Column for December
19
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for column of December
19 Mercury News report of the Google project is here. New York Times version here. The Detroit Free Press (on whose beat the University of Michigan lies) ran a nice piece by Mike Wendland. And here's some information on Google Print. Column
of December
12 Links
for column of December
05 The USA Today report of the 'honey-pot' experiment is here. The ArsTechnica account is here. Avantgarde's report is here. TechWeb also covered the story. The most vivid quote I saw came from Marcus Colombano of Avantgarde: "The average was just four minutes. Think about that. Plug in a new PC -- and many are still sold with Windows XP SP1 -- to a DSL line, go get a cup of coffee, and come back to find your machine has been taken." [Note: I don't think 'average' is right -- my reading of the results suggests that four minutes was the quickest time-to-compromise.] ZoneAlarm can be downloaded (free for personal use) from here. Links
for column of November
28 Update! The US Senate has met and pared down the IPPA, removing some of the wilder sections (like the bit that would have turned the Department of Justice into the litigation department of the music and movie companies). The result: what Wired calls "a kinder, gentler, copyright bill". Phew! (provisionally, because the effects of IP law often only surface much later) For a memorable account of the ongoing battle between technology and the copyright industries, see Ed Felten's terrific President's Lecture at Princeton. And for a masterful analysis of the ludicrous way we currently make IP law, see this column by James Boyle in the Financial Times. Links
for column of November
21 For an account of Sainsburys' IT woes, see this report. Alastair Darling's concerns about the CSA's IT system were first reported in 2002. More on the CSA's woes here, here and here. The report into Cambridge University's disastrous CAPSA IT system is here. Links
for column of November
07 For a good summary by Information Week of the MessageLabs warning about new-style phishing, see here. For a BBC report on the travails of LloydsTSB customers, see here. NatWest's experience is chronicled here. An excellent White Paper on Phishing can be downloaded (in pdf format, 1.8 MB) from here. For information on how to disable Windows Scripting Host see here. My Open University group has a new online course on viruses, worms, phishing, spam and related menaces. It's designed to help people understand the problem and teaches them how to protect themselves from 'malware'. Links
for column of
October
31 The OGC Report can be found here. LinuxJournal has published a usefully sceptical analysis of it. For an accessible primer on the Whig Interpretation of history, see this site. Silicon.com claims to have seen a pre-release Word version of the report, with 'track changes' enabled. They claim that the favourable comments on Open Source software were 'sexed down' by civil servants to preserve a semblance of impartiality vis-a-vis proprietary software! Audio version of this column. Links
for column of October
24 The New York Times has an interesting article on what it calls eBay's "power sellers". Quote: "An estimated half-million people make a full- or part-time living by auctioning everything from macramé to Maseratis on the Internet. In the online auction world, they are called power sellers, and they have succeeded by researching consumer trends, finding reliable sources for goods and not sparing the bubble wrap." Links
for column of October
17 Audio version of this column. The Guardian report of the Indymedia seizure is here. The Bits of Freedom researchers have produced a fascinating report of their experiment with Dutch ISPs (as a pdf file). Update (18th October): The FBI has apparently returned the confiscated servers.
Links
for column of October 10 Correction: it's the British Phonographic Industry, not (as I had it) the British Phonographic Society. BBC report of the new initiative by the British record industry is here. Simpson Garfinkel wrote a nice, insightful piece about P2P in MIT's Technology Review. The Pew report on music downloading can be found here (in pdf format). For a report of the Appeal Court's judgment in the Grokster/Morpheus case, see here. On Friday last, the RIAA/MPAA announced their intention to take the case to the Supreme Court. Audio version of this column. Links
for column of October
03 News of the JPEG vulnerability here. And here's a report of its appearance on the Net. Coincidentally, the New York Times is running a piece by James Fallows this morning which is partly about alternatives to IE. Forbes Magazine has finally noticed that IE has serious competition. Quote: "The world of Web browsing has reached a tipping point. Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has been and remains the de facto standard for Internet users. But for the first time since the late '90s, when Redmond quashed Netscape, Microsoft has some real competition.
Alternative browsers have been around for years, including Netscape,
which was long ago absorbed by the Time Warner conglomerate.
The popular open source browser Mozilla is based on Netscape,
a program called Opera has a following, and Apple Computer has
its own browser, dubbed Safari. Read Charles Cooper on "Why I dumped Internet Explorer". Another interesting aspect of IE's stagnation is that it provided third-party developers with numerous opportunities to develop products which enhanced the Microsoft product. For some, this was lucrative. But now, as frustrated users eventually start migrating to other products, these third-party developers are getting worried. Still more: Marc Andreessen (who co-wrote Mosaic and co-founded Netscape) speaking on the issue: "One
of the most amazing things over the last six or seven years
is watching Microsoft basically get a monopoly over the browser
and then not use it," he said. Links
for column of September
26 The original Brennan post is here. Marc Tobias's site is here. Ed Felten's commentary is here. BikeBiz's article is here. Links to video can be found here. Media outlets which covered the story included Wired News, the New York Times and the Boston Globe. Links
for column of September
19 The transcript of Pat Gelsinger's keynote is here. Intel's Press release summarising his keynote is here. PlanetLab's home page is here. Links
for column of September
12 Ed Felten's Blog entries on Wikipedia. Links
for
column of September
05 The latest Pew Internet report on IM is here. PC World magazine published a useful "Grown-Up's Guide to Instant Messaging" in March 2004. You can find it here. Links
for column of August
29 Nice allegorical essay by John Kay looking back at the 3G auctions. My thoughts about cocktail parties and spectrum scarcity were prompted by this essay in the Economist. Column
for August
22 No
columns for August 08 and 15 (well, even columnists have holidays) Column
for August
01 Links
for column of July
25 There's a terrific analysis by Floyd Norris of the taxation aspect of the Microsoft bonanza in the International Herald Tribune. The Economist's kindly piece is here. Links
for column of July
18 There's a stray character in the Observer's link to the Register story. The correct link is to this. Links
for column of July
11 The statistics for UK spam came in too late to make the print edition of my column. They reveal that things have worsened even more than I had supposed. According
to MessageLabs, a leading anti-spam company, UK spam figures
for Apr-Jun are: So,
despite the legislation, spam is still increasing. Mark
Sunner, Chief Technology Officer at MessageLabs, says “As
the proportion of spam in corporate and home inboxes continues
to grow exponentially, there’s a direct correlation to
regional demographic trends. The US presents the widest market
for spammers in terms of Internet access and adoption of email
as a communications tool. While it currently has the worst global
figure at 83%, it’s only a matter of time until the UK
falls victim to similar volumes in around six-months time, whilst
Asia-Pacific countries will likely see the same impact in 12
months time. When it comes to the Internet, when the US sneezes,
the rest of us catch a cold. Spamhaus (a terrific and courageous organisation IMHO) is here. Column
of July
04 (Oh, and I also wrote a piece for the Review section of the paper about the proposed new music downloads charts.) Links
for column of June
27 Demos publications are available from here. Manuel Castells's latest book is The Internet Galaxy. Links
for column of June
20 Windows users can download iTunes software from here. (And it's free.) The catalogue of the UK iTunes store is still a bit thin compared with its US counterpart. There are various reasons for this (I hear) but they are all about difficulties in negotiating rights with record labels. Some small independent labels are complaining that Apple is offering them terms which are distinctly ungenerous. That wouldn't surprise me. Apple may be an excellent company, but it drives hard bargains. Ask the folks in China who manufacture the iPod! Links
for column of June
13 For background to the draft treaty (including links to PDF copy etc.) see Corante. The Public Knowledge site has lots of useful commentaries, especially from NGOs. There's a wonderful, legalistic, scholarly critique of the draft by some Oxford academics. And finally, re Edmund Burke's observation about evil triumphing when good men do nothing, there have been two good men and one good woman in Geneva all week -- Cory Doctorow and David Tannenbaum, and Wendy Seltzer . Their daily reporting of the proceedings have been just about the only enjoyable aspect of the WIPO event. Links
for column of June
06 Eric Raymond's essay "Homesteading the Noosphere" is here. His famous essay on Linux, "The Cathedral and the bazaar" is here. Steve Weber's Home Page is here. His book is published by Harvard University Press (you can download an excerpt in pdf format). An index of reviews to date can be found here. Links
for column of May
30 Nicholas Carr's home page is here. For a page listing some responses to his article see here. CIO magazine ran an interview with him. Don Tapscott wrote a rebuttal of his thesis (it's a pdf file). No
column on May 23 No
column on May 16 Links
for column of May
09 The Rubin analysis of Diebold code is here. There's an InfoWorld report of some of this work. Also an AP summary published in the Guardian. For accounts of the Walden O'Dell's donation to the Bush campaign see, e.g. this USA Today report. Here is a report by the Christian Science Monitor on the California decision not to use voting machines. Links
for column of May
02 The Google prospectus is on the Securities and Exchange Commission's site -- here. Maths background to e is here. Links
for column of April
25 Simpson Garfinkel's article is here. Links to the talk given by Google's technology supremo, Urs Hoelzle, to the University of Washingon at Seattle on November 5th 2003 can be found here. Links
for column of April
18 Adam Laurie is the Chief Security Officer at a British company, AL Digital. "Before we deploy any new technology for clients or our own staff", he told C-Net, "one of my duties is to investigate that technology and ensure it is secure--actually rolling your sleeves up and looking at it, not just taking the manufacturers' claims at face value. When I did that, I found that it is not secure," he said. Laurie found that phones are vulnerable to "bluesnarfing," in which an attacker exploits a flaw to read, modify and copy a phone's address book and calendar without leaving any trace of the intrusion. The flaw affects a number of Sony Ericsson, Ericsson and Nokia handsets (including my benighted T68i), but some models--including a handful of Nokia phones--are at greater risk because they invite attack even when in "invisible mode" -- i.e. when they are supposed not to be broadcasting their presence. For the grisly details, see the web page he has prepared. On Wednesday last (April 14) the London Times carried the article by Steve Boggan, who went out on the streets with Adam Laurie and found that Bluesnarfing was indeed as easy as Laurie had claimed. It was also intriguing to see the differences between the two main companies affected. Sony-Ericsson put up a feeble spokesbot who first tried to downplay the problem. Nokia, in contrast, were more forthcoming. When quizzed by C-Net, they acknowledged that some of their phones were vulnerable, but claimed that an attack was only possible if the Bluetooth was in 'visible' mode. (Wrong, according to Laurie, for some models.) The Nokia spokesman also volunteered some extraordinary news: If an attacker had physical access to a 7650 model, a bluesnarf attack would not only be possible, but it would also allow the attacker's Bluetooth device to "read the data on the attacked device and also send SMS messages and browse the Web via it." Way back in 2000, security expert Bruce Schneier wrote this: "Bluetooth
is a short-range radio communcations protocol that lets pieces
of computer hardware communicate with each other. It's an eavesdropper's
dream. Eavesdrop from up to 300 feet away with normal equipment,
and probably a lot further if you try. Eavesdrop on the CRT
and a lot more. Listen as a computer communicates with a scanner,
printer, or wireless LAN. Listen as a keyboard communicates
with a computer. (Whose password do you want to capture today?)
Is anyone developing a Bluetooth-enabled smart card reader? Links
for column of April
11 You can check domain-name ownership here. The Media Post profile of Wunderman Interactive is here. Links
for column of April
04 This is allegedly a screenshot of the Google email service in action. Can't vouch for it, but the image is all over the web. The first review I've seen is here. Column
of March
28 Column
of March
21 The Guardian report of HEFCE's decision is here. HEFCE's own announcement is here. The e-U's er, taciturn, response is here. The company accounts are available online from Companies House for a modest (£4) fee. Links
for column of March
14 The Shorenstein Case Study is available here. It comes in the form of a watermarked, highly circumscribed pdf file with fierce warnings about not copying or quoting, but at least you can read it online! Links
for column of March
07 How BitTorrent works: see here for a nice diagram. News.Com reported the Lindows decision to use BitTorrent. Paul Boutin wrote a nice piece in Slate about the technology. Links
for column of February
29 Wade Roush wrote a terrific article on search engine competition in MIT's Technology Review. You need to subscribe to read it, but subscription is free and well worth the effort because it's a great publication. How Teoma works: "Teoma uses document clustering to sort its results for its users. As it crawls pages, it bins them by topic, so that on your result page, in addition to a list of links is a list of clusters under the “Refine” heading. Each cluster heading, when you click on it, yields sites in that bin and potentially more suggested refinements. For example, if you wanted to learn about Snow College but couldn’t remember where it was or if it might be called Snow University, try typing snow into teoma. One of the suggestions under “refine” will be “Snow College,” and by clicking on this link, you can avoid having to wade through sites about snow reports, ski resorts, snow leopards, Snow Dogs, snow cones, and a host of other sites you care nothing about. Teoma does this by showing which pages it has put into its “snow college” bin. Thus it can have a dramatically positive effect on a user’s ability to retrieve relevant information by sorting and clustering sites by topics". [Source.] How Mooter works: "Mooter analyses the choices you make while searching, then reorders the results based on what you are actually looking for at that moment without you having to go back and rephrase your exact needs.
Column
of February
22 Bill Gates wrote an article in the Washington Post outlining the views he expressed at Davos. The Economist ran a good article on the spam problem last week. (Unfortunately you will need a subscription to access the full text online.) Examples of the economists' approach to spam can be found here. An interesting filtering approach comes from analysing your inbox to build a network of friends -- which unfailingly identifies 50% of spammed messages (leaving the rest for other types of filter). The scientific journal Nature carried a good article about this also. For a critical account of how the US can-spam act is doing, see here. Column
of February
15 Dan Hill's essay on Apple's design philosophy is here. One of the other thoughts prompted by it is about the way general ideas about design cross disciplinary boundaries. For example, the Berkeley architect Christopher Alexander is famous for his concept of 'pattern languages' -- which evolved from his study of the architectural 'patterns' that have evolved in response to the age-old need to design living spaces, but which have proved an inspiration for designers of computer software and information systems. Column
of February
08 Details of the conference on 'delivering adult content responsibly' are here. Column
of February
01 This week's Economist has a very good piece about Microsoft's difficulties with the European Commission. Details of Gordon Brown's 'enterprise' conference are here. Column
of January
25 Good exegesis of Googlebombing here. The definitive site on Googlewhacking is here. The New York Times piece is here (but will transform itself into a mere abstract -- with payment for the full piece -- after a time). Adam Mathes's page on his Pressman jape is here. Column
of January
18 The winning ads in the 'Bush in 30 Seconds' competition are here. Frank Rich's New York Times column of December 29 is here. Column
of January
11 Column
of January
04
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© John Naughton 1999,2000,2001,2002, 2003, 2004. Nothing in this Web page should be construed as offering investment advice. Information is posted here to supplement my column in the London Observer in the hope that additional links and background will be of interest to readers. If you are seeking advice or information about online investment, pay off your credit card bills first and then consult The Motley Fool. If you want to know where the World Wide Web is headed, buy a crystal ball.