For one thing, it's well--long term. It takes many years to really know. Hell, the tobacco people are still putting up a pretense that tobacco doesn't cause cancer.

The good news is that this cancerous rumor will almost certainly slow down the inevitable adoption of chipping human beings.

Posted on September 14, 2007

Privacy

Swarms of politicians

I believe that a great deal of the problems that we face today in America stem from the concept of "professional politicians." These men and women are getting their livelihood from political office and presumably are loathe to give up the money, power and perks. This concept is a relatively new one, mostly in the last 50 years. Historically people would go to Washington for a couple of terms, often after achieving success at something else, even if only running the family estate. After serving their time in DC, they would return to wherever it was they were coming from in the first place.

Now, it's all different. We have politicians that "conveniently" live in certain areas. I know of at least 4 Senators who have almost no connection with their state other than maintaining a residence of convenience there. Many politicians are groomed, some from birth, to take office and keep it. If dishonest, the gravy spigots turn on immediately; if they have some ethics, they have to wait until they're finally voted out by a disgusted electorate, at which point they can wallow in corporate muck as a directors, high priced lobbyists or political appointees.

We need term limits for all offices and campaign financing should be reexamined with an eye towards making it possible for pharmacists, writers, engineers and nurses to be elected.

Posted on September 13, 2007

Bitches

License to character assassinate

I have often wrote about how easy it would be to attack a political candidate more or less anonymously over the Internet. I predicted that it would be an issue in 2004 and I was wrong. I feel more comfortable about renewing that thought for 2008. Perhaps I'm just an early adopter.

It's already happening. Former Senator and character actor extraordinaire Fred Thompson has been contending with a vicious web site called PhonyFred.com that attacks Thompson for many things including calling him: Fancy Fred, Five o’Clock Fred, Flip-Flop Fred, McCain Fred, Moron Fred and Playboy Fred. "Playboy" Fred?

The site is being attributed to Romney because the creator of the site is a Vice President at the strategic firm advising Romney's run.

So these guys are pretty dumb, right? It's pretty easy to hide the trail--certainly easier than that. Obfuscate the domain name contact info, choose a generic corporate name when opening up the ISP account and better yet, host it outside the US. It works just as quickly if the server is in the Caymans as if it's in New York.

If we don't soon see lots of these trash n' flash sites, I'll be surprised. It's so easy to do, only what might still pass as integrity should stop any candidate from trying it. Hell, call me. I'll consult.

Posted on September 12, 2007

1 Comment

Politics

Fair is foul and foul is fair

I have been involved in the technology industry for close to 30 years and not a month goes by where I don't see something significantly different or interesting. Once or twice a year I'm even "wowed", seeing a gadget that just does something remarkable, either too because it's too cool for words or even more rarely, because it's so useful, it can make you cry.

Then there's the things that go wrong. I completely understand new tech breaking down or maybe some esoteric bug that manifests when some never-been-tested-before situation occurs, "we never tried using the invisible dog fence while making microwave popcorn. Look, we'll buy your kid a new poodle." But that's not what really happens. What is the most common tech problem?

Microphones that don't work. It happened to General Petraeus yesterday while testifying on the Hill.

After microphones? Speakerphones. Then comes the dreaded A/V nightmare, the overhead presentation.

Why is 50 year old tech this difficult to get right? I'm not sure that I've ever been to a presentation where there wasn't a problem with one of these three gadgets: microphone, speakerphone or overhead display.

This bodes ill for the future of truly complex gadgets like cellphones, PDAs or GSMs. As we begin using them in critical situations where we need them to function, will they let us down the way their stupid audiovisual brethren have? And where are the geeks from the old High School A/V club now that you need them? Oh that's right, they're running Microsoft.

Posted on September 11, 2007

Socializing the Internet

Social Networks are an interesting phenomena. Some sites like Linkedin are business-driven; an extension of real-world networking, while others like Myspace are multimedia party lines. Facebook began as an alumni service and seems to be morphing into a Swiss Army knife social network.

Several companies with strong brands like Coca-cola and Disney have built their own social networking sites.

New companies like Lemonade are trying to integrate pay referrals into social networking, allowing their participants to make a little money for using the service.

But what are they really? What will they become?

I believe that social networking is a transitory phenomena and will disappear as separate business entities quite soon. The underlying strata of the Internet will become a big social networking site. It's hard to believe that any one company among the ones listed above (and add Second Life to that list), will dominate something that large, or indeed, even exist in anything like their current form, if at all.

The Internet needs other "social representation" layers sitting on top of xml, html and http. The Internet will become one big always-on social networking site used throughout the day the same way as we use the "real world" when we step outside our front doors in the morning.

Posted on September 10, 2007

Nasty bits of Patriot Act ruled unconstitutional

A New York District judge struck down some key provisions of the Patriot Act yesterday. Judge Marrero ruled that the use of National Security Letters by the FBI must stop. These letters were issued by mid-level FBI agents (with no outside or judicial review) and handed to service providers, ISPs or telephone companies, requiring them to turn over customer records. The companies were barred by law from informing the client that they were being investigated.

Judge Marrero's ruling stated that usage of the National Security Letters violated Americans' First Amendment rights and constitutional separation of powers, presumably those of the judicial branch, because courts had little or no opportunity to review these orders.

The Bushies will undoubtedly appeal the ruling, but until then, the practice will stop.

This ruling made my week because it blocked one of the more egregious privacy violations perpetrated by the Bush administration. These FBI letters gave law enforcement a blank check to investigate Americans for essentially any reason. Several reports have come out this summer indicating that the FBI did in fact, abuse these letters, in thousands of cases, no less.

Our nation is built on checks and balances. Every action taken by a public official should be reviewed by SOMEONE. Anyone who claims that what they're doing is too important to be subject to any external review is too arrogant. Watch them.

Posted on September 07, 2007

Privacy

Hot cup of Apple

I'm thoughtful about Steve Job's announcements yesterday regarding changes to the iPod line. There were three significant points: They're dropping the price of the iPhone by $200, introducing a wi-fi enabled touch screen iPod and have made a deal with Starbucks to allow free wireless access to the iTunes web site while in the store to enable the customer to buy music.

I suspect that the most significant is the third part, although if I had run out and bought the iPhone for list two months ago, I would undoubtedly be furious about yesterday's price drop. The Starbucks deal seems like a big thing, although the future is still a little hazy. The possible mash-ups between Apple and Starbucks are endless...buy songs while drinking coffee, drink coffee while cruising the web, the list goes on. Seriously, the next generation of significant Internet presence will arise, IMHO, from the interstices between the "real" world and the "virtual" one. And nothing says real like a hot cup of Starbucks.

Prediction: In the next year, Starbucks accepts micropayments from an iPod for purchases. You heard it here first folks.

Posted on September 06, 2007

Business

Larry Craig, not that there's anything wrong with that

Larry Craig. Most of us didn't even know who he was last month. For the record, he's a Republican Senator from Idaho who votes fairly conservatively on most issues, supporting the Patriot Act and is against gay marriages. Most recently he has been in the news because he was caught "cruising" (also called "cottaging") a men's room at the Minneapolis, St. Paul airport. According to the police officer's report:

At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot.... The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area. Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times

Craig pled guilty. After the story broke, the Republican leadership broke with him, most calling for his resignation. The Senator announced his intention to resign by the end of the month, but is apparently now equivocating a bit.

I don't like hypocrites and the list of holier-than-thou Congressmen who say one thing in front of the camera and do another in private marches on. Not just sex of course, but as Michael Moore so famously pointed out in Fahrenheit, almost none of the biggest war mongers on the Hill have sent their own kids to Iraq.

So I bet I wouldn't like Craig for his hypocrisy, but hey, that's not what he's getting beat up about. He's being beat up for being GAY. Yeah, cruising stalls in a public place is illegal (I think it is?), but that's not why Craig is being abandoned...it's because it looks like he plays for the other ball team. Craig is being lumped into the same gravy as wannabe pedophile Mark Foley (another Republican Congressman, this one from the state of lunacy--Florida.) Craig did not betray the trust of young people, he was looking for some action. So why is what he did (being gay) occupying the same niche as child stalkers like Foley? Could it be...American homophobia?

Nah.

Posted on September 05, 2007

Politics

Prophylactic browsing

The New York Times has a thoughtful piece discussing the pros and cons of using software that blocks out ads on browsers. The application in question, Adblock plus, has been quite controversial of late, mostly because it works. What it does is to "white out" the ads on a given website's page. Some ad-dependent sites have taken to blocking Firefox as a way of stopping Adblock.

Advertisers also hate it. The 'S' word is often invoked by those in the advertising business to describe ad blockers--"stealing". Similar sentiments have been expressed by television networks in regards to Tivo or movie studios to "Pirates."

It's time for content providers to wake up and smell the Java. The effective way to advertise is to make the advertising appealing, not intrusive. For every Doubleclick, there will always be an Adblock.

Posted on September 04, 2007