The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: October 28, 2007

Official News page 12


WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton

You know it's getting more and more like a banana republic over here in the UK. Even the criminals are incompetent. This week a 'counterfeiting' gang came up in court after they tried to convince the Bank of England to honour £28 bn (US$65 bn) in £1,000 and £500,000 notes.

The problem was £1,000 notes were withdrawn in 1943 and there are only 63 not accounted for. Add to that the fact that there never were any £500,000 bills, and you begin to get an inkling of why even our police, whose talents lie more in the field of shooting innocent Brazilians, were able to catch them.

And now for something completely different...


Story: To Share, or Not to Share, That is the Question...

I'm sure you will have seen the stories about Comcast's BitTorrent zapping activities over the last couple of weeks. They raise rather more interesting questions than they solve.

The background is that for some time now there has been grumbling from some Comcast users that Comcast is doing something to stop them using the BitTorrent Peer2Peer (P2P) file sharing program. A couple of weeks ago the Associated Press agency decided to test what was going on, using the Christian Bible as its test material - presumable they were trying to avoid having their collar felt by the heavy hand of the RIAA's private army.

The tests were not exactly scientific, but they did make it clear that Comcast were doing something to disrupt the use of BitTorrent. Naughty Comcast. Slapped wrists and sent to stand in the corner for the rest of the lesson. And that appeared to be the end of it.

But not quite...

Deep in the techie mailing lists something stirred. The affair opened up a debate on several issues that the people who actually run the Internet had known about for some time - the first is that Comcast are by no means the only people who indulge in what is known as 'traffic shaping' to discourage the use of the major P2P applications like BitTorrent.

Second, this activity has nothing to do with the RIAA's current push to eliminate the sharing of music files.

Third, the broadband suppliers' last mile (ie the computer to the exchange or cable node) is designed to handle traffic from the net to the subscriber, rather than heavy traffic from the subscriber to the net. BitTorrent reverses that by using subscriber computers as 'servers', and generating heavy traffic from the subscriber to the net.

There are other technical considerations that exacerbate the problems. For instance most P2P programs use an Internet protocol called UDP. The bulk of the Internet applications most subscribers use is called TCP/IP. TCP has all sorts of things built in to handle congestion and other problems that can happen when you are using the net. It's also a co-operative protocol which will share the bandwidth available for other users.

By contrast UDP has none of these facilities and grabs all of the available bandwidth (I'm not sure whether that was by design, or it just came out that way). The net (pun intended) result is that if someone is running a P2P application, other subscribers on the same loop frequently get terrible problems with their Internet access - sometimes even being unable to use their Internet connection at all.

The end result for the ISPs is one happy file sharer and a whole bunch of unhappy other customers, so it's not surprising that the ISPs are taking steps to prevent P2P from wrecking their level of service to the rest of their customers.

So does that mean Comcast are off the hook? Not in a million years. And neither are all the other ISPs. They need to learn to be honest with their customers and transparent about what they are doing (although to be fair a few of the smaller ISPs do specify no P2P/BitTorrent in their contracts). They need to tell regular subscribers that there is a limit to the usage, and tell them the bandwidth is not for P2P (none of this 'unlimited' bandwidth unless you try to use it crud).

They also need to provide a package for those who want to use P2P - a package that reflects the costs involved. I suspect that P2P would become less of a 'compelling' application if you actually had to pay for it!

So there you have it, all is not what it seems, and the real problem is that ISPs have allowed their marketing weasels to promise things that the ISPs don't have the technical capacity to make good on. The solution - tell people what they are really getting, or get sued for breach of contract!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/20/comcast_denies_bittorrent_busting_again/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/19/AR2007101900847_pf.html


Roundup: Microsoft

The big Microsoft news was, of course, its decision not to contest the European Commission's ruling and fine from way back in 2004. It must have been a difficult decision for Microsoft. The fine, big as it is, is just petty cash - part of the cost of doing business for a company the size of Microsoft. The items the EC was ruling on should have been obsoleted by the introduction of new software by now.

Unfortunately, Vista hasn't been the success Microsoft expected, and most of what sales there have been are a result of Microsoft preventing people using the operating system of their choice - Windows XP. In addition, the court ruling sets a worrying (for Microsoft) precedent that confirms the right of the EC to poke its sticky little fingers into what Microsoft considers to be its private affairs.

I guess we will have to wait to see what happens next.

While this was going on Microsoft consoled itself by snapping up a US$240 million minority stake in Facebook. It's obviously betting that anti-social networking is going to be a big thing in the future. Still, in Microsoft terms, US$240 million is a small enough price to pay to get a foot in the door, given the way it's trailing Google at the moment.

And, of course, no round up on Microsoft would be complete without something about Windows bugs! Sure enough, this week a Microsoft upgrade - which even appears to have installed itself in some servers that didn't ask for it - brought all the PCs of a number of large (and small) institutions to a grinding halt.

That little fiasco came only a day after a Microsoft VP had boasted that Vista was more secure than Open Source software. The VP - Ben Fathi - made the claim in a keynote speech at the RSA Europe Security Conference in London. Significantly he left the stage without taking any questions!

http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=19F82F5:
215D3E184FC552DC613293B27B82842FEFF29049075316B4

http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBEUh0FypUC0FrX0Fbhc0A8
http://update.techweb.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBESj0HiOOq0G4T0FbaV0Ef
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/23/rsa_vista_security_pitch/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/25/windows_update_snafu/


Shorts:

The toll in the TJX hacking case continues to rise. The last estimate I saw, a month or so ago, came from the company and suggested that something like 45.7 million card numbers had been stolen. This week we got a glimpse of the banks' take on the hack when they filed documents relating to the court case against TJX. The banks think that more than 94 million accounts fell into the hands of criminals as a result of TJX's carelessness.

That's twice what TJX has admitted. Research firms were already talking about US$1 billion fraud losses on these cards, but that was based on the old figure of 45.7 million accounts compromised. As The Register rather euphemistically put it 'US Law enforcement officials have also taken a keen interest...' I just bet they have!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/24/tjx_breach_estimate_grows/

I guess no Winding Down would be complete without some news about the execrable patent system, and who better to discuss within that context than the king of software patents, IBM. At the beginning of this month they rather sheepishly withdrew a patent which attempted to patent outsourcing. No, I'm not joking, it's absolutely true. But now they've come up with an even better wheeze.

They're trying to patent making money out of patents! You've gotta hand it to IBM, they really have been able to maintain their creativity even though they are a massive monolithic firm. They might even get away with it. I mean to say, how would you prove that anyone else thought of it first? And business methods are patentable in the US.

Incidentally, IBM is a member of the Business Software Alliance, which is currently lobbying Congress for patent reform to cut down on frivolous patents! Pots -- Kettles -- Lack of colour...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/24/ibm_patents_patents/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/05/ibm_patent_outsourcing_slashdot/

I always knew that the incompetent bastards in charge of our UK Ministry of Defence (1984speak for Ministry of War) couldn't even tie their own shoe laces, but their latest screw-up beggars belief. They can't pay the people they sent to fight Iraq and Afghanistan the correct wages - or in some cases any wages at all. Actually it's wider than that - the problems run across all three services - as a result of, yes, you guessed it, a new computer system called JPA.

JPA is rubbish, of course, but the idiots at the ministry went ahead and sacked 1,400 people to cut costs in the department responsible for pay, so they now don't have enough people to sort out the shambles. Oh, and at the same time I see that they are also cutting 1,000 IT staff as part of a 'streamlining program'.

Strangely enough, I haven't seen any reports of any of the high ups in the ministry losing their jobs or not getting paid properly. What a surprise.

http://Mail.computing.co.uk/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBLnk0BsjfA0Xxi0EeQL0Ei
http://www.kablenet.com/kd.nsf/Frontpage/
CC40F569AF9B54948025737D0055635A?OpenDocument


Geek Toys:

I was just looking at Nokia's latest offering - the N810 Internet Tablet. I think they might just have got it right. It's roughly 5" x 3" by half an inch thick, and it comes with a built in Firefox based browser, GPS, WiFi, a camera, and an FM transmitter for in car use. The screen is a 4.13" 800 x 480 colour touch screen, and has a slide out keyboard. It has 2GB of internal memory and supports flash cards up to 8GB. It also supports Skype and the Rhapsody music service.

I'm normally not impressed with this sort of device, but this one strikes me as being just right. It's slated to be available in November for around US$500 and I will be adding it to my Xmas list!

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3669465936.html


Recent Reading:

The Quest for the Northwest Passage Edited by Glyn Williams. The Folio Society.
This solid book - both in terms of content and physical attributes - is very timely. This last summer was the first in recorded history that the Northwest passage was clear water all the way. The book charts the story of the search for the route via the journals and diaries of those who searched. Glyn Williams provides bridging and scene setting narrative that helps the flow and sense of continuity. A book to be dipped into, rather than read in a continuous sitting!


Scanner: Other stories

L1NUX number plate roars onto eBay
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/22/linux_numberplate/

TruEffect serves up cookie-free ads, Excel-ready ad server
http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2007/10/24/trueffect-launches-cookie-free-ad-
serving-excel-integrated-platform/?camp=newsletter&src=mv&type=textlink

ISP blows the whistle on router chip 'fault'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/22/zen_ar7_infineon_bt_fault/

Open Season exposes the real price paid for Radiohead's new album
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/23/open_season_episode_5/

BT battens down Home Hub backdoor
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/22/home_hub_vuln_plugged/

Gang attempted to pass £500,000 notes, court told
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/23/500k_notes/

UK kids get RFID chips in school uniforms
http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBEUh0FypUC0FrX0Fbhf0AC

Record labels to ditch CD singles for USB Flash drives
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10/19/universal_replace_cd_music_with_usb/


Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for material to alan@ibgames.com.

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
28 October 2007

Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist. His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.

Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html


Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page