Out of the Woodwork

Courts Encouraging Online Vigilantes?

As the Orange County Register reports, former Superior Court judge Robert Kline has been sentenced to 27 months of prison for child pornography. I hadn't heard of this case until Slashdot featured it yesterday, but it's not hard to see that it has a long and complicated history.

That history makes it pretty clear that Kline is guilty (having even admitted such, at one point). He committed a serious and indefensible crime, and the conviction is bound to make his neighborhood a safer place. But does that mean the conviction was right? Not necessarily.

You see, police never would have known about Kline's activities if not for the unlawful activities of Brad Willman, a young Canadian hacker who had compromised Kline's computer and monitored his activities there. In fact, Willman says he has done the same with some 3000 others who he suspects of exchanging and viewing child pornography. For this, the Ottowa Citizen calls him a "cyber hero", and the U.S. courts declared that the resulting evidence was admissible against Kline (and no doubt led to his conviction).

Every court involved said that Willman's hacking and surveillance was illegal. Every court said that law enforcement officials must never engage in such blanket surveillance--and that if they did, any resulting evidence would be inadmissible. And yet, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that this case could go forward with the evidence. Why? Because Willman's hacking was done of his own volition and not due to any request or coordination from law enforcement (whose involvement came later).

That feels to me like the slipperiest of slopes. This court has effectively said that civil liberties may be violated, as long as the government outsources its dirty work. If done directly by the police, these monitoring activities would be illegal and result in inadmissible evidence. If done by others, they're still illegal--but somehow the resulting evidence is allowable. How does that logic work? How does it not turn into an open invitation for more vigilantes like Brad Willman? And how can we possibly expect such vigilantes to choose who is and isn't a valid target?

Tags: legal privacy

Posted at 09:29AM Feb 23, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Privacy  |  Comments[3]

First Woman Recipient of Prestigious Turing Award

Congratulations to Frances Allen of IBM, who has become the first woman to receive the Turing Award (often called the "Nobel Prize of computing").

The announcement provides a nice contrast to the ongoing struggle to attract more women to engineering fields. Mechanical Engineering Magazine recently had a feature article on the subject, which I noticed due to Sun blogger Pamela Kong's reference. Though these focus on mechanical engineering, other engineering fields (such as computer science) also face the issue.

Hopefully achievements such as Ms. Allen's can be used in outreach programs to attract more women to engineering degree programs (and subsequent careers).

Tags: awards computerscience engineering ibm turing women

Posted at 11:25AM Feb 21, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[0]

Word of the Day: Backronym

Once again, Wikipedia has taught me what I didn't even know there was to know. While looking into the history of Wikis, I learned that the term is sometimes treated as a backronym for: "what I know is". The only problem was, one thing I didn't know was the meaning of "backronym".

Fortunately, that was also just a click away:

A backronym or bacronym is a type of acronym that begins as an ordinary word, and is later interpreted as an acronym.

Ah. That makes sense.

The article is also filled with some interesting tidbits about specific backronyms. For example: do you think that DVD stands for "Digital Video Disc"? It officially stands for nothing. Some of the creators did want it to mean "Digital Video Disc", but apparently they never gained consensus. And later when it became commonly used for purposes other than video, some of the creators decided it should stand for "Digital Versatile Disc" (but again, apparently never gained consensus to make it official).

And if you're really looking to give yourself a headache, you can even feed "acronym" into an online acronym-finding service and get several results (which, if popularized, would presumably turn "acronym" itself into a backronym).

Tags: acronym backronym dvd wiki wikipedia

Posted at 05:04PM Feb 16, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[2]

Picturing the Summit of the Blogosphere

I love visualizations which turn complex information into a simple picture. This one, from Ben Fry shows how the fifty most popular blogs in the world exchanged hyperlinks over a ninety-day period. See his description for full details, but in short:

The first [image], used for an article titled Linkology, shows the connections between the top 50 blogs, based on data provided by Technorati. The colors depict the categorization: orange for technology, blue for politics, pink for gossip, and green for "other".

The intensity of the line is based on the direction of the link, so the lines are brightest at the link destinations. Because lower-ranked blogs are more likely to link to a higher ranked blog than vice-versa, the lefthand side of the image (the top ranked blogs) is brightest.

In other words, we can see that the most popular blogs (on the left of the picture) get the most incoming links because their ends of the lines are brighter. And the large number of lines overall shows us how frequently top blogs reference one another.

The guys at Table of Malcontents think that the picture demonstrates how "professional bloggers are, at best, symbiotic parasites" (because they use information from other blogs to fuel their own). I'm not sure that the image supports such a conclusion. To me, the picture isn't noteworthy for unearthing some surprising trend. The web is made up of hyperlinks, and the most popular sites receive more inbound links than do less popular sites. No shock there.

It's noteworthy just because it's a great picture and makes a trend very easy to see and understand.

Tags: benfry blogs hyperlinks linkology visualization

Posted at 02:02PM Feb 15, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Web 2.0  |  Comments[1]

Why is the Digg Community So Sensitive to Competition?

The Digg community is once again lashing out at a "shameless rip-off" site. This time their target is Yahoo, which has (in their own words) added "Digg-style voting" to their suggestion boards. There was a similar reaction months ago when Netscape.com re-launched itself as a voter-driven news portal.

Why do so many Digg users have a hair-trigger response against anyone who builds on Digg's ideas? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Imitation with due credit (as Yahoo provided in their blog post) is pretty-well beyond reproach.

Yes, Yahoo and Netscape took ideas from Digg. That's the way the world works. We build off of each others' ideas. If you can't accept that, you need to strip naked and move to some deserted cave. Every technology and idea we use today is a derivative of something which came before it.

If you think the "good guys" of the tech world sprang up from great new ideas, you're wrong (at least partially). The ideas may have been great, but they were never entirely new. So before you launch another campaign against a "shameless rip-off" of Digg, consider going after:

• Linux, which shamelessly stole the design of UNIX.
• Apache, which shamelessly stole the idea of serving web pages from Tim Berners-Lee.
• Firefox, which shamelessly stole the idea of a graphical web browser from NCSA Mosaic.
• Digg itself, which shamelessly stole the concept of voting from the ancient Greeks.
• The paranoid members of the Digg community, who shamelessly stole the ideas of intolerance and isolationism from countless ancient tribes.

Yes, they're ridiculous examples. It's a ridiculous discussion. Building on the ideas of others is a fact of life. It's also a fact of Web 2.0, and it's time for lagging members of the Digg community to accept it.

Tags: digg netscape web2.0 yahoo

Posted at 10:04AM Feb 15, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Web 2.0  |  Comments[4]

Re: Is Solaris the New GNU?

Payton Byrd is wondering whether Solaris will become the new GNU. Specifically, his question seems to be whether OpenSolaris (if re-released under the GPLv3) could end up providing the preferred kernel for the GNU operating system.

It's a good opening question, but his argument then veers off with a lot of specific points which don't make a whole lot of sense. Let's look at a few examples.

Byrd: "Does the discontent this creates among Sun's engineers further push away the people who have made Solaris such an incredible product?"

What discontent? I think it's safe to say that most Solaris engineers at Sun are supportive of open source efforts and expanding the Solaris community. If adopting a more widely-accepted open source license advances those goals, I don't see why it would create discontent in our engineers.

Byrd: "If the FSF and Sun move forward with a replacement of Linux with Solaris in the GNU Operating System, I forsee a very ugly, protracted, and devastating fight that will last for years and seriously impede the progress that Linux is making into the market place. Whether this is a good or bad thing is a matter of perspective. I do know one thing, it highlights the fact that the GPL is anticompetitive because GPL v3 is looking to not only lock out IP protecting Novell, but Linux as well."

What you're calling a long and ugly fight, I would call ongoing and healthy competition. Has the existence of the BSD projects been devastating to Linux? Or vice versa? Has PostgreSQL been devastating to MySQL? Or vice versa? No. Competition is good. Where's the downside in having some competition and choice for kernels in GNU distributions. For some, Linux will continue to be the right choice. For others, a Solaris kernel may make more sense. And for both kernels' development communities, the competition and exchange of ideas will be a good thing.

As far as the "GPL is anticompetitive" statement... It makes so little sense to me that I wouldn't even know where to begin in responding.

Byrd: "I say let Sun, the FSF, and GNU fade away into oblivion!"

Huh? Earlier you say that Sun's Solaris is "probably the best kernel in the world." You correctly gave credit to GNU and the FSF for providing a huge portion of the software that people think of as "Linux". And now you're calling for all of the above to fade into oblivion, presumably because you've decided they're some kind of threat to Linux? Wow. Talk about being anticompetitive.

Tags: fsf gnu linux opensolaris solaris

Posted at 12:14PM Feb 14, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[0]

George Lucas Strikes Back

Never mind that it's all but universally regarded as the series' best by both critics and fans... George Lucas has declared that The Empire Strikes Back is the worst of the Star Wars movies.

Also, never mind that it happens to be one of two Star Wars movies that he didn't direct. I'm sure that ego has nothing to do with George's opinion.

We'll just have to wait a few years for some kind of re-re-re-mastered version of the movie to set us all straight. I'm sure the flaws are nothing that he can't fix with a few good Jar Jar cameo insertions.

Tags: sci-fi starwars

Posted at 05:34PM Feb 12, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[1]

Open Source and Employee Passion: Avoiding "Employer Lock-in"

I agree with Kathy Sierra's argument that employers need to worry less about finding employees with a passion for their company and more about finding employees with a passion about their work. Having a primary passion for your work means you'll always look out for the interests of it and its users. In the long run, that will be in the best interest of your employer (since they commissioned your work in the first place). The opposite doesn't always hold true--having a passion for your employer above your field and profession can sometimes result in choices which are detrimental to your work (and thus, in the long run, detrimental to your employer).

Things get more interesting when an employer provides the freedom to take your work with you. That's what open source licensing does. If you're at Microsoft, I hope your primary passion is for general fields such as operating systems or GUIs. Because you certainly won't be able to take any of your specific project work with you some day when you walk out the door. But at a company like Sun, that's not the case. You don't have to be afraid to put your full passion into our application server project. If you leave some day, you'll still have full access to the work that you and others have put into your project, plus the option to continue contributing (or fork it and start your own competing effort, if you think the original has gone far off course). The same is true in areas such as operating systems, programming languages, and even hardware. Instead of "passion for your work" having to remain at an abstract level, it can be at the level of specific projects and efforts. That's a good thing.

I realize that Kathy had a bad experience working at Sun (and she even infers that Sun is an example of "what not to do" in one of the comments following her post). I don't know any further specifics of her situation, but I do think it's safe to say that Sun has evolved in this area (and continues to do so). As a recent European Commission study shows, Sun is the world's leading open source contributor. That's a big change. And in this context, I think it also means a big change in how the company thinks of its employees' work.

When talking of allegiances, some people say "love it or leave it." Perhaps a better saying would be "love it because you can leave it." That's a good measure of freedom and values in any setting. And in the setting of tech employers, I think it's a measure that Sun is leading.

Tags: employment opensource sun

Posted at 02:33PM Feb 08, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[1]

TiVo Lists Top Ten Commercials From Super Bowl XLI

TiVo's second-by-second information on what users are watching, repeating, and skipping gives it a unique ability to rate the popularity of Super Bowl commercials. Yesterday, they released a list of the ten highest-rated commercials from this year's Super Bowl. I was sad to see that my own favorite, Sierra Mist's "Beard Comb Over" ad, didn't make the cut.

And for those who may be worried about just how closely Tivo is watching them, more info is available in a recent San Francisco Chronicle article. In short: they gather (and sell) random anonymized samplings of user behavior.

Tags: commercials ratings superbowl tivo

Posted at 09:50AM Feb 06, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[0]

Lemonade 2.0: Could Blogging Be Your Kid's First Business?

Today, The Christian Science Monitor has a story about using contextual advertising systems (such as Google AdSense) to make money from blogging. It notes that moderately successful bloggers usually make at most a few hundred dollars a year from advertising, while only a very few uber-bloggers make enough to actually live off of blogging (and in their cases, indirect revenue from consulting and public speaking work is usually far more lucrative). Interesting, but not very surprising if you've read other writings on the subject.

More intriguing to me were a couple of side comments on the article's second page. One expert notes that his son now makes more from his blog's AdSense revenue than from his allowance. That's interesting. Blogging has practically zero barrier to entry and provides the realistic opportunity for revenues which most kids would find very meaningful. Hmm... Could starting a blog replace lemonade stands as the quintessential step in childhood entrepreneurialism?

Also catching my eye was a complaint that AdSense doesn't allow venue owners enough control over ad content. I've often thought this myself. Our policies at Sun prohibit AdSense ads on company blogs for this very reason. No business wants to open the door for competitors to advertise on its own site. Of course, many corporate blogging sites probably wouldn't allow advertising anyway. But some would. And the corporate blogging example is just one of many cases where advertising is being omitted due to a lack of control for the venue owner. Might this be a key vulnerability in Google's AdSense behemoth?

I think it could be. So if your entrepeneur child is ready to graduate past professional blogging, you might just encourage them to create an AdSense competitor with better content controls. Success in that endeavor would certainly mean more than a few hundred dollars.

Tags: adsense blogging entrepreneurialism google kids

Posted at 01:20PM Feb 05, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[0]

Sun: Your Stealth PR Firm

In Chapter 4 of Naked Conversations (which many would call the "Bible" of corporate blogging), Robert Scoble and Shel Israel call Sun "the bloggingest of companies." True, they wrote that a couple of years ago--but since the number of Sun bloggers has trippled since then, it's probably safe to assume that the label still fits.

Cool. But what can it do for you? There is, of course, the obvious benefit of reading the blogs. Whether you're wondering how our kernel geeks plan to top Solaris 10 or how one of our accountants' kids did in a dance recital, we've got a blog for you (if not ten of them).

But I think there is also a less obvious benefit. If you're smart, we'll even do your PR work for you--free. Just tell us how you're using one of our products, and one of us (if not ten of us) is bound to blog about it. Even if you could find a PR firm with 3,000 agents (and counting), they certainly wouldn't beat our price. And if you believe in the "new media" ideas being advocated in works such as Naked Conversations, you know that the right blogging really can trump traditional marketing.

So if you're comparing technologies, don't forget to include the "free marketing" benefit in your list of pros and cons. The technology comes first, of course. But in the case of a tie, why not go with the company that can handle your technology and PR needs?

For an example of this kind of blogging, see our new Stories blog, where we profile users of GlassFish and related technologies. We think it's a win/win situation, with positive exposure for everyone involved: Sun, the GlassFish community, and the profiled users. It's nice when interests align, isn't it?

Tags: blogging marketing sun

Posted at 10:08AM Feb 02, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[2]

Train Safety

You can get a lot out of reading the words of Sun's executive bloggers. But lately, one thing you can't get is a good feeling about rail travel. Both our CEO and CTO have survived train crashes? What are the odds?

(If you haven't already seen, Jonathan talks about his train wreck experience in item #3 of his "five things" meme post and Greg mentions his own experience in item #5 of his list.)

Tags: rail safety train travel

Posted at 09:51AM Feb 01, 2007 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[0]