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Microsoft flips the switch on remote TV recording
Microsoft has quietly enabled the MSN Remote Record feature for its Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 operating system, a customised version of Windows XP that enabled users to watch and record television shows on their computers.
Users now can instruct the software to record a show through the internet. That feature should appeal to TV junkies who are travelling and don't want to miss their favorite shows, but more importantly allows them to search the electronic programming guide with MSN's search engine.
VC massacre postponed
The predicted massacre among the over-confident and over-financed venture capital investors in Silicon Valley isn't happening.
"Why not?" asked Silicon Beat. Because most firms are still hanging in there. They cut costs by laying off some of their staff and sold some of the companies they invested in at a decent, although not spectacular, profit.
In another sign that the sector has weathered the storm, Shasta Ventures has raised $210 m from investors. Shasta specialises in technology for the consumer market.
Blinded by Microsoft hate
Microsoft might have an image of being fiercely competitive, but in their eagerness to catch the world's largest software company with it's hand in the cookie jar, the blogosphere has made an embarrassing mistake.
On Saturday an image started circulating on the internet that "proved" that Microsoft's anti-spyware was enticing users to uninstall Firefox, an open source competitor of Internet Explorer. The image was an hoax, but many bloggers and websites, including Slashdot didn't bother to check, putting all their faith in the JPG-image.
This is what happens if you let your anti-Microsoft religion stand in the way of old school fact checking.
Microsoft's anti-spyware software did come under fire recently when it turned out that is prevented users from setting the Dutch Startpagina.nl as their homepage, suggesting that users switch to MSN.nl instead. Startpagina.nl is the number one website in the Netherlands and a major competitor for MSN.nl. Microsoft has since apologized for the mistake and adjusted the software.
Firefox update not for the mom and pop user
Users looking to apply the latest security upgrade of the open source Firefox browser have an unpleasant surprise waiting for them.
They are advised to manually uninstall the software before they can get the new security features. There is no simple patch for them to apply.
In terms of ease of use, Microsoft's Internet Explorer outshines Firefox – for now at least.
Fuel cells not your thing? Help's on the way
Forget my previous post about fuel cell technology coming to mobile phones by 2008. Students at the Department of Industrial Design at the Indian Institute of Technology have designed a portable turbine that generates sufficient electricity to charge a mobile phone. The device would be ideal for people travelling on trains: just hold it out of the window you've got instant power.
In areas where electricity is a scarcity and where there is a constant wind source, it could also be used to power a radio or to run lights.
The device will cost 200 Rupees, or $4.59.
Internet over powerlines gets real at last
The year 2005 will mark the breakthrough of broadband over powerline technology in the US, claims the New Millennium Research Council.
The NMRC is a group of scholars and policy makers, aiming to "develop workable, real-world solutions to the issues and challenges confronting policymakers" in the fields of telecommunications and technology.
Due to interference issues, internet over powerlines test projects have been as abundant as they have been big failures. But there are some real world deployments now, notes the NMRC. Homes in sections of New York City as well as Manassas, Virginia are being hooked up to the internet through the power grid. The provider in Manassas already had to put 1,300 prospective customers on a waiting list.
Internet over the powerline might have to compete with cable and DSL connections, but those wires are getting used less and less. Copper phonelines are being cut in favour of mobile plans, and cable TV is losing ground to satellite, the NMRC point out. The power line in the future might very well become the only wire that still comes into the home from the outside.
Meanwhile NMRC conveniently leaves out the possibility that the WiMAX wireless technology in the future replaces wired internet altogether. But hey, they have a whitepaper to promote here. And in their defence, the surge of WiMAX seems all but certain.
Mobile phone to go liquid by 2008
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone has developed a fuel cell that will provide 3G telephone sets with up to 9 hours of talk time. The catch is that it'll take until 2008 before the technology will be able to deliver on its promises.
One could argue that the two days of battery life that we get out of our mobile phones at this moment is sufficient, but 3G models will suck up a significant larger amount of power, requiring for a major overhaul in battery technology.
Fuel cells could provide that technology. They use liquid hydrogen or methanol to create electricity. The big advantage is that the technology allows for rapid recharging (refuelling to be exact) and has a larger storage capacity than traditional batteries.
Fuel cell technology might deal with the jungle of power adapters that reside under our desks, consumers instead will get a hydrogen storage unit the size of a car battery in their homes to refuel their devices – just forget about carrying that thing with you on a business trip.
The iPod shuffle is display-ready
The iPod shuffle might cost only $99 for the 512 Mb version, that still leaves Apple $35 to $40 in profit, according to an estimate by research firm IDC.
About two thirds of the costs are gobbled up by the 512 Mb flash memory chip that the portable media player uses to store its music.
The iPod shuffle uses the STMP3550 digital music decoder chip from SigmaTel Inc. Those willing to speculate should pay attention to the fact that the chip also supports the decoding of Windows Media audio files, although Apple has it programmed for AAC and Audible music formats.
The chip also offers support for an LCD display (!!!), voice recording and FM tuner.
Especially the lack of a display in the iPod shuffle has been a major point of criticism. The decoder chip supporting such a display however gives Apple the option to easily add one in future models.
Will Microsoft kill Longhorn's security?
Microsoft has become awfully quiet about its Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) initiative. NGSCB is a set of new security technologies that will be part of Windows Longhorn.
The technology promised to greatly increase the level of security in Windows. But at the same time it sparked concerns about fair use and the need for hardware and software developers to adjust their products in order to profit from the new security technology.
Microsoft unveiled NGSCB, formerly codenamed Palladium, in 2002, and published a beta October 2003. Last year May, the company disclosed that it had severely watered down the programme based on user feedback. Microsoft missed a deadline for late 2004 to publish an update to the programme.
The project's website currently appears abandoned and the company won't comment on the direction the technology is taking.
The evidence that a major catastrophe has hit the NGSCB project is overwhelming. If Microsoft kills the technology and doesn't come up with a proper alternative, it sends a strong signal that it doesn't care about security, and has no intention to offer secure products to its customers.
For all that NGSCB had going against it, it did promise to offer a dramatic increase in security for the average user. It would be sad to see Microsoft make this mistake.
Computer users demand liability at last
Enterprise computer users including General Motors, AT&T and Alcoa (an aluminium producer) are bundling their forces to have software vendors accept liability for the software that they sell, reports The Wall Street Journal (paid subscription).
If successful, the lobby would mean the end of an era in which companies like Microsoft, Apple, IBM and Oracle can hide behind software licenses that severely limit a user's right to expect a product that does what it promises to do.
It's always struck me as amazing, but the software industry so far has gotten away with providing abysmal service without taking even a bit of responsibility.
"Can you imagine if GM produced a vehicle and said, 'We did a pretty good job of engineering this. It worked in the laboratory. Here it is, consumer, you go crash-test it,'" asks Eric Litt, chief information-security officer in GM's information-systems and services unit in the Wall Street journal story. "We wouldn't accept that as a society."
As a result of the limited liabilities, we have created the weirdest of situations: if a software vendor messes up, he can force his customer to buy an upgrade to correct his mistake. Economics 101tells you that this picture is plainly wrong because it gives the vendor an incentive to create crappy code.
Change here is long overdue.
It's official: blogs threaten economic stability
Want to miss your car and mortgage payments? Starting a blog is an exelent way to achieve that, claims US employment lawfirm Littler Mendelson. The company warns that bloggers run an increased risk of getting fired over what they post on the web.
Bloggers initially have a sense of anonymity because… well… most blogs get about 5 hits a day, most of which are from the blog owner himself. But that can change overnight, as a stewardess with Delta Airlines and a newly hired Google employee have found out the hard way.
The Delta Airlines stewardess published photos depicting her in suggestive poses, wearing her work uniform and inside airplanes.
The culprit at Google mistakenly thought that the company's playful corporate culture meant that he could start telling everybody that they were stupid morons who didn't understand a thing about how the company should be run. In the process he also disclosed a trade secret or two, although nothing major got out.
Companies often lack a blogging policy, but can easily justify firing their employees if they disclose trade secrets are criticise their employers.
Dell stays loyal to Intel relationship
Dell has shunned AMD and is holding on to Intel chips for servers, Dell CEO Kevin Rollins said.
It appears that Dell used the AMD deal to get Intel to the bargaining table and squeeze some steep discounts out of the company.
The move by the largest computer maker in the world is a blow to AMD's ambition to make the Opteron a mainstream processor, but isn't the end of the line. Sun Microsystems, HP and IBM sell Opteron based servers and workstations.
Apple delays rewriting of the constitution
Apple has agreed to extend the deadline on a subpoena that it issued to the ISP of a blog until after a hearing about the constitutionality of Apple's attempts to muzzle free speech.
The whole case revolves around a leak to bloggers about a project codenamed "Asteroid". Desperate to pursue the culprit to its fullest extend, Apple wants to force the ISP of the blog Powerpage.org to release his emails, thereby tracing the source of the Asteroid leak.
These tactics might be fully constitutional in the dictatorship that Steve Jobs envisions, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has its doubts that it will work in a democracy that is based on free speech principles. The two will meet in Santa Clara County Superior Court on March 4.
Could silicon trash be a treasure?
Those faulty Pentium processors that Intel throws away every day, might find some good use after all, researchers at the University of Southern California suggest.
When a computer generates an image on a computer screen, the user won't notice a few miscalculations. As long as it involves output to humans, computing cycles can afford the occasional flaw.
The use of faulty computer chips forms an enormous economic opportunity because it increases the yield of the chip making process.
The problem is however that we get on slippery road of having to determine where to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable mistakes. An of course some day, somebody is cross that line. A computer is going to screw up your credit card payment and all hell breaks loose.
That's the exact reason why I choose to stay clear of refurbished products today.
A penny for my thoughts
Blogger Jason Kottke is going pro. He has quit his job as a web designer and is asking his visitors to donate $2.50 per month to help him pay his rent, buy a new car and take that vacation to Hawaii.
Kottke's approach reminds of Salon.com's efforts to become a subscription based online publication (the company breaks even, but that's it). Or attempt back in 2000 to get web visitors to pay $1 for each chapter of a book he posted on the web. The project got off to decent start, but faded further down the road.
Since Kottke is the first who is trying to do this, he might very well succeed. But blogs through a subscription model lack an essential economic feat: scarcity. With an endless supply of blogs, there is only an emotional incentive to pay the blogger for his work. If he stops blogging, we'll just visit some other site.
That's why advertising and the web are made for each other. Advertisers look for exposure though an abundance of eyeballs, not scarcity.
Microsoft's mea culpa on the lack of IE innovation
Have you been wondering what Microsoft's Internet Explorer team has been up to after the IE6 launch and why Microsoft has so suddenly decided to speed up development of its Internet Explorer 7?
In short: what has the IE team been doing since IE6?
Over on the Microsoft Developer Internet Explorer blog, Dean Hachamovitch feels your pain. "I want to acknowledge that we have a problem if people are asking this question," writes Hachamovitch who runs the IE team on the IEBlog.
"Listing what we’ve done or our priorities will help but won’t address the problem. Responding to specific questions with a great product and great documentation (for developers, for IT professionals, for deployment specialists, and for other customers as well), and doing that consistently for as long as we’ve been quiet about IE will help more."
The team has been busy with new projects such as MSN Explorer and the MSN toolbar, as well as creating updates that shipped in SP1 and SP2, and updates for Tablet and Media Center PCs. And of course there were countless security holes to be patched in IE5, IE5.5 and IE6.
Thank you Microsoft for embracing blogs. We never would have gotten an answer direct from the source and honest as this one otherwise.
Craigslist founder stresses the need for citizen journalism
Craigslist founder stresses the need for citizen journalism
The folks over at Silicon Beat, a blog by the San Jose Mercury News, have a preview of an interview with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark where he talks about his plans to set up some kind of collaborative news site.
Recent scandals have shown that (especially in politics journalism) you can't trust the media anymore (case 1: Talon News; case 2: White House paid commentator; case 3: The CBS scandal). In an era where the political left and right are completely alienated from each other, the old safeguards that were put in place to ensure proper fact checking don't seem to work anymore.
"As a consumer of news, I've learned that there's too much important stuff which isn't printed or which is distorted on the way out,'' Newmark told the Mercury News. "One example being news out of the White House. We need to fix it."
"We, meaning the public, need to evolve a trusted institution with lots of fact-checking that we can trust and that we can prove does provide honest news," Newmark said.
Sony takes Clié off life support
Sony has pulled the plug on its Clié PDA in Japan. The company last year discontinued its line of Palm OS powered PDAs in the rest of the world, retreating to the gadget-crazy Japanese market.
The company's decision marks the complete and utter failure of product category that for a while was considered the Holy Grail. But PDAs soon lost much of their appeal for both the enterprise and consumer markets. The collapse of the internet bubble caused corporate IT budgets to freeze up, while the rise of smartphones made consumers abandon their PDAs in favor of the feature rich telephone.
PalmSource (the venture that owns the Palm operating system) now focuses on getting its software on smartphone. The market for enterprise class handheld computers is there for the taking for HP and Dell with their iPaq and Axim PDAs.
The Woz to Apple: stop the bullying
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has leashed out against Apple's legal crusade.
The company filed lawsuits against several unnamed persons for leaking a pre-release build of the upcoming Mac OS 10.4. The drunken blog in January published an interview with Vivek Sambhara (desicanuk), one of the people named in the lawsuit.
Sambhara registered for an account with Apple Developer Connection (ADC), downloaded a copy of the Mac OS 10.4 beta and made the astronomical mistake of putting it on BitTorrent.
By registering for his ADC account, the med-student agreed to the terms of a non-disclosure agreement, which he violated the moment he put the data on BitTorrent.
Late December Apple ruined Sambhara's Christmas holiday when it served him with the lawsuit.
After reading the interview, Wozniak was appalled. "I wish that Apple could find some way to drop the matter. In my opinion, more than appropriate punishment has already been dealt out," he wrote in an email to the blog. He pledged to donate $1,000 to support the student in his defense.
Has Sambhara been punished? No doubt he has lost many nights of sleep over the matter. The question if he has been punished sufficiently is more tricky.
But it's more important to turn this around. What is Apple trying to accomplish with its lawsuit? Whatever damage has been done can't be reversed.
If anything, the case will make the next Sambhara think twice before he posts secret code on the web. Will pursuing this case any further set more of an example – or will the damage to Apple's image outweigh the gains from the scare tactics?
Microsoft wandering around in the speech recognition market
You know that Microsoft is betting big on a market when they fly out Bill Gates to do the official announcement. But in the case of the company's Speech Server 2004, the company's efforts could be considered a losing bet, claims IDG News.
Launched in March 2004, Speech Server 2004 is Microsoft's attempt to enter the market for speech recognition software. The product was supposed to crush the competition by offering a low cost, easy to deploy solution. But Gartner puts Microsoft market share at 2.7 percent, far behind Nuance Communications' 34.5 and ScanSoft's 42.6 percent shares, writes IDG.
While Microsoft maintains its trademark optimistic tone of voice, partners point at several strategic mistakes that the company made. Speech specialist Pronexus Inc "bet the farm" on Microsoft's technology, but is seeing only a third of the revenues that it expected initially.
Pronexus' CEO blames the disappointing revenues on a failing marketing strategy by Microsoft. The software juggernaut went after small and medium sized businesses, but later realised that it should have gone after enterprise customers instead.
Given that this is Microsoft, I'm not too surprised. The company can afford missteps like these. An upgraded version of the software is expected for August. And if that turns out not to be working, there is always version 3 to make up for the mistakes they made in the mean time. Hopefully Pronexus will have shifted gears by then and decides to put its faith in the hands of a more reliable partner.
HP's self-destructing printer cartridges
HP's printer cartridges have a device build in that causes them to self-destruct after a predetermined amount of time, a lawsuit filed by a Georgia woman alleges.
The time bomb chip is secretly programmed to prevent the cartridge from working properly, which could be even before the ink holder is inserted into a printer.
The suit is seeking class action status and demands restitution, damages and other compensations.
Sun keeps trimming its workforce
Sun Microsystems has once again increased the number of layoffs in its software group.
The jobcuts are part of a corporate restructuring that was announced in 2004 when Sun appointed Jonathan Schwartz as its Chief Operating Officer and revealed its landmark settlement with Microsoft.
The number of cuts however keeps growing: it started at 3,300 but last week reached the 3,600 level.
Sun has been using its software business as differentiator, launching subscription plan licensing to attract customers to its hardware. Although this has allowed the company to return to profitability, overall results remain meagre with just $18m in profit in the most recent quarter.
IBM to Dell: copy this!
It must be good to be IBM when you can stick 3 years and $100m of research in Dell's face, as Big Blue did today when it unveiled its X3 chipset. The new technology delivers a 38 percent increase in performance over its predecessor: X2.
X3 will be applied in IBM's X-series server line using x86 intel processors. By adding the proprietary technology to the commodity Intel processors, IBM claims it can avoid getting trapped in the commodity trap of evaporating margins.
Since the X-series is proprietary IBM technology, Dell can't touch it, let alone sell it. The Texas based computer company instead has to rely on technology developed by Intel or AMD. And IBM is all to happy to point out that it easily outperforms those solutions.
Google charts new ethics territory
Google is under attack for a new feature in its Toolbar.
The service adds hyperlinks to webpages without the author's knowledge or consent. A street address for instance, will be turned into a link to Google Maps and a book's ISBN number gets linked to Amazon.
The service raises two questions. Is this a copyright violation and does Google unfairly promote its services?
Microsoft for starters wouldn't get away with a service that links to its maps.msn site. The company last year abandoned Smart Tags, a service similar to Google's, because of trademark concerns.
And secondly Google (potentially) gets revenues from changing the content of a page of which it doesn't own the copyrights. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
In Google's defence however, the company could argue that users install the software voluntarily. That might not be a strong argument in the discussion around copyrights, but does take away the pressure from the anti competitive side.
Cannes gets Starwars III
Star Wars geeks better start booking tickets for the Cannes film festival in May. The event will be opened by Star Wars: Episode III – The Revenge Of The Sith.
The movie opens 19 May, but the true Star Wars fans among you marked that on your calendars months ago.
Virtual keyboards all over again
Last week at the DEMO conference in Arizona a company called VKB unveiled a virtual keyboard to much praise from investors, bloggers and media.
The annual DEMO conference allows entrepreneurs to unveil their products to an audience of investors, industry analysts and press. DEMO in past years has been the podium where the Palm PDA and TiVo were launched. The show charges the companies to get access to this A-level audience.
The event however has gone over the top if you ask me. Most product introductions fail to create any exitement, causing me to remove DEMO off my list of "conferences to attend". Having to justify their attendence, the audience is all too eager to spot the next big thing and will loose the ability to critcally look at the offierings. This is demonstrated by VKB's keyboard.
After all, Canesta unveiled a similar technology in 2003, as well as Virtual Devices.
Even VKB of Israel talked about the technology ages ago, by which it seems to have violated DEMO's policy requiring that product announcements are about new introductions. It's embarrasing that VKB dares to repeat an introduction it did two years ago. And even more embarrasing that the "high level" audience fell for it.
You know that blogging has gone mainstream when...
when Jon Stewart starts talking about it.
Jon Stewart does "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. He puts up an act as an "anchor" for a news program, mixing real world news events with a dose of comedy. He is assisted by several "senior correspondents" that turn out to be experts on any topic that might arise. IMHO, the show's a blast and it is a regular item on my TiVo.
Just see Stewart's item on bloggers below. (via: http://homepage.mac.com/onegoodmove)
What happens when your TV becomes an open platform
Andrew Wallace from Portland, OR, has created and application that lets your TiVo display pictures posted on Flickr.com.
Wallace's application combines the open TiVo standards with the open Flickr standards and it's a great example of who embracing these increases the appeal of both products.
Flickr is a free, online service where users post pictures online. TiVo is a digital video recorder that is sold in the US primarily.
Using the TiVo device to show Flickr content on the TV puts the Flickr data in the living room, which is a far more convenient place to view pictures than behind the PC.
Tax free internet cigarettes go up in smoke
A Michigan woman has received a $2,500 bill from the state tax agency for taxes on cigarettes that she has bought over the internet in the past 4 years.
Strapped for cash, the state has forced online cigarette shops to hand over their customer lists. Letters have been sent to 533 consumers owing a total of $1.7 m. They all bought their smokes from esmokes.com.
The retail websites often advertise their cigarettes as cheaper because they don't charge the state tax which in Michigan is $2 per pack.
In the end, buying cigarettes without the tax online is just like that brand new Apple Powerbook that you can buy on eBay for half the price, from that kind seller in Lithuania: too good to be true.
One in ten is a smartphone
Smartphones will by 2009 claim 9.3 percent of the global mobile telephone market, Jupiter Media predicts.
Consumers are attracted to the devices because they prefer to carry only a single gadget over both a telephone and media player. Al least that what 62 percent of consumers told the researchers. They will even put up with compromises for the added capabilities, as long as the mobile phone remains the most important feature.
The smartphone in the past year has single-handedly killed the consumer markt for PDAs. Jupiter however cautiously adds that smart phones won't replace standard mobile phones, gaming devices, media players or cameras.
A smart phone is generally defined as a telephone with at least the following:
- mobile telephone
- address book
- calendar
- the ability to synchronize the device with a computer
Lawsuit reveals the true reason behind Apple's record profits
Users and resellers have filed class actions lawsuits against Apple computer for, well, being SOBs.
Consumers accuse Apple of selling them old computers while claiming that they were new. They also claim that the company cheated them out of their warranty by starting the countdown on the day the manufacturer ships the unit to the reseller instead of the purchase day.
Resellers meanwhile believe Apple stole their customer contact data and to send them marketing messages about the company's own retail store. They also say the vendor charged them parts that were used to repair units while within the official warranty period – getting this problem corrected would take several days.
Apple might be the underdog in the battle over the desktop computer (currently in the number 3 spot behind Linux and Windows), if proven guilty, the company deserves no sympathy for how it behaved.
Yet somehow we've seen this happen all before. That's just sad.
Gmail hungry for more and more users
Gmail just can't get enough users. Merely two weeks after Google allowed current users to invite 50 friends to start using the service, the company began giving away Gmail accounts to users who had asked to receive updates about the service.
"We also wanted to thank you. For showing us your support and for being so patient," the email stated. Thanks for nothing, most users will think. All the good user names by now have been snagged up. So unless you're looking to be londoner4235@gmail.com, you're out of luck.
Gmail remains in beta, and the company stresses that the latest move doesn't signal a change in that situation.
That may be so, the company seems to be collecting users as a squirrel does with nuts before winter.
HP intensifies CEO search
You might want to add the name of "Russell Reynolds" to you Easter card list soon. That is, if you fancy the job as new HP CEO.
HP just hired the head-hunter to help the company find a new CEO.
Since Fiorina's departure the company's CFO Robert Wayman has taken over as interim CEO. Patricia Dunn became chairman of the board of directors.
Russell Reynolds has offices around the world including London. So go ahead and give them a ring. You've got nothing to loose.
Rental software going strong
Salesforce.com saw a 82 pct increase in revenues of the last quarter to a total of $54.6 m.
The company that seems to be single-handedly proving that software as a service is the next big thing made a $3.6 m profit, reached 13,900 customers and a total of 227,000 users.
The idea for the company's hosted CRM solution is mind-boggling simple. Or as one user said it at last year Dreamforce User Conference in San Francisco when asked if he would ever consider going back to the old fashioned SAP-style solution: "Are you asking if I would rather start paying more?"
Windows wins security showdown against Linux
The IT headlines this week were dominated by both security and Linux, as LinuxWorld took place in Boston and RSA Conference had it's annual occurrence in San Francisco.
But yesterday the two events came together when two academics put Windows and Linux head to head in a security test. Microsoft Server 2003 kicks some Red Hat Linux 3 butt.
Next the spin doctors come in and start validating/battering the research methodology and accusing the researchers of being partial. But until the next study comes to claim something else, this one stands.
Former cyber security tsar says it all
Thought Microsoft has a debatable reputation in the field of computer security? Leave it up to Richard Clarke to do the Microsoft thrashing for you: "Given their record in the security area, I don't know why anybody would buy from them," Clarke told the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
Until January 2003 Richard Clarke was president Bush's national cybersecurity czar. Prior to that he was an antiterrorism advisor under the presidents Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. Last year he wrote a book titled "Against all enemies" in which he trashed Bush Jr's anti terrorism policy before and after the September 11 attacks.
In his 3 years as cybersecurity chief, Clarke warned against what would happen if the industry doesn't improve its security record. He referred to the unwillingness of the sector to invest money in security as "the dialog of death". Now that the industry has failed to change, Clarke pleads that it's time for the government to come up with rules and regulations that penalize companies for creating faulty products.
I fully agree with Clarke. Why can I sue Ford if my SUV rolls over, but does Microsoft have the right to protect itself from product liability claims just because they put so in their software licence?
SCO's Nasdaq listing goes the way of its Linux claims
The Linux bashing company SCO is about to loose its listing at the Nasdaq stock exchange after the company failed to meet deadlines to publish its annual results over 2004.
The delisting could become effective as early as Friday 18 February.
A delisting would be mostly embarrassing rather than inconvenient. SCO's lawsuit against IBM – SCO claims that it owns the intellectual property behind Unix and demands $5 bn in damages – already has made SCO the pariah of the software industry.
Recent progress in the legal proceedings hasn't given SCO investors much reason to believe that the suit will have a favourable outcome for SCO.
No listing for a company with no future makes for a nice cleanup. If only they could loose the lease to their office next.
What is wrong with this picture?
What would you do if a man comes to your door, telling you that he is the heir of the former president of Mozambique and that he will give you $5 m if you help him to free up the funds – you'll just have to pay him a $25,000 advance.
Or what if he has a package and tells you that it's filled to the rim with copies of playboy magazine. And when you open, the package turns out to contain a hand grenade that explodes in your face.
Or a man claming to be from the government takes away 25 percent of your pay check and uses it to starts a war against a distance Mideastern nation…
OK, we only allow ourselves to be fooled by the last one. Yet on the internet all three work like a gem.
Sometimes this world can be such a depressing place.
East Coast LinuxWorld on the move again
After IDG World Expo moved LinuxWorld to the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, abandoning New York, the event next year will move to the new Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
The event has outgrown its current facilities, the organiser told The Boston Herald. "We're pretty much wall-to-wall with exhibits'' and people, said Darrell Baker, vice president of event service at IDG World Expo told the newspaper.
Prior to the event, IDG said it expected 6,000 – 7,000 delegates to flock to Boston. LinuxWorld was supposed to stay at the Hynes convention center for a few years before it would move to the larger facility.
New York still gets to host a LinuxWorld Summit in May this year.
LinuxWorld Boston 2006 will take place from 3-6 April.
MySQL CEO to commercial software vendors: don't loose any sleep over open source.
"We hear so much about legacy vendors thinking that there is some sort of conflict in the software world and that open source is taking away business. That is completely wrong. The world hasn't seen even a fraction of the software it needs to develop in order to keep to this planet going. We have just scratched the surface. Software means ERP systems. There is so much more that hasn't been created yet in areas of medicine, research, entertainment, media, machine to machine. There is just so much to be done. In order to get there we must simplify what we've build so far. We must standardise, we must open up, we must turn them into building blocks so we can move to the next level. If we don't, we will be stuck at this level. We will have to hope for another y2k problem. This is not the end, it's not the beginning and not even the end of the beginning."
Marten Mickos, CEO of the open source database vendor MySQL, today in his keynote addresss at LinuxWorld in Boston.
Need I say more?
Microsoft preparing a patent offensive against open source?
Microsoft is hiring intellectual property engineers, open source advocate Bruce Perens said at a press conference at LinuxWorld in Boston today. The company claims that it will use the new hires to look for prior art, but Perens suspects Microsoft is preparing for a full frontal legal assault on open source.
Prior art is a legal term that points to a way to invalidate a patent after it has been issued. The term means that someone else already had created a similar application before the patent holder applied for his patent. For example, someone arguing that he invented the wheel would (hopefully) see his claim dismissed based on the existence of prior art: wheels have been around for thousands of years.
"The bad news here is that open source still doesn’t have an effective defence against [patent litigation]," Perens said. He raised doubts as to wether IBM would come to the rescue despite Big Blue previously committing itself to doing so.
IBM has an interest in maintaining the patent status quo because for years it has been is the largest filer of technology patents. IBM also could be reluctant to side with the open source community if that would see the company picking a battle with a partner.
Perens's plea has a weak spot in the fact that there is no proof that Microsoft will take legal action against the open source movement. But he does rightfully point out that the patent threat against Linux still is very real.
And I'd hate to think of what would happen if he is right about Microsoft.
Bruce Perens, as always at LinuxWorld with his signature penguin tie
You better scrub and floss that code
Any enterprise that does software development and uses open source should be worried about licence violations, if you ask Boston based start-up company Black Duck. Because when developers use general public licence (GPL) code in combination with proprietary code, they is a fair chance that they are violating the commercial software licence, the GPL licence and maybe even both.
Black Duck, exhibiting at LinuxWorld in Boston this week, develops an application that will analyse the binary code of any application that you might have developed in house. Using finger printing technology, it will effortlessly recognise any open source code inside the application and warn the user about possible conflicts between licences.
The GPL requires that developers reveal the source code of any customizations that add to the GPL-code. But in many cases, enterprises don't want to reveal the source code of projects they develop themselves. Companies violating the GPL run the risk of receiving a phone call from the Free Software Foundation. Linksys in the past has had the pleasure of receiving one of those, due to sloppy programming work by a partner in India.
For $25,000 Black Duck will scrub up to 25 megabytes of code. The software currently runs inside the company firewall, but Black Duck later this year expects to come out with a hosted solution that customers can access over the internet, CEO Doug Levin said.
"It is very easy to pick up stray code and put it in your releases. Software no longer necessarily becomes yours. The nature of software development has changed," Levin told vnunet.com
Levin currently has about a dozen customers. Yet Levin predicts that the market for software compliance management will grow to about $500 by 2009.
Firefox hits 25 million downloads in 100 days
MOZILLA FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES 25 MILLION DOWNLOADS OF FIREFOX BROWSER
"Twenty five million Firefox downloads is a significant achievement, and we see that number continuing to grow," said Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation. "
Computer Associates keeps it real
Claiming that "open source is no religion" Computer Associates CEO John Swainson has a good shot at winning the prize for delivering the most realistic keynote at this edition of LinuxWorld in Boston.
Living in a fragmented world of IT shall remain a reality for years to come, both in terms of hardware (x86, Sparc, Power and mainframe) as well as software (Solaris, Windows, Linux, AIX and HP/UX). Any vendor trying to sell you a vision of a single monolithic architecture is just going after your money.
For the IT industry to truly help its customers and users, it should "put aside politics," Swainson told attendees at LinuxWorld in his keynote on Tuesday. "We can't afford to behave that way. We need to work together as a community and create standards that have flexibility. Just because Linux has arrived, doesn't mean Windows will just fade away."
I couldn't help but shed a tear over Swainson's honesty. Have we at last found an IT vendor that loves us for who we are? Oh, wait. Swainson is with Computer Associates. That company that under its founder CEO Charles Wang build a reputation of squeezing customers for every penny the have while cutting back on services. Too bad. Or maybe they really did change?
Swainson, the newly appointed CEO of Computer Associates
IBM joins the Solaris hunt
IBM earlier today launched a Special Interest Area, offering help to sofware vendors in porting applications from Solaris 10 to Linux on x86, Power or IBM mainframes. The programme is as noble as it is selfserving.
IBM claims that Solaris users are starting to have doubts about the long-term viability of the operating system. By helping software developers to switch over to Linux, IBM says it offers them a more stable platform – and in the process sets itself up to sell some of hardware to the Sun refugees.
"We believe that the Linux opportunity is significantly bigger than the Solaris opportunity," said IBM vice president for Linux Scott Handy. "There is no room for a third operating system on x86 [in addition to Windows and Linux]."
Yesterday Red Hat startedthe full frontal assault against Solaris by setting up its new Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (REL 4) as the perfect alternative for Solaris users.
But I guess Sun could expect some flack after it started claiming that Solaris 10 is superior to Linux.
Microsoft reverses on Internet Explorer strategy
Microsoft will release a new version of Internet Explorer prior to the launch of Longhorn, the upcoming veresion of its operating system, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said in his opening keynote at RSA Conference in San Francisco.
The company had previously said a new browser version would only be launched as part of the Longhorn launch in 2006.
The absence of any kind of security – or at least any kind of security that stops spammers, malware and viruses from spreading – in Internet Explorer 6 has caused many users to switch to Firefox, giving the open source browser a huge boost. Last month 21 percent of the visitors to HPShopping.com, HP's online store, used Firefox, HP's Linux president Martin Fink told delegates at LinuxWorld in Boston this morning.
For more news about RSA Conference, tap into Vnunet.com's RSA special report and the Security Watchdog blog by vnunet.com and IT Week.
HP saves Linuxworld the drama. Any drama
HP's Martin Fink's started his keynote at LinuxWorld in Boston this morning with the promise that he wouldn't deliver any of the drama that HP showed last week with its CEO Carly Fiorina ouster. It was the high point in a keynote full of lows.
By dealing out clichés like: "The GPL is what enabled Linux to earn its wings," Fink told his audience what they already knew: Linux is here to stay and Linux is ready for the enterprise.
In a rare tidbit of news that accidentally must have slipped into Fink's keynote address, he told that HP Labs will start contributing to Xen, an open source virtualisation project out of Cambridge University.
Martin Fink, vice president for Linux at HP sings his audience a lullaby.
Novell's Jack Messman kicks off Linuxworld
Novell CEO Jack Messman keeps pushing for the datacentre. In delivering the opening keynote for LinuxWorld 2005 at Linuxworld, Messman revealed a deal with PolyServe to resell its clusering technology, as well as adding support for the open source Xen virtualisation technology that will be added to the next version of the SuSE Enterprise Linux Server 10 (SLES 10). By adding the new technologies Novell, aims to keep increasing the appeal of Linux for enterprise users to run their enterprise applications to run on the open source operating system.
7,000 LinuxWorld attendees can't be wrong
LinuxWorld organiser IDG World Expo is expecting 6,000 to 7,000 delegates to attend the first edition of the event in Boston this week.
The Boston edition comes in addition to other LinuxWorld events in North America in New York and San Francisco. The fact that the inaugural event draws such a respectable crowd, shows yet again that Linux and open source have reached maturity.
Novell CEO Jack Messman will deliver the opening keynote on Tuesday morning. Other keynote speakers include CEO Jack Swainson of Computer Associates, Martin Fink, vice president Linux for HP and Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL.
To stay posted, look at vnunet.com's LinuxWorld Boston special, read IT Week's exclusive review of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, and of course your own Silicon Valley Sleuth.
Siemens gets to WiMax Walhalla first
At the 3GSM convention in Cannes, France, Siemens has unveiledwhat it claims to be the first WiMax equipment.. The range includes modems and base stations for the upcoming high speed wireless networking standard.
The Siemens launch must give joy to Intel, which has been the main sponsor of WiMax. On the other hand, several parties have had their doubts about the viability of the wireless standard. Last year the American mobile operator Nextel abandoned plans to support WiMax.
Another way to look at Linux security
As the Silicon Valley Sleuth was sleuthing around at the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 launch tonight in Bostn, I got to speak with Evan Bauer, principal research fellow with the Robert Francis Group. In a previous life he had been a software developer (with DEC, among others) and has contributed to the Linux source code. He revealed the real secret behind Linux high level of security and stability:
"The last code that I contributed to Linux got eliminated in the 2.6 kernel. So you can now safely use Linux."
Red Hat laughs at Sun's attempt to compete
Red Hat had little love for Sun Microsystems on this Valentine's day evening at Boston. By launching Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, the company will keep doing what it has done so successfully over the past years: take away customers from Sun's Solaris.
It is no secret that many Sun users have abandoned the vendor over the past years and bought industry standard servers running Linux on Intel or AMD chips instead.
One analyst claimed that even within Sun's x86 business it's Linux all the way, saying that 80 percent of the Opteron servers Sun ships run the open source operating system.
Sun of course refuses to go down without a fight. So when it launched Solaris 10 last year, it positioned it as the perfect alternative for Linux users longing to buy software from a vendor who actually owns the code. To get more support from the industry and developers, Sun in January release the Solaris source code.
Red Hat isn't impressed: "There is more to open source than just looking at the code," Red Hat senior vice president of Enginering Paul Cormier told vnunet.com.
LinuxWorld Boston will kick off officially on Tuesday, with Novell CEO Jack Messman delivering the opening keynote.
Red Hat's Paul Cormier: "Sun Microsystems? whohahahahahah!"
Oracle spoils the dual core party
Before any enterprise swaps out its servers for new models equipped with dual core processors, it better reads over its licence for Oracle applications. The company is determined to charge customers per core, not per physical CPU.
Oracle justifies the unchanged licencing policy by pointing out that the "consumption" of its software won't change if customers switch to dual core processors. The company is joined by BEA Systems.
Microsoft is one of the companies that have vowed to keep charging per physical piece of Silicon, regardless of the number of cores it holds.
By refusing to adept to the changing hardware landscape, Oracle puts up a major barrier against the adoption of Intel's and AMD's dual core processors. The chip manufacturers were hoping that savings in software licences would entice users to quickly switch to new processors.
Why Scoble will fail at changing Microsoft
The economist has a profile of Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble.
Anyone who claims to be at home in the blogosphere should know Scoble. His blog is a must read site and he is said to single-handedly have succeeded at changing the image of "Microsoft the bully" into "Microsoft the former bully with some nasty old habits".
But there is something severely wrong with this image: it isn't sincere. Scoble is a single instance of a single Microsoft employee writing a blog. He might be world famous inside the blogosphere but in the real world he is a nobody.
If Microsoft really wanted to make an impact, one of its highest ranking executives should start blogging. If Sun's COO Jonathan Schwartz can write a blog, so can Bill Gates. His words would outweigh anything Scoble says and give his company actual credibility.
The fact that Microsoft has hired Scoble as its representation in the blogosphere says a lot about how the company choses to communicate with the outside world.
As The Economist concludes in:
"Will corporate bloggers [such as Scoble] start to get tongue-tied and sound just like tedious press releases? Mr Scoble, for his part, hates the question but concedes that, theoretically, Microsoft's corporate view and his own could come into severe conflict, and it is not clear what would happen then. Will he criticise only the small things, but toe the line on the big issues? As his pageviews, fame and influence increase, it might become increasingly difficult for him not to feel self-conscious, and to resist the deadening effect that this can have on any writer's prose."
Bill Gates would never have that problem. And that's why Scoble reinforces the image of the old controlling Microsoft more than that he changes it.
Cnet joins in RSS frenzy
Entering a space swarming with competitors, Cnet has launched its Newsburst online RSS Reader.
Newsburst doesn't do anything that any other RSS reader can't, except that users get to see news items selected by the Cnet editors. But the service also heavily pushes Cnet's reports.
I am puzzled about the ratio behind this new venture. The service doensn't offer anything new. If Cnet thinks the RSS is a good idea, they might want to consider launching a free internet provider in Europe, or even better, start on that offers flat fee dial up service. That too once was a promising technology where too many providers were fighting over customers and where in the end everybody lost.
Dell just keeps rolling
Dell doesn't even need a superior supply chain to beat the crap out of the competition, the company's rivals recently have done a pretty good job at taking themselves out. The PC and server manufacturer nonetheless in the last quarter posted record revenues of $13.5 b, a 17.3% increase over the same period last year.
The rise of Dell is so powerful that it caused IBM to sell its loss making PC and laptop business to Lenovo of China. And earlier this week HP fired CEO Carly Fiorina for her inability to turn the merged HP and Compaq into a leading technology company.
With two of Dell's largest competitors knocked out, celebrations must have erupted at the Dell headquarters in Texas. And it gave Dell CEO Kevin Rollins enough courage to declare $80 b in annual revenues as the next big target that he will be aiming for in a conference call with reporters. The company in the last for quarters combined posted $49.2 b in revenues.
Intel declares 2005 the year off the big catch up
Almost a year after Intel made an U-turn on its 64-bits strategy by copying AMD's Opteron, the company is ready to launch a 32/64 bits processor for desktop computers. The company only in January 2004 was trashing need for 64 bits computing power for home users. But now the chip giant is a devoted follower of the 64 bits religion.
"We view 2005 as the year of 64-bit computing," Kirk Skaugen, general manager of Intel's enterprise platforms group told vnunet.com. "We're going to bring 64-bit aggressively to the PC."
What a difference one year makes.
Love is in the air at LinuxWorld
The bags are packed and your friendly neighbourhood Silicon Valley Sleuth will soon be leaving the warmer surroundings of the Valley for Boston to check out the latest news and buzz at Linuxworld 2005. Kicking off on Valentine's day, the Linux-Lovefest is sure to attract a lot of attention from both the community and vendors alike.
Pre-show buzz is already building around the launch of Red Hat's new Enterprise Linux 4.0 and VNUnet's sister title IT Week will, on Monday, be posting one of the first reviews of the product. So be sure to check back to this blog, VNUnet and IT Week to get all the latest news and information to emerge from the show.
Call to all open source geeks: take a cheap shot at Microsoft
Are you sick an tired with Microsoft's FUD (Fear, uncertainty, doubt) campaign against Linux?
This is your chance to drive the company's Chief Linuxbashing Officer Martin Taylor in the corner.
Slashdot is having an interview with Taylor, and as usual is asking its readers to come up with the questions.
If you're having a slow day, just read through some of the suggestions, such as this one:
"I have heard rumors that you, in fact, prefer the taste of babies to chicken. Can you please confirm whether or not you eat babies,and if yes, your individual preference in terms of taste compared to the other white meats? (chicken = white meat, pork = the other white meat, babies = the other other white meat)"
For suggestive nudity we charge you – full nudity gets you sued
Showing that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act really is good for anything a copyright holder would ever want to use against an unsuspecting web citizen, game publisher Tecmo sued several Florida website operators. The accused allegedly violated the DMCA by distributing code that took the bikinis of players in Tecmo's game: Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, according to a Cnet report.
Although you could argue about the lack of good taste behind the group's decision to undress the players, Tecmo's attempt to muzzle the hackers might very well violate freedom of expression rights.
Unfortunately it's unlikely that we will ever find out now that the lawyers are in charge. They after all are interested more in a quick settlement than actual justice.
MSN Messenger drops dead
If you couldn't connect to MSN Messenger the past days, you weren't alone. A "significant" number of users were affected by an outage at the service.
I hate to take this out on Microsoft but of the four instant messaging networks I use (MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and AIM), MSN – to my knowledge - is the only one that gets affected by outages.
It gets all the more embarrassing if you realize that of that group, Microsoft is the only one developing its own software that can run the service. I just don't know if MSN actually does run on Windows.
After all it’s common knowledge that Hotmail service uses Unix after several failed attempts to switch to Windows.
Speculations fly after HP loses CEO
Now that Carly Fiorina has been scarified to the profit margin gods, speculations fly about what will happen with HP.
Would Intel's Sean Maloney be prepared to run the ailing computer and imaging company, Cnet asks in a story where headhunters are allowed to baselessly speculate. Or maybe Ed Zander, current CEO of Motorola and long time COO of Sun Microsystems?
Further than the name of the new CEO, the big question is what the new strategic course that HP's board is looking for. Will HP be split off into several smaller ventures, hoping that a stand alone printer company will perform better than the imaging unit does now?
Does HP's PC unit have any future, IDG News wonders? The business unit is only barely profitable while facing tough competition from Dell.
These questions will distract not only HP management, but should also concern any customer. That's a pity for HP, given that I just now has the perfect opportunity to go after some of IBM's customers after the Lenovo deal.
Too late for valentine, to lame for words
Unless you're into watching those dating shows on TV where people try their hardest not to be themselves, this one isn't for you.
The US cable company Comcast is starting a Dating on Demand service through its cable television network.
Using video on demand technology, users will be able to watch video taped profiles of people in their local area. See that hot boy or girl that you've been craving for? Just write down their user name, go online, pull out your credit card and start communicating.
The service will become available in Chicago, Washington DC, Portland, Baltimore and Denver over the next six months.
Online dating sites may be a success, but I'd doubt it if you can just copy their business model to the world of television.
For starters the computer is a device that you use individually. But the TV is a media you enjoy with other people and makes for much more of a passive activity.
Watching the profiles might make for great late night entertainment for alcohol induced students. So you better think twice before you publicly reveal your interest in collecting stamps from Lichtenstein.
WiFi VoIP on the rise
Sales of WiFi enabaled mobile phones reached $6.6 m last year, says research firm Infonetics. That figure might seem tiny, but the phones have only been available since the 4th quarter.
The dual models make for 14,6 percent of the total WiFi telephone market which last year reached $45 m or 113,000 units, says to the same study.
Motorala, HP and NEC have previously launched or talked about launching such products.
Anyone who has ever used a VoIP service such as Skype or Vonage can understand the appeal of having a portable version of the service – and that's exactly what the WiFi phones deliver.
Microsoft not amused by iPod appeal
Would Ford send out a memo to prevent employees from driving a Toyota to work? They probably could. But if the Russian car maker Lada would do the same, it would make a fool of itself.
Yet Microsoft is taking the Lada approach by sending out memos to its employees in an attempt to keep the iPod off the company's campus in Redmond, Washington.
Wired estimates that 80 percent of all the digital music players on the campus are iPods. The massive endorsement of a competing product is a slap in the face of the Windows Digital Media Group. The group which provides among others the Creative Zen with its operating system. But it has failed to make any impression on the digital media market.
Yet Microsoft feels it doesn't get the credit it deserves. "In the media group they all smoke the company dope on that one," an anonymous source told Wired News.
The memos make it all too clear that the management's frustration is rising – but at the same time sends out a signal that Microsoft doesn't intend to compete with the iPod by delivering a better solution, but by making more noise instead.
Bad copyright holders!
You probably don't need any more proof that copyright holders can be, well, pure evil.
But just in case you needed more convincing, read this blog posting by Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research.
He tells the tale of his daughter's school play – and how the copyright owners demanded over $1300 for the right to perform three evenings in the school's auditorium.
The school doesn't have the money, so instead is opting for a smaller venue and only two performances. And any recording equipment is banned – no video cameras at this play.
As a professional writer I can relate to the need of the play writers to make money from their copyrighted materials (my landlord still doesn't buy the "but the internet stole my work" argument). But there also is a thing called fair use – I've never charged educational institutions for the right to use any of my writings.
On the other hand schools make a tidy little profit from selling photos and video tapes of the plays its students perform in.
But still… 1300 dollars for a school play?
Google ousts blogger for lack of tact
Google has fired Mark Jen over his blog, writes fellow blogger Jeremy Zawodny with Yahoo.
Jen's tenure with the search company was limited to just a few weeks. Taunting common sense, he on his first day started blogging like he had landed a position as senior vice president (he doesn't disclose his title, but given his experience it's a safe bet to say it's nothing senior). He criticised his new employer and disclosed some minor facts that violated Google policy.
Google management found out, and Jen soon had to edit his earlier posts. But that apparently wasn't enough and in the end Jen found himself in the line for unemployment benefits.
There's a lesson for all bloggers in there:
Be carefull what you write about your boss, employer or business partners. If you're writing a draft for a blog post, think: how would you feel if you're standing in a bar telling the same story to a friend, you turn around and your boss stands right behind you and he has heard the entire story.
Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble of course says it much better
Bye Carly
After years of struggles, HP's Carly Fiorina earlier today stepped down as president and CEO of the server and imaging company.
Fiorina has been under fire ever since she unveiled her plans to acquire Compaq, back in 2001. And more recently she was pressured by analysts to break up the company into separate units - hoping that those units indivually would perform better than the combined company.
Fiorina always seemed to successfully fend off