Technology

Some Possible Good News on the Spam Front

This entry was posted in Internet Spam Technology on by

This looks like a good thing:

Comcast, the US cable giant, is threatening to disconnect customers whose infected PC are being used to relay spam messages.
Up to 30 per cent of spam is now spewing from hijacked “zombie” PCs. Spammers use Trojan horses and worms to take over PCs and use them as spam engines, a practice that can severely disrupt the operation of ISPs.

I’d like to see them extend this to include PCs infected with Blaster and other worms that continually spew out probes looking for machines to infect. There policy should provide a mechanism for these users to regain access once they have cleansed their PC.
There is some risk that Comcast will block some innocents as well. Remember, Comcast is the outfit with the Kafkaesque usage policy.

The Music Industry Might be Wise to Get Rid of the RIAA

This entry was posted in Capitalism Libertarianism Marketing Music Technology on by

John Dvorak makes this interesting argument:

Copy protection schemes, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and lawsuits against file sharers are not going to save the music business. In fact, the opposite is true. I’m convinced that the shuttering of the original wide-open Napster almost four years ago was the beginning of the end for the recording industry. This is because Napster was not just an alternative distribution network; it was an alternative sampling system.

Dvorak is right about the aborted potential of Napster to power growth in the music industry but it was never going to survive in its old form with or without Napster like sampling capability.
I can’t predict exactly how it will transform as such things take on a lives of their own but I do expect to see massive disintermediation despite the best effort of the faltering industry dinosaurs.
Napster was the tip of the meteor so to speak. The RIAA, Warner, Sony, etc., congress, the FCC all need to just get out of the way because we will have our music and we will have it at the price and in the form that we find useful and enjoyable.

Water of Life

This entry was posted in Astronomy Technology US Foreign Policy on by

On Mars:

The Mars rover Opportunity has discovered powerful evidence that water once “drenched” the surface of Mars and made the planet habitable for life at some unknown time in the distant past, NASA scientists said Tuesday.

This is very cool stuff.
On the other hand, we are, perhaps, lucky Mars is not currently suspected of supporting life. Or we might be dealing with this:

Why take chances?
Life, if found on Mars,
Might evolve and threaten Earth:
Launch pre-emptive strikes!

Update (3/2): There is a lot of good info on what the water announcement really means here. Via Electolite.

The Mantra, Punters, Givers, Formatters and Mentors

This entry was posted in Capitalism Marketing Technology on by

If you have owned a computer or used one at work chances are you have had a chance to talk to ‘tech support’ and your experience may have been good or bad.
This Salon article is well worth the second or two to click through to the premium content and depending on your past experience with tech support you will either laugh or scream as you relive past experiences.
You will not, though, look forward to your next call. Your support might have been outsourced to a company that gets paid by the call and where technician training might go like this:

Beyond a cursory overview of the computers we were in charge of healing, the closest thing to a troubleshooting tool we were taught was The Mantra. When class ended, which varied wildly depending on Chad’s interest and mental status, we were all encouraged to say The Mantra out loud. We repeated it over and over, the words seating themselves deep in the folds of our brains until the breakup of class began to feel more and more like the end of a cult meeting.
The Mantra is simply, “We don’t support that.”……Without The Mantra we’d waste precious time trying to answer questions beyond the scope of our expertise. Never mind that the scope of our expertise was largely limited to reciting The Mantra and logging calls. The important thing was that we understood our mission was to answer questions that fell within the limited margins outlined in the computer’s warranty. Beyond that we didn’t have to do anything.

Of course, over some period of time companies who choose to save a penny now by providing this type of service to their customers should find themselves out of business.
Via Dan Gilmour.