The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: February 24, 2008

Official News page 12


WINDING DOWN

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

I have bad news for you all - no Winding Down next week. I'm out of town, so I'll be unable to treat you all to your usual sumptuous fare (not to mention juicy scraps). Fear not, though, I'll be back the following week.

There was once again no shortage of news this week, so lets get straight down to the week's biggest story...


A Lesson From the Past

The big news of the week was, of course, Toshiba throwing in the towel in the Blu-ray/HD DVD war. The question is, why did it end after only two years, when the fight was expected to drag out for a decade? (And the more embarrassing question, why did I get it wrong last year when I predicted Sony would lose?)

The short answer was that Sony learned the lessons of its fight over VHS/Betamax video tape formats in the 1970s. It lost that one for a variety of reasons, including the mistaken belief that it could go it alone. This time it has been wooing studios, silicon valley and the retailers. It also pulled a masterstroke in fitting its PS3 games console with a Blu-ray player - this alone means it has shipped an order of magnitude more players than Toshiba did HD DVD players.

Rumours abound on the net that the clincher, Warner Bros. decision to go solely Blu-ray for its movies, was oiled to the tune of US$400 million at the end of a bidding war between Sony and Toshiba. And there was a prize for Toshiba for gracefully conceding defeat, rather than dragging it out - Sony will sell Toshiba its microchip production facilities in western Japan, for US$835 million. The plant makes the high-performance cell chips and RSX graphics chips used in the Playstation 3, so Toshiba will gain access to that highly desirable technology for its own products.

Not, as far as I'm aware, that anyone is suggesting there is anything illegal in money changing hands. Certainly consumers will heave a sigh of relief (unless they already bought an HD DVD player) at knowing what the de facto standard is. I expect there will be a big surge in purchases of Blu-ray players now as those who held off because of the confusion start to buy.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080220.RBLURAY20/TPStory
/?query=Toshiba

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousivMolt/idUST28617520080220


Shorts:

More twists in the attempt by Microsoft to buy Yahoo. A couple of Detroit pension funds (I thought they made cars in Detroit, not pension funds) have sued Yahoo's directors for trying to thwart the takeover. The funds claim that the directors have failed in their duties to shareholders.

The plaintiffs claim that the board is pursuing what they call 'value destructive' deals with third parties in an effort to avoid being swallowed by Microsoft. It seems that Yahoo also adopted new employee severance packages which would protect employees in the event of a Microsoft acquisition. This will undoubtedly drive up the cost of any takeover my Microsoft.

I'll be interested to see just what surprising information comes out in the court case.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080222/ap_on_hi_te/yahoo_shareholder_lawsuit

My comments about the fraud potential in the EU's new plans to allow VAT claims from companies in countries where they aren't registered for VAT, received some interesting back-up this week. A report to European Parliament indicated a massive increase in VAT and Carousel fraud in the EU. (VAT is a sales tax. Carousel is a form of VAT fraud where one bunch of importers claim back VAT, while their mates who sold them the goods and charged them VAT, vanish without paying the tax over to the local tax man!) The new systems (if they ever finish writing the software) will make this sort of fraud even easier...

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/02/20/eu_vat_fraud/

Remember I mentioned that there seemed to be 1.4 million iPhones missing between the sales figures reported by Apple and the numbers registered by the phone operators? They've finally turned up - in China. Which is where they are made. It seems that genuine iPhones are very desirable in China. So, they get built in China, shipped to the USA, bought by the handful by tourists and smuggled back into China where they are unlocked and sold openly.

Apple is not happy, because it has no phone operator deal. Although it gets money for the sale, it isn't getting the follow up cut of the usage charges. I think it's between a rock and a hard place on this one. It doesn't like losing that charges income, but given the absurdly high prices it charges, it doesn't want to lose the profit on nearly one and a half million overpriced toys.

I don't think I'm going to lose any sleep over their dilemma.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/business/worldbusiness/18iphone.html

Good news from the land of the maple leaf. Quebec cops have rounded up a botnet gang, who, allegedly, were running a 1,000 PC botnet, worth US$44.6 million. The claims should be taken with a pinch of salt, given the temptation for crime busters to exaggerate the scale of their successes. However, even if the claims are only half true, and the 17 people arrested are given custodial sentences, it represents a blow struck against this sort of crime on the net.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/21/canada_botnet_bust/

The news from Australia doesn't look so good, though. The government has just admitted that its AU$85 million scheme to protect children from Internet porn has been a complete failure. The scheme, launched six months ago, involved a free filter that households could use. The filter's protection was broken within minutes of the launch...

Now the Australian government is planning a new scheme to protect the children - filtering! What was it they said about the French Bourbon rulers? That they had forgotten nothing and learned nothing. Seems to be a problem with non-hereditary rulers too.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/20/australian_adult_content_filter_failure/

Are you unfortunate enough to have an apostrophe, a hyphen or a space in your name? Then you probably know what a nightmare computer forms - especially web ones - are. It seems that it never occurred to most programmers that these are valid characters in names, so the forms are programmed to reject them. To give an example of the scale of the problem, in 2004 thousands of people in Chicago were denied votes in the Michigan caucus because of this problem.

I was thinking about this, and it seemed to me that there could be advantages in the government not being able to get your name into its databases. In fact, I was thinking of changing my name to A-lan van der O'Lent-on. Try putting that into your no-fly list, Homeland Security!

http://www.physorg.com/news122832051.html

Microsoft's new Service Pack (SP1) upgrade for Vista is not proving to be the wild success they had been hoping for. It's not really out there in the wild yet, but Microsoft have sent it off for CD duplication. Enough are out there, though, that it's been found that many machines wouldn't boot following the 'upgrade'. It's now been withdrawn from Microsoft's download update service.

Microsoft have also had to admit that in addition to the applications that already won't run on Vista, their changes have stopped a whole bunch more - mostly security programs - running. The one that struck me was the firewall program Zone Alarm. I use Zone Alarm, it's very good, and, as far as I can tell, it also blocks off Microsoft applications from phoning home!

I wonder when Microsoft will finally get their act together?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935796
http://www.crn.com/software/206801221
http://update.techweb.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBHB30HiOOq0G4T0Fqru0EZ

In an interesting move a UK Bank, HBOS, has decided to block payments using its cards to subscribe to World of Warcraft (WoW). The decision has nothing to do with WoW's owners Blizzard being naughty, it's because of the high level of fraudulent transactions the bank has experienced from people using their credit cards. This isn't anything Blizzard is doing, it just seems that they are attracting unsavoury types who rip off other people's cards.

I wonder of this is a warning for the future? I suspect a number of massively multiplayer online games operators are starting to get very worried.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/15/halifax_blizzard_block/


Homework:

I have something really stunning for you to look at this week. How to turn your ordinary monitor into a 3D virtual reality display using only the Wii remote and a $5 pair of work eye protection glasses. The video is incredible - the inventor, Johnny Lee explains how it works and gives a demonstration. At one stage he seems to be between part of the image which looks like it's sticking out of the screen, and the screen itself.

Fantastic!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=976

Wired magazine recently took a pictorial tour of world's longest linear accelerator, the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC). the pictures are well worth a look, both as art pieces and for the science revealed in them. This is big science at its most impressive!

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/02/gallery_slac


Geek Toys:

And now, a little something for those who have more money than sense! We at Winding Down Central would like to draw your attention to the just available Optimus Maximus keyboard. It's a snip at a mere US$1,564! For all those spondoolies you get a keyboard with LED keys - every key is its own programmable 48x48 pixel 65,536 color display. And that's not all - the keys can support video at a frame rate of 10 frames/second.

As for typing on it, well I can only quote one reviewer, "Typing on it, well sucks." Yeah, man, but look at those really cool video keys...

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/21/optimus_led_keyboard_shipping/
http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/239514392/

On a more positive note, keep your eyes peeled for an application called DoubleTwist. It's an application that allows you to move music you've bought between different devices - PC, phone , MP3 player, iThingie, etc. Details are scant at the moment, but it seems all you need to do is to drag and drop the files, and DoubleTwist handles the rest including any DRM. More info at the URL. If you see it, get your hands on it fast - the media biz ain't gonna like this baby!

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9873241-7.html

Oh, and have you seen the latest from Intel? It's a new desktop mother board that supports two 3.2GHz quad core processors and a choice of graphics solutions from ATI or NVidia. With eight Intel cores, I doubt if you will need any other heating in your house, even in the middle of winter... It should be available in high end machines (the high refers to cost as well as performance) real soon now. Alternatively, if you wait until next year it'll probably be available in entry level models!

http://www.physorg.com/news122653789.html


Scanner: Other Stories

The Internet as a platform? Not as ISP bloodbath looms
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/20/iplayer_isps_broke/

"GiFi" - Short-Range, 5-Gbps Wireless for $10/chip
http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/10-chip-puts-australia-on-the-fast-track/
2008/02/22/1203467349733.html

Wikileaks judge gets Pirate Bay treatment
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/21/wikileaks_bulletproof_hosting/

SFLC's legal guide on Free Software
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/foss-primer.html
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS8821390933.html

UK report slams EULAs
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7252707.stm

Secret printer ID codes may breach EU privacy laws
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/15/secret_printer_tracking_dots/

Analog phones fade into the sunset
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/
15/AR2008021500036_pf.html


Patent Roundup:

Patentability of business model and software patents comes under court scrutiny
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080215/174009268.shtml

Lawmakers debate patent immunity for banks
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/
13/AR2008021303731.html

Patent troll attacks cable, digital TV standards
http://www.multichannel.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6532982

Developers warned over OOXML patent risk
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62037862,00.htm


Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, and Slashdot's daily newsletter for drawing my attention to material used in this issue There was also some material from a reader, which I saved somewhere safe, so I wouldn't lose it, and now I can't find it...

Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Spamato spam filter...

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
24 February 2008

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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