Current Event #4

Tech Startups Feel an IPO Chill

During the 1990's technology companies were in high demand by financial backers. Investors found startup tech companies to be easy flips to make a quick cash out with little work. People began to act like sharks and jump on any startup company, good or bad, and get them to enter the public market as soon as possible. This time was known as the "Dot Con" era. Fast forward to today, and technology companies are starting to get the cold shoulder from investors. Instead of being treated as royalty, tech companies now have to survive the proving grounds of any other startup company and get to a stable point financially before investors will back them. One company that is starting to feel this pressure is Dropbox. Instead of cashing out like many other tech companies of the past, Dropbox is now forced to continue to improve its services and begin to branch out with more products in order to keep up its value. While this change in the market may be negative for startup companies becoming successful, it will help to improve the quality of the software being created. It makes me think of the parable of the wheat and the tares in D&C 86 where the good companies will be invested in and the bad companies will disappear.

Study Journal #3

Law & Computing

October 6

• Free Software: Sometimes having software for free isn't always the best thing. Money saved on support costs can end up going to spending your own time to troubleshoot your own problems. Linux may offer a lot of freedom, but it requires a vast amount of time to master and customize to suit your needs. Is your time worth the same or less than the cost of paying a support team to take care of any problems that may come up?
• I feel like the Free Software Movement is the nerd version of the hippie movement. Share everything with everyone. What is mine is yours. Bill Gates did come off pretty strongly though that he felt that the creators of good, clean, documented code should be paid for their work. I think that we have a nice balance today between free software and intellectual property.
• I think it is funny that Linus Torvalds thought that it was embarrassing to call his operating system Linux in public.

October 8

Dr. Asay: Intellectual Property

• Trade Secrets: Confidential information that the company depends on can be considered a trade secret. However, if someone can duplicate this trade secret, then the secret is out and can be reverse-engineered by anybody.
• To obtain a patent, you need to apply at the patent office. It takes about three years to get the application process completed due to so many patents coming in. If you are the first to get a patent in for some technology, then you will most likely be the one to get it. Patents are used primarily to sue other people.
• Copyright: Copyrightable material has to originate with you and have a portion of creativity to it. It is more lenient with independent creation.

Cybersecurity & Espionage

October 13

The Cuckoo's Egg & Intellectual Property Review

• Why would the government grant a monopoly to someone? It helps to protect inventors and give them rights to their inventions, as well as give more motivation for innovation. This can be a double edged sword with patent trolls though.
• I think that software patents should not have a duration of twenty years. Most technology is rapidly evolving to the point that what is patented today becomes outdated in just a few short years. I feel that five years would be a much more appropriate length of time.
• Non-Compete Clause: These agreements keep a person from leaving a company and going to work for their competitors. A company normally pays extra to add these clauses to employment contracts.

The Cuckoo's Egg

October 15

• Is being apathetic unethical? In Cliff Stoll's situation, system admins that were apathetic and did nothing to prevent the hackers moving through their system then allowed the hackers to move on to bigger and more important systems.
• I, like many others, find the Windows Updates very annoying. I run Windows on a Mac, and so I am constantly booting back and forth between operating systems. It is a major drain on my time when Windows decides to update when I am in the middle of switching back over to Mac OS X. However, I am very grateful that they go through all the work of keeping my data and system secure and safe.
• I find it interesting that as Cliff gained more knowledge during his experience with the hackers, he started moving his political views more towards the right. I know that there are extremists on both sides of the line, but maybe learning more would help us all to center ourselves. Education and knowledge allow us to see more options and choices.

Daryl C. Dougal

October 20

• The FBI is unable to investigate if less than $100,000 is involved. This affected the Cuckoo's Egg story because there wasn't a monetary loss happening for anyone.
• Before 1996, theft did not include taking pictures or copies of information, such as taking a picture of the KFC recipe in their vault. An example of this is Fuji stealing the technology of the disposable camera from Kodak. (Economic Espionage Act of 1996)
• One of the biggest reasons that the United States lost the Vietnam War is due to the actions of John A. Walker. He passed on military secrets pertaining to the machinery that encoded and decoded messages for the Navy.

Current Event #3

Swig vs. Sodalicious
A battle is brewing in Utah. Swig, a soda shop, is suing a competitor, Sodalicious, for trademark infringement. A few years ago, swig started out as a small company in St. George, UT. When they began business, they trademarked the term "dirty", which denotes a special variation on their drinks. Sodalicious, a more recent player on the scene, began to also market almost all the exact same products as Swig, just under a different name. However, they also use the term "dirty" to denote the same type of mixture for their drinks. While Swig is technically in the right for being able to sue over this, is it really right for a company or individual to copyright a common word? As we saw in the examples from class, terms such as elevator and kleenex were originally brands which became so common to use that they lost their copyright protection. But dirty is a word that has multiple meanings. Can a simple word such as this really be protected? It will be very interesting to follow this story to see where this lawsuit goes.

Study Journal #2

September 22

• Triumph of the Nerds (Part 1): Great things don't just happen by chance. Hard work and sacrifice are required to make something truly great.
• During the advent of personal computers, everyone had a greater sense of community and sharing. It's too bad that today people want to guard every bit of information possible and strike down all those around them.
• Is the definition of success really measured by money? Shouldn't it be the knowledge that you have made a difference, even if you aren't the one getting the recognition for your accomplishments?

September 24

• Triumph of the Nerds (Part 2): IBM was a big mainframe computer company until the era of personal computers arrived. Good thing they recognized what the future had in store and changed gears and got in the game.
• It's sad that the original inventors of new concepts such as the QDOS end up being cast aside while others make millions off of their ideas.
• I always wondered how reverse engineering was legal. I didn't know about the "clean rooms" using people who have never interacted with the original product. I guess there is a lot of legal jargon that I am still missing out on, but I still don't like reverse engineering. It sounds like a cheap way out of designing something new and original.

September 29

• Triumph of the Nerds (Part 3): Why couldn't companies realize what they had at the time? XEROX had the first GUI system with a mouse and keyboard and they just blew it off! Narrow-mindedness and no desire to change can really cripple even the best of companies or people.
• "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." - Steve Jobs. Too bad they didn't steal more of the software ideas from IBM so that they would be more sellable. There is only so much you can do with a text editor and a simple paint program.
• It's a good thing that Bill Gates wanted to create a GUI interface to challenge the Macintosh. With no competition, Apple would have become complacent and we probably wouldn't be anywhere near what we have now.
• It's funny to see Steve Jobs' reaction to Microsoft launching Windows. He sure isn't happy about losing out on another chunk of the market share.
• What is my definition of success? If I have enough to provide for my family by doing something that makes society a better place, then I feel that I have been successful. Money helps, but also knowing that advancements have been made by using something I have done is a great feeling.

October 1

• Module Quiz only today.