Asterisk Discovers Again Why Open Source is a Star

Call me parochial, but until a few minutes ago, I'd never heard of MFC/R2, and certainly had no inkling it might be important. Apparently:

MFC/R2 is a telephony signaling protocol, which dates back over 50 years. Its full name is the Multifrequency Compelled R2 Signaling System. It was originally used to provide register to register (i.e. switch to switch) signaling over analogue copper pair wiring at a higher speed than had been possible with pulse dialing....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Enterprise Interview with Ryan Bagueros, North-by-South

On Open Enterprise blog.

Of "IP", "Piracy" and China

As readers of this blog will know, I don't use the terms "intellectual property" or "piracy", since both are profoundly misleading and hopelessly skew the discussion. Nonetheless I can recommend a paper entitled "Intellectual Property Piracy: Perception and Reality in China, the United States, and Elsewhere", since it presents a cool analysis of the reality behind the terms, as well as some surprises.

Here's a sample of the former:

Free-rider downloading also serves an advertising function that may actually benefit music-copyright owners: Some free-rider downloaders may like “Sci-Fi Wasabi” enough to go out and spend 99¢ per song for other Cibo Matto tunes from iTunes, or even $11 for the album Stereo Type A or $19 for Pom Pom: The Essential Cibo Matto. If the downloader (or another who hears the downloaded copy) becomes a fan, hundreds of dollars in sales may result; if no download takes place, all of these potential future sales would be lost. Even if the total number of such sales represents only a tiny portion of downloads, it still exceeds the number of sales in the absence of downloading, which would be zero.

And one of the surprises is as follows:

Of the supposed $6.1 billion in losses to U.S. studios, 2.3 billion, or 38%, were lost to Internet piracy, while 3.8 billion, or 62%, were lost to hard-goods piracy. The three countries in which the losses to U.S. studios were highest were not East Asian countries, and two of them were not developing countries: Mexico, the United Kingdom, and France accounted for over $1.2 billion in lost revenues, or 25% of the non-U.S. total – and slightly less than the U.S. total of $1.3 billion. The three countries have a combined population of about 225 million, somewhat less than the United States’ 293 million, giving them a slightly higher per capita piracy rate.

(Via Salon.)

Firewalls in Meatspace

Hmm, disturbing.

Not so Corny for the Mexicans

By embracing the NAFTA treaty, Mexico surrendered its corn output to the vagaries of the North American corn market. Now, all of a sudden, Americans want corn, lots of it. As part of a dubious strategy to make “cleaner” gasoline while rewarding Big Agriculture and farm states, the U.S. Government is shoveling huge subsidies to corn-based ethanol production. This new demand has bid up prices in the U.S. and caused acute corn shortages in Mexico, which in turn has tripled and quadrupled the price of tortillas.

Which just goes to show that "free" trade is neither free as in freedom nor free as in beer.

W(h)ither Sun?

McNealy leaving Sun is certainly the end of an era. But the big question is: what follows?

As far as Jonathan Schwartz is concerned, too much is being made (a) of his ponytail, and (b) of his blog. Perhaps the clearest indication of his thinking is this panegyric:

There is no single individual who has created more jobs around the world than you. And ... I'm not talking hundreds or thousands of jobs, I'm talking millions. They ended up in America and India, Indonesia and Antarctica, Madagascar, Mexico, Brazil and Finland. They ended up everywhere. Everywhere the network travels.

No single individual has spawned so many startups, fueled so much venture investment, or raised so much capital without actually trying - just with a vision of the future that gets more obvious by the day.

No single individual has so effectively created and promoted the technologies at the heart of a new world emerging around us. A world in which the demand for network computing technology will never decline - as we share more family photos, watch more digital movies, do more banking on-line, build more communities on line, run our supply chains, automate our governments or educate our kids.

Unfortunately, Schwartz is not talking about Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who did all these things, and did them entirely out of altruism, but supposedly about McNealy, who did nothing on the same scale, and did it for the dosh. If this is the quality of analysis we can expect from the new head of Sun, it's probably time to find some comfortable chairs, order a dry sherry, and to enjoy the imminent sunset.