Welcome to BarelyAdequate.info!
Computers are marvelous machines. They have revolutionized the way we work, the way we communicate, the way we shop, the way we live. But that same technology is also disruptive: it threatens to radically change or make obsolete whole methods of commerce; makes it infinitely harder for members of governments to hide their excesses and misdeeds from the citizens they allegedly serve; makes it easier for citizens to secure their activities, records and communications from surveillance by government, law enforcement and corporate interests who have grown used to spying on us unasked; and gives those same government and corporate interests powerful new tools to search for and aggregate data about us.
The focus of this page is to provide commentary on news events that concern the intersection of technology, law, politics and the freedoms granted to citizens by the US Constitution; and illuminate attacks upon these freedoms by bureaucrats, law-enforcement officials, Congresscritters, government agencies domestic and foreign, and numerous moneyed interests. Many of the articles commented on here will also deal with what, for lack of a better term, I call "fairness in the digital age." And because I am a techie, I'll also comment on cool technological happenings in my industry, and uncool ones as well!
Some of those in positions of power — particularly in government, law enforcement and certain key industries — feel that if they are to preserve their power over society and/or protect their profits as we move into the digital age, the law needs to be changed to the detriment of our freedoms! Every time I learn about one of these issues, you will read about it here!
Once again, welcome to BarelyAdequate.info! Enjoy your stay and come back often!
January 1st 2010
Hot Story of the Quarter:
Comcast announces plans to buy NBC Universal from GE, which would put one of the Big Three network broadcasters in the hands of the number one cable TV operator and Internet Service Provider (ISP), increasing the urgency to pass Net Neutrality rules:
The idea of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV provider, and NBC, which in addition to owning one of the Big Three TV networks owns cable networks such as Telemundo, MSNBC and Bravo, and the Universal Studios motion picture empire, led to an immediate outcry by consumer groups and legislators, who question whether such a merger wouldn’t have too much influence over television content.
The news only got worse, as French media giant Vivendi announced that it might sell its 20 percent stake in NBC Universal, which would give Comcast a 51-percent share in the new NBC!
In an online statement titled Comcast/NBC Universal Merger Bad for the Public Interest, Josh Silver, executive director of Internet free speech advocacy group Free Press immediately came out against the merger, saying:
The idea of this mega-merger raises many troubling questions regarding media concentration, competition and the public interest. The union of Comcast and NBC Universal would create a juggernaut large enough to dictate what programming U.S. consumers can watch, and whether independent and diverse viewpoints will be heard on the largest cable systems and on the Internet. The Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission must scrutinize the proposal to ensure that antitrust laws are enforced and that the public interest is protected. If Comcast pursues this deal, there will be deafening opposition from Free Press and the public.
Media Wars!
The Google Books settlement continued to anger a wide range of interests:
In an open letter to Google (PDF), a coalition of privacy and civil rights advocacy groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), slammed the terms of Google Books settlement, saying:
While various signatories below have raised other concerns that are also critical to your ongoing negotiations, we write here together to express our shared concern that reader privacy be among the issues addressed in conjunction with the amended settlement.Google and book publisher agents revised the settlement, limiting its scope to the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada. Further action is on hold until the judge hearing the case approved it or throws it back for more work.
In the mean , Google has set up an online books store called (of course!) Google Books, primarily as an outlet for selling or offering free downloads under the court-imposed solution they agreed to.
HP has started up an online book service similar to Google Books, called BookPrep, that they are positioning as a “virtual publishing house” where anyone can upload a digital book and have it printed out (for an appropriate fee, of course!).
Another Google start-up named OneBox, will offer song previews, and links to featured music download sites. Unfortunately they morphed it into a virtual phone service.
According to Canadian Michael Geist, a long-time advocate of copyright reform, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations being held in secret in Korea, would, if adopted, require ISPs (and sites like YourTube, Facebook, etc.) to police what its users post online, and make them liable for infringing materials; require them to cut off Internet access of infringers (yeah, the whole family, not just a single user!); and prohibit the reverse-engineering of DRM.
Despite the fact that such a treaty would trample our rights, the US delegation has is urging other countries to adopt it! I guess protecting Big Media profits, instead of protecting consumer rights, is their primary motivation. No doubt the fix is in.
I’ve mentioned here in the past, and on my Media Wars page, that Big Media’s long term goal is to do away with media ownership rights and make everything we watch, read, and listen to pay-per-view. Here’s another step towards that process: Walt Disney Co. is working on a new technology code-named Keychest that would "redefine ownership as access rights, not physical possession." It would allow consumers to pay for permanent access to a movie or TV show from any device with an Internet connection, which sounds good now, but it means we have to access our content from their site. At the very least it means we can’t listen if we can’t reach the Internet. But the real danger is this: if all content providers follow suit, and all our paid content is eventually stored on some company’s server, what is to stop them from changing the terms of service and mandating we pay for each access? Nothing, of course! Best not to start down that road at all.
In a letter to the FCC the Motion Picture Association of America is again attempting to get the regulators to force video content providers to inactivate analog outputs on set-top boxes when running video-on-demand movie programming, which would limit their viewing to digital TVs only! For someone like me who is still happily watching his 27-inch analog TV, this would be a bad thing!
Public Knowledge’s Harold Feld agrees with me, posting a five-minute video that was highly critical of the idea, saying:
We're going to break 25 million television sets, and break your TiVO, and break your Slingbox, and make sure you can't use it on VoD anymore, because it's so important to get these movies to video-on-demand earlier."
Want the Beatle catalog in digital files? Their music publisher EMI is still feuding with iTunes, so you’re out of luck there. But never fear: EMI’s Beatles Store is shipping a new limited-edition 16GB Apple-shaped (of course!) USB drive with 14 Beatles albums, 13 documentary videos, and all of the album art, for $279.99. The music files are encoded in both 44.1 Khz 24 bit FLAC files and 320 Kbps MP3 files!
In a SaveTheInternet.com article titled The Internet: It's Not a Truck, It's a Town Square, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) does a good job of describing the need for Net Neutrality:
Right now, a blog loads just as quickly as a corporate Web page. An e-mail from your mother comes through just as smoothly as a bill notification from your bank. An independent bookstore can process your order as quickly as Barnes & Noble. A garage band can stream its songs just as easily as a multi-platinum superband like REM can.
But recently, business executives from top ISPs have declared their interest in offering "prioritized " Internet service to companies that can pay for it. In other words, a company like Microsoft or Amazon could pay for its content to be delivered over a high-speed network — relegating a blogger or a mom-and-pop business to the slow lane.
That would transform the Internet from a free, open and competitive playing field into a "pay-for- play" arena in which citizen bloggers, nonprofits and small businesses are simply muscled out by major media conglomerates. That would transform the World Wide Web into a system of separate and unequal networks.
Another SaveTheInternet.com article titled The Internet Must Not Become a Segregated Community, by Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice, points out that Net Neutrality is critical for those who champion civil rights, saying:
For communities of color, the Internet provides us with a unique opportunity to speak for ourselves without first seeking approval or permission or having to secure major funds to do so. But the big telecommunications companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast want to create an effectively segregated online community where they will act as our gatekeepers . . .
. . . It’s not that network owners are secretly plotting to stifle free speech. But they have an undeniable, rational interest in creating a pay-for-play model for the treatment of communication on the Internet. Commercial Web sites that pay will get speed and quality, and the noncommercial uses of the Net will be collateral damage — relegated to the slow lane. It’s not necessarily that they want to block our speech for political reasons. It’s that our speech is not important to them because it’s not going to make them money.
In a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, (PDF) a coalition of public interest and rights groups including Public Knowledge, the ACLU, CDT, and the American Library association, urged the commission to contine its support for net neutrality, saying:
Over the past two weeks, the largest telephone and cable companies have launched an intense lobbying campaign to oppose meaningful rules using dire yet vague predictions of doom if the FCC acts to preserve the Internet’s traditional openness. This outcry over a proposal the public has yet to see is clearly intended to halt the dialogue over the proper rules of the road for an open Internet before it even starts.
The Washington Post reported that a comment made by White House deputy chief technology officer Andrew McLaughlin about Internet censorship — "If it bothers you that the China government does it, it should bother you when your cable company does it." — angered AT&T. Guess it most have hit to close to home!
The latest argument being furthered by the cable industry is that forcing Net Neutrality on them would be a violation of their First Amendment rights because it would be "compelling a speaker to convey information that the speaker does not wish to convey."
Sorry! I don’t buy it! ISPs aren’t the speakers. They are just a conduit to the cloud that I am paying for. The Web sites I choose to connect to are the speakers. And if my ISP in any way restricts my access to those sites, they are interfering with my Free Speech right to watch, hear or read what I want, and — more importantly! — are interfering with the Free Speech rights of every Web site author whose site doesn’t get the special treatment they are trying to get away with setting up.
Andrew Jay Schwartzman, President and CEO of the Media Access Project, testifying at a Federal Communications Commission workshop entitled “Speech, Democracy and the Open Internet,” pointed out a novel argument regarding liability, saying:
Internet service providers can’t have it both ways. If they wish to continue to receive liability protections relating to copyright infringement, they cannot turn around and claim to have First Amendment rights to edit others’ content. ISPs do not materially contribute to the content they retransmit, and they receive important protections based on the presumption that they do not function as speakers.
Digital Rights Management strikes again: Microsoft Office 2003 users who had been protecting their documents using the new Rights Management Service (RMS) feature found themselves locked out of their own documents, when a Microsoft-provided security certificate expired!
In a Washington Post article titled Yes, journalists deserve subsidies too, Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols warn that the "’information age’ could be characterized by unchecked spin and propaganda," as newsrooms close. They are calling for public subsidies for the press, saying:
We seek to renew a rich if largely forgotten legacy of the American free-press tradition, one that speaks directly to today's crisis. The First Amendment necessarily prohibits state censorship, but it does not prevent citizens from using their government to subsidize and spawn independent media.
Indeed, the post-colonial press system was built on massive postal and printing subsidies. The first generations of Americans never imagined that the market would provide sound or sufficient journalism. The notion was unthinkable. They established enlightened subsidies, which broadened the marketplace of ideas and enhanced and protected core freedoms. Their initiatives were essential to America's progress.
The value of federal journalism subsidies as a percentage of gross domestic product in the first half of the 19th century ran, by our calculations, to about $30 billion per year in current dollars. It is this sort of commitment, established by Jefferson and Madison, that we must imagine to address the current crisis.
Countering the argument that newspapers no longer impact consumers, Editor & Publisher reports that a Scarborough Research study found that 74 percent of adults in the US read a newspaper in print or online during the week studied.
The American Booksellers Association sent a letter to the US Department of Justice, asking for an investigation into what it called “predatory pricing practices’’ of Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, and Target, who are deeply discounting 10 new, popular books for as little as $8.98 each. This is typical retail merchandizing, where certain “loss leaders” are advertised and sold below the retailer’s cost to get shoppers in the door, who will hopefully buy other items while they are there at the store’s regular price. The ABA makes the practice sound like an evil plot to kill book sales! However, I think that what the ABA is really afraid of is losing control over its ability to set suggested retail prices and have them stick!
HR1147, Local Community Radio Act of 2009 was passed by the House and sent to the Senate with little opposition. The bill would repeal regulations requiring the FCC to protect full-power commercial broadcasters from interference from Low Power FM stations being placed on third-adjacent channels. If approved, this could open the airways to numerous local radio stations, with diverse music offerings not heard on the airways in years!
Free Speech Watch
The American Civil Liberties Union reports that the FBI continues to issue gag orders to prevent discussion of government investigations conducted using National Security Letters, even though a federal appeals court called the gag orders of "constitutionally suspect," and ruled that they should be subject to judicial review.
Nearly 200 people were arrested during the protests of the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh, PA. Most of the arrests occurred in the Oakland section, where the University of Pittsburgh is located. Dozens of students claim they were arrested for simply coming out of their dorms to see what was going on!
In what could have become a First Amendment issue if it had gone to trial, a Jackson Heights, Queens man who used police scanners to track the motions of police and update Group of 20 summit protesters via Twitter, was arrested in a Pittsburgh hotel, and had his home searched by the FBI. Prosecutors later withdrew the charges after an attorney asked the presiding judge to unseal police affidavits used to gain the search!
In a Reason article titled Scenes From a Crackdown, Radley Balko expressed concerns for our free speech rights, saying:
These are precisely the kinds of events where free speech and the freedom to protest is in most need of protection. Instead, the more high-profile the event, the more influential the players, and the more high-stakes the decision being made, the more determined police and political officials seem to be in making sure dissent is kept as far away from the decision makers as possible. Or silenced entirely.
The Justice Department sent a subpoena (PDF) to independent news site Indymedia.us ordering it to provide "IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information" on all readers who visited their site on a certain day, and placed a gag order on them telling them not to talk about it! Instead, IndyMedia called in the EFF, and when the EFF dropped a letter (PDF) on the prosecutor telling him he was way out of line, the prosecutor replied by letter saying the subpoena had been withdrawn!
In a CBS News article, tech rights journalist Declan McCullagh noted:
Under long-standing Justice Department guidelines, subpoenas to members of the news media are supposed to receive special treatment. One portion of the guidelines, for instance, says that "no subpoena may be issued to any member of the news media" without "the express authorization of the attorney general" — that would be current attorney general Eric Holder — and subpoenas should be "directed at material information regarding a limited subject matter."
In an attempt to cut down on the number of astroturf sites, the Federal Trade Commission just issued new guidlines covering product testimonials and endorsements, but, as a MediaPost blog noted, the rules apparently only apply to online journalists:
In a portion of the guides addressing review copies, the FTC says that bloggers should disclose the receipt of free merchandise, but that people who write for news organizations need not do so.
Why the difference? The FTC seems to think that professional news organizations -- but not citizen journalists -- can be trusted to self-regulate in this area. Certainly, some newspapers have policies forbidding writers from accepting swag. But plenty of publications don't think twice about reviewing a book after receiving a free copy, or writing about a movie after attending a free screening. And some newspapers and magazines allow journalists to review a hotel after going on a travel junket, or write about a restaurant after accepting a free meal.
Likewise, some citizen journalists and stand-alone bloggers probably accept swag, while others purchase merchandise with their own money and then write about it.
The federal Stolen Valor Act, which makes it a crime to falsely claim to have received a military medal, even if the liar makes no effort to profit from the act, is being challenged on First Amendment grounds.
As a disabled veteran myself, here’s my thinking on this: most perpetrators who claim medals they never received, or claim service they never actually served, do so for the sole reason of improving others’ good opinion of them. When they are finally found out, the scorn and outrage directed at such people is likely viewed by them as far more punishment than a fine or jail time. These people don’t make me mad, only sad for them, that their have such a poor self image that they feel the need to claim service and/or honors that are not theirs.
How shocking!!! A News Interest Index survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that 47% of those responding say they think of Fox News is "mostly conservative" compared to other news channels! Who woulda guessed?! (Yes. This is intentional sarcasm!)
The proposed federal media shield law. S.448, Free Flow of Information Act of 2009 , moved forward to the Senate floor this week. If passed, it will make it more difficult for the government to compel journalists to disclose information, including the identities of their sources. A identically-name bill, H.R.985, was passed by the House, and is sitting in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Privacy Watch
In a Salon article titled Obama's latest use of "secrecy" to shield presidential lawbreaking, Glen Greenwald is concerned that the Obama Administration continues to push to defend the illegal wiretapping the Bush Administration began:
If the President can simply use "secrecy" claims to block courts from ruling on whether he broke the law, then what checks or limits exist on the President's power to spy illegally on Americans or commit other crimes in a classified setting? By definition, there are none. That's what made this distortion of the "state secrets" privilege so dangerous when Bush used it, and it's what makes it so dangerous now.Barack Obama campaingned against Bush Administration domestic spying. He needs to shut it down on his watch!
Post 9/11, the FBI National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) set up a data-mining system called the Investigative Data Warehouse to hunt down terrorists dubbed the, that has combined numerous government and private-sector data about both citizens and foreigners. Unfortunately, the system is now being used in many other investigations.
In one of his CryptoGram articles, computer security guru Bruce Schneier points to a recent court case where a plaintiff whose account was hacked and money stolen, is being allowed to sue her bank, claiming that they didn’t do enough to secure online access to her account! As Mr. Schneier noted in his article:
Fraudulent transactions have nothing to do with the legitimate account holders. Criminals impersonate legitimate users to financial institutions. That means that any solution can't involve the account holders. That leaves only one reasonable answer: financial institutions need to be liable for fraudulent transactions. They need to be liable for sending erroneous information to credit bureaus based on fraudulent transactions.
They can't claim that the user must keep his password secure or his machine virus free. They can't require the user to monitor his accounts for fraudulent activity, or his credit reports for fraudulently obtained credit cards. Those aren't reasonable requirements for most users. The bank must be made responsible, regardless of what the user does.
University of Tokyo Researchers have created a paint containing an aluminium-iron oxide that resonates at Wi-Fi frequencies, and would therefore block wireless signals. If you painted your house with it, your neighbors wouldn’t be able to see your home wireless network!
A Fordham Law School study found that state educational databases across the country kept children's social security numbers, mental health, illness, jail sentences, family wealth indicators, and even pregnancies in children's educational records, and that most states use third-party vendors for all or part of their data collecting and reporting!
Back in March, Steve Bierfeldt, an aide to Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), was detained while attempting to board a plane at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport carrying $4,700 in cash, and was grilled for half an hour. Unfortunately for the TSA, Mr. Bierfeldt recorded the event on his iPhone. As a result of the publicity over the issue, the TSA issue two new internal directives stating that "screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security" and "traveling with large amounts of cash is not illegal" because the cash doesn’t threaten the aircraft (duh)!
To read about Mr. Bierfeldt’s experience in his own words, read his article titled I Fought the Law. . . And I Won.
In an article on his blog titled Beyond Security Theater security guru Bruce Schneier, explains why it is important to not set up special tribunals or courts to try terrorists:
We should treat terrorists like common criminals and give them all the benefits of true and open justice — not merely because it demonstrates our indomitability, but because it makes us all safer. Once a society starts circumventing its own laws, the risks to its future stability are much greater than terrorism.Politicians that avoid political expediency, do what's right and speak the truth? Come on, Bruce! I know it's important to speak truth to power, but you're asking too much of them!
Supporting real security even though it's invisible, and demonstrating indomitability even though fear is more politically expedient, requires real courage. Demagoguery is easy. What we need is leaders willing both to do what's right and to speak the truth.
The Smart Grid Interoperability Standards Project was mandated by the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 to improve the electrical grid in the US, by developing standards and protocols for devices that “talk” to each other. The idea is to make power use and distribution more efficient. However, EPIC, in comments (PDF) filed with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), who are managing this program, expressing concerns that consumer privacy is not being given sufficient priority. As EPIC explains:
The Smart Grid may threaten privacy in many different ways. First, the Smart Grid could reveal sensitive personal behavior patterns. The Draft Framework proposes to create a "draft specification for facilitating common scheduling operations." That is, coordinate power supply based on the schedules of the power needs of users and the availability of power. For instance, [e]nergy use in buildings can be reduced if building system operations are coordinated with the schedules of the occupants." However, coordinating schedules in this manner poses serious privacy risks to consumers. Information about a power consumer’s schedule can reveal intimate, personal details about their lives, such as their medical needs, interactions with others, and personal habits: "highly detailed information about activities carried on within the four walls of the home will soon be readily available for millions of households nationwide." "For example, research has delineated the differences in availability at home for various social types of electricity consumers including working adults, senior citizens, house wives, and children of school age." Similarly, the data could reveal the type of activity that the consumer is engaging in, differentiating between, for example, housework and personal hygiene, or even revealing that a consumer has a serious medical condition and uses medical equipment every night, or that he lives alone and leaves the house vacant all day.
That concern is further exacerbated by the fact that Smart Grid meter data may be able to track the use of specific appliances within users’ homes . . . The ability to track appliance usage data has significant privacy implications: "With the whole of a person’s home activities laid to bare, [appliance-usage tracking] provides a better look into home activities than would peering through the blinds at that house. " Not only could that information be used to extract even more intimate information from the usage data, but that information could also be used in ways that impact the user in tangential areas of their lives. For instance, appliance usage data could be transferred to appliance manufacturers to respond to warranty claims.21 Or, the data could be transferred to insurance companies that may want the information as part of an investigation into an insurance claim.22 Or more generally, energy service providers in possession of consumer data may simply choose to use the data for marketing purposes or to sell it on the open market.
Scary stuff, folks! There needs to be a way to capture the usage data while anonymizing its source.
Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain is bringing up a so-far unconsidered down side to cloud computing: your information is only secure if the companies holding for you keep it that way! If they find out they have a business need to sell you out, or a government agency puts the heat on them, you have no recourse, and no way to stop them! Better to keep your data safe at home.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and three other government agencies, which have so far refused to release information under a Freedom of Information Act request made by the EFF to determine how the agencies are using information on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks in their surveillance and investigations!
In a TechRepublic blog article titled Presumption of guilt: Your rights when it comes to data encryption, Michael Kassner warns that, although we have a right to encrypt data on our PCs, the law on whether you can be compelled to give up your password is unclear. Further, in some cases, the fact that encryption is being used has been pointed out by prosecutors in some cases as evidence of guilt! Needless to say, we are far from having any black-letter law on this issue.
The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), the largest and oldest professional organization for computer professionals (disclosure: I am an ACM member!), posted A Threat Analysis of RFID Passports that describes a scenario of how an RFID-equipped US passport could be illegally scanned to facilitate identity theft:
Several months ago, as you were casually walking through the airport en route to a business meeting in Europe, someone was lingering close behind. As you approached a security agent to have your passport checked, this individual used a small antenna connected to a computer in his backpack to eavesdrop on the radio communication between the security agent's reader, which has the capacity to decrypt the highly sensitive and secured data on the passport, and the RFID-enabled passport itself . . . Private information, including not only basic information about your identity but even a digitized photograph, had been stolen from you at a moment when you thought your passport was safely in the hands of a government official. You moved on without any clue as to how deeply your privacy had been violated in an attack that you had no idea was occurring.So even if you keep your passport in a nice shielded holder, it’s still vulnerable the moment you take it out and present it to the Customs official! <sigh!>
Legislation, Government & Politics
The FCC is expected to rule that cable operators cannot block other television service providers from broadcasting local sports events. So, even though Comcast may have an exclusive deal to broadcast the Blazers game, my provider, DirecTV, could broadcast it too! Works for me! Of course, this sort of blows exclusive deals out of the water (which was the idea, of course!).
The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report (GAO-10-8) (PDF) that suggests a serious influenza pandemic could result in a significant increase in Internet traffic as large numbers of people stay home. The report reads:
Increased use of the Internet by students, teleworkers, and others during a severe pandemic is expected to create congestion in Internet access networks that serve metropolitan and other residential neighborhoods.
I’ve long called for this: Paul Venezia, in an InfoWorld article titled Changing the way the law deals with high-tech cases suggests that we create special technology courts, with tech-smart judges, lawyers and juries, to hear technology cases:
Is it unreasonable to think that high-tech cases should have juries of high-tech people? After all, the accused is supposed to be entitled to a jury of peers. I realize it sounds elitist (like the old saw about juries containing twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty), but I can't get past the notion that it's simply impossible for lay people to absorb enough technical knowledge in a few weeks to enable them to make sound decisions about a case like this one. That even applies to technical people who have a deep understanding of other aspects of technology: If they don't have a background in networking, they would be challenged in a case like this.
Court Cases
Comcast settled its class-action suit, over the the blocking of peer-to-peer Web sites, for $16 million! But each class member can only collect $16.00, and Comcast does not have to admit any wrongdoing!
According to a PC Magazine blog, Microsoft lost its appeal of a patent-infringement verdict awarded to Toronto-based i4i regarding Custom XML its Office software suite. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals awarded i4i over $290 million, then tacked on $40 million for intentional infringement. However, Microsoft figured out how to do without Custom XML, which isn’t in the Office 2010 beta. They may have to pull a few copies of Office off the shelf in the US, though!
Cool Tech
Intel is showing off their new Larrabee graphics chip, which is the first hybrid graphics chip to combine the CPU and GPU in a single device.
Intel demonstrated a fully programmable 48-core, 1.3-billion transistor CPU dubbed the Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC) , that can run standard x86 software.
PC Magazine posted the 2010 Laptop Roadmaps for AMD and Intel CPUs.
ExtremeTech posted the 2010 AMD and Intel CPU Roadmaps
AMD is showing off its Fusion hybrid "APU,"of which mates processor and graphics in the same CPU.
Nvidia trotted out its latest GPU, dubbed the Fermi, and announced a supercomputing contract with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in which the Fermi will be an integral component.
Micron is talking up their RealSSD C300 solid state drives, which are the first SSDs to use the new 6Gbps SATA interface. The drives are due out in early 2010, in both 1.8-in. and 2.5-in. form factors, at 128GB and 256GB capacities.
Seagate launched its first SSD, named the Pulsar. The drives are aimed at the enterprise market (i.e. servers as opposed to PCs), and will be offered in 50, 100, and 200-GB capacities, in a 2.5-inch, 7.5-mm-high form factor.
Toshiba is sampling its new 64GB NAND flash modules. Aimed at the mobile device market the drives could make hard-drive-based mobile devices obsolete!
McDonald's is fast deploying free Wi-Fi hotspots in all their restaurants. Some early test sites that were charging $2.95 for two hours’ access will dropped the fee starting in mid-January 2010. I expect this will force the rest of the fast-food restaurant industry to follow suit to stay competitive!
HP is getting ready to buy out network equipment giant 3Com Corporation, allowing HP to fully equip a data center using its own products!
Gartner is calling Windows 7 an "all but inevitable" upgrade for enterprises. Of course, given Microsoft’s dropping support for XP, and Vista being the dog it is, what other choice is there?!
PC Magazine’s Lance Ulanoff agrees, saying that a "perfect storm of technology factors" will force companies to upgrade, including XP’s age and lack of support; Win7’s reported stability and compatibility; replacement of aging PCs, mandating the new OS due to drivers, etc.; and lessons learned from Vista’s "three year beta test;"
ZDNet’s Ed Bott claims that readily-available drivers will be the "single biggest reason" why Windows 7 won't be another Vista, suggesting that the delayed release of drivers "killed Vista."
According to PC Magazine’s Jamie Lendino, Windows 7's Device Stage, the successor to Vista’s Windows Mobile Device Center (which I learned to hate given its dog-slow syncing compared ActiveSync), isn’t working very well because mobile vendors aren’t supporting it with the custom XML files needed to recognize the phones. Fortunately, Windows Mobile Device Center is still available in Windows 7. Unfortunately, I suspect it will still run just as slow as it does on Vista.
If you’re ready to tackle Windows 7, TechRepublic has posted a self-explanatory article titled Plan and execute a smooth Windows 7 upgrade with the help of this flowchart
And once you have it up and running, PC Magazine will show you 21 Ways to Customize Windows 7
For those who like to play that way, Microsoft has posted a free Trial Version off Office 2010 (better known as a beta version!). My first response when checking out the site for the new version was: does Microsoft have a requirement that the icons for each new version of Office be uglier than the last? It sure seems that way.
A new touch-based mobile OS called Android has blasted into the market, and Google is the first to put out a smart phone running it, dubbed the Nexus One.
Motorola is also making an Android-based smart phone they unimaginatively called the Droid and hawking it with glitzy Sci-Fi-style TV ads.
Taiwanese computer giant Acer is readying both a smart phone and a netbook PC that will run Android.
The hope is that enough new Android phones are release to start up a viable Android app market, based on the highly-successful iPhone app market. We'll see!
Buzz Aldrin, the famed Astronaut from the Apollo 11 mission, lived up to his nickname when he posted an article titled Why We Need Better Rockets on Huffington Post, suggesting we dump NASA and moving space exploration into the commercial sector. Check this out:
Here's my plan -- and yes, I am a rocket scientist -- cancel Ares 1 now and the version of the Orion capsule that is supposed to fly astronauts back and forth to the International Space Station. Instead, unleash the commercial sector by paying them for transportation services to the station. Could be capsules. Could be winged ships like the Space Shuttle, capable of flying back to a runway with its crews and cargoes, not splashing in the ocean like a cannonball. With the money saved, start developing a true heavy lifter worthy of the Saturn V's successor. Could be a side-mount rocket like the Shuttles, with a tank-and-booster set flanked by a payload pod jammed full of cargo-or a space capsule with astronauts in tow. Or new upper stages capable of deep space missions. Let's open 'er up to a true competition, with designs from inside -- and outside -- NASA. If we bypass a foolish Moon race and let the development of the Moon be an international affair, we will have time to refine the super booster to make sure it is compatible with our deep space goals, like missions flying by comets or asteroids — or to the moons of Mars. Such a rocket would be ready when the time comes to colonize Mars. No more false starts and dead end rockets.
Virgin Galactic unveiled the SpaceShipTwo in Mojave, California, which they hope will be the world’s first commercial manned spaceship. The craft will carry up to six "astronaut passengers" and two "astronaut pilots" on sub-orbital flights.
NASA’s Mars rover Spirit apparently broke a second power wheel and scientists are frantically trying to get the spacecraft unstuck from the mud before Martian winter freezes it up. Unarguably the most successful unmanned space exploration ever attempted, the Spirit landed on Mars in January 2004 for a planned 90-day mission, but, despite the occasional breakdowns, it is still going strong over six years later!
Italian scientists have created a pill-sized remote-controlled robot equipped with moving legs and a camera! The tiny robot was developed to scan for stomach and colon cancer, and crawls at 50mm per minute!
Another Sci-Fi "technology" about to become real? Intel researchers are working on ways to interface the human brain with a computer using brain implants. Intel hopes to have the technology in production by 2020.
3M, maker of Scotch Tape and Post-It Notes, has created a sequential 3D optical film that will display true 3D images on mobile phones and other handheld devices, with no glasses required!
You might not care about this unless you’re a techie, but it’s way cool for us: Microsoft plans to publishing the Outlook 2010 Personal Folders (PST) file format and releasing it on an open license. Up to now, only Microsoft has known the PST file structure, and I see two really good reasons opening the structure will be a good thing:
- Because of the closed format, the only repair tool available for damaged PST files has been Microsoft’s lame Inbox Repair Tool (SCANPST.EXE). Opening the format will open a market for third-party PST tools.
- With a closed file format, the only way you could access the data stored in the PST is through Outlook, which limited you to only doing the things with the data Outlook was programmed to do. With an open format, other apps can interface with the PST directly, opening the market for a whole range of apps such as contact management, calendar and event management, etc.
Google stood up its own Public Domain Name System (DNS), supposedly to speed up Internet access (read this if you aren’t sure what DNS is). Most home Internet users use the DNS their ISP sets up, which, if it gets really busy, could slow down your connection. For this to work well implies have a honking large computer network to support it. Of course, this is Google!
ExtremeTech tested the service against both his company’s DNS and OpenDNS, another public DNS that’s been around since July 2006. His results? OpenDNS was typically faster than Google’s.
If you’re interested in trying it, TechRepublic posted a nice article on Configuring Google's new public DNS.
However, a TechRupublic article by their security guru Chad Perrin, titled Should we be afraid of Google Public DNS?, points out that privacy is one issue that needs to be considered:
DNS is what tells your browser (for instance) what IP address it wants when you give it a domain name (such as google.com) to look up, and anyone whose DNS server you use for such lookups can track what domains you try to resolve if he or she wants to. At minimum, it can track DNS requests by associating them with the requesting IP address, and if you use Google Public DNS, you are putting some trust in Google’s hands that it will not gather information on your online behavior in a way that can be traced back to you, or at least that it will not abuse such information or sell it to someone who will abuse it.Of course, we've been doing that all along when we use out ISP's DNS, so I guess its a matter of who you truyst the most.
In a Tech Republic article, Michael Kassner describes a new technology that, if the banks adopt it, would make it almost impossible to clone a credit card! To bad they’ll never go for it, since it would require them to actually buy something!
Google has released version 3 of it’s Chrome browser. PC Magazine reviewed the browser, and gave it kudos for fast JavaScript performance, but dinged it for lacking a RSS reader or extensions.
UnCool Tech
A new term to learn in the world of malware: Ransomware. This is software that infects your PC then asked you to pay for the tool to “clean” it up! Really!
A DNS amplification attack is where hackers send a spoofed DNS query message (one that looks like it’s coming from a different IP address than it really is) to a server with an "open recursive" or "open resolver" DNS system, tricking it into sending it to victim's computer. Typically, the hacker sends out hundreds of these spoofed messages to DNS systems it’s already found to be open, all pointing to a single computer, which can, at best, block the system’s computer access; or, at worst, crash the system. The reason that this problem is getting so serious is that many of the DSL and cable routers being deployed in the home are set to open DNS by default!
I guess this was inevitable, but some of the most popular videos on YouTube are mission videos from military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), dubbed "drone porn" by afficianados!
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