Christopher Mercer.Net

Today’s article by Dr. Geist in the Toronto Star discusses the lack of participation of Canadian Universities in the Open Courseware initiative. Originally started by MIT – which, as Dr. Geist points out, offers about 1800 courses freely – has spawned into the Open Courseware Consortium featuring universities from China, USA, South Africa, and Colombia to name a few. But the surprise is the highly touted Canadian universities are missing with the exception of the Capilano College, a small school nestled just north of Vancouver.

This is a topic that was often battered around during my time on campus at Memorial University working with the Commons. In my discussions with staff it became apparent that there was apprehension against using podcasts or blogs at the university. One staff member even suggested that no professor would want to share his or her intellectual property for free. But the 90% participation rate of MIT – a world leading school – suggests that staff would be interested if the opportunity was presented to them. So why is it a highly ranked and respected school, such as Memorial, would not jump at the chance to join this group?

It could be a fear that by offering their lectures and content for fee they would devalue their work and risk funding. There is the technology barrier and the consideration some professors may not know how to participate from a technological level (how to make a podcast for example). The sister to that argument is other technology barrier, availability of equipment to produce the necessary content and provide it.

However, each argument should be trumped with possibility of advancing the schools brand, attracting students, professors, and staff. It can be have the effect of bringing to light new opportunities for investment and research, advancing and raising the level of education at the school.

Application platforms like Facebook can be integrated - not withstanding the outstanding copyright concerns – into the daily student life. Apple offers the iTunes U for schools to provide their audio and video content. There are a dozen avenues to explore in allowing greater social networking, social media, and interaction between students and the university members.

This is not to say all of the delivery should be or could be outsourced to other vendors. A school like Memorial (To continue with my previous example) could develop its own portal (which it has) and provide content via that system. Some content could even be restricted to the university community using the existing authentication systems, or even to particular classes. The possibilities are only as limited as the resources and time restrict. That said it would be great to see my alma mater become the leader in this field and the first major Canadian University to join the Open Courseware Consortium.

Well the Christmas season has come and gone. Like many people, our parliamentarians are back to the grindstone in just a few weeks, and while most of us have been working at our respective jobs since the start of the year, our MP’s have been preparing for what will be the next round in the ring known as the House of Commons.

A hot topic that will have many punches thrown over this session will most likely be the highly debated and controversial copyright reform bill. A bill that would mimic the highly disliked DMCA bill in the USA. The bill that was suppose to be tabled in the fall session but was delayed when sudden and vocal opposition was demonstrated by the very people who would be effected by this proposed law change, the voters!

A lot of the organization behind this opposition comes in the form of a Facebook group. Started by Dr. Michael Geist, law professor and Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, the Facebook group “Fair Copyright for Canada” has attracted the attention of 37000 users and resulted in national news coverage by CBC’s The Hour and The National.

While all that might be old news to some readers, a new development was the creation of local chapters that started quietly over the Christmas break. Just this past week The Fair Copyright for Canada group went public with its announcement of local chapters spanning 13 cities. I was delighted to be asked to start the Halifax Chapter and welcome anyone in the Halifax area to join. You are also encouraged to start your own campus or city chapter if one is not already in existence. Just contact Dr. Geist through the national Facebook group.

The momentum of this group continues to grow with coverage on Computer World Magazine’s site and on local newscasts across the country. This is an important step in bringing the concerns of the public to the MP’s who will eventually vote on this issue. Any stakeholders, who have a desire to see a balanced copyright reform bill put before the House of Commons, or an unbalanced bill defeated, are asked to get involved and ensure that your concerns are heard. Through these Facebook groups we will be making available the necessary information about who to contact, how to get involved, any rallies, and most importantly how this will effect you.

This development is also notable for demonstrating the impact that social networking sites can have on an organization. Although that is another topic. So please get involved, learn how this can affect you, and most importantly stand up for your rights.

AT&T has announced that as of today it would start allowing any phone, device, or software from any maker on its network. That is right, as of today the third major wireless carrier in the US has opened their network to allow customers to use what they want on their networks.

For years the wireless network carriers that provide your cell phone service have had a restrictive hold on what devices could be used with their services. Today marks the final major player to reverse that practice and customers in the US win. But what about Canada?

It seems that wireless providers in the Great White North are less inclined to provide the same openness to their customers. The big three here – Bell, Telus, and Rogers – still require that customers use only the devices and software that they provide. Even when you consider that two of them use the same technology (CDMA), they do not easily allow, if at all, the ability to take your phone from one carrier to the other. Instead, you are required to sign a new contract for a subsidized phone in order to switch companies. So the question remains when will Canadian companies follow the American lead. Not only do they seem disinterested but the Canadian Government’s department of Industry also lacks any definitive position on the topic. In fact, the Minster of Industry lacked any requirement of an open network policy for bids in the upcoming Canadian wireless spectrum auction. A requirement that is part of the same auction that is ongoing in the US.

For a government that seems so determined that align its self with the American draconian DMCA it has missed the boat on a pro-consumer move of open wireless networks. Which is also a policy of the Americans. So who looses should we not adopt this policy – either though industry or government regulation – why we the customers do!

An open network policy would allow consumers the choice to use any device, phone, or software on their wireless provider. Therefore, instead of being tied into contracts and restrictive choices of phones you would be able to take any technological compatible piece of equipment to any provider. The caveat to this is you may have to pay full price for the phone to avoid the contract requirement since the carrier’s subsidize the phones through those contracts.

The Canadian wireless providers face three issues and mounting public pressure to fix them.
1) Open networks – allow the customers the choice to use any device, phone, or software they wish with their connection.
2) Service plans/pricing – currently there is no reasonable data plans for mobile devices and most plans have minutes, bandwidth transfer, or content restrictions. Unlimited – if even available - plans are priced well out of the affordability of the average Canadian.
3) Competition – With only two major CDMA and one GSM carrier there is little to no choice for service. Increased competition is necessary.

As for the iPhone, the AT&T move will have no effect. Customers will still need to sign a two year contract to get their iPhone. That said, in two years I predict a surge of iPhone users fleeing AT&T for other carriers.

Recently a particular nasty feature of the new Facebook advertising model allowed certain advertising partners to post your purchases to your news feed showing everyone what you had recently bought. The nastiness of this feature – and it is a feature since it was deliberate by Facebook – was the automatic opt in of the sharing. When you made your purchase with particular advertising partners, you had a 10 second window in which to opt out of sharing your purchase. The potential privacy risk is apparent when you take into consideration a statement the NY Times made about regarding this problem. “What if you just purchased a book titled Coping with AIDS”. I highly doubt anyone is in a rush to share this information.

Since then a new security risk has been discovered that exposes all you photographs to potential viewer though simple website address manipulation. Thanks to the work of Computer Engineering Graduate student Dave Churchill this simple exploit can allow anyone to view the full album of someone who is not on his or her friends list.

The conditions for doing this are quite simple. First, you need the address of a photograph in an album that belongs to someone who is not in your friends list. The easiest way to obtain this address is by viewing a photograph that has been tagged by someone you know. Make sure that photograph belongs in an album of someone you do not know and in an album you cannot view through standard navigation. This is necessary as it provides all the information necessary to make the hack easy and demonstrates that it indeed works.

At this point, the simple removal of a parameter in the address bar will expose all the photographs in that album. In this case the “&subj=123456789” portion of the address. If you remove that piece of data and hit enter and you now can view all the photographs in that album.

If this was an album of someone you did not know and as such would not be able to view otherwise, you have just bypassed Facebook’s lacking security with the preverbal Mac truck. I have tested this and found I was easily able to view full albums I otherwise would not have access to view.

This simple oversight in the development of the Facebook code is alarming. If this very trivial hack can be applied to albums what other hacks can be applied to expose further data. Since Facebook relies on cookies to track if you are logged in or not, this URL and many others are essentially open to the pubic.

How much longer will Facebook’s lack of security and questionable content policy be accepted? From the blanket user agreement that anything users post on Facebook is free for Facebook to reuse and even sell to others, to their substandard security. Facebook is facing mounting pressure to answer questions to how they use users information and how they protect that.

It is starting to look increasingly like Facebook is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

See Dave’s original document here

“Special Edition” is what the label said on the cup of hot chocolate said and this got me thinking. Is anything really “special” anymore? I have just poured myself a cup of Carnation’s Dark Chocolate Hot Chocolate to enjoy while I catch up on some of the articles I have subscribed to through RSS. It is a tasty treat and if you are a fan of dark chocolate I suggest trying it. That said, it is not ”special”. It has no unique taste or blend. I am sure anyone could make it with a bit of coco and powered milk. In fact, that might even be tastier but it is still not special.

This got me thinking about do products of any kind really make special editions anymore? Did they ever really make a special edition before? Now if this Hot Chocolate was made from a rare kind of coco, only made once a year in a very limited quantity – say only one store chain carried it and only 5 can’s per store – and came in a specially designed, reusable canister. Then I would call it special. So beyond a marketing gimic is anything really special, rare, or unique?

The original iPod was unique! However, it was not rare nor was it limited. The production has only increased with every generation made. The U2 edition iPod was different. Came preloaded with some U2 content and had the signatures of the band on the back. The color was unique at the time – black with red – but it was still not “Special”. It was just your standard iPod with a different case and some music already on it.

So my next question is can software be special? Could “Special Edition” software really work? Since software can be copied and reproduced, it is hard to hold onto the idea of rare. If that is the case, it stands to reason that it could never be special since with the click of a few buttons any number of copies could be made.

So back to my original thought. What is the point of “Special Edition” anything if it is mass-produced and contains no unique or rare quality. It seems it is nothing more than marketing speak gone a little to far.

Well it appears that my iPod has finally bit the dust. Having commented previously about the iPod Death Watch site, which uses statistics from their iPod repair center to estimate the average life left on your iPod, I thought it proper to give an update as to the accuracy of the site. Well it was pretty accurate and only 15 days off the mark. Tonight my little 4th generation iPod died.

I had been having trouble with the device recently and had performed a disk repair on it twice. Tonight while playing a few tunes, I noticed that it was getting choppy as if the songs had random pauses in them. Much like the effect of a radio cutting in and out. Eventually I saw the icon indicating the iPod was in need of servicing. I was able to connect it to a computer and it recovered fine for a brief period. By the time I got home it had completely died. This was only after a few songs and a couple of hours later.

Finally, after many attempts to start the iPod I saw the infamous Sad iPod Face . I knew this was not a good sign. It was also starting to make an audible clicking noise as it started up. It was as if the iPod was starting only to encounter an error, stop the internal drive, and attempt to start again. No number of attempts to connect the device to the computer, restore it, or refresh it has delivered any success. The little guy is gone. The only way it will stay on is if I connect it to the computer and then it is unresponsive. It is like life support for electronics.

This is the downside of portable devices like the iPod. They work really well for a few years and then take a rapid decent into malfunctions and eventual electronic death. Combine that with the cost of a replacement and it is like a double slap in the face. Cell phones, iPods, and blackberries all come with hefty price points making them luxuries, not must haves (with the exception of a cell phone if it is your only phone). That said, I used my iPod on average of about 2 to 3 hours a day and would notice its absence during my commute and at work. So it will get replaced in time with a new iPod Touch or a regular iPod. Like I said, in time.

Now if Mr. Jobs reads this – and I doubt he does – feel free to send a replacement.

DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince got it wrong when they said “Parents just don’t understand”. I believe it is lawyers who just don’t understand… the internet.

There has been a fairly loud laugh and a collective head shaking as intelligent people attempt to understand how a U.S. firm feels that not only is the content of their site the property of the owner – and it is – but the HTML code that allows your browser to view it is also property of the owner. Not only is it their property but you are forbid from viewing it [the HTML]. In addition, this firm attempts to prevent you from linking to them, or referring to them, without permission. The firm Inventor-Link is represented by the law firm Dozier Internet Law - and I assume advised by them - who have recently attempted to prevent another site from posting one of their take down letters, citing it as intellectual property. A letter from a firm who think that is possible is likely neither intellectual nor property but most likely, a document filled with such verbose legalese that it only attempts to scare and confuse the target into submission.

All these two firms are demonstrating is a general misunderstanding of internet technology and I hate to point it out, the law.

To the first point I will simply state that in order view a web page a browser must make a temporary copy [cache] of the information in order to display it to the viewer (if you are uncomfortable with this do not post anything online as this is simply how it works). If viewing the HTML is violation then certainly copying is as well. To the second point I will remind everyone that it is a long standing legal precedent that you are free to link to, cite appropriately, and criticize properly, any site you wish. Such as I am now. How either firm figures this is helping them is beyond me.