Article Blog #15: Can you hear me now?

"So, Verizon, about those doubled early termination fees..."

In recent days, the Federal Communications Commission has again been acting as a watchdog for consumers. Instead of threatening direct action against companies, the FCC has been sending letters asking a few questions about policies they find suspect. And these letters have been getting results. The latest company to receive such a letter is Verizon Wireless. The reason the FCC is so interested in Verizon is their recent hike in early termination fees. On November 15, Verizon doubled the early termination fee for customers purchasing smartphones with one or two year contracts, from $175 to a whopping $350. To clarify, customers who signed a contract with Verizon after buying a Blackberry or Droid smartphone would have to pay $350 if they want to terminate that contract early. Early termination fees are just something you live with when you sign a cell phone contract, but $350 seems a bit excessive. And at least four US Senators agree. On thursday, they introduced legislation that would put a cap on the amount cell phone carriers can charge for early termination of contracts. Verizon claims that the boosted charges are to recover money that Verizon removes from the purchase price of the smartphones with a contract. Verizon, and many other major mobile companies, subsidize the often high prices of phones in exchange for the customer agreeing to sign a contract with the company. However, this explanation seems to fall flat. The FCC questioned why a customer who terminated a 24 month contract in the 23rd month would still have to pay a fee of $120. If the purpose of the early termination fee is to recover money lost through subsidizing, why is the fee still so high near the end of the contract? Currently, Verizon's termination fee decreases by $10 for every month of the contract. If the proposed bill passes, Verizon will be required to change this so that the rate decreases in proportion to the time left in the contract. Which means that after one year in a two year contract, the customer would only owe half of the original termination fee. This is a good thing in my book. Verizon's doubled termination fee for smartphones just seems to me like an attempt to discourage customers from even looking at the competition.

Additional Sources:
Verizon's Going to Have to Answer to the FCC (and Customers)
Verizon Wireless asked by FCC about increased termination fee

Article Blog #13: Hooray for atom smashers

Large Hadron Collider progress delights researchers

I love science. I love reading about new discoveries. Even though it isn't my own field of study, I love physics. So naturally, I'm extremely excited that the Large Hadron Collider has been successfully restarted. Originally planned to start up in September last year, the collider suffered a failure in one of the giant superconducting magnets used to guide the stream of protons around the collider's 27 kilometer loop. An electrical fault caused a large amount of liquid helium, used to cool the magnets to their operating temperature of 1.9 K, to leak into the collider's tunnel. For the past fourteen months, scientists and engineers have been repairing the superconducting magnets, and taking advantage of the time to install upgrades on the instruments and software. CERN's (European Organization for Nuclear Research) director of accelerators , Steve Myers, reports that the project is now more advanced than it was after the first five days of experiments last year. But now, as of Friday, the enormous particle accelerator has been successfully restarted. On Friday, a single beam of protons was directed around the loop of the collider, and is now circulating inside the machine. Following the success of the clockwise beam, a counterclockwise beam was injected and successfully guided around the loop. As long as all continues to go well, scientists will direct the beams together in the next few days, producing low energy collisions. Provided that these experiments go well, the energy of the beams will be increased in early 2010, allowing experiments searching for the elusive Higgs boson to begin. The Higgs boson is a theoretical particle crucial to our current theories of physics. Current theories predict the existence of the Higgs boson, but we have yet to find one. The high energy collisions produced by the Large Hadron Collider should, in theory, finally prove or disprove the existence of the Higgs boson. This may not sound very exciting to those who aren't interested in physics, but to scientists and those who follow their research, this is the biggest news in physics right now. All things considered, these are very exciting times.

Additional sources:

Restarted LHC Now 2 Steps Closer to "Big Bang" Test

CERN Restarts Large Hadron Collider

Article Blog #11: Accidentally forgot about #10

Zynga To Remove All In Game Offers

Social gaming company Zynga has landed themselves in a bit of trouble over the third party offers in their popular games. But first, some background. Zynga is the company behind many of the popular games on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Farmville, Fishville, and Mafia Wars are just three of their creations. The reason Zynga has been getting in trouble is their business model. Players are encouraged to spend money in get in-game currency. This isn't an uncommon model, several games allow players to buy currency or reward players for donations. But Zynga allows users who don't want to pay cash to complete offers from third parties, and be rewarded with in-game currency upon completion of the offer. This isn't the problem either, per se, and it's also not unique to Zynga. The problem is that many of these third party offers are really just scams. Users who use the offers may end up paying more in cash than they would have to just buy the in-game currency. Technology blog TechCrunch accuses Zynga of taking advantage of its customers and forcing competitors out of business. Customers fall for the scams, Zynga gets paid and puts this money back into advertising on Facebook and MySpace, gaining more new users. Meanwhile, games without these third party offers fall behind in advertising because they aren't making as much money from their customers. The blog post also details how the system tends to force legitimate advertising offers out, making more room for scams.
To their credit, Zynga does seem to realize that this is a problem. They have taken steps to remove the scam ads from their games. After a rocky start to the removal process, they seem to be serious about the effort. Facebook's removal of their newest game, Fishville, because of the scams may have helped prompt swift action. Because third party offers comprise roughly a third of Zynga's income, the decision to remove ads couldn't have been an easy one. But their dependence on these offers should also serve as a catalyst, to encourage them to change their policies on scams quickly and put the offers back into the games.

Additional Sources:
"Horrible Things" Slink Back Into Zynga
Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell
Zynga Wikipedia article

Article Blog #9: Bring on the Droids

Big Cellphone Makers Shifting to Android System

In recent years, the iPhone has been the most popular smartphone for general consumers. While Blackberry and Palm retained the corporate market, average consumers were swept away by Apple's iPhone. Ever since the iPhone was released exclusively on AT&T, other networks and cell companies have struggled to capture the market. Windows Mobile, which held a large portion of the market before the advent of the iPhone, has faded in comparison to Apple's phone. But now, phones running the Android operating system, developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance, are growing in popularity, and many people are predicting that it could rival the iPhone. Many cellphone manufacturers have started producing phones running on Android, and all four major US carriers have agreed to carry Android phones. Verizon has even started taking shots directly at the iPhone in a new series of advertisements for the Motorola Droid. Using a format similar to Apple's attack ads against Microsoft, the Verizon ads target places where the iPhone falls short compared to the Droid.
Why is Android suddenly so popular? The association with Google certainly can't hurt, but it doesn't explain its status as a possible iPhone killer. A lot of it probably has to do with it being so similar to the iPhone. Specifically, it's easy to use and easy to customize, the things that helped make the iPhone so popular. Users can easily add apps to add functionality to their phone. But it isn't only easy for users to customize, it's also a great operating system for the manufacturers. Android is an open source OS, meaning the source code of the OS is available to phone manufacturers to change as required for their hardware. Android still controls a very small percentage of the market, but that percentage is rising. At the same time, iPhone customers have been expressing recently over AT&T's contracts and Apple's rejection of apps from their store without much explanation. Android is in a position to take a large portion of the market, as long as a manufacturer can create a handset to rival the iPhone's design.

Additional sources:
Android phones give carrier services more muscle

Verizon Droid Takes on iPhone

Article Blog #8: Microsoft, T-Mobile, and the Cloud

I nearly blogged about net neutrality again, but this story popped up and I decided I've said enough about net neutrality for now.

Microsoft, T-Mobile Could Recover Sidekick Data, but Questions Remain

At the beginning of the month, owners of T-Mobile Sidekicks received a nasty surprise. Because of a server failure at the Microsoft subsidiary in charge of the Sidekick, Danger Inc., users found themselves without any of their personal data, including photos and contact lists. T-Mobile froze sales of the Sidekick, and Microsoft reported that there was a chance the data could be lost for good. Both the primary and backup servers experienced a hardware failure, which was close to a worst-case scenario. Now, 16 days after the loss of data, officials at Microsoft and T-Mobile report that the data can be restored, and are in the process of doing so.

The Sidekick data storage is an example of cloud computing, storing data on the "cloud" of server farms rather than on the user's device. Cloud computing has several advantages, and has been gaining popularity recently. However, this incident shows that there are potential downfalls to the use of cloud computing. When data storage is left in the hands of a corporation, they have a responsibility to ensure the safety of the customer's data. The Sidekick stores very little data on the phone, with the majority of customer data being stored on Danger Inc.'s servers. The data loss shows, among other things, a lack of proper fail-safes on the part of Microsoft and Danger. A single incident should not be able to knock out both the main and backup systems, and the fact that it did seems to indicate either a catastrophic failure or very poor design. Cloud computing does have advantages, the greatest being that documents and programs stored in the cloud can be accessed anywhere, as long as an internet connection exists. But placing your data in the hands of a company carries risks. The best way to guard against accidental data loss is to make a  backup of your own, stored on your own system. It shouldn't be necessary, but until a better solution to prevent data loss is proposed, it is.

Additional sources:
 Clouds are nice, but be sure to back up important data

Getting past the fear of computer clouds

Article Blog #7: Taking the backdoor into Adobe

Adobe exploit puts backdoor on computers

A new exploit has been discovered, and the affected software company is scrambling to code a patch. This time the company is Adobe, and the products in question are Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat. The security flaw is exploited when a malicious hacker sends the victim a PDF file containing javascript-based malware. The trojan horse creates a backdoor into the victim's computer, which the hacker can use to gain access. This is a zero day attack, meaning that the exploits started on the same day Adobe became aware of the security flaw. The term "zero day" attack comes from the practice of starting numbering at zero in computer science, a practice readers are sure to be familiar with. This is the fourth zero-day attack involving malicious code contained in PDF files this year.

This latest attack is a good reminder to the computer-using public. The Internet has enabled us to do many things that we once could not, and has made everyday tasks and communication far easier. But with that convenience comes the ever present threat of viruses and hackers. This attack uses a .pdf file as a trojan horse. The success of the attack depends on the victim trusting that the attacker is being honest and sending them a safe file. Unfortunately, such attacks have become common. There will always be people who can be fooled by hackers on the Internet, so security issues become a race between software vendors to close holes and hackers to exploit them. And no matter how quickly vendors work, some users will fall prey to malware before security patches can be issued. So it is in the users' best interests to learn about the software they depend on, and about the potential security exploits. This knowledge would give those who understand it the ability to better protect themselves from the threat of hacking.

Additional Sources:
New Adobe Reader, Acrobat Vulnerability Comes Under Attack
Hackers exploit this year's fourth PDF zero-day
Zero day attack

Article Blog #6: Net Neutrality Again

GOP: Neutrality Rules Will Thwart Broadband Investment

Once again, net neutrality is in the news. The FCC recently revised their network neutrality rules. The new plan adds two new principles to the existing four, and turns the principles into regulations. The new principles require that internet providers not discriminate against any lawful content on the internet, and that they stay transparent about how they manage their networks. The chairman of the FCC also said that neutrality principles should also apply to wireless networks.

To me, this proposal sounds like a good idea. But not everyone feels this way. House Minority Leader John Boehner and House Republican whip Eric Cantor sent a letter to President Obama, complaining about the new FCC proposals. The pair claim that network neutrality rules would threaten investment in broadband technologies. This letter came after a move by House Republicans to block funding to the FCC to prevent the new neutrality rules from being put in place. This move was retracted, and never took effect. In addition, the letter advised Obama to instruct the FCC to drop net neutrality in favor of extending broadband internet access to all US homes.

The reactions of these two congressmen are somewhat hard for me to understand. First, while President Obama does have significant influence with many departments of the government, the FCC is an independant agency and not directly controlled by the President. Second, the claim that net neutrality will thwart investment in broadband technology is ridiculous. The ISPs argue that they need to be able to control and limit access to ensure fair access to their networks. They claim that the rules will prevent them from managing their networks properly. However, there is nothing in the new rules that would prevent the companies from conducting business as usual, as long as the companies are transparent about their actions. The new proposals are important steps, but they only extend the existing rules to a minor degree. The internet has thrived for the past decades with neutrality, and there is no reason that it won't continue to flourish under the new neutrality rules.

Additional Sources:
Network neutrality: Doing the right things
House GOP Leaders Complain to Obama About Net Neutrality

Article Blog #5: Texting and Driving Do Not Mix

AAA Wants Ban on Texting While Driving

The American Automobile Association (AAA) is pushing for texting while driving to be banned in all 50 states by the year 2013. Specifically, the organization wants it to be illegal to read, write, or send text messages while driving a vehicle. Eighteen states, plus Washington DC, currently have laws banning text messaging while driving. Are these laws really necessary? Statistics seem to indicate that they could be. Roughly one out of five US drivers admitted to texting while driving at least once in a 30 day period. And a Virginia Tech study revealed that commercial truck drivers who text while on the road are 23 times more likely to be in a crash.

What we have here is another conflict between a new technology and our established society. While text messaging is not new as a technology, its widespread use is a recent development. For many people, text messaging has become a vital part of their life, a way to communicate with friends and family in times or places where a phone call is unnecessary or inappropriate. Some cell phone users send text messages more than they make phone calls. The conflict comes into play when those people start using text messaging in places that it should not be done. Driving is an activity that requires near-constant attention to the road. Brief glances to mirrors or to take a sip of a beverage don't affect driving too much, but sending a text message would require a driver to take their eyes off the road for several seconds. An average of 4.6 seconds, long enough to travel the length of a football field at 55 mph. Common sense tells most of us that taking one's eyes off the road for that length of time is too dangerous. But some people do it anyway, and it has already caused accidents and injuries.

The question is, does there need to be a law to ban texting while driving? Some would say no, but I disagree. Texting while driving has caused accidents, and charging drivers with reckless driving can only be done after the driver has already done something reckless that endangers other drivers. The new laws will serve as a deterrent, something that will hopefully make people think twice before taking their eyes off the road to compose a text message.

Additional Sources:
State needs law to ban texting while driving
Ban texting while driving

FCC Chief to Propose New Rules for How Firms Control Internet Traffic

Network neutrality, a topic that should be important to everyone who uses the Internet on a regular basis. Net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers should keep all legal Internet content freely available. This would obviously be good for consumers, as all network traffic would be treated equally, but service providers are less happy about the idea. Many providers would rather have control over what content has a higher priority than others. Some say they want to have more control to regulate bandwidth across their networks. But with the ability to give higher priority to certain types of Internet content comes the possibility of bribery and payoffs. Some companies have lobbied for a pay-to-play system, where companies would pay ISPs to give their content higher priority on the networks. Companies who couldn't afford to pay would be bumped down to lower speeds, with priority given to those who can pay up.

This isn't the kind of system we have now. Since 2005, the Federal Communications Commission has had four principles that cover net neutrality policy. However, many developers and interest groups have expressed concern that the current policies are too vague, and don't properly cover recent advances in wireless network technology. We have net neutrality, but it could stand to be stronger. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is expected to propose new rules on Monday that should strengthen the current net neutrality policy.

I'm a strong advocate for free access on the Internet, so my stance on net neutrality is probably obvious. The Internet has seen increasing use as a way for smaller companies to get their names out and grow. The social networking industry, now very large, developed itself from a collection of small websites. Many small businesses use the Internet to communicate and promote their services. Giving out bandwidth priority to those willing to pay would make it difficult for smaller, less wealthy businesses to compete. While that system would be very profitable to ISPs, it would be harmful to the customers they are supposed to serve. In lobbying for an end to net neutrality, ISPs do a disservice to their own customers. The FCC's new net neutrality guidelines should insure that the Internet remains a level playing field for consumers everywhere.

Additional sources:
FCC to propose 'Net neutrality' rules
We can't be neutral on net neutrality

Hacker pleads guilty to ID thefts netting millions

Albert Gonzalez recently pleaded guilty to nineteen criminal charges related to an enormous identity theft scheme. His offenses include conspiracy, computer fraud, wire fraud, and access device fraud. Gonzalez worked with ten others from various countries to steal credit and debit card numbers from a number of retail companies. Albert and his co-conspirators used wardriving and packet sniffers to steal the information, and also engaged in ATM fraud by putting the stolen data on blank cards and making fraudulent withdraws.

Wardriving is the name for the practice of driving down a street with an open laptop, scanning for unsecured wireless networks, and a packet sniffer is a tool used to capture data being transmitted over a network. Both are practices used by hackers. What Albert Gonzalez did was clearly illegal, and caused financial damage to countless individuals. This serves as an example of what can happen when new technologies are used in unethical ways. But some of these same methods can be used in good ways too.

Computer hacking falls into two broad categories: black hat and white hat. Black hats like Gonzalez break into computer systems for their own gain, and generally without regard to the owners of the systems. Their actions can damage the systems they break into, and cause harm to others in the form of piracy, fraud, and identity theft. However, the same techniques used by the black hat hackers can be used for the good of society.

White hat hackers also breach computer security systems, but do so for non-malicious reasons. Sometimes the system the hacker breaks into is their own, other times they're hired to test the security of another person's system. They use the same tools and techniques as the black hats, but the end results are radically different. The techniques used in hacking can be used for ethical or unethical ways, it all depends on the user.

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Additional sources:
Hacker Pleads Guilty In Major Identify Theft
Remorseful hacker faces 25 years
Hacker (Computer security)

Microsoft ordered to stop US sales of Word, appeals court stays injunction

U.S. appeals court stays Microsoft Word injunction

This one might need some background info. In a suit filed in March 2007, Canadian software developer i4i charged Microsoft with patent infringement. The suit centered on Microsoft Word's ability to create and edit custom XML (extensible markup language) documents. Last month, a jury found in favor of i4i, and Microsoft was ordered to pay $290 million in damages. Additionally, the judge imposed an injunction prohibiting Microsoft from selling any version of MS Word capable of opening .XML files, as well and .DOCX or .DOCM files, which contain custom XML. All current versions of Word have this capability, so the decision could have taken Word off the shelves entirely until Microsoft could create a version without the offending features, or find another work-around. This week, the US Court of Appeals granted Microsoft's request for a stay of the injunction, pending the appeal of the original decision.

All this brings us to the real question: What does this all mean? For right now, nothing. The injunction has been postponed, so Word will remain on the shelves until the appeal process has been finished. But what would happen if Word were removed from the shelves? For most people, there wouldn't be much of an effect. MS Word would disappear from store shelves for a few weeks, possibly a few months, while Microsoft created a new version of the software without the features that infringed on i4i's patent. However, considering the large number of people who depend on Word on a daily basis, this gap in availability would be sure to negatively affect somebody. However, some bloggers and writers have expressed an opinion that this could be a good thing. Jeff Bertolucci of PC World wrote a piece exploring what he thinks could happen if Word were banned for a few months, or possibly for good. His opinion seems to be that the general public would start turning to free and open source alternatives if Word were unavailable. I find that I must respectfully disagree with Jeff's opinion. Word is the standard word processor for a large percentage of computer users, and switching to a product that many people have not even heard of before would be very difficult. Besides, chances are very good that Word will not be removed from store shelves, and if it is, it likely won't stay gone for very long.

Before I bring this post to a close, I do want to bring up one more issue raised by this lawsuit. The ODF open document format is an open source document file format, intended to become a standard usable across many types of software. ODF is XML based, and there have been some fears over the possibility that i4i's patent could cover ODF too. While this is a legitimate worry, the current version of ODF does not use the custom XML covered by i4i's patent, and it's worth nothing that the case against Microsoft may have more to do with a deteriorated relationship between i4i and Microsoft.

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Additional sources:
Microsoft's 'Custom XML' patent suit could put ODF at risk

Injunction on Microsoft Word Unlikely to Halt Sales

Microsoft Word Ban: Maybe it Wouldn't be so Bad

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UK Government threatens to shut off internet for file sharers

UK. gov revives net cut-off threat for illegal downloaders

UK officials are reconsidering a plan to force ISPs to cut off internet access to users who frequently download illegal files from P2P networks. Although the government has stated that this sanction would only be used in extreme cases, many people, myself included, feel that the option is too extreme to even consider. The Internet has become an important part of our society, from entertainment to global communication. Students often use the Internet for socializing, communication, organizing, and taking classes without a physical classroom. Average people often use the Internet as a source of news and information, and as a way to stay in touch with friends and conference with coworkers. To cut off an individual from those resources could have a large impact on their lives, to the point where it would be a disproportionate response to the crime of illegal downloading. But these proposed sanctions would do more than just cut off an individual, but also everyone in their household. In punishing one illegal downloader, these restrictions could cut off an entire family from valuable online resources.

Consumers aren't the only ones who could be negatively impacted by these measures. ISPs in the UK have been against this measure, as the government would be forcing them to disconnect their customers. The current plan makes the ISP pay for half of the costs of disconnection, with the entertainment industry providing the other half. ISPs also object to the plans on the grounds that it will politicize their business.

Societal implications aside, there is another concern over the revival of the cut-off plan. The current plans give more power to First Secretary of State Lord Mandelson. Though the government has denied it, there are rumors that the revival of the plan could be connected to a summer holiday meeting between Mandelson and Hollywood mogul David Geffen. If those rumors prove to be true, the new plans could represent a major conflict of interest for Lord Mandelson.

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Additional sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6089126/Should-illegal-filesharers-have-their-broadband-connection-taken-away.html

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=138587#=rss2534

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