Expect More Troll-like Behavior

Oracle recently sued Google for patent and copyright infringement. The full text of the complaint is available here. I agree with Miguel De Icaza in that this will most likely result in a settlement out of court.

Sun’s weaker position, and its alliance with the Open Source community, did not allow it to sue Google for patent infringement. This is all covered in depth in this CNET article. Given Sun’s massive patent portfolio, and Oracle’s need to monetize their acquisition, the lawsuit is not surprising.

Oracle’s behavior seems troll-like. It is also seems unabashedly capitalist. Big companies that act like trolls have a tendency to be countersued. Chances are, others can find a patent or two that the bigger company has run afoul of. The question is, why is a large company like Oracle going after a large company like Google, besides the money? Oracle has much to lose in this case. In addition, it is not clear that they have all that much to gain either.

As Eben Moglen pointed out at his recent Linuxcon keynote “The patent system is built for secrecy and for trouble-making — it’s not a pro-innovation system.” Patent trolls and those that sue for patent infringement usually are not creating any value. This is a reason that the Open Source community, people who create value for the common good, finds this behavior so reprehensible.

A lot of enterprise software companies are sitting on a lot of cash. Investment opportunities are not good as a few years ago. Consequently, for companies that have not donated their patents to cross-licensing organizations (such as OIN), it makes sense to extract as much value as possible out of their patent portfolio. Also, it has the benefit of helping companies to build out their cash stockpiles, suppress competition and stifle innovation.

Patent On Patent Trolling

Via Felix Salmon, here is the patent on patent trolling.

Methods for a first party to acquire and assert a patent property against a second party are disclosed. The methods include obtaining an equity interest in the patent property. The methods further include writing a claim within the scope of the patent property. The claim is written to cover a product of the second party where the product includes a secret aspect. The methods further include filing the claim with a patent office. The methods sometimes include offering a license of the patent property to the second party after the patent property issues as a patent with the claim. The methods sometimes include asserting infringement of the claim by the second party after the patent property issues as a patent with the claim. The methods sometimes include negotiating a cross-license with the second party based on the assertion of infringement of the claim, where under the cross-license the first party obtains a license to an intellectual property right from the second party. The methods sometime include attempting to obtain a monetary settlement from the second party based on the assertion of infringement of the claim. – link

Lenovo Multimedia Remote

I was a little bit embarrassed when I pulled out a wired keyboard and a mouse to show some guests a Youtube video on my HTPC. I saw that the Lenovo Multimedia Remote with Keyboard was on sale directly through Lenovo, so I ordered it without a lot of research. My cost was about $33 with free shipping.

The remote fits very nicely in my hands. It is a full-featured keyboard which reminds me of a Blackberry, though the feel is not as good. The remote is very lightweight, so much so that it makes me question the quality. However, I have not had any issues with it yet. The rollerball could be a bit smoother and it takes some getting used to the operation, especially clicking.

The USB dongle is extremely small. One great design point is that it fits in the base of the remote, next to the 2 AA batteries, in case you want to retire the remote without losing the dongle. Another good feature is a on/off switch under the remote to save on batteries.

One missing feature this keyboard is a back-lighting on the keyboard. It is impossible to see the keys in the dark, which is a PITA if you want to use this to control your HTPC. The remote worked immediately with Ubuntu and the dongle is almost invisible with my HTPC. Overall, I am happy with my purchase and would buy this keyboard again, especially at the $35 price point. It was definitely worth it to retire the wired keyboard I had before.

Ubuntu Smiley

One of the developers in the Novell Cambridge office decided to have some fun with obsolete disks.

This Is Why I’m Scared Of Facebook

This image, from People Magazine, is why I am scared of Facebook.

On one hand, I am really excited that they found a way for me to post my thoughts without having to log into their site. On the other hand, they have my picture, my name, and know that I’m interested Lindsay Lohan’s accidental nudity. On top of that, it allows Facebook to better target their ads based on my browsing preferences.

Also, I thought I had turned this functionality off?

Larry Ellison and Sun

There is a special report available via ABC which is really an in-depth post-mortem of the Sun deal.

In recent years, Sun outsourced much of its sales, counting on resellers to promote its products. That’s anathema at Oracle, which employs 22,000 salespeople and 11,000 software consultants who work directly with its largest customers. … “Astonishingly they laid off all the sales people and they laid off all the field service people. They just got rid of them all,” he said. “Guess what? Sales dropped. It’s breathtaking!”

I am not going to mention what company this reminds me of. I will mention that the quote is from Larry Ellison. I think this article is required reading for anyone in the enterprise IT market.

Up There Film

This film was sponsored by Stella Artois and created by an ad agency. Despite that, it is really darn cool.

Mass Customization Of Email

With all the tools that spammers and mass marketers have at their disposal, you would think that they would be better focused on mass customization of their emails. I received a thank you email from Hilton after my recent stay in the UK. The email started out with:

“We’re so glad you’ve recently enjoyed the special treatment Hilton HHonors® guests receive at Hilton hotels.”

This really irks me since they had given away my room, despite my honorary Gold status. I had to take a Taxi to the next Hilton property after a grueling international trip. I ate some disgusting pizza with Tuna fish on it, since the kitchen was closed. The room was terrible and had a lumpy mattress. So if by “special treatment” you mean “being treated like a stray dog”, then yes, I did have to enjoy that. I am pretty sure I do not ever again want to be a Hilton HHonors guest!

Since Hilton has my email address, it would have been nice to receive a personal apology. At a minimum, if you are going to email your customers, you should at the very least check to make sure that there were no issues before sending out a “Thank you, please come again” message. The benefit of having all these computers is that you can analyze client data and send relevant information to improve your loyalty and customer experience. Lastly, the email did not even contain a survey link where I could give them some honest feedback about the service that I received.

WSJ Story

The WSJ posted a story yesterday that explores a similar topic. I had not read that story when I posted mine yesterday morning. But the theory is the same: small-businesses will benefit from reduced capital costs.

SMBs And Cloud Computing

The real beneficiaries of the trend towards Cloud Computing (if there is such a thing) are the small to medium size businesses (SMBs). I suppose I should start by defining Cloud Computing as IAAS, PAAS, or SAAS with a measure of Utility Computing.

Several decades ago, before the emergence of computing, if you wanted to start a new business and you had to set up an office to accommodate your employees. The office would have staplers, desks, lamps, etc. You might have wanted to get a mimeograph machine as well. These were all things that could be leased or purchased.

Over the last two decades, there have been rapid changes in the amount of computing resources needed to perform office duties. If you wanted to set up an office, you needed to purchase or lease computers. In addition, you needed to purchase licenses of software, hire expensive technicians, etc. The capital costs of opening an office skyrocketed. And you still needed to purchase a mimeograph machine, which they were calling a “photocopy” machine.

Out of this shuffle, there is now a general consensus about core hardware and software that is needed to successfully open a new office. For example, we know that each employee will have a computer with monitor, email, internet access, a word processor, a spread-sheeting program, etc. If you didn’t have the latest version of these software programs, you couldn’t do business with suppliers, partners, and customers.

So now the technology and bandwidth is available to host these office applications securely at a central site, and to provide employees with on-demand access to it. If you want to think about it another way, you can have someone else lease the package as a service. In addition, you can lease thin clients, and get the same services at lower monthly cost. This dramatically lowers the capital investment needed to open a physical office. You’ll probably still have to purchase staplers and lease a scanner or photocopier.

The true effect of Cloud Computing is to lower the cost of business for SMBs. Why SMBs? Because newer, smaller organizations will be better positioned to embrace this shift. They have the most to benefit, since capital costs for computing would have previously consumed a far greater percentage of their resources. Because of the complexity, older and larger companies will find it much harder to embrace this Cloud Model. Also, larger companies already have established IT budgets and it consumes far less as a percentage of their resources. Lastly, there is a false consensus that control over IT resources results in security or advantage.