What is LiveCycle ES and how can it save you money?

We get asked all the time – “What is LiveCycle ES”? This is a question we had to answer while at Adobe but somehow the way this question is answered now has changed from an Uberity perspective. We find ourselves describing it in terms of business capabilities and value rather than the technology itself. Nevertheless, if you want to know what LiveCycle is, this blog post should provide a solid background.

LiveCycle is an enterprise software system that solves problems pertaining to mass scale processing of Portable Document Format (PDF) documents. While individual users of PDF’s tend to use Adobe Acrobat or Reader for working with PDF, LiveCycle is meant to aid the processing of tens of thousands of LiveCycle PDF documents. Hence, it is an enterprise solution that anyone who currently uses paper forms should look at if they are wanting to streamline the ingestion of data from forms. Likewise, it had many modules that can mitigate problems around PDF such as document security (think of Wiki-leaks).

LiveCycle itself is comprised of several components. We’ll walk through each of these components one at a time. the main component is akin to what many call an Enterprise Service Bus or ESB for short. This includes a set of common services, a common environment of service execution, a registry-repository system, workflow and storage components to name a few components. LiveCycle ES installs as a server and the server can bind to many different types of common enterprise infrastructure components including directories (LDAP for example). Below is a depiction of the server side component of LiveCycle ES.

What is LiveCycle ES Server

The server’s core services are all registered in a registry.  There can be orchestrated and used to perform different types of operations on PDF documents and now with Uberity’s extensions, to also talk to mobile (wireless) devices.  At the bottom of the Service tier is a Service Provider Interface (SPI) which is where back end systems often integrate.  Systems such as SAP that might consume and produce massive amounts of data for government or finance could link in to this layer to offer PDF forms as a point of interaction with humans, then automatically accept, validate and consume the form data provided by the user.  The users themselves can access data (by requesting a PDF form or perhaps by being pushed notifications of events) via the Service Invocation Layer at the top.  This is a J2EE server and can be set up in many different ways.  One option is often to install it on site however for evaluation, we have found that using the Amazon cloud is one of the best ways for evaluation.  Uberity has experience with this and we have found that while it takes an average first time installation of LiveCycle’s server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux with full SSL/TLS configuration and testing afterwards to take many over 2.5 days.  We highly recommend the turnkey Windows server installation however we do offer a flat fee to install this on the cloud for evaluation.

So what are the core component and services LiveCycle offers?   Here is a brief rundown.  The following is not an exhaustive list, rather an example to help explain what LiveCycle is.

Forms ES – this module can be licensed to automate just about every aspect of forms processing.  The ability to save money over paper forms is astounding.

Barcoded Forms ES – the barcoded forms module allows forms to be printed with a corresponding 2D bar code that can later be electronically scanned to recapture the form data electronically.  This is useful if you wanted to create something like an electronic voting system that had a fully audit able paper trail or if you needed someone to electronically fill out a form and sign it then mail it in to you for ingestion into your systems.

Digital Signatures ES – since many companies use digital signatures now, often deemed more reliable and audit able than wet ink signatures, PDF documents support this feature.  The LiveCycle Server can perform massive scale operations using the Digital Signatures module like validating 100,000 signatures to ensure certificates have not been revoked.

Output ES – Our put is used often for production print.

PDF Generator ES – this module provides almost every possible method for generating PDF, PostScript, FXA, XDP or other related files.

Process Management ES – LiveCycle ES contains a full blown business process management capability.

Reader Extensions ES – this module of LiveCycle unlocks features in Adobe Reader that enable it to perform more like Acrobat.  These extensions are often cheaper as a solution than forcing all users to buy copies of Adobe Acrobat.

Rights Management ES – Rights Management is one of our favorite modules.  You can use this to protect documents from beign distributed beyond what you want and even expire a document. The perfect solution to Wikileaks!

There are many other modules and this is only designed to show you a small cross section of LiveCycle.

So what does LiveCycle look like when you use it?  This is actually very dependent upon your role.  There are Adminstrators and other various types of power users.  This group use the administrative console which is web based.

LiveCycle ES Administrative login view

Most people who work with received forms or kick off business processes will use the Workspace interface.  This is where privileged users can also receive work that has been queued up for them to work with.

The Adobe LiveCycle Workspace view

For users who design actual PDF forms, this class will spend a lot of time in the Adobe LiveCycle Designer view. If you have ever wonder “what is LiveCycle Designer”, this is what you will see.

Adobe LiveCycle Designer

Another class of developer users for LiveCycle will bind these PDF forms into Business Processes.  These users will spend a lot of time in LiveCycle WorkBench.  This is an eclipse based environment where business processes can be designed by using assets (such as the form above) in combination with business logic and LiveCycle Services.  This view looks similar to the graphic below.

LiveCycle Business Process view

Finally, the Business process users will also rely on a set of services.  The view to these services are provided via the service registry.  The service registry interface is easy to use and will be the subject of future Uberity Educational Series videos that show LiveCycle Help.

LiveCycle Services View

This blog post only covers the basic elements of LiveCycle ES.  To put all the pieces together, this is what a fully implemented architecture could look like.

LiveCycle ES Architecture with Uberity Mobile Deployment

As you can see, the development tools also include Java IDE’s such as Intellij and Eclipse.  We have produced a few LiveCycle tutorials on how to invoke LiveCycle from a Java environment using Eclipse and the LiveCycle SDK.  These are available at:

The setup video is here:

http://blog.uberity.com/2012/03/uberity-video-education-series-livecycle-es/

and a video of how to migrate from EJB invocation to SOAP is here:

http://blog.uberity.com/2012/04/tutorial-invoke-livecycle-es3-using-soap/

Also shown above is the fact that third parties can develop their own functionality around LiveCycle ES.  Uberity specializes in building mobile interactions that integrate with the Adobe LiveCycle ES3 platform.  The next time you hear someone ask “What is LiveCycle”, this is a blog post we hope will help others answer that question.

As with all our posts, if you do not feel your questions are answered here or want to follow up, please contact us at info@uberity.com for more information.  Our experience can save your company money.  We can show you how a forms initiative will be more successful on LiveCycle ES than any other platform.  Whether it be a PDF form, HTML5 or custom native iOS application, we are here to help.

Vancouver to Bring Steam Back as Part of Greenest City Initiative

Mayor Gregor Robertson's long term vision to make Vancouver BC the greenest city in the world by 2020 has already started taking shape in so many ways.  Some of the top issues to be addressed are well under way such as urban gardening and the right to own up to 4 chickens per household.  Other components of the plan include more bike lanes and better rapid transit.  On the latter note, a brilliant scheme is now before tomorrow nights' city council meeting and expected to pass with flying colors.

The idea is to increase the current Vancouver demonstration trolley system from Granville Island to Science world to new locations as shown on the map below.

The new exciting twist has been a plan developed behind closed doors for months but has now been made public.  The transit cars themselves will be none other than Steam engines from the days when steam power ruled.  The reason behind this scheme is that renewable energy is one of the top priorities for the Green Plan and Wood powered Steam trains for passenger trolleys meet that criteria.  The engines, two initially from the old baldwin factory (including the 2-6-2 show below), will be retrofitted to scrub any pollutant by products from the smokestacks as well as being equipped with modern spark arrestors and quieter running gear.   Here is a photo from a recent test track section of one of the first routes to be run along Pacific Boulevard.  This rute will be coupled with Science world.

While electric trolleys were considered, city council feels that the steam approach, cupled with 1940's style coach cars, will enhance Vancouver's  tourism capacity.  According to Tourism BC, the immediate affect wil be to bring in over 250,000 new visitors each year who flock annually to various steam engine events.  The offset of carbon but using green energy coupled with a unique look and feel for the city of Vancouver are a clear winner.  Andrea Reimer had argued that the city should opt for a narrow guage railway (36") vs the standard 48" which the latter would allow interoperability with existing trains.  No clear motivation was given for her reasoning.

it is estimated that the steam train powered street car system, if eventually expanded to Marpole via the Arbutus corridor, could save over 2,6 metric tonnes of CO2 annually while adding over 300 new jobs and making Vancouver a unique city attracting an estimated $33,000,000 in new tourism revenue each year.

How to get involved:

Contact City hall at http://talkvancouver.com/transportation-forum and express your support for this plan.  Let's work together to make our city the best city in the world!  Make sure you let them know you found out about this on Technoracle, the leading source of open data.

Adobe MAX 2012 - a Dilemna

I was scouring my inbox and came across an old email I had sent myself while still at Adobe.  It turns out that mere days before I got laid off on Nov 8, I made the Adobe MAX 2012 Masters list.  The email lists all of the MAX masters.  Written in the chain of that email was also a note from a former colleague saying that the high mark at MAX (4.96/5 with over 70 responses not once but twice!) was the highest ever for a hands on lab session.  This was further complicated by the fact that it was a Bring your own Laptop lab, meaning the attendees take the session on their own laptops and mobile devices. Needless to say, the probability of something going wrong is exponentially complicated.

The Adobe MAX 2011 Masters list is posted here http://max.adobe.com/blog/2011/max-masters-announced.html

• Adam Lehman, Adobe Systems
• Bryan O’Neil Hughes, Adobe Systems
• Chris Converse, Codify Design
• Chris Kitchener, Adobe Systems
• Colin Smith, Adobe Systems
• Dani Beaumont, Adobe Systems
• Dave Helmly, Adobe Systems
• David Nuescheler, Adobe Systems
• Duane Nickull, Adobe Systems (Correction: Uberity)
• Greg Rewis, Adobe Systems
• Jack Davis, Wow, Inc.
• James Williamson, Lynda.com
• Jason Levine, Adobe Systems
• Jim Babbage, Adobe Systems
• Joe Rinehart, Booz Allen Hamilton
• Marc Esher, Booz Allen Hamilton
• Michael Chaize, Adobe Systems
• Michael Labriola, Digital Primates
• Michael Ninness, Lynda.com
• Mordy Golding, Design Responsibly
• Nicholas Zakas, NCZ Consulting
• Patti Sokol, Adobe Systems
• Paul Trani, Adobe Systems
• Russell Brown, Adobe Systems

Of course now that I am with Uberity Technology Corporation, I have to decide if I would even go.  My inclination is probably not unless I get invited.  There are tons of other skilled speakers and I have had my turns at Adobe MAX.  Adobe MAX 2012 would be fun however so I have to keep my mind open.  Let's see what happens.

Uberity - Five important lessons for startups

I am in Vienna, about to give a keynote talk tomorrow to share the millions of blunders and mistakes I have personally made over the last fifteen years of high tech startups.  One of our last companies was even acquired by Adobe Systems for a component that made is used today for Consulting Services LiveCycle ES.  The reason I do this is in hopes to share some of the errors I wish I had someone warn me about.  While I won't tell you all of them in advance, here is a list of things that Uberity will do or not do during it's startup phase.

1. We will keep a clean IP trail.  Uberity is developing some very interesting intellectual property we feel will be required by most small to medium sized enterprises as they move to mobile in the next 5 years.  Without divulging the details of what we are building, one thing I can promise is that the entire IP development process will be documented from start to finish.  Every single person who comes into contact with our technology will sign an NDA and/or IP invention agreement (and he fairly compensated for anything they contribute).  This is important if your overall exist strategy is to be bought out by a larger company.  Startups need to realize that larger companies often have very skilled legal business units who know what is required to ensure the company acquiring the startup does not expose themselves to undue risk.  Startups need to document and record every step of IP development and ensure they are thorough.

2. Ensure you understand your fellow startup team's personal desires and goals.  Understanding what motivates them and what they seek out of life is very important to understand how they imagine themselves working for the startup over the next decade.  The people at Uberity are like my brothers and sisters from a different mother. I know them, I know what they like and don't like.  I trust them and would follow them into battle.  They are your company, not the IP.  Treat them with immense respect and it shall be returned.  Set examples and constantly check in with them to see if the startup is matching their expectations.

3. Be ethical.  Just today, I worked with a client and solved a very technical issue in about three hours.  There is a huge implied trust in the professional services relationship that I see violated time after time by unscrupulous companies figuring they can invoice people for extra hours and they will never find out.  I have news for you.  Even if they do not find out, you are really ruining your own reputation.  Uberity under-promises and over-delivers on every contract.  By doing this, we get repeat customers.  If a company is unethical, it will come out in the long term.  We are committed to being ethical in our entire customer relationships.  We have even done some smaller jobs where we did not bill as the time it took us to solve the problem was too minimal to even consider billing.  This does not imply weakness however.  We are ethical, we plan to be in business a long time.  We will not compromise this, no matter how tempting.  We also pay for software that we use to make money with.  We believe that a little honesty goes a long way in business and plan to make it a core part of our existence.

4. Don't be afraid to walk away.  We had an original plan to pursue a business model whereby people could post tasks and others could respond to them, perform them and get paid.  After performing weeks of due diligence, we discovered that these companies are likely not even earning revenue that would cover the interest for the funds VC's invested into them for a year.  After validating, re-validating, we decided to walk away and were prepared to re-assess our core beliefs and mission.  These other companies will probably succeed in the long term, we just feel we can make more revenue for less effort doing other things.  It takes a mature person to admit they had wrong perceptions and be willing to walk away as opposed to being pressured into sticking with a bad idea until it goes into a death spiral.  I am grateful to have partners in Uberity that are wise enough to understand this, powerful enough to embrace this and courageous enough to make changes when others might not have.

5. Build a business plan and answer the tough questions.  A business plan is not just to show investors, it helps put everyone in the company on the same page.  We got together and worked out what was required and what needs to be documented.  We are working on our business plan and it is hard.  It is very tempting to come across a tough question and think "I can just not address this now" however the reality is that the tough questions have to be answered.

Maybe none of this is new to you.  My hope is that someone writing a startup will see this and it will save you time and effort.  Uberity is not just about making money.  We are part of the technology community.  Our contributions are given freely with no warranty or accuracy or value.  Feel free to use or disregard this data however you wish.

New Mobile Application to get you out of Trouble!

My friend David Wolpe recently launched a cool little mobile application that can definitely save you more grief than the $0.99 it costs.  ApologyWiz (Android:  http://bit.ly/y8ISQi and iOS http://bit.ly/zWuSNY) has already helped me when I was helping a clerk who was hopeless at copying down the data I gave her for each question she asked me.  The response "I'm terribly sorry I am always right".  She laughed.

The apologies are chosen based on either a manually sift through the massive array of apologies (many of them funny enough to keep you rolling in laughter) or use the built in device accelerometer to allow it to find one for you.  This is version one and it works.  For the future versions it would be cool to have categories and maybe a way for crowd-sourcing apologies and also excuses.  I have a few of the latter to contribute but my all time favorite is "it was like that when I got here" which covers just about everything.

Great job David - I cannot wait to see more from you!

Uberity releases Free/Open Source LiveCycle ES SMS Module

On Friday Uberity Technology Corporation launched a free and open source code Adobe LiveCycle ES SMS module that allows LiveCycle Services and Processes to integrate SMS messaging into the process flow.  The SMS module was written by Matt MacKenzie using the Twilio SMS service.  To make it work, you can download the source from Uberity, read the instructions, get an account from Twilio and you're good to go.

GitHub Project - https://github.com/uberity/uberity-lc-twilio
Twilio Account Setup - http://www.twilio.com/
Uberity LiveCycle ES Blog - http://blog.uberity.com/2012/02/extending-adobe-livecycle-es-to-use-sms-in-business-processes/

Apache Launches the new official Flex Logo

The new Apache Flex logo rocks.  In case you haven't seen it, check out the video below:

Apache-Flex-Logo

There has been a lot of discusion lately on the future of Flex. Adobe has published some white papers to clarify their position. The future of Flex seemed a bit murky but the latest paper appears to be more promising, other than the fact about 65% of the words are marketing ramble that talks about what Flash did in the past. If you are interest in this topic, read the document entitled Adobe's view of Flex and its commitments to Flex in the future.


then scan forward to the Flash Runtimes Roadmap at
http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/flash-runtimes-roadmap.pdf (skip forward to the top of page 3.  That is where the content actually starts talking about the runtimes roadmap).

Understanding MEAP - Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms

MEAP's are going to be the new *aaS.  If you don't understand that statement, consider yourself blessed. You may feel like you need a computer forensics degree to understand it all.  Understanding technology industry analysts and acronyms is a difficult task. A relatively new category of Gartner Magic Quadrants have emerged one one in particular is a category that we think deserves a lot of attention.  Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms are not typical software like your daddy used to buy.  MEAP's are collections of services and components (including frameworks, profiles, libraries and more) that facilitate the types of functionality required to develop and maintain applications running on wireless devices (aka mobile devices).

Now I don't subscribe to hype and BS and neither should you.  As the former chair of the OASIS Service Oriented Architecture Technical Committee, the group that produced the standard reference model for SOA, I never anticipated that people would run with this and start all these (INSERT ANY CAPITAL LETTER FROM THE ALPHABET HERE)aaS.  Software as a Service (SaaS) is not really that different from hosted solutions is it?  If you disagree, you'd better hurry and claim one while there are still letters left for acronyms.  I think XaaS is not used yet.

When I see value though, I want to point it out.  MEAP is one of those rare acronyms that seems to be vastly underestimated by the majority of the industry.  The term itself seems to have come from Analyst firm Gartner in a paper published in April 2011 (Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms, Michael J. King, William Clark). I believe I read somewhere that Gartner believes over 95% of the technology industry will use some form of MEAP by 2012.  When I try to research this topic on Google, very little information comes up.  Regardless of the title, let's explore what a MEAP is and what it does.

In their paper, "The rule of three" is used as a quantifier for identifying when this functionality might be of interest.   Quoting from Gartner (via Wikipedia):

The Rule of Three refers to a concept developed by analyst firm Gartner, whereby companies are encouraged to consider the MEAP approach to mobility when they need their mobile solutions to:

• Support three or more mobile applications 

• Support three or more mobile operating systems (OS)

• Integrate with at least three back-end data sources

According to Gartner, using a common mobility platform, like a MEAP, brings considerable savings and strategic advantages in this situation.

This helps frame the problem that MEAP's are trying to solve.  The ability to support these patterns requires a common set of "things". These "things" enable several common patterns of enterprise architecture to mobile device communication.  Some of the more common patterns are:

• Mobile Device Management (MDM) - manages, monitors and secures distrubuted mobile environments. 
• Multiple Message Exchange Patterns such as Push Notifications that are respect end users data plans and battery life.
• Advanced Security Features such as remote session management and data wipes.  These are sometimes viewed as part of MDM.
• Mobile Payment Gateway Services - services that can access a Merchant Processing Account and extend that functionality via the MEAP to the mobile environment.
• Analytics of user interactions.
• Temporal-Spatial Capabilities - the ability to work with geocoded and location graphs
• User Administration and management
• Data Synchronization when mobile devices become re-connected to networks.
• Data Transformations to facilitate existing data being marshaled into formats that are optimized for mobile such as JSON or even HTML5 for mobile websites.
• Data Persistence usually on both the mobile device and the server side.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of items.  Uberity will be writing some more about this topic in coming weeks. It is clear to use that some, if not all of these components, will be of interest to a large number of customers.

One last word.  I don't want to ever see someone pitching "MEAPaaS" but sadly I know it will probably happen.

Patent Troll claims he invented Internet

At the risk of being sued myself, I find I have to really speak out about this news story.  Found on SlashDot and after some research, it appears that Michael Doyle and Eola Technologies are suing what will inevitably be any one who uses the internet or deploys a networked coputer product. He is seeking royalties for the use of just about every modern interactive Internet technology, like watching videos or suggesting instant search results.

Michael and his company formerly sued Microsoft and won a $521 million lawsuit after successfully claiming that their Internet Explorer browser infringed one of his patents.    Hey Michael!  Guess what?  No one likes patent trolls.  On top of that, I am pretty sure that the DarpaNet founders as well as Tim Berners Lee may have something to say about this.  In fact, I would be totally willing to testify about a pre-IP/TCP program I wrote back in around 1980 that enabled two computers to communicate using 600 baud modems, 7 stop bits and half duplex.

Mr Doyle's lawsuit is rumoured to claim he created a program to view embryos online.  He furthermore claims this was actually the very first program which allowed users to interact with images inside a browser window.  In my opinion, if you abstract "browser" to a "graphical rendering tool that parses and interprets bytes into one or more interactive graphic user elements", then I also did this (albeit prior to streaming video) in about 1984 using GWBasic.    This also passed very rudimentary images over a network and changed the images at a rate of about 3 per second, creating the illusion of a crude video.

If Michael wins, I will certainly be calling up my old Computer Science professor  Mr. Langston and a few former friend who can document this.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2098415/Patent-troll-sues-worlds-biggest-internet-firms-600m-claiming-ownership-interactive-web.html#ixzz1lqEmmLil

Uberity is now live! Free WhitePaper on Mobile Strategy

Today Uberity Technology Corporation officially opened the doors for business and launched it's website. Since leaving Adobe, I have been blessed to get back together with the best developers and engineering staff I have ever worked with and start building the technology we think will help enterprises transition to extend their IT systems to the mobile space.  Uberity's mission is to help's it's customers to define, develop, deploy and support the technology that can make or break their business.

One of the first offerings we are releasing is a free White Paper on Enterprise Mobile Application  Development Strategies.  This is a pragmatic look at the challenges facing executives and managers who are responsible for their companies long term mobile development strategies.  Most of the content of this white paper comes from learning the hard way what does and does not work for mobile application development strategies.  There are plenty of options from cross compiling to running through an intermediate interpretation layer to developing natively for each stack.  This White Paper explores the key considerations along with the strengths and benefits of each approach.  More will be written on this topic later.

Another area we are working within is Adobe LiveCycle ES and Data Services.  Uberity employs several former Senior Adobe Engineering staff who worked on the core LiveCycle platform.  Along with myself, we feel we have a team that is skilled and capable to take on any LiveCycle work.  Uberity has recently successfully completed some LiveCycle Professional Services work and is open for business to hear your needs.  With a combined experience of over 32 years of LiveCycle expertise, our team is ready to take on new challenges.  If interested, contact duane at uberity dot com.

Another area we are building out is a health care solution based on using Neo4J as a graphDB back end to integrate mobile functionality.  This project is built using our modular approach to enterprise architecture and the core patterns we have implemented can be used for other verticals as well.

On a personal note, this is the most exciting thing I have done in technology for years. We've already closed a lot of business and are hungry for more.

Feel like you don't understand things?

For anyone who feels maybe they got behind and the world is moving too fast, take a look at the data below.  If you're reading this blog, chances are you are ahead of 90% of the rest of the world.  The graphic below was done by searching real search keyword inventory Feb 2, 2012. Maybe these people need to take some classes online to catch up.   My favorite is "What day is it?".

A Serious Problem with Cloud Computing

We've written lots about Cloud Computing and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Virtualization, defined as when the logical network topography no longer aligns with the physical topography, has been a trend in recent years.  With the advent of SOA, many businesses were easily lead down the path of "who cares how long the wire is" and "does it really matter where my data is physically located".  The mainstream media regards the movement as "Cloud Computing" and the tech industry has been very quick to push this as a solution on many who have not fully understood the potential consequences.

This month, a nightmare scenario has surfaced that may have lasting repercussions for cloud users.  As reported from Associated Press, American prosecutors blocked access to Megaupload and charged seven men alleging the site was a catalyst for allowing illegal downloads of copy written material.   When you visit the MegaUpload website, a rather ominous graphic greets you.

So why is this an issue for those who use Cloud Computing?  The Federal prosecutors do not distinguish legitimate users of MegaUpload from illegitimate.  The same prosecutors stated that data from users of Megaupload may be erased beginning later this week.  Those users have no path to get any of their data.  Furthermore, it is unclear if Federal Prosecutors will also be seizing data not directly related to the injunction.   Small companies who used the services as a data backup are currently blocked from access.  From the AP/CBS article:

"A letter filed in the case Friday by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said storage companies Carpathia Hosting Inc. and Cogent Communications Group Inc. may begin deleting data Thursday. Spokespersons for the two companies and for the U.S. Attorney's Office did not respond to messages Sunday night."

This should have been easy to avoid, correct?  Much like the derivatives market though, several users of the services might not have even understood what they were getting into.  The business model used by MegaUpload includes hiring third parties to store the data for a fee so perhaps some data is safe?  Unfortunately, as reported by Associated Press, the same government prosecutors have frozen MegaUploads finances.  If they cannot pay the third parties, it is seriously likely that data may get deleted, depending of course on the EULA used.  According to the same sources, millions of users who use this site to store data may be affected.

The lessons learned here?   We would aver that legal rulings such as the one made need to account for the impact of seizure.  The whole notion of locking down a complete system due to an alleged illegal activity may have a serious and lasting impact on legitimate users.  A path to recovery of legitimate data should be part of the any such future actions and by blocking access, those who do so incur a large responsibility to all users of that site to ensure no losses are suffered.  Unfortunately, in cases like this, it seems no impact assessment had been done or accounted for in the contingency plans and it is akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

10 Technology Masterpieces that made it

I just finished reading Akweli Parkers article entitled "Ten Concept Car Success Stories: The Ones that Made it to the Production Line"

"Ever since legendary automotive designer Harley Earl created what was arguably the first concept car in 1938, the public has been enthralled to witness the ever-expanding limits of technology combined with auto designers' unrestricted imaginations.

Traditionally, concept cars were usually extreme flights of fancy. With exaggerated bodywork and wildly impractical technology (on-board nuclear generator, anyone?), concept cars of the past boldly tossed reason out the window while pointing the way to a more fun motoring future."

See the rest of his great article here.

10 Technology Masterpieces that made it

I just finished reading Akweli Parkers article entitled "Ten Concept Car Success Stories: The Ones that Made it to the Production Line"

"Ever since legendary automotive designer Harley Earl created what was arguably the first concept car in 1938, the public has been enthralled to witness the ever-expanding limits of technology combined with auto designers' unrestricted imaginations.

Traditionally, concept cars were usually extreme flights of fancy. With exaggerated bodywork and wildly impractical technology (on-board nuclear generator, anyone?), concept cars of the past boldly tossed reason out the window while pointing the way to a more fun motoring future."

See the rest of his great article here.

An Epic Failure to Service the Customer and Resulting Revenue Loss

This is notes from a recent dialog I had with an Big company representative who utterly failed to comprehend that she lost her employer money by not escalating this.  To be fair to them, I got on the phone and a person stayed with me until they solved the issue.  Their phone service is awesome.  I guess you could say that every barrel has its' 'bad apples'.  Private info is blacked out.

**************FIRST MESSAGE FROM ME********

Hi:

For some reason, I cannot retrieve my password for duanexxx. I no
longer seem to be able to get access to emails at nickull@XXX.com or
duanexxxx@XXXXXXXXXX.com which are listed as the emails that the password
reset goes to.

Can you please reset the password for duanexxxxxxx and send it to
duane@XXXX.XXX?

I am trying to buy software.

Duane

**************MESSAGE BACK***********
Hello Duane,

It's me again, Grace. I apologize for the delay in response, I just got back from my two days off. Thanks for your understanding.

Sorry to hear about that, Duane. However, I still wanna thank you that you have been an  customer. Should you have other concerns, please let us know. Cheers!

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.

**THIS IS THEIR RESPONSE WITH MY SECOND MESSAGE INLINE***
 Inline:

On 12-01-18 1:38 PM, wrote:

Hi Duane,

Thanks for contacting Support again. This is Grace and I'm
taking over on Gagan's behalf. Glad to assist you today.

I understand that you need assistance in resetting your password for
"duanexxxx". I realize your eagerness to have this taken care of,
and I'd be happy to help.

Duane, I can reset the password for you. Before I can do this, I
require that you provide at least one of the following, for your
security:

- the order number of one of your purchases
DN: #120020XXXXXXX

- the last four digits of the credit card used for your account
DN: MasterCard .... XXXX

- the answer to one of your security questions

And two items from this list:

- your birth date
DN: April XX,XXXX

- the billing address listed on the account
DN: XXXX West Xth Avenue, Vancouver, BC XXXXXXX

- the phone number on the account
DN: One of these
604 XXX XXXX
604 XXX XXXX
604 XXX XXXX

Upon receiving your response, we will verify your billing address,
reset your password, and send you an email with your new password.

Take care and have a good one, Duane!

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.


*****THE MESSAGE I GOT BACK A DAY LATER****

On 12-01-18 2:49 PM, wrote:

Hi Duane,

Thank you for providing the information that was requested, Duane.
However, the credit card number and order number you provided did not
match our records. Now to have this sorted out, please respond to this
email and provide other credit card numbers you used on the account
that you are trying to access. Or, provide an order number that you recall
you made on the account "duanxxxxxx".

Thanks for your patience, Duane. Hope to hear back from you. :)

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.


*************MY RESPONSE*****************

At this point I sent her several emails showing orders made from the specific account in question
and using the credit card.  All these orders were labelled with all the data she had requested.

I also asked her to please expedite this as we are trying to make a decision to go with a competitor.

*******MY (SEMI RUDE) RESPONSE**********
So screw you. We decided to buy (A competitor) instead. As I told you
yesterday, we were trying to buy software from [you]. I am
responsible for IT buying in my company and you made the decision easy.
We will now use [someone else's software] as the standard.

I am really angry at the fact I have provided you everything you asked
for below and you don't even phone me or respond.

You just lost your company $$$

GoodBye!

***AND YET ANOTHER DAY LATER I GET A CHEERFUL BUT USELESS REPLY***

On 12-01-19 10:18 AM,  wrote:

Hello Duane,

I'm sorry to hear about that. It's really a pain for me as an
advisor to loose a valued customer like you. But please, allow me to
explain the other side of this issue.

If you feel that way because I am unable to reset your password right
after 30 minutes, and I am unable to phone you, I admit that it is my
complete mistake as I haven't given you a heads up. Please note that we
are receiving volume of emails and there are tendencies that we
overlooked replies. Further, [our company] does not provide
assistance via phone call so we are doing our best to provide you with assistance
through email.

Duane, please don't get me wrong about this, as much as possible I would
not want to be the reason of loosing a valued customer, so I apologize
about what happened.

Thanks for bearing with me. Have yourself a wonderful day!

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.


**************NOTES*************


OK.  At this point I am now completely pissed off.  WTF is she talking about 30 minutes???  I gladly would have loved if it had been done in twice that time.  The "Have a wonderful day" quote is about as stupid a thing you can say to a pissed off customer.  The last line "Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you." should perhaps only be used when the customer service rep actually does something.  What about not being allowed to use a phone to sort this out????

But wait - there is more...

*********MY RESPONSE*************


So are you giving me access to my account or not? I sent you all orders
I have copies of, answered every question you asked etc. I also waited 24
hours now, not just 30 minutes, which would be okay. I haven't bought [your competitors software] yet so if you can do this in the next hour, maybe we will stay as customers.

Reset the duanxxxx password and or change the email account used to
retrieve the password to duane@xxx.xxx or duane.xxx@xxxx so I
can do it myself.

If not, not only will you lose a customer, I will seek any legal remedies
that are available to me against you for denying me access to my
account and previous purchases.

Since I have given you everything you asked for, you should just do this
right now. I should not suffer anymore because your company does not
allow you to pick up a phone to verify me.

Duane Nickull


************HER RESPONSE*************


Hi Duane,

Thanks for your response again. As you have requested, I reset the
password for "xxxxxx". This is the password: xxxxxxxx.

Please let me know if it still does not work. Thank you!

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.


************NOTES*************


Guess what?  It did not work!!  I sent another barrage of emails explaining politely that it did not work.  This is where I decided to call and got a smart, capable  rep who fixed the issue.


*********HER REPSONSE (24 hours later)**********


Hi Duane,

Thanks for letting me know about that. I checked your account and found
that "xxxxxxxxx" is renamed to "xxxxxxxxx". This is why
you're still unable to access the account.

Now, please sign in with "xxxxxxx" using the password I
provided. If you still can't, I will have to reset the password again for
you.

Thanks for your patience.

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.


*********NOTES*********


So at this point I had the issue solved by the very capable and heroic guy from their help telephone desk.  I tried her advice again and once again, it did not work.  This prompted me to send yet another email back saying "It doesn't work"


**********HER RESPONSE (A DAY LATER)********


On 12-01-20 3:41 PM,  wrote:

Follow-Up: 173662775

Hello again,

I wanted to send a quick note to see if you are still experiencing any
difficulties with the  Store. Resolving your issue is important to
me, so please don't hesitate to reply if you need any further assistance.

Sincerely,

Grace
Please Note: I work Mon-Fri, 8:00AM-5:00PM CT
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.


*********MY FINAL RESPONSE************


???

You didn't think it was important enough to fix when I asked yesterday so
we went with [competitor] instead. We will not buy your products for our
office.

Duane

************FINAL NOTES**********

Ok - I got mad.  I acted a bit unprofessional but honestly, this sort of thing should be a lesson for anyone doing customer service.

1.  Don't wait 24 hours each time.  Note the entire thread took place over 6 days.
2.  Escalate things if you can't figure them out.  I don't claim to know everything and will gladly escalate stuff to whomever can help.
3.  Don't be condescending to the customer with crap like "Have a wonderful day" when you know they're frustrated at you.

and lastly...

Grace - you are an idiot!!!!

More on (Moron?) SOPA

Funny thing about SOPA is that it keep my awake at night.  I actually took the time to read the bill to understand it better and it seems that around 2:45 AM my brain makes random connections as to why the Stop Online Piracy Act might pose threats to people who don't event know about it.

Today a colleague wrote a post also outlining some additional thoughts entitled "10 Reasons Lots of Websites Violate SOPA and Don’t Know It".  Now according to several news sources, SOPA has been shelved so no one is actualy violating it as it is not in effect.  Nevertheless, it is worth thinking about from a perspective of false positives and what could happen.  On the InternetServiceProviders.org blog I found the following arguments.  I've reposted a few to share here but urge interested parties to go to the source to leave any comments or read the rest.  These are five of the ten reasons.

"1. Vague Language – Though House supporters have claimed that SOPA is designed to protect the intellectual property of Americans from foreign profiteers that illegally distribute content in exchange for advertising and membership revenue, the vague wording of the bill makes it difficult to understand exactly what constitutes a violation and certainly doesn’t offer immunity to inadvertently-offending American sites."

My take on this is that there is certainly ambiguity and penalties in the forms of takedown notices.  The innocent ones here who might be the most liable are the ad servers themselves. If the bill was put into effect as written, it is not clear how some of the enforcement mechanisms might be implemented.  My stance is that most of the illegal copyright and trademark infringement has actionable paths under existing laws, many of which are not enforced.  If existing laws are not enforced, who amongst us believes a new, untested bill will stop this.  Not me.

2. User-Submitted Content – If a site allows any sort of user-submitted content to be posted as part of their business model, they could very easily find themselves in violation of the Stop Online Piracy Act. Under the current language of the proposed law, the owner of the site that hosts the content, the user that posts a link to the content and the website that allows the user to submit that link could all potentially be charged with violating the bill.

Our gut feeling on this is true, but once again, this is illegal under existing laws.  Why do we need a new law to stop someone from selling fake merchandise over eBay?  Use existing laws.

3. The “Friend-of-a-Friend” Effect – Do you remember when you were a kid, and the friend of a friend did something that got you all in trouble? Maybe you weren’t directly involved, and maybe you didn’t even like that person very much, but your mom still said that you were “guilty by association.” Under SOPA, the same principal applies: even if a link to legitimate and legal content housed on another site is shared, the site that posts the link could be punished if the hosting site is found to house illegal content as well.

Not quite correct.  According to the SOPA act, as written today, a takedown notice would be issued.  This would still have the effect of creating a lot of work for webmasters.  Even the odds that the Technoracle blogroll points at a site that might contain an ad that is subject to SOPA laws is very high.

4. The Comments Section – One of the quickest ways to lose faith in humanity and the education system is to take a look at the comments section of a YouTube video or comedy article; comments are almost universally inflammatory and poorly spelled, but that’s still legal. Should SOPA pass and one trolling user posts copyrighted material in the comments section, the site would be in violation and could face blacklisting, blocking of revenue and DNS blocking.

This is not how I interpreted the SOPA Act but in such cases  take down notices would be issued.  What I am curious about is how the government intends to patrol all these comments.  Even as we contemplate this today, I would argue our NTi ( an index of collective content production vs content consumption) is reaching the point where most people create more than they consume.  Bots using RSS feeds and aggregators add to this menace.  To enforce SOPA, one would have to patrol the web with a virtual army of police to scour all such comments.

It is more likely that peer to peer interactions are going to be more effective against such comments.  I've deleted some spam from this site on numerous occasions.  Google also once in a while let's me know if there is a comment up here violating the Blogger terms (which I take down).  I would not voluntarily censor anything for SOPA if it was not directly violating someone's copyright or trademark against the true copyright owners will.

There are six more comments on the original article - a good read at http://www.internetserviceproviders.org/blog/2012/10-reasons-lots-of-websites-violate-sopa-and-dont-know-it/

Very Important SOPA and PIPA Information!

The SOPA and PIPA acts are now at the forefront of the internet revolution.

Here is some important information about SOPA you need to know.

 

Do not support SOPA.  Censorship hurts!  Tweet this now!

DNS Provision Pulled from SOPA!

I wrote some of my thoughts about SOPA down in this earlier log post.  Now it appears that common sense has prevailed.  After a good discussion on the O'Reilly Foo Campers Alumni list, some of the participants of which were asked to get opinions, it seems that the DNS provisions of SOPA are being dropped.  This was just reported on SlashDot http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/01/13/2222203/dns-provision-pulled-from-sopa .

The Republican Chairman Mr. Lamar Smith has historically been one of the biggest backers of the so called Stop Online Piracy Act.  CNET ran the story and claimed Mr. Smith announced that he plans to remove the Domain Name System or DNS-blocking provision.

"After consultation with industry groups across the country," Smith said in a statement released by his office, "I feel we should remove DNS-blocking from the Stop Online Piracy Act so that the [U.S. House Judiciary] Committee can further examine the issues surrounding this provision"

Read more at CNET

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) - aka HR 3261

Several people have recently asked for an opinion on the US proposed legislation to stop online piracy of intellectual property.  Rather than read the opinions of others, I decided to read the actual proposed legislation itself.  For the record, the version I read is at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c112:1:./temp/~c112UufGtF::   There are many worries about limitations on freedom of speech and costs that will be born to internet service providers (ISP's) including potential legal actions to recover damages from those who find themselves participants in such transactions.

DISCLAIMER:  I am not a lawyer, nor am I am US citizen.  I am a musician and have a vested interest in enforcement of IPR laws.

I found the bill somewhat flawed, despite what appears to be a noble attempt to correct an injustice.  I initially like this section:

"SEC. 2. SAVINGS AND SEVERABILITY CLAUSES.

(a) Savings Clauses-

(1) FIRST AMENDMENT- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to impose a prior restraint on free speech or the press protected under the 1st Amendment to the Constitution."

This alone alleviated many of my worries. My first issue was section 101 (23) paragraph C:

"(23) U.S.-DIRECTED SITE- The term `U.S.-directed site' means

an Internet site or portion thereof that is used to conduct business

directed to residents of the United States, or that

<SNIP/>

(C) the Internet site or portion thereof does not

contain reasonable measures to prevent such goods and services from

being obtained in or delivered to the United States;…<SNIP/>

I am sorry but I do not believe that I should have to take measure to comply with US law.  First of all, the internet is "opt in" by default.  Anyone may take any publicly served file and re-serve it via another website.  I can reference files and there is no clear demarcation of paragraph C that ensures I am not wrongly classified as such a site.   I am also not a US citizen, I have no physical presence in the US.  Your laws do not apply to me.  Furthermore, I, like many other website hosts, have no way to prevent such goods or services from being obtained in the USA.

As far as the original question goes, there is little elaboration on the impact to ISP's.  Section 102 C reads: 

(c) Actions Based on Court Orders-

(1) SERVICE- A process server on behalf of the Attorney General, with prior approval of the court, may serve a copy of a court order issued pursuant to this section on similarly situated entities within each class described in paragraph (2). Proof of service shall be filed with the court.

DN: Inference - ISP's do not need to take proactive action, only respond to court orders.  The problem is that there could be huge numbers of these court orders and most of the violating sites will be not on USA soil, hence out of reach of United States law.  This concerns me since each ISP must block each site via their own system as well as potentially making the sits visible again should they not be in violation anymore.

(2) REASONABLE MEASURES- After being served with a copy of an order pursuant to this subsection, the following shall apply:

(A) SERVICE PROVIDERS-

(i) IN GENERAL- A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name's Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.

DN: Filtering an IP address or domain name is very little effort but may have unintentional consequences.  For example, Apache virtual servers may share a common IP address but use virtual hosting based on the http.config file.  Such actions may block legitimate sites causing financial losses.

(ii) LIMITATIONS- A service provider shall not be required--

(I) other than as directed under this subparagraph, to modify its network, software, systems, or facilities;

(II) to take any measures with respect to domain name resolutions not performed by its own domain name server; or

DN: This means that ISP's are not required to perform any further work in these cases?

(III) to continue to prevent access to a domain name to which access has been effectively disabled by other means.

DN: My gut feel is as follows:

- there is a problem that needs to be addressed WRT IP theft.

- in parallel, I believe there are issues with orthogonal systems such as the USPTO/WIPO and the problems cannot be adequately addressed alone via HR 3216.

- if it proceeds to become legislation, it will take a while to establish legal precedent and find where the bill in practicality does not work.

- the criminals who sell the IP of others knowingly are likely crafty enough to use revolving IP addresses or even hacked legitimate servers to complete such transactions making it virtually impossible for an effective countermeasure.

Then again, what do I know?

Duane Nickull