Dana Blankenhorn

Will Law Force a Meego-Android Merger?

At first blush the idea sounds stupid.

Why should Android, the leading phone OS on the planet, merge its code base into Meego, which has shipped a single Nokia phone that will likely disappear faster than Mr. Popper's Penguins?

One word. Law.

As Florian Mueller has pointed out, many times now, Google faces an immense potential liability from Oracle's copyright-and-patent suit. The suit isn't against Android per-se. It's against Dalvik, the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) written to run Java-based applications. The Google legal team did not do their homework before letting this semi-proprietary thing into the wild, and Oracle may justify its purchase of Sun with one law suit as a result.

While Google and Oracle are both part of the Open Invention Network, the patent consortium designed to protect Linux, the suit is about Java, not Linux. The OIN has not, and will not, interfere, even though OIN head Keith Bergelt has made noise about wanting to protect Android in the press.

Net Becomes a Tower of Babel

Back when the Web was spun, nearly 20 years ago, the dream was simple. One network protocol, one network, a world connected, and people as well.

That dream has been fading for some time, but now it's pretty much over.

ICANN ended it this week, although the concept had already been on life support.

When it began letting domain names be written in languages other than English, the unified Web was basically dead. When a domain name is in Chinese, an American can't even type it, let alone know it. And if that's the domain's only name (increasingly that's the case) it's inaccessible outside the country.

What has been happening over the last few years is the gradual creation of national Internets, which can be controlled rigidly by national governments. China's is the most extensive, the largest as well as the most actively-censored Net in the world.

Tomorrow's News Today: Google Chromebook #Fail

When I traveled to China in 2009 I had an HP Netbook with me.

It was a failure. It only had 2 Gigabytes of internal storage, which within a few months wasn't even enough to run Windows (which updates constantly). I bought a 32 Gbyte stick for it, but as that wasn't the primary drive Windows never recognized its full capacity.

Now Google has, through Samsung and Acer, introduced Chromebooks that solve all those problems.  And they, too, have Fail written all over them. 

The problem is not the operating system, or the dependence on online updating. (Ostatic seems to have a problem with that). The hardware itself is first-rate, with 32 Gigabytes of chip memory inside the box and a Linux that won't swallow it all, leaving plenty of room for applications.

The problem is the basic design.

The Big Opportunity in Home Servers

A lot of people are writing today that Apple has killed the home PC  with its iCloud and iOS announcements.

They haven't. The PC has been dieing for years. As a client.

But as a server? Not so much.

I know that the long-term talk about “media servers”  has proven to be a dead end. I'm talking about an opportunity that has existed for nearly a decade, which I first began labeling “the world of always-on.”

I'm talking of single-chip, specialty devices that can provide automation, security, inventory and medical services to our aging population.

• Devices placed in-line with lights, kitchen appliances, and any other system which uses energy, which can monitor the conditions of those devices, turning them on-and-off in response to a program.

• Single-chip cameras that can be turned on remotely, or via a program, to provide constant security.

• RFID chips placed on goods and even foodstuffs that can monitor the inventory and location of what you got.

• Medical devices that can monitor and report on health without outside intervention.

Intellectual Property Imperialism, or The 1793 Game

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 24 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Ideas have no intrinsic value.

They are only valuable if they are exploited. You can only get value from them if you pursue an idea to a completed work or invention, or if you get so good at coming up with new ideas people who do scale works or invention will pay you to supply them.

Patent and copyright were first created as “monopolies” in our 1787 Constitution, but they did not become enforced until the late 19^th century, after the U.S. gained a positive balance-of-trade in the products of ideas – in books and inventions.

When countries like China and India choose to ignore our copyright and patent laws, they are walking in the foodsteps of people like Samuel Slater (right), the people whose inventiveness built this country. Slater copied his 1793 Rhode Island mill from one he'd worked at in England, in violation of English law. Eli Whitney never made money from his cotton gin – his money came from a gun made with interchangeable parts he was able to manufacture.

Even when copyright and patent rights are fully maintained, most of the money they generate does not go to the people who came up with the ideas. In fact, very little does. A singer or author may only earn a 15% royalty. Royalties on patents are even more modest.

So why has the United States become such a stickler on patent and copyright, to the point where the government is willing to call Google an outlaw in order to enforce these laws more rigorously? 

Cloud, iCloud, Not a Cloud

Cloud computing makes sense.

You squeeze programs, storage, and compute power into a tight little bundle, ignoring things like what OS was used through virtualization. You use parallelism to make the whole system available to any single program that may need a huge calculation or a "rush to the rail" for a Web site.

But to Apple, a cloud is just a general term for hosting files. Its iCloud will be just that, with only proprietary systems supported, with only its files hosted. The "savings" -- such as they are -- will be Apple's, because if your iTunes library has Dire Straits' "My Party" and so does yours, they'll just store it once. Big deal.

The Cloud Backlash will FAIL

The big story of this month is the backlash against the cloud.

It began with Amazon's downtime, and has continued with the revelation that Amazon itself was the source of the hack attack that took down Sony. This has caused nervous nellies like Murray Jennex of San Diego State to suggest cloud computing be ignored by the enterprise.

But the problem here isn't the cloud. The problem is identity. A Bloomberg story describes the Amazon sign-up procedure:

Signing up to the service requires a name, e-mail address, password, phone number, billing address and credit card information. Users get an automated call from Amazon and are asked to dial in a four-digit verification code to complete the registration process.

Note what's missing? Proof that you are who you say you are. A hacker can use a stolen identity. He doesn't have to prove he is who he is.

Facebook Knows It Can't Beat Google

The silly scandal of Facebook running off to Hillary Clinton's old campaign manager, trying to launch a privacy investigation over Google Social Circle, actually has a serious point behind it.

Facebook can't beat Google. And they know it.

The issue that has reporters Twittering is privacy and even the fact we're all talking about that means that Facebook has succeeded in its campaign, because we're talking about something Facebook has long had to deal with, and in that it can be seen as existing on a level playing field with Google.

But in evaluating the two companies that's not the real issue. Raw traffic is not the real issue. Ads are not the real issue.

The real issue is infrastructure.

Scott Cleland's Game: Turn Google Into AT&T

Scott Cleland is a Bell troll.

He is what he has always been, an apologist and paid advocate for the Bell companies and their causes. He hides his source of funds, and reporters new to every beat keep buying the act. It's crazy. Crazy like a Fox.

This week he's a concern troll, having issued a "book" (the same way Regnery publishes "books") that is nothing but a long hit piece against Google. USA Today gave him an admiring interview without once asking him where his money comes from, which is like treating Glenn Beck as an unbiased journalist.

Cleland's theme is that you can't trust Google, that Google always lies, that Google is not out to serve anyone but its own shareholders, and that it deserves the strict government scrutiny given his clients, the Bells.

The aim is simple. To hobble Google with lawyers and layers of bureaucracy, hordes of people who spend their days focused inward, taking big salaries to prevent innovators from innovating.

Open Clouds and Google's Future

The idea that clouds should or could be closed is a straw man.

Even Cisco agrees they should be open. So Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst repeating this truth is no big whoop. 

But lock-in isn't all about software. Just because Cloud A and Cloud B run open source software does not eliminate the lock-in problem. They could be running different open source systems.  They could be incompatible in some other way.

More important is the fact that clouds are big, and systems built in clouds are very big. You ever try to move between two Windows machines? It can take up a full day. Now you're talking about moving between two mainframe equivalents. It's going to take time, it's going to take money, and it's going to be a considered decision.

So HP executives gave away nothing in the Cloud Memogate that has tongues wagging in the Valley.

The hope of all the computing giants (HP, Microsoft, IBM), Web hosts (Rackspace, etc.) and telco companies (AT&T, CenturyLink) crowding into the cloud computing space is that their reputations, their brand names, and their current customer lock-in, will be enough to see them through into the new era.

They couldn't be more wrong.