WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
I hate weeks like this when the bulk of my material comes in at the end of the week. If I were paranoid, I'd think that someone had it in for me. Fortunately, I understand that it's probably just incompetence on the part of a higher power...
Well! Congratulations to the integrated circuit (ic) which was 50 years old this week. It was born when Jack Kilby demonstrated the first ic at Texas Instruments on 12 September 1958. The chip measured 7/16in by 1/16in and contained one (yes one) transistor, some resistors and a capacitor. Today's chips contain rather more components, although the main chip makers seem to have given up publishing just how many transistors their current chips contain, so I can't tell you exactly. However, using Moore's Law I can tell you that it's roughly two raised to power of fifty over one point five. The arithmetic is left as an exercise for the reader...
And a reminder: Winding Down will not be available on September 28th (the week after next) and October 5th, because I will be away on a course in Oxford. Winding down will be back on October 12th.
Roundup: Of Lawyers, Language and Licentiousness
A High Court judge here in the UK has struck a blow against lawyers for using their word processors to produce boilerplate documents. Judge Peter Prescott QC described a legal document he was ruling on as being ambiguous and drafted by someone without '...a deep understanding of the relevant law...' He went on to say, '...Bits of legal boilerplate are bolted together so that it is the words that are allowed to shape the concept, instead of the other way round.'
I suspect the losing side will be having a few strong, and well chosen, words with their lawyers in the not too distant future...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/11/court_attacks_badly_written_contracts/
While we are on the subject of legal spats, I have no doubt most of you followed the story about the bottom dropping out of United Airlines share price, after Google indexed a six year old Florida Sun Sentinel story about UA going into bankruptcy.
Given the potential costs for a legal case, the question of whose fault it all was is being passed around like a hot potato. The Sun Sentinel claim they didn't change the URL of the story, so it shouldn't have been indexed. Google claim it was changed, so they were perfectly correct to index it. A Florida investment company that produced a one line summary of the story without checking the content are also in the frame. Finally, there is the fact that the one liner made its way into Monday's Bloomberg business wire, this time without Bloomberg checking.
I think they're all guilty m'Lud. Actually, I would apportion the blame in reverse order of appearance. The biggest fault lies with Bloomberg, who appear to have failed to even pick up the phone and ask UA if the story was true. Next is the unnamed Florida investment firm, who also failed to check the story.
I don't really think that Google are in the wrong this time, although they need to rethink their 'a new URL is a new story' behaviour - it's certainly not true in today's web, even if it was anything other than a rough approximation in the past. And finally, the Sun Sentinel must take a small part of the blame for not making sure that its stories are clearly datelined.
Most of the buck passing at the moment seems to be an argument between Google and the Sentinel about whether or not the URL changed. I think that's pretty irrelevant. The key issue is why the story was not properly checked before it went out. So, Bloomberg, what are you going to do to make sure this doesn't happen again?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/11/ual_share_price_fiasco_analysis/
Next in line is the story that a former Verizon techie has been apprehended for using customer lines to make 45,000 minutes of sex calls - that's US$220,000. According to Verizon estimates, in a 40 week period he spent 15 weeks talking on 900 chat lines! Just one question - how come his supervisors didn't notice?
http://wcbstv.com/watercooler/phone.sex.calls.2.813865.html
More lawyer stuff. Defence attorneys in Arizona won a major victory this week when a judge ruled that they should be given access to the software used by the Intoxilyzer breath testing machine. Given that the company that makes the machines has already been fined over US$1.2 million for refusing to disclose the software in other jurisdictions, I doubt if the attorneys will get to see it soon.
If they don't see it, there is a good chance that their clients will have the drunk driving charges dismissed, even if they were driving under the affluence of incerhol , since the prosecution will not be able to prove that the machines are accurate. I'm surprised that the police don't always follow up positive breathalyzer results with a blood test, which would be much easier to prove.
This touches on a wider issue. If you are charged with a crime, you (usually) have the right to see all the evidence against you. Does that include software used to produce the result that caused you to be charged? Oh, and don't get me started about the right to see the software code that's supposedly counting my vote in an election!
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/257375
And finally in the case yet to happen department I notice that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has hired the so-called 'Super Lawyer' Sandy Litvack, former general council for Walt Disney, to help it review the Google/Yahoo advertising deal for possible anti-trust action. Significantly, Litvack was the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the DoJ Antitrust Division in the Carter administration.
You know, I've always thought that Google was following closely in Microsoft's footsteps, but I didn't expect it to even feature in an anti-trust action brought by the DoJ!
http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?
articleID=210600373
Shorts:
What does your web site look like? And can someone who doesn't know you find it easily through a search engine? What sort of material do you post on social networking sites? It's probably more important than you think, and not just because you want people to be able to find your fascinating prose and pictures.
A new survey on CareerBuilder.com has revealed that one in five employers use social networking sites to assess the suitability of candidates. I also know from personal experience that in every job I've applied for in the last few years, at least one of the interviewers has checked out my web site (several of them asked me about material on it). In the case of my current employer, the content on the site played a part in getting me the job.
It is, according to the survey, the same with social networking sites. Employers can reject or accept candidates on the basis of what they find on the net. Big no-nos are information and pictures of drinking or drug use, while plusses are a fit with company culture and good communication skills. Are your Facebook entries written in clear, coherent, properly spelt, English? Jobs aren't getting any easier to come by in the present economic climate. Perhaps it's time to clean up your public act!
http://www.careerbuilder.com/share/aboutus/pressreleasesdetail.aspx?id=pr459&sd=
9%2F10%2F2008&ed=12%2F31%2F2008&siteid=cbpr&sc_cmp1=cb_pr459_
There were a couple of interesting snippets of news coming out of Hewlett Packard (HP) this week. The first was a claim that it has a laptop whose battery will give up to 24 hours of continuous use on a single charge. Forgive me for being cynical. While I don't doubt that HP have extended, perhaps significantly, the battery life, I've seen too many claims of 'xx hours' computing to believe the claim is valid for the real world. There is also the point that few people actually spend 24 hours working on their computers.
Did I hear a cry of 'World of Warcraft' from the back row? Company computers for playing games? Surely some mistake?
http://www.physorg.com/news140105404.html
The other rumours emanating from HP involve the curious case of the alternative operating system. It seems that the PR wonks at HP have just discovered that touting the Windows Vista compatibility of HP machines is winning no sales. Most of us noticed that months ago, but these things take time to percolate through to PR departments in big companies.
HP appear to be reacting to this revelation on two fronts. The first it to try to build something a little less resource intensive and a little more customer oriented on top of the basic Vista system. Good luck, HP!
The second reaction is to investigate the possibility of cutting free from Microsoft completely and shipping their own, Linux based operating system. HP are being cagey about admitting to the second option, but freely admit to the first.
HP's own operating system on consumer machines would be quite a step for HP, although they have plenty of experience with Unix on their servers. The research seems to be driven by the competition from Apple. A lot of HP sales come from the sub-US$1,000 notebook market, an area where Apple currently has no product. If Apple were to come out with a notebook in that market while HP were still lumbered with Windows Vista, there could be serious consequences for profitability. Understandably, HP want to avoid being in this situation, and the way they are going, if senior management doesn't get cold feet, may just be what they need.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_38/b4100084242512.htm?
campaign_
id=rss_tech
Here's an interesting little (and little known) factoid - traditional search engines like Google and Yahoo index only about 0.2% of the Internet. The rest of the Internet is known as the 'Deep Web' - remember that, it's a good buzzword for work - and, for one reason or another, cannot be accessed by traditional search engines.
Now a firm, Infovell, has emerged claiming to be able to penetrate the Deep Web. It will be nice if it works. I would like to find something that indexes the really interesting stuff, rather than the trivial. The jury is out at the moment, it doesn't launch until the end of this month. After that I will, as with the Cuil engine, give it a six month period of grace to iron out the bugs, before deciding whether it works or not.
http://www.infovell.com
http://www.physorg.com/news140110066.html
A friend once told me a few years back that Sony Vaios were 'blazing hot'. At the time I didn't know just how true that would prove to be. Fast forward to 2008 and what do we find but a familiar tale of laptops 'overheating' (a PR euphemism for 'it would be very unwise to put them on your lap, even if they are called laptops'). 440,000 of these machines have already been recalled in the US and Japan.
Sony aren't admitting that they are recalling the UK laptops (it's another of those faulty battery things, by the way), they're just bringing back channel stock and 'reworking' the affected model. Hmm... Looks like a recall... Smells like a recall... Sounds like a recall... Could it be that it really is a recall?
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/09/05/sony_uk_dealers_wiring_fault/
I wasn't surprised to find that the Electronic Arts (EA) release 'Spore' encumbered as it is by Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) is not proving to be as popular as EA hoped. In fact on Amazon.com it has (currently) 2,015 one star votes out of a total of 2,215. While this is obviously an organised campaign, which may or may not be significant, the DRM is definitely onerous, requiring both online activation and the disk in the drive to play.
Personally, I've virtually stopped buying game because I don't want companies (especially games companies) poking around in my computer. I still buy a few older games as they go on sale cheap. But new games? Forget it!
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2558
I had to smirk. A company called Verayo has just announced the world's first unclonable (their description) silicon chip - the Vera X512H RFID chip. I can't imagine anyone who fancies themselves as a hacker missing out on a challenge like this. What's the betting that it will be hacked within three months - a year at the outside. If you don't agree, then perhaps you'd also be interested in buying the Eiffel tower, which I can sell to you for a mere US$10 million - cheap at twice the price!
http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=6480
The next item I came across wiped the smirk off my face: the UK government's Migration Advisory Committee on which skills the UK is short of. Ballerinas, fish-gutters and sheep shearers are all ahead of IT staff. My company has just spent months trying to find a qualified Java programmer, and all we get are university 'computer science' graduates whose only skill is to be able cobble together a bunch of Java libraries.
That's part of the problem. Because of graduates with useless skill sets, and everyone who has once used Microsoft Front Page allowed to call themselves a 'Web Site Designer', the country looks like it's flooded with more IT staff than it could ever use. It's not, of course, and the lack of trained staff is forcing more and more stuff to be outsourced, in spite of the dire quality of the code that comes back.
It's odd that they think we need sheep-shearers and fish-gutters, since there is supposed to be a youth knife-based crime wave here. They don't need to import more people familiar with knives - just add a few training courses on sheep-shearing and fish gutting to the prison rehab schedules and, voila, ex-criminals using their existing skills in a socially useful manner!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/09/uk_skills_shortage/
Coda: More on previous stories
There is an analysis of the Fedora-Red Hat affair by Bruce Byfield on earthweb. It makes disturbing reading for all who value the open source ethos.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3770216/The+Fedora-Red+Hat+Crisis.htm
The UK police have started quizzing British telecom over its covert wiretapping while testing the Phorm 'deep-packet' and profiling system in 2006 and 2007.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/05/bt_phorm_police_meeting/
Geek Toys:
All true geeks build their own PCs, but with the proliferation of components it's sometimes difficult to review all the possibilities. Never fear, the solution is at hand: Ars Technica's September 2008 system guide.
Ars Technica offer three price ranges, the Budget Box priced at under US$800, the Hot Rod, a mere US$1,600 to build, and finally the God Box - 'Cost is no object'. All the machines have the chosen options justified and also carry suggestions for alternatives. From my own knowledge I'd say that even the 'cheap' machine is going to be pretty powerful, but the top end version will absolutely scream along, although you may scream at the electricity bills. Two Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB video cards, each drawing 260 watts. Ouch! This baby needs a 1.25KW power supply. But, man, feel the (band)width!
Joking apart, if you do plan to build your own machine this piece is well worth a look. If I was based in the US I would probably build myself a workstation based on the 'Hot Rod' specs. A useful round up.
http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200809.ars
On a slightly less spectacular scale I notice that Pinnacle have added a new ultra compact HDTV tuner in a USB stick. Pretty nifty, since you can also pause live TV and record shows to a hard drive of a DVD recorder. Sounds good.
http://www.physorg.com/news140092406.html
Recent Reading:
The Mystery of Capital by Hermando De Soto. Black Swan Books
I had high hopes of this book, since I'd come across mention of it in a number of different books read previously. In the event I was somewhat disappointed. It wasn't that I massively disagreed with the book. It was more that I fell asleep while reading it! The problem is that Mr de Soto seems to have been told that you only teach one thing at a time and repeat it in at least three different ways. This may be true talking in a classroom, but in a book it leads rapidly to terminal boredom.
The central theme of the book is simple - the reason while capitalism has not taken off outside the west is not that people are somehow lazy (quite to the contrary) but that legal and property systems do not allow them to use their property to obtain liquid capital. I don't disagree, but I think this is a one-dimensional view. I'm always dubious about single cause explanations for economic and social phenomena, and this idea is no exception. Yes, lack of legal property is an important part of the problem, but it's not the only one, and a more rounded view of the problems involved
is needed to resolve them.
Scanner: Other Stories
The integrated circuit is 50 years old this week
http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/604848/integrated-circuit-is-50-years-old-today.html
Microsoft delivers four critical updates
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/09/microsoft_sept_patch_tuesday/
Senate Judiciary Committee approves copyright cops
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080911-committee-amends-approves-enormous-
gift-to-big-content.html
VMware co-founder quits for academia
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/09/vmware_rosenblum_quits_for_stanford/
The London Stock Exchange goes down for whole day
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSL01084620080908
http://www.onwindows.com/Articles/LSE-TradElect-system-goes-live/843/Default.aspx
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi and Slashdot's daily newsletter 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 voracious Spamato spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
14 September 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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