May 2008 Archives

Rob Enderle over at Datamation.com takes a fascinating look at the state of desktop computing, featuring one of the most provocative headlines that doesn't include the word porn: Apple vs. Google vs. Linux vs. Microsoft:  The Fight For the Desktop is On!

Enderle writes:

I have not seen this level of competition before and Microsoft has never appeared more exposed. In my lifetime I have never seen a major vendor allow the kind of attack-marketing Apple is using without challenge. And, coupled with initial problems with Windows Vista, Microsoft suddenly looks like they are in a fight for the desktop the likes of which they -- and we -- have never seen.

Later, Enderle makes this salient point about frustrated Microsoft customers:

Microsoft has made some but not all of the mistakes IBM made. They have effectively raised prices for core offerings without ensuring that the perceived value has increased -- making many customers feel, like they did with IBM, that they are overcharged. Firms like Gartner fuel this belief with services that sell the idea that Microsoft customers are overpaying for their offerings. Increasingly, IT buyers are viewing their payments to Microsoft as a tax.

The column is a must read for anyone interested in Apple, Google, Linux, or online porn.  

I like our chances against just the monkeys, and I like 'em against just the robots. But this...

Monkeys Control a Robot Arm With Their Thoughts

...this is just asking for trouble.

Initially I was tempted to dismiss this story as today's "news of the weird"...

Arthur Firstenberg wants the city of Santa Fe, N.M., to ban wireless Internet signals in public buildings on the grounds that he and his associates are allergic to the radio waves.

Firstenberg and dozens of "other electro-sensitive people" are arguing that the city's proposal to establish WiFi hotspots in public places is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

...but after Googling around for 30 seconds some in-depth research I discovered that there really is such a thing as electro-sensitivity (and I for one will not mock the electro-sensitive for cheap blog fodder). You can learn more about this little-known condition, which apparently affects millions of people worldwide, at ElectroSensitivity.Org.

Obviously wi-fi (never mind electricity) is here to stay, so the chances of Firstenberg successfully blocking public hotspots in Santa Fe are slim. But there's nothing on the ADA web site -- nothing I could find, anyway -- that clearly supports or negates Firstenberg's argument. So tempting as it is to lump this case into the "nuisance" category, don't be surprised if you read about it again, perhaps all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Less than two years ago Merriam-Webster added the verb "google" to its dictionary. As defined by M-W here, it means:

to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web

It's time to move our language forward further still. I now claim official first use of the verb "google," but with an entirely different meaning:

to crush and dominate your competitors with laughable ease (as in "the New England Patriots googled the entire league last season, until the Super Bowl")

Because that's what continues to happen in the online search market: Google is just, well, googling everybody. According to monthly data just released by Internet research firm comScore, Google's share of the U.S. search market grew to 61.6 percent in April from 59.8 percent in March.

In fact, total searches using Google increased (to 6.51 billion from 6.44 billion) despite a 2 percent overall drop in online searches from March to April. Here are comScore's April market-share percentages for Google and the also-rans*:

                April        March
Google      61.6          59.8
Yahoo       20.4          21.3
Microsoft     9.1            9.4
AOL            4.6            4.8
Ask.com      4.3            4.7

* Good band name, by the way, which I also take credit for.

Many people try to dismiss Apple's success as being based on marketing and hype. But marketing and hype alone can't explain the company's phenomenal performance in Q1.

In a quarter when Windows notebook sales were flat and Windows desktop sales were down more than 20 percent, sales of Apple computer products increased over last year's Q1, according to new market-share data from research firm NPD Group.

From Daily Tech:

Apple notebooks...are up 50 percent to 60 percent from Q1 of last year...On the desktop side of things, they're up 45 percent.

In Q1 2008, Macs overall took 14 percent of the market for personal computers, and took a whopping 66 percent of the lucrative $1,000+ personal computer market. On the desktop side of things, Apple owned a 14 percent overall retail share, and 70 percent share of the $1,000+ sales. For notebooks, the sales were 14 percent and 64 percent respectively.

What's impressive to me isn't Apple's share of the high-end computer market -- nearly all of its products cost at least four figures. What I think is noteworthy here is that even in uncertain economic times, an increasing number of expensive computers are being sold, even when there are numerous cheaper alternatives. And most of the time these expensive computers come from the House That Jobs Built.

Say what you will about "reality distortion fields"; Apple is doing something right.

There were a lot of predictions back during the first Internet Golden Era (circa 1996-1999) about the transformative power the online revolution would have on global commerce, particularly how people and companies bought things.

While the Internet indisputably has brought great changes to our economy, things hardly are beyond recognition. Certainly when it comes down to the basics -- goods and services being exchanged for money -- the Internet has a far lesser impact than you might have imagined, according to the latest survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The Internet and Consumer Choice, which surveys 2,400 American adults, concludes that "the online mall helps people sort through product choice, but it is not the only method they use to assess products and not a place where people often close the deal."

That sounds about right to me. I buy things online now and again, but as a consumer mostly I use the Internet for product or service research. And so do millions of other Americans. More than half (56%) of all people who buy music used the Internet for research, but less than one in four (22%) actually made the purchase online, and only 7% said online information had a major impact on their buying decision.

The data was slightly different for people who bought cell phones and real estate, the other two categories surveyed. The bottom line is that while the Internet has altered the commerce landscape, the older information sources -- friends, family, television, radio, sales people and other support professionals -- aren't ready for the museum yet.

Looks like they'll have to come up with a new IT certification to deal with this problem...

There's a new bug crawling around that can wreak real havoc on computer equipment.

Dubbed the 'crazy rasberry ant,' the flea-sized pests have been causing power surges and frying computers and other electronics around Houston for days. By some estimates billions of ants have swarmed the area.

The crazy rasberry ants, called crazy because of their affinity for moving erratically in search for food as opposed to in orderly lines like normal ants, are a new species believed to have arrived in Houston via a cargo ship possibly from South Africa or the Caribbean.

And these ants, which get the rasberry moniker because it is the last name of the first exterminator to combat them, are also atypical in that it appears over the counter sprays and other pest control mechanisms are futile to thwart them.

Along with their craziness, the hairy, reddish-brown creepy crawlies also have a bizarre love for electronics, invading them in droves and in some cases causing power surges that can render a computer useless. They've been found inside hard drives and caught burrowing into laptops, in some cases making them not work at all.

I wouldn't want to work at a Best Buy down there, that's for sure.

"Do you still have any CNET shares?" my wife asked, eyebrows raised.

No, dear, I haven't worked there in four years. So went our pillow talk this morning on the news that CBS is buying CNET Networks for $1.8 billion, or $11.50 per share. That's 44 percent over CNET's closing price yesterday of $7.95. So those with CNET shares are sitting on a mint today.

Timing is everything, right? I was at CNET in '98, the glory days, when the stock split twice in a year, hit 70 plus, and stock options were being handed out like candy. San Francisco was buzzing with startups and one-and-a-half-inch-thick tech mags like the Industry Standard and Business 2.0. CNET had a TV show and a radio show.

We played a ton of ping-pong and foosball in the office and went to expensive dinners all over the city. We bought ZDNET for $1.6 billion.

We had company parties in San Francisco City Hall and rented out the old California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park for a Christmas party. I was a notebook-review guru for CNET. On weekends, I wrote a book on Sony, "How To Do Everything with Your Sony VAIO."

This was of course before the events of 2000 and 2001. After that, the SEC investigated CNET regarding the backdating of stock options. In the midst of that probe, golden boy CEO and Chairman Shelby Bonnie decided to step down in 2006. (CNET was later cleared of wrongdoing.)

Anyway, that's water under the bridge (and router). As Jupitermedia CEO Alan Meckler said in his blog today, this looks like a great deal for CNET. Let's just hope there aren't big layoffs.

For an excellent report on the deal, including a transcript of the conference call announcing the news, check this Silicon Alley Insider story.

One of Datamation's more provocative columnists, Mike Elgan, bravely tackled the subject of women in IT earlier this week.

Rather than pen the predictable (and somewhat patronizing) "It's a shame there aren't more women in IT and it's time we do something about it," Elgan took a different tack. He acknowledges that advocates of women in IT, along with universities such as Carnegie Mellon, have been trying to reverse the steady decline of women in the ranks of technology professionals. The problem with these efforts, Elgan writes, is:

The Carnegie program makes the same mistake as some other gender-balancing initiatives: It seeks to boost the percentage of women by focusing on those women who, deep down, may not be as interested in IT as the people they'll be competing against in school and in the workplace. These less interested people are likely to fail or quit at higher rates than the deeply interested and self-motivated people, regardless of gender.

I know what he means. When I was a freshman in college, my student adviser laid out a sensible plan in which I would get my B.S. degree in accounting and then go to law school. Trouble was, I was interested in neither numbers nor litigation. If I had taken his advice, I'd either be a law school washout or a currently miserable accountant/lawyer.

Elgan's column drew a response from a female software engineer named Sara Chipps, who writes an irreverent-but-serious blog called Girl Developer (hence the title of this post, so back off). Chipps took particular exception to this paragraph in Elgan's piece:

Rather than telling girls that IT is trendy and fashionable, we should be telling both girls and boys what we really believe to be true: that focusing on being trendy and fashionable is hollow and irrelevant, and that a career in IT is interesting and challenging. The kids who dismiss that argument aren't cut out for IT and shouldn't be persuaded to devote their careers to it.

In her response, titled An open letter for girls considering I.T., Chipps first notes that one can be trendy and  fashionable without being hollow and irrelevant. Then, for her female readers, Chipps lays out "some reasons I think it's awesome to be a developer," and in a way that I suspect is more effective than any arguments middle-aged guys like me and Elgan (sorry to drag you under the bus with me, Mike) could make to that particular audience. It's worth reading her entire post, but here are a few excerpts (plus comments by me):

"Smart is Sexy"

Absolutely. I agree 1,000%. I've always believed this.

"There is more than one right way to do things usually when designing systems and writing applications. You have to develop your own style and make it unique."

A great message, especially for those who fear programming would be as boring as, well, being an accountant/lawyer. The best developers think outside the box and aren't afraid to take chances.

"Nerds are nice - ...When you are sick they will bring you Kleenex, lozenges, AND clean your apartment. They won't take advantage if you're sad and just want to talk."

Well, that last one's a bit delusional, but I admire the sentiment.

OK, maybe "hate" is too strong a word, but I've always had a strong aversion to instant messaging, especially in the workplace. I touched on this subject in a long-ago post, but a recent conversation with two of my colleagues got me thinking about it again.

Upon learning that I and a co-worker not only don't use IM, but assiduously avoid it, another colleague asked us, "What is it with you guys and IM? What horrible things do you think will happen if you are on IM? :-)"

Fair enough question. Here are my reasons:

1) IMs are intrusive. You know how annoying it is when you're mousing over a web site and an ad suddenly pops up or even takes over the screen? That's what IM feels like to me. When I'm trying to focus, I don't need an instant  message shoved in my face, especially since...

2) Way too many IMs are trivial and unimportant. Just because IM'ing someone is easy (you don't have to dial, you don't even have to type in an email address) doesn't mean it should be used to convey whatever insipid  thought pops into your head: "u c amy winehouse on youtube? WTF!!!!!!"  But too many people do.

Worse, there are those -- the insecure, the lonely, the manipulative -- who use IM for mission-critical missives such as "'mornin'" and "hi" and "how r u?" I don't mean to sound anti-social here, but if you worked remotely, would you phone  someone at the main office just to say "hi"? We get it; you're at your desk, workin' hard! Well, you're at your desk, anyway.

3) IMs virtually demand instant replies. "mornin'"...
"Chris?"...
"Chris?"...
"r u there?"...

Yes, I took three minutes to go to the bathroom. Is that allowed?

4) IM threads go on interminably.  Just when you think the ordeal finally is over,  you see the dreaded, "IM Maven is typing..." 

5) They have these things called emails and phones. Last I checked, these were still working pretty well and seemed fast enough.

Those are my practical reasons for not using instant messaging. I'll leave the philosophical to my fellow IM-avoiding co-worker, who offers a far more eloquent rationale. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing this with you:

For me, I've been addicted to the Internet and technology for years, sort of joined at the hip. So much so that when my wife and I took a weekend getaway, she told me she was surprised I didn't bring my laptop.

Using IM would be like losing that last little bit of myself that isn't connected to the Internet. I'm trying to maintain some healthy separation, however minor.

Looks like Apple fans can point to one more feature that makes the Mac Notebook a better product than those other laptops. From Gizmodo...

A White Plains, N.Y. woman who was the victim of burglary, including her MacBook, used the Back To My Mac screen sharing feature to turn on her webcam and capture images of the unwitting culprits using the computer. As a result, police were able to arrest the thieves and recover most of the stolen goods, which included two laptops, two flat-screen televisions, two iPods, gaming consoles, DVDs and computer games.

Makes sense to me. I mean, can you imagine Batman down in the Batcave going through the hassle of rebooting his Windows OS, hassling with IE glitches, facing the blue screen of death. Seriously, the Caped Crusader wouldn't have it.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and the putative War on Terror have spawned innumerable challenges to our democracy, most of which we never even hear about because they're done in secret. Worse, millions of Americans have been all too willing to forego their personal rights and freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism.

So it's refreshing to see that, on occasion, someone is willing to stand up to this ongoing abuse of governmental power and actually win. The latest freedom fighter is Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, a 12-year-old  non-profit that essentially acts as an Internet library, preserving "texts, audio, moving images, software and archived web pages" in its collection. From the Washington Post:

The FBI has withdrawn a secret administrative order seeking the name, address and online activity of a patron of the Internet Archive after the San Francisco-based digital library filed suit to block the action.

It is one of only three known instances in which the FBI has backed off from such a data demand, known as a "national security letter," or NSL, which is not subject to judicial approval and whose recipient is barred from disclosing the order's existence.

NSLs are served on phone companies, Internet service providers and other electronic communications service providers, but because of the gag order provision, the public has little way to know about them. Their use soared after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, when Congress relaxed the standard for their issuance. FBI officials now issue about 50,000 such orders a year.

Let's stop right there and consider the implications. We're talking 50,000 secret orders a year, or more than 300,000 since 9/11. Does anyone seriously think there are 300,000 potential terrorists in this country? And in all but three instances, no one has any idea who is being served with these NSLs, or for what. There's a good chance that someone reading this has been the subject of such a letter, or that the organization he or she works for has been. And they don't even know. Can you say secret police?

Here's a statement from Kehle, courtesy of the CNET.com:

"The free flow of information is at the heart of every library's work. That's why Congress passed a law limiting the FBI's power to issue NSLs to America's libraries. While it's never easy standing up to the government -- particularly when I was barred from discussing it with anyone -- I knew I had to challenge something that was clearly wrong."

To me, that's real patriotism and real bravery. Kudos as well to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the court case on the Internet Archive's behalf.

Since 2005, more than 3700 individual developers have contributed their time towards modifications of the Linux kernel operating system. A recent report here shows exactly how far and how fast that project has come, and the extent that Linux has become the province of corporations such as IBM, Novell, Red Hat and others. Since 2005, the community of developers has actually doubled, but new releases continue to appear every 100 days or so...

Continue reading David Strom's blog post here. 

 

There’s been a lot of barking lately regarding video games, including MADD’s recent call for changes in the new version of Grand Theft Auto, in which you have the option of driving while three sheets to the wind.

 

The latest salvo fired against a video game is aimed at the popular virtual world Second Life.

 

According to CNET News.com:

A Republican congressman who has sponsored legislation banning access to social-networking Web sites in schools and libraries has found a new target of displeasure: Second Life.

Rep. Mark Kirk, who is seeking re-election this year, staged a press conference at a library in his suburban Chicago district on Tuesday to highlight what he called the "dangers" of the virtual world to children. Flanked by local officials, he also released a letter asking Federal Trade Commission Chairman William E. Kovacic to "take action to warn parents of the similar dangers and sexually explicit content found on Second Life."

Kirk said he was appalled that Second Life has no age verification features built into its registration process, and he claimed that there are "countless locations" outside of the service's teen-designated area where virtual prostitution, drug deals, and "other wholly inappropriate activities" occur.

According to a Chicago Tribune report, Kirk recounted an aide's failed attempt to create an avatar on the site as a 10-year-old -- and a subsequently successful attempt to log in as an 18-year-old.

"Sites like Second Life offer no protections to keep kids from virtual "rape rooms," brothels, and drug stores," Kirk said, according to a press release. "If sites like Second Life won't protect kids from obviously inappropriate content, the Congress will."

Second Life creator Linden Lab, for its part, released a statement, according to various local news reports, saying, "Members of the Second Life community, including Linden Lab staff, actively monitor against minors accessing the (adult portion of the) service." But Kirk said company officials have acknowledged that it's possible for teens to get into the adult portion of the service, and vice versa.

… Kirk's comments were yet another attempt to drum up support for a bill, which he reintroduced last year, known as the Deleting Online Predators Act.

This plea from Rep. Kirk just seems silly to me. As always, I’m anti-censorship. Let the nerds play their virtual games.

 

But I am the father of an 11-year-old son. I can see a bigger picture. I see idiot parents letting their kids go anywhere on the Internet and play any video game. I fear for the fragile innocence of these pre-teens, call me a bleeding heart.

 

I really do wonder what this generation will be like as adults. So while Rep. Kirk’s plan is ludicrous, I don’t think we can depend solely on Second Life monitors to keep kids out of the adult areas.  

 

There always have been dangers lurking on the Internet. But things are getting worse, according to this article on the San Francisco Chronicle's web site:

Criminal attacks against major Web sites have grown so common that Internet users have no reliable way to know which sites are safe to visit, no matter how well known those destinations are, security experts say.

News of the latest attack comes from Finjan, an Israeli security firm, which is reporting today that last month it found a large cache of information - including confidential medical records, financial records and business e-mails - sitting unprotected on a computer network server in Malaysia.

The data came from more than 40 major financial companies around the world, including the United States, and was stolen from computers belonging to doctors and home users conducting online banking and, in some cases, from machines inside corporate networks that the hackers managed to penetrate and infect.

The Chronicle reports that attacks have been increasing for more than a year, with the main goal being to "steal and sell personal information to conduct identity theft and sometimes extortion."

It seems the cyber-criminals are taking advantage of numerous weak points: Inherent flaws in all kinds of software (instant messaging, media players and JavaScript, among others), configuration mistakes by web sites, and even vulnerabilities built into the web itself. That last one is tough to fix. I mean, what are we going to do, start over? Not bloody likely.

You have to wonder if things will get to a point where millions of regular Internet users unplug because it's just not worth the trouble and risk. We're probably a long way from that now, but if the Internet eventually becomes the equivalent of New York City in the '80s (or Baghdad today), I don't think that scenario is inconceivable.

So much for being undervalued. In the first trading session after Microsoft on Saturday withdrew its revised $47.5 billion offer, shares of Yahoo plunged 16 percent at the opening bell.

Microsoft recently upped its buyout offer to $33 per share from February's original offer of about $31 per share. But Yahoo rejected the latter offer, insisting that it was worth at least $37 per share.

Right now it's worth $24.56 per share, and analysts believe the pressure on Yahoo's board of directors and senior management will only increase as the company continues to grope for a survival strategy.

So is it really over? Well, as I noted in this recent post, both Yahoo and Microsoft are desperate for fresh strategies to help them avoid the pending threat of market irrelevance. Whether the deal would have provided what each company needs is a matter of speculation, but without the buyout both companies are right back where they were -- with no viable strategy going forward.

Should Yahoo's shares fail to rebound from today's fall, look for Microsoft to make another offer, perhaps after an upper-level uprising at Yahoo.

In April’s edition of the Semantic Web Gang Podcast -- now up on Semanticweb.com -- the gang discusses Bret Taylor’s notion of a "Wikipedia for Data" and looks at the role that semantic technologies should play in connecting diverse pieces of data together within and between organizations.

The gang also explores whether the different conferences for academic and commercial uses of the semantic web are creating a problem.

Paul Miller of Talis recorded the podcast just before the recent World Wide Web Conference in Beijing.

Click here for the podcast.

Also on Semanticweb.com, check out Jennifer Zaino's piece on how Partners Health Care is embracing semantic web technology.

 

 

In Grand Theft Auto IV, you can hijack a car, run over people, deal drugs, and do all sorts of other nefarious activities. And now, while playing the new version of this insanely popular game, you can also choose to drive drunk when you leave a bar -- although there are virtual penalties if you do.

 

Because of that, Mothers Against Drunk Driving is not happy. MADD released a statement saying that, “Drunk driving is not a game, and it is not a joke. Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime, and it is also 100 percent preventable.”

 

MADD is asking Rockstar Games to consider removing GTA IV from distribution, “out of respect for the millions of victims/survivors of drunk driving.”

 

Rockstar replied to MADD by saying, “We have a great deal of respect for MADD's mission, but we believe the mature audience for Grand Theft Auto IV is more than sophisticated enough to understand the game's content.”

 

The controversy has sparked one of the biggest outpourings I’ve seen at Slashdot.org in quite a while. NPR also filed an excellent story and podcast on the game.

 

I must admit that at first I had a strange reaction to the MADD story. Strange for me, because I’m anti-censorship. And yet, at first I thought, yeah, OK, maybe driving drunk shouldn’t be a choice, especially since so many teens play this game.

 

But after more thought, and after reading the scores of impassioned responses on Slashdot, I realize that you can perpetrate all sorts of horrible crimes in video games. Why is this different? What’s really important is that parents monitor the games their kids are playing.

 

One heartfelt Slashdot response in particular caught my eye. This is reproduced straight from the site, with no editing on my part (although it badly needs editing). The content, and the writing style, speaks volumes about young gamers:

 

“My assumption is that MADD had only caught wind of the drunk driving in GTA and didn't actually witness it. Had they experience the same scene i had, they'd know that while funny as all heck, there were penalties.

Now... My mother had been an alcoholic in my youthful years. She loved to be out all night at bars drinking her life away. On a school night when I was 8 she was out with her friends drinking till 2am. Yes that is a horrid act in it's own right leaving a kid in the car to drink but that is not the case to prove only back ground... Well her Beau of the time was going to drive us home, her more sober friend offered me a ride and somehow I refused and stupidly allowed me to ride with my mother and her drunken boyfriend who was driving.

Well the car didnt get far before hitting a stone wall, flipping 3-4 times and landing upside down in someone's yard. I woke up in her friend's car. I suffered a broken tibia and elbow and got to spend christmas in a wheelcheer. She suffered most of her life with a bum hip until a recent replacement. …

Speaking on my behalf I found the GTA IV drunk scenes hilarious. I found it to be a fun and refreshing challenge to an ever increasing stagnating market. I love the game and have played every GTA released so far. I've yet in real life to drive drunk, shoot cops, run over people, jack a car, pick up use and shoot hoes, deal drugs, participate in a gang war, drive by shooting, break an enter, steal and save someone from a burning fire and do unique stunts. Though I've managed to do all that and more playing GTA...”