Eclectic Views

    

> $8 billion profit on $11 B sales per year

!! Really??? Makes me wonder what the definition of "profit" is in this
situation.
  

    
Whatever they can't manage to write off...
  

    

   Tenfold Increase In Optical Bandwidth Seen

A report in Nature says Stanford University researchers have discovered how
to create an expensive and very small shutter that can switch a laser beam
on and off 100 billion times a second, compared with the present max of
about 10 billion.  Besides its potential for long-range communications, the
discovery has the potential to speed up inter-chip connections within the
case of a PC.  According to the director of Stanford's Solid State and
Photonics Laboratory, "those large numbers could get rid of the bottlenecks
of wiring, bottlenecks that are quite evident today and are one of the
reasons the clock speeds on your desktop computer have not really been going
up much in recent years".
  

    

   Microsoft Quarterly In

In brief, first-class corporate customers boosted the bottom line while
those of us in steerage were no help.  Gross revenue for the quarter ended
September 30 rose 6 percent to $9.74 billion, while net profit was up 24%
from a year ago to $3.14 billion. (Unlike Google, the relation of MS numbers
to the value of pi is probably a coincidence.)  MSN revenue fell 4%, and the
business of servers and other large-company tools was up 13%, but MS lost
money on small-business tools as well as "home and entertainment, mobile and
embedded devices"; some of the game-system loss may be due to people waiting
for the new XBox due out next month.
  

    

   Yet Another Millennium Round The Corner

According to the subtitle of the newly released book titled _Spychips_,
"Major Corporations and Government Plan To Track Your Every Move With RFID".
Thought you might like to know.  The loudly Christian authors, Katherine
Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, reportedly "suggest that a real spiritual threat
in presaged in those implants [including the E-Z Pass gizmos in cars]: RFID
may evolve into the 'mark of the beast' referred to in the Book of
Revelations".  They acknowledge some difficulties with their theory: for one
thing the Bible evidently says the transponder er mark will appear on the
right hand or the forehead, both unlikely places for implants according to
the vendors of the beast like Applied Digital, and "we're not sure how the
666 part fits in".
  

    

   Baloney From Sony

Japanese media giant Sony is making music CDs with copy-prevention software
which installs itself on a computer when it is played and functions like a
"rootkit", a particularly nasty form of virus (loosely defined) which hides
itself at the lowest levels of the operating system and grants essentially
unlimited privileges to itself.  Removal of the software can be complex, and
results in the CD drive becoming unusable until further software repairs are
made.  Details are at
www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html
   and    www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/02/AR2005110202362.html

I went over to the site of the company who wrote Sony's malware,
 http://www.first4internet.com    but curiously their press releases don't
mention the issue or anything about the "patch file" Sony says it will make
available to address security concerns.
  

    

Boycott sony and tell them why.
  

    
A friend of mine is telling Sony off via their feedback page.  

See 

   http://mdlbear.livejournal.com/

for November 1.  You might also look at the day or two before and after. 
  

    
Reposting from my Business & Technology conference response:

> Do you mean that black hats can use Sony's rootkit?

Yes. I'm not enough of a Windows internist to know the details, but there is
plenty in the blog page I cited above to inspire concern.  For example, the
author (who apparently is a serious Windows guru with investigative tools to
match)

> confirmed that it patches several functions via the system call table and
> saw that its cloaking code hides any file, directory, Registry key or
> process whose name begins with "$sys$".

Later:

> Besides being indiscriminate about the objects it cloaks, other parts of
> the Aries code show a lack of sophistication on the part of the programmer

A "lack of sophistication" in privileged software which hooks and diverts
system calls, and hides files, processes, keys, etc. based on name is IMHO
simply an invitation like an unlocked front door.

What I do know a little about in my professional capacity is there is a very
real question of user consent.  From the Washington Post story:

> At issue is whether Sony has provided customers with adequate notice about
> what they can expect when installing the software, said Ari Schwartz,
> deputy director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy and
> Technology.
  ...
> Windows users cannot listen to tracks on the CD without agreeing to
> install the anti-piracy program, which merely advises that "it will
> install a small proprietary software program" that will remain there
> "until removed or deleted."

Given that removal or deletion took the system-internals guy something like
the better part of a day of hard work, plus more time to re-enable his CD
drive which had disappeared, I see a possible lack of informed consent by
the user, and even deceptive inducement on Sony's part.  Sony better hope no
black hats take advantage of the code or they could be in deep trouble.
  

    
I just posted this to their feedback page:

> Although I have purchased numerous Sony consumer and industrial products 
> in the past, I will not be purchasing Sony products in the future.
>  
> That your products should put unwanted software rootkits on any computer 
> is inexcusable.  It's most likely illegal, as well, and you will be 
> responsible for untold damages, I suspect.
>  
> Shame on you.
   


I did notice this on that page, as well, maybe it's worth trying, as well:
> If you believe a Sony Music product has a manufacturing defect, please 
> call our Quality Management Department at 800-255-7514; 856-722-8224 in 
> New Jersey).
  

    
One lesson that consumers can take from this is the value of actually
reading the text of the license they ask you to click "I agree" on.  Much of
it is boilerplate about how they are not responsible if your dog dies or it
gets dark at night, but there are a few things to watch out for.  Even the
woefully inadequate Sony license does apparently say they will install
executable software on the user's PC, and on at least one occasion I dodged
spyware on a download by reading that I had to agree to let my Web surfing
be tracked and declining to agree.
  

    
It's a big difference, though, between allowing "executable software"
and allowing a rootkit to be installed, especially one that is (a) likely
to be removed by various malware scanners in common use today, and (b) if
so removed, causes your PC to no longer work properly.

It's like asking if I can feed your dog, then if you agree, I feed him 
arsenic.
  

    
> It's a big difference, though, between allowing "executable software"
> and allowing a rootkit to be installed

No argument from me; the Sony disclosure was so inadequate as to be
actionable IMHO and I will not be surprised to hear of a class action suit
over it. I was just observing there was some minimal notice, and there is an
understandable tendency among users to assume the license is all just mumbo-
jumbo and skip over what little protection it does afford. From the BBC
story on it:

If Sony BMG released XCP copy-protected CDs in the UK this oversight could
leave the music company open to prosecution under the Computer Misuse Act
because it made "unauthorised" changes to a machine, said net law expert
Nick Lockett.  "There would be no problem if there's a big screen coming up
saying as part of the anti-piracy measures this CD will amend your operating
system," he said.
  

    

   Free As In Speech, Not As In Beer

A private investment firm is buying rights to the Ingres database system
from present owner Computer Associates and will turn it over to a new open-
source software company created for the purpose, with CA holding a 20%
interest. The undisclosed price is estimated at somewhere under $50 million.
The business model is to give away the code but charge for maintenance and
support. While the long-range plan is to "eat away at Oracle's hold", they
face more immediate competition in existing open-source software such as
Cloudscape, PostgresSQL and particularly MySQL.  Ingres, said to date from
the 1970's, is seen as "a solid technology" but dated, while the 10-year-old
MySQL "has a big lead in the open-source database market [I think it's the M
in LAMP] and wide following among developers".  And it remains to be seen if
CA's predatory reputation will hurt the new company as it struggles for
adoption outside the world of suits.


   FrankenGums

I am not making this up; Colgate-Palmolive wants to introduce a genetically
modified mouthwash.  Well, I am a little; it's you they want to modify, the
mouthwash is just the vehicle.  C-P paid a Texas gene-therapy firm $20 M for
about 10% of the company; it puts special genes to fight gum disease into
"disarmed" cold viruses and then into the gargle which you roll around your
tonsils to modify yourself.  A possibly genetically-modified exec from the
Introgen says the technique is quite safe even though an earlier test
"killed a teenager at the University of Pennsylvania in 1999".  And you
might become Roundup-resistant as well.  Can't you just see the spam we're
going to get about this stuff in a couple years?
  

    

   Buy It And Give It Away

Think of it as the Linux ministry of defense.  The goal of the new Open
Invention Network, backed financially by IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and
Sony, is "to enable the Linux ecosystem to grow" by acquiring patents and
licensing them for free to any person or company who "agrees not to assert
its patents against" other OIN licensees.  The article says the growth of
Linux has not appreciably been slowed by litigation so far, such as the SCO
Group's pending $1 billion claim against IBM, but the concern is out there.
Last December a failed dot-com called Commerce One auctioned off its patents
and it was feared that one of the new IP holding companies who buy those
things up and license them (or just sue people with similar technology)
might have won the bidding; later it turned out to be a subsidiary of
Novell, who is donating the $16 million worth of patents to the OIN.
  

    

   Traffic

A new technological development may yet persuade diehards to stop using
their cell phone in the car, even the ones who say "Hey, pedestrians are
soft, they won't damage the grille on a Hummer." Maryland and Virginia are
joining foreign cities like Antwerp, London, and Tel Aviv in enabling
"private companies, law enforcement and government agencies" to use mobile-
phone transmissions to track the location, direction, and speed of vehicles,
which they can distinguish from gabbing walkers.  The cellphone need only be
on, not in use.  Published purposes are to monitor congestion and update
road signs to alert motorists, but of course once they have the data...


   Take A Barely Visible Bow

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, responsible for the
Emmy awards for excellence in daytime TV [long pause to let laughter die
down], "has created an award category to recognize original video content
for computers, cellphones, and other hand-held devices."  The story notes,
perhaps with tongue in cheek, that "despite he academy's interest, the
market for such programming is still tiny."
  

    

   Booble?

A share of Google stock, which opened at $85 a little over a year ago and
went for less than $300 last month, was worth $403.45 at the close of
business yesterday.
  

    
So kind of you to remind.
  

    

One of my worst investment decisions in the past few years
was thinking that google stock was priced too high. Oh well,
that was one more mistake out of many.
  

    
Don't forget you need to be right on when to sell as well as when to buy.
  

    
That's easy. Sell enough today to recoup the original investment. 

Hold the rest till Bill Gates releases a better product, and the stock
plunges to its original $85 + 6% + commissions. 
  

    
Better product?  Only rarely has Microsoft done THAT.
  

    

> Sell enough today to recoup the original investment. 

That's an old poker trick. Take your original stake off
the table while you still can. It's good advice for
stocks as well.
  

    

   A Third Of The Internet?

In a story about an agreement with the movie industry to hinder the sharing
of films with his software, BitTorrent CEO Bram Cohen stated "Internet
tracking research indicated that more than one-third of Internet traffic was
using the BitTorrent protocol, much of that for video".
  

    

   What, Google Evil?

Monday's NY Times Editorial Observer piece by Adam Cohen is titled "What
Google Should Roll Out Next: A Privacy Upgrade".  He notes the search firm
places cookies on users' computers that do not expire till 2038 and "make it
possible to track those searches in a personally identifiable way"; he cites
a recent murder trial where the accused was found to have searched Google
for "neck" and "snap" as well as GMail's scanning of e-mail content, and he
says "The government can gain access to Google's data storehouse simply by
presenting a valid warrant or subpoena. Under the Patriot Act Google may not
be able to tell users when it hands over their searches or e-mail messages."
He concludes,

"Google says it needs the data it keeps to improve its technology, but it is
doubtful it needs so much personally identifiable information. Of course,
this sort of data is enormously valuable for marketing. The whole idea of
"Don't be evil," though, is resisting lucrative business opportunities when
they are wrong. Google should develop an overarching privacy theory that is
as bold as its mission to make the world's information accessible - one that
can become a model for the online world. Google is not necessarily worse
than other Internet companies when it comes to privacy. But it should be
doing better."

I admit I changed my settings to convert Google cookies to session-only
after reading this; I mean you never know.


   New GNU

According to <http://gplv3.fsf.org/process-definition> and a news story
about it, the Free Software Foundation is planning to revise the General
Public License for the first time since 1991. The GPL is a cornerstone of
the open software industry and is widely used to license Linux and related
software.  A first draft of the new document is due to be presented at an
MIT conference in January.  The story observes that in terms of hardware and
software using Linux it is presently a $40 billion business, definitely a
step up from 1991; the FSF's general counsel Eben Moglen says "the big boys,
corporations and governments, have far more reason to be interested and
concerned this time". A second draft is due next summer, with a third if
required in the fall.  Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has called the GPL a
"cancer" and will probably not participate; though it would be fun to see
him and Richard Stallman together duking it out.