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Cyber Monday turns into a dark Monday
Marketeers at Shop.org today are dancing a victory dance.
Shop.org is the applause machine for online retailers. In a clever but deceitful plan they came up with a way to piggyback ride on the "Black Friday" phenomenon that sees sales in retail store spike on the day after Thanksgiving.
The idea: claim that there is such a thing called "Cyber Monday" where workers after a three days of shopping in brick and mortar stores would continue their buying spree online, using their bosses broadband connections. Cyber Monday, in summary, was portrayed to be the largest day of online shopping in the year.
Some media took the bait. And some shoppers were fooled into thinking that there bargains to be had, causing a 35 per cent rise in internet traffic.
But Shop.org's executive director Scott Silverman quickly confessed his deceitful ways to BusinessWeek: "It's not the biggest day. But it was an opportunity to create some consumer excitement."
The Monday after Thanksgiving actually doesn't even come close to being the largest day in online shopping. It ranks at a mediocre 12th place. For your online shopping bonanza, you should've looked at November 22 (which is when Microsoft started selling the Xbox 360 in the US).
Crazy Thanksgiving shoppers are mostly found offline
Tags: shop.org, e-commerce
Google stock takes a sanity break
Google's valuation in the stock market dropped by about $5.9bn today, its stock slipping 4.71 per cent to $403.54.
Investors dropped the stock after data was released indicating that retail sales in the past weekend were less bullish than hoped. Fewer retail sales could indicate a weaker economy, leading to a slowdown in advertising sales on Google's web pages (including its Froogle price comparison service).
Nearly $6bn might be a bit of an overreaction, but apparently some investors are finally starting to see that Google isn't in the business of printing money but instead will grow over time. This justifies valuations that are more in line with other normal businesses where the laws of supply, demand and competition apply.
Bull statue near Wall Street
Photo: myles davidson
Tags: google
How long did Sony have to screw up the XCP?
As F-Secure already published when the Sony BMG XCP controversy first started spinning out of control, the company was already on Sony's tail before Mark Russinovich informed the world about this evil technology.
The difference being that F-Secure reported the issue quietly to Sony BMG to drive its consultancy business (helping fix the flaw before taking credit) where Russinovich was out to give Sony BMG a public whipping.
This story went back in time to seek out what exactly happened prior to the Russinovich blog posting. Most importantly it even further shows the level of incompetence that First 4 Internet showed in dealing with its own flawed code. The firm not only failed to act when it was first told about the security flaws in its software, it also derailed attempts to bring in F-Secure to help fix the issue (the parties couldn't agree on the terms of the non disclosure agreement). Given that First 4 Internet had created a patchwork of proprietary code combined with stolen GPL components, this isn't a big surprise.
First 4 Internet still won't comment on the mess it created. With lawsuits popping up against its technology all over the world, that's no big surprise. But the report in BusinessWeek only seems to make matters worse for both Sony BMG and First 4 Internet.
Creating insecure code is one thing. Knowing its bad nature and failing to act is even worse.
Tags: Sony BMG, first 4 internet, XCP, DRM, trojan
Are we being hacked by aliens?
Aliens could use the radio signals that we are trying to analyse with projects like Seti@home to hack into the world's computer infrastructure, D. Carrigan is warning.
That would mean that the signals have a hidden message that we fail to notice but that does succeed at hacking our computers. Carrigan advices that we act more carefully when analysing radio signals from outer space, using stand alone systems to prevent the alien worms from spreading.
How badly do we want to believe in the existence of intelligent life in space?
Carrigna's theory is fundamentally flawed, as F-Secure points out on its blog. Even if there is intelligent life closeby (say within 25 light year's range), it would take 25 years for the aliens to pick up human radio signals. They then need to analyse them and develop exploit code and send back a signal which again will take another 25 years to reach earth. By that time the computer architectures have fundamentally changed and the chance that the exploit still works is zero.
Most alien theories are easily deflated
The dirty Open Document war
The mud slinging in the format war down in Massachusetts is in full fare. As the Inquirer points out, both governor and Mitt Romney his CIO Peter Quinn have come under political fire after they decided to favour the Open Document Format (ODF), dealing a blow to Microsoft.
Quinn now is accused of accepting bribes because he failed to properly report trips to open source conferences. The allegations charge that he should have reported which companies sponsored the events.
A Microsoft servant was clearly firing a warning shot here. Besides the ridiculous nature of the complaint, the trips actually took place after the state decided that it like open formats better than proprietary ones. So far for charging that the event sponsors were trying to influence the decision making process.
Besides, Microsoft last week more or less opened its Office document format, which might outdate the entire discussion.
Still there is much at stake here for Microsoft. If Massachusetts keeps favouring ODF over the Microsoft, it will set an important precedent.
Tags: Microsoft, ODF, Massachusetts
DMCA used as a blunt weapon
In a society where companies file lawsuits before they sit down and think (or talk), it's no big surprise that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is being widely abused.
A study from two California universities found that more than half of the DMCA claims were used as a scare tactic against direct competitors. Another 30 per cent of the claims that referred to the DMCA wouldn't stand up in court, 10 per cent of which should be discarded because the complaints were badly written.
The DMCA is widely criticised legislation that gives sweeping powers to copyright owners. The study focuses on the DMCA and publication of copyrighted materials, but the DMCA for instance also makes it illegal to 'reverse engineer' software. Reverse engineering is a useful technique to find out what software like the Sony XCP anti-piracy technology is actually doing or to hunt for security bugs.
Let's not forgot that the DMCA aims to serve the legitimate need for copyright owners like movie studios and record labels to protect their intellectual property. The industries were the main backers of the legislation, but a mere 6 per cent of the cases originated from there. The games industry accounted for about on quart of the claims, targeting publishers of cheat and authorisation codes (which enable illegal copies).
Every copyright owner is entitled to see his property protected. But this study hopefully will cause law makers to have a good look at the monster they created. Do the legit cases really justify the rubbish that comes with it?
Tags: dmca
Opera ventures into the snake oil business
Opera today "revealed" that security concerns have prompted record downloads of its browser.
In a schoolbook of example of "don't send a press release if you've got nothing to say," the company sent out a press release for the sake of sending one.
The "revelation" isn't based on anything, as the reader will find out. It just combines two findings: more than one million copies of Opera 8.51 have been downloaded in the past week and Internet Explorer keeps getting pounded by security vulnerabilities. But Opera doesn't provide any data to back up the claim that there is a link between the record number of downloads and security concerns with Internet Explorer users (aren't the downloaders more likely to be upgrading from older version of the Opera browser?)
Add a link to the Secunia security website (deceivingly suggesting that the link will show the reader an independent test to verify Opera's security claims) and a generic CEO quote and you got yourself a case study for PR gone wrong.
Opera might have a decent (although far from perfect ) security track record, today's news release only sought to capitalize on the holiday shopping craze and the sad state of online security. Suggesting a link between unrelated facts is better left to the sellers of real snake oil.
Tags: opera, internet explorer, security
Hosting for tree huggers
Webhosting venture AISO Inc is hoping that putting on a green face will help it gain some new customers.
The California company claims to have build a "green" design to its web hosting facility that will minimize the impact on the earth's resources. The building is powered by 120 solar panels as well as other environmental friendly design features.
It's no secret that hosting firms are big energy hogs, so naturally there are firms trying to make money off that. AISO is joined by several other 'green' hosting providers that power their data centres from renewable energy sources.
It probably makes good business sense. Hosting services are pretty much a commodity service where providers find it impossible to differentiate their products from the competition. Being green is a clear differentiator that could give profit margins a nice boost.
tags: green hosting, environmentalism, solar energy
Smash my Xbox
The best $400 spend this week came from a group of pranksters who set up the website smashmyxbox.com.
The idea is simple: get in line to buy a new Xbox and then go medieval on it with a slash hammer in front of the Xbox faithful. Put up a movie on the internet and voila.
Except… that the prank itself was kind of lame. They bought their Xbox alright, but didn't have the guts to wreck the thing inside the store for all the Xbox wannabes to see and be shocked. Instead they went to the outside parking lot and did their magic in front of an audience of 3 Xbox buyers.
Their responses are amusing nonetheless – especially the guy that says: "Why?" several time and then starts nagging: "Can I have you controller?" But the effect would have been so much better if the group would’ve pulled the trick inside.
Another interesting point is made at the very beginning of the video when a store clerk from Best Buy tells the group of people waiting about the troubles that they had with the demo Xbox units. He ends with the phrase: "So, serious, guys…" and a look on his face that tells: don't buy it.
Tags: microsoft, xbox 360
Amazon your place to buy... IDC research?!
Analyst firm IDC is selling research papers on Amazon. The firm is offering over 14,000 of its reports for sale on the webstore.
Business doesn't appear to be spectacular. The best selling paper, a $1,500 report on networking for next generation gaming consoles like the Xbox 360 from May this year, has an overall Amazon sales rank 240,430 in the books category.
At that price, nobody should be surprised that business is limited. Especially since I tend to visit Amazon to buy digital cameras and books. Still the online store claims that people who bought the gaming paper also purchased an Xbox bundle with Halo (mind you: this is the old Xbox and these discontinued bundles were overpriced ways for Microsoft to make Xbox fans pay for a T-shirt and hat).
This looks more like an experiment than a genuine part of Amazon e-commerce efforts. If people really would be buying IDC research papers on Amazon, you'd probably have seen office supplies or other business items pop up in the "customers how purchased this item also bought" section.
There is no information on the site indicating how long these sales have been going on. Amazon first started selling digital documents in 2001.
Webmasters who didn't think when they registered their URL
The /spadassin/ blog has a nice list of URLs that can be read in more than one way. Make sure to give the blog a visit, but here's one to give you an idea of what to expect:
Need a therapist?
http://www.therapistfinder.com
Google and Yahoo are killing web startups
The cut throat competition in the search and portal markets between Yahoo and Google is causing a draught in the venture capital investments, claims investor Tony Conrad in the San Jose Mercury News.
Last year Conrad reluctantly sold his shares in a company called Oddpost. The startup had developed a better online email application and was quickly purchased by Yahoo.
Neither the company itself or its investors had been planning to sell out at such an early stage. It's better to let the business mature and get some revenues because that gets a much higher sale prices. But Yahoo made an offer they couldn't refuse.
Because Yahoo and Google don't have much patience in waiting for startups to mature, they are effectively driving down profit margins for venture capital investors. As a result those investors are starting to look at different market altogether and are creating a drought in innovation and investments in the portal area.
The whole thing inevitably should level out at some point. If an overly aggressive acquisition strategy causes a drought in VC funding, there soon will be nothing to acquire. Or Yahoo and Google will have to set up their own VC funds to fill the void.
Droughts tend to make victims
Tags: Yahoo, Google, venture capital
Black, black Friday coming
With Thanksgiving coming on Thursday (to celebrate how native Americans saved the immigrants behinds once by feeding them turkey), the most important day in a shopping year shopping is just around the corner: Black Friday.
It's the official kick off for the Christmas shopping season. Retail insiders claim that stores only start making a profit on this day and that all the other months are just waiting time leading up to December. Profits use black ink vs. red ink for losses, hence the term Black Friday.
Black Friday has grown into a shopping bonanza with early hour sales and the likes. Fry's, an electronics store with lousy service, bad quality and low prices, is famous for selling items for cents after mail in rebates. Low cost warehouses Wal Mart this year plans on selling an HP Windows laptop computer for $378.
Stores are overcrowded and parking impossible to come by, so don't expect to see me there. But in case you're interested, several sites have overviews of sales (some times much to the dismay of the stores).
Tags: black friday, thanksgiving
Nokia declares the N-Gage dead
Nokia has admitted failure in its effort to create a mobile gaming system with the Nokia N-Gage.
"N-Gage is still being sold but it was not a success in the sense of
developing a new category," said Antti Vasara, Nokia's vice president for
corporate strategy on vnunet.com.
The mobile phone with a heavy emphasis on gaming was launched in 2003, but sales have disappointed. Gaming is no longer an item on Nokia's product roadmap until 2007. The new Walhalla, according to the Finish manufacturer is actually mobile music and television.
Success in that space isn't assured either. Convergence is a fine art that few have mastered. The big question is in the marketing: is a the N-Gage a mobile phone with a gaming feature, or a gaming console with mobile phone features? And in either case neither feature is allowed to under perform. Sealing the N-Gage's faith, it turned out to be a poor phone and a mediocre gaming platform.
The same question has caused the Motorola Rokr (aka iTunes phone) to dissapoint. Although here is was perfectly clear that we were dealing with a phone with music capabilities, Motorola launched a marketing campaign portraying it as a music device.
Tags: Nokia, Ngage, Rokr, Motorola
The art of Xbox 360 price gouging
The US last night survived the launch of the Xbox 360. A happy few were able to buy a premium system for $400, the unlucky got stuck with a core system that lacks a hard drive and therefore won't be able to play any of the first generation Xbox games (but you can always upgrade)
Soon after the launch the laws of supply and demand kicked in. The record: one system sold on Ebay for $10,400.
If you hope to copy this healthy 2500 per cent profit margin when the Xbox launches in Europe next week or Asia the week thereafter, pay attention. Below are some observations based on looking at that prices that people paid for new Xbox systems on Ebay.
- Promise the fastest shipping possible: the $10,400 auction promised to ship the unit overnight on Tuesday, allowing the buyer to touch it on Wednesday. Others told prospective buyers to wait up to a week.
- Carefully time when your auction ends. You aren't dealing with your price conscious regular Ebay crowd here. These are impulse buyers. You want to catch them when they are the most desperate:
- Buyers on average paid the most in auctions that had ended before noon. Most systems that sold for around $3,000 actually went under the hammer by 11 am in New York (8 am in San Francisco).
- By 5 pm San Francisco time the average price had dropped to about $800.
- Later in the evening the seemed to pick up again: this one sold for $1325 at 6:30 pm (SF time)
- Learn to spell! Few people will find your Xobx.
- People don't care much about the core systems: this premium system sold for $1025. Only 8 minutes earlier a Core version sold for only $649
- Do you know for sure that you'll get an Xbox? SELL IT! If you're really desperate to own one, sell yours in the morning and buy one in the afternoon after prices have levelled off.
- If you're in for a gamble, follow the above rule even if an Xbox hasn't been allocated to you.
- Don't get greedy: this unit never sold, probably because of a $2,000 reserve price. Ebayers like to bid on items that others already bid for. And low prices get you your first bidders.
- All these rules would also apply if you're looking to buy, in which case I'd like to urge you to take a deep breath and spend a few bucks on a new game for your existing Xbox that will get you through the Holidays. You'll save a truckload of money by waiting. Just donate the savings to charity to further enhance the Holiday spirit.
Tags: Xbox 360, microsoft, ebay
Researchers foil government's tinfoil hat conspiracy
A group of brave students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has foiled a large scale government conspiracy to control the minds of its citizens.
They took it upon themselves to research the effectiveness of the tinfoil hat, the devices that have saved us all from the mind control brain waves that the government is sending. But contrary to popular belief, the hats don’t block the radio waves, but actually act as an amplifier. Logically the CIA has known this all along and actually seeded the brain control wave rumours to make its "project zombies" more effective.
"It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the government, possibly with the involvement of the Federal Communications Commission," wrote the authors of the paper entitled On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets: An Empirical Study.
The group tested the 3 basic hat designs: the classic over the head (aka: the punctured soccer ball), the 'fez' conical (aka: dumbo) and (my personal favourite) the 'centurion' with the foil peak (aka: silly Germany army World War 1).
For sale: used Windows, only surfed to the grocery store and back
A UK firm claims to have found a loophole in Microsoft license agreements that will create a market for second hand software licenses.
A software license in theory is between you and the developer, meaning that you can't just sell your license to someone else. But Microsoft's license agreement has a loophole for bulk licenses at bankrupt companies: those are up for grabs.
So Discount-licensing.com has started to scout bankruptcy auctions for software licenses and has now opened the doors of its web store.
A version of Windows NT gets you a nice 50 per cent discount over what you'd pay a reseller, the store claims, with more recent Microsoft products discounted by at least 20 per cent.
"years of gentle use, stored in a secure location"
Tags: microsoft, windows, software license, used software, second hand software
Spammer seeks to launder spam proceedings through… spam
An unknown spammer has been sending email messages recruiting money launders, security expert F-Secure is reports on its blog.
But the email messages aren't actually that clear in phrasing it. The spam email is masked to look like a job posting from Monster.com, pointing to a fake moster.com website. The description mentions that the job involves transferring money through Western Union.
Moving around money made from illegal operations is a common method for criminal to launder their proceedings, putting up smoke screens that make it hard for authorities to track these money streams. F-Secure pointed out that the job posting likely tries to recruite people to launder money made from credit card fraud and identity theft operations.
An excerpt from the job listing that F-Secure posted states:
"In case of getting order from another country we have to pay 15% fee for international bank transfer according to the US law. To reduce the transfer cost we are looking for Financial Managers all over the world. When we get an order from another country, the Financial Manager in this country gets the payment and sends it to us through Western Union. Commission rate of Financial Managers is 3%."
The posting mentions a genuine company called Velocity Global Resources, but the URL for the site that it points to adds an 's' at the end of velocityglobal.com, pointing to a site hosted by the spammer.
I must give the criminals credit for their cleverness in trying to recruit unknowing job seekers for their money laundering operation. By offering fake Monster.com posting and referring to a fake but real company, they might just fool the occasional individual.
Sony DRM's silver lining
Nothing to add:
(click image for a larger version)
Today's twist in the Sony DRM soap
No single sane person can do by accident what Sony has done over the past weeks with the XCP anti piracy technology. Sony must have a bigger plan with this DRM technology. (Summary: software for Windows seeking to protect copyrights. bad design, poor security, easy to defeat, PR nightmare, consumer boycott).
Only the creator of a TV soap could have come up with the unlikely twists and turns that Sony BMG has shown.
In last week's episodes we saw how the respectable Sony created its own downfall because of substance abuse. Today, the RIAA, the long time slut of the recording industry who will sleep with anyone claiming to have a nickel, came to the rescue of the record label.
"The problem with the Sony BMG situation is that the technology it used contained a security vulnerability of which it was unaware," said RIAA president Cary Sherman. He didn't realise that his remarks only made Sony look worse. Endorsements from known villains trying to fight technological progress by yelling "burn the witch" ever louder tend to have a negative effect.
Then over the past weekend, Gatner, the friendly neighbour who has had a thing with Metagroup in the past, dropped a bomb, unveiling another one of Sony's dark secrets. The XCP technology could have been easily defeated by putting a piece of tape on the CD.
Also last week's news that XCP has actually illegally used GPL licensed code that was partially authored by DVD John was a nice twist that rivalled the "brining back a character from death" move.
I can't wait for the next episode of the Sony BMG soap. Will Sony have an affair with the slutty neighbour? Or will the soap authors bring in a surprise visitor who upsets the current balance of chaos? Stay tuned for more after these messages.
PS: This blog has a brilliant analysis of the whole situation.
Bad acting and poor story lines are no longer a soap opera monopoly
Photo: Rafael Reverte
Tags: Sony BMG, first 4 internet, XCP, DRM, trojan
More exploding mobile phones
The LG v6000 mobile phone of a student in Wyoming caused burn wounds when it exploded on the owner's bed, according to a Philadelphia ABC affiliate.
The student had placed the phone on her bed while it was being charged. The explosion burned a hole through her sheets and caused a large "popping" sound.
The owner had replaced the factory issued battery with an unapproved one – which in the past has caused several mobile phone explosions. Other than saying that she should've known better, these pictures might deter future battery skinflints.
Microsoft doesn't even care about Microsoft's standards
Showing exactly just how Microsoft cares about adhering to standards and backward compatibility, the MSN.com website is no longer properly displayed in the Internet Explorer browser for Apple's OS X operating system.
Users who (for whatever reason) might try and visit MSN.com using the Microsoft software will see a poorly rendered page stating:
"Your browser cannot find our style and presentation information and as a result may not display the page properly. You are welcome to use the page as is, or upgrade your browser to its latest version which may address the problem. If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer, go to the Microsoft Internet Explorer website to install the latest version. If you are using another browser, see the provider's website for more information. If you are using Internet Explorer for Mac, we recommend that you use another browser to have an optimal experience on MSN."
Admittedly Microsoft has mothballed Internet Explorer on the Mac after Apple released the 1.0 version of the Safari browser in June 2003. The Microsoft software has been stuck on version 5.2 and won't move anywhere – other than for any security updates.
Microsoft however is still offering the application for download on its website, claiming that the software is "award-winning" and "makes it easy to view and find information on the internet." They should at least change that into: "find some information on the internet".
The fact that Microsoft pages aren't displayed properly on the Microsoft browser shows a blatant disregard of internet standards. Sure IE5 is two years old. Given that many consumers and enterprises today still use Windows 2000 (which is 5 years old), users have expect that software lasts longer than 2 years. But then we already knew that Microsoft doesn't really care about standards.
tags: internet explorer, ie5, microsoft, monopoly
Cheat codes for your car
According to reports on discussion boards, some Toyota made cars (including the Lexus luxury brand) has what amounts to a cheat code to turn off the VDIM (Vehicle Dynamics Integrated Management).
Better take a pen and paper:
....start the car with the parking brake on ....then foot brake twice....(keep the foot brake down)....then parking brake twice (keep it down )and repeat till skid light is on the dash.....it will reset when you restart the car.
This is said to be described in the maintenance manual.
VDIM uses a series of sensors to ensure a car's stability on the road, measuring wheel rotations and angle and such. It will automatically apply the breaks and do other things to improve the car's stability while driving. In the case described at on the online discussion board, this had led to excessive wear and tear of the break pads.
But you'd expect that for those cases the car maker come up with a proper way instead of something that resembles a cheat code for a gaming console.
UPDATE:
This isn't so weird after all, apparently. A friend of my neighbour's dog watcher's grocery bagger owns a GMC where you reset the oil quality monitor (after you refreshed the oil) by pressing the gas pedal three times.
Lexus
Tags: lexus
Is there no limit to Sony BMG's incompetence?
After all the horrible mistakes that Sony BMG has made over the past weeks with the XCP anti piracy technology, it now seems that the firm has also violated the General Public License (GPL).
Sebastian Porst of Germany and Finish Matti Nikki took a good look at the binaries for the software that Sony had included on XCP equipped audio CDs, and found numerous references to functions that were performed by open source (GPL and LGPPL) applications.
If the software contains any GPL code, the GPL license requires that the developer has to release the source code of the new application.
Since Sony and First 4 Internet, the company that developed the technology in the first place, didn't do so, they violated the terms of the GPL. Sony must understand how bad that is but to put it in terms that they understand: it's similar to downloading music of the internet for free.
Sony will probably be able to make the case that it merely purchased the software off First 4 Internet, but is unlikely to get away from this DRM nightmare unharmed.
Why on earth would a commercial company that claims to safeguard copyrights rip off GPL code? For starters because they probably believe they would get away with it. But secondly because this isn't about 'safeguarding copyrights', but all about greed.
First 4 Internet lacked either the time, money or engineering skills to create its technology all by itself (probably all three of those come into play). Security experts already had typified the application as poorly engineered.
Can someone please sue First 4 Internet into oblivion? And before we do so, tattoo the words "incompetent idiot" on the foreheads of each of its employees.
Management schools some day will have a field day picking apart how the company added failure upon failure upon failure. It would be amusing if it wasn't so sad.
Tags: Sony BMG, first 4 internet, XCP, DRM, trojan
Those poor Indian call centre workers
Do you dislike foreign call centres over outsourcing concerns? Don't take it out against the poor $1-per-hour-earning-agent that you get on the phone. People like you are undermining the mental health of India.
"A lot of trauma is caused," Vinod Shetty, a Bombay lawyer who has formed a collective for call-center workers said in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Shetty blames the outpour of customers swearing at call centre agents on racial dislikes over the outsourcing trend.
In addition to the mental damage, India now starts to hate those rude Americans for their telephone tirades instead of their tendency to invade sovereign countries under false claims of weapons of mass destruction.
A recent study by Harris Interactive by the way found that companies using outsourced call centres experience a drop in customer satisfaction according to 47 per cent of consumers. Half of them didn't trust giving them financial details over fears of identity theft.
Cricket: one thing that most Indians probably would prefer to do over being confronted by rude American callers.
(This photo replaces one of a crowd protesting against America by burning a flag – several readers pointed out that the picture was inappropriate. I'd hereby like to apologise)
Tags: offshoring, outsourcing, call center
Spammer gets 6 years to think things over
The UK might have lousy laws to prevent denial of service attacks, a judge this week was more willing to leash out against a prolific spammer with a tendency to making death threats.
Peter Francis-Macrae received a six year jail term for sending out bogus emails selling .eu domain registration services and making subsequent threats against people complaining and the police. Francis Macrae is a known spammer listed in the Spamhaus blacklist of spammers.
"You are, I think, one of the most vindictive young men I have ever seen," judge Nicholas Coleman told him at the time of sentencing.
The 23-year-old might still have lived at home, he made a cool estimated £1.1million ($1.9m). It isn't clear where he hid those funds, although part of it was spent on a lavish lifestyle with Yves Saint Laurant clothing (£12,000 - $20,600) and helicopter lessons (£16,000 - $27,500). Both are things that have little use in a jail cell however.
Solar power plants inch forward
California is about to start construction of two new solar power plants that will make any existing project look like child's play.
To be set up in the Mojave dessert, one plant is set to generate 500 megawatts of energy and a second one 300 megawatts. A coal or gas powered plant typically generates 500 to 1000 megawatts. Current generation solar farms using photovoltaic cells only get to 35 to 80 megawatts.
The new plants will use mirrors to direct sunlight to a so-called Stirling Engine. The engine has a reservoir filled with hydrogen that will expand due to the heat from the mirrors. The expansion will drive pistons generating electricity.
The 500 megawatt generator will feature 20,000 dishes (a set of mirrors) – each with its own Stirling engine - spread out over an area of 4,500 acres (18.2 square kilometres). That might not look very pretty, but anything that reduces the world's dependency on foreign oil and in the process might diffuse any terrorist threats (oil funds have largely funded terrorist activities over the past decades) has my vote. Flash animation: Sterling Energy Systems
Tags: solar power, stirling engine
You and I are paying $170bn for telcos' screw ups
A study from analyst firm Analysys claims that telecoms this year alone will loose $170bn through in efficiencies.
The sum boils down to 11.6 per cent of the firm's overall revenues, up from last years 10.7 per cent.
Let's do some math. Assuming that there are about 6 billion phones in the world today (both mobile and land line), this boils down to $28 per phone per year. And guess who's paying for that? We all are.
The cost are caused by fraud, credit management, least-cost-routing errors (not taking the cheapest route), interconnect/partner-payment errors, and poor processes and systems.
Any new provider that succeeds in cutting these costs can break open the telecom market. And can lower my phone bill.
tags: phone bill, operator, fraud
Helpdesk? What do I do if counterfeit money is stuck in my printer?
Police in Arizona have caught a crime ring that is believed to have been responsible for up to 10 per cent of all the counterfeit money in the state.
The group sort of gave themselves away when they sent in a printer for repair that had an unfinished sheet of counterfeit dollar bills stuck in its mechanism.
The bills were of average quality. But the group of 10 would prevent detecting by using the money to buy expensive items at Walmart, paying at a register staffed by an accomplice. The purchases later would be returned for cash.
Police caught $56,000 when they raided the group members' homes. Another $160,000 is believed to have been spent.
Nine things to look for when catching a counterfeit $50 bill
Tags: dumb criminals
Starformers double up on geeky fun
If you remember the transformers, even played with them as a child, than you are likely to score above average on the geek scale.
But what is more geeky than anything? Exactly, Star Wars.
All geeks therefore should mark their calendars. Starting this January Hasbro will start selling the Star Wars Transformers (I recommend we refer to them as Starformers, as it is much shorter and easy to pronounce).
Watch in amazement as Darth Vader turns into a TIE Advanced x1 star fighter (if you don't know what either of those are, Starformers aren't for you). Obi-Wan Kenobi will become a fighter plane from Episode III and General Grievous transforms into a wheel bike. Luke is set to morph into a X-wing fighter.
Finally something new to put up in your cubicle, even if they won't be available in time to be put under the Christmas tree.
Tags: star wars, transformers
A free Windows? Sure, but not now
An internal Microsoft research paper is suggesting that the company is looking at launching a free version of its Windows operating system, supported by advertising. Microsoft only makes $9 per user per year from Windows, the paper alleges.
Google's average revenue per user is about $50 per year, we reported earlier. So no wonder that Microsoft is looking at ways to capture some of the adversiting market's richness. In fact, that's what that vendor's Live Software initiative is all about.
Add the threat of open source applications to the mix, and Microsoft should do some deep soul searching.
But don't mistake the paper for anything other than soul searching. The paper was merely prepared for an executive brainstorm session and doesn't represent any actual plans.
Over time Windows is likely to become free – if it wants to meet open source competitors. But currently there is no need to Microsoft to do so. The vendor still has a comfortable market share in the desktop computer market.
Just putting up advertising in Windows also is unlikely to make Windows an interesting advertising destination. Google didn't become successful by selling online advertisements, but by offering highly relevant advertisements next to the search queries that users performed.
You can already argue about the value of advertising next to your Gmail or Hotmail If there is any case for it, it is far smaller than next to search results. Let alone that any users is waiting so see irrelevance hence intrusive banners on his desktop or popups between application windows.
Irrelevant advertising is has little economic value
photo: Jenni Baker
Tags: windows Live, office live, microsoft
Sony-BMG flushes DRM down the toilet
Record label Sony BMG has finally stopped selling music CDs with the XCP anti-piracy technology. The company for days failed to listen to security experts who claimed that that the technology formed a security risk if the owner inserted it into his computer.
But as soon as the first real internet worm surfaced, the executives bailed ship and did what they should have done from the very first day: ditch the affront of a software product called XCP that was created in the dark dungeons of First 4 Internet.
If you happen to own one of the CDs, you can exchange it.
While it didn't take worm authors long to create a computer virus that targeted the features of XCP that hides the technology from both the system and users, it's comforting that they have failed to actually do so.
By now half a dozen of worms have been detected that try to exploit the cloaking features. But not a single one has actually succeeded using the features, even though every security expert that studies the technology could explain you how to do it.
It's comforting because it shows that most virus authors are mentally challenged and have the programming skills of an onion. Al also makes you fear what happens if more skilled programmers join the virus writing guilt.
Sony BMG's new corporate head quarters
Tags: Sony BMG, first 4 internet, XCP, DRM, trojan
And now SAP looooves open source?
SAP is upset, to say the least, about a story that we at vnunet.com published last week about some comments that SAP's president of the product and technology group Shai Agassi made.
Agassi speaking at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley explained why he believed that open source wouldn't work as a model for innovation and made the mistake to refer to (at least part) of the open source movement as "intellectual property socialism".
Now Agassi together with SAP's PR department put up a response on the company's website that is presented to suggest that it comes only from Agassi himself. They told me it was prepared by PR, and it also explains the mistake of entering an incorrect date for the event, claiming that it was on Tuesday where in reality it took place on Wednesday.
It isn't often that one of our (vnunet.com's) news stories themselves become news, but this time SAP did just that by claiming that we "got the story wrong and took […] quotes completely out of context."
We disagree, but since SAP is attacking our integrity, vnunet.com no longer can be considered an impartial observer. Listen to Agassi's remarks in mp3 here (the open source bashing section is at 35:30).
Or read here what some other observers had to say about Agassi's remarks after they read Agassi's posting (and in some cases listened to the mp3 recording).
If we have any regrets about the story, they would be about the headline. As it goes with headlines, they are a simplification and summary of the story. A much more accurate headline would have been "SAP says that open source model in enterprise software is great for bug catching but in practice doesn't deliver much innovations". It wouldn't have fit on the screen and wouldn't have made it past the editor. So when you condense the hell out of it, you come to the admittedly more sexy: "SAP dismisses open source innovation."
But I doubt that would've given SAP a large head ache.
Reading the blog postings where Agassi is flamed for his remarks, they mostly rant about the use of the words "IP socialism". In his blog posting Agassi does little to rebuke the socialism argument, but only waters it down to "extreme socialism", adding that any "extreme" movement usually is bad.
Secondly, Agassi's remarks seemed to act as the fuse in the proverbial barrel of gunpowder that was waiting to go off: the software patent discussion. SAP is a strong proponent of software patents, where the open source community is mostly against it. According to the group that makes this argument, you can't claim that you "love open source" yet lobby in favour of software patents.
The original story touches on several points about SAP and open source:
- Agassi compares the ability to customise open source applications to customize SAP's enterprise applications and notes that SAP's experience shows that long term it creates issues with upgrading and maintenance.
- The trend for SAP to go more towards a "closed box" solution where access to the source code is limited in favour of the creation of application programming interfaces (APIs) (as supported by this Zdnet blog posting)
- Agassi points to the fact that Windows Vista isn't copying features from Linux but rather from OS X, labeling it as the most innovative operating system in the market today.
- Agassi says about the ideals of free open source software that live within (parts of) the open source comminty that "Intellectual property socialism is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society," and claims that it will stifle innovation because developers will be unable to earn back the research funds they invest.
In his blog posting Agassi touches on 4 points:
- the value of having access to the source code (which he calls "openness of source code"), because it allows for customisations
- the value of the swarm of innovators to which SAP accommodates by creating APIs
- the need for a commercial entity to monetize its intellectual property. Here he again leashes out against the "socialize IP ownership"-movement (but as one observer points out, there is no trace of such a movement on the web today)
- the value of open source as a solution for commoditised technology.
I don't see any huge differences, but tell me what you think.
Tags: SAP, Shai Agassi, open source, open souce socialism
Scott Adams is real
"The best part of the story is the face he made when it became clear I wasn’t going to change my mind. It looked like someone had taken his dog and shoved it up his grandmother’s ass, put them both on his driveway, borrowed his SUV and used his gas to run over them repeatedly in front of the kids."
Anyone capable of coming up with such a phrase is my hero.
And this anyone happens to be Dilbert author Scott Adams. He has a blog, I just found out, which is just as amusing as his comics.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Adams about 3 years ago. We talked in his home in Danville, CA for about 2 hours. Walking back to my car at the end I wondered if the interview was actually any good. His answers to questions about office horror made too much sense for a guy that does hilariously ridiculous comics.
The uncertainty quickly vanished when my editor told me she loved the copy turned it into a cover story.
What I learnt from the interview is that Scott Adams has the gift to get to the core of a ridiculous situation and explain it's ridiculousness in a way that makes sense. You see the same on his website.
Tags: dilbert, scott adams
Microsoft memo: we suck at innovation
Whether it was leaked intentionally or not doesn't really matter, but the Microsoft memos that CTO Ray Ozzie and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates authored are stating the obvious: Microsoft sucks at innovating.
Microsoft today makes money with products that it copied rather than invented: the idea of Windows' graphical user interface came from Xerox Park and Office too wasn't exactly a Microsoft innovation. Similarly the Xbox was a clear "me too" strategy.