Erik on Software

Personal Reading List: 2Q2012

My personal reading list for April, May, and June 2012.

Color Key: Special Notes, Currently Queued, Completed Reading. Updated throughout the Quarter.

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Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Third Edition), by Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank, and Mark A. Hall, Morgan Kaufmann, 2011. By invitation from Amazon Vine.

Everyday Enterprise-Architecture: Sensemaking, Strategy, Structures and Solutions, by Tom S. Graves, Tetradian Books, 2010.

Gold and Iron: Bismark, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire, by Fritz Stern, Vintage, 1979.

HBase: The Definitive Guide, by Lars George, O'Reilly, 2011.

Introduction to Decision Analysis (Third Edition), by David C. Skinner, Probabilistic Publishing, 2009.

Portlets in Action, by Ashish Sarin, Manning Publications, 2011.

Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation (Second Edition), by Kees van der Heijden, Wiley, 2005.

Strategy and the Fat Smoker: Doing What's Obvious But Not Easy, by David H. Maister, The Spangle Press, 2008.

Waging War on the Autistic Child: The Arizona 5 and the Legacy of Baron von Münchausen, by Andrew J. Wakefield, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012.

What is a P-Value Anyway? 34 Stories to Help You Actually Understand Statistics, by Andrew J. Vickers, Addison Wesley, 2009.

With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child - Volume 2, by Keiko Tobe, Yen Press, 2007.

The Wrong Answer Faster: The Inside Story of Making the Machine that Trades Trillions, by Michael Goodkin, Wiley, 2012. By invitation from Amazon Vine.

Domain Finally Captured: erikonsoftware.com

A couple months ago, I noticed that registration for domain erikonsoftware.com was finally set to expire, so I put the domain on backorder with the hope of capturing it. Notification that this domain was captured was received today, which is great news for this blog after nearly three years of existence.

New Book Review: "Patent, Copyright & Trademark"

New book review for Patent, Copyright & Trademark: An Intellectual Property Desk Reference (11th Edition), by Attorney Richard Stim, NOLO, 2010, reposted here:

Good introduction to intellectual property law, which consists of four separate and overlapping legal disciplines: (1) patent law, (2) copyright law, (3) trademark law, and (4) trade secret law. Following an introduction that provides a high-level overview of intellectual property law, the remainder of the text is broken down into each of these disciplines, with the bulk dedicated to patent law and copyright law. Each of these sections provides an overview of the discipline covered, along with definitions associated with the corresponding discipline and explanations of forms that need to be filed, together with sample completed examples, followed by the actual legal statutes.

While the bulk of what Stim provides here is dedicated to patent law and copyright law, definitions are what carry this text across all of the four disciplines. That definitions comprise a majority of this text is important, because depending on the needs of the reader this may or may not be an effective format. This book is one of a number of self-help legal resources that Nolo provides, and so it is important to realize that this 600-page effort should probably be seen as just a good place to start one's journey in intellectual property. At the same time, it is also likely that the reader will not need to read this book cover-to-cover, because Nolo publishes separate texts dedicated to each of the four disciplines covered here.

Nolo has been updating this text regularly since the mid-1990s, so the reader can be assured that the content that is provided is up-to-date at time of publication. In each of the overview sections, Stim provides several pages under the header "What's new in patent law since the last edition?" that explain the major events in each respective discipline since the last edition of the book was published. In my opinion, this information mainly serves as a reminder that the law continues to evolve, and is probably best used by the reader as a starting point for further investigation, since the legal decisions provided are highly summarized. It is also worth pointing out that the author provides references to abundant web site resources that provide additional information.

The overviews and definitions are written clearly for those new to these legal disciplines. Compared to the last text I read on related subject matter, "Inventing Software: The Rise of 'Computer-Related' Patents" by Kenneth Nichols (see my review), I also find the material that this book provides to be very well organized. As a consultant in the software industry, the definitions that Stim provides for such terms as "algorithms", "software patents", "reverse engineering and trade secrets", and "software and trade secrets" are especially appreciated, and as a blog writer I also appreciated some of the tips that the author provides on copyrighted material. Recommended to anyone looking for an introductory text on intellectual property law.

Past Book Review (July 6, 2007): "Inventing Software"

 Past book review (i.e. posted prior to starting this blog) for Inventing Software: The Rise of "Computer-Related" Patents, by Kenneth Nichols, Quorum Books, 1998, reposted here:

From the first lines of the preface of this work by Kenneth Nichols, it is apparent that what was initially planned to be of more concise scope grew into a discussion of all things associated with software patents, and therein lies the rub. It is interesting that the author notes in just the second sentence that he "came to the conclusion that the particulars of the debate [within the programming community over the desirability and ultimate effect of software patents]...are not that interesting or enlightening". Really? I find it odd that an individual with a J.D. and an M.S. in Computer Science would make such a statement. Of course, his follow-up statement that the "larger and more important story" involves the fact that "software development is a new kind of creative activity, one that defies the neat and mutually exclusive categorizations of intellectual effort as either artistic or scientific" might be true, Frederick P. Brooks wrote extensively on this topic in his classic tome on software engineering long before the USPTO permitted the filing of related patents. Fortunately, Nichols dedicates most of his work to the more boring subject matter, although unfortunately the explanations provided are a bit boring themselves.

Putting aside the fact that this book was written in the late 1990s, however, there is a lot to offer here to the professional software engineer as well as the non-technical management community associated with software interests of this nature. For example, the author's concise 20-page introduction introduces well much of the background subject matter. Nichols also discusses well the topics of algorithms, programming, computer science, software engineering, and how patents fit in with this universe. The heart of the text, the third chapter which presents various software patent examples, however, is very poorly constructed in my opinion, although the explanation in its first few pages on major terms such as "novelty" and "nonobviousness" is concisely written. The diagram provided that depicts concepts related to nonobviousness, written in the style of a Venn diagram, is especially well suited for the discussion. The fourth chapter covers the software patent controversy, and the reader is well rewarded in my opinion when reaching this point in the book after 50 pages of rambling.

It is strange that the seventh chapter is dedicated to a definition of programming, a discussion best suited for the introductory pages of the book, although some of the quotes provided in these pages are quite entertaining, such as the W. Saba quote from an IEEE periodical that "hardware engineers have gone further than their software counterparts because hardware design became a science...Unlike hardware engineers, software engineers still deal in magic and witchcraft". Interestingly enough, it was just recently that The Economist discussed the emergence of computer science as the foundational branch of science. Last of all, while the sixth chapter boldly begins by proclaiming "we've finally come to the good part" because it deals with recommendations for software developers, only 6 pages are dedicated to the subject! If Nichols is to write further on software patents, I recommend an entire book dedicated to recommendations.