Another Start-up Idea! (or An Idea Whose Time Has Come! . . . . and Gone?)

I originally wrote this entry on September 23, 2004, and published it on blogs.sun.com.

I guess since there have been many start-ups in the Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) brought to the rank of credible companies by ex-Sun employees, I need to provide my own creative contribution to this frenzy in some small way. Otherwise, I may not be worth even half a true-blooded Sun guy.

I'd given away one start-up idea earlier on this weblog, and here's another, and there may be more in the future.

Over the last four years, I have been lucky enough to see, first hand and behind the scenes, a great trend in the telecommunications market to move applications of all sorts to the J2EE platform. In fact, I have been involved in a couple of R&D projects with a focus on evolving some of our partners' service platforms to the J2EE environment. This has all been very, very exciting work and some of it has been published in JavaOne presentations. (So, I'm not giving away any trade secrets.) In fact, some of this work fed requirements that led to the advent of the J2EE Connector Architecture 1.5. (Ram Jeyaraman, the lead for that JSR is a superb engineer. We've worked together for some time, beginning with our implementation of GIOP 1.2 in RMI-IIOP, also involving Mr. Anderson.) Now, the concept of [ connectors | telecom protocol stacks ] is congruent (remember your Abstract Algebra and Category Theory?) to [ JDBC drivers | Databases ]. The point I'm trying to make is that just like some corporations started out of Sun as database connectivity companies and then realized they needed to grow in adjacent areas in order to become significant weights in the software world, other start-ups can grow as telecom protocol connectivity companies and grow into significant weights in the telecom services software world. This is particularly important because high-value services involving the web, enterprise, mobility, multi-media, identity and telecommunications are on the roll. I've been so gungho about this idea that I've even suggested (in a moment of madness, I wonder?!) to some people here that if Sun incubated a startup to do this for a live-or-die period of two years, I'll be willing to risk joining it ! ! ! However, this was several months ago . . . time is running out . . . but I don't think the idea is quite yet passe.

It'll also be cool to have some JSRs to standardize the connector APIs above the protocol adapters. (In fact, there is an engineer in Sun/IEC who may help me do this sometime soon.) Having a standardized API will create a true market in these connectors. Yes, I'm not a big risk-taker right now, and it's fun working with the people at Sun, but if you're one, you don't have to let people know where you heard the idea first. Just go ahead and do it! It'll be good for everyone else in the market. Finally, I think it'll be great to stage an open source project that actually accomplishes what I'm saying here. However, in that case, given the telecom market's penchant for standardized components, the JSR route becomes even more necessary for commercial success.

Another Start-up Idea! (or An Idea Whose Time Has Come! . . . . and Gone?)

I originally wrote this entry on September 23, 2004, and published it on blogs.sun.com.

I guess since there have been many start-ups in the Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) brought to the rank of credible companies by ex-Sun employees, I need to provide my own creative contribution to this frenzy in some small way. Otherwise, I may not be worth even half a true-blooded Sun guy.

I'd given away one start-up idea earlier on this weblog, and here's another, and there may be more in the future.

Over the last four years, I have been lucky enough to see, first hand and behind the scenes, a great trend in the telecommunications market to move applications of all sorts to the J2EE platform. In fact, I have been involved in a couple of R&D projects with a focus on evolving some of our partners' service platforms to the J2EE environment. This has all been very, very exciting work and some of it has been published in JavaOne presentations. (So, I'm not giving away any trade secrets.) In fact, some of this work fed requirements that led to the advent of the J2EE Connector Architecture 1.5. (Ram Jeyaraman, the lead for that JSR is a superb engineer. We've worked together for some time, beginning with our implementation of GIOP 1.2 in RMI-IIOP, also involving Mr. Anderson.) Now, the concept of [ connectors | telecom protocol stacks ] is congruent (remember your Abstract Algebra and Category Theory?) to [ JDBC drivers | Databases ]. The point I'm trying to make is that just like some corporations started out of Sun as database connectivity companies and then realized they needed to grow in adjacent areas in order to become significant weights in the software world, other start-ups can grow as telecom protocol connectivity companies and grow into significant weights in the telecom services software world. This is particularly important because high-value services involving the web, enterprise, mobility, multi-media, identity and telecommunications are on the roll. I've been so gungho about this idea that I've even suggested (in a moment of madness, I wonder?!) to some people here that if Sun incubated a startup to do this for a live-or-die period of two years, I'll be willing to risk joining it ! ! ! However, this was several months ago . . . time is running out . . . but I don't think the idea is quite yet passe.

It'll also be cool to have some JSRs to standardize the connector APIs above the protocol adapters. (In fact, there is an engineer in Sun/IEC who may help me do this sometime soon.) Having a standardized API will create a true market in these connectors. Yes, I'm not a big risk-taker right now, and it's fun working with the people at Sun, but if you're one, you don't have to let people know where you heard the idea first. Just go ahead and do it! It'll be good for everyone else in the market. Finally, I think it'll be great to stage an open source project that actually accomplishes what I'm saying here. However, in that case, given the telecom market's penchant for standardized components, the JSR route becomes even more necessary for commercial success.

Global System for Mobile Communications

I originally wrote this entry on September 22, 2004, and published it on blogs.sun.com.

Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is the grandfather of most 3G mobile network environments.

GSM's success was not so much dependent on the architectural definnitions that it put together for public land mobile networks (PLMNs). The main reason for its success has been the standard interfaces it defined which made roaming across operators easy. For a description of the interfaces, architecture and system design, I highly recommend Gunnar Heine's excellent book GSM Networks: Protocols, Terminology, and Implementation. This highly readable book (how often can you say that about a telecommunications protocols book?) was originally written in German: GSM--Signalisierung verstehen und praktisch anwenden.

Not only easier roaming was achieved by GSM . . . It also made mergers (such as the recent one between AT&T Wireless and Cingular) easier.

This morning, it looks like Cingular has finally integrated the AT&T Wireless home registries. My carrier was AT&T Wireless. I had spotty reception in certain locations which apparently were owned by Cingular but were not being shared generously before the merger. After the merger, I first noticed an improvement in signals on my phone due to better cell coverage, but a number of new problems with direct dialing of my own landline number when mobile in my own area code. When in the newly available Cingular cells, I had to dial full long-distance number of my home. This had something to do with the slow integration of home and visitor registries. Now, that the integration seems complete, this new problem has also disappread.

More cells, better reception . . . make me a happier user.

My Favorite TV Programming

I originally wrote this entry on September 19, 2004 and published it on blogs.sun.com.

My favorite English-language TV programming comes to me via Reuters.com.

It brings me large quantities of "raw" video clips, which often include the original language.

The "raw" video clips give a much better sense of the context of the news.

The Reuters TV channels can be followed through their RSS feed.

Balkanization or a Welcome Diversity

I originally wrote this entry on August 17, 2004 and published it on blogs.sun.com.

When Tim Wu writes about the Balkanization of the Internet on Lessig Blog, he is really trying to get to the effects of diversity of cultures and languages on the production and consumption of Internet content. While he only scratches the surface of this phenomenon, he does bring something important to his readers' attention. However, characterization the phenomena as Balkanization produces a rather unfair assessment. The volume of comments on his post demonstrate that many others have thought (or have thoughts) about the problem. A dialog still needs to occur regarding the issue. In my view, this is not a case of Balkanization. Instead, it is a case of diversity mixed with new global opportunities for exchange and dialog among civilizations.

Tim does mention a few cases where governments, regulations or technology work together or separately to break the available online content into islands of discourse. This is a natural evolution, and the only way these islands can be connected is by multi-lingual people. Multi-lingualists will be the people who will distill and make available across linguistic islands material from one culture to the next. Hence, the expected rise in the social value of multi-lingualism. There's a caveat here, aptly revealed by the late British philosopher, Barnard Williams, in his Moral Luck: Only those who can truly see another culture as a genuine alternative have the best capacity to provide a valid critique of the other. (For more on the philosophical concept of moral luck, see here.)

In general, we're living in a world where diversity is on the rise.

Speaking for myself, for example, I was very suprised about the extent to which Persian Weblogs have taken off. Here, i.e. with Weblogs, the expressive power of a culture comes to its assistance. The electronic realization of some cultures, in which masses are consumer rather than participant producers of cultural expression and content, will be at a disadvantage.

On the positive side, all cultures are expressive and all languages have high human value. Cultural and linguistic diversity is to be cherished and nurtured, as one nurtures a garden full of beautiful flowers.

What Internet offers to the smaller, more endangered cultures and linguistic communities is a means for them to preserve and propagate themselves. It also gives other rising cultures an ability to find new ways of connecting.

Then, there are cultures that go well beyond linguistic and national borders. For them, the Internet provides a bonanza of expressive power. For example, a Shiite Islam website, Ahlulbayt Global Information Center, carries the writings of its scholars, including Ayatullah Sistani. It carries independent versions (at various levels of completion) in several languages including Arabic, Kurdish (arabic lettering), Kurdish (turkish/latin lettering), French, Urdu, English, Persian, Bulgarian, German, Azeri Turkish (in Cyrillic lettering), Chinese, Bosnian, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Hausa (I'd never heard of this language before), Indonisian, Fulani, Burmese, Swahili, Bangali, Hindi and Thai (I might have got this last one wrong). The same website, provides translations of Al-Quran in these same languages.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998

I originally wrote this entry on August 10, 2004 and published it on blogs.sun.com.

There's a nice, compact 18-page document published by the U.S. Copyright Office that summarizes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998.

On Lessig Blog, guest writer Congressman Rick Boucher writes how DMCA went too far in restricting fair use in the digital era. He summarizes consumer-rights and scientific research exemptions to DMCA he and Congressman John Doolittle of California have introduced.