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?

I’ve hacked up a little program to track the accuracy of weather forecasts in an attempt to determine if the forecasting computer models are flawed.

It’s no secret that predicting the weather is hard and even the experts frequently get it wrong, but I seem to be noticing that when they get it wrong, they always tend to error on the optimistic side. For example, if the 5 day forecast predicts 20C, it actually ends up being 15C. Being off by a few degrees is understandable but if it truely was a science, then it should be wrong the other way approximately the same amount of times. So when they predict 20C, half the time we should get 25C but it never seems to work that way.

I know very little about forecasting but from what I understand, all forecasters use computer models. Usually they run a few different models then set the forecast based on the consensus. If my theory is correct, my data will show that on average the forecast is always too optimistic and that will prove that the computer models are wrong.

If that turns out to be the case then it raises some other questions.

First of all, the weather modelers should already know this. They have access to all the forecast data and can easily compare the predictions with the actual temperatures and then adjust their models accordingly to make them more accurate. Why haven’t they done that?

A wrong forecast may not seem like a big deal but does it have other implications? Do the same people that wrote the software which makes short term forecasts also write the climate models that predict global warming?

It’s going to take some time to gather enough information to be meaningful (at least a  year), and maybe I’m wrong? Once I’ve gathered enough data to make some pretty graphs I’ll post a link to a site where everyone can take a look at the results.

A group of misguided individuals is calling for the dismantling of the CRTC after a series of decisions that they say are unfavorable to competition.

Duh? In early 2007, then minister of industry Maxime Bernier, in an unprecedented move, overruled the CRTC and issued a special policy directive that effectively tied it’s hands with regard to promoting competition. (just Google “Bernier, Maxime crtc policy directive”) Shortly afterward the chair of the CRTC stepped down and was replaced. BTW, this wasn’t the first or last time the Conservatives fired the heads of supposedly “arms length” government agencies for doing their jobs.

We can only imagine that since then, the CRTC employees know that if they issue any rulings that go against big business there will likely be retrobution.

If these people had a clue they would be demanding that the Conservative Government of Canada be scrapped, not the CRTC.

According to this story in the Vancouver Sun:

“Merrill Lynch ranks current Canadian wireless penetration [...] dead last among 22 developed countries. Similarly, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has tracked a steady decline in Canada’s wireless penetration rank: from 35th in 1998 to 128th in 2008.”

Similarly, the Globe & Mail reports that Canadian cell phone rates are among the highest in the world.

“Cellphone users in Canada are paying more for wireless service than those in most other Western countries.”

The media seems focused on cell phones and residential internet access, but lost is the impact on business. High prices for wireless, landline and internet service combine to ensure that Canada is fast becoming one of the worst places to run a Technology company.

By the time the government wakes up and relaxes foreign ownership rules we will be in serious trouble. Given that Canada’s economy is likely to continue to shed manufacturing jobs and we envision ourselves as transitioning to a service based economy, this will be disastrous.

As I predicted, Bell has won the throttling complaint. There are no specific rules which prohibit providers from tampering with the network (on the contrary, the tariffs specifically require the providres to “manage” the network) and the CRTC did not find that Bell’s practices gave it any advantage over it’s wholesale customers since the throttling was applied evenly.

The CRTC also did not find any merit in the claim that throttling was a privacy concern on the basis that throttling certain types of traffic does not give Bell any insight into the content.

And perhaps the most controversial portion of the decision; the CRTC ruled that since users expect to wait for P2P downloads there is no harm in making them slower.

Now before everyone jumps all-over the CRTC lets keep in mind it was asked only to rule on whether or not Bell had violated its wholesale access tarrif. The decision is not an overall determination of whether or not throttling is good or bad and the CRTC has gone to great pains to emphasize this.

Accordingly, the CRTC has launched a public hearing on the overall topic of throttling. Telecom Public Notice 2008-19.

According to media reports (that get their news from Groklaw), the US District Court ruled that SCO does not own the copyright to Unix (Novell does). This effectively means the SCO has had their entire case pulled out from under them.

In a way this was a unexpected ending since originally the SCO case was all about the code. SCO had even gone so far as to show side-by-side comparisons of Linux and Unix code claiming this was proof that Linux had stolen code from Unix which they claimed to own. In the early days Linux advocates expected SCO’s attempt to show that code was stolen would fail miserably and that would be the end of it.

Unfortunately for SCO, screen shots of the supposed infringing code were leaked on the internet and quickly dubunked. Even more unfortunate for SCO, someone at Novell rememberd that the deal to sell Unix to SCO wasn’t quite what SCO thought it was and dug up the old deal which showed that it was actually Novell that still owned Unix.

SCO will likely appeal and there is still a chance the some of the rest of the case of SCO vs IBM will continue but does it really matter? While the legal issues are yet to be resolved, it was proven long ago that SCO will not have any significant or long term impact on Linux.

In the mean time SCO vs. Linux may have been a blessing in disguise. Things went so badly for SCO in so many different ways that it can only serve as a warning to other companies trying to put a stop to Linux through lawsuits. Microsoft has been rattling their patent saber for years but so far has not dared sue and one would think the SCO case had at least something to do with it.

Yahoo recently announced that its “Yahoo Music” service will be shutting down. Sony Connect and MSN Music have previously done the same. What all of these services have in common is that they sold DRM “protected” music. The quotes around “protected” are intentional.

This means that consumers who bought music through these online stores are now at risk of loosing all the music they purchased. After the music store’s sites are shutdown the music will no longer be playable because the music players will no longer be able to access the digital keys that unlock the music.

Consumers are relatively fortunate in these specific cases because all three of these companies are not actually going out of business but are just shutting down their music services. Consumers may actually get a refund or some other compensation. If the companies went fully out of business and shutdown consumers would be up the creek.

In Canada this currently wouldn’t be as big of a deal since we can just break the digital locks on the content and play the music. But not if Bill C-61 passes. Circumventing the locks to access content you legally purchase will be illegal. All that in a bill that Jim Prentice claims is for the benefit of consumers.

Sorry Jim, we are not buying it. DRM is bad, legally protecting it is worse.

Canadians love to hate their public service. Whenever something doesn’t go the way we want we quickly blame “the government” and demand our politicians take action. A lot of the public service takes heat, but none as much as the CRTC. But the fact is, most of the time this anger it is completely misplaced.

First and foremost, even when the CRTC actually has jurisdiction in the area being criticized (which is rare), keep in mind it is just enforcing regulations passed by the government. The CRTC does not make regulations, it only enforces them! If you don’t like the regulations then your beef is with the politicians, not with the CRTC.

Here are some recent examples of misplaced CRTC hatred:

“The CRTC is preventing me from getting an iPhone”: First it was the CRTC’s fault that the iPhone wasn’t available in Canada, because apparently the CRTC controls Apple?!? And now that we have the iPhone it’s the CRTC’s fault that it costs too much, because apparently the CRTC runs Rogers sales and marketing?!?

fact: The CRTC does not regulate wireless prices, or handsets, or just about any other consumer aspect of wireless service with the only exception being 911 service (which it mandates).

irony: The CRTC was criticized for charging every cell phone user a yearly license fee for cell phone use, a fee that appeared on bills as the “system access fee”. Responding to the criticism, the CRTC eliminated the fee. But guess what? Nearly a decade after the fee was eliminated, the cell phone companies are still charging it! They just keep it themselves! So the CRTC has actually done what it could to bring prices down but the carriers just pocketed it.

the real cause: is lack of competition. There are only 2 national cell phone networks. Rogers and the ILECs. When you use your Bell cell phone outside your home area, you almost certainly are actually using MTS, or Telus and visa versa. And Rogers is the only GSM network (what the iPhone uses) so if you want an iPhone in Canada, you have to get it from Rogers.

The CRTC is “shafting gamers”: This is my favorite, Paul Chapman writes a blog for “The Province” on technology and gaming [article]. Commenting on the recently announced PS3 movie download service he writes:

“Sadly, gamers in Canada continue to be shafted by the antiquated CRTC. The U.S. gamers are getting a movie service to download movies and TV shows to their PS3, Canadian customers are going to have to wait until the CRTC actually gets around to dealing with it.” [emphasis added]

Maybe Paul knows something about video games but he sure knows nothing about the CRTC. But why let ignorance stop you from slamming something?

fact: First, the CRTC does not, and never has regulated gaming consoles so I’d like to know how “gamers … continue to be shafted”? What is this “shafting” that the “antiquated CRTC” has been purpotrating on gamers?

Second, the CRTC has nothing to do with movie and media distribution rights, period. In fact, no government agency regulates this. It is entirely up to the copyright holders to license their material for distrobution in Canada.

And the CRTC certainly has nothing to do with movie and music download services on game consoles.

irony: The CRTC is currently looking to the practice of “traffic shaping” by the ILECs and cable companies who provide internet service. Traffic shapping is used by interet providers to slow down things like movie downloads. No decision has been made yet but if the CRTC decides to order the practice be stopped, it will actually help “gamers”.

the real cause: is big media companies like to break up their distrobution rights and sell them seperately in every country so they can earn more money. And for obvious reasons they do the deals in the biggest market (the U.S.) first. I’m sure a PS3 download service will eventually come to Canada, but when is anybody’s guess.

“The CRTC won’t let me watch The Sopranos”: Ok, The Sopranos is over but similar situations occur with lots of other television shows especially those from HBO. I think we notice it more with the HBO shows because as far as I can tell HBO is the only channel that actualy makes decent television. But I degress.

fact: The CRTC does not regulate copyright licensing or media distribution rights! I already said this about the PS3 and (almost) the exact same situation applies here.

irony: Publicly Canadian broadcasters and cable companies often complain loudly about CRTC regulations but in fact, they ride a massive money train smothered in gravey only made possible because of these same regulations. If the Broadcast Act didn’t exist and ABC, NBC, Fox, etc. were free to compete directly in Canada, do you really think CTV, and Global would exist? What shows would they air? If FOX had a station in Canada they shure as heck wouldn’t be licensing The Sipsons to Golbal.

the real cause: Canadian broadcasters are free to license HBO shows for broadcast in Canada live or even before they air in the U.S. if they want to but they don’t. Or maybe HBO won’t let them? Either way, it has nothing to do with the CRTC.

About the only sliver of truth to this accusation is that the CRTC won’t license HBO for broadcast in Canada but that’s no different than any of the other American station like CBS, ABC, NBC, etc. Yet we still get live broadcasts of those shows. Why? Because Canadian broadcasters have licensed the rights to do so.

Ok, so maybe you think it’s the CRTC’s fault for not licensing HBO in Canada? Wrong again. The elected officials of the Government make the rules in the Broadcast Act and CRTC only enforces them. Blaming the CRTC would be like blaming the police for not making rock music illegal. They don’t make the rules!

To Regulate or not to Regulate?
Trust me, I’m no great fan of the CRTC. I have plenty of experience dealing with them on the regulatory side of the telecom business and it can be frustrating. But at least when I have something critical to say I try and make sure that it’s actually something they are responsible for.

What bothers me the most is people who can’t make up their mind. People who on the one hand vilify the CRTC and shout at the top of their lungs that it’s antiquated and should be disbanded and then scream bloody murder when their internet service is throttled.

People who want the telecom industry deregulated and then demand the CRTC do something to prevent telecoms from charging 15 cents for text messages (Yes, Jim Prentice I’m looking directly at you).

I have re-written my Asterisk CDR import script so that it now tests every record for uniqueness before inserting into the database. As long as the database has an index on the call date field the performance hit is very reasonable given the extra flexibility and ease of use this provides.

Previously if you started your SQL logging before you ran the import it wouldn’t work which was a major pain because generally you want to get the sever up and running with logging before worrying about old log records.

Now you can run the import anytime and it will import everything and won’t create duplicate records.

The new Asterisk cdr import V2 is located here.

I also finally got around to putting online my maxcallcount perl script. I run this script in a cron every night so I can keep track of how busy my asterisk server is getting. More importantly it tells me how many Zap channels we’re using so I know if we need to consider adding more PRIs.

It also catches things like people call-forward looping their phones which can eat up all the Zap channels in a big spike.

The maxcallcount script is located here.

They both can be found (with more Asterisk stuff) at this page : http://www.johnlange.ca/tech-tips/asterisk/

Wired has a nice little story on the invention of the Phillips screw. The notable part of the story for me is the section that mentions Peter L. Robertson’s square screw. Despite a couple of decade head start and technologically superior design, it failed to gain wide spread adoption because of his insistence on keeping tight control over the invention.

Though neither invention could be called an open standard, it’s a classic example of how more liberal rules for usage lead to wider adoption and technological dominance.

It’s a pattern that has repeated itself throughout history and continues to impact technology today. Companies would do well to heed the lessons of the past.