Everybody is an Information Worker: Bill Gates

So says Bill Gates, Microsoft Chief Software Architect: One of the most important changes of the last 30 years is that digital technology has transformed almost everyone into an information worker.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity. This isn't true at all.

In almost every job now, people use software and work with information to enable their organisation to operate more effectively.

That's true for everyone from the retail store worker who uses a handheld scanner to track inventory to the chief executive who uses business intelligence software to analyse critical market trends.

So if you look at how progress is made and where competitive advantage is created, there's no doubt that the ability to use software tools effectively is critical to succeeding in today's global knowledge economy.

A solid working knowledge of productivity software and other IT tools has become a basic foundation for success in virtually any career.

Beyond that, however, I don't think you can overemphasise the importance of having a good background in maths and science.

If you look at the most interesting things that have emerged in the last decade - whether it is cool things like portable music devices and video games or more practical things like smart phones and medical technology - they all come from the realm of science and engineering.

The power of software

Today and in the future, many of the jobs with the greatest impact will be related to software, whether it is developing software working for a company like Microsoft or helping other organisations use information technology tools to be successful.

Bill Gates
Lifelong learning is vital

Communication skills and the ability to work well with different types of people are very important too.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

This isn't true at all.

Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.

I also place a high value on having a passion for ongoing learning. When I was pretty young, I picked up the habit of reading lots of books.

It's great to read widely about a broad range of subjects. Of course today, it's far easier to go online and find information about any topic that interests you.

Having that kind of curiosity about the world helps anyone succeed, no matter what kind of work they decide to pursue.

Nortel Claims Patent Infringement by Vonage

Nortel Networks has sued Vonage Holdings Corp., alleging Vonage is infringing 12 Nortel patents. Of course, in some ways it is a counter-suit, as Vonage earlier had sued Nortel seeking to invalidate three of the patents.

An injunction would prevent Vonage from using technology that relates to 911 and 411 calls, as well as its "click to call" feature.

Business Model Juxtaposition

There are multiple reports from Twitter users on T-Mobile networks that Twitter streams are being interrupted. Separately, photographer Lane Hartwell has taken 5,000 images formerly available on Flickr out of public view. What's the resemblence?

Hartwell objects to images being used on the Web without credit or compensation. "I don't want people just taking my stuff and saying, 'We're going to redistribute this to the masses," she says. She wants to protect her business model, in other words.

Assuming T-Mobile actually is blocking Twitter posts, one would assume there is a similar motivation: to protect the business model.

"It is stealing," Hartwell says of the unauthorized use of her photo in a YouTube video. "I'm not a charity. This is my living."

Likewise, T-Mobile seems to be taking the position that its "short code" service requires a commercial relationship with T-Mobile.

“Twitter is not an authorized third-party service provider, and some services are not available on third-party networks or while roaming," T-Mobile is reported to have replied to a complaint about the apparent Twitter blocking.

"We may impose credit, usage, or other limits to service, cancel or suspend service, or block certain types of calls, messages, or sessions (such as international, 900, or 976 calls) at our discretion,” T-Mobile reportedly has said.

The point is that use of some resources occasionally is a direct assault on some individual's, or some enterprises's, business model, and those entities sometimes take steps to protect their business models.

The observation is that as all content, communications and information moves to IP delivery, these sorts of disputes are bound to multiply.

Search Surges

U.S. users posted a new record for the number of search queries performed on the top engines in November, with over 8.1 billion discrete searches. That’s roughly 48 monthly searches per person on average and 12 more monthly searches than the 36 per month that Compete estimated for November 2006.

Personally, I think I do something more like 48 searches an hour!

Fair Use: Tragedy of the Commons

I might not be the most popular user in defending "fair use" policies, but I have to tell you there is such a thing as the "tragedy of the commons."

Without being overly literal about it, the "tragedy of the commons" is a way of describing how free access and unrestricted demand for a finite resource ultimately dooms the resource through over-exploitation.

This occurs because the benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals or groups, each of whom is motivated to maximize use of the resource, while the costs of the exploitation are distributed among all those to whom the resource is available.

As a westerner, I'll illustrate the problem by pointing to the history of conflict over grazing and water rights. Assume you are a cattle or sheep rancher, grazing those animals on open range that actually is owned by the U.S. government. Assume the market for livestock is good. Each rancher then has an incentive to add animals to the herd, increasing the intensity of grazing. At some point, there isn't enough grass to support all the animals.

Now Internet access is a shared resource, by definition. If you use a cable modem, the actual bandwidth is shared by a large number of end users. If you use Digital Subscriber Line, the sharing happens further up in the network, but the resource still is shared. "Oversubscribed," we like to say. One never provisions enough bandwidth to meet the full theoretical demand any single subscriber might use.

Basically, designers use statistics to provide enough bandwidth to meet average demand, at average times of day, and day of week, to meet the demand created by users who actually are online and using the resource at any given point.

But those statistics are based on "typical" demand. So what might be typical? For a consumer user, somewhere between one and three gigabytes of use in a month. My business use--and I am on the Web all day from roughly 6 a.m. to 8 or 9 p.m.--runs about 2.5 Gbytes a month, typically.

There always are a small number of users who "graze their cattle" vastly more extensively than the rest, creating something that might be less than a major "tragedy of the commons" problem, but clearly consuming enough bandwidth that user experience for all the other users paying the same amount of money is degraded.

"T'aint fair." There's a solution for very-high usage: buy a business plan that really offers "all you can eat" bandwidth at the level you require.

At Qwest Broadband, for example, the illustrative volume that really is excessive for a consumer user might be:
• 300,000-500,000 photo downloads in one month
• 40,000 to 80,000 typically sized MP3 music downloads in one month
• 15+ million unique e-mails each month
• Online TV video streaming of 1,000-3,000 30-minute shows each month
• 2-5 million Web page visits (approximately one every second, 24 hours per day)

Those of us who have jobs, spend time outdoors, play sports, garden, ski, raise children, go shopping, read books and so forth really don't have time to consume that much data in a month.

Some people might have to do those sorts of thing for work, but that's the point: buy business bandwidth that clearly is sold with the understanding that if you want to push the network that way, you pay more for the privilege.

So long as access bandwidth is a shared resource, there will be a "freeloading" or "tragedy of the commons" danger. Good citizenship, good manners and good neighborliness requires a little respect for other people here.

I fail to share the "outrage" of people who think they should be allowed to overgraze the commons. Nobody has a "right" to impose those costs on the rest of users who "play nice."

Windows Vs. BlackBerry in Enterprise?

A recent poll of enterprise wireless subscribers found 84 percent of respondents who do use smart phones, use a BlackBerry, according to InfoTech. Palm Treo and HTC devices trail and Microsoft OS devices, though growing fast, appear to fare no better than fourth.

But Windows Mobile finally is making inroads. "As such, the world essentially will come down to RIM vs. Microsoft in the enterprise market," says InfoTech.

More than 70 percent of respondents say email is the most important function of a smartphone, followed by Internet Wi-Fi access at 12 percent, the survey found.

More than 80 percent of respondents indicated they also use text messaging.

About 49 percent of survey respondents across all enterprise sizes said they were using wireless data card, with nearly 38 percent reporting a preference for the Verizon Wireless network.

Sprint the second-largest base at 24 percent. And speed apparently matters. Some 81 percent of respondents would switch operators to get faster speeds.

If Microsoft Had Designed GMail...

A funny spoof at http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-20-n35.html