Thursday Thimble

The news from CES. But first, happy birthday Elvis. The king would have been 69. The show floor doesn't open until 10a, but CES kicked off last night with the traditional Bill Gates keynote address. I arrived too late last night to attend the address, so I missed the witty videos that Bill usually shows, but here's the hard news culled from people who were there.

1. Xbox Live will hit one million subscribers by June. Bill Gates told Reuters in an interview before his keynote last night that Microsoft would be releasing a kit for the gaming console that would turn it into a DVR, giving it much of the functionality of the Windows XP Media Center.
2. Jay Leno assisted Gates at his CES Keynote, suggesting the mogul consider Lasik and saying Gates still owed him $20 for lunch from the Windows 95 launch. Leno was there to help Gates launch a new verion of MSN. The Microsoft CEO also showed the Media Center Extender, a small set-top box which would bring content from the PC to the TV. Gates said some TVs would come with the capability built-in. He also talked about the Portable Media Center (see yesterday's entry), announcing content deals with EMI Music, Napster, and Cinema Now. And he said the SPOT watch which Microsoft had announced at last year's CES will finally be available next week. A transcript of Gates speech is online at the Microsoft web site.
3. Quotations from Chairman Bill:

   "A particular challenge here is making sure that we strike the right balance in managing digital rights and yet having the simplicity that you can move the content that you paid for around and have it available in the richest possible way -- a very tough problem"

   He said that Microsoft was spending record amounts on R&D to support "seamless computing:"

   So the theme of seamless computing, bringing the smart devices together with very rich interfaces, that's what we're dedicated to and that's why we're investing so much in the software and the partnerships that will pull this together.

   He struck a blow for upgrades:

   Many of the types of software products I'll talk about tonight are not software products that you just buy one time and that's it... the relationship between us and that software user is very different in terms of learning what we can improve and delivering those improvements on a constant basis.

   On the new SPOT watch:

   That technology is pretty amazing because it's got not only a wireless network receiver that uses a form of FM to connect up here but it's also got a very powerful computer... All I have to do is go onto the Web, use an account and type in the watch registration number, which I've already done that so I'm on here.

   Great. A wristwatch that requires a computer to program. Microsoft software will also continue to appear in cell phones:

   Here you can see all the different phones and there's quite a variety of form factors from the very small ones that you think of as more phone like to the larger ones that are more PDA-like. And the variety here will just increase over time as people want to add in GPS devices, as we go to different aspect ratios, different keyboard capabilities. You can see one already there with the keyboard, but you'll see more of those. That is a trend that is important.

   Uh huh. And automotive?

   In the car it's a particular challenge that you don't want to distract the driver, so here's where we know that as you go to your car, the idea of having directions that you've looked up on a PC or on a phone, having those available to you through a map or an audio readout, that makes sense. Having any new tunes that you got at home brought down to the device in the car or videos for the passengers, particularly the kids, that should be very automatic. And after all, your car is now generally within range of your Wi-Fi network, not always but in many households that's true and so just by having a receiver you can make that so you don't have to do manual synchronization. Even if you're listening to, say, a radio show, an NPR show, right, wherever you are, you ought to be able to have the rest of that streamed down to the car and then listen to it on demand through the rich device there in the car.

   Cool. Where do I get one of them rich devices? Set top boxes have always been a challenging arena for Microsoft. The very limited hardware makes it tough for software.

   We have software that runs even on the current set-top boxes, so our strategy is not based on just relying on a new generation, we went back and wrote software for even the very resource limited boxes that are out there. That's called our Foundation product. Today we're announcing the version 1.5, which is where you get the high definition and digital video recording support. More and more through add-ons, the set-top boxes are including those capabilities.

   His vision for the future of TV?

   A big project for us in this TV space we call IPTV, and this is assuming that in the future programs won't just be sent in a broadcast mode, but they'll be sent over the IP data network and so the ability to have high-definition, arbitrary number of channels, user in control, targeted advertising, rich interaction, those things become possible when you think of the platform as an IP-type platform. And helping make that transition very economical and simple for the cable operators is something that we believe that software can make that very possible.

   Gates also showed the Portable Media Center and Media Center Extender, both ways to move content from your PC to your TV and beyond.

   There's been a missing standard in the media area where every device that wanted to go up to the PC and find out what sort of audio or video things were there insisted that people had to install software on the PC, and as such on all your different PCs you get different versions of that software. Really, we decided that shouldn't be necessary. You should be able to go out and buy a portable media device, or a device that lets you go in and see the audio or picture files on the PC with no software installation required at all.

   As long as you're using Windows, that is. He concluded...

   And that is the magic of software. It's the very rapid hardware advance, the idea of software platforms, great software development tools, and software richness that makes me very optimistic that even though people have many, many devices, lots of music, lots of videos, lots of memory, even though they won't have time to want to manage these systems, and move data around we will be able to create the ideal for them, whether it's communicating, creating, or just consuming the best content that's out there.

4. One surprise was the lack of comment on tablet PCs. In an interview with c|net Gates admitted that he might have been a little premature in his support for the form factor:

   Many of my assumptions--I'd say a high percentage--are overly ambitious. I have to wait longer to have them come true. I was working doing the Tablet PC for a decade before it came out. Now, it's gaining traction, but we have lots work to do. I believe that it will be mainstream on every portable PC, but we're a long way from that.

   
5. In other news, Slashdot is reporting that the new version of Photoshop won't let you open images of money. Paintshop Pro seems to have the same restriction.

My Weekly Reader

I'm on vacation and I've ignored the tech news up to now, but here's a summary of the week's top stories so far.

1. Tuesday there were 531 more lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America, bringing the 2004 totals to over 1000. The EFF says the RIAA is cutting corners in this latest round. Meanwhile one of the victims is suing back claiming racketeering and extortion.
2. They've been talking about it for months, now finally Yahoo has dropped Google as its primary search tool in favor of a homegrown product. Yahoo has been buying up search technologies from Inktomi, Overture, AltaVista and FAST. The Yahoo Slurp crawler started spidering the web on Monday, Google was gone by Tuesday. Big differentiator: Yahoo search will include paid placement, Google does not.
3. Cingular became the largest cell phone company in the country with the acquisition of AT&T Wireless on Tuesday. 30% of all cell phones will be on the new joined network.
4. According to pundit Paul Thurrott the Microsoft Windows source code leak came from an Israeli developer, Mainsoft, who was given the code several years ago to investigate porting parts of Windows to Linux.
5. Our Worm of the Week: Netsky.B spreads via email then infects the entire network via shared folders. Symantec rates it a 4 out of 5 on the threat-o-meter.
6. According to SlashDot, Apple is now debt free with $4.8 billion cash in the bank.
7. Will the biggest threat to Microsoft's monopoly come from China? Chinese developer Evermore Software released the English language version of its EIOffice suite at Demo this week. The company will start leasing the Java-based software for $99/year this May.
8. At the Intel Developers Forum this week, Intel announced that several notebook manufacturers will begin to incorporate Internet telephony in their computers this year using Intel's Extended Mobile Access (EMA) technology.
9. Earthlink is going after the Alabama Gang, a group the company calls "the most professional and technologically sophisticated group of e-mail spammers" it has ever encountered. Earthlink is naming names and says the US DOJ has contacted it about criminal complaints, too.
10. Slashdot has a story about a new automatic guitar tuner for musicians who are too stoned to tune their own. Jimmy Page and Graham Nash are endorsing it.
11. Can you believe there's no Morse code for the @-sign? Now there is. The first change to Morse since WWII. da-dit-da-dit-dah-dit
12. My buddy Rick Yaeger at MacMerc says he's found a way to get free iTunes from Pepsi bottles every time.

Monday on the run day

Tech news from around the world and around the block. It's 30 years after 10 Years After played their last concert in 1974. Intel introduced the Pentium in 1993. It was 60 Hz.

1. There's a new bug, the Witty worm, and it's crashing hard drives. The worm attacks two ISS products, BlackICE Defender and RealSecure firewalls, spreading via a bug in both. ISS is offering a patch on its web site. If you run BlackICE or RealSecure - patch now.
2. Sun will demo a server built for the online gaming industry at this week's Game Developers Conference in San Jose. Maybe we should get one for the LAN party.
3. The IBM Blade server network that was built for Lord of the Rings is being rented out now that business is a little slow for Weta Digital.
4. A programmer who devised a way to bot Google's ad server has been arrested for allegedly attempting to blackmail the search company.

Marvelous Monday

Tech news. Back to work edition... This is an unhappy day in US history. The American Revolution began in 1775. The first blood in the US Civil War was spilt in 1861. The Oklahoma City bombing occurred in 1995. Dick Sargent, Darrin #2, was born in 1933. The ABC television network launched in 1948.

1. Baystar Capital, a VC firm that pumped $50 million into SCO, wants its money back. The bucks bankrolled SCO's anti-Linux lawsuits against IBM, Chrysler, and others. Now it wants SCO to convert its shares in the company into cash. Last month BayStar admitted that it was Microsoft that had introduced it to SCO and encouraged the investment.
2. The recording and movie industries are rolling out the Automated Copyright Notice System (ACNS) to help stop illegal file sharing at colleges. ANCS will automatically notify students when copyright violations occur and can cut off Internet access until the offending file is removed. And the good news is, it's open source!
3. More news from the Pew Internet and American Life Project (could they dribble this stuff out any slower?). According to the survey, 48 million Americans have broadband at home. That's 25% of all adults. Among college educated adults under 35 the penetration soars to 52%. 54% use cable modems, but DSL has been surging since late last year and now makes up 42% of all broadband connections.
4. But don't get too uppity, a survey released today puts the US sixth on the list of most wired nations. Denmark, Britain, Sweden, Norway and Finland all offer a superior "social and cultural environment for the Internet" according to the survey conducted by IBM and The Economist magazine. Australia is 12th, Japan 25th on the list. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are at the bottom of the list.
5. Meanwhile SBC is testing fiber to the home in 15,000 Californian residences. The service costs $26.95 for download speeds of up to 1.5 megabits per second to $139.95 for 6 Mbps. The phone company says fiber is easier to maintain than copper, and unlike DSL, they don't have to offer access to competing ISPs. Take that Denmark!
6. The FTC has until June 16 to set up the Do Not Spam registry mandated by the Federal CAN-SPAM Act, but anti-spam advocates say it's not going to be easy. The FTC's public comment period ends this week.
7. Some mighty big security holes have been discovered in Linux kernels 2.4, 2.5, and 2.6. The buffer overflow flaws have been patched, but many Linux users don't know how to reccompile their kernels and there's no easier mechanism to update them.
8. Apple is positioning itself to take over the high-end video business with the release of Motion, a real-time motion graphics design program, for only $299. The company has also updated Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio, Shake, and Logic.
9. Power Paper demonstrated hypoallergenic, non-toxic, microelectronically-enabled patches that create semi-permanent tattoos in just 20 minutes. The tats last four weeks, just about as long as the typical Hollywood marriage.

Listen in tomorrow at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.

Thursday Throwdown

All the week's news in one convenient package - cuz I've been too lazy to do the news all week. It's Towel Day. Douglas Adams passed away on this day three years ago.

1. eEye is at it again. April 19 the firm discovered four serious flaws that occur in almost all Symantec security products. Symantec is offering a comprehensive patch and strongly encouraging its customers to update immediately (in most cases running Live Update is sufficient). It typically takes less than a day for worm authors to capitalize on such holes once publicized. The holes, which occur in the symdns driver, allow ring 0 access to code, even when all firewall ports are filtered and all intrusion rules are set (thanks to a separate bug there).
2. Google'sAdSense will offer banner ads for those that want them. I'm sticking with the plain old text version. Still no graphics on the main Google site, however. The company has also launched the second beta of its Google Groups site.
3. There have been five more Sasser arrests this week, but the German police say it's not a gang, just a loosely knit collection of teens and 20-somethings who share code with each other. Meanwhile they're calling the original suspect, 18-year-old Sven J., a "bottom-feeding hacker" who is responsible for all 28 strains of Sasser and Netsky. In his confession Sven said he originally intended to create an anti-virus worm but something went wrong.
4. The US House of Representatives is considering modifications to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) but the movie industry is crying foul. Republican Representative John Doolittle waved his iPod around and said he didn't understand when he sponsored the DMCA that it would limit what he could do with his music. "We went way overboard," he said. "It needs to be corrected."
5. The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill Wednesday that would outlaw "upskirt" pictures. The Video Voyeurism Prevention Act would prohibit taking covert pictures in any place where people had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The Senate passed the bill last year.
6. A Salinas, California High School has banned camera phones from classes after catching a student using one to cheat on a math exam. Last year, six University of Maryland students admitted to cheating on an accounting exam by using SMS messaging to get the answers from their friends.
7. Wi-Fi is susceptible to a denial-of-service attack according to AUSCERT at the University of Queensland in Australia. A vulnerability in the 802.11 spec could allow someone with a PDA to disrupt an entire wireless network. No patch is possible because the problem lies in the fundamental spec for 802.11.
8. Spammer OptInRealBig won a temporary injunction Monday against SpamCop, prohibiting the spam fighting site from reporting spammers to ISPs. The judgement was issued ex parte because SpamCop had not yet files a response. Once the court heard from SpamCop's parent IronPort it rescinded the order.
9. Intel released the 90 nanometer version of the Pentium M this week, code named Dothan, a year late. The small die should further improve the M's already excellent power usage. Its 2 meg L2 cache should speed it up condsiderably. Reviews available at Tom's Hardware and elsewhere.

Listen in tomorrow at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.