WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at the week's net and technology news and 
comment
by Alan Lenton
November 17,  2002

It was a pretty quiet week this week. Just as well, since I'm trying to recover 
from my first cold of the season. I think, perhaps, everyone was exhausted by 
the coverage of the end of the Microsoft trial. Readers were all analysed out 
by the torrent of words. Anyway, the result is a slightly shorter issue than 
recently, and a dearth of Scanner items to report.


Shorts:

There are already pirated copies of the Harry Potter movie out on the web. I'm 
told the quality is terrible. Of course, few people would bother down loading 
them if the publisher made the video available as soon as the film was 
released. But no, this would upset the business model. Better to criminalise 
whole chunks of the population than risk a few bucks. The frustrating thing, of 
course, is that virtually everyone who looks at the 'pirate' version will buy the 
official version when it becomes available. People just want to be able to see 
it at home, now, not next year. The overall effect of this sort of behaviour by 
the big media giants is to bring the law as a whole into disrepute. People will 
see it increasingly as a tool to prop up outmoded big business, and once that 
starts to happen we all lose out.

http://go.hotwired.com/news/business/0,1367,56400,00.html/wn_ascii

And talking of outmoded business models, the Panamanian government is 
trying to ban net telephony so that the telephone company doesn't lose money 
when you use applications like NetMeeting. Of course, telephone companies 
have long been protected monopolies, used to charging more or less what 
they liked for their services - especially international services. So like the big 
media companies they are turning to governments to protect their profits. The 
irony is that studies indicate that lower telephone rates actually spur usage. 
Indeed, China Telecom, for instance, after the obligatory period of trying to 
shut down net telephony, added the service to its product mix. This year is 
expects to take in more than $12bn from such services. You can make money 
out of the net, you just need to employ engineers and programmers - not 
lawyers.

http://www.cnet.com/software/0-8888-8-20646894-1.html

Have you updated your anti-virus software recently? Since it's a quiet week 
it's a good time for me to hassle you again. Klez (the 'H' variant) is still top of 
the pops, and we are still getting copies of it in our Feedback mail from our 
customers who aren't using their anti-virus software properly. Come on guys, 
get your act together and protect your computer against viruses, you know it 
makes sense.

A report out this last week pours cold water on the notion that 'cyber-terrorists' 
have Western countries' computer networks under attack. The study, from 
British firm mi2g, provides a welcome dose of reality amid all the hype on 
cyber-terrorism. The problem is twofold. The computer security industry sees 
a magnificent chance to get its hands on a lot of government cash by hyping 
up the threat. At the same time the governments are only too happy to go 
along with the game because it represents the first chance in decades to tilt 
the delicate balance of personal freedom v. security back in the direction of 
security. The result? A few lone voices in the wilderness, like security 
guru/cryptologist Bruce Schneier saying that we are wasting money and 
making no one safer. Hopefully, this study will provide material for use in the 
debate, but don't hold your breath.

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56382,00.html

Mention of security brings me on to Microsoft, who have also been talking 
security this week. Vice-President Craig Mundie delivered his annual report 
on the company's 'trustworthy computing' initiative. The results were 
fascinating. Microsoft had already indicated that they were planning to charge 
extra for security, so that wasn't new information. What was new was the 
assertion that the Windows 9x series (Windows 95, 98 and ME) are 
'impossible' to fix, so everyone using them will have to upgrade to Windows 
XP. What a surprise! Of course, Microsoft has had a problem for some time 
insofar as people with Windows 95, and particularly Windows 98 - which has 
USB support - are just not disposed to upgrade. So now Microsoft has 
another reason to urge them to upgrade. Actually it's not likely to work, since 
it's unlikely that XP with its order of magnitude greater resource requirements 
would run on existing 95/98 machines. But it was a nice try.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/28100.html

Large companies are looking at the aftermath of the dot com bust and the 
accounting scandals and starting to consider whether they should be 
outsourcing their IT in the way in which they have traditionally done so. One of 
the first outsourcing companies to suffer has been the giant EDS, famed for 
regularly screwing up UK government contracts. It's been issuing profit 
warnings and now consumer goods company Proctor & Gamble has pulled 
back on an outsourcing contract with EDS worth $7.5bn. Proctor & Gamble 
will be outsourcing their IT, but they will spread the outsourcing over a number 
of different firms to reduce their exposure if one goes belly up. I suspect this 
could be the start of a trend as customers become more leery of putting all 
their eggs in one basket.

http://mail.vnunet.com/cgi-bin1/flo?y=eEUB0BsjfA0EjN0BVPj0AW

Those of you who've been following the copyright debate will probably have 
heard of the Hollings Bill mandating government approved copy-protection 
technology in all 'digital media devices'. What you may not have realised is 
just how wide a range of devices this ridiculous proposal covers. Among the 
devices that would need to be fitted with copy protection are aircraft cockpit 
voice recorders, traffic speed cameras, Mars Explorer rovers, audio greetings 
cards, the Wallace and Gromit Talking Alarm clock and digital hearing aids. I 
can just see the campaign slogan now. Stop deaf people pirating music!

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/cat_fritzs_hit_list.html


Have fun on the web!

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com

Past issues of Winding Down can be found at 
http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html


