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T-shirt tossing: fun with gravity (JavaOne - videoblog)
Even the greatest geek advocate can't deny that computer geeks like their free T-shirts. Java creator James Gosling for years has taken the hunger for textile with the JavaOne audience to the next level by creating devices to toss free T-shirts into the crowd.
This year instead of building a device himself, Gosling started a competition.
Gosling picked three teams that got to show off their devices after the keynotes of the JavaOne conference. The first two teams failed at creating at a decent flight path, but today the last team showed of a medieval trebuchet that did the job, and took home the first price.
Click here to watch the movie of the winning team
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Tag: JavaOne
June 30, 2005 at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Google Earth on hold
Google has stopped offering downloads of for its new Google Earth software.
The service couldn't handle any more new users, given that it's still in beta, the company said in a statement on its website.
For those desperate to get a copy, the software can still be obtained through file sharing networks, the Inside Google blog points out.
And the company shouldn't worry about insufficient bandwidth capacity for the service. Looking at satelelite images of my home and VNU's London office grew old after about 10 minutes. I don't see any applications for the average consumer here.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin gave a demonstration of Google Earth at its company headquarters last May. Click here to watch a video
Photo credit: Google
Tags: Google
June 30, 2005 at 12:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Building a case against Intel
About two years ago I had a private conversation with an Intel employee. We touched upon the competition and then moved on to Intel's near monopoly of the desktop market. Back then there was this notion that Intel just barely had escaped a Microsoft-like case for its dominating position in the computer industry.
Of course my conversation partner disagreed, but his reasoning was stunning.
He didn't deny the claim, but instead pointed out that Intel for years has had very strict policies about data retention and clean up. The point being: anyone filing a claim against Intel would have a hard time collecting evidence because the company had been much more careful than Microsoft had been.
He didn't mean to imply any knowledge of illegal actions, but if there were any, Intel made sure they would be hard to track.
Photo credit: Charles Toepfer
June 29, 2005 at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Peer to peer and the legality of illegal downloads
While Hollywood rejoices over the legal victory against the Grokster file sharing service, handed down by the US Supreme Court, you'd better properly read the ruling (download a PDF here) before you draw any conclusions.
The judges don't say peer-to-peer or file sharing in general is illegal – just that file sharing that is aimed at violating copyrights is. Grokster too strongly marketed itself as a service that lets users download movies and music. It doesn’t surprise me at all that the company is getting burnt for that.
The ruling doesn't reverse the Sony Betamax case (that allows disrupting technology that potentially violates copyrights as long as its sole use isn't to make illegal copies). Nor does it say that file sharing by itself is illegal.
It's up to the lower courts now to decide Grokster's fate. But the next peer to peer file sharing application will just contain a disclaimer warning users that they shouldn't violate copyrights and that might just solve the whole thin. Hollywood put back that champagne for now.
Has lady justice lost her balance?
Photo credit: Ken Duncan
June 29, 2005 at 06:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
IBM and HP's non-response to SOA
BEA is making waves with its Aqualogic SOA offering. Sun Microsystems acquires the leading provider of SOA management tools. And how do HP and IBM respond?
Both companies today sent out press releases stating that they will open "service centres" (HP) and "a detailed compilation of no cost education, workshops, software and services" (IBM).
Neither company tries very hard to cover up the fact that they have very little to offer to customers seeking a SOA solution.
"Third party software vendors and systems integrators can count on IBM best practices to help support their SOA customer engagements, and ultimately the greatest value proposition is for customers," said Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Software Group.
"HP offers the two critical elements for using SOA to run IT as a business: management software and professional consulting services," HP said understatedly in its press release.
Users should be happy with the candour with which both companies admit the gaps in their product lineups. But the timing suggests that the press releases are primarily an attempt to cover up these gaps and that they are only now starting to think about the technology.
Going nowhere
Photo credit: José A. Warletta
June 29, 2005 at 05:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Google makes it personal
When you look for a bass, you might be looking for something else than I am. And when you're looking for Microsoft, again we are probably looking for something different.
We all might use the same search queries, at the end we expect different results to pop up in the search engine. Up until now nobody did much to address that. But today Google took a beta of Google Personal live.
The service builds a database of your past searches, detects which search results you clicked on and thereby gets to know you. So when a developer looks up Microsoft he'll probably end up on MSDN while a 10 year old is lead to an MSN chat box.
The new service isn't a big surprise given that Google unveiled My Search history about two months ago. The feature builds that database of past searches that is needed for Google to create your personal profile.
And while it might be too early to see if this really works, the first question that comes to mind is: what took you so long?
Customisation is good
Photo credit: Jesse Moen
Tags: Google
June 29, 2005 at 02:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
How Mac rumours get out of hand
AppleInsider went ghost hunting but caught nothing but thin air. In a posting the website seeded a rumour that Apple is preparing to do a major launch on 7 July. One French media outlet received an invitation to attend an event.
The blog puts the event together with the "high profile" launch of iTunes 4.9 (that has since been launched without much noice), and based on "industry sources" that remain unnamed it draws the conclusion that a next generation iPod Shuffle and/or iPod mini awaits us.
This is what you get when a company is being highly secretive about forthcoming products.
One call to Apple and I learnt that the event aims show off some iPod accessories for the French media. Boooring. And nothing to be secretive about.
At the same time you’d have to doubt the authority of the "sources" that these rumours are attributed to – if they exist at all.
Steve Jobs at the unveiling of the iPod shuffle last January at Macworld San Francisco
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June 28, 2005 at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Oops Sun does it again (JavaOne)
Sun Microsystems never ceases to amaze the world. After a fairly disappointing first day at JavaOne, the company on Tuesday spiced things up when it announced the acquisition of SeeBeyond.
Monday saw Sun announcing an open source application server and kick off development of an enterprise service bus (ESB). The news lead senior analyst Ron Schmeltzer, with Zapthink to say that "Sun just doesn’t innovate anymore," calling the products part of a "me too" strategy.
The company also revealed that IBM has renewed its Java licence– that's good news for developers because it guarantees stability within the Java platform, but isn't very exiting news.
The SeeBeyond acquisition, which was rumoured to take place for a long time, however pushed Sun to the forefront of enterprise integration and puts it at direct odds with BEA's Aqualogic.
"SeeBeyond has a good mature integration product. Sun can hit the ground running," principal analyst Shawn Willett with Current Analysis told vnunet.com.
Sun CEO Scott McNealy just spent another $387m
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June 28, 2005 at 07:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Silicon Valley Sleuth embraces Creative Commons
With Microsoft throwing its weight behind the Creative Commons licence in its extensions to the RSS standard, we couldn't wait any longer.
In the spirit of sharing, we've decided to make all our photos on this blog available under a Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License. Follow the link if you want the legal version, but in a human readable format: you can use and alter the pictures in posts that are marked with the commons disclaimer, on the condition that you attribute the photo to www.siliconvalleysleuth.com and stick to this licence for any artwork that you base on these pictures
If you find this image in a post, all the photos in that post are copyright Silicon Valley Sleuth and are available under the Creative Commons License.
Enjoy.
(PS – Not all the images on this blog are copyright Silicon Valley Sleuth. Please look for the disclaimer before using any images. Also, I'm too lazy to go back into the old posts and add the disclaimer there. Old pictures too are available under the CC license. When in doubt, please leave a comment with the post in question asking for permission to publish them and I'll get back to you (please include an email address).
June 28, 2005 at 07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sun plays the platform game (JavaOne)
Sun Microsystems has ended a feud with year another partner and competitor. In the opening keynote this morning at JavaOne in San Francisco, Sun's president and chief operating offericer told delegates that the company has signed an agreement with long time rival IBM to licence Java for the next 10 years.
The deal seems like a no-brainer. If IBM wouldn't renew its Java licence, WebSphere becomes a fairly worthless product: it would fork away from Java over time would either fall behind or create another legal nightmare.
Still, knowing for sure that IBM will put its force behind Java for another ten years is good news for Sun.
Especially because as part of the deal IBM has promised to make Websphere, DB2, Tivoli and Rational available for Solaris on x86 servers. IBM was one of the last companies to hold out on supporting its software on the platform.
There aren't any company's left that Sun is fighting with, Sun's chief executive Scott McNealy said jokingly during a press conference. With a bunch of interoperability and support deals in place, Sun is broadening its portfolio. Making sure that is has an offering for any application.
With the technological hurdles out of the way, it can start competing for real.
Sun chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz
Robert LeBlanc, general manager for IBM's Websphere software (left) and John Loiacono, executive vice president for Sun's software group.
Java creator James Gosling must have the largest collection of Duke themed clothing in the world
Sun chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz and chief executive Scott McNealy rejoice over the lack of enemies.
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June 28, 2005 at 01:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
10 years of Java (videoblog @ JavaOne)
Several birthday parties are always better than just one. So to continue the celebration of the 10 year anniversary of Java, Sun this morning at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco once again marked Java's birthday. No dump tank this time however, but a brass band instead.
Group picture of the early Java developers including Sun chief executive Scott McNealy on the left (white shirt). Java creator James Gosling is on the far right.
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June 27, 2005 at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Apple has met its match in Ebay (Ebay Live)
I've done my share of tradeshows, but Mac events always stood out. Somehow Steve Jobs always succeeds in getting a crowd to attend his presentations that have a bias to liking his new products. When Jobs shows off an updated version of the calculator, you know he's going to get a standing ovation.
I thought no-one could rival Apple's fan base. Until I went to the Ebay Live keynote by the auction site's chief executive Meg Whitman this afternoon in San Jose. If you think you don't get fans more devoted than Mac-heads, you've never been to an Ebay Live event.
The event attracted over 11,700 attendees, and these often are people who depend on the auction side for they livelihood. So when Ebay said it's going to tackle to problem of negative feedback left by buyers who don't really understand the system of negative feedback, the company is going to get a standing ovation. The same when Ebay announces that, in partnership with the US Postal Service, it will offer an easy way to ship internationally and fill out customs forms.
apple"This is great," an Ebay seller sitting behind me chanted while loudly applauding. And judging from the sound of it about all the 11,699 other ones agreed with her.
Ebay had to rent out the HP Pavillion sport stadium that usually houses the San Jose Sharks ice hockey team to accommodate the 11,700 sellers, buyers and partners that attended this year's Ebay Live event in San Jose.
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June 24, 2005 at 07:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Meet Ebay seller fuzzyslippers23 (Ebay Live)
With millions of people selling on Ebay worldwide, did you ever wonder who the person is that's hiding behind fuzzyslippers23? We took a (slightly biased) random sampling of the delegates at this year's Ebay Live conference in San Jose during the Meg Whitman keynote tonight.
Crowds leaving the HP Pavilion after Meg Whitman's keynote on Thursday.
"ebabe" (that's not a value judgement - it's what her shirt says)
If you need a hat to say that... doesn't that by definition mean that you aren't?
Is that your name badge or are you just happy to see me?
Seller ID: Glowsticksarecool34 and 35
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June 24, 2005 at 07:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
The Ebay nation (Ebay Live)
From Ebay Live in San Jose:
You know you're in Ebay country when you see vanity licence plates dedicated to the auction side
The San Jose convention centre dressed up in Ebay colours
Walking back to my car after the Meg Whitman keynote I ran into these two Ebay fans...
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June 24, 2005 at 07:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Meg Whitman at Ebay Live
Ebay's chief executive Meg Whitman tonight kicked off the company's annual Ebay Live user conference in San Jose.
The company has to rent the HP Pavilion for the event, which usually houses the San Jose Sharks ice hockey team - if they aren't on strike that is.
Meg Whitman in the past years has helped Ebay grow into a multi billion dollar company that provides jobs for thousands of people. Tonight was all about those people, who through their fees have made Ebay a highly profitable venture.
The company also succeeded in pointing out a bright spot about humanity: Ebay
revolves all about trust between the buyer and the seller. Feedback that everybody leaves about the buyer and seller further ensures that people behave. In 99.9 per cent of the transaction positive feedback is left.
"Together we have proven that 99.9 per cent of the time, people actually do the right thing," said Whitman."And we togeher have confirmed that Ebay's belief that people are basically good, is acuatlly true."
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June 24, 2005 at 03:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Rotten tomato resigns
Justice has prevailed over corporate greed and stupidity.
Richard Philips resigned from a top position with London law firm Baker & McKenzie after he sent his secretary an email demanding that she paid ₤4 ($7-8) for his dry cleaning of a ketchup stain that she caused.
His secretary Jenny Amner replied to his collection email that she understood the his dire financial position. "Obviously your financial need as a senior associate is greater than mine as a mere secretary."
There is no relation between the incident and Philip's resignation, the firm stressed. The lawyer simply wanted to take time off to study.
Hopefully he'll pick up a book or two on social skills and ethical behaviour.
As for Ms Amner, she is on paid leave after the email incident. Some of the Baker & McKenzie staff didn't like her standing up for herself. Ranks and hierarchy are there for a reason – don't expect stale law firm to develop a sense of humour or righteousness just overnight.
The whole thing smells like a cover up to me. The culprit is a high ranking lawyer with friends in the right places. The victim is a mere secretary – cheap, replaceable and most of all: no friends in high places. So you let the lawyer do some studying to prevent a public relations mess, but act carefully not to harm his image.
In the mean time you bully the secretary until she resigns. Problem solved, but nothing really changes.
June 23, 2005 at 08:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Microsoft is still misbehaving, judge warns
Microsoft hasn't changed since it was convicted for illegally using its monopoly in the operating systems market, said Thomas Penfield Jackson, the judge who presided over the case but was later removed and saw his ruling overturned.
"Nothing has changed, to my observation, in the five years that have elapsed since my decision," Jackson said yesterday at the American Antitrust Institute, according to a report by Bloomberg News.
Judge Jackson ordered Microsoft to be split into an operating system business and an applications business. But soon after Bush Jr. became president the case faded away and resulted in a settlement that is generally considered a gentle wrist slapping for Microsoft.
Jackson still believes his ruling was more appropriate: "The Microsoft persona I had been shown throughout the trial was one of militant defiance, unapologetic for its past behaviour and determined to continue as before."
Although Microsoft's hold on the operating system business today is just as strong, if not stronger, than ever, there are signs that it is easier to compete today.
The company has refrained from pulling any tricks against Firefox, and still has to take any strong action against Linux. The 'get the facts campaign' is a rather limited and obscure attempt, where it could have launched a full frontal legal assault.
I don't say it can't happen in the future, but it hasn’t so far.
Photo credit: Monica P.
June 23, 2005 at 07:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cisco takes virtualisation to the next level
Grid computing isn't the final boundary for virtualisation inside the IT world. If you ask Cisco CTO Charles Giancarlo it's just the beginning.
In a keynote today at Networkers 2005, Giancarlo talked about an intelligent processing switch that makes grid computing more granular: instead of bundling servers, Cisco is looking to bundle just the processor and just the memory.
Think of it as finding a way to remove the engine from your car and bundle it together with all the other engines in your street, and assign the horsepower that you get to each car as they require them: driving uphill you get more, going downhill less. That's what the cable cars in San Francisco are doing by using an underground moving cable that they grab on to.
"This type of virtualisation promises to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and ability to deliver services rapidly in a data centre environment," Giancarlo said.
The CTO wouldn't say when his processing switch will be ready, but he did say it's an area that the company is "investing in very heavily."
Charles Giancarlo
Big stage or small man?
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June 23, 2005 at 03:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
How does Cisco's AON work? (videoblog)
Watch the video below to see how Cisco's demonstration
officer Jim Grubb and chief
technology officer Charles Giancarlo create a "flow" using Cisco's
new Application Oriented Network. The two gave a demonstration of the new technology this morning during Giancarlo's keynote at Networkers 2005, Cisco's annual user conference in Las Vegas.
A flow is a set
of rules that is applied to a data message. In this case Cisco builds an flow
that ensures that purchase orders for over $10,000 have a digital signature. The
software Grubb uses is the AON development
studio that comes bundled with the AON blades that are scheduled to start
shipping later this year.
Click here to watch the video (5.8Mb)
Giancarlo (left) and Grubb show off the new AON blades this morning at Giancarlo's keynote presentation at Networkers 2005 in Las Vegas
June 22, 2005 at 07:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Watch Giancarlo sell Chambers on AON (videoblog)
What is the case for Application Oriented Architectures? Cisco's chief technology offier Charles Giancarlo (left) and chief executive officer John Chambers (right) acted it out in a roundtable with media at Networkers 2005. Watch the video to see how Giancarlo makes his case.
Click here to watch the movie (7.0 Mb download)
June 22, 2005 at 02:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
John Chambers kicks off Networkers
Cisco chief executive officer John Chambers this morning delivered the opening keynote at the "Networkers" Cisco user conference in Las Vegas.
The big news here is the unveiling of AON: application oriented networking, a technology that puts intelligence into the network that lets it understand messages rather than just pump around data packets.
The technology is related to application integration, web services and service oriented architectures (SOAs). Rather than compete with, it supports solutions from companies like IBM and Tibco.
Organisation can get AON support by adding a blade to their router or switch. An appliance is set for release later this year.
June 21, 2005 at 07:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sony uncomfortable with portable porn
Sony has officially objected to porn movie studios bringing out their movies for the PSP portable computer/gaming console. It then turned around and smilingly started counting its money.
There is little the company can do against First Soap Lady premiering on Sony's Universal Media Disk (UMD), the company said. However "it is utterly undesirable," a spokesperson for the company told Asahi Shimbun.
Naturally some people would take offence if I sat down in a crowded train, pulled out my PSP and watched the First Lady getting soaped up. I would however get the same result by pulling out a dirty magazine.
But back to Sony. Given that the UMD is proprietary, the company easily could have put a provision in the license that prohibits any porn from being put on the disks. That however would have limited the appeal of the device and hurt business.
<dirty voice>Oh yeah, more bubbles please</dirty voice>
Photo credit: Lieven Volckaert
June 21, 2005 at 01:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Cashing in on the security scare
A company called Eli plans to start shipping a consumer security device next week that bundles a DSL modem, anti-virus and spam filtering software and a wireless router.
The security device would be a solution worth looking at if it weren't for its hefty price tag of $199.99 and $9.99 per month for the automated virus and spam updates.
You get your DSL modem for free, a Wifi router for $80 and anti-spam and anti-virus for $70 per year: $150 total. Why pay $319.98 to get a similar service in an Eli box?
"Until now, dealing with the full scope of Internet security threats has required a dizzying combination of software, hardware, and technical expertise far beyond that of an average home computer user, at a cost more in line with corporate budgets than that of the typical household," the company claims on its website.
Most new computers today come with anti virus and spam filtering software pre-installed and configured to automatically fetch updates as they become available. You could hardly call that "beyond" the expertise of the average home computer user.
Eli is trying to cash in on the IT industry's inability to secure the world's computers, but it doesn't solve the real problem. Delivering anti-virus and anti-spam in a box just moves the application away from the desktop. It doesn’t do anything to address vulnerabilities in operating systems and software applications and the unwillingness with end users and organisations to install the latest patches.
But if you believe that just a tinfoil hat keeps you safe from software vulnerabilities, I'll happily sell you one for a $199.99. You'd also need a subscription plan of course to keep blocking the latest cyber rays. That'll be $9.99 a month, thank you very much.
The false illusion of safety might be worse than no safety at all.
Photo credit: Per Hardestam
June 20, 2005 at 08:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Linspire loses its sole asset
Desktop Linux provider Linspire would be just another Linux distribution if it weren't for its chief executive Michael Robertson.
The guy makes for great PR ever since he struck it rich by selling mp3.com for $350 million back during the dotcom boom, and he made for even better PR when he battled Microsoft in the court room over the former Linspire name: Lindows. The case was settled out of court. Lindows became Linspire and cashed in $20 million in the process.
Last week Linspire became just another Linux distribution when Robertson left the company. All that remains now is a Linux vendor that in 2003 lost $2.1m on $4.1m in revenues and one that in 2004 had to cancel its initial public offering due to a lack of interest from investors.
Robertson's departure doesn't come as a big surprise. Not only is the chance that he will once again strike it rich with Linspire very slim – there are too many Linux competitors out there – he also in the past year founded his share of other ventures including royalty free mp3 files mp3tunes.com and Skype-wannabe SIPphone.com.
June 20, 2005 at 05:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
40 million reasons for security legislation
A major security breach at a company called CardSystems Solutions has compromised the information for 40 million credit cards, MasterCard international has warned. 13.9 million of the cards were MasterCards, the others were likely issued by Visa, American Express and Discover.
Just add this case of failing computer security to your list of reasons why you shouldn't be too confident about how organisations deal with your information.
Read between the lines of the MasterCard press release and it would be my guess that CardSystems' computer systems weren't up to par:
"CardSystems has already taken steps to improve the security of its system. However, MasterCard is giving it a limited amount of time to demonstrate compliance with MasterCard security requirements."
It's economics 101: CardSystems feels that the cost of today's public scolding on its lacking security is less expensive than investing money in its security. The only answer for such ineptitude is legislation.
Legislation allowed us to find out about this breach in the first place. Thank to California's 2003 Security Breach Information Act and similar laws in Massachusetts, organisations are required to disclose any breach of customer information.
It's just state legislation for now, but it's a start. Because don't think for a minute that MasterCard would have come clean if it weren't for these laws. And it seems that we need more of them.
PS
It might also be the reason why we never hear about similar cases in Europe. Does anybody know if the EU or any individual member state requires the disclosure of security breaches?
Photo credit: Nick Benjaminsz through Stock-xchng
June 18, 2005 at 03:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
The perfect way to end your week
Via the Good Morning Silicon Valley news letter:
Mp3 of some German singing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. The perfect way to kick off your weekend.
June 17, 2005 at 09:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Ah, the power of stupidity
Richard Phillips, a top London lawyer with Baker & McKenzie, was rather aptly put in his place after he demanded that his secretary Jenny Amner paid him ₤4 for a ketchup stain she made on his trousers – on the very day that she had to attend her mother's funeral.
She responded to his collection email by CC-ing her reply to colleagues. Who in turn forwarded the email, and forwarded it some more until it landed in the inbox of vnunet.com
"With reference to the email below, I must apologise for not getting back to you straightaway but, due to my mother's sudden illness, death and funeral, I have had more pressing issues than your £4," she wrote.
Please, Mr. Philips, have the audacity to sack Ms Amner for putting you in your place. That would harm the image of your law firm even more than your rudeness and tight-fistedness has already done.
June 17, 2005 at 08:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Mobile phone makers identify the true killer app
The Mobile Entertainment Forum has awarded Taneli Armanto with "special recognition". Armanto's ingenuity and vision have made a significant contribution to the growth of the mobile entertainment industry, according to the MEF.
The feat that Armanto should be laurelled for of course is the embedding of game Snake in the Nokia 6100 series in 1997.
Nokia estimates that by now there are 350 million phones worldwide equipped with the nerve wrecking game where a line of dots eats blurbs on the screen, growing taller and becoming harder to navigate as he eats more.
Armanto himself could hardly control his emotions upon receiving the recognition that he had been waiting for so long:
"I'm truly honoured to receive this recognition. When we created Snake for the Nokia 6110 in 1997, we wanted to give people an entertaining experience, but we never imagined that it would become the classic mobile game. It showed people that you could create a great game for a mobile phone. In particular, we wanted to take advantage of the infrared link in the Nokia 6110 - a first at that time - which would allow people to play against each other."
In recognition of the highly successful game, Nokia has release a special 3D version for its failed Ngage mobile gaming platform. Just in case an Ngage owner stumbles upon a fellow owner, he can share the game via his Bluetooth connections and engage in a Snake battle.
Also make sure you check out www.snakesoutbreak.com, a website that does a great job at confusing visitors about what they can do there.
Don't miss the special online chat session with Armanto on Tuesday June 28 at 10 AM Pacific Time (6 PM GMT) on http://forums.arena.n-gage.com/.
Make sure you ask him about Nintento or all those mobile games that came out after Tic Tac Toe really started the mobile gaming revolution in 1972.
June 17, 2005 at 01:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
HP claims Linux victory
HP is all to happy to put a magnifying glass over the last IDC report on server market shares: the company is the first server vendor ship over 1 million Linux servers.
HP points out that is has an 8 percentage point lead over IBM and shipped nearly ten times as many Linux servers than Sun Microsystems.
The latter doesn't surprise me, as Sun was late to arrive to the Linux party and has yet to establish itself there.
But wasn't IBM the big Linux backer?
First of all you don't want to believe anything that comes out of IBM's marketing department. Secondly, HP just claimed to top spot in terms of volume. If IBM ships a Linux solution on a mainframe, only one unit gets counted. Yet a mainframe might do the same job as a whole cluster of Intel servers, it still just counts as one.
"The numbers don't lie," Martin Fink's, vice president and general manager for HP's Open Source and Linux Organization said in a press release.
Not to say that HP isn't big in Linux, but numbers rarely tell the whole story.
Martin Fink - here speaking at the Red Hat Summit earlier this month - has been promoted from Linux executive to figure juggler.
June 16, 2005 at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AOL wins loser bragging rights
America Online has been branded the most infected network in the world. No other single internet provider houses so many zombie PCs. Of all the DoS attacks that originated from the US, 11.7 percent came from AOL's network, according to an analysis by security consulting firm Prolexic.
Zombie PCs are systems that have been infected by a computer virus that gives a hacker control over the computer. They can use the system to send spam or launch denial of service attacks (DOS).
The statistic is all the more embarrassing because AOL justifies overcharging their dial-up customers $23.90 per month by bundling the service with anti virus and spam blocking software. Despite the hefty price tag, AOL's security software couldn't safeguard its user from getting recruited for the world's zombie networks.
Red faced, AOL spokesperson Andrew Weinstein pulled out some apples and oranges in an attempt to defend the provider's poor security record. "We're the largest ISP on the planet," he told Techweb.com. "You'd expect us to have the most zombies."
AOL has 21.7 million subscribers. Corrected for the number of susbribers, AOL accounted for only 0.54 per cent of the attacks in the US per million subscribers, Weinstein's calculator said. Per million subscribers, cable broadband provider Comcast got 1.44 per cent. And Verizon did even worse in the per million rate: 1.9 percent.
Mind you, Weinstein is comparing apples and oranges. Comcast offers broadband cable internet, Verizon is mainly a DSL provider but also offers dialup. AOL is mainly a dial-up provider.
Broadband users spend more time online, so there is a larger chance of the computers in those networks being used for DoS attacks. You simply can't launch a DoS attack without being online after all. If Weinstein would have wanted to make a fair comparison, he should have included the total number of minutes that each provider's users spend online.
It don't have the minute per user figure for the providers that Weinstein names, but something tells me that if we use the per minute calculation, AOL gets off far worse thatn with Weinstein's hocus pocus.
AOL's contribution to the world's zombie army is amazing and embarrassing. No fuzzy math can change that.
June 16, 2005 at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Michael Jackson beats the pope
A video about Michael Jackson's acquittal from child molestation charges has stormed the charts.
According to the SiliconBeat blog, the video is now the best watch video ever for with subscribers of the SBC Yahoo DSL service, which is offered in parts of America.
The fact that the prosecution failed at proving that Jackson is a pervert attracted more viewers than other trivial news items including the burial of Ronald Reagan and the appointment of the new pope.
Just to put the pope and Reagon in their place.
June 16, 2005 at 03:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
So far for the Skype acquisition rumours
Yahoo earlier this week bought soft phone provider Dialpad. The company develops a desktop application that lets users place telephone calls to a regular land line using VoIP technology.
If the offering sounds familiar, you're probably thinking about Skype's SkypeOut service, which does pretty much the same.
The Yahoo-Dialpad deal puts an end to the rumours about the internet giant buying or partnering with Skype. I don't doubt the two have talked - but there is a long way between talking and signing a contract. And now that Yahoo has acquired its own soft phone platform, it has no need to buy or partner with Skype.
I think I would still prefer to use Skype over the Yahoo offering however. The two seem to charge about similar rates, but Skype's rate structure is far more transparent Dialpad's. Besides some of Dialpdad's plans charge a monthly fee. That's a bit too much of a commitment just make cheaper phone calls from your PC. Especially if you have Skype as an alternative.
London based Skype charges €0.017 ($0.021) per minute for calls to most of the developed world. Dialpad offers unlimited calls to the United States for $11.99 per month and goes as low as $0.017 (€ 0.014) for some international calls. But users have to pay a monthly fee to get the lowest rate and the offer is valid for only a limited number of cities, mostly capitals (Bejing, London, Signapore, Paris – Tokyo goes for 3.9 cents).
Dialpad's softpone
June 15, 2005 at 07:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Developer's notebook: open source shines on OS X on Intel
When Apple CEO Steve Jobs told delegates at the World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) last week that its would be "easy" to port their software to Intel, I didn't expect it to be this easy.
Game developer Ryan Gordon attended last week's WWDC and "pretty much chained [himself] to an Intel-based Mac in the Universal Binary Lab," he wrote on his website.
"Various open source things […] all compiled and ran without any changes. Not a single line. Take that as a ringing endorsement of free software if you like."
But Gordon makes his money as a game developer, so he set out to port several games over to x86 OS X.
Within three days he had Unreal Tournament 2004 up and running. Not to say that he didn't hit any roadblocks. At one place he "stalled out for over 12 hours trying to coerce the compiler not to crash." He finally got help from an Apple engineer at the event who solved the problem for him. "Still, three days qualifies as a success story for this work," the engineer wrote.
The official story Apple is telling is that the new Intel based systems will come out some time before June next year. But don't get your hopes up for an early launch. Apple might have been working on OS X for Intel for the past five years, but "it's pretty clear that this is not ready to ship to the public as a Complete Retail Thing." Luckyly Apple has until June 2006 to iron out the last wrinkles.
Gordon also was impressed with the Rosetta emulation technology that allows current generation OS X applications to run on the new Intel based systems. It "isn't as bad as I anticipated," he wrote. "In fact, it's pretty darned good. For everything but games, you probably wouldn't even know you were running it." That corresponds with what Jobs promised last week, but it always sounds better when it comes from a developer.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs talks about Rosetta at the WWDC. Rosetta is named after the Rosetta stone, which allowed scientists to decipher the hieroglyphs.
June 14, 2005 at 05:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
HP chief faces SEC investigation
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has asked HP to provide information about the timing of stock trades by its current chief executive Mark Hurd, Businessweek wrote.
Shortly before he was hired as HP's new CEO, Hurd sold $1.4m worth of stocks of NCR, the company where he previously was the chief executive.
It's fishy for a simple reason: the day Hurd got hired, NCR stock fell 17 per cent.
With the company just losing its star CEO, that drop could have been expected.
So the question that the SEC is asking is: did Hurd know that he was going to leave NRC when he sold his stock? If so, it could be called insider trading and lead to charges against Hurd.
HP claims that the sale occurred before the company had even engaged in talks with Hurd. Hopefully they are right. Otherwise they might need to start looking for a chief all over again.
June 14, 2005 at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Holland picks up gaming trophy
The Dutch have just won bragging rights for making the strongest gamers in the world. Arthur van Kan, a 17-year old Dutchman over the weekend conquered the title of world champion Halo 2, according to the Dutch gaming website Gamez.nl (in Dutch - the official results aren't up yet).
The Dutch last year in October also swept the World Cyber Games in San Francisco, winning three gold medals and one bronze – out of seven games in which they competed.
Van Kan has gaming in his blood. Back then the won gold with Project Gotham Racing, a game he described as "lame" and "not challenging." The 1st price also made him $20,000, enough to quit he paper route, he told Xbox.com.
His first price for the Halo tournament, that was played online, got Van Kan a mere $1,500, a 50" plasma TV, a trophy featuring a gold Halo 2 disc.
The next time anybody tells you to get from behind your gaming console, tell them about the Dutch. They might be notorious for the drug policies, but seem to be doing all right with gaming. Just connect the dots and you can speculate how the two are related.
June 13, 2005 at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Blog rumours put Skype with Yahoo
Yahoo is on the verge of buying or partnering with Skype, claims Jean Michel Billaut, an internet pundit over in Paris, on his blog.
You'd better polish up your French skills to check this one, but translated the post says:
"This is what is being said in circles that are in the know… will Yahoo buy Skype? Or otherwise will Yahoo propose a shared revenue model? Anyway it is 'on the road'" He goes on by analysing the rumour that he just seeded, providing proof nor sources.
The posting is making quite a stir in the blogosphere, but all we have as proof is Billau's resume (he works as an internet consultant for BNP, a major French bank). Even the rumours about Apple switching to Intel had more credibility.
Photo: Skype CEO Niklas Zennström
June 13, 2005 at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Novell preparing for layoffs
Novell is preparing a corporate restructuring, claims Linuxtoday. The company is said to start cutting jobs in the company's European offices soon, following weak financial results over the first quarter of 2005.
Novell is stuck between a rock and a hard place: it relies heavily on its installed base of Novell Netware to bring in revenues, but sees a bright future in Linux. The open source operating system however doesn’t offer much revenues for now.
Last quarter showed that Novell's strategy of subsidising a Linux transition with Netware sales is severely flawed. Users are abandoning Netware at a faster rate than expected while the Linux business won't grow as fast as the company planned.
But job cuts aren't much of a solution for this problem. Linuxtoday claims that the cuts will focus on Europe. That can mean two things: reorganising SuSe Linux or scaling back the "non-development" part of the organisation (sales, marketing, support).
Since Novell has put its future on Linux, messing with SuSe would come close to suicide. Decreasing sales, marketing and support similarly could scare away prospective customers.
Instead of focusing on cost cutting, Novell needs to turn up the heat against Red Hat by becoming a true open source player - it currently mostly provides lip service to the movement's ideals by selling Linux but keeping the source code for new projected proprietar .
Surely Netware is nice because it pays the bills, but it's time Novell starts taking the future a little more serious.
June 10, 2005 at 07:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The dark side of smaller chips
UPDATE: I had a chat with Intel's John Casey, a spokesperson for the Intel Technology Leadership Group today (15 June). He claims that the link between Moore's Law and processor reliability - that was made in an interview with vnunet.com and in the whitepaper that Intel published about this subject - is far fetched to say the least.
A follow-up to this story has since gone online on vnunet.com.
===
You want faster, cheaper, smaller processors? Better prepare for more computer crashes too then, an Intel research told vnunet.com during "Research at Intel Day," an open house of Intel Research.
"In the next 10-15 years Moore's Law is going to make platforms
more unreliable," Padma Apparao, a staff engineer at Intel's Corporate
Technology Group, told vnunet.com.
Unreliable chips make faulty calculations and could cause a system to crash,
she warned.
With smaller, denser chips physics start playing an increased role. Cosmic rays that constantly bombard the earth can disrupt electronics, especially during cosmic storms. The same goes for alpha particles. These miniscule particles usually don't hit much in today's chips. But as researchers increase the density of a chip (cramming more transistors in them), there is also more to hit. Think of it as the difference between shooting an arrow onto a sports field with players on them, or into the stands in a packed stadium.
There are more issues that scientists don't know how to overcome. Electrical noise will start playing a larger role, as will oxidation and miniscule shifts inside a chip. Finally testing becomes more expensive for more elaborate chip designs, so faulty chips are more likely to slip through the cracks.
But surely Intel must be working on a solution? Apparao developed a technology that will monitor if a chip has gone bad and if needed takes it offline. But that doesn't solve the problem, it just prevents it from completely messing up you system.
June 9, 2005 at 05:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Another gentle Microsoft spanking
Microsoft is set to start shipping its Windows without the Media Player in Europe next week.
What was intended to prevent Microsoft from abusing its monopoly on the desktop is now expected to be a completely ineffective measure.
It is still up to computer manufacturers to choose to install Windows XP N Edition on their computers instead of the full blown version of the operating system. Few will opt for the dressed down version – unless somebody thinks it would make for a nice marketing campaign to do so.
But even if consumers buy a computer with the stripped version of Windows the "N" version won't do much good. When they comes home they (hopefully) run Windows Update to download the latest patches. At that moment Microsoft will try its hardest to have them download Windows Media Player.
And users will probably want to download the software too because you hardly can go by without it these days. Certainly Real Player or Quicktime offer similar functionalities, but for certain media formats you just require Windows Media Player, or at least a PhD in computer science to get them to work on the non-Microsoft players.
What was the EU thinking when it put a "Media Player-less" Windows on its spank Microsoft list? This might go further than the spinelessness that the US Department of Justice showed in its battle against the convicted monopolist, but it still won't be much of a determent to keep anybody from abusing monopoly powers in the future.
June 9, 2005 at 07:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
IBM's scare tactics
IBM has unveiled a bundle of software and services to battle online identity theft. It's a noble effort no doubt, but Big Blue crosses the line when it comes to selling its product.
Making the case that organisations need a solution to fight identity theft, IBM in a press release IBM refers to recent studies:
"According to the Federal Trade Commission, 9.3 million people in the U.S. were victims of identity theft last year; a recent survey indicates that the dollar impact of this form of crime was $52.6 billion in 2004."
Reading this everybody should start shivering, shaking and reach for the phone to order some of IBM's new services.
But the company isn't beying very honest here, or ethical for that matter. Note that the word "online" is missing before "identity theft".
The quoted figures refer to all identity theft. That's a big deal because the vast majority of identity theft is committed offline and by people the victim knows – not through online phishing emails. There is nothing that IBM's Tivoli identity manager or the suit donning consultants can do about those scams.
Shame on you IBM for this FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) attack.
Don't have something better to do? Like regaining some of the Power PC business that you just lost?
June 8, 2005 at 01:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Siemens bails out of handset business
Siemens has finally found a company that is willing to "buy" its ailing mobile handset business. BenQ of Taiwan has agreed to take over the business unit and will move its headquarters to Germany.
BenQ will receive not only the ownership of R&D facilities and a 8.4 percent stake in Symbian, but is also set to get a € 50m investment from the German company and € 250m in cash to keep the business afloat while BenQ tries to integrate it make it profitable.
Simply put, Siemens just gave BenQ € 300m to get rid of its mobile phone division, which just shows how desperate the company must have been to get out of this business. After the deal has been finalised, all Benq really has to show for it is a 2.5 percent stake in the Taiwanese company.
The mobile unit brought in € 5bn in revenues and caused $152m in losses last year.
Paying BenQ for the privilege of taking over the business might seem odd, but I'm sure Siemens did the math. Closing down factories, taking care of warranty obligations and laying off the 6,000 employees would have cost more than the €300m it's paying the Taiwanese, even after Siemens would have sold their stake in Symbian and patents.
June 7, 2005 at 11:26 PM | Permalink |