A letter of explanation

Not that I’m obligated to share any of my personal life with the public but there is a sense of fair play as to why I’m writing this post.  When I started the GRTP back in February I had the knowledge that this spring would be a stressful time for the Lang house.

You see – our yet to be born daughter, at the time, was diagnosed with a rare congenital heart defect called Hypo-Plastic Left Heart Syndrome or HLHS.  Here’s a really good link about what it is if you’re part medical geek – https://health.google.com/health/ref/Hypoplastic+left+heart+syndrome

Her due date was in early April and we expected to have our daughter home by the end of May.  I thought I was doing pretty well: just brought on Will Hartwell as a partner, High Tech walking tour was on track, we launched NOW…GR Tech Calendar and all while I spent 6 out of 7 days at University of Michigan’s Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor.  Our daughter was to have the first of three open heart operations within a week of her birth – which she did.

Unfortunately being at the center of the HLHS universe with the best doctors and nurses around – it wasn’t enough.  Our precious little daughter Arawynn died after 43 days of fighting for her life.  It’s still raw for me.  I sometimes sit in her room and cry with my wife.

On reflection – we go through life in this AMAZING technological world we’ve built.  We live with the greatest and most advanced technology EVER!  Information Tech, Medical Tech, Computing Tech, etc…  We create more data daily than was ever created prior to the millennium.  We think of ourselves as the smartest, savviest population to ever walk the earth.

The fact is with as much as we think we know – we don’t know much at all.

Now why write this on Computing the Rapid Cloud?

I’m the Founder and I wanted to be transparent as to why things were gaining momentum for GRTP and then suddenly stopped. Plus I wanted to have a say about how cloud based computer technology helps up though this time.

You gotta know the cloud is where it’s at.  I mean Google, FaceBook, Twitter, FourSquare, ect… wouldn’t exist the way we enjoy them without this type of technology platform.  Going through this hard time I am totally grateful for them.

I mean can you imagine standing in the intensive care cardiac unit, where a fraction of 1% of Michigan’s sickest kid are, and making 100 phone calls to whom ever asking them to start praying because your daughter just went into a progressive cardiac arrhythmia?  No that would suck and drain me away from being present in that situation.

What am I doing in that situation to help…..well nothing since I’m not a doctor but being present is all you have when you’re in the situation of only watching someone else be your daughter’s hero.  With that my family were and still are people with a big faith in God.  So being able to communicate to around 100 people on FaceBook, Twitter and my Gmail in a matter of seconds that we need some prayer – is a powerful testament to the technology.

With services like Picasa, and yes I do drink a lot of Google Kool-Aid, I can take a picture with my smartphone and can instantly upload it for our friends and family to see.  By the way I do have a Android device – Moto Droid.  So I’m assuming that a great many of you that may be reading this already know the tech geek side of what I’m saying.  But let me be clear; being able to rely on this technology was something that allowed us to concentrate on “quality of life” matters vs. having to communicate to an extended number of family and friends that were genuinely interested in what was going on with us.

It allowed us to be present and others to be present as well.  I read some drivel on the web recently about keeping your drama and problems off your FaceBook and other social media.  What those authors fail to realize is the “Social” part of social networks.  It’s not just for “Hey I’m here drinking this and having a good time with them”.  Social is about being able to communicate what you want / need to when you need to.

It allows others to participate in your life and isn’t that what we all here to do?  Isn’t that what this great new social technology is here to help facilitate? Participation in each others lives in a healthy way?

Because of this technology I was able to give the gift of allowing others to be involved in our lives in a very intimate way.  Most importantly it allowed me to be present for my daughter and that presence is the most valuable thing I could have.

C’ya in the Cloud

About Doug Lang:  Doug is the Founder of the Grand Rapids Technology Partnership (GRTP).  He is 34, married for almost 11 years to Molly.  Doug has lived in the area for 9 of the last 12 years – the last 2 in Grand Rapids’ Garfield Park Neighborhood.

Copywrong: Using Technology to Curb Copyright Infringement

By Will Hartwell

Approve of it or not, everybody knows that it happens.  Each year, billions (yes, with a “b”) of music and video files are downloaded without the consent of their copyright holders.

This trend is the direct result of the advent of decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing technology.  Beginning with programs like Napster in the late 1990’s, and continuing today with the BitTorrent file sharing protocol, peer-to-peer technology has effectively changed the way that we distribute media, and in the process has forced distributors to change the ways they do business.

Now, a couple of recent articles show how the music and film industries are using their own technological developments to fight back.

DRM-Free, But Not Entirely Free

In How “Dirty” MP3 Files Are A Back Door Into Cloud DRM, Free Republic contributor Michael Arrington discusses how some music distributors watermark files with a purchaser’s personal information.  Basically, certain companies, such as Apple and Wal-Mart, are embedding information into their music files so that down the road the files can be looked at to determine whether they are in the hands of their original purchaser.

What is particularly concerning about this not-so-new technique is that it is being utilized in files advertised as “DRM-free.”  For those who don’t know, Digital Rights Management (DRM) refers to technologies that limit a person’s use of certain copyrighted digital content.   An example of this can be found in Apple’s iTunes Music Store, where DRM-protected files are encoded using Apple’s proprietary FairPlay system.  Files encrypted by FairPlay can only be played in media players that utilize Quicktime, Apple’s proprietary multimedia software.

When a file is listed as “DRM-free,” buyers know that they will be able to use the file in any way they choose, free of any limitations placed on it by the seller.  There is a certain value to this, and some buyers are even willing to pay more money to  purchase DRM-free content.

Adding identifying information to a file changes things.  Although it doesn’t necessarily limit the immediate ability to play the file, it keeps open the possibility of limiting playback in the future.  Imagine, for example, a system that compares a user’s account data to the data contained in a music file, requiring the data to match before playing the song (one of the features of Apple’s DRM-encoded files).  Arrington suggests that could be a key feature of future cloud-based (internet-based) music streaming systems.  By placing identifying information in a file, the file remains susceptible to future use control.

Torrent Users Sued For Movie Downloads

In another recent article, New Litigation Campaign Quietly Targets Tens of Thousands of Movie Downloaders, Eriq Gardner of The Hollywood Reporter talks about a recent lawsuit aimed at people who download motion pictures using the BitTorrent protocol.  The US Copyright Group, the plaintiffs in the case, have utilized a new German technology that tracks torrent downloads and identifies downloaders by their IP address.  This technique, which has already been used in Germany and the UK, is being used for the first time here in the United States as part of this massive lawsuit involving over 20,000 defendants.

[I’d like to note that Philippe Martinez’s “The Steam Experiment,” one of the films the defendants are charged with downloading, was filmed right here in beautiful Grand Rapids, MI.  Having seen “The Steam Experiment,” however, I’d like to make it clear that I do not warrant the film’s quality in any way.]

As the article points out, there is a significant flaw in identifying downloaders by their IP address.  At present, it is relatively easy to “steal” another user’s IP address.  For example, any time someone logs into another person’s wireless network – whether a friend’s home network or a local coffee shop’s free public network – they are using that other person’s IP address.  Just because someone administers a Wi-Fi network shouldn’t mean that he or she approves of or authorizes the actions of the network’s users.  Or should it?

OK, that’s enough from me.  What do you think?

Will Hartwell is a GRTP volunteer and Computing the Rapid Cloud contributor.  Will is a recent law school graduate and a law clerk at Paparella & Associates, an Intellectual Property Law Firm here in Grand Rapids, MI.  He can be reached at will@grtp.org.

Open Source a disadvantage? Nawh

Great blog picked up from Twitter – http://bit.ly/98BEDd

Well written and thought out but…

I tend to think this blog highlights a certain population of the Open Source community that doesn’t really not what that core of Open Source is about.  Open source isn’t about a militaristic view that all software must be open and free for use.  It’s about community that want’s useful software to be available to people who will embrace it.  That doesn’t mean you can’t have a viable business plan or gain economically from using open source software.

I think of it like this:

The Open Source movement is like a free flowing river or software, data and programming. It is a river close to fertile fields where all you have to do is dig your open channel to irrigate the crops you plan to grow.  There you have tapped a source to use to grow your own crops (developing your own products).

You have changed what came from the river and created something else.  You’ve labored and now it is different from what the source was and in that is something new.  You give credit to the source because without it you could not have created/grown what you have but now it is yours to do what you want with – consume or sell for economic gain.

Another way to look at it would be like saying:

“Open roads and highways or skies are a disadvantage” – that would be crazy to say.  Having these open resources are the medium that carry everything from personal freedom to pure hardcore commerce.

People or firms that engage in the open source community have plenty of vision and patients to see their vision to an economic gain.  Has anyone heard of RedHat, Google, Mozilla or the billions of dollars that are transacted over open source built platforms?

Open source may have some socialist underpinnings as its mother – but its father is pure “Free Market”.

So I ask you who really has the disadvantage here:  Open Source or Status Quo?

Please comment and spread the word…..