Digital-Lifestyles

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Changes to business digitisation brings

  • EU/Microsoft Mediaplayer Decision Due Today

    The EU’s National Antitrust Exports Advisory meets to day to give their decision on one of their longest running cases – Microsoft’s bundling of multimedia applications in their Windows operating system.

    This is the first of an expected two meetings – Microsoft will probably be given a deadline today, and will be expected to provide a “lightweight” version of Windows without its bundled applications, making it easier for other software manufacturers to include their own multimedia players and browsers when conusmers purchase a new PC. We would be very surprised if MS Europe didn’t already have a “core OS and applications only” version of Windows ready to go. Since this case have been going on since Windows 95, they’ve had plenty of time as there have been at least five major versions released since then.

    The current solution for MS, the “Set Program Access and Defaults” tool, included in the last service packs, was introduced as a result of legal action, but does not tackle the controversial issue of software bundling.

    The second meeting will be on the 22nd of March, where we predict that Microsoft will get hit up for a couple of hundred million euros.

    Of course, Microsoft will appeal against both measures, prolonging the case even further – but perhaps next year you’ll be able to buy a PC with RealPlayer instead of Windows Media as the default multimedia application.

    The EU’s Antitrust Site

    Watching Microsoft Like A Hawk

  • Nintendo Uses Patent to Crack Down on ROM Copying

    There’s been some confusion in how this story is being reported, so we thought we’d go over the key points.

    Nintendo’s patent applies to emulating ROM-based games consoles, such as the N64 and GBA in other systems. You’ll no doubt have seen this before when you’ve played Mario Kart on the way over to New York from London: obviously there aren’t a hundred SNES consoles behind the cargo hold (if there were, it might explain why they’re so pricey on eBay).

    From the patent document: “A software emulator for emulating a handheld video game platform such as GAME BOY.RTM., GAME BOY COLOR.RTM. and/or GAME BOY ADVANCE.RTM. on a low-capability target platform (e.g., a seat-back display for airline or train use, a personal digital assistant, a cell phone).”

    The patent can be used to prevent other people making commercial use of a similar system – such as Firestorm gbaZ, and that’s exactly what’s just happened. Nintendo contacted Kyle Poole, responsible for the emulator and demanded that he no longer promote, market, use or distribute the Firestorm gbaZ or pursuse any further emulation of any Nintendo system. Nintendo’s key is that “All of the software for Nintendo’s proprietary video game systems is distributed in a tangible medium, sold through retail outlets. None of the games are distributed in digital versions on the Internet. Any such distribution, or promotion of any such distribution, is illegal.”

    Crimson Fire – home of the Tapwave Emulator

    Slashdot on the affair

  • Gracenote CD Database Raises US$13 Million in Venture Capital Funding

    A few years ago, it was just a convenient tool to show what tracks you were playing on your CD – but now Gracenote is an important tool for people who listen to music on their PC or iPod, whether they know it or not.

    We can think of few tools which have gone from a nice feature to being absolutely essential – the rise of personal digital music players has made online CD databases absolutely essential if you want to rip your 1000+ collection of disks and still stay sane.

    Many users of Gracenote don’t even know they’re accessing the service – most applicatons just nip off and download the data without them realising. More recent changes to Gracenote have meant that applications must be licensed to use the database, and must display the Gracenote logo when they access the service.

    The company estimate that 150 million units of Gracenote-capable software were shipped in 2003, and that this will rise to 200 million in 2004.

    Gracenote

    FreeDB – an open source CD database

  • Microsoft, AOL, Earthlink, Yahoo Gang Up on Poor Defenseless Spammers

    Only two months after the US can-spam act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing), Microsoft, AOL, Earthlink and Yahoo have taken legal action against at least a hundred of the individuals that have been clogging up your inbox with all those offers of loans, cheap medicines and naked men, women and livestock.

    The can-spam act made many of the spammers techniques illegal – such as sending bulk email by the misuse of open proxies (basically a relay for sending mail), using false email addresses and false unsubscribe options.

    The plaintiffs aren’t entirely sure who they are prosecuting – many of the defendants are as yet unnamed, but they’re confident they’ll know who they are by the time the cases get to court.

    This is a tiny, tiny step in the progress towards reducing the amount of spam that is sent worldwide every day. This legal action from MS et al will do little to stop the vast tidal wave of spam from around the world – only when changes are made to email software and mail transmission can we look forward to seeing any reduction.

    Microsoft’s Coordinated Spam Reduction Initiative (CSRI)

    BBC Q&A on Spam

    Spam filters on ZDNet

  • .mobile domain on the way?

    There has not been a new Top Level Domains (TLD) since .name came out a couple of years ago. Even that ended up as a bit of a damp squib. But now a collection of nine corporations, have applied to ICANN (Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers) to form a new domain. Their proposal, .mobile is to be used for mobile applications/devices and will be filed by 15 March 2004.

    Nokia is leading some pretty heavyweight companies from the worlds of computing, software, tech manufacturers, mobile phone makers and cellular service providers. The list; Microsoft Corp., Nokia, Vodafone, 3, GSM Association, HP, Orange, Samsung Electronics Co, Ltd. and Sun Microsystems is not only from a diverse range of areas, but are feature companies that normally do not really like each other, like, Nokia, Microsoft and Sun.

    If the current application is successful, the current estimate is to have the first names available during the second half of 2005. An independent, separate organisation would run the registry.

    This is not the first time Nokia has tried to get some new TLD’s introduced, back in October 2000 they requested, the following form ICANN:-

    .mas
    .max
    .mid
    .mis
    .mobile
    .mobi
    .now
    .own

    At the time they came out with a press release, which sadly they have removed from their site, but thanks to archive.org (nee Way Back Machine), we can find the original release. (Interesting to see their projections for mobile handset, overtaking computers for IP access by 2003). The 2000 applications, clearly was not a success.

    UMTS forum has been a big supporter for a Mobile TLD, or M-TLD, as they prefer to call it, and two years ago (March, 2002) they published the findings of ‘Benefits and Drawbacks of Introducing a Dedicated Top Level Domain Within the UMTS Environment’ prepared by Theron business consulting. The Executive Summary –  is available to the public, the detail (TOC) is not without registration. The estimated cost of applying for and running the was estimated at less than 3m Euro.

    The purpose of the .mobile domain, beyond opening up the domain market to another potential name grab, is not immediately clear. So after reading between various lines and carrying out further research we’ve concluded the following.

    It appears that the idea is to limit the people who can get a .mobile name, and by doing this, they hope to ensure that, at the very least, the content is formatted for mobile devices and the service has a level of QoS (Quality of Service). If this will turn out to be a mobile walled garden, a mini-internet, only for mobile devices is not clear. Will .mobile domain only be available for use BY mobile devices, or are people to put their mobile-friendly content on .mobile domains?

    Some quotes by the founding partner companies appear to support the walled garden theory.

    “We expect that by leveraging the technologies of the Internet, appropriately scaled for mobile scenarios, this initiative will provide the ease of use and efficiency that will significantly fuel mobile Internet usage.”
    Brian Arbogast, corporate vice president of the MSN Communications Platform at Microsoft

    “Creating a unique, standard platform for a mobile Internet environment is a natural next step to enabling new and compelling services for businesses and consumers,”
    Felice Swapp, director of strategic initiatives and business development, HP

    Forcing publishers to create a whole separate sites to operate under a .mobile domain appears a very expensive route. We would imagine that it would be a much better to define a standard that can be used with any currently existing domain. ie just serve it from the same domain as before but define Digital-Lifestyles.info/mobile or mobile.Digital-Lifestyles.info as the convention.

    If the mobile phone owners would get a choice between .mobile-internet or Internet is also not clear.

    One things that the mobile industry understand is if each handsets has its own domain name, there are significant issues in maintaining DNS records and monitoring their connection to the Internet – as the phone connect and disconnect so regularly. This lead us to think that they are talking about maintaining a separate DNS system for mobile devices. If they do end up running a separate DNS, Nokia (or their JV company/partners) would become the gatekeeper to and from the mobile world – a very powerful position.

    More details of this are bound to popup over the next few weeks, if anything relevant turns up, we will let you know.

    The mobile Top Level Domain initiative

    Nokia October 2000 application to ICANN

    Theon business consulting

  • EU Passes the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive

    The European Parliament has passed the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive, an anti-piracy law covering media and other copyrighted goods across the entire EU.

    The new law has had an early amendment to restrict civil lawsuits to commercial counterfeiters and pirates such as those selling copied football shirts, CDs and videos. In it’s original form publishers could pursue individuals through the courts for downloading music and other media in good faith, rather like the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

    Civil liberties groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) still argue that the amendment is not enough and that individuals could still be prosecuted as under the new law. Companies are allowed to raid homes, freeze bank accounts and seize property though proposals for custodial sentences were dropped. In the US, organisations such as the RIAA used the DMCA to prosecute file sharers, and resulted in a number of unfortunate legal cases against children.

    Interestingly, the new law was guided through the courts by Janelly Fourtou. By sheer coincidence, her husband is Jean-Rene Fourtou, chief executive of Vivendi Universal.

    The EFF on the new law

  • SCO Round-Up

    SCO is charging companies a licencing fee for using Linux – despite the fact that they don’t offer a distribution of the open source operating system, but instead claim ownership over part of the code used in the kernel.

    • Last week SCO claimed that Computer Associates (CA) had bought a “Linux IP Licence”. This would have been a big win for SCO had it been true: instead CA had actually bought some UnixWare licences from the Canopy Group.
    • Midweek, SCO announced legal action against companies using Linux in their business or websites — these were AutoZone, and Daimler-Chrysler.
    • A leaked memo from SCO stated that they’d considered taking action against Bank of America, whilst another leaked memo refers to a much larger amount of funding from Microsoft than previously thought: US$86 million
    • The the court in Nevada where SCO are pursing their legal claims runs its website on a Linux server. They do not possess a licence.
    • The Judge in the case has now ordered SCO to provide the disputed source code. Part of SCO’s tactic has been to not identify the code portion – as soon as the kernel developers know which part they are laying claim to, the kernel will be rewritten (probably over night) and SCO will have no further claim.
    • SCO lost US$2.25 million in the quarter ending 31st January, against an estimated income of US$20,000 in Linux IP Licenses.

    The key reason we bring you news in this area is because Linux is a fundamental part of many of the devices that Digital Lifestyles readers use now, or will use in the future: the Linux kernel has been extremely successful as an embedded operating system in consumer devices.

    The majority of set-top boxes use a Linux kernel as their operating system, Linux is the core of many phones and PDAs, and PVRs (and PVR-capable cards) are increasingly either Linux-based or feature extensive Linux support. Even your G5 Macintosh running OSX has more than a whiff of the penguin about it, just under that Aqua look and feel. This is because other operating systems are often too flabby to function on the limited hardware available or licensing another operating system can just be too expensive.

    If SCO are successful in their legal claim it will push up the cost of licencing the kernel for use in embedded devices.

    The Halloween X Memo – Microsoft Funding

  • Michael Dell Steps Down as CEO

    Kevin Rollins, Dell’s president and chief operating officer has taken over the role of CEO from Michael Dell. Rollins joined the company as second in command in 1996, from Bains and Co.

    Last year, Dell announced plans to launch new consumer products including televisions and its own personal music player.

    Dell founded the company in 1984 with US$1,000 – last year Dell’s sales were worth $41.4bn. Shares in the company closed down slightly on the announcement, but the news is not expected to damage the company’s share price in the long term.

    Dell on the news

  • SCO Sues First Customers; Judge Orders SCO to Submit Disputed Code

    SCO named the recipients of their first two lawsuits in their mammoth online conference call yesterday: AutoZone and Daimler Chrysler. They are being targeted as they run Linux – and of course SCO claims ownership to part of the source code of the Linux kernel, having found its way there from UNIX System V.

    Meanwhile, in Utah, SCO have been ordered to identify all lines of Linux source code that it claims ownership of. Once the disputed code is identified it is expected that Linux kernel programmers will simply remove and rewrite the offending sections immediately, regardless of who the code belongs to – just to be safe.

    Show me the code!

    AutoZone

  • SCO Delays Promised Tuesday Lawsuit

    Citing the need for more time, SCO did not begin promised legal action against the two companies they wish to prosecute for using intellectual property that SCO claims ownership of.

    SCO, in a move entirely fitting with how they’ve handled the Linux/Unix source code issue to date, refuse to even name their targets until they are ready. However, the company has already stated that the soon-to-be recipients of the lawsuits are SCO license holders – this move to sue its own paying customers has raised eyebrows, and not for the first time.

    The Santa Cruz Operation’s legal behaviour has been seen as increasingly erratic, with several volte face moves of late – and in fact the entire structure of their claim has changed. Originally a dispute over trade secrets, and claiming ownership of millions of lines of code, SCO have revised their claim to a copyright case over a small amount of code. Code over which IBM claims ownership.

    SCO promises to name the recipients of its lawsuits on Wednesday – we’ll cover it here.

    SCO’s live webcast — Wednesday, March 3, 2004 – 9:00 AM MT

    News.com

    Slashdot