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The
weekly newsletter for the Fed II game by ibgames EARTHDATE: January 29, 2006 OFFICIAL
NEWS |
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The
weekly newsletter for the Fed II game by ibgames EARTHDATE: January 29, 2006 OFFICIAL
NEWS |
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 WINDING DOWN An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news by Alan Lenton There was more news than I expected this week, so I've had to push some of it back to next week. I did however find some space to relate the latest happenings at Fortress Redmond. Come to think of it, Microsoft must be almost the only company of any size in the US who haven't yet managed to lose tapes with their customer's data on them. Never mind, I'm sure they have some people working on that. I notice that a couple of academics in Gothenburg, Sweden have come up with a nifty way of having Wi-Fi enabled MP3 players automatically exchange tunes as they pass one another. Oh Joy, drive-by MP3 viruses... I also spotted that US companies spent more on lawyers than on Research & Development last year. Nothing new there, then. Now, as for Microsoft...
Microsoft is still locking horns with EU over the company's failure to provide adequate documentation for third party developers. Developers need this to produce sophisticated products that work with Microsoft's operating systems. But even as the EU granted an extension until February 15 to produce the documentation, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) was articulating very similar criticism. If Microsoft doesn't come through with the documentation the EU will be fining it US$2.45 million a day, backdated to when the documentation was originally due, last December. The documentation it has so far produced was judged to be 'totally unfit for its intended purpose' by the neutral arbiter approved by both Microsoft and the EU. Microsoft has cited an inability to find qualified employees able to construct adequate documentation from the documentation they have available. This is totally believable and says a lot about the quality of Microsoft's internal documentation, and the quality of its code. The question is however, how much of the lack of quality is deliberate? And what are they going to do about it? Microsoft have offered an alternative. Third party developers can sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and pay to look at the source code. Pay for something that was supposed to be provided free as part of the anti-trust settlement! But even without the NDA and the payment, the code base is a poison chalice. Anyone who looked at the code would automatically be prevented from working on competing products. Why? Because they would be liable to accusations that they had used copyrighted code they had seen in Microsoft's source. Fortunately, the EU are not taking the offer at face value and have already declared that it's not good enough. Lets hope they stick to that position. A lot of people have asked me how it is that Microsoft can mess around when they have a fine of US$2.45 million per day hanging over their heads? Well there are two possible answers to that question. The first is that the cultural gulf between the US and the EU is such that Microsoft simply do not believe that the EU will actually impose the fine. They could be right, but I don't think that's really what is behind it. To find out what is behind Microsoft's arrogance you have to look at the numbers and do some sums. This week Microsoft published its accounts for the last quarter of 2005. On a record revenue of US$11.84 billion (up 9 percent and the best quarter ever) it made a net income of US$3.65 billion (that's over 30 percent, by the way). Ok - now US$3.65 billion is US$3,650 million, and that is for three months - or 90 days. Now, 90 days worth of fines at US$2.45 million per day is US$220 million. Divide the net income by the total fine and we find that Microsoft is earning 16.5 times more that it is being fined. And Microsoft is predicting that the current quarter's income is going to rise to US$4.5 billion. (Note: the figures have been rounded out for the arithmetic.) Even on last quarter's figures the fine represents only six per cent of Microsoft's income. The fact is that these fines are like the parking tickets that plumbers get - part of the cost of doing business! So now you know why Microsoft would rather risk the fine than provide the documentation... http://www.physorg.com/news10326.html
Let's start this week's shorts with a little conundrum to exercise your brain. What US commercial organisation considers that the rules it is demanding everyone else should obey thinks that the rules don't apply to itself? I'll give you a hint - the name contains the word 'Ass'. Yes? You at the back? Correct! It is indeed the Motion Picture ASSociation of America (MPAA). The ASSociation was recently given an advance copy of a film about how it does the content ratings for new movies. It was specifically told that it couldn't make any copies of the movie. On Monday the MPAA admitted that it had copied the film, but claimed that they were not violating copyright law because their staff were the subject of the film! I'm sure this interesting and unique concept will be noted by defence lawyers the whole country over... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/25/mpaa_caught_pirating_dvds/ So many reports of lost data tapes are coming in these days that soon losing a data tape with tens of thousands of your customers' social security numbers won't be news anymore. The latest story to break is of Bridgeport-based People's Bank losing a tape containing information on 90,000 of its customers. The information included names, addresses, social security and checking account numbers. Meanwhile, many miles away, Kansas City-based H&R Block was busy sending out unsolicited mail to its customers. H&R Block wasn't actually losing computer tapes, instead it was embedding the recipient's social security number in the package tracking number. H&R Block seem to feel that no one is going to notice because the entire tracking code is 47 digits long. I guess it gives a new meaning to the term 'security by obscurity'! While all this was going on, ChoicePoint, erstwhile involuntary purveyors of identity information to the criminal fraternity, were settling up with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to the tune of US$10 million in fines. It was also bound to pay a further US$5 million in restitution to those who suffered from identity theft as a result of it compromising the information of 163,000 people. Have you noticed how there has been a sudden outbreak of data loss since it became a legal requirement to notify the affected customers? This suggests to me one of three things. Either companies have been getting very careless since the notification laws were passed, or... data thieves have decided the new laws are an opportunity to go high profile. Alternatively, perhaps, it's been like this all the time and millions of people had their personal information compromised, but no one was told about it. Now which do you think is the correct answer? http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2006/01/11/ I mentioned in issues December 11 and January 8 the losses taken by companies trading on the Tokyo stock exchange. The main problem is that there is no way of canceling an order. Things aren't getting any better. This week there was another error when a trader with Daiwa Securities made a mistake and sold 25,000 shares of the wrong company. The error was spotted a couple of minutes later and a buy back order issued, but by then investors had already snapped up over half the shares. By the end of trading Daiwa had managed to re-purchase all the outstanding shares, but lost almost 500 million yen (about US$4.26 million) in the process. Given the number of problems that have cropped up in the year or so, it's clear that these are not isolated incidents. Errors that happen this frequently indicate structural problems. Heads have already rolled - including that of the Exchange's boss, but the problems will continue until the procedures are changed and the software is changed to fit safer procedures. In the mean time there's a nasty hole in the pot for bonuses at Daiwa. http://www.cbc.ca/story/business/national/2006/01/13/goof-060113.html Every heard of a company called Verichip? It's currently involved in a run up to a much anticipated IPO. Verichip make RFID implants for people. The Mexican authorities were so impressed that they had Verichip embed their chips in the arms of 18 of the Attorney General's staff. The chips give access to a sensitive records room. Then there are bar clients in Europe who have a chip fitted to pay for their drinks in a bar. The digerati thought this was all tres cool, the security community were less impressed. This week a security researcher published details of how to extract the information on the chip and use it to program another chip to mimic the original. Ooops! I guess that might well put a crimp on Verichip's IPO, to say the least. http://cq.cx/verichip.pl A couple of weeks ago I reported the launch of the new Intel-powered iMac. Steve Jobs claimed its speed "will knock our customers' socks off". Apple benchmarks showed a fourfold increase in speed over the G4 and G5 processors previously used. At the time I suggested that the new machines might have trouble with the heat generated by the notoriously power hungry Intel chips. Well, I was wrong. Trouble yes, heat no. 'MacWorld' magazine has been running some bench tests on the new x86 iMacs and discovered that there is indeed a four involved in the speed increase. Unfortunately for Apple's claims, it is only 1 over 4, not 4 over 1. The new machine don't run four times as fast, they only run a quarter faster. When I was told that Apple was one of the most creative companies in the business, I thought it was their products that were being referred to, not their numbers! http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/01/23/intel_macs_25pc_faster/ And while we are on the subject of numbers, here's an interesting one: 98 per cent. That's the percentage of US patents that have errors in them. Most of the mistakes are trivial, but not all. A small, but significant number contain errors serious enough to invalidate some or all of the patent. I'm not really surprised, given the sloppy nature of the US Patent Office, which seems to grant patents without worrying too much about whether they are valid or not. http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/01/20/proofreading_errors_in_software_patents/ Best story of the week, though, was the grass roots response to the Supreme Court judgement in Kelo vs City of New London, Conn. The case resulted in the power of local governments to take over private property being significantly broadened. In this case the City was allowed to take over private property and sell it on to a developer in the interests of redevelopment. Well... In Weare, New Hampshire, voters will decide in March whether the town will seize the property of Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who supported the taking of Kelo's property. Souter's property, it is proposed, will be used for the purpose of erecting a hotel and property-rights museum. The development is called 'Lost Liberty Hotel'. Just goes to show, ordinary voters are not powerless - all that's needed is a little imagination! http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2005/06/29/
Microsoft looks beyond
Vista and sees Vienna Date set for Blackberry
ban hearing The lie detector you'll
never know is there UK IT industry prepares
for the worst over ID cards UK.gov loves computer
contractors (true) VOIP attack
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist. His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan. Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html. |
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