Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Larry Insane

OAKLAND, CA - NOVEMBER 08:  Oracle CEO Larry E...OAKLAND, CA - NOVEMBER 08: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison passes through security as he arrives at U.S. District court on November 8, 2010 in Oakland, California. Ellison is in court to testify in a trial against arch-rival software maker SAP AG who allegedly stole customer support documents from password protected Oracle websites. Oracle is seeking $2 billion in damages. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison Cracks Me Up
Larry Ellison's 1995 Network Computer Vision
Larry Ellison's Personal Life
Putting My Money On Larry Ellison

"I don’t know if you can copyright a language."
- Larry Ellison

"Oracle finally filed a patent lawsuit against Google. Not a big surprise. During the integration meetings between Sun and Oracle where we were being grilled about the patent situation between Sun and Google, we could see the Oracle lawyer's eyes sparkle. Filing patent suits was never in Sun's genetic code. Alas.... I hope to avoid getting dragged into the fray: they only picked one of my patents (RE38,104) to sue over."
- Java creator James Gosling



The only acceptable price tag on Android is free.

World War III Time: Let's Go To War
Android Has To Be Kept Free

Microsoft is wrong in milking the Android handset manufacturers. And Google is even more in the wrong in not defending those manufacturers. And now here comes Larry Ellison. You can't patent APIs, Larry.

Nothing prevents Larry Ellison from modifying Android - Kindle, anyone? - to put out a smartphone product that would be yet another interaction point to the many databases he sells. But that would be innovation.

Larry Ellison is so in the wrong here, it's not even funny. I get the impression the guy is clowning around Steve Jobs' grave. There has got to be better ways to express sentiments than to try and snatch from the peoples of the Global South their number one pathway to the Internet. And to think Android is older than the iOS.

The PC could not have been patented. The tablet can not be patented. The smartphone can not be patented.

The PC Was A Category And Could Not Have Been Patented

And so Larry Ellison is going to unleash "thermonuclear war" on his best friend's behalf. If he wins, he gets 20 million dollars, right? Is that "thermonuclear war?"

This is like Yahoo going after Facebook.

Yahoo Has Patents?

Monday, April 16, 2012

Skype On HTML5 Has Smartphone Implications

Image representing Skype as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBaseWP Sauce: Web version of Skype confirmed by Microsoft job posting

I have long expressed the belief at this blog that HTML5 is where it is at. Smartphone apps are transitional authorities. If Skype becomes available on your browser, and if the HTML5 browser is the primary player on your smartphone, what is your Skype ID? I want it.

Smartphones are computers. They have been misnamed. PC is personal computer. SC should be small computer. Smartphones are small computers.
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Events: Week Of April 16

FourSquare LogoFourSquare Logo (Photo credit: johnscotthaydon)Monday, April 16
FourSquare Day, The Caulfield, 119 East 27th Street, 7-10 PM

Tuesday, April 17
Websdays @ Tribeca Grand, 7-1155 PM
Tribeca Grand Hotel, 2 Avenue of the Americas

Wednesday, April 18
Indiegogo presents HOW TO BUILD FROM AN IDEA / A Creative Forum, 7-10 PM
Projective Space LES, 72 Allen Street, 3rd Floor, Between Grand & Broome

Thursday, April 19
Entrepreneurs Roundtable 46, 7-9 PM
NYU Stern Room 1-70, 44 West 4th Street
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Sunday, April 15, 2012

Quantum Network



PC Magazine: Scientists Build First Working Quantum Network
Time: World’s First Quantum Network Built with Two Atoms, One Photon
Scientific American: Bits of the Future: First Universal Quantum Network Prototype Links 2 Separate Labs
Engadget: Scientists create the first universal quantum network, are scared to restart the router
CNet: Physicists connect the dots on quantum computing
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The Subway, The Mobile Phone: NYC, The Global South


The subway more than anything symbolizes NYC for me, a city I love. The mobile phone similarly more than anything symbolizes the Global South for me, my heritage, my background, my nook in the universe, where I am from.

Every time a train glides into a train station, it feels like an action movie to me.

The phone will do more for the Global South than anybody and anything else.


Give Me Blazing Broadband, Or Give Me, Give Me


Sergey Brin's Is The Right Stand

I once said there is a direct correlation between Sergey's parents having to flee Russia and Sergey's principled stand on China. Some of us are free speech bigots. I am one. Now I am extending that metaphor. Only now it's not about China, it is about America. And it is still about free speech.

A lot of people I admire in the tech industry wrongly frame the debate in that they suggest if only people on Capitol Hill knew, if only lobbyists did not have this much unfair power. I think more than that is at stake. The Internet turns the entire world into one country, and the nation state as we know it feels threatened. The Internet sends a clear message that Capitol Hill is not the center of the universe. The universe has no center. And that suggestion riles Galileo's enemies.

The Internet is a country. It is the new country. It is the newest country. I said this back in 1999 when I was with my first serious startup while at college. America is Europe. The Internet is America now.

Tim Berners-Lee: The Internet Is Not A Country

Although I'd not put China, Saudi Arabia and Iran in the same category as Facebook and Apple. Facebook's "walled garden" exists because people choose to keep many things private on there. Although I would argue services like Google should have ready access to stuff people publicly share on there, as well on Twitter. API level success, don't need nobody's permission kind of access. Immediate access. Apple's iPhone apps go away when HTML5 and wireless broadband become mainstream just like desktop apps have given way to the cloud. Although one can argue there has got to be a better way to search though the hundreds of thousands of smartphone apps.

The Guardian: Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google's Sergey Brin
the threat to the freedom of the internet came from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry attempting to crack down on piracy, and the rise of "restrictive" so-called walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly controlled what software could be released on their platforms. ..... he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet ...... the intensifying battle for control of the internet that is being fought across the globe between governments, companies, military strategists, activists and hackers ....... From Hollywood's attempts to push through legislation allowing pirate websites to be shut down, to the British government's plans to monitor social media and web use, the ethos of openness championed by the pioneers of the internet and worldwide web is being challenged on a number of fronts. ....... In China, which now has more internet users than any other country in the world, the government recently introduced new "real identity" rules in a bid to tame the boisterous micro-blogging scene. In Russia there are powerful calls to rein in a blogosphere that was blamed for fomenting a wave of anti-Putin protests. It has been reported that Iran is planning to introduce a sealed "national internet" from this summer. ........ Ricken Patel, co-founder of Avaaz, the 14 million-strong online activist network which has been providing communication equipment and training to Syrian activists, echoed Brin's warning, saying: "We've seen a massive attack on the freedom of the web. Governments are realising the power of this medium to organise people and they are trying to clamp down across the world, not just in places like China and North Korea; we're seeing bills in the United States, in Italy, all across the world." ...... Brin said he was not surprised by the effectiveness with which China had so far managed to create a technological barrier against the outside world. "I'm more surprised by the acceptance," he said. "I had imagined people would be more rebellious." ........ it would be hugely difficult for any government to defend its online "territory". ........ He reserved his harshest words for the entertainment industry, which he said was "shooting itself in the foot, or maybe worse than in the foot" by lobbying for legislation to block sites offering pirate material. ...... the Sopa and Pipa bills championed by Hollywood and the music industry would have led to the US using the same technology and approach it criticised China and Iran for using. ...... "I haven't tried it for many years but when you go on a pirate website, you choose what you like, it downloads to the device of your choice and it will just work – and then when you have to jump through all these hoops [to buy legitimate content], the walls created are disincentives for people to buy"

CNet: Google's Sergey Brin: Facebook and Apple a threat to Internet freedom

Al Zazeera: The UK government's war on internet freedom
Despite declaring early on in his term that internet freedom should be respected "in Tahrir Square as much as Trafalgar Square", his government is now considering a series of laws that would dramatically restrict online privacy and freedom of speech. ...... would allow the government to monitor every email, text message and phone call flowing throughout the country. Internet service providers (ISPs) would be forced to install hardware that would give law enforcement real time, on-demand access to every internet user's IP address, email address books, when and to whom emails are sent and how frequently - as well as the same type of data for phone calls and text messages. ....... Because many popular services - like Google and Facebook - encrypt the transmission of user data, the government also would force social media sites and other online service providers to comply with any data request. ....... "In a terrorism investigation, the police will already have access to all the data they could want. This is about other investigations." The information gathered in this new programme would be available to local law enforcement for use in any investigation and would be available without any judicial oversight. ....... "A cross-party committee of MPs and peers has urged the government to consider introducing legislation that would force Google to censor its search results to block material that a court has found to be in breach of someone's privacy." ...... a Scottish oil company obtained a super-injunction against Greenpeace to keep photographs of the environmental group's protest off social media sites. Within hours, unaffiliated users posted hundreds of the pictures, effectively nullifying the order. If the recommendation by the MPs were followed, Google, Facebook and Twitter would have to proactively monitor and remove such results from their webpages. ........ Despite the enormous backlash over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US, the UK government is reportedly trying to broker a backroom deal between ISPs and content companies in which search engines would start "voluntarily" censoring sites accused of copyright infringement. The deal would force search engines to blacklist entire websites from search results merely upon an allegation of infringement, and artificially promote "approved" websites. ....... recently, one man was forced to pay 90,000 pounds (plus costs) because of two tweets that were seen by an estimated 65 people in England and Wales. ...... Britain is home to many of the companies exporting high tech surveillance equipment to authoritarian countries in the Middle East, where it is used to track journalists and democratic activists. The technology, which can be used to monitor a country's emails and phone calls, is similar to what the UK government will have to install to implement its own mass surveillance programme.

Fred Wilson: Life Liberty and Blazing Broadband