24-hour drive-thru

Sunday, August 18, 2002

LAWSUIT CHARGES PENTIUM 4 IS NO BETTER THAN AMD ATHLON OR PENTIUM III
Intel, PC Makers Sued Over P4 Performance
A small group of PC owners has quietly filed a class action lawsuit against Intel, Gateway, and Hewlett-Packard alleging the companies misled them into believing the Pentium 4 was a superior processor to Intel's own Pentium III and AMD's Athlon.
The complaint--Neubauer et al v. Intel et al--was filed June 3 in the Third Judicial Circuit in Madison County, Illinois. The case is in limbo awaiting a ruling on whether it belongs in a state or federal jurisdiction, and has not yet achieved class action status. It came to light this week after a copy of the complaint was sent to PCWorld.com anonymously.
The plaintiffs claim the companies deceived the public when marketing Intel's flagship processor and allege that it is "the material fact that there is no benefit to consumers in choosing the Pentium 4 over the Pentium III." The complaint alleges that "the Pentium 4 is less powerful and slower than the Pentium III and/or the AMD Athlon." From Slashdot | Discuss
12:03:58 PM comment []

"LIVING IN THE BLOG-OSPHERE."
Steven Levy of Newsweek writes:
Zack, with his 28 readers a day, isn’t part of Weblogging’s “A list,” an intricate mutual back-scratch society that includes clever curmudgeons, high-tech avatars and angry ankle-biters who ferociously snipe at traditional media. He is, however, a truer representative of the blogging boom that’s making people into instant publishers, newshounds and public diarists—and helping the Internet make good on some of its heady promises of personal empowerment.
Indeed, with a new blogger joining the crowd every 40 seconds, Weblogs are officially the explosion du jour on the Net. Most estimates peg the current number at a half a million Weblogs, depending on how you define the term, but “my suspicion is that there are even more,” says Cameron Marlow, an MIT graduate student who’s studying the phenomenon.
That’s a startling contention, especially since most coverage of the so-called Blog-osphere (the name given to the collective alternate universe consisting of all active Weblogs) seems to focus on A-listers like pundit Andrew Sullivan, gadfly Mickey Kaus or former MTV veejay Adam Curry. Even the various computer-generated lists that purport to probe what’s happening on Planet Blog don’t go beyond the 10,000 or so most popular ones, rated by the numbers of links to and from the various sites. But the bigger story is what’s happening on the 490,000-plus Weblogs that few people see: they make up the vast dark matter of the Blog-osphere, and portend a future where blogs behave like such previous breakthroughs as desktop publishing, presentation software and instant messaging, and become a nonremarkable part of our lives.
Read the rest of the article here.
Dave comments on the article: "Weblogs are a realization of the intention of the Web, to make publishing accessible and inexpensive for anyone with a computer who wants to participate."
11:55:52 AM comment []

Saturday, August 17, 2002

PALLADIUM ANALYZED.
"Palladium and the TCPA." Security expert Bruce Schneier analyzes Microsoft's Palladium (Pd) proposal: "There's a lot of good stuff in Pd, and a lot I like about it. There's also a lot I don't like, and am scared of. My fear is that Pd will lead us down a road where our computers are no longer our computers, but are instead owned by a variety of factions and companies all looking for a piece of our wallet. To the extent that Pd facilitates that reality, it's bad for society. I don't mind companies selling, renting, or licensing things to me, but the loss of the power, reach, and flexibility of the computer is too great a price to pay."
2:00:57 PM comment []

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER LANGUAGE GENE.
"Language Gene Is Traced to Emergence of Humans."
A study of the genomes of people and chimpanzees has yielded a deep insight into the origin of language, one of the most distinctive human attributes and a critical step in human evolution.
The analysis indicates that language, on the evolutionary time scale, is a very recent development, having evolved only in the last 100,000 years or so.
The finding supports a novel theory advanced by Dr. Richard Klein, an archaeologist at Stanford University, who argues that the emergence of behaviorally modern humans about 50,000 years ago was set off by a major genetic change, most probably the acquisition of language.
...
The gene came to light through studies of a large London family, well known to linguists, 14 of whose 29 members are incapable of articulate speech but are otherwise mostly normal.
...
The gene would help] account for the sudden appearance of novel behaviors 50,000 years ago, including art, ornamentation and long distance trade. Human remains from this period are physically indistinguishable from those of 100,000 years ago, leading Dr. Klein to propose that some genetically based cognitive change must have prompted the new behaviors. The only change of sufficient magnitude, in his view, is acquisition of language.
1:42:35 PM comment []

Friday, August 16, 2002

BIG RECORD LABELS SUE BIG ISPS OVER MUSIC BOOTLEGGING.
"Record Labels Sue Internet Providers over Site." Major record companies are suing the biggest American Internet service providers to force the ISPs to block access to a Chinese Web site which allegedly carries bootleg music. Plaintiffs include business units of Vivendi, Sony, RCA and AOL Time Warner; defendants include units of AT&T, Cable & Wireless, Sprint, and WorldCom. The site in question is Listen4ever.com From Slashdot | Discuss
5:56:11 PM    comment []

LOSING FACE.
"And after Baghdad, Delaware!" Patrick comments on today's report in the New York Times that leading Republicans are criticizing President Bush's plans for an Iraqi invasion. He notes that a key Bush advisor defended the plans on the grounds that Bush would lose credibility if he DIDN'T invade Iraq after all his big talk. Patrick says, "In other words, we're no longer arguing the merits of a "pre-emptive" strike against Iraq. Rather, we're arguing that we have to do it because our credibility depends on it. My own carefully-considered, weighing-both-sides opinion: Uh oh."
11:22:45 AM    comment []

DOGS AND CATS LAYING DOWN TOGETHER!
"Next, 'Biblical molestation' isn't really molestation, either." Patrick writes: "Political aptitude test! You are Jeb Bush, governor of a state whose child welfare agency has recently driven into the ditch. Children in the state foster care system have died of mistreatment and neglect--or vanished entirely. The Bush reputation for hard-nosed competence is at risk! What do you do?"
The answer: appoint a guy to head up the department who wrote an essay defending "Biblical spanking" that raises bruises or welts, He also said Christians shouldn't marry non-Christians, wives should view working outside the home as "bondage," and more.
"DCF leader: It's OK to spank." The nominee, Jerry Regier, also urged Christians to take "whatever actions we can, within our biblical and constitutional limits, to realign county, state, and federal legislation regarding family issues in order to make it conform to the Bible's view of reality and morality," according to the Miami Herald.
10:53:58 AM    comment []

LETTER TO LILEKS.
An e-mail I just sent to James Lileks (Lileks links here and here.
From: Mitch Wagner
To: James Lileks
Date: Friday, August 16, 2002, 10:17:18 AM
Subject: First editions of "regrettable food"?
I'm interested in getting a signed first edition of "Regrettable Food" as a gift for a friend who collects first editions. Is such a thing available? What would you charge for it? Please bear in mind when you quote a price that I like the guy a lot but it's not like he donated a kidney to me or something.
Mitch Wagner
10:23:03 AM    comment []

DOWNLOADS ARE GOOD FOR THE MUSIC BIZ, SAYS ANALYST.
"MP3s are good for music biz - Forrester." The Register reports:
Forrester Research has surveyed a thousand music customers and concludes that MP3 downloads are good for the music business.
Twenty per cent of those surveyed - two groups Forrester describes as "music lovers and music learners" - buy 36 per cent of CDs, and these enthusiastic downloaders said MP3s had no effect on their CD purchasing.
"The idea that digital music is responsible for slump is completely false," concludes Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff.
The news will dismay the entertainment pigopolies*.
Forrester attributes the 15 per cent slump in music sales to a number of other factors. The economy is in a slump, there's much more competition from games, from DVDs - which saw an 80 per cent rise in sales - and most interestingly - from the "limited playlists" rotated by commercial US radio stations.
Forrester notes that one company, ClearChannel controls 60 per cent of radio, so new artists don't get the opportunity to be heard.
The headline and lede of the article say that filesharing is GOOD for the music biz, but the story merely says that Forrester was unable to prove that filesharing is BAD for the music biz, which are similar but very different statements.
Last year, music sales were down only five percent, even as the music industry itself claimed that five times as much music was traded illegally as bought legally, according to a recent speech by Lawrence Lessig, an intellectual property lawyer who's done a LOT of stumping on the subject of reining in IP law abuse. He notes that there could be several factors causing the slump, including a recession. His conclusion: even if the five percent slump were entirely caused by filesharing, that's insufficient economic harm to justify rewriting the entire copyright code and requiring the entire PC and electronics industry - with ten times the revenue of the entertainment industry - to redesign all their products with copyright protection as the primary design criterion.
A recording of Lessig's talk is here. It's a very interesting and informative overview of the copyright issue, spelling out the basics in terms a layman can understand. Lessig is a lively and interesting speaker, and his voice here is synchronized with a slide show. The talk is rather long for a computer presentation, however - about a half-hour, I think, although I wasn't timing it - and a rather big download, about 8 MB. Still, it's a worthwhile use of time and computer resources.
10:11:06 AM    comment []

SUN WANTS TO TAKE COMMAND OF LINUX
"Multiple wars raging in Linux land." InfoWorld writes, "Sun Microsystems roiled the competitive waters of the Linux world this week with top company officials making it clear the Linux community sorely needs a 'benevolent dictator' to usher it to the next level where it can more effectively compete against Microsoft."
9:36:08 AM    comment []

LINUX ACTIVIST QUITTING HP
"HP's Linux icon chooses politics over paycheck." Bruce Perens, a leader of open source and senior strategist with HP's Linux software group, plans to quit HP to focus on political activism.

Although HP has benefited from his Linux expertise, the company has been putting pressure on Perens to mute his activist tendencies. In late July, the Palo Alto, Calif., company forced Perens to cancel a demonstration he had planned that would have put him at risk of violating the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). His boss, Martin Fink defended the decision, and noted that he "didn't want any of his employees going to jail."

Perens was to reveal the recipe for a software program that would allow a DVD (digital video/versatile disc) player to circumvent some digital rights management (DRM) technology. Such a demonstration is prohibited under the DMCA, Perens said. He had aimed to show how trivial most DRM technologies are.

After Perens leaves HP, he will follow through with that demonstration, he said.

2:44:01 AM    comment []

VENDORS SEE DESKTOP LINUX OPPORTUNITIES.
"LinuxWorld Expo: Red Hat preparing desktop Linux." Sun and Red Hat are readying versions of Linux for the desktop. Linux hasn't gotten much desktop adoption to date, but the two vendors see an opportunity as customers are getting ticked off at Microsoft.

2:32:40 AM    comment []

That's a honkin' big server farm.
"Google gives testimony to Linux scalability." Google is using 15,000 Linux servers to power its search engine. That's fifteen THOUSAND individual computers. They get queries every day from Antarctica, and they probably get queries from the International Space Station too, says co-founder Sergey Brin.

2:18:20 AM    comment []

Thursday, August 15, 2002

Hello, world.

This will be a mirror of the content of my weblog 24-hour drive-thru. I've been using Blogger as the tool for publishing drive-thru, and now I'm giving Userland Radio a try. Thanks to John Robb, a honcho at Userland, the company which makes Radio. John recommended I give Radio another try after having some problems with it and abandoning it a few months ago. Thanks also to Lawrence Lee, a tech support wizard at Userland, who helped me work through some problems installing the software.

(Apparently, I had a mis-configured the firewall Zone Alarm Pro which was causing conflicts with Radio; once I uninstalled ZAP everything worked fine - I should note that thousands of people have found Radio easy to install and use. My system is configured oddly - just because I had problems with Radio doesn't mean you will.)

About me: In my 13 years in the computer trade press, I've covered almost every subject in information technology, including the Internet, e-commerce, Microsoft, and software development. I started covering the Internet full-time in 1994, and did extensive reporting on the Internet prior to that, starting at the very beginning of my computer trade press career in 1989. I've been a staff writer for InternetWeek, Computerworld, InformationWeek and Open Systems Today, and done freelance writing for Network World, BtoB magazine, SDTimes and others.

My resume and clips are here.

Before I got into the computer trade press, I was a community newspaper reporter, covering town government, police, a couple of murders, and what seemed like a million fires and car accidents for the New Jersey Herald.

I now live in San Diego with my wife and two useless cats. I read a lot (now reading "The Years of Rice and Salt," by Kim Stanley Robinson; just finished "Amnesia Moon" by the excellent Jonathan Lethem), watch some TV (favorite new show: "Monk," about an obsessive-compulsive private detective, starring the excellent Tony Shalhoub), and spend a lot of time at the computer.
So welcome to my blog. I'll continue to update it in its original location, this site is, for now, just an experiment to see how I like Radio. The original location has the purty pikchurs and logo and layout, but BOTH locations will have the same text and links, and the text and links are the good stuff, anyway.
11:50:08 PM comment []

By Mitch Wagner

"I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes." - Henry David Thoreau

August 2002

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