ABCNews.com Video Goes Premium. The move follows CNN's lead as the media giants look to better monetize their online properties. [internetnews.com: Top News]
Here's a good example of why broadband is going to be very expensive. In my neighborhood, Comcast charges $60 per month for cable modem Internet service. Problem is, that includes no content! I like to think of what I could get for $60 per month for cable TV. For broadband content, cable modem Internet can't touch cable TV.
Microsoft upgrade plan gets cold shoulder [CNET News.com]
You would think that there would be downward pressure on prices of software products, because the marginal cost for a product is very small, and because many technology budgets are being reduced. For some software products, this is true. Especially for small products. However, when you talk about extremely large and complex software like Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office, there are other factors that matter. Microsoft has strong pricing power -- enough pricing power to increase prices even when other software companies are finding that they must make do with less. If you want to know who has all the power, it's Microsoft. As a result of the changes to their licensing plans, Microsoft will be getting more revenue, while their customers will be adjusting their budgets to spend more money on Microsoft's software. Is this a monopoly or what!?
Will ISP's ever start offering authenticated SMTP service? Currently, you can use the SMTP server of an ISP if you have an IP address that is owned by that ISP. What's going to happen if WiFi networks become popular? As you move from one WiFi network to another, how can you use an SMTP server? There are three possibilities: (1) You use the same SMTP server and authenticate yourself to the server each time. (2) There is a standard way to discover the SMTP server on a WiFi network, and you use the SMTP server provided by the WiFi network to send mail. (3) Your computer uses the DNS to find the SMTP server of the mail's recipient and sends it directly. Perhaps there is a fourth possibility: (4) The WiFi network provider intercepts any TCP connection to a destination port 25 (SMTP port) and redirects it to it's own mail server.
I don't see ISPs rushing to offer innovative features to their customers, so I don't expect authenticated SMTP in the near future. And that gets me thinking. Will the business of ISPs eventually become like that of the local phone companies, where there is regulated and unregulated service? The government would require certain minimal service requirements -- the regulated service -- and would allow other add-on features -- the unregulated service. Basic SMTP service would be the regulated service. Authenticated SMTP service at a cost of $3 per month would be the unregulated service.
The way Internet mail currently works, subscribers to an ISP get their mail via POP3. The mail transfer is initiated by the subscriber's computer, which acts as the POP3 client. There is no way for the ISP's mail server to notify the subscriber that he has mail. Instead, the subscriber's computer must poll the mail server. Some subscribers set their computer to poll the mail server every 10 minutes, but there is no restriction, and a subscriber could poll the mail server as frequently as he wants. If every subscriber sets their computer to poll the mail server every 10 minutes that could start to put a real strain on the mail server. This could become a bigger problem with always-on Internet service. The POP3 protocol is good for a subscriber on a dial-up account who needs to connect to the Internet, get his mail, and get off. It's very inefficient for always-on Internet connections.
So, how about this idea: a protocol where either side can initiate the transfer of mail. This already exists in SMTP as an extension (ETRN). Many (or most?) cable modem companies prohibit subscribers from running a mail server. Will this change in the future?
Note: It gets even worse with IMAP4. Some IMAP4 clients open a connection and keep it open for hours at a time. Polling is one thing. Opening a connection and keeping it open for a long time is much worse. Subscribers should be running IMAP4 servers on their home network, and their mail should be delivered by SMTP from the ISP's mail server.
Does anybody really think that Ogg Vorbis is "free from patents or royalties"?
Bruce Perens: "I consider the announcement to be only a first step for RealNetworks"
Mr. Perens says: "Unless the company can modify its business models, it will be difficult for it to achieve a real partnership with the open-source community." Since when was a partnership with the open-source community a goal for a business? How about making enough money to stay in business?
Ted Lewis wrote in a column once that open source was the strategy of the weak, not the strategy of the strong. Yes, some companies like Red Hat start with open source from the beginning, and those companies have a much better chance of succeeding. However, when I see a company like RealNetworks going down the open source path, I have my doubts. It really does appear to be a desperate measure, or the "strategy of the weak", as Ted Lewis calls it.
I will be happy to see open source software coming from RealNetworks, because it means more free stuff for me. However, it also has me a little concerned. Is there any way to stop Microsoft from achieving dominance in media formats?
A slashdot poster writes:
Rules of not getting spammed.
1. Don't put your email address on the web.
2. Don't pick a name that will be targeted by a dictionary or brute force spam attack:
e.g. "ggh@hotmail" will get spammed.
"lovetocook@hotmail" will get spammed.
"arh6yypolk11j@hotmail" will not get spammed. (well, it will now that it's on Slashdot)
As an experiment, I created a test email address at hotmail that was 20 random characters long. Every once in a while I would send it emails, or send emails from it to myself just to keep it alive.
Never once in several months did I receive any spam.
This is an interesting thought. Since we have address books to help us remember email addresses, maybe we should use more random-looking email addresses. We should already be used to this, because phone numbers aren't easy to remember.
If you want to put your email address on your web site, you really ought to turn it into a graphic, so it is not machine readable.
EE Times: Content protection debate reaching do or die. Many of the stakeholders in the digital-copyright debate are beginning to wonder how long the discussion will drag on and when the content and technology industries will agree to launch standards that satisfy all of the sides. [Tomalak's Realm]
So, what if Congress steps in and forces the adoption of a techology for protecting copyrights? Congress can't force the content owners to release their content in digital form. It seems like the content owners can just say "no". So what's the point of Congress trying to do anything?
What are the most significant open source products? I'm going to try to list them, not necessarily in any particular order.
Is there really such thing as an "open source movement"? Some people use that term. But I think it's baloney. There is no "movement". There is just "open source".
What are people thinking when they refer to the "open source movement"? Here's what I think. Those who refer to an "open source movement" mean a belief system that says software should be free. If you are a user, and you buy into the open source movement -- that is, you adopt the open source belief system --, then you ought to be very happy, because you aren't going to pay for software. If you are a developer and you buy into the open source movement, then you are going to start giving away all the source code to the software you write. If you are a software company and you buy into the open source movement, then you are going to offer all your software for free and you are going to give away the source code for free. Since this is a "movement", it's catching on: developers are giving away the source code they write and companies increasingly are giving away their software products. Right?
It's all baloney. Open source is nothing more than a bunch of software developers who like to write code as a creative outlet and who share the code they write with others.
Federal bill targets electronic waste. Hoping to wake the country from its "e-waste nightmare," a U.S. congressman takes aim at the increasing volumes of obsolete computers. [CNET News.com]
It seems like Microsoft and Intel have some responsibility here. Their business models are heavily dependent upon the "technology treadmill". They make money by getting users to continually upgrade. Microsoft has no interest at all in computers that work fine, but that happen to be five or more years old. Even an old 486/33 computer could be put to work as a mail server or Internet firewall for one's home. Add a web server that supports web-dav, and you have a simple document management server that could be used as part of a home office or by students. Add a simple web browser -- not javascript, activex, or flash -- and html editor, and students can work on school assignments, including term papers.
Start-ups try to dupe file-swappers. False versions of songs are turning up in file-swapping networks, thanks to new technologies designed to frustrate song-traders until they just log off. [CNET News.com]
It seems like a good idea to me, for the record labels to spoof the file sharing networks. It seems fair, too. Because when the file traders go onto the file sharing networks, they trade songs with complete strangers.
But it's not just that. If the spoofing is effective at stopping the swapping of music files among complete strangers, then that may just satisfy the record labels. Hopefully, that would put an end to all the draconian DRM schemes.
Maybe Palladium is also necessary to deal with the eventual demise of Moore's Law. What happens to all these BigCos when the technology treadmill -- that seemingly endless cycle of upgrading -- comes to a screaching halt? What happens when your application reaches near perfection, to the point that there are no compelling new features you can add? Well, by that point, maybe you have in place an infrastructure that facilitates software subscriptions. Or music subscriptions.
Even then, I don't know to what extent the impact of the death of Moore's Law can be mitigated. Let's face it, once Moore's Law becomes a thing of the past, it will be a very different world.
Palladium: Safe or Security Flaw?. Microsoft's new project could offer virus protection, control over personal information, even spam blocking. Or maybe it's a giant boondoggle. By Paul Boutin. [Wired News]
If people complained so much about the unique ID that Intel wanted to put into the Pentium III, why would anyone think that people will accept the Fritz chip?
Who needs Pallidium? Big software companies need it. Once you have saturated your market, how do you continue to grow your revenues? Well, if you have little competition, you can raise your prices. But that can anger your user base. However, to grow your revenues, you absolutely must get more revenue per user. How do you do that without raising prices? You tinker with the licensing terms and enforcement. You make sure that a user buys your software twice if he wants to run it on his desktop computer and his laptop computer. The problem is, no matter what you do to grow per-user revenues, you make your user base angry. It helps to spin your case by emphasizing the benefit to users: namely better security.
Media companies also need Pallidium. They also need to grow per-consumer revenues. If you are a media company, how do you do that? Well, you make sure that consumers must buy a CD for their home and for their car. You make sure that they can't make a backup copy of a CD, so that they will eventually have to replace the CDs they play the most frequently. And you spin your case by claiming you are fighting illegal distribution over the Internet.
All this discussion gets to what I think is the heart of the matter. User/consumers want to pay less for their computer/entertainment needs over time. They want to reap the benefits of improvements in technology by paying less. So when BigCos take steps to get more per-user revenue, it just makes them all angry.
Canning spam without eating up real mail. Blacklists have become a key weapon in the war against unsolicited bulk e-mail, leading some companies to turn a blind eye when they toss out legitimate messages with the trash. [CNET News.com]
I don't understand the dogged persistence of spammers. If people don't want to receive spam, why try so hard to force it on them? I mean, some individuals are working so hard to stop the spam from coming into their own inboxes. If they work so hard, doesn't that mean that they really -- I mean really -- don't want it? So why do the spammers work equally as hard to send spam to those who really don't want it? And are the businesses who choose to advertise via spam so naive as to think that they will get a positive response from those who work so hard to not receive spam, and yet receive it anyway?
I expect that in the future, one technique for fighting spam will be to slow the delivery of spam. What if edge routers were set up to allow only so much outbound traffic on TCP port 25 before they start dropping IP packets? (Note: You could use a similar slowing technique at the application layer if you required all port 25 traffic to go to the ISPs mail server. At the application layer, it would be much simpler to implement.) The dropping of IP packets would cause the TCP flow control mechanism to automatically slow the flow of outbound IP packets. The idea behind this, is that if spammers could send only 100,000 emails per day, it could really alleviate the spam problem. Now I must admit that I really don't like this idea. Why should edge routers have to bear the additional burden of filtering? But it appears that the age of innocence may be over as far as the Internet is concerned. Unscrupulous spammers have done their part to spoil it.
There are other techniques for fighting spam. I would like to see a trusted network that runs parallel to the port 25 SMTP network. The trusted network could also use SMTP as the protocol. The difference would be that the trusted network would have controlled access points -- namely, that the MTAs all share a whitelist of other MTAs and MSAs, and all submission occurs through a known MSA (that's Mail Submission Agent). This is not much different than what we have for Internet mail now. Many ISPs require that you submit mail through their mail servers (MSAs). The difference would be the controlled access throughout, which means that if there is spam, one can determine with a high degree of certainty where that spam originated. And that means there is some degree of accountability. Finally, since this trusted network would be run in parallel with the old SMTP network (port 25), that means we could still have the old system for casual use. The trusted system could be used for business. MUAs (Mail User Agents) could support both the trusted network and the untrusted network, and allow users to have mail from the untrusted network to be deposited into a special, low-priority inbox.
Jon Udell has a good article on Palladium and trust. He remarks that trust is a good way to curb spam. He's right.
But what about other ways to build trust. I still think the whitelist idea is good. The whitelist contains mail addresses that I will accept mail from. If I get an email from an address that is not on the whitelist, then my system automatically sends a response back to that address and tells the sender how to get on the whitelist. What I really like about the whitelist idea, is that it means you only get mail from humans. I hate getting mail from machines.
Back on the subject of Palladium again... There is a good reason why strong-arm tactics in hardware can be a problem. (I suppose the argument applies to software, too.) The reason is that it would really hurt the cash flow of the hardware companies. If the new computers all come with, say, DRM chips, then consumers will choose to use their existing computers a year or three longer than they would have otherwise. That would cause definite short-term hardships among manufacturers. I have lots of old computer hardware around that still works. I don't know what the life span of some of these hardware components are, but they seem to live on for a long time.
Yahoo relaunches with streamlined look. The Internet portal introduces a new home page that sports a cleaner layout with more potential real estate for advertisers. [CNET News.com]
The problem with Yahoo, is that usability is contrary to their business model. Think about shopping, entertainment, news, and so on. They have links to their own shopping, entertainment, news, and so on on the main page. For good usability, those pages would be listed under their directory -- that is, you would click on Business & Economy, then on Shopping, then on a link to another subpage of the directory, and so on. That's how the old Yahoo used to work. Alas, Yahoo can't be a good directory and have its own web properties such as shopping, otherwise the directory would make it too easy for users to find Yahoo's competitors. Therefore, Yahoo can never be a good directory. Q.E.D.
What's needed, is a company that has only a directory, thereby staying impartial to the directory content. I wonder if such a company could make money by licensing its directory to ISPs.
Yes, it's Palladium back in the news again. This time, it's an article from David Coursey.
The way I see this, our computers and "devices" are more secure when there is more diversity. Having a single operating system and a single processor architecture is not good for security.
It's interesting from Mr. Coursey's column, Microsoft understands the "politics" around Palladium.