However, I was wrong. On February 3, I ran a retraction after an insider at The Register tipped me off that "Bonhomie" was a pseudonym for another long-time Register contributor.
Now the FFWD blog has made a compelling case that Bonhomie Snoutintroff is the pen-name of Thomas C Greene, a long-standing Register contributor who used several near-identical passages in a 2001 article in The Reg.
I wrote to Greene to ask him if he was Snoutintroff. Here's part of our exchange:
CD: Did you write the Bonhomie column about EFF? If not, did the writer who did so use your lines with or without your permission?If Greene and Snoutintroff are indeed one and the same, it's a pretty ironic circumstance. Greene is the author of "Computer Security for the Home and Small Office," which contains chapters on the correct use of crypto to defend your network. The irony is that the strong crypto that Greene's book recommends was only legalized when EFF org/Privacy/Crypto_export/Bernstein_case/">Bernstein case, which menas that Greene owes part of his living to the victories of an organization that the Snoutintroff article characterizes as a perennial loser (the other irony is that the article predicts that EFF will lose its class-action suit against Sony for distributing malicious software on its music CDs, a case that EFF went on to win). Link (Thanks, Jason!)TG: I don't like to be cagey, but if i am bonhomie, then i should prefer to leave it unconfirmed so that the nom de guerre isn't a total giveaway, whereas if a contributor to the Reg had, say, flattered me by imitating a phrase of mine here and there, then i would handle that directly, and not embarrass the fellow in public.
So it's a bit of a no-win item, as you can see.
I find it puzzling that there is such interest in learning the author's identity, since the piece is obviously not straight news. Bonhomie's byline should make that abundantly clear.
Now, if it were straight news, and it became controversial, we would certainly handle it in a more formal and forthcoming manner. But questioning the EFF item strikes me as very much like questioning this one: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/01/bush_twins_volunteer/ .
I would add that many writers and journos use pseudonyms occasionally, and enjoy it for what it is: a chance to write in a voice not one's own. It can be useful creatively sometimes, or it can simply be a welcome break from the routine. Sometimes, journos contribute to competing publications, and often prefer to do so pseudonymously. At the Reg we've had several pseudonymous submissions from known tech journos who would prefer not to advertise where they work. I've published articles elsewhere myself, sometimes under my name, and sometimes under a nom de guerre.
There's really nothing sinister to it; it's a common practice, actually.
The Participatory Culture Foundation just launched the Windows version of their internet video player (formerly called DTV) today, and renamed their platform Democracy, which includes tools for playing, broadcasting, and sharing net videos. Like FireANT, which also recently had a big upgrade, Democracy Player makes it pretty easy to subscribe to feeds and browse through videos you've downloaded. What's great about the Democracy solution is that it's very easy to create new channels for other people to watch. You can use their Video Bomb to make your own channel with links to videos anywhere - essentially allowing anyone to curate a found video blog like Rocketboom's (great and fun) Apollo Pony, or collect all of their own videos in one place, like someone at the PCF nicely did for the brilliant ladies of The Variety Shac. You can also use Broadcast Machine to host and create your own video blog or channel, complete with torrent creation to ease the bandwidth on your server.
The whole platform's so well-thought out and easy to use that it's a near miracle that this is an open source project by a non-profit foundation, considering the enormous amounts of money and attention lately focusing on this space, and on sites like YouTube and Google Video, and the Video Bomb front page already stands up very well against those sites in terms of sheer time wasting value (personally, I already prefer it).
It'll be interesting to read what people say about this over the next week or so; until then, it's definitely worth checking out on your own.
At stake is the "webcasting provision" of the "Broadcasters' Treaty" underway at WIPO, the UN agency that handles copyrights, patents and the like. The Webcasting provision would make it illegal to retransmit Creative Commons licensed works (as well as public domain works, uncopyrightable works like those made by the US government, etc) without permission of the person who hosts them. In other words, it will no longer be enough to know that the author of the work wants you to share it -- you'll also need permission from the company that hosts and distributes the files.
The treaty wil eliminate fair use for all Internet audio/video casts, by creating a different set of rules for what's fair and what isn't when it comes to casters than when it comes to copyright holders. You'll have to negotiate two separate, contradictory "fair use" systems whenever it comes time to making a podcast.
At the UN, the US consistently argues that this is a popular idea. They've been put up to advancing it by an org called DIMA that's a front for Microsoft and Yahoo, who like the idea of being Internet audio/video gatekeepers.
I've delivered a letter to the UN signed by 20 tech companies that oppose the inclusion of webcasting in the Broadcast Treaty. The copies of the letter were stolen from the literature table and put in the trashcans in the toilets. Repeatedly.
I questioned Mary-Beth Peters, the US Register of Copyrights, about the Webcasting treaty during the Q&A after her panel at a conference at UNC last November. To everyone's surprise, she admitted that the US's position that this is a fundamentally popular idea was a lie:
MP4 Link, AVI Link, MPG Link[7:20]...I think the most controversial piece is the scope of the right that's being created. The position that the US took is well, if you're going to give that type of a right to a broadcaster -- theft of a signal -- then you should look at all people who are similarily situated, including webcasters. Now, that has been totally rejected by the rest of the world."
Credit: The University of North Carolina and UNC-TV for the video capture and TJ Ward for digizing it.
If you were one who bought an HDTV back when they first hit the streets, it appears your TV will be almost useless with the new HD DVD and/or Blu-ray players. The AACS copy-protection rules were released this week and those older HDTVs will be unable to display full resolution because their video connections have no copy protection. The signal older HDTV owners will receive is 960x540, almost half of what they should be getting.
We knew this was going to be the case with HDCP and AACS, but it's worth noting that the inevitable has come to pass.
Early HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules [SciFi Tech]
For a mere $69.99, you, too, can own a piece of HAL 9000's core memory. This 1-GB USB key may LOOK like it just has a sticker that says HAL on it, but this is the operational memory for the most maniacal robot in universe. Just don't pull it out without ejecting it first in OS X—because it has the greatest enthusiasm for the mission.
Product Page [ThinkGeek]
. . . a potential solution to the acquisition of the commons.
Can Larry Ellison be stopped? By which I mean could Oracle shut down the fledgling open-source software movement through a series of acquisitions??
Consider this: This week, (not) coincidentally with the open source conference at the Argent Hotel in San Francisco, Oracle announced the acquisition of Sleepycat, an up and coming open source database; MYSQL said Oracle tried to buy it; and industry insiders are saying the acquisition of JBoss by Oracle is imminent.
In one fell swoop, Oracle has drawn a square around the most active and interesting parts of the open source movement--the databases and tools. These are the platforms for applications. Applications are just skins on the database--if you own the database (Oracle) or access to the data (Net Apps) you are in the sweet spot.
Oracle isn't going to lose its customer base to challengers such as MySQL or Sleepycat. But it will lose some of the new IT business. And there is some new IT business out there--but it is all heading for open source. Become.com for example, a very successful shopping comparison web site--all runs on open source. And I cannot tell you how many startups have told me: All our IT is open source we don't pay a penny in license fees to anybody.
If you don't have a legacy requirement to run Oracle, you won't. It's as simple as that; and it's why Oracle wants to remove this option. Because it's not just the startups, it is also enterprise IT departments, that are now comfortable with using open source. That's a huge chunk of lost business if even a small number of Oracle's enterpise customers choose open-source equivalent products.
Oracle could lose tens of millions of dollars in new business from just a handful of large customers in a single quarter. It costs less than that to acquire these small, privately held companies.
Even if Oracle paid a very high multiple for one of its open source challengers--it would still be ahead of the game. The ROI on paying a few tens of millions to acquire an open-source company would be stunning. Oracle would make its ROI in just months--because its potential loss of business would easily outweigh its acquisition costs.
It is a no brainer for Oracle. In fact, Oracle would be negligent in its fiduciary duties to its shareholders--its legal duty to maximize its profits and value--if it did not pursue such an obvious strategy. Oracle's duty is to defend itself against disruptive innovation.
However, I think there is a way that the open source movement can protect itself from the last gasp Darwinism of the 20th century.
To save the open source movement from acquisition by commercial interests I propose that open source companies adopt a Grameen Bank-type organisational structure. It is a corporation with a Not-for-Loss charter in which all customers are automatically shareholders, and also the developers within the open source communities that develop these products become shareholders.
I don't know what the right mix of shareholder rights and awards would be but it would prevent the selling off of the open source movement, imho. The shareholders would never agree to a commercial aquistion by default.
And it is not as if the geeks and customers will get rich by being shareholders--they won't--because it prevents a market from forming in the M&A open-source sector. If you don't have a market you aren't able to sell out.
If there is no effective M&A defense, then it will become very difficult to recruit a developer community. Without a developer community you have none of the open-source benefits.
So all you VCs thinking you can invest in open source companies and sell them to Larry--think again. No developer wants to work free for Larry--which is a very real future scenario.
Work hard now and then Oracle acquires the project? No way, it ain't going to happen. Where is the glory of working on an open source project when eventually Oracle reaps the benefits?
I'll say it again: In one fell swoop Oracle drew a square around the open source movement and unless it can prove that it can remain independent--it is a dead movement. Unless the open source movement reorganizes to meet this challenge it will dwindle and become an interesting footnote in the history of the computing industry.
But if it can meet the challenge, then the open source movement has the potential to become one of the jewels in the crown of humankind--it has the potential to become one of the most valuable collective projects since the pyramids, the industrial revolution, and now: enabling the collaborative revolution.
- - -
Here is some more of my reasoning . . .
Most municipal networks that are being bid out combine several kinds of networks and several kinds of services: The coverage and criticism of municipally authorized and bid networks often focuses strictly on Wi-Fi. That's just one element. Most municipal networks comprise six separate components.
Wi-Fi for mobility. This is the typical form of outdoor Wi-Fi that's well characterized and currently employed in networks as large as several hundred scale miles. This is also the form in greatest competition with cellular 3G because outdoor Wi-Fi typically offers much greater upload and some greater download speeds unless heavily loaded with users. Wi-Fi can be cheaply deployed in rural areas--think the giant networks in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Oregon--where 3G isn't a sensible investment for cell carriers. In urban environments, mobile Wi-Fi will work, but may have competition and interference.
Wi-Fi for residences. This is the riskiest part of metro-scale wireless: having signals strong enough from the least number of outdoor Wi-Fi mesh nodes or access points--least number to keep costs at their lowest--to reach weakly enough into single-floor and multi-floor residences that they don't interfere (much) with existing networks and yet can be picked up with high-gain adapters or bridges.
Intra-node networks. All mesh networks use some form of communication among nodes to achieve the mesh advantage. This type of communications can be in the same band and channel (Tropos, one kind of BelAir router) or in 5 GHz (more common). The former saves cost; the latter reduces contention, reuses spectrum, and has a greater backhaul pool available, but requires one 5 GHz radio for every 2.4 GHz radio, keeping costs much higher.
Back-haul networks. Moving data from mesh clusters into higher-capacity point-to-multipoint connections is a clearly different form of network. WiMax should play a big part here, as it will in EarthLink deployments in which Motorola Canopy base stations--which are very WiMax like and will eventually go through certification—form the aggregated backhaul. These networks are subversive: In most municipal deployments, cities will turn over intra-building data networking to the muni-scale provider who will use WiMax or fiber to link those facilities together. Philly estimates 300 to 500 buildings will add better networking or replace wired leased lines with Canopy connections.
Aggregation. The back-haul networking will reach aggregation points which will comprise either or both fiber optic lines and high-frequency, short-range, very high speed microwave links.
Backbone. The network operation center where traffic is exchanged across the network, to local servers, and to peering points that join to the Internet.
Now the first four functions can be in a single device, of course. But it's good to think about all this entails.
The RFP released from Houston, Texas, today for a citywide network defines these into three categories: public service (municipal non-emergency purposes), public access, and public safety.
Most of the above are on the plate for every single serious urban municipal broadband RFP, which is one reason why fiber--despite its expense--is often cited as a reasonable part of a broadband plan. If not to the home or node, at least a fiber ring to deal with local backhaul and municipal needs.
Tammy, Tammy, you're the girl for me.
You don't know me but you make me so happy.
Tammy, don't change your number,
8-6-7-5-3-0-9 (8-6-7-5-3-0-9) *
Who's Tammy? She's only the hottest webstar on Technorati right now (front page; screencap image at right) -- or at least it's the name given to an alleged IT student who filmed her oral and anal adventures on her cell and then -- as these things happen -- it fell into the wrong hands. Or the right hands, depending on your POV. Unfortunately in Singapore oral and anal sex are a "crime against nature" that result in 10 years in jail. But jail shmail, and nevermind the Hiltons when some guy is selling off your info on eBay!? Or a CafePress shop (proudly made in the USA; privately fucked in the Golden Triangle). Even YouTube got Tammy's number. Oh, and the irony of "kittens". (thanks, Xeni)
If you are a Mac owner and you use Safari then you need to be aware that there is a security flaw that you need to be aware of. Curious in how in less than one week three security issues surface for the Mac, will the trend continue that is anyones guess. But long gone are the days where Mac users could feel completely secure. Obviously the Mac is well protected in comparison to Windows but this does put a pretty major gap in the armor.
What is concerning is that so many Mac users feel they are invincible that once something does get cut loose looking to damage a lot of mac users are likely not going to be very happy with the destruction that could follow. Whereas Windows users are expecting utter destruction of their PC's at any given moment at the rate of infections and sophisticated Trojans especially when running Internet Explorer. [heise.de]
My twelfth essay for Wired.com is about U.S. port security, and more generally about trust and proxies:
Pull aside the rhetoric, and this is everyone's point. There are those who don't trust the Bush administration and believe its motivations are political. There are those who don't trust the UAE because of its terrorist ties -- two of the 9/11 terrorists and some of the funding for the attack came out of that country -- and those who don't trust it because of racial prejudices. There are those who don't trust security at our nation's ports generally and see this as just another example of the problem.The solution is openness. The Bush administration needs to better explain how port security works, and the decision process by which the sale of P&O was approved. If this deal doesn't compromise security, voters -- at least the particular lawmakers we trust -- need to understand that.
Regardless of the outcome of the Dubai deal, we need more transparency in how our government approaches counter-terrorism in general. Secrecy simply isn't serving our nation well in this case. It's not making us safer, and it's properly reducing faith in our government.
Proxies are a natural outgrowth of society, an inevitable byproduct of specialization. But our proxies are not us and they have different motivations -- they simply won't make the same security decisions as we would. Whether a king is hiring mercenaries, an organization is hiring a network security company or a person is asking some guy to watch his bags while he gets a drink of water, successful security proxies are based on trust. And when it comes to government, trust comes through transparency and openness.
Seems Dell Computer Corporation has it's eyes set on every domain with the word Dell in it and god forbid your doing website design. Seem Dell wants a pile of money from a guy in Spain who's last name is Dell and is a website designer. He has a legal defense fund, but it appears Dell wants to make the poor guy to pay 100's of thousands of Euro's for supposed damages. Why are companies so stupid sometime. [CMX]
Let's face the facts it is early in the game and people are already getting OS X running on regular PC's that normally run Windows. It is such a nightmare for Apple that they have their lawyers serving DMCA notices to anyone that links to sites that show how to do it or even discusses it. They are demanding site take downs and legal notices are flying.
Guess what Apple I have no sympathy, for years you have charged consumers a premium for your computers and had people locked in. People like choices and you have to face the fact that your decision to move to Intel based chips is opening the door for people to run OS X on computers that used to be reserved for Windows and Linux. [ZDNet]
If manufactures were smart they would insure that they made it easy for people to do this. They don't have to break the law to introduce feature sets on their computers that run better when run on OS X
The era of downloadable major motion pictures is nearing, but the biggest players are taking baby steps: Amazon is about to inch its way into the digital movie download market. The company will launch a new service in Spring 2006 with at least two studios. Either a customer would pay for a download of a copy of a movie with the fee applied toward the purchase of a DVD; or be required to buy a DVD and then permitted to download that movie while the DVD is on its way. [Digital Media Thoughts]
First M, now Metropolis, one of Fritz Lang's other masterpieces, is available for download on Internet Archive.
As Bibi says, other formats are available at the Public Domain Movies. Related: Metropolis poster fetches record.
(by Sascha)
Süddeutsche Zeitung Online features an interesting article on whether nanotech-equipped soldiers are a very likely scenario in the near future. The research, often advanced by the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology, which is a division of MIT, was recently assessed in a study funded by the German ministry of defense. The researchers at INT Fraunhofer-institute stated that many of the concepts regularily put forward by the U.S. military as almost ready to deploy, are still completely utopian and maybe will be forever. Namely smart dust, self-healing body armor and self-reproducing nanobots.
However, the concepts do play a role in politics already, for example in one incident where the U.S. claimed that China was developing nano-ants to attack America's infastructure. Eventually, it turned out that this strategy was originally developed by RAND Corporation, a notorious U.S. think-tank.
Another scientist, Jürgen Altmann, has a different take on the subject. In a study titled "Military Nanotechnology: Potential Applications and Preventive Arms Control", he says that although nano-weapons are far from being imminent, there should be international treaties installed and the existing non-proliferation agreements extended. He also proproses a general ban on autonomous robots which are smaller than 20 centimeters.
Scarily remindful of how much this technology is related to military research. Illustration ("MIT to make nanotech army wear") picked from H. Thomas.
A provocative (or is it prophetic?) piece from The Register’s Andrew Orlowski who sees the end of Skype and VoIP:
It's small, it's boring and won't turn any heads - but it probably spells the end of the road for Skype, Vonage and any other hopeful independent VoIP companies. It's Nokia's 6136 phone, which allows you to make calls over your home or office Wi-Fi network, as well as on a regular cellular network. UMA, or unlicensed mobile access, is the mobile operators' answer to the threat of VoIP - and now it's reality.
UMA, he says, has the edge because in one phone you will be able “to keep one phone number, one handset, and receive one bill at the end of every month.” In the future phone calls at home — whether you’re on your mobile, landline or online — will be free. This is a neat fit because where quality was worst — inside — you will be able to use WiFi.
Got a signal yet?
This is not good news of course, for those of us who saw the interesting lunatics taking over the asylum. Disruptive technology, it turns out, means just that it disrupts the monsters out of their slumber and they finally get it. As Orlowski concludes: “So long then VoIP, and thanks for the free calls.”
.
Yahoo! has released some easy-to-plug-in interactive tools to make your blog more social.
Yahoo! now offers several free interactive tools for publishers, bloggers, and podcasters -- for anyone who creates content for the web. It's a breeze to add simple action buttons to a web page to make it easy for users to share, save, or blog about your web site.
The tools come in various formats and can be customized to the look and feel of your site.
Earthlink is playing a high stakes game of poker. At stake - beleaguered Atlanta-based ISP’s future. Its two big bets - cellular MVNO and muni wireless networks. Both are costly mega-million dollar investments. It has already carved out one (Helio) and raised outside capital from SK Telecom. Could its muni networks division be next, with a big cash infusion from outside investors?
It should have been quite a day for Earthlink. It wasn’t.
The stock ended down for the day, despite what seems to be good news. The company made a joint bid to San Francisco-wide wireless network along side search and online advertising giant, Google. The two companies, would offer two tiered service - a slower free version by Google, and a for-fee but higher speed (1 megabit per second) service by Earthlink.
On surface seems to be a great partnership. Earthlink takes out one of its biggest rival, and the joint bid is enough to calm the nerves of bureaucrats that always favor brand names. (Google, of course doesn’t have to worry about managing the network or those pesky headaches.) The bid to build-and-operate a municipal wireless network is one of the four strategic moves being made by Earthlink to grab a tiger called broadband by the tail.
Like America Online, Earthlink has been in a desperate fight to make itself over, using any and every broadband technology. Broadband over powerlines, Fixed Wireless, MuniWireless, Broadband MVNO, and Voice over IP - anything to get off its dependency on incumbent - DSL or cable - access pipes.
These are expensive initiatives that come at particularly harrowing time for the company. According to its most recent earnings statement, the company is losing premium dial-up customers who are switching to cheaper People PC offerings or to broadband. The broadband business’ profits are taking a toll, because of increased competition and costs. (I bet the incumbents are squeezing blood out of a stone here.)
During the fourth quarter of 2005, EarthLink maintained its position as the fastest-growing value narrowband ISP by adding 104,000 net PeoplePC Online subscribers, added 63,000 net broadband subscribers in the quarter. EarthLink continued to manage the decline of its premium narrowband subscriber base, which decreased by 174,000 net customers during the quarter….. Broadband revenues were $111.4 million, an increase of 4.9 percent over the prior year quarter, resulting from the growth in broadband subscribers partially offset by a decline in overall broadband average revenue per user.
The company essentially forecasted a flat revenue outlook for 2006, at about $1.3 billion. In the first quarter of 2006, the company is expecting an increase in its expenses, mostly due to “the expected municipal Wi-Fi market introductions in Anaheim, California and Philadelphia.” The new initiatives are going to cost between $75 million to $100 million.
“Its most profitable business is in decline … and it’s going into areas where it is late to market and has a lot of competition from some well-capitalized firms,” said analyst Jim Friedland at S.G. Cowan & Co. brokerage in San Francisco. “The company wasn’t in dire straits last year, but it’s not necessarily in better shape this year.”
Earthlink is currently planning WiFi networks in five cities, and the total cost of building networks in these cities will be in the $50 million range, according to informed industry insiders. Municipal Wireless is the easiest way for Earthlink to get out from under the yoke of large incumbents, and it has no option but to aggressively chase these opportunities. And to turn it into a viable business, many think the company needs to play in at least 20 cities, including some NFL towns.
Twenty cities at $10 million per, could put them in the $200 million capital expenditures. [ Great news for Tropos Networks, which has become a key supplier of WiFi gear for some of the major players in the Muniwireless marketplace - including Google (Mountain View) and Earthlink (Philadelphia, and Anaheim.)
While the company has ample cash on hand, the problem will not be funding it, but explaining it to Wall Street. Its core business is that of an ISP, which gets a certain specific valuation. The muni wireless effort is “access business” with a different valuation metric. Earthlink, which is running the muni wireless business as a separate division under, Don Berryman. By carving out this business, the company could easily tap outside capital for expanding its muniwireless business.
It certainly has past history of spinning out businesses. Helio, their MVNO was spun-out and has received backing from SK Telecom of South Korea. So why not Muni Wireless Business? In recent days I have heard fleeting rumors about Earthlink spinning off the muniwireless business as a separate entity, including an investment from a big investment bank.
I asked the question to Earthlink spokesperson Jerry Grasso and he said, “It is still a fully functional unit at Earthlink.” I tried to press him for answers, but he denied any immediate plans. He refused to give any details, on the Google-Earthlink joint bid as well. (I have an inkling how that deal is structured, but cannot confirm the details.)
I guess, we will have to wait for the analyst day tomorrow in New York to get a clearer picture on the future of muni networks business. The conference call starts at 8 am tomorrow morning. And that’s just a few hours away!
<Paul Boutin describes his hands on attempt at gene engineering with no prior experience: "How hard is it to build your own weapon of mass destruction? We take a crash course in supervirus engineering to find out." Boutin's conclusions challenge the conventional wisdom that this kind of thing requires the resources of a large National Lab, and emphasize the importance of investment now in biodefense. From the article:
DNA synthesis is following a kind of accelerated Moore's law—the faster and easier it gets, the faster and easier it gets....The rush toward DIY genetics is reflected in so-called Carlson curves, plotted by Rob Carlson, a physicist-turned-biologist...who worked them out in 2003. "Within a decade," Carlson wrote in the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, "a single person could sequence or synthesize all the DNA describing all the people on the planet many times over in an eight-hour day."
Food for thought. (via Dave Farber's IP list)
A year ago, U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., tried to slide language into a $447 billion defense spending bill that would have imposed a moratorium on offshore wind projects. Earlier this year, Warner and U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., tried to exempt wind farms located off coasts, near military bases, in national parks, and in other potentially sensitive locations from receiving a crucial federal tax subsidy. Earlier this fall, Young's committee considered making any offshore wind project subject to review by the commandant of the Coast Guard.Greenpeace suggests that you take action, since this could potentially affect other offshore wind proposals. Older news coverage about the wind farm is available here. Reading through those headlines, it's surprising that the project is still alive. If everything goes well, the wind farm should come online by 2009.