On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court rejected the ACLU’s challenge to warrantless wiretapping. That leaves the EFF’s lawsuit as the last one still standing. The argument made by the majority of justices for dismissing the ACLU challenge was that the defendant had no standing because there was no provable harm. There are many things that are disconcerting about this argument. For starters, it is entirely unclear how someone would know that specific harm has occurred to them and is the result of wa...

On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court rejected the ACLU’s challenge to warrantless wiretapping. That leaves the EFF’s lawsuit as the last one still standing. The argument made by the majority of justices for dismissing the ACLU challenge was that the defendant had no standing because there was no provable harm. There are many things that are disconcerting about this argument. For starters, it is entirely unclear how someone would know that specific harm has occurred to them and is the result of wa...

I have been wanting to write about the sequester for a couple of days and have been stymied by not knowing where to start because I deeply disagree with both sides. It’s a bit like observing two of our kids fight with each other when both are clearly in the wrong – who do you turn to first? So here is my attempt at blurting it all out in condensed version. We need to change pretty much everything about the federal budget: how much money goes through government, how it is raised, what we spend...

I have been wanting to write about the sequester for a couple of days and have been stymied by not knowing where to start because I deeply disagree with both sides. It’s a bit like observing two of our kids fight with each other when both are clearly in the wrong – who do you turn to first? So here is my attempt at blurting it all out in condensed version. We need to change pretty much everything about the federal budget: how much money goes through government, how it is raised, what we spend...

Because I consider myself a peer progressive who believes in some role for government and the existence of market failures, I usually don’t agree with Senator Rand Paul. But I strongly support the basis of his filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination: highlighting the excessive powers available to and sought by the President with regard to killing American citizens without due process. I have long felt that President Obama is completely on the wrong side of the drone program which is an exampl...

Because I consider myself a peer progressive who believes in some role for government and the existence of market failures, I usually don’t agree with Senator Rand Paul. But I strongly support the basis of his filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination: highlighting the excessive powers available to and sought by the President with regard to killing American citizens without due process. I have long felt that President Obama is completely on the wrong side of the drone program which is an exampl...

This is the first of a new series of Tech Tuesday posts on Technology in Startups. Today’s topic: choosing your technologies. As a startup when you are just getting going, you have the luxury of picking any technology you want – you don’t yet have a legacy set of choices to contend with. It’s completely greenfield and that level of choice can be both exhilarating and daunting (what if I pick the wrong technology? cf Paradox of Choice). So what are some guidelines for thinking about that choic...

This is the first of a new series of Tech Tuesday posts on Technology in Startups. Today’s topic: choosing your technologies. As a startup when you are just getting going, you have the luxury of picking any technology you want – you don’t yet have a legacy set of choices to contend with. It’s completely greenfield and that level of choice can be both exhilarating and daunting (what if I pick the wrong technology? cf Paradox of Choice). So what are some guidelines for thinking about that choic...

My older son asked me yesterday about how colors on the screen work. We started talking about the history of the RGB color model including early color screen technology. That eventually led to a discussion of how the RGB color space is three dimensional with 256 values on each axis for a total of 2^24 or roughly 16 million colors. Since a display is only two dimensional how would you go about showing the entire color space? From that question we talked about projections (from 3D to 2D) but al...

My older son asked me yesterday about how colors on the screen work. We started talking about the history of the RGB color model including early color screen technology. That eventually led to a discussion of how the RGB color space is three dimensional with 256 values on each axis for a total of 2^24 or roughly 16 million colors. Since a display is only two dimensional how would you go about showing the entire color space? From that question we talked about projections (from 3D to 2D) but al...

Germany’s parliament today passed the highly controversial “Leistungsschutzrecht” which is an ancillary copyright that requires payment for excerpting from and linking to content in some instances. When I walked around in a slight daze at Chicago O'Hare this morning after an all too short red eye flight, my Twitter feed was full of German friends and others outraged about the bill (just look for #lsr). Jeff Jarvis – who spoke out strongly against the law at this year’s DLD conference – i...

Germany’s parliament today passed the highly controversial “Leistungsschutzrecht” which is an ancillary copyright that requires payment for excerpting from and linking to content in some instances. When I walked around in a slight daze at Chicago O'Hare this morning after an all too short red eye flight, my Twitter feed was full of German friends and others outraged about the bill (just look for #lsr). Jeff Jarvis – who spoke out strongly against the law at this year’s DLD conference – i...

The IPv6 standard was first published in 1998 which is now 15 years ago. For a while it looked like adoption would drag on forever resulting in some anguished discussions. But by about 2011 IPv6 started to develop real momentum on private networks with Google achieving 95% IPv6 on their internal network at the end of 2011. Another major milestone was World IPv6 Launch Day, which took place last June. A study that was just presented a couple of weeks ago at the NANOG conference shows (PDF) tha...

The IPv6 standard was first published in 1998 which is now 15 years ago. For a while it looked like adoption would drag on forever resulting in some anguished discussions. But by about 2011 IPv6 started to develop real momentum on private networks with Google achieving 95% IPv6 on their internal network at the end of 2011. Another major milestone was World IPv6 Launch Day, which took place last June. A study that was just presented a couple of weeks ago at the NANOG conference shows (PDF) tha...

I started writing this review last night with the Oscars still going on, having seen Zero Dark Thirty the night before (I will have some separate comments on other Oscar choices). I went to see it despite having some trepidation about doing so. On the one hand, I had enjoyed Hurt Locker a lot. On the other, I have resented the zealous pursuit of folks who illegally downloaded Hurt Locker (which still is *not* available for streaming on Vudu) and much more importantly was concerned about Zero ...

I started writing this review last night with the Oscars still going on, having seen Zero Dark Thirty the night before (I will have some separate comments on other Oscar choices). I went to see it despite having some trepidation about doing so. On the one hand, I had enjoyed Hurt Locker a lot. On the other, I have resented the zealous pursuit of folks who illegally downloaded Hurt Locker (which still is *not* available for streaming on Vudu) and much more importantly was concerned about Zero ...

I am finally getting around to writing about the third paper in my MIT PhD thesis. The first paper was an empirical analysis of the impact of information technology on firm size. The second paper provided a model for how improvements in information technology can result in hybrid organizations. The third paper is both the most ambitious and also the most theoretical – it attempts to provide a general framework for analyzing communication in organizations. In rereading it I found a fair number...

I am finally getting around to writing about the third paper in my MIT PhD thesis. The first paper was an empirical analysis of the impact of information technology on firm size. The second paper provided a model for how improvements in information technology can result in hybrid organizations. The third paper is both the most ambitious and also the most theoretical – it attempts to provide a general framework for analyzing communication in organizations. In rereading it I found a fair number...

Last week on Tech Tuesday I ran the third reader survey to determine what to write about next. I offered up three possible topic areas that I had mentioned previously: lower level programming, theory of computer science and neural networks/machine learning. Because I thought that this seemed like a bit of a short list I also added “Technology in Startups.” And here are the results: For starters, adding the other category (for write-ins) really didn’t do anything as only 2 people bothered. Als...

Last week on Tech Tuesday I ran the third reader survey to determine what to write about next. I offered up three possible topic areas that I had mentioned previously: lower level programming, theory of computer science and neural networks/machine learning. Because I thought that this seemed like a bit of a short list I also added “Technology in Startups.” And here are the results: For starters, adding the other category (for write-ins) really didn’t do anything as only 2 people bothered. Als...