ExtremeLabs, Inc

Verizon proposes to eliminate some of their data plans for smartphones– the kind with unlimited data– and replace them with caps and or “family data sharing plans”. May I suggest that if they do, they’ll kill one of the geese that are giving them the golden eggs of customer satisfaction and comparatively good experiences.

My experiences with the competition are low, so the bar isn’t that tough to get under. Consider my thoughts on my direct experience with the major US cell carriers:

AT&T: Bell South with Lipstick. The monopoly, with all of its evils, revisited like a zombie from the grave of the TCA.

T-Mobile. Not my friend. Sparse coverage. Customer service that wasn’t for customers. EU policies that were draconian. They tried to be good. Now they’re trying to sell to AT&T.

Sprint: The. Most. Awful. Service. Ever. Charges for the air you breathe.

Verizon: Pricey. No apology coverage. Now: gonna put a cap on my data. I’m not even a big user. Seems to feel that they own a lot, and now that the world of US carriers is shrinking, they can shaft their loyal customers by changing the data plan. Just when smartphones were becoming really cool.

I don’t know if you’re listening, Verizon. You have a fat corporate head on your shoulders and you have your fingers in your ears because you’re not used to being customer driven. Let me spell this out to you: you’re about to become relegated to list that will now consist of “all carriers suck”. Doesn’t have to be this way. You could think about your clientele and differentiate yourself in a way that you’ll be loved.

I know. Love. You’re fixated on shareholder return. Fine. Give them lots of return with something important: happy customers not enslaved by your ceilings. If you impose ceilings, you won’t be a hero anymore. You’ll just be one of them.

Windows Skype: A Telco Nightmare

May 10, 2011—The peer-to-peer Voice over IP application, Skype, has been purchased by Microsoft. What happens now has the possibility of changing telephony and voice/video communications, as we know it.

Skype is a peer-to-peer based voice and video application that has been a thorn in the side of telco carriers and governmental units across the planet. It uses Internet Protocols to carry voice via global Internet plumbing. It was invented in an era where telco voice call toll avoidance was a popular idea: circumvent costly telephone company charges—especially expensive international phone call costs.

The popularity of Skype internationally is huge, with an estimated 100M+ world-wide users. Historically, when broadband connectivity was spotty, and its speed was slow, Skype had huge quality issues. The architecture of Skype improved vastly over several years and several owners to the point where Skype reliability for voice is very good, and video communications is almost as good.

Of huge benefit, however, is the sheer number of Skype users, their contacts, and their status as a social network rivaled only by Facebook, Twitter, and the burgeoning number of Google, and Yahoo user lists. Microsoft has, in one purchase, bought the identities and accounts of millions, whereas their own efforts at Hotmail, Windows Live, and other network identity federations has been historically awful. Now Microsoft has an application that drives social networking, has a huge user list, and adds value to Microsoft’s efforts to try to build a visible user community.

Microsoft’s Windows Mobile offering may get a boost as well, as community application momentum for Windows Mobile is perceived as week, compared to that of Google’s Android developers, and those of Apple’s vast iPhone developer plantations. Skype over mobile devices is a common toll-avoidance mechanism for smartphone users, and an easily transportable directory/contact service for users. Where Microsoft has failed to develop strong and portable federated identity management for users, Skype gives them a chance on a par with Google and Apple.

There are other features that Microsoft hasn’t explored in their own offerings, that the Skype acquisition brings to users. Skype video conferencing works across a wide cross-section of hardware platforms. YouTube-ish possibilities to rival Google are a distinct possibility, as is the capacity to offer an application and especially media store for P2P video that’s being done by Hulu, NetFlix, XFinity, and others.

Using Skype’s P2P infrastructure goes against the grain of traditional communications infrastructure—and it’s why Skype remains popular—it’s tough to shut down and uses its user’s CPU and communication strength rather than a centralized approach. Microsoft doesn’t have to buy a lot of infrastructure to make Skype expand, rather, it must keep Skype reliable and add features which anchor on the Skype user base and the market it represents.

Skype works today across a wide number of platforms that Windows products currently don’t transverse—Linux, and to a lesser extent, Apple. Skype also works well on Android, and other smartphone platforms, and gives Microsoft and unembarrassing entrance to non-Windows platforms.

Mobile, desktop, laptop, and future platforms will likely have Skype running on them as a highly-desired, get-there-first application demanded application, and Microsoft has the ability to gain another must-have application to offer users. It leverages a huge user-base. The user base comprises a stunningly broad cross section of international users. In turn, the Skype application is ripe for delivery of lots of value-added media, as well as the revenue from Google Voice-like revenue, unified telecom features (that Microsoft has been trying to beachhead for years).

Microsoft gets to buy a user base that comes close to rivaling Google, Apple, and Yahoo with a killer application that works on a lot of equipment and has a brilliant future. Let’s see what they do with it.

I rushed into Hannover, parked my suitcases, and went by tram to the Grand Opening Ceremony at the Hannover Congress Zentrum. Outside, about 50m or so from the front door, were a couple hundred protesters. I’m not sure, but I believe they were protesting the Turkish PM’s visit to CeBIT as a keynote speaker.

Protesters at the Grand Opening Ceremony

Turkey was the partner country this year at CeBIT, and Turkey was showing their ITC prowess in 4500sq meters of exhibit space. I saw some of it. It was… interesting.

In his speech, the Turkish PM railed on about how visa qualification was hurting Turkey’s ability to do business in the EU, and especially in Germany. He noted that Germany has more Turks living there than some EU member country’s entire population. Indeed my Hannover neighborhood had many Turkish residences and businesses. Hookas and great Middle Eastern cuisine abounded in many other Hannover warrens, too. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, said she’d work on the problem. Sam Palmisano, CEO and poobah of IBM, also greeted the crowd at the Zentrum. IBM’s presence was enormous at the fairgrounds, too.

The visa problem also haunts the international participation in US tradeshows, but also other tradeshows/conferences in the EU. The post 9/11 atmosphere has added a layer of business-killing bureaucracy with visas, and the US Embassies aren’t the fastest in the world to turn visas around for requesters. We were once friends, but now we have to verify it, it seems. Entry for me, a US citizen, was simple. But coming to the US is more difficult even for EU citizens. Bad news. Sam and I had no problem. But we weren’t from Turkey. Dubai is now making a name for itself in the conferences/tradeshow world simply because there are no needs for visas. Imagine that.

The Conference and Trade Fair

The good news was that CeBIT had a wonderful attendance, more than 4000 exhibitors (I think statistically there were more than that) and a wider and more appealing mixture of exhibitors was to be found. For reasons that are purely German trade fair politics, CeBIT had eschewed consumer electronics, but they’ve reappeared. No more stodgy business-only, wear-a-suit sort of show.

The opening day crush was made crazier still by a tour of the show by the German Chancellor, the Turkish PM, and other high potentates. Imagine you, 400K of your friends, and tight security. It was a bit silly to maneuver around initially,  but tenable.

There were conferences; I had no time to see them.

I started at Hall 9, which contained Public Sector and University pavilions. This is always a hotbed of innovation, and it was as good as last year. I had hoped to see more ‘green’ themed offerings, but was pleased to find university research going well. Across the fairgrounds, I focused on the digital health exhibits. Although dominated by just a few organizations, there was lots to see, ranging from skis as a digital input device (you get to play downhill skiing games using your feet and swaying motions) through to new sports beverages– with alcohol in them.

There were a few stands that also had green vehicle technology on display, as well as advanced automotive digital dashes and device integration components. The iPad as a co-pilot is not far off. A few EVs (Electric Vehicles) could be found, and I longed for more. It’s my belief that people in tech are the most accepting of EV technology, and I was pleased to find lots of attention being paid to vehicle charging systems– personal and commercial ones. One item that caught my eye was an electric bike.

Cool Electric Bike. I want one.

The Battery is the Tire is the Battery.

The Italian Pavilion had something that drew my attention, then stunned me. An organization demonstrated a blade server (nothing new) with storage frame (also nothing new) and a fully redundant chassis for the blade server (a 2N configuration for those that understand high availability constructions). So far, nothing new. Then I was floored: this company, Revenge.it, puts 240 cores in each chassis on their blades, making the entire stack just 15U tall! This is one of the densest ‘cans’ I’ve ever seen! Ten years ago, this stack standing barely a foot and a half tall, replaces the functionality of a warehouse of servers of the old variety; imagine 480 old free-standing HP, IBM, or Dell servers; this replaces them. Each blade has its own power supply, which is even more astounding (and redundant for those that care). Fabulous. Ingenious. And apparently, sold heavily to NATO.

After a brief intermission, I landed in the ASEAN pavilions– China, Taiwan, Korea (there is only one at CeBIT), and a spot called the Golden Mall. Here was the more interesting consumer and small business innovation. There were tablet/pads galore on display. Few were shipping, but I saw dozens of varieties ranging from too small to be useful through to very large (18″x11″) with vivid, battery eating displays. Batteries were there. Bags. WiFi gear. Cables, OEM whitebox computers. Cameras. Storage of every flavor and type. One booth had nothing but flashdrive housings. Another showed brilliant do-it-yourself mobile phone covers. Still another had highly advanced microwave transceivers.

Famous organizations like ASUS and MSI had large stands with interesting varieties of gear. Some of their stands showed what Americans think of as ASUS and MSI like netbooks and vivid displays,but a few strange items were displayed as well. One that comes to mind was a Roomba-like vacuum cleaner robot from MSI that tried frequently to vacuum up crumbs, but never quite got them. I wonder if it was full; it couldn’t hold very much given its size.

MSI Vacuum. Little whirring whiskers. Not so good.

There were interesting cameras, some with helmet mounts, others the type you might see watching you in a NYC taxi. There was higher-end gear, like routers, FC switches, and industrial servers. One organization I ran into had high-density 1U servers and drive cages, all ready to accept whatever program loads you’d like.

Ferric Titans

In Hall 2, one of CeBIT’s largest, were the iron mongers. IBM had a Z-series mainframe as well as a bladeserver to heat up the chilly late-winter German air inside the Hall. In theme with all-things-cloud CeBIT trend, I listened to an IBM rep, who tried to explain cloud to several doubtful looking executives, in English. It seemed, in my discussions with many people at CeBIT, that cloud is a hassle in the EU for many reasons, much amounting to privacy. I don’t think they really get cloud in the EU… a handful understand, but there’s amazing reluctance to try it.

IBM's Cloudy Vision of The Cloud

Microsoft pushed Cloud. The color is Azure.

I look for signs that the rest of the world has some how pulled ahead of the US in one technology direction or another. Leadership and the pride that goes with it is important. The strong technology focus in the US and Canada have been a source of important changes. I don’t see much change in this area; the EU progresses more slowly, sometimes with a Rodney Dangerfield problem.

Apple, whose product appeared in many places but not because Apple was an exhibitor at CeBIT, used the CeBIT event like a cowbird– announcing the iPad 2 so as to take the media frenzy to advantage. They did this at CES. They’ll do it at other events, too. Free ride for Apple.

iPads were there. Apple was not.

Yet there were literally dozens of new tablet computers at CeBIT, although few were ready to ship. I saw Android Honeycomb, MeeGo, Windows 7 (!), and even one with iOS on it. Few are shipping. The most amusing if tragic tablet came from Lenovo– with MeeGo (the doomed operating system) on it. Some were really pretty, others too heavy, some were just plain weird as their screens were tiny compared to their frames. Does Apple have to worry? Apple doesn’t worry about anything.

Lenovo Tablet Running the Austere MeeGo OS

There was more: retail POS systems, restaurant systems, VoIP makers, PBX makers, and many industrial products makers. I walked past these, looking for something special: green computing. I didn’t find much. Geothermal cooling was largely absent. There were a few interesting battery technologies, but nothing I haven’t seen before elsewhere.

What was somewhat wondrous were new conferences. CeBIT has had mixed, often negative results with conferences and this year there seemed to be a lot of them– and on salient topics. I didn’t have time for them, sadly. Two and a half days doesn’t really permit them. Of the press conferences seen, not much was really new there, either. This isn’t a newsy, announcement-driven event. Instead, it’s about business, doing business, taking orders, meeting new people, and cruising the widest variance of computer-related technologies in one spot on the planet.

In a time when the IT/ITC industry is trying to maintain its position and grow, I had great disappointment in the lower number of US industry participants. Yes, Google and IBM were there, Apple would never come, and there was indeed a USA Pavilion, but it was tiny, ghastly small compared to previous years. I saw Dell and others, whose stands are run by country managers. But the musculature of US tech wasn’t really present in an organized way like it used to be. It was sad. If President Obama really wants to increase exports, he’ll need to find a way to fund a bit more into programs like CeBIT, the largest tech conference on the planet.

CeBIT has now joined forces with CompuTex, the leading computer hardware show that’s located in Taipei. The idea is to join together these two best-of-breed shows into a single sales venture, allowing organizations to sign-on to both, logistically. The Taiwanese government believes this is a coup, and are very proud of the deal that joins the two largest computer shows on earth together. This duo competes with several other conferences that are subsets of technologies represented at CompuTex and CeBIT: iFA in Berlin, CES in Las Vegas, CTIA in Las Vegas, and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Europe has indeed, along with the joiner of CompuTex in Taiwan, moved the conference agenda away from the USA. I’m not happy about that. I’m glad for their success, but it shows the problem with US tech leadership in the world: the US needs to market itself personally, not across the Internet, to gain new international customers. Not all of them use Facebook.

Parting Thoughts

I was able to leave before the German train conductors and drivers went on a strike. I didn’t personally hear of any travel problems caused by the strike, but it was timed in a strange way. What I did like was that CeBIT is still strong, seems to have improved its management team, has found focus (if in a decidedly ‘CeBIT’ sort of way), and is weathering the economic malaise better than others. It was a bit brutal to travel from Bloomington Indiana to Hannover and return in five days. I won’t do that again. But I’ll likely return. I usually learn a lot at CeBIT, professionally, personally, and of the pulse of the worldwide pace of technology evolution. I hope it continues to be as interesting as I found it– or better.

We’ve been busy. Here are some recent works of ours:

1) We review Red Hat Linux 6 at http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2011/012411-red-hat-linux-test.html

2) Our observations on Microsoft System Center: Data Protection Manager at http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2011/012411-microsoft-system-center-data-protection.html

3) Then we checked out Microsoft System Center: Service Manager at http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2011/012411-microsoft-system-center-test.html

4) We relate what to do when there’s been a security breech at ITWorld:  http://www.itworld.com/security/134572/youve-been-hacked

5) Tips for IT when Litigation rears its ugly head: http://www.itworld.com/legal/134434/youve-been-sued

6) Our take on various types of private cloud managers: http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2010/122010-cloud-management-test.html

Lots more in progress. Stay tuned to this channel……

TBH 2/6/11

Update: It’s all about a patent filed by Apple

I looked further to find http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7865579.html, which describes Apple’s network boot patent, filed in 2006 and apparently just granted recently. Looking at the patents cited and the base description, it appears that Apple claims the processes they cite. I’ll have to examine it more deeply and update again. – TH January 9, 2010 22:28

Why Apple Might Be Booting from the Cloud

One of the themes of media consumption at CES 2011 was the concept of a single UI/user interface for all of the different devices in one’s home. Download a YouTube video and send it to the HDTV, or the laptop, or some combination of devices you own. A single UI that does this, pan-operating system, is the goal. No confusing file sharing things, steps are eliminated, and civilians can use their content stuff to appear where and when they want it to.

This in turn, co-incided with a rumor that Apple might be making devices that boot on the Internet. What this means is that the device might have no inherent operating system of its own, or perhaps all of the combination of user settings, might be stored on the Internet for handy fetching to be used on your device-of-the-moment.

Why do something like this? It’s the nature of people to customize their devices, and they spend a lot of time making choices, downloading this and that, putting wallpaper, contacts, favorite photos, music, videos, and so on, in their devices. These devices now range from a smartphone, to a tablet of some kind, a notebook, perhaps a desktop computer, maybe a set top TV device, and of course, whatever’s used at work.

Currently, devices have an installed operating system, which is a basic group of programs that know how to let programs use the features of the device. Operating systems are of great rivalry, and different versions of operating systems have evolved to take advantage of the evolution of hardware devices, like USB, peripherals like cameras and network connectivity, and so on.

Consider: Apple took a lot of trouble to develop its Xserve and Xserve RAID product lines. They were, as many Apple products have been, technically astute and thunderously expensive. We reviewed them for NetworkWorld. Now they’re gone. With it, it appeared, was Apple’s enterprise computing strategy, low-reaching as it was, in many ways.

Killing their most of their server product line would seem to have been an admission of failure, something that Apple doesn’t like to do. A no-embarrassment no-apology no-failure happy experience is what’s given Apple the second largest stock value and capitalization on this planet. So what gives with Apple’s burgeoning ‘enterprise’ strategy?

I have some speculation.

From the rumor mill comes word that Apple may be unveiling a boot-on-cloud strategy. Apple has been developing network discovery protocols, like Rendezvous and more recently, the Bonjour protocol. These protocols are designed to easily discover local networking devices and then negotiate communicating with them in a way that’s potentially smarter than Ethernet and USB discovery. Apple’s been doing network discovery from the very earliest days of their networking offerings, which are now edging thirty years– and the earliest were as pioneers in networking. Apple may use Internet ‘cloud’ capabilities to ‘boot’ devices, complete with personalization.

Kick The Clouds

Most devices today startup from local storage. That storage can be flash memory, or starting (pseudo) hard disks, CDs/DVDs, and so on. In the old days, we used paper tape, punch cards, and even cassette tapes. Storage is easily virtualized, and Apple championed the discovery protocols that know how to search for devices (the Rendevous and Bonjour protocols, among other methods).

Having a device start on a network is no science fiction. Network protocols like bootp, DHCP, PXE Boot, Boot on LAN, NetBoot, and others are similar in that they’re used today rather frequently, and they get their usability from maturity. Not. Network engineers know how to use them, but civilians never see the “plumbing” that goes into making machines go to a network source for their “hard disk” or storage start info.

Apple doesn’t have to do that much work to make the Internet the source for boot information for devices. In fact, there are good reasons to do so, providing that Apple prevents “in the middle” attacks that corrupt data flows to nefarious benefit.

Security and Cloud Boot

Part of the problem of operating systems is that in the normal course of interacting with Internet stuff, the possibility that someone might slip in some malware or a virus is actually high. Some operating systems are more impervious to viruses and malware by their design, and by the belief that certain operating systems are more vulnerable than others.

Once a virus or malware payload infects a machine, it can reside in the machine for a long time doing absolutely nothing, or it might go to work immediately doing bad things. The number of programs that make malware has soared, and detecting malware payloads as they’re accidently downloaded from the Internet becomes more difficult every day. Having users reload fresh operating system components every session is crazy, as the components represent a fairly large amount of files, data, and therefore time to load them.

So what if your organization was famous for using a sparse set of them? Perhaps your operating system kernel, the program-that-loads-and-controls-all-others was small, and difficult to attack. This microkernel could be downloaded each time a device is started, cleansing the machine of any infection. Boot on network cloud would mean that each session starts only with settings and user data– and fresh clean software to run the applications that do something with the data and settings.

Apple uses such a microkernel now, a now highly-modified version of the Unix-BSD-Darwin microkernel. Updates and revisions and such could come very quickly using a boot on cloud methodology. Users wouldn’t know the difference, and if they’re worried, at anytime, they could save data and reload from the Internet. Apple in turn, gets a juicy amount of information about what users are doing, just as Google combs through its online/cloud resources for interesting information.

Would Apple do this? I speculate they might. It potentially cures a huge security problem that Apple is bound to face soon, as Microsoft loses mindshare and interest among buyers.

The quick background is that I started going to CES in 1977, and have been going every year since 2002. I was in the CE business in the late 1970s. For the past dozen years, I’ve run my own research business that focuses on enterprise systems components, as well as storage and wireless devices. I also purchased my first iPad for a gift late last year. I am not a fanboi of anything. No one paid for my trip or is paying for these observations.

Before

We arrived on Jan 1, and started doing pre-show press events that started with the CES Press Preview event, which is held at the Venetian Hotel. It was a media star event, thousands of people crammed into a fairly hall exhibit hall. A lot of nascent CES focus was on 3D technology, as well as Internet media content delivery systems of various kinds. There were tablets, along with AMD, Intel, and VIA-fueled partner initiatives. Mobility in general was a strong theme as well. Verizon Wireless sponsored the press room, and in a fit of rationality, the CES organization expanded the press room into a facility at the LVCC where Verizon was a sponsor. Indeed Verizon would steal a lot of thunder by having the rumor of the iPhone finally appearing on the Verizon Wireless network. The strange spectre of Apple would haunt many parts of the show; more about that later.

Another pre-show press event, Digital Experience, was held at Caesars. Here was a lot of room, a huge press crowd, and many and diverse CE vendors. Most all of the products were consumer-focused, although a few (Absolute Software comes to mind) have enterprise components awaiting those interested. Dell and HP were prominent, as well as Lenovo. Tablets were strong, but didn’t get quite the crowds as last year. Smartphone makers were there, although numerous names were missing– especially HP’s smartphone acquisition, Palm.

The Doors Open

The registration tent, where Gibson Guitars stood for years, was more efficient than former years. In front, CES temps hawked free copies of Gary Shapiro’s book regarding the future of TV and media.

What struck me, as these books were handed out to the few that wanted them, was that Shapiro’s organization, the CEA that puts on CES, has a bit of an industrial leadership problem. Each of the CEA’s main areas are being hit hard. Rival conferences and exhibitions the world over now rival CES in many ways.

Berlin’s IFA Conference draws plentiful more people, and Hannover’s CeBIT remains the top systems show on the planet. If you like to build computers, then CompuTex is your show. But we’re talking about consumer electronics, right?

Then the big shadow over the show is Steve Job’s continuing timing of announcements made post-CES. In entertainment electronics of the top-selling segments, Apple overshadows CES, and much of what I saw in media is this year’s response to Apple’s last-year announcements. Indeed, Apple will make announcements shortly that will show the rest of the industry’s followship, not leadership. The seemingly waning interest in tablets helps to describe how thoroughly, for better and much worse, products are judged against Apple’s.

Apple doesn’t own television. Yet TV is becoming highly fragmented in several ways. The 3D TV trend is strong, and I saw many products focused towards 3D entertainment in both movie, episode, and gaming segments, but enthusiasm seems tepid. Instead “TV” is no longer “TV” as oldsters knew it.

Today, media is delivered through several segments, the hottest of which is via content-on-demand, be that content YouTube, videos, episodes, movie downloads, or premium streams. Following that are home unifying systems where a black box is used to send content from this device to that device, laptop to phone or phone to monitor, and so on. A single user interface for all devices seemed to be most presented and desired. From there, you control your device with a remote, maybe custom, or perhaps grafted onto your iPhone or iPad Touch.

Content providers and aggregators are also still trying to convince us that the tiny real estate of your mobile phone/smartphone is actually an HDTV, and you’ll want to watch expensive full length movies on your phone. Verizon has succumbed to this illusion, but they’re not alone. Verizon seems only the least-hated among domestic US wireless phone carriers. Indeed as Verizon is to announce availability of the iPhone on its network, I worry about how much bandwidth will be crunched, as it has on AT&T’s network. The growth of smartphones on any wireless network will do the same thing to bandwidth availability on that network.

I’m still reminded of The Producers. Why? Imagine 600 MBAs all wringing their hands, promising their CEOs that if they could get just 10% of the content market, their stock price would soar off the charts. One of the reason that Facebook has done as well as it has, is that it has stolen eye share away from other content. Our social nature follows the Andy Grove Law: you have two eyes and 24 hours in your day. The competition is for those eyes, in those hours. Facebook accomplishes its goal by preventing you– by your interest– from watching television, playing games, or perhaps from doing the laundry.

The Hangover

A successful wedge has been driven between seeming needs of consumers, and the need for organizations/employers to control access of these devices to organizational resources. We’re working on a review of products that examine controlling popular CE mobility devices, but the outlook is a bit dour. It’s not going to be easy to explain that one’s new iFad can’t be connected somehow to get email, or use internal web applications.

There’s the thought that VDI (virtual desktop interface) can somehow abstract user device sessions and organizational resources; there may be some truth to this. Yet no one seems to care that perhaps a quarter of computers in the US are actually controlled by a bot or other malware. One day, there’s going to be a quiet explosion, perhaps not different than the ending to the movie Fight Club.

Worse still, there is the distinct possibility of taking down financial and content delivery networks by network terrorists. Already, “Anonymous” and other network have used simple if effective techniques to barrage networks into disappearance for short periods of times. These attacks are now becoming political in nature, and are unlikely to stop. If you can’t buy, can’t sell, can’t collect, you’re in trouble. Yet there is no outcry from the CEA organizations about network safety, inherent platform safety and security standards, or what they’ll do if the Internet goes dark in regions.

Perhaps you might think I’m being paranoid. If one considers the nature and number of CE exhibitors and attendees Internet-related activities, it’s a huge volume of business that flatlines if network terrorism and theft continues. I hope they find a solution.

-Tom Henderson

January 9th, 2011

Yahoo is a constant source of spam, as are many mail providers. It’s easy to sign up. Then you send spam until the account is closed by the mail provider. I’ve been sending spam reports, especially 419 spam, for a dozen or more years. Yahoo, along with Microsoft/Live/Hotmail does a nice job to tell me that they killed the account, or some other action was taken that they can’t tell me about for one reason or another. It’s a positive feedback loop.

Today, I forwarded several 419 messages. The reply from Yahoo is that these reports have to be in IETF RFC 5965 format.

Way-to-go, Yahoo. No one has software that can do that, at least not Outlook, Apple Mail, and others. So you don’t have to listen to their problems any more, do you? Now the spammers will have a field day. And you can fire all of those pesky employees that had to do spam intervention because your infrastructure is a hotbed for fraud.

You know better, and did less, Yahoo. Now you can claim holy ground with the new RFC, which no one can comply to, as the spammers have a field day. Somewhere, someone made a wrong decision, and you need to fire that person, and now, and start accepting abuse reports wherever they come from: or surrender your mail system because you abet fraud through your actions in this new procedure.

Lots of nice stuff, including a low price. Yet the price delta between a small SSD and the big fat one is huge. SSDs aren’t worth that much, despite their lack of weight and comparatively fast response. But I’m still tempted. HP? Where are you? Where is your MBA killer? Where? When?