April 2008 Archives

I'll leave the good stuff to Ars Technica, but Howard Berman's bouncing baby copyright bill is one step closer to becoming law, sailing through the Judiciary Committee.

The bill would create a new position for a federal copyright enforcement czar, establish a new copyright enforcement division within the Department of Justice, and would also permit law enforcement agents to seize property from perpetrators of copyright infringement. 

The good people at the NYT have given me more reason to get excited about next month's NCTA Cable Show in New Orleans: Watching the speculation, rumour and intrigue behind who might try and take over Time Warner's cable systems, which are about to become sort of "up for grabs" as they get spun off.

Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner Inc., continued to trim what has for years been the world's largest media company by announcing Wednesday that it would completely spin off its cable company.

The news -- which was not unexpected and follows an earlier transaction in which a portion of the cable unit was spun off into a separate public company -- came as Time Warner reported quarterly earnings that were largely in line with Wall Street's expectations.

This is going to be fun to watch for a number of reasons. Last time there was a major group of systems up for sale was when AT&T sold off their Cable systems, leading to a "friendly" competition between Cox Communications, and the eventual winner Comcast. That victory gave Comcast a huge market advantage in the number of subscribers, but Comcast, which has a reputation for fighting like Rocky, the unofficial mascot of its' home city of Philadelpha, may not be able to benefit from going after TIme Warner without helping Cox, their old Atlanta-based foes. 

In this space, when we write about  Silicon Valley and its' relationship with the federal government, it's usually something nasty or hot-button, like net neutrality, energy, patent reform, intellectual property, or copyright. When people bring up environmental issues with the technology sector, usually it's the air pollution from all the cars, or whether or not Apple uses too much packaging, or what materials go into hardware and whether or not it should be illegal to throw away that old computer in a landfill. 

Capitol Valley interactive at kyte.tv/capitolvalleyinteractive
Capitol Valley content from Alex and Andrew at kyte.tv/capitolvalleymedia

Don't forget to check out the rest of the media center, with links to the Kyte.tv channels, our flickr pools, the dop.io drop and any other cool stuff we might add later.

For years, people have wondered if Microsoft has built in backdoors for law enforcement. China created their own Linux distribution for government use. There have been instances of police using off the shelf monitoring tools for investigations, installing them in court-sanctioned "black bag jobs."

Now, the good folks at Ars Technica reveal that Microsoft proudly crowing over their latest achievement, a (built-in) back door into Windows and the tools to open it!

 Microsoft revealed its development of a digital forensic analysis toolkit at a security conference yesterday as part of a wider discussion of how technology can be used to fight crime. The Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, or COFEE for short, is a USB thumb drive that contains software capable of executing approximately 150 separate commands. Once plugged in, COFEE can be ordered to decrypt system passwords, display a history of internet activity, and search the system for evidence.

That loud anguished crying sound you heard is a million IT managers' heads exploding. Why? This thing has been available "to law enforcement" since last June.

Here's a question, what company in their right mind that has any requirement for confidentiality would buy software from a software company that sells decryption and password cracking tools for its' own operating system? Isn't that almost advertising how poor your software's built-in security is? Security extends beyond malware protection. It also means that if you build doors and install locks, you should install a good lock. In this case, you're being sold a foam core with a skeleton key.

I would expect a surge in Apple enterprise sales. In their zeal to be helpful and combat computer crime, this may be a shocking case of corporate suicide. They thought people were reluctant to buy Vista now? They'll be shipping XP for a very, very long time, I believe.

CNN.com had an article today that, while in no way dispensing any new information, is something that could be pretty useful for people who a) are brand new to social networking sites or b) have kids who are on or want to be on one.

"I don't want to have to worry about all the different online scandals and problems," says Brown, an education major at St. Joseph College in Connecticut. She'd like to control her personal information and keep it out of the hands of identity thieves or snooping future employers. "It's just common sense."

It sounds like her info is locked down and airtight. But is it?

Turns out, even the privacy-conscious Sarah Browns of the world freely hand over personal information to perfect strangers. They do so every time they download and install what's known as an "application," one of thousands of mini-programs on a growing number of social networking sites that are designed by third-party developers for anything from games and sports teams to trivia quizzes and virtual gifts.

The rest of the article is here, and if you fall into either of the categories I mentioned, you should totally check it out.

I feel the need, again, to make the point that nothing is free.  Not entirely.  If you want the neat applications and you don't want to pay for them they need to be supported by ads.  The ads are more effective and therefor more profitable if they are targeted based upon assumed interests and patterns of behavior.

So should you be careful?  Sure.  Should you whine and moan because your online activity is being tracked?  No, you should just stay away from sites and applications that do the tracking.

So much for the idea that Silicon Valley doesn't understand the Legislative or Regulatory process, turns out that some don't even get the Judicial system either.

In a murder case with no body, no crime scene, no reliable eyewitness and virtually no physical evidence, the prosecution began the trial last November with a daunting task ahead. By the time prosecutor Paul Hora rested his case February 14, he had called some 60 witnesses, but presented mostly circumstantial evidence demonstrating animus between Reiser and his wife, and suspicious behavior by the defendant following Nina's disappearance in September, 2006.

The turning point in the trial came when Reiser took the stand in his own defense March 3.

In his 11 days of testimony, Reiser offered lengthy and verbose explanations for every piece of circumstantial evidence. But Reiser's version of events often drew disbelieving head shakes from jurors -- and occasional smirks from the trial judge.

Reiser's case, at least to this writer's, is in one way a microcosm of the landmark Federal Antitrust case against Microsoft. Gates squirming under the camera lights at deposition,  Reiser offering detailed, geeky explanations for every bit of circumstantial, even silly pieces of "evidence" brought in front of him. He just didn't know when to keep his mouth shut. The state presented a weak case. No body, no scene, nothing. Some detectives following Reiser while he tried to avoid unmarked cars following him (I'd probably get creeped out by that, too). It looked like the prosecution hadn't really proved anything at all, until Reiser made a classic Valley mistake, commonly made in Washington hearing rooms, but found just as often in courtrooms across the land: he took the stand in his own defense:

As the prosecutor rested his case, it seemed far from clear that the circumstantial evidence would be enough for the jury of seven men and five women to find Reiser guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Throughout his cross examination of the prosecution witnesses, defense attorney William DuBois aptly painted a picture of Reiser as a misunderstood computer nerd, so inattentive to social cues, and so slavishly devoted to logic, that his innocent behavior could be easily misinterpreted as evidence of guilt.

From his seat at the defense table, Reiser seemed to offer supporting evidence for that so-called "geek defense" in the form of his own actions, frequently quarreling with his attorney, and interrupting DuBois' cross-examination...Reiser couldn't explain why, following his wife's disappearance, he suddenly drove through the Sierra Nevada mountain range to Reno, to sample casino buffets. And he admitted taking evasive maneuvers while walking and driving to determine if he was being followed by the police, something he attributed to his innate distrust of authority, amplified by the books he read when authorities began investigating him.

He bought those books about murder investigations, he said, because he wanted to know how police behaved. "I was under investigation by the police," he said. Reading up on their techniques was only logical, he testified.

"I have a compulsive tendency to say things that I know are true that people don't want to be true," Reiser said at one point.

As testimony wrapped up April 14, Reiser offered his assessment of the proceedings in front of the jury. "This whole thing is silly," he said from the stand.

"What do you mean, the 'whole thing'?" DuBois asked.

"The whole case."

Does anyone recall Gates on the video 10 years ago? He got a lucky break when the judge involved had to recuse himself. No such luck for Hans, who will spent at least the next 25 years in prison, where perhaps he can design a better system for tracking inmates or a database for record keeping. 

I saw this at mocoNews.net and was blown away.  It's the kind of simple, common sense stuff that gets so easily lost in the bureaucracy and over analyzing of a big corporation.

Guy Talmi is a Senior Marketing Director at Pontis, an Israel-based company that works with wireless and cable operators to help determine the most relevant marketing approaches based on a user's profile, preferences and behavior. Talmi has compiled a list of the top 10 most common marketing mistakes he sees made by the operator.

Here I'll just list the actual top 10, but you can click here to see the explanation of each over at mocoNews.

1.  Operators fail to target the right products to the right customers
2.  Free trial offers fail because of poor follow-up
3.  Introductory offers for new customers alienate existing customers
4.  Non-targeted offers look like spam
5.  Operators address churn too late
6.  Marketing campaigns may fail if not tested before launch
7.  Operators use the wrong medium to market to users
8.  Value the customer
9.  Operators miss marketing opportunities
10.  Success breeds success - if you can recognize it

When you get into the explanations it makes even more sense.
What he says in his summary, praising online retailers like Amazon for marketing based on past searches and purchases, is something that has been a little controversial.

There's growing concern among (mostly older) web surfers and purchasers that companies are keeping too much information about them.  I tend to shoot down these concerns, more vocally when referring to sites that are trying to monetize a free service, because there is a reason behind targeted advertising.  I think that Talmi would agree with me that targeted advertising and marketing, regardless of industry, can help companies save money and hopefully pass those savings onto their customers in the form of more competitively priced goods and services.

First, here's a little bit of the story that ran at CNN.com today

James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone.

...

Buck, a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested April 10.

On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.

The message only had one word. "Arrested."

After that one-word message was sent out James' followers started Tweeting and blogging about their friend's precarious situation.  One friend even got on the ball and hired a lawyer on James' behalf.  James was freed.

Less than 24 hours after he was arrested.

This is exactly the kind of thing that needs to be given the spotlight, and I'm super excited about seeing it on CNN.com.  It's the sort of thing that can further help to spread awareness of how Twitter can function as more than just a fun tool or even a professional one, both of which are hats it wears quite well.

The only failing I see is that it can only benefit Twitter.  If, as we rant about ad nauseum,  this good press could have benefited the entire social networking/blogging community.  We're always saying that Web 2.0 (And I'm caught playing Buzzword Bingo) companies, and those that are involved in social networking especially, should and need to form an industry organization to keep themselves safe from potential regulation hell.

Let's face it - Like it or not, a negative story will wash over an entire medium like wildfire.  Did Janet Jackson's nipple focus the ire of over-reacting, zero-responsibility, whack-job, non-parents on CBS and the NFL?  I think that we all know what the answer is there. As I've said about on-topic examples and as was discussed in our interview with Dr. Patrick Moore, it's true that forming an industry organization means working with your competitors.  But it's working with your competitors so that you can be allowed to compete and to keep your own set of rules.

I won't go into much more detail, because I'd basically be reposting old info (more than I have already).

I'll close by giving big ups to Twitter, of which Andrew and I are big old fanboys.  This kind of story is what can help to elevate a technology from "fun" to "professional" to that next level where it can be used for very serious situations.  The same way that text messages and mobile phones in general have, the latter over the past decade and the former over the past 4-5 years.

Twitter, great job!  Social Networking/Web 2.0 execs - Celebrate the good but team up and protect yourselves from the bad.

My hometown paper, The Washington Post, has a (for once) terrific and thoughtful article on the public policy and employment law implications of social networks: that which you have done in the past but recorded for your own memory, can now be easily used against you. Quoth the Post:

It's almost like Googling someone: Log on to Facebook. Join the Washington, D.C., network. Search the Web site for your favorite school system. And then watch the public profiles of 20-something teachers unfurl like gift wrap on the screen, revealing a sense of humor that can be overtly sarcastic or unintentionally unprofessional -- or both.

One Montgomery County special education teacher displayed a poster that depicts talking sperm and invokes a slang term for oral sex. One woman who identified herself as a Prince William Countykindergarten teacher posted a satiric shampoo commercial with a half-naked man having an orgasm in the shower. A D.C. public schools educator offered this tip on her page: "Teaching in DCPS -- Lesson #1: Don't smoke crack while pregnant."

Sarcastic? Yeah. Unprofessional? I'm not so sure. I think the danger begins when you identify yourself by your employer. While we were all proud to post that first job on Facebook, many of us neglected to take down photos or change profiles. And then they caught on. I saw an old employer's H.R. director on Facebook. As much as I considered her a friend, there were parts of my life I wasn't comfortable sharing. So, I blocked her. I also went through the trouble of blocking the network of another employer from viewing this sight. Hindsight being 20/20, many of them have written to me since unblocking it in complementary terms, but I did out of an abundance of caution, not to mention never making a single reference to where I worked or what I did for living. I live a very public life (or as my friend Andy Beal says, a Radically Transparent lifestyle - BUY HIS BOOK!).

I know that employers will look at that page, and I need to be more careful," said Webster, adding that other Prince William teachers have warned her about her page. "At the same time, my work and social lives are completely separate. I just feel they shouldn't take it seriously. I am young. I just turned 22."

many school systems are wrestling with the problem, as teachers are in a way, public figures, and certainly role models. To the credit of some systems, they aren't reacting in a knee-jerk fashion. Pulled on one hand by the need to maintain reputations, but on another by the need to recruit quality teachers who are enthusiastic about their jobs (anecdotal evidence shows young adults with healthy personal lives have better interpersonal and workplace skills) they are walking a fine tightrope, and to some, it may come down to a Justice Potter Stewart-style "I know it when I see it" mentality which some smart employment lawyers are going to have to codify.

Local school officials say they have no policies concerning social networking pages or blogs kept by teachers. But they said that online improprieties would fall under general guidelines requiring proper behavior in and outside school and that sketchy Web sites would be handled case by case.

"I hate to think of what's out there. . . . There's so much out there that it's hard to know what's there," said Ken Blackstone, a Prince William schools spokesman. "But as public employees, we all understand the importance of living a public life above reproach."

Above Reproach? Get thy recruiter to a nunnery, Mr. Blackstone! Here is the sad truth, you will find eager young men and women who want to be teachers. Inspired by one of their own, or driven by a calling or desire to help or do good, they apply for underpaid, overworked positions which are afforded little respect by parents or the institutions which they serve. 

While I won't make any jokes about Cher or trees, or skiing, I will give a hat tip to That Other Andrew(tm) for pointing out the reintroduction of bills governing "Orphan Works" under copyright law.

As Alex reported in the Weekly Mobile News Roundup, NextWave Wireless, Inc. (yes, THAT NextWave) is planning on selling off their 2.5GHz PCS spectrum licenses.

So here it is, a day late, but in no way short.  It's the Weekly Mobile News Roundup.  Let's jump right in, starting with the price-per-share (PPS) at last trade on Friday, 4/25 for the Big 4, posted highest-to-lowest with the amount of change over last Friday.

AT&T - $38.58 + $1.07
Verizon - $37.04 + $1.01
Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) - $17.90  -$0.05
Sprint - $7.91 + $1.24

As usual, AT&T and Verizon are pretty much tied for first place, with only $1.54 separating their PPS.  What's interesting is that Sprint gets the fancy highlight action with their leading $1.24/share gain over Friday 4/18.

Quotes from Yahoo! Finance.


More after the jump...

(this was originally dated 4/10 but I think it deserves another look at how a big, often maligned corporation is doing something right. Hopefully Frank and I will talk again soon.)

Image Credit: The New York Times
The Gray Lady's Brad Stone has a 3 pager in today's paper on everyone's favorite new holy war: RIM versus Apple. It comes complete with a cute historical reference to RIM's headquarters:

STEVE JOBS, Apple's chief executive and field general, has Napoleonic dreams of global conquest for his 10-month-old wonder gadget, the iPhone. So it may be fitting that he's encountering his most serious resistance in a city called Waterloo.  That is where, 70 miles west of Toronto in Ontario, 19 nondescript, low-rise office buildings comprise the headquarters of Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry.

Well, I, for one, have welcomed our Canadian overlords, having ditched my iPhone for a BlackBerry after 3 and a half months of swerving, sweating, and getting annoyed at the coolness of Apple's $400 screen.

In March, Mr. Jobs announced that Apple would take the rare step of licensingMicrosoft's corporate e-mail technology, to allow iPhones to connect directly to business computers -- a dagger aimed at the heart of R.I.M.'s strength in the corporate market. In Apple's quarterly conference call last week, Apple executives said that one-third of Fortune 500 companies were interested in giving iPhones to their employees.

I'll go out on a limb here and actually praise Microsoft for delivering a great product, Exchange, and RIM for leveraging it for the on the go email user (sadly, most of my mobile use is email, Instant Message or an even cooler feature, RIM's peer-to-peer BlackBerry Messenger follow, but I use email more than anything). Also, the calendar. Ah, the calendar. I can add an appointment and invite a friend and it hits their calendar and mine, I can edit it on my Mac and it hits the phone in the same way. Yes, ActiveSync does that but at what cost?

I'll admit that I'm probably the last guy who you'd expect to come out in favor of limiting a consumer's use of their own technology.  Well, I don't know that I am in favor of Skype not getting "Carterfoned" for use on U.S. mobile devices, but I certainly understand it.

Being able to have free, unlimited calling to other Skype-ers and dirt-cheap rates to other phones would rip the bottom out of the mobile phone industry.  Think about how many people would activate data-only plans or just get the cheapest rate plan to maintain an account with their carrier.  Either carriers would lose a ton of money or, more likely, we'd see the price of data-only plans soar to compensate for the loss in calling plan revenue. 

Also, keep in mind that one of the Big 4 is in pretty serious trouble.  I won't name names, but they've seen millions of customers and billions of dollars evaporate in the last 3 years, seen their stock plummet from a respectable low-$20's to about $6.50 and have been entirely unable to find their direction.  If Skype came in on mobiles we could see our Mystery Carrier shut down or get bought out.  We would lose 25% of the Big 4 national carriers and there would be an enormous number of jobs lost.

So if you're gearing up to scream about how stupid I am, I'm way ahead of you.  I get why people want Skype on their mobile and why they think they should be allowed to.  I understand it, I promise.  But at the same time, it's a really tricky situation that K-Mart (the FCC Chairman, not the retailer) is in the middle of.   Sometimes it's easy to say that  the Government  just likes to meddle or that they can't get their heads out of their asses, but this isn't one of those times.

Trying to find a balance between being pro-competition and (no exaggeration) protecting the future of an entire industry in this country - I'm not jealous.

At CTIA, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin ("K-Mart") announced his intent to deny Skype's petition for a declaratory ruling that would apply "Carterfone" rules to wireless networks, meaning the Big Four couldn't interfere with Skype software on iPhones or BlackBerries. Maybe this was a message to Skype, "stay off their lawn."

Skype didn't get the message. According to this press release, they're testing mass-market VoIP software in a number of countries.

Following recent moves to extend Skype? conversations to a wide variety of new mobile and wireless devices, Skype is taking another major step as it continues to merge its internet communications software with mobile phones. Today, the company released a beta version of Skype for your mobile, a mobile "thin" client that works on about 50 of the most popular Java-enabled mobile phones from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

The beta version of Skype for your mobile is available worldwide with a feature set that includes chat, group chat, presence (seeing when your contacts are online), and receiving calls from Skype users, and through SkypeIn.* Additional features, which include the making of Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls from the mobile handsets, are initially supported in seven markets: Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

  Now, note that this doesn't include the US. Maybe because of K-Mart's intentions to let the Big Four block Skype traffic, maybe because they want to see how it goes elsewhere first. But no matter what, when that 700mhz phone market opens up, expect Skype to get huge. You'll be able to have a landline, mobile, and portable number on any device you can think of. Now that's competition.

That's right, I'm going to New Orleans next month for the National Cable and Telecommunications Association's Cable Show 2008. which takes places May 18th-21st.

The 5th Revision- Scripps Networks

The 5th Revision is made up of: Doug Klein on drums. Jeza Kepler on vocals. Spencer Corden on piano/keyboards. Stewart Pack on bass. Phil Fuson on guitar.

The Frontline - Charter Communications

The Frontline is made up of: Eric Ketzer on guitar/vocals. Chris Logan on bass. Brendan O'Neil on guitar/vocals. Patrick Swan on trumpet/keyboard. John Sykes III on drums. Robert Little on vocals.

Full Mesh - Juniper Networks

Full Mesh is made up of: Robb Foster on vocals. Richard Russman on guitar/vocals. Eamon Loftus on guitar. Brad Ryan on drums/vocals. Bill Seeger on bass.

Links:   Full Mesh on MySpace

More Cowbell - Time Warner Cable

More Cowbell is made up of: Julie Simon on vocals. Lyndel Navarro on guitar. Bill Helms on guitar/vocals. Howard Pfeffer on bass. Scott Ramsdell on drums. Kent Vermillion on cowbell/vocals. Tom Richards on keyboard/vocals.

Links:   More Cowbell on MySpace

One Night in NOLA- Fox Cable Networks/TVN Entertainment.

One Night in NOLA, a rock fusion band, is made up of: Sean Riley on guitar. Jim Riley on bass. Nick Constantinides on guitar. John Malkin on guitar. Carlo Hume on drums.

Charter Communications Presents The Paul Allen Band

The Paul Allen Band is made up of: Paul Allen Terry Davison Gary Thompson Andrew Nelson James Clark

Ralphie and the Streamers - Cisco

Ralphie and the Streamers are made up of: Ralph Galione on vocals. Pat Craig on guitar/vocals. Jason Shreeram on bass/vocals. Andrew Smith on drums. Ken Orbach on guitar. Ted Brown on guitar.

The Solutions - ARRIS

The Solutions are made up of: Mike Caldwell on lead guitar. Mike Dorff on rhythm guitar/lead vocals. Tom Dutra on bass. Tony Davis on drums/vocals. Alex Swan on harp/vocals. Vickie Marti on percussion/vocals.

TV Rejects- C-Span/CableFax/Broadband Gear Report/Retirement Living TV

TV Rejects are made up of: Mike Grebb (CableFax) on guitar. Tim Hermes (Broadband Gear Report) on drums. Tommy Bullough (Retirement Living TV) on bass. Rob Kennedy (C-Span) on keyboards. Seth Arenstein (CableFax) on trumpet.

Xpanded Bandwidth - Cox Communications

Xpanded Bandwidth is made up of: Ginger Davis on drums/vocals. Alfred Ellis on bass. Bob Wilson on guitar. Domingo Hipona on lead guitar. Heidi Martell-Barnes on piano/vocals. Stephen Wilson on keyboards. Deniece Yarbrough on vocals. Kenneth Brown on vocals. Mike Rossenwasser on vocals.

Thankfully, it's the last night of the event, so I will rest up for it by giving you full coverage of the public policy events, the show floor, and anything else I see that's cool. If we're lucky, I'll be able to stream some live video, and you'll be able to contact me live on the floor with a new toy (to be announced) so I can see what you want to see. More as the show approaches, including my schedule. I can count on one thing, though: I will be hitting Cafe du Monde for a Diet Coke and some Beignets.

Yes, Washington, There is a Santa Claus. Traditionally, the Federal Communications Commission would announce their meeting agenda only days, sometimes 24-48 hours before a meeting.

Washington, D.C. -Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin 

today announced that topics selected for open meeting agendas will now formallybe made public and posted on the Commission's website three weeks prior to the upcoming monthly meeting.  This step enhances the openness and transparencyof the Commission's processes and deliberations. 

Now and