Wednesday, November 16, 2011

You Shouldn't Have To Read This

Engineers are scientists and, as such, I have always insisted that we should not meddle in politics because such an entanglement makes for bad science and worse politics.

However, as the Al Pacino character in Godfather II said, "just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in." -- "I"meaning all of us technical people and "they" meaning the Congress of the United States, or politicians.

We went through something like this with the DMCA and then with "Net Neutrality." Now SOPA (the Stop Only Privacy Act) is the soup of the day -- actually it is more like the human waste that is produced when someone ingests spoiled soup.

America is truly an amazing country. Our Congress, whenever their incompetence is most apparent -- just look at the economy for Heaven's sake! -- they tend to dabble in the most inconsequential things such as baseball or, unfortunately for us, the Internet.

In the midst of a floundering economy the sector that is most promising and actually thriving is having cold water thrown at it. This is like a drowning person deciding that drinking large amounts of seawater would be good idea on since the salt in the water is a natural source of sodium.

So what is this SOPA thing all about? If you don't mind legalese terms such as "in personam" and language so thick it puts mud to shame, you may access the full text here. For the rest of you who prefer plain English here is a brief summary.

SOPA puts the burden of protecting intellectual property on ISPS and search engines. Sounds like China's great firewall to you? I am afraid you are right.

Apart from the twin facts that China is a dictatorship (hardly the country America should be modeling its laws after) and that China's catch-all censorship has proven more annoying than effective (at least to power users), this sort of legislation will stifle technology, drain ISPS of cash via huge fines and make search engines virtually useless if not illegal. It places the burden of blocking sites that violate IP laws on the aforementioned.

Google, which had to leave China because of their anti-free speech rules, may also end up facing the same choice in the US. This is insane. Will Americans seeking unfiltered search result have to turn to China's Baidu.com?

And there is an even greater moral hazard here. SOPA's proponents claim that it's sole purpose is to protect intellectual property. Even if we were to overlook the spotty record of IP policing and prosecution in the years since DMCA (including innocent victims and companies issuing notices for material they did not in fact own the rights for), given the fluidity with which IP violations have been redefined to suit certain agendas, this law is an open invitation for fascist politicians to initiate IP violation notices against sites that espouse political views with which they disagree. Even more slyly, these rats could attack the advertising networks --yes the law does address advertising networks -- that support the sites they dislike.

In the same way in which Soviet Russia labelled dissidents "reactionaries" rogue politicians could label the bloggers they dislike "IP-violators!" If you are not alarmed yet, you are probably a bot incapable of passing a Turin test.

Let me reiterate that I do believe in protecting intellectual property rights -- online and off. The courts have been enforcing the law for the past 20 years of public Internet with existing laws. SOPA is not needed --plus it's harmful. We even had a teenager extradited to the US for 16 lines of code because IP holders felt threatened by. What more to these people want?

I hope sense prevails among legislators and that those whose will is steeled by campaign contributions will be in the minority. As the closing screen of an old public service ad once proclaimed: "God, bless America, please."

To read more and do your part in combatting this anti-technology, anti-freedon piece of drivel that passes for law, click on the links below. I urge especially to click the online petition:

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011

The Day The Music Died

I am still recovering from the shock at the headline announcing the death of Steve Jobs. Beside being the face in front and the heart inside Apple for almost 30 years, Steve was a visionary the likes of which are hard to come by.

Steve Jobs was not just an innovator he was a leader in creating new paradigms, new cultures, new worlds. Its not that he invented gadgets; he showed us the way to a universe we had never seen before and made us feel a home there.

He was a great man and will sorely be missed.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Give Hydro-Engineering A Chance

As with all challenges faced by engineers, these days of record heat should help spur innovation.

The field of geo-engineering, especially because it involves lofty projects that wow visitors and investors alike, gets a lot of press these days. And, I will not belittle its usefulness.

However, the often neglected field of hydro-engineering holds a lot of promise as well as challenges that have yet to be met.

Water, although not the best heat exchanger (hardly anything beats Freon gas) is abundant cheap and safe. I think there is a lot of room for devising systems that combine water and air to cool large spaces effectively, efficiently and perhaps even more cost-effectively that is done nowadays.

In the same way that lakes and rivers help to temper environmental heat, water-based heat exchange technology could be used to boost existing climate control systems.

Another area where hydro-engineering could help improve quality of life on this planet would be through easily deployed light pipelines that would combine flood control with irrigation. It's a fortuitous coincidence and somewhat of an irony that flooded areas are often just a few hundred miles removed from drought-stricken regions.

Imagine if we could move water from the flood-prone Mississippi delta to the scorching Nevada desert, or from Monsoon drenched Bangladesh to the scorched Sahara desert. Water, young man!

Sunday, July 10, 2011

The Shifting Sands Of Social Networking

As Google+ debuted with much fanfare and as it was revealed that Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg pretty much endorsed his competition by both admitting that he had a Googled+ profile and commending the service, I realized that social networking is quite a unique field in which to operate.

Like with the MTV series The Real World where season is likely to bring a new cast and story line, Social Networking's wagons seem not very amenable to longtime commitments. Those who had hitched their wagons to MySpace can easily understand where I am coming from.

I don't think Facebook is going anywhere anytime soon, but I think there is a real possibility that it might be at least partially eclipsed by the big G.

Social networking has a lot in common with cellphones except that, not being physical and not requiring two year contracts (or money for that matter), the players fortunes are a lot less secure that one might presume.

I say this not for Zuckerberg's sake as I am sure his financial advisor's are taking care of that end, but I want to warn developers who might find their Facebook allegiance unfruitful should their target demographic decide to move on.

As I have always warned my colleagues, those who refuse to design and plan independently of platform will find their work becoming irrelevant soon enough —Foxpro developers know this all too well.

A clearly designed game or application can be conceivable ported if its features follow a platform-agnostic design. There is a difference between maximizing the strengths of a port's platform and designing around it.

It also goes without saying, that we should choose our platforms like we chose our tools: the right one for the right circumstance. It doesn't hurt to ask the hypothetical question how could we go about moving our cash cow if we needed to?

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Engineers and Politics

Writing as I am on the morning after the President's State of the Union address, as much as I feel tempted to, I will still resist the temptation to comment on it. My main reason is that this is not a political blog. and the speech was a political event with mostly political implications. Some of its ramifications may affect the technology world down the road. Then would be a great time to comment on them.

However, I do want to use the momentum of the Speech to warn my fellow technologists of the pitfalls they might encounter on the road to Washington. Honestly, I think good engineers serve the nation better by developing the technologies that improve the quality of life of our fellow citizens than by going into politics.

Yet, since politics has a way of insinuating itself into every aspect of life, it might be useful to try to flesh out some principles that those of us in the world of zeroes and ones can follow in order not to support political agendas that will hurt our work.

(1)Fuzzy is as Fuzzy Does
Precision in implementation, measurements and language are staples of the engineering world. Ambiguity in technology is not just frowned upon; it has no place. In politics, however, ambiguity is often sought and frequently used.

This translates many times into politicians drafting members of the digital economy into fighting against their own interests.

So how can we protect ourselves from shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot? In the same way in which we harden our applications for use in the real world: know the environment. In other words, do your homework and fully understand the issues before committing.

Int their book, Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner, warn us to always remember that experts have their own self-interest in mind even as they make recommendations. This applies infinitely more to politicians.

(2)Neutrality, It's Not Just Good For The Net
One of the advantages of being an engineer is that one is excused if one chooses not to take a position in political or otherwise extraneous matters.

It turns out that this is a very good idea. This course of action is especially advisable when the issues being discussed or the way in which they are being discussed are murky. Take, for example, net neutrality.

I have read and heard so many a definitions —at times conflicting, at times too imprecise— of the term "net neutrality" to render it useless for engineering purposes. The situation has gotten so bad that should Congress pass a law that says "let there be net neutrality," no one would have any idea how to implement it.

Once upon a time, net neutrality used to be defined as all data packets on the internet being given the same priority regardless of content or origination. Not one of the positions currently being debated involves this simple definition, therefore the discussion is really about something else nowadays.

In times like these, it would serve the technology world best if many of us were to remain neutral until the concepts are properly clarified. Otherwise, we might end up actively promoting policies that hurt our our principles, our livelihoods, or both.

(3)Don't Be Evil
This applies not just to large Google-like corporations with valuations in the billions of dollars. We all have some measure of power to affect how the lives of others will be governed. From voting at ballot station to serving in some advisory panel.

It is vitally important that you remember that with power comes responsibility, that good law is measured not by its intentions but by its effects, that freedom is self-correcting while coercion self-multiplying, that the moral hazards of a policy can nullify its laudable objectives. Above all impress in your mind that there is such a thing as the law of unintended consequences; it is as pervasive as Murphy's and neither may be safely ignored.

Wether you are worth a few hundred dollars or a few hundred billion, please, for the sake of the rest of us and your own, don't be evil — and do not support the causes of evil people either.