Monthly Archives: May 2006

Quote of the day

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The attractively simple thesis of The Change Function is that most technology ventures fail because technologists manage them. Technologists think their business is the creation of cool technologies loaded with wonderful new features. They think this because they are engineers who thrill to the idea of change. By contrast, Coburn says, “technology is widely hated by its users,” because ordinary folk loathe change. Therefore, any new artifact, no matter how much its various features might appeal to technologists, will always be rejected by its intended customers unless “the pain in moving to a new technology is lower than the pain of staying in the status quo.”

Or in Pip’s geeky formulation:

The Change Function = f (perceived crisis vs. total perceived pain of adoption).

[Former UBS analyst Pip Coburn, quoted in Technology Review.]

Google stitches up the Dell desktop

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I missed this.

Under the terms of a roughly three-year pact announced yesterday, Google will pay Dell an unspecified sum to have its browser toolbar and desktop-search software pre-installed on the company’s PCs and their homepages set to a co-branded portal site. “The real reason we do this is for users,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at a Goldman Sachs conference in Las Vegas. People “turn the Dell machine on, and everything is integrated right there. (This deal) is a turnkey solution for search.”

It’s a turnkey solution for Google as well, at least when it comes to wresting control of PC users’ default settings away from Microsoft. Dell shipped more than 37 million PCs and servers globally in 2005, according to research group IDC. That means Google could conceivably put its software in front of 100 million new PC owners over the life of the deal, and that’s the sort of footprint that can preserve its search dominance over Microsoft…

This seems very significant to me. Wonder why there hasn’t been more coverage of it. Or did I just miss the commentary as well as the announcement?

Securing Windows

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From Bob Cringeley…

Last week, a Microsoft data security guru suggested at a conference that corporate and government users would be wise to come up with automated processes to wipe clean hard drives and reinstall operating systems and applications periodically as a way to deal with malware infestations. What Microsoft is talking about is a utility from SysInternals, a company that makes simply awesome tools.

The crying shame of this whole story is that Microsoft has given up on Windows security. They have no internal expertise to solve this problem among their 60,000-plus employees, and they apparently have no interest in looking outside for help. I know any number of experts who could give Microsoft some very good guidance on what is needed to fix and secure Windows. There are very good developers Microsoft could call upon to help them. But no, their answer is to rebuild your system every few days and start over. Will Vista be any better?

I don’t think so.

Hmmm… Is this really the advice corporate customers are being given about how to make sure their Windows installations are secure?

Google peculiarities

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Very interesting column by Bob Cringeley on how Google advertising works against the little guy. Also hints that ClickFraud is considerably higher than Google will publicly admit.

The real cause of “systemic failure”

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Terrific column by Jackie Ashley, putting her finger on the nub of the problem of “systemic failure”. Many of the problems that have come to light in the last few months are only incidentally about ministerial failure. They are about the inability of Britain’s civil service to manage complex organisations. Excerpt:

John Reid is absolutely right. Traditionally, ministers have been nervous about criticising officials, and for obvious reasons. It’s like standing on the top of a wobbly ladder abusing the chap holding it at the bottom. Since the days of Richard Crossman and Harold Wilson, Labour ministers have privately complained about civil service competence. All too aware of the leaks and career-ending embarrassments angry officials could visit on them, they have put up with the responsibility for every failure, leaving their servants anonymously blameless.

There desperately needs to be a change in the rules of the game. The days when the civil service was a badly paid, understaffed operation are long gone. The people in charge of major departments are well-paid managers with excellent pensions and job security. Why shouldn’t they bear responsibility when things go wrong? Everybody else does. If a journalist makes a mistake, she doesn’t expect the editor to be sacked. If a shop manager loses billing information, the chief executive doesn’t resign.

The civil service knows how bad the situation really is. A survey of senior officials by SCS found that just 16% thought poor performance was effectively dealt with – a figure that dropped to a terrifying 6% at the Home Office. Meanwhile, a “Have Your Say” survey of all Home Office staff found only 19% thought the Home Office was well managed. Yet when the cabinet secretary, Gus O’Donnell, appeared before the public administration committee recently he enraged MPs who wanted to know who was carrying the can for the foreign criminals fiasco. It was “a complex issue” was his inadequate reply…

Quote of the day

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“We support democracy, but that doesn’t mean we have to support governments elected as a result of democracy.”

George Bush on dealing with the Hamas government elected by the Palestinian people. Cited in David Hirst’s Guardian column today.

Microsoft’s most dangerous competitor is…

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… itself! Here’s an insightful essay on Redmond’s growing problem. Extract:

It is, admittedly, a cliché, but Microsoft is clearly a victim of its own staggering success. What they’ve done best, historically, is kill and/or neuter their competitors. That’s why they’re gearing up for a fight against Google; Microsoft, as a company, defines itself by its rivalries. They relegated early PC peers like WordPerfect, Lotus, and Borland to relative obscurity; then, famously, they outright obliterated Netscape.

In the ’90s, to sell copies of Word, they needed to beat WordPerfect, and they did; to sell Excel, they needed to beat Lotus 1-2-3. Now, though, to sell new copies of Microsoft Office, they need to beat older copies of Microsoft Office. Hence the much-maligned ads in which Microsoft casts their own users as dinosaurs simply because they haven’t upgraded to the latest version of Office.

Most of the criticism of these ads revolves around the fact that it’s a bad idea to insult your own customers. But what I found interesting about them is the tacit acknowledgment that Microsoft’s strongest competitor in today’s office software market isn’t OpenOffice, or any other competing suite from another company, but rather the Microsoft of a decade ago.

The problem with Google, as an “enemy” for Microsoft, is that Google is even less of a direct rival to Microsoft than Apple is. Microsoft sells software. Google does not sell software. The only way for Microsoft to “beat” Google is for one of the two companies to enter the other one’s market. Google doesn’t seem the least bit interested in selling operating systems or office software — and even if they do eventually enter those markets, it would likely be with software they give away in order to generate advertising revenue. Microsoft’s previous corporate rivals were companies that helped Microsoft focus on its core competency: selling and developing PC software. Obsessing about Google draws them away from that focus…

Link via Nicholas Carr.

Kafka rules OK in the National Security state

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Here’s a sobering story.

Two weeks ago when USA TODAY published their famous story about a database of telephone records maintained by the NSA on all Americans, I decided to test my luck and see if I can get a copy of those records via a Privacy Act request. Following instructions on NSA’s FOIA page, I sent them a digitally signed email with my request (I have never seen any other federal agency accept signed email in liue of a written request). The email is as follows:

Under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. subsection 552 and the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. section 552a, please furnish me with copies of all records about me indexed to my name, social security number and phones numbers specified below. To help identify information about me in your record systems, I am providing the following required information…

And the reply? It went like this:

Because of the classified nature of the National Security Agency’s efforts to prevent and protect against terrorist attacks, the fact of whether or not any specific technique or method or activity is employed in that effort is exempt from release pursuant to the exemption provisions of the FOIA.

We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records responsive to your request. The fact of the existence or non-existence of responsive records is a currently and properly classified matter in accordance with Executive Order 12958, as amended. Thus, your request is denied pursuant to the first exemption of the FOIA, which provides that the FOIA does not apply to matters that are specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive Order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign relations and are properly classified pursuant to such Executive Order.

Moreover, the third exemption of the FOIA provides for the withholding of information specifically protected from disclosure by statute. Thus, your request is also denied because the fact of the existence or non-existence of the information is exempted from disclosure pursuant to the third exemption. The specific statutes applicable in this case are Title 18 U.S. Code 798; Title 50 U.S. Code 403-1(i); and Section 6, Public Law 86-36 (50 U.S. Code 402 note)…

35% of software in the world is pirated

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From ZDNet.com…

35% of the packaged software installed on personal computers (PC) worldwide in 2005 was illegal, amounting to $34 bln in global losses due to software piracy. Piracy rates decreased moderately in more than half (51) of the 97 countries, and increased in only 19. The global rate was unchanged from 2004 to 2005 as large developed markets like the United States, Western Europe, Japan and a handful of Asian countries continue to dominate the software market while their combined piracy rate hardly moved….

Serendipity and the Web

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Thoughtful essay by Bill Thompson. It was prompted by a column by William McKeen arguing that online reading precluded the serendipity that one experiences in reading offline newspapers.

Perhaps the best argument in favour of the argument that today’s richly interlinked web is as much a promoter of serendipity as the library, the bookstore or the radio is simply that the discussion is happening at all.

I came across Steven Johnson’s first post, a response to McKeen’s article, because I subscribe to the feed from Johnson’s blog through the Bloglines service. I can see whenever he writes something new, and because I like his style I generally read his stuff.

He linked to the original article so I read that, but there were also a range of comments already posted on Johnson’s website, so I followed them up too.

My serendipitous discovery of McKeen’s piece demonstrates clearly not only that he is wrong but that the potential for accidental discovery is greatly enhanced by the net and the web. The chance of me stumbling across the St Petersburg Times in my local library is rather small, since it doesn’t actually keep copies of it.

Once I came across the argument about serendipity I focused on it, searched specifically for people engaged in the debate, and ignored many interesting sidelines – like an old post from Jason Kottke about why Macs used to be rubbish – as a result….