Video: NYC Open Government Data Hearing Jun 21 2010 #nyc #opengov
YouTube Video is now posted of the NYC Council Committee on Technology Public Hearing on Open Government Data Bill Int. 029-2010 – June 21 2010
More info: nycctechcomm blog
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Curators Wanted: SpokenWord.org 2.0
SpokenWord.org, a non profit site that aggregates spoken word programs on the net, and also the creator of the excellent Levelator software which ISOC-NY uses to improve its webcasts, is appealing for curators to join its ranks.
Curators will cover specialty areas and be prominently featured on the site. If you’re interested either in becoming a curator or just participating in the discussion of how the curation system will function, please join the brand-new dedicated Google Group .
isoc-ny
Video: Clay Shirky TED Talk – Cognitive Surplus
Clay Shirky speaking at Cannes in Jun 2010 about Cognitive Surplus.
isoc-ny
The Next Hope Conference – NYC July 16-18
The 8th Hackers on Planet Earth Conference aka The Next HOPE Conference will take place at the Pennsylvania Hotel NYC on July 16-18 2010.
- Full schedule
- Cost: $85 advance, $100 door
- Facebook page
- Twitter @thenexthope
isoc-ny
Audio: ISOC-NY meeting with Hunter Newby of Allied Fiber
On Monday Jun 28 2010 a small group of ISOC-NY members met with Hunter Newby, founder of Allied Fiber, to discuss the company’s plans to encircle the entire USA with a dark fiber ring with carrier neutral access at any point . It was a very stimulating talk lasting over 2 hours.
Audio is available: mp3 | (ogg coming tomorrow) Audio currently under review, will return a.s.a.p.
joly
Further information is contained in a recent interview with Hunter Newby, and the subsequent comments.
joly
It has now been decided to, rather than edit this meeting’s audio , to hold a follow-up meeting that will be videotaped and subsequently webcast. This meeting will take place on Weds 14 July 2010 at NYU – if interested in attending please RSVP to president@isoc-ny.org
isoc-ny
In Code We Trust: crowd sourced democracy in the 21st century – NYC Event Thurs 1 July #nyc #opengov
Noel Hidalgo will be presenting a public discussion “In Code We Trust” at Eyebeam NYC this Thursday July 1 2010. A live video stream is promised.
“In Code We Trust” is the new motto for Government in the 21st century. Across the country, geeks inside and outside of government are developing a new participatory and transparent Federal, State and Municipal governments. Built upon open-source tools, open standards, and best practices, this panel will highlight authorized actors as they practical examples of initiatives from private, public and government sectors.
Date: Thursday, 1 July 2010 from 6:30 – 9:30
Location: Eyebeam, 540 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10011 (map)
Format:
6.30 – 7:30 – Happy Hour / Socializing / Viewing of exhibits & installations
7:30 – 7:45 – Introduction to the RE:Group show
7:45 – 8:30 – 6 Lightning presentations (20 slides at 6 mins 40 sec) –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecha_Kucha
8:30 – 9:30 – Question and Answers
Hosts:
Noel Hidalgo, New York State Senate
Beka Economopoulos, Not An Alternative
Presenters:
Sarah Kaufman – Projects Coordinator, Emerging and Intelligent Transportation Systems, MTA New York City Transit
Laurel Ruma – Gov 2.0 Evangelist, O’Reilly Books
Daniel Latorre – VP, Digital Placemaking, Project for Public Spaces
Phillip Ashlock – Open Government Project Manager, OpenPlans
Ben Berkowitz – Founder, SeeClickFix
- Hashtag & Twitter references: #InCodeWeTrust and @Eyebeam_Org
* Facebook Event
isoc-ny
People’s Production House Broadband Stories #1
The People’s Production House has embarked on producing a series of video narratives from New York City’s most active community organizing groups about why the Internet is important to their communities. The first is now online:
isoc-ny
ACTA 9th Round in Luzern this week
The 9th round of negotiations of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) are taking place this week in Luzern, Switzerland.
The participants in those negotiations are: Australia, Canada, the European Union and its 27 member states, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States of America.
- ISOC ACTA info
- Twitter #ACTA
- Michael Geist ACTA: The State of Play
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Supreme Court on Bilski – no but whatever..
The Supreme Court opinion in re:Bilski is in. With typical ambivalence it upheld the federal court’s decision while rejecting it’s reasoning, replacing the machine-or-transformation test with essentially no test at all. The Court rejected the patent just because it was an “abstract idea”. From the syllabus:
The machine-or-transformation test is not the sole test for patent eligibility under §101. Although that test may be a useful and important clue or investigative tool, it is not the sole test for deciding whether an invention is a patent-eligible “process” under §101. In holding to the contrary, the Federal Circuit violated two principles of statutory interpretation: Courts “‘should not read into the patent laws limitations and conditions which the legislature has not expressed,’” Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U. S. 175, 182, and, “[u]nless otherwise defined, ‘words will be interpreted as taking their ordinary, contemporary, common meaning,’” ibid. The Court is unaware of any ordinary, contemporary, common meaning of “process” that would require it to be tied to a machine or the transformation of an article.. . .Because petitioners’ patent application can be rejected under the Court’s precedents on the unpatentability of abstract ideas, the Court need not define further what constitutes a patentable “process,” beyond pointing to the definition of that term provided in §100(b) and looking to the guideposts in Benson, Flook, and Diehr. Nothing in today’s opinion should be read as endorsing the Federal Circuit’s past interpretations of §101.
So this would seem to leave the whole question of software patents as wide open as ever.
Opinion is at http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf
Seth Johnson is discussing. -
Seth Johnson
The machine-or-transformation test is a hack that diverts attention from the right understanding of software and patentability. I actually see this ruling as helpful in its not relying on that. It essentially pushes us to make the argument against software patents based on their being abstract ideas. By finding the machine-or-transformation principle not sufficient and by not finding an exclusion on business method patents, the court actually pushes us to making the right point.
Below are comments I posted on the following article. I posted a couple of followup responses there:
http://technologizer.com/2010/06/29/supreme-court-leaves-software-patent-issues-unanswered/#commentsSoftware patents are patents not just on abstract ideas, but on *pure* abstract ideas. By pure I don’t mean “extremely” — I mean “independent of empirical facts or particulars,” like math.
The general purpose logic processor does *pure* logical operations; it follows that the instructions provided to that processor are likewise *pure* logic. However, what translates a pure logical algorithm or process to something of specific use is the devices you attach to the logic processor. It is in principle perfectly conceivable that the *exact same* set of logic instructions could control *entirely different* processes, depending on what devices you attach.
And while higher-level, human-readable code uses language that humans can relate to specific things or uses in the empirical world (variable names like “PartNo” or “EmployeeID” or “Chemical1Proportion,” or function names like “InitiateStirring” or “TurnOnBlender”), at bottom the compiled code provided to the processor is pure logical abstraction.
The point is, the software is in principle not patentable, though it may be true that a particular empirical process that that code is being used to control, is patentable. But what decides that is the empirical process as such, not the pure algorithm expressed by the code.
So I see this ruling as simply excluding the easier resolution to the software patent issue (an approach not really on point and not really addressing the nature of the issue of software patents) that sees software patents becoming untenable along with the invalidation of business method patents, as well as the notion that what makes something patentable is that it is a machine or a transformation.
What makes software unpatentable is not really directly related to either of those points, but rather to the fact that it is *pure* abstraction. You don’t have to say patents only cover machines and transformations to eliminate software patents. Instead, all you have to do is show that software is always abstract because the nature of the logic processor is inherently pure — it deals only in bits/numbers and logical and mathematical operations and algorithms — and when one says those numbers and algorithms are intended to refer to or apply to something more, what you’re really saying is that there’s also an empirical process, alongside the pure code, which is the actual process which may be patentable or not.
The distinction that counts isn’t between machines or transformations and software; it’s between pure abstraction, such as logic and math (which is definitively abstract because it is pure), and plain vanilla abstraction in the form of general principles about empirical reality, such as physical laws (which is a kind of abstraction regarding which the lines between patentability and non-patentability are harder to draw — the machine-or-transformation test is an example that gets kind of close, but doesn’t really make the right point).
-
Seth Johnson
Now see what’s happened?
USPTO, post-Bilski: A strong presumption against abstract ideas:
http://diffbot.com/read/451169/1977394454
isoc-ny
NY Times: Broadband Availability to Expand
NY Times Story Broadband Availability to Expand
Selected quotes:
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is seeking to nearly double the wireless communications spectrum available for commercial use over the next 10 years, an effort that could greatly enhance the ability of consumers to send and receive video and data with smartphones and other hand-held devices.
President Obama will sign a presidential memorandum on Monday that aims to make available for auction some 500 megahertz of spectrum that is now controlled by the federal government and private companies, administration officials said Sunday.
Specifically, the presidential memorandum will direct the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to identify federally controlled communications bands that can be made available within five years for exclusive or shared use by commercial companies.
Roughly 45 percent of the spectrum to be auctioned would come from federal government agencies that will be asked to give up allocations that they are not using or could share, according to administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to upstage the announcement.
The remainder would come from unused spectrum already scheduled for auction or from broadcasters and other spectrum licensees who would be offered incentives to give up or share parts of their communications airwaves. Currently, the spectrum for wireless communications is about 547 megahertz.
Lawrence H. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council and assistant to the president for economic policy, is expected to detail the broadband effort in a lunchtime speech in Washington to the New America Foundation, a public policy institute
Some spectrum also would be made available for free, unlicensed use by start-up companies and others, administration officials said. Such unlicensed spectrum has previously helped in the development of cordless phones, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth applications.
Harold Feld, legal director of Public Knowledge, a consumer-oriented policy group, said the interest of consumers will be most helped by auctions that help to promote competition between wireless companies rather than entrenching the dominant providers in the market.
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