Free your Images from Facebook?

Kodak has organized a stunt whereby a man will remain trapped in a box until 1 million photos are set free from Facebook by using the new My Kodak Moments app.  With the app, users can pull photos directly from their albums and their friends’ albums to create photobooks and prints, which can then be ordered on Facebook for delivery.

If you’re in New York City, you can visit Mark Malkoff in his transparent box. Or regardless of where you are, you could print something and help end his imprisonment.  Or you could cry, or maybe just cringe.

Yes, I get that this is marketing schtick.  It doesn’t have to make complete sense.  But does it have to be embarrassing? After all, they’re nice prints. The photo books are great. The app is well done. It’s the message behind the stunt that makes me wince. (Full disclosure: I work for Kodak.)

Think about it. Kodak thinks your photos are trapped in Facebook Jail.  A place where they are easily sharable with 800 million Facebook users.  A place where they are archived indefinitely.  A place where they are downloadable, linkable, or cross-postable on demand. Yup, these photos are confined like a lion on the Serengeti.

Further, Kodak is proposing to “free” your photos by printing them such that they exist on a single piece of paper and are only sharable with people who can see over your shoulder.  This is like trying to convince people to free their music from iTunes by pressing it onto vinyl disks.

They should just hang up a sign that says, “Kodak—We don’t get it… and get off our lawn.”

Let’s face it, Kodak is in trouble.  This is no secret.  The news reports daily on Eastman Kodak’s efforts to remain financially solvent as it tries to shed the shame of failing to capitalize on the market’s shift to digital imaging (a technology it pioneered) and reinvent itself as a printing company, all in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.  Not an easy go.

But it’s one thing to be late to the game.  It’s another to show up at the football field with your first baseman’s mitt and your swim goggles and wonder why no one picks you for their team.

The current bill in Congress known as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) or as it’s known in the Senate, PROTECT IP (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property) is just beginning to get coverage in the non-technical press.  In draft, this was called the E-PARASITE Act (Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act). Seriously, who names these things?

From the names, it all sounds like goodness right? Theft, exploitation, piracy, who wants that?  If only it were that simple.

The intent of the bill is to crack down on illegal online file sharing.  There’s ample room for debate about how damaging online piracy truly is, and whether or not it makes business sense for content providers to aggressively attack their customers, but that’s a topic for another day.  Even if we accept that online piracy threatens to destroy the music and movie industry (just like VHS tapes and writable CDs did), the proposed bill is absolutely not the way to go about preventing it.

There are lots of articles out there on why this is so.  You can read the bill yourself, or read others’ analyses here, here, or here.  However, let me try and boil down the basics for you.

The Great Firewall of the USA: Enforcement of SOPA will require the creation of a Internet filters by all domestic ISPs to control what sites you are allowed to visit. This may be well intentioned censorship, but it’s still censorship, and it puts the mechanisms in place for less benign intentions. Do we really want to head down that slippery slope?

Online Security: Let’s face it, once the firewall goes up, many of us will find ways around it. This will involve a combination of foreign or rogue DNS servers, proxies, or VPN services. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to believe that once you start getting your Internet delivered through black market servers that your online security will be at greater risk.

No More Safe Harbors:  The current law allows web site owners some protection under the “safe harbor” clause.  That means that if you were to post a comment on this article containing some illegal content, the owner of the content could demand I take it down, and I would be obliged to do so. But if the owner wanted to sue for damages, he couldn’t sue me as the website owner.  Rather, he’d have to come after you as the one who posted it.  Under SOPA, that protection is gone.  If you upload a funny Big Bang Theory clip to Facebook, CBS can sue Mark Zuckerberg for damages. SOPA will undoubtedly result in far fewer sites taking on the risk of letting you post things on them. The web will become a lot less participatory.

Loss of Due Process:  This is perhaps the most egregious implication. Under SOPA, website owners are guilty until proven innocent.  Based only on an accusation of having illegal content on your site, anyone can demand that the ISPs block access to your site, and may further demand that all banks stop doing business with you.  Sure, you can appeal to the court, but that could take months or years to settle. In the meantime, you’re out of business.

As the major backer of SOPA, the entertainment industry is making lots of assurances that the provisions of SOPA would never be used for anything but the most noble of causes.  They are full of it.  These same people have already collaborated with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stretch the In Rem Forfeiture clause (allowing for the immediate seizure of property used in the commission of a crime) to include domain name seizures of websites with no warning or due process.  They are wielding this with a broad brush and have repeatedly seized domains eventually found legal by the courts, but by then put out of business.  Oops.

This whole SOPA mess has also created some strange bedfellows.  The tech community and most high tech companies have come out against it.  Along side them are Michele Bachmann and her Tea Party Coalition.  Ironically, the Tea Party and the Techies were on staunchly opposite sides of the Net Neutrality debate, so this is a somewhat uneasy alliance.

On the other side we find the Hollywood studios, music companies, and the organizations like RIAA and the MPAA that lobby for them.  We also find VP Joe Biden and several key Democratic legislators who have historically been supportive of anything Hollywood wants.  To her credit, Hillary Clinton has expressed some concerns about SOPA, and Obama claims to be on the fence.

To that end, Obama is currently taking input on the issue.  If you want to oppose the bill, go to the White House website and sign the online petition.  As of this writing, we are still a few thousand signatures short of the “pay attention to me” threshold.  Yes, you have to create a White House account to sign the thing, but it only takes a minute.

On the other hand, if you think SOPA sounds like a great idea and want to know how to support it, please write a long letter and mail it to your local animal shelter. They are always looking for material to line the bird cages with.

The Westboro Baptist church, which has a rich history of inappropriate and distasteful demonstrations at funerals, has announced that it will be making an appearance at Steve Jobs’ memorial service.  It seems the group found him insufficiently grateful to God in life, and a teacher of sin through his technical gadgetry.

The message was posted to Twitter… from an iPhone.

I’m pretty sure Jobs would have found the irony hysterical.  His legacy has become so interwoven into the fabric of society that even those professing to hate him can’t escape it.

Rest in peace Mr. Jobs.  You are truly one of history’s most talented geeks, and the tech world is less today without you.

I’m a hero.  And no, I don’t mean I’m a long tubular sandwich, although the fact that I’m not should put to rest once and for all the notion that you are what you eat.  I mean I’m now an actual American hero. I’m in league with the likes of John Glenn, Abraham Lincoln, and Superman.  My time has come.  I have arrived.

I know I’m a hero because I’ve been recognized by a major celebrity on national television as one of our nation’s heroes.  And it only cost me $50.

This screen capture came from last night’s Colbert Report where Stephen faithfully acknowledges those who contribute to his SuperPAC by shamelessly pandering to them.  This is also evidence that I’ve fulfilled the promise I made to my kids last month that if I was lucky enough to sell my ancient boat for a fair price that I’d send a donation to the organization dedicated to making a better tomorrow tomorrow.  Done and done.

It’s not at all clear my kids really care about this, nor is there any obvious connection between boat sales and snarky political activism.  It’s perhaps more that I’m prone to the unwarranted linking of disparate thoughts running through my brain after 11pm.  But at least I follow through on them.

Today’s local newspaper reported that federal prosecutors are alleging that a Hell’s Angels member threatened a witness—through a Facebook page “poke.”  Seriously… you can’t make this stuff up.  How lame of a Hell’s Angel do you have to be that your preferred intimidation tactic is a button on a web page?

Wait… Facebook still has a “Poke” button? And people use it?  I can’t remember the last time I was poked, but maybe I’m just inherently unpokable.

Then again, my immediate family has a lingering bad taste about poking as my youngest used to instigate serial poking episodes from the back seat of the car.  His opening volley would be to stick a pointed finger into a fellow passenger and then issue the drawn out low-key utterance, “po…ke”.  This would then propagate randomly through the vehicle for what seemed like an eternity as everyone poked everyone else while I gripped the wheel and muttered, “Are we there yet?”

So, maybe it’s just that my circle doesn’t poke.  But either way, this notion of Facebook poking as harassment has to be a bit of a legal stretch, no?  Apparently not.  Google “Facebook poke considered harassment” and you get a ridiculous number of hits.  People being arrested and sued for all manner of virtual abuse.  This is just one out of control poke-analia, to the point that it’s rather amazing CNN hasn’t devoted a full news segment to scourge.  After all, they spend most of their time reporting on Facebook and Twitter anyway.

I guess the upshot here is just a word of warning to all your serial pokers out there.  Trespass on your friends’ cyberspace with care.  One poke too many and you’ll be headed to the pokey.

Last week, Grammy award-winning singer Lady Gaga confessed that she is an avid fan of Ubuntu, the Linux-based operating system. Reports are that Ubuntu’s desktop market share has shot up from 1 percent to 7 percent in just two days. Furthermore, due to a huge rise in traffic, Ubuntu’s website suffered a downtime of about 8 hours on Tuesday.

While Ubuntu is a really slick OS, made slicker by its price tag (free), it’s hardly a new kid on the block.  The Linux distro has been around for years, struggling to make inroads against Microsoft and Apple.  It’s got a fair following among the geek crowd, but has yet to make big inroads into the mass consumer market… until now.

Many Ubuntu enthusiasts as well as developers and investors are overjoyed, and understandably so.  But what does this say about the sanity of the average person?  Lady Gaga’s advice might be worth following if she opined on music, popular culture, or fashion. But if we’ve intellectually regressed to a point where we will change our computer operating system based on an offhand remark from a celebrity, what else will we buy?

It’s hard enough to figure out which experts to trust in a sea of competing voices on a topic, but there has to be some ability to discern who should warrant consideration as a person to whom we should listen.  Or have we really reached the point where we are unable to discern that Lady Gaga shouldn’t even get a voice as a tech expert?  Alternatively, are we just so awestruck by celebrity that we’ll do anything a celebrity says?

Even sheep are smarter than that.

Even sweet old ladies can be driven over the edge by tech frrustration.

I stopped to get gas today, and pulled up to the pump behind an old lady who seemed to be having some trouble.  As I was parking I witnessed her jam her card in the pump, then whack the pump selector button somewhat indelicately. This was followed by a repeated two-handed thrust of the pump nozzle into her car, into the pump, and then back again… and again, as if she was the center attraction in some weird mechanical ménage à trois.

What stuck me was not the rage against the machine, but that this sweet little woman would have looked right at home at a church social, undoubtedly uttered the phase, “Well aren’t you a dear,” several times a day, and couldn’t have weighed 100 pounds soaking wet and carrying a bowling ball.

Stepping out of my truck I called forward, “Would you like some help?” She turned toward me, muttering something about the kid inside the store not doing his job.  She then returned to her jamming, whacking, and thrusting.

I set my pump up to run and she was still at it—a relentless geriatric machine.  I called forward again, trying to be helpful. “Did you answer all the questions on the screen?”  Her head pivoted my way again.  She stopped momentarily, considering my words.  She glanced back at the pump, then flung open her car door to retrieve her glasses.  You could feel the tension in the air as she squinted at the pump.

“Why the hell do they need me to answer questions? They have my damned card!”  And undeterred, she jammed, whacked, and thrusted again.

I finally decided to intervene anyway, and approached her.  “Here, let me try,” I offered, and I pressed the cancel button on the pump thinking we’d start over.  But before the pump had a chance to reset… you guessed it… jam, whack, thrust.

“I don’t know why it’s got to be so damned complicated,” she said with exasperation.

“Let’s just start over,” I said a bit more firmly while taking the nozzle from her hand.  I reset the pump with an eye out this time for any flailing hands, asked her to put her card in again, then asked if she wanted a receipt.  Once the pump was operating I told her I thought she was all set and returned to finish filling my own vehicle.

As I was walking back I could hear her mutter, “That’s the last damn time I let him tell me to stop for gas. It’s not my job!”

I’m sure she was grateful in her own way… and I do not envy her husband when she gets back home.  This is one sweet old lady you do not want to piss off.

A peek behind the curtain at Zediva's operations center.

A new video on-demand service called Zediva was introduced this week.  It’s kind of like if Netflix and Redbox got together and turned Slingbox inside out.  The key feature of the new service is that you can rent new movie releases without ever leaving home. They are employing a delivery method that appears completely legal, but is sure to get the movie studio executives running hair-on-fire to their legal departments looking to find some means to stifle them using copyright law..

The consumer advantage is access to a movie selection similar to Redbox or Blockbuster, including the latest DVD releases.  That’s something neither cable or satellite video on-demand services, nor streaming services like Netflix are able to offer.  You see, Hollywood studios impose a release window around new DVDs such that streaming services are not allowed to play them for a period of time.  The theory being that this allows the studios to get people to buy DVDs, on which they make a tidy sum.  Studios correctly assume that if you could watch the movie without getting off of the couch, you would opt for that instead.  Meaning, if you’re in a rush to watch a new release, you either buy or rent a physical disc, or (heaven forbid) download a pirated torrent.

Zediva gets around that release window by actually buying DVDs and renting them to you.  However, rather than having to wait by the mailbox or run to the store for the disc, Zediva helpfully pops the disc in one of their networked DVD drives and streams it to your house over the Internet. The key being that during the playing of the movie, that DVD and player are only playing to you, the renter.

Thanks to legal precedents established when Slingboxes were introduced years ago, place-shifting is perfectly legal.  In the case of Slingbox, it was ruled that copyrights couldn’t prevent you from sending video content to your phone or remote computer from a box located in your house.  You were paying for the content, and studios couldn’t restrict you to watching it locally, as long as you weren’t sharing or reselling it.  It’s hard to see how this is different.  Zediva is a DVD rental store, nothing more. They just provide Slingbox-like capability (also legal) to allow you to watch the movie remotely.

The initial popularity of Zediva is huge.  They have already cut off new registrations as the demand for the service has far exceeded their capacity.  Thus it seems enormously likely we’ll soon hear the screams and howls from the studios of how they will go bankrupt if this sort of thing is allowed to continue.  (For reference, they screamed that when writable DVDs were introduced… and VHS tapes… and color television… Hollywood?  Still solvent.)

Yet, there is a larger message here that should not be lost.  The Zediva model is clever, but technologically stupid and inefficient.  It exists only to do an end-around to existing copyright rules put in place to prop up dying business models.  These are business models designed to create artificial scarcity and inflate prices.  Zediva also illustrates a pent up market demand for access to this sort of content.  People want the convenience and are willing to pay for it.

The theory of capitalism is that some new business will come along and leverage the consumer demand, thereby driving the dinosaurs to extinction.  But Hollywood studios are an effective monopoly.  The barrier to entrance in that business is huge. So the reality is that as long as they stick together, they can continue to abuse consumers in defiance of capitalist principles.

Kudos to Zediva for finding a way to give consumers what they want, but they may want to open up that legal defense fund now, just to get a head start.

Growing up in my father’s auto repair business, I came to understand that a car’s firewall was that piece of the body that separated the engine compartment from the passengers.  Back in the day (as my teen son is wont to say despite sporting such a paltry number of days), this was pretty essential hardware as engine fires were not uncommon.  The advent of several safety systems as well as the demise of carburetors has made such fires comparatively rare.  But modern digital automotive systems now have different safety issues requiring a different sort of firewall.

Security experts from the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Washington have successfully hacked into a car’s onboard control system using a variety of attack vectors. In one case, they used a car’s cellular connection (similar to OnStar) to access the vehicle’s computer.  In another, they took control using an Android phone connected to the car’s Bluetooth interface.  In the third case, an MP3 music file, loaded into the car’s sound system, was infected with a Trojan that successfully loaded itself into the vehicle’s firmware.

Now in your average car, there is a limited amount the hacker can do once he gains access to the firmware.  He could futz with the fuel mix and mess up your gas mileage, or change all the presets on your radio.  While this is annoying, it’s not terribly dangerous.  It’s also not interesting enough to warrant the efforts of would-be hackers unless this is their thesis project.

However, many higher-end cars may be unlocked, started, or in the case of vehicles with a self-parking features, even driven away under computer control.

While this is a scary prospect, it mostly reflects car designers not yet realizing the impact of networking the vehicle control systems.  Cars will simply need to employ the same sorts of firewalls and security software used by other computer systems.  Which also means the same sort of constant updating to address more recent exploits and attack vectors will also be required.

Ironically, I left the automotive field to pursue a career in computers.  I know my life will have come full circle when the first family member calls because their car has a virus.

The device is nearly invisible when worn.

Sometimes technology comes up with odd things that are way more useful than tools for hygienic espionage.  Case in point is the new SoundBite dental hearing system.

Bone conduction systems have been around for awhile now, and are effective at restoring hearing when there is damage to the auditory nerve of only one ear, but the other is working well. In such cases, conventional hearing aids are useless.  However, existing systems require an external device to be bolted on to the side of your head.

Okay, that probably is an overly dramatic description, but as someone who has complete loss of hearing on one side, when they explain they are going to attach something to your skull with a drill, that’s kind of how it sounds.  At least so far, that solution isn’t more appealing than suffering the loss of all spatial hearing ability.

However, this device requires no surgery or permanent attachment of any kind.  The receiver unit is molded to your teeth and just pops in when you use the device.  It wirelessly picks up signals transmitted by the small microphone clipped behind the decorative ear, and passes the sound into your jaw where it resonates into your head for the other ear to hear.

Apparently, with enough practice, a user can regain a good share of their spatial hearing.  It would certainly be nice to not have to spin around in circles looking for who’s talking any more, or have to turn my head ridiculously far around to hear a quiet comment from the person seated to my right.  Unless we’re eating I suppose.  Then the device would be in my pocket and I could still only hear half the table.  Then again, maybe I’d be so riveted by the conversations around me I’d eat less and listen more.  Yeah… probably not.