Quanta Computer v. LG Electronics

(Warning: This is very geeky re US patent law. Skip if you are not interested in US patent law.)

Interesting Quanta podcast/blog entry on the Quanta Computer v. LG Electronics case,

“In this U.S. Supreme Court case, the Court was asked whether a patent holder can seek royalties from the downstream third-party purchaser.  The Court concluded unanimously that it could not. Writing for the Court, Justice Clarence Thomas relied on the theory of “patent exhaustion,” which provides that a patented item’s initial authorized sale terminates all patent rights to that item, denying LGE royalties from companies down the line of commerce.  The panel of experts discuss the decision, and the implications of the decision for patent law and  licensing agreements.”

Lovers In A Dangerous Time wins People’s Choice Award at CIFF

Congrats to May Charters & Mark Hug! I am really happy to report Lovers in a Dangerous Time, May & Mark’s lovely Canadian film set and shot in the beautiful Creston BC., has won the People’s Choice Award at the 2009 Calgary International Film Festival. Check out Lovers’ Facebook group and Twitter.

Here are my previous blog entries about the film.

Here is a trailer of the film.

Here is my interview with the filmmakers May Charters & Mark Hug.

Here is the film synopsis from CIFF,

LOVERS IN A DANGEROUS TIME is romantic Canadiana, centering around two former childhood friends – Todd, a small town could-have-been, and Allison, an overly nostalgic children’s book illustrator – who are reunited at their ten-year high school reunion and embark on a childish yet romantic adventure recapturing the life they use to live.

The film’s characters eventually spiral into delinquent behavior, where scorching campfire antics, teenage bush parties, and childhood memories only delay their impending return to adulthood. Directors Mark Hug and May Charters build a story that shows what occurs when we try and revisit the folly of youth, and the results of trying to hold on to the past.

Blogger/journalist Kady O’Malley joins CBC News

“Kady O’Malley, Parliament Hill’s blog maven is leaving MacLeans to join to CBC News.”

Here is an April 2009 interview of Kady, pretty well done.

[via insideCBC]

Reactions to the Nobel in Economic Science

NYT Blog, “Reactions to the Nobel in Economic Science“

And this piece “Williamson and the Austrians“

[via my friend Wallace]

Top 20 Design Thinkers

Interesting read and a way to get to know a few more names to read & learn some more, “Top Twenty Design Thinkers“.

[via BMD]

Grim assessment of Progressive Conservatives Premier Ed Stelmach

Excerpt from a Calgary Herald  Oct 15th interview with Diane Colley-Urquhart (local alderman and failed Conservative candidate in the recent Calgary-Glenmore byelection),

In an interview with the Herald, Colley-Urquhart said she’s been shocked by the anger of Calgary voters toward the premier and believes his government’s decisions have severely damaged the PC party brand in Alberta. “I honestly must tell you, I’ve never felt such personal animosity towards an individual–the premier–as I did door-knocking.”

“It wasn’t policy-based at all. It was entirely just a real deep dislike for the premier,” she said. “The extent of the dissatisfaction, how emotional and systemic it was, was a real surprise for me.”

Colley-Urquhart said her public profile and years of service on city council weren’t enough to overcome “the total …lack of confidence in the provincial government” on the oil and gas royalty framework.

And if the premier’s office dismisses the byelection results as a communication problem, “they’re really missing the boat,” she added.

Election politics is a messy business.

Business news commentary

Reuters,

“The decision to buy Breakingviews pushes Reuters News further into the world of commenting on business and financial news. [...] Thomson Reuters said it is talking to Jonathan Ford, who was hired last year to start the Reuters commentary service, about taking on other roles at Thomson Reuters.”

[via G&M]

Institutions Matter: Oliver E Williamson’s and Elinor Ostrom’s Contribution to Economics

My friend Dr. Gary M. C. Shiu wrote an interesting article in the HKEJ about the two 2009 Nobel Economists. “Institutions Matter: Oliver E Williamson’s and Elinor Ostrom’s Contribution to Economics“. Enjoy.

Here is a brief excerpt  from “Institutions Matter” (emphasis added),

[Williamson’s] work on merger argues that efficiency gains through cost savings from such transaction might completely offset efficiency losses as the market becomes less competitive after firms merge. Indeed, economists are so impressed by Williamson’s efficiency defense of mergers that they refer to the trade-off involved (costs savings against weakened competition) as the “Williamsonian Trade-off”. It is not difficult to sense the influence of Williamson’s work in this matter when the first Merger Guidelines of the Department of Justice appeared in 1968. Williamson once worked as the Assistant Attorney General at the US Government’s Department of Justice.

[...] A piece of common resource would be utilized in wasteful ways when individuals with access to it have an incentive to extract value from it in the quickest way possible for fear that others get ahead of them. [the “Tragedy of the Commons”] The tragedy lies in that if everybody shares similar expectations, the value of the resource would be dissipated in a sub-optimal manner. Backed by a large number of case studies and well-calibrated experiments, Ostrom’s major contribution in addressing the commons problem is to show how, in the situation described by Hardin, individuals with access to the common property within a community would have incentives to devise usage rules to prevent such wasteful dissipation. Such usage rules are an example of how institutions guide individual interactions towards a better societal outcome.

Taking Flight With The Birdmen

Here is the 60 minutes story and video.

Here is where I first saw them “fly” in this TED video (flying starts at timecode 5:50). Truly amazing stuff.

BetterManagement TODAY Book Review – “The Snowball” by Alice Schroeder

Read my review of The Snowball (with book excerpt) here.

Steven N. S. Cheung’s original insight on common property rights is unfortunately overlooked (re 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences)

I have been reading the ideas of Steven N. S. Cheung for many years and have even written a few blog entries about him and his ideas. So it is my pleasure to repost my professional economist friend Zhaofeng Xue‘s English comment here in my blog. If you read Chinese, also read Zhaofeng’s longer posting “今年诺奖忽视了张五常的原创贡献” (evidences are the same).

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Repost from Zhaofeng Xue‘s English comment (Oct 13th, 1:56pm)

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I think Steven N. S. Cheung’s original insight on common property rights is unfortunately overlooked. The idea Nobel committee awarded on the basis of Ostrom’s 1990 publication can be clearly seen in Cheung’s earlier publication in 1974 and 1987. See the following four piece of evidence. (Zhaofeng Xue, Ph.D. from Mason)

Evidence 1:
Scientific Background on the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2009
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2009/ecoadv09.pdf

Elinor Ostrom (1990) has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be completely privatized or regulated by central authorities. Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes, and groundwater basins, Ostrom concluded that the outcomes are often better than predicted by standard theories. [Ostrom, E. (1990): Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Actions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.]

Evidence 2:
Ostrom, Elinor. “tragedy of the commons.” The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Second Edition. Eds. Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics Online. Palgrave Macmillan. 11 May 2009 doi:10.1057/9780230226203.1729

Policy analysts tend to look for certainty and want to know whether the tragedy of the commons theory is either right or wrong. A more productive approach is to ask under what conditions it is correct and when it makes the wrong predictions. In settings where there is a large group, no one communicates, and where no rights to the resource exist, Hardin’s theory is supported by considerable evidence. There are many settings in the world where the tragedy of the commons has occurred and continues to occur – ocean fisheries and the atmosphere being the most obvious.

Contrary to the conventional theory, however, multiple studies have demonstrated that users have overcome social dilemmas to craft institutions to govern their own resources (National Research Council, 1986; 2002; McCay and Acheson, 1987; Ostrom, 1990; 2005). The possibility, however, that the users would find ways to organize themselves was not mentioned in basic economic textbooks on environmental problems until recently (compare Clark, 1976, with Hackett, 1998). The design principles that characterize robust, long-lasting, institutional arrangements for the governance of common-pool resources have been identified (Ostrom, 1990) and supported by further testing (Guillet, 1992; Morrow and Hull, 1996; Weinstein, 2000).

Evidence 3:
Cheung, Steven N. S. “A Theory of Price Control.” Journal of Law and Economics, 1974, 17(1), pp. 53-71.

Proposition 2: Given the existence of non-exclusive income and its tendency to dissipate, each and every party involved will seek to minimize the dissipation subject to constraints. This will be done either through seeking alternatives in using or producing the good so that the decline in resource value is the lowest, or through forming alternative contractual arrangements to govern the use or production of the good with the least rise in transaction costs, or through the least costly combination of the two procedures.

Evidence 4:
Cheung, Steven N. S. “Common property rights,” M. M. John Eatwell, Peter Newman, The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, 1987,

In the real world, the complete dissipation of rent is rare indeed. … Attempts to reduce rent dissipation go far to explain why common property in its ‘pure’ form is seldom observed. … What is useful and important from the standpoint of economic explanation is to view whatever rent dissipation does occur as necessarily a constrained minimum becasue, under the maximization postulate, each and every individual has an incentive to reduce that dissipation.

Wildrose Alliance basks in spotlight – Danielle Smith

Wildrose Alliance basks in spotlight; leadership vote nears – Upstart party to pick leader saturday - Calgary Herald

If I were a betting man, I would put my money on Danielle Smith winning in this saturday Wildrose Alliance leadership vote.

As I wrote in a previous post, Alberta politics is not boring anymore. And if Smith wins, the Progressive Conservatives, Liberals, and NDPs better act fast. I suspect all these parties are already in discussion on how and what to do with the rising of Wildrose Alliance. How smart will their strategies be, only time will tell. In a sense, if rise of Wlidrose Alliance brings politicians from all parties closer and more in tune to Albertans’ wishes, I think it is a good thing.

At the end of the day, what matters is the welfare of all Albertans, regardless of their political affiliations. So good luck to all Albertans.

‘Amateur’ IBM brings down Air New Zealand

• Air New Zealand boss criticises IBM over outage
• ‘Amateur’ IBM brings down Air New Zealand
• Air New Zealand boss lands hard on IBM
• The cloud: no place for amateurs

The boss of Air New Zealand has given us a convenient term for companies that can’t get to grips with the realities of delivering computing as a service: “Amateurs”. His reported comments were addressed to IBM, which failed to restore operations at a mainframe data center in a responsive enough fashion after a major outage on Sunday:

“In my 30-year working career,” he reportedly emailed the hapless vendor, “I am struggling to recall a time where I have seen a supplier so slow to react to a catastrophic system failure such as this and so unwilling to accept responsibility and apologise to its client and its client’s customers.”

Using Wi-fi to “See” Through Walls

Impressive research.

By the way, I’ve blogged about other technologies that can see through walls as well. Time Domain‘s Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology has been available to law enforcement and authorized agencies for a few years now.

[via Bruce & Wired]

Note: Because of the training needed (?), deployment of this Wi-fi technology in unknown/non-trained locations will be unlikely.

Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 2009 (An institutional economics prize)

Elinor Ostrom (“for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons”) and Oliver E. Williamson (“for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm”) are the 2009 winners of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

“Economic governance: the organization of cooperation

Elinor Ostrom has demonstrated how common property can be successfully managed by user associations. Oliver Williamson has developed a theory where business firms serve as structures for conflict resolution. Over the last three decades these seminal contributions have advanced economic governance research from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention.

Economic transactions take place not only in markets, but also within firms, associations, households, and agencies. Whereas economic theory has comprehensively illuminated the virtues and limitations of markets, it has traditionally paid less attention to other institutional arrangements. The research of Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson demonstrates that economic analysis can shed light on most forms of social organization.”

Here is a very insightful and sometimes funny Nobel Prize website interview with Elinor Ostrom talks about resource governance (including lobster fishery, irrigation system). Elinor also studied Economics with Armen Alchian and others. (Extra reading material on Armen.)

Here is the Nobel Prize website interview with Oliver Williamson. This is an older 21 minutes long Berkeley video interview with Oliver.

Here is Paul Kruigman’s (Nobel 2008) take on the prize winners and their work.

From Economist, “The bigger picture – This year’s Nobel prize has rewarded the use of economics to answer wider questions“

Here is Marginal Revolution’s look “Elinor Ostrom and the well-governed commons” and an interesting paper where Ostrom summarizes the findings in one of her research.

P.S. Here is something more I wrote about Armen,

UCLA economists Armen Alchian and many of his students, including Steven N. S. Cheung, are known by their abilities to ask deep and simple (child-like) questions to bring out new perspective and new angles to look at things. Alchian helped clarified many economists’ confusion with respect to “Utility” in the early days. May be we have something to learn from them all.

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Nov 25, 2009 Update:

Indiana University’s Elinor Ostrom speaks about the award Monday, Oct. 12 at Indiana University (YouTube video)

Berkeley Prof. Williamson’s Nobel Prize day highlights YouTube video

UC Berkeley Professor Oliver Williamson wins the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics (YouTube video)

Getting Your Hands Dirty

What a great concept.

[via BMD]

Elections in Afghan & Alberta (Which one is fair?)

United Nation officials have confirmed “widespread fraud” in August’s Afghan presidential election.

With my current outstanding complaint with Elections Alberta, I have lost confidence with Elections Alberta’s ability to hold open and fair elections.

Sure, there are more “widespread fraud” in Afghan, but until my complaint with Elections Alberta, I had zero doubt with Elections Alberta‘s ability, but I was sadly mistaken.

So very sadly, if you ask me today, do I have confidence in Elections Afghan’s or Elections Alberta’s abilities to hold open and fair elections, I will have to politely say no.

Update re: Complaint regarding Campaign Activities in Calgary-Glenmore by-election

After reading Elections Alberta Sept 25th decision (see attached), me sending Elections Alberta a Oct 4th followup request for clarification (see attached), and then reading the Elections Alberta Oct 7th “decision” and refusal to clarify (see attached), I have lost confidence with Elections Alberta‘s ability to hold open and fair elections in Alberta.

I am in the process of collecting supporting evidences and also deciding how to proceed on this complaint. Let me repeat, it deeply saddens me to say I have lost confidence with Elections Alberta‘s ability to hold open and fair elections in Alberta.

Here is a link to my original Sept 15th, 2009 complaint with videos.

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(Sept 25, 2009 email from Drew Westwater, Director of Operations and Communications, Elections Alberta)

Dear Mr. Lam;

I am responding to your complaint, dated September 15, 2009, regarding the campaigning activities of Mr. Paul Hinman outside two polling places during the Calgary-Glenmore by-election held on September 14^th, 2009.

Your complaint indicates that you observed Mr. Hinman (Candidate – Wildrose Alliance Party) actively campaigning and greeting voters at two different polling stations during polling hours on September 14^th, 2009, and you state a possible violation of section 135 of the Election Act may have occurred.

It is always about the people – The September Issue

A good documentary is always, always about the people.

“The September Issue is a documentary film about the behind the scenes drama that follows editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and Vogue Magazine. Directed by R.J. Cutler, The film follows the making of the 2007 September issue. The issue ended up weighing nearly five pounds, was 840 pages, and was the single largest issue of a magazine ever published.”

I love and enjoy fashion (even I am not fashionable). I highly recommend you check out The September Issue.

Notables

* Sex, conference calls, and outdated FCC rules (Official Google Public Policy blog)

* What The Associated Press is saying to Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo (Nieman Journalism Lab, Harvard University)

* Street view exposes Calgary to the world (Calgary Herald, finally getting to Calgary)