SteveJ-restore-test

Horace Dediu of asymco has written two recent posts on Microsoft: " The evolution of the computing value chain ", and  " Who will be Microsoft's Tim Cook? " I find Dediu's work outstanding: he provides hard data for the points he argues... " The evolution of the computing value chain " - the graph, although log not linear sales, seems to show three things: Past product rarely 'plateau', they move from growth to decay in a single, sharp step. PC's as a proxy for MS-Windows + MS-Office has had decades of ramp-up and seems to have plateaued. Already, the longevity and plateauing mark PC's as 'different'. Other products, smartphones and tablets, are in strong growth phases and surging past PC sales. What the graphs can't show is "what will be?": predict the future. My view is that Desktops aren't going away, especially the Corporate Desktop, but they will morph and take on characteristics of competing, new dev...

Marcus Ranum, renowned IT Security expert, has interesting views on Cyberwar. It's a lot more nuanced and subtle than "One Big Attack". Where I diverge: a Big Event is a great distraction for really 'interesting', subtle actions - and can be just as simple as the First Worm by Morris. Oooops, it wasn't meant to do that... Things you should read or view: RSA Conference, 2012, On Cyberwarfare Fabius Maximus posts on cyberwar You must Be >this< Tall To Play Cyberwar (has DoD grown enough yet?) Cyberwar: The Pentagon Cyberstrategy Cyberwar: About Stuxnet‏, the next generation of warfare? Congress Authorizes Pentagon to Wage Internet War  [Wired. Ryan Singel] M.R. on rearguard-security: Cyberwar

What  did US Intelligence tell the Australian Government about Real Network Security  when a chinese vendor was vetoed  as supplier of NBN (central?) switches? Now that we have O'bama admitting " we did Stuxnet, with a little help ", we know that they aren't just capable and active, but aware of higher level attacks and defences: you never admit to your highest-level capability. Yesterday I read two pieces that gave me pause: the first,  the US Navy replacing Windows with Linux for an armed drone was hopeful, the other should frighten anyone who understands Security: there's now a market in Zero-Day vulnerabilities . The things the new-world of the NBN has to protect us against just got a lot worse than you can imagine. Links in that article: Google's responsible disclosure  [and payments] “The Hackers Who Sell Spies The Tools To Crack Your PC (And Get Paid Six-Figure Fees) " “Shopping For Zero-Days: A Price List For Hackers’ Secret Software Exploits ...

Will Apple, in 2013, release its next Game Changer for Television following on from the iPod, iPhone, and iPad? If they do, will that break the Internet as we know it when 50-250MM people trying to stream a World Cup final? Nobody can supply Terrabit server links, let alone afford them. To reinvent watching TV, Apple has to reinvent its distribution over the Internet. The surprising thing is we were first on the cusp of wide-scale "Video-on-Demand" in 1993. Can, twenty years later, we get there this time? Walter Isaacson in his HBR piece, " The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs " says: In looking for industries or categories ripe for disruption, Jobs always asked who was making products more complicated than they should be. In 2001 portable music players ... , leading to the iPod and the iTunes Store. Mobile phones were next. ... At the end of his career he was setting his sights on the television industry, which had made it almost impossible for people to click...

With the release by IBM of " Australia's Digital Future to 2050 " by Phil Ruthven of IBISworld  there is now some very good modelling to say "The Internet Changes Everything", with some Industry bulwarks of the past set to disappear or radically shrink and others, "New Century Industries" (my words), that don't yet exist at scale , will come to the fore of our economy. Previous pieces that link the NBN/Smart-Internet with "Negawatt" programs are now more relevant: Smart Internet+Smart-Grid: making money and reducing carbon footprint Smart-Grids and Carbon Trading: Enough for an economic Negawatt scheme? I'd appreciate someone with real Maths and Analytic Economics ability to tear apart my simple assumptions and ideas to create something achievable and provably economically advantageous to Australia. But until then, I have to let my simple arguments try to carry the day. I think "the Negawatt" is a Big Idea that's been 2...

Groklaw's " Curing the Problem of Software Patents " Link on Sites... " Curing the Problem of Software Patents "

Software is the stuff that runs on computers. It's invisible, intangible and isn't even 'isomorphic': exactly one form for one thing . There's an infinite number of representations of a single function, program or thing,  producing the identical result. Computers are active cognitive processing engines . They can be electronic, mechanical, relays or "wetware" like brains. If you don't know what you're working on and with, then: You can't answer: What is it that we Do? Nor can you talk about:  What's the best way to do what we do? How do we assess results? Nor:  What is unique to what we do Professionally? What is the stuff that is ours alone? The wonderful Pamela Jones of Groklaw persuaded a very insightful Intellectual Property (I.P.) expert, Michael Risch, to contribute a piece: " Curing the Problem of Software Patents ". I attempted a contribution countering the notion that "Software is Mathematics" and it was lost i...

We've crossed a Internet Security Rubicon: the USA admits to combined cyber-attack operations with Israel against Iran's nuclear enrichment program .[NY Times] The Washington Post's " Zero Day " series says a lot more. It's a very important event when a government goes public with its most-secret security or intelligence programs: it took over 4-decades after WWII (and the 'Spycatcher' court case) for news of just part of the Allied SIGINT activities to become public. The work of Bletchley Park, the home of Alan Turning's biggest contribution, was kept secret to the point of allowing mass casualties rather than give it away. The only reason I can think of for O'Bama to publicise the USA's active, and successful, practice of cyber-attack is they think they've developed protections against it. For competent, well-resourced and persistent/dogged attackers, like the Military or Intelligence Agencies, even the Gold Standard of Internet Sec...

There's stuff that I don't know about the technical implementation of the NBN using Gigabit PON (Passive Optical Network) - and I'm not sure where to find them: What sort of fibre are they using? Can it be upgraded to normal Ethernet? Does this fibre have a 20km range? Is that 28dB loss or more in 20km? How many dB loss do the splitters introduce? The wikipedia page suggests that the 2.448Gbps downstream link is normally split into 32 subscriber fibres - and that it does that in 28db. Is that a single splitter in-the-field? [low loss, high fan-out] Or a number of splitters that will be deployed between the head-end and subscriber. Will NBN Co be laying additional empty conduit/pipe in the pits it digs? Or if using aerial cables (power poles), making provision to easily run additional fibre. In 2000, Adrian Blake in Cooma paid AGL/Great Southern Energy to lay extra conduit in the trenches being dug to reticulate natural gas in the town. The "Dot Boom" became the ...