Eclectic Views

    
Very nice april 1 news hit parade!
  

    

   Windows Vista is So 2007

Make way, make way; a new version of Windows to replace the widely ridiculed
present release seems to be gathering buzz, if not more:

<http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9911470-56.html>
  

    

   Robo-Writer

Philip Parker describes himself as a professor in "innovation, business, and
society" at a business school named Insead. He is also an author; so far his
output consists of 200,000 titles, well ahead of the most prolific second-
place finisher. Most of his books do not appeal to a mass market: for
instance, his "2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats
and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India" ($495 for 144
pages) will probably never appear in the best-seller lists, but he has about
another 199,999 that may do better and if not, so what? Especially since he
figures that "each new book costs him about 12 cents" for the electricity he
uses to derive its contents from the Internet. The books are largely
compilations of publicly accessible material, reformatted and printed
(sometimes on demand, such as for the rug book above). He is already
branching out to generation of crossword puzzles and "game-show scripts",
whatever that means. The article at
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/business/media/14link.html> also notes
"he is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms.
'I've already set it up,' he said. 'There are only so many body parts.'"
(That of course is a fact already known and occasionally lamented by writers
of erotic fiction.)
  

    

   More Parallel Processing Research

From  <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/technology/30lab.html>:

A number of teams are working in, er, parallel "in response to a growing
awareness that the software industry is not ready for the coming
availability of microprocessors with 8 or 16 or more cores, or processing
units, on a single chip". A "Pervasive Parallelism Lab" will shortly be
announced to tackle the issues with backing from AMD, H-P, IBM, Intel,
Nvidia, Sun, and Stanford University. Last month Intel, Microsoft, UC
Berkeley and the University of Illinois set up similar research efforts.
In a nutshell, the feeling is that "While today's operating systems ... can
work with this [multi-core] type of hardware, ... most applications, ranging
from corporate productivity software to multimedia programs, are not
designed for efficient use of the dozens or hundreds of processors in future
computers". Compilers are another focus of the labs' efforts, along with
educating "mainstream programmers who have spent their entire careers
designing software for sequential, not parallel, programming systems".
  

    

   Now We Know: EBay vs. Craigslist

When eBay sued Craigslist (which it owns 28.4% of) last week, it declined to
make the complaint public. Now it has, minus some information on finances.
The story is at  <http://tinyurl.com/527yo9>

Briefly, it's about eBay's classified site kijiji.com as a rival to
Craigslist and how to deal with the fact.

"As part of [the stock purchase] contract, the parties agreed that if eBay
ever entered into the online classified advertising market and became a
competitor, each side would no longer have a 'right of first refusal' to
acquire each other's shares. In 2005, eBay went into the classified ad
business overseas, launching Kijiji.com. In 2007, eBay launched the site in
the United States. In June 2007, Craigslist notified eBay that it was
engaging in competitive activity and that both parties had ceased being
subject to the right of first refusal."

EBay later said it had "completely firewalled" its Kijiji subsidiary from
relations with Craigslist and it would like to buy all of Craigslist stock.

Craig evidently did not buy the story. "In October 2007, the two Craigslist
directors began meeting with their lawyer on corporate governance issues,
without eBay's involvement. On January 1, 2008, they reorganized the
company's stock structure, issuing one 'reorganization' share of Craigslist
stock for every five shares of common stock. That diluted eBay's stock from
28.04 percent to 24.85 percent and, as specified in Craigslist's bylaws,
eBay lost its ability to elect a director. Thus, the lawsuit."
  

    
TechCrunch reports <http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/03/breaking-microsoft-
walks/> Microsoft has dropped its bids, hostile and friendly, for Yahoo
after negotiations broke down over the purchase price.
  

    

   Changing Values

According to an article at
<http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/the-new-hacker-economics/>, the
hacker economy is so awash in credit card and PIN numbers that they have
become bulk commodities, down from $100 each 2 years ago to around $10 now.
The real money is in more sophisticated stuff like "company e-mail, business
documents and personal health information", according to Finjan, a web-
security firm.
  

    

   Modem Tax! Modem Tax!

No, not really. But New York State has passed a "law that forces online
retailers to collect sales taxes on shipments to state residents", even if
the retailer has no "presence" in the state. (Strictly speaking, the
purchaser is required to pay a "use tax" equal to the sales tax, but there
is no enforcement in most cases and most buyers don't.) Previous such laws
were found to be unconstitutional burdens on interstate commerce by the
Supremes, and amazon.com has sued the state <http://tinyurl.com/3fqe2k> over
whether its "affiliates" constitute such a presence. Overstock.com is taking
a different route, shedding its NY affiliates <http://tinyurl.com/3t259o>
instead. The article says "The state hoped the new legal interpretation
would bring in $50 million a year to help close New York's budget gap."
Minus attorneys' fees, court costs, and lost business, presumably.


   Be Very Afraid

Per <http://tinyurl.com/4y57nw>, "Charter Communications, the fourth-largest
cable system in the United States, has started telling its high-speed
Internet customers that it is going to keep track of every site they visit
on the Web. The cable company will sell the data to a firm called NebuAd,
which in turn will use it to show ads to Web-surfing Charter customers that
are meant to be related to their interests."  The company describes this
initiative as "an enhanced online experience that is more customized to your
interests and activities".
  

    

   Gray Hats?

This article from Information Week at <http://tinyurl.com/5wuo27> suggests
that Hollywood's copyright-protecting minions are firing in all directions,
including targets who merely share their own data.

"Online media company Revision3 says that it is the victim of a cyberattack
launched by MediaDefender, a company that fights illegal peer-to-peer
distribution of media on behalf of major entertainment companies. Revision3,
the host of Internet shows such as Diggnation, was inaccessible over the
weekend. Company CEO Jim Louderback blames the outage on a denial-of-service
attack initiated by MediaDefender. ... Revision3 uses BitTorrent, a popular
peer-to-peer protocol, to efficiently distribute its content. MediaDefender,
Louderback notes, gets paid to disrupt peer-to-peer networks by injecting
fake media files."
  

    
  <http://revision3.com/blog/2008/05/29/inside-the-attack-that-crippled-revision3>
  

    

That sounds like great lawsuit material to me.
  

    
Wow, this all gets more and more fascinating.
  

    

   Do Not Adjust Your Set

Comcast says it will begin shortly to choke the bandwidth of its customers
if it decides they have been downloading more than Comcast thinks they
should. It has been "interfering" with those of its customers who use the
BitTorrent protocol up to now, but so as to leave no client unmolested it
will soon "identify heavy bandwidth users" and "temporarily slow
connections" for them. "Most significantly, Comcast won't even tell its
customers if or when they are having their connections throttled", though a
representative said it would be noticeable. <http://tinyurl.com/5da53x>


   Printer Busted For Watching Movies

In related news, a professor and a grad student at the University of
Washington decided to test how trade groups like the RIAA and the MPAA
identify file-sharing copyright violators. In a pair of studies, they
"concluded that enforcement agencies are looking only at IP addresses of
participants on these peer-to-peer networks, and not what files are actually
downloaded or uploaded". The monitoring agents they placed on the Internet
received over 400 warning notices. Next they used the IP addresses of three
laser printers; the university was informed in letters that the printers had
unlawfully downloaded "Iron Man" (well, that's appropriate) and the latest
Indiana Jones epic. <http://tinyurl.com/4hbtng>


   Who Are These iPhone People?

According to Nielsen research:
 - one out of seven is 55-64 years old;
 - the most popular feature is the iPod function;
 - 36% of them run up a monthly bill over $100;
 - 37% watch video on their iPhone;
 - 20% play online games;
 - and 33% send instant messages with it.


   Military Intelligence

Though not always known for quick thinking on its own, the Department of
Defense has just spent $133 million on a supercomputer capable of over a
petaflop, described in the article as a quadrillion calculations per second.
(Next step? Glad you asked; the exaflop, then the zettaflop, the yottaflop,
and the xeraflop.) The "Roadrunner" located at Los Alamos is built from
12,960 IBM Cell chips originally designed for the Sony PlayStation and uses
three megawatts, or "about the power required by a large suburban shopping
center". Speaking of intelligence, remember Los Alamos was nearly destroyed
a few years ago in an intentionally set "controlled burn". Hmmm..
  

    

> Comcast won't even tell its
> customers if or when they are having their connections throttled",

That offers its competitors a significant marketing advantage should they
choose to take it.
  

    
 > Comcast won't even tell its
 > customers if or when they are having their connections throttled

Will it tell its support people?

If a customer calls in complaining of slow downloads, what will the
support person do?  Will they be able and/or allowed to say that it's
deliberate, or will they still go through whatever troubleshooting was
standard before this throttling started?

And how many support person-hours will be wasted with this?

Another thought:  In theory they could deliberately waste the customer's
time if the customer calls support while on throttled status.  By careful
use of the automated call-handling system it could be done without taking
much support-person time.

I have no idea of whether they will do this, but I can see how they might
if they wanted to.
  

    

It's funny how one can read the same basic story in another way that
leaves another impression. I read something like: Comcast will use quality
of service capabilities to ensure that the vast majority of customers get
decent response times during high usage periods. In other words, they're
going to not let a small number of people hog the pipe during peak
periods. It actually sounds reasonable said that way. I've had terrible
response times sometime because of someone else's usage. Of course, it
really does depend on their true intent and how they implement it.
And there should be a way to buy a guarenteed bandwidth but that's
another issue.
  

    

   Tracks In The Snow

Not exactly a future-Macintosh leak since it came from Steve Jobs, but an
interesting tidbit about "the next version of the OS X operating system,
Snow Leopard": he is reported as saying that "Apple would focus principally
on technology for the next generation of parallel computer processors".
Sounds like a movement..


   The Rise Of The Click-Bot

Evidently the WWWOS (world-wide war on spam) is having some effect; botnet
operators are using their armies less for spam and more for click fraud, in
which zombie machines repeatedly click on an online ad to simulate customer
interest and generate unearned commissions. There is even a company called
Click Forensics hired by advertisers and networks to follow this. They
report the percentage of click fraud due to botnets is up from 9 percent in
the first quarter of 2007 to 23.5% in 1Q2008; also that while most of it
originates in North America, runners-up are Monaco and Ghana.
  

    

   Steampunk Hypertext

An amazing story in today's paper at
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/science/17mund.html> about a Belgian
version of the Internet begun in 1895. Yes, 1895, when Grover Cleveland was
in the White House. It even included an early form of hypertext along with
the later (1934) concept of "a global network of 'electric telescopes' that
would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked
documents, images, audio and video files". Most of the physical
implementation was destroyed when the Germans occupied Belgium and turned
his building into an exhibit of Third Reich art, but parts survive such as a
museum in Mons. The Web site at <http://mundaneum.org/> is pretty spare, but
it seems to have spawned a project called "Babelcafe" at
<http://en.babelcafe.org>  which redirects to Wikipedia.
  

    

   Open Cells?

Cell-phone maker Nokia is reported set to buy the rest of software-maker
Symbian (it already owns 48%) for about $400 million, and turn it into an
open source foundation to make its smartphone OS available without royalties
to network operators and rivals like Ericsson, LG, Motorola, and Samsung.
Smartphones presently account for about a tenth of all cell phones worldwide
but are catching on; sales grew in 2007 by 72 percent. An analyst observes
Nokia is not solely motivated by charitable impulses: "These companies [IBM,
Sun] didn't make less revenue from their products through open source. They
simply got the sales back in a different way, from maintenance and other
service fees."
  

    
Apple is also heavily involved in open source...

http://www.apple.com/opensource/
  

    

   Replacing The SUVs On The Desktop

The "thin client", a lightly equipped PC that does much of its work at a
remote location, is making a comeback according to a NY Times article at
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/technology/21pc.html>, and most PC makers
don't like the idea for the same reason that GM and Ford don't like compact
cars: smaller profits. It says the current "netbook" movement was pioneered
by Asus and Everex who have sold out their inventory of $300 Eee machines
(Asus) and $350 CloudBooks (Everex). Granted that doesn't immediately
threaten the 271-million-unit sales of bigger PCs today, but IDC predicts
the sector may grow to nine million by 2012, and Intel says it may reach 40M
in three years. Fujitsu is waiting this one out, though; per its director of
mobile product management, "We're sitting on the sidelines because even if
this category takes off, and we get our piece of the pie, it doesn't add up;
It's a product that essentially has no margin."
  

    

   Into The Clouds!

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/technology/7540282.stm>

  "Microsoft sees end of Windows era
Microsoft has kicked off a research project to create software that will
take over when it retires Windows. Called Midori, the cut-down operating
system is radically different to Microsoft's older programs. It is centered
on the internet and does away with the dependencies that tie Windows to a
single PC. It is seen as Microsoft's answer to rivals' use of
"virtualisation" as a way to solve many of the problems of modern-day
computing. "
  

    

   Creative Commons Wins On Appeal

According to an article by John Markoff in today's NY Times business section
at <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/technology/14commons.html>, an earlier
trial ruling that the open-source contract of Creative Commons was "overly
broad" and invalid has been overturned by a federal appeals court. A UC
Berkeley professor sued Matthew Katzer of Kam Industries for distributing a
commercial program which incorporated open-source Java code without
crediting the authors as required. The article suggests that was just the
tip of the iceberg and that Mr. Katzer has opposed the terms of open-source
on several occasions. This ruling appears to validate the concept and enable
businesses and others to rely on the terms of the license.
  

    
<http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/att-wants-to-watch-you-read-ads/>

"AT&T is 'carefully considering' monitoring the Web-surfing activities of
customers who use its Internet service, the company said in a letter in
response to an inquiry from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce."
  

    

   The Fiber Gamble

The jury is still out on whether running fiber optic cable down residential
streets will prove to be a prescient strategy or a gross blunder, but some
results are in:

  "Verizon's FiOS: A Smart Bet or a Big Mistake?"
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/technology/19fios.html>