Business

My email address, which I've had for about 9 years at this point, is finally killed dead. Not dead as in someone else took it - that would be altogether unlikely - but dead as in 'my host ate it'. But they didn't really eat it. The spammers infesting my host have made my email address null and void.

I found this out after going through about 48 hours of the ISP's hiccoughs - TSTT can be stable, but has yet to make a habit of being stable. In other words, for all intents and purposes, it's unstable. When I finally found that the light at the other end of the cyberpipe was not a SysAdmin with pizza breath, I quickly downloaded emails. Within the moldy, spam laden emails I found a few treasures, and of these treasures the diamonds were some offers to review some books that looked pretty interesting. So I sent off emails to the masked publisher, saying that 'yeah, verily, I wish to read your books and write about them!'.

In response I got the emails bounced. In the world of snail mail, this isn't a 'return to sender' - rather, this was 'We don't want your stinking email because people from your zip code keep trying to sell us adult haberdashery'. I don't sell adult haberdashery. I'm not even sure what it is. Even so, the problem is that my host appears to be a spam haven at the time - which means that my host enters the blacklists of organizations who do not want Spam (how dare they!) and thus my email address is likely to be tossed out like a green thing lurking at the back of the refrigerator. { Read more }

As the story of open source licensing being upheld by copyright law bounces around the Internet, there's been quite a bit of commentary on it. Today, I came across yet another article which made a very important distinction. From How not to get sued by open source coders:

...Specifically, those policies should include a list of open source technologies in-house developers can use, a procedure for obtaining appropriate approvals for usage, and most importantly, a process for tracking the code. The latter – tracking how the code is used and modified – is often the root of the issue, said Abe, when a business wants to start selling its products.

But at the core of the court ruling, is the fact that the business had infringement on copyright – not just in breach of the license contract – by not following conditions imposed by the license agreement, like crediting the author, reference to copied files, a description of modifications to the original source, and where to find the original source...

I suppose that I've been using, writing and writing about Open Source and Free Software that I think that this is a no-brainer. That being said, it seems that at least a few organizations and companies are using open source code as Commercial Off The Shelf Software (COTS). And COTS is something that a lot of companies decide to use based on development and process tracking costs: if, for example, a company is trying to maintain a SEI level of 3 or better and they want to avoid having to track a project, they may plug in some COTS. { Read more }

Perhaps because what I do tends to be as diverse as the DNA found on the planet, I don't really fit too awfully well on LinkedIn. If there is one thing I cannot do, it is to define what I do in a subset of some logic that a social networking site is programmed for. If you held my feet to the fire, I would admit to being tenuously linked somehow to the human race. Call me a chimpanzee. I'd probably think of that as a step up from homo sapien. In my formative years, a few people made the mistake of telling me that I could do whatever I wanted. And so I have. And that doesn't fit into any career rut other than 'Writer' or 'Consultant', both of which are accepted forms of addressing anyone from street bums or the real menaces, alleged experts.

I'm a beach bum. But I don't get to the beach as often as I would like.

All of that being said, I got a message today from someone who wanted to connect on LinkedIn. I have no idea who the person is, but the word 'Recruiter' leaps out at me. And, the mandatory part of the message: "Please don't say that you don't know me..."

BAM. I don't know you. There isn't even a picture of you around so I can see a picture of someone I don't know. Why do you want to know me? Because I might have a skillset that can be pawned off to a company looking for a pawn? No, no, that won't work. I did my time in the intellectual coal mines of corporate America. I'm not better, but I've been spoiled by 8 years of doing my own thing - and somehow managing to survive and get ahead. { Read more }

Groklaw has an interesting story about a possible takeover attempt by Microsoft on the Open Document Format (ODF) standard. While I don't have the time or inclination to read and analyze all the gobbly-gook that is put out in the form of standards, Groklaw has, as usual, done a serious analysis after research. It certainly looks like the committee is stacked in Microsoft's favor, which should probably be no surprise.

Of course, to someone on the fringe of technoville, this seems a bridge too far to understand. What needs to be understood by everyone is that this is about the future of how documents are passed around and who they can be passed to. An open standard allows people to share their work more easily; a closed standard creates all manner of trouble - as Microsoft itself has exemplified.

However it works out, one has to wonder what Microsoft's interest in ODF extends to. Microsoft's interest in ODF isn't sufficient to sentence Microsoft; many people (including myself) have often pointed out that Microsoft's lack of support for standards other than it's own seems like an extension of it's monopolistic practices. Before we start arming the villagers with torches and pitchforks, we might want to consider the motive of Microsoft. Historically, Microsoft's involvement could be seen as an attempt at sabotage of the open standard since Microsoft has a tendency to do this with private companies. Will it do it with an open standard? It's hard to say, but I must admit a bit of suspicion.

Even so, if Microsoft were to see my optimistic side, I could see how Microsoft could add value to ODF - like permitting royalty free use of it's patents to assure compatibility of ODF with it's own standards. { Read more }

I came across a copy of the September 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review a few weeks ago, and have had it in the pickup for emergency reading. I'd never read the magazine before, probably because it is almost never seen in Trinidad, so despite the exotic price of TT $149.99 (US $23) I picked it up. It's always good to read what others are writing, and reading broadly is something I do as a reflex.

Within the magazine were some interesting articles, yet the one that bothered me the most was Don't Try This Offshore (HBR Case Study and Commentary). I couldn't quite put my finger on why - the article is well written, funny and a little controversial for American businesses. I re-read it, as well as the commentary, and re-read it again. I thought about it for days. Then it struck me: the premise of the article is what disturbed me.

To summarize the article in one paragraph, the article is about a fictional business in the United States - 'management-metaphor boutique Serendipity Associates (SA)' - is suddenly challenged by a competitor with a lower price tag, and that lower price tag is linked to outsourcing creative work. This comes as a surprise in the story to Serendipity Associates. And that, you see, is what I found disturbing. That people even thought in this way - that creativity is geocentric or, in the Internet era, business-centric. Is this the way that people really think? That an accident of geography or hiring creates the perfect creative business? I don't think like that, but the article's premise clearly demonstrates that at least some people think like that. { Read more }

There's a lot being written of the present economic crisis. Frankly, if it weren't for Alex Rollin and his Facebook updates (he hasn't blogged on his site), I wouldn't have thought as much about it. It seems surreal, especially from my own context.

After getting the turbo gaskets replaced on the Mazda B2500 Turbodiesel, I ended up visiting an Uncle who - true to form - was watching the BBC because he has a tendency to know when to turn on Aunt Beeb. He and I sat there and watched the $700 million bailout bill pushed by George W. Bush fail, and he asked me what I thought. I basically said that I didn't know what to think. The word 'socialist' kept getting used in conjunction with the bill, and I honestly don't think that the Bill itself was socialist as much as it was a Third World answer to a First World problem. My gut told me that the response to the bill, demonstrated by the vote which turned it away (228 nay, 205 yeah as I recall), was a democratic surge of socialism itself. 'The meek shall inherit the earth', but who wants a blue marble so deeply in debt?

The tongues of Aunt Beeb's analysts danced across the screen, discussing why the bill failed. They spread their net and found a few folk who had a few interesting things to say. One man said that (paraphrased), 'everyone wanted the bill but no one wanted to vote for it'. In essence, everyone wanted to get rid of this debt but no one wanted to bail out the people who created the problem in the first place. { Read more }

Over the last few months, off and on, I've tried ordering MP3s through Amazon.com. When I do this, it invariably asks me to change my address... or, more properly, forces me to have to try to change my address. This I do not understand, so I go to Amazon.com's help.

When I go there, I try to email a customer representative because the problem does not appear in the FAQ. However, I can't even email a customer representative without... an order number.

So if you can't order through Amazon.com, the answer is that you don't get help in making an order? Silly me. I can't understand that. I'd have thought that Amazon.com would be interested in any problems I have ordering things.

Silly me.

Without any way to actually speak with anyone at Amazon.com, I'll just toss this into the ether and get my music somewhere else. Sabe?

When I read and reviewed Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World, the filtering and/or censorship of content by nations became more apparent - particularly China. in the post 'Internet filtering is growing by the minute around the World': conversation with Robert Faris of ONI Initiative, a discussion with Robert Faris, Research Fellow of Open Net Initiative (ONI), seems to indicate that the growth of filtration/censorship continues:

...Rob shared some interesting and intriguing outcomes of this research as well as some research ideas to pursue in future. He thinks that the outcomes of ONI research is showing that the filtering is growing by the minute around the World. There are more and more country that are filtering the Internet and the scope of what they filter is growing all the time. Trying to guess what the causes could be, he identified few that are seem to be common all across the research work. Example: to protect our children from harmful content, national security interest, social norms and trying to prevent highly offensive materials from being out there, preventing copyright infringement etc. But interestingly as the research shows, once you put up the infrastructure for filtering the Internet and not only the technical infrastructure but also the administrative, political and social infrastructure- it is very easy to add other things to the list... { Read more }