 |
 |
The
weekly newsletter for the Fed II game by ibgames EARTHDATE: April 30, 2006 OFFICIAL
NEWS |
 |
 |
 WINDING DOWN An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news by Alan Lenton Well I'm back - with the 200th edition of Winding Down, which has now been going for something over four and half years. Longer that I expected it to last, I have to confess. The ACCU Conference was fabulous again this year. Loads of old friends (the friendship was old, not the friends), and much high grade discussion and argument about the issues facing programmers in the coming few years. I gave a talk on designing Graphical User Interfaces which I'm currently in the process of writing up for the web site - I'll let you know when it gets finished and published! Issue of the week was, without a doubt, the EU-Microsoft court case. It has featured heavily in the tech press - so heavily, in fact, that I was inclined to skip the story on the grounds that everyone had already heard it. In the event I thought there were a few more things to be said - and who better to say them than me :)
Long ago in a galaxy far away... The genesis of this story dates back a loooong way, to about the same time as the US Department of Justice (DoJ) took Microsoft to court for abuse of its monopoly position. In fact I reported on that in the first issue of Winding Down in 2001 - and it was the very first story! This week the European Commission and Microsoft have been arguing in an EU court about the requirements and fines that the commission slapped on to Microsoft as a result of finding it guilty of using its desktop operating system monopoly to shut out competitors in other areas. Let me make it clear. Contrary to popular belief, it isn't in any sense illegal to have a monopoly in an industry. Being a monopoly is perfectly legal in both the USA and the EU. What is illegal (in general terms) is to use that monopoly to raise artificial barriers to others entering the market, and to use that monopoly to leverage your way into other markets, putting your competitors at a disadvantage. In this case there were two specific instances. The first related to Windows Media Player. The Commission believed Media Player was tied by Microsoft to the Windows operating system in order to ensure the domination of Media Player (and ultimately force the media companies to licence Microsoft's Digital Restrictions Management). Microsoft claim that Media Player is an essential part of Windows, while everyone else in the world believes it is an application, not an essential part. I think the Red Queen had something to say about this! The second is more interesting. The Commission ruled that Microsoft was guilty of using desktop Windows to build up its position in the server market. It is doing this by not allowing its competitors to know the protocols it uses to communicate between its servers and desktop Windows, claiming that these are proprietary and patented. Microsoft is very open about the fact that it wants every client that connects to a Windows server to pay a Client Access licence of around US$50. What you and I might call a licence to print money! I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of the case in this article - the press is full of the story or you can search on Google for 'about 57,900,000' pieces on it! URLs for the daily reports in The Register are listed in the Scanner section. What I will tell you, though, is that this trial will make or break the ability of governments to deal with predatory behaviour on the part of international monopolies. And yes, I personally do believe that Microsoft did misuse their monopoly position in the server field. Ironically, the reason I wish they didn't, has nothing to do with sympathy for their competitors. I know a number of Microsoft techies. they are unbelievably bright and capable of extraordinary things - including sorting out the whole shambles that is Windows. And what's more, they are more than capable of delivering material on time. The problem is they are hamstrung by their management twisting their work to do things like breaking into and controlling the server market. I want Microsoft to be forced to compete on equal terms, not because I want to see it go to the wall, but because I want to see to see the talent of its programmers and engineers unleashed to produce the real goodies it is capable bringing us!
So, farewell to Scott McNealy, one of the founders of Sun computers, and its CEO for most of its life so far. The computing industry owes a lot to McNealy, even if the shareholders of Sun will probably heave a sigh of relief at his departure. The fact that he lost the ball in recent years shouldn't make us lose sight of the fact that it was Sun's use of the TCP/IP protocol, and its slogan 'The network is the computer' in what was to become the world's first workstation that opened the way for the Internet as we know it. The IT scene will be poorer without one of its most flamboyant characters, but all good things come to an end eventually. Have a look at the first URL for an appraisal of the former boss of Sun. http://ct.enews.deviceforge.com/rd/cts?d=207-106-2-28-255-8683-0-0-0-1 The rise of satellite navigation systems (SATNAV) is proving to be very lucrative for the locals in the UK village of Brook End in Wiltshire. And no, they aren't selling the systems. It seems that a number of well known systems are directing cars to use the ford across the Avon river at Brook End as part of a route . Unfortunately, no one at the SATNAV companies bothered to find out what happens when it rains... What happens is that the ford becomes semi-impassible. Ooops! Mind you that doesn't stop drivers mindlessly following the instructions of their systems and driving blindly into the local equivalent of a raging torrent. The locals reckon that they are pulling out several cars a day now, as opposed to a pre-SATNAV count of one a week. A nice little earner, since they are starting to charge 25 pounds UK (US$40) a time to drag the cars out! http://www.guardian.co.uk/transport/Story/0,,1757228,00.html Security guru Bruce Schneier raised an important issue at a security conference in London this week. Microsoft's new version of Windows, Vista, due out next year has a new hardware based encryption feature. Known as 'BitLocker Drive Encryption' it encrypts the contents of the hard drive, so that if the computer is stolen, no one can get at the data. Interestingly enough, and perhaps deliberately, this encryption will also make life difficult for people who use dual boot systems (so that they can boot into other operating systems as well as Windows). For instance, my laptop allows me to choose, at boot time, whether to run Linux or Windows. If I choose Linux it will mount my Windows partition for me as an additional drive, giving me access to all my Windows data while I am programming the Federation 2 server code under Linux. However, BitLocker will make that impossible, since all the data on the Windows drive will be encrypted whether I like it or not. Actually I think this is a classic case of optimising the wrong thing. OK, in a few high profile cases there are problems with data on the drives of stolen laptops. It should have been encrypted, because of its sensitivity, but wasn't, even though there are already programs around that will encrypt hard drives. But that isn't a problem for most people. The problem they have is retrieving material from their hard drives when something goes wrong. Not only will BitLocker do nothing to help in that case, it will make it even more difficult to retrieve the material you forgot to back up... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/27/schneier_infosec Finally, in this section, I thought you would like to know that the Recording Industry Ass of America are at it again. Not content with suing grandmothers, small children, and the dead, they are now accusing a family in Rockmart GA of illegally file sharing on the Internet, and demanding money. This week's good wheeze? The accused family doesn't even have a computer! One has to marvel at the ingenuity of the RIAA; most people would assume you have to have a computer to use it to share songs over the Internet! http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm?pnpid=728&show=
Researchers working in the field of organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) are within striking distance of attacking the market for ordinary light bulbs. A team at the University of Southern California have been able to create OLEDs that produce brilliant white light at high efficiencies. OLED panels last for five to ten years. The only problem remaining to be overcome for commercial exploitation is for the plastic coating to be improved so that water doesn't degrade the OLED. Somehow I don't think that is going to take a very long time to overcome! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/13/oled__white_light_invention/
Microsoft vs EU States seek levies on
digital-media downloads Seagate readies 750GB
desktop hard drive Intel to get widespread
restructuring Computer shooting
incident...
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. |
|