Claria Settles The Wrong Lawsuit
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Contributed by Mike
on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 @ 06:40PM
from the bad-idea dept.
I am obviously no fan of Claria. However, the law is completely on their side when it comes to popping up advertisements on certain sites. The problem with Claria (and, specifically, their Gator adware product) isn't that it pops up competitors ads, but that many users have no idea they installed it. The installation process for Gator is incredibly sneaky, leading many people to not even realize they have it on their machine. For those who do realize they have it on their machine, Claria is not particularly upfront about what they're doing (watching where you surf and popping up ads) or how to get rid of it. I'll admit that I don't know why people would want to have that app on their desktop, but the problem isn't the app itself, but how its installed and what they tell people the app is doing. So, when some websites complained that Claria was popping up competitive ads when surfers visited their sites, Claria was in the right. If the user wanted to have those ads shown, they should be allowed to. There was no trademark infringement - because no one is trying to confuse people into thinking that they were on a different site. They were just showing alternatives. So, it's a bit upsetting to find out that Claria has settled the lawsuits rather than see them go to court (where it's likely they would win -- but you never know for sure). While many people (including myself) dislike Claria's business practices, that's no reason to celebrate this settlement -- as it only means we'll be seeing plenty more of these lawsuits, sometimes directed against more upstanding companies. An end user should have the right to do whatever they want to their surfing experience -- even if it means popping up ads of competitors on sites they visit. This settlement is a setback for people being able to do what they want on their own computers.
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Spammers Using Authentication Faster Than Legit Emailers
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Contributed by Mike
on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 @ 03:19PM
from the doesn't-necessarily-bode-well... dept.
It's still quite early in the effort to get email servers to use some form of authentication. While the focus lately has been about all the various standards, and which one is going to get adopted, many still question whether or not sender authentication actually does anything to stop spam. A recent study certainly suggests that spammers don't think so. It notes that more spam than legitimate email is currently using sender authentication. That's right. While most companies are still figuring out exactly what's going on, spammers are pushing ahead and publishing their own authentication records -- and then spamming away. It doesn't build much confidence.
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2 comments |
What Are Kids Using Wireless PDAs For?
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Contributed by Mike
on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 @ 01:37PM
from the whooops dept.
Ok, there really wasn't all that much to comment on concerning yet another article about kids in schools being given handheld computers and set up on a wireless network. Obviously, it's nice to hear that the program is going well, and that many of the teachers and students find the benefits to be even more than they expected. My point in posting this is just to note that for all the wonderful educational benefits of the system touted in the article, the photo they include pretty clearly shows someone playing solitaire on the device.
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3 comments |
Do People Want A Mobile Phone Directory?
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Contributed by Mike
on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 @ 12:03PM
from the questions,-questions dept.
There's been a lot of talk over the last few months about the potential for a mobile phone directory. Many in the industry have been pushing for it, though, consumers fear for their privacy. Already sick of telemarketers on their landlines, they don't want to start receiving such calls on their mobile phones as well. Those supporting the directory want to set it up so that you can only request the number based on a name, rather than get your hands on the entire directory -- which, in theory, should eliminate the type of phonebook dialing that many telemarketers engage in. Of course, it just takes one screwup allowing the directory to get out there, and it won't matter any more. The other part of the debate has been over whether such a directory should be opt-in or opt-out. The folks behind it have done a very odd sort of agreement on this, suggesting they could make it "opt-in," but that you will have to pay if you don't want to be included. In other words, a new fee could simply start showing up on your bill, and the way to get rid of it, would be to give out your mobile phone number. The latest in this ongoing debate is a new study suggesting that 52% of users would opt-in to such a directory if it had some privacy protection (just what kind of protection is not described and could make a huge difference). 11% would opt-in even without privacy protection. Of course, the study was done by a company who provides consulting services for the directory assistance industry -- so you have to imagine they have some bias. A big new directory makes it more likely someone will hire them.
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6 comments |
Contributed by Mike
on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 @ 10:37AM
from the that'll-teach-you dept.
If you thought New York City's ban on using a mobile phone at any kind of performance (with its $50 fine) was a bit much, you might want to avoid the libraries in Huntington Beach, California. You can now get fined up to $1,000 for using your phone in the library. Admittedly, that's only for your third strike. The first offense is $250, the second $500. They had considered a 6 month jail term but decided, all in all, that might be a bit much.
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1 comments |
Revealing The Chinese Great Firewall Filter
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Contributed by Mike
on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 @ 09:51AM
from the spam-good,-sex-bad dept.
There have been plenty of stories about the somewhat arbitrary nature of the nationwide internet firewall/filter used in China to block out any websites or conversations that they believe are somehow harmful. We've already mentioned that the country has backed down from the most restrictive filter they had, after businesses were complaining that it was impossible to get anything done online. However, Dan Gillmor points out that some Chinese hackers have found the forbidden words list that was included in a popular instant messaging program, noting that it appears to be the same list used on a national scale. Still, my initial response is the same as the first comment on Gillmor's site. They spend all this effort blocking out terms related to sex and political dissent, and they couldn't be bothered to block out spam?
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Defense Department, US Senate Computers Zombiefied
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Contributed by Mike
on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 @ 01:49AM
from the talk-about-political-spam dept.
We all know that there's an exemption in CAN SPAM for political spam, but I don't think they meant it was okay for Department of Defense and Senate computers to be hijacked as spam-sending zombie machines. However, apparently, that's part of what the Department of Justice found out when they went on their spam crackdown binge. No real details are given in the article, unfortunately. They just mention that those two organizations both had zombified machines.
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2 comments |
Contributed by Mike
on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 @ 01:43AM
from the here-they-come... dept.
A startup, Atzio, is now claiming that they have the first peer-to-peer internet platform for television, apparently ignoring something like BitTorrent. Of course, the technology can basically be described as... BitTorrent with copy protection (how innovative). Plus, they only allow a select group of clients to seed material on the network, making it less likely that people will bother to download the software to make it possible for all this P2P television distribution. The company's own website, amusingly, claims it's having trouble handling all the traffic from the news of their launch -- which might raise some concerns from a company telling the entertainment industry they can handle the distribution of large files in great demand. Still, you have to wonder how effective this sort of solution is. The whole point of their system is you want more people getting and redistributing the content, but then they throw in this copy protection, which is almost laughable considering the system doesn't work if people aren't copying from you while you're copying from others. Besides, if you're a content producer, why bother paying this startup (and I assume they want money) to put your content on their network, when it's easier to just create a torrent, and get it out there -- where a lot more people already have BitTorrent clients.
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Where Did All The People Go?
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Contributed by Mike
on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 @ 01:29AM
from the thanks-for-pawning-off-the-work-to-me dept.
There's nothing wrong with automation. It often does help improve tedious tasks while opening up new more interesting jobs. However, what keeps getting passed off as automation, isn't automation at all, but shifting labor to customers. You'll notice the people have been disappearing. It's happening at grocery store checkout counters, movie theater ticket purchases and airline check-ins. Now, you can add hotel check-ins to the list. The hotels implementing this say it's to give guests better service -- but I'm not sure that's true. Maybe I've just been lucky (or I have the good fortune to always arrive at odd hours), but I've never had much of a problem checking in to hotels. I honestly can't remember ever having to wait in line at a hotel to check in, but to read this article, you'd think it was a big problem -- that's now solved by the fact that you can "check in" via the web, up to a week before. You get a page to print out and when you get to the hotel you hand over the paper, and they hand you an envelope. It seems like this must save all of about a minute. It must be all those impatient broadband users (note how the check in occurs over the web?). Honestly, I wouldn't have any problem with this, if they simply said outright that this is a way that they can save some money or get rid of tedious/repetitive jobs by making the customer do the work instead. Hell, if we got a discount for doing some work the hotel staff used to have to do themselves, even better. However, this isn't automation, and it's really not designed to make the customer experience better. It's just shifting the labor to the customer.
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11 comments |
IPO Loses Its Luster For Some These Days
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Contributed by grier
on Monday, August 30th, 2004 @ 02:36PM
from the high-class-problem-to-have dept.
Are IPOs becoming less attractive? In the post-bubble economy with higher costs, more government scrutiny and all the work that goes into an IPO, some are questioning if the IPO still should be the liquidity event of choice for entrepreneurs. The story uses the example of one dot com CEO realizing the process was too stressful and distracting from the work at hand, and decided to sell out instead. The story contains a litany of experts who attest to the fact that it is growing more expensive and more challenging to run a public company, but struggles to find more solid examples of companies that could have done an IPO but opted for a sale instead. The perception is still that the IPO is the way to go. In part, this is because VCs, the press, and plenty of others still seem to promote the IPO as the only viable "exit strategy" (not necessarily ever asking why an "exit strategy" is needed), and partly because, indeed, you are much more likely to make gobs and gobs of money that way. So, it's going to have to get a lot more expensive and troublesome to become and run a public company for them to sell out when they can IPO instead.
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5 comments |
No Patience For Patience? Blame Broadband!
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Contributed by Mike
on Monday, August 30th, 2004 @ 12:44PM
from the say-what? dept.
Apparently, the world has less patience these days, and it's all broadband's fault. Yes, that's right. This always on, give me answers now, now, now, fast, fast, fast world has meant that we no longer enjoy being put on hold by the support staff to find out why our (oops) broadband connection is down or waiting in line. Just yesterday, at the supermarket, the guy in front of me, who just wanted to buy a bag of apples got fed up when the woman at the front of the line seemed to be having trouble coming up with enough money. He stormed off in a huff, tossing the bag of apples on an adjacent counter. Obviously, he must have been one of these crazy, impatient broadband customers. Somehow, I doubt our growing impatience has anything to do with the speed of our internet connection, but the growing element of our life that seems to involve being on hold or in line just to get the bad service we don't deserve.
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3 comments |
Jack Valenti... Misunderstanding The Digital World Right Up Until The End
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Contributed by Mike
on Monday, August 30th, 2004 @ 12:36PM
from the buy-him-a-clue... dept.
Jack Valenti is getting ready to retire, but that hasn't stopped him from continuing to give interviews where he says stuff that are clearly false or purposely misleading. My biggest complaint with the interview isn't with Valenti, actually. It's that the interviewer, JD Lasica, who definitely knows better, didn't challenge Valenti on any of his ridiculous answers. Not once does he say anything. Even when Valenti trots out his ridiculous excuses for why you should never be able to back up a DVD, where, in a single answer Valenti confuses the different between digital and tangible items and then insists that there should be no reason to back up digital items because they last forever. Of course, they only last forever... um... if you can back them up. So, there's a bit of a disconnect there, and it should have been hammered home. Also, Valenti continues to insist that there's no such thing as fair use. Or rather, he makes a series of contradictory statements about fair use, none of which fully make sense. He first seems to say that you can only use fair use on content that belongs to you, in which case you wouldn't need fair use (it already belongs to you!). Next, he claims that if someone fast forwards through something in classroom, that is fair use, but follows it up by saying the law doesn't recognize fair use (which is simply false). These are all things he's said before, so there's nothing that new in the interview, but how could the interviewer, especially someone who has written a new book about these things, let Valenti get away with them? That's why he continues to think he's right -- because no one tells him to his face that he's wrong when he spouts this stuff.
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12 comments |
What If The Phone Company Called Your Friends To Collect Your Bill?
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Contributed by Mike
on Monday, August 30th, 2004 @ 12:02PM
from the ah,-so-much-data dept.
Let's say you're a phone company, and someone has been a bit late in paying their bills. You have all their phone records, and you know who they call. Would it make sense to call some of their frequently called numbers and have these friends, family or colleagues put the pressure on the delinquent subscriber? According to a post at Dave Farber's Interesting People list, that's exactly what one mobile phone company in India just did. As the full story notes, the person that Hutch called up happened to be a potential client -- and that can't look good. While someone in the comments notes another local phone company did the same, you have to wonder if this is common practice, or one collections agent simply going to far. Either way, you have to wonder why a collections agent should have access to the phone numbers you call.
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1 comments |
Is XM Bending Over Backwards To Make Satellite Radio Less Useful?
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Contributed by Mike
on Monday, August 30th, 2004 @ 11:18AM
from the bad-policies dept.
Last week, we wrote about how XM Radio and the RIAA were getting increasingly concerned about someone who dared to make some software that would record XM radio feeds. According to people at Broadband Reports, XM has become so upset about this that they have pulled their PC receiver from the market while they look for a solution to this "problem." It's quite a world when it's considered a problem that someone has made your service more useful. The note at Broadband Reports also claims that XM is considering removing USB ports from future equipment for the same reason. Both of these seem unconfirmed at the moment, so it would be nice if there were some real confirmation on either rumor. However, the satellite radio business is in a tough position. For all the success they've been claiming in signing up customers, they're nowhere near profitability. Their capital costs are incredibly high, and the thing they need, more than anything else, is more subscribers. Shutting down tools that make their offering more compelling just means they're making their job that much more difficult. Hopefully, it's not true, and this is just a baseless rumor, perhaps caused by the product being out of stock. Update: News.com has put up an article on the subject. While XM refuses to comment, others "close to the company" confirm the story. Hopefully, XM will realize what a bad idea this is.
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1 comments |
Does Anyone Need VoWiFi-Cellular Combos?
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Contributed by Mike
on Monday, August 30th, 2004 @ 10:37AM
from the how-big-is-that-market? dept.
In the last few months, there's been a lot of talk about combined VoWiFi/cellular phones with the idea that you could use voice over a WiFi network, where available, and cellular connections where WiFi is missing. Even ignoring the point that most of the devices that have been announced combining a cellular phone with VoWiFi have been hideously crippled by their manufacturers to barely work at all the way you would expect (and the way they might be useful), some are now pointing out that maybe the market really isn't so big, something we've suggested before. There are potential innovative uses combining VoIP and WiFi, but this insistence on "cheaper" calls doesn't make much sense in a world where most people have a zillion minutes and no long distance fees. Also, the eWeek article oddly spends way too much time focusing on how VoWiFi could be useful in hospitals, without ever bothering to note that hospitals are now changing their policies and allowing mobile phones, now that they've shown the phones don't interfere with most medical equipment.
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1 comments |
Will The Air Force Buy Computers With Little Green Men On Them?
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Contributed by Mike
on Monday, August 30th, 2004 @ 09:53AM
from the why-not? dept.
Alienware has made quite a name for itself in the gaming world, making high end, stylish computers designed for (and built by) gamers. Now, however, they want to expand into other areas, including selling to government and military officials who need higher end hardware -- leading to amusing situations where Alienware's founder is showing off their "Area 51" computer, complete with the signature Alienware alien face with glowing eyes, to a group of Pentagon and Air Force officials. One other interesting point in the article is that Area 51 says they want to get customer service right -- and that means not doing it the way almost every other computer maker does. For example, if you speak to one customer service representative, you can always ask to speak to that same rep again, to avoid having to re-explain everything. Having recently needed to waste countless hours on the phone trying to explain some computer problems (and getting different, and often contradictory answers each time), this simple idea sounds quite intelligent (though, perhaps much more difficult to handle logistically as a company grows).
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3 comments |
Too Early To Regulate RFID
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Contributed by Mike
on Monday, August 30th, 2004 @ 09:16AM
from the give-'em-a-chance dept.
Every time we mention RFID technologies, someone from CASPIAN or a related group stops by and posts comments or sends us emails saying that we absolutely must stop RFIDs because of the potential for privacy violations. Declan McCullough is now suggesting that it's way too early to talk about banning RFIDs. The potential benefits for everyone are huge. The potential downsides look like they can be corrected via technology (and many are already working on solutions). However, insisting that we create laws banning or changing a technology before there's a clear problem sets a huge precedent problem, suggesting that any new technology needs legislative approval to get built. That's not a recipe for innovation at all. As McCullough points out, in 1974, Phil Donahue was absolutely convinced that the bar code was dangerous and needed to be banned. None of this means we should ignore the potential privacy problems -- but that we should explore technological solutions, rather than ineffective, and potentially damaging legal ones.
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Techies Still Cling To Current Jobs
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Contributed by Mike
on Monday, August 30th, 2004 @ 02:48AM
from the not-really-sure-about-this-economic-pickup... dept.
During the bubble years of the late 90s, it often seemed as though people looked down on you if you kept a job for more than a year. Everyone was job hopping, often moving up a level with each hop. However, following the bubble burst and the recession and all those layoffs, it appears techies are still very, very cautious about switching jobs. A new study shows that only 8.9% of tech workers willingly left their jobs last year, which the researcher says is the lowest number since he started the study in the 1980s. On the involuntary side, many should be happy to note that the number of people who left their job via layoffs also has dropped significantly as things seem to be stabilizing. Of course, you could question the study, as it only follows a group of "the world's best-known tech firms," which is likely to leave out many startups and other firms where job hopping is more popular.
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9 comments |
Text Spammer Gets Injunction, But Will It Help?
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Contributed by Mike
on Monday, August 30th, 2004 @ 12:33AM
from the didn't-show dept.
Lots of folks are picking up on the story that a man accused by Verizon Wireless of sending text message spam has received a permanent injunction against sending SMS text message spam to mobile phones. However, the more important part is whether or not it matters. The guy in question seems to have disappeared. It's barely mentioned in the article, but he didn't show up at the hearing at all, and the article suggests his last known address is not valid. Basically, it sounds like the guy skipped town, or at the very least, didn't care enough to show up for a case against him. It seems unlikely he's going to let a random judge tell him to stop sending SMS spam.
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Techs Get Unfair IPO Treatment From The Media
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Contributed by Mike
on Sunday, August 29th, 2004 @ 11:33PM
from the tech-is-sexy dept.
The biggest IPO this year, so far? It wasn't Google. Google didn't even make second place. Two other companies raised more money in their IPOs earlier this year, but didn't generate nearly the same interest -- and so some are wondering why tech companies seem to get a disproportionate amount of attention compared to non-tech company IPOs. The general conclusion "tech is sexy," may only explain half the story (though, it's clearly part of it). Another part of the attention given to tech companies, generally, is based on their potential for growth, whereas many non-tech companies that go public don't have the same meteoric growth potential (or corresponding risk).
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