WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
My thanks to everyone who wrote in and told me that they were happy with the current length of this newsletter. If nothing else it proved that I do have readers! Thank you :)
I can't even begin to count the number of people who've asked me if I think Kenneth Lay died of natural causes. Admittedly it was a very convenient death, but no, I don't think it was caused by an unknown secret organisation, the US government, UFOs, the UK's MI5, an assassin hired by Enron shareholders, the KGB, Al-Queda, Fidel Castro's secret police, or the Spanish Inquisition (though I have to admit that refusal of successive popes to disband the Inquisition is suspicious), to name but a few of the suggestions I've been given. I'm sure the number of people who believe it wasn't natural says something profound about western society today.
This week saw a harbinger of doom for the UK's National Health Service IT project - known to the enlightened as NPfIT . Prime Minister Tony Blair publicly backed the project and expressed his faith in it...
Last week I reported on an anti-terrorist file that was 'lost' in South London. It's now been found again. A passer by found it in an abandoned rucksack. Most of the contents were pretty banal, it seems - who would phone who, and such like, and an A-Z phone directory of most of the country's senior military figures.
I have been meaning for some time to do a round up of what's going on on the patent front. But time seems to be against me at the moment. I had expected it to be the quiet season by now, giving time and space for such a round up. Quite a lot is going happening with patents, though, so I've collected a bunch of URLs in the Scanner section. This will give you a flavour of the current state of affairs.
And now for something completely different...
Shorts:
Well! What a surprise! Microsoft has suddenly discovered that it can support interoperability between the Open Document Format (ODF) and Office 2007. Microsoft is now supporting the Open XML Translator Project, whose first goal is to allow potential users of the delayed Word 2007 to open and save ODF documents.
That Microsoft had to be dragged kicking and screaming into supporting ODF is not really very surprising. Microsoft's two biggest money makers are Microsoft Office, of which Word is a part, and Windows, and a large part of the ongoing success of these programs is because people are locked into them by the proprietary formats used. Open formats mean that Microsoft Office, and especially Word, will have to compete on performance, usability and user inertia.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/06/microsoft_odf_interoperability/
There was an unremarked end of an era event last week - Apple Computers replaced the last of its remaining CRT based computers with an LCD based one. The demise of the CRT has been predicted for quite a few years now, but at last it seems to be coming to pass. It's about time too. CRT monitors have all sorts of poisonous materials in them, and are a nightmare to safely dispose of. I don't think anyone is going to grieve when the last of the hernia-inducing monsters are gone.
http://ct.news.com.com/clicks?t=2824992-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0
There are interesting rumours swirling around in the circles frequented by those charged with overseeing international trade. They suggest that the US is on the verge of suing China over what the US considers to be intellectual-property rights violations.
The US House of Representatives has already passed legislation that includes US$50 million for the monitoring of Chinese compliance with trade agreements, and the word is that the US will bring its case to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the autumn. You can bet your bottom dollar that if they do, the question of software and digital content will feature heavily!
More info as it becomes available - this has the potential to make some very large waves, both in the consumer electronics and software industries.
http://www.physorg.com/news71498235.html
More sabre rattling at the EU. Last week the EU's competition commissioner was speaking at meeting with the German competition authorities. In the speech she argued that the fines proposed against Microsoft are proving that the European regulators do not shy away from taking on complex cases. This speech follows persistent rumours that the decision to go ahead with the fines has now been taken.
If this is indeed the case, it does not bode well for Microsoft, since it makes it clear that the commission regard this as a seminal case that will establish their authority. More to the point, they are likely to fight the case right to the bitter end, if it comes to that.
I would have urged Microsoft to seek an accommodation, (not that they would have taken any notice of what I have to say! ) but I suspect that it's already too late for that.
More to the point, as I've said before in this newsletter, marketing decisions made long ago have distorted and twisted Microsoft software to the extent where Microsoft themselves no longer know how their own programs work. Indeed, it may well be the programs are inherently undocumentable.
Microsoft is between a rock and a hard place on this one.
http://www.physorg.com/news71500081.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/06/fines_ahoy_for_ms/
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=12E79D1:1F69382
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/04/microsoft_ec_fines/
http://www.physorg.com/news71162279.html
Over here in the UK we have a government official known as the Information Commissioner. The commissioner's job is to make sure that the data protection laws are observed, and to enforce their observance if necessary. I can't honestly tell you that the system works all that well - in a way it's a bit like the Freedom of Information Act over here - the government goes out of its way to make sure both are underfunded so they can't interfere too much, but are still able to provide a fig leaf of credibility.
Anyway, this week the Information Commissioner issued the operator of a web site that allows searches for a person's contact details with an enforcement order. The site operator had been in breach of the Data Protection Act, because, among other things, the site had failed to remove people's details when asked to.
This order has interesting implications for search sites on this side of the pond. I suspect many of them assumed that they were somehow exempt from the requirements of the data laws. Complying could well be an expensive business, requiring human intervention and making the databases somewhat less that comprehensive. I, for one, am not complaining if this turns out to be the case!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/06/b4u_data_protection_breach/
I've mentioned the shambles caused by the attempts to 'upgrade' the UK's National Health Service (NHS) IT systems several times in previous newsletters. Now however the first evidence is emerging of the real damage it is doing to the medical services provided by the NHS.
It seems that 10 out of London's 31 health care areas have installed new software to track vaccinations, but of those only two are able to provide data on the take up of vaccinations - especially the important MMR vaccinations. The few figures produced seem to indicate a nearly 20% drop in vaccination, but the real crime is that information is missing on over 50,000 children. And this screw up only covers a third of London. Some days it's a real embarrassment to have to admit working in the IT field :(
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/1.0/-/1/hi/health/5154556.stm
More bad news for Microsoft. It's having to issue new 'critical' security patches for Windows and Office as part of the regular monthly batch of patches. 'Critical' is the most serious level of security patch, and there is one for each of Office and Windows, together with several other, less 'critical' patches.
It's also updating its Malicious Software Removal Tool. I wonder if the tool will remove Microsoft's 'Windows Genuine Advantage' spyware program (a piece of malicious software, if I ever saw one)? I suspect not, even though the class actions against this little gem are continuing to grow...
http://ct.techrepublic.com.com/clicks?t=2823992-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0
http://ct.techrepublic.com.com/clicks?t=2823994-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0
Bad news for Apple, too, this week. The French have passed a law requiring a modicum of interoperability between copy-protected digital downloads. While Apple's iPod isn't the only machine that locks its users into Apple's own Digital Restriction Management (DRM), it is definitely the biggest and most prominent. There was, however, a get out clause. If Apple can get the copyright holders to agree, it can continue as it is at the moment.
Apart from the cost of trying to negotiate with all the different bodies involved in copyright, this clause will immensely strengthen the hand of the copyright holders in negotiations with Apple. I predict either a withdrawal from the French market by Apple, or a massive increase in the price of digitally downloaded music!
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=12E79D0:1F69382
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/30/france_itunes_law_loophole/
And while we are on the subject of Apple, I note that it has joined the rapidly growing list of companies announcing 'problems' with past stock options. It seems there were 'irregularities' with options - including those granted to Steve Jobs - between 1997 and 2001.
I'm sure that the problems will be resolved and the position 'regularised', so to speak - Jobs has already had an option grant cancelled, for instance. Nonetheless the whole business does lift an interesting corner on how the other side pays itself. Did you know, for instance, that in 2000 Jobs was paid $1 salary, 20 million shares in Apple, and a US$90 million corporate jet! Fascinating.
Oh, and by the way, I'm assured that the sudden outbreak of 'irregularity' filings has nothing to do with the convenient death of Enron's Kenneth Lay...
http://www.forbes.com/2006/06/29/apple-jobs-options_cx_rr_0629apple_print.html
There's an interesting experiment going on in the UK at the moment. UBC Media Group, one of the UK's largest independent radio production groups, has launched a trial download service with a difference. The difference is that the downloads are not via the Internet, they are via the Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) network.
The idea is simple. You listen to digital radio and if you hear a song you like you can buy it and it is downloaded, via DAB, to a DAB compatible music player. The price is currently rather steep - about US$2.27 a pop, but that could well drop with volume - though not if the greedy big media companies have anything to do with it :(
I'll be interested to see what comes of this.
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/06/26/uk_music_dloads_via_dab/
Back in the US, Symantec is heading for a punch up with the IRS over a US$1bn demand for back taxes and penalties. Symantec was caught shuffling technology between itself and overseas subsidiaries in a manner to which the IRS took exception and so it slapped on the fines. From what my US readers tell me of the IRS, I'd be inclined to bet on the IRS winning this little fracas!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/30/symantec_tax_court/
Indian outsourcing took something of a knock recently, when the monsoon hit Mumbai, leaving large chunks of it under water. A number of big names - most prominently HP - were left with no customer service. Nothing new there, then.
Strange that they should be zapped by monsoons. I seem to remember from my school geography that monsoons hit India with monotonous regularity - like every year about this time. You'd think they would have noticed before now and done something about it.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/05/monsoon_call_center_floods/
Watching Brief - New Technology:
Researchers at Cornell University have come up with a technique that allows a broadband light amplifier to be created on a silicon chip. It has proved to be very difficult to persuade silicon devices to act as optical amplifiers until this breakthrough, which combines silicon, nano and optical technology.
The first uses for the device are likely to be in fibre optic communications, but I suspect that ultimately the technology will be an important breakthrough for optical computers.
http://www.physorg.com/news71425655.html
Scanner - Other Stories:
Terrorist response file found by road after car break-in
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2258524,00.html
Microsoft hides under duvet
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/30/microsoft_wga_snafu/
ICANN settles feud with country-code TLD operator
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=12E79D3:1F69382
ICANN - Highs, lows and sickos
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/30/icann_blog_marrakech_friday/
Blair backs NPfIT
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/30/blair_backs_npfit/
MI5 bumps off ambitious IT plan
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/04/mi5_it_bodge/
UK - CSA, the most broken system of all?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/30/eds_csa/
ICM Registry probes US government interference in Domain process
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/30/icm_registry_foia_three/
Patents Roundup:
IT set to dominate European patents debate
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/04/patent_europe/
Patent overload hinders open source innovation
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=12B2AC5:1F69382
Patent trolls are elusive, say experts
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=12B2A70:1F69382
Industries lobby EU Commission to cut copyright fees
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/04/industries_propose_copyright_fee_slash/
Prospects fading for European patent agreement
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=12CB9BB:1F69382
EC schedules public hearing on patents
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/20/patent_hearing/
Intel paid $10 million for processor license
http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/ew2y0FypUC0FrK0EZdV0Ey
EU revises position on software patents
http://www.physorg.com/news68740738.html
Sony licenses Patriot processor patents
http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/ew2y0FypUC0FrK0EZdO0Er
Patent office rejects Forgent's JPEG claims
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=126ACB1:1F69382
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to readers Barbara, Fi, and Lois for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for material to alan@ibgames.com.
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
9 July 2006
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist. His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
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