How and why our intellectual properties became ludicrous

Most software engineers agree that the current laws covering intellectual property rights in our business are a disaster and impossible to implement. However, we should remember that nobody ever set out to design the system this way, it just evolved based upon a different environment which existed when the laws were being drafted.

To understand our current laws we must look back to Shakespeare’s time. Back then there were very few laws that protected the creative works done by William Shakespeare and his contemporaries. As a result they had very little financial security and had to rely upon the generosity of patrons.

It was of great benefit to the English language that subsequent authors felt free to re-use passages of Shakespeare's work with out fear of litigation from his heirs. However, most people felt it was wrong that he was not getting financial recompense from his creative output and so a series of copyright laws were enacted. These laws evolved over time, but they all maintain the principle that the author retains rights to control anything they create for a limited time after which the work reverts to the public domain.

As well as protecting publications, many countries felt that they needed a legal protection for inventors. One of the big differences between inventions and creative works is the fact that there is no inherent reason for inventors to publish details of their inventions. The initial patent laws granted inventors total control of their inventions for a period of 10 years in return for the inventors publishing a detailed description of their invention that others could follow after the protection period expired.

The basic idea behind patents has still been retained in modern laws, but the main area of change has been in relation to the length of the protective period. Currently patents last for 20 years, but there has been much debate about this in relation to medicines.

• On the one hand, 20 years probably provides enough protection to allow the original inventors make a decent return on their investment.
• On the other hand, it seems reasonable that 20 years after the invention, the consumers should benefit by having market opened up to competitors (who presumably would sell the medications at cheaper prices).

However the speed of innovation in the software industry is much faster than in the pharmaceutical industry. A 20 year exclusive right to implement an invention is a long time on the internet. In fact things move so fast in the software industry that parallel teams are coming up with similar ideas while the original invention disclosures are still being evaluated by the patent office. As a result companies find that they are accidentally infringing upon patents that they had no way of finding out had been already filed. There are many examples of patent trolls who try to make money by extorting money out of technology companies rather than by implementing any technology themselves. This practice has much in common with Mafia protection rackets and needs to be stamped out whenever possible.

The copyright system works pretty well for the software industry because software programs are similar in many ways to books.  Nobody begrudges commercial companies the chance to control the programs that they have developed at huge cost. However, the patenting system is not working as well.

NB - I should emphasise that what I have written here is my own personal opinion and not the opinion of my employer IBM. IBM's position is that they are currently the most prolific user of the patenting system, but they are also actively campaigning for reform of the system.

Equipment for my SmartHome project arrives

This week I took delivery of an Indeon SmartHub and a Raspberry Pi model B. Both of these will play a key role in transforming my home into a SmartHome.I don't have a detailed system design yet, but I think that the SmartHub will be the central controller and main web interface while the Rasberry Pi will probably become a media centre.

I already have most of the other bits and pieces (e.g. Arduino boards), but I am sure I will also probably need to make a few purchases - especially cases which will be required to make the system neat and tidy.  However, my initial observation was how differently these two different devices were packed for shipment. Although the devices are roughly similar in size when unpacked - the Raspberry Pi was simply packed in a jiffy bag and the postman was easily able to slide it through my letter box, but the Indeon device was packed into a box along with bubble wrap and this box was in turn packed into an even larger box so that I struggled to attach the large box to my bike carrier when I collected it from the post office.

If anyone with experience ins Smart Home projects has advice to share with me, I would be delighted to hear from you so I don't have to learn all of the lessons the hard way.

Completing my first Olympic distance Triathlon

I originally signed up for the Sprint distance at TriAthy, but when the races schedule was published I found that the sprint distance would not be held until the evening when I had a conflicting commitment. As a result I signed up for the Olympic distance instead.

The registration for this event closed at 8:30 am, so I was up and on the road from Dublin at 7 am. I was already excited before I arrived at the registration venue, but my adrenalin levels went into orbit at the sight of a beautifully decorated school filled with athletes preparing their equipment. I was dismayed by the length of the queue for registration, but the organisers were so efficient that it was no time until I was heading back to my car with race number etc. safely in my hand.

There is a lot of preparation required for a triathlon and so I didn't have time to draw a breath until it was 10 am and the race marshal announced that it was time for the competitors to line up behind a pipe band and march to the starting point. This was a lovely touch which added to the sense of occasion. I was delighted to meet a former college classmate and two work colleagues also lining up for the start and so I knew that even if I was crazy to be competing in Triathlons at my age - I was not the only one. The competitors were very friendly and offered lots of encouragement to each other.

We were soon under way and the 1,500 meter swim went much better than expected. I was surprised to find myself getting cramp in calf muscles towards the end of the swim, because I had not really been kicking my legs very much. I took it easy during the transition in order to give my legs a chance to recover.  This was  probably a good idea because I was delighted with my performance on the 40 km cycle. I used the tri-bars for most of the run and average marginally over 30 km/h. However, this did take a lot out of me and I limped home quite slowly on the 10 km run with plenty of time to admire the beautiful scenery along the River Barrow. The results are not yet available on-line  but I guess that I probably completed it in around 4 hours because I reached the end shortly after 2:30 pm and I was in the 4th wave to leave which meant it would have been after 10:30 and before I started.

I later found out that Leo Varadkar (the current Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport) was one of the competitors in the sprint event. I think that this is great example for a Minister for Sport to be personally involved in such an active sport. .

Overall I think this was a great way to spend a sunny June Bank Holiday weekend.  I overheard some experienced triathletes who said that if there was a prize for efficient organisation - TriAthy would be the winner. However, the pains in my legs the day after have convinced me that maybe I should stick to the sprint distance in future.

Update 12:30pm:  It seems that my tiredness caused me to be wildly inaccurate about my timing. When the official result was released it seems that I was closer to 3 hours (3:07) than 4 hours. This beats my expectations. Unfortunately they recorded me as 21 years old rather than 50.

What tool do I use for interacting with Twitter?

Because, I am a frequent user of Twitter, many people ask me what is my favourite tool to use. I like to be helpful, but the reality is that I do not have a single favourite tool and I use many different tools depending upon the circumstances.

Luckily Twitter keeps a record of the tool that is used to publish each status update, so I decided to write a tool which would automatically analyse my feed.

The following table shows tools that I used for the 1,000 most recent tweets from my account (ignoring the tools which were responsible for less than 1% of the Tweets each):

Percentage	Count	Tool
31.67%	317	web
24.38%	244	TweetCaster for Android
11.49%	115	foursquare
10.79%	108	LinkedIn
4.00%	40	Tweet Button
3.70%	37	HootSuite
3.30%	33	Facebook
3.30%	33	Twitter for Android
2.50%	25	NetworkedBlogs
1.60%	16	bitly
1.30%	13	Flipboard

Another thing that people sometime comment upon is whether Twitter is a broadcast service or a conversational service. So I also looked at what percentage of my tweets were replies to other people (8.7%). However, almost half of my tweets (42.8%) are accounted for by retweets of content originally Tweeted by someone else.

An academic once told me that my social networking style was "to collect interesting information and share it with my friends". However, a more honest explanation would be that I am lazy and it is much easier to click on a "retweet" button than to think up original content to Tweet about.

My colleague Andy Stanford-Clark was recently featured on a list of Tech Execs that smart people follow and so I decided to compare his activity to mine. More than half of his tweets (67.5%) were replies to other people and retweets accounted for only 10.8% of his tweets. Therefore it is clear that he uses Twitter as a conversational service more than I do.

He also used a much smaller set of tools to interact with Twitter. He only used 8 different tools (as compared to my 18) and over half of all of his updates (65.4%) were done directly on the Twitter web site.

Percentage	Count	Tool
65.40%	654	web
8.80%	88	Twitter for iPad
8.70%	87	TweetCaster for Android
6.80%	68	txt
5.40%	54	Twitter for Android
4.70%	47	TweetChat
0.10%	1	HTC Peep
0.10%	1	Tweet Button

It is also interesting that Andy is a much more prolific user of Twitter than me. I had to go back as far as 23/Nov last year (about 6 months) to get 1,000 tweets from my feed, while I only needed to 10/April this year (slightly over a month) to get 1,000 tweets from Andy's feed.

It would be interesting to a similar analysis on a wider sample of Twitter users, because I guess there is no such thing as a typical Twitter user.

Training for my second Triathlon

I signed up for my first triathlon last year to mark my half century. It went so well that I was confident to sign up for TriAthy this year. I didn't worry too much about my preparation, because the race wasn't until June. However, it just dawned on me that it is now only 2 weeks to the event and so the time is running out to ensure I am prepared. I did my first open water swim of the year today in Blackrock.


I am inspired to increase my dedication to keeping fit after reading the inspiring autobiography of  Gerard Hartmann's the renowned physical therapist. I new that he had been an athlete in his younger days, but I hadn't realized that he dominated the early days of the Triathlon sport in Ireland before his career was tragically cut short by a serious cycling accident.

I feel I am fairly well prepared for the cycling, because I am training for the Wicklow 200/100, but I think I still need more training for the swimming and running legs.

Draft slides for @3dcamp

Here is the first draft of the slides for my proposed talk at 3D camp in Limerick the weekend after next. Feedback and comments are welcome.

Seamless sharing between Linux and Windows

I am a big Linux fan, but sometimes my work requires me to work on Windows based machines. To do this I use the Remmina application to allow me to connect my laptop's screen, keyboard and mouse to the remote machine.

The main function of Remmina is to facilitate remote interaction through the VNC protocol for Linux servers and the RDP protocol for Windows servers However another thing that many people struggle with is the need to share files between the local machine and the remote server. This is possible, but can be tricky to set up. For this reason the Remmina dialog for setting up a new connection includes a simple check-box which allows you to specify that you want to share one of your local directories with the remote machine.

When you make this selection Remmina will automatically configure a SMB share for the directory for the directory that you selected. Then it connects to the share on the target machine so you will see a shared drive listed in Windows Explorer on your target Windows machine (see the example screenshot).

I am not aware of any tools for file sharing in the opposite direction (i.e. sharing files between a Windows Laptop and a Linux server). However, I would be very surprised if there were not several tools available to meet this need. Maybe one of the readers of this blog could post a comment with a link to such a tool.

Tweeting about local weather conditions

I am quite proud of my personal weather station and the fact that it automatically makes reports available through a dedicated page on the Weather Underground site. However, until recently I was embarrassed to admit that the weather station didn't have its own twitter feed. Yesterday, I rectified this situation and I can now boast to my fellow geeks that the station is Tweeting hourly weather reports as @LLweather which is a new Twitter account I created for the weather station. In fact it is one of a large network of private weather stations in Ireland tweeting weather reports with the #iwn hashtag - this should not be surprising because most Irish people are obsessed by weather.

Initially I tried to write a short python script to do the updates, but then I discovered that this feature was already supported by the PYWWS package that I was using to upload the data to Weather underground. There were even clear instructions available on how to configure the software on their web site (I had to upgrade to v12.10 to get it to work).

After I set it up I was surprised to notice that the weather station was apparently giving weather reports about 20-25 minutes into the future. When I investigated I found that the clock on my Tonido plug was running alarmingly fast. I tried to set up the NTP deamon to keep the clock synchronised, but this proved complicated because the plug is running a very old version of Ubuntu. I corrected the time manually and will keep an eye on it until I get around to configuring NTP properly.

How much do you need to pay for a bike computer

I like cycling and I like gadgets so I suppose it is not surprising that I consider that it is essential to have some form of bike computer to keep track of my speed and distance. Currently I am using simple bike computers on each of my bikes which I bought for €5.99 in Aldi.

Some of my cycling friends recommend that I should consider splashing out on a Garmin 500 series model. This would give me certain neat features not present on my current model:

• It has built in GPS so as well as tracking my speed it can also record exactly where I was cycling.
• It allows uploading of data directly to the internet so I can analyse my performance with neat visualization tools.
• It connects with additional sensors to track things like my hear rate and cadence so I can judge how effective my training is.

However, these features come at a price. The Garmin model costs about €250 as compared to only €6 for the Adli model. Therefore I think I will stick with my Aldi computer for the moment. In any case I can use some neat free apps for my phone to track my training in addition to the bike computer.

The demise of Google Reader and Google Listen

Like many other people I was surprised to hear about Google cancelling two of my favourite tools - the Google Reader service for managing your RSS feeds and the Google Listen podcast player.  Apparently the reason given is that they could not see any way to make revenue from these products, but I would have though that the users of Google Reader would have been a gold mine of data in relation to what feeds are most popular through the number of reads/favourites/shares etc..

I like the simplicity of Google Listen and you can still install Google Listen, but only if you have  saved a link to it (it no longer shows up in search results). I occasionally find that Listen will crash at random times and since Google have cancelled the project they are unlikely to fix it (I wonder why they didn’t Open Source the project like they did with Google Wave),  As a result I have switched to BeyondPod as a replacement. Overall I find it reasonably easy to use - I have paid for the Pro version, but I don't think I really use any of the Pro features so the free version is equally good from my point of view.

Apparently Google Reader site will be shutting down in July, so while there is no mad rush to get off the platform, it is still a good idea to find some other tool to replace it. The consensus on the internet seems to be that Feedly is the best alternative - my initial experiences seem to back up that claim.