Tynan on Tech

I’m sorry but this story is just too wild to ignore.

It seems Newegg has quite a bit of old egg on its face this week after it shipped customers "counterfeit" Intel CPUs that were more like movie props than actual working electronics.

Last week a Newegg customer ordered an Intel Core i7-920 CPU, which retails for $288.99 at the site. But what he got was more than a little different.

IDG News’ Sumner Lemon puts it rather drolly:

The fake processor, sold as a standalone or "boxed" chip, came with an instruction manual comprised of blank pages. In addition, [a] sticker on the outside of the box misspelled the word ’socket’ as ’sochet’ and other words on the box were spelled incorrectly — subtle but clear indications that the contents inside were not genuine.

Subtle but clear. You betcha.

Actually, it gets better (or worse, depending on your perspective). According to photographs posted at the HardOCP forums where the story originally surfaced, the "chip" came with a "heat sink" that was simply a blob of molded plastic. The CPU fan, visible through a cut out in the box’s packaging, was a decal glued to the "heat sink." In other words, it was a picture of a fan, not an actual fan. The "chip" itself appears to be a piece of tin with perforations where you’d normally find circuits.

According to reports, Newegg got 300 of these things from its now-former supplier, IPEX. Apparently the guy they hired to do random out-of-box inspections was in the bathroom when this shipment arrived. Or maybe he was on a three-day bender in Tijuana. Or maybe they simply don’t have anyone inspecting their products as they come in the door.

NewEgg’s initial, somewhat amazing explanation: These were "demo versions" of the Intel chip, mistakenly mailed out to customers instead of the actual ones. Per an email NewEgg sent to its customers:

Please take a moment to examine the product you received thoroughly to determine if you in fact received the wrong product. The Demo Version of these CPUs were purchased between March 1, 2010 through March 4, 2010 and will have FPO/BATCH# 3938B006 printed on the product’s packaging. Additionally, the Part Number on the heat sink will read CNFN936612 and there will be no wiring on the heat sink itself.

Also: The bill of goods will have been filled out using crayons and contain pictures of unicorns. And the popcorn used inside the box will be actual popcorn (but please, don’t eat it).

About the only thing these chips could demonstrate is that, if you’re planning to go into the bogus CPU business, it might behoove you to learn how to spell "socket."

Using information it says it got from NewEgg sources, the HardOCP site reported (incorrectly) that the source of the bogus chips was D&H Distributing. That earned it an immediate nastygram from D&H’s attorneys, who insisted HardOCP post a retraction on its site and keep it there for a month.

So just to be perfectly clear: D&H Distribution is not in the business of distributing fake Intel CPUs that have fewer working parts than a Barbie Doll.

NewEgg did subsequently publish a more accurate statement on its Facebook page, calling the chips "questionable" and "counterfeit." But really, even that doesn’t begin to describe them. And it’s giving full refunds (duh) to anyone who got one of these.

I have to wonder, though, if it would make more sense to hold onto them as collector’s items. I mean, how often does a major electronics dealer get pwned this badly? They could be worth actual (not fake) money on eBay one day.

As for NewEgg, I think they need to start hiring bipeds with opposable thumbs to work in "quality control." Even really smart chimps would do. Somebody needs to make sure that if it’s supposed to come from "Intel," the box doesn’t say "Entell."

How much would you pay for a bogus CPU? Post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

This originally appeared on InfoWorld.

Photo found on HardOCP. No, I don’t know what "OCP" stands for either, but I bet it’s something truly geeky.

Tags: asshattedness, fake cpus, Intel, newegg

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Steve Jobs appeared at the Oscars last night looking radiant in a strapless Giorgio Armani Prive organza evening gown with a side train accented by Swarovski crystals.

Oh, sorry, that was Jennifer Lopez. My bad.

(Though Jobs could very well have been in that gown too, along with Marc Anthony and half of The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers. There was enough J. Lo to go around for everybody. If she were a commuter train, her engine would be arriving at its final destination before her caboose even left the station.)

But I digress. Yes, Steve-o really was at the Academy Awards ceremony, looking dapper in a classic black tux, though I’d bet $50 he had a black turtleneck on underneath it. Marketing dude Wayne Sutton was apparently the first to spot Jobs entering the Kodak Theater, and his squeals of excitement echoed across Twitter, even in plain text.

The point here, such as it is: Hollywood has officially been taken over by the Geeks. And not just James Cameron and his army of blue-skinned cartoon cats. There have always techies making movie magic. ET didn’t really fly that bicycle. I’m talking about the business side of geekdom. The decision makers. That’s what’s changed.

Jobs’ understated appearance at Hollywood’s biggest party was his way of announcing that the nerds are driving the bus, and all you pretty people need to step to the rear.

He is, of course, the world’s largest holder of Disney stock, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of his $5 billion net worth. That came as a result of selling Pixar to Disney four years ago, after 20 years of helping those talented folk change how films are made. So he may have just been there to help his old Pixar pals celebrate the success of Up, which won two Oscars, including Best Animated Feature Film.

But I think it was deeper and more symbolic than that.

Not coincidentally — because there are no coincidences in Jobs World — the Oscar broadcast also saw the debut of the first iPad commercials [video], which brought forth its own Category 5 tweet storm.

As those ads amply demonstrate, the iPad is a content delivery device — possibly the first gadget to deliver every kind of content possible, from newspapers and books to movies and video games, to any location anywhere within reach of an Internet connection. It won’t be the last, by any means, but everything else is already in catch-up mode.

So Steve’s message to the gowned and tuxedoed assemblage boils down to this: You make the content (or at least some of it), I’ll deliver it. And I’ll create another $10 billion-a-year market in the process.

There’s always been tension between Hollywood and the consumer electronics industry. One side wants to control everything and dictate how people can consume its content, the other side wants universal standards and wide open innovation. So far, the only geek macher who’s been able to bend Hollywood’s aging mandarins to his will has been the Man in the Black Turtleneck. No longer an outsider, he’s now a player — bigger and badder than ever, and with a brand new bionic liver.

Who was the richest person in attendance? Who has the most influence and commands the biggest audience? Who’s the least bound to Hollywood’s old ways of doing business? The answer to those questions is the same.

It is truly revenge of the nerds. That’s something any geek can be proud of.

What do you think — can an army of geeks change the entertainment industry? What should they do first? Post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

This originally appeared on InfoWorld, though with a different headline. Isn’t that special?

Jobs in tux photo from Huffpo.

Tags: academy awards, Apple, apple ipad, avatar, content, hollywood, jobs, oscars

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Sir Issac Tynan, the near-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of this blog’s author, formulated these rules more than a century ago, and yet they still hold true. Believed to have been lost to the ages, they were recently uncovered while said blog author was cleaning out his office. He now shares them with the world.

Tynan’s First Law of Wires: When left untended all wires will return to their natural state, which is tangled.

Tynan’s Second Law of Wires: Two wires left in proximity to each other will immediately tangle without any human intervention. Three wires left in this state will form a Gordian knot.

Tynan’s Third Law of Wires: The power dongle you need is almost never the power dongle you have. The power dongle you have belongs to a device you lost two years ago.

Corollary to Tynan’s Third Law of Wires: When you finally throw out the power dongle to the device you lost two years ago that device will suddenly turn up no more than three days later.

Tynan’s Fourth Law of Wires: There is no fourth law of wires.

Tynan’s Fifth Law of Wires: Like snowflakes, no two power dongles are exactly alike. Even dongles from the same manufacturer won’t work on different devices. Thus the number of dongles in the universe at any given time always converges toward infinity.

Tags: good god almighty great balls of wire!

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Apple has lawyered up and is out for blood — or at least, blood money. Its patent suit against Taiwanese handset maker HTC is further proof that the cold war between Cupertino and Mountain View is quickly escalating into a shooting match with live ammo.

Apple could easily have chosen to sue Palm, whose WebOS functionality closely mimics the iPhone’s. But it’s not worried about Palm, it’s worried about Google. And HTC makes most of the cool Android phones, from the G1 to the Nexus One.

(Several HTC Windows Mobile phones are also implicated in the suit but, really, who cares? That’s like Mercedes suing over the Yugo.)

Among the 20 claims submitted to the Federal Court and the International Trade Commission are patents for the seemingly straightforward "Object Oriented Graphic System," the widely used "Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image" and the brain-twisting "Method for providing automatic and dynamic translation of object oriented programming language-based message passing into operation system message passing using proxy objects." Whew.

Interestingly, two of those (#1 and #3) predate the iPhone by more than a decade. So Apple’s really reaching deep into its patent toy chest here.

I’m not trademark attorney (thank god), and I truly believe people who invent ground-breaking technologies should reap the rewards. But not at the expense of stifling innovation elsewhere. Even if you created the first device that lets you make things happen when you smear your finger across a touch screen doesn’t mean that you should be able to prevent other folks from making a better way to smear. That is the beauty of open source, which Google embraced with Android.

Imagine how the automobile industry would have evolved if, say, Henry Ford managed to patent the steering wheel and the accelerator pedal, while Walter P. Chrysler owned the rights to the stick shift and the rear view mirror. Every time we climbed behind the wheel — err, inside the driver seat — of a new car, we’d be starting from scratch.

Of course, there are companies who simply buy up patents on the open market and wait for an opportunity to pounce on somebody with deep pockets.  The fact that the US Patent system still keeps trolls alive and well fed (especially those who line up at the trough in the Eastern District of Texas) is an ongoing disgrace.

Apple is not a patent troll by any stretch. They actually make products people buy. And they filed suit in Delaware, not Texas. Still, it sends a chill through the air at precisely the time that mobile computing is getting really exciting — in large part because Apple finally has some serious competition. And you get the feeling Apple’s lawyers are just getting warmed up. 

(Who will they sue next? Those snarky geeks at eSarcasm have some ideas.)

These suits might serve Apple well in the short term — and cause angina for HTC, Google, Palm, and anyone else who gets locked into the Cupertino cross hairs. But it won’t serve consumers well. Litigation is expensive (guess who’ll be paying for it?) and handset makers may grow timid about pushing the envelope on new features. Imagine buying your next phone in two years, only it does less than the one you have now. Who wins then?

Should Apple sue to protect its patents (even though we all know they’re just doing it to get back at Google)? Post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

Yes, this originally appeared at InfoWorld, god love em.

Attack dog from Command and Conquer Red Alert 3.

Tags: android, Apple, Google, handsets, HTC, iPhone, patent absurdity

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It seems Conde Nast is embracing the Apple iPad as its one and true savior. Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, Glamour, and Wired are all getting gussied up for Apple’s WonderPad, according to the New York Times. Hey if you’re gonna do it, might as well start with the best.

I say, more power to them. If anyone can create a digital marketplace for a dying industry that has consumed much of my working life, it’s the Conde Nasties. But I fear the ship for most publications may have already sailed. It may simply be too late. Because people are too used to getting subpar content for free.

(Now I’m going to take off my geek hat and put on my editorial chapeau. Please talk amongst yourselves while I slip into something even grungier.)

Here’s the nasty little secret most publishers would rather you not know: Their online versions aren’t nearly as good as their print versions. The reasons are pretty obvious.

The premium rates publications charge(d) for print advertising subsidized a great many things — like teams of researchers, fact checkers, copy editors, and multiple line editors — that online ad models simply don’t support. So the very first thing that goes when a publication moves online is quality control. When faced with producing lesser quality content or no content at all, that’s an easy call to make.

Meanwhile, in the print world, you more or less had a fixed amount of copy you had to produce to satisfy your readers each day, week, or month. Online, though, the need for new copy converges on infinity. It’s a hole that can never be filled. Publications are under intense pressure to produce more stories with fewer people, which is why so many of them moved to a blogging model, generating simple stories that can be produced quickly by a single person without a lot of oversight. (And sometimes that can really come back to bite you.)

More often than not, what you read on the Web is the work of a single person. If you’re lucky, a copy editor scanned the post quickly before making it go live — one of dozens he or she might have to edit in a single day.

(For the record: All InfoWorld blog posts are copy edited, which is why so I don’t sound quite as foolish as I otherwise might. Thank you Caroline and Uyen for saving my sorry behind.)

Don’t believe me? The Columbia Review of Journalism surveyed more than 600 print publications with online editions. Slightly more than half of them fact check online articles in the same manner that they fact check print articles; the rest use a less-stringent process or none at all. Per Victor Navasky, the big cheese behind CRJ:

“One of the things that it appears to mean is that there’s this trade-off of standards for speed,” Mr. Navasky said of those topics. “The conventional wisdom is that you have to be there first in order to get traffic, and you need traffic in order to sell ads, therefore you do not have time to do conventional copy-editing and fact-checking.”

And there you have it. Internet publishing is a different beast. The problem is that readers haven’t adjusted their expectations accordingly. They still expect the same kind of quality control they got when magazines were fat and happy, even though they’re paying even less for it than they used to — usually nothing at all.

Now having said that, you can still find original, well researched, well-written articles on the Web (on InfoWorld’s site and elsewhere); but the vast majority of online content is none of those things. And as more of it gets machine generated, that will only get worse.

The notion behind putting magazine articles on an iPad is that, assuming people are willing to pay, publications can still afford to produce quality material without taking a financial bath. But the question is, are people willing to pay? Does quality matter? Or have we passed the point of no return, where fast and cheap trumps fast and good, and everything else be damned?

So that’s my question. Got answers? Post them below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

This deeply researched lovingly crafted blog post originally appeared on InfoWorld.

Masthead Mag cover shot courtesy of Content Wise. That was the last issue of Masthead Magazine, by the way.

Tags: apple ipad, conde nast, dead magazines, deader editors, glamour, GQ, the new yorker, vanity fair, vogue, Wired

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I knew my story about the Lower Merion School District spying on its students via their Web cams would get a rise out of the Cringeville population, and I wasn’t disappointed. Since I posted the piece, however, there have been a few new developments.

For one, Harriton High assistant principal Lindy Matsko has issued an emphatic and emotional denial, declaring media reports that she spied on students "unjust and inaccurate":

"At no point in time did I have the ability to access any Web cam through security tracking software. At no time have I ever monitored a student via a laptop web cam, nor have I ever authorized the monitoring of a student via security tracking web cam, either at school or within the home. And I never would."

She adds that she’s never disciplined a student for actions outside of school that were not related to school activities. You can listen to her full six-minute statement at KYW Newsradio’s web site.

The problem? According to the law suit at the heart of this case, Matsko allegedly showed Harriton High sophomore Blake Robbins a picture somebody else allegedly snapped of him using his laptop’s Web cam. That’s something she never actually denies doing (possibly on advice of her lawyers).

Fact is, though, if there’s anyone at fault here, it isn’t Matsko — it’s the IT geeks who implemented this "laptop tracking" technology, and the school administrators who approved its use.

Outrageous as it seems, this practice does not seem to be that unusual. First there’s that school in the Bronx that uses Webcams to remotely watch students in classrooms [video], which was featured in an NPR Frontline documentary, "Digital Nation." It’s pretty damned creepy.

Then I got an email from a reader, a former school systems engineer who goes by "anonymous" (no, not that Anonymous), who says his former employer  — a district outside Richmond, Virginia — has done the very thing Lower Merion school officials have admitted to doing, and for the same reasons. His take on it is somewhat chilling.

In the first year of the laptop program, the laptops were running Mac OS 9 which had a remote control program called ARD.  Principals, the technology department, etc used ARD to push software to the laptops, and also to monitor what students were doing.  I know firsthand that many students had figured out how to run ARD on their own to remote control other students’ laptops. 

[The district] upgraded to OSX several years ago.  With the latest laptops that have been issued to the middle school students, the administrators, technology department, etc have the ability to use the built-in cameras by remote control exactly as was done at Lower Merion… 

Of course, if the students were able to figure out how to hack ARD, it’s very very likely that some student has figured out how to do the same with the camera software. 

According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the school district has activated its web cams 50 times in the past three years to locate laptops stolen from elementary schools, and recovered 20 of them. One big difference, though: Unlike in the Lower Merion case, these computers were not supposed to go home with students. That’s really where those guys crossed the line. It’s one thing to watch kids on school grounds, quite another to snoop on them at home (see creepy, damned, above).

Meanwhile, Cringe fan N. M. served up this fascinating bit of trivia: Lower Merion counts among its graduates the late Alexander ("I am in control") Haig, the Gong Show’s Chuck Barris, and LA Laker star Kobe Bryant. I know there’s a connection here between those three and this Web cam story, and if I drank enough Vodka Red Bulls I might find it.

A reader known to me only as Stu had this correction to add to my post:

You said, "you shouldn’t give Big Brotherish software to school districts and expect them not to misuse it."

Instead, I would say, "you shouldn’t give Big Brotherish software to ANYONE and expect them not to misuse it."

Tru dat.

How many other school districts are doing the same thing? (Or at least, were doing the same thing until the news about Lower Merion hit?) For that matter, how many employers who issue Web-cam equipped notebooks are secretly watching their employees at home? It’s as if everybody has signed up for ChatRoulette, whether they know it or not.

We have met Big Brother, and he is that dweeby guy in the cubicle down the hall.

If you’re reading this you’re probably an IT geek. So I’ll ask: Have you ever used your techno-powers to spy on someone when they were unawares? Post your confession below or email me: dan@dantynan.com. Don’t worry, I won’t pull off the mask and reveal your secret identity.

This first appeared on InfoWorld, god bless ‘em.

WebCam Spy box shot found at Dvorak’s joint.

Tags: lower merion, school district spies, snooping, spies, web cams, webcamgate

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Sometimes even I am blown away by how mind-numbingly stupid people can be when it comes to technology. I’m not talking about people who can’t find the ‘any’ key. I’m talking about institutional stupidity, the kind you only get when you mix technophobic bureaucrats and geeks with no sense of boundaries.

In case you haven’t been following the plot of Webcamgate, starring the Lower Merion School District in Southeastern Pennsylvania and a cast of thousands, here’s the skinny.

Last week the Robbins family, whose son Blake attends LMSD’s Harriton High, filed a class action suit against the district alleging that it’s been spying on its students via Web cams on school-supplied MacBooks.

The suit came about after Blake Robbins was called into the assistant principal Lindy Matsko’s office last November to discuss "inappropriate behavior" he was displaying…. at home. The proof? A snapshot of him taken with his laptop’s Web cam.

Apparently Matsko thought Blake was popping pills. According to Robbins, he was merely eating candy — Mike-N-Ikes. (A classic gateway drug. Before you know it he’ll be deep into Good-N-Plenty and then totally hooked on Tic Tacs.)

The idea that the school could peer into the Robbins’ home — and by implication, the homes of nearly 2400 other students in the district — blew their minds. It also may have violated dozens of Federal and state laws regarding privacy, wiretapping, and electronic communications, as alleged in their suit [PDF].

The school district’s response? Yes, we have the ability to activate students’ Web cams remotely, but it’s strictly used for tracking lost or stolen laptops, says school superintendent Dr. Christopher W. McGinley. No, we didn’t tell any of the students or their families about it. Oops. Our bad.

(Apparently Southeastern Pennsylvania is plagued by bands of roving laptop thieves, most of them cheerleaders and prom queens between the ages of 14 and 17. Or so I hear.)

Interestingly, while the district failed to inform parents about the technology, it did take time to create a video lauding the remote access features of the software, LANrev 4.6 (now Absolute Manage), which it created for MacEnterprise.org in June 2008.

How often have they used the technology this year? 42 times, according to McGinley. He writes:

At no time did any high school administrator have the ability or actually access the security-tracking software. We believe that the administrator at Harriton has been unfairly portrayed and unjustly attacked in connection with her attempts to be supportive of a student and his family. The district never did and never would use such tactics as a basis for disciplinary action.

It’s clear somebody’s not telling the whole truth. (Clear enough that the FBI is investigating.) But you have to wonder: If Robbins’ story isn’t true, how else did he find out that the school could be watching its students — and anyone else who wanders in front of their laptops — 24/7?

The media is on this like a pack of hyenas on a McDonalds delivery truck. Other students have reported noticing their Web cam’s green "on" light coming on randomly, and having been told by school officials that this was just "a glitch."

Savanna Williams, a statuesque sophomore at Harriton, appeared on The CBS Early Show with her mother, talking about how she takes her school-supplied notebook everywhere — including the bathroom when she showers. If that doesn’t give you a strong mental image of the potential for abuse, nothing will.

For a thoroughly creepy demonstration of how another school, the Bronx’s IS 339, spies on its students using Web cams, check out this video. Assistant Principal Dan Ackerman cheerfully shows how he watches sixth and seventh graders in real time without their knowing it while they preen in front of an app called Photo Booth.

"Photo Booth is always fun… a lot of kids are just on it to check their hair, do their makeup, the girls, you know. They just use it like it’s a mirror…  They don’t even realize that we’re watching…I always like to mess with them and take a picture."

At least he’s doing it on school grounds and not in their bathrooms.

Still, even if the LMSD’s motives were pure — and the techies in charge of activating the Web cams didn’t abuse the privilege — the cluelessness displayed by the school district is breathtaking.

First, what good does taking a snapshot via the Web cam do, exactly? It doesn’t prove that whomever’s in front of the camera actually stole the thing. That would be laughed out of court. The district gets much better location information from the IP address. It’s totally gratuitous — but the kind of thing geeks eat right up.

The school district has many other questions yet to answer. Like: Who had the authority to initiate remote access? What events trigger it? Does a police report have to be filed? Why were school techs invoking remote access and not law officers? Are the legitimate laptop users notified when pictures are snapped? How many pictures were taken and where are they stored?   Who else has access to them? How long are they kept? How secure is access to these controls?

In short: What the hell were they thinking?

Imagine some tech-savvy teen hacking that system, activating cameras at will and then posting the images to Facebook or YouTube. Oh the fun they could have.

You wouldn’t give a crack pipe and a gun to a monkey and set him loose in a crowd. Likewise, you shouldn’t give Big Brotherish software to school districts and expect them not to misuse it. Regardless of what happens in this suit (I predict a quiet yet healthy cash settlement) it’s clear that administrators at Lower Merion have earned an F in computer management. I’d recommend a years’ detention, if not outright expulsion.

Does Web cam spying cross the line? Post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

This appeared originally on InfoWorld, and unoriginally here.

Tags: camgirls, extreme stupidity, Privacy, schoolgirls, schools, spycams, web cams

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So far, 2010 is shaping up to be the year Google discovered it had feet of clay — and those feet have been spending a lot of time in Google’s mouth.

(Also: This blog is shaping up to be all about Google, Apple, and Microsoft. Maybe we should rename it Notes from the GoogAppSoft. Or maybe not.)

First, there was Google’s disastrous foray into direct-to-consumer sales with the Nexus One phone, in which Google learned that, yes, you actually have to talk to customers when they’re ticked off; they’re not willing to wait until somebody gets around to responding on an online forum. Though Google has gotten slightly better at dealing with complaints over problems with 3G connections and phone delivery, they still haven’t figured out what "customer service" actually means.

Then, Google Buzz. A nice idea, if you spend all your time on the Googleplex and have no life and no secrets. Otherwise, just a bit too friendly with the information of relative strangers. Google has revised its Buzz product at least three times since it was introduced last week, trying to tweak it to quell the privacy storm that followed; it’s still got a ways to go on that one, too.

On top of those comes a so-far little reported incident that’s been tagged Musicblogocide 2010. Earlier this month Google deleted years’ worth of archives from six popular music blogs hosted on Blogger.com. Just wiped them from the face of the InterWebs. The reason? It had received multiple DMCA takedown notices from record companies alleging these sites were sharing music illegally.

Under the DMCA (otherwise known as Congress’s boundless gift to copyright holders), a service provider like Google can escape liability for violations only if it acts immediately to remove any offending sites or files. The copyright holder doesn’t have to prove the violations are genuine, and the service provider doesn’t even have to notify the sites beforehand — it can wipe first and notify later.

The problem? Some of the sites claim they had permission to share those music files. Worse, others say Google didn’t ever notify them — or if they were notified, the information was so vague that it was impossible to find out where the alleged violations occurred.

The only recourse for a site that’s been hit with a DMCA takedown is to file a counter notification — essentially a claim of innocence — which Google then must forward to the copyright holders. If the copyright holders don’t take legal action against the alleged infringers within two weeks, their sites must be restored.

That’s kinda hard to do if 1) you’ve never been notified, or 2) you have no idea what you allegedly did wrong. In one case, Google has admitted its notifications were insufficient and restored the site. As for the others, it’s sticking by its policies and saying the bloggers should have filed counter claims.

Meanwhile, Bill Lipold, owner of the I Rock Cleveland blog, has been publicly haranguing Google and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (essentially an international version of the RIAA) on Google’s own public support forums. He’s reproduced emails from record companies stating he had the right to publicly distribute their music. On his new, non-Google-hosted blog, he points out that at least one of the files in question had been removed from his site more than two years previous, which would have been easy enough to check:

If at this point you’re drawing the conclusion that neither the IFPI nor Google know exactly what they’re doing in these matters, you’re not alone.  If at any point during the DMCA claim process a human being had clicked on the link and looked for the infringing content they wouldn’t have found an mp3, but a 404 with the message, “Sorry, dude. The rockin’ has stopped. Please be aware that downloads from I Rock Cleveland are only available for a limited time. You can find more Rock ‘N’ Roll at I Rock Cleveland.”

Google isn’t to blame for the DMCA, one of the most spectacularly abused pieces of digital legislation ever created. But it does seem to be getting more aggressive about DMCA enforcement.

Over the last year Google made it easier to file DMCA complaints against Blogger.com blogs by creating an easy online form. It also provides instructions for filing a counter claim, though that’s not nearly so easy. (You can find a fill-in-the-blanks form at ChillingEffects.org.)

Like I Rock Cleveland, most of those other sites have found new homes. (So much for the effectiveness of DMCA takedowns.) But Google is taking most of the heat for this, and a big part of that is because of how it reacted. It all stems from Google’s attitude of "we’ll respond if and when we feel like it, and only indirectly via our blog or online forum." It’s another symptom of Google’s self-centeredness — the same thing that caused its failure to provide actual customer support the Nexus One, as well as the entire Google Buzz fiasco.

The G-folk can’t seem to see beyond the boundaries of the Googleplex. As Google becomes less of an Internet company and more of a consumer goods company, that myopia is only likely to get worse.

Does Google deserve the beating it’s been getting (here and elsewhere)? Weigh in below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

Yes, this first appeared on InfoWorld. Thanks for asking.

google Fail Whale found on Flickr.

Tags: chillingeffects, google fail, google google buzz, musicblogocide 2k10

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They’re baaaack. Just when you thought the dragon had been mortally wounded and sloughed off to its cave to die, it comes back spitting fire and disturbing the neighbors.

At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft introduced a new mobile operating system that appears to be nothing like any OS it’s ever invented, borrowed, or imitated. It might even be — dare I say it — innovative.

While you’re busying cleaning up the coffee you just spit out, let’s take a quick look back at recent history.

There was a point in the ’90s where Microsoft seemed grimly determined to make everything in the world run on Windows — your phone, your TV set, the lights in your house, your toaster.  That might still be their ultimate goal. But the introduction of truly innovative interfaces like the iPhone OS, Android, and Palm’s WebOS (combined with dramatic price cuts in touch screens and computing horsepower) have given us alternatives to Windows’ maddeningly hierarchical menu structure that make a lot more sense for any device that isn’t a work PC.

Nobody wants to click five times and say OK twice just to turn the lights on and off. Nobody ever did. But until these new phone OSes came along, it looked like Microsoft could just muscle its way into all these markets, in the same way it muscled out anyone who tried to compete in the IBM PC arena.

With Windows Phone 7, however, it seems Microsoft finally has some skin in the non-PC game. And yes, the name truly sucks. It screams “boring and predictable” in the way only a Microsoft product can. But apparently that’s the only thing about it that’s Microsoft-like.

They’ve thrown out the whole Windows metaphor — the useless CPU-cycle-sucking graphics, the folders within folders within folders, yadda yadda — and replaced it with a multi-touch interface featuring a handful of colorful “live tiles.” Beneath those buttons you’ll find unified messaging that mashes together updates from social nets like Facebook and Windows Live (but not Twitter — yet), some stripped-down Office apps, Outlook, Bing, an apps marketplace, pretty much the entire Zune experience, even a little Xbox Live.

Mind you, I’m not in Barcelona. I’ve not had a chance to put my grubby little hands on any working prototypes, so I’m relying on Microsoft’s video preview and my brethren in the blogosphere for the key details. Most of them seem pretty excited.

For example, the Windows 7 phone seems to have induced all manner of involuntary bodily functions in Gizmodo writer Matt Buchanan.  Never in my 347 years of covering technology have I encountered a review — really, a preview — quite so giddy (note: all italics are his):

….it’s the most groundbreaking phone since the iPhone. It’s the phone Microsoft should’ve made three years ago. … It changes everything…. There’s an incredible sense of joie de vivre that’s just not in any other phone. It makes you wish that this was aesthetic direction all of Microsoft was going in…..I’ll admit, I very nearly needed to change my pants when I saw the Xbox tile on the phone for the first time….it’s actually good.

Dude: Get a room.

PC Mag’s Sascha Segan — who knows more about mobile phones than most sane humans should — was a bit more circumspect, but still impressed.

I received a few minutes with a Windows Phone 7 Series prototype today, and the software looked beautiful but felt very, very early. Tiles responded sluggishly. When I scrolled down a contact list, it scrolled into a great black abyss that only filled with contacts after a few seconds…. On the other hand, if it actually performs properly, WP7 has the intangibles that Microsoft phones have lacked for years. It’s fun to explore. The interface makes sense. It’s easy to find the things you need. Nothing is buried. It uses the power of a mobile computer to put important information at the fore – possibly even more immediately than the iPhone.

Meanwhile, The Register’s Bill Ray says “Microsoft made a phone, and I hate it already.” His point: he doesn’t want a whizzy new phone. He wants a pocket computer that also lets him make phone calls. Finally, we’ve found someone besides Steve Ballmer who actually liked Windows Mobile.

Here’s my confession: For the last two years I’ve owned a Windows Mobile phone with AT&T as my carrier. So I’ve been doubly cursed. Recently I moved to an Android phone under T-Mobile, the Motorola Cliq. I look forward to the day very soon when I can smash that WinMo POS with a sledgehammer. (But first I have to get all my stuff off of it.)

Yet I can’t say the Cliq is entirely without flaws. What looks super cool in a three-minute YouTube video can be a pain in real life. Getting all your messages in one place sounds good, at first, but …. do I have time to wade through thousands of tweets, status updates, emails, and text messages every damned day? Not if I want to get anything else done.

So it’s waaaay too early to annoint WinPho 7 as — wait for it — an iPhone killer. The thing won’t even ship until year end. Still it’s a positive sign for Microsoft fans. Along with Microsoft Surface and Project Natal, it’s a sign that Redmond might be finally getting over the bureaucratic tar pit in which it’s been bogged down for decades.

While it’s fun to imagine a world without Microsoft, the new OS suggests that we’ll continue to have Redmond to kick around — and vice versa — well into the Mobile Internet age. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Because I can’t just write about Google and Apple all the time, can I?

Is Windows Phone 7 too little, too late for Microsoft? Post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

Hey this originally appeared on InfoWorld, without whom I’d be unable to pay my mortgage. So give them some love, too.

Tags: iPhone, Microsoft, microsoft windows 7 phone, windows, windows mobile, WinMo sucks, WinPho

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If you work at Google, your ears are surely burning right now. Google’s introduction of its Buzz social media tool this week was possibly the most disastrous product debut in the company’s 12-year history.

Almost immediately Google Buzz got smacked around hard by the blogosphere and veteran journos for making it easy to access information — like who you’re in regular contact with — that people may not have necessarily wanted the rest of the world to know.

What Google Buzz does is essentially mash up two similar but distinct services, Twitter and Facebook. Twitter is very open — anyone can follow or send messages to anyone else — but very limited in what people can find out about you. Facebook opens the kimono wider, but offers much more control over what strangers can see. If they don’t have your OK, they can’t see much (assuming you know how to use FB’s privacy settings).

Google Buzz combined the openness of Twitter with the ‘whoo-hoo look at me!’ aspects of Facebook. The result? A total face plant.

Nick Carlson at Silicon Valley Insider was particularly scathing in his criticism, noting how Google’s casual attitude toward revealing one’s Gmail contacts could have nasty real-world consequences.

When you first go into Google Buzz, it automatically sets you up with followers and people to follow….The problem is that — by default — the people you follow and the people that follow you are made public to anyone who looks at your profile. In other words, before you change any settings in Google Buzz, someone could go into your profile and see the people you email and chat with most….

In my profession — where anonymous sourcing is a crucial tool — the implications of this flaw are terrifying. But it’s bad for others too. Two obvious scenarios come to mind:

• Imagine if a wife discovering that her husband emails and chats with an old girlfriend a ton.
• Imagine a boss discovers a subordinate emails with executives at a competitor.

(Get the feeling Nick has been chatting up a few old flames lately?)

I spoke with a Googler yesterday about the Buzz backlash. He said they were totally unprepared for it. They had no idea this reaction was coming and were frantically working to respond to it. What seemed blatantly obvious to people who’ve been through the many Facebook privacy imbroglios was complete news to the Googlefolks.

Late yesterday afternoon Google introduced some changes it was making to Buzz via its Official Google Blog. They didn’t really change much — they just made some of the privacy features more visible, made it easier to block people from following you, and easier to manage which followers show up on your public Google profile.

What they didn’t do was change the requirement for you to create a Google Profile in order to use Buzz, or change the default URL for the profile, which is the first half of your Gmail address. That’s not good.

(I should also add a correction. In my last post I implied Buzz had crashed my Gmail account, a complaint I also heard from other users. But I was able to access it from another machine later, so the problem was probably local.)

The fact is, the more you use Google, the more you put yourself at risk. Not that Google is worse at security than other high tech companies (Chinese hacks notwithstanding). It’s because every service you sign up for is built around your Gmail address. And since Google has effectively made that public via your Google Profiles URL and Google Buzz, all that’s left is your password. Once a hacker guesses or social engineers you out of that, Game Over.

It’s a single point of weakness that could come back to bite people in a huge way (remember, the Chinese hacked some Gmail accounts). My Google contact said they had some things in the works to beef up Gmail authentication and make it a tougher nut to crack, but couldn’t discuss anything specific.

I was chatting with my fellow InfoWorld blogger Christina Tynan-Wood this morning and she brought up what I thought was a highly cogent point. More and more, Google is starting to resemble Microsoft. She wasn’t talking about its sudden introduction of me-too products (Google Buzz, hello?), or its insatiable appetite for new markets to conquer, or its growing tendency to buy innovative technology companies instead of creating its own stuff.

Her point is that Google is becoming increasingly insular. It’s like the world ends at the edge of the Googleplex, and beyond that… there be monsters. Just like folks on the Redmond campus started to be back in the early ’90s.

"This is how it started with Microsoft. First they were fun and it was okay. They lived in their own little geek world and it was funny how they just didn’t get how those of us who live out here don’t have quite the same issues. Later — and Google isn’t there yet but having seen where this leads, I worry — MS got almost belligerent in their insular attitude and completely lost touch. That’s when everyone got mad at them."

She said this as someone who has great affection for Google, both its people and its products.

"It’s like they spend all their time inside Google. They really need to get out more," she sighed.

Does Google need to get out more? Are they turning into Microsoft? Post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

This first appeared on InfoWorld. Where it will appear after that is anyone’s guess. But will I see a dime from any of that? Nooooo.

Borg Cube courtesy of WiredTowns.

Tags: borg, buzz, evil, gmail, Google, Microsoft, old flames

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I wake up each morning with the same mix of hope and dread. I hope Google will buy me for a princely sum and allow me to retire to some sandy beach where they serve mojitos 24/7. And I fear Google will simply invent a better version of me, forcing me to get a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart.

This must be what Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, MySpace, et al experience every day. Unable or unwilling to acquire those services, Google has decided to reinvent them (or copy, depending on your point of view) with Google Buzz.

In case you missed the announcement yesterday, Buzz is Google’s latest attempt to drop a 16-ton weight on the heads of Facebook and Twitter, primarily by combining elements of both. Using Gmail as a starting point, it lets you follow and unfollow, share your deep insights about what you had for lunch, post pix, videos, links, etc.  You can connect it to Picasa, Flicker, Google Chat, Google Reader, and even Twitter (though only in one direction — your Tweets show up on Buzz, but your "Buzzes" don’t show up on Twitter).

The key differences? Unlike Twitter, you’re not limited to 140 characters, and the conversations are automatically threaded. Unlike Facebook, you don’t have to fight off a zillion things competing for your attention, like people playing Farmville or Mafia Wars. Also: When people post something you can comment and vote on it. As the Buzzes pile up, Google will apparently sort them so the most ‘liked’ posts rise to the top, while the ones about people’s cats sink to the bottom. At least, in theory.

(Also: So far, Ashton Kutcher and Perez Hilton haven’t discovered it yet. So they got that going for them.)

I had to check it out; fortunately, I’m one of the 1 percent of Gmail users who were invited to get Buzzed. Everybody else on Gmail will apparently get access within the week.

I signed onto Google Buzz — it wasn’t hard, there was a big splash screen waiting for me when I logged onto Gmail — and immediately had the classic social networking experience. Before I’d even logged on some random stranger had already befriended me: a not-unattractive woman who appears to live in South America.

I ran through the usual gamut of questions in my mind. Have I slept with this person? Do I owe her money? Is she a stalker? What does she look like from the neck down? Her Twitter feed, YouTube page, and blog offered no clues. But I followed her back anyway, because hell, it’s what you do.

Meanwhile, Buzz had already connected me to 10 people in my Gmail address book — the 10 people I’ve actually sent email to on the service, most of whom are not technically savvy and will have no clue about (or interest in) what Buzz is or does. I’m pretty sure I haven’t slept with any of them; I hope I don’t owe them money.

I then followed another two dozen or so folks that Buzz suggested for me, even though they’re not in my Gmail address book (all of them have Google Profiles). Then I used Buzz’s search tool to find people at random. Did you know there are at least four people with Google Profiles named Paris Hilton? I followed them all.

Whenever anyone in my follow list "buzzed" (I don’t know what the right word for that is yet, but I hope "buzzed" isn’t it) I got an alert in Gmail. Due to the threaded nature of the conversations, it’s kind of like eavesdropping on strangers. Not that anyone had anything particularly juicy to share.

Mostly it was "Hey, I’m using Buzz. What is this for, exactly?" Or "Hey, I can’t get Buzz to work on my smart phone." Or "Hey, Buzz works on my Droid, but not my PC. What’s up with that?"

In fact, there was a lot of "this isn’t quite working" chatter. I had my own problems as well. Like, for reasons unknown, it wouldn’t let me add my Flickr account, and some of my tweets simply never showed up. Also, quite pointedly, there is no Facebook integration at all.

Then Gmail just stopped working entirely — I’m guessing because a lot of people like me were trying it to access Buzz at the same time. (Wait, this is Google. Aren’t they supposed have a goddamzillion computers churning away in secret lairs buried deep inside volcanoes?) 

So that’s another thing Buzz doesn’t have yet: A fail whale. But it looks like they might need one.

Do we really need yet another social media service? Really? Post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com. 

Hey, this first appeared on InfoWorld. (Yes, that’s why it looks so familiar.)

Buzz Lightyear action figure courtesy of StrollerDerby.

Tags: eavesdropping, Facebook, Google, google buzz, paris hilton, social disease, social media, Twitter

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The big event has passed, now it’s time for Monday morning quarterbacking and second guessing key decisions. I’m not talking about last night’s Super Bowl; I’m talking about the advertisements.

It’s an enduring testament to the cunning of Madison Avenue that the commercials interrupting the event are a much bigger story than the event itself. For this, as for many things, you can credit (or blame) Apple, whose seminal "1984" Mac ad really upped the ante on what a Super Bowl commercial should and could do.

Super Bowl ads changed again in the late ’90s thanks to high tech, as the dot commers started an arms race to see who could lower the bar on tastelessness. The peak (or nadir) for me: Cyberian Outpost’s 1998 ad where it fired gerbils out of a cannon against a brick wall. (Like the gerbils, Outpost.com and most of the other dot coms that advertised in those heady years also went splat!)

Now the contest is to see who can create an ad that’s so out of bounds it gets banned by the network before it even reaches the air — thus ensuring tens of thousands of views on YouTube while saving millions of dollars in airtime. (The feral snarks at eSarcasm have rounded up some of the better Super Bowl ads the networks didn’t want you to see.)

The biggest news in the geekosphere, though, is the buzz over Google’s first-ever Super Bowl ad. Titled "Parisian Love" (though a more accurate title would be "How to date, marry, and impregnate a French chick while never leaving your computer"), it’s a classy piece of work that shows the progression of a courtship from the initial blush of romance through 3 AM feedings, as told through Google searches. Here it is in case you missed it:

As CEO Eric Schmidt points out in a terse blog post, that ad’s been running on YouTube for three months, but "we liked this video so much, and it’s had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience."

Translation: We’re in a public relations war with Apple and Microsoft, so we’re going to start spending the billions we’ve got stashed in our sock drawer on big TV ad buys. Google made at least six other "Search Stories" ads; look for more of those coming to a flat screen near you.

Interestingly, Google managed to find search terms that did not suffer from CSACC (completely surreal auto-completion complex) in which random phrases appear below the search window as you start typing search terms. Like "Steve Jobs is your new bicycle" and "Why is there a dead Pakistani on my couch?" I’d bet $50 Google deliberately cleaned up the auto-completes on the terms they used in those spots.

By and large, the Google ad clicked with users on Twitter, across the blogosphere, and in the offices of Wired Magazine, where they strapped electrodes to plucky volunteers and measured their biometric responses to each ad.

Still the ad that got my heart racing was for the Motorola’s MotoBlur phones: Megan Fox takes a picture of herself in the bathtub [video], posts it online via her Android phone (yet another Google ad, of sorts), and brings the entire US telecommunications infrastructure to a screeching halt. Yep, that sounds about right.

Oh, and congratulations to the New Orleans Saints and their fans. They’ve suffered from ineptitude and failure for 42 years — longer even than Windows users. They deserve some good news for a change.

What was your favorite Super Bowl ad? Which ones did you hate? Do these ads have any impact on your life at all? If you’re not too hungover, post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

This originally appeared at InfoWorld a few days ago.

Tags: bathtubs, dead pakistanis, Google, megan fox, new orleans saints, parisian love, Wired

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We have interrupted our nonstop coverage of Apple iPad mania to bring you this important word about the freedom of information. And, more specifically, Wikileaks.org.

I’ve written about Wikileaks several times over the last few years, in part because it’s a classic example of why the Internet is such an extraordinary telecommunications tool.

Wikileaks is usually described as a "whistleblower" site, but it’s really more like a safe haven for secrets that need to be exposed — kind of like a Swiss bank, only in reverse. Instead of shielding people who are trying to hide their assets, it exposes them. Thanks to the nature of the Net, confidential sources can make those secrets public without putting their own necks on the chopping block.

(Admittedly, these sources sometimes break the law or their legal agreements by doing so. And Wikileaks sometimes exposes information — like personal email addresses — of people who’ve done nothing wrong. It’s far from perfect.)

So it’s kind of fitting that a Swiss bank is one of its most famous targets. Through its work it has exposed money-laundering banks, brainwashing cults, repressive governments, corporate scofflaws, butter-fingered politicos, and all other manner of bad actors. Not surprisingly, the org has been sued by its deep-pocketed targets, harassed by the authorities, and attacked by dDOSers.  Now it faces the biggest obstacle of all: money — or, rather, a lack thereof.

Today Wikileaks has announced it has been forced to suspend its operations due to a lack of funds. That sound you hear is champagne glasses clinking in the boardrooms at Bank Julius Baer; at the Scientology HQ in St. Petersburg, Florida; in the government halls of Beijing, and other elite locations around the globe.

I can understand why the wiki’s donor pool dried up. About a year ago Wikileaks sprung a leak itself and accidentally emailed a list of its financial patrons, some of whom probably would have preferred to remain anonymous. That email was then submitted to Wikileaks, which dutifully posted it like any other document it receives from anonymous sources.

Now it’s seeking donations from the public to stay afloat, as well as technical resources (like servers and storage space) and legal expertise. Its supporters have started a Facebook group (about 1200 members at press time) and other journos besides yours truly are spreading the good word.

Why support Wikileaks?

Because investigative journalism is on a respirator, and prognosis isn’t good. For one thing, it’s expensive. You need publications that can afford to pay a professional reporter, or a team of them, to dig into a story for months or even years without any promise that they’ll end up with something worth publishing. Those stories might involve the use of a private detective, and they will almost always require the services of a team of attorneys to vet the copy carefully and defend the story later in court, if required. None of that stuff comes cheap. 

Still, investigative reporting was how major news dailies and dozens of glossy mags made their bones, back in the day. Now the number of publications that can continue to fund this kind of reporting have been whittled down to a handful, and most of those are teetering on the brink.

These days it’s all about how fast you can publish a story online — even when it bears little resemblance to reality as defined by most people — and how much Google loves you as a result. Not a lot of rewards for reporting and reflection there.

Sure, the blogosphere can occasionally step in and break a story, just like a blind pig occasionally stumbles across an acorn. But only for the most brain dead simple stuff — like the wrong font used in a typewritten letter.

Most investigative breakthroughs involve detailed painstaking work, deep understanding of a topic, and the ability to earn the trust of a wide range of confidential sources who are willing to put their jobs and possibly their lives at risk just by talking to you.

Those things are not generally available to obsessive-compulsive pajama-wearing typists who may or may not be using their real names. And they certainly won’t be without resources like Wikileaks, which levels the information playing field for everyone, professional and amateur journos alike.

So, your choice. You can spend $10 on a couple of lattes and a kruller, or you can spend it on keeping information flowing just a little more freely around the world. I know which one I’d pick.

If Wikileaks goes down, will something new rise to take its place? Post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

This post appeared first on InfoWorld.com.

No Secrets image courtesy of SEO consultants.

Tags: abu ghraib, china, julius baer, no secrets, repressive governments, scientology, swiss banks, tom cruise, wikileaks

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I don’t know about you, but beautiful Russian girls are just dying to meet me. They’re all 26 yo, most of them are named Olga, and from their descriptions they sound totally hot. But first I have to buy a fantastic luxury timepiece, change my Facebook log in, get a bucketful of knock-off prescriptions, and pick up that parcel waiting for me at UPS or DHL (even though I never ordered anything).

Yes, spam is ruling my life these days. My inbox is overflowing with it. Amazingly, it seems to have gotten worse since the last time I ranted about it, if that’s possible.

And yes, I use multiple spam filters. So does my Web host, my ISP, and (I’m certain) my ISP’s upstream providers. I’m sure they’re catching 95 percent of the crap. But 5 percent of 250 billion emails sent each day is still quite a lot of crap.

Back in October I asked the residents of Cringeville what they would do to fix the spam problem. And I got a number of very good responses. Why am I just writing about it now? Because — irony alert — those responses were all trapped in my (ahem) spam folder, which I clean out about as often as my sock drawer (about once a decade).

So I dug through it and found messages from several Cringesters with the same good idea: Make email expensive to send in large amounts. Here’s C. D.’s scheme: 

My best bet is for a robust, maybe token-based, validated email system that (gulp!) costs money like a stamp to send email. At a fraction of a penny per email, I don’t think anyone should balk at having to pay a buck or two per month extra to clean things up. Maybe this is validated through ISPs, so it’s more transparent to end users? Maybe our illustrious USPS could get savvy enough to make it happen and keep from going bankrupt?

A penny or two for an individual isn’t a deal breaker — think of what people pay for texting packages!

I like this scheme, though I’d modify it slightly — let you send the first 500 or so emails for free, or only charge for email sent to more than, say, 50 or 100 people at once. That should let casual users off the hook and make commercial users carry the load (as it should be).

But it will never fly. Why? Because of what I call "legal spammers" — ad agencies and online marketers who fill our inboxes with solicitations for actual products, whether or not we’ve asked for them. They’ve spent millions making sure most of the anti-spam laws on the books are toothless.

The other problem? When the spammers phish your account and suddenly you’re on the hook for their marketing bills. Cringester  J. L. B. is less than sympathetic to your plight, though:

When Joe Clueless starts receiving $200 bills from his ISP because of all those spams he’s unwittingly sending us, maybe he’ll start paying attention to security.

Other Cringe readers offered technical solutions — like encouraging ISPs to employ Sender Policy Framework and use Reverse MX lookups to spot forged sender addresses.

Regular commentor ticedoff8 suggests we hand over our email systems to a third party so they can enforce anti-spam rules:

To solve this problem, someone has to "own" the routing and transport system. This new system would have to be secure and require some form of authorization to access (put mail into the pipe). …This "owner" of this new transport & routing system would establish criteria for relationships with ISPs. If the ISP violates their contracts – boom, the hammer drops and the ISP is cut off.

As he (she?) notes, you’d have to give up notions of a free and open Internet and Net Neutrality to make such a system work. And then there’s the possibility of somebody just bribing their way onto that third party’s permanent whitelist.

Dedicated anti-spammers like Spamhaus’s Steve Linford have spent years negotiating with tier-one and tier-two backbone providers, trying to persuade them to shut down known spamming operations. And he’s been amazingly successful.

The problem? There’s too much money for many of them to turn down — literally millions a month in bandwidth charges. Spammers who get booted just move to another provider or set up shop under a different name, so it becomes a constant game of whack-a-mole. And then there’s the thriving black market of Web hosts and bandwidth providers who specialize in providing safe haven to the scum of the Internet.

I suppose if this were an easy nut to crack we’d all be eating peanuts by now — and enjoying a spam-free Internet.

Last time out I suggested sentencing spammers to some quality time in a maximum security cell with an ex-biker named "Tiny." But I think that’s too good for these people. They should be strung up by their thumbs and forced to watch ShamWow infomercials and Rick Astley videos until their ears bleed.

Are you with me? Who wants to take pitchforks and torches to the homes of the world’s worst spammers? Vote aye or nay below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

Yo, this first appeared on InfoWorld.

Tags: beautiful russian girls, spam, spam spam spam spam lobster thermidor and spam, spamola, spamorama

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The circus is finally over. The carnies are pulling down the tents, the clowns have packed up their seltzer bottles, and we are basking in the soft sweet afterglow of greatness.

So much for Obama’s State of the Union address. Now about that Apple event earlier today. By now you’ve probably seen or read dozens of stories about the iPad, as well as stories about stories about the iPad. Well, here’s my take, post facto.

First, the iPad really does look like a game changer. I honestly didn’t think Apple could pull it off. Color me stupid. Yet again they seem to have created a new product category — as well as possibly a netbook and eBook killer — out of sweat, Red Bull, and Steve Jobs’ fevered imagination. 

Still, this wouldn’t be a Cringely blog post if I didn’t have a few quibbles.

The name: iPad, eh? I know — it’s like iPod, only with an a. Personally, I see problems brewing. As eSarcasm’s JR Raphael snarks:

Mass confusion will ensue at all Boston-area retail outlets when accent-heavy customers ask for an “iPod” (e.g. an “iPahd”). Prepare to hear frequent yelling of such phrases as: “I said iPahd, not iPad. Whatayou, fahkin’ retahdid?”

Also, as I’ve said before, that name carries some off-putting connotations for me. Or as another wag put it, "On especially heavy surfing days they call it the MaxiPad."

The specs: Impressive, to say the least. A 10-inch, 720p touch screen; 1.5 pounds; optional physical keyboard; and as whizzy an interface as you’ll find anywhere. But 10 hours of active battery life and 30 days on standby? I’ll believe that when I see it. Once people can get their hands on this sucker and play with it, I expect we’ll find a few more flies in the honey.

The price: I gotta say, I never expected it to come in at $499. But when you add in all the goodies they showed off at today’s unveiling — including 64GB of memory, 3G and WiFi — we’re talking $829. That’s much closer to what I expected.

The bigger price news, IMHO, is the data plan: $15 a month for 250MB of data; $30 unlimited, and no customer headlock (aka contract). If that’s not a model for future wireless connectivity, I don’t know what is.

The 3G carrier: AT&T. Thud. I guess you can’t have everything. Still, I hear they have a really good map.

The press coverage: It’s become almost mandatory: Whenever there’s a product announcement of any import, hundreds or even thousands of attendees must "live blog" the event. So many tried to capture the iPad announcement in real time that they temporarily overloaded live-blogging platforms at CoverItLive, bollixing coverage from sites like SiliconValley.com, Ars Technica, The Seattle Post Intelligencer, and The Technologizer. (Ars and TT later recovered.)

Then, of course there are the sites live blogging the live blogging of the event. It’s a little like watching a movie by having someone write down summaries of each scene onto a blackboard.

Maybe this is a stupid question, but: Why doesn’t somebody just digitally capture the entire event and stream it live to the world? Do we really need interpreters to tell us what Steve Jobs is saying? It’s not like he’s speaking Swahili.

The mantra: Jobs said it (twice) near the end of the event, then put it up large on screen in case anybody missed it: “Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.” Or, to make it easier to fit on a tattoo: OMATIAMARDAAUP. Remember that; you will be tested later.

Twitter: As I write this, half a dozen of the top trending topics on Twitter are related to the iPad announcement — including "iTampon." See, I told you it was a bad name.

OK, enough of my mindless palaver. What do you think of the JesusPad? Post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com. Just remember: Any Apple fanboys who get too unruly will have their iPhones confiscated until class is over.

This post originally appeared on InfoWorld. Boo-ya!

Ancient Apple Tablet prototype (circa 1983) via Wired.

Tags: Apple, apple ipad, esarcasm, iPhone, ipod, Steve Jobs, steve jobs is god

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Forget Obamacare or the new Republican senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Pay no attention to the New Orleans Saints or the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien soap opera. You can even safely ignore the Chinese and their cyber-shenanigans. There’s only one thing happening in the world this week, and it’s taking place in about 48 hours in San Francisco.

Call it what you will — iSlateMania, iPadMadness, iTabletBabble — the hype surrounding Apple’s upcoming mystery announcement (aka the Wonder Tablet) has drowned out everything else of import, at least among the geekerati. Jesus Himself could descend from the heavens and declare the rapture, and unless He was carrying an Apple tablet nobody would pay Him any mind.

Thus we have TechCrunch quoting Steve Jobs (using second- third- and fourth-hand accounts) saying "This [ie, the Wonder Tablet] will be the most important thing I’ve ever done."

(FYI, other things Steve Jobs has probably been overheard saying:

"My, that was certainly a tasty macrobiotic burrito."

"What the #$#@#! do you mean you don’t #$#@#ing! know when the #$#@#ing! OS will be ready? Remind me again who signs your #$#@#ing! paychecks?"

"Bill Gates on line 2? Tell him I’m in the shower.")

What does this tell us, exactly? Two things: 1. TechCrunch will report anything (but we knew that already) and 2. Geeks are desperate for any crumb of news attached to the Wonder Tablet, no matter how trivial or implausible.

Meanwhile there is actual news, of a sort. Web analytics firm Flurry, which offers software to app developers that lets them where and how their apps are used, reports  a flurry (sorry) of activity from unidentified devices emanating from IP addresses in Cupertino. Some 50 devices that are not iPhones yet use iPhone apps — particularly game and entertainment apps — are apparently actively hitting the Flurry network. (They’re also detecting testing of iPhone OS 4.0, thus confirming that rumor as well.)

This is the first solid evidence for an Apple tablet that’s not based on an analysts’ predictions, rumor, innuendo, blind hope, or goats entrails. So all this slate/pad hype might actually pan out. 

Here are my predictions for how this will all go down, two days hence.

* The Hype Climax: Moments before the beginning of the January 27 event, some blogger will report seeing Steve Jobs carrying the mythical tablet and walking across the San Francisco Bay to the Yerba Buena Center.

* The Special Event: Blah blah blah iLife 2010. Blah blah blah new wireless partners. Blah blah blah iPhone OS 4.0. And maybe other stuff nobody but people with images of Steve Jobs tattooed on their posteriors will give a damn about.

* The One More Thing: Yes, it’s the Wonder Tablet! My god, it’s so shiny. It glows with its own ineffable light. And it runs iPhone apps. Heavens be praised.

(Also: I predict this will be the last time Jobs ever says "one more thing." That phrase will be permanently retired and sent to the Computer History Museum in San Jose.)

* The Predictable Fawning: It will change life as we know it! It’s a jet pack and a time machine! It cuts your drying time in half and completely eliminates the need to buy paper towels! How did we ever live without it?

* The Inevitable Backlash: Once the groveling has peaked, some crafty bloggers will leap upon the chance to declare the Wonder Tablet not all that wonderful, really. I mean, it’s kind of pricey. Not as light as we’d hoped. It runs hot, the screen gets scratched pretty easily, and the battery life sucks. There are problems finding 3G networks or connecting to WiFi. The content partners aren’t as exciting as we’d hoped. And so on.

Months later: People come to the sobering realization that it’s just another friggin’ computer, with the usual computer problems. And in the interim, maybe, we’ll all be able to pay attention to things that really matter.

(Go ahead, Apple fanboys: Complain about how there’s no "real news" in this blog post. You know you want to.)

Can’t wait for all this Apple tablet madness to blow over? (Me neither.) Or are you on pins and needles waiting for Wedneday? Either way, post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

This post appeared first on InfoWorld.com. Visit InfoWorld.com for all your geeky IT needs.

Steve Jobs as Chuck Heston image found at MacDailyNews.

Tags: Apple, apple tablet, idontcare, ipad, islate, iwhateveryouwanttocallit, jesus, Steve Jobs, tablet

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Yes, "information imperialists." That’s what the People’s Republic of China is calling us now, thanks to Google and the US State Department. Hey, it’s as good a description as any.

The blowback against Google’s announcement that it was hacked by Chinese cyber agents– and in response would be lifting the restrictions that keep users of its Chinese search engine in the dark — has been utterly fascinating. (PC World’s JR Raphael serves up a nice summary of Google-China history here.)

I’m trying to remember the last time a corporate decision — and really, not so much the decision as the way it was announced — turned into an international incident. I’m drawing a blank. Anybody out there in Cringeville think of anything?

Earlier this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton upped the ante in a speech calling for Internet freedom across the globe. She said the US would actively encourage the development of technology to circumvent restrictions on Internet access — something private companies like Anonymizer.com have been doing on their own for a while. Sayeth Hillary:

"Both the American people and nations that censor the Internet should understand that our government is committed to helping promote Internet freedom… We want to put these tools in the hands of people who will use them to advance democracy and human rights, to fight climate change and epidemics."

Needless to say, that didn’t sit well with the "Internet censorship? What Internet censorship?" crowd on the other side of the planet.

Per All Things D:

In a statement posted to China’s foreign ministry Web site, Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said the United States should “cease using so-called Internet freedom to make groundless accusations against China. The US has criticised China’s policies to administer the internet, and insinuated that China restricts internet freedom. This runs contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-US relations. We urge the United States to respect the facts….China’s Internet is open.”

And by "open" they mean open to all right-minded citizens who have never typed the words "Falun Gong," "Dalai Lama," or "Tiananmen Square massacre" into their search engines. Otherwise, not so open. More like partially shuttered in a room without electricity.

Get the feeling these people are so used to lying that they can no longer tell when they’re doing it?

The Beijing-friendly English-language paper, Global Times, published a scathing editorial earlier today opposing Clinton and Google. It claims to have broad support among the Chinese people:

… Google’s threat to pull out of China … has stirred widespread debate among the public in China. The recent poll conducted by huanqiu.com shows a growing number of people voicing opposition to an unregulated or uncensored Google in China. As many as 81 percent of those polled are opposed to Chinese government accepting Google’s demands.

Interestingly, that’s the same percentage of Chinese who replied that they didn’t want to spend the next 30 years scrubbing Premier Wen Jiabao’s toilets. What an amazing  coincidence! As for the 19 percent who agreed with Google lifting the censorship veil, well, let’s just say old Wen won’t have to worry about his toilets for a long long time.

It goes on:

It is not because the people of China do not want free flow of information or unlimited access to Internet, as in the West. It is just because they recognize the situation that their country is forced to face.

Unlike advanced Western countries, Chinese society is still vulnerable to the effect of multifarious information flowing in, especially when it is for creating disorder.

And by "multifarious information" they mean things like the fact the people of Tibet probably don’t appreciate being squashed like a bug under the boot heels of China. Certainly can’t have them Googling that, now can we? You might end up with disorder. Or tanks in the streets. Which you can view footage of on YouTube — unless, of course, you live in China.

Also: I’m sorry, but can someone out there explain to me how a country can be considered un-advanced and vulnerable when it has a) a highly sophisticated culture dating back more than 5000 years, b) 384 million netizens, c) electronics plants that build things like the iPhone, and d) the Bomb? Cuz I’m a little confused about that.

Bottom line: All governments lie and all governments spy. Uncle Sam is as guilty of that as any, regardless of which party is occupying the White House. But (unlike in China) you can read all about it on the InterWebs, and argue about it in bars, without having to worry about spending time behind them.

It’s when the Net is used as a tool for lying and spying that things go over the line. I think China understands that as well as anybody. Good luck getting them to admit it.

If you were Google, what would you do? Post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

This sucker first appeared on InfoWorld. After that, it could show up anywhere.

Image of Google in Chinese via Google Blogoscoped

Tags: censorship, china, Google, iPhone, Privacy, propaganda, youtube

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So far, 2010 has started off with a bang. Google decides to take on Apple in the ultra-smart phone market, while Apple appears on the verge of creating yet another new market for touchscreen tablet PCs. Google says "bite me" to China, after Chinese cyber-attackers target it and three dozen other tech firms. Yahoo chimes in with support for Google and gets spanked by its Chinese partner, Alibaba. This story isn’t going away any time soon. 

Before we get too far into the new decade, though, I’d like to highlight a handful of really great letters from readers regarding two recent posts.

The first is from reader K. R., who was responding to my story on Facebook’s increasingly blithe attitude toward its subscribers’ privacy ("Facebook puts your privacy on parade"). He says he recently deleted all of his Facebook updates and closed his account because of changes the network made to its default privacy settings.

As a highly visible gay political activist in the 1990s, KR says he received his share of blowback — being fired from one job, almost losing another, and harassment by men posing as local police. Now, as with most Facebook users, his past and his current interests were woven into his Facebook profile — searchable by anyone, including prospective employers:

My direct action days are now largely past, but I did make mention of them periodically on my Facebook page. I posted a pic of myself, for example, wearing just boots, leather shorts, and a harness, from the 1995 Pride parade carrying a sign directed at Fred Phelps reading "He’s your God. They’re your rules. YOU go to Hell!" ….

While I can control who can view my non-profile pics under the new privacy settings, I can’t hide my membership in different groups and pages I’m a fan of. Being in the "No on Prop 8" and "Yes on Ref 71" groups could be a job killer. (It’s sad that this is still the case, but it is.) Add in my home town – a small city – and another visit from YAHOOS posing as cops is an unwelcome possibility. That’s why I retired my account.

K.R. brings up something I didn’t get into in my post: Everyone has some information they want to keep private, but for some people the stakes are much higher. He adds:

"If someone WANTS to post a pic of themselves nude, drunk, and with their Social Security Number scrawled across their chest, more power to them. I don’t want to have to limit what I share with my close friends and family for fear I’ll be asked about it in my next job interview."

Topic #2: Google and the China controversy. I heard from several readers about my post on "Google’s China problem (and ours)," including one from a Chinese student studying in the US, T. Z.

In somewhat fractured English, T. Z. points out that while the western media has largely assumed the Chinese government is behind the attacks, no one has proven anything. He adds an interesting perspective on what people in China are aware of (I’ve cleaned up some of the grammar and language for readability):

… The majority of citizens in China do not talk about politics too much, especially that kind of the Inglorious history of the party in the last century, and the media do not show people negative news about government and society. That’s true in the past years. But things have been changing, a lot…. Lots of the western countries (certainly including the U.S, no offense) are criticizing the human rights situation in my country all the time. I am not so sensitive about the numeric [?] provided by the US nor China governments. According to what I know, people in China mostly have got equal treatment in various aspects. As for the Dissidents, I remember there was a piece of news that a Dissident was sentenced to jail for several years because of violating laws. Perhaps the leadership should have a reconsideration about the development of the political system, but I don’t think it would go the western way finally, though the economics [are] actually growing more far away from the communism. OMG, I used that word…

T. Z. adds that he’ll miss Google Docs and Gmail if they go, but most Chinese won’t, since they use Baidu, and that the climate of opinion of China "is definitely getting better, just give it more time."

Meanwhile, Cringester C. M. is skeptical that Google will make good on its threats to leave China.

I think that they will have to take a good long hard look. If they want any market share in the future for smart phones then, I think they will still have to play ball. …I personally think that if Google does leave China it will only shoot itself in the foot and the other companies will rejoice, because that would mean that 20% of the market share is now up for grabs.

And reader C. P. says he wants Google to fight cyberfire with cyberfire:

I like to think that Truth, Justice & the American Way will triumph over evil, but I don’t know. … As for Google. Good for them for saying something, but I think I would rather have seen them engage in some covert Internet warfare. Of course, they couldn’t say anything if they did, being covert and all. Maybe they figured the publicity and the international spotlight would be worth more than some secret victories that would just p*** off the Chinese Overlords.

That is a good question. If you worked at Google (or any of the other companies targeted), wouldn’t you want to do some reverse mojo to help break through the great firewall? 

If you were Google (or Facebook) what would you do? Post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

This originally appeared on InfoWorld.

Tags: censorship, china, Facebook, Google, hacking, Privacy

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I can’t remember who first said it, but it seems truer every day: The future just ain’t what it used to be.

Here we are in 2010, and I’m still waiting for my personal jetpack, let alone a transporter. Flying cars? Fahgeddaboutit. Phasers? Not even close. I want Rosie the Jetson’s robotic maid; instead I have Roomba the robot vacuum cleaner.

But there is some good news: They’ve finally invented a robotic companion like the ones in Westworld.

At the other trade show in Vegas last week, AVN, a company called True Companion threw a coming out party for Roxxxy, a 5-foot 7-inch, fully functional rubberized “girlfriend” with a personality, of sorts.

According to her daddy, former Bell Labs AI whiz Douglas Hines:

"She can’t vacuum, she can’t cook but she can do almost anything else if you know what I mean… She’s a companion. She has a personality. She hears you. She listens to you. She speaks. She feels your touch. She goes to sleep. We are trying to replicate a personality of a person."

Think of her as party doll with a Ph.D.

Roxxxy will be available in five prefab personalities, from Wild Wendy to Mature Martha and Frigid Farrah, for $7,000 to $10,000 apiece (though why someone would pay for a frigid version is beyond me). That still makes her cheaper than a mail order bride and less likely to bolt once she’s gotten her green card.

(And yes, to all my female readers out there, they are apparently working on a male version as well. So stay tuned.) 

To be fair, Hines has grander goals – to make companions for all kinds of activities beyond sex, and ultimately to find a way to preserve human personalities and memories after our bodies are kaput. He’s just starting with sex because, well, that’s how nearly everything starts.

Still, when I was a kid, 2010 was going to look a whole lot different. I expected to be vacationing on Mars and having my meals prepared automatically simply by voicing a request. I did not expect to spend the better part of two days reinstalling an operating system and software after being hit with a nasty virus, as I did last week. 

The one great innovation Sci Fi didn’t really prepare us for – at least until Neal Stephenson and William Gibson started writing – is what you’re reading right now: the InterWebs. That’s changed virtually everything we do. (Today’s cell phones are also kind of amazing, even if the networks they rely on often are not.)

Unfortunately, as the Net gradually dominates all media, not all of those changes are for the better. Virtual Reality pioneer Jaron Lanier has an excellent essay in today’s Wall Street Journal about how collectivism – what some people like to call “the wisdom of crowds” – is actually killing innovation and turning us all into peasants.

Here’s one problem with digital collectivism: We shouldn’t want the whole world to take on the quality of having been designed by a committee. When you have everyone collaborate on everything, you generate a dull, average outcome in all things. You don’t get innovation.

A world in which everything looks and reads like Wikipedia? Not one I want to be a part of. But that’s where we seem to be headed in the short term – especially as automated content factories continue to ramp up, fueled by the goal of gaming Google, so that vast amounts of Web content are virtually indistinguishable.

Removing the editor from the process and crowd-sourcing content directly to and from the people? Sounds great in theory, but as a business model it’s not sustainable for long. (As a longtime journo sloppy drunk with a keyboard, I admittedly have some skin in this game. Disintermediation isn’t so fun when you’re the one being dissed.)

I like to think 2010 will be a turning point in the evolution of the Web. We’re starting to realize that while information may want to be free, the things that add value will still have to cost money or we won’t have them any more.

Whether enough people will realize that – and how we get to a Web that is still mostly free but still rewards the people who bring innovation – are questions I’m not smart enough to answer.

And if we don’t get there? I may just hole up in a cabin somewhere with Wild Wendy until our collective batteries run out.

So what do you think? Free collectivism or paid innovation? Wild Wendy or Mature Martha? Weigh in below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

Yes this originally appeared at InfoWorld.com. Thanks for asking.

Tags: crowdsourcing, robots, roxxxy, sexbots, wisdom

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The 2010 Vegas Gadgetfest is winding down today, and I’m sure all the cabbies, blackjack dealers, and strippers are breathing a sigh of relief. (CES attendees — and geeks in general — don’t do much gambling and are notoriously lousy tippers, or so I’ve been told.)

As always, CES is one enormous hype factory. Its primary purpose these days seems to be getting consumers all hot and bothered about some whizzy new technology. This year CES is agog with talk of Web tablets and Android-based phones like the Google Nexus One and the Motorola Backflip. (I also hear TechCrunch will be introducing Arrington 2.0, but I’m not sure I believe that.)

Of course, easily a third of the stuff that gets the most attention never materializes, or if it does show up it isn’t nearly as impressive in the wild. So I thought I’d step back and take a look at what CES was supposed to bring us last year, and how well it fared. (The Retrevo shopping engine, surprisingly enough, also has a pretty good look at CES ‘09 too.)

Here are some of the things people were gushing about after last year’s CES, and what happened to them:

The Palm Pre: Arguably the biggest story to come out of last year’s confab, the Pre arrived to mostly glowing reviews last June, followed by her cute little sister, the Pixi, in December. But like a Hollywood child star she’s already looking ridden hard and put away wet, surpassed by sexier Droid and Nexus handsets. The deal with Verizon and newly announced "Plus" versions of each don’t do much to change that. With everyone and their dog now coming out with smart phones and app stores, the prospects for Palm’s resurrection look even dimmer than they did a year ago.

Windows 7: Last year Ballmers’ keynote was all about Windows 7, and this year his keynote was, well, mostly about Windows 7. But heck — for the first time in recent memory a new Windows release a) actually arrived when it was supposed to, and b) got a pretty favorable response from reviewers and users alike. So is one CES

LED TVs:  Super-thin flat panels using LEDs instead of fluorescent lights for backlighting were all over the place in 2009 — Samsung, LG, Sony, heck even Vizio came out with one. They use roughly 40 percent less electricity too, making them one of the few "green technologies" to actually have an impact.

Green Technology: Speaking of which, 2009 was supposed to be the year High Tech went all Al Gore on us. Aside from a handful of eco-conscious products like Samsung’s Reclaim cell phone (made from corn and recycled materials) and those LED TVs, it really didn’t happen.

OLED TVs: The next generation of ooh-I-want-that displays were supposed to start hitting retail shelves some time last year. Didn’t really happen, though they have started popping up on smaller screens, like the Zune HD and the Google Nexus One.

Cool DVRs: Smart settop boxes like EchoStar’s Sling-loaded DVR were supposed to give TiVo a run for its money (though mostly pocket change, these days), combining a Dish Networks HD video recorder with Sling’s place-shifting tech. Well guess what Dish Network is showing off at this year’s CES? Yes, the very same box, which is now slated to appear in Q2 2010.

Smartphone projectors. These mini-projectors were supposed to connect to your cell and put an entire Powerpoint presentation in your pocket. Quick show of hands: Anybody ever see one of these presentations? Anyone at all?

The Zune Phone: Uh, yeah. According to Wired (circa December 2008) the Zunephone was "the real deal" and going to be announced by The Mad Ballmer at his CES 09 keynote. I think we all know how that’s turned out.

What do you think will be the most overhyped tech to come out of CES this year? Post your thoughts below or email me: dan@dantynan.com.

This post appeared on InfoWorld. I write for other publications too, I’m just too lazy to repost them all here.

Tags: ces, hype, las vegas, Microsoft, samsung, strippers

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