Microsoft is doing to much too late

Companies who fail to adapt to new market realities are often accused of doing "too little, too late". However, in the case of Microsoft I think they may be a case of doing  "too much, too late".

Until recently Microsoft had a virtual monopoly in the market for operating systems and productivity software that ran on Desktop PCs. People who were technology aware tended to favour either a MacOS desktop (which its fans claimed as being so much better that it justified the extra cost) or Linux (which is available for free but is rarely offered pre-installed on new PCs). However, there was (and indeed still is) a market for people who don't want new features and would prefer if the interface stayed the same as the one that they fist learned to use over a decade ago. In order to defend their monopoly position Microsoft made minimal changes to their software and put a top priority on backward compatibility which ensured that they appealed to people who did not want to learn any new interface.

In the last 5 years or so it became clear to Microsoft executives and anyone else observing the computer industry, that the desktop is becoming less important. In order to appeal to this new market Microsoft developed Windows mobile and then Windows v8. This was a brave move because, although these interfaces have received good reviews from people who have put the effort into learning them - the interfaces are very different from earlier versions of Windows and hence they force Windows users to learn something new.

I personally know only one person who has a Microsoft windows based phone - although he tells me that he grew to love it once he invested in learning the unconventional interface. The only thing I hear about Windows 8 based desktops is enquiries from people who are technical laggards asking if there is any way to downgrade from the version of windows 8 which came with their new PC.

I applaud Microsoft for their bravery to experiment. However, they have already lost their fans among the technical elite because of their slowness to innovate. With Windows 8 coming out I feel that they might also be set to lose their fans among the sizeable portion of the public who don't want to learn new technology.

Monitoring my Heart

I recently acquired a blood pressure monitor from Lidl. I find that the readings vary considerably depending upon when I measure it. This encouraged me to dust off my Polar Bluetooth heart rate monitor which allows me to monitor how my pulse varies as I take part in various activities.

I find that when I go running my pulse goes up to 145-150 BMP and stays there for ~4 minutes before falling back to 120 BPM for the remainder of the run.  When I use the cross trainer, my pulse climbs to roughly 170-180 BPM and stays there.


Interestingly when I meditate, my pulse stays level around 85-90 BPM. I think this is an indication that I am not very good at meditation, because this is higher than my normal resting heart rate of 75-80 BPM. If I were a Zen guru, I should be able to bring my pulse down very low while meditating.

The SPAM comments are back again :-(

I had a problem with SPAM comments some time ago. After trying a few defence mechanisms I finally settled on forcing people to log in. Recently I saw a revival of the SPAM comments. Of course this time I know the identity of the people leaving the stupid comments. I would threaten to leave junk comments upon their blogs - but this would not deter them (they might welcome the extra traffic).

 At the moment I am deleting the SPAM comments shortly after they are left, but if the problem doesn't go away I might be forced to introduce comment moderation.

 As they say It is an ill wind that blows no good. While I was deleting the SPAM comments I noticed that my home weather station has been off line since 14th of August. Hopefully I will be bringing it back on line again soon.

A good vision for how a Smarter Electricity grid might work

Although I have blogged a lot about smarter-electricity, I have also gone on record as a sceptic about the benefit of eliminating electricity monopolies. With the current archaic electricity infrastructure there is little to be gained by introducing competition into the market. However, this recent presentation bu Amit Sheth paints a picture of how the grid might work in the not too distant future. This has converted me to a fan of competition in such a smarter electricity grid.

Transforming Big Data into Smart Data for Smart Energy: Deriving Value via harnessing Volume, Variety and Velocity from Amit Sheth

A really interesting new robot

In recent decades, the field of robotics has advanced  from science fiction to practical industrial use. Nobody is surprised when they visit a modern factory and they see a robot doing much of the repetitive and specialised work. However, it is only relatively recently that robots are becoming mainstream in homes. The Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner is popular-but often more for its novelty value among geeky owners than for its really practical usefulness.

I was very impressed to see a recent proposal from a small company names Matia Robotics for a robot which effectively replaces a wheelchair. I think this is a very practical use that many people would be willing to spend money on.

The following video explains the details of the device. I don't really know any more about it other than what is contained in the video, but apparently it looks like a major improvement over a conventional wheelchair for people suffering from spinal cord injuries.

They have a FAQ page on their site which answers many questions that people might have. They are not shipping units yet, but they are taking advance bookings which are expected to ship before the end of 2013 and will cost about US$15,000.

I know that this is quite a hefty price, especially when compared with manual chair (prices counted in the low numbers of hundreds of dollars) - but it is probably fairer to compare this with a motorized wheelchair whose price would already be counted in the low thousands. Hopefully the price will comedown considerably once the large volume manufacturing starts.

What it feels like to be a victim of Online crime

I normally like to view the internet as a fairly benign and safe place, but I have been a victim of cyber crime  three times in recent years. I don't think this will have a major impact upon my habits, but I suppose it is natural that it will make me a bit more cautious online.

Here are the details of the incidents:

eBay
I normally only use eBay to buy items, but a few years ago I was getting rid of some old gadgets and decided to see if I could sell them via eBay. Shortly after I placed the items for sale I got two emails enquiring about details of the laptop that I had for sale. This puzzled me since I wasn't selling any laptop. Shortly after this I got an email from eBay customer support saying that they were suspending my rights to sell on eBay due to suspicious activity on my account.

I still am not sure exactly what happened, but I think that someone was advertising laptops for sale on eBay such that the payments would go to the criminals and the irate customers would contact me when the laptops never arrived. I changed the password on my eBay account, and while I have never suffered any more fraud on eBay this is mainly because my bad first experience dissuaded me from ever selling anything on eBay again. In any case, if I did try to sell something, I am sure my seller reputation rating would be very low

Skype
Around the same time also suffered when somebody gained access to my Skype account. At the time I had set up a facility whereby my Skype credit would automatically get topped up whenever the balance fell too low. I would normally only need to top up my account every few months and so I was surprised to be notified that it was topped up twice in two days.

I investigated this and found that someone was making lots of calls from my account to phone numbers in the UK and Nigeria. Since none of these calls were to numbers I recognise or know, I assume they were fraudulent. I was keen to stop this and so I immediately changed the password on my account (it was already an obscure and hard to guess password)  and cancelled the instruction to automatically top-up so that my exposure would be limited to the current balance. This stopped the flow of calls being charged to my account.

I tried to make contact with Skype customer support to inform them what happened and have them investigate further. However, they showed no interest in making any enquiries. I am surprised at this because I would assume that the people involved ate still defrauding Skype customers. The amount of money I lost was not very significant, but I must admit that my opinion of Skype and their security controls was damaged by the way they reacted (or failed to react) to this incident.

Twitter
Earlier this month some malicious individuals gained access to my Twitter account. I am not sure exactly who gained access, but it seems that they used the access to send some strange Direct Messages with links to malware to my Twitter followers.

The first I knew about this was while I was out in a pub with a friend and I started getting messages from friends querying why I was sanding such strange Twitter messages. I decided to postpone investigating until I returned home, but when I got home I already had an email from Twitter customer support  saying that they noticed suspicious activity on my account and had disabled it. The email had a helpful link to instructions on how I could change my password and re-enable my account.

Overall the impact on me was relatively minor and I must say I was impressed with the speed and efficiency with which Twitter dealt with the issue.

Overall
I took a few lessons from these incidents:

• Malicious people will try to gain access to your online accounts even when there is no direct potential to steal money with this access (e.g. Twitter).
• Different online companies have a very different level of reaction to abuse of accounts on their system.
• When you are a victim of fraud, you can end up being seen by companies as of dubious honesty. This is just a sad fact of life.
• It is always important to stop malicious people gaining access to your account, but it is more important if their is a potential for this access to cost you money.

Cycling around the Ring of Kerry

Last weekend I took part in the 30th annual Ring of Kerry Cycle. The distance of 180km was the longest cycle I have done, but it did not feel very tough because of the lovely weather, the beautiful scenery and the fact that I was cycling in the company of over 8,500 cyclists of varying levels of fitness.

The most famous participant was the Taoiseach Enda Kenny who gave an excellent example to all Irish people that it is possible to find time for exercise. I bought the commemorative jersey which is quite attractive and even includes a map of the route in case you forget.

The terrain was relatively flat apart from one significant climb over Molls Gap near the end of the route. I took it quite easy (average speed just over 22km/hour) and as a result I didn't have any aches or pains the day after.

Someone told me that whenever someone completes the ride it is inevitable that they come back every year afterwards to repeat it. I think they are probably right.

Initial Design for my SmartHome project

I have prepared an initial design for my Smart Home. The first version of the system will simply be able to detect the temperature in the house and turn the heating on or off.

I chose this design on the basis that I should concentrate on a single use case at first. I also wanted to make maximum use of the equipment I already have installed (all the items in green are already installed and only the items in white remain to be ordered). I also have a number of redundant communication paths because this is advised in the Insteon whitepaper.

As always, I would welcome feedback from people with more experience in this area.

Next week I will be adressing the Intelligent Systems Summit hosted by University of Ulster in Derry/Londonderry

Here is the content I will present.

I hope to travel up and back by train, because a colleague told me that Michael Palin declared that the trip between Belfast and Londonderry is the most scenic in the British Isles. It should also be more relaxing than driving.

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.