Into Tech

While UK shoppers hop from foot to foot to stay warm in iPhone 3G queues waiting to get their mitts on a black iPhone, other users around the world will be getting their hands on the white version.

Not for me, I admit, especially not after I saw Chuck Norris in Good Guys Wear Black as a kid and it pretty much made everything black - from clothes to gadgets - really cool. There are many others though for whom white is the new black - something to go with their white iPod, iMac etc. etc. etc.

Down under, Duncan Riley has posted this unboxing video of the white iPhone 3G - the one that UK shoppers will not be getting - at least not yet.

When we first started Techdirt, one of the things I said clearly on the site was not to send us press releases, as we had no interest in writing about them. Yet, so many PR people clearly chose not to read the site and they send them anyway. They don’t read the fact that we don’t want press releases — and in most cases they clearly don’t read the site because the press releases obviously are about stuff we never write about. And it just gets worse and worse. These days, my inbox is filled with more press releases than regular email — and I don’t post any of them. You would think that PR people would eventually recognize how inefficient it is to send these press releases — but since it’s so easy to just cc every email address in a press list, they never even think about it. This leads me to write posts trashing PR people. But, of course, that does no good, because (as already established) the PR people who send us press releases obviously don’t actually read the site.

While there are some PR people who understand this, and with whom I have a good relationship, the vast majority don’t seem to care at all. And, now, some seem to be going in the opposite direction. Romenesko points us to a marketing/PR guy who claims that bloggers with large audiences have a responsibility to just accept these press releases — even if they have no intention of writing about them:

In my view, a popular, well-read blog de facto takes on some of the public trust that the mainstream media have always assumed…. Why shouldn’t I send you a press release? If you’ve got 2,000 readers, you’re like a small newspaper. Newspapers don’t complain when we send them press releases. They may throw the release away, but they don’t write articles ridiculing the person who had the audacity to send it, as some bloggers do when they get an unwanted release.

Well, we’ve got a lot more than 2,000 readers, and if we have any sort of de facto “public trust” with our readers, it’s to write about what we think they’ll find interesting — and they’ve made it clear they don’t care about press release “fake news.” And if we ridicule PR people — it’s not simply for sending us a press release. It’s for clearly not reading the site where we ask them not to send us press releases and for not understanding what we want to write about.

We do want story ideas. We have always asked our readers for story ideas. But press releases aren’t story ideas. They’re attempts to spin a story in a positive manner with a bunch of unwanted and useless information that actually makes our job harder.

The fact is, in a very short time, you’ve become a key cog in our society’s communication machine. You’re part of something that’s destroying the old model; at the same time, you’re being given the opportunity to help create something worthwhile to take its place.

Yes, and part of that “something worthwhile” is getting rid of simply parroting spin from a company PR person. It’s about having a real conversation. Spamming people with press releases is part of that “old model” that isn’t working. Why do you think it’s okay that journalism is changing, but it’s just hunky dory that PR people do the same old thing?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that you have an obligation to actually write about what’s in press releases. The world will go on whether you tell your readers about XYZ Widgets or not. But understand that you have an audience and people are going to want your ear. Accept that as a compliment, and don’t be indignant when it happens.

No. You’ve got it wrong. We know that we have an audience and people are going to want our ear. And that’s why we make it clear how to get our ear. You’re the one choosing to ignore the very clear terms of engagement that we’ve laid out — and thus, you shouldn’t get upset when we point out that you weren’t paying attention. Since you seem to think our “ear” is so valuable, isn’t it up to you to at least understand how to get that ear to pay attention? If you want to be lazy and not understand, that’s not our fault.

Finally, the biggest problem with press releases is simple: they’re not actually about getting the ear of the blogger. They’re about using the blogger as a one-way path to that blogger’s audience. It’s missing the point of why many (though certainly not all) bloggers do what they do. They blog to be a part of the conversation — which is more than a one-way path. It’s a multi-directional conversation where everyone gets something out of it. If you stop looking at the blogger as a one-way road to an audience, and realize that the blogger, the readers and the company you represent should all be part of a larger conversation, you might realize just how ineffective press releases are for that purpose.

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We’ve discussed multiple times in the past about how economics Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz believes that patents hurt innovation. Michael Geist points us to Stiglitz’s latest speech, where he teamed up with John Sulston, a 2002 Nobel Laureate in Physiology/Medicine, to point out how the patent system is stifling innovation. It’s great to see Stiglitz continue to point out the problems caused by the patent system (and great to see other Nobel winners noticing as well). While Stiglitz has normally focused on pharmaceutical patents, in this speech he also touched on software patents. While Stiglitz hasn’t yet come around to believing that patents should be abandoned, he is quite convinced that they’re doing plenty of harm in many cases, often locking up innovation and costing society a lot more than they benefit it.

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Laws are like London buses, which come along in threes. I’ve therefore suffered a bit of teasing for only having two Laws of Computing. However, I am now thinking about a third law, which will roughly state that “the easier it is for you to access your data, the easier it is for someone else to access your data”. If you can come up with a snappy or even witty formulation, I’d be grateful. I’m obviously not Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler or Isaac Asimov, and I’m not proud.

My laws are nothing like real laws in the scientific sense. They are simply intended to help people think about the possible consequences of their actions. We all like computer geegaws, and can be sucked in by their shiny-shiny aspect. But as every teenager soon discovers, short-term attractions can have regrettable long-term effects.

And over the long term, data is the only thing that matters. In 50 years, you won’t care which computer hardware or software you used, and whether it had fashionably rounded corners. But you will care if you can’t read your old notes and diaries, play your favourite songs, or access old family photos. Data is forever.

With that in mind, Schofield’s First Law of Computing says: never put data into a program unless you can see exactly how to get it out.

This law was born in the early 1980s when I edited a monthly magazine called Practical Computing. We used a lot of incompatible machines with different storage formats including cassette tape, 5.25in and 8in floppies, 3in and 3.5in “stiffies” and Sinclair Microdrives. We used even more incompatible word processors and other software. All of this stuff was doomed, but what isn’t?

Schofield’s Second Law of Computing says that data doesn’t really exist unless you have at least two copies of it.

This one was born when we got hard drives that were so big that we didn’t back them up. When files were on floppies, you knew you needed a spare. When you could back up a 40MB or 80MB hard drive to a 700MB CD-Rom, backups were a doddle. If you had to back up an 80GB hard drive with a 700MB CD-Rom, it was easier not to bother.

But could you remember which files you had backed up, which you’d deleted to make space, and which had simply gone missing? Of course not. You only found out what you had when the hard drive failed, as all of them do, eventually.

When I figure it out, Schofield’s Third Law of Computing will reflect life in the 2000s. Over the past 50 years, you knew where your data was: it didn’t move around. Now you may have data on PC hard drives, laptops, mobile phones, MP3 players and online. This is good, from the point of view of my first two laws, but there’s a downside. While it has become much easier for us to access our data, it has also become much easier for other people to access it.

Any data that’s online is vulnerable either through mistakes, hacking, social engineering or other causes. Maybe you got the permissions wrong, maybe it was cross-site scripting, maybe it was that library or cybercafe you visited, or you used the same weak password everywhere. Any data on a mobile device is vulnerable to loss or theft, and that includes external hard drives and Flash memory cards.

Data loss has obviously become a major problem for UK government and major corporations. Protecting data could soon become your problem, too.

Moving music

We want to put our existing iPod libraries on to the new PC.
Jane McNicol

JS: Apple’s website provides instructions for moving your music library either via a CD or DVD or using an iPod (support.apple.com/kb/HT1329). However, this requires the use of iTunes 7 on both machines. One alternative is to use iGadget software ($15), which has replaced iPod Agent by the same developer, but there are many others. The main problem is transferring any protected files bought from the iTunes store. According to Apple, you must authorise the new PC by selecting Authorize Computer on the Store menu in iTunes. You can then attach the iPod, go to the File menu, and select Transfer Purchases from iPod (support.apple.com/kb/HT1727). Of course, you can always copy your files onto CD or other storage medium and add them to iTunes on the new PC. However, this will lose the metadata you had in the old library.

TinyURL revisited

What’s the best way to follow up your many TinyURL references?
Tom Garrud

My system - Firefox 3, Zone Alarm Security Suite, Windows XP - will not let me access any TinyURLs.
David Gompertz

JS: TinyURL references work as published if you type them directly into the address bar of your browser or, at worst, stick http:// on the front, eg http://tinyurl.com/owd8n etc. But it’s probably easier to follow the links from the Ask Jack blog, where I use the full address of each link instead of the TinyURL. Some websites and security programs may block TinyURL addresses as they can be used to take people to malware sites. The Zone Alarm Suite now does this via its Spy Site Blocking tab, but this is not part of the free firewall program.

Saving boot time

I can remember having to wait for radio valves to warm up. Why do I have to wait even longer after switching on my Windows XP PC?
Hugh Roberts

JS: When correctly set up by the manufacturer, Windows XP boots in about 30 seconds, resumes from Hibernate in 20 seconds, and resumes from Standby in five seconds. The boot time for a well-used PC is generally more like 60 to 90 seconds, depending on how many applications are being loaded in the background. These will usually include a firewall and antivirus software, but most other preloads are unnecessary. Search for [windows startup manager] and you will find lots of programs that allow you to control which things are loaded. I use AnVir Task Manager Free for this purpose, though Windows Vista has a utility built in. Otherwise, you can go to the Control Panel, click Power Options, and set your PC so that it will hibernate after a specified time. This uses very little power but it will start up quicker.

Data destruction

I’ve bought a replacement for my broken down PC, and would like to dispose of it, but it still has my data on the hard drive.
Barbara Evans

JS: Simply remove the hard drive before disposing of the base unit. If the drive is big enough to be worth the effort, you could mount it in an external drive case and use it as a USB drive with your new machine. If it’s a small drive and you don’t need to rescue any data, you can do enough physical damage to render it inoperable - eg, wrap it in a tea towel and whack it with a hammer. The tea towel is to stop bits flying around, but you should also wear appropriate protective equipment such as goggles.

What’s Kontiki?

I have installed the BBC iPlayer, but every time I activate it, a program called Kontiki pops up.
Denis

JS: When you download TV programmes using iPlayer - as distinct from watching streamed versions online - they are downloaded using Kontiki (kontiki.com). This is a peer-to-peer file sharing program, which is also used by similar services such as Sky by Broadband and Channel 4’s 4oD. Kontiki seems to load and use your bandwidth, even if you are not using iPlayer: use the Windows Task Manager to see if Kservice is running. The BBC has a page that explains how to stop it running on startup and when you are not using iPlayer (tinyurl.com/4h2t26). You can remove it altogether using the kclean.exe program from tinyurl.com/5msknq. However, if you do, any Kontiki-based programs such as iPlayer may not work.

Backchat

Vista user JH Prentice wanted a photo retouching program to replace Microsoft’s Picture It! I suggested the Picnik website and Paint.net. Two readers suggested Picasa (picasa.google.com), which is mainly a photo organiser, while Marcus Fallon proposed XnView (xnview.com), which is mainly a viewer. I’d go for XnView too, if its retouching facilities meet your needs. A great pro solution is Adobe’s Lightroom, if you have £200 to spare.

The standardized testing business is a big business — though many are extremely critical of it. However, given how many universities rely on standardized tests for admissions, it’s difficult to overstate how important some of these tests can be. And, because of that, there’s a huge ecosystem of test preparation built around all of these tests, trying to help applicants prepare for the exams. These usually involve practice exams, often with questions from older exams. However, what if you got questions that were appearing on current exams? Given how many people take these tests, would it really be that surprising that someone would tell others about some of the questions they received on the test? In the long run, it probably wouldn’t make a huge difference in testing results since it’s unlikely anyone would see all the questions they could get, let alone remember the correct answers (it would be easier to just study in general).

However, one website that did test preparation for the GMAT (needed for business school) not only was sued for copyright infringement because test takers passed on “live questions” to the site, but in winning the case, the creator of the GMAT, Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) got access to the all of the site’s computers, logs and records: meaning that it’s now threatening to go after those who used the site, potentially getting them kicked out of school or having their degrees revoked. It’s one thing to go after obvious “cheaters” but this is very much a gray area. These students were simply doing test prep, trying to practice with various questions. It’s not as if they had the actual test itself beforehand. Would they similarly go after a friend who had taken the test who then mentions a couple questions he remembers to someone else? Furthermore, it seems really questionable to use copyright for this purpose. The test prep site wasn’t “competing” with GMAC. If anything, it was driving more business to GMAC by helping people get ready to take the GMAT.

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Given the way that Apple tries to push the boundaries of product design in so many ways, it takes a unique talent to run product design at the company. Both Jonathan Ive and Steve Jobs get much of the credit for the designs of products like the iPod, iMac and iPhone. Still, it’s rather interesting to find out that the original CTO for the Segway is leaving Segway and joining Apple as its VP of Product Design. Coming from a Dean Kamen company is probably a pretty good background for thinking out of the box — though, the Segway never was the mass market success story that was predicted. So who wants to start up rumors about the iScooter? Or the iCar?

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If you’re an Apple fan for whom price is actually a consideration, then you may be pleased to know that the sexy catwalk MacBook Air is about to become less of a burden on your bank account.

Apple has knocked the price of the world’s thinnest laptop down to £1,719, from £2,029 due to the fact that Solid State Drives (SSDs) have gotten cheaper.

It might seem like an unholy alliance but Dell has reportedly approached Apple with bags of cash to buy into its money-saving Manila Case laptop packaging. That’s the big joke going around now in the US.

According to Piper Jaffray’s industry watcher and Apple fan Gene Munster, Dell wants to cut its costs and thinks paying Apple to use their exclusive envelope packaging is the quickest way to do it - even if they have to pay £10 per envelope for the privilege. According to Munster:

We’ve covered the concept of SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suits plenty of times before. These are bogus lawsuits filed to try to bully a critic into shutting up. In one such case, involving an incredibly broad subpoena against a librarian blogger compiling information on the potential link between mercury and autism, a magistrate judge has seriously smacked down the lawyer who filed the subpoena. The blogger had merely published on her blog information about the fees the lawyer in question had received. In response, the lawyer subpoenaed a ridiculous amount of information from her: “all documents pertaining to the setup, financing, running, research, maintaining” of the blog, “including communications with representatives of the federal government, the pharmaceutical industry, advocacy groups, non-governmental organizations, political action groups, profit or non-profit entities, journals, editorial boards, scientific boards, academic boards, medical licensing boards, any ‘religious groups (Muslim or otherwise), or individuals with religious affiliations,’ and any other ‘concerned individuals.’”

The judge quashed the subpoena quickly, but has now hit back really hard on the lawyer, Clifford Shoemaker, for filing it in the first place:

Shoemaker has not offered a shred of evidence to support his speculations. He has, he says, had his suspicions aroused because she has so much information. Clearly he is unfamiliar with the extent of the information which a highly-competent librarian like Ms. Seidel can, and did, accumulate. If Shoemaker wanted to know if Ms. Seidel was in part supported by or provided information by Bayer, he could have inquired of Bayer or limited the Seidel subpoena to that information. Instead he issued the subpoena calling for production of documents and a deposition on the day before he stipulated to dismiss the underlying suit with prejudice. His failure to withdraw the subpoena when he clearly knew that suit was over is telling about his motives. His efforts to vilify and demean Ms. Seidel are unwarranted and unseemly….

I find that Clifford Shoemaker violated Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b)(1) and Rule 45(c)(1)…. The 11(b)(1) violation may also violate Virginia’s Rules of Professional Conduct …. Clifford J. Shoemaker’s action is an abuse of legal process, a waste of judicial resources and an unnecessary waste of the time and expense to the purported deponent.

The Clerk of Court is directed to forward a certified copy of this order, the motion to quash, the show cause order, and the response of Shoemaker and Seidel to the appropriate professional conduct committee of the Virginia State Bar in order that it may be made aware of Clifford J. Shoemaker’s conduct and so that those authorities may take whatever action they deem appropriate.

As a sanction from this court, Clifford J. Shoemaker is ordered to attend within three months, a continuing legal education program on ethics and on the discovery rules in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He is ordered to file a certification of completion of the programs.

Now that’s a smackdown.

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