Internet Power

     

     Internet can be one of the most important inventions in human history.  It started of as only few point-to-point connections between some computers. Nowadays, it grew into a gain monster covering almost everywhere on earth.  It seems to become one of the most powerful inventions as well.  People can get almost any information of anywhere in the world from Internet.  And they almost can upload their own knowledge onto Internet for everyone to see.  Many organizations fear of losing power to this gain communication network, especially, countries with serious domestic issues.  Internet in those areas has become not only a tool for people seeking for truth, but also a weapon of anti-government movements.  Therefore, some countries decide to eliminate this weapon for their own survival.  Egypt and Libya are examples of massive Internet shut down.  Now, Syria may join the party.

     It is still unclear what is the reason for the recentcountrywide Internet shutdown in Syria.  The government claims that it is caused by terrorist attack.  But it is still unusual or nearly impossible for a simple terrorist attack to cause all 84 IP address of Syria to drop off from world Internet all at once.  However, there is a massive civil war in Syria, in such chaotic time, anything can be possible. Moreover, this time in Syria, it was not only the Internet; the cell phone network also only works intermittently.  If this is really caused by Syria government, they for sure have learnt something from Egypt – to stop people going onto Internet completely, not event from their phones. 

Monitoring firm Akamai posted this graph showing level of net activity in Syria

     Many countries have already recognized and started to fear the gain power of Internet.  But the potential of Internet will not stop on only being an information-exchanging platform.  It will be developed bigger and more into our every day life.  Many of us have already rely on internet form many of our daily activities, such as using cloud to store and access important files, control home appliances using cell phones or internet connections, access to stock market, banks and more.  Soon, shutting down Internet will not only stop connection to outside world, but also cause huge destruction.  It is not even mention how much destruction people can cause by using Internet for unlawful purposes.  This is the power of Internet, soon will be the strongest power in the world.

"Updating" Patents

To turn a page of a book is no longer free, because Apple owns it. Patent office gave Apple an exclusive privilege for turning a page on a scree. That is right, now you have to pay for the activity we have been doing since the very beginning of the existence of book, and only this is on your digital devices.  May soon we have to pay to have any thing on a screen?

A patent on such broad idea does not only fail to serve its original purpose of protecting intellectual properties, but also limits development on both technology and economy in the field of Information Technology.  Patent law needs to be reformed, and “software patent” should be the first to be eliminated.

Software patents, as indicated on words, are patents for programs that run on an electronic device.  But it is different from most of other patents that issued for hardware innovations.  Software patents often cover not the actual programs (there is something called copyright), but the general ideas behind the programs. For example, the famous Siri patent 8,086,604 from Apple.  Instead of granting patent for Siri program, it covered any “universal interface” that people can use to search across varieties of medium, such as Internet, without going through multiple search engines.  Then, as ridiculous as it can be, the famous “Google quick search box,” a function that has been in use for years, became a violation to Apple’s patent.  

Patent is now guns for those software gangsters.  Nancy R. Heinen said, “attitude was that if someone at Apple can dream it up, then we should apply for a patent, because even if we never build it, it’s a defensive tool." Just to show how software patent can be used as a weapon. Patent 5,715,314 excluded all “network-based sakes systems.” Patent 5,797,127is on the whole Priceline.com, and blocks any competitor in the field.  The ridiculous of all, Patent 4,949,257covers all purchase of software over a network. Software patents have become pistols for software monopolies, and serve none of patent’s original purpose.

For the patent’s purpose of serving as public recourse in order to help later inventors, software patent results in a completely opposite reaction. A single search interface may be great idea, but it covers so broad that it restricts all other Apple competitor from farther developing a better or different program of the same idea.  Now, for an inelegant programmer, instead of spending passion in developing a great program that would benefit many, he or she has to pay Apple or any other big software giants couple million dollars to gain access for patents, which do not even help or have anything to do with the development at all.

Moreover, software patents like the Siri patent also fail to serve the very basic purpose of patent.  That is to protect one’s intellectual works. But there is not intellectual work to protect.  Such ideas that are being “protected” can come up by anyone, who is frustrated after searching multiple search engines, or known by everyone who can turn a page. The only different between those people and Apple is couple expensive patent attorneys. 

In addition, software patent results in mass financial damages for innovators, especially individual programmers.  First, to file a patent in US, it takes about $40,000.  It is not affordable for many poor little individual software developers.  If that do not stop them, then, potential lawsuits from big lawyer-ed up software giants for sure will destroy the rest.  Keith Bergelt estimates, “win, lose or draw, it costs $3 to $ 5 million dollars to defend against a patent lawsuits.”  It is not the amount of money ordinary entrepreneurs can afford.  MichaelPhillips is one of the many victims lost his company not to patentedtechnology, but to a patent lawsuit. 

It is not even talking about patent lawsuits that are outside of courts. After Google bought Motorola, it demanded Apple to pay 2.25% of all its sells on devices that uses Wi-Fi for Google’s patent on the ideal of Wi-Fi.  On the same week, Apple’s $368 million went to VirnetX for the idea of having a camera filming the person while calling (FaceTime).  Software giant Apple may be able to afford this, but what about smaller companies and ordinary consumers? 

If the patent system stays where it is, it is not so long until the end of software development.  Then, only chaos of patent war will remain.  Software patents need to be eliminated before not turning a page, but even the idea of having software becomes a patent. 

Hacking Voting Machine

Election nowadays is a completely different story from decades ago.  Everything from campaign advertisements to polling analysis is all going digital.  Voting process is not an acceptation.  From the very first voting machine in 1920, voting machine was designed to fight voting fraud.  Now, many parts of the country use electronic voting machines. However, whenever things going electronic, there is the concern about security.  It is for sure harder to hack a voting machine than to tamper the old phone voting system, but it is not an impossible task.  Here is a youtube video showing how to hack a voting machine.

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Nowadays, voting machine is not the only concern people have in this brand new century.  Everything in our life is going electronic in a blink of eyes.  Information security on electronic devices becomes more and more important.  However, security is not a new problem specific to electronic devices.  It is also possible to hack old paper or phone system.  Electronic information is easy to carry, store, change and copy, which also make it easy to still and interference.  From this point of view, electronic seems made information unsecured.  On the other hand, instead of pills of papers, small electronic chips also made information smaller and easier to guard in the physical world.  So did electronic bring better or worse of security? 

Renewable Energy vs. Renewable Energy Policy

Another $249 million US government grant vaporized as A123Systems, a lithium ion battery manufacturer, declared bankruptcy on October 16th.  It is the one of the largest failures of green energy companies after the bankruptcy of Solyndra with $528 million government loan as part of President Obama’s alternative energy project of stimulus package.  Green energy technology such as solar photovoltaic is important for the future, but it should not be substitute or granted by government just for the purpose of increasing their capacity.  Instead the government should pay more attention on the development of the actual technology, such as investing more in research institutions, to improve its efficiency and reliability.  It is essential to make green energy a real competitor against conventional energy on both environmental and financial aspects.  Overall, the federal government can’t babysit clean energy forever.

Alternative energy is no doubt the future for energy industry.  It is not because of the climate change.  Many people may have a false assumption on the need to alternative energy is solely base on the possible cause-effect relationship between climate change and CO2 emission.  Therefore, people refuse to support alternative energy by arguing the cause of climate change is not proven to be human activity or CO2 emission alone. Like Governor Mitt Romney said in his speech at Consol Energy Center, “my view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.”  His view may be true, but it proves nothing against developments of alternative energy.

Fossil fuel as a limited recourse is the real reason behind the need of alternative energy. Facing the rapid growth of world energy consumption, the end of precious fossil fuel is going to come.  When governor Romney said, “I will fight for oil, coal andnatural gas,” he did not realize that there will soon be no more oil, coal and natural gas to fight for.  The world needs to move on to another form of energy for its demands. 

Therefore, when president Obama supported developments of alternative energy as part of his the Stimulus package, it is like finally somebody know what is the right thing to do.  However, the result is not so right.  The Stimulus package did not only do the right thing of promoting clean energy, it also did bad thing, like loaning millions to individual companies, which turned out to be complete failures.   The share of clean energy in US barely passed 12% in 2011, after spent almost all of $90 billions.  Two large federal supported companies bankrupted, which lead to almost $800 million taxpayers’ money gone to nowhere. Moreover, for every MW-h of solar energy people use, more than $700 vaporized under the name of federal subsidies. Governor Romney may be wrong on his view on future energy industry, but his is right when he said, “in place of real energy, Obama has focused on an imaginary world where government-subsidized windmills and solar panels could power the economy.”

One thing people have to realize is that building an unsupported frame of clean energy by pouring taxpayers’ money is not going to help the transition of energy industry in the long run.  It is going to collapse as soon as the money disappears.  Base on the national debts of US, it is not so far away.  The only way to strength the structure is to build a strong foundation, which is effective clean energy technology itself.  The only reason for the government to spend this much money in support is clean energy technology is unable to support itself on the market to compete with conventional energy on both efficiency and production costs.  The concept of free market is only in favor of strong competitors.  By thinking in the long term of clean energy development, it is critical for it to be able to compete in the market by itself without much government financial supports.  It is only can be achieved by improving technology’s efficiency and reduce production costs. 

In term of improving this new technology, no place does it better and science and innovation institute.  It was the National Renewable Energy Laboratory decreased costs of wind power production.  However, only $2 billions of Stimulus package went into science and innovation.  It is not a small amount of money, but the money could do better if instead of throwing money to a company, which major goal is to be profitable, it went into science institutions where innovation is the priority.

To Fix the Climate

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Monday was the last presidential debate of 2012 election.  During the past three debates, many issues had been discussed, and we all see the clear differences between President Obama and governor Romney.  However, surprisingly, one of the hottest topics was not discussed and asked about.  That is climate change.  And this marked “the first” since 1980s that climate change didn’t come up in presidential debates,even the topic of clean energy was only mentioned briefly here and there. But it does not change climate change as one of the most important and hardest to answer problem for current society.

Many people in US have accepted the idea of climate change, and for people, who have not, they should.  There is hardly any doubt on the existence of climate change, but the cause of it is now the central question.  Many people believe that it is solely due to human activities, but the scientific evidences have just not been enough to give a clear, one plus one equals two, answer to convince everyone, even scientists.  People have been criticism governor Romney for changing his position on climate change.  But it is not his fault for changing his answer when he probably doesn’t know the answer himself.  The truth be told, no one really sure what the cause is and if cutting the emitting of CO2 is really going to change the situation.  Therefore, making policies for climate change that will apply nationwide is hard and getting it approved is even harder. Moreover, the issue about alternative energy technologies, such as high production costs, low efficiency and high polluted producing process for equipments, makes the situation even worse.  Everyone expects the president and the government to do the right thing for the country and the world, but what happens if there is not a right thing to do?

However, it doesn’t mean that promoting clean energy is not necessary, because there is not only the climate to be considered.  The limited supply of fossil fuel is a clear answer for developing alternative energy facing high growth of energy usage of modern society.  When governor Romney says, “I will fight for oil, coal and natural gas,” I will ask what is going to happen if there is no more oil, coal or natural gas.  To develop America’s oil, coal and natural gas industries is not proceeding for energy independent, it is only accelerate the end of fossil fuel age for America. 

One the other hand, it also doesn’t mean that we should just put all of our money into renewable energy and paying billions of dollars to subsidize the market.  The green technologies nowadays are still too immature and costly both on money and on earth resources.  They need much more improvements before entering the market to compete or to replace conventional energy.  Clean energy is the future, but the clean technologies that we have now is not the right answer yet.

Live For the Future

On October 20^th, Under Tomorrows Sky project first opened for Dutch Design Week.  It is a fictional future city think tank project created by a group of scientist technologists, futurists, illustrators, science fiction authors and special effects artist leaded by speculative architect Liam Young of the London based Tomorrows Thoughts Today.  The major contributors are Bruce Sterling, Warren Ellis, Rachel Armstrong, Paul Duffield, BLDBlog, Edible Geography, Next Nature, the Centre for Science and Imagination and New Scientists.  Most of the images and city models are buzzard.  The sky is gray.  There is hardly any beauty of nature. The city is full of coldness and destruction.  Many people may think those art works are too extreme and fictional, but the reality could be not far from those. 

The human consumption rate for earth resource has been overshot earth resources’ reproduction rate since 1970s.  In 2012, we are consuming 156% of earthbio-capacity, according to Global Footprint Network.  It is not only talking about energy industry.  It also includes food consumption, garbage production and, most of all, manufacture industry.  Almond all of countries, the United States is, unfortunately, one of the worst in the world.  There is only 5% of global population living in the United States.  But Americans use 20% of the world energy, eat 15% of the world’s meat, and produce 40% of the world’s garbage.  GlobalFootprint Network created a study on calculating the number of planets needed,if everyone lived like a residents of certain countries, assume all land isused for human activity except Antarctica.   It would take 4.16 earth to support roughly 7 billion people, if everyone lived like American.  Perhaps, it is good that not everyone in the world lives like Americans. 

Overall, this is not a problem that any government can solve by policies.  It needs efforts from everyone to be awarded of how much of earth resources that they are using.  Moreover, to use less earth resources and save the planet does not only means to stop driving cars, it also means to turn off lights when you are not using them, to reuse water, to stop wasting food and not to use disposable plates and cups.  I would not doubt for a second that there may be another earth out there in the universe, but they are really far away from us, like billions of light years away.  Therefore, in my life time, this earth is the only one we got, and the save the earth should be the most important mission for everyone who lives on it.

Interesting footprint calculator from Global Footprint Network:
Footprint Calculator: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators/

"Republican" and "Democrats"

It was a cloudy day in Philadelphia on October 14^th, 2012. Arlen Specter took the last breath of his life in his home at age of 82.  As everyone who know about Arlen Specter, he was one of America’s most prominent Jewish political and the longest severed senator for the state of Pennsylvania.  He had served five terms as a Republican senator for 30 years since 1980.  In those 30 years, Specter was tough on his political views.  His colleagues saw him as an intellectual and stubborn politician. The former Republican senator Pat Toomey called him “a man of sharp intelligence and dogged determination.”  The 2002 PoliticsPA Feature story also named him the “toughest to work for.”  However, he was most known for his moderate political stand, which made him capable of turning either side of Republican or Democrat.  Philadelphia magazine stated him as “one of the few true wild card of Washington politics…reviled by those on both the right and the left.”  As a senator, Specter would side with Democrat on some issues, but support conservatives on others.  For him, party seemed to be just a name on the paper with no power to limit his political decision.  As he said, “I believe that my duty is to follow my conscience and vote what I think is in the best interest of the country, and the political risks will have to abide.”

                  Nowadays, people like Arlen Specter are rarely anyway.  American politics has grown more and more polarized between conservatives and liberals.  Many people have the assumptions that if you are Republican or Democrat, you will only have a certain political views.  Republican and Democrat have became more than names of the parties.  They are more like representations of set of values. Party names are like frames, which categorized people.  Politicians, who are not voting with their “political party,” are facing huge political risk from both the public and their own party.  However, can those party names really conclude people’s political views?  And where does that put people, who have moderate political views or have different values on only some of issues from their party.  The truth is, “Republican” and “Democrat” are really nothing more than party names.  People, who are pro-choice, do not have to be pro-renewable energy.  People, who support expending military, do not have to be against gay marriage.  The same thing should true for politicians in Washington.  There should be no requirement on how you should vote base on your party membership.  A betrayal is not to vote against your party, it is to vote against your belief of what is the best for the country and the people.  One of the hottest topics for this election is the president should be able to work with both Republicans and Democrats in Washington.  But in order to have Republicans and Democrats work together, the first thing is to put the name of party behind and put the country and the people in front.

Arlen Specter was certainly one of the best examples of moderate politician who are not afraid to say what they believed without limited within their political party.  As consequences, Specter faced many challenges in his political career, and was criticized by both Republicans and Democrats.  But his strong belief in closing the best for the country and the people put him in the senate for more than 30 years.  Even though he was fighting with sickness in later years, he had never backed down from a fight.  As President Obama said, “Arlen Specter was always a fighter. From his days stamping out corruption as a prosecutor in Philadelphia to his three decades of service in the Senate, Arlen was fiercely independent — never putting party or ideology ahead of the people he was chosen to serve. He brought that same toughness and determination to his personal struggles, using his own story to inspire others.”