The word processor and the spreadsheet are the "killer apps" that kicked the personal computer into high gear in the 1980's. The acknowledged creators of the first spreadsheet, Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, certainly are numbered among my personal heroes.

This past week, both of them weighed in on the current intellectual property discussion in ways that bespeak their shared and individual views. Mr. Bricklin posts an inspiring story, Learning from a Patent, about how a friend was able to build a geodesic dome from R. Buckminster Fuller's 1954 patent. As I'm in the midst of writing my second patent, I took heart from the old notion that intellectual property rights are meant to encourage and not impede advances.

Mr. Frankston must be paying heed to the Eldred vs. Ashcroft case before the U.S. Supreme Court. His writing, A Lack of Progress. seeks to refocus the intellectual property debate on what the founding fathers had in mind. That Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were inventors as well as politicians has always been of interest to me.

Also of interest is attorney Larry Lessig's interpretation, from the front line, of his own oral presentation representing Eldred before the court. The power of the internet to provide me with access to such great minds and their current thinking is nothing short of amazing.

Favorites: audiobooksforfree.com Director Breaks Microsoft Reader * Endian 1,2,3 * Worldwide Institute of Software Architects * about.com * howstuffworks.com * Janis Ian * GPS Tracker * New Yorker cartoon * David Coursey/Time * More ...

Nicholas Negroponte's oft-quoted dictum, "Bits are bits," seems to have come back to haunt the folks who seek to restrict the copying of digital entertainment files (Adobe, RIAA, Microsoft, etc.)

At its simplest, the digital model is analog-to-digital-to-analog (the universe translated into bits and back to a reasonable facsimile of the universe.) The problem with using a "secret code" on the bits is that the end-user still must experience an analog translation. That analog experience is relatively easy to capture in a non-encrypted digital format to be stored or transmitted.

This seemingly obvious paradox has been the "soft white underbelly" of "secret" human communication through the ages. Amazingly, it has been rediscovered by Ruslan Fedorovsky, managing director of British-based audiobooksforfree.com. I find the description of his "discovery" (audiobooksforfree.com Director Breaks Microsoft Reader) as humorous as the original notion.

Favorites: Endian 1,2,3 * Worldwide Institute of Software Architects * about.com * howstuffworks.com * Janis Ian * GPS Tracker * New Yorker cartoon * David Coursey/Time * More ...

Whenever I run across the "byte order" debate, I'm reminded of the practice of "facing" money. When counting money, a bill may "face" one of four ways. Now many people can count money that is facing different ways, but most professional counters make sure the bills are all one way. It seems to make counting and recounting just a bit easier (and more accurate) if the bills are "faced."

The use of binary numbers and the creation of "base 2" binomials presents much the same problem. At its simplest, a two-place binomial may represent four "states," designated "00," "01," "10," and "11." If the states to be represented are sequential, we must decide whether the first state is designated 00 or 11. Additionally, we must decide whether the second state is created working from the right or left. The choices are 00-01-10-11, 00-10-01-11, 11-10-01-00, and 11-01-10-00.

All of this is compounded when we group the bits into an 8-bit "byte" which may represent 256 states (2^8.) The terms used for the two major methods of assigning "byte order" are "big endian" and "little endian" (from Jonathon Swift's "Gulliver's Travels.") Interesting discussions about the problem are David K. Every's What Is Endian?, James M. Curran's Little Endian vs. Big Endian, and William Stallings' Endian Issues.

The obvious choice would be to choose among equals and have everyone agree on one. Suffice to say that the computer industry has yet to resolve these issues and, in my opinion, the cost in performance is high.

Favorites: Worldwide Institute of Software Architects * about.com * howstuffworks.com * Janis Ian * GPS Tracker * New Yorker cartoon * David Coursey/Time * More ...