WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
I've just finished reading Sharon Weinberger's book 'Imaginary Weapons'. It's all about the Pentagon's attempt to develop a 'hafnium bomb'. It's like something out of 'Alice in Wonderland'; the Pentagon spent umpteen million dollars on something based on a single experiment using a second hand dental X-ray machine. An experiment which no one else was ever able to reproduce and which was unanimously characterised as junk science by all the US government's scientific advisors!
I really recommend it as a good read on how easy it is to waste public money when there is no proper oversight.
That aside, the news of the week was Bill Gates' announcement that he was stepping down from full time work at Microsoft. Well, eventually. We shall see. Actually, there was all sorts of Microsoft news this week, so I've covered the more interesting stuff in the Shorts section, the rest is in the Scanner section.
So, let's get down to it!
Shorts:
So, Bill Gates is planning to stop working full time for Microsoft... My theory is that Steve Ballmer has broken so much furniture that Bill can't find anywhere to sit down!
That aside, though, the announcement has drawn massive amounts of punditry from the analysts, journalists, and op-ed writers. Interestingly enough, none of them really have that much to say once you get past the obligatory eulogies. In a way that doesn't really surprise me. Microsoft is going through a very tough time - stock price down (and it's a long time since that was last a problem), competition with Google and Linux, delays in getting Vista out of the door, and the EU fines, to mention only the most visible problems.
Moving Bill Gates out of the Chief Software Architect position won't make a lot of difference to those problems. Microsoft's problems are not born of a lack of ideas and programming talent. Quite to the contrary, Microsoft's problems lie in the realm of structure, and it will take more than a change of the guard at the top to fix that.
In any case, Gates isn't going for another 18 months, and even then he is staying on part-time. I can't imagine him merely becoming the ghost at the banquet - he will play an active part in Microsoft, part-timer or not.
What goes around, comes around!
http://ct.techrepublic.com.com/clicks?t=2615904-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0
http://ct.news.com.com/clicks?t=2622003-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0
http://newsletters.zdnetuk.cneteu.net/t/122299/921984/191841/0/
The new .eu domain is being hailed as major success - 1.5 million domain names were snapped up within a week of the public launch. The truth is, though, that it's largely a con trick. The .eu domain name, like a lot of the trendy new domain names being authorised is just a method of extracting even more cash out of the owners of current domain names. Pay up for the .eu version of your current .com, or whatever, name, or the cyber squatters will get it and then it will cost even more to take it off them.
If anyone cares to look into it, I am pretty sure that they will find that the overwhelming majority of the sites just redirect the viewer to an existing, long established, web site. I could be wrong, cyberspace could now be buzzing with new dynamic .eu sites. But I wouldn't bet on it at any odds...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/15/punish_cybersquatters/
Hands up those of you that sloped off to the Windows Vista web site to try running the evaluation tool on your current computer? Lots of you? Yes! I though so. And most of you came away having been told that your kit would run Vista, no doubt. Forget it sunshine. The tool merely checks that your kit meets what Microsoft defines at the 'minimum' requirements.
To give you some perspective, the Microsoft minimum for XP Pro is a 233Mhz Pentium, 64MB of RAM and 4GB of hard drive. XP Pro runs like a dog on my laptop with a 2.1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and a 7GB hard drive. If you really want to know what it takes to run Vista, then you need to get hold of the documents Microsoft produces for hardware manufacturers. It's called the 'Windows Logo Program Requirements' and you can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winlogo/hwrequirements.mspx.
Unsurprisingly enough the requirements shown in the Excel spreadsheet and the three Word documents are considerably more than those of all but the most cutting edge machines available at the moment. The truth is that Windows Vista - which comes in seven different flavours - is realistically only going to be available on new, high performance, and expensive, machines. And that's a lot of money to pay for extra eye candy - especially when you take into account the loss of facilities in current machines as the built in DRM facilities to allow the big media companies to spy on you!
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/06/15/windows_vista_hardware/
Over here in the UK we have been treated to a tiny peep behind the hype surrounding the '6.2bn' UK pounds (about US$10bn) National Health Service IT project which is turning into another government mega-IT disaster. For a start it turns out that the Health Department's figure of 6.2bn didn't include actually implementing the massive monolithic system - only developing it.
This is a bit like only costing the land and bricks for a house, but not the cost of workers to actually build it! It seems that the department 'knew' all along that it would cost another 6.2bn to actually implement it - making a grand total of 12.4bn UK pounds (about US$20bn). Then of, course, no money has been allocated to training people to use this dinosaur of a system which was foisted on the health service with no consultation or determination of what the doctors or patients wanted.
Predictably, the scheme is already running massively late, and owing to the failure to invest in adequate infrastructure - like high capacity wide area networking - everything feels like you are using a dial up line with a 300 baud modem. Even the areas where the system's supporters are claiming it's working, no one is using it.
What a shambles. Yet another example of a scheme dreamed up to support the Blair government's attempts to prove it's trendy and dynamic, all at the taxpayer's expense. 12.4bn UK pounds on a system that no one wants or uses? That's really cool Tony, no one else would even have thought of that! In the mean time, just think of the extra doctors and nurses we could have trained and employed for that money.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/16/nhsit_budget_overrun/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/16/nao_npfit_whitewash/
Microsoft is up to its old tricks again. A recent update to Windows XP modified the tool that verifies the 'validity' of the XP installation. This tool, known as the 'Microsoft Genuine Advantage' (I think Microsoft has been re-reading George Orwell) provides no advantages to the user, but has now started accusing perfectly innocent computer owners of having pirated versions of XP. These are usually, but not exclusively, people who have had their computers repaired and had a replacement version of XP put onto the computer to replace the damaged one.
It is proving incredibly difficult to get Microsoft to sort out the mess. In addition, it seems that after applying the update, the computer contacts Microsoft over the Internet every time it boots up, even if you do not have automatic update enabled.
With this sort of activity from Microsoft, how do they expect people to put any patches, even security ones onto their machines? This short sighted behaviour happens all too often, unfortunately...
(Source Risks bulletin and PFIR newsletter)
Following up on my piece last week about the RIAA, EEF and Mechanical Copyright, I'm please to report that the Copyright Office's proposals went through the relevant House committee almost on the nod. Hooray! Incidentally, if you would like to know a bit more about Mechanical Copyright, have a look at this week's 'Homework' section.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/09/mechnical_copyright_reform/
Personal Losses:
US - An Internal Revenue Service employee managed to lose an agency laptop last month. The computer contained sensitive personal information on 291 workers and job applicants. Apparently the idiot employee actually checked the computer in as baggage, instead of keeping it with him. He never saw it again - which will come as no great surprise to anyone who flies regularly. The computer contained unencrypted names, birth dates, social security numbers and fingerprints.
Presumably the IRS is now going to issue the unfortunate victims with new fingers?
(Info taken from Risks bulletin)
Homework:
Following on from my piece last week, several readers asked me for more information about Mechanical Copyright and its history. The best short and informative piece that I know of on this issue is by novelist Cory Doctorow. It's part of a talk he gave to Microsoft's Research Group in 2004. It not only explains what mechanical copyright is all about, it also relates the issue very closely to Digital Restriction Management (DRM). The material about Mechanical Copyright is in the second half of the talk, but the first half is well worth reading as well.
As an extra, if you would also like to read about an author's take on e-books and DRM, I've included a second URL which is Doctorow talking more specifically about the problems of e-books.
http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt
http://craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt
There's an interesting (and short) piece in the ACM's Ubiquity magazine by John Stuckey. It's about what we should be teaching children on the digital front. Stuckey argues that rather than succumbing to the lure of flashy gadgets we should be teaching the students to develop critical faculties to use the likes of Google. A useful and timely piece. Recommended.
http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i21_stuckey.html
Oh, and as an aside to the Stuckey piece, I spotted a story the other day that a number of students had written to Jimmy Wales founder of the Wikipedia. It seems that the students were complaining that they had failed their courses because they had lifted information out of the Wikipedia which turned out to be plain wrong! I think there's a lesson to be learn there...
Geek Toys:
I thought I'd just point any hardware geeks among my readers in the direction of http://www.mutr.co.uk/ which is an interesting source of materials and gadgets. In particular they sell ferrofluid, memory metals, and really powerful magnets. The stuff they sell seems to be mainly targeted at schools, but there is certainly stuff there that even a software person like myself would like to get my hands on!
Scanner - Other Stories:
Microsoft HPC set to take over the world - allegedly
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/09/microsoft_hpc_launch/
Microsoft releases bumper update patches
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/09/patches_for_june/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/14/ms_june_patch_tuesday/
Net neutrality: Meet the winner
http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/communications/networks/0,39020427,39274640,00.htm
Information Commissioner overrules UK Dept of Work & Pensions on ID report
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/12/commissioner_overrules_dwp/
3-D trigate transistors
http://www.electronicstalk.com/news/iel/iel115.html
UK first battleground for European convergence
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/12/mobile_convergence_war/
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to readers Barbara and Deidre for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for material to alan@ibgames.com.
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
18 June 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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