Silicon Valley Sleuth

Spam King cuts a deal with the cops

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:12:13 +0000

So it's the end of the road for Alan Ralsky, the so-called Spam King.

Ralsky, his son in law and three others have pleaded guilty to offences under the Can-Spam act and Ralsky is facing up to six years in prison and a million dollar fine. I only hope he doesn't regret sending all those penis enlargement adverts...

One of the interesting facets of the case is that the feds got him for carrying out pump and dump scams, rather than just for sending regular spam. He'd send out millions of spams promoting a penny stock, credulous fools would rush to buy it and the owner could see huge profits when they sold.

Ralsky has long been the scourge of the industry but the good folks at Spamhaus say he's been less active of late. Now he's gone completely, others will no doubt pick up the slack, but it appears that they too might have problems because I suspect that Ralsky will sing like a canary to cut his time in prison.

How much help he will be is another matter. I'm sure the Feds know how the business works already so he'll have to name some names to get a reduction in his sentence.

However, the news does give me a chance to reprise my favourite Ralsky story. He gave an interview to the Detroit News in which he boasted about his new home, built on the proceeds of spam.

However, the article contained enough clues about his location to allow enterprising geeks to find his address and Slashdot it. Before long he was drowning in a tide of junk mail, introductory offers and trial magazine subscriptions.

The volume of mail was such that he was getting four or five sacks of the stuff a day, not to mention lawn sets and other sundry items. Ralsky discovered that finding legitimate mail was impossible in the morass of junk, and vocally complained about the problems he was facing.

Somewhere out there the world's smallest violin started playing...

Another setback for GPS

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:24:31 +0000

Concerns over the GPS network's accuracy are again at the forefront after it was revealed that the latest satellite launched in March to boost the sagging network isn't even close to being operational.

So far it is going to take until at least October to get the satellite online, if it ever will be ready. It's a sad note on a system that underpins such an important part of our technological infrastructure.

It wouldn't be so bad if the problem was isolated to just this one satellite, but it now appears that the dodgy new edition is interfering with the rest of the network. Given the lack of accuracy from my GPS system these days I can believe it. Some sources are saying accuracy is down from two feet to 20!

The airforce is making reassuring noises but there's the whole location-based commerce system at stake. I'm sure the armed forces can't be too happy either - difficult to do a surgical strike when the accuracy is so poor you might as well use a chain saw.

Say goodbye to the old Sun

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:40:09 +0000

The opening keynote at the JavaOne conference was a bittersweet moment, for in a sense it was the end of the Sun some have grown to love.

The standard dress code of jeans and a tshirt were much in evidence, even if it wasn't the most flattering attire for James Gosling. Schwartz still has his ponytail, which personally I think looks ridiculous but Java developers love him for it.

There was a fun atmosphere on stage, with tshirts being flung into the audience from the main stage using a giant catapult at one point.

But then at the end of the keynote Larry Ellison came on stage, suited and booted and ready to shake things up. His immaculate suit and grooming were alien to most of the attendees and I could see some of them were worried that the free and easy days of Sun's corporate model were over.

While most attendees accept the Oracle takeover is going to happen there are very few people on the show floor that like the idea.

Sun has been a good company to work for and develop with. It's so laid-back it's practically horizontal. Oracle on the other hand is almost the direct opposite; sharkish, formal and driven totally by the bottom line.

I spoke to one developer, obviously a Sun enthusiast by his tshirt, big beard and bigger beer gut. He was mournful at the change-over, fearing developers were going to be given a tougher time from their new masters.

Of particular concern to him (JavaOne is one of the most male dominated conferences on the circuit) no details have been forthcoming about Sun's commission on applications sold in the new store. He, and others, are expecting to get hosed. I suspect they may be right.

Who wants the online czar job?

Sat, 30 May 2009 18:33:58 +0000

So the new administration has decided, after its review, that it wants a 'czar' to oversee online security. The question is does anyone want the job?

After all it's a thankless task. There's a refrain you hear constantly from chief security officers that they are unappreciated because if everything works without a fault and no security breaches happen then it's a sign things are going well. This is not the job for someone high profile looking to build a career.

It's also a highly political job. Much of the US critical infrastructure is in private hands and whoever gets the job will have to spend a lot of time negotiating with them to ensure security standards are met. Businesses are looking to keep costs and complexity down so it'll be an uphill job for the new czar.

Key to the effectiveness of the position is going to be budgets. Unless the role has a budget, and a serious one, then it will be little more than a figurehead position, or to be less kind a blamehound - someone to take the rap when it all goes wrong.

Personally I'd like to see Bruce Schneier get the job. He's got the skill set, and the ability to knock some heads together, but I doubt he'd want the job.

Microsoft/Linux partnership fails

Thu, 21 May 2009 05:18:06 +0000

It was a valiant last stand but the Linux Foundation and Microsoft's efforts to delay the American Law Institute's (ALI) ruling on software warranties have failed.

The two took the unusual step of joining forces at the last minute to try and thwart a clause in the ALI's Principles of the Law of Software Contracts - an influential legal guide handed out to US judges and other legal professionals. The clause basically states that the buyer has a de facto warranty that any commercial software they buy will work perfectly.

"The ALI adopted the Principles in a vote on May 19th," wrote Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of intellectual property and licensing at Microsoft, in a company blog.

"We are disappointed that the ALI did not allow for additional input, and will continue to work with the Linux Foundation and others across the software industry to ensure that any application of the principles does not adversely impact software developers, the software industry or consumers."

How the two respond to this is going to prove very interesting. Both sides aren't keen on the definition.

Microsoft is, for obvious reasons, not wild about the prospect of a flood of legal cases under the new guidelines. It's impossible for any entity to write a perfect operating system with no flaws, particularly if you're supporting a myriad of older products, standards and security protocols.

If you're Linux then the case is more down to legal fees. While the guidance appears to exempt free software it's such a legal gray area, and an expensive worry for new firms. Is selling services for your software counted as free for example? Open source companies have reason to fear such murky waters in court.

Today's confirmation looks to be a classic case of the law trailing after reality. The judiciary is seldom trained in real world problems,particularly in IT, and the experts that examine cases are paid for by defence and prosecution services and often exaggerate for effect.

In a perfect world independent counsel would be taken from the best experts in the field to advise how to deal with legal minefields like this. Maybe the team behind the minesweepers doesn't have the best interests of their clients at heart?

We can only hope that the two sides see that their enemy's enemy is their friend.

New search engine for Microsoft?

Wed, 20 May 2009 05:57:16 +0000

Rumours are swirling that Microsoft will unveil its new search engine at the D: All Things Digital conference next week.

The engine, codenamed Kumo, has been running inside Microsoft for a few months now and comes with a new semantic search algorithm after Redmond's purchase of Powerset in 2008.

Microsoft desperately needs to get back in the search game in order to be taken seriously. With any deal over Yahoo seemingly stalled it is trailing a distant third in the market, with some interesting competition coming up from below.

The Wall Street Journal is predicting a launch next week and it has been a place for Microsoft to leak news before. We shall wait and see.

Job hunting on Second Life?

Thu, 14 May 2009 16:49:47 +0000

We all know that virtual worlds are gaining increasing interest from organisations for use in internal and customer-facing scenarios. But finding a new job on Second Life? Well, yes, it can happen. At the Thinking Digital Conference in North East England today, we heard a heart-warming story.

Here's the thing. A couple of years ago, a young Simone Brunozzi from Assisi (yes, as in St Francis of...) was just a lowly web app enthusiast. Now, being a true geek, Brunozzi decided to create a virtual Assisi in Second Life, which he did, and blogged about his work.

Then one day, wandering through the digital hallways and walkways of Second Life, he came upon Amazon Web Services. They said they were looking for a new European evangelist. He said, "Hello! I'm from Assisi, as in, you know, saints and stuff," and 16 interviews later he got the job.

Joking aside, this is probably a long shot for most of us hoping to follow in the footsteps of Brunozzi, but it does show the increasing impact virtual worlds are having in the real one. Whether organisations take their presence on these new platforms seriously or not is a matter for them to decide, but if you're a developer with a great idea, it might be worth checking out.

Microsoft gearing up for big bid

Wed, 13 May 2009 03:11:28 +0000

Some interesting news that makes the possibility of a Microsoft bid for Yahoo much more likely came to light today.

Redmond issued bonds for the first time to raise $3.75bn. The company's offering was oversubscribed thanks in part to the company's AAA rating from Standard & Poor.

Given that Microsoft is sitting on big cash reserves already the move has heightened speculation that a big buy is in the offing. Top choices seem to be Yahoo or SAP.

Either would be expensive but to my mind SAP looks to be a better bet. The Obama government is looking very hard at antitrust and so a Yahoo deal could come with millions in legal fees to head off action.

SAP on the other hand looks like a solid bet. It would give Microsoft a needed boost in the enterprise market at a time when Google and others are attacking its Office applications.

Apple set to buy Twitter?

Tue, 05 May 2009 12:45:48 +0000

Apple is poised to launch a $700m bid for Twitter, the hugely popular social messaging service, according to insider reports.

Silicon Valley blog Valleywag cites an inside source at Apple, claiming that the firm will launch the bid in early June, in time for its Worldwide Developer Conference.

"A source who's plugged into the Valley's deal scene and has been recruited by Apple for a senior position says Apple and Twitter are in serious negotiations, with the goal of unveiling a deal by June 8, when Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference launches in San Jose," said Valleywag reporter Owen Thomas.

This is not the first time that Twitter has been the subject of buyout advances. In November the firm turned down a bid from Google which was said to be in the region of $500m.

Despite concerns raised by some over high churn rates and continued attacks against the service, the Valleywag report suggests that it will be the lure of Twitter's web savvy developers and users that appeals to Apple more than the actual technology, a version of which is available through the App Store.

"Users overshare every last detail of their lives, while Twitter makes these updates available on its web site, via RSS, and through third-party applications," wrote Thomas.

"Apple is surely realising it needs to play in this world, and needs someone to show it the way. Is it coincidence that Apple has put Twitter executives on stage so frequently, or that it profiled Twitter as a business recently?

"If Apple buys Twitter, it won't be about making money. It will be about making a statement. In 140 characters or less."

Apple recently posted a business profile of Twitter under the heading: Twitter. Triumph of humanity.

PayPal founder appears to have lost it

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 03:04:13 +0000

Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, appears to have gone off the deep end.

In a blog posting for the libertarian Cato Institute Thiel espoused some views which have sent Silicon Valley tongues wagging.

In an extended posting he said that he was increasingly becoming convinced that democracy and freedom were incompatible, that the 1920s were the last time Americans were free in a libertarian sense and, most startlingly, appears to come out against the right of women to vote.

"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron," he wrote.

One has to wonder what Meg Whitman, former head of eBay and candidate for the governership of California, thinks of all this.

In the future, if men wanted to be free, they would either have to head online, go to outer space or to floating cities on the planet's oceans. We shall see.

RSA: Nearly over

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:49:10 +0000

By Thursday there is a zombie-like quality about some of the delegates at RSA 2009.

The conference is the biggest computer security show in the world and contains the best and the brightest in the industry. But you get the feeling that we've all had to absorb too much information in too short a time frame.

If there is a benefit to the economic downturn then it's that the liggers have gone from RSA. The people who are here have had to justify the expense and lost work time to their bosses. But I can't help feeling that in most cases they have got their money's worth.

The US airforce famously set up the Top Gun school, although Hollywood has rather misrepresented the place. I was lucky enough to interview a former head of the Top Gun school a few years ago (call sign 'Llama) and got the skinny on the real purpose of this place - and this has so much relevance to RSA.

The purpose of the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor (SFTI) program, nicknamed Top Gun, isn't so much to teach flying skills to pilots, although that's part of it. Instead the main purpose of the school is to train fighter pilots to go back to their bases and teach others of the tactics they have learned.

RSA is very much like this. Thousands of security professionals head into the Moscone Center each day and face a brutal schedule of brain dumps about the latest security methodology. Their job now is to go home, sleep for a few days to recuperate and then pass that knowledge on to as many people as possible.

MySpace chief executive steps down

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:27:33 +0000

MySpace chief executive Chris DeWolfe will step down from his position at the social networking firm and become a strategic advisor to the company.

No exact date was given for DeWolfe's departure, although News Corporation's chief digital office, Jonathan Miller, said it was to be "in the near future". News Corporation bought MySpace for $580m (£332.85m) in 2005.

Miller said DeWolfe was stepping down by "mutual agreement".

No reason was given for the decision but reports of a management restructure at MySpace have been circulating for a long time. While MySpace now boasts 130 million users worldwide, its main rival Facebook is beating the site by around 80 million.

Miller confirmed the new management structure will be shortly announced. He also added he was in talks with MySpace president, Tom Anderson, about him "assuming a new role in the organisation".

RSA Day One

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:35:29 +0000

OK, not technically day one since there were some sessions that kicked off earlier but today was the keynotes and official start of RSA.

The day started obscenely early, not just because the first keynote began at 8am but because a PR woke me at dawn with a call because she didn't know what time zone I was in. I kept a civil tongue, barely.

Art Coviello set the tone for the day's proceedings with a speech extolling the virtues of interoperability and cooperation between security vendors. The angle was good; security companies do need to work together more efficiently to build products that interoperate without leaving holes for hackers.

It's just, and I may be too cynical here, that whenever companies talk about interoperability you can see the thoughts in the back of their minds "How can I extract maximum benefit from my company from this?"

I blame Microsoft, who has made a career from subverting standards to suit its goals. Since Redmond was so successful at this other companies have taken the hint. I hope the security industry can build a useful consensus, but have my doubts.

Next off it was the turn of Enrique Salem to give his keynote. Now we wrote a story on his address to Storage Networking World a few weeks ago. Today we got pretty much the same speech with a new middle section about security not storage. This was a foolish trick to try, considering the audience crossover between the two conferences. John Thompson he is not.

Microsoft's Scott Charney turned out a good performance, both during Coviello's keynote and his own, but the audience had its doubts it seemed. For too long Microsoft has played the white knight while concealing black armour.

The cryptographer panel was fun however. The crypto krew are always good to listen to because they really don't give a monkey's about formality; they call it how they see it. They know they are the best in the business and are genuinely happy to talk frankly about their trade. Schneier, as ever, was the voice of reason on the panel.

As a counterpoint immediately afterwards we had the director of the NSA giving his take on online security. He spent a few minutes rebutting critics of the NSA, then a short history of how it had saved humanity from fascism/communism before attempting to scare everyone silly about the threat landscape. Then he offered a solution of working together to defeat a common enemy. Somehow I kept flashing back to the beginning of the Iraq debacle. Still, an entertaining speaker.

Once the keynotes were out of the way everyone broke for lunch. The Europeans headed outside en masse for a cigarette and coffee break while everyone else tried to find something to eat.

The afternoon was devoted to sessions and interviews. RSA this year was not as packed as it has been in previous years and the exhibition floor was manageable for a change. In many ways this was no bad thing, since for too long people have swarmed exhibitor's stands grabbing logo-branded pens, t-shirts and squeeze balls as fast as they were available. Not that they were in any great number - the recession has thankfully cut down on such useless fripperies.

View from the Valley on Oracle/Sun deal

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:01:11 +0000

Oracle's announcement that it has sorted out a deal to buy Sun has sent tongues wagging in Silicon Valley.

The speed of the deal caught many by surprise. Steve Ballmer said he was "very surprised" by the announcement, but then again he's up to his neck in trying to buy Yahoo at the moment.

The deal may have been helped by the close friendship between Sun's founder Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison, and offering an extra $400m over IBM's reported bid price was also a strong factor in the deal.

But the devil is in the details. One of the major sticking points in the IBM negotiations was the willingness of Big Blue to defend the deal against anti-competitive regulations. If the IBM deal had failed Sun's stock would have tanked, just as Yahoo's did after the Microsoft merger fell through.

No-one yet knows, or certainly isn't telling, if Oracle promised to stand up and be counted if the regulators come calling. There are strong doubts that this is the case and one rumour currently doing the rounds is that Oracle will head off any regulator interest by selling off Sun's hardware business.

This makes some sense if you're Oracle. After all, it's a software business through and through. Ellison is not a hardware person and it's possible that Oracle scouts are already making calls to see if anyone wants, and has the cash, to buy up Sun's hardware arm.

However, the more we hear this the less likely it sounds. At a time when virtualisation is just beginning to have an impact on server sales the asking price for the hardware side would be low, and the major competition would all run into regulation problems of their own.

Instead our guess is that Oracle is planning to keep the hardware arm and become a one stop shop for server sales. This would mean Oracle could use the deal as an opportunity to shake up Sun's hardware arm and make it profitable.

In contrast to Sun's cuddly and laid back corporate atmosphere Oracle's management are ruthless cost cutters who are expert at trimming fat. These people could find excess flab on Calista Flockhart and if anyone can turn Sun's hardware into a cash cow it's them.

But the key prize for Oracle is the software, especially Java. Java is already key to Oracle's middleware, and Ellison has acknowledged as such. It also gives Oracle a part in the embedded device market that could prove useful in the future

The deal also gives Oracle control of MySQL. This may cause it some problems with the regulators but there's no reason why the MySQL can't run concurrently with Oracle's Database 11g; they'll just address different markets.

Of course the decision to move into the hardware business would put Oracle in direct competition with companies like HP and IBM. Both companies put a lot of cash Oracle's way and it could prompt retaliation, but on the other hand where else are they going to go? And no-one loves a fight like Larry Ellison.

Mac users to get a Tweetie

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:10:57 +0000

Mac users looking for an alternative to clients such as TweetDeck as a way to manage and use popular micro-blogging site Twitter could be interested in a new application set to launch on Monday.

Tweetie for Mac is the latest invention from developer atebits, maker of the popular iPhone client for Twitter, also called Tweetie.

It is set to have a similar look and feel to its iPhone cousin, and could be a welcome addition to the apps on offer to Mac users, being less resource hungry than other applications such as TweetDeck which run on the Adobe Air platform.

The new app has been given a glowing first-look review from TechCrunch. The site was impressed with the easy drag and drop functionality for sending images, and the easy-to-view display of photos from sites like TwitPic - images pop up in windows without the need for opening a new browser.

Tweetie for Mac also uses Global Hotkeys, and the look and feel is very much Mac-like; crisp and clean, with no extraneous text fields or buttons, according to TechCrunch.

The new application is currently lacking the column display of TweetDeck, which many users have rated positively, but it does allow users to open as many search panes as they need.

Atebits is set to launch the new app on Monday with a free ad-supported version and a paid, ad-free version for around $15 (£10).

It's probably too early to say whether it will supplant many of the current apps knocking around for Twitter, but given that it's relatively low in memory and CPU usage, and is very Mac-like in terms of usability, it could have a chance.