WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
Sunday, and it's time to write another Winding Down. Well, it beats going out of the apartment any day. The weather over here has moved into winter mode - cold, wet and miserable. That's as opposed to summer, which is warm, wet, and miserable. For the record there is usually a week in the spring or autumn when it is merely miserably hot and Americans ask why we don't have air conditioning. :)
I was pleased to note that the ASUS Eee PC, which I will buy when some more make it into the shops over here, made it into one of London's decidedly low-tech newspapers list of the top ten laptops. This emboldened me to read another newspaper where I learned that the UK government has spent two billion UK pounds (about US$3.5 billion) since 2000 on projects it has now abandoned. They should have talked to me - I could have abandoned twice as many projects for half the price!
Oh well, I suppose we'd better talk about Microsoft...
Story: Microsoft - Once more unto the breach
The EU has opened two formal investigations into whether Microsoft has abused its position by squeezing out competing browsers and software rivals. Readers with long memories will remember that only last year the EU closed a multi-year investigation into Microsoft's activities. The result, upheld by the courts, was a large fine (petty cash to Microsoft, but large to everyone else) and an order to open up large chunks of code to people who needed it to make their products compatible. As a consequence, Microsoft's position is weaker this time round, since there are now precedents detrimental to Microsoft.
I have to confess that it always puzzled me at the time why, when Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer free, as part of the operating system, it didn't face charges of 'dumping', which is illegal in most Western countries, including the US and the EU.
Dumping, for those unfamiliar with the concept, is the practice of manufacturers selling products at below cost in order to capture market share and drive competitors out of the market. Dumping, as far as I know, is only applied to foreign companies, not to domestic ones - though, of course, there are often other, anti-trust sanctions for domestic misbehaviour. Probably the best known cases of dumping were in the early years of micro-computing when Korean chip makers were found guilty of dumping memory chips, and both the US and the EU slapped punitive import tariffs on the offending chips.
I guess, at the time the regulators didn't really think about software in these terms - but if you give something away for free that you paid people to develop, then that's got to be selling it for less than it costs! At the time Microsoft were doing their best to obscure things by winding the browser into their Windows operating system, and the people being hammered were mostly start-ups with little political and legal savvy.
Of course, things are different now. Microsoft may still be the biggest on the block, but there are plenty of extremely clever people watching its every move, and the latest EU probes are probably only the start in a new chain of woes.
I'll bring you more on this story once the investigations open properly.
http://www.physorg.com/news119531599.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/14/microsoft_hit_new_ec_probes/
Shorts:
Coming soon to a grocery cart near you - in-trolly advertising from Microsoft! Yes, dear readers, Microsoft is working with a company called MediaCart Holdings to bring the infamous 'blue screen of death' to the humble shopping cart. Starting in the second half of 2008 the companies plan to test the MediaCart - which also includes facilities to pay for your wheaties and the like without queuing - in ShopRite supermarkets.
I look forward to hearing from readers who try this beast out - you never know, it might just be useful enough to make it worth putting up with the agro. Hopefully, Microsoft will have learned enough about security in the last five years to avoid broadcasting your credit card details all over the supermarket...
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080114/D8U5LR780.html
Is the Recording Industry Ass of America (RIAA) going to go down in history as the example par excellence of hubris in the 21st Century? Its policy of suing everyone in sight for 'file sharing' is starting to backfire. This week a US District Court in Oregon confirmed that the RIAA has to pay Tanya Andersen's lawyer fees. It also cleared the way for Ms Andresen's to file against the RIAA for malicious prosecution, and for that to become a class action.
The RIAA pursued a file sharing suit against Ms Andresen for two and a half years before dropping the case just hours before the court deadline for producing evidence of file sharing. Sounds pretty malicious to me!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/17/tanya_andersen_riaa_attorneys_fees/
Living, as I do, in the world's most CCTV infested city - London, England - I was absolutely fascinated to read a report of testimony from a representative of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) to the House of Lords Constitution Committee this week.
Cameras, Graeme Gerrard, head of CCTV at ACPO, told the committee, don't deter drunkenness and violence in town centres, because people have to be rational to be deterred by them! And on the rationality front, criminals contemplating theft will take the cameras into account when planning the heist!
Not that this deters ACPO from wanting more cameras - their written submission says, 'The availability of CCTV images greatly assists in the investigation of crime and disorder.' Surely some contradiction here...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/17/cctv_failure/
Security mavens are worried about a new web infection that is poisoning web sites and causing them to distribute toxic malware to visitors. The problem is that at the moment, although they can figure out what the infected sites are doing, no one has cracked the problem of how the sites are being infected in the first place. The techniques being used represent an important breakthrough for malicious hackers, since without knowing how the malware is spread, it's very difficult to prevent new sites from being infected. More on this story as it develops.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/01/16/mysterious_web_infection_continues/
Back to Microsoft, whose latest patent filing to be made public will send shivers up (or down) your spine. The patent is for big brother software that is capable of remotely monitoring your productivity, physical health and 'competence'. The system involves linking the user to their computer via sensors that measure metabolism. Measurements include heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression(!), and blood pressure. These are supposed to give a measure of 'performance' for the managers to watch.
I wonder how long it will be before a 'taser' facility is added to give people electric shocks if their 'performance' is considered 'inadequate'?
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3193480.ece
It's difficult to avoid a smirk in this story. Apparently a conman found the details of the chairman of the UK's Barclays Bank, Marcus Agius, online, and persuaded the bank's call centre to give him a Barclaycard in Mr Agius's name with a 10,000 UK Pounds (about US$18,000) credit limit. I don't think much more needs to be said! The case is a poster child for the dangers of identity theft...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7181741.stm
Oh dear, herding cats suddenly starts to look easy. An article in the Columbia Journalism Review suggests that bloggers should be in a union. I can just see it now - The (Dis)United Bloggers Guild of America. One could go on at length about the inanity (or should that be insanity?) of the idea, but I'll settle for just one point. For a union to work, its members have to have something in common - preferably something economic. Bloggers as a whole don't have anything in common, and who would they go on strike against? Their readers? Their ISPs? The people who write blogging software without decent spelling checkers? Microsoft? The mind boggles!
Homework:
European readers might be interested in a post-graduate course offered by the UK's Open University, on 'Computer Forensics and Investigations'. The course blurb looks interesting, and you don't need academic computer qualifications to take the course, which is all distance learning. If I had more time, I think I would probably give this a go myself.
http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01M889
Geek Toys:
Everyone's fave in-cubicle geek toy - the USB missile launcher - just got a new year upgrade. Not only does it launch missiles, but now it comes equipped with a targeting webcam! The only down side is that you need MSN instant messaging to use it. Still, it looks pretty nifty to me. As El Reg commented, all it needs is wireless control, rather than a measly four feet of cable, to make this toy the bee's knees (or should that be the geek's knees?)
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/01/14/usb_missile_launcher_gets_webcam/
And now a special treat for the paranoid geek - tinfoil knickers! The URL is for an online shop whose clothes have a silver lining - literally! Fed up of wearing your home-made tin-foil hat? Well here is a smart baseball cap woven from silver/copper core thread. Just the thing to protect the top of your head from radio-frequency pollution...
http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html
Recent Reading:
India after Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha. Macmillan
At over two inches thick, this book is, at first sight, more than a little daunting. Open it up, though, and you will find the work of a true master of historical and political analysis. Mr Guha is also an excellent writer, and the book is a joy to read. It is a history of India over the last six decades, and what a history! it's all here: the origins of the Kashmir dispute, the war with China, the rise and assassination of Indira Gandhi, Indian cinema, and, of course, the recent rise of outsourcing and the Indian software industry.
This is the way history should be written!
Scanner: Other Stories
Companies launch gadget buy back services
http://www.physorg.com/news119771885.html
Sun buys MySQL
http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/sun-acquires-mysql.html/
http://lwn.net/Articles/265303/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/16/sun_buys_mysql/
Consumer Electronics wireless babel
http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBGP30FypUC0FrK0FlSd0Es
Latest Vista SP1 tweak open to everyone with a week to spare
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/14/windows_sp1_rc_refresh_open/
CIA claims cyber attackers blacked out cities (but they won't say which ones!)
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=205901631
Microsoft threatens startups over account info
http://techland.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/01/18/the-hard-side-of-mister-softie/
FCC will test Internet over TV airwaves - again
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22728557/
The Video Game industry goes political
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/technology/15game.html?_r=2&ref=
technology&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Severe UPnP flaw allows home router hijacking
http://update.techweb.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBGTX0HiOOq0G4W0Flqq0EM
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi and Lois for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voratious Spamato spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
20 January 2008
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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