sky, Author at Sky's Blog

Is the Sidekick failure a cloud failure?

12 October, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

When all data for Sidekicks got lost recently [read this article in the Wall Street Journal] was it a cloud failure or was it a single system failure?^[1] [also New York Times article]

In the sense that data was being stored somewhere and the customer didn’t know where it was, then yes it was a cloud failure. But I contend that it was also a failure caused by the existence of a single-point-of-failure. (As system developers, this is our constant nightmare.) The product/service was set up to use a single data service with (apparently) inadequate backup. That created the possibility of this single-point-of-failure. The real failure was that T-Mobile didn’t provide the option to back up your data in a location under your control, so that you could later on restore it if the central service went down. [Read more…]

On the road(s) in northern India

7 October, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

You can learn a lot about a place if you sit for a while and observe the types of vehicles passing by on the road. During one of my trips to India I sat at lunch and watched the traffic on the busy highway. Upon finishing, I stepped outside and snapped photos of some of the traffic on a busy highway over the course of about five minutes. You can look at my photos and read my observations below the fold…

The snapshot to the left is of the rear of a (big) truck. Big TATA and Mahindra trucks do the heavy lifting in India, carrying huge cargoes everywhere. They are brightly painted—each one different from all the others—and on the back of every one is the legend “Blow Horn — Use Dipper at Night.”^[1] When passing one of these behemoths, every driver honks, and sometimes the honking continues the entire time you’re passing. The honk is both a request to pass and a warning that I’m passing. Unlike the US, the honk is a courtesy, not an annoyance (in California it is illegal to honk except to warn other drivers in case of danger).

Lest you think otherwise, the photos I’m showing you express my admiration for a country where everything is used that possibly can be, and is re-used when it breaks. Very few things go to waste here.

And here are my photos: [Read more…]

Defending yourself against patents – Patent busting at EFF

5 October, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

The Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF.ORG] has a “patent busting” activity that watches for patents that “should never have been granted” (my language) and works to invalidate them, or at least invalidate as many of their claims as possible.^[1] You’d be amazed at the kinds of things that have been patented that were just plain obvious, or had clearly been invented years before by someone else. I’m particularly sensitive to this because of my long history in computer-based learning and education. As an example, EFF is focusing on busting a patent on online test-taking. This one hinges on a method for charging for the tests and splitting the revenue, but nevertheless it seems absurd that someone could obtain a patent on splitting revenues from test-taking, doesn’t it?

[1] A patent hinges on any number of “claims” which are generally separate and somewhat independent of each other, and these are usually structured in such a way that they’re like ”gotchas” — if the patent owner can’t get you on one of them he may get you on another of them. There is a tension between how much is claimed by the inventor and what claims the patent office allows — and this back-and-forth starts at the time a patent application is filed, continuing until the patent is either issued, claims are removed, or the application is denied. On a granted patent, its strength is generally related to how many claims there are and how broadly they can be applied to a competing invention. Attacking a patent involves showing that individual claims should be invalidated, until you have either stricken the entire patent or reduced it to a few claims that are so weak it can no longer be effectively used.

The free flow of information does not respect political borders

3 October, 2009 by sky 1 Comment

The free flow of information, which is facilitated by the Internet, should have no respect for political borders. Nations that try to restrict the flow of information by either cutting it off at the border (using Internet routers and filtering) or by cutting it off in the “last mile” to your computer (using content filtering and throttling [see China’s Golden Shield] – or by thwarting net neutrality^[1] principles) will ultimately fail to do so. Information wants to be free.

We are a species that communicates by telling tales, and we learn from the stories told by others.

YaleGlobal Online carried an interesting article [part II is the part you want to read] examining China’s dual standard when it comes to interference in what they call their “internal affairs.” China strongly opposes the granting of visas to His Holiness the Dalai Lama when he visits countries around the world — calling it “interference in China’s internal affairs.” However, the attempts by the Chinese to block the Dalai Lama’s appearances can just as easily be interpreted as Chinese attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. They have succeeded in many countries, and notably failed in countries such as Germany and France. And particularly in the US, where the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, and in Canada, where he received honorary citizenship in 2006.

Here’s what YaleGlobal said about their two-part article: “China, a significant beneficiary of globalization, is happy to go out into the world, but seems less willing to let the world come in, according to writer Frank Ching. In fact, China, which asserts that it does not interfere with the internal affairs of other countries, appears to do the exact opposite, especially with regard to issues surrounding alleged separatism in China. Notably vocal whenever a foreign leader meets with the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama or a country grants him a visa, Beijing claims that such actions “grossly interfere” with China’s internal affairs and “hurt the feelings” of the Chinese people. For a country that prides itself on having signed more human rights treaties than the US – certainly a mature approach to international affairs – such a reaction seems oddly truculent. Indeed, as Ching argues, globalization is a two-way street where the benefits hopefully compensate, even outweigh, the loss of sovereignty. Rightly or wrongly, China seems yet to agree with such logic. – YaleGlobal”

[1] Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the [US] Federal Communications Commission, on net neutrality

Genachowski and more on net neutrality

24 September, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

FCC Chairman Genchowski Craig Newmark put up a good article on his blog about Julius Genachowski’s^[1] position on net neutrality. I wrote a short article on it two days ago. Thanks, Craig, for mentioning OpenInternet.gov, where everyone can learn more about the issue. The full speech at the Brookings Institution is also available on OpenInternet.gov. The Internet, of course, is a world-wide resource, and not just a US institution, but the FCC regulates network operators in the US and the backbone connections that support huge portions of the net today, and what the FCC does on this issue is critical here as well as an example for the rest of the world.

Sometimes as tech fans and geeks we just assume that technology we invent will be used fairly and for the good of all. When I was inventing online learning (after a half dozen others had done it earlier—LOL) in the 1970s, I assumed that we were all working toward a common goal – making life and learning better and easier for everyone. Always surprises me when someone gains a patent on something like the process of pretest-prescribe-posttest^[2], which we had been doing since at least the 1970s (and perhaps since B. F. Skinner experimented with computer-based teaching machines in 1954.

But the point is that unless we scrupulously protect open and even-handed access to the Internet, and don’t allow anyone to corner the net and deny us access unless we pay more, we could end up with the same kinds of fees we now see for our telephone service (it hasn’t gotten cheaper for me in all the years I’ve had phones—it seems to go up every time I change providers). Take a look at Genachowski’s talk and you’ll see why I think there’s greater hope now for the net.

[1] Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission

[2] Interactive learning system with pretest

Craig Newmark is Founder and Customer Support Rep for Craig’s List.