Mike's Father's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Every week, we have a member of the community post their “favorite Techdirt posts of the week.” Since tomorrow’s Father’s Day, I figured this week I should ask my Dad, an avid Techdirt reader.
Well this is a treat. I am Mike’s father and this is my Father’s Day present (sort of). I do read Techdirt on a regular basis and with very rare exceptions I don’t comment. I have followed some of the more contentious comment streams out of curiosity and I have found it striking that articles on Techdirt arouse such intense reactions. In any case I will comment here on what I regard as the most interesting articles for me on Techdirt this past week.
I have followed with some interest the Megaupload case which has just taken a further step down the rabbit hole, as seen in US Continues To Try To Block Megaupload From Using Its Lawyers, Pretends It Has Jurisdiction Over The World.
It has been my experience that arguments that use logic, legal precedent, constitutional reasoning and sometimes even common sense almost never convince a person or organization that holds power to reconsider the path they have started on. Most people, regardless of their training, knowledge or instincts, go into defensive mode when challenged. Almost always. The trouble seems to come up extra strong when the person or agency is really powerful — and the DOJ is about as powerful as you can get outside of military forces. Challenge the DOJ on what it has come to regards as its turf and you are gonna get a whale of a lot of pushback. They have a ton of weapons and almost no restraint in using their arsenal. And they can make it mighty expensive to challenge them. So my bias says that it’s usually a good thing to push back when they overreach. That way there’s a chance (probably a small chance) that cooler heads or judicial review will set things right. That’s probably not the way to bet, though.
We live in a world defined by the suffixes .com, .org etc. But that is about to change, possibly in a big way. As noted in .Rip .Off: Highlights From The Top-Level Domain Scrum.
There are currently 22 top level domains (like .net, .xxx, etc) but for an obscene amount of money ($375 million) there will be as many as 1,000 by the end of 2013. ICANN (International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), a not for profit corporation, charged $185,000 per application to 1930 organizations (groups and companies), to have their suggestions examined. The process, the prospective domain names, the competing companies that have proposed the same names and some potential problems with the process and the proposed names are discussed in this article.
Whatever the original purpose of copyright law was, a heavy dose of lawyering (and a compliant court) has brought us to the point where the level of impediments to normal commerce has reached new heights. It surprised me to learn that if I make a product, say a blender, outside the USA, and I put a tiny copyrighted symbol on the blender, that used blender may not be resold by the original purchaser to a third party without the permission of the copyright holder. For details on these and other nutty facts of life under USA copyright law, study: Why The Supreme Court Needs To Make Sure That Selling A Used iPad Isn’t A Copyright Violation.
Many years ago, I worked in the research department of the Grumman Corporation. This was my first job out of graduate school and I loved it. My boss was a very smart guy named Bob McGill and he was, in addition to being a first class scientist/engineer, a very sophisticated investor. I had never invested a nickel up to that point so I was very impressed when, over lunch, Bob related to me some of the basics of investing. No one remembers it now, but before there was a dot com boom, there was a boom in computing stocks in the 1960s. The success of IBM and Xerox awakened investors to the potential profits in early investing in technology companies. Bob showed me a “red herring.” That was the informal name for the prospectus that brokerages sent to customers who might be interested in investing (gambling) in the IPO for companies about to go public. The company described in the “red herring” was for an enterprise that would, at some point in the future, provide computer services for companies that did not have a computer of their own. I read the prospectus. The experience of the founder of the company noted that his previous position before starting this venture was working in “Tom’s Bike Shop” and he wasn’t Tom. That fact was enough to convince me that this was probably not a great investment opportunity. If you’d like to see a modern version of a prospectus for a “hot IPO”, check out this tongue-in-cheek version: Prospectus for Silicon Valley’s Next Hot Tech IPO.
Patents. We are in an era when patents (and their misuse) have created fits for technology companies. Long ago, just out of school, I met a prolific inventor with over 150 patents who told me that all his patents were an attempt to prevent him from being sued by someone else for patent violation. His most important invention, which made him and his investors very wealthy, he never patented. He kept that as a trade secret, zealously guarded. That was my first hint that something was wrong with the patent system in the USA. Attempts to explain the intrinsic value of our patent system are stretching, distorting or simply making up from whole cloth non-fact facts to justify the current system. Exhibit A is this article: Commerce Department’s Own Study Debunks Commerce Department’s Defense Of Said Study.
Finally, this past Fall saw the SOPA/PIPA debacle in which various vested interests attempted to put forth prospective legislation to protect legacy companies, business models and enterprises in some fairly heavy handed ways. Once the online community caught on to what was being proposed, they arose real fast and real hard. But some of the more egregious features of those now defeated attempts are nonetheless part of current law and causing all kinds of troubling problems. For a description of one such case, check out: Tell The White House To Stop Illegally Seizing & Shutting Down Websites.
Well that’s all for now. I’m probably off the hook to do this again until next Father’s Day.
Re: Re: Re: We must test this theroy about rapid advancements in research.
Yup.
Re: We must test this theroy about rapid advancements in research.
Okay. As Mike's father (who sent in the article to Mike) I can testify that there was never a moment that could be painful about Mike's childhood except for that time when he
Patents
Believe it or not, the primary reason for a business to patent things is to keep yourself from being sued by someone else, NOT to go off suing the world. Of course, there are spectacularly newsworthy cases of companies that do go on suing binges for vendettas, publicity and even sometimes in the usually wrongheaded notion that they'll get a lot of money. This is not true of individuals who have dollar signs in their eyes as they file. I worked for a company that was an exception and actually had a profitable business for many years selling licenses to its patents. But it's a yery tricky business and demands that you have a stable of patent savvy lawyers constantly searching for suspected patent abuse. Eventually my company gave up the patent part of the business because the habit of countersuing by the sue-eee led to some startling and wildly costly instances of patent reversal.
Shakespeare
It is remarkable that folks could have gotten things quite so wrong. The point of the original comment is something like "if you have an infinite time to generate all the possible combinations of letters and spaces, some of those would be the works of Shakespeare". Of course actual Monkeys (and a very short time span) means you'll get crap (apparently literally and figuratively). Unless this was done with tongue in cheek from the gitgo, this is a remarkable waste of time.
Is Slashdot's Ad Model Working?
Are you "weary" or "wary" or both?
"A Beautiful Mind"
I actually read the book, "A Beautiful Mind" by Sylvia Nasser, after seeing the movie. Two things about the book (assuming it's accurate). John Nash was actually more of a genius than the movie shows. First, his contributions in many areas of deep and applied mathematics are astounding, deep and lasting. Second, he was MUCH MUCH nastier as a real life person than was shown in the movie. The long list in the book of really nasty stuff that he did when sane, let alone when he lost it, is chilling. When Cameron Crowe won the People's Choice award, he said that, "At the end of the day, A Beautiful Mind is just a movie and an entertainment". I think he had in mind that the movie was a necessary contraction of the complexities of the true story. So my take on the story is that the film-makers made a wonderful story that is uplifting and interesting. It's relationship to the true story is a bit "Disneyesque". However, it is true that John Nash essentially did cure himself of severe delusional mental illness, which, like many other things about him, is just remarkable.
Merging Phone Companies
Actually, it's not so dopey that the telcos are merging. There is a massive infrastructure expense in front of them as the telcos gear up for the wireless, data heavy new world awaiting us. It just doesn't make sense because of the massive costs associated with building that infrastructure that the equipment and the huge expense be duplicated by each company. Unpalatable to predict a small number of giant, impersonal telephone monopolies but economics probably makes that the future. Back to Ma Bell uber alles.
Can Mature Companies Innovate
Mature companies have systems in place to almost guarantee that they won't innovate. Note that when IBM wanted to make its first PC, the put the operation outside the normal IBM paper and decision approval system and let them run essentially (at least for IBM) free. Of course, as soon as it was evident that they might be onto something big, they pulled it back into the paper and decision approval system so that they made sure it wouldn't thrive in a fast changing environment. Some big companies (3M comes to mind) do try very hard to foster innovation, but it's a struggle and must have support from the very top all the way through middle management.
Re: A paranoid madman calls the kettle black
Your detailed response and the detailed response to your headline message are both well worth reading. Would love to see more of these multi-person debate/essays, which have some meat on them, in addition to the skeletal quips and shots. Perhaps more essays could be invited to the site.
Signed,
Yet another (really) distant relative of the aforementioned Mr. Bronfman
Dad's starting internet companies
When I retire, I had been planning on starting inut.com, a service that would allow you to order pecans, almonds, walnuts etc and have them delivered to your house within an hour by steroid pumped bicycle deliverers. But keep it a secret. inut is too good an idea and someone might steal it from me.
Love,
Dad
Iridium
The problem is that throwing Iridium into bankruptcy has nasty consequences for everyone - the banks sourcing the loan, Motorola which sort of guaranteed some parts of the loans and last and certainly least Iridium itself, which would have yet another burden to deal with. So this bandaid is going to be pulled off the skin exquisitely slowly, in the hope that something will prevent this tower from crumbling. IMHO, Iridium has virtually no possible cures for its fundamental ills. Cutting prices cuts revenues from existing customers while inducing few new customers. Fixed costs keep eating away at a shaky balance sheet. About the only way Iridium can make that payment is to buy some Powerball tickets before midnite tonite and win.