Paul O'Flaherty

SourceForge: Nobody Is Asking Why Now?

Bound by the law?

Sourceforge is now blocking access to sites from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria.

Since 2003, the SourceForge.net Terms and Conditions of Use have prohibited certain persons from receiving services pursuant to U.S. laws, including, without limitations, the Denied Persons List and the Entity List, and other lists issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security. The specific list of sanctions that affect our users concern the transfer and export of certain technology to foreign persons and governments on the sanctions list. This means users residing in countries on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria, may not post content to, or access content available through, SourceForge.net. Last week, SourceForge.net began automatic blocking of certain IP addresses to enforce those conditions of use.

In all the commentary I am seeing, nobody has asked the very simplest and perhaps most obvious of questions: Why now?

These terms have been in place for nearly 7 years now. (The Entities list has existed since 1997)

Lets forget for the minute that one hell of a lot of the software hosted by Sourceforge is developed with the help of, or even entirely by, people living outside the U.S.

Lets also bear in mind that SourceForge has claimed that this is because of the “transfer and export of certain technology” to foreign persons and governments on the sanctions list, yet doesn’t give any details about what this technology is?

Surely everything on SourceForge can’t contain dangerous technology? Why not just restrict the programs which contain those technologies?

Not to mention the fact that everybody knows that any idiot, never mind some evil axis human overlord wannabe wouldn’t be able to use a proxy or Tor to get past the IP filtering!

Or is there something more at play here?

Google and China perhaps? Did the U.S. government pay SourceForge a call and “politely” remind them that these laws exist? Maybe because the government wants to show that it is willing to enforce it’s laws and send a subtle hint to China that the hacking of U.S. companies and theft of their I.P. might get them added to these lists?

I find it very hard to believe that the guys at SourceForge have had a sudden moment of conscience and, out of the blue, decided to comply with laws that have existed for almost 12 years and to their own terms and conditions which they have ignored for the past 7 years.

Google Is Just Saber Rattling And Won’t Pull Out Of China

All talk?

David Drummond, SVP of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer for Google, just dropped a very provocative post over on the official Google blog.

Normally a post of this nature would go pretty much unnoticed (except by the tin-foil hat wearing security freaks) as it details an attempted attack on Google and a number of other companies operating within China.

What makes this post truly interesting however is the tone of the post, which, to my mind at least insinuates that the Chinese government were themselves responsible (or at least played a part), without ever coming out and actually making that accusation.

While that was provocative enough, the real sensationalism was to be found in this bold statement:

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Wow, it sounds like Google is going to pull out of China. After all we know the Chinese government won’t back down, so what choice will they have?

To be honest, it’s all saber rattling. Google is trying to put pressure on the Chinese government, a regime that it knows doesn’t even generally bow to the massive weight of global political and public opinion.

In fact, Google is so aware of this that they provided themselves with a back door within their statement:

and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law

I’m confident that the settlement will come, one way or the other, and there are a number of reasons for it.

First and foremost there is the financial situation. Simply put, the amount of money Google will lose.

In Q2 of 2009 there were 338 million internet users in China and Google was the search engine of choice for 23.7% (about 80 million) of those users in Q3. That’s more users than North America which had 246.8 million users.

Add that to the fact that the Chinese market is growing rapidly as internet penetration is only 26.9% (or 1 in 4 people are online) compared to the saturated US market which has 74.2% (or 3 out of 4 online) penetration.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that there is too much at stake to walk away and too much potential for growth.

Could Google really walk away from that? Could they honestly allow their market share in China to be eaten up by Baidu (the number 1 search engine in China) or to allow Ballmer to walk Microsoft in there and expand their market share? Or even better have Ballmer cut some sort of a deal with the Chinese government?

Sara, Steven Hodson and others have pointed out that Ballmer wouldn’t walk into that hornets nest. I think he would. What is there to lose?

Microsoft already operates Bing in China so it won’t be as if they can be demonized for pushing into the territory.

The digiratti may get up in arms about it, but who in the real world listens to them? Once they leave the geek twitter/blogosphere they have no real influence over the masses, no matter how they may delude themselves. Lets make it very clear-being famous in the blogosphere is nothing but an ego trip. It comes with no power and you won’t be recognized if you walk into the average pub.

Mainstream media will pick up on the story, but they’ll likely focus on the fact that Google is pulling out and not who is staying in. Even if they did, you can be sure Microsoft would have an army of PR experts ready to be on the tube and tell everybody how they’re trying to do the right thing, by sticking it out and fighting for the Chinese peoples right by providing them a service, working with the government and trying to affect change. Not like childish Google who couldn’t take the heat so took their toys home to play in their room alone.

The number of activists who may give out about Microsoft (and others) staying in China will be many, they will be loud, rant and rave on twitter, get their backs up and shout from atop their high horses, but very few of them will do anything about it.

Only a very minute percentage will actually bother to stop using Bing, or to not buy a Microsoft product and even their outrage will be short lived before they go back to their old habits.

Most will forget what they were angry about after a few days, and the real world will have forgotten about it within 24 hours of the mainstream media miking it.

The bottom line to a company like Microsoft would be an increase in revenue from the Chinese market that would far, far outweigh any potential loss or fall out from the few malcontents who actually do something about it rather than just rant on twitter and blow hot air on their blogs.

Public opinion can be a wonderful thing, but it only works as long as the public pays attention. In this day an age the public has an attention span that can be measured in minutes. The next time Angelina and Brad adopt, that Madonna farts or Obama stares at a girls ass, it will all be forgotten about.

The Chinese government has a stubborn streak and disregard for international opinion that is beyond legendary and Microsoft are definitely not above doing something that may not immediately be popular in order to gain a long term advantage and the public is too wrapped up in dealing with their own economic woes and miserable lives to really care who is providing search results to the Chinese.

Finally and above all, Google is not a public service. They are a business and their primary responsibility is not to their users but to their shareholders. Leaving China would not be in their shareholders best interest.

Google are testing the waters to see if they can get a concession. It would take some serious brass balls to pull out of the Chinese market and give their foothold over to competitors. Brass balls, which for all Google has done in the past, I think are more like two rolled up socks stuffed down the underpants.

They may look impressive from afar, but they don’t hold up to scrutiny.

The Cloud isn’t Everything

Which one?

John Gruber (Daring Fireball) has been arguing the case for PC manufacturers to build their own operating systems.

The essential argument being that with everything that we use every day already existing in the cloud it shouldn’t matter what OS we are running.

Apple has separated themselves from the crowd by developing their own OS and hardware, other PC manufacturers should be doing the same thing or just give up and die.

If Palm can create WebOS for pocket-sized computers — replete with an email client, calendaring app, web browser, and SDK — why couldn’t these companies make something equivalent for full-size computers?

If Apple and Palm can do it (and now Google) then why aren’t Dell, Sony, HP and the rest of the big gin PC manufacturers?

These PC makers are lacking in neither financial resources nor opportunity. What they’re lacking is ambition, gumption, and passion for great software and new frontiers. They’re busy dying.

Johns logic is sound as long as you are willing to make the assumption that the only reason personal computers are used today is to surf the web and be online.

The web is a great resource and has enriched or lives dramatically but is only of any value if you can actually connect to it. Admittedly, for most of the developed, world it is now easy to connect to the web even while on the move, but even when you do connect the service that you want is not always there.

Your email host may be down. Your web applications host may have server issues or simply shut up shop.

What about graphic designers or people doing audio and video editing? Photoshop on the web? Not likely! Not in a way that offers the power and options of CS4 running on my laptop.

As we’ve already seen most online applications are cut down versions, lacking the feature set and power of the their desktop “big brother”.

Can you imagine editing a high definition video and having to upload gigabytes of data to the cloud before you could begin editing your footage? Not to mention the bandwidth costs to the service providing the editing software.

What of the lowly PC gamer? Will Activision develop a version fo Call of Duty 2 for Sony OS, Google OS, HP OS, Windows, Mac and god knows how many other OS’s?

How about Photoshop, Firefox or iTunes for all these platforms as well?

I think not. It’s just not a practical solution. Most companies have a hard time getting versions of their software out for Windows, Mac and Linux at the moment.

The reason we have so much diversity in software at the moment and so much polished quality software that we rely on, is because the operating system arena is not saturated in the way that John wants is encouraging.

If it was, then talented developers would all be working on incredibly similar projects for a vast number operating systems, their talent and the programs they develop reaching incredibly limited audiences.

As it stands now we have vast armies of developers working for a limited number of platforms which allows them to develop and innovate without having to constantly reinvent the wheel. They can build upon and learn from the work and code of others.

Lets not even bring the issue of software patents into the mix!

Imagine if every time you wrote an application you had to do it for 16 different operating systems with their own file systems, quirks and API’s? A nightmare!

In fact it is that nightmare that would bring us very rapidly back to a situation where we had only a small number of OS’s as developers would develop for the platform which is the most developer friendly.

This is turn would lead to end users choosing that platform as it would have the greatest choice of software and support. That in turn brings more developers to the platform because the money is where the users are.

As John notes this already happened in the early days of personal computing when we had a massive amount of operating system choices and they all whittled away as developers and users moved to the platforms with the most choice and users.

See where I’m going with this? Even if every PC manufacturer released an OS tomorrow, after a while we would end up with the vast majority of people using only 2 or three of those operating systems.

Everything is not in the cloud, nor should it be. The cloud is unreliable. Connections to the cloud are unreliable and the cloud can’t match the convenience or power of software running locally on your home PC or laptop.

This is Why Network Neutrality is a Big Deal

I don’t know how I missed this during the week, or who created the original image but this goes a very long way to graphically illustrate one of the possible scenarios in a world without network neutrality.

Imagine an internet that worked like a cable TV subscription, with different bundles and packages. Where most of the content is locked off unless you pay your ISP to allow you get to it regardless of whether or not the site you want to access is itself free.

Imagine having to choose between one telco and another because one gives you access to Google but the other doesn’t.

I don’t know who created the orginal image, but hat-tip to Gizmodo and Packet Life.

After A Little Crowd Control

Lost in the crowd?

I’m constantly amazed by the sheer numbers of people on Twitter that follow you back just to keep you as a number.

Yesterday I reduced the number of people that I was following by over a 1000. That meant wading through the list of people I was following and removing anybody who hadn’t updated recently (not many of them as I regularly run tools to remove people who haven’t tweeted in the past 30 days and gone stale), who offer nothing to the conversation (as in are simply pimping links or affiliate schemes and such, the entire time) and who I simply don’t talk to anymore.

I expected to take a huge hit in my follower numbers after the cull and I wasn’t disappointed by people.

My numbers dropped by over 200.

It’s blindingly obvious that a lot of the poeple I’ve followed over time only followed me back because they were only interested in how awesome it looks to have 30,000 followers and actually have no interest in really talking to people.

The like to talk at people.

I thought that social media was supposed to be a platform for communication or more specifically for conversation. That’s why it’s called “social media” after all.

For a lot of people social media platforms such as Twitter appear to be just another soap box from which to yell their message at the unwashed masses in the hopes that their brand/scheme/message will be heard amongst the background noise.

These people treat platforms like Twitter as if it was advertising on TV and have yet to realize that the smart money is to be made by engaging the audience rather than repeatedly yelling at them in the hopes that something will sink in.

FTC Guidelines : They’re Not About YOUR Blog!

All your blogs...

I watched the news surface yesterday about the FTC’s guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials and how they now affect bloggers.

I read the entire 81 page document (it’s a bit of a drag to read but I recommend that you do), shrugged my shoulders and moved on. I decided to stay out of the inevitable shit storm that I knew the blogosphere would make of this and return to my navel gazing. After all, I’ve been disclosing since early 2007.

I’m sure that the most excited I got was to tell Sara: “The only people who will complain about this are people with something to hide”. I may or may not have been correct.

My feed reader is full of posts (which I did not read) about the guidelines today. My twitter stream is seeing more than a few mentions and as far as I can see the general reaction either “meh” or “oh hell no… we’re all doomed!”.

Except of course for my good friend Steven Hodson. His Canadian sensibilities are so tightly wound up by this that his man spuds must be pushing past his tonsils at this point. According to Steven the FTC guidelines are seven shades of wrong, unfair and make us bloggers out to be “scumbags”.

Apparently I am also a “fuckwad” because I think these guidelines are actually good for the blogosphere and the internet as a whole.

As this misguided Irishman sees it the objections to the FTC guidelines are as follows

• Bloggers shouldn’t be subject to these guidelines because traditional media outlets appear not be
• Our readers are smart enough to know if we’re hawking shite because they know us and they’re smart.
• Oh yes, did I mention that the traditional media outlets don’t have to!

Okay, where to begin.

The FCC guidelines are about more than bloggers. They cover all “new media” users. That means, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, everywhere. Basically if it’s online and you’re not a “proper” journo, this affects you.

The biggest flaw in the logic of those claiming that these guidelines are a bad thing lies in the belief that it is about bloggers, or more specifically you as a specific blogger. It’s not! It’s about search engines and search results.

It doesn’t matter if your readership can spot that you have an apparent “mystery change in attitude” about a product and know you’re suffering from freebie induced verbal diarrhea. Your readers, who on the whole I seriously doubt are not smart enough to notice, unless you became a shill on every product review (1 in 10 could just be called a bad call), are not the people these guidelines are designed to protect.

Look at the stats of your blog and see where the vast majority of you traffic comes from. Go on, I’ll wait….

Just to state the blindingly obvious, the vast majority of your traffic comes from search engines like Google. Bloggers also get a lot of traffic from social networks where the person clicking through may be clicking on a retweet or a forward  and have no idea who the heck you are. Damn, they wouldn’t even care if you died 5 minutes after hitting the post button, they’re just interested in scanning your review, endorsement or otherwise of a product.

Those people coming from Google and Twitter have no idea if you’re affiliated with a company, got paid for your review or accepted a blowjob in order to write 100 glowing words. They don’t know you or your reputation.

Search engine results can also be polluted. It’s all to easy for a company to solicit a 1000 reviews from high profile bloggers, or 10000 reviews from “average bloggers” or even more from Z list bloggers like myself.

This is common place behaviour. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it isn’t.

Starting to see how this is not just about you as a blogger and your readership? It’s about large numbers of bloggers and new media users combined with all their readerships and when you think of it that way, the FTC guidelines start to make a lot of sense.

Bloggers should be incredibly happy about these guidelines because they will help protect the impartiality of our beloved internet.

Addressing the issue of traditional media, according to the FTC (page 47):

The Commission acknowledges that bloggers may be subject to different disclosure requirements than reviewers in traditional media. In general, under usual circumstances, the Commission does not consider reviews published in traditional media (i.e., where a newspaper, magazine, or television or radio station with independent editorial responsibility assigns an employee to review various products or services as part of his or her official duties, and then publishes those reviews) to be sponsored advertising messages. Accordingly, such reviews are not “endorsements” within the meaning of the Guides.100 Under these circumstances, the Commission believes, knowing whether the media entity that published the review paid for the item in question would not affect the weight consumers give to the reviewer’s statements.

As such their point is sound. There is a difference between being paid to review products where that is known and accepted by the audience from the get go and, say, reviewing a new Xbox 360 game when an impoverished blogger may not have been able to afford the game themselves.

There is a fundamental difference between your actual job being paid to review things for a traditional media outlet, and a blogger who doesn’t get paid reviewing a freebie or being paid to review a product.

There is a massive difference in expectation. There is  simply no way to know for the average visitor landing on a blog from a search engine, what the bloggers position is without disclosure.

It is perhaps this difference between traditional media outlets and bloggers that make these guidelines so beneficial for the blogosphere and the internet as a whole.

We now have a proper platform with which to make ourselves stand out from the shills. Those of us that disclose will carry more weight and authority. Folks that are shills can now be properly called out and scandalized (perhaps not the kind of fodder the blogosphere needs but think of the posts) and that may help cull the crap.

We can also stand apart and above from our traditional media brethren, and rather than this being a free pass for them, we can now criticize them and their behaviour, their nondisclosure and self serving interests and bring pressure to bear for positive change.

We can also, finally, bring some respectability to the cesspool of the blogosphere which is overpopulated by self serving marketers and folks out to make a quick buck under the guise of blogging. The shit might finally sink and the cream may rise to the top.

So, why the problem with disclosing? It’s not about serving ourselves, it’s about serving the wider internet. Focusing on your own blog is just self-centered and shows you’re missing the bigger picture.

The Social Media Guru (Video)

Trust me!

Social media experts, gurus and witchdoctors! You can’t turn a corner on the internet without running into 10 of them. Each and every one of them pimping their own regurgitated brand of “unique” insight that will do everything from save your business to turn you into a superstar with all of the perks and track marks as proof!

They’re like pigeons around old people at the park -- annoying, everywhere and covering the place in shit.

Have you ever wondered what it is most of these so called “social media experts” actually do for companies? This video tells all…

Hat tip to “New Pair Of Goggles“

Breaking: No More Techcrunch 50! Confirmed

I just posted about whether Arrington and Calacanis had a falling out that would result in the death of TechCrunch 50, but now it appears it’s been confirmed by  Calacanis himself on his Twitter Stream.

Calacanis' Twitter

This begs the question, if there was a bust up, how bad was it and what comes next?

No More Techcrunch 50? Did Arrington And Calacanis Have a Lovers Tiff?

Arrington and Calacanis

I know it’s hard to believe a lot of what you see in Loren Feldmans satirical puppet videos but there is sometimes truth buried in them. Especially in this one which features a very real Jason Calacanis saying that there will be no more Techcrunch 50 event.

Calacanis looks a little more than rather sincere when he says it.

So, if there is any truth to this, why have Calacanis and Arrington thrown in the towel. Feldman alludes to a falling out between the two?

There is a second video posted a little later that features Calacanis and an Arrington puppet where Calacanis says that there might be another Techcrunch 50 if they “make up tonight”.

Again, Calacanis looks a little too serious.

Here are the two videos so you can see for yourself.

First up Calacanis with the Feldman puppet:

Now Calacanis with the Arrington puppet:

It’s all conjecture and “reading between the lines” at this point.

It may be nothing, it may be everything.

Opinion?  Did Arrington and Calacanis have a lovers tiff? If they did, what does it mean for the future of Techcrunch 50?

Update: It’s been confirmed that there will be no more Techcrunch50’s!

What XP Netbook Manufactures Aren’t Telling You?

Your XP Netbook that you just bought isn’t secure. Nor will it ever be. It’s running an 8 year old operating system for which support has been discontinued since April of 2009. There will not be any new security patches or updates for your XP netbook. Not from Microsoft at least.

Microsoft announced on April 3rd last year ( 2008 ) that it had bowed to demand of manufacturers and would allow them to sell Windows XP Home for ULCPCs (ultra low cost personal computers or netbooks) will be until June 30, 2010, or one year after general availability of the next version of Windows.

Michael Dix, General Manager of Windows Client Product Management, also made it very clear in the same interview that just because OEMs could sell netbooks with XP on it, did not mean they were going to be supporting it beyond April 2009:

I should also note that there will also be no impact on our technical support plans—mainstream technical support will continue to be available until April 2009 and extended support will continue until April 2014.

Now I know some of you are baying for Steve Ballmers blood at this point and ready to blame Microsoft for this apparent “injustice” or trickery, but step back and think for a minute about who really is to blame on this occasion. Here’s a hint: It’s not Microsoft.

This all came to my attention today when I read that Microsoft would not be patching a bug in XP that it had already fixed in Vista, citing the age of XPs code as making it unfeasible and I ended up in a lengthy discussion on Twitter trying to explain why it was not Microsoft people should be mad at, but the manufacturers, the OEM’s.

The fact of the matter is that when the manufactures approached Microsoft, due to consumer demand, they entered into the arrangement knowing Microsofts support lifecycle and exactly when support for XP was due to end. Microsoft have never hid or even glossed over the fact that support for XP would be ending last April and I would hazard a guess that the OEM partners involved got a pretty good deal on XP due to that fact.

Yet, this knowledge in hand, the netbook manufacturers have sold and continue to sell and advertise machines that are running an operating system that will not be receiving an more support, bug fixes or security upgrades.

On the whole XP is a dead horse to Microsoft and their only interest in providing any support for it is at business level, which means businesses with XP Professional (and even they would like to bump those up to Windows 7 ASAP ). These are the only licenses that may qualify for extended support as XP Home is a consumer product and does not qualify as business or development software.

Microsoft are more interested in the imminent release of the excellent Windows 7 and erasing the memory of Vista while moving on to the next project.

So where does this leave you? It leaves you with a bone to pick with the company that produced your netbook and quite possibly with your retailer as well.

Questions have to be asked of both. Why weren’t consumers informed when purchasing these machines that the operating system was going, or at this point, is out of date and no longer supported?

Of course, I’m sure that the OEM’s and retailers alike will push the responsibility back on the consumer, stating that if they’re savvy enough to be looking for a netbook they should be savvy enough to do some research on the product they’re about to drop a lot of hard earned cash for.

Frankly I agree with the manufactures and retailers on that score, but it doesn’t eliminate the fact that they should have actively informed customers that this was the situation when they were purchasing the netbooks and included it in the advertising literature. After all, it’s a serious thing and a big deciding factor to know that the operating system is no longer supported.

One last thing, considering the OEM’s decided to go with XP knowing that the OS was about to end it’s support lifecycle, should they be held accountable to move into an paid support arrangement with Microsoft similar to what they have in place for business software?

Facebook Ads And Suggestions That Aren’t

Our friend Heather (@Wigenout) pointed us to an image on Facebook yesterday for submission to Daily Shite and while we were checking it out I noticed the advert that you can see on the right hand side there.

I have very little problem with Facebook or any network suggesting people to me that I may know (except when I’ve already removed them or blocked them) but these new user created adverts cross a line with me.

These ads attempt trick the user in to adding the person in the advert to their user list by suggesting that the recommendation is coming for Facebook. That is not only untrue, simply sneaky and underhanded, but also expressly forbidden by Facebooks Advertising Guidelines.

From section 3 of Facebooks Advertising Guidlines (emphasis added by me):

Facebook references

1. The following conditions apply to all adverts that have a Facebook Page, application, event, group or Connect site as its destination, except as otherwise specifically permitted to those subject to the Branding and promotion policy section of the Platform Guidelines:
   1. Adverts may make limited references to “Facebook” in its title, body or image for the purposes of clarifying the destination of the advert;
   2. Adverts cannot imply any endorsement of the product, service or ad destination by Facebook.
2. All other adverts, destination adverts and landing pages must adhere to the following restrictions:
   1. Adverts cannot mention or refer to Facebook, its site or its brand in any manner, including in the title, body, image or destination URLs;
   2. Adverts cannot use Facebook logos, trademarks or site terminology (including but not limited to Facebook, The Facebook, FacebookHigh, FBook, FB, Poke, Wall and other company graphics, logos, designs or icons);
   3. Facebook site features cannot be emulated.

I’ve been seeing this style of advert on Facebook for a number of weeks now and am wondering how long before the crack down begins or will they just continue to ignore them in favour of the advertising coin?