Into Tech

There’s been plenty of backlash against a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080604/2243441315.shtml”red light cameras/a (which often a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080313/231629539.shtml”increase/a the number of accidents) and a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20040107/1933259.shtml”speed cameras/a (which seem to have problems with a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050302/1117213.shtml”accuracy/a). However, that’s not stopping the manufacturers of those cameras from trying to get governments to buy even more of them for other purposes. A few folks have sent in a story from TheNewspaper (a site that actively fights against the spread of traffic-related cameras), noting that the two big firms in the space a href=”http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/25/2537.asp” target=”_new”are pitching the cameras to governments for surveillance purposes/a, to keep records and data on motorists. They talk about using it to recognize license plates on stolen cars, but you can imagine it’s only a matter of time until it also puts together a nice database on where you traveled when. It’s yet another step towards proving the saying that you no longer have any privacy anywhere. At least not from the government. Maybe next up, they’ll look to just put cameras directly in your cars, like some taxis have these days. That way they can track what you’re saying as well.
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We had just mentioned Scott Harrison a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080910/0408132224.shtml”recently/a as an extreme example of patent attorneys getting their own patents and suing. In Harris’ case, the a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071019/020936.shtml”trouble began/a when it was discovered that he (through a shell company) was even filing patent infringement lawsuits against some of the clients of his own law firm. He was fired and a lawsuit quickly followed. That lawsuit was a href=”http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2008/08/scott-harris-v-fish-richardson-litigation-is-settled.html”settled/a just last month, and Harris wasted little time a href=”http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2008/09/harris-mce-lawsuit.html” target=”_new”suing more companies over his patents/a. In this case, the patents in question involved a a href=”http://www.google.com/patents?id=x8QOAAAAEBAJ”system/a and a a href=”http://www.google.com/patents?id=w_gVAAAAEBAJ”method/a for making use of traffic data on a GPS system. He’s sued eight GPS makers, claiming there are “a lot of companies are infringing my patent.”
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Interestingly, he also notes: “When I thought of this and tried to put it into practice, it was pure science fiction.” That would seem to raise questions about the legitimacy of his patents. If it was pure science fiction, then it would suggest that he wasn’t able to put it into practice (and, certainly, he does not seem to be actively engaged in the market). If that’s the case, then he would have effectively just patented “science fiction” and is now suing the companies that actually figured out how to turn science fiction into reality. Since they’re the ones who made the leap (and took the risk in building the products and bringing them to market), why should Harris get to put a tax on them?
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With the Justice Department getting closer and closer to going after Google for supposed antitrust violation, we’re going to see more and more articles like the one in the New York Times this weekend that tries to highlight the story of a company “harmed” by Google’s market power. In this case, it’s the story of a guy who runs a directory site that was based entirely on Google arbitrage. He bought ads on Google’s search engine to drive people to his directory page, and then littered the page with AdSense to collect revenue from people clicking through. The NY Times presents this as being somewhat harmful, but I have to side with Jeff Jarvis who doesn’t see what Google did wrong.

Google arbitrage sites are a problem for the end user. They’re based on the simple concept of forcing people to go an extra click to siphon some money away. If I’m looking for a particular site on Google I don’t first want to go to a directory — I want to go directly to the site. That’s true for many, many users — and Google’s efforts in punishing arbitrage sites isn’t anticompetitive, it’s about improving the user experience, which is something that should be praised, not sued. The only problem noticed in the scenario was that the guy chose a bad business model, where he was totally reliant on a single company for both all of his traffic and all of his revenue. He made the decision to base his entire business on a single supplier, and that supplier has every right to change the terms of its deals in an effort to make a better consumer experience. This isn’t Google being anticompetitive — it’s Google serving its customers.

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The telecoms industry, not the government, will need to stump up the billions of pounds needed to rollout the next generation of super-fast broadband networks across the UK, according to the former boss of Cable & Wireless, who was appointed earlier this year by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and the Treasury to look at the UK broadband market.

But Francesco Caio said the government can help reduce the estimated £5.1bn to £28.8bn cost of installing super-fast broadband, by coordinating the digging up of streets so that fibre optic lines can be installed, opening up national infrastructure such as sewers so cables can be laid and relaxing the rules on where overhead wires can be erected.

His recommendations, which the government welcomed, come ahead of the publication of regulator Ofcom’s initial thoughts on next generation broadband networks - which will allow consumers to download songs in seconds and movies in minutes - later this month. The regulator is expected to re-open its consultation with the industry by asking what sort of regulatory regime is required to ensure next generation networks are built over the coming decade.

Caio said there has yet to emerge a service that cannot be delivered over current broadband networks but as more and more devices are produced that can access the internet, the need to install networks that can run at much faster speeds will increase. The government needs to keep a watchful eye to ensure investment is made, but does not need to bankroll broadband.

“In my view the case for major intervention now is weak at best,” he said. “It is true that the UK has a lower number of homes connected through fibre (optic cables) than other countries, but I think we should take a rather more articulate view of how broadband is used, what there is today and how the system is evolving, as opposed to just counting the number of fibres there are in the ground.”

He said next generation networks will be a mixture of fibre-optic cabling, either to individual homes or street-side cabinets, and wireless broadband. BT, which welcomed the review, has already said it plans to spend £1.5bn running fibre optic cabling to the streetside cabinets that ultimately connect 40% - 10 million - of the UK’s homes.

Earlier this week, the government’s own independent advisory panel, the Broadband Stakeholders Group, estimated that rolling out such fibre optic cabling to all the UK’s cabinets would cost £5.1bn, while putting cabling all the way into every home in the UK would cost £28.8bn.

Virgin Media, meanwhile, is already rolling out broadband at up to 50Mb per second - 10 times faster than the average connection - across its cable network which covers half the UK.

Caio said such moves prove that competition, not intervention, is the way to go. The market is also changing so fast - wireless networks today can offer faster broadband speeds than were possible over a fixed-line connection a decade ago - that the government should keep an open mind on what technology gets used.

“My recommendation to the government is don’t commit to anything today because the technology is changing,” he said. “You might find yourself having committed a lot for something that could have been done by the market”.

As a result he said the government should not look to extend the universal service obligation, under which BT must to provide a basic phone line to every UK household, into the provision of fibre optic cabling.

He gave the current state of the broadband market - which covers 99.6% of UK households - a relatively clean bill of health. But he added that current ‘bottlenecks’ in the system, which reduce the speed of internet access, are appearing in the telecom companies’ backbone networks rather than in the ‘last mile’ connection between telephone exchanges and people’s homes, which is where next generation networks will be installed.

As a result he wants Ofcom to demand that the ISPs give their customers more detail of how they manage their internet traffic, especially at peak times. The regulator has already pushed for a voluntary industry code which gives customers more information about the average speed they can expect on their line. But Caio believes some customers may be willing to pay more in order to have dedicated bandwidth, once they fully understand how their line is managed, so they do not see their speed dip at any time of day.

Caio’s recommendation that telecoms companies be able to carpet the countryside with overhead cables is likely to alarm some rural communities. But Shriti Vadera, parliamentary under secretary of state for business and competitiveness, said local communities will have to weigh up the benefits of super-fast broadband against the impact of overhead cabling. “It is a matter of ensuring that people have a say,” she added.

Business secretary John Hutton added: “We want to create the right conditions for private sector investment and stand ready to play our part in ensuring the UK has a competitive infrastructure in the years to come.”

My laptop has started to show steady data input and output as soon as it connects to the web via a wireless router. This continues for as long as I leave the machine connected. AVG 8, Ad-Aware and Spybot have revealed nothing.
Robert Caldicott

You are right to be concerned because the unknown data traffic could be spam or worse, if your PC has been hacked. However, the most likely cause is Microsoft’s Windows Update, which dribbles away in the background so as not to interfere with normal usage. Otherwise, your firewall should tell you which applications have your permission to access the internet, and which ones are active. Active processes should also be visible in the Windows Task Manager or the superior Process Explorer, a free download. In your case, the culprit may be setupxv.exe, which could be malware or fake anti-spyware.

The web is another common source of unknown data traffic. Some pages refresh adverts or update their contents periodically without telling you, but this should stop if you close down all browsers.

If you can’t see what’s sending traffic, you can try using a packet sniffer to capture and examine the data being transferred. Sadly, I use Wireshark (wireshark.org), which is not a simple option for beginners. There are alternatives listed at sectools.org and SnapFiles. SmartSniff looks easier to use. Other suggestions welcome!

RSS has been used for more than a decade, but have only recently become commonly used. It is used to provide headlines and summaries of information in a concise and standardized way in one place, without the inconvenience of visiting separate site on the internet.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (although versions before RSS 2.0 [...]

Going on 64-bit

I recently bought a new quad-core desktop machine, but I am considering increasing the amount of Ram from the 3GB now installed. Would I have to upgrade to the 64-bit version to increase my memory? I want to use my PC for gaming, but I have a fondness for my back catalogue of games.

Jez Robinson

JS: As you know, 32-bit Windows can only use 4GB of memory, which means about 3.25GB after you’ve allowed for graphics and system use. The 64-bit versions can access more memory than your motherboard can support. However, the upgrade path from your 32-bit Packard Bell version is not smooth. Although Microsoft sells “in place upgrades” (hence the 15GB of disk space devoted to Vista), you can’t upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit Vista without reinstalling it as a new operating system.

Also, you will have to pay for your new operating system. If you buy a boxed copy of Vista, you can run either the 32-bit or the 64-bit version, so the upgrade is free. (There may be a charge for shipping you a new disc: only Vista Ultimate includes media for both.) But if you have a manufacturer’s pre-installed version, what you’ve bought is all you get. Unless Packard Bell can offer you a deal, you may have to pay £70 or more for a retail or upgrade version. See Microsoft’s guide at bit.ly/aj0023

Whether it’s worth it is a difficult question, but gamers were among the first to move to 64-bit Vista so you should be able to check for compatibility and performance of specific games online. In general, 64-bit Vista is faster and more secure, it runs 32-bit software, and cheap Ram means sales are now growing rapidly. However, it does not run old 16-bit software, and that unfortunately includes 32-bit programs with 16-bit installation routines. Two obvious solutions are to set up your PC as a dual-boot system, so you can switch between versions, or to install 32-bit Vista in a “virtual PC”. There are several free virtual PC programs including Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, VMware and VirtualBox (version 1.6.2 or later). There are lots of demos and tutorials on YouTube.

Office upgrade

I have Microsoft Office Professional 2000 and would like to know the cheapest legal way of upgrading to Office Professional 2007. I am not a student.

Bob Baker

JS: Microsoft’s website says you can upgrade to Office Pro from Microsoft Works 6.0-10 or any 2000-2007 Microsoft Office program or suite except Office XP Student and Teacher (bit.ly/aj0028). You could therefore shop around for the Microsoft Office 2007 Professional Edition (Upgrade), which you can install on two computers - normally your desktop and your laptop. A slightly cheaper option is the OEM version coded MSOEM162. This is designed for original equipment manufacturers and PC system builders to sell with machines, and can only be installed on one PC. It is not necessarily suitable for consumers, bearing in mind that the OEM (in this case, you) also has to provide the support. OEM versions of software may also come without boxes, manuals, or even discs.

Positively not Adobe

I need to update Adobe Acrobat/Reader to read bulletins, but my attempt to download version 9 has been blocked because AVG Anti-virus (Free Edition 8.0.169) has detected Trojan horse Generic11.PWW.

Cyril Braganza

JS: Adobe says AVG has acknowledged that this is a “false positive” and it will be fixed in an update: bit.ly/aj0027. Avast is also correcting a false positive.

Unknown data in and out

My laptop has started to show steady data input and output as soon as it connects to the web via a wireless router. This continues for as long as I leave the machine connected. AVG 8, Ad-Aware and Spybot have revealed nothing.

Robert Caldicott

JS: You are right to be concerned because the unknown data traffic could be spam or worse, if your PC has been hacked. However, the most likely cause is Microsoft’s Windows Update, which dribbles away in the background so as not to interfere with normal usage. Otherwise, your firewall should tell you which applications have your permission to access the internet, and which ones are active. Active processes should also be visible in the Windows Task Manager or the superior Process Explorer, a free download (bit.ly/aj0029). In your case, the culprit may be setupxv.exe, which could be malware or fake anti-spyware (bit.ly/aj0030).

The web is another common source of unknown data traffic. Some pages refresh adverts or update their contents periodically without telling you, but this should stop if you close down all browsers.

If you can’t see what’s sending traffic, you can try using a packet sniffer to capture and examine the data being transferred. Sadly, I use Wireshark (wireshark.org), which is not a simple option for beginners. There are alternatives listed at bit.ly/aj0031 and bit.ly/aj0032. SmartSniff looks easier to use (bit.ly/aj0033).

Automatic backup

Is there an external hard drive that is really automatic?

Michael Abraham

JS: Clickfree external hard drives are promoted as offering the “first out-of-the-box automatic backup” and can handle up to 10 PCs. I’ve not used one, but the 160GB model was warmly recommended by a reader who bought it from QVC.

Backchat

· Chris Berg wanted to help donate a computer to a village that has no electricity, and I suggested Aleutia (aleutia.com/). GreenNet, an ethical not-for-profit ISP based in London, says: “We work closely with Mike Rosenberg and are Aleutia’s official reseller to the charity and not-for-profit sector. If you could put Chris Berg in touch with us, we’d be happy to give him some more information and tailor a solution to his needs.” See gn.apc.org

Get your queries answered by Jack Schofield, our computer editor at jack.schofield@guardian.co.uk

Introduction to RSS Feeds
RSS is an acronym that stands for Really Simple Syndication. In layman terms, it is a way to syndicate information on blogs and other websites so that it can be delivered through a software platform to a person without actually having to visit a website. Software like Google Reader can be used [...]

As was widely expected, Comcast has appealed the FCC’s ruling concerning its traffic shaping practices — even though that ruling was a total slap on the wrist that had no real punishment other than a verbal scolding. But, of course, for Comcast, it’s a question of principle — with the principle being that the FCC has no authority over it on this matter (except, of course, when it’s politically convenient for Comcast to say otherwise).

While the ruling against Comcast was rather pointless and meaningless, this appeal could create a much more interesting lawsuit, helping to more clearly define the FCC’s authority on these issues. Amusingly, despite the effective issues being identical to the question of the FCC’s authority over consumer electronics in the broadcast flag debate from four years ago, expect various public interest groups to align on the opposite sides of where they did back during that fight. Apparently, FCC regulation is bad, except when it’s in agreement with your opinion.

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In the old days, there were limited means for getting your content - articles, white papers, knowledge - and hence marketing your brand and products out to your target audience. You could write a book and try to get it published; you could print white papers and submit them to industry journals, libraries, or post [...]