Doug's Inner Net News

Just a thought: What

Just a thought: What with all the strife between Walter Hewlett and Carly Fiorina, do you think the merged company will be called Packard-Compaq? :-)

I mentioned in an

I mentioned in an earlier post to my weblog, that a good way to judge the results in the proposed settlement with Microsoft would be to look at its effect on the development of Samba. If Samba becomes more interoperable with Microsoft operating systems as a result Microsoft revealing the APIs and protocols used in their "middleware", then the settlement could be considered at least somewhat successful. If not, then clearly the settlement should be considered unsuccessful. Now we see the tricks from Microsoft that we could have easily anticipated. First, there are lots of conditions attached to the specs, that make the Samba project ineligible. The worst condition is that the GPL is prohibited. Second, as reported by the Samba team, the spec for CIFS released by Microsoft is away out of date. See the discussion on Slashdot.

After reading more about

After reading more about REST, I think I have a pretty good understanding of it now. And, I think I like the REST philosophy (or is it architecture?). When you think about it, REST is almost a natural extension of the current Web. Think about HTML screen-scraping, then think about making the screen-scraping unnecessary by having the server send cleaned-up XML instead of HTML. You could go further with REST, either in the direction of WebDAV, or in the direction of advanced HTTP use. As an example of the latter, clients and servers could take advantage of content negotiation in HTTP to deliver content in the form that the client can make the best use of. This feature of REST, of course, is a significant one, as it allows graceful upgrades to services.

Now, I'm thinking that REST would be a good architecture for an email message store. I hope to describe this idea on paper in more detail when I have the time.

Scott Johnson: Marketing Software

Scott Johnson: Marketing Software When You Are a Small Company. [Scripting News] Short, simple, good advice.

Liquid Audio to let

Liquid Audio to let subscribers burn music [news.com] This move by liquid audio is on the right track. Clearly, the record labels know what consumers want (I mean, besides free music). They want good music at a good price, and they want portability. There is tremendous opportunity for the business. The record labels could provide downloadable music that consumers could burn onto CD-Rs. They could sell a lot more music, because they would have a lot more music available compared to what's available in a brick-and-mortar store. They could achieve new efficiencies in production and distribution. And consumers could benefit by a wider selection of music and lower cost. Then there is even room for innovation: the content owners could provide technology to help consumers find new music that interests them from artists they probably have not heard of before.

And what's holding all this back? Clearly, it's fear held by the content owners. They have chosen to follow an almost purely defensive strategy. They are risk-averse, as many big companies are. Risk-averse, one would assume, because they have a lot to lose.

To change the situation will require some smaller companies pursuing offensive strategies and some government assistance to break the monopolistic tactics of the big record labels. Perhaps Liquid Audio will be one of those smaller companies.

Salon: A law to

Salon: A law to protect spyware. But Hollings' bill should outrage Internet users just as much as Brilliant Digital's spyware. For while it talks a good game about protecting "sensitive" information, the truth is that it would place a congressional stamp of approval on precisely the kinds of practices that purveyors of spyware are eager to engage in. [Tomalak's Realm]

Gateway tests waters of

Gateway tests waters of music business. The PC manufacturer is examining a number of strategies that could effectively turn the company into a player in the music publishing and distribution business. [CNET News.com]

If you can't make money selling computers -- and this line of business is becoming increasingly difficult -- try innovating. I applaud Gateway for this move. There's a reason why Ted Waitt is a billionaire: he's got vision.

The Consumer Broadband and

The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) is really misguided. It won't cause more consumers to sign up for broadband Internet access. Why? Because of price. The cost of broadband Internet access in the U.S. starts at about $35 per month, but typically the cost is closer to $45. And that cost doesn't include any content other than "free" content. So, if you sign up for a movie subscription service at, say, $25 per month, and a music subscription service at $15 month, the total amount is $85 per month. Who's going to pay that much for a service that isn't much more than cable TV, which costs about $40 per month? I think there is value in broadband Internet access, but not for the reasons that the sponsors of the CBDTPA think.

Study: Customers wary of

Study: Customers wary of online IDs [news.com] The digital content owners -- record labels, movie studios -- are struggling with the issue of piracy. Consumers are struggling with the issue of privacy. There are interesting similarities between these two issues. They both arise because of the ease of copying data. We know about the piracy problem. But the privacy problem is also a result of the ease of copying data. When they use the right technology, the big web companies can track your every move in Cyberspace, and they never forget. And, you have no control. You can't get them to erase any data that might be embarrassing to you, and you can't get them to stop harrassing you with email.

I'm tempted to say to the content owners struggling with piracy, "I feel your pain"!

It is past time

It is past time that the W3C called an end to its involvement in web services -- Edd Dumbill

If SOAP becomes DCOM

If SOAP becomes DCOM 2 (or CORBA 2), the only thing that argues for its success is that, unlike DCOM and CORBA, it is supported by Microsoft and the rest of the world. However, when I see how complex web services standards are becoming, I just can't see how the SOAP version of web services will be any more successful than DCOM or CORBA.

Zoe is a email

Zoe is a email client. It's also a email server. And a long term archive. And a search engine. And an application server. All that at once on your desktop. Or server. Or both. Or it doesn't matter because client and server are the same.

The Fate of Online

The Fate of Online Music at Internet World. Are music subscription services giving digital music lovers what they want, or was Napster onto something long ago that is still evading the business strategies of the Big Five? [internetnews.com: Top News]

As I mentioned in an earlier post, in the future consumers will "own" far more music than they do today. I think I might own roughly 100 CDs. That is not a lot of music by the standards of the future. Consumers will want far more music because old music gets stale quickly. Consumers will get more music because the costs of production and distribution will fall. This, of course, means that the relatively few music superstars will not be making as much money from recordings. (They will, however, makes lots of money in other ways: fame has its rewards.) The record labels can make money, too. But they will have to produce more music, and produce and distribute it more efficiently.

Okay, here are two

Okay, here are two of the best articles on REST, both by Paul Prescod.

Second Generation Web Services

REST and the Real World

Apparently, the REST architecture suggests:

1. Use a URI whenever possible
2. Actions on URIs should be simple actions, like the HTTP GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE
3. Standard data formats are important, and in the future, these formats will probably be XML vocabularies

Each URI identifies a resource, which can be a very general concept. In a sense, it is the concept of a name that is the most important. Therefore, you could consider a "resource" to be anything that can be named (by a URI). The stanardized data formats are also very important. The current Web makes extensive use of HTML, GIF, JPEG, and a few other standard formats.

REST is certainly much simpler than SOAP or XML-RPC. It is more flexible, too, since you can enter a URI into the "URI line" of a web browser. You just can't enter a SOAP RPC invocation into a URI line.

Microsoft exec warns court

Microsoft exec warns court of computer frustration [IDG InfoWorld] Kind of funny, isn't it? Computer frustration? What's that? *wink*

It's beginning to look

It's beginning to look (to me) that the REST approach is closer to the Unix philosophy: resources represented by file names and simple components connected by simple mechanisms (<, >, |, etc). The RCP approach is closer to the Windows philosophy: complex applications interacting via COM and scripted by Visual Basic.

If you are serious

If you are serious student of web architecture, then you probably already know about REST. If not, there is a 10-page article (PDF format). I am printing it now, for later reading. Is REST just a purely academic exercise? Or is there something in it for real-world web application developers?

While I don't fully understand REST at this point, my initial impression is that web application design using some of the ideas of REST will be important for web applications to be really successful. RPC interfaces do tend to be rather brittle. Finding a way to make them less brittle would likely make them more "successful".

Here's the problem that I'm hoping REST can solve: If you want to aggregrate a bunch of component web services to create a higher level web service, it may be very difficult because each component service has very specific APIs, object models, etc. For each component service, think of sitting down with 50 pages of documentation that are required reading before you can use that component service effectively. Obviously, in that situation, aggregation is a daunting task. REST is supposedly fundamentally different from RPC. REST is credited with the success of the HTTP/URL/HTML success formula of the current web. Again, I don't fully understand REST, but what I do know seems interesting.

Would web services protocols

Would web services protocols work for inter-application communication on the same desktop?

Will we ever see standard, open XML formats for common desktop data, like address book info or email messages?

Slashdot comment: Hillary's starting

Slashdot comment: Hillary's starting to become the new blink tag of the internet. [refers to Hilary Rosen, CEO of Recording Industry Association of America] I love it!

Boston Globe: Burned? Another

Boston Globe: Burned? Another article reporting about a bunch of musicians whining and complaining about "not getting paid". Yes, those who create and distribute intellectual property should be paid. No, intellectual property is not the same thing as physical property. For one thing, intellectual property can be very easily duplicated, while physical property cannot. More importantly, intellectual property is a matter of public policy. We as a society decide the laws of IP in a way much different from the laws of physical property. With physical property, the law is more inflexible: if you take my car, you have clearly stolen it. No need for an army of lawyers. For IP, the laws are subject to interpretation, and can vary over time. With IP, there is sufficient fuzziness to allow legions of lawyers to get involved.

At the extreme of IP are patents, which allow one to "own" an idea. If we apply the musicians' simple arguments to the owning of ideas, it actually sounds a little inane: "If you steal my idea, that's no different than stealing my physical property! Stealing is stealing!" I think that stealing a musician's creative musical work is a more tangible instance of stealing than stealing an idea. But neither is as tangible as stealing physical property.

Musicians and record labels have never had total control over their creative works, as a matter of public policy. They are granted limited rights. The law says that a consumer may make a back-up copy of a copyrighted work. The law also says that a comsumer is allowed to timeshift publicly broadcast content. Those are just some instances of the rights that are reserved for consumers.

I keep thinking that somehow consumers and content owners will "meet in the middle" in some kind of compromise. However, as a consumer, I see no signs that the content owners want to meet consumers halfway. They want to grab more rights than they had before, at the expense of the rights of consumers. Consider the legal music subscription services: you have to pay again and again for the same music. Consider that the record labels want controls built into portable music devices so that they can allow the playing of music for a limited number of times, or until a certain cut-off date. Consider that they want to make it a crime to make a back-up copy of a copyrighted work. There are too many examples to list them all here.

I think musicians should be compensated for their work. But there's a big power struggle going on right now, and I hope that we can arrive at a comprise that we can live with.

Following up on the

Following up on the previous post, we all know the standards game: it's a delicate game of coopetition. Cooperate, but don't cooperate too much. It couldn't hurt to hire a political consultant or two, as they probably have some highly transferable skills that could help in playing the standards game.

OpenStandards.net: Web Services There

OpenStandards.net: Web Services There are some interesting points in this article. Microsoft clearly has no choice but to play along with open standards in web services. If Microsoft were to do otherwise, their proprietary web services technology would be adopted no more than DCOM has been adopted. As I was reading this article, it occurred to me: SOAP, unlike CORBA and DCOM, is being supported by Microsoft and Sun and IBM and BEA and etc. That observation alone would seem to suggest that SOAP will achieve much more than CORBA or DCOM. A few years back, we used to wonder what distributed computing would be like if Microsoft supported CORBA. Maybe with SOAP, we will get a chance to see what the world of distributed computing is like when Microsoft plays along, instead of competing with a proprietary technology.

Looks like Verisign ought

Looks like Verisign ought to hire a usability expert and revise their site. The product names are confusing. Where do you go to get a certificate? Is a ServerID the same thing as an SSL certificate? All the tutorial and reference material on secure web servers refers to SSL certificates. Could the marketing department at Verisign be so stupid that they decide to call an "SSL certificate" a "Server ID"? I must say, I am very confused. Now, the options to me include links with these labels: Buy, Try, Guide, Price, Tour, Renew. Which one do I click on for more information? Trial and error shows that Try, Guide, and Tour just show me a form that wants all kinds of personal information. I'm sorry, but asking for this kind of information is a little premature. I fill out a form for the Guide, entering completely fictional information. What I get is just marketing speak. Their web team and marketing team need to read the book Don't Make Me Think, then go back and rewrite all that stuff.

Talk about making a potential customer feel uncomfortable! I have a feeling that if Verisign weren't so dominant in the market for SSL certificates, they would be more customer-friendly. What arrogance!

Somewhere, sometime, some company

Somewhere, sometime, some company is going to figure out the right formula for Internet advertising. The right formula means the right amount of control for Internet users, and a very clear, mutual understanding between the company and the user. The user agrees to view advertising in exchange for content. The company provides content and advertising that is most likely to interest the user. This has always been the promise of advertising on the Internet. However, the mutual understanding and trust is still a long way off. Users like me have almost no trust in Internet-based businesses. Other users are way too trusting and get burned. [Stop! Look before you click - news.com] This mutual understanding and trust -- the right balance -- will only be achieved through a process of trial and error, constant refinement of business practices, and user learning experiences. In short, it will evolve over time.

It seems there are still too many companies that are willing to prey upon their naive users. This is understandable among the lesser known companies. The better known companies should show more restraint. Building trust with your customer base takes time. Losing that trust can happen overnight. Yahoo comes to mind, with their decision to change the marketing preferrences of all their registered users.

When I renewed my membership with the IEEE, that organization encouraged me to allow direct mailing from advertisers. They were very honest about the deal: advertisers pay the IEEE in order to send out direct mailings, and that pay helps to keep the membership dues low. I decided to opt in, giving the IEEE permission to provide my address to advertisers, because I like low dues. As an added benefit, I knew the advertising would be about engineering products or services, not furniture sales or personal hygeine products.

When Internet-based businesses develop real trust with users, I imagine that relationships will arise that are similar to my relationship with the IEEE. Namely, that the company will lay out the proposition in clear terms, and the user will weigh the terms and decide to accept or decline. It may take a decade -- who knows -- but someday we will get there.

Yesterday I discovered Yarrow,

Yesterday I discovered Yarrow, a free tool from Counterpane Internet Security (Bruce Schneier, et. al.) for generating cryptographically secure random bits. The problem I have with Yarrow, is that it depends on mouse movements and key presses. Yes, those may be good sources of randomness, but I think there must be a less intrusive way to collect randomness. How about collecting random bits without requiring anything from the user? Completely behind the scenes?

There is Intel's hardware random number generator, which works only on motherboards that use the Intel chipsets. That's a very good solution if you have a motherboard based on the Intel chipset and you don't mind installing the driver software.

On Linux and BSD variants, there is /dev/random or something similar. This is a very good solution.

But, what about Solaris? I am thinking about developing my own solution. It will gather kernel statistics using the kstat routines, and it will gather process statistics using by reading from files in /proc. All this information will be mixed together using the SHA-1 hash algorithm. Finally, and this is the real deal: it will use gethrtime to collect lots of timings at a very high precision. On my sparc machine, the precision is 180 ns. It seems that there is a lot of unpredictability in how much time is spent executing system calls. A program could therefore gather a lot of unpredictability by timing the system calls. Not only that, but you could estimate the amount of entropy by repeating the exact same system call multiple times and collecting statistics on the timings. It makes perfect sense to me, because if an attacker wanted to attack your random number source, he would run the same sequence of system calls, generate the timings, and use those timings to reduce the search space. If you collect stats on the timings, you can estimate the extent to which the attacker could limit the search space. For example, if a particular system call takes either 3 or 4 us with equal probability, that is one bit of randomness. An attacker could limit his search space to 3 or 4 for that particular source. But if you have 256 such sources, then the attacker has a very large search space! (In fact, my measurements indicate much more randomness than this simple example implies.) If I implement this, what it will provide is a source of random bits and a (conservative) estimate of the amount of entropy, with minimal intrusiveness (no mouse movements required). The only downside is that it will be very system-specific.

DevX C++ Zone: ...

DevX C++ Zone: ... about 3 million of the approximately 9.5 million software developers worldwide use C++. Java still comes in a distant second or third at about 50 percent to 70 percent of the C++ developer numbers, depending on which study you look at.

You mean I'm one in 3 million!

Slashdot: Researchers have discovered

Slashdot: Researchers have discovered that across the entire web, links are distributed according to a "power law" which leads to "rich get richer" or "winner's take all" behaviour where a small number of sites get the vast majority of links and traffic.

This is interesting! A few years ago, we heard that Amazon.com and many other e-tailers would not be able to achieve good profit margins on the web, because the competition is just a simple mouse-click away. Then we heard about "mind-share". Now, we hear that because of a "power law", or "winners take all", or "rich get richer", that Amazon.com has a huge market share, and that it will be difficult for any competitor to dislodge them. Sounds like a 180-degree turn from the original thinking of the web.

Deep Linking Returns to

Deep Linking Returns to Surface. The Danish Newspaper Publishers' Association is trying to stop a news service from linking to stories within its website in a case some fear may alter the natural course of the Web. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]

I sure hope the courts take into consideration the "tradition" of the World Wide Web. First, it was the World Wide Web. Then, it became the World Wide Web Controlled By Commercial Interests. In that order. In my opinion, if the commercial interests want to use the web, they should adapt to the web, and not try to force the web to adapt to them.

Sneakemail. The solution for

Sneakemail. The solution for throwaway email addresses. Never hurts to have a bunch of 'em.

Another Big MS Browser

Another Big MS Browser Hole Found. Don't click that back button if you're using Internet Explorer on a PC running Windows: You're opening yourself up to a potential malicious hack. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]

The thought just occurred

The thought just occurred to me. What if, because we Linux users are such a small minority, that the bullying big companies will just leave us alone. Think of the mass of normal users as sheep. :-) They will be hearded around by the big companies, while those who are technologically more savvy will make their own way. In the future, the sheep will have Windows Media and copy protection. Those of us who are die hard Linux fans will have MP3, because Windows Media won't be available for Linux.

On a related note, more Microsoft control over technologies like audio and video won't necessarily mean death to Linux on the desktop. The prices that media companies plan to charge, if current offerings are any indication, will be beyond the means of the less-wealthy PC users, especially those in underdeveloped countries. Those are the same users who will adopt Linux.

Microsoft looks to extend

Microsoft looks to extend digital media reach (news.com) Microsoft's strategems with media formats are particularly insidious. What better way to impose a "tax" on the Internet than to own the media formats. If Microsoft succeeds in controlling the media files formats, they accomplish to goals: First, they lock in their operating system dominance. They even extend their operating system dominance by push WinCE for non-PC devices. Second, they collect a tax on the Internet. The tax won't be paid directly by consumers; it will be paid by companies that have any kind of stake in the Internet media space.

A really lame patent:

A really lame patent: Method of swinging on a swing. See discussion on Slashdot.

Is it possible that there is a snowball effect in the area of patents? The reasoning goes like this: a few lame patents are awarded, like patents for business processes. The companies that receive these lame patents use them successfully to advance their business. Other companies take note, and apply for lame patents to advance their business. Because the patent office is then swamped with so many patent applications, it can't conduct adequate reviewing of the applications. Therefore the patent office awards even more lame patents.

The bottleneck, of course, is in the courts. They can nullify bad patents, but it takes a long time.

Posted today on slashdot:

Posted today on slashdot:

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." -- Robert Heinlein

Amen!

Is it just me?

Is it just me? Or do others feel that something is not right when analysts talk about a Big Company as though it were a growth company. There is a lot of talk about AOL, and a lot of articles, like this one from the New York Times. So, AOL's subscriber growth rate has started to decline. What did analysts expect? Yes, you have an initial period of strong growth, then you reach saturation and the growth rate slows.

I think the thing that bothers me about talk of Big Companies as if they were growth companies is the notion that Big Companies are just too powerful already. The idea that they can continue to grow suggests that they will continue to control more and more of our lives. I prefer to see growth from smaller innovative companies.

Salon: In Defense of

Salon: In Defense of Copyright Goldberg's argument is that the Constitution delegates matters of copyright policy to the Congress, and that the Supreme Court should not raise the Copyright Term Extension Act to a Constitutional level. I myself believe in a conservative role of the Court. The Supreme Court Justices are an unelected group that should not nullify the democratic process by second guessing the Congress. However, I still find it compelling that the Congress has once again extended the copyright term for existing works. I think the Court should consider the possibility that no new works will ever be released into the public domain, which is clearly unconstitutional. If Congress is planning to change the term of copyrights whenever they are about to expire -- heck, why don't they just pass a law now that says copyright terms are unlimited from now on. Obviously, the Court would have to consider the term "limited times." If no works have passed into the public domain since 19-whatever because Congress has repeatedly extended the terms of copyrights, then I think the issue should be raised to a Constitutional level.

Goldberg makes some arguments about why extending the copyright term is good. The problem is, that his arguments are also arguments about why works should never be released into the public domain. His arguments will no doubt be presented once again 15 years from now, when Congress is again asked to extend the term. Because his arguments argue for continual extension of copyright terms, I tend to think they are arguments against the Constitution, which specifically says "limited times." The Court must acknowledge that the Framers intended works to eventually pass into the public domain. To the extent that Congress prevents works from passing into the public domain, they are violating the Constitution, even if the Constitution delegates to them the matter of copyright policy.

Just wondering... What must

Just wondering... What must going through the heads of Jerry Yang and David Filo. You know, the guys that founded Yahoo. There was a time when we all thought Yahoo was really cool. It was absolutely the most efficient way to find really good information on the Web.

I rarely visit Yahoo anymore. Sometimes I go to Yahoo just to see what it's like at the present time, hoping that maybe it has reversed course and could once again become the Yahoo that we all knew and loved, although I know that will never happen. What I find are just pop-up ads, sponsorsed links, and blinky banners, which only serve to make the useful information that much harder to find. Does anyone pay attention to banner ads or pop-up ads?

And poor Jerry and David. Their company has been taken over. Okay, well, well they aren't really poor.

Microsoft dumps HailStorm This

Microsoft dumps HailStorm This is reported today in the New York Times. I'm sure similar stories will appear very soon in many other web sites.

Microsoft is still thinking about licensing the software to corporations, who could use it for their own networks. There is a problem with this. If a vulnerability is found in the software, that means all deployments of the software are at risk. Multiple implementations of a technology is a very good thing from a security point of view, though perhaps not from an economic point of view.

What makes more sense to me, though, would be a service where third party plug-ins could be purchased and installed into a standard personal application server. This sounds a lot like HTTP/CGI/Servlets doesn't it? For accessible address books, email, file storage, etc why not a personal application server? Most users have quite powerful computers that could easily pull the load of a personal application server. For users with always-on Internet access, they could host the personal application server on their own computer. For other users, including those with always-on Internet connections who want managed service, there could be hosting providers that offer the service. Think of it as a Personal HailStorm, where you have the choice of software you want to install, and hopefully even a choice of service providers and third-party plug-in vendors.

When will IBM buy

When will IBM buy Sun? When asked about the desire to own Java, IBM's Director for eBusiness Standards Strategy Bob Sutor said "I don't know about owning it, but we'd sure like to see it open sourced." [ ZDNet]

It is pretty amazing how many open source projects IBM controls, in the sense of having a significant sway over the project's direction. In fact, I think we could refer to the relationship between a big company like IBM and the thousands of independent open source programmers as symbiosis: each group benefits in some way.

SJ Mercury: Andreessen: Copy

SJ Mercury: Andreessen: Copy protection efforts are doomed. As film studios and recording studios urge Congress to extend copy protection to every home entertainment device, Andreessen said the entertainment industry need look no further than the software industry's own expensive, failed attempts at encryption to realize it is ineffective at stopping piracy. [Tomalak's Realm]

Mark Andreessen is right on. But let me take Mark's comments a little further. Extremely high volume and very low cost is where the music industry is heading. This is a big paradigm shift for music industry executives. As the article mentions: "Within five years, that same $600 PC would have the capacity to hold 12,800 hours of music -- a veritable Tower Records available at the click of a mouse." Music lovers have an insatiable appetite for music. They don't want to listen to the same tunes over and over, and they get bored very quickly with music. There is a never ending search for new music. Contrast that with the music industry's thinking: release a song and continue to reap revenue from that song for decades. Also, contrast that with the new legitimate digital music services, MusicNet and PressPlay, offered by the major labels. Heck, for $10/month you get a whopping 100 songs! (sarcasm intended). When the music industry starts to realize that music lovers are always wanting more new music, they will be able to start making piles of money. As long as they continue thinking interms of $20 CDs that continue bringing in revenue for four decades, they'll just have to keep whining about piracy.

Loki: A promising plan

Loki: A promising plan gone terribly wrong [Linux And Main]

A fascinating story about the now defunct start-up Loki.

Don't Buy Hollywood's Broadband

Don't Buy Hollywood's Broadband Script [ BusinessWeek Online]

Hollings' bill isn't about helping consumers. It's about protecting Hollywood. And using the broadband mess to address the digital-copyright issue is just a ploy. Hollywood has already shown it isn't interested simply in protecting digital versions of copyrighted works -- it also wants to control how those works are used.

XML and Emergent Simplicity[ITWorld.com]

XML and Emergent Simplicity[ITWorld.com]

As to the first question, I believe that XML could not have happened without SGML. If not for the groundwork laid by the SGML work, the map of the territory that it created, then XML would have contained a lot more mistakes. This seems to reference another fundamental rule of the universe that can be stated thus: Complexity is a necessary but not sufficient pre-cursor for the emergence of simplicity.

Three other examples of this law apart from SGML/XML spring to mind: C++ to Java, ISO Seven Layered Model to TCP/IP, and X.500 to LDAP. Interestingly, the metamorphosis from complex, niche standards to simple, pervasive standards seems to take about a decade or so. Perhaps the greatest progress in standards setting we could make would be reducing this incubation period.

One of the things I learned from my days as a mathematician, is that the first proof of anything is very complex. But after a few decades the proof can often be stripped down to a few paragraphs. Abstraction in mathematics is quite relative. What is quite well understood today was considered highly abstruse decades ago.

Just How Trusty Is

Just How Trusty Is Truste?. Even one of the originators of the Internet's wannabe consumer seal -- ubiquitous technologist Esther Dyson -- is disappointed in the way the service has panned out. By Paul Boutin. [Wired News]

Enron had Arthur Andersen. Yahoo has Truste, the nonprofit privacy organization whose seal of approval is designed to assuage consumer fears about giving personal information to websites.

Everybody Gets Hacked But

Everybody Gets Hacked But You. An FBI survey shows 90 percent of respondents have been hacked and cracked in the past year -- but the general consumer still has little to worry about, experts say. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]

"Except for a virus delivered by e-mail, most home users are unlikely to be affected by the security holes that have been plaguing the corporate world," Paul McNabb, deputy director of the Center for Advanced Research in Information Security, said. "Very few hackers have much interest in attacking home computers."

Wow, I hate this kind of talk. "You're just a home user. You don't really need to worry about security. Just don't open any email attachments and you'll be fine." Then, baamm! Home users get hit in a big way. This is called reactive security.

I take a different view. If you have an always on Internet connection, even if it's a dial-up modem connection, you need to pay attention to security.

pyRXP - the fastest

pyRXP - the fastest XML parser? (ReportLab) [IBM DeveloperWorks: XML News]

pyRXP, like the underlying RXP parser, is available under the GNU General Public License. If you wish to use it in closed-source commercial products, you need to obtain a separate license from us and also from University of Edinburgh; email info@reportlab.com for more information.

Yet another product available under dual licensing! You can use it under terms of the GPL if you are writing free software. Alternatively, you can get a commercial license.

Time Warner: Bandwidth hogs,

Time Warner: Bandwidth hogs, pay up! The all-you-can-eat bandwidth buffet that cable modem users enjoy may soon come to an end. [Network World Fusion]

So, what do the cable companies think that we want cable modems for, just to get our email faster? On the one hand, they promote broadband access by telling you that you can view video clips, download MP3s, listen to audio broadcasts -- in short, that you get lots of broadband goodies -- then they want to charge you if you use your broadband connection to do broadband things.

On the other hand, the cable companies are the companies that are accustomed to raising your prices on a regular basis for cable TV. Why not raise prices regularly for Internet access, too?

Larry and the Supremes

Larry and the Supremes On Feb. 19, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear the appeal of Eric Eldred, who runs a small organization dedicated to putting public domain literature online, against the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. [Network World Fusion]

I would love to see the Copyright Term Extension Act eliminated. But how can the Supreme Court do that? The U.S. Constitution gives the U.S. Congress the duty to establish copyright law. The Constitution says "for limited times." If Congress says 95 years is "limited times," what's the Supreme Court to do. The Supreme Court can't just say, "Hey, 'limited times' means no more than N years." That would be a wonderful example of judicial activism -- also known as "legislating from the bench." However, as Scott Bradner points out, the Supreme Court could find the Copyright Term Extension Act unconstitutional because it applies to current works. Now, that makes sense to me. If the goal of copyright is to promote the continual creation of new works, how does extending the copyright term of existing works promote the creation of new works? (The answer: it doesn't.) Therefore, the CTEA could be unconstitutional because it appears to extend copyrights on existing works indefinitely. Makes perfect sense to me. On the other hand, if Congress rewrites the law to say that the new copyright terms apply to new works only, gee, then I'll just feel so inspired to create new works!

Press Play to Access

Press Play to Access the Future
Its success has far outstripped expectations, and as a result of the DVD's booming popularity since its introduction in 1997, the audience's relationship to movies has changed. The home video was merely a small-screen version of a movie. The DVD is interactive--so much so that to the studios' alarm, technically sophisticated film buffs with a little determination and access to the Internet can relate to a movie in ways that were impossible only a few years ago, including moving and removing scenes and characters from a movie. [CalendarLive]

I love DVDs. I love being able to buy favorite movies at Walmart or Target for $15, $20, or $25. I think that at those prices, they offer real value to consumers. Compare the cost of a DVD to the cost of taking a family of four to the movies, which probably costs more than $40 easily, if you buy any popcorn or sodas.

Exception: I hate many Disney DVDs that try to force you to watch 4-5 minutes of previews.

A unified theory of

A unified theory of software evolution
"Less and less effort is spent on fixing original design flaws; more and more is spent on fixing flaws introduced by earlier fixes," wrote Brooks. "As time passes, the system becomes less and less well-ordered. Sooner or later the fixing ceases to gain any ground. Each forward step is matched by a backward one. Although in principle usable forever, the system has worn out as a base for progress." [Salon]

Personally, I found that refactoring is a hard sell to managers. Refactoring means that no new features are added, while parts of the code are cleaned-up, even re-written, followed by a retesting of features. It's the "no new features until" part that managers have a problem with. Because most managers won't agree to an occasional two-week (or longer) period of refactoring, many (but not all) developers try to accomplish some refactoring during a time when they are assigned to add new features. When no refactoring happens, code eventually reaches a point where adding a new feature always adds a lot of new bugs. And often it is the developer who added the new feature who is credited with the bug, even though the bug may be more fairly credited to another developer who wrote code months earlier.

Agency Pushes Digital TV

Agency Pushes Digital TV Shift
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael K. Powell yesterday exerted new pressure on the television industry to speed the rollout of digital television, challenging it to meet a set of comprehensive deadlines. [WashingtonPost.com]

Oh, sure. Everybody will be so happy when HDTV arrives. Not! Not when they find out that they can no longer time shift programming without paying extra for it. Not when they find that they can no longer record programs for their own personal viewing. Just let me have the old technology, for Pete's sake.

I mentioned yesterday about

I mentioned yesterday about the content owners being greedy. I should probably explain that statement better. I don't mean to pronounce a moral judgement on content owners. Regular expressions are "greedy", but they are not bad. :-) However, when I say that the content owners -- specifically corporations like Disney -- are greedy, I just mean that they try to earn as much money as they can, and that is not wrong. But, when formulating public policy on copyrights and technology, the government must take this greediness into consideration. It is the nature of corporations to be greedy. It is the responsibility of governments to make sure that the greediness does not get out of control. The Founding Fathers put checks and balances into our form of government because they recognized that humans act according to human nature. It would be wise for the government now to put checks and balances in place to limit the greediness of the content owners. I think it would be a big mistake to pass the CBDTPA, as it allows content owners to take advantage of technology to grow their profits at the expense of consumers.

Is your e-mail watching

Is your e-mail watching you?. Marketers may be tracking your moves online through e-mail messages that share the look and feel of Web pages--and often without regard for safeguards that protect consumer privacy. [CNET News.com]

Yes, email marketing companies use cookies and web bugs to track your actions on the email they send you. We've known this for a few years. Why haven't the companies that make email client software figured this out? Here's a hint: if you see a tag like this

<img src="http://spamsource.com/image.gif?id=873905">

guess what? That's a web bug. Else why would a GIF image need a query string (the part of the URL the follows the question mark).

Here's an idea. How about if we use HTML mail in simple ways, like using bold and italic for emphasis, and bulleted lists for organization. Let's drop the tables, forms, images with HTTP URLs, etc.

News.Com: Microsoft preps content

News.Com: Microsoft preps content locks for devices. [Scripting News]

This amazes me. The content owners whine and complain about piracy on the Internet, yet they clearly appear to be overly greedy. One of the reasons they won't allow content to be moved to portable digital devices is because they don't have a system clock, which they require so that they can "expire" the content after a certain time, and because they don't have the persistent storage to count how many times a song has been played, again, so that they can expire the song after a certain number of plays. So, in the old world of CDs, you could buy a song and listen to it until your CD wore out. In the new world of digital content, you have many new restrictions that are put there by greedy companies that want to get even more money from you.

So, copy protection isn't just about stopping piracy, it's about new experiments in ways to extract more money from consumers.

In addition to your cable TV bill, your cell phone bill, and your ISP bill, get ready to pay $25 per month to listen to music.

Slashdot: Seeking Arguments Against

Slashdot: Seeking Arguments Against the CBDTPA How about this as an argument against the CBDTPA: The law would not guarantee that the content owners would make their content available in digital form. If they don't think the government-mandated copy protection technologies are sufficient, then they just refuse to release their content onto the Internet. A slight variation on this theme: they release their content, but it is so tightly controlled or so expensive that consumers don't buy it.