Date: 12/30/2003
Views: 155
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Wednesday, 12 May 2004 |
The monthly batch of patches from Microsoft was released. There's plenty of room to debate the wisdom of only releasing patches once a month (I think I'll save that topic for another day), but at least this month none were rated 'critical'. Last month's critical patch was followed by the Sasser worm (the author or which was recently arrested).
Apple has been granted a patent for the interface of the iPod. I have an iPod and love it. I wholeheartedly agree the interface is both novel and an important factor in the commercial success of the product. I am not a fan of software patents, but if ever there were a device I thought could warrant one, it's the iPod. But here's where the absurdity comes in... The patent just doesn't seem useful to Apple. New digital music players are popping up every day and Apple is already launching derivitave products, like the iPod mini. By the time a peice of software is successful and has made enough money to warrant trying to enforce a patent you are already in the financial nirvanna of near zero marginal cost software sales and working on version 2.0.
I suppose it's not a bad defensive strategy. If for nothing else but to signal to your competitors you are sufficiently litigious to make their lives difficult. Maybe that's why Microsoft holds many patents but rarely enforces them.Write Comment (0 Comments) |
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Friday, 07 May 2004 |
According to Wired, 12% of support calls to Dell and 50% of system crashed reported to Microsoft are caused by spyware. A recent study by Earthlink found an average of 28 peices of spyware per computer.
Even if their numbers are off by a lot, the message is clear - spyware is costing real money. This fits with my own experience working in IT. At work we manage about 600 client computers, about 500 laptops and 100 desktops. Spyware and worms are contending for the top spot when it comes to support issues. In fact, we just added spybot to the disk image for our laptops. Most of the spyware seems to come as a hitchiker with another program, like Kazaa, or be installed by a website. Many sites use vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer to download and install software without the user even knowing it. And because the preview pane in Outlook is really just IE, you can get infected just by reading SPAM. Another good reason to use my favorite browser, firefox.
In unrelated news, it looks like the record labels are forcing Apple to raise some prices on iTunes. As if suing your customers wasn't a bad enough business strategy, they now think it's a good idea to make legitimate legal alternatives to downloading music free less attractive by raising prices. The article also notes that some labels, namely Sony, are trying to launch their own competing services. This could be an early move to push prices up and send customers to the new sites run by the labels themselves. Can you say "anti-competitive"? Wal-mart is still offering songs for $0.88. It would be interesting to see the labels try to renegotiate prices with wal-mart.Write Comment (0 Comments) |
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Thursday, 06 May 2004 |
A while ago I blogged about easy TiVo hacking for the masses. I have the DirecTV integrated TiVo which is pretty locked down. On the plus side, it has two tuners so I can record two shows at the same time and the montly service is only $4.99. At the time it looked like remote control based hacks were about all I could pull off. I decided to head over to tivocommunity.com and see if anyone has made progress in applying the usual TiVo hacks (larger drive, installing an FTP server, etc.) to the DirecTV model.
Luckily, I found a link to this site which presents a HOWTO on hacking (or screwing up) the DirecTV TiVo. I'm going to give it a shot with an extra 60GB drive I have. If it doesn't work, maybe I'll finally go all out and setup a MythTV based ultimate media center with DVD ripping, MP3s, PVR, weather, video game emulator, and more. The cool thing is I could then run the MythTV front end on a wireless laptop anywhere in the house.Write Comment (0 Comments) |
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Wednesday, 05 May 2004 |
I realized today my polling module wasn't set to allow anonymous visitors to vote. Given the tendency of my blog to promote free and open source software, and freedom in general, I rectified the situation after a little googling about postnuke permissions. Let the voice of the people be heard (yes all two of you, and on completely irreverant subjects).
Speaking of Google... I have long admired the company for doing something useful without "selling out". The company's philosophy amazes me not because of what it says, but because it's consistent with what they do (I especially like number six and number nine). I was concerned when they started to consider an IPO because going public could change the company for the worse. It seemed to me the responsiblities to satisfy Wall Street were not aligned with the company's values. On top of that, the disclosure that comes with public filings could take away a significant competitive advantage - the ability to move under the radar. GMail came out of nowhere and by the time it goes live competitors will still be struggling to figure out how it works. As if that wasn't enough, I guessed they probably didn't need the money.
They decided to go forward with a public filing and as part of that process revealed a war chest of almost half a billion dollars they are adding to at a rate of over one hundred million a year. So I was right about the money, but it looks like secrecy might not be as important in the future for Google as it has been in the past. They have developed an astoundingly large and resilient network.
And as for the misalignment of Wall Street and Google values, true to Google form they did it their way.Write Comment (0 Comments) |
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Thursday, 29 April 2004 |
SCO dropped their claim the GPL is unconstitutional. I guess BayStar asking for their $50M back got them to tone it down a little.
DaimlerChrysler filed for a dismissal of SCO's suit against them, and AutoZone also filed a motion asking for SCO to be more specific and to hold their case until rulings in SCO's suit against IBM and RedHat are handed down.Write Comment (0 Comments) |
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