WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
Well my feeble attempt at humor last week, 'gird your lions' instead of 'loins' was shot down by reader Allison, who pointed it out that it should really have been 'grid your lions'. Pah!
I started to write a note about patents for the 'Shorts' section this week, but it kinda drifted up to nearly 800 words of my irresistible prose, so I thought I'd better give it its own section. Other items covered include hard drive famines, procrastination (you may have to wait a while for this piece...), and a nifty indoor do-it-yourself elevator system.
And, wonder of wonders, the sun is actually shining this morning!
Story: Pandora's Patents
ZDNet recently published a pair of articles, one on each side of the software patent debate. Personally, I've always been firmly against software patents, but the first of the pieces, by Marty Goetz, the first person to be granted a software patent way back in 1965, certainly made me think more carefully about the issue. The second piece, by Mike Lee, is also well worth a read, although, to be honest, the 'debate' is now so polarized that I doubt any of the protagonists are going to change their mind at this stage.
Interestingly enough, both sides are in agreement that there are whole swathes of software patents that should never have been granted. Goetz argues that the question to ask is "Is an invention that is patentable in hardware, equally patentable if implemented in software?", to which he answers an unequivocal yes. I confess that I hadn't thought of it in these terms.
The row over software patents has been going on for a long time, but what has really brought it to a head is smart phones. The truth is that these little beasties are the culmination of a long line of hi-tech hardware and software development, and, as Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond has pointed out, "...[a] modern smartphone might be susceptible to as many as 250,000 potential patent claims, depending on how broadly those patents and claims were interpreted".
My feelings on the issue are a little more broad. I think that the speed of innovation in the hi-tech industries, combined with the breadth of the patents issued, points a finger not just at software patents, but at the patent system as a whole. I freely admit that as a lefty I am inherently biased against a system derived from a cunning method developed to help medieval absolutist monarchs raise funds for their foreign wars! Even allowing for that, though, there are still problems, and two of them stick out like sore thumbs.
The first is that the system is really designed to be played by the big boys - the IBMs, the Apples, the Microsofts, the Amazons and the Googles of this world. The costs of defending a patent are completely prohibitive for the small businesses it is touted as protecting. That's why until relatively recently patents were mostly used by the big boys as a sort of quid pro quo and a basis for valuation in takeover bids, rather than as a means of bringing in cash.
The second is an outgrowth of the dot com boom and bust. A lot of the dot com start-ups had more venture capital funds than even they could immediately spend, and so they used some of it to apply for patents on their ideas. When the bust arrived, the funding dried up and the defunct companies were scooped up for a pittance by patent trolling companies to build patent portfolios. This created, for the first time ever, a secondary market in patents, and one of the results is that the trading drove the value of patents massively upwards. Many people in the business now believe that the values of these patents are unsustainable high, and that what we have now is a patent 'bubble'. If that doesn't ring alarm bells, given the economic events of the last 20 years, then I don't know what will!
Patents may sound like something for lawyers (who, as usual, are the only people to benefit), but it is important for everyone. To give but one example, if the University of California, Berkeley, had patented the bits of the internet it had developed, then we would not have the internet as we know it today. The internet is built from extremely sophisticated patent free software. Imagine having to pay a license fee to a patent owner for every packet of data sent over the internet, and you will get some idea of what's involved.
None the less, I would encourage you to read Marty Goetz's defense of those parts of the software patent system he considers not to be broken. No one should ignore well argued cases against things they disagree with - and if you agree with patents, it will provide you with some interesting ammunition! And for those of you who want to dig deeper I have included a couple of other more general articles.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/intellectual-property/2011/10/29/should-software-be-patentable-thats-the-wrong-question-to-ask-40094152/
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/intellectual-property/2011/10/30/software-patents-are-legalised-extortion-40094260/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/05/BUQP1LQN3V.DTL
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/04/is_there_a_patent_price_bubble/
Shorts:
OK, this isn't hi-tech, but I couldn't resist. I immediately recognized my own behavior, although, of course, I didn't get round to reading it until I had something more important to do! It's a method of getting things done called 'Structured Procrastination'. An amusing article that's just so accurate that you can't help laughing at yourself. No, I'm not going to tell you any more, the article is a must read!
http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/
Planning on buying a new PC or laptop this Christmas to cheer yourself up, despite the economic gloom? Then you need to time your buying very carefully, because there is a looming shortage of disk drives. The flooding in Thailand eliminated Western Digital's production lines, flooded Toshiba's disk drive plant, and seriously affected Seagate's sub assembly market. Samsung, the other major player in the hard drive market, had its component suppliers flooded.
PC maker Asus has confirmed that it could well be out of hard drives by the end of this month, and the outlook for firms like HP and Apple is equally bleak. A lot of this is due to modern procurement methods, which keep stock inventory to a minimum and have the suppliers deliver more as needed. This saves tying up capital in inventory, and is known as 'Just In Time Inventory Management'. It works fine until something like the Thailand floods occurs, at which time it becomes 'Just Too Late Inventory Management'.
And, of course, by having multiple vendors concentrate all their production/sourcing in one small geographic area - Thailand in this case - the drive manufacturers have created a classic single point of failure. Almost enough material for a PhD thesis there! Will the manufacturers learn the lessons of this little disaster? I doubt it, but I could be wrong - only time will tell.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/11/04/pc_shortages_at_xmas/
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/11/09/dell_drives/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-57322023-64/hard-disk-shortage-hits-consumer-outlets/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&tag=nl.e703
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/11/10/goldman_lowers_pc_sales_outlook/
As I go to press there is bad news for gamers. Steam have been hacked. For those who don't know, Steam is the biggest of the PC computer game digital protection services and is used by most of the major games publisher. You have to be online and logged into them to play games protected by Steam, which is owned by Valve Corporation of Half-Life fame. At first it looked like it was just the forum, but now it seems the hack went deeper, although details are currently scarce. I suppose, as someone who works for a competitor to Steam, I should be smirking, but I'm not. This sort of criminal activity is a danger to everyone - competitors, affiliates and users alike. Perhaps one day the police will become savvy enough to realize that every break in to someone's computer matters just as much as a break in to their house, and start to take hacking seriously.
http://store.steampowered.com/news/6761/
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/games-news/breaking-valve-announces-massive-steam-server-intrusion/
Homework:
Now here an interesting little use of mapping software by Felix Pharand-Deschenes. It's called Anthropocene Cartography, and it's the art of mapping human networks. Pharand-Deschenes has done just that using data gathered from US government agencies, and you can see some of the results on shareable.net. Topics covered by the maps include electronic networks in the US (inevitably) and West Eurasia, global energy flux, world transport systems, and transatlantic air routes. I look forward to seeing more as this idea takes off.
http://www.shareable.net/blog/mapping-the-world-of-human-activity
Geeks Topics:
Would you like to take a peek inside the world's coolest data center? It's really, really, cool, one might even say cold. It belongs to Verne Global, it's in Iceland, and it's just this side of the Arctic Circle. Is that cool enough for you? And here's another twist - it also gets all its electric power from hot geothermal springs and hydro-electrics. So you get both hot and cold! Take a look at these photos in silicon.com to see what's involved.
http://www.silicon.com/technology/hardware/2011/11/01/photos-one-of-the-coolest-datacentres-in-the-world-on-the-edge-of-the-arctic-circle-39748168/#story
And here's an invention that might well be of use to an Icelandic data center in winter - a snow blower based on a Chevrolet V8 engine from Kai Grundt. Be the first one on your block to get one of these monsters - it's even powerful enough to pull your car out of a ditch! What more could you want?
http://www.gizmag.com/for-the-man-with-everything-the-v8-snowblower/4889/
Here's something for the aspiring geek living in a house, rather than an apartment. A vacuum elevator (lift for my UK readers) that can be installed in a few hours and is, I'm told, affordable (for some definition of affordable). I have to say it does look cool with its one person standing width, two story plastic cylinder. Reminds me a bit of those sci-fi B movies where the villain has people (usually women in 60's bikinis) stashed away in transparent tubes waiting for Flash Gordon style heroes to rescue them. (Moral of the story, do not wear bikinis when visiting villains...)
http://www.gizmag.com/go/4007/
Geeks living in more dangerous places - like Mexico, for instance - might like to invest in a little something from Ohio's IMPACT Armor Technologies. To be exact, take a look at their newly launched bulletproof 'Ballistic Clipboard'...
http://www.gizmag.com/impact-ballistic-clipboard/20430/
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Blogger-murdered-and-beheaded-in-Nuevo-Laredo-2260814.php
Scanner:
UK police using surveillance system to monitor mobile phones
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/30/metropolitan-police-mobile-phone-surveillance
How does cell phone money laundering work?
http://www.net-security.org/article.php?id=1648
Pollution from car exhausts 'helps city dwellers fight stress'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/10/carbon_monoxide_is_good_for_you/
NVIDIA and Asus unwrap Transformer Prime tablet with Tegra 3 processor
http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidia-Asus-Unwrap-Transformer-Prime/
Philips's beehive concept - an urban home for the 21st Century bee
http://www.gizmag.com/philips-beehive-concept/20412/
Senators introduce Internet sales tax bill
http://www.itworld.com/networking/222693/senators-introduce-internet-sales-tax-bill
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Allison, Barb, Fi, and to Slashdot's daily newsletter for drawing my attention to material used in this issue.
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Spamato spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
13 November, 2011
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
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