Book to get: William Alford: To Steal a Book Is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilization. I haven’t read or even ordered this, but it is the third time I have come across it – independently, from a Concours project on What Every CIO Should Know About China, in this Joho post.
According to a Chinese student of mine who is studying the DVD pirate market in China, the pirates tend to have better products than the originals available six months after the original release (in contrast to my own experience). At a conference on DRM a few weeks ago, one of the participants told me that it would not matter much what we do here in the West – what is important is how the Chinese will do.
Stay tuned.
Author Archives: Espen
Cory Doctorow coming to Oslo!
And now it it time to announce the technology event of the year in Oslo:
The Norwegian Polytechnic Society invites you to a discussion with Cory Doctorow, themed “The Economics of Openness”
Time: May 9th from 7pm to 8:30pm, with informal discussions following.
Place: The conference hall, Norwegian School of Management’s Center for Management Education (at the old Marine College, Ekeberg – map reference), Karlsborgveien 4, Oslo. (Parking is available, or you can take the Ljabru tram line (about 10 minutes) from the center of Oslo.)
Open standards and access to information are not just about about teenagers downloading MP3 files. Historically, openness – in the widest sense of the word – has been an important contributor to economic success: Open societies experience faster economic growth and political stability than closed ones. Despite this, we see a trend today where public and private actors work to limit access to information, using both technical and legislative means.
The Norwegian Polytechnic Society, which has facilitated debate about technology and society for more than 150 years, has invited the Canadian author and activist Cory Doctorow to speak about openness as a basis for economic growth and innovation, followed by a debate. Doctorow currently works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an organization working for protection of electronic freedomes, and has as a representative of EFF followed the processes in international fora such as WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) and the EU Parliament closely.
Cory Doctorow is himself an avid user of information technology and a prolific content producer. In accordance with his principles of openness, he makes his whole production (including books) available through his web site craphound.com. He is also a regular contributor to boingboing.net, one of the most widely read blogs on the Internet. Doctorow is a lively and engaging speaker, who delights in audience interaction.
Free admission, please register to the office of the Norwegian Polytechnic Society, via email or telephone +47 2242 6870. (Or, if you prefer, by writing a comment to this post.)
Let users lead
The Feature has an interesting interview with Erik von Hippel (whose latest book Democratizing Innovation can be downloaded from his website in PDF format or bought from Amazon). He researches the contribution to technical development from lead users.
The interesting perspective here, of course, is that users (or, at least, customers) can lead you astray when you are facing a disruptive technology – and, at least according to Eirik Chambe-Eng in Trolltech, you cannot expect applications to “write themselves” in an open source model, only error checking and comments on extensions.
Looking forward to reading this book – the difficulty of using leading users must lie in when not to use them.
Visicalc to the rescue
Tom Evslin is reminescing about Visicalc over in his blog, how it saved his bacon when he was road commissioner for Vermont.
I suspect there are my stories like this. I always liked the quote from Dan Bricklin, about people’s reaction to the program:
In those days, if you showed it to a programmer, he’d say “Yeah, that’s neat. Of course computers can do that–so what?” But if you showed it to a person who had to do financial work with real spreadsheets, he’d start shaking and say, “I spent all week doing that.” Then he’d shove his charge cards in your face.
(This from Licklider, T. R. (1989). “10 Years of Rows and Columns.” BYTE 14(13): 384-390.)
Pervasive computing – we seem to have forgotten how much this technology has changed our lives, how abundance of processing power is in everything.
French competitor to Google
The Economist has a story on how the French see Google as a case of English-language imperialism and want to combat this with a competing French language search site (sounds OK to me) which should be sorted not by popular demand, but by a team of properly authenticated (by Academie Francaise?) experts, lest something as vulgar as how popular a page is be used as a criterion.
If it wasn’t for the dateline of March 31, I would have thought this a very Economist April 1st joke…..
Googling quotes
Google has a couple of cool new features: If you put in a sticker symbol, it will give you a quote. And if you have Firefox or Mozilla, it will pre-fetch the first page for you, so that it is already cached when you click on it.
Which leads me to suspect (especially when you include Google Desktop and Google’s limitation of its first page to 26 words or so) that Google is a company populated by Morlocks intent on bringing back the command line interface….
Distributed password cracking
Interesting article in the Washington post about how the Secret Service in the States is using grid computing to crack passwords. Interesting because it adds an aspect of social engineering by creating targeted word lists based on the suspect’s emails, web cache etc.
In other words: Be eclectic, multilingual, and really good at remembering non-meaningful passwords…..
(from Slashdot, which for once had some good jokes in the comments)
Peter Drucker on protectionism
Peter Drucker, who remains the “consultant’s consultant” shows his form in his article The Evolution of Protectionism in National Interest, arguing that the United States is no longer the single dominant economy in a world where blocking imports no longer can protect home industries, since prices are set in worldwide markets where information is freely available. Protectionism has evolved from tariffs to export subsidies and bureaucracy – especially on agriculture. And regulatory bodies, especially national ones, matter less since multinational companies increasingly are small and outside the realms of economic statistics. Excerpt:
We have almost no data on the world economy of the multinationals. Our statistics are primarily domestic. Nor do we truly understand the multinational and how it is being managed. How, for instance, does a multinational pharmaceutical company decide in what country first to introduce a new drug? How does a medium-sized multinational, like the German surgical-instrument maker mentioned earlier, decide whether to keep importing into the United States? To buy a small American competitor who has become available? To build its own plant in the United States and to start manufacturing there? Our dominant economic theories–both Keynes and Friedman’s monetarism–assume that any but the smallest national economy can be managed in isolation from world economy and world society. With an estimated 30 percent of the U.S. workforce affected by foreign trade (and a much higher percentage in most European countries), this is patently absurd. But an economic theory of the world economy exists so far only in fragments. It is badly needed. In the meantime, however, the world economy of multinationals has become a truly global one, rather than one dominated by America and by U.S. companies.He finishes by painting a picture of an (as it seems to me, at least, global) “new mercantilism” increasingly influenced by the E.U. and its standards and regulations, adopted as free market alternative to the US-dominated NAFTA.
(Via Marginal Revolution)
Open software move on ERP?
So, IBM will buy Ascential, presumably to fill out its software range, which has been missing a good ERP suite.
From a purely economic and technical viewpoint, this one does not make sense. IBM is a company which has as a strategy that they will do anything that creates value for the customer (which really isn’t a strategy according to Porter’s definiton, but IBM might be the only company in the enterprise space that still could make this claim and sound believable.) If the company sticks to anything, it is that they believe in open standards and modularism, as evidenced in their heavy support for Linux, Java, XML and other open standards.
Which begs the question – if your future direction is all about open standards, you really shouldn’t need to own companies and software like Ascential, you could just work with whatever comes down the pipeline and publishes to the right standards. You could have a partnership, recommend Ascential because your salesforcre knew it, but really let the customers decide.
So, I guess the interesting question is what IBM will do with Ascential’s stuff once they own it? Will they reengineer it to become thoroughly open standard and pull the same trick on SAP as they pulled on Microsoft (that is, make the software (which IBM can’t sell anyway) available for free and make their money on modifications, operation and perhaps added hardware sales?)
If that is in the offing, we can look forward to some really interesting years ahead, with competition heating up and utility computing perhaps really happening at last.
Integrated air travel
The Economist has an interesting article on the coming optimization of airline processes, to make travel easier. Most of this is stuff that travellers have known for quite a while – self-service kiosks, electronic tickets, and check-in via mobile telephone. A more substantial investment (both in terms of equipment and procedural changes) is RFID for luggage handling. This will take longer time, and RFID technology will have to improve quite a bit. The article mentions 95% accuracy RFID tag reading in transportation settings, but a large company I talked to said it was more in the neighbourhood or 80-90%, that is, the same as unassisted bar codes and nowhere near what is necessary for accurate large-scale luggage handling.
That will change, of course. The main way forward, as the article points out, lies in standardization and interlinking – making all airlines use these technologies. Wonderful for the traveller, but it erodes the potential for differentiation. But that potential has probably disappeared already, since most of the large airlines, at least those within functioning alliances, have the technologies anyway.
The article briefly touches on the real problem of airline travel: The interlinking to procedures and services not provided by airlines. The high-speed train to the airport which requires you to queue through a moronically designed ticket reader (try Gardermoen in Oslo, where the train does 200km/h and then leaves you waiting for 5 minutes to get off the concourse), the taxi service (which in many countries, notably the US and China, still don’t take credit cards) and the various public control activities will need to be streamlined and interlinked as well.
A few years ago, when I travelled frequently to the US, I had a wonderful thing called the INSpass, which was a biometric identification system (hand geometry) that would get me into the US in less than two minutes. I walked up to the INSpass kiosk, pulled an electronic card through, typed in how long I would stay, put my hand on the hand reader, got a receipt I put in my passport and I was on my way. Wonderful, and if my technological insticts don’t totally underserve me, at least as secure and accurate as a manual check by an agent, electronic passport or not. The upshot was that I was through immigration in no time flat, and, with only carry-on luggage, could make my connection to Boston two hours ahead of my original booking.
Airlines cut costs and improve accuracy by using electronic identification. I just wich public control services would do the same thing. The INSpass was brilliant – I spent 45 minutes getting it, and saved many hours using it. I just wish the US Immigration office would revive it – and that many other public control organizations would look at the INSpass and realize that it is a lot easier to sell increased control to travellers by offering convenience than an increasingly threadbare offer of more security from terrorists.
Integration within airlines will help. Integration outside airlines is even better, but the benefits of the integation have to show through to the individual traveller.
And while we are at it – as a friend of mine once wondered, how come we carry our luggage until we are almost on the airplane, then drop it off on a conveyor belt that feeds into an incredibly expensive mechanism to take the bag the last 500 meters to the plane? Why not let us drop the bag off closer to home – or have us carry it all the way out to the plane? I am aware of the need for load balancing before loading the plane, but you could do that calculation at the gate, you could also get your luggage at the gate when you leave. This would reduce the wear and tear and theft that comes with moving luggage around on big airports, for instance. Of course, you would still need the conveyor system for transfers, but still….. Seing your bag leaving the plane on a conveyor belt as you disembark and knowing that you will see it again, if you are lucky, after 20 minutes deep in the not particularly friendly bowels of whatever airport you are at does not give the impression of a well integrated service. But I ramble…..
Change is in the air. But not really – what is happening so far has a strong whiff of speeding up the mess. And that, of course, is marginally useful.
English is as English does
Jeremy Paxman: The English: Portrait of a people
Fun book – really a collection of essays – on the English (not to be confused with Britain…..). A good companion to Bill Bryson’s Notes From a Small Island, which Paxman pans a number of times with the huffiness of an academically oriented journalist beaten to the punch by an American with better jokes and fewer footnotes.
Paxman sees the English myth – of “mustn’t grumble”, uneducated elite and imperial post-partum depressions – as a big lie. Hooliganism, modernism and individuality are not aberrations, but the true English character, and have always been. Interesting chapter on the strict hierarchical relationship between the sexes, as well as the consequences of generations trained never to display emotion.
Recommended.
May the team with the best surgeon win…
Steroids can be detected, but a little surgery to enhance sports capability apparently is OK.
I just can’t wait for the reality show version of this – follow the teams’ heroic surgeons as they slice, dice and mix for your viewing pleasure….
Warming up the DMCA
Anyone who has been the recipient of a “cease and desist” letter should take a look at the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse website before responding. This is an excellent source and a great example of how universities and research organizations directly benefit society.
Airtime Machiavelli
My colleague and fellow case teaching enthusiast Mark Kriger dug into his files a few days ago and showed me Robert Ronstadt’s The Art of Case Analysis, a self-published how-to for prospective students in a case teaching environment. This thing is fantastic – it has strategies for how to look smart in front of the teacher (see exhibit), where to sit in the classroom, and roles to play in the classroom. Also has pointers to preparation and case ethics, as well as some basic analysis. My, what a cheat sheet for students…..
Here are three alternative strategies for how to let the teacher form a good impression:
And here is where to sit in the classroom:
Corporate LIFF
Anyone who enjoyed Douglas Adams‘ The Meaning of Liff will enjoy Fouroboros’ executive lexicon.
Architecture and buildings
JohnJim McGee (with whom I briefly overlapped at Harvard) has written an excellent essay on architecture of buildings and systems based on Stewart Brand’s book How Buildings Learn.
I first encountered this perspective back in the mid-90s, when I worked at CSC and Richard Pawson pursued the same ideas, thinking about how systems architecture could learn from the adaptive architecture ideas of Brand and Christopher Alexander (who wrote A Pattern Language, a collection of architectural “ideas that work”, much read in the circles that practice extreme programming).
McGee adds a thoroughness to the analysis that I haven’t seen before, and nicely points out the contradiction in Brands conclusion: That building work if they are either adaptable or non-changeable (the latter, I suspect, being more an artifact of the stability of the activity taking place in the building than the building itself.)
I have recommended Stewart Brand’s book for years (and have given away at least 3 copies so far, the last time when we were designing the new building for the Norwegian School of Management). It really is an amazing book and an enjoyable read whether you are an architect, a systems engineer, or just someone who happens to take an interest in your surroundings.
Highly recommended (both the essay and the book).
From Mozilla to Firefox/Thunderbird
This blog seems to be degenerating into the usual “this vs. that” technology, so here goes: I recently went from Mozilla 1.7.1 to Firefox/Thunderbird (Mozilla’s new browser/email client). Verdict so far: Mixed. I have gained a better email interface (faster and less errors, and the great ability to save searches as folder). Firefox is also a marginally better browser than Mozilla 1.7.1, with better bookmark handling, RSS inclusion (though I use Bloglines, so it shouldn’t matter much – or perhaps that was Thunderbird?) and more robustness.
However, I have lost the easy integration between email client and browswer, and the (admittedly not wonderful) HTML editor is gone. I cannot click on a link in an email and choose “open in new tab” or even “open it new window” – instead, it will open in the top window of Firefox, pushing aside whatever I had there. I can do ctrl-m to compose a new email message when in Firefox.
A good thing with F/T is that if one app crashes (and face it, it happens), then I don’t have to shut down the whole suite. But the integration I am referring to should be easy to accomplish. And how do I easily link in an editor under Firefox – I would very much like to be able to hit ctrl-e and go right ahead editing.
As it is looking now, I will probably keep Thunderbird but go back to Mozilla 1.7.1 for browsing and editing.
MacCharlie resurrection
Via Gizmodo comes this mocked up Mac Mini back-pack docking station. Let me be the first to point out that this looks uncanningly like one of the weirdest computer products ever to see the light of day: The MacCharlie, a wrap-around PC-compatible computer that turned a Macintosh into an IBM clone back in 1985.
Those were the days…..
Upside down world
Interesting idea by Dana Blankenhorn – how about Apple buying Sony? Would make an interesting inroad into portable cellphones/MP3 players, and also get them access to a lot of digital music for iTunes. I wonder to what extent there would be institutional obstacles, though. Sony is an old Japanese company and the shares may not be as licquid as a listing on NYSE should indicate.
Dream desktop getting closer
Once upon a time (in the mid-1980s to be slightly more precise) I expressed a wish for a desktop that would be real and electronic – that is, it would be the size of a real desktop, with a touch-sensitive interface. The idea was to create the paperless office (anyone who has seen my office knows what a pipe dream this is) where only the coffee cup would be “real”.
Now, we seem to be getting a tad bit closer with this beautiful screen from Wacom (via Gizmodo.) Let’s see, if we set about four of these side-by-side….
Applied Abstractions 