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Tech at Night: TN’s Haslam wants CA’s job killer tax, Al Franken too extreme for MN, Astroturf hits the FCC, Google roundup

Tech at Night

Hello again to those I saw in Charleston over the weekend, and hope to see you next time to those who weren’t able to make it!

While I return to California and get settled in again, it seems that some are leaving the state for good, and the hostile business climate is why. This includes the punitive Amazon Tax which has made it impossible for Amazon and others to host affiliate programs in California, destroying small businesses, slashing profits, and killing jobs. And this is a story we’re seeing again and again, up and down the state. New and higher taxes, even of the unconstitutional variety, kills jobs.

So my message to Tennessee’s Governor Haslam is don’t do it. Don’t be like us. Create a job-friendly environment, or you will only compound whatever revenue problems you have.

Once again, San Francisco bay area proves itself out of step even with far-left Democrats. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system shut down some wireless phone transmitters to disrupt some protests, and even the Obama FCC has a problem with that.

Speaking of the President and his FCC, just where is Barack Obama on FCC matters? Does this President intend to lead, or follow?

File under “When you lose the unions….”: Minnesota’s AFL-CIO has called out Al Franken for being too big government on the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. Al Franken: too extreme, even for Minnesota unions.

Genuine Astroturf is being driven by the radical left, and Sprint, to the FCC comments process. What they accuse our side of doing is nothing they don’t actually do. Projection, projection, projection.

How do groups like Anonymous do so much, with so little sense? People are lazy and/or ignorant and deploy insecure systems. Even the government. Why, I deployed a network a couple of weeks ago, and if I’d used the hardware supplied by the ISP, I’d have been giving my client encryption that was broken completely, years ago, making the network insecure against any determined listener.

And no, you can’t legislate or regulate this stuff. Legislation and regulation are too slow; consider that the government-sponsored DES encryption algorithm had grown insecure by brute force years before it was actually replaced by the new AES standard.

The debate between LightSquared and GPS manufacturers rages on. Heightened competition in the high-end, national, 4G wireless Internet market hangs in the balance.

App developers: Don’t target children under 13 with your email gathering, or the government will come after you. COPPA, unlike some for the children bills like CDA, does not enforce censorship and I expect to withstand any court scrutiny.

I caught some flak when I pointed out that Google is hypocritical about patents. Google acquires them freely, but like the Peace Loving Soviet Union said about its imperialist expansionism, Google claims its actions are different and don’t count. So some may be surprised that as Google announces plans to buy Motorola’s mobile phone business, it turns out that the big story is that Google wants Motorola’s patents related to those phones. And that’s not me saying that: It’s Google co-founder Larry Page, who has now replaced Eric Schmidt as CEO.

Anyone care to bet me, and lay me odds, on the proposition that Google will announce Royalty Free licensing on all its patents, to the public at large, with no discrimination of any kind, forever? I’m skeptical, but maybe a Google true believer has some money to burn make by betting me on this. Keep in mind that Android is supposed to be an open source platform, but Google is complaining its source code is confidential.

So let us all pause to chuckle a moment at the sad, unfair, big government intrusion by the FTC into Google’s business as Search Neutrality marches on. This investigation by the Obama administration will also check to see if Android is as open as they say it is. So it’s Search Neutrality and Android Neutrality. And yes, fellow conservatives, we must oppose this power grab. It may be funny now when it’s directed at Google, but it won’t be funny when it targets someone else next.

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COMMENTS

  • fishbreath

    Full disclosure: I’m an engineer for a (non-Google-affiliated) company that ports Android to rugged mobile hardware*.

    Android’s an odd case as open-source projects go. There are two parts to it: Google’s internal code, which is presumably under some regular copyright license, and the Android Open Source Project, which consists of the stuff Google elects to re-license under the Apache license (a permissive open-source license without any of the baggage of the General Public License and ‘copyleft’).

    They’re under no contractual obligation to release anything to the Open Source Project, and there are indeed some things they haven’t– Android 3.0 (known as Honeycomb, the release that runs on most Android tablets) is one thing, but there are others too: for instance, the Gmail app, Maps app, and other Google apps (including the one behind-the-scenes that can determine your location based on the cell network and even some things as odd as the auto-completion dictionary for the on-screen keyboard).

    I would agree that this isn’t an ideal situation– for one, it means that Google can simply stop releasing Android source, and were they to do that we’d basically end up crowded out of business by rugged hardware companies big enough to attract Google’s eye. On the other hand, they’re doing nothing illegal, and they made it very clear that the project was not a traditional, completely-open open source project from the very beginning. It’s not entirely fair to bash them for that.

    Nor do I entirely trust their patent acquisitions, but given the frivolous attacks Android has taken from people like Oracle and Apple, I’m willing to believe that Google’s aim is mutually assured destruction with the other big players.

    * If you need rugged mobile Android hardware, visit us at www.sdgsystems.com.

  • utahtim

    Really? It’s like the bar scene at the end of “Unforgiven” when Clint Eastwood’s character Wm Muny shoots the bar owner, and the sheriff says “you just killed an unarmed man.” Muny replies “he should have armed himself.” Well, Google has been taking shots, and it just armed itself. How is that hypocritical? I reiterate that Google has never sued anyone in the first instance over patents. Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle have. But I guess they’re not hypocritical, just taking advantage of our broken patent system. It seems that when large software companies can no longer compete on innovation, they fight dirty with patents. I suspect at some point in the future when Google can no longer out innovate its competitors, it will do the same.

    Now as to the openness of the Android OS: it’s obviously a lot more open than any other mobile OS with any significant market share.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Nobody cares what you think. You proved your position to be intellectually bankrupt last time, falling back to ad hominem comments against my position.

    It’s like Maggie Thatcher’s old saying. You proved you have no arguments left.

    So I’m not even reading your comment.

  • utahtim

    Most of the time I agree with you. I just disagree with your position on Google’s patent acquisitions. But, your accusation of ad hominem attacks is fiction, and I can’t let that go unanswered.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    I don’t have to tolerate you.

    Consider this fair warning from a site moderator.

  • utahtim

    Please submit your case to the editors, and if they agree, get me banned. I can stand not being able to comment at RedState, but I don’t think RedState can survive as the great forum it is by not allowing disagreements of opinion.