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INTEREST: A.M.D. and Its War With Intel: predatory pricing?
by billing 21 Jun '08

21 Jun '08

...from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/business/21nocera.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&… A.M.D. and Its War With Intel By JOE NOCERA Published: June 21, 2008 A few weeks ago, Stephen Labaton of The New York Times broke the news that the Federal Trade Commission had decided to open a formal antitrust investigation into Intel, the world’s dominant maker of microprocessors. Subpoenas had gone out not just to Intel, but to many of the computer manufacturers who rely on Intel chips. The investigation, as Mr. Labaton wrote, was going to revolve around “accusations that Intel’s pricing is intended to maintain a near monopoly on the microprocessor market.” The chief accuser, of course, was Intel’s main (some would say only) rival, Advanced Micro Devices. I say “of course” because I can scarcely remember a time when A.M.D. hasn’t been complaining about Intel’s supposed predatory behavior. But I can also recall the company’s many missteps and execution failures over the years, which have tended to undercut its claims. It was always a little hard to swallow A.M.D.’s argument that it was being hurt by Intel’s anticompetitive practices when it had such a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. In recent years, however, two things have happened. First, in 2003, A.M.D. came out with a chip called Opteron, which was far superior to anything Intel had on the market. Indeed, this was one of the few times that Intel was the company stubbing its toe; it took a year before it had a competitive chip. What’s more, the Opteron was aimed at the highly profitable server market, which has long been Intel’s domain. It is fair to say that Intel was none too happy with this state of affairs, and it wasn’t too long before A.M.D. was complaining that Intel was cutting deals to keep computer makers from straying, even though many of them wanted to use the Opteron. Which perhaps explains the second thing that happened: A.M.D.’s accusations finally began to gain some traction. In 2005, after a lengthy investigation, Japan’s Fair Trade Commission asserted that Intel had violated the country’s antitrust laws by, in effect, paying Japanese computer manufacturers to limit their business with A.M.D. That same year, A.M.D. sued Intel in federal court, charging predatory pricing; the case is scheduled to be tried in February 2010. Meanwhile, the European Commission began looking into Intel’s pricing practices; it has since made several preliminary rulings that don’t bode well for the chip giant. And in South Korea this month, Intel was fined $25.4 million for giving rebates to two South Korean computer manufacturers, which had the effect of “excluding” A.M.D., according to the Korea Fair Trade Commission. Intel has said it will appeal. (The New York attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, has also started an investigation, but he’s just piling on.) With all this ferment, it was probably inevitable that the F.T.C. would follow suit. If the rest of the world is busy imposing sanctions on Intel for abusing its monopoly power, it hardly looks good for the nation’s chief antitrust enforcer to be sitting on its hands. When I made some inquiries this week, the strong sense I got was that the commissioners wanted to get to the bottom of the Intel accusations once and for all, and needed subpoena power to gather all the evidence they needed. But in antitrust, the notion of “getting to the bottom of it” is notoriously squishy, and this case is squishier than most. There is no question that Intel offers large discounts to its big customers, along with rebates, quarterly marketing dollars and other goodies. Because those discounts are directly related to how much business a manufacturer gives to Intel, it necessarily has the effect of excluding A.M.D.—since it’s the only other company competing for the business. Is that predatory behavior? Or is that good old-fashioned competition? What makes antitrust so maddening is that the answer depends as much on who is asking the question — and where — as it does on the evidence. • Let’s start with a simple question: Are discounts good or bad? When I put it like that, the answer is obvious: discounts are clearly good. They allow consumers to buy things at lower prices. Indeed, price competition is at the very heart of free-market capitalism, and it is the natural result of competition. It’s what we as a society want companies to do. For as long as we’ve had antitrust laws in the United States, predatory pricing — pricing intended solely to prevent a rival from being able to compete — has been against the law. After all, if a big company drops its prices on a short-term basis to drive a smaller rival out of business — and then can raise prices with impunity because it has eradicated its competitor — consumers are ultimately harmed by the price cuts. But our definition of predatory pricing has tended to vary over time. In the 1950s and 1960s, United States antitrust enforcers — and the courts — tended to view many forms of discounting as predatory. One sorry result was that actions that actually helped consumers were considered illegal practices. But in the 1970s, that all changed, as legal scholars argued persuasively that anticompetitive behavior had to be defined in more rigorously economic terms, and that there needed to be a high standard of proof that monopolistic behavior was harming consumers. This became known as the Chicago School of antitrust theory, and in time, the courts embraced many of its theories. One consequence is that today, it is almost impossible to bring a discounting case, even if it has exclusionary consequences. It is presumed by the courts that discounting benefits consumers. The only form of discounting that is now viewed by the courts as proof of predatory behavior is pricing below cost. When I spoke to Robert E. Cooper, a lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, who is representing Intel, he cited a series of Supreme Court cases, going back 20 years, that has come down in favor of discounting — even enormous discounts based on market share, which have the effect of excluding rivals. Intel insists that it doesn’t price below cost, and given the nature of these things — selling in huge volume brings Intel’s own costs down, thanks to economies of scale — it will be almost impossible to prove otherwise. Does this mean that Intel is all warm and fuzzy when it is negotiating with the big computer manufacturers? Not remotely. Roger Kay, the president of Endpoint Technology Associates, and a very close observer of the Intel-A.M.D. wars, laid out a scenario to me that he thought likely. A computer manufacturer sees its market share declining. When it comes time to negotiate a new microprocessor contract with Intel, it is told that its volume has diminished so much that it can not longer get the same big discounts it has come to depend on for its own profits. But, the Intel salesman adds, if the company is willing to shift more business to Intel, and increase the volume a little, it will still get the discount. Naturally, the company agrees. Indeed, Mr. Kay says he believes this is precisely what happened in Japan, where the two companies that abandoned A.M.D. completely were Toshiba and Sony — which were both losing market share to competitors. “Thus,” he wrote me in an e-mail message, “Intel can claim it is doing nothing wrong and A.M.D. can claim its options are being foreclosed, and in a sense, they’re both right.” One reason A.M.D. has had more success pressing its case abroad than in the United States is that in many places in the world, the reigning antitrust view is what’s called the post-Chicago School, which holds that there are times when pricing above cost can still constitute predatory behavior. Indeed, the European Commission tends to put far more emphasis on competition than on consumers, and views with suspicion companies with oversize market share, like Intel But what happens if the commission rules against Intel — as seems likely — but the F.T.C. and the United States courts rule in favor of the company? That’s what happens these days with mergers that need government approval — Europe has turned thumbs down on a number of mergers involving two American companies, and as a result they haven’t gone through. The world economy really won’t function very well if multinational companies have to dance between dueling regulators. Either we need to adopt their standards, or they need to adopt ours. The Intel-A.M.D. shows, if nothing else, how untenable the current state of play is in antitrust. Despite its recent investigation, the F.T.C. has long been reluctant to pursue a formal investigation against Intel; I hear that even now many of its economists simply do not believe that Intel’s policies amount to predatory pricing. But there is one other reason why A.M.D. faces an uphill struggle pressing its case in the United States. Its own market share numbers don’t seem to back up its contention that Intel is preventing it from competing. According to data provided to me by Ashok Kumar, a well-known technology analyst with CRT Capital Group, A.M.D.’s overall market share in microprocessors was 17 percent in March 2005. By December 2006, it had risen to 25 percent. Today it has sunk back to 20 percent. The rise in market share is directly attributable to A.M.D. having strong products like the Opteron. But then Intel came roaring back, leap-frogging A.M.D.’s technology. Meanwhile, the smaller company’s latest high-end chip, code-named Barcelona, has been delayed when a flaw was discovered in it. A.M.D. has lost money for six quarters in a row. Apparently, some things never change.

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INTEREST: Wall Street Journal conference - D: All Things Digital
by billing 28 May '08

28 May '08

Once a year, the Wall Street Journal puts on the "D: All Things Digital" conference. This conference, created and produced by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, invites the computer and electronics top players to participate in "informal" conversations about the impact of digital technology on our lives now and in the future. Last year's feature was a session with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher talking with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: VIDEO: D5: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates This year's speakers for D6 include Facebook’s Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Sony’s Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer, Time Warner’s President and CEO Jeff Bewkes, IAC’s Chairman and CEO Barry Diller and Amazon.com’s Chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos. There was also a joint appearance by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer. All the video can be found at: http://d6.allthingsd.com/ = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = Microsoft Windows 7 is currently scheduled to ship sometime in 2009. "D" saw the first Windows 7 demo: http://d6.allthingsd.com/20080528/windows-7-touch-demo/ = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = ...from: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/slow-fade-bill-and-steve-at-the-d-… May 28, 2008, 12:37 am Slow Dissolve: Bill [Gates] and Steve [Ballmer] at the D Conference By JOHN MARKOFF Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, is intent on performing what must be the world’s longest-running Cheshire Cat act. Mr. Gates — who is reducing his role at Microsoft on July 1 and will work only on specific projects but will remain as chairman — appeared with his longtime friend and business partner Steve Ballmer on the opening night of the Wall Street Journal’s “D: All Things Digital” conference in Carlsbad, Calif. During the 105-minute conversation, the two executives were most comfortable chatting about the past. They were cagey when it came to talking about the bid for Yahoo and what might happen next, and they were generally testy when they were challenged about whether Microsoft would continue to lag behind Apple in some areas. The hosts of the conference, Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, tried several times to draw the two men out on the company’s failed effort to acquire Yahoo, but neither man was willing to say much beyond his previous public statements. Mr. Ballmer did reiterate that he reserved the right to reopen Microsoft’s bid in the future, but he was unwilling to talk about the circumstances under which that might occur. Mr. Ballmer also repeated his recent statement that, having failed to see eye to eye on the price of the acquisition, the two companies are now talking about other unspecified partnerships. Mr. Ballmer and Mr. Gates were much more willing to reminisce about their days as college students at Harvard. Mr. Ballmer also described how Mr. Gates attempted to recruit him to Microsoft while his former classmate was attending Stanford Business School and living in a “fleabag” apartment in Palo Alto. Mr. Ballmer recalled that he had been reluctant, and that Mr. Gates had told him, “Too bad you don’t have a twin brother.” He said he called Mr. Gates back the next day and asked him if he would consider him for the job. The joint interview took a slightly odd turn when, halfway through, the Microsoft executives consented to give the audience of computer industry executives a “sneak peek” of the next version of Microsoft’s operating system, known as Windows 7. Although Windows 7 is not scheduled to ship until the end of 2009, Microsoft has been creating some consternation in the computer industry by talking about the new program as an opportunity to address some of the shortcomings of Windows Vista. On stage Tuesday evening, neither Mr. Gates nor Mr. Ballmer was willing to concede any major shortcomings in Vista. Mr. Ballmer said the company has shipped 150 million copies of the program, but he did acknowledge that Microsoft might have done some things differently “in hindsight.” He blamed compatibility issues that have led to criticism of the program on the company’s decision to focus on computer security problems. During the brief onstage demo of Windows 7, a Microsoft software designer made the puzzling choice to unveil a new “multitouch” feature by working with a paint program, evoking memories of the original Macintosh paint program in 1984. She then used the touch-sensitive technology with a photo collection and a mapping program, evoking comparisons to both the iPhone and Google Maps, which already have similar capabilities. (You can watch a video of the multitouch feature on the Microsoft Vista blog.) Another new feature appeared to be a circular pop-up menu that provided a “concierge” function. Fencing over the issue of whether Apple will get to market first with desktop multi-touch features, Mr. Ballmer implied that the two companies don’t compete directly. “We’ll sell 290 million PCs, and Apple will sell 10 million PCs,” he said. “They’re fantastically successful and so are we and our partners. But it’s a different job. Steve can flip his hand and sell a few models and I don’t take a thing away from him.” In response to a question from the audience, Mr. Ballmer insisted that Microsoft had not been damaged as a brand or in its strategy by its failure to acquire Yahoo. “The world recognizes even greater seriousness than when we started,” he said. “It’s certainly something we thought about before we put in the bid because there was no guarantee.” Mr. Gates was the less vocal of the the company’s two largest individual shareholders, but he did show animation at various points during the evening. Asked if he saw himself as a businessman, Mr. Gates responded, “Sure, sales minus costs equal profits. Is there more?” In response to a question asked by Tim O’Reilly, the computer book publisher and conference impresario, about whether Microsoft had a “big hairy audacious goal,” in the tradition of its original commitment to put a personal computer on every desk and in every home in America, Mr. Ballmer and Mr. Gates suggested that the company now had many big goals, but not a single overarching goal. The industry commentator and investor Esther Dyson suggested that the company did need a single goal, like transforming the nation’s health care system. Mr Ballmer responded that he wasn’t sure that tackling problems where software wasn’t fundamental to the solution was appropriate for Microsoft.

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FYI: MacBook helps save itself: "I know who that is — it’s Ian"
by billing 12 May '08

12 May '08

...from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/nyregion/10laptop.html?_r=1&ref=technolog… May 10, 2008 Stolen Laptop Helps Turn Tables on Suspects By LISA W. FODERARO WHITE PLAINS — The thieves were voracious, filching flat-screen televisions and computer games, purloining iPods and DVDs, even making off with a box of liquor and a set of car rims in a burglary two weeks ago at an apartment three young people shared here. Luckily, they also took two laptop computers. One of the laptops was a Macintosh belonging to Kait Duplaga, who works at the Apple store in the Westchester mall and thus knows how to use all its bells and whistles. While the police were coming up dry, Ms. Duplaga exploited the latest software applications installed on her laptop to track down the culprits and even get their photographs. On Wednesday, the police arrested Edmon Shahikian, 23, of Katonah, and Ian Frias, 20, who lives in the Bronx. Virtually all of the property stolen from the apartment was recovered at the two men’s homes. They face charges of burglary and possession of stolen property; Mr. Shahikian was released on $3,500 bail, while Mr. Frias was at the Westchester County Jail, held in $7,500 bail. “It doesn’t get much better than their bringing us a picture of the guy actually using the stolen property,” Daniel Jackson, the deputy commissioner of public safety in White Plains, said in a telephone interview on Friday. “It certainly made our job easier. The fact that they knew who these guys were certainly added solvability.” The high-tech solving of the White Plains burglary, which was reported Friday in The Journal News, is one of several recent cases in which the police and crime victims have turned the keyboards on their adversaries, so to speak, taking advantage of computer software and other high-tech tools. In March in Modesto, Calif., for example, the police recovered a stolen computer containing vital personal information, including Social Security numbers, belonging to the public school system’s 3,500 employees. Detectives used tracking software on the computer to apprehend a suspect, who had a long criminal record. The police said he had stolen the computer from a data processing firm, perhaps with the intention of committing identity theft. Here in White Plains, a break in the case came on Tuesday when a friend of Ms. Duplaga’s sent her a congratulatory text message on the return of her stolen computer. “She said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ and her friend said, ‘Well, you popped up as being online,’ ” Mr. Jackson said. He said that Ms. Duplaga immediately signed on to another Macintosh computer and, using a feature called “Back to My Mac,” was able to gain access to her missing laptop remotely. She could see that that the person who had her computer was shopping for beds, Mr. Jackson said. Then it occurred to her that she could activate a camera on her laptop and watch the thief live. At first, the photo application revealed only a smoky room and an empty chair, Mr. Jackson said, but then a man sat down. Ms. Duplaga, again using remote technology, typed in the command to snap a photo. “When you take a picture with that computer, it shows a countdown, and when it does, this guy figures out what’s going on,” Mr. Jackson said. “It all clicks for him, and he puts his hand up to cover the lens, but it was too late. She had already taken the picture.” Had the suspect been a complete stranger, the photographic evidence would have been a “great lead,” but not the decisive clue, Mr. Jackson said. He said that when Ms. Duplaga described the tattooed subject of the picture to one of her roommates, the roommate replied: “Oh, I know exactly who that is — it’s Ian,” referring to Mr. Frias. Mr. Frias and Mr. Shahikian, it turns out, had been among the guests at a party at the apartment weeks before, and were friends of friends of the victims, as Mr. Jackson put it. Ms. Duplaga was able to retrieve a photograph of Mr. Shahikian from the laptop as well, but Mr. Jackson was not aware of the circumstances. Mr. Jackson said that Mr. Frias and Mr. Shahikian were arrested last year on a felony marijuana possession charge, but are not career criminals. The disposition of their cases was not known. Mr. Jackson said that Ms. Duplaga did not wish to be interviewed. On Friday, no one answered the door at the beige colonial-style house on Ridgeview Avenue where she rents an apartment diagonally opposite a church. The neighborhood is on the edge of the city’s downtown; in recent years, many of the prewar homes have been renovated. An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the case or on the phenomenon of tracking criminals through computer software. “Back to My Mac” is part of an online service that costs $99 per year and allows users to gain access to their personal computer from any connected Macintosh computer with the operating system Leopard. The software that Ms. Duplaga used to take a picture of the thief, called PhotoBooth, is standard on all newer Apple laptop models, perhaps an unintended new frontier in crime-fighting. “It’s certainly a great use of what was probably meant as a business product,” Mr. Jackson said. “But if she had taken the picture and didn’t know who he was, we wouldn’t be in the same place as far as the investigation goes.”

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INTEREST: Spam Moves to Cellphones and Gets More Invasive
by billing 12 May '08

12 May '08

...from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/technology/10spam.html?th&emc=th Spam Moves to Cellphones and Gets More Invasive Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times By LAURA M. HOLSON Published: May 10, 2008 If you thought spam on your computer was a bother, brace yourself: spammers want to find you on your cellphone. Cellphones have become consumers’ most personal technological devices. Some industry executives, along with consumer groups and security experts, are concerned that unwanted text messages on phones will be an even greater headache than unwanted computer messages. Cellphone spam is particularly annoying to its recipients because it is more invasive — announcing itself with a beep — and can be costly. Taber Lightfoot, an assistant director for new media at the Yale School of Management, is among those who have paid for the privilege of receiving cellphone spam. “I was at work and I got so annoyed,” she said of the first burst of three messages she received. She got another burst two days later. “That is when I called Verizon and demanded they reimburse me $1.60 for eight text messages,” Ms. Lightfoot said. “It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was my money.” American consumers are expected to receive an estimated 1.5 billion unsolicited text messages in 2008, according to Ferris Research, based in San Francisco, which tracks mobile messaging trends. That is nearly double what they received in 2006. Of course that is a small percentage of the overall number of messages: an industry survey showed that consumers in the United States sent and received about 48 billion text messages in December alone. But for many people who are charged as much as 20 cents for an incoming message or are interrupted in the middle of dinner, even one is too many. “The reason this really burns people up is because they have to pay for messages they don’t want, and they shouldn’t have to,” said Chris Murray, senior counsel for Consumers Union, a nonprofit group. Now some consumers, like Ms. Lightfoot, are monitoring their cellphones more aggressively for unwanted messages and, in some cases, demanding refunds. Computer security companies have developed products to help fight mobile spam. And AT&T, Verizon and others are making it easier for customers to block unsolicited messages and keep spammers at bay. The fees that customers pay to receive messages are a source of profit for the phone companies. It is hard to estimate how much they make. Many consumers pay for a monthly plan that allows them to send and receive large numbers of messages. But for those without a plan, getting as few as 10 unsolicited text messages a month at 20 cents each would cost an extra $24 a year. Communications companies say they are not interested in spam as a profit center. They want to one day exploit the power of customized advertising on mobile phones, and tawdry spam pitches threaten to make their customers hostile toward all commercial messages. The companies are trying to head off the problem before consumers revolt. The carriers regularly adjust spam filters to block offending messages. At Sprint, more than 65 percent of all text messages sent over its network are identified and blocked as spam before they reach customers. The companies use legal weapons as well. Verizon said it had filed eight lawsuits against spammers since 2004. “Even if Verizon or AT&T are not the ones sending text messages to customers, there is the perception that the operator is to blame,” said Seamus McAteer, a senior analyst at M:Metrics, which tracks mobile phone advertising. “It is not in the companies’ best interest to have customers calling and complaining about their bills all the time.” Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T’s wireless unit, said wireless companies recently agreed to quickly share information about the sources of spam to fight it more effectively. Most phone spam is actually e-mail that comes through gateways linking the Internet and cellphone networks, industry executives said. Most wireless phones have a dedicated e-mail address. At AT&T, for example, it is a customer’s cellphone number followed by @text.att.net. Using computers, spammers create millions of possible number combinations, then send messages to those addresses. One day in March, Anthony Melone, Verizon Wireless’s chief technology officer, began getting complaints from customers in the Northeast and Midwest about a wave of unsolicited text messages that were flooding its network. Mr. Melone said Verizon technicians tracked down the source and found the messages were coming from someone using e-mail accounts at Microsoft’s Internet portal, msn.com. It took a day to quell the assault because the spammers kept changing their e-mail addresses and the Web sites they were promoting. By then, nearly five million messages had made it past the network’s anti-spam filters, resulting in grumbling and demands for refunds from customers like Ms. Lightfoot. “Even when you find them, spammers know how to keep it below the radar,” Mr. Melone said. Christopher Siracusa, a 24-year-old medical student in Brooklyn, said he gets about one or two spam messages a week, usually from pornographic sites with come-ons like, “Hey Sweetie, we talked last night.” As a result, he disregards any text message from a number not programmed into his cellphone. This, though, has caused miscommunication more than once with people he actually wanted to reach. Recently, he said, he got a text message from a female friend who wrote, “I have a new number, call me.” Mr. Siracusa did not, thinking the message was spam, and he later had to explain the problem to her. But inconvenience is not the only downside; there is also the threat of viruses as phones become more like personal computers. Some companies are already preparing for this. Last winter, Symantec, a maker of security software, introduced a product for smartphones that connect with the Internet to detect mobile threats, check for viruses and automatically delete spam or corral suspect texts in a folder. Khoi Nguyen, a product manager for mobile security at Symantec, said the company developed the software mainly for Asia and Europe, where creative spammers try to steal credit card information or banking data through phones. He said he expected to see the same trend here in the next 6 to 12 months. “There has been a transition from annoying spam to threatening spam,” he said. Michael Zaruba, an AT&T customer who works in Chicago as an editor and producer, recently received unsolicited texts from “Rose,” asking him to visit a Web site. He said he did not visit the site, but it made him question whether his 12-year-old brother, who just got a new cellphone, would. “Nowadays phones come equipped with access to the Internet,” Mr. Zaruba said. “It’s another way to mess with your computer. I can see people getting viruses on their phones.” All major communications companies give consumers the ability to thwart spam by changing the easily guessed e-mail addresses for their phones, or completely blocking messages coming from the Internet. They can do this by logging onto the company’s Web site and changing their preferences. “I did that six months ago and I have not received any spam,” Mr. Melone of Verizon said. “No one, not even me, wants their cellphone to ring at 2 in the morning.”

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INTEREST: Microhoo (Yasoft?) not to be
by billing 05 May '08

05 May '08

Just to bring you up to speed if you haven't already heard. Some months back, Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com) made an unsolicited bid to purchse Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com). At the time, Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer described the move this way, "“We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market.” “Our lives, our businesses, and even our society have been progressively transformed by the Web, and Yahoo! has played a pioneering role by building compelling, high-scale services and infrastructure,” said Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft. “The combination of these two great teams would enable us to jointly deliver a broad range of new experiences to our customers that neither of us would have achieved on our own.” “The combined assets and strong services focus of these two companies will enable us to achieve scale economics while reaching R&D critical mass to deliver innovation breakthroughs,” said Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms & Services Division of Microsoft. “The industry will be well served by having more than one strong player, offering more value and real choice to advertisers, publishers and consumers.” Indeed, the letter that was sent from the Microsoft Board of Directors to the Yahoo! Board of Directors includes, "In late 2006 and early 2007, we jointly explored a broad range of ways in which our two companies might work together. These discussions were based on a vision that the online businesses of Microsoft and Yahoo! should be aligned in some way to create a more effective competitor in the online marketplace. We discussed a number of alternatives ranging from commercial partnerships to a merger proposal, which you rejected. While a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! that we are proposing." After much to'ing-and-fro'ing by the two companies, Yahoo!'s April 7th response, however, was an unencouraging, "We consider your threat to commence an unsolicited offer and proxy contest to displace our independent board members to be counterproductive and inconsistent with your stated objective of a friendly transaction", in a reply to the Microsoft Board, while also saying Yahoo! is open to a deal but only at a higher price. Yahoo's letter also said Microsoft had not responded to requests for more information on antitrust issues since a deal would be subject to regulators: "To date, you have still not provided any of the requested information." (http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/07/Yahoo-again-rebuffs-Microsoft-in-… ) On Saturday (May 3, 200) Microsoft pulled the plug on the deal: ...from: http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/03/microsoft-pulls-bid-for-yahoo/ Microsoft pulls bid for Yahoo! Microhoo will never be by Ryan Block, posted May 3rd 2008 at 8:33PM Well, that's that! Microsoft has officially pulled its bid for Yahoo! -- inflated for good measure this weekend by another $5 billion -- after the company did "not move toward accepting [the] offer", asking again for even more, another $4 bil (totaling $9b more than the original offer). In a letter from [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer to [Yahoo! CEO Jerry] Yang, he states that Microsoft also won't be looking at its option for a hostile takeover, stating that Yahoo! likely "would take steps that would make [it] undesirable as an acquisition"; Ballmer then goes on to make a few backhanded criticisms of Yahoo's possible new partnerships with Google (which is no surprise). Good night, Microhoo, the monstrous, hamstrung, lumbering mega-merger that might have been. Update: Yahoo! makes its public response here. Yang sums it up: "With the distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies..." etc. Alright then.

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INTEREST: Warning on Storage of Health Records
by billing 18 Apr '08

18 Apr '08

...from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/business/17record.html?th&emc=th Warning on Storage of Health Records By STEVE LOHR Published: April 17, 2008 In an article in The New England Journal of Medicine, two leading researchers warn that the entry of big companies like Microsoft andGoogle into the field of personal health records could drastically alter the practice of clinical research and raise new challenges to the privacy of patient records. The authors, Dr. Kenneth D. Mandl and Dr. Isaac S. Kohane, are longtime proponents of the benefits of electronic patient records to improve care and help individuals make smarter health decisions. But their concern, stated in the article published Wednesday and in an interview, is that the medical profession and policy makers have not begun to grapple with the implications of companies like Microsoft and Google becoming the hosts for vast stores of patient information. The arrival of these new corporate entrants, the authors write, promises to bring “a seismic change” in the control and stewardship of patient information. Today, most patient records remain within the health system — in doctors’ offices,hospitals, clinics, health maintenance organizations and pharmacy networks. Federal regulations govern how personal information can be shared among health institutions and insurers, and the rules restrict how such information can be mined for medical research. One requirement is that researchers have no access to individual patients’ identities. Under the current system, individuals can request their own health records, but it is often a cumbersome process because information is scattered across several institutions. As part of a push toward greater individual control of health information, Microsoft and Google have recently begun offering Web- based personal health records. The journal article’s authors describe a new “personalized, health information economy” in which consumers tell physicians, hospitals and other providers what information to send into their personal records, stored by Microsoft or Google. It is the individual who decides with whom to share that information and under what terms. But Microsoft and Google, the authors note, are not bound by the privacy restrictions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or Hipaa, the main law that regulates personal data handling and patient privacy. Hipaa, enacted in 1996, did not anticipate Web-based health records systems like the ones Microsoft and Google now offer. The authors say that consumer control of personal data under the new, unregulated Web systems could open the door to all kinds of marketing and false advertising from parties eager for valuable patient information. Despite their warnings, Dr. Mandl and Dr. Kohane are enthusiastic about the potential benefits of Web-based personal health records, including a patient population of better-informed, more personally responsible health consumers. “In very short order, a few large companies could hold larger patient databases than any clinical research center anywhere,” Dr. Mandl said in an interview. But the authors see a need for safeguards, suggesting a mixture of federal regulation — perhaps extending Hipaa to online patient record hosts — contract relationships, certification standards and consumer education programs. “I’m a great believer in patient autonomy in general, but there is going to have to be some measure of limited paternalism,” Dr. Kohane said in an interview. Peter Neupert, the vice president in charge of Microsoft’s health group, said that he admired the authors and that they raised some important issues. But he resisted the suggestion of extending Hipaa to newcomers like Microsoft and Google. “Philosophically and politically, I am skeptical of the concept of paternalism,” Mr. Neupert said in an e-mail response to the article, which he was sent, and to the authors’ comments. “It never turns out to be ‘limited.’ ” Designing a health records system that clearly informs consumers and requires their consent for data use is the better approach, Mr. Neupert said. “We have to earn the consumer’s trust for our brand,” he said. “So I can imagine a scenario where we have a third party verify that our system works the way we assert it does,” much as an auditor reviews a company’s financial reporting. Dr. Mandl and Dr. Kohane are physicians and researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston, the primary pediatric teaching hospital of the Harvard Medical School.

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INTEREST: Net Neutrality
by billing 18 Apr '08

18 Apr '08

What is it? - long answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jHOn0EW8U - short answer: In a "neutral" Internet the infrastructure owners do not differentiate one packet of information from another either by content, source, or destination. Neither is there a restriction on the type of device that can be connected to the Internet. Without this neutrality, infrastructure owners can give higher priority to certain packets and charge differential fees for each packet depending upon the contents, source, or destination of that packet. Differential fees could also be applied to the type of computer you connect in a non- neutral Internet. A "non-neutral" infrastructure is what is now found in the cell phone networks. The more you pay the more you are entitled to talk on them. There are also additional fees for the type of information and how much of it you send on the cell network: voice, SMS messaging, data, etc are all charged differently. There are also different fees for day and night cell service. A "neutral" infrastructure is your traditional telephone service. You pay one monthly fee (the same fee, pretty much, as everyone else) and you can talk 24x7 without it costing you more. In addition, you can connect your computer (over the older modems) and transfer data over that phone line and that also costs nothing more for the use of the telephone line. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bell Canada seeking to create "non-neutral" Internet structure in Canada: ...from: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/story/4161642p-4748665c.html Bell seeking to curb heavy bandwidth use By: Sarah Schmidt OTTAWA -- Bell Canada says it is downgrading the Internet services of bandwidth hogs in the public interest, and is asking the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to toss out a landmark complaint by competitors alleging the telecom giant is regulating the web in its own interests. [...] The practice, known as "traffic shaping" or "traffic throttling," is part of a new billing system by telecom giants based on usage instead of connection speed. In addition to penalizing heavy bandwidth users with hefty charges and slower service at peak times, Bell is lifting a cap on over-usage charges for all its Internet customers. Last month, Bell informed smaller Internet service providers that it was bringing traffic-shaping to the network space it sells to them, effectively downgrading the services these smaller companies are able to provide to their customers. The association, which represents over 50 smaller companies, replied with a complaint to the CRTC, saying Bell's use of "deep packet inspection" technology to "choke" the traffic of its customers is illegal and tantamount to anti-competitive behaviour. Technology expert Jesse Hirsch says Bell's argument before the CRTC is bewildering -- and bad news for consumers. He says Bell is acknowledging it failed to anticipate the growth of the Internet, and is now penalizing innovative users who are turning to the web to swap TV shows and movies. [...] In its brief to the CRTC, Bell says the "balance of convenience" supports its new traffic shaping. - - - - - - - - - - - - ...from: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/16/EDM11064UL.DTL Public must fight to maintain net neutrality Lawrence Lessig - Stanford University, Ben Scott www.freepress.net Thursday, April 17, 2008 The Internet is an engine of economic growth and innovation because of a simple principle: net neutrality, which assures innovators that their next great idea will be available to consumers, regardless of what the network owners think about it. No previous mass media technology has been so remarkably open. Traditional media - newspapers, radio, TV - have gatekeepers standing between consumers and producers, with the power to control content. The Internet eliminates the gatekeeper. Now, however, the Internet's unprecedented openness is in jeopardy. Comcast, AT&T and Verizon have been lobbying to kill net neutrality. They say they won't build an information superhighway if they can't build it as a closed system. No other industrialized country has made that devil's bargain, and neither should we. Without net neutrality, online innovation is vulnerable to the whims of cable and phone companies, which control 99 percent of the household market for high- speed Internet access. And Silicon Valley venture capitalists are unlikely to bet the farm on a whim. Network owners say the threat of abuse is hypothetical. But actions speak louder than words. Last fall, Comcast was caught secretly blocking popular technologies that can bring HDTV to your laptop - used by everyone from the Hollywood studios to NASA. It was no coincidence: Comcast is targeting a growing competitor to its cable TV service. In response, the media reform group Free Press and a coalition of public interest organizations and legal scholars filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission calling for urgent action. This is a bellwether case - a signal of whether we're headed toward an open or a closed Internet. After the FCC started an investigation, Comcast admitted to blocking, but thumbed its noses at the government and the public - going so far as to hire seat-fillers at an FCC hearing at Harvard University to stifle the debate. Public, government and media scrutiny ultimately forced Comcast to stop blocking one of the file-sharing companies. But we can't expect everyone to negotiate a side deal for permission to innovate. This limits the online marketplace to ideas and commerce that don't pose a threat to network owners - a chilling prospect. This type of behavior shows why we can't trust the future of the Internet to these companies. Just two years ago, telecom executives went before Congress vowing never to interfere with the open Internet. Their broken promises are exactly why we need net neutrality laws back on the books. Fortunately, members of Congress from both parties have introduced legislation that would do precisely that. But net neutrality is just the first step. If this nation is to return to the economic growth of the 1990s, it takes a renewed commitment to Internet deployment and technology. The past eight years have seen America fall behind other industrial nations - a deficit that we will pay for in jobs, wealth and social opportunity. Better policies in other countries have created a competitive high- speed broadband market. But these policies require political leadership - and public pressure to ensure that politicians aren't distracted by the telecom industry's cash and clout. Today, the FCC is holding a hearing at Stanford University - the birthplace of our Internet economy - to give the public a chance to weigh in on this debate. It's not often that federal regulators leave the Beltway to ask people what they think. It's time to stand up and make your voice heard. The threat posed by would-be gatekeepers is real and getting worse. The success of future innovation depends on an open Internet for everyone. Lawrence Lessig is a law professor at Stanford University and founder of the Center for Internet and Society. Ben Scott is policy director of Free Press, the national, nonpartisan media reform organization ( www.freepress.net ). The FCC hearing will be held at Stanford University's Dinkelspiel Auditorium today from noon to 7 p.m.

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FYI: Safe financial sites in Canada? Don't bank on it.
by billing 15 Apr '08

15 Apr '08

...from: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/story/4157473p-4745347c.html Safe financial sites? Don't bank on it Study finds banks misleading customers Guarantees giving users a false sense of security By: Sarah Schmidt Updated: April 10 at 02:00 AM CDT OTTAWA -- Canadian banks mislead their customers about the safety of online banking in their marketing materials and give users a false sense of security with a refund guarantee if hackers raid their accounts, a leading software-security expert concludes in a new study. Paul Van Oorschot, Canada Research Chair in Network and Software Security at Carleton University, and PhD student Mohammad Mannan, a specialist in Internet security, tested the standard banking claim of a "100 per cent online security guarantee" against the fine print that makes it conditional on fulfilling complicated security requirements. The researchers opened up bank accounts at Canada's five major banks and one online bank, and surveyed 123 technically advanced users, mainly computer-science students, professors and security researchers. Most in the survey are more security-aware than average customers, and still failed to satisfy common security requirements. Expecting average people to meet them is "extremely naive," they write. "We conclude that most average users are ineligible for the 100 per cent reimbursement guarantee banks assert, and doing online banking with 'confidence' and 'peace of mind' is no more than a marketing slogan which misleads users." They found that despite strong recommendations about password uniqueness, most banks allow weak passwords, such as "123456" and "111111." In one case, RBC listed "iwthyh," an acronym for the Beatles' song I want to hold your hand, as an example of a "rock-solid" password, even though it doesn't meet RBC's password length requirement of eight characters. The researchers also found weaknesses in banks' Secure Sockets Layer, a protocol for transmitting private documents known as SSL certificates. Software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's knowledge, known as malware, can easily access all user information, including on SSL-protected sites, the study says. The researchers also point out that malware can replace a bookmarked login URL with a phishing site URL that masquerades as the bank. And increasingly, phishing sites include SSL certificates to gain the confidenc of users. Meanwhile, most banks' customer agreements require users to install and maintain up-to-date copies of anti-virus, firewall and anti- spyware programs. The survey of 123 tech-savvy users found fewer than half reported using anti-spyware on computers used for banking, and more than a quarter do not use anti-virus software. Ten per cent do not use any firewall. Further, 65 per cent of users didn't read the banking agreements when they signed on to online banking and 85 per cent couldn't name any conditions for being eligible for the 100 per cent reimbursement in the case of hacking. "Banks advertise that users can start online banking 'in minutes.' However, to comply with the security requirements and recommendations, we expect most users would be delayed hours or days, if indeed technically capable of doing so at all." Maura Drew-Lytle, spokeswoman for Canadian Bankers Association, says the expectations of banks are fair and are no more stringent than what people should have on their home computers to do simple things like sending e-mails. It's also fair to expect customers to read agreements before they agree to the terms, she added. The study points out agreements can be changed at any times, and customers will be notified by notice on the bank's website. -- Canwest News Service

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INTEREST: use GarageBand to remix RadioHead song - a novel approach
by billing 02 Apr '08

02 Apr '08

It seemed like such a novel approach to handling and distributing media (music in this case) that I thought it might be of interest to some of you on this list. Wayne ...from: - MacWorld magazine - http://www.radioheadremix.com/information/ Remixing Radiohead By Christopher Breen mailto:cbreen@macworld.com Radiohead, in league with the iTunes Store, yesterday began offering fans the opportunity to remix the band's single, "Nude" (nudeness not required) and upload the results to the band's Web site, where the public will vote on its favorite remixes. The remix information site goes on to say that the band will listen to the best remixes. The Terms page provides further niggling details, the gist of which is that you're doing this for the fun of it and nothing more. It works this way: You purchase up to five "stems" -- the bass, drum, guitar, string fx, and voice parts of the single -- for $0.99 cents each. These parts are in iTunes Plus format (unprotected AAC) so you can import them directly into Apple's GarageBand or Logic as well as a variety of other music editing applications. (Or you can convert them to AIFF, WAV, or MP3 for editing in applications that don't support AAC.) If you purchase all five stems you'll receive a link to a GarageBand project file of the tune. The track is in 6/8 meter rather than 4/4, and no tempo or key information is offered (if you count it in 6 rather than 2 it runs at around 64 bpm). Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor did something like this three years ago when releasing a version of the song "The Hand That Feeds" in GarageBand format. (No longer available.) It's now Radiohead's turn. It's an interesting idea -- a nice way for bands to bring in some extra cash and promote their work while providing fans the opportunity to be part of the creative process. Given that GarageBand includes very few 6/8 loops, I'm not sure that it's the best editing environment for your remix unless you're willing to create your own parts (a couple of remixes I've heard cheat this by doubling up 3/4 loops), but kudos to the band and Apple for providing parts -- OK, stems -- that can be used in other editing applications. Whether you're an old hand or just someone who would like to try his or her hand at remixing, $4.95 is a small enough investment in something that should be, at the very least, a fun way to spend a couple of hours. Get all the latest iTunes and iPod news at http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/ipodblog.html?lsrc=mwipod.

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FYI: Two possible Microsoft Word 2008 issues
by billing 01 Apr '08

01 Apr '08

...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/132716/2008/03/0328bugsnfixes.html?lsrc=mww… Bugs & Fixes: Two Word 2008 issues by Ted LandauMar 28, 2008 6:51 am If Word 2008 is bugging you with slow launch times or frequent crashes, here are two fixes that can help. Slow launch times for Word Does Word 2008 take unusually long to launch? If so, here’s a fix that reportedly speeds things up. Select Word -> Preferences and click on the General pane. From here, deselect WYSIWYG Font And Style Menus and Show Project Gallery At Startup. Quit the program. Next time, it should launch faster. Apparently a font preview problem is to blame and Microsoft is expected to fix it in an upcoming Office update. Word crashes How about crashes—experiencing those in Word 2008? Tidbits reports that you may still be able to use an old fix to solve this problem. If a corrupt “Word Settings (10)” file, located in your user folder/ Library/Preferences folder is the culprit, the solution is to trash the file. Word will create a new clean copy the next time you launch the program. This is a well-documented fix dating back at least as far as Word v. X running under Mac OS X 10.2 (see this Microsoft support file for details).

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