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EARTHDATE: March 26, 2006

OFFICIAL NEWS
Page 12

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WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton

Finally, the cold weather seems to have broken here in the Big Smoke. About time too - we Londoners live in draughty old houses with inefficient heating and no air conditioning, because it's -never- too cold or too hot here...

Except when it's too cold or too hot.

The story of the week was Microsoft's decision to delay the new version of Windows for the umpteenth time. It would probably have been just a yawn story, had it not also been the case that it will now miss the 2006 Xmas season, thereby also screwing everyone else in the PC business as well.

Other stories included the fact that the US Department of Home Security is itself insecure (no change there), and that scientists have built a see-through chip. The next generation DVD format wars are hotting up, and the FBI is so hard up that it can't give all its agents e-mail addresses. Actually, thinking about it, I don't see a problem with the latter - FBI agents have better things to do than delete spam in their mailboxes all day!

Oh, and it's time for my annual plug for the ACCU Spring Conference in Oxford this year. Apart from the fact that I'm giving a couple of talks, Guido van Rossum, the creator of the Python language is giving a keynote speech. If you want to learn about C++, Python, or Software Engineering, it is -the- place to be - check it out at http://accu.org/index.php/conferences/2006.

And so to Microsoft...


Story: Three years late, and counting...

So, Microsoft is delaying the launch of Vista, its new version of Windows, until next year. Vista is already three years overdue. The question is, will the beast make it out of the door in the first quarter of next year, or will it slip even further?

The delay is really going to hit the PC industry hard, because it was expected that Vista would be available for the Xmas season and fuel high levels of sales. The failure is expected to hit hard, with shocks rippling up through PC sellers, the makers themselves, peripheral vendors and chip fabricators, to name only the most obvious.

Microsoft tried to put a good gloss on the news by claiming that the delay was to enable them to improve the security of the system, but I don't think many people believed that. I only found one analyst prepared to accept that excuse, and he was pretty half hearted, giving the impression of a man clutching at straws.

So what's the problem? Why are successive releases of Windows becoming further and further behind schedule?

The answer is twofold. The underlying problem is one of complexity. The whole system is so complex that altering anything is likely to bring down the whole house. Partly this is bad design, but only partly. Microsoft employs some of the brightest software engineers I know, but their hands are tied by instructions from above not to separate out the different component of the system.

The Internet Explorer (IE) browser was a case in point where the programmers had to integrate its functionality into the core of the operating system during the period running up to the anti-trust actions. The result is that every time a security flaw is found in IE it compromises the security of the entire system, and patches to fix IE have been known to bring down Windows itself.

The second part of the problem lies in Microsoft's propensity for big bang launches, which means that, unlike other vendors, who tend to upgrade things incrementally, Microsoft likes to launch everything new in one package. As a result each new version includes massive quantities of new code, plus all the old code, because people's current applications use the existing code, making testing a nightmare.

Vista has already had a number of major features ripped out in order to meet the three years late deadline. One has to wonder what else is going to be removed to make it ship in the new time slot.

And that's not all. The new release of Microsoft Office - Office 2007 - has also been delayed as a consequence of the Vista delay. It's interesting to speculate what other delays might be be in the works as the ripples spread.

And Microsoft's response? It's reorganised its company structure once again.

Anyone else interested in re-arranging the deck chairs?

http://ct.news.com.com/clicks?c=1847854-7863277&brand=news&ds=5&fs=0
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/4831374.stm
http://news.com.com/Clouds+over+Redmond/2100-1016_3-6052928.html
http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/evF50FypUC0FrK0ENoU0E8
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+Office+2007+to+be+late
%2C+too/2100-1012_3-6053504.html


Shorts:

You have to wonder how governments decide what to do with all the money they collect. Over here in the UK government follies include plans to build the biggest database in the world with every UK citizen on it - the biggest and most lucrative hacker target in the world - and burning up all the money allocated for the housing building vast numbers of houses on the biggest flood plain in the country.

In the US the big spender is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which receives a lion's share of the public purse, and seems to spend it all on reorganisation and buying expensive hi tech toys that don't work as expected.

But that's not all. This week a report from the House Government Reform Committee gave it the lowest grade of any government department - an 'F' - for network security. Other bad boys were the Department of Defense, Justice and the State. Why is it that those who are charged with the protection of the State and its citizens are always the worst at looking after the information they are entrusted with while exhorting others to try harder?

http://www.physorg.com/news11986.html

The next generation DVD wars are hotting up. Toshiba is about to start selling the world's first HD DVD player in Japan. This is a bit of a rush forward on its original plan to launch in the US later in the year, at a price of around US$800-850. It seems likely that the first rival Blue-Ray DVD player - from Sony - will not be available until July when it will launch in the US at around the US$1,000 mark.

Toshiba is hoping to get a drop on Blue-Ray in the highly lucrative Japanese market and establish itself as the de-facto standard before Blue-Ray can get started. Yet another format war is probably in the offing here.

Next generation DVD stores the information in layers and uses shorter wavelength lasers to burn and read, giving a substantially higher capacity than conventional DVDs. HD DVD can store up to 15 GB a layer and currently supports two layers, with a third in the offing, making a total of 45 GB. Blue-Ray supports 25 GB a layer and also currently supports two layers. Blue-Ray have also demonstrated four and eight layers in the lab, but there is many a slip twixt lab and retail outlet, so we shall see if those formats ever have time to come to market before those formats are superceded by new forms of media. The main problem facing Blue-Ray is that although it stores more, it also costs more, by about 25 per cent from the look of it.

My advice? Wait for a dual format recorder/player to come out. :)

http://www.physorg.com/news11948.html

I suspect a shiver went down the collective back of Intel executives on Wednesday, at the news that Dell had reached an agreement to buy high-end PC supplier Alienware Corp (great name!). Why? Because, among other things, Alienware produces high-end servers based on AMD chips, and until now Dell has been an exclusively Intel house - and a very big customer at that.

AMD is still many times smaller than Intel, but its 64-bit chips have established a reputation for being physically cooler and faster than their Intel equivalents. The suspicion is that Dell has long wanted to get into the high end AMD server market, but was trapped between its relationship with Intel, and its lack of experienced AMD based designers.

I think this is going to be interesting to watch, since I doubt that Intel will take this lying down. More news on the issue as things develop.

http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/evF50FypUC0FrK0ENoR0E5
http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/evF50FypUC0FrK0ENoS0E6

And from the 'Just when You Thought It was Safe...' department comes news of a new virus threat. Viruses in RFID tags. Those are the little wireless chips that are starting to get everywhere courtesy of big supermarket chains like Wal-Mart and Tesco who use them to track merchandise. The chips have also started to appear in the latest generation of US passports, something which will no doubt spread, like a plague, to other countries' passports in the not too distant future. In some countries pets also have the chips implanted, usually in their ears, to help identify them.

Anyway, some researchers in Amsterdam have just published a paper showing how RFID tags can be used to inject an SQL based virus into the database that is being used by whatever is scanning the chips.

Manufacturers are, of course, denying that it's possible because there are no accepted standards for the RFID software. That's true, but that isn't likely to be more than a minor hindrance to intrepid hackers. And, in any case, the trend these days is towards standardisation and connecting up databases. You only need one infected database to pass on the infection to another if they are all connected.

So, you never know, one day your cat might become the 21st Century equivalent of Typhoid Mary!

http://ct.cnet-ssa.cnet.com/clicks?c=1816869-7863277&brand
=cnet-ssa&ds=5&fs=0Cash-strapped

New York State scourge of digital snake oil vendors and protector of the gullible, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, is on the trail of some more dastardly plots with a law suit against web site operator Gratis Internet. Gratis, claims Spitzer, sold on personal information in violation of a strict promise of confidentiality.

People who signed up to Gratis's promotions received hundreds of millions of e-mail solicitations from the three marketers that Gratis sold their mailing lists to. Earlier this month Spitzer reached an agreement with one of the marketers, Datran Media, who agreed to pay a US$1.1 million for buying lists from companies like Gratis.

I look forward to seeing how much Spitzer can wring out of Gratis - enough to wipe out all their profit and more, I hope!

http://www.physorg.com/news12067.html

And finally, do you like fish? How would you like a million of them? Yes, really! Utah Lake, it seems, is overflowing with carp. A few of them were introduced about 125 years ago and they rather liked their new environment. In fact, they liked it so much that there are now 7.5 million of them in the lake, and they are driving out all the native fauna.

Officials at the lake plan to tackle the problem by scooping out one million of the blighters each year until things are under control. However, what do you do with a million fish? It puts eating the left over turkey at Xmas and Thanksgiving into perspective!

If you think you could market a million carp annually, send ten copies of your statement of qualifications and ten copies of the proposal to the Utah Department of Natural Resources before April 10th. I assume from the ten copies bit that they don't have photocopiers in Utah.

OK. I know it's not a techie subject, but I couldn't resist telling you about it :)

http://www.physorg.com/news12080.html


Scanner - Other Stories:

See-through chip built in Oregon State University
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/03/21/osu_transparent_chip/

FBI agents left without email
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/22/fbi_email_access_woes/

French lawmakers put worm in Apple's iPod
http://www.physorg.com/news11997.html

First Alpha release of Firefox 2.00
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=1176D92:1F69382

Pay your cell-phone bill by watching ads!
http://www.physorg.com/news12053.html

Laptop loaded with HP employee data stolen--
http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/evHS0FypUC0FrX0ENxF0Ai

40,000 BP workers exposed in Ernst & Young laptop loss
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/23/ey_bp_laptop/

Chris Crawford proclaims computer games industry 'brain dead'
http://www.physorg.com/news12117.html

New plastic developed that could rival silicon for electronic devices.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4825388.stm

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
26 March 2006

Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist. His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.

Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.


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