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I was making my rounds earlier today and noticed the Story of the Day at Robert Loch’s blog. It’s a 4-part interview with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.

Based on multiple news stories regarding several controversial moves on the part of Google, I’ve tried to maintain a healthy level of skepticism as to whether or not Google has any ulterior motives. I am more reassured now after reading all 3-parts and encourage others that might be skeptical to read the series as well (especially those at Google-Watch).

In part 1, Mr. Schmidt discusses the purchase of Blogger in February. While explaining the diffusion of information, this statement struck my fancy:

“When the Internet publicity began, I remember being struck by how much the world was not the way we thought it was, that there was infinite variation in how people viewed the world. People are amazingly surprised to find out that an awful lot of people think that they’re idiots, whether it is the Flat Earth Society or some other variant.”

In addition to showcasing fugly sites, SomethingAwful.com (and others) continually expose the: weird, half-baked, sensationalistic and unoriginal thoughts that are somehow created by a fellow human being.

In part 2, Mr. Schmidt mentions his own thoughts regarding privacy and free speech, stating:

“My view is that the cure to the problem of free speech is more free speech, not less. And Google exists in order to further that outcome, which is more communication.”

He then touches on the privacy issues several individuals have mentioned:

“In this case, which I’m familiar with, people get confused over what Google knows about people. We actually know very little. We don’t know anything about you. We know your IP address but your IP address can be shared. This is all disclosed in great detail as you read into our website.”

And the George Zimmer promise:

“And so we have a tremendous debate, because Google has the ability to do many things like what you described, and in every case we decided not to. Because we don’t think it would benefit our end-users. And I should be very clear: We will not do that. That’s a commitment.”

In part 3 he discusses the Google Appliance and the worldwide markets Google is involved with. Nothing very profound or earth shattering though, it could still be news to you however if you don’t follow the happenings at Google.

Lastly, if you don’t already, be sure to visit Dr. Elewyn Jenkins Microdoc News. It is continuously filled with well-written commentary regarding Google and blogging.

Addendum: Here is the 4th and final part of the Eric Schmidt interview, was just published today (May 5th) — he discusses the oft-quoted Moore’s Law.

Alrighty. You’ve heard various musicians moan and groan about how they have lost oodles of money (which may or may not be true). You’ve heard politicians and their cohorts, lobbyists, explain the need for harsh penalties and devastating lawsuits (billions of dollars in damages are claimed by the RIAA).

What you might not have heard is that Hilary Rosen, current chairman and CEO for the RIAA, will be the author for Iraq’s new copyright laws (the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire). In addition to not being impervious to bombings, it appears Iraqi artisans are not impervious to outsiders ’stealing’ their hard work (see: labor theory of value). Actually, the new copyright laws for Iraq are being created to punish people in Iraq that pirate anything which is copyrighted, previously:

Under Iraqi copyright legislation, passed by The Revolution Leadership Council in 1971, a copyright lapses 25 years after the death of the author, but no more then fifty years after the publication of the work. It’s shorter for private works, and there are several public interest exemptions.

Continuing,

Iraq does not have a reciprocal copyright agreement with the United States, which means that US works are not protected.

As you might have guessed, those sorts of exchange policies keep individuals like Mrs. Rosen up at night (I?m kept up by Google AdWords).

In addition to having a reciprocal copyright agreement with itself, Congress has increased the life of a copyright almost a dozen times in the past 40 years and passed yet another extension in October of 1998 called the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act which tacks on another 20 years to an artisans work — bringing the duration to 95 years (you can see why Rosen might want to modify the existing Iraqi law). Last year, Eric Eldred and several others lost the (in)famous Supreme Court case involving these extensions, in particular those of Disney.

In honor of the new found gumption, I’m pleased to present three pictures I Photoshopped. Feel free to ’steal’ them, just make sure you save it to your own server — they were inspired originally by this:

Stay in school. Don’t do drugs.

Back in highschool (how many times have I said that now?) I participated with Distributed.net, the first large-scale public effort at using distributed computing to crack an encrypted key. I actually only participated for about 2 years (from late ‘98 to mid ‘00 or so) and the initial project, RC5-64, was completed last summer.

I’ve decided to give it another try, this time with their new RC5-72 project (a 72-bit encrypted RSA key versus 64).

A quick histiography regarding modern encryption. After World War 2, an agency known as the National Security Agency (or No Such Agency) was formed specifically to break encrypted messages (from ‘bad’ guys) through various means (some of which, like ‘Echelon,’ have come under scrutiny).

What is digital encryption? It’s a way of coding data so that only those you want to understand it can. Actually, there are two parts to a crypotsystem. First, the encryption algorithm, which methodically scrambles data. Then there is the key which can ‘break’ (understand) what the message means. Throughout the centuries various individuals (generals, politicians, lovers, etc.) have used encryption methods to hide messages from prying eyes. What is equally as significant is the decrypting side (cryptanalysis) of the equation, which tries to find a schema, a method to its madness.

As you can imagine with the advent of computers that could process and calculate combinations of numbers faster than the quickest human, decrypting messages are made that much easier. In fact, some of the first digital computers devopled were designed to decipher codes from ‘the bad guys’ (like the German ‘Enigma‘). Some of the original uses for computers were for balistics in canons [ENIAC] or later with missles and rockets, especially the Apollo/Gemini Programs as discussed by Ceruzzi).

One of the more popular encryption schema’s used today was developed in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman (take the first letter of each of their last names, that’s where RSA comes from). What is RSA encryption?

“The RSA algorithm works as follows: take two large prime numbers, p and q, and find their product n = pq; n is called the modulus. Choose a number, e, less than n and relatively prime to (p-1)(q-1), and find its inverse, d, mod (p-1)(q-1), which means that ed = 1 mod (p-1)(q-1); e and d are called the public and private exponents, respectively. The public key is the pair (n,e); the private key is d. The factors p and q must be kept secret, or destroyed. It is difficult (presumably) to obtain the private key d from the public key (n,e). If one could factor n into p and q, however, then one could obtain the private key d. Thus the entire security of RSA depends on the difficulty of factoring; an easy method for factoring products of large prime numbers would break RSA. ”

Originally, the NSA and other ‘intelligence agencies’ (like MI6) had the capability to crack nearly all encrypted messages and they wanted it to stay that way.

Then along comes a ‘troublemaker’ named Phil Zimmerman. You see, it is illegal under current U.S. law to export sophisticated encryption software (that’s one of the reasons OpenBSD is based in Canada). Mr. Zimmerman created an encryption program called Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). In 1991 he wrote PGP1.0 which implemented RSA encryption, combined with his own cipher called Bass-O-Matic (which was later replaced by IDEA which is from Ze Swiss). Both RSA (those 3 guys formed a company) and the State sue Mr. Zimmerman for: using unlicensed intellectual property (RSA) and for exporting the actual program outside America (he probably didn’t as he lent it to a bunch of friends who in turn gave it to a bunch of more people who posted it online… and we know what happens with that).

The lawsuits are later dropped and PGP became ubiquitous among the geek community. The goal of the RC5 Distributed.net project is to break an RSA encrypted key. The first one was 56-bit, the next was 64-bit and the new one is 72-bit. “The more bits used in a key, the stronger the encryption. But the increase is exponential, so that a 64-bit key is only marginally longer than a 56-bit key, but would take 256 times longer to break.” (source)

A couple of additional notes:

If you’ve seen Mercury Rising with Bruce Willis or Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon or even Sneakers - a few of the concepts discussed in those films involve encryption (in GWH they supposedly edited out the part where he actually breaks some codes).

It is reported that PGP could have been compromised (in more than one way), there is however an ‘open-source’ version called OpenPGP (GnuGP) which is gaining wide spread use as well (having a compromised key sort of defeats the whole purpose).

Okay, so that wasn’t very brief, but I learned some more stuff while digging up links (I didn’t know how to make a chalupa). If enough of you want to do the RC5 Project, I could create a team – the Movementarians? Let me know.

One of the books I was required to read back in college was Paul Ceruzzi’s “A History of Modern Computing.” If you are looking for just one book that is jammed pack full of both the history and the technical jargon for the world of computing, Mr. Ceruzzi’s book fits the bill quite well.

Among the various computing companies discussed, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC and later rebranded to Digital.com) itself could have volumes written about its rise and fall as the second largest computing company in the world (it made databases, operating systems, CPUs, switches).

It was founded in 1957 in Maynard, Massachusetts by MIT engineer Kenneth Olsen (and his brother and a colleague), who created the company after working on the TX-2. Reportedly when Mr. Olsen went in for a bank loan, he was instructed not to say his company was planning to build computers but rather digital equipment (hence the name). I’m not sure if this is true though, because in his interview with David Allison he states that American Research Company originally invested $70,000 in his venture.

At any rate, DEC made a huge splash with their new mini-computers (as opposed to the massive multi-room variety), starting out with the PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processor, which Ceruzzi discusses in length).

Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, DEC grew at a phenomenal rate which ultimately climaxed at the end of the ’80s. With over 125,000 employees worldwide and billions of dollars in sales each year, DEC hit The Wall, fell down a stairwell into a street, run over by a car and later picked apart by a couple of crows.

Throughout the ’90s DEC attempted to reassert itself as the preeminent provider of computing technology:

1992 they unveiled the Alpha 21064, their next-generation CPU workhorse and first commercial 64-bit CPU
1993 they begin shipping 200-mhz Alpha’s in volume
1994 they sell off their RDB database software to Oracle
1995 Alta Vista goes live, originally started in the deep dungeons at DEC’s black-ops Palo Alto office as a way to index the web and for companies to use in private intranets
1996 Alta Vista is then made available online for the general public (altavista.digital.com) and DEC discontinues their home PC Starion line (catchy name, eh)
1997 they sell off their printing division to Genicom and end up being countersued by Intel
1998 to settle the Intel litigation, DEC sells its semiconductor operation to Intel. Then on January 26, 1998 DEC is acquired by Compaq.

I found this article amusing as it is written in February of 1998, a week after the DEC-Compaq merger was announced — with the central theme “will the Alpha remain the fastest chip?” If the development of the chip continued as originally planned, it would have remained the fastest chip, but today the answer is no (though it took several years for the competition to catch up).

Throughout it’s 10+ year life, several operating systems were ported or built for the Alpha. NetBSD support came along in February of 1995. OpenBSD was ported to the Alpha in 1996. FreeBSD was ported at this time as well (no exact date was readily available). AlphaLinux, a distribution of Linux for the Alpha was also created (all of these are still maintained to some extent).

In 1993 DEC managed to convince Microsoft to make a port of NT for the Alpha (no small feat), a year and a half after Compaq acquired DEC (in mid-1999), MS and the Q stopped Windows development for the RISC processor.

Internally, VMS and OpenVMS were ported to the Alpha as well. OpenVMS is simply VMS renamed (*cough* synergetically *cough* it seems) and was neither Open or new. VMS was the operating system created for VAX (the DEC workhorse prior to the Alpha). Note: Compaq developed an operating system for the Alpha (originally for others as well) called Tru64 which still has a large active community.

Michael Capellas (who was the Chairman and CEO of Compaq prior to the HP merger) let the cat out of the bag spelling the doom for the Alpha platform in this letter to OpenVMS/Tru64 users on October of 2001. Comically, the Merger link at the bottom of his letter routes you to an old ‘Vote Yes’ merger campaign page at HP. A little dated, but just another sign of the times at HP (here are a bevy of insights from the Garner Research Group regarding the merger prior to it occurring).

Last April (2002), the HP-Compaq merger was officially completed. This doomed the Alpha primarily because HP is the co-creator of the Itanium (along with Intel) and needs the Itanium to succeed financially — as you will see, HP kills the development of the Alpha shortly after the merger (HP even canabalized their own PA-RISC line which performed better than the Itanium).

Today’s Opteron has the unofficial motto of being the ”Poor Man’s Alpha.” Not only does it perform at levels similar to the 21264 from yesteryear, but several innovative designs were brought over by DEC engineer Dirk Meyer who worked on both the 21064 and 21264 (in addition to the EV6 bus which AMD licensed from DEC).

This past February, Paul DeMone continued his analysis of the 64-bit market, including the Opteron. He also discussed the current life of the Alpha and predicts what HP will do, stating:

Large scale EV7x systems will be relatively inexpensive to build (look ma, no chipset!) but expect HP to charge top dollar regardless. Since the acquisition of Compaq, HP’s official policy has been to direct all new customers to IA64 hardware and limit sales of Alpha systems to the remaining customer base. But with PA-RISC long toothless for technical computing and a number of vendors like SGI offering huge Itanium 2 based systems optimized for HPC, sheer pragmatism will likely force HP to sell EV7x gear to anyone with approved credit. Obscenely high prices will ensure the Alpha tail doesn’t wag the IA64 dog.

In the past Mr. DeMone has posted at Ace’s Hardware, which itself has discussed the EV7 several times too. Back in September of 1999 Ace’s concluded, “Provided the 21364 can be delivered in sufficient quantities, it will garner the same appearance of strength and stability, making for an easy victory.” The Itanium bombed (sux0r3d), but as Intel and HP control the majority of the Alpha intellectual property and engineering talent, they were able to easily kill off the possible contender.

Several weeks later, Johan De Galas (at Ace’s) started his series on ‘The Secret of High Performance CPUs.’ Notice just how far ahead of the pack the Alpha still is at this point in terms of rough benchmarks (not real-world) and clock speed. That trend was supposed to continue too (a 1000x performance increase in 25 years, the EV9 was targeted at ~77 GFlops and slated for production in 2005-6).

In May of 2000, Ace’s benchmarked AlphaLinux and concluded:

OpenSource and Linux is here to stay, and Linux offers a huge opportunity for Compaq to promote the excellent Alpha Platform. We URGE Compaq to be more aggressive and secure the future of the Alpha processor. Compaq should include the Alpha Linux Compiler with each entry level Alpha server and work together more vividly with Samsung.”

However, Paul DeMone’s prediction regarding the death of the Alpha in the hands of HP appears to be on the mark. As of this writing the EV7 21364 (which was supposed to come out over 2 years ago) costs a small fortune, a calculated strategy that will most certainly keep new blood from purchasing that solution. The EV79, the last planned Alpha processor release should debut sometime early next year, but don’t expect competitive pricing, it’s in ‘maintenance mode’ (preping for CPU heaven).

And for those of you that think you might be able to snag the stellar technology through other venues, PriceGrabber comes up negative for any actual Alpha. They certainly have enough listings for RAM modules, but I don’t think that’ll get the women in the sack (or whatever you try to impress).

In conclusion, the Alpha is the BeOS for the contemporary microprocessor world. It was originally launched with enthusiasm and recieved accolades for innovation, however it did not muster the necessary marketing momentum to win the hearts and minds of IT managers (though Intel FUD didn’t exactly help — obfuscating can win short-term sales but builds a shaky ground for a long-term relationship). In the end, this blogger predicts the Opteron will soundly defeat the E2K Itanium technically and with any luck, the marketplace.

I read an interview with some of the members of the FreeBSD team after seeing it posted on Slashdot. In high school I never really had a chance to toy with it as most of the geeks were Linux/BeOS/Solaris aficionados (at the time, Sun was just beginning to ‘give’ out copies of it’s x86 build).

FreeBSD is a pretty snazzy under-reported operating system that can be found primarily in servers and workstations (although there are a few desktop users out there). FreeBSD is a System IV Unix clone derived from the 386BSD distribution. It was created at University of California at Berkeley (BSD stands for Berkeley Software Distribution) to provide a freely customizable alternative to AT&T’s Unix environment. It’s networking stack is used as the basis for Windows NT and was most notably used in the Hotmail servers prior to Microsoft acquiring the popular webmail company.

Here is a quick historical overview of FreeBSD along with a detailed historical diagram of various Unix derivatives (I’m younger than some of them).

What caught my eye was xMach, which was originally a variation of Unix from Carnegie Mellon University (version 3.0 ended up in Mac OS X as a kernel along with FreeBSD 4.4).

I then started poking around to find more about this new project and came across another interview at OSNews (they did that FreeBSD one mentioned above) involving Mr. Joseph Mallett, Alpha Geek in the xMach project. However, that was done over 2 years ago so I set off to find out the latest. Googling his name pulled up several posts by him at FreeOS.com, the last of which was dated - Mon 30th Apr 2001 12:00:53[AM] UTC.

Then I visited his Amazon.com profile, of which his last book review was on January 16, 2002 (on MacOS X and OpenStep no less).

The Freshmeat entry for xMach states: “Invalid project ID.” SourceForge uses big red lettering to state: “This project has not yet submitted a description.” Now remember, this was started more than 2 years ago (3 really). Even the xmach.org domain was not renewed (ran out on April 5, 2003).

Pulling up a Whois query on xmach.org resulted in showing one Marc Fruchter whose name, when combined with “xmach” failed to produce any Google results. Similarly, his email address: smegnozzy@hotmail.com ‘did not match any documents.’

The only weird wrinkle I came across was this link at Advogato (they’re a community for ‘open-source’ developers) which gives a short description of xMach and team members. Clicking on the jmallet profile brings you to a Juli Mallett who apparently is not just any geek, but a geek engaged to a geek (most probably Joseph). I didn’t find any recent information regarding xMach on her Livejournal or her journal at Advogato.

I think at this point it is safe to say that xMach is currently not being developed at the level it was initially hoped to be at (hehe, an understatement). Additionally I think it is a good time to don your shiny aluminum-foil hats and chalk up another one for the Black Helicopter Brigade. Note: check out Gentoo sometime if you’re interested in a BSD-like Linux distribution.

Several days ago I mentioned the Semantic Web and have unearthed more data since then (I also linked to Web Ontology Language OWL, which is a key ingredient for the SW and needs further elaboration at some point). While out googling today I bumped into Semaview, a Canadian-based firm, “focused on creating the next generation of knowledge management tools using the latest technologies such as agent-based computing, machine learning and the Intelligent Internet.”

A quick note of interest: Semaview’s products combat information overload by collecting only relevant, personalized information from the web and displaying it in unique ways when and where the user wants it.

This simplified statement of intent is similar to what Applied Semantics focuses on, primarily for ads (whom if you recall was recently acquired by Google): Applied Semantics’ products are based on its patented CIRCA technology, which understands, organizes, and extracts knowledge from websites and information repositories in a way that mimics human thought and enables more effective information retrieval. A key application of the CIRCA technology is Applied Semantics’ AdSense product that enables web publishers to understand the key themes on web pages to deliver highly relevant and targeted advertisements.

In addition to staying in Santa Monica to lure employees at Overture, would Google acquire (invest) in Semaview to reach the engineering talent in Toronto?

The folks at Semaview also created an easy-to-understand flow chart as to how the Semantic Web will work in the near future (note: the flying men with rotary fans are default vanilla AI agents, in later variations you can add jet engines along with moustaches & muttonchops).

Their pictorial explanation of RDF & XML is the best that I have come across, Step 6 says it all: XML is the alphabet and RDF is the language. Note: I’m personally interested in what the OWL illustration will look like.

And they don’t stop there either:

- Here is a quick overview of the technologies they incorporate with the Semantic Web
- A list of simplified yet powerful (I can say that) explanations for XML, RDF, the Semantic Web and more (note: they reference the Scientific America article I’ve permanently linked to – it’s worth a read)
- Extensive consultation services which provide solutions by which software developers can now integrate standardized Semantic-based languages into their products (something the Mozilla and others are incorporating)
- Notice any similarities between these two pictures? Yea, that has no bearing on Semaview at all - neat picture though (Tangent: Pirated-Sites has a side-by-side comparison of sites that ripped designs & logos from each other)

Semaview also has a Google AdWords listing when “Semantic Web” is queried (as does another semantically inclined company, Intellidimension, but they do not have slick flow charts). However, what does strikes me as odd is that this 1.5 year-old company (Sema) fails to appear until page 3 on the regular listing when “Semantic Web” comes up (these things keep me awake). Search engine optimization is a Good Thing ™.

Additionally, it also appears that I’m not the first blogger to discuss Semaview, I was beaten by ekrsulov who posted on Julio 17, 2002:

Semaview una empresa canadiense que promete desarrollar productos para que las tecnologías de la Web Semantica llegue al ambito empresarial. Tienen un rincón para desarrolladores con un FAQ e índice de software y artículos. (Google translation)

Apparently, I’m not the first English speaking blogger to speak of them either (though that shouldn’t count against my score).

At any rate, Semaview appears to be a step (a mile even) ahead of the rest in terms of both know-how and deployment. They’ve positioned themselves in a soon-to-be booming market and can hopefully capitalize off that opportunity. With any luck they can also develop those advanced AI agents with rocket boosters in a reasonable time frame, I’ll let you know how that progresses.

I mentioned a couple weeks ago (when I was discussing RSS templates) about this new meta-thang called: Friend-of-a-Friend or, FOAF.

At the time I assumed that it required some sort of server-side hardcoding, especially after viewing this Six Log post.

Well praise the Internet Gods once more, no need for any fancy programming or weird uploads, just visit this automated FOAF-maker and fill out the form. Once you have the code generated simply put it in a file (or a new template in MT) and point to it like you do your RSS feeds.

If you need to borrow-a-friend, go here and you’ll have access to about 100 FOAFarians who are leading the way in FOAFary. As an added bonus, you can add my FOAF feed using this link: http://tim.movementarian.com/tim.rdf — don’t forget to smile.

For those unfamiliar with the Korean peninsula, it is divided into two parts along the 38th parallel. From 1950-53 there was an armed conflict that ended without a treaty, but rather an uncomfortable armistice.

The Korean Calamity (or the Korean Klimax or Kafka in Korea or whatever you want to call it) can be traced in part to the American military gerrymandering the world in the aftermath of World War 2.

Exhibit A: General Order #1

On the night of August 10,1945, Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy turned to two young army colonels in the Pentagon and ordered them to draft a line of demarcation that the United States would present to the Soviets as the dividing line between their separate zones of occupation. The two young colonels {future Secretary of State Dean Rusk and future General Charles Bonesteel} and they were entrusted with the future of Korea in their hands. They were given thirty minutes to draw an imaginary line dividing Korea. Lacking experience and lacking an effective map of Korea, these two “desk officers” drew a line roughly across Korea at the 38th parallel. The rationale for dividing Korea at this arbitrary line was because it included the capital, Seoul, in the American zone. As there were no American forces remotely near the area to add “teeth” to the American recommendation, nothing was in the way of a complete Soviet takeover of Korea. The American proposal was clearly seen as a test of Soviet intentions in the post-war era. Rusk would later reflect on the hurried decision of Aug. 10th and its response, remembering that he himself was “somewhat surprised” when the Soviets agreed to go along with the American proposal and halt at the 38th parallel.

What the American State did was the very same thing the European State’s did with Africa and Southeast Asia during the 19th century (with spheres of influence, colonies and all that jazz).

One should also note that Dean Rusk would later become the Secretary of State under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and is credited partially (along with Robert McNamara) at developing and planning policy for Vietnam. And Charles Bonesteel would later command American military forces in Korea (did you know that Australians and Canadians were involved with that conflict?).

Anyways, the Soviets marched through the Korean peninsula throughout August of 1945 and stopped at the 38th parallel (demarcation line). The American troops land in Inchon Harbor on September 8th, a month after the Soviets moved into the peninsula, and proceed to ‘take’ Seoul.

Flashback

Japan went through one of its imperialistic stages starting in 1904-05 where it engaged the Russian navy. Then in 1910 the Nipponese annexed Korea into its own little colonial sphere (just like the European powers were doing in Africa and like the Americans did with Spain in Cuba and Puerto Rico [Spanish-American War]). The Japanese created a split society whereby natives of Korea became a “sub-class” through various legal reforms (just like Jim Crow Laws or Apartheid or to a lesser extent, the Platt Amendment). When the Japanese military capitulated in 1945 they put together yet another State, this one comprised mainly with nationalistic Koreans (Yo Un’hyong) that promised to maintain “order” (to keep the Koreans from retaliating against Japanese businesses and families for years of occupation).

When the American’s and Soviets entered the Peninsula they looked at this de facto State (can there ever be a “legitimate” one?) and followed two separate paths. The American’s ignored the various Unions and syndicates that had been formed and created a new State of hand picked individuals, most of whom were bureaucrats from the previous “oppressive” Japanese puppet State (just like the American’s are doing in Iraq - placing former members of the regime back into various positions). The Soviets on the other hand apparently liked the Unions and Syndicates on their side of the 38th parallel (not surprising) and just went with the flow without creating yet another State.

Then, in an eerily similar scenario, the American’s put forth an initiative with the United Nations that eventually created a presence in Korea. The resolution called for a “United Nations Temporary Committee on Korea” (just like the American’s did recently with Iraq minus UN approval). The Soviets did not recognize the UN Commission when it landed in Korea and at that point, both factions held seperate elections and drafted seperate constitutions (they didn’t wear whigs and sansculots so no wonder they failed). These ‘established’ the Republic of Korea and the Democractic People’s Republic of Korea.

From this point on, both sides clamored at being the legitimate “authority” for the entire peninsula, making bellicose statements and brandishing their sabers towards one another. Then on June 25, 1950 the North attacked the South. An armistice was concluded upon on July 27, 1953 after 3 million Koreans, 1 million Chinese and 54,000 Americans had been killed (a brief outline as to what occurred during the war can be found here).

Note: this is similar to how the Democrats were the majority in the South as were the Republicans in the North, thereby splitting apart and fighting one another with some intervention by France and Britain. Gladstone’s England originally aided the South but was told by the Northern ambassador, C.F. Adams, that if they continued to aide the Confederacy, the North would view it as an act of war and proceed to “attack” British Trade and Canada. At the same time Lincoln tried to get Napoleon III to assist his cause to crush the South (or liberate or love on or whatever makes him look good apparently). Russia however was the only European power to side with the North during the Civil War and that moral support comes from Czar Alexander II who justified the slaughtering of the Polish (from 1863-64) by using Lincoln’s Logic “We must keep the Motherland together: no rebellion.”

Over the past 50 years, there have been several small skirmishes and assassinations between the two Korean factions; this article (enthusiastically) describes several of these.

Contemporary History (the only stuff neo-con’s remember)

North Korea probably has no real intention to annihilate the planet, South Korea or the American West Coast. They merely want to be recognized as a Power (with a capital P) and are doing what they think is necessary to get that recognition. Whether it is for the free itinerary delivered yearly by State Departments that comes with the territory of having The Bomb or being invited to more Buddahmas parties, Premiere Kim has his sights set on bi-lateral talks with the American State.

This is where the White House and Pentagon fulfill the fable: “Pride comes before a fall.” Rather than sitting down face to face to fill out the membership forms and exchange secret hand shakes, the Hawks (neo-cons) are now setting in place a “Cuba-lite” trade embargo. This in an of itself could be economically disastrous for North Korea as shown by the decade-long embargo on Iraq and the 40 year embargo on Cuba and cause for more desperation on the part of Kims Kids. Remember, in the eyes of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Farah, O’Reilly, Peikoff & Sullivan, the only State allowed to build and use nuclear devices is America or its buddies (Israel, Britain and… well no one else because of the Iraqi invasion).

Apparently the Chinese State is not too keen on the idea of a nuclear North Korea either, especially since the Chinese can read between the lines: the Pentagon will not budge and may in fact act sometime soon. Similarly it appears the Russians are expecting North Korea to attempt other backdoor schemes into the elite Dr. Strangelove Club.

However, this blogger doubts that no matter how Turgidson the American military is, they would not partake in a full out invasion of North Korea, for the reasons listed here. Though, seeing the intelligence and education levels of the American populace, one wonders if renaming the 9-11 hijackers with “Yamazuli” and “Wangtofu” might spur them on for another “acceptable” war — after all, Koreans have slanted eyes, yellow skin and eat flied lice.

You may have heard the term “strawman” used in a debate at one point or another, what it means is this:

Someone misrepresents a position, usually to make it easier to attack, and then proceeds to tear apart (knock down) the new (strawman) position. Then they proclaim that the original position is flawed and declare victory, thus failing to deal with the actual position.

It can be a combination of fallacies as well (like non sequitir - does not follow), but in Robert Cringely’s case: a misrepresentation of a position.

His column at PBS this past week focused on the flaw(s) of ‘open-source’ projects, stating:

There are a thousand Open Source projects that get started out of need or fun, are maintained for awhile for fame, then get abandoned because there is no reason to go on. Eventually, the programmers come to understand that “users” are people who yell at you to fix stuff. So Open Source is inherently flawed. It only works because otherwise unknown programmers can get 15 minutes of fame using the Internet as low-barrier entry into introducing their skill to the world. Since they are introverted nobodies, getting a few emails from unknown users that say “good job!” feels great. But in time, most Open Source projects grind to a halt. The ones that survive are projects like Linux and Apache that have substantial involvement by PAID engineers. One could argue, in fact, that the idea of Open Source software being created by volunteers is a misnomer. Even Linus Torvalds is paid by Transmeta to be the God of Linux.

Let me preface my rebuttal by mentioning that Mr. Cringely does not define what ?open-source? is, so therefore whatever he says about it leaves the reader guessing what it could be. It also allows Mr. Cringely to create a strawman from which he can heave sticks and stones at.

With that said, Mr. Cringely uses a clichéd fame & fortune strawman to represent the self-explanatory term: “open-source.” The term ‘open-source ‘means simply, the code source is open for viewership. There are multiple variations of this concept in which restrictions are placed on who can and cannot view the code as well as what can be modified. He is most probably referring to the GNU variety.

At this point I should point out that Mr. Cringely failed to do his homework. Microsoft for instance has had a “Shared-Source” program by which various State agencies, Universities and large corporations are allowed to review the code source of various products, modify and implement these changes without paying Microsoft royalties (the average Joe Blow can now too).

Microsoft continues to modify, simplify and streamline this program. For instance, last month (March) they released a new license called the “ASP .Net Starter Kit License” -

Under the licensing terms, developers and users are permitted to download the ASP .Net Starter Kit source code for free, to develop on and around the code and redistribute it, commercially or internally, without paying Microsoft any royalties.

Feel free to read the new license yourself and compare it to the popular BSD or GPL licenses.

So will the same conditions that Mr. Cringely applies condescendingly to the ‘open source’ community now apply to Microsoft as well?

Mr. Cringely also states that “most Open Source projects grind to a halt.” He doesn’t produce numbers from SourceForge, Savannah or MozDev. Just conjecture making this blogger wonder if Mr. Cringely knows those entities exist. At the same time, just because a project is not being actively developed does not mean it is a poor or broken solution.

These projects are like any normal businesses, if a programmer is dissatisfied with where a project is moving he can start his own branch. OpenBSD is one of the better known examples of this (branched off from FreeBSD). Similarly if a developer dies or moves on other programmers can pick up where he left off and move on. Cafelog and PHPAdsNew are two good examples of this. Michel Valdrighi went MIA several months back, but that has not stopped the development of Cafelog. Similarly PHPAdsNew is an entirely new development team that began after the TextAds developers moved onto other pastures.

While fame and sometimes fortune could play a role in the open-source community, I have yet to meet any individual in the community that verbalizes either. To be balanced, fame and fortune can play a role in journalism too, as networks and media outlets strive for larger audiences — this is no secret and in fact many of the personalities (talking heads) that appear on TV are brought in specifically to raise ratings and/or appeal to a specific demographic group. I challenge Mr. Cringely to list 10 open-source programmers that go out of their way or are primarily paid because of their celebrity status. To the best of my knowledge both Alan Cox and Linus Torvalds make a concerted effort to stay out of the razzle dazzle limelight that many journalist bask and glow in. In fact, neither one has their own syndicated column on a large public network which needs donations to exist.

Another difference between many widely syndicated American commentators (ex: FOX) and open-source programmers is merit versus sensationalism. To succeed in the open-source world one has to perform at a certain level as his contribution (code) is continually reviewed for flaws. Commentators on the other hand are required at some level to hook an audience, because without an audience the network cannot pay the bills (advertisers want consumers to sell products to).

Mr. Cringely’s argument about certain programmers being paid is besides the point. Yes Transmeta might receive more attention because Linus works there, but the company does not utilize him as a cheerleader, nor do they showcase him like a showgirl, nor do they have him endorse their product lines (I’d be quite interested in seeing the “Linus Approved” signature on a Crusoe box). In fact, if anything the Crusoe is a failure in the minds of many geeks as it failed to perform up to its hype. Plus, if someone did their homework they can find that Linus discusses the merits (pros & cons) of the Itanium and Opteron processors. The same can be said about Alan Cox at Redhat. He does not actively promote or endorse the products the company signing his check makes. And some geeks consider Red Hat to be an inferior distribution compared to Gentoo, Debian, SuSE and Mandrake - yet he does not use his position to proclaim the superiority of Red Hat. The list can go on. At Collectrix we do not use an open-source product because some well-known developer works on it - we do not use Transmeta products currently nor do we plan to in the future. We use what works and what is economically sound (no Microsoft tax).

Mr. Cringely states:

Open Source has value or people wouldn’t still be doing it after 10 plus years. At the same time, complexity breeds inefficiency. Whatever approach you take to the organization of product development some form of the 80/20 rule applies — 80 percent of the available material is useless to you. We can easily just dismiss the creaking parts of Open Source by bunching them in the 80 percent we ignore.

Here is another example of the conjecture I mentioned previously. Mr. Cringely does not specify which projects can have 80 percent of the code ignored. Somehow I doubt that those coding many of the projects have entire sections of code that do nothing more than burn CPU cycles and occupy memory. I’m sure that much of the code can indeed be optimized and compressed, but 80 percent is certainly a very large unsubstantiated number. Can I use the 80/20 rule with journalists too?

Mr. Cringely continues with,

“But ignoring them does not make those parts go away, and here is where we’ll find Open Source’s vulnerability. There is this idea (I’ve written it myself) that Microsoft, for example, can’t compete with Open Source because you can’t compete with a product that has no profit Motive, and can’t out-market a product that has no marketing budget or plan. But Microsoft could still beat Open Source simply by subverting it.”

Just like ignoring journalists does not make them go away (a truism). There are many ways you can still compete with open-source projects. You can make a better product than the competing offerings (like Office XP was to OpenOffice or WordPerfect Suite), you can find a niche market that is willing to purchase your product (like blogging software from Radio, pMachine or Movable Type), advertise and market your product to individuals unaware of alternatives (this occurs quite a bit) or you could simply make “open-source” illegal (which Microsoft has attempted and continues to do).

Mr. Cringely states,

“It is possible to hijack an Open Source project since any Open Source team will automatically bend itself around the party doing the most work. What I find most interesting, however, is applying varying motives to the hijacking. What if Microsoft, for example, suddenly started devoting a lot of resources to Open Source development? They could throw a team at all the key projects. But why would they do that? Well, IBM is already doing it. IBM has hired most of the Apache team. IBM has some major pull on what work gets done and does not get done. In some cases, it is frustrating, and other cases not. However, everybody just accepts it because IBM is paying the bills and people can do what they love. Is there an official IBM party line at Apache? Absolutely not! It is just that none of the Apache developers will talk negatively about IBM, even those that do not work at IBM. So in this sense, it already appears that Apache has been hijacked.”

At the beginning of my rebuttal I mentioned how Mr. Cringely failed to produce a definition of what “open-source” is, so in turn he had the ability to obfuscate and otherwise create strawmen to throw rocks at. The source code is still available regardless as to the actions of IBM. What exactly are they hijacking? IBM can certainly influence the code and even dictate what they want to have implemented, they cannot however control developers and programmers. If one of the developers is unsatisfied he can simply create a new project with the available source (that never disappeared). However, it is in IBM’s interest to keep the developers and programmers satisfied because replacing experienced talent is both costly and time consuming.

In fact, here is a link to several servers by which anyone can obtain the source code for Apache. If by some freak occurrence IBM manages to shut down those servers, I will personally load a copy of both the 1.3.x and 2.0.x sourcecode and mirror them from my blog.

Continuing Mr. Cringely states,

“Now consider an evil alternative. Say Microsoft assigns a team of programmers to help some Open Source project. Maybe this time that team isn’t specifically identified as being from Microsoft, perhaps it is a Microsoft-funded startup. This team, because of its vitality and funding, quickly takes control of the project and goes running off in some particular technical direction, taking with it the rest of the suddenly re-energized team. But what if this new direction is not a good one? Even worse, what if the team gets far down that lonely road only to have Microsoft suddenly pull the plug, removing its team from the game? Would the project survive? It is hard to say, but if I was Microsoft that’s how I would compete with Open Source, by subverting it. Microsoft can’t compete on quality or price. And subversion — since it is subverting a not-for-profit venture — breaks no laws, nasty as it is.”

Again, Microsoft’s new license discredits this possibility as their shared-source initiative is much more lax and less restrictive than ever before. And once more, Mr. Cringely misses the point regarding GNU “open-source” - the code never disappears from outside of Redmond so therefore anyone can still work on the project outside of Microsoft’s purview, that’s the way it has always worked I don’t see how it would somehow stop once Microsoft started funding “open-source” projects.

Additionally, Mr. Cringely has a distorted view regarding the makeup of “open-source” teams. They are all different and many can operate autonomously, simply because no one “controls” the code. There is no building to lay siege upon or company to buyout, the code is available to anyone. In fact, Microsoft could start their own version of Linux or MySQL. They could hire all the developers (I doubt many of them would take the job offer) and then proceed to do nothing with the project. What they are unable to purchase however is the source code which exists on thousands of computers around the globe.

Mr. Cringely ends with,

“So Open Source is not especially altruistic, just ego-driven. It can be hijacked and it can be subverted. And a concerted effort at subversion taking advantage of developer fatigue could be devastating. This hardly seems a movement, then, that can be relied on, yet millions do.”

The only person that can tell whether or not ones actions is altruistic is the individual. I don’t know if the reason Mr. Cringely writes his columns is out of “altruism” or “ego-driven.” Only he knows that. He failed to convince me that:

1) He has spoken to Linus or Alan to find out why they code
2) Knows anyone that is active in the GNU open-source community
3) Done research regarding what “open-source” projects are developed actively, the efficiency of the code and the number of individuals and companies that use the code
4) He can differentiate between “open-source” code and “closed-source” code
5) Asked Apache developers why they continue to live in their cruel and slave-like conditions at IBM - apparently they don’t choose to work there
6) How “open-source” is developed, aside from “15 Minutes of fame”
7) Shown who these superstar celebrity-like programmers are and the digital mansions they now reside in

In short, Mr. Cringely failed to convince me of anything other than he knows zilch about GNU “open-source” and the reasons why companies and individuals use it and modify it daily.

Several months ago I stumbled across this great article by Todd Woody called: The Race to Kill Kazaa. You probably have used some sort of peer-to-peer file sharing program since the advent of Napster – and there are literally dozens of similar programs.

In Mr. Woody’s story he mentions a new legitimate service that Sharman Networks (the creator of Kazaa) has developed and is now deploying: Altnet. I tried to access the Altnet website after reading the article but could not access it (nor could I a few weeks later). However, I did end up finding this summary off of Kazaa’s site.

A couple weeks ago I decided to take a peek once more and was pleasantly surprised with a living, breathing website. Here’s the skinny: you sign up, pay $99 and they help you distribute your content via two separate channels, both of which use the Kazaa P2P software. All of your work is “protected” with the latest contentious acronym: DRM – Digital Rights Management. It’s actually not too shabby of a deal as trying to replicate your software or music is next-to-impossible (though I’m sure there are hackers trying). Additionally, you have access to tens of millions of Kazaa users (not to mention all the ‘lite’ versions).

If you aren’t familiar with how the Kazaa software works, here is a quick tutorial. First, it has a search tool which operates just like a search engine. Their programmers figured out a way (primarily though Supernodes) to index Petabytes (1,000,000 GB) worth of data for instant (no more than 20-30 seconds) results. Additionally, the query tool is broken down by type: Audio, Video, Images, Documents, Software and Playlists.

So if you are in the mood to watch Dr. Strangelove all you do is: load up Kazaa, go to the Search menu, click on Video and then type in Dr. Strangelove. I’m pretty sure you can figure out the rest of the necessary requirements needed to complete a transfer (if I didn’t say the actual words I can’t be held liable).

Altnet utilizes credit card payments and payments charged to your phone bill (I guess they assume everyone has a phone, MacGyver didn’t). Altnet also created an easy-to-understand slide-show explanation that can be viewed here.

So how does this help you launch your Polka career? Well, I am actually going to try and convince my musically inclined sisters to publish their material with Altnet. $99 is could be a lot cheaper in the long run if you compare it to competing products (though it also depends on the target demographics, disposable income, etc.).

For instance, using Text Ads from Overture (Lycos, Alta Vista, FAST, etc.) will cost you at a minimum of $.05/click (depending on what the key word is it can cost up to several dollars – guess what their competitors do all day: click on that keyword to rack up charges). Google and Yahoo have implemented similar services on their search engines (quite successfully too, Google recently acquired Applied Semantics - which I discussed briefly here).

Here is the math: you purchase the key phrase, Big Band Music, (the user has to type that exact phrase in) at Overture for $.05/click. Note: you might see the acronym PPC, it stands for PayPer Click just like PPV does for PayPer View.

For the same price of having your product listed and deployed by Altnet, your TextAd at Overture can be clicked on 20,000 times. That does not mean 20,000 individuals will purchase your product. To be conservative, just use a 1% conversion ratio (note: this assumes that your website looks decent, is navigable and there is a market for your product or service).

At 1% you receive 200 customers. You sell your product, The Best of Big Band Wanna-be’s, for $10. So that translates to $2000.

Costs on the other hand include: domain registration ($9/year), web hosting (~$50/year), web design ($100 once) and of course that $99 PPC fee. But you are still making a profit.

A few caveats however. First, can you generate 20,000 visitors to your site? Next, will 200 people buy your product for $10? Can you get that keyword for $.05/click? If you are actively promoting both your band and your web site you probably could generate the traffic and if you brainstorm enough you can think of keywords potential customers might use (Overture has keyword lists which detail what words were used each month along with companies who have purchased keywords, how much they bought the word for, etc.).

Altnet utilizes a similar keyword scheme called TopSearch. I found a translation to their poorly worded commentary used in their slide shows: Content owners can self-publish their content to the Kazaa Media Desktop by paying fees of $99 and up to Altnet. The content creators can place whatever restrictions they prefer on the use of the copyrighted work using the Altnet software, and can ensure that their works are placed at the top of user searches by buying placement through Altnet’s TopSearch. The TopSearch applet interfaces to the Kazaa desktop and places the approved searches on top of other, non-copyrighted files.

The same questions apply here as the Overture scenario: Is there an audience for your product? Are they willing to purchase your product? Additionally you should ask yourself: what is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Fortunately it seems that there are at least individuals willing to pay for copy-protected products off of Kazaa – Altnet is reporting that approximately 18 million ‘copy-protected’ products have been sold (I assume in the past year as that is how long the service has been available for).

Conclusions

Looking at both the Overture and Altnet solution it appears that with either one you will need a website (or a blog). As far as which system will offer a better conversion ratio, that depends on your product. If you are trying to sell a video or song I would personally go with Altnet (Kazaa), as many more potential clients with disposable incomes use this venue (of course it also depends on what genre your video or song is, if it’s Oldies or music from the Rat Pack, you might not have an audience left that is still alive – aside from me).

By optimizing your website properly, it could appear higher in search engines thus alleviating the need to use PayPer Click schemes from Overture or Google. Assuming you do that you can focus your advertising energies with Altnet.

I personally would like to know more as to how Altnet has worked out DRM technology for software, documents and images. I understand how they can prevent reproduction of music and videos, but the other three seem a bit more difficult, especially documents and software.

If you are uneasy about using Altnet at first, try a ‘free’ alternative built into Kazaa called Kreate. This allows you to customize the keywords in files that you are sharing. Once you have renamed your files (ex: Big Band Music can use keywords like – jazz, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, rat pack, etc.) you can see just how popular your file is (you can see who is downloading and what they are downloading from you). If you find that your files are indeed very popular then trying out the Altnet solution might prove to be a successful strategy.

If you try out any of the above strategies, whether it is TextAds, Altnet or Kreate, feel free to keep me informed on their progress and successes.

In my freshman year of highschool (many many moons ago), one of the organizations I was involved with worked in conjunction with Apple to facilitate PDA’s, more specifically Newtons, in the classroom. By in large, the project was a colossal failure, like many public education initiatives. The select few that had Newtons were both teased and envied upon by other students, creating unnecessary rifts and otherwise straining student relationships. It would be like giving 10% of the student body a Gameboy and telling everyone to go about their day.

In the classrooms those with them (myself included) would dink around, play Tetris or send “I think Jessica is hot” and “I’d tap that” messages to one another. The teachers weren’t too thrilled because most of the students that used them didn’t actually bother to take notes with them (the primary reason for having the Newton in the first place). By the end of the school year few, if any, took them to school. Besides the distracting games and applications the Newton itself was unpleasant to use:

- It was bulky. If you are familiar with the graphing calculators from TI or HP, it was about twice that total volume.
- It bled batteries. Fortunately for the school Apple had the foresight to place rechargeable batteries in the Newton’s (on some of them at least). Leaving the Newton on for any extended period of time or using the backlit display (that was really cool) was not in your best interest if you disliked down-time.
- Terrible handwriting recognition. This, despite the advances in Apple’s Skunk works R&D facility (the cafeteria) and despite the supposed ?customization? level for each user (each user is prompted with several screens with little X’s you tapped and despite your best efforts somehow the OS generated results similar to those poorly aimed guns at arcades).

By in large the Newton experiment failed. By the end of the next year the school (or Apple or both) canceled that PDA program - at around the same time Apple (Steve Jobs) also canceled further production of the product itself.

Since then, I have never actually bothered to purchase a PDA, despite several friends and family members owning them. Last year I worked for a software firm and among other tasks was given the instructions to rigorously test their software on a couple of PalmOS-based PDAs.

Palm has had an interesting history; they came out of nowhere (well, originally the US Robotics Pilot product) and won accolades based upon their slim design, easy-to-use and accurate Graffiti system as well as longer battery life. With the Newton it seems Apple tried to shove all the amenities of a desktop into something the size of a small book, including a sound card. Several years ago Palm started licensing it’s Operating System (like Apple did for 3 years) and it has since then fallen in disrepair (somewhat)

They hit that wall so many successful start-ups do and are suffering a similar problem that Sun in having a clear definitive vision for future products. Last Christmas in fact, I purchased a Palm m105 for my mom (my older sister actually uses it) and compared its feature set with competing products - afterwards. What enticed me to purchase it: its low price tag and the fact that the Victorian Holiday was the very next day.

Anyways, feature wise most of the competition had color-based screens, more RAM, faster processors and were often even cheaper than Palm’s lineup - a continuing trend.

Which brings me to the Zaurus, a newer Linux-based PDA a friend of mine is now a semi-expert with - his synopsis is as follows:

In the second year of his reign, King Sharp had dreams; his mind was troubled and he could not sleep. So the king summoned the mathematicians, engineers, source-morphers and astronomers to tell him what to do, they replied: Find the Zaurus.