Monopolistic business as usual at Microsoft

Well, well. An interesting New York Times story reveals that, back at Redmond, all systems are functioning normally. Quote:

“Last summer, Orlando Ayala, then in charge of worldwide sales at Microsoft, sent an e-mail message titled Microsoft Confidential to senior managers laying out a company strategy to dissuade governments across the globe from choosing cheaper alternatives to the ubiquitous Windows computer software systems.

Mr. Ayala’s message told executives that if a deal involving governments or large institutions looked doomed, they were authorized to draw from a special fund to offer the software at a steep discount or even free if necessary. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, was sent a copy of the e-mail message.

The memo on protecting sales of Windows and other desktop software mentioned Linux, a still small but emerging software competitor that is not owned by any specific company. “Under NO circumstances lose against Linux,” Mr. Ayala wrote.

This memo, as well as other e-mail messages and internal Microsoft documents obtained from a recipient of the Microsoft e-mail, offers a rare glimpse these days into the inner workings of Microsoft, the world’s largest software company. They spell out a program of tactics that were carried out in recent years, ranging from steep price discounts to Microsoft employees lying about their identities at trade shows.

The Microsoft campaign against Linux raises questions about how much its aggressive, take-no-prisoners corporate culture has changed, despite having gone through a lengthy, reputation-tarnishing court battle in the United States that resulted in Microsoft’s being found to have repeatedly violated antitrust laws.”

There is also the added complication that Microsoft’s “have Windows free if you were thinking of Linux” strategy is illegal in the EU — which now encompasses 25 countries.

Bush’s Saudi problem just got worse

“US Vows to Find Saudi Bombers” is the headline on a BBC story about the Riyadh bombings. But the difficulty is that Saudi Arabia has more Bin Laden sympathisers than the rest of the entire Arab world. And the Saudi royals are, er, somewhat ambivalent in their attitudes to ol’ Bin Liner himself. In fact, some of them have been bankrolling Islamic terrorism for decades. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. Saudi Arabia poses a much bigger threat to the US than did Iraq. Will we now see a new ‘coalition of the willing’ to sort out this sordid, medieval fiefdom? Hmmm…

The hidden cost of file-sharing: you might get a nasty virus — and not just from the RIAA

Register story. “Using P2P networks as a vector for viral propagation has become a popular trick of late. In February, the Igloo worm (which falsely promised racy pictures of celebrity nudes) spread through KaZaA. In August 2002, the Duload worm used attempted similar propagation tactics. Before that we had the (awkwardly named) Backdoor.K0wbot.1.3.B and Benjamin worm. So Fizzer is just the latest in a long and ignoble line. However its use of random names and payload makes it more stealthy and dangerous than most of its predecessors.”

15 tips for remote collaboration

Useful essay by Indi Young.

A litmus test for e-commerce sites

In my Observer column today, I propose a test for determining whether a company aspiring to do business online understands the Web: Can you find out what a product or service costs in three clicks or less? The astonishing thing is not that many sites fall at this elementary hurdle, but that so many are reluctant to cite prices at all. Instead they invite you to dispatch an email query to sales@braindead.co.uk.

What this implies is that they are afraid that potential consumers will be able to compare them with their competitors. Such a strategy may wash in the real world but it bombs in cyberspace, where customers are accustomed to performing effortless price comparisons. It’s a mistake Jeff Bezos never made – which is why he’s taking over the world.

The Web is only good for searching and selling according to the New York Times. Oh yeah?

The Times publishes one of those pieces which makes you wonder if the author (Steve Lohr in this case) inhabits the same planet as the rest of us. The gist is that the Net has failed to live up to its promise of creating ‘new media’, and instead has degenerated into an arena where only shopping and searching are viable. Quote:

“The shift to bits promised more than just faster and cheaper distribution of the same old information and entertainment. The digital age held out the potential for a genuinely “new media.” Pundits and media executives spoke about the prospect of everything from interactive television and shopping — click the zapper to suggest a new story line or buy the sweater Jennifer Aniston was wearing on that “Friends” episode ?– to donning goggles and suits to enter virtual worlds offering simulated sports, travel and sex.

But it hasn’t happened. The companies that spent hugely on the “digital convergence” of media and Internet-era computing, AOL Time Warner and Vivendi Universal, which bought Mr. Diller’s media properties, are in turmoil. And their visionary architects, Stephen M. Case at AOL Time Warner and Jean-Marie Messier at Vivendi Universal, have been ousted.”

Note the argument: because some brain-dead Big Media companies couldn’t create ‘New Media’ on the Web, therefore the Web has failed. But who said that new media would be Old Media plus broadband? If Mr Lohr had chosen to look at — for example — the Blogging phenomenon, he would have seen seriously ‘new’ media in action. And then he might then have been obliged to contemplate how radical this phenomenon is — how it involves what Clay Shirky calls “the mass amateurization of publishing”. But print journalists are so locked into their paradigm that they apparently cannot see what’s in front of their noses.

Paul Graham’s “A Plan for Spam”

Fascinating essay outlining a probabilistic approach based on analysing the content of spam messages, rather than concentrating on the headers.

Especially on Thursday: more stats on the staggering scale of spam

BBC Online story.

“A survey by the counter-spam firm Brightmail detected more than four million pieces of junk mail on just this day sent to UK internet users.

The volume of unsolicited mail has shot up in the last year, making up nearly half of all net traffic, according to some estimates.

An insight into the staggering scale of the spam problem was provided by Microsoft, which said this week that it now blocks 2.4 billion junk messages to its MSN and Hotmail subscribers every day.

‘Astonishing’ figure

Brightmail monitored mails sent for a week in March over the UK net provider, BT Openworld.

It found that nearly 11 million out of 25 million messages were scanned were spam – a weekly average of 41%.

A large chunk of the junk mail, more than four million, was sent on the Thursday.

“The problem with spam is well documented, but to get close to the 50% mark is astonishing and that figure can only increase,” said Duncan Ingram, Managing Director at BT Openworld.

The deluge of spam is prompting online services like BT Openworld to take action to stem the flow of unwanted offers for miracle cures, get-rich-quick schemes and adult products.

The company offers an e-mail protection service to its customers for £1 a month.

Legal steps

In the US, internet giants AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft have all been touting their anti-spam features.

AOL recently said it blocked about two billion junk messages in a single day, while last week Microsoft revealed its anti-spam measures now net about 2.4 billion spam e-mails sent to its Hotmail and MSN customers.

Some firms are taking to the courts to stop the spammers.

Earlier this week, US net provider Earthlink won $16.4m (£10.3m) damages and a permanent injunction against someone who sent 850 million unsolicited e-mails via its service.

Law suits brought by Microsoft and AOL against suspected spammers are still making their way through the courts. ”

Monkey business

Wired story:

“Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.

“They pressed a lot of S’s,” researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. “Obviously, English isn’t their first language.”

A group of faculty and students in the university’s media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques. Then, they waited.

At first, said Phillips, “the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it.

“Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard,” added Phillips, who runs the university’s Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies.

Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S. Later, the letters A, J, L and M crept in.”

Record companies diversify — into illegal hacking
NYT story.

“Some of the world’s biggest record companies, facing rampant online piracy, are quietly financing the development and testing of software programs that would sabotage the computers and Internet connections of people who download pirated music, according to industry executives.

The record companies are exploring options on new countermeasures, which some experts say have varying degrees of legality, to deter online theft: from attacking personal Internet connections so as to slow or halt downloads of pirated music to overwhelming the distribution networks with potentially malicious programs that masquerade as music files.”