Microsoft’s Munich sweeteners

There’s a riveting report on USA Today of the lengths to which Microsoft went to prevent the city of Munich defecting to Linux. Some details:

“Ballmer visited Mayor Christian Ude to assure him Microsoft would do what it takes to keep the city’s business. Documents obtained by USA TODAY show Microsoft subsequently lowered its pricing to $31.9 million and then to $23.7 million — an overall 35% price cut. The discounts were for naught.

On May 28, the city council approved a more expensive proposal — $35.7 million — from German Linux distributor SuSE and IBM, a big Linux backer.”

Note: the decision to go with Linux was not driven just by cost.

Apart from the whopping discounts, Microsoft also offered other inducements:

:For example, the company:

” * Agreed to let Munich go as long as six years, instead of the more normal three or four, without another expensive upgrade, a concession that runs against its bread-and-butter software upgrade strategy.

* Offered to let the city buy only Microsoft Word for some PCs and strip off other applications. Such unbundling cuts against Microsoft’s practice of selling PCs loaded with software.

* Offered millions of dollars worth of training and support services free.”

Quagmire News

Useful reality check from the new US commander in Iraq. Quick summary: we’re in a guerrilla war (aka quagmire) here, folks. Longer version from the NYT reads as follows:

“American troops in Iraq are under attack from “a classical guerrilla-type campaign” whose fighters, drawn from Saddam Hussein’s most unyielding loyalists and foreign terrorist groups, are increasingly organized, the new commander of allied forces in Iraq said today.

The commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, pledged that the United States and its allies would not be driven from Iraq by the guerrilla attacks, which today killed one American soldier and wounded at least six others around Baghdad. But he cautioned that pacifying Iraq might require fresh American troops to spend yearlong tours there, double the normal duration of Army forces on peacekeeping duty.

The assessment of Iraqi resistance by General Abizaid was a significant change from previous comments by senior Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has said that the insurgents’ raids were too haphazard to qualify as a guerrilla war or organized resistance.”

First Law of Technology bites again

The First Law of Technology states that people always over-estimate the short-term impact of a new technology and under-estimate its long term effects. Latest case is Wi-Fi. Initially there was a feeding frenzy of analysts about its short-term potential of providing broadband access in eateries and cafes. But now it has dawned on people that there’s not that much money to be made providing that kind of service, so Wall Street has concluded that Wi-Fi is another dot-com-type bust.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wi-Fi is a seriously disruptive technology and we haven’t even begun to tap its potential yet. Interesting, then, to see that Intel seems to have understood it. Here’s a quote from John Markoff’s report from Sun Valley, where Intel’s top honchos, Craig Barrett and Andy Grove, provided an insightful analysis:

“Mr. Barrett now says that people who predict a Wi-Fi shakeout are missing the point, as well as failing to see the deeper implications of the technology.

“What is missing is the realization of how many legs this technology has,” he said.

In the three months since Intel introduced its wireless PC chips, the company has come to dominate the Wi-Fi market. It is now putting Wi-Fi circuitry in all of its chip sets for portable computers, investing widely in Wi-Fi industry start-ups and spending almost its entire annual marketing budget in a $300 million advertising campaign trumpeting the virtues of its unwired Centrino brand.

“Intel has raised the level of the water and is floating all the boats,” said Glenn Fleishman, editor of Wi-Fi Networking News, a Web-based daily newsletter.

Of even greater potential import, Intel plans to start a test in Texas in a few months that will use a combination of wireless technologies, including Wi-Fi, to bring broadband Internet connections directly to homes.

Last week the company quietly announced that it was teaming with a small equipment maker, Alvarion, of Tel Aviv, Israel, to back a free wireless standard, 802.16, that is intended to send data over distances of as much as 30 miles and at speeds of up to 70 megabits a second.

The data rate is high enough to comfortably stream high-definition television video broadcasts, and the range makes it possible to quickly deploy a system in a large urban or suburban area.

By comparison, current Wi-Fi technology is limited to several hundred feet and maximum speeds of 54 megabits a second. The Intel test, however, will explore using the 802.16 standard, known as WiMax, to distribute the data to Wi-Fi antennas in local neighborhoods.

If Intel is able to jump-start the market to reach millions of homes with a relatively inexpensive interactive data and video service, the technology could quickly alter the communications landscape.

That is already starting to happen. There is now an explosion of Wi-Fi hot spots in hotels, coffee shops, restaurants and airports, and a new wave of hand-held gadgets will soon supplement portable personal computers for a class of mobile workers that analysts are calling windshield warriors.

In a speech here on Thursday, Mr. Barrett sketched out a portrait of a market that it is growing rapidly.

There are now about 40 million Wi-Fi users, he said, and new access points are selling at the rate of about 15,000 a day, which makes Wi-Fi a much faster-growing technology than cellular telephony.”

RFID — the next double-edged sword

A couple of years ago I attended a demonstration at the Judge Institute given by the MIT Auto-ID Lab in conjunction with some large US companies like Procter and Gamble. The Lab had developed something called Radio Frequency ID — tiny radio transmitters which could be printed on to product packaging, clothing etc. The idea — as explained to us — was that this would make inventory control much easier. Each product could be ‘read’ by a suitable device, which would then look it up on the Net and ascertain what it was and decide how it should be treated. One of the demos showed a package of quick-cook pasta being put into a beefed-up microwave oven. The oven read the code emitted by the tag, looked it up on a database on the Net and determined how long the cooking time should be. Using this technology, the academics explained, supermarket shelves could ‘know’ when stocks of a product were running out, and checkouts could compile a bill without requiring you to unload all the stuff onto the counter. They even suggested that the RFID system could be used to enable shelves to adjust prices for individual customers (who were of course equipped with a suitable gizmo). And so on and so forth.

What was NOT mentioned, of course, is that RFID technology could enable the finest-grain surveillance technology ever seen. RFID tags are already approaching the size of a printed full-stop. As such, they can be printed on banknotes, clothes, condoms — you name it. And with the right infrastructure everything that happens to a RFID tag can be tracked — and logged. Now it’s been revealed that the scientists working on this stuff realised all along that their work has a really dark side. According to this Register report, their PR firm has been advising them on how to distract public concern from privacy worries. But the relevant documents fell into the hands of campaigning group CASPIAN. Some quotes:

“The Auto-ID Center is the organization entrusted with developing a global Internet infrastructure for radio frequency identification. Their plans are to tag all the objects manufactured on the planet with RFID chips and track them via the Internet,” CASPIAN says. Apparently the RFID lobby sees public reluctance as nothing more than an obstacle to be overcome with shallow bromides and platitudes. Many of the documents are related to focus-group surveys in which consumers wisely note that RFID offers them few benefits while posing considerable threats to privacy. In response, PR firm Fleischman-Hillard recommends that the industry communicate several inaccuracies, the most egregious being that the RFID transponder is “nothing more than an improved bar-code,” as if broadcasting data were an inconsequential difference. In another it is suggested that the sheep-like populace will resign itself to the inevitability of this innovation, though they may not much care for it. In one document it is recommended that RFID tags be re-named “Green Tags” to suggest an overlay of environmental concern. But it seems that they will be re-named eTags, to give them that cool Silicon Valley cachet instead. At no point do the flacks suggest the obvious solution to consumer concerns, namely that any products containing such tags be identified clearly and that they be designed so that buyers can remove or disable them easily. …

Can this be true? McDonalds in trouble?

“McDonald’s has reported its first loss since the Fifties as Americans blame the fast food industry for their obesity epidemic. Is the brand on its way out?” Fascinating Observer piece by Conal Walsh.

Why I never play computer games

Because I need the time for living. And if I paid attention to this kind of thing I wouldn’t have it.

The impact of Google

There’s a story in today’s Guardian claiming that a mysterious and reclusive British financier has bought the most expensive apartment ever sold in New York — he’s paying $45 million in cash for a 12,000 square feet, 76th floor flat overlooking Central Park. The building in which this pad is located is still being built, but that’s not the interesting bit. The identity of the buyer is shrouded in mystery. “He’s not a celebrity”, said the Real Estate agent who’s acting for him. “You wouldn’t even find him if you did a Google search”.

Interesting, that, isn’t it. Google is regarded as so powerful and ubiquitous that the new measure of obscurity is that you cannot be found by it. But that’s not the end of the search engine’s quiet penetration. For example, someone came to see me last week about a project I’m working on. After the initial pleasantries he said: “OK. I’ve been to the web site and done a Google search, so we can start from there”. Which I guess would have dismayed some people, but in this context was terrific. It meant that we could get quickly to the heart of what we wanted to discuss.

The other implication of Google+the Web is that one of the tenets of old-style print journalism — the assumption that the writer has privileged information which the reader does not possess — has to be abandoned. It was always unwise for journalists to patronise their readers; but now, it’s absolutely fatal. Better to assume that they know more than you. Apart from anything else, this does wonders for the quality of your work — you have to wise up, not dumb down.

There’s also a constitutional issue about balance of powers. If Google is now so powerful, who’s going to make sure it doesn’t abuse its power? Remember Lord Acton: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. That’s one reason Google Watch is important.

Comment from Ian Winship: “The impact of Google’ should be complemented by the ‘myths of Google’ – ie, that all information is on the Web (but it isn’t); that the Web is free (but lots of professional information is subscription only); that Google can find everything on the Web (not the subscription stuff, not the invisible web, not the open Web that it doesn’t index); that there are no other search engines (there are lots and their coverage overlaps with Google, they have other features), etc.

As well as Googlewatch to monitor Google there’s Gary Price’s Resourceshelf (www.resourceshelf.com) which often picks up and comments critically on articles about Google.”

Hacking for free speech

Interesting piece by Chris Sprigman about Hacktivismo, which has developed tools for poking holes in censorship firewalls.

The star system in academia — and its consequences

You thought the transfer market for top footballers was outrageous? Well, think again. It’s even more cut-throat in US academia. Fascinating, detailed account of the mayhem caused when too much private money goes chasing too few academic stars. Thanks to Arts and Letters Daily.

A Beginner’s Guide to Textbook Writing

Lovely, cynical piece by Garrett Bauman (whose textbook is now into its fifth edition).