Monthly Archive for April, 2006

Rant2.0

Published
by
Ben Balbo
on April 19, 2006
in Random
. 5 Comments

I need to rant, and I just found my (in my opinion) rant-worthy subject.

A job posting I just saw:

We’re a business focussed on Web2.0 and changing the web media experience of Aussies.

I’m still trying to work out what Web2.0 is. It seems it’s about using the web as a platform, harnessing collective intelligence (wiki, blog, …), open data (APIs), no more software release cycles (immediate updates to online applications?), lightweight programming models (allow easy integration of online apps without dependencies?), platform independence (access app from PC/PDA/…) and rich user experiences.

Is it just me, or do most marketers love the phrase Web2.0 without understanding its meaning, or understanding it only to bear a couple of the qualities described above? Ignore that question. It’s rhetorical.

And how do you focus on Web2.0? Tim O’Reilly himself says Web2.0 is an attitude, not a platform. Can you focus on an attitude? Maybe… but I’m not so sure.

If you ‘get’ RSS/Atom, blogging, tagging, sharing and services like ‘Technorati’, ‘Flickr’, ‘Youtube’, ‘Rojo’ - then you will understand the kind of work we do.

You write web sites?

We’re looking for someone to join our stealth team, someone who loves to ‘cut’ quality code and who will be proud to see their efforts result into tangible products that are a first for Australia.

I’m sorry! Stealth team? What is this marketing crap? Why can’t people talk English?

OK, maybe this is a silly point. I myself replied rather enthusiastically to a job advert that wanted a Jedi Programmer and even sent the application email from “Jedi Ben <jedi@benbalbo.com>”. But that kinda invoked geeky feelings of warmth associated with the whole StarWars thing. The Stealth Team doesn’t work for me - it may for others, I guess.

You need to have a very good knowledge of the technology and tools of the trade – PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, XML, XSLT, WebServices and some of the various open source libraries.

Join us on a 8-10 week contract initially, with a view to extending or coming on full time. We’re ready to go.

Hmm, nothing to rant about there. Shame.

Well that rant went less that perfectly. I’m feeling rather calm and collected now, and not even sure I want to post this due to its lameness. Quite disappointing.

Isuzu Gemini

Published
by
Ben Balbo
on April 11, 2006
in Random
. 1 Comment

My jaw dropped, and it’s still not coming back up… and I haven’t blinked for over 4 minutes (but that’s not difficult for me)…

http://www.steelcitysfinest.com/Isuzu.htm

Erm. WOW!

Privacy Law Goes Too Far - My Counter Offer

Published
by
Ben Balbo
on April 5, 2006
in Open Source, Politics and Work Life
. 0 Comments

The Sydney Morning Herald reported three days ago on a new law that will allow the interception of anyone’s email if they have been in contact with a current suspect. This person, referred to as the B-party (the prime suspect is the A-party, I imagine) will not only have email to the A-party intercepted, but all email.

And all anyone needs to say is that it’s “likely to assist [in obtaining intelligence] related to security”. Vague enough for any politician’s conscience.

What can we do to protect our privacy? We can encrypt all our email. I certainly will be encrypting as much email as I can to friends and colleagues that support GPG encoded email.

I also extend out this offer to anyone who cares to take it up. I will install and configure GPG on your system and integrate it with a mail client so you too can start protecting your privacy. I will help you create a public/private key pair and show you how to read and write encrypted email.

This offer comes with no guarantee that I can get GPG working on your system or with your preferred mail client, but if you’re using Outlook Express, you really should think about changing a few habits anyway :)

Password Analyser

Published
by
Ben Balbo
on April 4, 2006
in Open Source
. 0 Comments

I’ve written a degradable javascript based password analysis tool to inform a user in real time of their password strength.

Patent Pending

Published
by
Ben Balbo
on April 3, 2006
in Patents
. 0 Comments

My sister sent me a link to her on-line travel journal today, which was a great read. The system is quite nice too, it’s like a blog of sorts, and even plots your travels out on a map so visitors can see where you’ve been.

As I’m off on a bit of a trip at the end of this year, I thought I’d sign up and get a feel for it. I signed up (painless process) and clicked on the Create a Trip Journal link, only to notice a “patent pending” notice at the bottom of their form. I didn’t go any further, but the form had three buttons, one of which was disabled. One of the buttons would have been a next or continue button.

It looked like a wizard. Much like you see in a WordPress or FlySpray install, like when you create a new document in a word processing package, like when you withdraw cash from an ATM, or even like when you self-checking at an airport. Nothing new. So I wondered what the patent was about.

I emailed their support team this morning:

Hi!

I just created an account on your site and was about to “Create a Trip
Journal” and noticed the patent pending notice. Can I ask what type of
patent you’re applying for?

I’m just wondering if this is a software patent?

If it is a software patent, could you kindly cancel my account and remove all my details from your system? I’m strongly opposed to software patents and don’t wish to use the services of a company that uses them.

If it’s not a software patent, then please just reply telling me so, and I’ll be happy to continue to use your site.

I just got a reply:

Thank you for your interest in RealTravel! It’s nice to hear from you.

As per your request, I have canceled you account. Please feel free to use RealTravel for information and inspiration for your future travels!

I presume from that they have applied for a software patent, and that’s really bad.

I wonder why they feel a software patent will help them. Sure, it won’t be a disadvantage to them in itself, but they are joining a war that only the rich can win.

So what can you do to protect your ideas? Everything you create yourself is implicitly your copyright. Companies can use trade secrets and non-disclosure policies to protect assets. Software patents are there to punish developers, not the criminals who steal ideas. They punish people who write code, test, debug, work hard, and then (possibly) have it all taken away from them by a large, greedy MegaCorp.

A quick primer for those who are not familiar with software patents

You can apply for a patent that covers a methodology, for example a progress bar that tells you how far through an operation you are, or a single-click purchase, or a wizard for helping users complete a task. Nothing specific. If someone writes software that uses that idea, you can be sued by the patent owner.

So that’s good idea, no? Someone thought of that idea and you should pay them for it? Surely it protect the small people from big companies that use their ideas for their own gain; Joe Doe can sue MegaCorp Inc for their use of his idea!

No - MegaCorp Inc have 2,398,153 software patents already (this is an example), and Joe Doe probably infringes 1% of their patents (including the one that allows a user to log in - yes, they are that vague!) so MegaCorp will turn around and say “Tell you what Joe, instead of filing a counter-suit, how about you drop the law suit and just sign your software over to us and we’ll call it quits!”.

The small people never win from software patents.

Further Reading

It is interesting to compare the Google search results for “software patents are bad” and “software patents are good“.

Against Software Patents - The League for Programming Freedom, MIT

NoSoftwarePatents.com

Foot Note

I have a feeling I once heard about a Joe Doe that won a software patent case against a MegaCorp Inc. Any one have any references to this?

Oh - and there is a way a small company could win in this. They would have to obtain numerous software patents and sue MegaCorps. The key to not being counter-sued is not to write your own software - that way you will never use patented software techniques!