WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
OK guys, holiday time draws near. The time when European boys and girl all drop their work and head for beaches with sun (the hot, shiny thing hanging up in the sky, not the struggling computer company). I offered to write a simulation of all this, but was ordered to take a real break for two weeks... So, next week's issue will be the last until August 19th.
I note that the demise of Net Radio has been put back a few weeks to allow more time for negotiation. We shall see whether it makes any difference.
Big things are happening in happening here in London towne at the moment. Miserable and eccentric mayor, Ken Livingstone, is being challenged for the post by the cheerful and eccentric Boris Johnson. There's a good chance Boris will beat Ken, because even people who originally supported Ken are disgusted with his obsession with CCTV cameras and killjoy politics.
And talking about cameras, I had no idea of the extent to which people in this country are trashing the speed cameras installed by the side of the road. So much so that there is even a web site devoted to burned out cameras. The URL is in the Scanner section.
Oh, and while I remember - Happy Birthday to the ThinkPad - 15 years old this week!
And finally, those of you who read the Homework piece on the Greek mobile phone scam last week will be amused to know that on Sept 3-7 Athens is hosting the 18th IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications. The organisers report record registrations for the conference. Very apt!
Shorts:
Stop! Hold it right there!
Google and Microsoft, have been engaged in an arms race involving software that you can use online. Microsoft has been pushing its 'Microsoft Live' web based office application, Google is pushing everything, up to and including the kitchen sink to run online.
And what is the latest offering from Google? Why, it's a neat little browser plug-in called Google Gears. And what does it do? Hey guys, it caches stuff that you would use online so you can work offline.
Ummmm...
Isn't that what standard applications do? You know the stuff you install from a CD or DVD? Like I said -stop now. Why do we need to have online applications which then need special software to work offline, when we already have offline applications that can work online without any special software?
And really, at the end of the day, would you trust Microsoft or Google to look after your business data for you? I wouldn't!
http://code.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=69197&topic=11629
There were red faces in the office of Nevada Governor Jim A Gibbons this week when it was discovered that the username and the password for his Outlook e-mail account were posted on his web site! They appear in a Microsoft Word file giving details of how aides should send out the weekly e-mail updates to the 13,000+ subscribers. In case you're wondering, the user name is 'governor' and the password is 'kennyc', but I suspect they've probably changed it by now :)
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9747705-7.html
In an important move, Ask.com became he first major search engine to promise users that data on their queries won't be stored. There has been a lot of debate about the implications of search engines (especially Google) storing details of users research for long periods of time. The move by Ask hopefully marks the start of competition for users by offering better privacy and anonymity. If this does turn out to be the case, then we will all benefit from better control over information about ourselves. Well done Ask. I for one will start using Ask's search engine!
http://www.physorg.com/news104157198.html
I'm not sure whether it's good news for Apple, or bad news for Gateway. According to figures from Gartner the two computer vendors tied for third place in US personal computer shipments in the second quarter this year. Perhaps it's a bit of both - Apple's share went up, and Gateway's went down.
I don't know what will happen to Gateway, it's a long time since I last saw one of their computers, but if Apple continue to increase their sales then they are soon going to be selling to ordinary people rather than just Apple fanatics. I hope for their sake they improve their quality control. I hear all too many tales of laptops with cracked screen and apocryphal stories of the difficulties of getting Apple to make warranty repairs.
I'll keep my fingers crossed, because I'd like an Apple laptop, but I rate reliability far above ultra-coolness, so I'll be sticking with Toshiba for the foreseeable future.
http://update.techweb.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBA5h0HiOOq0G4V0FOh40EL
And talking of Toshiba, I note that they are recalling more Sony manufactured batteries following a laptop fire. The recall currently only affects Japanese customers, but I suspect it will soon extend to Europe and the US. Toshiba isn't the only company with battery problems - earlier this year Acer started a battery recall program, and last month Gateway extended its original recall program to cover another 14,000 laptops.
The real problem, of course, is that only a small fraction of the people with the affected computer are likely to take any notice and get replacement batteries...
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/07/19/toshiba_japan_recalls_batteries/
It looks like the European Court is about to advise the national courts that European telcos and ISPs do not have to hand over subscriber information to record labels trying to find files sharers. Spanish telco Telefonica was hauled into court for refusing to hand over the names and addresses of customers using Kazaa file sharing software.
The Spanish court asked the European Court for guidance on the case, and the advice from the court's advisor, Advocate General Juliane Kokott, was as I've stated above. The European Court could ignore his advice, but that seems unlikely. This should make for some interesting times in the near future!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/19/courts_protect_filesharers/
And while we are on the subject of file sharers, I note that an Oklahoma woman recently managed to zap none other than the Recording Industry Ass. of American (RIAA) for a cool US$70,000 in costs following a failed file sharing prosecution. I doubt that this will stop the RIAA from pursuing a business strategy of prosecuting its members' customers, but what it will do is to make people more inclined to defend themselves in court, costing the RIAA cash when they fail. I look forward to reporting more cases like this.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/17/riaa_pays_legal_fees/
Mention of the RIAA reminds me of that other class of loathsome toads - anti-virus companies. I was not really surprised to note that Symantec had to rush out an updated set of anti-virus definition files, after it mistakenly labeled a NASA open source virtual globe program and the Filezilla open source FTP client as a parasitic program called 'Adware-Cpush'.
This sort of thing happens more often than you think - not long ago the Church of England's sermon planning software was labelled as spawn of the devil by an anti-virus program. In the meantime the anti-virus companies collude with the likes of Sony to pass Sony's root kit as harmless, and rumours persist of unhealthy relationships between virus writers and the big anti-virus companies. There's no proof of the latter, of course, but then there wouldn't be, would there?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/17/norton_nasa_false_positive/
Which very conveniently leads us on to Sony, and their root kit and other DRM products. Sony didn't write the MediaMax DRM themselves, they outsourced it to an outfit called SunnComm (now called The Amergence Group), so Sony are suing Amergence in an attempt to recoup some of the millions of dollars it's had to cough up to settle class action law suites.
On the face of it, it looks like an open and shut case, with Sony the winner, but I wouldn't bet on it. Sony would have provided the specifications for the software, and Sony should have tested the final code to make sure it was up to scratch.
Let battle commence!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/16/sony_bmg_sues_amergence/
Moving over to this side of the pond, I note that the EU Court of the First Instance has announced that it will rule in mid-September on whether Microsoft broke EU anti-trust laws. Microsoft appealed against a decision by the EU Commission that it had broken the law and a fine of half a billion euros - about US$690 million.
The quaintly named 'Court of the First Instance' is the second highest court in the EU, so if Microsoft loses this one, there is only one other court to take a further appeal to. I'm not going over the case again, I've covered it several times in the past, and it's been going on for years (the original decision to fine Microsoft was in 2004, and that was after several year's investigation), but now looks like it is drawing to a close. Even JK Rowling's Harry Potter series has taken less time to finish! (It was Voldemort with the snake in the court of the first instance, or so I'm told :) )
More news in September, I guess...
http://update.techweb.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBAw30HiOOq0G4S0FOCK0EH
Actually, I think that Microsoft is soon going to face a much more serious threat to its dominance in this country, at least in the home market. Tesco supermarkets, which over the last 20 years have spread like a blight across England's green and pleasant land, are moving into sell software in their stores. Current titles include a complete office suite, two anti-virus products and a photo editing tool for school and home use. Each of these products retails for under £20 (US$40).
It has been running a trial in a mere 150 of its stores since last October, and has already sold 25,000 units. In the long run, I suspect this is a serious threat to Microsoft's hegemony in the home market. I'd suggest that Microsoft might like to ask Levi what happened to Levi's profit levels when Tesco moved into the jeans market a few years ago.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/07/19/tesco_home_software_apps/
Scanner: Other stories
Microsoft grows despite Windows Vista
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/20/microsoft_quarter_vista/
The IBM ThinkPad: 15 years old today
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/07/19/forgotten_tech_ibm_thinkpad/
Ten corollaries of Murphy's Law: Debugging
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=1832969:215D3E184FC552DC79B2C2BF0FBF47E3EFF29049075316B4
New ID system is 'lousy' technology but it's cheap
http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBAzj0FypUC0FrK0FONW0Ec
Burning speed cameras
http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2.htm
Net radio saved from certain death
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/13/net_radio_gets_stay_of_execution/
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, DJ and Lois for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for material to alan@ibgames.com.
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
22 July 2007
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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