August 2004 Archives

Cory Doctorow:
Joyce Park is a coder who worked at Friendster, leading the charge to re-engineer the poky, Java-based back-end with fast PHP. She blogged about it, got slashdotted, got written up in the press -- and got fired. Even though there was nothing confidential in her blog posts, the new CEO shitcanned her.

[I]t's especially ironic because Friendster, of course, is a company that is all about getting people to reveal information about themselves...

Link, Link to Jeremy Zawodny's instructions for resigning from Friendster

(Thanks, Jeffreyp!)

Cory Doctorow:
The Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert has gone on record as suspecting that billionaire currency speculator George Soros (who made his money on currency speculation) is a drug kingpin. Soros funds a lot of progressive causes (including a lot of drug-law and copyright-reform stuff) and has pledged his financial support to overturn the Bush presidency, so this smear is clearly political in nature:

"You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where -- if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from," Hastert mused. An astonished Chris Wallace asked: "Excuse me?" The Speaker went on: "Well, that's what he's been for a number years -- George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he's got a lot of ancillary interests out there." Wallace: "You think he may be getting money from the drug cartel?" Hastert: "I'm saying I don't know where groups - could be people who support this type of thing. I'm saying we don't know."

Link

(via Electrolite)

The signs of trouble surrounding Microsoft's massive Longhorn development project have been building for months. But on Aug. 27 the software giant bowed to the inevitable. Rather than accept another long delay in the next version of Windows, Microsoft announced that the new operating system would be released by the second half of 2006, but in attenuated form. [TechNewsWorld]

'-- The challenge for Microsoft will be to create a compelling case for going to Longhorn now that one of its most interesting features has been removed. But the marketing folks in Redmond, Wash., have a good two years to figure that one out. --'

Expect tons of FUD and other nonsense in the next couple of years designed to round up users into the Shorthorn corral.

...John

The Power of a Blog: take one conservative Republican Representative from Virginia (a co-sponsor of the Federal Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment and representing a district that includes Pat Robertson's homebase), mix with gay sex phone lines, and you have it: his resignation, over "allegations."

Most of the attention and current criticism of America's e-voting infrastructure and technology is focused on the lack of a verifiable paper audit trail, but an equally prominent issue is the closed nature of election system certification, companies, and software.

Voxilla points us to the press release which says what we have been wanting to hear for a long time: Skype on Mac OS-X has gone beta now. "We celebrated Skype’s first anniversary on Sunday (August 29) with more than...

FCC wants the Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court ruling that could lead to heavier regulation of cable companies' high-speed Internet service, according to Reuters. FCC has asked the federal appeals court to overturn its ruling that labels cable broadband as a telecom service. Do that, kill VoIP and give Bells another 100 years of monopoly status quo. "Applying taxes, regulations and concepts from a century ago to today's cutting-edge services will only stifle innovation and competition," FCC Chairman Michael Powell said in a statement on Monday. For once I actually agree with the man.

Hidden inside this CNN piece about cell phone company surcharges was a nano-expose of T-Mobile's most recent quarter. Catherine Zeta Jones' wily charms were not the only reason Germans were able to attract more customers in the last quarter and perform better than everyone else in the mobile phone business. Actually, the real reason why the "wireless company's revenues were up $1 per customer compared with the previous quarter. That was because T-Mobile, for the first time, counted as revenues two fees it tacks onto customer bills. Without those surcharges, the average revenue per customer would have dropped. The surcharges certainly make T-Mobile more attractive to investors -- they added $58 million in revenue during the quarter." These are not government mandated taxes, but instead these are just a way phone company quietly add a buck-or-two to your bill, and try and recoup normal business expenses such as "property taxes and the cost of posting their rates on the Web." Companies' advertised rates don't include extra fees. For a company like Verizon, this means about $173 million a year. Read the article for the complete lowdown.

cimmer writes "USA Today, the San Jose Business Journal and the suspiciously captivating monitor thing in the elevator are reporting the results of a survey conducted by Aon Consulting that states voluntary turnover in the tech industry is at 8.9%, 'the lowest in the history of the surveys, which date back to the mid-1980s'. Given all of the talk about an economic turnaround, are we looking at a potential tech turnover spike as individuals leave positions they have stayed in only because of a dismal job market? Aon seems to think so. Interestingly, the results of this study are released just as CNN.com reports that personal income growth is at its weakest in two years. Also of note is a discrepancy in the reported sample size, with USA Today stating the results are based upon input from 595 companies while the Business Journal reports that over 950 companies participated."

Didion Sprague writes "News.com is reporting that XM has decided to "quietly discontinue" the XMPCR -- a tiny USB satellite radio receiver for XM radio. Slashdot readers may remember last week's story about TimeTrax -- homebrewed software that allows XMPCR users to automatically record and tag each song. Now, XMPCR receivers are going for almost $400 on ebay. The RIAA, it should be noted, claims that they weren't "behind the discontinuation of the PCR"."

Mark Frauenfelder:
"Small toys showing an airplane flying into the World Trade Center were packed inside more than 14,000 bags of candy and sent to small groceries around the country before being recalled." Link (Thanks, Steve!)

Cory Doctorow:
Metafilter Matt has written a great roundup of DIY coverage of the RNC event in New York:

all Flickr photos tagged with rnc, rncwatch.typepad.com, Technorati search for New York City ("rnc" was too short to search), Buzznet's No RNC photostream, rnc convention bloggers, WeSeeRNC moblog, Indymedia's RNC coverage, and Google News search for rnc.

Link

Just like with regular spammers, Verizon is discovering that suing a text message spammer doesn’t necessarily
accomplish anything (though we bet it feels really good). They just won an injunction in federal court against Jacob
Brown, who had been sending literally millions of spam text messages to Verizon subscribers, but he never bothered to
show up in court and has pretty much disappeared completely, which is a pretty good sign that he probably won’t bother
paying attention to a court order.

[Via TechDirt]

For the RFID tag to near universally replace the optical UPC code on retail items, its price will have to drop radically. As recently as just a couple of years ago, I was using 5 cents in talks I gave, as an estimate of what the cost would be by 2004. At that time, some industry pundits suggested that 4 cent chips were available then, in sufficiently large quantity. At a presentation at a NYC retail meeting this year I shocked some people when I expressed doubt about making 5 cents by next year. Now ARC advisory group says we are unlikely to make 5 cents by 2008: ....ARC Advisory Group, a research firm based in Dedham, Mass. Instead of dipping to a nickel, as some industry observers predict, the average price of a passive UHF RFID tags will drop to only 16 cents, according to recently issued ARC report entitled "RFID Systems in the Manufacturing Supply Chain." ARC found that in 2003, the average unit price of tag was 91 cents for a passive HF tag and 57 cents for a passive UHF tag. The firm expects that by 2008, the unit price will drop to an average of 16 cents for passive UHF tags ... This does NOT mean we wont see tagging much sooner. High margin goods that need to be tracked closely will be tagged much sooner. Tagging will happen on the case and pallet. Pharma is an example area, prompted by the government in the US, where consumers will start to see widespread RFID soon. Recent hacking fears will lead to delays. But their use in pharma will lead to familiarization for the public and help remove many fears of the technology. This article is a good update: RFID To Flourish In Pharmaceutical Industry A Meta Group report says RFID use in pharmaceuticals will surpass that of consumer packaged goods within 18 months. By Rick Whiting, InformationWeek, Aug. 23, 2004 Use of radio-frequency identification by pharmaceutical companies will surpass that of consumer packaged-goods makers within 18 months, predicts a new Meta Group report to be issued Tuesday. But predictions that most pharmaceutical products will be tagged with electronic product code-compliant RFID tags at the pallet and case level within three years are "overly optimistic," the report says. The "immaturity of EPC tag technology" is the limiting factor in the rate of RFID adoption, the report says. Current EPC specifications, for example, lack safeguards to prevent one chip's programming being copied onto another, a key requirement for guaranteed authentication. Such technology limitations, according to the report, reduce RFID's potential usefulness in the pharmaceutical industry to simple "track and trace" applications until EPC specifications are revised ......

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With all the buzz around China and Korea, many tend to overlook that India is turning into one of the hottest telecom markets on the planet. While visiting India I saw many US venture capitalists were out pitching their companies to Indian telecom giants, recognizing that growth is in Asia, and not in the US.

Last week, Susan Kalla told me she was headed to Bombay and then to Delhi for a quick visit. To me she is always a leading indicator of the next big telecom trend. While visiting India in April 2004, I met with several telecom executives who indicated that Indian telecom companies could spend nearly $10 billion a year for next several years as the country tries to build out is basic wireline, wireless and eventually broadband infrastructure. Actually I was wrong. The Indian market for equipment and services is expected to jump to $24.3 billion by 2006, up from $13.7 billion in 2001, according to telecom research firm Frost & Sullivan. The mobile infrastructure market in India hit $1.17 billion last year, Gartner said, and is forecast to grow to $1.885 billion by 2008.

I stumbled across this article on InternetNews.com which outlines the recent developments in the Indian market, and provides a good overview, on where that market is headed. In short, the article I wanted to do. In recent days, Nortel and Nokia announced deals with Indian operators worth nearly $862 million. Last week I reported exclusively that Motorola was being the "outsourcer" for Tata Telecom. While wireless gets most attention in India, I find that wireline and broadband categories get overlooked. Cisco and Alcatel, along with chinese powerhouses UT Starcom, and ZTE Corp, have done well in india. In Cisco's most recent conference call, CEO John Chambers called India "a great success story." "We put a lot of investments over the last several years, and it's growing approximately 100 percent year-over-year," he said.

Lest you think that only large mega billion dollars corporations can succeed in India, smart start-ups are finding success in India. One such company is Atrica of San Jose, California. The company makes optical and networking equipment that can be used to stream voice, video and data services over Ethernet. Almost two years ago, the company got a call from Reliance – they needed moderately priced gear for their Ethernet-based network that would eventually service over 10 million commercial buildings across India.

Nan Chan, Atrica’s vice president of marketing says, “Indians are tough negotiators who know how to watch for their own interests. A lot of people underestimate their ability and the total market opportunity.” He didn’t. Atrica worked on developing a special product portfolio for India which met the needs of Reliance, was inexpensive and still kept the company in black. It took a year, but it worked. Sales from India could be over $25 million in next couple of years.

Anyway given all the hoopla around the market, and given my contacts, I am adding a new category to keep you abreast of what's happening in india and will keep you posted of major developments.

Business Week in an editorial writes, "That's because the U.S. is becoming something of a broadband backwater, a place where almost no one can do what Kato and millions of other Japanese take for granted. Many Americans may think that the U.S. is making progress because the number of broadband Net links continues to climb, but that misses the bigger picture." I agree - and had made a similar argument late last year in a column for CBS Marketwatch, Broadband...what Broadband! The Koreans and Japanese are enjoying a whole new generation of broadband applications including IPTV. "Broadband is the foundation upon which entire new generations of technology will be built: full-motion video, Web-based medical care, more sophisticated Internet telephoning, and online gaming. Already, companies abroad seem to be using their robust broadband markets to gain an edge on U.S. rivals. Korea's NCsoft Corp. has come out of nowhere to become a tough contender in multiplayer online games," Businessweek writes.

Many have laughed at me for constantly harping on the point, that the axis of technology world has moved to somewhere in South China Sea. I think we sit in our ivory towers with a myopic view of the world, getting excited about WiFi. Look when there are going to be a half-a-billion people in Asia using 50 megabits per second broadband connections, some of them - lets assume 0.0001% - will figure out a new use for the speed, will write applications and decide the direction of broadband. That will result in another 0.0001% figuring out how to build new hardware to make those networks work their way. You see where I am going with it. Anyway the whole article argues, correctly about backward looking regulatory policies are to blame for US falling behind in the broadband sweepstakes. Up until the point where it starts talking about WiMAX, the greatest FUD there ever was. I think WiMAX is going to turn out to be "push" technology of the 21st century.

Cory Doctorow:
Pat York sez, "A guy gets his pension cheque automatically deposited into his bank account. Then he authorizes automatic withdrawals to pay his condo fees, phone, etc. Then he dies in bed. How long does it take for someone to notice that he's checked out? Two years. Even Canada Post missed it."

Link

An application written by an Ontario programmer has caught the attention of XM Radio and the RIAA due to its ability to save broadcasts to a PC as mp3s.

Xeni Jardin:
A Washington Post article covering yesterday's DoJ raids on fileswappers:

Federal agents yesterday took their first steps to go after individuals who illegally trade copyrighted music and videos over the Internet, seizing computers, software and related equipment at five homes around the country. After a months-long sting operation, FBI agents raided residences in Texas, Wisconsin and New York where people were suspected of operating "hubs" of file-sharers that were part of a system called the Underground Network. About 7,000 users connected to the network via file-sharing software known as Direct Connect, according to law enforcement officials. (...) No arrests were made yesterday, and no charges have been filed. But the raids for the first time throw the weight of the Justice Department behind what has been an intense campaign by the music, movie and software industries to curb online file-sharing that millions of computer users around the world use every day.

Link (Thanks, Thomas)

David Pescovitz:

Howard Lovy's NanoBot points us to a site selling plastic model nanotube kits. They sell other fun molecular model kits too, including cocaine, caffeine, THC, and, of course, lysergic acid diethylamide.

"LSD is a strong hallucinogen. A rough form, ergotamine, which can occur in stored rye grain, is believed to have been the cause of the odd behaviour which triggered the Salam witch trials. This model of LSD can be used in conjuction with molecular model kits of other street drugs as part of drug awareness programs."

Link

Jeffrey Citron, the maverick founder of Vonage, might be taking a page out of his online trading playbook again and using it to manage and run the fast growing, cash guzzling VoIP service provider. Bill Burnham, who used to track online trading business as an analyst before switching gears and becoming a VC draws the parallels in this excellent post.

In that industry, Ameritrade, Datek and E*Trade were able to pull away from the competition by dramatically ramping their customer acquisition spending and that appears to be exactly what Vonage plans to do in the VOIP space. In fact, the financial language that Vonage is currently using to talk about their business where they claim to be "cash flow positive before customer acquisition costs" is a carbon copy of how many online brokers talked about their own financials back in their heydays of online trading.

Looks like Verizon is dipping its toes in the fixed wireless waters. The experiment is happening in Grundy, Va. Verizon said the opportunity seemed perfect to try a small fixed wireless pilot using Alvarion BreezeAccess VL gear. Verizon will use unlicensed spectrum at 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz to connect homes and businesses in line of sight of the base station. In addition it will use 900 MHz equipment to link harder-to-reach homes without a clear line-of-sight. Several other small counties have tried their hand with fixed wireless and done well in terms of rolling out broadband in the boonies. Meanwhile Clearwire, Craig McCaw's latest project has finally gone live in Jacksonville, Florida.

The CTO of XID Technologies, a biometric security company based in Singapore, has been nominated for this year's World Technology Awards (WTA) for the development of an adaptive face recognition technology involving face synthesis. The technology, marketed under the name XID SmartID, permits for example to compare the biometric data embedded on a passport and the live data of a person at an immigration counter or passport verification booth. This face synthesis technology is currently used in Singapore, SmartID has been deployed at the Immigrant Workers Dormitory in Kaki Bukit to provide access clearance for about 6,000 workers day or night across 16 channels of entry.

ruland writes "It turns out there was a reason the hosting company CIT/Foonet was raided in February. SecurityFocus.com reports that the CEO of a web-based satellite T.V. retailer has been indicted for allegedly paying Foonet's administrator to arrange denial of service attacks against his competitors, causing outages as long as two weeks at a time, and $2 million in losses. Now he's skipped out on $750,000 bail, while the five packet monkeys who worked for him are left facing felony charges of their own."

Tim writes "New Scientist reports on a German man who had a complete jaw transplant, after having his cancerous jawbone removed nine years ago. The twist? This jawbone was grown on his shoulder, using a titanium mold, bone marrow, and recombinant bone morphogenic protein." There's also a BBC story.

802 Planet reports that at the annual CableLabs Summer Conference earlier this month in Keystone, Colorado, ultrawideband (UWB) chipset developer Pulse~LINK showcased its technology for cable operators.

Pulse~LINK transmits high definition television content over cable and powerline. "It transmits across the entire cable bandwidth -- not wirelessly -- showing that it coexists with the television signals that are already there," said PulseLINK representatives.

The demonstration consisted of industry standard off-the-shelf CATV equipment beginning at the “Cable Operator’s head-end” where the UWB signal was injected into a standard RF combiner, then modulated onto a fiber optic cable for transmission to a “fiber field node” where the
RF content was demodulated for transmission through more than 1000 feet of coax cable and two “field amplifiers.”

The signal was then sent through multiple RF splitters and into a “digital living room” where both the UWB HDTV broadcasts and standard cable broadcasts were displayed simultaneously.

(Continued at Daily Wireless)

Cory Doctorow:
Ernie Miller sez, "I've started a new audio show on IT Conversations, where I'll be discussing issues of law and technology with many of the leaders in the field. You can stream the audio or download it either directly or via RSS enclosures in MP3 or AAC format. My first show is on the Grokster decision and features a panel including Fred von Lohmann, who argued the case, Denise Howell and C.E. Petit, two attorneys in IP law practice, and law professor Tim Wu of the Univ. of Virginia."

12.4 MB MP3 Link

(Thanks, Ernie!)

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EWeek is reporting about a coordinated online strike against Internet servers by terrorists. Dubbed "electronic jihad, there is a good chance that it could happen sometime this week, perhaps on Thursday, according to some security experts. Lately there have been some consistent attacks on primary Internet services and the unraveling of major encryption routines are raising concerns in the Internet operator community. With all the yellow and orange alerts, e-terror is more of a clear and present danger for US. No nation on the planet is more dependent on its e-infrastructure than US. From banking to shopping, to ATMs, a lot of our machines are connected. One man worries that with too much reliance on one company's gear could be a problem. "After Cisco [Systems Inc.]'s code was leaked, their fix was to throw MD5 hashes at it," Bill Woodcock, research director with the nonprofit Internet routing education group Packet Clearing House said. "How much longer is that going to work?"

4A6F656C writes "In an article on LinuxWorld.com.au, Kieren O'Shaughnessy, director of SCO Australia and New Zealand, details SCO's plans for Australia, stating that they have 'prepared a hit list' and "would approach Australian Linux users to ensure they had an IP licence." In closing, he adds 'Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix'." UnknowingFool writes "IBM's lawyers have been busy the last few days. Groklaw has reported a number of different filings. On the heels of last week's motions (1) and (2) for summary judgement, they have filed more documents. First, IBM wants large portions of SCO's testimonies striken (removed) on multiple grounds. Deep in the motion, they call out SCO to produce the 'experts' that did the code comparison analysis. If IBM wins on most of these points, SCO will have very little left in the way of legal evidence. SCO answers on IBMs 10th counterclaim. IANAL but from I understand SCO says this copyright infringment that SCO has allegedly committed on one of IBM's patents is irrelevant to the case and the court doesn't need to decide on it. So SCO is saying that they can sue IBM for infringing on their Unix copyrights and patents but IBM can't counter sue on a specific patent. IBM also filed another memo to support summary judgement. As a matter of law, SCO has to produce evidence to backup its claims. This mountain of evidence SCO has claimed all this time: If they don't produce it, the court has to rule in IBM's favor."

Whether you're spieling on about Atom APIs, Laszlo BlogBox objects or a fancy media asset management systems with sexy RIA interface - it's clear that lots of folks are figuring out where we're all going.

The ants are united in their intentions.

That's why I'm so gung ho about new kinds of micro-content. It's exactly the sort of standard that everyone can interpret their own way, add their own value added onto it - while still having the sort of infrastructure that Doc and Tom O'Reilly talk about.

It's the combinatoon of a Web OS, lots of micro-content standards and this decentralzied, mesh world at the 'edge' of the network - that will not only keep us all honest and happy - but also wealthy and wise.

USA Today has a good overview of the Ultra Wide Band war. As UWB Insider explains, it pits the Motorola backed Direct Sequence standard against the MultiBand OFDM Alliance. Consumers who are looking for "wireless USB" may find incompatibility between vendors.

"It's a civil war," says Yoram Solomon, head of consumer networking for Texas Instruments. "You have friends in the other camp, and you're willing to kill them."

While standards battles are not new, the UWB shootout has taken on the aura of a backroom political brawl, with charges of vote-buying, of bias by IEEE officials and of violations of non-disclosure deals.

This fracas also is unusual in that it pits about 170 companies, many high-tech heavyweights such as Intel, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Panasonic, Mitsubishi and Hewlett-Packard, against Motorola and about 60 start-ups.

"Microsoft has turned to a Swiss telecommunication operator for the first commercial trial of its system that delivers television signals to consumers over a broadband telecommunications network, it announced this week. Beginning in September, Swisscom's Internet service provider subsidiary Bluewin will deliver 25 TV channels to set top boxes in 600 homes. During the four-month trial, testers will have access to five pay-TV channels and a video-on-demand service through the set top boxes, which also function as a digital video recorder with a live pause function, Microsoft says. Testers will have to pay for the service: $12 per month for 12 channels, or $19 for all 25, with pay-per-view films costing from $2 to $8 each. Microsoft expects the trial to result in the launch of a Bluewin TV service over ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) in 2005, it says."

Mark Frauenfelder:
Gerry sez: "While searching for something entirely unrelated, I came across this: the original Planet of the Apes movie, reedited and reimagined as a thirty-minute episode of the original Twilight Zone. Black and white, commercial breaks, Rod Serling narration and everything.

"*Extremely* well done. I'm pretty floored. It really is a perfect fit." Link

UPDATE Cliph sez: "That fan re-edit of Planet of the Apes is excellent. The site was a bit slow to serve the file when I tried so I've made a torrent. "

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While the Segway HT hasn’t been a huge commercial success in the consumer sector, people who build robots are tricking Segways out for all sorts of things. NASA’s is taking their “Robonaut B” robotic astronaut, which can romp around the space station gripping things with its human-like hands and seeing things with its video camera eyes, and popping him onto a Segway and rolling around the joint and even the moon. Plus there’s also the SPAWAR Systems Center in San Diego’s Segway RMP (Robotic Mobility Platform) project which is mainly for moving weapons and military stuff around.

The NY Review of Books examines James Wood et als book: Whats Wrong with the Rorshach?: Science Confronts the Controversial Inkblot Test ... (subscription required) ... Hermann Rorschach invented the idea of an inkblot test in 1921, and it soon became embedded in our cultural psyche. A student of Freud and Jung, Rorschach developed a set of ten seemingly formless bisymettrical inkblots on cards, and a methodology to interpret what patients saw when exposed to the cards. The goal was to produce an experience type (Erlebnistypus) that would lead in part to a clinical diagnosis. The object was to somehow peer into the operation of the brain, without surgery and before fMRI techniques. A bit of post-victorian science-as-classification. The book portrays Rorschach as a crank and the test as deeply flawed. Most damning from an analysis point of view, Rorschach and his followers did a very inadequate validation of his classification approach. Nowhere close to statistical significance. It drips with confirmatory bias, and that bias has a strong negative slant. Yet 80 percent of clinical Phd psych programs still emphasize the slant. Why still support what seems to be pseudo-science? Under fire: The International Rorschach Society. The inkblot tests also reminds me of techniques used by research groups who use choices of pictures to reveal underlying consumer thinking. This also links to the newly emergent techniques of Neuromarketing (For recent intro see MSNBC article) There MRI techiques are used to collect patterns of blood flow in the brain after people are exposed to stimuli. These patterns are then linked linked to known behavior. Although I would hope the people developing these techniques know more about classification validation than Rorschach did, there is a clear danger of finding pattern that is not there. (Pareidolia) Also, look at the Amazon reviews of this book, this is apparently a very polarizing book among the psych community. There are other posts out there about how much is wrong with this book....

Well, well. What a surprise. The New York Times' John Markoff has the story that Microsoft has pulled out [sub req] of a UN software standards body (United Nations Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business, or U.N./Cefac) for "business reasons", after a dispute over "a set of thorny issues over control of intellectual property that is being contributed to the standards-setting effort": "Earlier this year, Microsoft's participation had created controversy within the group, which is attempting to define standards for creating a new generation of Internet services to automate buying and selling through networks of computers." In an email to the group, Microsoft made clear that any prior contributions it has made are "not bound by the negotiations taking place over the control of intellectual property." The group wishes corporations who contribute technology to indemnify the United Nations against IP claims. In May, SAP also withdrew from the group. The trouble with monopolies is, they get to like it. Now, putting our thinking caps on, can anyone think of any good reason why Microsoft might not wish to contribute to a standard, if it has to give up suing the standard body over IP claims?

Why do bellheads always come across as whiny bitchy unhappy people? I mean FCC has given them their cake, and a new sterling silver set, but they still got to complain. Take for example, Lawrence Babbio, Verizon's vice chairman and president at a conference in Aspen remarked, "The FCC hasn't done their job for the last eight years." Which is why they have not rolled out high speed fiber to the home connections in the northeast. But I thought FCC gave them exclusive control over all those new lines. What's the bitching about? Have they not been getting billions in subsidies for broken promises over first ISDN and then FTTH. Never mind! "While the FCC did agree to not apply the unbundling regulations to new fiber in a decision last summer under one section of the communications act, perhaps the new fiber nevertheless would have to be unbundled under a different section of the communications act," said Randolph May, a senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation. Now how did I know why he would say that? Well because his organization is a shill for Bells and other large phone companies. Including Verizon! But wait, there is more whining! Qwest and Verizon are complaining that FCC would hold the line sharing in place for another six months, while it works out an alternative plan. Now we know FCC is no paragon of efficency but people, we are talking about killing Ma Bell and all competition here. The faster we do it, the faster we can start gouging Americans.

Cisco has been perhaps the earliest and strongest backer of VoIP technologies. It has worked hard to make people believe that its IP-Phones are the greatest thing, well the phone. I have seen them at work in controlled environment, and they are pretty cool. But they don't work all the time, according to this report in the Channel Insider. Actually this is a story from EWeek and is excellent piece of investigative work by reporter Ellen Muraskin.

When IBM Global IT Services announced that it was taking over for Electronic Data Systems on a major IT contract for Dow Chemical, this reporter (and others) heard a faint bell ring, launched searches into their story files and came up with the original 2001 announcement: A $1.4 billion contract over seven years to build and maintain a multinational IP network, DowNet, for 50,000 employees and contractors.

Early this month, EDS and Dow said they had reached a "mutual agreement" to cancel the contract. On July 28, EDS reported a $135 million pretax termination-related charge for an unnamed client that most industry watchers believed was Dow Chemical.

According to a major Cisco systems integrator, Cisco's John Chambers has been negotiating hard with IBM Global IT services to keep Cisco VOIP equipment front and center for DowNet. "Cisco is standardizing on IBM servers–it's some leverage," he notes. He also reports that Cisco's unified messaging and call center adjunct projects have run up against a lot of integration problems.

bbc writes "Distributed Proofreaders has posted its 5,000th ebook to Project Gutenberg. The book, a Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, by John W. Cousin, was proofed for this special occasion by over 500 volunteers. Distributed Proofreaders is a project that distributes the otherwise gargantuan task of correcting scanning and recognition errors in an OCR'ed text. The project has thousands of volunteers, of which many hundreds are active on any given day. It is currently the main supplier of etexts for Project Gutenberg."

The Importance of writes "The INDUCE Act, which has been discussed many times previously, will likely be getting a lot more attention thanks to the recent Grokster decision. The Register of Copyrights, who thinks the Betamax decision should be overturned, is supposed to come up with a consensus fix to the current language of the bill by Sept. 7. So, various people are proposing alternative solutions to the INDUCE Act. C|Net reports on one coalition's version [PDF] [HTML]. However, there are also versions by Prof. Tim Wu [PDF] [HTML], IEEE-USA [PDF] [HTML] and Ernie Miller [HTML]." Read more below about the proposed "Don't Induce" act.

gtoomey writes "The UK Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints that Microsoft misled consumers by running advertisements claiming Linux is 10 times more expensive than Windows. The print advertisements used "independent research" to compare the cost of Linux on an expensive mainframe to Windows on a PC."

Roland Tango/ Om Malik are reporting that David Sifry and Technorati have received $6.5 million USD in VC funding valuing the company at $12 million dollars. David Siftry has declined to comment: "I'm sorry, it is our policy not to...

Cory Doctorow:

Ernest Miller sez, "Videogame character BloodRayne (a red-headed 'Dhampir' who hunts supernatural baddies for the 'Brimstone Society') will be topless in October's Playboy. According to her creators, 'This is a first in videogame history and trust us when we say that Rayne does not disappoint.'"

Link

(Thanks, Ernest!)

A new worm has been discovered that is able to take over your webcam.

Cory Doctorow: Jefferson sez, "This paper won the Outstanding Paper Award at AAAI-04 (Amer. Assoc. for AI's National Conf.) in July. In a nutshell, they took the trace from a person carrying a GPS unit around with him for a month. With no hand labelling of the data, they were able to build a model of the person's travel behavior including frequent destinations (work, home, grocery friends homes), and modes of transportation (bus vs. walking). With new data, the model can predict, on-line, the traveler's most likely destination, and detect 'unknown activities' (e.g. strange behavior)."

144k PDF Link

(Thanks, Jefferson!)

Xeni Jardin: Huge online collection of old postcards from the late 19th century and early 20th century. I spent hours last night noodling through the ones from Guatemala, Nigeria, Hawaii, and Tahiti -- but the gallery includes many more countries. Looks like they're for sale, too. In the "Guatemala" batch, I found three Mayan girls from the early 1900s; I love this postcard of two Mayan men from Solola, from the same period. Then, there's "Visiting a Vietnamese Penal Colony, Wish You Were Here!" How cool is it that the site allows you to search by topical themes like dromedaries, chiromancy, and prostitution? In the latter, I found this totally bizarre image of a sex worker's flea-bitten thighs, and the haunting postcard portrait of an anonymous Algerian prostitute, shown at left.
Link (Thanks, Carl!)

Ernie Miller is interviewed over at O'Reilly and (no surprise) provides plenty of excellent answers to the question.

Here's just one:

Koman: So, assume that this was passed. How debilitating a hit would it be to technological innovation?

Miller: It's hard to overestimate it, to be honest. It would be incredibly debilitating to investment and innovation across the board, to anything having to do with the Internet, anything having to do with computers and the ability to copy. First of all, there's no clear boundary as to what is legal and what is not. There's no bright line defense. As long as they can provide some evidence that a reasonable person could think some technology was intended to induce infringement, then the lawsuit has to go all the way to the jury. You can't get it dismissed very easily. That's very expensive.

There's no limitation on who can be sued. Not only can the company making the device be sued, but under the Induce Act they can sue the company that invested in the company, they can sue the company that provides parts and supplies to the company, they can sue business partners, they can sue the advertising agencies. If you come up with something that's a really wonderful, neat new product but Hollywood won't like it, who's going to do business with you, who's going to invest in you? It's going to be incredibly difficult to do business, and that's going to dry up investment to no end. It's scary how far-reaching this is.

...has evidently been broken by two companies that make and sell DVD chips to companies that make products that (take a breath) have features that fail to hew to Hollywood's standards for copy "protection." So the MPAA is suing.

As John Borland points out, the suits have nothing to do with copyright law. To avoid the kind of lawsuits that destroy companies like 321 Studios, the chipmakers essentially 1.) asked Hollywood for permission to make the chips, 2.) agreed to make them in the Hollywood-approved way, and 3.) signed on the dotted line. It's a lot cleaner than squabbling over messy, intractable stuff like arguments for "personal" or "fair use" of digital media.

The robotics actuality is pretty rich these days. Besides the fighting robots of Robo-One and the flying microrobots from Epson (the best picture is at Ananova), here are some the latest intriguing news in robotics. In Japan, Yoshiyuki Sankai has built a

This is very polarizing topic. Using under the skin RFID implants in humans. Its an approach long used in Veterinary applications. Now some devices of this type have been approved by the FDA for humans. Notable is the Verichip from Applied Digital. Good overview article in ZDNet. I have brought this topic up with a number of people closely involved with RFID in the more mundane supply-chain world, and the reaction is always strong, something like ... it won't happen ... its too invasive ... it will really spook people, etc. They are sensitive to these kinds of applications because they highlight privacy issues. Yet current passive tag technology used in these devices have read distances of only a few cm. True, the basic technology can be extended, so there is a danger that reads can be extended beyond those distances. Yes, there is a danger of mis-use, but compare it against the value of protecting health and lives. Will the use of human implantable tags out-run tagging the average item on the grocery shelf?...

David Sifry explains why he doesn't want to talk aboutthe funding he received. Sifry is being modest and I like the reasons he gives, and respect him for that. "Making a big deal about VC investments is unnecessary, it seems to me. One of the biggest reasons for the dot-com crash was an imbalance of attention: far too much on investments, and far too little on building real businesses with those investments. In our case, we're putting our investments to work building infrastructure and providing service to a population that's growing at an explosive rate. Frankly, we'd rather talk about that than about the money others have invested in us. Right now our staff is just thirteen people, all sprinting a marathon. As you probably know, our struggles have been no secret. ," he writes. David, no hard feeling, but we all wanted to celebrate your good fortune and give you a big whoop!

Look up Technorati on Technorati and read what others including (e.g. Michael Fioritto, paidContent and John Battelle have to say. Here is a link to, the story. Robert Scoble had some doubts about the deal, but Sifry almost talks. And by the way I did get a confirmation from another DFJ general partner, Andreas Stavropoulos, who wrote to me, "Om, Technorati would rather not comment about the details of its funding rounds. I can confirm that DFJ is one of the institutional shareholders of the company but that's about it."

BusinessWeek columnist Stephen Wildstrom recently wrote a piece called A Big Fly in the Open-Source Soup that concluded, "The future of commercial open source might be considerably brighter if Linux and other programs went to a more commerce-friendly license with fewer complexities and ambiguities than the GPL." At the risk of offending a great many NewsForge readers, I am going to say that I don't disagree with him. Not because of the alleged complexity or ambiguities of the GPL -- it's a piece of cake compared to a typical proprietary EULA -- but because I don't understand what he means by the term "commercial open source." If he had simply said "open source" -- or used the more definitive phrase "free software" -- I would reject his position outright. Updated:

Take one part wireless, shake it with equal amount of security and you have the recipe for a cocktail venture capitalists can't resist. Cranite Systems and Vernier Networks both recently raised VC dollars. Cranite which develops security software for wireless local area networks, snagged $10 million while Vernier focuses hardware closed its series D round at $12 million. It just got last tranche of $2 million but fell short of its round target of $15 million, according to Venture Wire. Vernier was founded in March 2001 and was a spin-out of Packet Design which still holds a stake. Hitachi Ltd. and ITX International Holdings also are investors in the Mountain View, Calif., company, VW says. RCR Wireless News has a nice round-up of recent wireless funding madness. Recent fund raisers include Spotwave Wireless, July Systems, Figure 8 Wireless and Cypak. As I had noted following my chat with Bob Metcalfe, Wireless is the new platform, and most VCs are jumping in head first to get in on the action. As they say, sometimes too many cocktails can leave a nasty hangover. (I linked to my story on the coming wireless boom from July 2003)

Last week, analyst firm KMI Research came out with a report predicting that after being stalled for years, the optical networking market is going to change gears, and predicted that the market would grow at a 12 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2009. This market, which includes SONET, SDH, DWDM, DXC, and OXC products, hit $7.6 billion in 2003 and should reach $15.3 billion in 2009. They were quite bullish about the prospects of the long haul optical gear market. Fast forward a couple of days and Ciena and Sycamore Networks report their earnings, with a bit more pessimistic point of view. Sycamore on the conference call pointed out that it had hired an investment banker to explore strategic options.

This despite the news that Sycamore had beaten Ciena and Nortel and snagged Sprint as a customer. This along with their GIG-BE win, the company's products have been selected for two of the most important contracts out there. "Despite these successes," Pacific Crest Securities analyst Tim Daubenspeck told the Daily Deal that "finding a buyer could be tough for Sycamore. It's a small company with essentially one product and a ton of cash. Someone might buy them for the cash and the value in their technology, but then again I don't know of anyone who would want to enter that market."

Sycamore has had tiny bit of good news, but things are getting downright depressing for Ciena. Light Reading is speculating that the downturn may cost CEO Gary Smith his job. "I'd say he's got one more quarter to go," says one investment source who holds no Ciena shares. "One more quarter of disappointment and the sh*t really starts to hit the fan." Smith might pay the price for a broader market problem.

eBay has just announced that during a 180-day pilot it will allow digital music files for download. "Pre-approved" resellers will be able to offer downloadable music within auctions at eBay. Is this the beginning of a legal secondary market for...

Nintendo has been granted a patent for online gaming. Reading the patent description, the description looks a lot like the Xbox Live.

Cory Doctorow:

This 1924 photo from the archive of the Canon City, Colorado library archive shows a whole troop (gaggle? fewmet? murder?) of Klansmen riding a Ferris-wheel.

32K JPEG Link

(Thanks, horhayole!)

Cory Doctorow:

Ever since I signed up for some Flickr photo RSS feeds with keywords like "Graffiti" and "Tokyo," I've gotten a steady stream of pix taken by folks around the world. Some days, there's a serious jackpot, as today, with all these great pix of graffiti in Manhattan by someone called "Ninjin" and this sweet Tokyo skyline photo. Producing these little highlight posts is slightly labour-intensive, so I dunno how often I'll do them, but today it was worth it. (Disclosure: I'm an advisor to Ludicorp, the company that makes Flickr).

Cory Doctorow:
As a requirement of its price-fixing settlement with the Feds, the RIAA is obliged to give thousands of CDs to public libraries. However, as has been noted, the CDs they're sending around are worse than shit: hundreds of copies of the years-old Whitney Houston single of the Star Spangled Banner, that species of kidney.

Jenny Levine (AKA the Shifted Librarian) works at a library where the RIAA care packages have started to come in. She reports on the contents thereof:

Several of the boxes are literally cut on the side, and the cut goes into the jewel cases themselves. Hence my declaration that we received a ton of "cut-outs." Some of the boxes even have dates of 2001 and 2002 posted on the labels, which I hope doesn't mean the date they were boxed up and put into storage. There is no way these boxes were packed by mistake as the result of a computer glitch. Some of the labels very clearly say 30 copies of this or that title, and I highly doubt the labels were supposed to cut the boxes after boxing and labeling them.

Link

Intermec, which acquired much of IBM's RFID IP , has some 140 RFID patents and outlines how it plans to manage them. The RFID blog provides some commentary on this and implications for EPCGlobal. You would wonder if IBM regrets selling much of their RFID IP to Intermec, though they remain partners. For a less than up to date review, see a history of RFID....

Guangdong, a fast growing province of China is gearing up to become an important sourcing base for a myriad of VoIP products. The region is home to more than 50 manufacturers who are churning out VoIP products in China. (Other VoIP manufacturing bases in China are around Shanghai and Beijing!) One of the mainstays of the region is ZTE Corp., a name many Americans are familiar with. A large portion of the equipment is meant for export, but seems like a lot of Chinese companies and consumers are buying up VoIP gear. Growth of broadband in China is one of the reason for growing popularity of VoIP in CHina.

Late Friday, the FCC released details for its interim rules covering UNE-P pricing. According to these rules, the RBOCs freeze wholesale rates for a six month period and after this period, if finalized rules are not in place, Bells are allowed to raise the as much as 5% for existing customers and even higher for new ones. Chairman Powell wants to have final rules in place in a timely fashion and has already scheduled a vote for the finalized rules at the committee's December meeting. AT&T's decision to quit from the consumer market says that the FCC favors the RBOCs in regards to UNE-P. In a statement, AT&T the company most hurt by this decision said: "Unfortunately, the order approved by the majority of the Commission does little to protect and preserve consumer benefits and the existing competition in today's consumer markets. Through this continuing uncertainty, only one thing is clear, if the Commission does not meet its now self-imposed deadline to craft permanent rules, the Bell companies will be free to squeeze its dwindling number of competitors by charging "market-based rates" -- code for whatever price the Bell companies want to charge -- for facilities that are essential to preserve competition for small businesses and consumers." Actually I could not have said it better myself.

Yahoo, Google and other major web sites have been hit with a lawsuit saying they carry online gambling ads in violation of California law. This comes after two of the major search companies earlier this year made moves that were supposed to remove online gambling ads entirely.

The robotics actuality is pretty rich these days. Besides the fighting robots of Robo-One and the flying microrobots from Epson (the best picture is at Ananova), here are some the latest intriguing news in robotics. In Japan, Yoshiyuki Sankai has built a robot suit, called Hybrid Assistive Limb-3 (or HAL-3), designed to help disabled or elderly people. In the U.S., Ohio State University is developing a robotic tomato harvester for the J.F. Kennedy Space Center while Northrop Grumman received $1 billion from the Pentagon to build a new robotic fighter. I kept the best for the end. A Californian counselor has just patented the ten ethical laws of robotics. A good read for a Sunday, if you can understand what he means.

Alien54 writes "Scientists in the US have developed a novel technique to make bulk quantities of glass from alumina for the first time. (link includes a picture of samples) Anatoly Rosenflanz and colleagues at 3M in Minnesota used a "flame-spray" technique to alloy alumina (aluminium oxide) with rare-earth metal oxides to produce strong glass with good optical properties. The method avoids many of the problems encountered in conventional glass forming and could, say the team, be extended to other oxides (see also: A Rosenflanz et al. 2004 Nature 430 761). Scotty would be pleased."

Ernie Miller has a comprehensive round-up on the decision, plus additional analysis of its possible impact on --you guessed it -- the push for the Induce Act.

Later: Fred von Lohmann has more @ Deep Links:

The Ninth Circuit's ruling in MGM v. Grokster today clarified four points of incredible importance to innovators of all stripes, including peer-to-peer developers:

• The Court made clear that, for purposes of the "Betamax defense" announced by the Supreme Court in 1984, the important question is whether a technology is merely capable of a substantial noninfringing use, not the proportion of noninfringing to infringing uses. The opposite rule, urged by the entertainment industry, would kill off new technologies prematurely, as infringing uses tend to be common until the incumbent entertainment industries adjust their business models to take advantage of the new opportunities created by the new technology. (When there were no pre-recorded videocassettes, the VCR was doubtless used for more infringement than it was after there were Blockbusters on every corner.)


• The Court also explained that, in order to trump the Betamax defense, a copyright owner must show that the technology developer had (1) knowledge of specific infringments (2) at a time when it could do something about those infringements. The entertainment industry, in contrast, had argued that it should be enough to simply deliver a pile of "infringement notices" to the technology developer after the fact. Such a rule would have imperilled all kinds of companies. (Imagine Xerox receiving a pile of infringement notices about photocopiers that it had sold the year before -- should it be liable for infringing activities at every Kinkos in America?)

Grokster has won MGM v. Grokster. (By Grokster I mean “Streamcast & Grokster,” hereinafter)

Analysis

The Ninth Circuit has decided that, on the facts developed, Grokster-style P2P technology is an easy case under Sony. For those unfamiliar with Sony, that decision held VCR manufacturers are not liable for copyright infringement practiced by owners of VCRs. The Court ruling recognized, in other words, that the P2P filesharing technology in programs like KaZaA falls into the same category as typewriters, photocopiers, VCRs, and pencils. All are tools that whose usage is not supervised by the manufacturer, that can be used for both legitimate and illegitimate purposes. All are tools that do not attract copyright liability for the manufacturer.

The opinion turns on facts rather than law. Two crucial factual findings accepted by the Court are basically the case. First, the court concludes that P2P is “capable of substantial non-infringing use”:

“A careful examination of the record indicates that there is no genuine issue of material fact as to noninfringing use. Indeed, the Software Distributors submitted numerous declarations by persons who permit their work to be distributed via the software, or use the software to distribute public domain works. [Example of popular band Wilco, who became successful via the P2P music distribution] … In short, from the evidence presented, the district court quite correctly concluded that the software was capable of substantial non-infringing uses and, therefore, that the Sony-Betamax doctrine applied.”

The second factual matter is whether Grokster “contributed” to infringement by its users. The Court found that Grokster does not provide the “site and facilities” for infringement:

“[Grokster et al.] are not access providers, and they do not provide file storage and index maintenance. Rather, it is the users of the software who … create the network and provide the access.” This, of course, is the major factual distinction from the Napster case, as Napster did provide an index and servers that were the “site and facilities” for infringement.

With these two factual findings in place, victory under Sony follows directly. The design of KaZaA with Napster in mind, and the successful development of these facts by Grokster’s lawyers at the EFF (Fred von Lohmann among them), is why Grokster won.

The court writes with a self-consciousness of the effects of copyright for innovation policy. It, in other words, writes in Silicon Valley language rather than Hollywood. The word “piracy” is not in the opinion, nor is “stealing.” Instead, words that could have been penned by Schumpeter: “the introduction of new technology is always disruptive to old markets, and particularly to those copyright owners whose works are sold through established distribution mechanisms.” Does it matter in the long run if the recording industry is hurt? Not really, suggests the court: “history has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karoke machine, or an MP3 player.”

The opinion is not without its weaknesses, particularly with a view to Supreme Court review. The most obvious weakness relates to the “blind eye” or “willful blindness” issue. On one account, Grokster escaped liability because it deliberately created a P2P network over which it had no control over specific file transfers. If it is trivially easy to create a network that makes it easy to stop copyright infringement, cannot Grokster be accused of trying to make an “end run” around the law, or making itself “willfully blind” to the infringements it is contributing to? This is the more important of two crucial differences with the Aimster decision penned by Judge Posner. Posner said in dicta that “One who, knowing or strongly suspecting that he is involved in shady dealings, takes steps to make sure that he does not acquire full or exact knowledge of the nature and extent of those dealings is held to have [knowledge sufficient for copyright infringement.” Arguably – constructing a system that deliberately left Grokster uninformed and incapable of stopping infringement – is what Grokster did here.

It’s a weakness because the Ninth’s circuit treatment of this issue is cursory: “There is no separate ‘blind eye’ theory or element of vicarious liability…” If this case makes it to the Supreme Court, I would expect everything to turn on this issue. Grokster, of course, can argue that making itself “willfully blind” is actually a better P2P design, and not just a ruse to get around copyright infringement.

But let’s return to the end result. The sale and design of P2P filesharing technology has just been legalized in California. Whether legalizations spreads depends on Supreme Court cert. policy (more on this latter), and that place called Congress and its Act called Induce.

Xeni Jardin: BoingBoing reader Darren says:

"Jill Greenburg is an accomplished celebrity photographer. Recently, though, she's turned her attention to another biped: monkeys. She discovered her affection for monkey portraits on a commercial, and started renting various species of trained primates and taking their photos as if they were A-list celebrities. The portraits express an amazing range of emotion, and are way more interesting that your average celebrity pic."

Link to Jill's website, with photos of monkeys, apes, and other non-human primates. You may also recall that totally gorgeous cover she shot for Wired Magazine's September, 2003 issue (The New Diamond Age): Link. LA-dwellers: the monkey images and other new works will be on exhibit starting October 23 at Paul Kopeikin Gallery on Wilshire.

We've been spending a good deal of time thinking and speaking about BPL (Broadband over Power Lines) these past few months. AMC member Guy Albanese sent in this article from USAToday.com The author, Andrew Kantor, makes some valid points about the technology and it's interesting reading.

The big idea is to use BPL for the backbone and then, because the big technological BPL hump is post step-down transformer where the signal is hard to control, use a WiFi or WiMax hub/repeater on the pole. This is truly the best of both worlds. Lots of electrons available for the backbone and plenty of coverage for the last half mile that has heretofore been a phone and cable company dominion.

So, how important is a valid BPL/WiFi combo plan to us domestically? Let's see, DSL is only a valid broadband solution if you are less than 18,000 from a switch. Let's just say that there are a bunch of phone customers that are more than three miles from a phone company switch. Cable modems don't have the same kinds of distance limitations, but you do need a cable. However, basically everyone in America has AC power and almost every household is within WiFi or WiMax range of a step-down transformer.

(Continued at EmmyAdvancedMedia)

There's a whole bunch of 1954 songs like "Earth Angel" that go into the public domain in Europe this year. The record industry will try to have the EU extend its copyright laws to match US. "Sincerely", 54 was a great year!

An anonymous reader writes "There are tantalizing hints, via The Inquirer, and other tech news sites, that the BBC may extend its multicast streaming services to non-UK citizens, for material where rights allows. There's details about how ISPs may peer to join the multicast trial network on an official BBC page." We previously covered the BBC's multicast streaming of the Olympics, unfortunately not available in the U.S.

The Indian state of Kerala has launched a wireless broadband service that will provide rural residents with 'Net connectivity that would otherwise be impossible via landline or cellular services.

The community Internet kiosks, named Akshaya, have been set up by the Kerala State IT Mission Department. More than 550 of the kiosks have been opened in the Mallapuram district, spread over 3,500 square kilometers. The local government plans to introduce kiosks in other districts later this year. The centers will offer services such as Internet access, Net-based phoning and videoconferencing to state offices as well as private businesses. Five Wi-Fi hotspots have also been established around government offices and a tourist resort.

"This is the world's biggest rural wireless network," H.S. Bedi, managing director of Tulip IT Services, said at the launch. "The decision to provide a completely wireless solution was dictated by the Mallapuram's rugged terrain. Other options could have been leased lines or cable or fiber--all of which would have involved digging and would have been more difficult as well as more expensive to roll out."

Boingboing buddy Eli the Bearded says:

Freedom to Tinker is reporting that two groups have signifcantly damaged the current leaders in cryptographic hashes. A French team has found collisions in a weakened form of the SHA-1 hash, which can probably be extended to the full SHA-1; and a Chinese team has found an out and out clash in MD5.

What does this mean? Well the hashes are digital abstracts from some input value (eg file) that are used to verify that the input value is unmodified. Due to the size of the hashes it has always been known that clashes would occur, but it was hoped that finding one would be impossible due to the large size of the hash space and the complexity of the generation process. Now that hope is shattered.

These hashes are used to verify integrity of downloaded programs, integrity of https site certificates, in pgp/gpg keys, etc. In other words lots of modern crytography is going to feel the waves from this.

Bugmenot appears to have been taken offline by its creators. The site served as a clearinghouse for shared passwords to registration-required websites. Subscription-based website owners despised it, hassle-hating 'net users loved it. No word on what happened (bugmenot peeps: talk to me, honey), but I'd bet dollars to downloads that lawyers were involved. (via MeFi)

Tim Wu has yet another excellent post over at the Lessig Blog, this time on the "Loser's Paradox" -- e.g., the affinity the U.S. government has for ailing business sectors.

"[T]here's not much a conceptual difference between something like the Induce Act on the one hand, and the farm subsidies for corn on the other," writes Wu. "Each case features an industry that desparately wants to slow the arrival of more competitive rivals. And each are in truth, slowly dying industries whose ongoing decay poisons our economy."

Equally excellent and apropos: Wu's Digital Audio and the Copyright Gap and Copyfight co-author Ernie Miller's Senators Put Copyright Office in Charge of Finding INDUCE Act (IICA) 'Consensus' by Sep 7. Don't miss them.

RealNetworks put Fred von Lohmann criticizing Apple's FairPlay on its "Freedom of Music Choice" campaign website homepage. But something tells me it may decide to veto Fred von Lohmann criticizing Real's undistinguished record on promoting choice via interoperability.

Writes Fred:

If Real actually cared about "Freedom of Music Choice," it would be telling its customers to burn the downloaded music they purchase to CD, then rip to any DRM-free format they like (including MP3, WAV, or AAC, all of which play just fine on the iPod). That's a much better option than being dragged into a feud between Apple and Real.

Meanwhile, Real's record for promoting the "healthy, open competition" made possible by reverse engineering for interoperability is less than inspiring. Consider, for example:

• In the RealNetworks v. Streambox case, Real was among the first litigants to invoke the DMCA to squash a competitor trying to interoperate with Real's proprietary streaming software.
• Real's own end-user licenses expressly forbid reverse engineering, even where that activity would be lawful as a fair use.
• Real has been conspicuously silent when it comes to legislative reforms, like H.R. 107, that have been introduced to reform the DMCA to permit legitimate reverse engineering.

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Not really news exactly to anyone who read the reports about the crazy long lines that formed outside the Apple Store in Tokyo the first day the iPod mini went on sale there, but the AP says that Apple has really been hitting Sony where it hurts lately, with the iPod (in all its various forms and colors) now accounting for six of the top eight best-selling music players in Japan.

Man, this just isn't SCO's week. IBM has just filed *another* Motion for Partial Summary Judgment, this one on its 8th Counterclaim, the one for copyright infringement. No, silly, not IBM copying SCO. It's where IBM says that SCO has literally copied more than 783,000 lines of code from 16 packages of IBM's copyrighted material. They are asking for summary judgment as to liability and a permanent injunction. Here's the lesson. You don't ever want IBM legally mad at you. SCO and friends keep floating these rumors about SCO settling or being bought up. I think IBM has other plans, like crushing SCO like a bug. Here is the motion, and there will soon be a memorandum in support, which should be hilarious reading, so stay tuned. It may take a little time before the document resolves. Meanwhile, Tuxrocks has a link that works. I always said the GPL was SCO's Achilles Heel, way back from the very beginning, when I was a tiny little voice in the wilderness, and now I get to watch it play out just as I knew it could and should. I'm thinking this will be the end of the FUD about the GPL never being tested in court. That'll be refreshing not to have to hear that any more. Rest in peace, dead old FUD #1. Some of your cousins will be joining you soon in the Olde GPL FUD graveyard. UPDATE: Here is the Redacted Memorandum in Support. Enjoy.

Nielsen NetRatings is reporting that broadband connections for the first time reached 51 percent of the American online population at home during the month of July, as compared to 38 percent last July. Sixty-three million Web users connected to the Internet via broadband during July 2004 as compared to 61.3 million accessing the Internet through narrowband. [TechNewsWorld]

'-- "Despite a plateau in the growth of U.S. Internet access, we've seen continued high double-digit growth in users' broadband access," said Marc Ryan, senior director and analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings. "We expect to see this aggressive growth rate continue through next year when the majority of Internet users will be accessing the Internet via a broadband connection." --'

...John

The creator of Linux says "I can't be nasty" when leading the open-source movement since it's all built on trust and teamwork[OSNews]

'-- I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It's the right way to do things. I compare it to science vs. witchcraft. In science, the whole system builds on people looking at other people's results and building on top of them. In witchcraft, somebody had a small secret and guarded it -- but never allowed others to really understand it and build on it. Traditional software is like witchcraft. In history, witchcraft just died out. The same will happen in software. When problems get serious enough, you can't have one person or one company guarding their secrets. You have to have everybody share in knowledge. --'

...John

As my colleague Glen Robinson wrote in the 1990s, the transformation of the FCC from the 1960s-to 1990s was “one of the stunning achievements of modern public policy,” accompanied by “the transformation of a staid and stagnant industry into the most dynamic and rapidly growing industry in the modern economy.” As he argues, it “did not come about through technology alone; it came about by rethinking notions about natural monopoly, economies of scale and scope--concepts near and dear to the ancient regime.”

Where are we today?

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"There are people who don't like capitalism, and people who don't like PCs. But there's no one who likes the PC who doesn't like Microsoft." - Bill Gates



The Microsoft Corporation generates a wide variety of perceptions around the world. The general public appears to perceive Microsoft as the software company, the main source of computer functionality. Software developers often have a very pro- or anti-Microsoft stance. Direct competitors to Microsoft usually see them as ruthless and dangerous. Other software companies sometimes see them as a necessary evil; they don't like them but need them to survive. Many nations do not like relying on a foreign corporation for a substancial part of their technical infrastructure. Therefore sentiment is often more anti-Microsoft in non-U.S. governments.

San Francisco's Asian Art Museum, which houses the largest collection of Asian art in the Western world,is testing a Web site that will display digital photographs of paintings, sculpture, and other artistic creations worth a total of almost $4 billion. The site runs on SUSE Linux and IBM's iSeries hardware.

Researchers at the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center estimate that an unprotected PC will be compromised within 20 minutes of being connected to the Internet, down from an estimated 40 minutes last year. The estimate is based on observations of...

An anonymous reader writes "Air cooled by the frigid waters deep in Lake Ontario started bringing relief to buildings in downtown Toronto on Tuesday after the valves were symbolically opened on the multi-million-dollar project. The company says that they have the capacity to air condition 100 office buildings or 8,000 homes - the equivalent of 32 million square feet of building space. They note that the cooling system reduces energy usage, freeing up megawatts from the Ontario's electrical grid, minimizes ozone-depleting refrigerants and reduces the amount of carbon dioxide entering the air."

Glad you asked. Link to an online photo gallery with street snapshots from Harajuku station in Tokyo. (Thanks, Todd!)

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Intel announces its latest round of price cuts, effective next week. Are they feeling the heat from AMD?

The government of Mexico is RFID-tagging police in order to combat record high levels of kidnapping and disappearances. About 170 officers are said to have been subcutaneously tagged in their arms with microchips about the size of a rice grain of rice. The chip grants them access to a crime database and becomes a tracking tool in case they're kidnapped.

The first-of-its-kind step shows the lengths to which the Mexican government will go to try to bring safety to the streets. Crime - and how to fight it - has long been a challenge here. Kidnapping is spreading, reaching beyond traditional wealthy targets to the middle class. And in a country where only a quarter of all crimes are reported because of fear that bribed cops will expose informants, securing access to sensitive documents has become a priority.

The chip comes from VeriChip, a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solutions of Palm Beach, Fla. The device is nonremovable (though it can be deactivated) and is slipped under the skin in seconds via a syringe-like device. The chip costs $200, plus $50 a year, in addition to the scanner and software. The technology has existed for years and was originally developed to let pet owners identify stray animals.

The chip sits dormant under the skin and is only "awakened" by a scanner using radio- frequency identification, or RFID. The scanner emits a signal that powers the chip, allowing it to send its identification number. Then, depending on the configuration of the database that is hooked up to the scanner, a door is opened or a database unlocked, the way an ID card allows employees into the office.

Witness the Copyright Gap in its full majesty. In the UK, Digital Radio has been live at the BBC for about three years now. As the BBC says, “Digital Audio Broadcasting gives you far greater station choice, better reception & clarity of sound with no re-tuning.”

Yet meanwhile, in the country that invented both the radio station and the transistor, digital radio is stuck. Among other problems, the FCC is contending with the RIAA’s arguments that, absent proper controls, digital radio would be “the perfect storm” for the music industry. Digital radio, the RIAA believes, must be prevented from causing the “enormous damage wrought by peer-to-peer piracy.” On Monday, the RIAA filed a new letter reiterating that the “threat” from digital radio is “real and imminent.”

In addition, anyone who wants to run a digital radio-station through the network as opposed to broadcast is at an immediate disdvantage over those who stay analog or terrestial. A 1995 Act mandates that digital broadcasters pay an additional license fee (for sound recording copyrights) above and beyond the usual fees due ASCAP or BMI. That puts network radio, the technology of the future, at a cost disadvantage. And who gets those extra fees? You guessed it — the RIAA.

So next time you’re wondering why radio isn’t any better: its not the technology that’s the problem.

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Your company has a useful piece of technology, but no plans to make a software product out of it. Your engineers all think it's cool and think others outside the company will, too. They've badgered you enough that you're thinking seriously about releasing the code under an open source license. What should you expect, and what should you do to make such a move a success?

Jack Kolesar of AMDPower writes "We have posted a review of a PC HDTV Tuner card that can receive QAM (Digital Cable) signals along with traditional 8VSB signals. This appears to be the first PC Card which can accomplish this task. Further, the software also comes with a utility to downsample HDTV content to DVD and DivX. "

Damon Darlin from Business 2.0 writes "We just posted a story on Arthur Van Hoff, the programming legend who now works at TiVo. He was one of the Java geniuses at Sun (has almost as many patents as Bill Joy) and started Strangeberry, which Tivo bought in January. the story tells how his Strangeberry software will be given away to developers of web content. The next generation Tivos will then be able to recognize web content and direct it to the appropriate home device. This could be the stuff that saves tivo because none of the set top boxes will have this ability.

In the third stage of a project which started in January 2003, Verdant Power, a small energy company, will install six electricity turbines into New York's East River. These turbines will only deliver 200 kilowatts of power.

This will be the world's fi

Last week, over on The Importance Of..., I annotated a letter from 46 state attorneys general to various P2P companies (State AGs Warn Filesharing Companies: Your Technology Too Dangerous!). Now, EFF has taken the letter to its logical conclusion and applied the basic arguments to the internet as a whole (No, Mr. Gore, I Expect the Internet to Die.):

Dear Mr. Gore:

We are writing to encourage you to take concrete and meaningful steps to address the serious risks posed to the consumers of our States by your invention of the Internet, including but not limited to email and web browsing. By addressing such problems as the use of email and the Web to disseminate pornography, invade privacy, and infringe copyrights, the Internet may one day realize its potential as a means for facilitating a wide range of collaborative project management, business planning, and academic/educational activities. At present, the Internet has too many times been hijacked by those who use it for illegal purposes to which the vast majority of our consumers do not wish to be exposed.

Apparently trying to smooth a path towards their own future bankruptcy, RealNetworks is going after Apple’s iTunes Music Store by slashing the price through Labor Day of all music downloads from their own RealPlayer Music Store (which will play on the iPod now due to some hackery on Real’s part) to just 49 cents, with most albums costing only $4.99. Since the kindly record labels aren’t about to give up their own piece of the pie and we know that at 99 cents a download even Apple isn’t making much profit, RealNetworks must be losing more than just a pretty penny on each sale (that’s their CEO, Rob Glaser, pictured at right). Apple fans, now’s your chance to put them out business!

Plextor’s new ConvertX PX-M402U real-time digital video converter makes all the right moves, encoding video from any
analog source not only into MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, but also into everybody’s new favorite video format, DivX MPEG-4 (hello,
Internet piracy!). We won’t even pretend that most people are going to be using this thing to import video from a
camcorder (we’ve all gone DV, right?), so fortunately the ConvertX PX-M402U also works perfectly well with TVs, DVD
players, (and perhaps most importantly if you want to digitize all those old taped episodes of 120 Minutes you
have lying around) VCRs.

[Via I4U]

Journalists are a cynical bunch. They've seen it all, heard execs and politicians spin baloney, and endured endless press conferences where they've been told what turn out to be lies, so they can be forgiven for ending up Being From Missouri. The thing about journalists is, they do usually know what is really happening. They may not print what they know, or all they know, or they may feel compelled to slant it to suit their editors/owners. But they know.So when the announcement was made at a press conference in the UK that Newham, a borough of London, had just decided not to go open source after all and instead to sign on with Microsoft because their software was cheaper than open source and more secure, the room spontaneously burst out laughing. You can maybe buy what journalists print sometimes, but there is no amount of money that can make a cynical heart naive again. Of course, the entire room knew that was ridiculous. And, while it is unfortunate that the hustle paid off, it is also encouraging news that this laughter means MS is near the very end of that particular rope. When journalists laugh at your FUD in public, the End is Near.The Register has the very funny story, and more details here. Here's the part that isn't so amusing. They made their decision to go with Microsoft because of an "independent" study by Capgemini. Guess who paid them to do the study? Yes, boys and girls, future cynics of the world: The Register reports it was Microsoft.

Here is an advanced copy of a paper: "RFID, Whats in it for the Forecaster?" by Larry Lapide, of MIT's Integrated Supply Chain Management Program. Good overview regards the ultimate value of transparency of flow in the supply chain. He presented this at a recent meeting. PDF of Paper...

When Hewlett-Packard Co. warned of a profit shortfall last week, it blamed problems it had combining two SAP systems, something that the computer maker believed would be relatively simple when they were putting together a deal to buy Compaq two years ago. [Reuters: Technology]

'-- "The fact that they are both SAP systems doesn't make it much easier because you still need to harmonize the data and business processes," said Bill Swanton, an analyst with AMR Research. "There is no significant difference from merging systems made by the same vendors from two vendors." Software giants which offer a suite of products have long argued that customers should buy all their software from the same vendor. Customers have responded as they also want to deal with fewer vendors. --'

Looks like another example of the computer universal law that states "There ain't no compatibility no where with nothing."

...John

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"A personal, lengthy, but highly articulate outburst." This is a very long, well researched essay explaining one person's perspective on Microsoft's corporate conduct. With many facts the unethical and harmful actions of Microsoft are explained.

Mark Frauenfelder, founder and contributor to the weblog BoingBoing.net does not like the Scientific-Atlanta 8000.

So many other things suck about the user interface that I can't list them all. But the main UI problems include lack of keyword scheduling, way-too-slow fast-forwarding, no alpha character entry, and the inability to see how many hours of programming are available on the hard drive.

This last flaw hit home when the machine suddenly stopped recording shows. I tried everything I could to get it to work, including rebooting the system and calling Time Warner Cable customer service. They told me that they'd have to replace the unit, which would take five days.

Five days later a service technician came with a new box. I asked him if this problem was common, because Google returns a lot of pages from people who think the Explorer 8000 is a piece of junk. He said the system is fine as long as you didn't store too many shows on it. If you fill up the hard drive, the system freezes up, and there's no way a user can undo it. But how do you know when the disk is close to being full if there's no gage to tell you? The service tech's answer: "don't keep very many shows on the hard drive." That pretty much defeats the purpose of a DVR, doesn't it?

He also warned me not to put anything on top of it, as it was notorious for overheating and seizing up. I told him I was considering TiVo, but he insisted the Explorer 8000 was better than TiVo. How so, I asked? "We will give you a new one if it breaks," he said.

Boing Boing: I hate this digital video recorder: Scientific-Atlanta Explorer 8000

Yuan-Ping Pang is not your average chemist. At Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, he designed and built a supercluster composed of 800 Xeon processors. With this computing power at his disposal, he modeled the SARS viral enzyme. "Pang analyzed the SARS viral genome and built, atom by atom, the instantaneous 3D structures of the viral enzyme -- each of which is composed of 8,113 atoms -- just 20 days after the SARS viral genome was made public." The next step is to find anti-SARS drugs to prevent SARS and to cure SARS patients. For this, he will need even more power. But as he says, "in 2002, we developed the computing technology that performs 1.1 trillion floating point operations per second. Now, we are working on new technologies that will give 1000x improvement and more ..."

An anonymous reader writes "Exciting advances in breaking hash functions this week at the CRYPTO conference. SHA-0 has definitely been broken (collision found in the full function). Rumors are that at the informal rump session, a researcher will announce a collision in full MD5 and RIPEMD-128. And Ed Felten is speculating about collisions in SHA-1! Many systems, especially those that use cryptography for digital signatures are most at risk here."

portscan writes "The Financial Times is reporting that Intel has dropped a planned technology that would have halved the price of big-screen televisions by year end. This is the latest mistep in Intel's consumer market strategy. Slashdot has reported on the technology, LCOS, before."

Armchair Dissident writes "The Register is reporting that IBM has filed for partial summary judgement against SCO. Groklaw also has the story, and is saying that SCO was still offering the disputed code for download as recently as August 4 2004. If this is true, then - according to Groklaw - SCO's case must surely be scuppered. Again."

A new Wi-Fi standard that promises faster WLANS is one step closer to becoming reality:

The WWiSE (worldwide spectrum efficiency) group said it has developed technology for review by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.11n task group, which is overseeing a next-generation Wi-Fi standard capable of sustaining data throughput exceeding 100Mbps.
The proposal is based on MIMO-OFDM (multiple input, multiple output-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) technology, which achieves higher speeds by employing two antennas at each end of the signal (one for transmitting, one for receiving) instead of one at each terminus.

Link

There is some degree of conflict over exactly how to approach developing the standard, though -- this BBC news story has more. Link

India's government began distributing free condoms in the '60s to stem population growth, and they're made available today for HIV/AIDS prevention. But according to a recently-released report, only a quarter of the 1.5 billion condoms manufactured each year in India are "properly utilised":

According to two university reports, rural villagers have used them as disposable water containers to wash, after relieving themselves in the fields. India's military have covered gun and tank barrels with condoms as protection against dust.

Of the 891 million condoms meant to be handed out free, a considerable proportion were acquired by road-building contractors who mixed them with concrete and tar and used the mixture to construct roads, rendering road surfaces smooth and resistant to cracks. Builders spread a bed of condoms beneath cement plastering on roofs, ingeniously preventing water seepage during the monsoon rains.

Weavers in Varanasi used around 200,000 condoms a day to lubricate their looms and to polish the gold and silver thread used to embroider the saris they produced. Sari maker Yusuf Bhai said they purchased the condoms from agents, who reportedly acquired them from agencies involved in family planning and AIDS prevention schemes.

Here is IBM's Redacted Memorandum in Support of Motion for Partial Summary Judgment On Breach of Contract Claims, filed by IBM on Friday. As you will see, they are going for the jugular now. Astoundingly, they say that all parties involved in the contract between AT&T and IBM have now provided testimony in discovery that IBM has the right to do whatever it wishes with its own code, contrary to SCO's claims, or as the memorandum puts it, they all provided "unequivocal testimony that the agreements were not intended and should not be understood to preclude IBM's use and disclosure of homegrown code and contemporaneous documents reflect this interpretation of the licenses".SCO thought it was going to find evidence in discovery to boster its case, but it has worked out exactly the opposite. I haven't finished reading the memorandum myself, because I wanted to share it with you immediately, but it looks like this is the heart of what's left of SCO's case. Everything you hoped IBM would say to the judge, they are saying, including pointing out that Novell has waived any breach, even if there had been one, which there wasn't. If IBM wins this motion, I think I might be in my red dress soon.

Above is a picture of a test portal, where the readability of tags on cases of various contents on a pallet can be determined. Package content chemistry can block RF transmission. There is still much work to do on the simple readability of tags. Here is the center's site, with more information. And pictures of research underway. German retail giant opens test center to push RFID, By Matt Hines , July 7, 2004 Metro Group, the German retail chain pushing for adoption of radio frequency identification technology, opened its RFID test center on Wednesday. The Dusseldorf-based company, which operates a range of retail outlets across Germany, said it began operating its RFID Innovation Center in the town of Neuss, where its sales divisions, technology partners and suppliers will test radio tag systems. Last year, the retail firm announced an RFID mandate requiring its top 100 suppliers to begin attaching the RFID tags to pallets of goods headed for the company's 10 central distribution warehouses and 50 of its stores by this November ... Related article with more details in InfoWorld....

Ongoing August chatter: what should the Telecom Act of 2006 look like? Below are 6 items and some of the papers making the rounds.

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Solar sails have been in science fiction for nearly 40 years. But in a poorly-reported event (at least in the US), Japan launched and tested ...

Chuck1318 writes "The US is halting its national nuclear fusion energy project, FIRE, and pinning its hopes on the internation fusion research program ITER. However, ITER is stalled over a dispute on where to locate the facility. The dream of fusion power is getting no closer..."

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Also on search, a presentation by Amit Singhal of Google on Challenges in Running a Commercial Search Engine. Lots of pithy little details of work ongoing at Google and the challenges of being such a public target....

Consumers hate spyware programs that slow their PCs and endanger personal data. So why are Congressional efforts to block the malicious software so unpopular? [Technology Review - Computers and Electronics]

'-- the protection afforded by the proposed legislation is skimpy at best. They dislike the bill's call for one uniform notice and consent screen for any software that collects information about the user. They argue that the provision could confuse consumers trying to distinguish between legitimate software and those programs that want to digitally pickpocket their personal information. Opponents also fear that consumers’ failure to read the notices could lead them to inadvertently agree to accept a piece of spyware. (One media wag has pegged the bill the “Yes, You Can Spy Act.”) There's a world of difference, they point out, between a media player that collects information for authentication purposes, for example, and a keystroke-logging program that follows users around the Internet. And the Federal Trade Commission, which the Spy Act designates for enforcement of the civil violations, has stated that existing laws adequately address the deceptive business practices underlying spyware. --'

Looks like Congress may be voting in the best interest of its campaign contributions.

...John

Few doubt the strength, potential and sheer size of the Chinese market for Linux and other open source software, yet the Asian nation that is promoting Linux at the institutional level and just beginning to rise in terms of personal computing remains elusive to much of the rest of the business world.

Links to this week's topics from search engine forums across the web: SEMPO Next Steps & Mike Grehan's Second SEMPO Article - Overture Bidding Cap - PPC Question for Merchants - SEO Firm Ordered to Refund Fees, Pay Fine - Tracking Past Links & Traffic? - Google Settles Overture Patent Dispute - Advice on Site Structure

The Interational Olympic Committee -- whose high-horse is well and truly elevated when it comes to lecturing atheletes about doping -- is policing spectators at the games to ensure that they aren't toting brand-marks for their sponsors' rivals. Penalties for buying the wrong product range from confiscation of your goods to being forced to wear your t-shirt logo-side-in. The worst of it is the steaming craopla from the IOC official who says "We have to protect official sponsors who have paid millions to make the Olympics happen." Oh, rilly? Or what? They won't sponsor the Olympics anymore? Earth-to-official: companies sponsor your games because they're important and lots of people watch them, not because they can be assured that Olympic venues will be swept clean of rival logos.

It's well and good to tell atheletes that they compromise their integrity and shame the games when they take steroids, but what about the perceived integrity of the game when a ticket-holder is turned away for carrying the wrong brand of bottled water?

Strict regulations published by Athens 2004 last week dictate that spectators may be refused admission to events if they are carrying food or drinks made by companies that did not see fit to sponsor the games.

Sweltering sports fans who seek refuge from the soaring temperatures with a soft drink other than one made by Coca-Cola will be told to leave the banned refreshment at the gates or be shut out. High on the list of blacklisted beverages is Pepsi, but even the wrong bottle of water could land spectators in trouble.

Link

(Thanks, Alfie!)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A group of consumer electronics makers said on Wednesday they approved the format for a new generation of discs that can store five times the data of DVDs at the same cost -- enough to put a full season of "The Sopranos" on one disc. [Reuters: Technology]

In this corner we have Sony Corp., Philips, Thomson, Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard. And in this corner we have NEC Corp. and Toshiba Corp. Each corner is fighting to corner the market with their proprietary high density DVD format. No matter which giants wins, the consumer loses.

...John

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Salon has an interesting article by Farjad Manjoo, Must-download TV [salon.com], looking at the emerging marriage between BitTorrent for media downloads and RSS for notification. While not directly addressing PVRs, it does speak to potential futures of media distribution, which is an area near and dear to PVR users.

In recent months, a host of developers and TV enthusiasts have been working on ways to improve online trading -- they're building sophisticated networks to record and encode and distribute shows, and they're improving peer-to-peer transfer systems to make downloading easier. The hottest new improvement is made possible by the merging of two Internet innovations, the peer-to-peer protocol BitTorrent and RSS, the popular Web syndication standard. Together, these systems enable a computer to automatically find and download a user's favorite shows -- something like having a TV station designed just for you.

This reminds me of the fansubbing culture associated with anime where Japanese and Western fans work together to translate Japanese anime shows for a global niche audience often within hours of the shows being broadcast on terrestrial Japanese TV.

Media demand is global but the content providers have yet to develop a business model to effectively provide that media to a global audience, and thus the lovers of the content have to "break laws" to watch their favorite shows. It is, as the hackneyed phrase goes, "a lose-lose" (in the sense that the content providers perceive that demand as theft and the content viewers often cannot get what they want when they want it legally.)

Salon.com | Must-download TV

Hello Kitty writes "Robert Parson, the 18-year-old who modified and re-released a version of Blaster last year, is on his way to being made an example of, after pleading guilty Wednesday in a Seattle courtroom. According to AP, he can now look forward to 18-36 months behind bars and -- shades of Kevin Mitnick's phantom damages -- may be expected to pay millions in restitution. And then there's that lifelong 5cr1pt k1dd13 title. of course."

Here's a new term for your conversations about the future of media: "Internet bypass." I first came across it in a fascinating report, "Pipe Dreams: Media's Exploding Capacity," prepared for investors by Tom Wolzien of Bernstein Research (wolzientr@bernstein.com). His report focuses on the economics of video distribution, and his conclusion is a little startling: We are nearing the day when Internet-delivered video can be delivered at prices -- and video quality -- competitive with cable. Wolzien finds that a 300Kbps video stream (the quality of MLB.com's Web video service for baseball games) already can be delivered as economically (...)

Entry continued...

Sony has announced plans to use PlayStation 2 chips to speed up the graphics processing in new flat-panel TVs:

The new TVs will be equipped with chips used in the company's PlayStation 2 home-use game consoles and PSX DVD recorder/game consoles. Sony fabricates these chips at a group plant in Nagasaki Prefecture.

The chips' ability to handle detailed computer graphics will improve the TV's image-processing capacity, leading to faster on-screen control for selecting the type of TV broadcasts or viewing image data stored on digital or video cameras, for example.

Sony says the chips, which are already widely used in its game consoles, will enable it to boost the functions of its TVs at little cost.

Link

(via Gizmodo)

In today's Wired News, an interview I conducted with veteran tech journalist and blogger Dan Gillmor. In his new book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, he chronicles the social and economic impact of weblogs, wikis, mobile technology and other networked phenomena on the business of news.

WN: What role do blogs play in all of this?
Gillmor: They have joined the journalism ecosystem. It's more symbiosis than rivalry. I disagree with Big Media partisans who feel blogs are irrelevant, and with blog promoters who see the demise of professional journalism.

WN: How did you see some of the issues in your book play out at the Democratic Convention? What sorts of trends and activity patterns do you anticipate as the November elections approach?


Gillmor: Bloggers became pets for the Big Media. You could almost see the establishment journalists petting bloggers like poodles and cooing, "Oh, good bloggers, aren't you cute!" (Apart from the ones who put on body armor and said, "Omigod, these pit bulls are dangerous!") It'll take a few more conventions -- and a time when blogs aren't a novelty -- for everyone to sort this out.

Link

Flash radiojacking, Bikes Against Bush, Backpack broadcast, and WiFi on Wheels are some of the geek power tools that protesters plan to use at the upcoming Republican convention in NYC. Link

Public enema number One [the INQUIRER]

'-- More two million scans of computers were carried out by the ISP Earthlink and Webroot Software during January to June. They found more than 54 million instances of spyware.
By far the biggest was CoolWebSearch. This hijacks a user's homepage and directs it to a paying client's web site. If you try to kill it some CoolWebSearch variants pop up so many ads that a computer locks up or crashes. --'

...John

Microsoft Corp's Windows XP security update has apparently hit a hurdle out of the gate, with Hewlett Packard Co and IBM Corp instructing their employees not to install the software. [CBR Online News]

'-- Microsoft's work on Windows XP SP2 was supposed to have been exhaustive and these delays will cause some embarrassment. --'

...John

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British scientists will soon clone human embryos for medical research. Cloning to create human babies--so-called reproductive cloning--is illegal ...

k2enemy writes "The Iowa Electronic Markets have created two markets where traders may buy and sell contracts based on beliefs of Google's market cap at the end of the first day of public trading. The first market, GOOGLE_LIN, trades contracts with liquidation values linearly dependent on the market cap. The second, GOOGLE_WTA, trades six unique and exhaustive contracts in a winner-takes-all market. The markets are currently suggesting a market cap around $30-35 billion. The IEM is also popular for its political markets, which have been very successful (more accurate than polls) at predicting political elections."

Autoblog reports the Chrysler is monitoring blogs for feedback on new vehicles...

Do you fear the outside world so much that you wish you could crawl back into your mommy's womb. If yes, then the Quantum Sleeper is for you. This bed folds up into a fire-resistant coffin-like box to keep bad people and bad things away.

The bullet proof polycarbonate barrier is designed to stop bullet penetration, blows from impact, forced entry and provide a sealed temporary safe room and environment from burglars, terrorist or harmful gasses and also provide protection from the destructive forces of tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods. The unit can also be fitted with defensive devices customized to the requests of the purchasers such as tear gas spray, robotic arms, or projectile weaponry. It is designed to enable the person(s) inside the unit to see out and prevent those outside from seeing in.

It also comes with a stereo system, so you can listen to music while a demented axe murderer attempts to chop through the polycarbonate barrier. Link (Thanks, John!)

Samsung has developed what it claims is the world's first Amorphous Silicon (a-Si) 2.6-inch Thin Film Transistor (TFT) LCD display with a VGA resolution, giving it a whopping 300 pixels per inch (ppi).

Amorphous silicon (a-Si) and polycrystalline silicon (polysilicon or p-Si) are the two main silicon technologies used in the thin film transistors for LCDs. Low-temperature polysilicon can achieve a high degree of integration, which has generally made it the favored technology for high-resolution TFT LCD displays.

Samsung, however, has managed to push the integration of a-Si displays much further, producing a 207 ppi display earlier this year and a 300 ppi display now. That pixel density translates to 640 x 480 (VGA) pixel displays that are only 2.6 inches diagonally. 300 ppi is a significant milestone, as it is often considered the lower-bound threshhold for displays that could potentially rival paper for image quality, and is often the standard resolution on low-end printing.

The company plans to debut the new technology in high-end mobile phones that it believes can double as mobile televisions, moving into smartphones and more mainstream mobile phones later.

"Bag Borrow or Steal" is an online handbag exchange service in which users sign up, pick a new bag to borrow, use it, send it back, then lather rinse and repeat. It's like -- social networking, filesharing, and sample sales, all rolled into one. P2Purses? Link (via Sean Bonner)

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colonist writes "Frank Drake, creator of SETI's famous equation, says the detection of extraterrestrial radio signals won't work, because Earth's own radio signal will only be around for 100 years. More and more of Earth's communications use cable and satellites, with no radio-frequency leakage to space. Instead, we should be looking for intentional signals in the form of high-powered lasers that could 'outshine the sun by a factor of 10,000'. Meanwhile, Paul Davies writes that we should be conducting SETI in our DNA. In turns out that an alien message designed to last millenia should be 'inside a large number of self-replicating, self-repairing microscopic machines programmed to multiply and adapt to changing conditions', otherwise known as living cells. Are we the message?"

rabtech writes "If you are thinking of ditching a land-line for a VOIP provider such as Vonage or Net2Phone, you might want to think again. Software "End User license Agreements" have gotten a lot of attention in the past over their onerous and restrictive terms, but who would expect such things from your phone company? The prime example is Vonage, which states among other things that 'If Vonage, in its sole discretion believes that you have violated the above restrictions, Vonage may forward the objectionable material, as well as your communications with Vonage and your personally identifiable information to the appropriate authorities for investigation and prosecution and you hereby consent to such forwarding.'" (Read more below.)

Despite warnings that facial-recognition technology is prone to a high rate of error, the U.S. State Department is moving ahead with plans to embed ...

Now I don't know what exactly you'd want to use this Waysmall 200ax-bt 200MHz computer with integrated Bluetooth for, but that's not because it's useless. Just the opposite, in fact. For $184 you get a low-power computer running the Linux 2.6.0 kernel with webserver and remote login and power management circuity on-board. Throw a solar cell onto this little bad boy and you could do all sorts of fun things, like embedding a permanent webserver into a building, controlling a swarm of wireless robots, or developing the first Bluetooth-enabled loaf of bread. At just 8.3 by 3.6 centimeters, the 200ax-bt still manages to pack in USB, serial, sound, and LCD controller - now with AC adapter!

(I can think of at least three excellent projects for this thing and at least two of them are legal. -kc.)

The giant has fallen behind in chips for multimedia -- and investors aren't happy. [Business Week: Technology]

'-- Why is Intel overpromising and underdelivering? The problems stem from mistakes made five years ago in the design of its Pentium chip. Execs misjudged, believing PC makers and consumers would continue to embrace ever faster, power-hungry chips. Now the latest iterations are ill-suited to today's corporate desktops, as well as the new multimedia home PCs that are the focus of a major Intel push this year. Intel says the problems are only temporary. "We continue to expect to exit the year with the vast majority of our desktop and notebook processors on the [new] technology," says spokesman Robert Manetta --'

...John

The New York Times published an article today comparing TiVo's financial pickle with Apple's in the dawn of the PC revolution. I came to the same conclusions a year ago when I published TiVo's Apple Problem.

borkee writes "Estonian MEAC and CMB start testing a new version of a national ID card containing what they call 'contactless' extensions. Although they do not specifically disclose to us, taxpayers, what technology is used there, it must be quite obvious that it's nothing less than RFID. Add to this, they'll have person's biometrics in memory. (Security gurus of course know: biometrics just don't work.) Soon you can track us poor Estonians by our GSM phones and by our ID cards too!"

Acidus writes "While researching for an embedded systems project (a magstripe enabled Coke machine), I was shocked by the lack of magstripe information: Programs/code that would run on a modern OS were all but nonexistant, articles that were 6-10 years old, etc. Further research proved hard, because I had become google's authoritative source. So Stripe Snoop was born, and is now at 1.5 . Stripe Snoop is a suite of research tools that captures, modifies, validates, generates, analyzes, and shares magstripe data, with an ever-growing database of card formats. Decoding everything from driver's licenses to banking cards, its features can analyze non-standard cards, such as NYC's Metrocard."

Krafty Koder writes "The Register is reporting that a consortium of Taiwanese firms are to launch a 2 Terabyte memory card at the Taipei International Electronics Show (Taitronics) on the 8th of October, with mass production expected to start next year. The card will measure 3.2 x 2.4 x 0.1cm according to this DigiTimes.com report" The reports say that this is supposed to be a "new type" of card, so the details are still quite sketchy. Offical unveiling will happen in early October.

A recent trade agreement between Australia and the US included a provision that extended Australia's copyright from 50 years after author death to 70 years, to match US Law. There was speculation that Project Gutenberg Australia would suffer, and it looks like it officially has. Take a look at this list of authors that were once available for public domain download in Australia, but no longer are. There are some amazing works in that list of authors, now locked up for two more decades.

Do mesh networks scale? Gosh darn it, 802 Planet did something that DailyWireless probably should have done first -- ask!

Tropos Networks is one of several firms working to deploy Wi-Fi on a city-wide scale in several areas. As usual, the devil is in the details. Let's suppose large scale Wi-Fi mesh networks really are due to replace the hotspot model. What technology hurdles are there to this idea, and how will the economics work out? We asked the company's marketing vice president, Bert Williams, to lay out the scenario.

Q: Some have said that large-scale outdoor Wi-Fi networks will run into quality-of-service trouble as connectivity breaks down over multiple hops within a mesh. How are you getting around that problem?

A: We say the idea that throughput in a mesh networks [degrades] with the number of hops is just incorrect. It does roll off, but not with the kind of exponential decay that some folks are claiming. In any case, we look at it in a very different way. Our idea is to have a routing algorithm which, rather than trying to minimize the number of hops, is instead aimed at maximizing end-to-end throughput.

As I'm sure many have noticed, there's been a flurry of articles recently regarding the Linux desktop and the direction it "needs" to go in. A few have been insightful and offered up valuable information regarding the future of desktop computing. Most, however, have been painfully ill-informed or even confrontational. After sitting back and watching the fighting break out in the trenches, I decided to pen something from the opposite side of the fence.... [OSNews]

'-- There's something romantic to the idea of an underdog. But when that underdog is clearly better fit for competition and *free*... well, I would have to say the race has already been won. Look out desktops everywhere, here comes Linux! --'

...John

Tim Wu says that copyright is the FCC's Vietnam, and that it "should be looking for a graceful exit strategy."

I couldn't have said it better myself (literally). Thank you, Tim.

Later: Ernie Miller takes issue with Wu's assertion that the FCC wants out of copyright: "The biggest flaw with Wu's argument...is that he doesn't explain why the FCC approved the broadcast flag in the first place less than a year ago. The broadcast flag ruling was, to borrow a court term, well-briefed on both sides. It isn't as if the FCC didn't realize what they were doing. Has anything changed in the last year to make the FCC regret their rash judgement?"

Digging through some FCC filings, my cow-orker Fred von Lohmann turned up a bit of Disney magic that tips the company's hand: they're planning to lock up everything capable of recording audio.

Well, in their latest comments, Disney (which is an RIAA member, and owns ABC Radio Networks and four record labels) let slip what this is all about:

In addition, to the extent the Commission considers such a content protection mechanism, it should also consider whether to extend that mechanism to all music distribution platforms, including satellite digital audio radio service, the Internet and broadcast radio service.

Got that? Disney wants the FCC to regulate all devices capable of recording from any audio broadcasting medium or from the Internet. FM radio, XM, Sirius, Streamripper, Total Recorder, you're all in the crosshairs. It's the Hollings Bill all over again.

Link

(Thanks, Donna!)

There're so many Prozac-takers in the UK that urine-borne traces of unmetabolised antidepressent have contaminated the drinking-water supply.

An Environment Agency report suggests so many people are taking the drug nowadays it is building up in rivers and groundwater...

The DWI said the Prozac was unlikely to pose a health risk as it was so "watered down"...

The exact amount of Prozac in the nation's drinking water is not known.

Link

(via Crooked Timber)

An anonymous reader writes:

The Canadian Recording Industry Association's call for what is effectively a notice and termination approach to removing allegedly copyright infringing material. CRIA's counsel told a Parliamentary committee that once an ISP receives notification that a subscriber is offering copyrighted works for download, the ISP "ought to kick that subscriber off the system." The approach would be the most radical worldwide as the proposed removal would presumably come without a court hearing or other due process. Given that CRIA lost its file sharing suit in Canada earlier this year, this would appear to be an end-around the court system by attempting to force ISPs to terminate subscriber service based on a mere allegation of activity that may or may not constitute copyright infringement.

Link

New Scientist reports on Frequency Selective Surface sheeting, essentially wireless security wallpaper that can contain Wi-Fi signals while allowing cell phone calls to pass through. Funded by UK telecom regulator Ofcom, BAE Systems (formerly British Aerospace) based the technology on material used to camouflage military radars. The company is now working on a transparent version to cover windows. Link

Biometric identification for non high security applications has started to take off, for example Piggly Wiggly Supermarkets has implemented fingerprint scanning at several stores for customer identification. Though PW is not well known nationally, they are innovators, having introduced the first self service grocery store in 1916. While reliability of fingerprint recognition is high, physically fooling these systems is possible, see the now infamous gummi bear example. Iris scanners have been shown to be more reliable, and likely harder to fool, but using them with the public in low engagement applications is problematic, since you have to present your eyeball to the device. That spooks some shoppers. Several airports have now implemented them in conjunction with face scanning software. Fingerprints, because of their identification with law enforcement, also trouble some consumers. The Minority Report world that casually scans your eye as you walk by is still some years away. Below, brought to my attention by a colleague at a Toyko Ubiquitous Shopping conference. Appears to be a somewhat unique method. Related mouse device. Fujitsu Laboratories Limited has announced its newly developed and the most advanced technology for the world’s first contactless biometric authentication system that can verify a person’s identity by recognizing the pattern of blood veins in the palm. Fujitsu’s new technology is a combination of a device that can read the pattern of blood vein patterns in the palm without making physical contact (see photo) and software that can authenticate an individual’s identity based on these patterns. Infrared light is used to capture an image of the palm as the hand is held over the sensor device. The software then extracts the vein pattern and compares it against patterns already stored in the database. Biometric authentication is a technology for recognizing an individual based on the human physiological or behavioral characteristics to verify that person’s identity. Infrared image Vein and hand contour image Contactless palm vein recognition unit ......

The Phone Safe is a work-through phone-sheath that you wear on your forearm. Worn with a jacket, it can also act as a concealment device.

Link

(via Red Ferret Journal)

Tim Wu, guest-blogging over at Larry Lessig's site, reports:

So today copyright scholar Joe Liu at Boston College asked a room full of law professors an interesting question. What did we think copyright would look like in 8 years? Here were some of the main categories of predictions (some contradict):
1. Primarily a criminal regime (remember when copyright was considered civil law?)
2. Focused on control of the design of hardware & software (in the model of the Broadcast Flag) to prevent infringement ex ante;
3. A regime dedicated to preserving the retail market and revenue streams for 4 discs: (CDs, DVDs, Software CDs, and Video-Game CDs), having given up on nearly everything else;
4. Made in WIPO or the FCC as often as the U.S. Congress;
5. Gone (not a good bet).

Rucas writes "With a minimum of fanfare, Intel has begun shipping a version of the Pentium 4 with 64-bit instruction set extensions. The news came to light not via an Intel press release, but rather through the spec sheet for a new server from IBM. In the midst of the new IBM eServer xSeries servers based on the recently released 64-bit Xeon is a blade server powered by the 64-bit Prescott. This marks the first product appearance of the new CPU."

A BB reader sez: "The basic gist of this is that JuliusBlog took the time to create a well-documented timeline of when terror alerts occur in relation to when bad news for the Bush administration occurs.

There are few things that are quite evident from the chart:

- Whenever his ratings dip, there's a new terror alert.

- Every terror alert is followed by a slight uptick of Bush approval ratings.

- As we approach the 2004 elections, the number and frequency of terror alerts keeps growing, to the point that they collapse in the graphic. At the same time, Bush ratings are lower than ever.

Link (via Crookedtimber )

This fall will mark my fifteenth year in the drug industry. Looking back at what things were like in late 1989, there's one thing that I find striking above all the others: that very little has changed. Fifteen years is...

Here’s the question: What would the Induce Act look like if it balanced the interests of copyright owners and technological innovators? Here’s what: the Inducing Innovation Act.

Comments welcomed, and thanks to all those who helped work on this.

Links to this week's topics from search engine forums across the web: Live Reports from Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2004 - PPC Bounce Rate - Google AdWords Myths - After SEMPO: Should We Start a Trade Association? - Search Inventory vs. Conversion - Terra Sells Lycos at Yard Sale Price

perl_camel_jockey writes "Sun is developing a new technology that promises to increase computing power by eliminating the need for physical, soldered chip-to-chip connections on the motherboard. Called 'proximity communications', it portends the ability for chips to talk to one another wirelessly just by being next to each other. Potential applications in computer design abound. Apparently this is part of Sun's Hero program, recipient of a $50 million grant from DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems program to rejuvenate supercomputing in the US and regain the lead lost to Japan, in particular to NEC's Earth Simulator, ranked as the most powerful supercomputer in the world."

Some days, I feel like Jon Stewart delivering the news.

Today, a small startup company with no products, no clear timeline on when it will release products and has lost $25.8 million since its founding in 2001 decided not to go public, and blamed it on "adverse market conditions."

NanoBot Backgrounder
Initial Perilous Offering

Nanotechs first big IPO is not happening. Yesterday, Nanosys announced it was withdrawing its initial public offering because of adverse market ...

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Some intriguing commentary on the linkage of the emergence of printing with spreading of uniformity and its influence on an optimistic world, from Diarmaid MacCulloch's excellent history: The Reformation Here he speaks on the influence of the emergence of printing during that time: ...Printing, which produced multiple identical copies of a text, encouraged a familiarity with uniformity, very different from the individuality of a manuscript. That in turn was able to produce a sense of how significant it was when differences occurred: Uniformity, paradoxically put a premium on individuality. A culture based on manuscripts is conscious of the fragility of knowledge, and the need to preserve it. A priority must be to keep it secure simply to avoid the physical destruction of a single precious source, and that fosters an attitude that guards rather than spreads knowledge.... a manuscript culture is going to believe very readily in decay ... because copying knowledge from one manuscript to another is a very literal source of corruption. This is much less obvious in the print medium: Optimism may be the mood rather than pessimism ... (p. 71) Printing influencing the form of ideas? How might the ability to cross link on the web, to blog and comment, to transfer memes readily have on our modes of thought?...

"Apple's iMovie can be used to strip the FairPlay digital rights management protection (DRM) on iTunes songs, according to a report by German news site Macnews.de. The site reports that Apple's own video tool can be used to create unprotected song files that be played on any computer without recompression, circumventing iTunes' DRM protection. iMovie users can use the "Share" feature of iMovie to export any imported (protected) song from the iTunes Music Store. The exported songs can either be stored in the un-protected AAC file format (used by Apple at the iTMS) or in the raw WAV file format; both of these formats are supported by iTunes."

Started by two developers from Toronto, RadioActive is the first open source suite of RFID applications. Currently in the design stages, this application should allow for RFID technology to reach its fullest potential.

To reach this goal, the developers believe that "there must be a basic application that is free, much like how the growth of the Internet would not have been possible without the Apache web server."

From RFID in Japan < Slashdot.

Wireless tech guru and pal 'o' BoingBoing Frank Keeney sends word of results from the annual WiFi shootout (an event at Defcon that seeks to determine just how far an 802.11 WLAN range can extend). And here are the winners, according to event organizer Dave:

3 teenagers from Ohio used Orinoco Gold 30 milliwatt USB adapters mounted on the feedpoints of two 10 foot dishes, and shot 55.1 miles. Yes, that's fifty-five point one miles! This is a new world's record for an unamplified shot! Complete details will be in a press release, which should come out in the next few days.

Hack attacks down, viruses up [The Register]

'-- Even though 99 per cent of organisations surveyed are using anti-virus technology, virus attacks were cited as the most common form of security incident, affecting 78 per cent of respondents. Further, virus attacks are contributing the most in terms of financial loss stemming from security incidents owing to the emerging threat of virus attacks being combined with denial of service attacks - costing companies more than double in monetary terms than any other type of security breach reported. -- After virus attacks, insider abuse of networks was cited as the second most common form of security incident, reported by 59 per cent of organisations, followed by laptop or mobile phone theft, which affected 49 per cent of the survey sample. --'

...John

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''[...]Eventually RFID will create an ''Internet of things''. To reach this goal, there must be a basic application that is free, much like how the growth of the Internet would not have been possible without the Apache web server.[...]''

bendelo writes "In his keynote address on Wednesday at LinuxWorld, IBM Senior Vice President of Technology and Marketing Nick Donofrio assured the Linux nation his company would not assert its formidable patent portfolio against the Linux kernel and strongly advocated others to promise the same. This comes following an independent study by insurance firm OSRM who revealed this week that the Linux kernel might use up to 283 patented methods. This seems a smart move by the Big Blue to help counter the FUD going around." A zdnet.com.com story has a response from Bruce Perens, who basically says he wants to see it in writing. :)

CNN is reporting that Microsoft is aiming for 1 million users within 12 months with its soon to be launched MSN blogging service. No launch date for the rest of the world yet but there will be many small operators...

"Spam" is an exhibition opening in Berlin this week of fictional tech products. Developed by arts collective Human Beans, the counterfeit creations include the forehead-mounted Neurocount that tracks your loss of brain cells, the Sleepwell sleep-managing wristwatch, and the Powerpizza theft-prevention laptop case. Link (Thanks, Dr. Paulos!)

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Gentu writes "Here are the first reports from the first day of LinuxWorldExpo's showfloor: NewsForge discusses a few interesting 'off-the-record' tidbits among the announced news, while OSNews offers a report, too, accompanied by a number of pictures from the Expo."

Jan0815 writes "Yesterday I received disturbing news from the CTO of Munich, Wilhelm Hoegner. As previously mentioned, there is a rising concern that software patents could stifle development of open source worldwide. FFII has complete coverage of what is going on in Europe." (FFII stands for Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure.) Reader jmt(tm) writes "The call for bids was supposed to be published in late July, but the Munich Green Party had pointed out about 50 possible patent conflicts which the city wants to evaluate before moving on."

querencia writes "Sun has announced that Solaris 10 will comply with the Linux Standard Base specification, thus allowing Linux apps to run unchanged on Solaris. This isn't emulation -- they claim that it is 'kernel-integrated and supported as an operating system feature.' While I appreciate the benefits of the Solaris OS, I've considered them on the losing end of the battle until now. Will the power of Linux apps put Solaris back into the running?"

colonist writes "The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to study human hibernation for long-duration space voyages (a la 'Alien', '2001'). Although 'practical hibernation mechanisms are at least a decade away', ESA researchers will make initial inquiries into DADLE (D-Ala,D-Leu-enkephalin), an opium-like drug that triggers hibernation in ground squirrels and human cells. Other subjects of interest include dobutamine, a drug that maintains muscle, and the Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemur, the only primate known to hibernate."

WIRED reports that 321 Studios has closed it doors thanks to multiple DMCA lawsuits and injunctions against it (321 Studios Shuts Its Doors). From 321's website:Thank you for visiting 321 Studios. 321 Studios regrets to inform you that it has...

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Crap! This is the worst PVR-related news I've heard in a while. When News Corp gained ownership of DirecTV, many speculated (myself included) that Rupert Murdoch's other satellite company (with a DVR), NDS, might be used instead of the combination DirecTiVo boxes DirecTV customers now have.

Well, the sad truth is that indeed NDS boxes will be released early next year, alongside DirecTiVo boxes. The Tivo-DirecTV relationship ends in 2007, so hopefully they'll continue to support TiVo boxes after the NDS rollout next year. TiVo's stock to a hit today, since I think almost half of TiVo's million users are DirecTV customers running the combo TiVo unit.

This probably explains why all the Series 2 DirecTiVo boxes still don't have the Home Media Option or the USB ports turned on -- I'm guessing DirecTV would rather not raise customer satisfaction on a box they'd rather rid themselves of for a cheaper inferior NDS unit.

When people new to TiVo ask me what system they should buy, I always strongly encourage them to get a new DirecTiVo and DirecTV subscription over a standalone TiVo with cable, since it offers two tuners and great digital quality. With this latest news, I'm going to reconsider that advice and personally start looking elsewhere for the ultimate PVR solution, as it is clear now the future is murky for DirecTV and TiVo and my own beloved combo box.

Yahoo has rolled out a feature-laden beta version of its local search service, sharply upping the ante in the rapidly evolving local search sweepstakes.

maggeth writes "Terra Networks has finally decided to dump its struggling web portal, Lycos, to the South Korean-based Daum Communications Corp. Terra bought Lycos for $12.5 billion and they managed to sell if for $105 million. More details at the story on eWeek."

It's rare for any speaker to draw a standing ovation from the OSCON audience, but that's what David Rumsey did last week. And Rumsey isn't one of the heroes of open source software. He's a philanthropist who collects historical maps, scans them at high resolution, and publishes them on the Internet as open content that anyone can access and repurpose. His motive is partly to connect many people to content that few would be able to view in a museum:

I thought about donating it to a university, but their libraries focus on preservation, they'd have put my collection in a vault and there would have been no access. Along comes the Internet, and I found we could do even more with the digital content than with the originals. We serve over 7000 visitors a day. A typical map library will serve 200 visitors a year.

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I wasn’t convinced that the broadcast flag was such a big deal. But this story about Tivo asking the FCC for permission to add new features is changing my mind. Creative destruction doesn’t ask for permission. (Thanks to Jonathan Zittrain, Susan Crawford).

It apparently took just one errant keystroke to foul up computers at American Airlines and US Airways over the weekend, grounding hundreds of flights while highlighting the vulnerability the carriers face by sharing a single system.

(08/02/2004 12:00 PM PDT) [Silicon Valley: Top of the Wires]

'-- "It is interesting that they would say it is a human error,'' said Massood Towhidnejad, a computer science professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. "Obviously there is a weak point in the database that caused something like this to happen,'' Towhidnejad said. "That is really showing the sad state of our software development in the industry.'' --'

It is a human error! Humans wrote the computer programs that failed to check the quality of data entered by humans.

...John

Joey "AccordionGuy" DeVilla has posted a rumination on how we got to the point where it is socially acceptable to break up with someone by email. He concludes that it's a natural outgrowth of "PowerPoint culture": "I think that the 'Dear Jane' emails that those people received were inspired by elements of office culture: PowerPoint, project post-mortems and annual performance reviews. Of the people who told me that they were dumped via email, all of their boyfriends worked white-collar jobs in which they either sat through or made PowerPoint presentations."

Link

Apro+im writes "According to this article over at ZDNet: 'Linux potentially infringes 283 patents, including 27 held by Microsoft but none that have been validated by court judgments, according to a group that sells insurance to protect those using or selling Linux against intellectual-property litigation.' Dan Ravicher, founder and executive director of the Public Patent Foundation, conducted the analysis for Open Source Risk Management. OSRM is like an insurance company, selling legal protection against Linux copyright-infringement claims. It plans to expand the program to patent protections."

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Jon Shoberg writes "Google IPO is open for bid registration. From the front page: 'A registration statement relating to Google's Class A common stock has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. Google's Class A common stock may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This communication shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of Google's Class A common stock in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state. No offer to buy shares of Google's Class A common stock can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the registration statement has become effective, and any such offer may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time until the notice of acceptance is sent after the effective date. Of the shares to be sold in Google's initial public offering of Class A common stock, 14,142,135 shares will be issued and sold by Google and 10,494,524 of the shares will be sold by the selling stockholders.'"

From the East Bay regional paper Contra Costa Times comes a well written and provocative take on the MP3 scene, by music critic Tony Hicks. It starts out with a short but clear summary of the technology and impacts so far, a good primer for any readers who are still in the CD world. Things heat up when he turns to an interview of several music industry experts, culminating in the following exchange:

Q: Record companies are acknowledging they didn't react to digital music quickly enough. Can they survive?

[Tracks magazine editor Alan] Light: They're in a corner. For too long, their approach was how to stop (online music), rather than how to exploit it. The record industry is going to look very different five years from now. What's tricky about (digital music) is, if the labels work together, they're accused of collusion. But they need to work together. Big labels will continue making big singles for the radio; like in Hollywood, you need the big studios to do the big Tom Cruise movies. But most of the interesting stuff comes from independent labels.

[Rochester Institute of Technology professor Stephen] Jacobs: It's evolve or die. Will the business adapt? No, it's unlikely. The business model has been beyond corrupt for years, perhaps just one moral step ahead of sharecroppers. Young acts sign away their rights, the royalties are bad, (people) get cheated out of their publishing. Digital delivery is doing extremely damaging things to the old business models. It'll be like Kodak losing 80 to 90 percent of their profits on plastic film (since the advent of digital cameras). The record companies had a choice to be proactive a few years ago, or hang on to their death-hold on the business.

Hat tip: Casper Bass.

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Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan recap of top search engine stories from July 2004.

awful writes "Last year Slashdot ran a story about Australia's largest telco moving to Linux desktops. Turns out it was all a way to get some tasty discounts from Microsoft. The Australian is reporting that Telstra just signed a four-year deal with MS for $AU15-20 million, for 40,000 users. No figures yet on how much of a discount Telstra got, but MS might want to rethink handing back all its cash to investors if this is how they're going to do business from now on ..."

An anonymous reader writes "The race is on for first mover in the domestic US Linux smartphone market! Last week, Motorola announced a new Linux-based business user smartphone that's expected to ship to US customers by the end of 2004. Meanwhile, Chinese phone maker e28 will debut its latest Linux-based smartphone at LinuxWorld this week, and will soon begin distributing it in the Chicago area. Both devices are pretty cool. The quad-band Moto phone features a 1.3 megapixel camera, Intel's latest cell-phone chip, and fancy sync software that (currently only) works with Microsoft email servers at this point (others pending). e28's phone is an upgrade to its previously announced e2800, which became the world's first commercially available Linux phone when it shipped in China in August, 2003 [Slashdot discussion]. Interestingly, e28 was founded in 2002 by the former president of Mot's Asia Pacific cell phone division -- the world's largest mobile market."