The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: May 20, 2007

Official News - page 13


WINDING DOWN

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

So many people wrote in and asked how you make cheese on toast in a conventional toaster that it has become clear to me that the solution is non-obvious. I have, therefore, applied for a patent to protect my method against would be imitators. I regret to inform people that while I wait for the patent to be granted, I am not able to disclose the details. I will, however, be issuing licenses to use my process, for a reasonable and non-discriminatory fee, in the near future.

In the meantime, as we inventors say, Patent Pending.

I note from the Feedback section of New Scientist (the printed edition*), that the Nigerian 419ers have come up with a brilliant new scam. This time it's getting people who've already been burned to send in all the info they gave the scammers so the 'Nigerian government' can reimburse them! Superb - how do they think these scams up?

*For the benefit of my younger readers, printing is an ancient process involving putting sticky, coloured, ooze onto dried wood pulp. The ooze is then allowed to dry out to make permanent writing. I'll deal with what writing is in a future issue.

OK, lets get down to the real McCoy!


Non-Story: Microsoft patents FUD

OK - this is going to get the minimum coverage from me.

This week in an interview in Fortune magazine Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer announced that Linux 'infringed' 235 Microsoft patents. Microsoft has refused to disclose what patents are infringed, and Balmer refused to say whether or not they would prosecute their own customers who use both Windows and Linux.

There is much speculation about who this is aimed at. Suggestions so far include:

1. Red Hat who don't seem disposed to strike a deal like the one Microsoft struck with Novell.

2. Google, who use masses of Linux machines

3. The Free Software Foundation, whose version three of the GLP (the license under which a lot of Open Source software is issued) is likely to stomp firmly on the Novell/Microsoft agreement.

4. (Less likely) Sun, whose Java platform will - at least theoretically - run the same Java (and Groovy) code on all machines, including Windows and Linux, making it easier to migrate code off Windows to Linux.

Who cares! I'm only interested in one thing - knowing what code Microsoft thinks is infringing what patents. Until they come clean with details then their threat to take legal action against their customers is so much hot air, which will, hopefully, alienate more users than even their dysfunctional Vista operating system.

Oh, and no - Microsoft didn't actually patent FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt), but I'm surprised they didn't, given that they are the ultimate FUDmeisters, and the fact that something was around before they even incorporated has never stopped them before...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/14/microsoft_oss_patent_number/
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index.htm?section=money_latest
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/14/microsoft_fortune_redhat/
http://update.techweb.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/e7m80HiOOq0G4T0FGK30EX
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/15/schwartz_blog_microsoft/


Shorts:

As the TJX data loss affair rumbles on, we have a new and unexpected entrant into the data loss stakes - IBM. At least they didn't get hacked, but IBM, of all people, failed to encrypt a tape containing sensitive former employee information before sending it off by courier. Apparently, the courier was involved in a traffic accident, and by the time everything was cleared up there were no tapes. On has to admit there was a certain amount of style in IBM's response - they advertised for its return in the local newspaper! IBM aren't saying how many people's details were compromised. I wonder why not?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/15/ibm_missing_tapes/

According to a survey released in March, by 2010 there will be 988 billion gigabytes of data being stored around the world (a suspiciously 'accurate' figure, if I might say so - why didn't they just say 'nearly 1,000 billion?). Now a new study has revealed that half of all stored data will never be accessed! Actually, that's not so surprising as it seems - consider how much stuff you put in files and then never look at again.

Just think of it though - a thousand billion gigabytes - how much would all that storage cost? And half of it is never going to be used. Why are people storing this stuff? Why don't they just store the stuff they are going to use?

Well...

It's not as easy as that. For a start it's not easy to know in advance which half you are going to want to look at again. And even if you could figure that out, every time a company turns around the governments of the West pass new laws demanding that more and more data be kept for longer and longer periods - squirrels have nothing on governments when it comes to hoarding, even though most politicians don't know the first thing about computers.

Eventually, of course, someone has to pick up the tab for all this data storage equipment, and I'll give you one guess who that's going to be...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/15/computer_storage_excess/

You've got to hand it to Microsoft when it comes to chutzpah. This past week they've been holding their annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (aka WinHEC). At that conference they announced that they had been 'analysing' the results of their Online Crash Analysis (OCA) tool. For the unenlightened that's the little box that pops up when something crashes and asks if it can report the problem to Microsoft.

Personally, I don't know anyone who says yes, so I have my doubts about the validity of the statistics. But I digress. Anyway, the results of this 'investigation' show fairly conclusively, according to Microsoft, that the crashes are not caused by buggy Microsoft software at all, they are caused by cosmic rays flipping the values of random bits in computer's memory.

Yep. Microsoft is, they believe, off the hook.

That's not all. In order to stop the crashes, they want suppliers in the cut throat business of supplying PCs and notebooks to start using more expensive error correcting memory, and redesign their machines to cope with the new type of memory. I think you can probably guess what the response of the manufacturers was!

http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/e7p50FypUC0FrK0FGim0Ey

Google announced this week that users searching the web with its site will be deluged not only with links, but also pictures, video, and news. Hey guys, listen very carefully:

YOU'RE SOLVING THE WRONG PROBLEM!

The problem with -all- search engines, Google included, is not that they don't return fancy pictures, but that they already return too much irrelevant crap. Why not use some of the much vaunted Google brain power you been accumulating over the last few years to figure out how to ensure that the hits I'm looking for are always in the top half dozen links returned by your site.

This is one area where more is definitely not better. Less is better, much better. So what are you going to do about it, Google?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/17/universal_search/

Here's a Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) story with a twist. One of the provisions of the much reviled Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is that it is illegal to sell products or services designed primarily for the purpose of 'circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to work' protected by copyright.

OK. So...

Media Rights Technology (MRT) make a technology called SeCure, which purports to have been 'proved' to be secure against stream ripping. This being the case, (anyone spot the sleight of hand there?) MRT argue, the likes of Microsoft, Apple , Real and Adobe are committing a crime by using their own, buggy, software instead of MRT's SeCure.

You've got to admit it makes for good publicity! Whether it will even get to court before being laughed into the bin is another matter, but that hasn't stopped MRT sending out a 'cease and desist' letter. I like it, I really do...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/11/media_rights_letter/

Beleaguered PC maker Dell is reeling from another blow to add to a list which already includes a massive loss of market share and an SEC investigation into its accounting practices. This time it's New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who announced details of a lawsuit filed last Tuesday alleging 'bait and switch' tactics, and selling onsite computer repair plans that it failed to honour.

It seems that Dell's finance wing was publicising zero percent financing and then switching the customers to a higher rate at the time of purchase, without the customer's knowledge.

Dell, of course, are denying these charges - what else would they do. On the other hand I've always thought Dell's warranty practices stank, ever since a number of friends of mine were required to send their CRT Monitors back to Dell for repairs under warranty. My friends had to pay for the carriage. So, tales about dodgy repair plans and financing don't exactly come as a surprise.

Nice to see that New York AG Andrew Cuomo is carrying on the fine tradition of his illustrious predecessor, though!

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/05/16/dell_ag_case/
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4809556.html

Finally, an interesting little case from 'Risks Bulletin'. Last month there was a report published about a problem with the operation of the Browns Ferry 3 nuclear power site last year.

Without going into a lot of detail, it seems that a number of reactor components (pumps, sensors and such like) are attached to an ethernet network. One of the components failed and it is believed that the failure of that component overloaded the network and caused two more components to fail. The phrase 'buffer overrun' comes to mind here. Anyway the result of the overloaded network was that the reactor had to be shut down while everything was sorted out.

An overloaded nuclear reactor network... Hmmm... I'm sure I'm being completely unfair, but I have a mental image of people playing networked 'Doom' on one of these reactor networks as it slowly slides into a China Syndrome!

Source: Risks Bulletin 24.66


Scanner: Other stories

Gates predicts death of the office phone
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/17/gates_desktop_phone_office/

'Gay or straight?' ruling looks bad for all US social networking sites
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/16/roommates_discrimination_suit/

Security bigwigs patch their programs
http://www.physorg.com/news98269741.html

How to fix your kids' education for $200m
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/16/mcnealy_opensource_curriki/


UK Government Roundup:

Minister defends UK government reforms
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/11/mcfadden_government_reforms/

100,000 'erroneous' records on UK DNA database
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/17/dna_v_rozzers/

Government project reviews are not FOI exempt, says Information Tribunal
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/09/gov_it_foi_ruling/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/04/id_gateway/

Gateway privacy under debate
http://Mail.computing.co.uk/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e8qc0BsjfA0Xxi0D1Uq0Ez

UK ID card costs climb £600m in six months
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/10/id_costs_pii/


Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for material to alan@ibgames.com.

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
20 May 2007

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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