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CP80 – Internet Channel Initiative

At the Utah Valley Business Expo last week I ran into a company that is fighting pornography — CP80. I had subscribed to their newsletter a while ago but didn’t know they were a Utah company. I met their president and some of the employees and was impressed by how strongly they feel about the issue.

As a bit of background, Internet traffic is divided into separate “channels” which are called “ports”. For example, port 80 is for web pages, port 443 for secure web pages, port 25 for email between ISP’s, and port 5190 for AOL Instant Messenger. There are over 65,000 ports in all, and many of them go unused.

CP80 is advocating that pornographic web sites be transmitted, by law, over a separate port. (The company was originally named Clean Port 80, implying that only “clean”, non-pornographic material should be transmitted over port 80.) This is similar to separate cable channels for TV shows.

If all pornographic material were transmitted over a separate port, it would be easy for filtering software to work — simply disallow content from the “porn channel”. This would make it easy for parents and schools to protect children from pornography. As it is now, internet filtering programs generally don’t work well because they have to maintain a database of “bad sites” or look for “bad words” in the text.

Like the idea of a separate TLD for porn sites, CP80 will only work if all porn publishers are required by law to transmit over a separate channel and the law well enforced.

If CP80 can get the right legislation passed, this is an intuitive solution to the problem. They’ve already met with all the Utah Congressmen. Senator Orrin Hatch said pornography is a “clear and present danger to children and families,” an interesting choice of words since those words represent the legal basis for limiting free speech.

More: Utahn tries new tack in battle over Net porn

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Legal fight against pornography

This week I met someone who I believe will be a hero and role model to me for the rest of my life.

One of my life ambitions — though not the strongest — has been to go to law school and become an attorney. (I worked one summer at a great law firm in Las Vegas and really enjoyed the work, the people, and the “banker’s hours”.) I envisioned practicing law for ~20 years to support my family, then retire early and use my legal degree and experience to mount a legal front against pornography.

This week I attended a luncheon with John Harmer, Chairman of the Lighted Candle Society, who has been doing this for decades. Mr. Harmer practiced law in California, became a state senator, and then in 1974 was appointed to be Lt. Governor under Governor Ronald Reagan. He has been litigating against pornographers since 1964. At the luncheon he explained the history behind the battle:

  • In 1960s porn was produced by organized crime. Now there are four publicly-traded hard-core porn companies on Wall Street.
  • In the 60s, it was easy to get a conviction in court against lewd material. Now mainstream magazines like Cosmopolitan and Vogue contain material more lewd that the material with which Mr. Harmer obtained convictions in the 60’s.
  • Litigating against pornography became harder in 1973 after the Miller vs. California Supreme Court decision, which sets three criteria for defining what is considered lewd, one of which is that lewd material violates “contemporary community standards”.
  • Up until 2004, AT&T made $220M/year from an adult TV channel it owned, one of many mainstream companies that profit from pornography.
  • In 2004 Forbes said pornography was a $56 billion industry.
  • The porn industry has used fake witnesses in court, who have received phony sexology degrees from mail-away colleges, to argue that pornography doesn’t violate “contemporary community standards”.
  • Pornography is a huge productivity drain on businesses — 70% of pornography usage happens at work.
  • Cherilyn Bacon, who hosted the luncheon, asked Kevin Rollins of Dell about pornography when he spoke at the BYU Management Society meeting last week and was impressed with his answer. Mr. Rollins said Dell has a zero tolerance policy for pornography — employees found using it are immediately terminated.

The point of the luncheon was to raise funds for the Lighted Candle Society. They have five goals or “smooth stones” (a reference to the David and Goliath story) — Prevention, Action Programs, Research, Guarding the Light, and Healing. Money donated to the society might fund, for instance, medical research to show the negative physiological effects of pornography or resources to help local attorneys properly prosecute pornography cases.

Come with me to the Lighted Candle Society’s fundraising dinner in May. A table of 10 costs $1500 so I’m hoping to get at least 9 other people to pitch in $150 each to go in on a table with me. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland will be the speaker that night, and the money will go to what I consider a great cause. It’s on May 3 at 7:00 PM at the Little America Hotel in SLC. If you’re interested, leave a comment below or email me at richardkmiller AT gmail.

I believe time will prove that pornography is damaging enough to families and societies that it’s worth fighting like an illegal drug. I also believe there are people ensnared in it that want our help to escape it. We can be the ones to do it.

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Report on Geek Dinner and CTO Breakfast

Last week I attended the Geek Dinner and CTO Breakfast, two unrelated technology events in the area.

My notes from the Geek Dinner — speakers were David Spann and Alistair Cockburn:

  • A tech manager shouldn’t know too much (he won’t allow others to do the work) or too little (others won’t trust his judgment.)
  • Ask two questions often (daily? weekly?) of your development teams: What went well? What could be improved?
  • IBM studies showed that companies focused on process didn’t deliver results. Those “flying by the seat of their pants” delivered.
  • Software development is like a cooperative game — like a reality TV show — in which you solve problems today, get past the current obstacle, and then repeat it tomorrow.
  • Responding to change is better than following a plan
  • Customer collaboration is better than contract negotiation
  • A working product is greater than comprehensive documentation
  • People’s interactions are greater than processes and tools
  • A greater development model is to shut 4-6 people in a room with a whiteboard, give them access to the customer, and have them ship something every month or two
  • The typical “iron triangle” is “time, spec, budget — pick two.” It’s a cop out.
  • The VC model is you keep performing, we keep paying, bit by bit
  • Don’t ever go a month or two without releasing something
  • Develop a list of features you want, pick the one with the biggest bang per buck, then renegotiate the list (feature reprioritization instead of feature creep.)

My notes from the CTO Breakfast:

  • Several people have had good experiences with Vonage for voice over IP.
  • Smart phones will be full fledged computers within a few years.
  • Bruce: Too many OS’s and platforms for mobile systems right now. When that consolidates we’ll really start seeing a lot of apps.
  • Bruce recommends going to China and taking a tour. Impressive infrastructure. Lots of engineers.
  • Can you build a mash up on parts you don’t control?
  • Flickr’s API makes it easy to get photos in, provides a natural, social lock in. Data is the new “Intel inside” — the value of the app.
  • Instead of exuberant VC funding of pre-bubble era, the new model for web companies is to sell out to Yahoo or Google.
  • Infrastructure now much cheaper, methodologies much faster, outsourced work much higher quality. Show stringing now possible. (Low budget or no business model is the model!)
  • One person paid $1200/month for an experienced CS grad in the Philippines who had worked at the IBM lab there.
  • Phil: When there’s no competition you can use Java. But when development can be outsourced for $10/hour you need something more agile.
  • Mystical force drives innovation, precisely at the time it’s needed. Necessity is the mother of invention.
  • The business model should be to take existing technology and execute on it now. Focus on now not the future. (Though you have to watch the future)
  • Matt: If you’re early you can fail. Established technologies with better execution makes more business sense.
  • Google, Bluehost examples of great second movers.
  • Google Ads with phone calling coming soon.
  • $1200 offered to boot Windows on a Mac.
  • GPS cheap, could be built into cameras with compass, tagging every photo with location information.
  • Use cases, Q&A, architecture, testing most important skills to learn now.
  • Scott: New Mac Book Pro ripped and encoded DVD in 80% of real-time as opposed to 200% time with Power Mac.
  • The up and coming $100 laptop and a steady income from Mechanical Turk might make a big difference to the poor in other nations.
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Empowering the disabled, poor, and distant

I’m fascinated by the way computers and the Internet can empower people who might not otherwise have opportunities because of disability, poverty, or distance.

The NY Times has an interesting article on a quadriplegic man from Centerville, Utah, who works from home as a call center operator for Office Depot. Technology makes this and other jobs possible.

Computer Technology Opens a World of Work to Disabled People

MIT is leading a project called One Laptop per Child that is producing, in partnership with several tech companies, a laptop that costs just $100. This price point will hopefully make it so accessible that countries like Brazil and Thailand can buy one for every child. This would give them access to a wealth of information and the opportunity to communicate with the entire world.

Sites like Elance bring outsourcing to the masses. Anyone can post a project there and gets cheap bids from programmers, designers, or writers from all around the world. It’s not right for every situation, but you might, for example, get a great deal on a programmer in India who will welcome the work for an amount we’d consider cheap. I recently met an entrepreneur that used Elance to get 200 quality articles of 500 words each for $5/article. The articles were written by a college-graduated, stay-at-home mom in the midwest who bid on the project. What a great deal.

I’ve mentioned this before, but Amazon’s Mechanical Turk pays out small amounts for completing tasks that computers can’t do. It doesn’t amount to very much per hour, but on the Internet these tasks can be done by those whose time is worth it to them. That might be a 14 year-old in Utah or a mother in India, in any case a paying job for someone who wants it.

I think the Internet will continue to have an equalizing influence on the world economy.

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UPHPU meeting on custom 404 pages

When you try to visit a web page that doesn’t exist, the server usually returns a 404 error message — “Page Not Found”. At the Utah PHP Users group meeting last Thursday, Mac Newbold presented on custom 404 pages. Custom 404 pages can help maintain your website branding, help you fix broken links, and help your users find something useful when they don’t find what they’re looking for.

For example, if you visit a page on Apple.com that doesn’t exist, instead of giving you a generic black & white error message that you might normally get, Apple gives you a “friendly” page with their logo and some links to things you might like.

Custom 404 pages are even more powerful when you combine them with PHP. I certainly didn’t expect the flood of ideas that Mac presented for using custom 404 pages:

  • To use a PHP-based custom 404 page, put this in your .htaccess file:
    ErrorDocument 404 /my_404_handler.php
  • Send yourself an email whenever someone gets a 404 message. This will let you know which page to fix on your site.
  • One local programmer (dataw0lf) set up his custom error page to automatically send an email to the webmaster of any referring site that had broken links to his site.
  • Have your custom error page search your site for something similar to what the user requested and forward the user to that page. Php.net does an excellent job of this. You can type in “php.net/” followed by function name or topic and it will find the documentation for that topic or a close match. This is great for usability.
  • If you switch site structure, keep a table of old URLs and new URLs. If someone requests an old URL, redirect them to the new one. …and without having to bother with mod_rewrite.
  • John Taber suggested you could use custom error pages on an unfinished site. Keep a tally of the unbuilt pages that are clicked the most, then build those first.
  • Use custom 404 pages for “virtual marketing campaigns.” Use URLs like example.com/tv or example.com/radio in your marketing, but then forward the user to the same place without having to build separate pages.
  • Mac uses custom 404 pages to build logos on the fly. He links to a specially formatted URL in his tags and then dynamically creates the logos with GD and ImageMagick.

It was a great presentation by Mac.