Category: Computers

This deal is pretty interesting:

Just as a computer’s spam filter “learns” to recognize new variations from the same spammer, it is hoped a computer can learn to decipher some fundamental repeat patterns about HIV’s genetic variability and narrow the search for vaccine targets.

“HIV mutates by making errors in its (genetic) copying,” Jojic said. But it can make only so many errors, he said, if it hopes to retain the genetic equivalent of the spammer’s intended e-mail.

If these techniques can identify genetic sequences retained by HIV despite its many disguises, the researchers believe this could identify critical parts of the viral DNA to target in developing a vaccine.

Continue reading “HIV is biological spam”

Early next week there may be a fairly major home networking industry announcement. Some will cry, some will rejoice, and some will go “Huh?”

More to follow.

This is amazing:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – U.S. personal incomes soared a record 3.7 percent in December, largely as the result of a one-time $32 billion dividend payment from Microsoft, the Commerce Department said Monday. Excluding the dividend, incomes rose 0.6 percent.

One little software company started by a couple of college dropouts did all of that.

Joe’s Dartblog: Welcome Back, Ma!

Welcome back onto the national scene Ma Bell; USAT reports that SBC is looking to acquire AT&T in a deal that would result in a company earning $75.3 billion a year in revenue.

Hah.

Making history:

Thought you’d appreciate this: I’m on an SAS flight from Copenhagen to Seattle right now, just crossing over Reykjavik. I’m sending this to you via in-flight wi-fi (Connexion by Boeing).

The flight crew are all proud they’ve beat Lufthansa to the punch: they tell me this is the first-ever commercial flight with in-flight wi-fi!

Also, as I was the first to log in on this flight, that makes this the first-ever email sent [over Wi-Fi] from a regularly-scheduled commercial flight.

(Obscure reference)

Morristown, Tennessee is a sleepy little town outside Knoxville where I grew up. Spurred by rising cable TV prices, the hamlet has embarked on an ambitious program to provide fiber to the home:

The new network should be available to all Morristown customers by the summer of 2007. Then the utility will use financing based on revenues it’s receiving from city customers to extend services to the county, Swann said.

He said the network will deliver service superior to the cable companies’ current offerings because it will consist entirely of fiber, or tiny glass cables, connected directly to the customer’s home or business — cables that can deliver video and data, such as the Internet, at lightning speed both coming and going.

Most cable companies, including Charter, supply service through a hybrid fiber coax system. While fiber comprises the bulk of the network, cable and Internet is delivered to customers via copper wires. These connections provide slower upload than download speeds and can be upgraded only to a point, Swann said.

With the fiber-to-the-home network, as technology improves, the utility will be able to deliver data services more and more quickly, potentially improving on today’s broadband speeds by more than 100 percent, he said.

I don’t generally approve of government doing things that the private sector is capable of doing, but I also don’t approve of getting screwed by the cable company, so I’ll be watching this with great interest.

H/T Isenberg

The resignation of Michael Powell as chairman of the FCC has been met with cheers in some corners. I would submit that anybody who’s happy to see Michael Powell go doesn’t have the first semblance of a clue about the Internet, VoIP, digital TV, or wireless networking, because Powell has been, far and away, the best FCC chairman ever on these issues. This is the way Glenn Fleishman of Wi-Fi Networking News put it:

But this site’s myopic focus will remember Powell’s legacy more for his unstinting support for the opposite of consolidation in spectrum policy. Over the last four years, Powell by his public statements and, ostensibly, private actions has managed to open more spectrum, consider innovative secondary uses of licensed spectrum, and build a framework for cleaning up the messier and least used bands that are needed for 3G and beyond and WiMax and beyond.

In these areas, Powell’s leadership encouraged technologies that aren’t centrally owned or controlled and that may, in fact, dislodge primacy of wireline incumbents.

So there you have it – some people evaluate FCC commissioners on how well they ignore long-standing law and policy to excuse the potty-mouth stylings of completely worthless human scum like Howard Stern, and some evaluate them on how well they push new technologies forward. I know which side of that debate I’m on.

I hereby declare Zone Labs, manufacturer of a personal firewall variously called Zone Alarm and Computer Associates EZ Armor, public enemy number one. They’ve committed a number of offenses that have the net result of preventing Mozilla Firefox from running on computers that have been infected with their crappy software. Here’s what happens:

1. You install Firefox on a computer that has previously had Zone Alarm installed and then un-installed. Most people will un-install Zone Alarm after a few minutes because it’s so annoying.

2. Firefox reports a “connection refused” error each time it tries to access any web site at all.

3. You go to the Firefox BBS for advice, wade through 18 pages of postings, and learn you have to install a newer version of Zone Alarm.

4. You download the new version of Zone Alarm and try to install it, only to get an error message that says it can’t be installed until you un-install the previous version.

5. You can’t un-install the previous version because you’ve already un-installed it.

6. You’re screwed, Firefox is screwed, and you want to beat the crap out of the entire Zone Labs crew.

But there is a way around this: delete the Zone Labs folder in Program Files, and, using regedit, remove all references to Zone Alarm and Zone Labs from the Windows registry. Now you can install the new version of Zone Alarm, run Mozilla, permit it to pass the firewall, and then un-install the crappy firewall. If you have XP with SP2, you probably need to un-install SP2 before doing this.

Zone Labs’ software continues to block Internet access after the firewall has been disabled, and the older version leaves parts of itself on your computer after it’s been un-installed. Their software is indistinguishable from a virus and nobody should use it anywhere at any time.

Zone Labs sucks.

UPDATE: Not all versions of Zone Alarm have this problem – the current one ( 5.5.062.000) appears to be OK, and the one they were shipping three months ago was OK. In between then and now, there were at least two defective versions. The problem is, however, that if you installed and then un-installed the defective version you probably don’t know what it was.

I don’t personally use or have a need for a personal firewall because I have a LAN that sits behind a NAT box/firewall/router. But why anybody who builds a personal firewall sees a need to block browser accesses to the Internet is a matter of great mystery to me, but what would I know?

Based on past performance I stand by the claim that Zone Labs sucks and would not recommend their software to anyone. If you can’t do basic Software QA you don’t belong on my gear.

I have a similar opinion of Symantec, based on their product support strategy. They will not provide telephone support without a fee over and above the cost of the product, and their web knowledge base is totally inadequate. The only thing they do well is issue refunds, presumably because they’ve had so much practice at it.

The world is wide open for a good anti-spam and anti-virus company.

Bill Gates has a few words to say about the Creative Commons folks on CNET:

CNET: In recent years, there’s been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, “We’ve got to look at patents, we’ve got to look at copyrights.” What’s driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?

Gates: No, I’d say that of the world’s economies, there’s more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.

And this debate will always be there. I’d be the first to say that the patent system can always be tuned–including the U.S. patent system. There are some goals to cap some reform elements. But the idea that the United States has led in creating companies, creating jobs, because we’ve had the best intellectual-property system–there’s no doubt about that in my mind, and when people say they want to be the most competitive economy, they’ve got to have the incentive system. Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the future.”

I like Bill Gates.

UPDATE: Professor Lessig, the guy who writes all those “The Sky Is Falling” Internet books, is sad, and Boing-boing makes drawings to show how very hip they are.

Lycos has invented a completely brilliant method of combatting spam. It’s a screen saver that pings spam sites when you’re not doing anything else with your computer. The idea was to increase spammers’ bandwidth bills, but it was so successful it completely knocked many of them offline, so they’re doing a bit of re-tooling:

A campaign by Lycos Europe to target spam-related websites appears to have been put on hold.

Earlier this week the company released a screensaver that bombarded the sites with data to try to bump up the running costs of the websites.

The screen saver was downloadable from the Make Love not Spam site, but no more.

Pity.