WiFi Copyright Infringement

There's a very interesting (and somewhat disturbing) article on a pub in the United Kingdom that was fine $13,000 for copyright infringement.  Apparently, they offered free WiFi and one of their customers downloaded copyrighted material.

Albeight, this is a very grey area of the law - apparently, but I've often wondered about this and thought of the legal ramifications of WiFi access.  If the pub is indeed responsible (aka guilty) for this copyright infringement - where could this possibly lead?  Would it be liable if a customer downloaded child pornography through an open WiFi?  If so, there could be significant risk and liability for any WiFi activity.

I wonder if it would be a reasonable analogy to suggest that if a pub was liable because a customer downloaded copyright material, could you not also extend this logic to suggest that a library would be just as guilty if a patron used it's photocopier to copy material?

The mind ponders - and shudders at the thoughts!

eReaders - Time to Rethink?

For the longest time, I have "pooh-poohed" the concept of eReaders such as Kindle (Amazon) or Nook (Barnes and Noble).  I expect that one of the possible reasons for my closed mind is probably because I love to read - and I've grown up with the concept of paper books.  I think that there are many like me that enjoy the aesthetic feel of having a book in hand - of being able to physically turn page by page

However, the more that I read about them, the more that I think that there may be some benefit to them.

I recall reading an article a few weeks ago about a school or school board in Ontario that has made a strategic direction to implement all text books on an eReader.  It's an interesting concept and especially in the area of education, I do think that there is merit.  Not only is there potential cost savings for the educational system, but the ability to have all text books in one device has significant physical benefits to our children as their bodies are not strained by the weight of a filled to the brim backpack. 

In addition, having the text books on an eReader will make the content much more relevant and up to date.  Textbooks cannot be updated.  They cannot be correct.  They cannot be revised in any manner.  With an eReader, it would be a simple matter of resynchronizing the reader with the new material.

I also think that having textbooks on an eReader will also be good for an environment.   If we assume that a school might have 5 grades that would have a significant number of textbooks.  With an average class size of 30 children, we'd be looking at perhaps 150 individuals with eReaders.  Assuming that over the course of the year, that a child would have 8 text books, in one school, that would be approximately 1,000 textbooks that would not have to be printed!

I'm sure that there are many other advantages to an eReader.  In this same article, I believe that it mentioned that any word could be instantly cross referenced with a built-in dictionary and I think that is a phenomenal feature.

I hesitate to give my "official" stamp of approval to this technology - for all that is worth!  Instead, I think I will research this technology a little bit more.

I think that in this technological age, that it becomes increasingly important for anyone to keep oneself up to date and informed with technology.  I think that there are few of us that can afford to ignore technology.

I will take an opportunity to take a look at this technology and comment further.  In the meantime, I'd be more than happy to accept a Kindle or Nook from the manufacturers, but I'm certainly not going to hold my breath :)

And Everything Old Is New Again...

It is with some interest that I continue to see technology "advance". Specifically, there seems to be a move towards touch screen monitors, and I'm sure with the proliferation of Windows 7 which now supports these monitors, touch screen monitors may become as much of a de facto standard as LCD/flat screen monitors have now.

What I find interesting is that this technology is now celebrating it's 25th anniversary. In the mid 80's, Hewlett Packard came out with the first touch screen computer. My first job upon graduation was in a support & training role for a company that sold hardware, so this was my first exposure to touch screens.

I'm curious to see if there are practical uses and tangible benefits for this newest generation of touch screen. As a touch typist, I'm thinking that the vast majority of business users will find that taking their hands off of the keyboard will decrease productivity.

Although some graphical applications that might (in theory) benefit from this technology, I don't think that there is sufficient granularity in the human touch to make this a viable user interface. Think for a second if your mouse pointer jumped as you moved it instead of having smooth movement. The lack of fine detail would become increasingly frustrating.

The biggest problem that I can see is that the main device for this interface has a hard limit as to how small it can go to allow for more detail. The human finger cannot get narrower, so I don't see how the technology can improve significantly.

My first thought was that someone could use a stylus or a something with a finer point to use a touch screen, but one again, I think that this would be extremely cumbersome as one would have to navigate from keyboard to mouse to stylus.

Too many times we see technology advance for the sake of advancement. In other words, there are numerous cases where new technologies have been developed without clear and measurable benefits. Case in point, a few years ago, one of the hot technology advances was integrating a computer and a monitor in the family refrigerator. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but if a new technology does not have "legs" (movie term for how long a movie will run in the theatre), then the novelty of the technology will quickly wear off.

I will remain open minded. Perhaps this is cutting edge stuff, I'm not sure. In the meantime, I'll happily plug away on my keyboard and mouse.

Electronic Arts - Things That Make You Go "hmmmmm"

Somewhat curious about two announcements by the uber-gaming company, Electronic Arts today. Perhaps coincidence, perhaps not.

Firstly, they announce that they are cutting 17% of their workforce, which is approximately 1,500 jobs. "recession. Cost cutting. Streamlining. Blah blah blah".

Next, they announce that they have acquired Playfish for a CASH purchase of $275 million. I guess that with these layoffs they managed to save $183,000 per ex-employee. Not really sure how I'd feel I'd I was one of those that lost their jobs, but hell, business is business is business I suppose.

Also makes me wonder about the future of gaming if EA is losing bundles on packaged games as they are a leader but perhaps that will br s topic for another day.

Fractured Fairy Tales - The Three Little (Wired) Pigs

As a young tadpole, I often enjoyed watching The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.


Not only did I enjoy the escapades of Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris, Natasha, Sherman and Mr. Peabody, I also enjoyed the little segments called "Fractured Fairy Tales. In this vein, I will be creating my own version of fractured fairy tales with (of course) - a high-tech twist!

I now present my version of The Three Little Pigs

Once upon the time there lived three little pigs who lived in Silicon Valley. It was a happy life for the three pigs. They had plenty of food and mud to roll around in. Their own one complaint in life was being unfairly targeted as the root cause of H1N1.


The pigs had recently discovered technology and each of them decided to install their own network and run their site from each of their homes.

One day, they were coming back from attending a conference on Twittering. They were quite disappointed when they discovered that it wasn't a seminar on bird calls!

On the way home, the came across a wolf who stopped them and asked "Little Pigs Three - can you tell me where there might be a free WiFi connection? I need to update my Facebook status and I don't have any money for broadband access".

Little pig 3 replied, "Go away Wolf, we don't help you, not by the hair of our chinny chin-chins!". And of they raced to the safety of their homes.

As they disappeared over the hilltop, the wolf shouted out to them "Then I shall hack and hack and bring your site down!" and off he went to the local library with web access.

As the first little pig was performing routine maintenance on http://www.pignumber1.com, the wolf was scanning at the library and found the IP address. Finding it, he quickly determined that Pig Number 1 did not change the default password for the router and he easily joined the workgroup and granted himself administrator access and brought the site offline as the first little pig ran to the second's house to retrieve the backup of the site source-code.

Next, the wolf loaded MSN Messenger and IM'ed Pig #2, "Little Pig 2, grant me access to your network, lest you suffer the same fate of your little brother!".

"Never!", the pig replied, "I know how you hacked into his computer and brought the site down, you won't do the same thing to me!"

With an evil grin, the wolf analyzed pig #2's network and determined that the site wasn't properly protected with router filters and up to date patches and launched a Denial of Service attack on http://www.pignumber2.com which flooded the pig's website with continued requests, preventing legitimate web traffic.

From there, the two little pigs ran to the third pig's house.

The wolf pulled out his cellphone and texted pig #1, "LOL u and ur brothers r no match 4 me. Let me n & b spared!" to which the pig responded "ur lame if u think u can hack into my net, go ahead n try :)".

The wolf scowled and tried every trick in his arsenal. The router password had been changed, all patches appeared to be up to date, antivirus definitions as well. Time after time, he tried to crack into http://www.littlepig3.com and he was so intense at trying to hack into the site that he never noticed the local authorities eFraud squad standing behind him - cuffs at the ready.

Righting the Rights - Is the Right Right or is the Right Wrong - Writing about This Dilemma

A few weeks back, I read an article about some jurisdictions which have established that people have the legal right to broadband access. As I was out today, listening to my iPod, this article came to mind as I was somewhat irked that I didn't have WiFi Access.

I then started thinking about this article and I wonder where this issue of if electronic access is a right or if it should be a privilege. Relating back to my last newsletter article about how we chase technology's tail, how long will it be before it is deemed that the minimum 1 megabit broadband access is insufficent. I would not at all surprised to see that as the technology matures, that faster Internet access is considered a legal right.

Reading on Wikipedia about this, Estonia, France, Finland and Greece all have made Internet access a basic human right. What I'd like to know is who pays for this. Of course we all know that it's everyone else that pays.

I suppose that I should be more understanding of the underprivileged that don't have access to Internet. Certainly, there is a very legitimate rationale for providing Internet access to those that normally can't get it. I'm certain that not having access to it puts these individuals at a significant disadvantage when it comes to job searchs, housing and community and social services, so I suppose that it's at first glance not a bad idea.

On a related note, it also appears that there are a number of cities (Austin TX, Portland OR, Atlanta GA and San Francisco CA among others) who are attempting to enable WiFi access across most of the metropolitian areas. As a consumer of WiFi, I think that it's a wonderful idea, but I wonder if there is enough infrastructure in place in order to fully implement this type of a solution and I question who should be paying the bill for this.

Subscribing via RSS

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" and it is a very common tool for subscribing to online content. This article will specifically go through the steps of how you can use RSS to subscribe to this blog. In this example, I'll give instructions on how you can add this blog as content to your My Yahoo! page (if you have one) but the steps would be similiar for any other websites that supports RSS feeds.

At the very bottom of this page, click on the link that reads:
Subscribe to Posts (Atom)



From the next page, select the service that you want to add this feed too - in this instance, select My Yahoo, but these steps would also work for other services, and then click on "Subscribe Now".



Finally, once these steps have been followed, then you will see this feed being added to your My Yahoo! content (you may need to do a page refresh to see these changes).