Wednesday, May 31, 2006
The End Of Internet Freedom
Unless you have not heard, Verizon, AT&T, Bell South and other telecommunications giants are lobbying Congress to establish a legal basis for charging website owners for traffic with the help of two-tier Internet.
If telecommunication lobby succeeds it would mean the end of online freedom and higher prices for online goods and services for all of us.
So what do telecommunication companies want? Quite naturally, greedy corporations want more profit and they are keen to find a way to stuff their pockets even tighter.
Hold on there, telecom companies already charging us - the consumers - for broadband and cable access, right? But now they want to charge content providers too based on the amount of traffic their sites generate. Nonsense! Although telcos argue that they want to curb proliferation of online video and other types of data-hungry streaming that allegedly taxes their networks they think imposing traffic fees on content providers would be a fair solution.
But content providers already pay traffic charges to their hosting providers! So what telcos want is to charge content providers twice! Not only that, the whole premise of two-tier Internet puts high-dollar companies ahead of cash-strapped runner-ups effectively killing start ups and low-key businesses. With two tier you've got to cash-out to cable providers if you want to ride 'high-bandwidth' channel and make sure that your pages are served fast and clear, whereas if you are a cash-strapped nobody like most of us you would be stuck to an auxiliary channel choked with spam, porn and god knows what else.
But most troubling of all is that the introduction of two-tier Internet creates a unique opportunity for censorship and interferes with the free speech right so much treasured by online community. Indeed what a clever move! The bill does not prohibit free speech not it interferes with the free speech directly. Sure, you can say all you want and blog all you want about anything you want. But we just won't serve your pages!.. Unless you pay a hefty price... and even then we may choose not to serve them.
The two-tier Internet bill must be stopped. Activist groups already pressure US senate to abandon the bill. And even an opposing Net Neutrality bill was proposed by democratic senators. Net Neutrality bill requires all online content to be served without discrimination, which is a nice idea in theory, yet it is vigorously opposed by equipment manufacturers and ISPs due to fears of potential liability (arising presumably from bugs, outages and custom content filters).
While Net Neutrality bill sounds like overkill, two-tier Internet bill is ought to be stopped too. If it passes freedom of speech would be seriously hampered, startups and small businesses will take a hit and we will pay higher prices for online advertising as well as goods and services delivered or sold over Internet. Do we really want that? I think not.
source:http://techsearch.cmp.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_end_of_inte.html?loc=software_and_web_development
Morfik defends its IP rights against Google
GWT is basically a The press release seems to imply that Google may've infringed on Morfik's IP. Java-to-Javascript translator. Programmers can write their front end in the Java programming language and the GWT compiler converts the Java classes "to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML". Morfik has a similar product called JST (Javascript Synthesis Technology), which was shown off at the last Web 2.0 Conference in October 2005. It turns out there is a patent pending on Morfik's JST and today they issued a press release in defence of it. In the press release they describe JST as follows: "JST allows developers to use a high-level language of choice and have it compiled directly and seamlessly to JavaScript."
What triggered this press release appears to be the release of GWT a couple of weeks ago. At that time rumors of a partnership between Google and Morfik proved to be false. The press release seems to imply that Google may've infringed on Morfik's IP. Currently I don't have a URL for this press release, so I'm going to re-print the guts of it here:
"Morfik Will Pursue all Avenues to Protect its IP Rights
Recent recognition of the value of mapping a high-level language to JavaScript by key stalwarts of the AJAX world has confirmed the viability and strategic importance of Morfik Technology Pty Ltd's many years of pioneering work in this area. Morfik's vision of "browser as computing platform" embodied by its JavaScript Synthesis Technology, "JST" (Patent Pending) is now gaining mainstream acceptance.
"Morfik believes in this paradigm and has invested millions of dollars over the course of many man-years in developing this technology." said Aram Mirkazemi, co-founder and CEO of Morfik.
"For some time now, Morfik has been recognized both in the industry and in the press for having conceived of and developed something that is truly inspirational. Morfik has been working on this technology for a long time. We are helping Morfik in pursuing all appropriate forms of intellectual property protection in connection with this technology and invention." said Tim Hale of Russo & Hale LLP of Palo Alto, California, one of Morfik's intellectual property attorneys.
Some time ago Morfik's founders identified JavaScript as the limiting factor in the development of complex interactive Web-based software applications and decided to develop some proof-of-concept prototypes for the translation of a high-level language to JavaScript. The success of the proof-of-concept resulted in the establishment of Morfik as a company in the year 2000 and the further development of JST. JST allows developers to use a high-level language of choice and have it compiled directly and seamlessly to JavaScript. Morfik spent the ensuing years building a state-of-the-art Rapid Application Development tool to make JST accessible to small businesses.
In October 2005 Morfik's JST was featured at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, California and immediately attracted the attention of leading search engine providers and software development organizations, including founders and top officers from some very large companies. In a number of instances, persons recognizing the potential in the JST innovation and its implications for their own organization's applications requested special more detailed presentations to their engineers or gained access to additional confidential information about JST.
Morfik as the owner of this ground-breaking innovation and technology is committed to protecting all of its rights, working closely with interested organizations to share its learning and innovations related to JST and to enter into appropriate licensing arrangements with such organizations to govern their use of JST."
Notice the second-to-last paragraph in particular: Morfik's JST "attracted the attention of leading search engine providers and software development organizations, including founders and top officers from some very large companies." While Morfik is very careful not to name names, my understanding is that Google was one of those companies shown the JST technology at the 2005 Web 2.0 Conference. Not just any Google employees either, but some very high-ranking Google executives.
With the release of GWT, it seems Morfik has seen too much crossover with their own JST product - hence Morfik's desire to "defend its IP". It's important to note that I have no actual knowledge of whether Google copied Morfik's technology, I'm just reading between the lines of Morfik's press release.
But if it's true that Google used Morfik's JST as a basis for GWT, then what does this say about Bret Taylor's statement immediately after the Morfik alliance rumors surfaced a couple of weeks ago? Taylor is Product Manager of Google Web Toolkit and he wrote at that time on a Google Groups list:
"Morfik seems like great technology, but Google Web Toolkit is in no way associated with Morfik or based on its technology. There have been some rumors circulating on this list that have been causing some confusion, and I wanted to clarify."
That was a couple of weeks ago, well before today's press release. I await with interest Google's response to Morfik's press release.
source:http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=196
Fight club draws techies for bloody underground beatdowns
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Kicking, punching and swinging every household object imaginable — from frying pans and tennis rackets to pillowcases stuffed with soda cans — they beat each other mercilessly in a garage in this bedroom community south of San Francisco.
Then, bloodied and bruised, they limp back to their desks in the morning.
"When you get beat down enough, it becomes a very un-macho thing," said Shiyin Siou, 34, a Santa Clara software engineer and three-year veteran of the clandestine fights. "But I don't need this to prove I'm macho — I'm macho enough as it is."
Inspired by the 1999 film Fight Club, starring Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, underground bare-knuckle brawling clubs have sprung up across the country as a way for desk jockeys and disgruntled youths to vent their frustrations and prove themselves.
"This is as close as you can get to a real fight, even though I've never been in one," the soft-spoken Siou said.
Despite his reserved demeanor, he daydreams about inflicting pain on an attacker. "I have fantasies about it," he said.
In recent months, police in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have broken up fight clubs involving teens and preteens who posted videos of their bloody battles online.
Earlier this month in Arlington, Texas, a high school student who didn't want to participate was beaten so badly that he suffered a brain hemorrhage and broken vertebrae. Six teenagers were arrested after DVDs of the fight appeared for sale online.
Adult groups are more likely to fly under the radar of authorities.
Menlo Park police hadn't heard about the local club and said they wouldn't be likely to take action because the fights are on private property between consenting adults. That could change if someone complains or is sent to a hospital, police said.
Gints Klimanis, a 37-year-old software engineer and martial arts instructor, started the invitation-only "Gentlemen's Fight Club" in Menlo Park in 2000 after his no-holds-barred sessions with a training partner grew to more than a dozen people. Most participants are men working in the high-tech industry.
"You get to be a superhero for a night," Klimanis said. "We have to go to work every day. We're constantly told to buy things we don't need, and just for a couple hours we have the freedom to do what we want to do."
The only protective equipment used is fencing and hockey masks. Several fighters have suffered broken noses, ribs and fingers.
Men involved in fight clubs often carry bottled-up violent impulses learned in childhood from video games, cartoons and movies, said Michael Messner, a University of Southern California sociology and gender studies professor.
"Boys have these warrior fantasies picked up from popular culture, and schools sort of force that out of them," he said. In these fantasies, "The good guys always resort to violence, and they always get the glory and the women."
There is also a sadomasochistic thread running through underground fight clubs, said Michael Kimmel, a sociology professor at Stony Brook University in New York.
"Real-life fight clubs are the male version of the girls who cut themselves," he said. "All day long these guys think they're the captains of the universe, technical wizards. They're brilliant but empty.
"They want to feel differently. They want to get hit, they want to feel something real."
Five-year fight club veteran Dinesh Prasad, 32, a heavily tattooed Santa Clara engineer, said he once broke a rib in a match but never complained to his fellow combatants. He also recently skipped his first wedding anniversary to attend a fight rather than drive to Los Angeles, where his wife is finishing law school.
"I came here to get over my fear of fighting, and it's working," he said. "I'm much tougher than I was five years ago. I'm not at the level of these other guys, but if things were to get tough, I can get tough, too."
Source:http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-05-29-fight-club_x.htm
