WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
A mixed bag for you this week, as usual - Apple and e-books, Verizon, Microsoft and the NSA, the Economic Development Administration, Gettysburg, and Google. There are also URLs for Evi Nemeth, AT&T’s plans for your smartphone data, a record setting solar powered plane, and a back door in HP’s storage devices.
It’s hot here in the UK. We don’t have air conditioning because it’s never hot in the UK. Go figure! It’s only because I got up in the cool, cool, cool of the morning for an issue to be here!* Hope you like it...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpfvH32HdQQ
Shorts:
“The Plaintiffs have shown that the Publisher Defendants conspired with each other to eliminate retail price competition in order to raise e-book prices, and that Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy. Without Apple’s orchestration of this conspiracy, it would not have succeeded as it did in the Spring of 2010.” Thus spake Zarathustra District Judge Denise Cote in the Apple e-book price fixing case.
What it comes down to is that Apple have been found guilty of getting together with a bunch of publishers - Macmillan, Hachette, Penguin, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster - to fix the price of e-books at a level higher than Amazon was then charging, by changing the way in which they operated, in an effort to break Amazon’s hold on the market. The publishers settled with the US Department of Justice and the 33 State attorneys general who brought the case, but Apple decided to brazen it out.
Indeed part of Apple’s case was that it was ridiculous to haul them up before the court on anti-trust charges, because this helped break Amazon’s hold on the market. The judge dealt with that one pretty bluntly. “...the remedy for illegal conduct is a complaint lodged with the proper law enforcement offices or a civil suit or both. Another company’s alleged violation of antitrust laws is not an excuse for engaging in your own violations of law. Nor is suspicion that that may be occurring a defense to the claims litigated at this trial.”
Reportedly, Apple have indicated that they will appeal the decision. I can’t imagine why - you can’t get a much more blunt and to the point statement of guilt than the judge handed down, and all the co-conspirators have owned up and gone to stand in the naughty corner. Still, Apple doesn’t exactly have a reputation for being reasonable. I’ll keep you informed as things progress.
Incidentally, one final word. Many years ago I used to run a small bookshop in London. I can tell you that the big publishers are not nice people to deal with if you are a small independent retailer (or an author, if it comes to that). The combination of big publishers and Apple makes me shudder.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23259935
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/10/apple_found_guilty_ebook_price_fixing/
And talking about legal matters, New York’s Attorney General has laid it on the line to Verizon Communications. The ultimatum concerns Verizon’s plan to abandon offering a land line service on the western half of Fire Island and potentially other areas further upstate to satisfy the company’s wireless business strategy. If they carry out that strategy then, according to the attorney general, “Verizon [must] divest those portions of its New York franchise where it is no longer willing to continue providing wireline service and replace Verizon with another carrier that will provide wireline service.”
Tough talking on the part of the attorney general in a 13 page submission to the New York Public Service Commission. It seems that Verizon want to be relieved of the basic responsibility to provide universal wireline telephone service for all customers. No wonder the attorney general is getting agitated. This will be an interesting affair, since it is clear Verizon would like to move away from expensive to maintain landlines in rural areas, and force people to move to its wireless based Voice Link service.
However, historically, the reason they have been given a monopoly in an area, bringing in guaranteed monopoly, profits, and a secure franchise area , is that they agreed to offer a phone service to any customer who wanted it. Clearly the latest move is an attempt to both have their cake and eat it!
http://stopthecap.com/2013/07/03/ny-attorney-general-to-verizon-either-serve-your-customers-or-sell-and-get-out/
This week saw one of the more interesting revelations in the Edward Snowden saga. Let’s face it, most of what he has released so far has been pretty mundane stuff which anyone who stopped to think about it would assume was happening. It is, after all, the job of spies to spy. Has been since time immemorial.
However, the collaboration by Microsoft in deliberately not fixing security holes in its software so that the NSA could use them for spying is less forgivable, not to say crassly stupid. It was bound to get out sooner or later that Microsoft was deliberately leaving its software open not just to the NSA, but to any crook who found the security flaw. I would expect the likes of the NSA to take advantage of security holes - that’s their job. But Microsoft has no such excuse.
Even if you could make a case for deliberately leaving holes in the software it doesn’t hold water (so to speak). What about the threat from hostile powers to those companies in your own country using the flawed software? What about the financial damage caused by criminal break-in via the unpatched bugs? What about defense contractor companies being open to exploitation? I think Microsoft has a lot to answer for on this issue.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/u-s-agencies-said-to-swap-data-with-thousands-of-firms.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/11/snowden_leak_shows_microsoft_added_outlookencryption_backdoor_for_feds/
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/computers/item/15925-tech-companies-hiding-depth-of-cooperation-with-nsa-surveillance
And from government departments that are too tech savvy for our own good, to ones that have no tech savvy at all. I actually looked at the date on this story when I first saw it but, no, it’s not an April fool hoax. The Economic Development Administration, part of the US Department of Commerce, was infected by malware. So what did they do about it? They destroyed the infected equipment - US$170,000 worth of it, including desktops, printers, TVs, cameras, computer mice, and keyboards! Unbelievable. Computer mice destroyed because of a malware infection! A further US$3 million worth of equipment was only saved because the agency ran out of money to pay to have it destroyed. The mind boggles.
http://gizmodo.com/government-destroys-170k-of-hardware-in-absurd-effort-708412225
http://www.oig.doc.gov/OIGPublications/OIG-13-027-A.pdf
Homework:
July 4th has come and gone - I wish I’d been at Gettysburg to see the 150th anniversary celebrations. Belatedly, though, I thought you might like to see the satellite picture that NASA took of the area with the important features, like Little Round Top marked for you. The text also makes interesting reading as it discusses what the opposing generals could and couldn’t see.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=81552&src=eoa-iotd
For Geeks:
The UK’s Daily Telegraph has an interesting view of Google in a recent issue. They were allowed to sit in as a new intake of employees were indoctrinated into the Google way. I always thought I would like to work for Google, until a few years ago when someone I worked with joined Google. As part of his introduction to the company he was sent skiing in Austria. That was more than enough to turn me off - apart from anything else, I hate heights, and even that aside I’ve never understood the attraction of skiing as a sport. As a means of getting from A to B when there is thick snow on the ground, I understand. But for fun? Ick.
Anyway, take a look at the article, the attitudes of the writer are somewhat Brit based, but it’s well worth a read to get an idea of what drives the world’s biggest advertising broker.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/10150353/A-glimpse-into-the-world-of-Google.html
Scanner: Other stories
Godmother of Unix admins Evi Nemeth presumed lost at sea
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/05/evi_nemeth_unix_dead/
How to opt out of AT&T’s plan to sell everything it knows about you and your smartphone use
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/03/how-to-opt-out-of-atts-plan-to-sell-everything-it-knows-about-you-and-your-smartphone-use/
NSA scandal: as tech giants fight back, phone firms stay mum
http://business.time.com/2013/07/03/nsa-scandal-as-tech-giants-fight-back-phone-firms-stay-mum/
Solar-powered plane finishes record-setting journey from California to New York City
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/solar-powered-plane-finishes-journey-lands-nyc-article-1.1392177?localLinksEnabled=false
HP admits to back doors in storage products
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/11/hp_prepping_fix_for_latest_storage_vuln/
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
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 Thunderbird spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
14 July 30013
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! 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.
