Blang!

This story on Slashdot points to a New York Times story (that is ironically hidden behind a pay-wall) on how the open sharing of scientific data lead to unprecedented advances in Alzheimer’s research.

OpenSource advocates have long maintained that by having more eyes looking at the code, they are able to develop better software than traditional closed source methods. While this story isn’t a slam-dunk for OpenSource vs. closed source, it certainly shows that there are benefits to sharing data.

A more chilling thought is how many more advances in medical science may be lurking out there if only scientists were encouraged to share? As some commentators point out, the “madness” of the patent system strongly encourages researches to keep their data secret. This begs the question, are patents hindering progress in some areas of science rather than helping it?

The Android army continues to march. While Android growth rates are impressive, it’s still a relatively small segment of the market but the new Android devices are creating more and more buzz so I expect growth will continue to accelerate.

The Internet was shocked when Google and Verizon teamed up and released a statement which outlines network neutrality rules for wireless. It appears that Google has reversed it’s previous position that the network should remain neutral and is now backing the idea that wireless providers should be able to manipulate wireless data. The key passage from Google’s policy blog:

“Sixth, we both recognize that wireless broadband is different from the traditional wireline world, in part because the mobile marketplace is more competitive and changing rapidly. In recognition of the still-nascent nature of the wireless broadband marketplace, under this proposal we would not now apply most of the wireline principles to wireless,”

The logic here seems to be that because, at any given location you can obtain wireless service from several different providers, market forces will keep the wireless providers in-line. If your provider is slowing access to a service you want, you can easily switch to a different provider.

This is a surprising and disappointing statement from Google. Fundamentally the importance of a neutral network does not decrease based on the medium it’s transported over nor the amount of competition. Furthermore, history shows that there is a strong likelihood that wireless providers will merge into fewer & larger companies decreasing competition over time. As our experience in Canada demonstrates, having only a handful of wireless competitors does not make them especially competitive. On the contrary, they tend to all offer more or less the same thing.

Google was previously the most important supporter of network neutrality and this statement is basically an admission that a neutral network isn’t actually all that important. The network neutrality movement has always faced strong opposition and this just might cause it to unravel.

CNN continues to circle the drain. What happened to this former “most trusted” news authority? I’m consistantly stunned by what a joke it’s become. I guess they are trying to emulate Fox?

Anyhow, the premise of this story is that Google, for all it’s cash and prestige, actually never releases a “killer” anything. It’s fair comment that Google has had many unsuccessful “product” releases, but, it seems this particular “business insider” hasn’t been paying attention.

First, the dismissive claim that the only thing Google has ever done well is its original search engine. Uh what?

First of all, even if that were true, search is still the most important application on the web and Google’s turned it into gold not only by making the best search engine, but by creating adwords. The dominance of search can not be dismissed. It still makes Google is still the most important company on the web and if Google never did anything else, they would still make a zillion dollars.

But setting aside search for the moment, somehow, Dan Frommer has never looked up an address on Google maps, or watched his own channel (CNN) zoom in on a map using Google Earth. What about street view? If ever their was a “killer-app” on the web, that has to be it. He says, “Google is no product-killer” ? Perhaps he should go ask the map makers at Rand McNally or map-quest their opinion on that?

And what about that gmail thing? Granted that Google hasn’t destroyed anyone, but GMail slammed hotmail and does anyone still have a yahoo mail account? I guess they do if they love spam.

How about phones? The article makes a big deal about how Google launched, the canceled it’s Nexus One phone making it sound like Google’s attempt at getting into phones was over, case closed… This must be intentional ignorance. The Nexis One was introduced to demonstrate the power of Google’s Android phone operating system which is now gaining market share at stunning rate. While the “iPhone” gets all the press, Android is steadily gaining market share.

As I’ve pointed out before, unlike Apple which is the only company that can release iX-ish products (iPad, iPhone, iPod, etc) Android can be taken and used by anyone. Thus it’s starting to appear on phones, tablets, set-top boxes, netbooks, and the list continues to grow.

I think maybe CNN is a bit sore over that other “non-killer-app”, Google news. Ya, the one that is so not important that every news outlet in America has been whining about the “death of real journalism”. Or maybe it’s the threat that youtube will replace news channels where you have to sit through hours of garbage just to see a few solid news stories?

Let us not forget the punch line to all this; Apple and Microsoft buy adds on CNN, Google does not. But of course this would never have any influence on a company with true journalistic integrity would it?

Netflix and Sony roll out Canadian download movie services, Rogers lowers bandwidth caps. Coincidence?

Rogers is no doubt starting to feel threatened by the Internet. Rogers TV and move rental businesses, which includes pay-per-view, DVD rentals, and TV movie specialty channels, can all be replaced by the Internet.

But, never fear! Canada’s lack of competition to the rescue!

Since Rogers is also the Internet provider in a market with no serious competition, it can just ensure that internet access remains slow enough and expensive enough to dissuade people from using it to rent movies.

Switch to another internet provider you say? That would be Bell who is also in the movie rental business (Expressview) and who recently started throttling internet traffic, but of course, not to it’s own online movie download service.

I was migrating some data to some new disks and since the drive letters would be changing once the old disks were removed, I partitioned them and then gave them label names so they could be mounted by label.

The original disks had labels like:
boot
srv
tmp

On the new disks I thought good names would be:
/boot
/srv
/tmp

(I think Redhat actually names things this way by default?)

Anyhow, to make a long story short, mount by label ignores the leading slash. When the system rebooted, as predicted the drives came up in a different order so a “mount LABEL=srv” will actually mount the first disk named either “/srv” or “srv”.

Moral of the story; it’s probably a good idea not to use any strange characters when naming disks.

On June 30th, the CRTC issued Telecom Decision CRTC 2010-445 which sets out the rules for traffic shaping on wireless networks. In short, the CRTC decided to apply the same rules to wireless data as for other internet services.

From the perspective that, up until now, wireless has been a black box and allowed to do whatever it wants with regard to the internet, this is good. It should force wireless providers to reveal how they are blocking or shaping internet content which will be valuable for any business hoping to do business over the internet using wireless devices.

On the down side, the previous CRTC net-neutrality ruling had some serious flaws so applying it to more aspects of Canadian telecom isn’t great news. Still, I’m actually surprised the CRTC decided to do anything. In Canada, cell phone companies have been allowed to do pretty much whatever they want so at least this is a sign the CRTC is starting to see the importance of wireless data and is no longer treating it as a regulation free area.

After a 5 year battle, I can finally declare victory over the incumbents telco companies 911 plans.

Back in 2005, I got involved in committee meetings at the CRTC regarding the implementation of 911 service for residential VOIP users. At the time, VOIP was hot and some were predicting it would have a major market share displacing wireline. The incumbent telcos were scared.

I was just starting to get invovled in the VOIP business and I was concerned that the incumbents were going to convince the CRTC to impose harsh restrictions on VOIP providers in an attempt to keep them from grabbing up market share.

It probably would have worked but for the efforts of just two independent voices, myself and a technician from Quebec named Francois Menard.

Though we worked independently, we both inherently understood that the proposals being tabled by the telco’s were based on old-school ways of thinking. It was the “Bell Heads” vs. the “Net Heads” all over again.

In the end the CRTC agreed with what we were saying all along; “the Commission concludes that the implementation of Ci2 is not viable due to Ci2’s technical limitations…”.

To put this into perspective you have to understand that traditionally the CRTC committees are made up of lawyers and senior regulatory policy analysts from the ILECs (Bell, Telus, Sasktel & MTS). Usually they all get together and make suggestions to the CRTC which are in all their best interests. Usually these suggestions are accepted. It’s a comfortable little system that has kept the Telcos rich and uncompetitive while Canada slips ever further down in the ranking of the worlds most connected countries (but I digress).

This time it was a little different. The one strength of the CRTC committee process is that absolutely anyone can participate. All you have to do is express an interest and be willing to sit through days and days of conference calls and meetings filled with bureaucratic and technical jargon. Trust me, it’s absolutely mind-numbing!

There were periods where I was spending more time on CRTC 911 business than on my own business.

Of course, the committee members and the CRTC (which, is mostly made up of former ILEC employees) still ignore you as best they can (the final CRTC decision only mentions us as “other parties”). But it was the only way to ensure that the committee and the CRTC had another perspective. One part of the decision in particular is almost a copy & paste of my own submission:

“[other parties] submitted that implementing Ci2 would lead Canada to a technological dead end and would result in costly retrofits to convert a highly customized solution to one based on international standards.”

There is no question that myself and Francois had an impact and I’m happy to say that we saved Canadians millions (the CRTC estimate is 190 million).

Thanks Francois, I’m patting us both on the back. Now lets start on NG911! On second thought, I’d rather swallow razor blades.

I’m really not that strongly anti-Apple, but I keep coming across these prominent stories on digg about how people are switching away from Apple.  The latest of which is “Switching from iPhone to Android”. Choice quote “Android is looking good nowadays, and Apple’s creepy corporate culture is wearing me down.”

Just in case you’ve not ready any of my other posts on the topic, I predicted Android will rule the world because it’s open and therefore it can run on anything. In much the same way that VHS ultimately crushed Betamax, (or the Phillips screw beat Robertson’s design), (a perceived) technical superiority is no match for proliferation. Devices running Android will starting appearing out of the woodwork while the next Apple gadget has to wait for Apple.

But I digress; the topic of this post is actually digg’s ability to predict the future. For a long time I thought digg wasn’t anything special, just another site rehashing stories from other sites. But then the 2008 US presidential election came along.

Long before his name was ever mentioned in main stream media, while everyone was still talking about Rudy Giuliani or Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama was generating buzz on digg. And against all odds he actually won! From nowhere to the first black president, and all predicted on digg. Was it just a fluke? I don’t think so.

Since then I’ve noticed that I read about new movies on digg long long before anyone else has even heard of them. A recent example is Avitar. It was getting “buzz” on digg before anyone even knew what it was about and now it’s the most successful box office movie of all time.  Another example was “The Dark Knight”. Heath Ledger was getting “buzz” as the Joker long before he died. His death may have propelled the movie even higher, but I have a feeling that it was going to be a smash hit even if he hadn’t passed away.

However, there is one thing to be cautious of, does digg reflect the true feeling of the people, or is it just the result of clever marketing planting stories? Or a better question, does it matter? If all we care about is predicting the future, then whether or not the buzz is real or artificially generated, the result is the same.

So is digg predicting the future downfall of  the iPhone, or is Google just planting all those positive Android postings? Either way, if recent digg history is any indication, Apple should be worried.

“Ultimately, my reason for switching can be summed up thusly: I used to feel that, to get the best smartphone software and hardware experience, I had to live in Apple’s walled garden. Now, the walls are getting higher, and life outside the garden looks better and better.” full article

In a way, the most telling thing about this article in PC World is that the name “Microsoft” isn’t even hinted at. Lots of people upgraded to Windows 7 so profits are looking pretty good at the moment, but chances are that by the time Microsoft comes out with their next major release, mobile devices will be king and they won’t be running Windows…