Consumer broadband prices keep rising. According to a new study, the trend is likely to continue, as providers of high-speed Net access consolidate--an evolution that typically means less competition and higher prices. [CNET News.com]
Yes, broadband prices are rising. What do you expect from cable companies, who are used to raising prices? Or from the monopoly phone companies? Cable modem Internet access from Comcast in my neighborhood costs $55 per month plus $5 for modem rental. For that price, there is no personal web hosting (although it was promised months ago), no Usenet access, lots of restrictions against running "servers", no dial-up access for use when the cable connection is not working.
If you are a music or movie company, you gotta love it. If you are a Silicon Valley company, you gotta hate it.
Here's a telling quote from the article:
"We expect that this trend of increasing prices will hamper the widespread adoption of broadband services and that the vast majority of users will continue to access the Internet via dial-up connections for the foreseeable future," ARS analyst Mark Kersey said in a statement.
<sarcasm>Perhaps these cable companies just don't get it. Don't they know they are supposed to be the savior of the high tech industry?! What, do they think this is some kind of cash cow?</sarcasm>
Okay, I'm going to go out on a limb here. I'm going to say that the real killer application for broadband Internet access is telecommuting. If you live in a growing metropolitan area, like I do, then you know what I'm talking about. The only way to really work effectively at home is with a broadband Internet connection. And as traffic gets worse, telecommuting will be promoted more and more. Entertainment via broadband Internet doesn't stand a chance.
I wonder, don't these phone and cable companies know that all they are selling is bandwidth? Jeez, it's a pure, undifferentiated commodity. And being that, it has to become cheaper over time, doesn't it? Like computing power? So, what's the future of broadband Internet? It's like the classic question of an unstopable force meeting an immovable object. Or like a jelly toast tied to the back of a falling cat. In this case, we have a pure, undifferentiated commodity -- bandwidth -- which, like almost all technology, should become cheaper over time. (Think of long distance phone service.) Doesn't everyone concur that bandwidth will get cheaper and cheaper for the forseeable future? On the other hand, we have phone companies and cable companies that know no other laws of economics than that of monopoly pricing power. In the end, what prevails?
Regarding REST, I'm not sure I understand how a REST web service can be as secure as a SOAP web service. My problem is with URLs, which are typically cached all over the place. You can infer a lot more information about a bunch of URLs that were invoked when interacting with a REST-based service. Consider accessing one's email. If you get your email via a REST service, then one can get a lot more information from URLs saved proxy logs. Presumably, there is a GET request to a different URL for each message that you read, and from a POST request, you may infer that a message was sent. If you get your messages via a SOAP service, the proxy logs will show only repeated requests to a single URL, so it's much harder to infer information. In another situation, a REST service would assign a URL to a receipt or other sensitive document, which would give crackers a good starting point for their attempt to get sensitive information (such as guessing a password).
In researching some HTTP caching issues, I came across this interesting paper[pdf] : Clarifying the Fundamentals of HTTP [Simon Fell]
This paper should be required reading for anyone who wants to really understand HTTP.
Why is HTTP so complex? Well, if you stick with serving simple web pages in a single language, and you don't require compression, partial transfer of content, and so on, then HTTP is quite simple. In perhaps 99% of current usage, it is this simple. But HTTP allows for some very complex situations, such as this: you request an "image" at a certain URL, you specify the formats you prefer -- say PNG, GIF, TIFF, in that order -- and the server chooses a format and sends it. In the real world, however, one would have a different URL for the PNG version, the GIF version, and the TIFF version of the image. It's the same with HTML pages. According to HTTP, you could have a single URL for a web page in multiple languages. In the real world, designers assign a different URL to the English version, to the Spanish Version, to the French version, and so on.
Fortune: 'This Is War'. They fear the government could muck up the computer industry royally. Moreover, they question whether it's their responsibility to rescue an industry that has historically been more concerned with cranking out Frankenstein sequels than embracing change. [Tomalak's Realm]
This is a pretty good article on the issue of copy protection and PCs. However, it makes so many of the common mistakes. If sales of CD-RW drives is increasing, that means computer users are buying them to copy audio CDs, right? No! Users are buying them because it is the natural replacement for the aging floppy drive. What other alternative is there for backups?
The content owners always claim that their actions are motivated by the desire to eliminate piracy. But their idea of piracy is quite a bit different from what most consumers think of as piracy. Consumers think of piracy as getting copyrighted digital content from the Internet illegally (that is, without having paid for it). The content owners think of piracy as playing a movie in your bedroom when you should only be able to play it in your living room (unless you pay them to play it in your bedroom and living room). The content owners think it is piracy when you buy a CD and make a backup up copy of it, or make an additional copy to keep in your car, or convert it to an MP3 file to play on your computer. The content owners think it is piracy when you don't watch four minutes of previews before you watch a DVD movie you purchased.
So, there's a real disconnect, because there are two different meanings of the term "piracy." We say "Piracy is illegal," and we all agree. But then the content owners say, you made a copy of a CD for your car, and that's piracy, and therefore, that's illegal. So, before we start any kind of debate about copy protection, let's first define our terms. Better yet, let's expose how the content owners owners define "piracy," so that consumers (and legislators) won't be duped.
And let's be clear about another fact. Content owners do not have, and have never had, a right to absolute control over their content. Beginning with the constitution, which allows for "limited" ownership of content, and continuing with legislation and judicial doctrine, consumers have always had some rights with regard to content. And content always passes into the public domain after some period of time.
Dave Winer on the use of the term "third party developer":
The term is an anachronism, dating back to the mainframe era, when every computer system was a major project, involving engineering from the customer (the first party) and the computer vendor (number two). In unusual situations, they would use software produced by a third party, an outsider to the deal. It probably wasn't fair then, but I don't know about that, it was before my time. That the term survives is not a good thing because it breeds disrespect. If you have a platform and want developers, fade into the background, make them the first party if you need parties at all, or just drop the concept and call them developers.
A new twist on spam: ask fans to send the unsolicited mail for you, then deny that the company is sending spam. Technically, when a company asks fans to send a chain letter to their friends, the company is not sending spam. Of course, the company will still provoke the same ill will as it would have if it had sent spam.
Microsoft program meets some resistance. With a summer deadline looming, about two-thirds of the company's largest customers have not signed up for the new Software Assurance program. [CNET News.com]
Companies will pay more licensing fees to Microsoft to upgrade their office software to get new features that no one needs or uses. It doesn't make sense. Most companies would be doing just find with Office 95.
Children taking interest in Web ads. Most of the click-through traffic for online ads may come from children, mainly because they can't tell an ad from other Web site elements, according to a recent study. [CNET News.com]
I love this quote:
While the study says adults develop a facility for ignoring ads called "banner blindness," colorful animations and mouse rollovers used in Web ads draw children's' attention.
Yes, adults develop "banner blindness."
What does the filler text "lorem ipsum" mean?
Lorem ipsum was part of a passage from Cicero, specifically De finibus bonorum et malorum, a treatise on the theory of ethics written in 45 BC. The original reads, Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit ... ("There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain ...").
Apparently, this filler text has been used possibly as far back as the 1500s.
Becoming a .pro has its price. The company in charge of registering new domain names for professionals was given the green light Wednesday, but doctors, lawyers and accountants will have to pay a premium for the .pro privilege. [news.com]
We heard arguments that a .adult (or .xxx or .sex) top-level domain was not a possibility. According to the critics, it would be too hard to police, and it would be too hard for administrators to separate adult content from non-adult content. It seems to me that the same argument applies to a .pro domain, yet there is going to be a .pro domain.
Just one question, what about .pro for computer professionals? (Not that I would want to pay $300 per year!)
Allchin stands up for Windows security. The states' antitrust remedy would expose Microsoft's OSes to hackers and viruses, and could further the illegal spread of digital content, according to Windows exec Jim Allchin. [CNET News.com]
Many Microsoft's arguments in court come across as laughable. How is having more that one choice in media players, in email clients, or in other software products bad for security? It seems to me that uniformity is bad for security, diversity is good for security. Concerning DRM, if they depend on code secrecy to protect digital content, they must not have a very secure technology.
IBM has unseated Oracle, study says. Big Blue has surpassed Oracle as the leading seller of database-management software, according to a study to be released later this week and obtained by CNET News.com. [CNET News.com]
Oracle is still number one, by a commanding lead, in Unix databases, but is now number two behind IBM in the total database market (Unix + Windows).
I don't know why, but I like IBM. For a big company, they're not bad. Is it because they don't have a prominent personality (no Gates, Balmer, McNealy, or Ellison)? Or is it because they are Linux and open source friendly?
A Look Inside Jaguar. The next version of Mac OSX, code named Jaguar, claims to have a sophisticated spam filter. Cool! Here's what they say:
One of the hazards of online life is the constant bombardment of unsolicited email, a.k.a. spam. Most spam programs use unsophisticated filters to block email. The Mail program in Jaguar, however, uses an advanced semantic inference engine to actually understand the structure of spam. Mail already knows the format and content of many typical spam letters, and also learns what you consider junk mail. It then bases future blocks on content, not email addresses.
Business Week: Lawrence Lessig: The "Dinosaurs" Are Taking Over. They've succeeded in making Washington believe this is a binary choice -- between perfect protection or no protection. No one is seriously arguing for no protection. They are arguing for a balance that avoids the phenomenon we are seeing now -- one where the last generation of technology controls the next generation of industry. [Tomalak's Realm]
Is it a 'magic box' or a high-tech hoax? Northeast Florida man attracted millions from investors who now say they were scammed.
This is a fascinating story. To really understand it, one would have to have been aware of the mania that took place in the late 1990s.
The guy put a VCR in a computer case and strung a coax cable through the power cord. Then he convinced investors that he discovered a way to pump bits through an ordinary phone line at speeds exceeding fiber cable. As proof, his demo included streaming video. It's sad, when you think about those who lost their investments. It's also rather funny.
The blink tag is back. There was nothing more annoying than the blink tag that Netscape created to afflict us all. Now there's flash, and many ad developers use Flash to create these annoying blinking ads. It's like 1997 all over again.
My favorite quote:
The problem with capitalism, see, is that in creating new markets you usually destroy older markets. Kellner and Hollywood just don't seem to understand that. As Copyfight put it more eloquently (Speak Softly and Carry a Big Sledgehammer), Hollywood has fallen in love with the creative and distribution possibilities of the Internet, but feel betrayed that those same possibilities will destroy many of their existing business models.
It's nice to know that the Hewlett name will not be struck from the new HP. :-)
How to collect addresses for sending spam. It's not hard. You don't need the harvesting tools from ElcomSoft. No, you don't have to spider the web or grep through newsgroups. All you have to do is farm out an email address to spammers, then grep the emails they send, since they often include multiple addresses in the To or CC line. Alternatively, set up your own computer to act as an open relay for the first N messages -- to fool a spammer into thinking he has an open relay -- then collect the SMTP recipients.
Okay, I really don't like spam. And I'm not trying to offer advice would-be spammers. I'm just commenting on how, once you get on a spammer's list, you might soon end up on every spammers list.
XML documents on the run, part 3 (JavaWorld.com) [IBM DeveloperWorks: XML News]
This article contains a performance comparison between various XML SAX parsers and the new XML pull parsers. The Piccolo SAX parser wins in every case. Xerces and Crimson SAX parsers are very slow (relative to the others) for small documents, but actually beat some of the other parsers for large documents.
Sun's OpenOffice open for business. A competitor to Microsoft's ubiquitous Office desktop software, Sun's OpenOffice is the open-source version of the company's StarOffice software suite. [CNET News.com]
I used StarOffice 5.2 and hated the MDI interface. I started usingOpenOffice 641c (the "beta" version of OpenOffice 1.0), and it's buggy in some ways. I was glad that 641c did away with the MDI interface.
I have a legitimate version of Microsoft Office 97 that I could install have not. OpenOffice 641 works okay for opening most Word documents.
I think it's good that Sun plans to charge for StarOffice. I hope the cost is very low. Nevertheless, they have to pay the salaries of those developers who are working on StarOffice. Charging for StarOffice may also be important for it to be accepted by real world corporations, many of which have a bias against free software.
I got CppUnit working with simple classes I'm writing. I used Junit with Java classes, and it's nice to have a similar tool to use with C++. It pretty nice that it uses static object instances to automatically register the test suites for running.
I find myself becoming more and more a REST believer. Maybe I just want to be different, to buck the trend, to dismiss the hype. It seems to me that SOAP web services get too much hype because, as they say, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. For many people in IT, SOAP is the solution for just about everything.
I can think of many situations where REST is much more appropriate that SOAP. For example, there are many binary document formats, and SOAP is just not good for handling binary data. How about an image database (JPEG or TIFF files), or a voice messaging system (WAVE files), or even a repository of office documents (Word and Excel files)? Yes, I know about DIME, but it seems like a kludge compared to a simple HTTP solution.
With SOAP, things get complicated when you start to design a really good API. There are so many layers. Consider the issue of error handling. At each layer, there is the possibility of an error. So, error handling must go something like this:
With REST, error handling stops at step 2. In fact, with REST, the errors in step 2 and step 3 are actually combined, because errors at the application layer are reported as HTTP errors. In SOAP, HTTP is not the application layer; it's another layer of communication that can get in the way.