Monthly archives: December 2004

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami :

Some bloggers have set up a site The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami : SEA-EAT blog News and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts. Please visit this site and help in the efforts of various agencies and people engaged in the help and support of the victims.

Slashdot reports that India is introducing software patents quietly. The Business-Standard India Report and NDTV’s Report. However, some slashdotters and myself are in little disagreement over the Software Patents : From one of the comments quoting Richard Stallman :his talk on the danger with software patents

This phenomenon of cross-licensing refutes a common myth, the myth of the starving genius. The myth that patents “protect” the “small inventor”. Those terms are propaganda terms. You shouldn’t use them. The scenario is like this: Suppose there is a brilliant designer of whatever. Suppose he has spent years starving in the attic designing a new wonderful kind of whatever and now wants to manufacture it and isn’t it a shame the big companies are going to go into competition with him, take away all the business and he’ll “starve”. I will have to point out that people in high tech fields are not generally working on their own and that ideas don’t come in a vacuum, they are based on ideas of others and these people have pretty good chances of getting a job if they need to these days. So this scenario, the idea that a brilliant idea came from this brilliant person working alone is unrealistic and the idea that he is in danger of starving is unrealistic. But it is conceivable that somebody could have an idea and this idea along with 100 or 200 other ideas can be the basis of making some kind of product and that big companies might want to compete with him. So let’s see what happens if he tries to use a patent to stop them. He says “Oh No, IBM. You cannot compete with me. I’ve got this patent.” IBM says “let’s see. Let’s look at your product. Hmmm. I’ve got this patent and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one, which parts of your product infringe. If you think you can fight against all of them in court, I will just go back and find some more. So, why don’t you cross license with me?” And then this brilliant small inventor says “Well, OK, I’ll cross license”. So he can go back and make these wonderful whatever it is, but so can IBM. IBM gets access to his patent and gets the right to compete with him, which means that this patent didn’t “protect” him at all.

The Seattle Times:

43 Things, a new social-networking service created by a local team of technology developers called the Robot Co-op.

How it works: Put your goals up on the site and get back profiles of other people who want to do the same thing. Join a team with the same goal. Tell others about things you’ve already done.

Tracing back: The robots liked the personalization feature at Amazon.com (people who bought this also bought that) and wanted to combine it with elements of Web logging and online networking.

CNET News.com reports that Craiglist is giving the local newspapers in US very tough times, something around $65 million. Craiglist is a community online classifieds site covering recruitment, dating, real-state, autobiles and majority of the products and services under the sun. This has affected in the revenue models of Newspapers who used to earn by providing classifieds and ads sections in the newspapers.

Craiglists 25% stake is now held by Ebay.com which has currently acquired Bazee.com and also interested in Rent.com. The success is of this is due to the simplicity and the fantastic utility it provides.

Take it with a holiday spirit. It may be funny for some and not so funny for others. Wish You A Merry XMas and a Happy New Year

[ Via Fast Company ] Michael S. Malone interviews John Doerr – The 46-year-old partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers (KPCB) is, by all accounts, the most influential venture capitalist of his generation. Over the last 16 years, he has built an unrivaled record of backing industry-defining start-ups in fields as diverse as computing, (Sun Microsystems, Compaq), software (Lotus, Intuit), biotechnology (Genentech, Millennium) and the Internet (Netscape, Amazon.com). But for all of those past triumphs, Doerr says, “there’s never been a better time than now to start a company. In the past, entrepreneurs started businesses. Today they invent new business models. That’s a big difference, and it creates huge opportunities”.

ADTmag.com informs :

Billing itself as the industry’s first Web services vulnerability assessment and management company, Kenai is marketing a set of inspection tools for Web services developers. Its flagship offering, eXamine 1.0, released in beta in October, is standalone tool that enables developers to import WSDL files and test them for compliance with industry standards, such as XML and SOAP, as well as their own internally-developed best practices. Kenai’s eXamineST is an advanced Web services inspection tool designed to enable developers to import WSDL files and test them for compliance with WS-Security standards and for other Web services security vulnerabilities.

Mahesh Murthy has written an online petiition address Prime Minister of India Mr. Manmohan Singh.Please sign this petition if you believe in it and express your support :

Release the CEO of eBay India (Baazee) – a travesty of cyber-law and e-commerce – Signatures

The idea of arresting a e-commerce service provide is very stupid, infact when he has very remote involvement with it. One cannot argue in terms of legalities and in this case they have declared Avnish Bajaj as criminal first and now he has to prove his innocence.

1) If this appplied everywhere then ‘A’ send a porno pic / abusive SMS to ‘B’ via Airtel and is recieved on ‘B’ via Orange . Then next day you find that CEO of Airtel and CEO of Orange are in Tihar Jail.

2) In-on-paper contract justification : If there has to be ink-on-paper for everything (see petition) then railway reservation system, demat accounts, online banking, online transaction, credit card merchants and anything electronics is pure rubbish. The entire e-commerce industry in India will collapse by this.

3) When the original person who produced the movie is still not jailed cos he is a minor, what was the big deal and creating action packed arrest of suited CEO of Bazee.com (now ebay india) who has nowhere to run. Is he a Dawood gang member or something…???

4) There could also be a chance that, Bazee.com has just been acquired by Ebay.com and the smell of crispy green dollars is still fresh

5) In India as it is entrepreneur spirit is dim, and by this action of police people will be afraid to put their hands in internet or e-commerce business. Till now it was red-tapism, now you can get arrested just ‘bcos nbobody understand your business and the laws are insufficient to handle your business domain

6) Again arrest and non-bailable arrest is little dramatic and non-justified. Is it that instead of child-girl-school-iit, the attention should divert to Bajaj who is just a kid at wrong place at the wrong time.

Its very hard in Swades.

The Economic Times reports about the rise of e-waste or electronics scrap in India.

Related :

JUST SAY NO TO E-WASTE: BACKGROUND DOCUMENT ON HAZARDS AND WASTE FROM COMPUTERS

Electronic Wate Guide

E-Waste: Dark Side of Digital Age

E-waste rules still being flouted

Ryan informs – where is the VoIP revolution :

Holding a cold Kilkenny beer, sitting last night discussing with a Lucent and Juniper rep the future of VoIP, it became apparent that we all are supplying appliances for carrying VoIP Software, and the future is in the software. Companies all around the world are sipping a cold beer or a cup of java in the morning discussing VoIP and it’s disruptive nature for telecommunications and benefits for the world of internet communications.

VoIP software is a wide category from codecs to actual compilations of code creating softphones or pbx technology such as the softswitch. Strategies for deploying the technology require a lot of collaboration between carriers, ISPs, and the deployment of device manufacturers and software providers. Moving towards a world of high level development code deployed in a platform neutral environment, a frenzy of ideas, patents, and business models unfold. Keeping in front of the game is not easy and it has not been won by anyone by any means. So what are we doing to create this future?. Read more…