« July 2006 | Main | September 2006 »
Putting those micro-slaves to work
Japanese researchers have created a first bacteria powered micromotor.
The device is essentially a minuscule (20 micrometres, about one fifth of a human hair) version of a horse mill. The bacteria are locked up in a grove and surrounded by proteins that make them all move in the same direction. This forces them to push against one of six feet sticking into the grove, which is attached to a larger circular device.
Don't expect these bacteria to power your vehicle just yet. The current prototype does about 2 rotations per minute, which is still pretty fast given the bacteria's microscopic size.
On the video below you can see the engine in motion. Shot from the top, The green line is the groove in which the bacteria make their rounds. The flower-shaped device is what lies on top of the groove with the feet sticking out from underneat.
Human resources Radioshack style
Nothing says "we appreciate the efforts of our employees" like a mass email informing them that they've been laid off.
That's what electronics store Radioshack did when it decided to lay off 400 workers at its corporate headquarters in Forth Worth, TX.
radIn all fairness, the retailer had previously said that it was looking to cut costs and drive up efficiency. Printing letters, sitting down with employees and showing human emotions is highly inefficient.
Many consumers meanwhile have found out the hard way that the Radioshack stores are highly inefficient, selling overpriced goods and plagued by an ignorant sales staff of bored high school students. But instead of voting with my feet, perhaps I should send the company an email?
technorati tags: radioshack, lay-offs, HR
Belgium goofs up on electronic passport, embeds chip in the wrong ID card
The manufacturer of the Belgium electronic identification cards Zetes has goofed up, embedding the wrong chip in it least two of the cards.
The error was discovered when 25-year-old Pam Helssen tried to check into a camping site in Spain, where she was told that: "According to your card, you're a boy," she was quoted saying in the Gazet van Antwerpen.
The information on the chip belongs to a Wesley Meynendonck, who was born in the same year and lives in the same village. His ID card has a chip with Helssen's information on it.
Local authorities claim that there are checks in place to prevent errors like this one, but those obviously have failed. It shows that even though technology can be perfect, humans will always make mistakes.
Reading into Eric Schmidt's Apple board position
Google CEO Eric Schmidt joining Apple couldn't be merely about a smart guy taking on a board position for a company looking for input from smart guys (which is in essence what the board of directors is all about).
No, something bigger must be going on. Why? Because the world must have something to write about!
Other Apple directors include former vice president Al Gore, Intuit chief executive Bill Campbell, biotech powerhouse Genentech's Arthur Levinson and J Crew's Millard Drexler.
Yet nobody is speculating that Al Gore's position indicates that Steve Jobs is running for president. Intuit got big making book keeping software, but where are the rumours about the Apple Books application? J Crew must signal Apple's Steve Jobs clothing line of turtlenecks and blue jeans. And let's not even get into the obivousness of Genentech helping Jobs to clone himself.
But when Google's Eric Schmidt joins Apple, the iPod maker is suddenly contemplating a merger with Sun Microsystems (wait, wasn't Google supposed to buy Sun?).
Google has expertise in online applications, and Apple's internet strategy has holes big enough to fit a freight liner. So if you're going to speculate, at least mention something like a Mac that comes preloaded with Google's hosted applications (eventhough preloading online applications is contradictionary).
Or dust of the old checkerboard theory: everybody hates their neighbour (competitor), so my neighbour's neighbour is my friend. In other works: let's all hate Microsoft.
Enough already! It's much more obvious than everybody thinks.
technorati tags: apple, google, eric+schmidt, schmidt, director, board+of+directors
Red Hat explores Oracle's Linux aspirations
Red Hat executive and Jboss founder Marc Fleury is taking a closer look at Oracle's plans to launch an Oracle Linux version, and argues that it will be an uphill battle either way.
Oracle's Larry Ellison floated the idea in an interview with the Financial Times in April.
"I would like to have a complete stack," he said. "We are missing an operating system. You could argue that it makes a lot of sense for us to look at distributing and supporting Linux."
The company later adjusted its rhetoric to argue that it could start offering support for the Red Hat Linux distribution.
Fleury quickly points out that the latter doesn't make any sense. Rather than buying a software box, enterprises purchase a Red Hat subscription that provides them access to the software, updates and support.
Given that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available under the GPL license, Oracle could compile the code and sell it as Oracle Linux. But that still doesn't take care of the updates. And third party applications won't be certified for Oracle Linux, even if the code is 99.999 percent identical.
The problems are largely the same if Oracle would choose to build an Oracle Linux from the ground up, Fleury argued: the suite would suffer from limited third party certification and a lack of large engineering investments.
Fleury isn't only proven wrong by the rise of Ubuntu as a major Linux distribution, he also fails to address the reasons for Oralce to create its own Linux.
Controlling the full stack from operating system to end user application would allow Oracle to create a tightly integrated collection of applications that is also referred to as a software appliance.
Essentially it's the difference bewteen creating a home stereo set by buying separate components or getting one of those nifty integrated sets: it has fewer buttons and fewer needless features and cables. The majority of the users are perfectly happy with an appliance.
Oracle contender Ingres unveiled such a database appliance at Linuxworld earlier this month. Getting rid of all the unused Linux features allowed the company to strip down Linux to 20-30 per cent of its original size.
Ingres is relying on rPath/ to build its appliance. Oracle could ask Red Hat to create such an appliance, as Fleury suggests, but why bother? Oracle is big enough to create one itself and ensure the optimal level of integration.
technorati tags: red+hat, jboss, marc+fleury, fleury, oracle, linux, ingres, rpath
HP chief Mark Hurd goes on a customer safari
Who hasn't strolled into a store or shopping mall on a weekend shopping spree only to run into some company promotion team? Add some freebies to the mix and you have a guaranteed, although small scale, marketing success.
Except that a HP promotion at a Best Buy store last weekend in San Jose didn't feature some marketing type, but no other than the company's media shy chief executive Mark Hurd.
The visit was part of a regular "meet the engineer" kind of thing where HP employees volunteer to visit retail stores on weekends and talk about the technology that they create.
It shows the human face behind the corporate logo, allows HP workers to stay in touch with their customers and the store gets some free promotion. It could come straight from the marketing best practices handbook.
Mark Hurd had insisted that he too would like to meet some customers in the wild. And so it happened that unsuspecting Best Buy shoppers looking for free goodies were greeted by the HP boss last Saturday.
Hurd explains why you're a nobody on Myspace if you don't have a HP digital camera.
iPod sweatshop hits back at reporters
Original equipment manufacturer Foxconn has frozen the assets of two reporters who broke the story of the deplorable working conditions in its factories.
Writing for the China Business News, the duo in June published a report about the harsh working conditions at the plant. Workers were paid less than $50 a month and had to work 60-hour weeks including Saturdays on a structural basis.
Apple investigated and found that the company violated its supplier code of conduct. Although claims that workers were underpaid were prove wrong, the company was found to engage in objectionable disciplinary punishment, allowed employees to work excessive over time and had an "unnecessarily complex" pay structure.
Foxconn however wasn’t happy. It publicly lashed out against the complaints, charging that its employees simply love to work overtime. But apparently it felt that a PR campaign itself wasn't enough.
The manufacturer now has gone after the two reporters' personal assets, demanding $3.8m in damages. In China's modern legal society, it's rather common that companies file lawsuits against publications, but it's rare for these suits to be filed against individual reporters.
Perhaps its time for Apple to intervene once again and explain Foxconn how to be a good corporate citizen instead of a furious capitalist.
Workers on a leisurely stroll on the Foxconn roof. It just looks like a military style drill.
AOL ventures on the Zango route
When internet provider America Online said that it would start offering free services in an effort to increase its advertising revenue, few people would have guessed that the provider take it as far as they have done.
The Stopbadware.org initiative on Sunday issued a harsh warning against the website, claiming that the software acts as 'badware'.
Badware really is a politically correct term for malware or spyware. It's just that most badware makers don't want to be called malware or spyware and sue anybody who does (Zango maker 180solutions comes to mind).
In AOL's case, the software installs items without the user's authorization, it contacts AOL's servers without the user's knowledge and it fails to fully uninstall. There's no excuse for any of that.
AOL doesn't steal confidential information or do any of the horrible things that Zango is known for. And Sunday's warning should prevent the provider from wanting to take this any further.
Mission accomplished.
technorati tags: zango, 180solutions, aol, badware, stopbadware.org, malware, spyware
Welcome to the Google police state
Most democracies are based on solid principles to proect its citizens against bureaucracy and baseless legal claims, but don't bother looking for those at Google.
The online search provider last week decided to remove one of our videos. In an email, the provider said:
Google was notified that your video "Cisco on telepresence" allegedly violates the copyright of others. According to our policy regarding copyright complaints under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), we are removing the video in question.
You can find the offending video below (on Yahoo! Video). It features Cisco chief executive John Chambers discussing telepresence at meeting with reporters last June. We're utterly clueless as to the kind of copyrights this video violates... perhaps we weren't allowed to include the image of the plant in the background?
But the worst part isn't even that Google gets to act as judge, jury and executioner. It's the fact that it will act on seemingly anonymous claims and that it won't identify the person filing the complaint. But in the Google police state, I guess that we should be happy that at least we get to hear the charges, however baseless and frivolous they are.
We've protested the removal of the video and requested that Google disclose the identity of our accuser. I'll keep you posted.
technorati tags: google, video, copyright, DMCA, cisco, telepresence
Really, it's 2B1. Or how the OLPC naming nightmare illustrates the flaws of the blogging echo chamber
The One Laptop per Child project has settled on "2B1" as its launch name. Pronounced as 'To be one', the name refers to the project's goal of uniting children through technology, Walter Bender, president of the OLPC's software and content programme.
The change comes only weeks after the name "Children's Machine 1" started circulating in an Aljazeera.net reports.
The initial story failed to explain the origin of the CM1 name. But because the name is now publicly used, Bender on 17 August published a page which refers to the device as the Children's Machine 1 (CM1).
In a classical case of information getting malformed in the blogosphere, the Aljazeera story was picked up by the One Laptop per Child News blog. Last Friday it spread to Arstechnica which incorrectly states that the OLPC has "announced" the CM1 name. The Arstechnica copy advances to Slashdot.
The fact is that CM1 is an internal code name, Bender told us in an email. It refers to the B-Test units that will be shipped to prospective buyers this fall and was never intended for public use.
Looking to clarify the name changes, Bender over the weekend decided to unveil the "2B1" name on the
The OLPC News blog further added to the confusion, baselessly claiming that the CM1 name has been retired – and Engadget runs its blogging Xerox without bothering to check the information.
The OLPC project certainly could have done a better job at explaining its naming changes. But a lack of information is no excuse for baseless speculation.
Or to make a long story really short:
The OLPC project is using the CM1 moniker as an internal code name. The final units will likely be launched as 2B1.
Was that so hard?
technorati tags: $100laptop, olpc, 2b1, CM1,
Online video is broken
I was looking at Jonathan Schwartz's blog just now and was surprised and pleased to see a familiar video there: the Sun chief executive embedded the video that we produced of the Sun Fire X4500 (which we made available on YouTube, Yahoo and Google Video).
If you're a regular visitor to this blog, you know that we've produced and published several dozens of videos over the past months.
Our (exclusive) video of the first working One Laptop per Child prototype has attracted over 100,000 viewers so far. Another success story is a video that we produced at the recent McAfee Avert Labs demonstrating how a Windows system got infected by a fly-by download.
Youtube and Google Video have been great in helping us find an audience for our videos. But as new and better video services continue to emerge, it becomes ever more obvious that something is inherently wrong with online video.
Each service is building a walled garden where users upload their content. You are able to share the content by embedding a Youtube video onto your website, but you can't use Google to find Youtube content, let alone Web1.0 videos that publishers have locked up inside their websites.
All these video services are taking an upside-down approach to search: they'll search any content, as long users submit it to their servers. Online search always has been the other way around, with engines spidering websites for fresh content.
I don't upload this blog posting to Google or Technorati. Instead I can patiently wait for their spiders to come by, or ping them to indicate that new content is available. Why should online video be any different?
The technical answer would be that Google has no way to index content outside its walls. It relies on the text description that user provide when they upload the content. But surely we must be able to come up with a simple tag that the publisher (me) to provide search engines with information about the video?
Most webservers also won't be able to handle a massively successful video. Some Youtube videos attract 100,000s of viewers. Such traffic will crash the average server and run your bandwidth bill through the roof. Even youtube can't handle it all the time: the service is down right now.
Professional publishers will be able to overcome these problems, and hosting services such as Google's and Youtube's are a great solution for bloggers. But it's no excuse for building a walled garden.
The current uploading model is creating a video monopoly where everybody is forced to upload to one or two services, simply because they have all the traffic.
It creates a situation similar to the Ebay monopoly: everybody lists their goods on Ebay because that's where the buyers are. And buyers flock to the site because that's where all the goods are offered for sale. It's nearly impossible to break that cycle and allows Ebay to raise their fees at will.
Youtube is building a nice little monopoly. It could allow the company at some point to insert commercials into our content or charge a fee for the privilege of reaching its massive user base.
Are we willing to let that happen?
As seen on Youtube and Jonathan's blog ;-)
The Office video that Microsoft doesn't want you to see
When Microsoft UK hired actor Ricky Gervais to feature in internal training videos, the company never realized that people outside the company could be interested.
It didn't take long for the videos to end up on Youtube and Google Video. The video talks about corporate values and integrity. As important as that may be, it's boring as hell and you need a comedian like Brent to make it slightly palatable.
Gervais stars as David Brent, the (obnoxious) boss in the UK version of "The Office", upon which the US edition is based (PBS has been broadcasting the UK edition it in the US lately). The sitcom is a rare example of a character comedy, exploring what could happen if you allow a group of characters to collide in an office situation.
But Microsoft apparently doesn't want the rest of the world to find out that it values women in the work space and honesty. The company lawyers ordered Youtube to remove the video. Until then, you can still watch it on Google. Until Microsoft discovers Google.
Part one:
Part two:
technorati tags: google, video, youtube, micorosft, office, david+brent, brent, Ricky gervais, gervais
Domain leeches: grab your dictionaries
Some prime online real estate has just hit the market: Aland's .ax internet domain went live earlier this month.
You're too late for rel.ax, anthr.ax or thor.ax, courtesy of local resident Jonas Holmström. But there surely must be additional words ending in .ax in the dictionary. You might not get the $350m that Michael Robertson got for mp3.com back in 2001 (mp3.ax might still be available, by the way), but there must be some internet gold available on these desolate islands.
Minor detail: you have to somehow exist on the island, be it as a business or not-for-profit organisation or resident. You also aren't supposed to register trademarks (google.ax, anyone?) or names of individuals other than your own.
But those are battles for the courts later one. This web2.0 goldrush is getting boring. Time to start an .ax one.
Some of Aland's 6,500 picturesque islands
Digg elite forcing out outsiders
Digg is falling victim to its own success, blogger Jason Dowdell charges.
Now that the social news site is using "karma scores" to rank stories in addition to plain Digg votes, the service has given rise to a small elite of users who determine which stories make it to the front page.
Invisible from end users, karma scoring is designed to prevent spammers from creating a set of new accounts to push stories to the front page. Instead of merely counting votes (or diggs), each has an invisible karma score. Digg doesn't say much about the karma score's underlying algorithms, but in general you can assume that high scores are awarded to users with a lot of front page diggs and who vote along the same lines of the average user.
The important thing to remember is: the higher the karma score, the more weight a vote carries.
But the system has been taken too far. Is has become practically impossible for a regular user to have his submission end up on the front page, Dowdell charges. Instead of questioning his headline writing skills, he went looking for a conspiracy - and found one: Top diggers have teamed up to create a Digg monopoly
"After contacting a few of the prominent "Diggers" in the sports section (who asked to remain nameless), I asked them all the same question on how their stories always get "dugg" and I was taken aback by the answers. These "diggers" all have some sort of advanced notification system, from email list servs, message board, and even IM bots to notify their digging network.
I guess it could be true, but the evidence at is point is weak. Digg's defence always has been that there simply is a group of power users who waste hourse digging and submitting stories. It also contends that the viral nature of the service makes that some times things happen that might not make any sense.
It's easy to spot conspiracy theories. But we'll need some real evidence beyond anonymous elite diggers.
Is the Digg elite having all the fun?
technorati tags: digg, netscape, manipulation
Expatriates put Dubai's VoIP ban to the test
Expatriates in Dubai have started an online petition, attempting to get local authorities to lift a ban on VoIP services. As of now it has been signed by 1,435 upset residents.
Dubai's local telecommunications monopolist Etisalat last week started blocking all traffic on the UDP port, which is used for Voice over IP traffic by instant messaging applications and VoIP services like Vonage.
In a less subtle move, access to the Skype.com website has been completely blocked, preventing users from downloading the peer to peer messaging client. Blocking Skype traffic is hard to do because of its peer to peer architecture.
Dubai might not be the first region where a local telecommunications monopolist is blocking VoIP traffic, but the measure is raising some serious questions over the nation's aspirations to becoming a regional IT hotbed.
Special "free zones" have been created where residents face less restrictions in their internet access. They are part of a bigger plan to attract foreign programming talent. Expatriates have gratefully used it to stay in touch with friends and family in cooler parts of the world without paying monopolistic phone prices.
The VoIP blocking illustrates that Dubai's commitments to free online innovation only applies when it doesn't threaten the powers that be.
Many regions in the world have tried to copy Silicon Valley's success, but most are merely paying lip service and are scared away by the consequences of truly open innovation.
Modern technology clashes with Dubai's harsh environment
technorati tags: skype, voip, net+neutrality, messenger, vonage, dubai,
Is there a case for search regulation?
About 500,000 small businesses in North America rely on Google searchers for the bulk of their online traffic. Another half million spends money to advertise on the website, according to John Battelle.
The ability to be found on Google can simply make or break a company, and has forced desperate site operators like Kinderstart.com to resort to legal action.
The judge in the kinderstart case ruled that the site had no constitutional right to be found through Google or any other commercial search engine. But could it once be, now that Google's economic importance keeps growing?
Fortune Small Business lined up some ruined online entrepreneurs who lost revenues after Google demoted their sites in its search results: the myrateplan.com service lost 20 per cent of its revenues because of Google.
But opposite to those cases are companies like Sharkdiver.com, which build its shark diving travel agency entirely through Google ads, and is now achieving $1m in annual revenues.
Selling wild flower seeds, Americanmeadows.com was able to slash its marketing budget. Ten years ago the company spent $300,000 per year on print advertising. Moving to online ads allowed it to shave off $180,000 each year.
All the whining entrepreneurs look a lot like inn keepers on country roads resisting the construction of highways. Any business that relies on a single source of revenue is setting itself up for disaster.
For that matter, Google had better watch out itself: more than 95 per cent of its revenues come from online advertising.
technorati tags: google, online, search, advertising
Maintaining momentum in the tech revolution
Ingres' chief technology Officer Dave Dargo is charging that Oracle has lost "it". As the company matured, it turned from an innovator into a "lord of its manor".
The database and enterprise software maker is no longer marches on new markets. Instead it's focussing on protecting its existing business. You can see the same happening in their SOA suite, as we described yesterday, where the technology is used to wage a market share battle instead of brining innovation.
Dargo has a personal reason to gripe: he has worked for Oracle for 15 years, retired in 2004 and last year joined the open source database vendor Ingres. Now he's staging an attack on Oracle's database fortress, questioning the company's strategy and commitment to its customers. It begs the question: "If Oracle is such a horrible vendor, why did you work there for 15 years?"
His answer:
"I want to be a revolutionary. I want to be part of something that is promoting new ideas and change and helping the industry see better ways of doing things. I’ve always sought change and new ideas. That’s why I joined Oracle in 1989. That’s also the reason I joined Ingres in 2005.
But what will keep Ingres from becoming an entrenched database vendor once it turns into a billion dollar public company.
Wall Street tends to suck the innovation out of innovators. Investors demand a steady stream of revenue increases, forcing enterprises to focus on safe bets rather than big bets. Few companies have been able to marry the two. GE comes to mind, and so far Cisco Systems is at least attempting to.
That's why there is a multi billion dollar market for start-up companies. It's also why Microsoft had to acquire Ray Ozzie's Groove Networks to find a decent replacement for Bill Gates.
technorati tags: ingres, oracle, database, sap, dargo, dave+darge, open+source, innovation
Sun marches on server market
Sun Microsystems had retaken the third place in the server market, bumping back Dell.
According to the latest market share data from IDC, Sun increased its server sales by 15.5 per cent. No bad for a company that has been declared obsolete for the past five years, especially if you realise that both first place ranked IBM, HP in second place and Dell saw their server sales drop in a growing overall market.
AMD too has plenty reasons to celebrate. The chipmaker powered 20.2 per cent of all x86 servers shipped in the last quarter.
Intel's Itanium meanwhile brought in paltry $740m (6 per cent of the overall serer market), most of which went to HP. Although Itanium sales are increasing (last quarter by 36.4 per cent), the chip architecture continues to look like a dead end street.
Sun Microsystem's Andy Bechtolsheim demonstrates the company's Sun Fire 8000 blade server
technorati tags: dell, sun, idc, market+share, server, x86, ibm, hp, itanium
Gmail adds integrated mp3 player
Google has started offering users of its Gmail service to play mp3 files that are sent as an email attachment directly from the browser.
Short term this is a great application for office workers whose IT department won't allow the installation of music players.
If I may speculate on the long term implications, this kind of application further illustrates Google's strategy of delivering all software as a service. Once Google launches its Gstore online storage service, users will be able to upload their entire music collection and play them through a widget in the sidebar for Google Desktop, or through the browser based player.
The same goes for word documents (Google opened its Writely online text editor to new sign-ups just days ago) and the online spreadsheet that was launched last June.
Gmail and Gstore will conveniently direct users to Google's applications and in the process undercut Microsoft's lucrative Office business.
Who needs Windows Vista in such a world?
technorati tags: google, mp3, player, gmail, microsoft, office, writely, spreadsheet, SaS,
Oracle turns SOA into SAP competition game
Oracle has bundled its middleware applications into a single Oracle SOA Suite 10g Release 3. It was released as a developer preview last week and will be launched some time this fall.
But if you know a thing or two about service oriented architectures (SOAs), you should be extremely puzzled by Oracle's decision to create a bundle.
SOAs are about turning applications into Lego blocks that can be stacked randomly and reused throughout the enterprise (and beyond). That also means that enterprises will be able to pick middleware components from any webservices compliant vendor or open source project.
Although Oracle says that it's shipping a house build from Lego blocks, it has already put them together and glued them in place. You can pry them loose with a knife, but why would you bother if you already paid for it?
Oracle isn't looking to abandon open standards, but its focusing its attention on its premier competitor: SAP. The latter is offering its Netweaver platform as its SOA-flavoured solution, and Oracle wants to make sure that it's as easy as possible to compare the two, Zapthink senior analyst Jason Bloomberg explained to vnunet.com.
The suite might cause Oracle to lose its battle against IBM and BEA, but it will beat Netweaver hands down. Right now that's what matters.
technorati tags: oracle, sap, netweaver, fusion, SOA, middleware
Apple bails out of Paris Mac Expo
Macworld Paris in September will go without a keynote by Steve Jobs, or any other Apple executive for that matter.
Conspiracy theorists charge that Apple is upset with the pending digital content legislation, which will upset Apple's comfortable hold on the iTunes music store in combination with the iPod.
Apple certainly is known for pulling its support from industry events for seemingly trivial reasons. The company for instance abandoned the East coast MacWorld show when the show's organizer IDG decided to move it from New York to Boston. The East Coast event was cancelled altogether after a lacklustre 2005 edition.
If you're open for even crazier speculations, there are some persistent rumours that suggest that Steve Jobs isn't 100 per cent healthy.
The executive's presentation at the World Wide Developers Conference earlier this month was sub par. Jobs is known for knowing his presentations by hearth, yet this year he was obviously reading off prepared notes. He also relied on fellow executives much more than in the past.
But all this is mere speculation and is only slightly better founded than the average Thinksecret scoop.
technorati tags: apple, mac+expo, steve+jobs
Dell haunted by inflammation laptop nightmares for at least 10 months
Dell's inflammation nightmare started 10 months ago
Dell received the first hints that its (Sony supplied) laptop batteries were defective as early as October 2005, a company spokesperson confessed to Infoworld.
The company also knew that the batteries could overheat. It just chose not to instate a recall until it stated raining reports of spontaneous laptop combustion incidents.
Instead of recalling the defective units, Dell and Sony decided to tweak the production process. Meanwhile they kept their fingers crossed that no airplanes would drop from the sky as a result of their defective products.
All that happened however was the widely publicised Dell laptop catching fire at a Tokyo event, which was followed by numerous reports of other incidents, including a Florida home that allegedly caught fire thanks to a Dell laptop.
Open source licence confusion to remain
The licence proliferation committee of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) last month published a first draft of a report containing recommendations to curb the open source licence proliferation.
There currently are 58 OSI approved open source licences (meaning that they can officially call themselves "open source"), and many consider that's too many. Enterprises refuse to spend hours studying the terms of all 58 licences. Instead they tend to approve only a few and simply ignore all software that's governed by other licences.
Developers too should be careful, because many of these licences are incompatible with each other. So even if two applications are both open source, it might very well be illegal to mix their code or code fragments in a single new application.
Simply said, the open source world would look a lot better if there were only a few open source licences.
But enough crying over spilled milk. These 58 licences are used today and there is very little that we can do to change that – revoking them certainly isn't an option.
So instead the OSI is proposing to create licence categories: 9 licences will be labelled " popular and widely used or with strong communities". Second comes group of special purpose licences for education, US government or testing purposes and a third group holds redundant, non-reusable and miscellaneous licences.
The categorization will clearly steer new open source projects away any but the 9 "popular" licences. The organization won't say it out loud, but the 9 essentially fall in a group of OSI-approved licences. It would kill all the other ones if it had the means to do so.
The proposal has "compromise" written all over it. OSI simply can't revoke its Open Source Approved label from any of the non-popular licences. But by describing them as "non-popular", it will make sure that no future open source project will pick them. Any existing project furthermore will be considered a second tier open source citizen.
It may not solve the problem of licence proliferation any time soon, but it's probably the best that OSI could do.
HP's Martin Fink kick-started the licence proliferation debate in a February 2005 keynote at Linuxworld.
technorati tags: open+source, OSI, license, licence, GPL, CDDL
Cutting through the Xen on Linx mud slinging
Is the Xen virtualization technology ready for prime time?
Ask Red Hat and you'll hear a company that isn't so sure: "What makes us most nervous is putting a bad taste in someone's mouth around the Xen technology, which we think is business-transforming. We should not screw this thing up and put a cloud around Xen," Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens told eWeek.
Red Hat Coincidentally won't be able to support Xen until laste this year, if not early 2007. Novell however started shipping a Xen-ready version of its SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 last month.
When I asked Novell's CTO Jeff Jaffe about Xen last week at Linuxworld, he responded with a big smile.
"Virtualization is on of the key differentiators of our release. We are very happy to talk about it," was the first thing he said.
Jaffe's comments hit the nail on the head. The Xen-readiness discussion doesn't revolve around the technology itself. It's a ego trip for the companies building support for the technology into their products.
Novell has it, Red Hat doesn't. So instead of admitting defeat in the race towards Xen, Red Hat prefers to spread FUD on the technology's readiness. But when the Linux vendor finally is ready to launch, it will boast that Xen is the best invention since sliced bread.
technorati tags: xen, virtualization, red+hat, novell, FUD
Net neutrality doom scenario hits Dubai
What happens when telecommunications giants get their way and the US government abandons net neutrality?
Just take a look at Dubai, the Gulf state that's pouring billions of dollars into building an IT economy. The state is considered one of most politically advanced nations in the Mid East, and has set up special "free zones" where the web can be accessed with little or no restrictions (regular zones have more restrictions). But even the local telecommunications monopolist has now stareted a war on VoIP services inside the free zone.
Gulfnews.com reports that instant messaging clients offering internet telephony services including Yahoo! IM and Windows Live Messenger are mysteriously being blocked.
The likely culprit is the local Emirates International Telecommunications Company monopolist, which is rumoured to block the services on its DSL and dial-up services because they affect its lucrative landline telephony market.
The same goes for the Vonage service. Although the company doesn't sell its VoIP services in the Gulf state, many expatriates from the US and Europe have directly imported the required hardware to make cheap phone calls to the home front.
Meanwhile major US network operators and telcos continue their lobby to kill network neutrality (the requirement to treat all network traffic as equal). If they succeed, you can expect Dubai's problems to pop up all over the US.
Dubai's internet city is left without VoIP
- Thanks to a Dubai-based tipster (you know who you are).
technorati tags: netneutrality, network+neutrality, dubai, voip, vonage, yahoo, msn
It's raining web2.0
Web2.0 start-up Kiko has gone belly-up. The online calendaring application has been listed on Ebay with a minimum opening bid o$50,000 (no bids as of now).
Kiko offered an online calendaring application. It looks great but offers very little added value over its competitors (both software and online).
The Onstartups blog has a thorough analysis of the failure. In summary it comes down to: don't try to compete with Google and: just using web2.0 technologies doesn't make for a viable business model.
Smart entrepreneurs had better dust off their domains and launch fuckedweb20company.com or dotcom2failures – copying the success of the vultures of the web 1.0 hype.
Another one for the Computer History Museum
technorati tags: bankruptcy, web2.0, kiko, google, yahoo
The Dell Dilemma
Dell is going down. The company in the last quarter saw its server sales drop, profit was cut in half and let's not even think about the 4.1m batteries that it has to recall.
Dell rose in a downward market by competing on price, selling point solutions. The price compensated for the lacking customer service.
Buying a Dell is going to a warehouse store for your groceries. You know you get a good deal, but it's a long drive and the service sub par. The warehouse shopping is fine if you're student with too much time on your hands. But once you land that high paying executive job, most people will opt for a more convenient store and happily pay the higher prices.
It looks like that same thing is going on with Dell. The company provided great servers and desktop systems in a time that IT budgets were tight and that every dollar had to be stretched to the limit.
But the lean years are over and companies are once again starting new IT projects and increasing their spending. IBM, HP and Sun offer a full range of servers. Dell is still selling point products and offers poor servers.
As the focus has shifted from cost cutting to growing the business, purchase priorities too have shifted. Configuring your own server network was great fun for a while, but the world has change. And Dell never saw it coming.
The Linuxworld Red Hat mystery
Red Hat may be dominating the world of corporate Linux, the company is a no-show at Linuxworld this year. The company declined to spend marketing dollars on a large showfloor booth. Instead it did some one on one interviews with clients and press in a nearby hotel and hosted a private reception.
The company itself is dodging questions on the subject, but speculations range from a fallout between Linuxworld organizer IDG to the fact the Linux vendor did its main announcements at the Red Hat Summit last May.
There is something to say for the latter explanation. But given the recent controversy surrounding Red Hat's support for the Xen virtualization technology (the company claimed that it wasn't ready for prime time yet and then retracted that statement) and the Jboss acquisition, it has plenty to explain.
Novell steals the show at Linuxworld 2006
technorati tags: red+hat, linuxworld, lnxw, lnxwsf06, open+source, linux, novell
Lawrence Lessig full Linuxworld keynote presentation video
It took a little more time, but Google Video has finally processed the video of Lawrence Lessig's opening keynote from Linuxworld.
It is 50 minutes of pure excitement and education, so sit back and enjoy.
technorati tags: linuxworld, linuxworld2006, linuxworldsf06, lnxw06, lnxwsf06, linux, open+source, lawrence+lessig, stanford, user+generated+content, youtube, google+video
15 years Linux: past and future (video)
Monday 21 August 2006 marks the 15th birthday of Linux.
At Linuxworld, open source luminaries Larry Augustin (VA Software), Dirk Hohndel (Intel), Chris DiBona (Google) Eric Raymond (author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar") and Jon "maddog" Hall discussed the operating system's past and future.
You can watch a video below.
technorati tags: linuxworld, linuxworld2006, linuxworldsf06, lnxw06, lnxwsf06, linux, open+source
Open source mobile phones redefine "open"
Just because mobile phones are increasingly running Linux doesn't mean that users should expect the devices to be as open as a Linux PC.
Regulators and operators have a big interest in limiting open source's "openness" as much as they can. Because they wouldn't want an enthusiastic developer to tweak the radio to ensure better signal quality, having him knock out the entire cellular system in the process, or secretly flip the switch on premium services such as high speed data plans without having to pay for it.
Phones are not PCs," Palmsource's senior vice president of Engineering Mike Kelley said at Linuxworld.
"They tie in to a radio that is regulated. They are tied into very expensive back end infrastructure that can be seriously disrupted by malfunctioning phones. They bill the users for all kinds of activities."
Smart phone makers therefore prohibit native Linux applications altogether (Motorola's current approach) or limit them to a so-called sandbox where they have limited exposure to the phone's vital functions.
But that won't stop open source developers. Given that Linux is governed by the GPL, they will hack away at mobile Linux simply because they can. Harald Welte especially seems to have made it his life task to (fully legally) tear down the walls that Motorola has constructed inside its Linux phones.
Mike Kelley
technorati tags: linuxworld, lnxw, lnxwsf06, palmsource, mobile+linux, cellphone, harald+welte
Crash course in user generated content
In his opening keynote at Linuxworld, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig described the "read-write culture", which revolves around user generated content.
The issue is that current copyright law is restricting user generated content. We therefore need a grassroots revolution to shake up the status quo, and as open source developers already have gone through this experience with Linux are in the perfect position to deliver this shake-up.
Read-write indicates that consumers don't just consume media (as they do today), but actively contribute (like they have done until the 20th century).
The video below offers a crash course in user generated content by Lawrence Lessig.
technorati tags: linuxworld, linuxworld2006, linuxworldsf06, lnxw06, lnxwsf06, linux, open+source, lawrence+lessig, stanford, user+generated+content, youtube, google+video
Has Linuxworld lost it?
Linuxworld once could boast that it was the premier open source show. But as Linux matured into a boring adult, Linuxworld slipped into the position of a second tier open source show.
It all became instantly visible to those attending the opening keynote by Lawrence Lessig this morning: the keynote room was the smallest in at least five years of Linuxworld San Francisco. And even open source darling Lessig was unable to fill all the seats.
The expo is dominated by the big companies looking to make big bucks. Meanwhile there might still be interesting sessions, but the sense of excitement has long ago left the event.
Linuxworld is desperately attempting to change into an open source event. While it's making some progress, it doesn't seem near enough.
Lessig
technorati tags: linuxworld, linuxworld2006, linuxworldsf06, lnxw06, lnxwsf06, linux, open+source
Novell's CTO on Desktop Linux
The market for Linux on the desktop is a lonely place. Red Hat has abandoned its desktop Linux version and Linspire has failed to inspire anybody. The only real players in this field are Ubuntu and Novell.
While Ubuntu has traction among hard core Linux fans, Novell is targetting the enterprise. That market has been largely the domain of Windows 98 replacements. In other words: leagacy systems that are used to perform a single task (including cash registers).
But all that is going to change, Novell's chief technology officer told vnunet.com in an interview at the Linuxworld conference in San Francisco.
technorati tags: linuxworld, linuxworld2006, linuxworldsf06, lnxw06, lnxwsf06, linux, open+source, desktop, desktop linux
Open source Java scheduled for October arrival
Sun Microsystems plans to release the first chunks of Java under an open source license by October this year, the company said at an event during the Linuxworld conference in San Francisco.
After the presentation we grabbed Sun's software boss Rich Green to get the dirt on open source Java, the risks and opportunities. You can watch the video interview below.
technorati tags: java, sun, sun+microsystems, open+source, linux+world, lnxw2006, lnxwsf2006, linux+world+san+francisco+2006
Dell seeks to extinguish flaming laptop talk
Dell chairman and founder Michael Dell address the issue of laptops going up in flames at an event in Sydney, Australia. The company hours after Dell's comments would kick its the largest recall in the company's history.
The company got flamed in June after photos of a flaming Dell laptop were published online. The event has been a hot topic in the blogosphere ever since.
"We are fully investigating that incident and a few other reported incidents to understand exactly what is going on and taking appropriate steps to provide the best outcome for our customers," Michael Dell said according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Dell has already acknowledged the first flaming laptop case. But the computer maker has its work cut out when it comes to dealing with the incident's fallout. Dell might just as well close up shop if it becomes synonymous with laptop barbecues. Companies have folded over smaller PR nightmares.
technorati tags: dell, flaming+laptop, laptop, battery
Google urges users not "to Google"
Google has started a campaign to discourage media from using the company name as a verb in an effort to prevent its "de-trademarkization".
If "to google" becomes a regular verb, the search provider will be unable to claim it as a trademark, allowing anyone use it for their search service (imagine hitting the "Google this! button on Yahoo).
But would that be a bad thing? Having a brand name that's synonymous with a product or service provides free marketing. Scotch tape is named after one of the companies making it, and it seems to have fared pretty well. Plenty of people will even refer to Pepsi as Coke.
More importantly, language is a living phenomenon that autonomously forms new words, regardless of silly rules, trademarks and regulations. Google's attempts appear to be a typical lawyer induced campaign to fight the symptoms rather than take on the root cause. That might make since given that other lawyers are likely to use media clippings in evidence of Google's commoditization, but it's only the tip of the iceberg.
technorati tags: google, to+google, verb, trademark, commodity
Plugging the ASP loophole in the GPL
The General Public License has a loophole that allows online applications to circumvent some of its provisions. Fabrizio Capobianco, chief executive of Funambol today took the initiative to create a new Honest Public License that closes that loophole.
The following is a recording of a phone interview that vnunet.com conducted with Capobianco earlier today.
- To listen to this 8:44 minute podcast, you can download the mp3 file (8.0 Mb) here or use the embedded player below.
technorati tags: open+source, gpl, honest+public+license, ASP, hosted+applications
Now that's a bullet proof storage server
How do you proof the fault tolerant, continuous operation of your enterprise storage device in the Youtube age?
HP decided to produce a movie that seems fit for the online video service: take a .308 calibre M80 rifle and shoot it at the HP Storageworks XP12000 disk array.
The bullet is bound to hit some parts and disrupt the system's operation, prompting the device to jump into action and ensure its continuous operation. The video is cleverly produced and the endless stream of disclaimers at the end is highly amusing.
There are points of concern however. After the shot is fire, a charred and punctured circuit board is shown. The bullet seems to have hit nothing but the circuit board. The demo would have been a lot more convincing if a hard drive or some chips had been hit.
Secondly, the "high velocity" bullet never makes it out of the aquarium that's sitting next to the storage server (obviously to proof that there is a bullet going through it). I'm no ballistics expert, but I'd have expected it to puncture both the back and front of the aquarium.
Via Illuminata
technorati tags: illuminata, hp, storageworks, youtube, bullet+proof, m80
Yahoo! & MSN show Google envy
In the odd case that you're using the Yahoo or MSN search engine to look for Google, both site make sure to point you to their search technology first.
The top result for either of these search queries is another one of their own search boxes.
Oddly enough, Yahoo doesn’t seem to fear MSN much – at least it doesn’t add its search box to the results. MSN however includes a search box for Yahoo queries as well.
(pics below)
Exhibit A: a normal web search with normal list of results.
Exhibit B: searcing for Google results in a second search box, right under the original one.
Exhibit C: MSN does the same
But Yahoo doesn't see a need to target MSN.
Via: Google Blogoscoped
technorati tags: yahoo, msn, google, searche+engine
Dr. Phil has met his match on Youtube
Finally the user generate online video revolution is showing some results. In that it produces a challenge for all those self appointed and life guru that soil daytime television.
Meet youtube user geriatric1927, who uploaded his first Geriatric gripes and grumbles vodcast early August and by now has amassed over 100,000 pageviews.
"I really am as old as I look and therefore I think I'm in a unique position. What I hope I'll be able to do is bitch and grumble about life in general from the perspective of an old person who's been there and done that," he proclaims.
"And hopefully you will respond in some way by your comments, and then I will be able to do other videos to follow up on your comments."
The "bitch and grumble" sums up the purpose of video blogs (and blogs in general) fairly well. And much like the those daytime talk shows, he doesn't talk about much. But he only needs 2 minutes to do so and it's actually funny.
Introducing the Floyd Landis bracelet
Following the success of Lance Armstrong yellow bracelets to benefit cancer research, we have a suggestion for Floyd Landis to launch a campaign of his own.
Admittedly cycling and doping go together like ecommerce and spam: it's all right until you get caught.
technorati tags: Floyd+landis, doping, tour+de+france
Homeland security department discovers online threats
The department of homeland security on Wednesday issued a press release to warn that attackers have started exploiting the MS06-040 vulnerability that Microsoft patched on Tuesday.
Warning the good folks living in the US against online perils is just one of the many tasks of the department. It comes on top of the fear mongering that advices residents to stock up on building plastic in case of a chemical terrorist attack.
It's not that we don't need government involvement in the online security space, but having yet another agency chime in on the online perils will do no good at all.
Instead of sending out press releases, the government should take a good look at legislative ways to tackle makers of badware (send me and email and I'll give you the URL for 180solutions), or to device laws that cut down on badly coded software.
Speaking of 180solutions… stay tuned. Vnunet's Security Watchdog blog is preparing to publish some video footage shortly that demonstrates without any doubt that the company is involved in illegal software installations and that it deserves to be called malware and spyware.
technorati tags: security, exploit, vulnerability, windows, ms06-040, 180solutions
Rising water for the useless gift list
Do you have friends who you think would fancy seeing water drops falling upwards? Get them a "time fountain".
The devices shines a stroboscope on drops of water falling down. Change the frequency and you can create the illusion of the drops going up.
The usefulness might be non-existent. But the fun will last a cool 15 minutes.
technorati tags: gadgets, stroboscope
Researchers concoct 4 litre car wash
Following a hot summer, searchers have come up with an inflatable car wash that will use only 4 litres of water (about 1 gallon) – far less than the 135 litres that poor out of the garden hose for your average car wash to day.
Consumers only have to inflate the thing and attach the cleaning device that will do its work with steam and water mist. There is no scrubbing required, which should make up for putting up the tent. You just go off reading your news paper and return one hour later.
It's that or you could save yourself all the effort, drive to the car wash and spend a few bucks to have some machine or some person do it all for you.
Speaking of car washes… it reminded me of this. You don't have to be a car enthusiast to appreciate this video of a Range Rover Sport taking on Challenger 2 battle tank.
technorati tags: car+wash, environment, green
Candy maker demonstrates how to embrace user generated content
The Mentos mints have become a genuine online hype after consumers discovered that mixing the candy with soda (most people use diet coke or pepsi) creates a powerful fountain.
The trick is simple. Drop a batch of mentos mints into the bottle and watch events unfold.
Many manufacturers would fight the trend, fearing the negative publicity that would follow from amputated limbs and eyes lost due to exploding bottles.
But not Mentos. They have launched the Mentos Geyser contest. Send in a video and you could win 320 rolls of Mentos (a year's supply for those Christians not eating candy on Sundays or Muslims/Jews observing Saturdays) and 1,000 iTunes songs.
It's a marketing done right – until somebody loses an eye.
technorati tags: mentos, rocket, diet+coke, diet+pepsi
Wired New's sleuthing uncovers lazy journalist
Wired News was forced to retract three news stories after it turned out that a freelance reporter had made up interviews and sources.
May the wannabe journalist and writer Philip Chien forever be known as a liar and a smear on the journalist profession.
We are impressed however with Wired's sleuthing skills:
Chien's reporting came under scrutiny when he submitted a draft article citing a different source, Ted Collins, along with contact information for Collins, as required by Wired News ever since questions arose last year over another reporter's sources.
An investigation traced the name and Hotmail account provided to a Usenet posting praising Chien's work. Wired News senior editor Kevin Poulsen then compared the IP address of the poster and Chien's computer and discovered they matched. An e-mail sent to Wired News from the Ted Collins account also originated with the same IP address.
Poulsen linked Chien's IP address to at least one other Hotmail account, created under the name Robert Stevens, which Chien had provided to Wired News as contact information for Ash. The name and address were used in additional Usenet posts making positive comments about Chien's work.
Chien has used Robert Stevens as a source in at least three articles published in two newspapers, which we have contacted privately. In each case he used a different description, variously calling him a retired engineer, a NASA engineer and an amateur astronomer
More lies by Chien?
technorati tags: wired, plagerism, journalism, ethics, philip+chien
Kill your blogging adversaries
More than half of all the online blog attacks are staged by business rivals, claims retired Oregon Supreme Court judge Edward Fadeley.
Online smear campaigns are certainly a fact of citizen journalism, and there's no doubt that many are orchestrated.
But Fadeley oddly enough refers to Apple's attempts to force Mac enthusiast websites to give up their sources, as part of Apple's campaign to keep new product details from leaking out prematurely.
The courts in that case have ruled that Apple's doesn't have a right to
know the source – and that Apple's obsession with trade secrets doesn't
overrule the freedom of press and information.
There are much better examples where "users" consistently leave derogatory comments about one manufacturer's products in feedback sections and online reviews. But few of those cases have shown proven signs of malicious intent.
Companies can however effectively fight the "wild west blogosphere" trend with facts of their own. That's why its so important to have a blog and respond to criticism.
The wild west analogy works to a certain extent: if you don't fight back, you're bound to lose.
technorati tags: blogging, competition, blog, wild+west
Click-fraud auditors return fire to Google report
Google today published a report condemning third party click fraud auditing firms.
Companies like Adwatcher, ClickFacts and Click Forensics are improperly measuring fraudulent clicks, which results in overstated and hyperbolic click fraud statistics, Google alleges.
The companies provide an independent audit of allegedly fraudulent clicks. Typically a single user clicking five times on a single ad is considered fishy, but these companies do more than just counting clicks from IP addresses.
But Google is trailing behind the facts, counters ClickFacts. The company in February was contacted by Google and has since corrected its technology, company spokesperson Mikail Ledvic told vnunet.com.
Google's data isn't just 6 months over due. After ClickFacts didn't see a significant change in the fraudulent clicks rate after it corrected its data for the problems that Google identified, Ledvic added.
When contacted, Adwatcher instantly offered us a test account to demonstrate that most of the Google's criticism didn't apply to its technology. Contrary to what Google claims, it doesn’t mix results from different search engines. It also doesn't embed code into its client's website – another method that drew Google's fire.
Firms like Clickfacts have publicly stated that large numbers on online advertisement clicks in fact are fraudulent, which raises questions about the viability of the pay-per-click advertising model on which Google relies so heavily.
Google doesn't charge for fraudulent clicks. However, it fears that advertisers will adjust their marketing campaigns based on poorly designed audit reports, thereby throwing out the baby with the bath water.
If you listen to the auditors, the click fraud debate is far from over. And it seems that Google as a stakeholder is unable to settle this one on its own.
Hopefully the IAB's Click Measurement Working Group will prove more successful, because the stakes are high.
technorati tags: Google, click+fraud, adwatcher, clickfacts, click+forensics
Never trust a Norwegian journalist
Hasn't it happened to all of us that you travelling coach from say San Francisco to New York and Bill Gates is sitting in the seat next to you?
Well, it happened to Norwegian journalist Bjørn Benkow. He used the occasion to interview the richest man on earth and published it in several publications.
It's just a minor detail that Gates owns a private jet. Not surprising if you consider that he has better things to than wait for his delayed flight connection.
In other words, Benkow is as much a reporter as Jeff Gannon. (the dirt in Norwegian here)
He also made up interviews with psychiatric patient scientologist Tom Cruise and Formula 1 racer Michael Schumacher.
Interviews with Bill Gates are almost as hard to find as those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Benkow should have known that before he decided to 'interview' the Microsoft chairman.
Bill Gates fighting Delta's customer service for failing to credit his frequent flier account.
technorati tags: bill+gates, michael+schumacher, fiction, journalism, tom+cruise
Microsoft kills Mac virtualization (podcast)
Microsoft had axed the Virtual PC application. Creating a new version would be too expensive, said Scott Ericson, Microsoft's director of product management and marketing for the Macintosh business unit (see the podcast below).
Creating universal code (a version of the application that runs well on Apple's new Intel systems) would require the company to start all over again, taking up too much developer resources. Meanwhile the competition is heating up with Apple wrapping up Boot Camp (to be integrated in Leopard next spring) and VMware preparing an OS X version of its product.
They are all decent arguments, but it leaves a gaping hole in Microsoft's virtualization strategy.
If the company would be serious about the technology, if would understand that enterprises want to be able to move around virtual systems between platforms and operating systems. After dropping Virtual PC, virtualization in Microsoft's dictionary once again means that you can use anything, as long as it runs on Windows.
Meanwhile the world is moving on VMware is moving in the exact opposite direction of Microsoft.
- To listen to this 5:03 minute podcast, you can download the mp3 file (4.6 Mb) here or use the embedded player below.
technorati tags: apple, os+x, virtualization, microsoft, virtual+pc, vmware,
OS X Leopard features
Apple during its annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco demonstrated several new features of its OS X operating system.
The main issue with this feature however appears to be that applications are tied to one space. So you're out of luck if you're looking to have a browser windows in your work space as well as your personal space.
Microsoft Windows users might want to check out the free "Virtual Desktop Manager"
powertoy, which offers similar functionality.
Time Machine
allows users to travel back in time on their hard drives. You can
literally scroll back to a specific date or instruct the computer to
find the most recent change. This allows you to undelete a document or
to revert a document to its previous state (especially usefull if you
have a tendency to accidentally overwrite existing documents.
Windows will actually introduce the same functionality with Vista, once it ships.
Time Machine also allows for constant back-up, although that would require a secondary or external hard drive.
Moving on to the Mail application, users looking to spice up their email messages will receive several templates. Since the feature is using html the message should show up correctly in most email applications.
Mail also will be the home of a "to do" list that for years had been
missing from OS X for years. Although Mail is an odd place to put the
to do list, you will be able to create a new item by selecting text in
a mail message. In the picture above Steve Jobs reminded himself to
"bring the desert" after he was asked to do so in an email message.
The to do list feature offers integrated with the calendar to allow for reminders.
Lastly the iChat instant messaging client is set for un update. For video conversations, users get all the Photo Booth silliness to transform their images.
You can also change the background to a photo or even movie. Just let the computer take a picture of the empty background first, change it and then move intothe picture. The white rim around the person's head is a dead giveaway that something weird is going on, but it's nice nonetheless.
Comparing Apples to orang...Windows
Apple is no stranger to the art of mud slinging, but at the World Wide Developers Conference today it took Windows trashing to a new level.
When Apple launched OS 10.4 two years ago, the company tauntingly put up banners stating: "Redmond, start you photo copiers".
"It was a joke, but they took it seriously," Apple's senior vice president of software engineering Bertrand Serlet joked today.
He pointed to desktop search technology in Windows Vista, the inclusion of RSS into Internet Explorer 7 and the unbundling of Outlook into separate applications for mail and calendaring – all of which mimic moves that Apple made two years ago.
Even the Longhorn logo (pictured right) had to suffer Serlet's wreath. He described it as "a standard Windows logo with a nice aqua bubble on top."
The WWDC's audience of developers and Mac faithful knew that Aqua the name for OS X's user interface, and the blue sphere admittedly has some similarity to the signature Apple style.
"But you know, underneath it all it's still Windows," Serlet said to finish it off.
The Windows trashing no doubt was done primarily for its amusement value. How else could Apple explain that it plans to "copy" the Previous Versions function in Windows Vista with the "Time Machine" feature in OS X 10.5?
Claiming – as Serlet did – that Microsoft copied Apple's desktop search technology after it pulled WinFS from Vista also is a far stretch. The concept of desktop search certainly wasn't an Apple invention – some would argue that Microsoft was the first one to publicly demonstrate it in 2003. And Google had a product on the market before Apple did.
But Apple needs Microsoft as much as God needing a devil. It's hard to define yourself if you don't have something to push off from.
So leaving the WWDC keynotes, delegates were greeted by a banner stating: Mac OS X Leopard. Introducing Vista 2.0.
technorati tags: apple, os+x, leopard, windows, windows+vista, wwdc, wwdc06, osx
OS X to go virtual
Virtual machine developer VMware is scheduled to make an appearance at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference this Monday in San Francisco.
What is VMware doing at the Mac event? The obvious conclusion is that the company will introduce a version of its software for OS X and/or OS X Server.
It would allow users to run Windows applications next to their OS X software, thereby delivering a solution that is much more practical than the current Boot Camp dual booting option.
Virtualisation is nothing new for Mac users. Connectix for ages has been selling its Virtual PC application (the company in February 2003 was acquired by Microsoft). Parallels offers a less expensive alternative that promises the same functionality.
The announcement could turn out to be significant however. VM Ware earlier this year dropped the license fees on its entry level products. Every Windows and Linux user is now able to just download the application.
If VMware extends its free offer to OS X, the price of running Windows applications will drop significantly (although you still need to purchase a Windows license).
It would look something like this (except that this shot doesn't feature VM Ware running on OS X but VM Ware running on Linux running Windows XP, VNC-ed on a Mac OS X systems)
technorati tags: apple, vmware, virtualization, wwdc, wwdc2006, san+francisco, software
Windows Vista proven far from secure
Windows Vista might be rightfully claiming to be the "most secure Windows operating ever", that doesn’t preclude that the operating system can still be hacked.
Symantec in whitepapers has claimed it has demonstrated so, and the Black Hat security conference this week featured a live demonstration on how to compromise Vista's security.
Nobody should be surprised that Vista has security leaks, since flawed security is a fact in all software. That's why Microsoft has equipped Vista with all kinds of internal barriers that aim to limit the damage in case a security vulnerability is exploited.
The true challenge is to build botnets, spyware and massively disruptive worms for Vista. The current security mess after all is the result of attackers' ability to make money.
That's why the Black Hat demonstration was particularly scary. In one case researcher Joanna Rutkowska used the virtualization technology inside an AMD processor to create a hypervisor that controls the actual operating system.
Now we're not just talking about malware that sits inside a user account. This one has the keys to the entire system without the user knowing it.
Time for Microsoft to start patching – and tune down it's "most secure version of Windows ever" pitch.
Joanna Rutkowska
Photo: eecue.com (via Flickr)
technorati tags: black+hat, security, windows+vista, vista, microsoft, joanna+rutkowska, hacking
iPods rule the automobile
As Apple signed up three more car manufacturers to offer iPod integration in their vehicles, the company is increasingly entrenching its position as the world's dominant portable media player.
The deal doesn't make an iPod connector just a prevalent as a powerplug however: it's still just and option for which buyers will be charged extra.
But it still demonstrates the iron grip that Apple has on the car media player market. No car maker after all is offering connectors for Creative or Toshiba's media players.
Instead of a clumsy connector, Apple could have added Bluetooth technology to the iPod a long time ago, but that probably would have offered too little of a vendor lock-in and only would have promoted customer choice. Other device makers after all could then have offered Bluetooth too.
No, Apple is determined to milk the iPod cow for as long as it possibly can by using proprietary connectors, a proprietary DRM and proprietary software. Openness would only hurt Apple's pocket book.
BMW with iPod connector. Who wouldn't want a white wire coming out of their dashboard?
Netscape's Calacanis exposes himself as a one trick pony
In a bid to dethrone Digg, AOL has hired several of the top submitters to the Digg, Newsvine and Reddit social bookmarking sites to start submitting links to the Netscape.com website.
They will be paid $1000 per month to submit news stories to the service.
Having people submit content is only a minor part of why they are successful. It's the "bookmark" part of social bookmarking, but doesn’t do anything to promote the "social" aspect.
The big challenge for Netscape is to attract a broad audience willing to vote on these submissions. That's where ease of use and attractive design come into play.
Digg is big because visitors get the site's concept the first time the view the page. Del.icio.us and Reddit are trailing behind because it's harder to figure them out. And Netscape isn't a text book example of a clean site design either.
A quick look at Netscape.com demonstrates the site's inability to have its visitors vote on stories – the average front page item has just a few dozen votes, where Digg's front page items attract several hundred votes.
In its current state, Netscape is merely a editorialized news aggregator. It certainly doesn't qualify for the web2.0 moniker.
The site's godfather Jason Calacanis struck it rich when he sold his Weblogs, Inc. to AOL, but is demonstrating a severe lack of vision with Netscape.
technorati tags: digg, reddit, del.icio.us, social+bookmarking, web2.0, jason+calacanis, netscape, AOL
Vonage's feels the pain of its catastrophic IPO
A loophole in Vonage's IPO prospectus is prompting a large group of investors to refuse payment for shares that had been allocated to them during the VoIP provider's May IPO.
The company as a result has paid underwriters $17.9m to buy up the stock. Meanwhile Vonage is taking its battle to the courts in an attempt to claim the investor's funds.
As a reminder:
- Vonage was founded by convicted criminal whose past forced him to step down as chief executive prior to the firm's IPO.
- Vonage staged a broad spam campaign (including the first known case of wide spread VoIP spam) to lure its subscribers into buying its shares.
- Vonage willingly and knowingly uses spyware and adware to advertise its products.
The provider might be offering decent services, but it has a horrible track record as a corporate citizen.
Cable and DSL providers meanwhile are rapidly chipping away at Vonage's customer base, forcing the VoIP provider to further raise its marketing spend. Each new customer is currently costing $239 in advertising. They make the company a mere $300 per year (based on the $25 monthly subscription fee for its unlimited plan).
Do the math. This model is flawed beyond comprehension.
Vonage founder and stock swindler Jeffrey Citron, just one of many reasons to shun the provider.
Gates inducted into the Stalinist hall of fame
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has been selected to the list of "50 foreigners shaping China's modern development" compiled by the Chinese state run newspaper People's Daily.
It's a questionable honour. The list also contains mass murderer Joseph Stalin and Karl "the bloodier the revolution, the better" Marx. Let's not forget the person who pioneered socialist government staged famine: Vladimir Lenin.
Other villains on the list include the late Japanese emperor Hirohito and North Korea's Kim Il Sung.
The list also includes true scientists like Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin. At least the Chinese haven't fallen for scientific fiction like the creationist theory.
The list shows that the Chinese are willing to honour any idea. The
list also features Harland Sanders, founder of the Kentucky Fried
Chicken fast food chain, in addition to movie director Steven Spielberg
and basketball millionaire Michael Jordan. 
Gates goes for maximum karma points.
technorati tags: gates, bill+gates, microsoft, china, lenin, stalin, marx, people's+daily, socialism,
Security hole surfaces on Centrino
Centrino laptop users have to start worrying about a new security vulnerability. The Microsoft made drivers for Intel's 2200BG and 2915ABG PRO/Wireless Network Connection Hardware are suffering from a security bug that could enable attackers to take over control of a system.
To add to the security fun, a malware author could exploit the vulnerability to create a worm that hops from laptop to laptop. It's a horror scenario for every enterprise IT manager, since the attack would bypass corporate firewalls and security software.
Intel has put up a special page about the vulnerability on its website where users can learn that there are three different issues. My laptop won two out of three.
So now what?
After clicking through a bunch of pages that aim to add to the overall confusion, you are finally allowed to download a whopping 130Mb patch.
This better be some really nice patch with sound effects and 3D graphics, because I've plaid games that took up less space.
To make things more confusing, Intel is also linking to individual drivers. If flawed drivers are the issue, users should be able to download the one for their specific system rather than the 130Mb jumbo pack.
But Intel never mentions this option, instead pointing users to the gigapatch. The beast is downloading right now. Keep your fingers crossed for me please.
Something has been brewing in the Intel clean room
From Intel's marketing vault
E3 puts the "trade" back in trade show
The E3 gaming convention has collapsed. Exhibitors have finally started to realize that they were engaging in an arms races on who could spend the most on booth babes, smoke and mirrors.
There may be nothing wrong with scantily clad booth babes to market products, but they attract a consumer audience that forces out the real traders.
The exact same thing happened with Comdex. Exhibitors started handing out free T-shirts and pens in exchange for business cards, only to find out later that the freebie collectors weren't spending big bucks on enterprise hardware and software.
The show tried to change, but to no avail. Comdex collapsed after its 2003 edition attracted only 60,000 attendees and few people miss the event.
E3's big challenge is to pull of a turn-around. It has to bring exhibitors an audience that helps them make more money and that they can't reach otherwise. In today's internet age, that's a quite a task.
Tradeshows are doomed if nobody is trading.
technorati tags: e3, tradeshow, comdex, games, gaming, xbox, nintendo, sony, playstation
Apple lays off forum moderators
Apple has fired all moderators for its online discussions forums, according to The Mac Observer.
The company's management allegedly questioned the value of the service, although it will continue unmoderated.
The result are as one should expect: shouting matches, name calling and the other kinds of mischief that you get when you leave a class of 8-year-olds unattended.
Employing the moderators provided Apple with a valuable way to gather feedback and spot issues with its products. In its current state, the boards are quickly loosing their value.
But Apple could jump to the occasion and deploy user feedback to curb the invasion of filth. Just have a look at Slashdot or Digg on how you can cheaply burry off topic or inflammatory comments. Apple has plenty of willing volunteers to restore the old state of quiet and order.
technorati tags: apple, forum, discussion, slashdot, digg
Diebold gives a crash course in voting machine manipulation
Diebold, the much beleaguered maker of electronic voting machines, has made it even easier to manipulate elections.
For anyone looking to hack into its voting machines, the company has conveniently printed instructions right onto the Diebold TS's system board. The Boot Area Configuartion table (pictured below) demonstrates how to make the system boot from an external flash memory unit instead of the internal memory chip with the Diebold software.
Anyone looking to manipulate election results can now craft their own application and load it onto the unit. Just remove the external chip after the election and nobody will ever know. The affected machine after all doesn’t provide a print out for verification purposes.
Diebold has repeatedly been criticized for shipping voting machines that failed to pass internal and external tests. Outside watchdogs have called upon the company to open up its design and software source code, but the company so far has turned down those requests.
Photo: Open Voting Foundation
technorati tags: diebold, democracy, voting, voting+machines, open+voting+foundation
Microsoft flunks voice recognition demo
Windows Vista will take another shot at introducing voice recognition, and Microsoft at a recent analyst event demonstrated the technology… to show that it's far from ready.
As the video below shows, the applications is unable to recognize the word "mom" and in stead jots down "aunt". It's the first of a series of embarrassing failures.
The company later blamed the failed demo on ambient noises (the audience). But if it knew that speech recognition doesn't work in a large room, why did it give the demo in the first place?
Spanish
