* Gearhead: Operating systems for the Web * Backspin: Feedback on your feedback * Gibbsblog: The past 7 days
Gearhead: Operating systems for the Web
Multics, Unix, OS/360, Pick, George3, RSTSE, RT-11, RSX-11M, CP/M, MP/M, PC-DOS, Macintosh, OS/2, Windows, OS X, Linux, Beos.
That’s a very short list of operating systems past and current for mainframes, minicomputers, early PCs, later PCs, network servers, clusters and PDAs. So what’s left to stick an operating system on?
How about the Web? The idea of a Web operating system has been bandied about for some time, and a few systems are appearing.
To read this week’s Gearhead, click here.
Backspin: Feedback on your feedback
This week I need to follow up on some reader feedback. Following the recent column “Entropy, identity and reputation” reader James Turner wrote, “First, remember that Wikipedia is not a closed system. It is infused with new stuff all the time, so growing errors are offset by growing content. How that entropic battle settles out, I am not sure, but it probably favors a net increase in information and net decrease in entropy.”
To read this week’s Backspin, click here.
Gibbsblog: The past 7 days
You’ve Got Sexual Predators!
Interesting Techdirt article on the problem of MySpace, the hordes of lurking deviants, and how to take advantage of the intersection. Basically the idea is to match registration data to databases of known sex offenders and nab ’em.
I doubt whether such a scheme would pay off for long because the weirdos would just learn to be more circumspect and devious but the idea of detecting predators through their engagement with multiple services and then watching everything they do — now that’s a great idea if it can pass the test of not infringing on their right of free speech.
Makes you wonder if using the ‘Net might eventually become like using the highways — a matter of privilege rather than a right.
This Week in Backspin: Feedback on Your Feedback
In Backspin this week I handle some reader feedback from the last three columns …
This Week in Gearhead: Operating Systems for the Web
This week in Gearhead we discuss the potential and issues with Web operating systems, a new way to provide personal and corporate productivity application environments.
The Death of TV Has Not Been Exaggerated
“Nielsen//NetRatings Inc. reports that homes with internet connection experience 25 percent less TV viewing than homes without internet, but more visitors to Yahoo! and MySpace watch more programming on Bravo and Comedy Central” — Nielsen//NetRatings press release. TV networks have got to be worried …
Avoiding IVR
Wow! What we all want! A way to not have to mess around with interactive voice response systems!
Bringo provides a categorized and an alphabetical list of companies to choose from. You find your target, enter your telephone number in the form, hit enter, and a few minutes later your phones rings. Pick it up and there’s a human being.
I just tried it with Cingular Wireless. The hinge on my wife’s clamshell style phone (it is an LG C1800) has broken and it’s a $50 insurance replacement but a theoretically free warranty replacement but try handling a warranty replacement through their Web site — to describe it as a miserable experience really doesn’t convey the full horror.
So, I need to deal with a Real Human Being or a Cingular Customer Service Droid, whichever I get first … but before I can do that, I need to battle their IVR or maybe not …
So, I entered my number and, ah! My phone is ringing … ah, it is Bringo asking to confirm my phone (this obviously prevents you from using Bringo to annoy other people) and … one minute elapsed … five minutes … failed. At least Bringo tells me (“Ooops! The representative at Cingular Wireless – Personal Sales hung up before we could connect you”) and offers the chance to retry. So, I’ll retry ….
Humm. The feedback from the site after you ask them to retry is poor — it will be working but the display will tell you nothing and then when you try again it tells you that a “search” is in progress.
So, I’m waiting for my phone to ring …
In the meantime, there’s another project that aims to cut through the IVR jungle is the GetHuman Project, created by Paul English, which aims to create (according to their press release): “new standards for telephone-based customer service. Microsoft Corp., Nuance Communications, Inc. and other industry leaders, businesses and consumers will work with the GetHuman project to drive adoption of these standards that are designed to eliminate poor caller experiences with automated systems.”
Hormel Loses Bid For Spam Trademark
“Ultimately, we are trying to avoid the day when the consuming public asks, ‘Why would Hormel Foods name its product after junk e-mail?'” — Hormel site text as quoted in AP article (but damned if I can find it on their site).
Hormel just want people to stop calling spam (as in email), “spam” so they tried to acquire the word as a trademark but the “European Office of Trade Marks and Designs, noting that the vast majority of the hits yielded by a Google search for the word made no reference to the food, said that ‘the most evident meaning of the term SPAM for the consumers … will certainly be unsolicited, usually commercial e-mail, rather than a designation for canned spicy ham.'”
You can see Hormel’s point but it looks as if the fickle finger of fate has conspired against them …
Also see the article in The Register for more detail.
IIS 6 Passes Apache for First Time in F1K
“Port80 Software … has surveyed the public Web sites of Fortune 1000 companies since 2003 to determine their use of Internet and application hosting technologies. In a survey released today, the Microsoft Internet Information Services 6 Web server (IIS 6) passed Apache … for the first time. With 27.0% market share, IIS 6 penetration has more than doubled in the past year and will soon overcome IIS 5 to be the most widely deployed Fortune 1000 Web server. Overall, IIS 4, 5, and 6 deployments continue to lead with a combined 54.9% share of all Fortune 1000 corporate sites versus Apache’s 23.3% share.”
“Not surprisingly given the prominence of IIS 5 and 6, Microsoft ASP.NET application server environments are also currently used on 48.4% of Fortune 1000 sites. Other application servers like Java platforms (J2EE, JSP, WebLogic, WebSphere, and Tomcat), PHP, and ColdFusion all combined to account for only 21.2% of Fortune 1000 site deployments.” — from a press release by Port80 Software about their latest survey.
Spreading the Word One Download at a Time
Very amusing Techdirt posting “Would Jesus Get Music From P2P Networks?”
Abramoff Citizens Against Government Waste = No Open Source
“Five conservative nonprofit organizations, including one run by prominent Republican Grover Norquist, “perpetrated a ‘fraud’ on taxpayers by selling their clout to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Senate investigators said in a report issued today … The groups are Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform; the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, which was co-founded by Norquist and Gale Norton before she became Secretary of the Interior; Citizens Against Government Waste; the National Center for Public Policy Research, which was a spinoff of the Heritage Foundation; and Toward Tradition, a religious group founded by Abramoff friend Rabbi Daniel Lapin.” — Washington Post article and see this Slashdot posting.
Eudora to be Set Free!
“San Diego’s Qualcomm has announced that the next version of its Eudora email client is going to be released as a free, open source application built upon the same code as Mozilla Thunderbird.” — Wired Monkey Bites blog item.
The Little White then Red Spot That Could
Jupiter’s “Little Red Spot is the only survivor among three white-colored storms that merged together. In the 1940s, the three storms were seen forming in a band slightly below the Great Red Spot. In 1998, two of the storms merged into one, which then merged with the third storm in 2000. In 2005, amateur astronomers noticed that this remaining, larger storm was changing color, and it became known as the Little Red Spot after becoming noticeably red in early 2006.” — NASA News item
HK Law to Ban Most Commercial Messaging
“[In] Hong Kong, it looks like they’re trying to create their own anti-spam law that doesn’t come with … loopholes [like the US and UK anti-spam legislation]. In fact, it has so few loopholes that it could potentially outlaw all sorts of commercial email that most people probably wouldn’t consider spam.” — from an article on Techdirt that points to a more complete article from Hong Kong’s “The Standard”.
Regrets and Apologies (But it Wasn’t My Fault!)
“I apologize for the option-related problems that happened under my leadership, I believe that the company has come a long way since 2003 in addressing these deficiencies, but am deeply disappointed it happened nonetheless.” — Shelby Bonnie, ex-chief executive, CNet Networks, carefully avoiding admitting that that he was actually involved.
“I have retired as Chairman and CEO in the best interests of the company, its shareholders and employees. I regret that some of the stock option problems identified by the Special Committee occurred on my watch.” — George Samenuk, CEO, McAfee, also apparently had nothing to do with the issue, it just sort of happened like the boiler leaking.
What with the furor over at HP and the exit of the company’s chairman and now Apple, Novell, Dell, CNET, and McAfee all getting into hot water over their improper backdating of stock options you have to wonder about the state of the high-tech world’s corporate ethics.
A 64GB Nerd Stick? How Much?!
Yep, CDW has a 64GB Flash Drive, the Buslink USB Hi-Speed 64GB Flash Drive BDP2-64G-U2, available for … get this … $5,739.99! Can someone tell me why anyone would want to pay that much? That’s $89.69 per GB compared to $9.00 per GB that you’ll pay for an 8GB drive. Sure, carrying around 8 separate drives is much less convenient than a single 64GB drive but is it worth spending almost 10 times the amount to not do so?
Google Code Search Beta Finds MS-DOS 6.0
Want the source for MS-DOS 6.0?
I wonder how long that will be available?
Microsoft’s Answer to Google/YouTube is a Safe One
“Google has only just bought YouTube but already Microsoft is fighting back by striking a deal on Monday with video search engine Blinkx … Unlike the Google-YouTube deal this is not a takeover but a deal where Blinkx will license its search technology to Microsoft.” from a posting on PVR Wire.
It is also a deal that means the Microsoft can’t be sued for copyright infringement unlike Google with YouTube. Cunning.
TiVo Goes to the Dark Side
“By including Macrovision with its products, TiVo is designing a product that is intended to control its owner and treat its owner (TiVo’s customer) as an attacker. They’ve added a swatch of functions that act directly against a user’s interests [and in] so doing, they’ve created a bunch of potential failures in which the user is locked out of her own equipment.” — from a BoingBoing posting.
