News About Computers and the Internet

There is such an amount of news about computers and the Internet this week, that I am putting up this web page.

1. Convergence: New York Times, 12/9/03, Pg A1. Time Warner cable announced yesterday that it would start selling telephone service over its cable TV system, using the new Voice Over IP protocol designed for this purpose. Customers could keep their existing telephone number, and use ordinary telephones connected to their cable modem instead of to the telephone wall outlet. Other cable companies plan to follow suit. Such services could be offered at much lower rates than traditional phone service, and therefore take business away from traditional telephone companies.
2. Intellectual Property and Encryption: The Motion Picture Association of America, which runs the Academy Awards, decided that "Screeners" - special editions of movies nominated for awards - would only be distributed to those people selected to vote for the Academy Awards who had signed a pledge not to distribute them. (Film distributors have lost millions of dollars each year as Screeners are given or sold to others, sometimes to make bootleg copies, sometimes to be posted on the Internet.) Independent film producers sued, saying that this would block them from consideration not only for Academy Awards but for other awards such as those for the Screen Actors Guild and the Los Angeles Film Critics Society. A judge in Manhattan agreed with the independent film producers, and ruled that the Motion Picture Association cannot restrict the distribution of Screeners. Now film studios are rushing to get Screeners out to voters for the Academy Awards and the other awards, in time for the awards season voting. This year, Screeners will have encryption that lets bootleg or Internet copies be traced back to the individual.
3. The hackers are after YOU: New York Times, 12/8/03, Business section Pg C2. Personal computers that are vulnerable can be taken over by hackers, and have "Trojan horse" software placed on them, that allows them to be used later, for example for sending spam email or for distributing pornography or other illegal files. In the past, these Trojan horses could be traced back to their origin, since a client-server system was used. But in a new development, a peer network system may make it impossible to locate the hacker or controller. Networks of such compromised computers are now openly for sale on hacker web sites such as Carder Planet. These networks of personal computers are known as Remote-Access Networks, or radmins. A quote from "r00t3d" on Carder Planet reads, '"I have a steady supply of FAST radmins. I am wanting to offer these to those of you who need good hosting for your scam pages" for periods of a week to "six months or more" for a price of $50 per machine.'
4. New type of hacking: New York Times, 12/8/03, Business section Pg C8. A computer hack called "Google-bombing" has developed. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo now look for common links in web files. If the same phrase is linked to the same web page on multiple web sites, the search engines will detect that, and typing in the phrase in Google or Yahoo will link to that same page, without the owner of the web site ever saying that phrase is a topic. An example is that several web sites apparently put links for the term "miserable failure" to President Bush's personal biography on the White House web site. So, at least for a while, Google users typing in "miserable failure" will see a link to Bush's biography, even though the White House clearly would not want that to happen. A similar event happened several months ago when typing in "weapons of mass destruction" would lead to a page that satired the search for WMD on a page strongly resembling an Internet Explorer error page.
5. eCommerce: New York Times, 12/8/03, Business section Pg C8 (eCommerce report). Online merchants are streamlining their processes and offering later delivery this Christmas season. Online merchants are now offering Christmas delivery using special delivery services for orders placed as late as December 23. The basic approach is guaranteeing that the right package makes it to the right loading dock and onto the right truck. On the other hand, merchants are now able to keep inventories leaner, so last-minute shoppers may not find the bargains that they found last year.
6. Internet Governance: New York Times, 12/8/03, Business section Pg C1. A United Nations conference on Internet issues will start this week. The conference will consider proposals for international control of the Internet, in contrast to the present system of non-governmental committees, all of which are in the US. Some issues on the agenda are: (i) the digital divide between rich and poor nations, (ii) how to supervise the Internet, and (iii) how to deal with problems such as spam and pornography.
7. Will there be enough jobs: New York Times, 12/8/03, Business section Pg C4. Many companies have sent their computer help desk call centers overseas. Under special circumstances, some of this work comes back to the US. Support for personal computers tends to be routine, and is a good candidate for going overseas. Corporate computers often have special software and processes, and may change rapidly, and these are among the help desks that are being returned to the US, because of the difficulty of constantly retraining the help desk workers if they are overseas. Another example in the article is the help desk for a skateboard company, where constantly changing skating techniques, equipment and jargon proved impossible for the overseas workers to keep up with. The help desk in fact has to hire active skateboarders in order to provide service acceptable to their customers.
8. Internet and Interactive TV: New York Times, 12/8/03, Business section Pg C9. The TV industry is trying to counter the rise of the VCR, Tivo, and similar appliances that put TV watching more under the control of the viewer. One tool in this effort is Interactive TV, which will soon be launched, but at least initially only for users of Windows XP, Media Center Edition. A TV card in the user's computer will add buttons around the TV screen or on the PC screen, that the viewer can use to interact with the program. Viewers with this system will be able to view trivia, vote on the outcome (for example in Celebrity Moe II) and to see how others have voted.
9. Moore's Law: New York Times 12/8/03 Business Section Pg C3. IBM announced a technical advance that would enable smaller memory chips that would be faster, use less power, and be more secure. The announcement was made at the Electron Devices Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, now meeting in Washington. Announcements from other manufacturers are also expected. This conferences focuses on advances that are expected to be commercialized in ten years or so. Expectations are that Moore's law will continue for at least the next decade. (Moore's law is an observation that computer performance doubles every 12 to 18 months.)
10. CDs and DVDs: New York Times 12/8/03 Business Section Pg C6. OneDisk Technologies will begin making optical disks with a CD on one side and a DVD on the other. Both sides would be music, but the DVD side would include high-quality video along with the music. Combination disks have been sold, mostly abroad, for several years, but are just now entering the mainstream. A combination disk, "Live From the Bowery Ballroom," is already on sale in record stores.
11. Online services we didn't know we needed: New York Times 12/8/03 Business Section Pg C6. William Dodd received a US patent for an online system in which someone might order a gift for you. The merchant would notify you that you were about to receive this. If you did not want the gift (another fruitcake?), you could then choose to give the gift to someone else directly, without having to rebox and reship it.