The Blinne Blog

What Are the Limits of Conventional Computing?

For their 125th anniversary Science magazine asked the Top 25 science questions, one of which is in my area of expertise. That question is:  What Are the Limits of Conventional Computing?.

At first glance, the ultimate limit of computation seems to be an engineering issue. How much energy can you put in a chip without melting it? How fast can you flip a bit in your silicon memory? How big can you make your computer and still fit it in a room? These questions don't seem terribly profound.

Unless of course, you've actually been involved like I have in semiconductor design. It always amazes us that any of this stuff works. With time, the physics gets nastier and nastier. When I started my career we were designing 4 micron gates (the distance measured here are the length of the gate of the transistor). Now we are working on 90 nm gates and next year it will be 65 nm. We now have to worry about capacitance, resistance, inductance, setup times, hold times, on chip variation, power consumption, crosstalk avoidance, electromigration, latch up, charge antennas, planarization, leakage, and electrostatic discharge (and these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head).

In fact, computation is more abstract and fundamental than figuring out the best way to build a computer. This realization came in the mid-1930s, when Princeton mathematicians Alonzo Church and Alan Turing showed--roughly speaking--that any calculation involving bits and bytes can be done on an idealized computer known as a Turing machine. By showing that all classical computers are essentially alike, this discovery enabled scientists and mathematicians to ask fundamental questions about computation without getting bogged down in the minutiae of computer architecture.

This is true. In fact, the basic architecture of a computer has not fundamentally changed since Turing described binary digits, von Neumann developed automata theory, and Shannon developed information theory before and during World War II.

For example, theorists can now classify computational problems into broad categories. P problems are those, broadly speaking, that can be solved quickly, such as alphabetizing a list of names. NP problems are much tougher to solve but relatively easy to check once you've reached an answer. An example is the traveling salesman problem, finding the shortest possible route through a series of locations. All known algorithms for getting an answer take lots of computing power, and even relatively small versions might be out of reach of any classical computer.

Mathematicians have shown that if you could come up with a quick and easy shortcut to solving any one of the hardest type of NP problems, you'd be able to crack them all. In effect, the NP problems would turn into P problems. But it's uncertain whether such a shortcut exists--whether P = NP. Scientists think not, but proving this is one of the great unanswered questions in mathematics.

First some definitions. P stands for polynomial time and NP stands for non-deterministic polynomial time. It is really, really important to find an order P solution. Given a fast enough traditional computer, this can be solved in reasonable time. An NP complete problem is in essence unsolvable for a computer. To see how many problems are probably NP complete check out this non-exhaustive list. If a mathematician can show P equals NP or P does not equal NP, it will be an instant Fields Medal for such an individual.

If it is the latter we may need to abandon the von Neumann architecture that has served us so well. But, how would we do that?

But there is a realm beyond the classical computer: the quantum. The probabilistic nature of quantum theory allows atoms and other quantum objects to store information that's not restricted to only the binary 0 or 1 of information theory, but can also be 0 and 1 at the same time. Physicists around the world are building rudimentary quantum computers that exploit this and other quantum effects to do things that are provably impossible for ordinary computers, such as finding a target record in a database with too few queries. But scientists are still trying to figure out what quantum-mechanical properties make quantum computers so powerful and to engineer quantum computers big enough to do something useful.

By learning the strange logic of the quantum world and using it to do computing, scientists are delving deep into the laws of the subatomic world. Perhaps something as seemingly mundane as the quest for computing power might lead to a newfound understanding of the quantum realm.

The reason why quantum computing could be so powerful is the difference between a bit and a qubit. A qubit consists of multiple entangled quantum states. A bit can be 0 or 1. A qubit consists of superpositions of whole binary strings.  Thus we can do things in parallel which we are currently doing serially. One of the current challenges is maintaining what is know as coherence. Coherence can be lost by observing the state of a qubit as a result of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

The first half of my career has been marked by doing the same thing but making it smaller and smaller, and faster and faster. We've ridden Moore's Law far longer than I had personally anticipated. The question for the second half of my career is whether we will see Python's (Monty) Law: "And now for something completely different."

Scientists get their own Google

Scientists get their own Google.

Imagine searching the Internet and being able to restrict your results to academic texts. Today Google launched a free search engine that aims to do just that. Google Scholar searches only journal articles, theses, books, preprints, and technical reports across any area of research. A test version of the search engine is available at http://scholar.google.com, so you can try it out. In a search for the phrase "human genome", for example, a normal Google web search throws back 450,000 or so hits, with genome centres and databases and other websites ranked top. In contrast, Google Scholar returns just 113,000 hits, and all the top-ranked items are not websites but seminal papers on the subject. In fact, the number one hit is the landmark article "Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome" published in Nature in 2001.

I did my own work research on this today and found a relevant paper (the free version) in a few minutes! Here's how it works:

Much of the peer-reviewed material has been made available to Google by publishers, including Nature Publishing Group, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, through a pilot cross-publisher search engine called CrossRef Search.

Publishers have arranged for Google robots to scan the full texts of their articles. Users clicking on a hit returned by Google Scholar are directed to the article on the publisher's site, where subscribers can access full text and non-subscribers get an abstract or information on how to buy an article.

Google Scholar has a subversive feature, however. Each hit also links to all the free versions of the article it has found saved on other sites, for example on personal home pages, elsewhere on the Internet.

Subversion feature. Hmm. In the words of the immortal Instapundit, heh.

Virtual Church

The BBC is reporting the appointment of a pastor for the Internet. I am not sure this is such a good idea. This is yet another step of the individualization of spirituality. I wonder how well such fellowship can be real rather than just merely virtual.

Alyson Leslie, a lay pastor, will run i-Church, a community of worshippers from all over the world who will congregate at the website for prayers in chatrooms, webcast services and e-mail socialising.

It is the first time a web community will be a fully recognised Anglican church. Although parishioners from many countries are taking part, the church will nominally be part of the Diocese of Oxford, which is funding the £15,000-a-year venture - a fraction of the cost of maintaining many physical churches.

It Rolks!

Helsinki University of Technology has developed a robot that doesn't walk and doesn't roll. It rolks! Here's a picture of the robot. Click for a larger view.

Gamers Conquer the World

Tomorrow's issue of Nature will report on how the Army is using gaming technology to simulate the whole world.

The US army has teamed up with a computer games company to create a simulation of the whole Earth.

In a bid to help soldiers train around the globe without travelling, army researchers are working with There, a company based in Menlo Park, California, that specializes in games set in realistic three-dimensional environments. Together they will build a virtual model of the entire planet, using existing data about Earth's terrain. Robert Gehorsam, a senior vice-president at There, says that the product will model the real world as closely as possible.

The artificial world will help the army to practise intelligence work, patrols and planning, as well as encounters with civilians. A group of soldiers who served in Iraq will test the system in the spring; a final version is hoped to be in place by September. But the team has a long way to go — so far only part of Kuwait City has been modelled in detail.

SCO Accidentally Makes Linux Viable

The question about Linux is how do you make money on free software? Without a business plan Linux could go the way of the dot-com bubble. SCO has been suing everything Linux hoping to produce a business plan out of a legal one. They dared the commercial Linux destributors to offer what is known as indemnification — holding the consumers of Linux legally harmless. Here's the response from the Linux vendors:

"Our customers need the ability to use Linux code without interruption, and developers have to keep working on open-source software," Bryan Sims, vice president of business development at Red Hat, told NewsFactor.

The company has been offering such protection to its customers for some time, he said, but decided to make a formal announcement. Sims said the assurance program was not a specific response to recent attacks by the SCO Group against Linux providers. "This is recognition of what it takes to put out a good product," he maintained.

The top Linux vendor, Red Hat becomes the third major Linux provider -- joining HP and Novell -- to offer some form of indemnification to its customers. Novell, which recently purchased Linux developer SuSE, last week began offering protection for copyright-infringement claims made by third parties against SuSE Linux Enterprise Server software.

Now business has a very good reason to spend money. The free version carries a risk. Thus, SCO in its attempt to kill Linux may have saved it.

Religion and the Internet

Pew Internet & American Life Project looked at Internet use including religious use and here were their conclusions:

• 30% of Internet users have sought religious information online as of November 2002.
• That represents growth of 94%, from 18 million who had sought religious information as of March 2000, to 35 million who had done such searches as of November 2002.
• More online women than online men have done religious searches on the Web.
• African-American users are more likely than other groups to have searched for religious information online, especially African-American women.

Is this a good thing? Only time will tell. Americans have often been very individualistic. One thing that religion provides is a community. An earlier study noted:

Similarly, solitary activities like mailing prayer requests and downloading religious music are also very popular pastimes for religion surfers (38% have done each of these activities), while more socially-oriented activities such as seeking spiritual guidance via email (21%) or participating in a religious chat room (10%) have not been as widespread.

If this is representative, then the Internet religious experience will be an attenuated one compared with the off-line, traditional, one.

U.N. control of Web rejected

U.N. control of Web rejected - The Washington Times

GENEVA — The United States, backed by the European Union, Japan and Canada, has turned back a bid by developing nations to place the Internet under the control of the United Nations or its member governments.

But governments, the private sector and others will be asked to establish a mechanism under U.N. auspices to study the governance of the Internet and make recommendations by 2005.

We dodged the bullet this time. Hey U.N. butt out! If you want to see what the U.N. does to things see my post on how well (cough, cough) they dealt with SARS.

More Thoughts on Online Music

I have had some days now to look at the respective technologies for online music. It seems that the labels are doing their best to make the pay versions of online music much more difficult than the "free" versions. Let's look at what made the file swapping programs popular (excluding, of course, getting something for nothing).

• Exploring — This deals with the issue that radio has done a lousy job of exploring new music (even so-called alternative stations). Even in large urban areas, radio is a vast wasteland of bland uniformity. Napster allowed for people to explore new music easily.

  There is a very key difference between copyrights for broadcasting versus actual copies. A copyright holder cannot withhold the broadcast of their material if the broadcaster abides by the statutory license payments. This license is also more artist-friendly and less label-friendly on who receives the royalties.

  With the new Napster many of the really new tracks are buy-only. Thus, only 30-second clips are available for streaming. This restricts the ability of exploring new music. This is not Roxio's fault. Rather, it is the music labels trying to restrict things. Napster also does not give information on music that is not yet available. Apple Music Store has no streaming whatsoever. MusicMatch to the rescue. Here they have their radio-based model for streaming. Brand new stuff is available for streaming. The only restriction is — like radio — you cannot pick the exact music you will be getting. You can specify down to the granularity of an individual artist, however. If the track or album is available for purchase, you can click on the buy-track button or add a song to your wish list. In addition to this, their music guide is far better than the other two. They include music that they don't have yet available. On the negative side, they removed the Buy-CD with Buy-Track button. There is really no need for this either/or approach. Some people would prefer a CD over electronic tracks. Hopefully, they will bring the old button back.

• Availability — People want to play their music on their equipment. For playing on your computer, this is mostly solved (at least for PC owners). It appears that the labels will be providing music at least for purchase in some form. It may get expensive. In one case I noted that to purchase an album through Napster would be twice as expensive as buying the CD. MusicMatch and Apple Music Store both provide more comprehensive album purchasing selections. My guess is the price issue will be a temporary problem on Napster.

  Playing on portables is a different story. As I commented earlier, there are two major formats for protected music. Apple Music Store seems locked into AAC while Napster seems locked into WMA. Again, MusicMatch to the rescue. Their CEO has been publically quoted as saying that they will look at supporting AAC format. Hopefully, this will include transcoding between formats. Their vision is being a universal player. Even without this support, they are coming real close. The only issue right now is they have the smallest library of the three majors. This will undoubtably be fixed in the next couple of months.

As you can see I am a big MusicMatch fan. In a sea of black hats they seem to be the only white hat out their. Add to that their new relationship with Dell for driving Dell's new portable. They may make the online music business work despite the ongoing stupidity of the labels.

Winner Takes All? No, Winner Plays All

Having run both Napster and iTunes for Windows I found the same thing a USA Today reviewer did

More seriously for users of other software, Apple's songs are sold in the AAC format, which I incorrectly said on my Chat last week was an Apple-proprietary format. It's not, but on the other hand it might as well be: I've had a really hard time finding another Windows jukebox application that works with it. Winamp, MusicMatch, RealOne and Windows Media Player won't play them, and if you want to use Roxio's popular Easy CD and DVD Creator to burn AAC songs to a CD, you're also out of luck.

If you buy songs at the iTunes Music Store, you have to play them in iTunes for Windows and use that program to transfer to CDs, whether you like it or not. And if you can get it to "rip" songs from your CDs onto your hard drive (which I did successfully on my laptop, but not desktop, which isn't currently recognizing CDs), the songs are automatically encoded in AAC, although a tab does let you switch your save preference to MP3.

The application nicely adds your hard drives MP3's to the library, as does Napster and MusicMatch, but if you happen to have any Windows Media Audio (WMA) files, they don't exist in iTunes.

However you feel about Microsoft and it's dominance of the computer world, the fact is that MusicMatch, Buymusic.com and Napster all sell songs in the WMA format, and more stores are coming. If you mix and match songs from the services, you'll have to make separate CDs, and listen in separate programs. Apple took the radical step of creating a Windows program. Why not go all the way and make life easier for the PC users?

Apple and Microsoft are playing this like the old VHS vs. Beta battle. This is the wrong paradigm. Rather, it is the recordable DVD battle. Here the DVD recorders that won play everybody's format. Whichever jukebox plays all formats wins and with it draws buyers to their storefront. Same thing goes for portable players. The other players in the portable game could care less what the format is. If Apple views Microsoft as the competition they will fail to have iPods play WMA files. Then iPods lose. The game is not winner takes all but winner plays all.

Napster 2.0 Launched

TechTV gave the following summary comments concerning the relaunch of Napster.

Summary: Napster 2.0's official launch on Oct. 29 will further broaden the digital-audio field for the PC audience. The combination of a music store, extra premium features, a sweet interface, community features, and its recognizable name should spell success for a grown-up Napster.

Gene Munster, senior research analyst with US Bancorp Piper Jaffray, thinks so too.

"If you look at the brand, the Napster brand dwarfs all others," Munster said. "So I think this is a situation where the dark horse is going to actually win."

I've tried the new Napster and I like it a lot. But I hate the name because of the history of piracy. 12-year-old girls get sued and the Napster dudez make out. Grrrr.

Excuses, Excuses

CNet is reporting that Developers gripe about IE standards inaction

Complaints over Microsoft's CSS support come amid broader criticisms that improvements in browser technology have slowed to a glacial pace since the software giant crushed credible competition in the market--an outcome that some view as ironic given Microsoft's cries during the antitrust trial that court-mandated restraints on its ability to bundle applications would stifle innovation.

"While it is true that our implementation is not fully, 100 percent W3C-compliant, our development investments are driven by our customer requirements and not necessarily by standards," said Greg Sullivan, a lead product manager with the Windows client group.

Now, I write software for a living. I also am a customer of (very expensive) software. We have and our vendors have what is known as bug-tracking software. This is how we know if there is a disconnect between the customer's requirements and our tools. Even open-source projects such as Mozilla have bug-tracking software. The blogging software I am using now has bug-tracking software. And not only that, but all of the above allow relatively unrestricted access to enter bugs into the system. There is no guarantee that they will be fixed, but at least someone will notice any trends.

This is not so for Microsoft. Try finding anywhere you can submit a bug without paying out money. I don't need support. I just want to submit a bug report. So, Mr. Sullivan's quote is completely bogus. Microsoft cannot know what their customers want. But, I can hazard a good guess. When IE 6.0 on Windows XP renders blogger.com correctly, but IE 6.0 on Windows 2000 does not because of buggy CSS support, that's a bug.

Description of IE Changes Due to Eolas Lawsuit

The following web page outlines the changes Microsoft is making to get around the Eolas patent suit.

For old Active X controls, Microsoft outputs the following dialog box:

The good news is that this can be blocked, so all those annoying Flash ads that haven't changed will not output a dialog box. If it is blocked then it will look like this:

Now for the recoding of the objects that will get around the lawsuit. The first technique is to code class parameters inline rather than from foreign web sites. This is — to put it bluntly — awful. Web pages could be terribly bloated. Here's an example HTML:

<OBJECT ID="myCtrl" WIDTH=50 HEIGHT=50
    CLASSID="CLSID:37C9CF72-E47F-445d-9228-AD1CA6398442">
    <PARAM 
        NAME="inline-data" 
        VALUE="DATA:application/x-oleobject;BASE64,j43aWGqdGxCvwEIQ"
        REFTYPE="BASE64" />
</OBJECT>

The next technique uses dynamic HTML. This, in my opinion, will become real popular. In this techique, a separate Javascript file is created that dynamically inserts the class instantiation into the web page. The web page looks like this:

<HTML>
    <HEAD>
        <SCRIPT SRC="sample.js"></SCRIPT>
    </HEAD>
    <BODY>
        <SCRIPT>
        ReplaceContent();
        </SCRIPT>
    </BODY>
</HTML>

sample.js looks like this:

function ReplaceContent(){
    document.write('<OBJECT CLASSID="CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6">');
    document.write('<PARAM NAME="URL" VALUE="http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/');
    document.write('samples/author/dhtml/media/drums.wav"/></OBJECT>');
}

As you can see everything is remote and this doesn't bloat the web pages. What should prove to be interesting is that cross-platform dynamic HTML is not a universal skill. Early attempts at coding this stuff could fail to work in Netscape/Mozilla.

This didn't produce the death of Flash ads like I hoped for, but it could block some of them as they are being recoded.

VeriSign calls halt to .com detours

VeriSign calls halt to .com detours

VeriSign, the administrator of the .com and .net domains, made plans to shut down its new Site Finder service Friday, after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ordered the company to undo controversial changes.

Victory!

A Good Match

CNet is reporting that

Musicmatch on Monday announced its entry into the digital song-selling business, and sources say PC maker Dell will be one of the first companies to promote the new download service to consumers.

As previously reported, the Internet music software company's service, which will provide a new online rival to Apple Computer's iTunes and to BuyMusic, uses the popular Musicmatch Jukebox software and is distributing music in Microsoft's Windows Media format.

I am a subscriber to PressPlay and I also stream using MusicMatch. So, I tried out the new MusicMatch and even this early it looks like we have a winner. The integration is good with their streaming music service. What is best about this is that you can easily explore artists and genres. PressPlay's interface is a whole lot clunkier. BuyMusic.com? Forget it. This looks like the best (legal) solution for Windows users, so far.

Can you hear me now?

Wired News is commenting that 'Push-to-Talk' Spreading Fast

If you think drivers yammering on their cell phones are annoying, wait until another wireless service already popular among business users becomes even more prevalent in public: instant, two-way walkie-talkie chatter.

The radio technology frequently used by police officers, truckers, taxi drivers and IT managers is coming to many cell phones near you. All the major wireless carriers, which plan this year to join leader Nextel Communications in rolling out nationwide cell-phone walkie-talkie -- or "push-to-talk" -- service, have said the feature is not just for businesses. It's for everyone, from men radioing their wives from the bread aisle of the supermarket to teens arranging meetings with friends in the schoolyard. At least one company, fastmobile of Chicago, sells software to let people instantly connect with friends around the world.

Maybe there is something to this. I remember the CB craze in the late '70s. Maybe there might be a resurgance of two-way radio now that you can reach all the way around the world.

See ya on the flip side. This is the supernova, KXV-0821, goin' 10-7.

Passing Messages Between Disciplines

In today's Science Marc Mézard discusses the interaction between Computer Science and Computational Physics.

Problems in computer science, such as error correction in information transfer and "satisfiability" in optimization, show phase transitions familiar from solid-state physics. In his Perspective, Mézard explains how recent advances in these three fields originate in similar "message passing" procedures. The exchange of elaborate messages between different variables and constraints, used in the study of phase transitions in physical systems, helps to make error correction and satisfiability codes more efficient.

---

The author is in the Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques, CNRS, and Université de Paris Sud, 91405 Orsay, France. E-mail: mezard@lptms.u-psud.fr

The following diagram from the article shows how message passing help solves the error correction problem.

The circles represent the bits transmitted through the channel. The squares are the parity check constraints; for instance, constraint C1 requires that the sum of bits B1, B2, B3, and B5 should be even. Along each edge of this graph two messages are exchanged, one in each direction. These messages give the "belief" of the sending node on the state of the bit. This retrieves the actual value quickly for low density error correcting codes that are not too close to the Shannon limit. This also can be used to solve N-Satisfiability problems again when they are not too close to the Shannon limit.

By studying spin glasses, it has been discovered that these algorithms do not do well when the solutions are not clustered. The belief messages are limited to local areas. So, the algorithm has been modified to pass not just a beliefs but a whole survey of beliefs to get around the local problem. This has allowed this algorithm to be used for noisier channels and more difficult optimization problems.

Microsoft Throwing Its Weight Behind Web Search

Microsoft wants to get into the search business. Let me translate Micro-speak into English.

"The decision to build or buy came down to our ability to innovate," said Kirk Koenigsbauer, strategy manager at Microsoft's MSN Internet portal.

"Our ability to innovate is predicated on our ability to own the platform," he added, a clear sign that Microsoft thinks it can only beat Google if it owns the technology.

The ability to have monopoly power depends on owning the technology.

"Search engines are doing a good job but not a perfect job," said Koenigsbauer, adding most search results today "don't deliver the results people are looking for."

Search results tailored to individual users based on a history of their interests and searches is one area that Microsoft is looking at, Koenigsbauer said.

We are going to build spy-ware into Windows. You really aren't very happy with Google, are you? You should feel guilty for being satisfied.

Does Eolas Lawsuit Mean the Death of Flash Ads?

This was buried in a NY Times article entitled:Setback for Microsoft Ripples Through the World Wide Web

The consortium organized a four-hour meeting on Aug. 19 at the San Francisco offices of Macromedia, a producer of software for showing animations on the Web. Those invited were the leading producers of multimedia Internet and Java applications, including Real Networkscoei, Sun Microsystemscoei, Apple Computercoei and Adobecoei, as well as Macromediacoei.

Microsoft proposed three possible design tweaks to its browsing software to ensure compliance with the court ruling. These include having personal computer users approve a "click to proceed'' box to run multimedia programs from the browser and modifications that other software companies and Web page designers can make. All would require some adjustments from companies, executives say, but should not affect ordinary PC users significantly.

If the customer had to click on a Flash ad, it would mean the death of them. The reason why there are Flash ads is to animate (and make noises) without the customer's consent. If we want to run a Flash application, one click is not much of a hassle. Combine this with the pop-up block on the Google toolbar (yeah!), and we might gain control of our desktop again.

Memory Lane

Back in 1982, I purchased an Apple ][+ computer. I had put off purchasing a computer for almost five years, passing on Heath Kits and TRS-80s and Commodore Pets. This machine had 48K of memory and a floppy drive on it. My high school had an Apple II (non-plus) that had a cassette interface where we loaded the non-Microsoft BASIC. I found the following ad for an Apple I ad (transcribed from here). SCO should take note of Apple's attitude towards the price of software.

Apple Introduces the First Low Cost Microcomputer System with a Video Terminal and 8K Bytes of RAM on a Single PC Card

The Apple Computer. A truly complete microcomputer system on a single PC board. Based on the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, the Apple also has a built-in video terminal and sockets for 8K bytes of on-board RAM memory. With the addition of a keyboard and video monitor, you'll have an extremely powerful computer system that can be used for anything from developing programs to playing games or running BASIC.

Combining the computer, video terminal and dynamic memory on a single board has resulted in a large reduction in chip count, which means more reliability and lowered cost. Since the Apple comes fully assembled, tested & burned-in and has a complete power supply on-board, initial setup is essentially "hassle free" and you can be running within minutes. At $666.66 (including 4K bytes RAM!) it opens many new possibilities for users and systems manufacturers.

You Don't Need an Expensive Teletype

Using the built-in video terminal and keyboard interface, you avoid all the expense, noise and maintenance associated with a teletype. And the Apple video terminal is six times faster than a teletype, which means more throughput and less waiting. The Apple connects directly to a video monitor (or home TV with an inexpensive RF modulator) and displays 960 easy to read characters in 24 rows of 40 characters per line with automatic scrolling. The video display section contains its own 1K bytes of memory, so all the RAM memory is available for user programs. And the Keyboard Interface lests you use almost any ASCII-encoded keyboard.

The Apple Computer makes it possible for many people with limited budgets to step up to a video terminal as an I/O device for their computer.

No More Switches, No More Lights

Compared to switches and LED's a, a video terminal can display vast amounts of information simultaneously. The Apple video terminal can display the contents of 192 memory locations at once on the screen. And the firmware in PROMS enables you to enter, display and debug programs (all in hex) from the keyboard, rendering a front panel unnecessary. The firmware also allows your programs to print characters on the display, and since you'll be looking at letters and numbers instead of just LED's the door is open to all kinds of alphanumeric software (i.e., Games and BASIC).

8K Bytes RAM in 16 Chips!

The Apple Computer uses the new 16-pin 4K dynamic memory chips. They are faster and take 1/4 the space and power of even lower power 2102's (the memory chip that everyone else uses). That means 8K bytes in sixteen chips. It also means no more 28 amp power supplies.

The system is fully expandable to 65K via an edge connector which carries both the address and data busses, power supplies and all timing signals. All dynamic memory refreshing for both on and off-board memory is done automatically. Also, the Apple Computer can be upgraded to use the 16K chips when they become available. That's 32K bytes on-board RAM in 16 IC's -- the equivalent of 256 2102's!

A Little Cassette Board That Works!

Unlike many other cassette boards on the marketplace, ours works every time. It plugs directly into the upright connector on the main board and stands only 2" tall. And since it is very fast (1500 bits per second), you can read or write 4K bytes in about 20 seconds. All timing is done in software which results in crystal-controlled accuracy and uniformity from unit to unit.

Unlike some other cassette interfaces which require an expensive tape recorder, the Apple Cassette Interface works reliably with almost any audio-grade cassette recorder.

Software:

A tape of APPLE BASIC is included free with the Cassette Interface. Apple Basic features immediate error messages and fast execution, and lets you program in a higher level language immediately and without added cost. Also available now are a dis-assembler and many games, with many software packages, (including a macro assembler) in the works. And since our philosophy is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost, you won't be continually paying for access to this growing software library.

EE Times - TSMC reportedly lifts quarterly shipment forecast

Finally, some good news for my industry. TSMC is my company's main outsource silicon supplier. EE Times - TSMC reportedly lifts quarterly shipment forecast:

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturer Co. Ltd., the world's largest foundry, said third quarter shipments were likely to be up nearly 10 percent from the April-June period, higher than earlier forecasts, according to a Reuters report on Friday (Sept. 5).

The company expects fourth quarter business to be at least at the same level as the third quarter, the account quoted TSMC public affairs manager Jesse Chou as saying. TSMC said in July it expected third quarter shipments to grow from between 5 and 9 percent from the second quarter and for a revenue increase in the high single-digit percentage.

The Semiconductor Industry Association predicted that worldwide chip sales in the third quarter of 2003 would be 5.9 percent or more ahead of the second quarter in revenue.

Experts fear network paralysis as computer worms blast Internet

Nature is reporting Experts fear network paralysis as computer worms blast Internet. My comments will be interspersed throughout.

[PARIS] Blaster, Welchia, SoBig — the late summer blitz of computer worms was the last thing the world's universities and researchers needed as they prepared for the start of term. And worse could be on the way, computer scientists say.

While this article is focused on the affects of university, the effects on industry should not be discounted. While universities have been lacking on dealing with computer security, industry has been complacent because they were "safe" behind their firewalls. More later...

Universities were seriously disrupted by the SoBig.E worm in late July — which copied itself into reams of e-mails that it sent out from infected machines — and the Blaster worm, which struck on 11 August causing computers to restart constantly. Next came the Welchia worm, which tried to fix computers infected with Blaster but ended up causing its own problems. Then, on 18 August, came the SoBig.F variant, the most voluminous e-mail worm in Internet history.

'The volume of traffic created by the worms gorged many university networks, often grinding them to a halt,' says Theresa Rowe, a security official at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.

Despite the widespread disruption, many computer professionals say that the attacks could have been far worse. SoBig's worm-laden messages may have accounted for one in every 17 e-mails worldwide at one point, but specialists say that far more disruptive worms could potentially be let loose.

Worms spread much faster than computer viruses — whereas viruses need to piggyback on other programs in order to propagate, worms simply self-replicate.

Computer departments in most universities and research laboratories had been on the alert since 16 July, when Microsoft announced a flaw in a connection protocol, called the remote procedure call (RPC), used by every Windows machine linked to the Internet. This flaw was quickly exploited by Blaster.

Here's the problem: if an infected user logs into a work system using virtual private networks, RPC calls can infect computers behind the firewall.

SoBig only spread when users opened the e-mail attachment in which it was hidden. Although the worm saturated networks and slowed down the Internet by creating huge volumes of e-mail traffic, it was widely spotted by antiviral filters and wary users, and only infected about 100,000 machines.

Far more worrying for computer experts is the potential trajectory for 'autonomous network worms' such as Blaster. Instead of arriving in e-mails, these worms crawl the Internet, scanning millions of computers for security weaknesses — such as that in the RPC. When they find one, they hack in and replicate themselves. Users are often unaware that their machines have been infected.

In a paper published last year, scientists at the California-based Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) predicted the emergence of high-speed worms that could hijack millions of Internet computers within minutes (S. Staniford, V. Paxson and N. Weaver "How to Own the Internet in Your Spare Time" in Proc. 11th USENIX Security Symp. 149-167; USENIX, Berkeley, 2002).

The paper's conclusions, based on mathematical models of existing worms, were partially borne out in January when a worm called Slammer infected almost all 75,000 vulnerable machines within minutes.

Relative to this potential, Blaster was something of a damp squib, says Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of the CAIDA study. He points out that the RPC flaw was a "sitting target" for a very large Internet attack by a fast worm, given the huge number of vulnerable machines. Slammer, in contrast, could only hit the relatively small number of machines hosting Microsoft databases.

"What was remarkable about Blaster was how little damage it did," he says. "The lack of damage was mostly good luck in that Blaster was so poorly engineered." It was "glacially slow", he adds, which gave computer departments time to build defences against it. "A few tricks and it could have spread within minutes," Weaver warns, adding that, like most worms to date, it did not carry a particularly malicious payload. A properly engineered RPC-targeted worm carrying a destructive payload might have blacked-out computer systems worldwide, he claims.

What is not mentioned is other mechanisms for remote execution such as SOAP or XMLRPC. This is the so-called future of computing including Microsoft's vaunted .NET framework.

Specialists in assessing that sort of risk will gather in Washington next month for the first Workshop on Rapid Malcode to discuss possible technical responses. But for Bruce Schneier, co-founder of Counterpane Internet Security of Cupertino, California, the problem is not so much technical as legal. He wants software suppliers to be held accountable in court for security problems. "When Firestone produces a tire with a systemic flaw, they're liable," Schneier says. "When Microsoft produces an operating system with systemic flaws, they're not liable. That's crazy.

Indeed.

Cisco to grant employees options for 141 mln shrs

The recent accounting scandals have taken away an important tool of the high tech industry, stock option grants. According to surveys that I have seen, newly proposed accounting rules of expensing options have taken them away from employees but not executives. Hopefully, Cisco will be leading a trend in the industry. Reuters is reporting that Cisco will grant employees options for 141 mln shrs:

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Cisco Systems Inc., the leading maker of equipment that directs traffic over the Internet, on Tuesday said it will grant employees stock options for about 141 million shares, in what is expected to be its main options grant for fiscal 2004.

The San Jose, California company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the options will be granted to employees based on merit, and will carry an exercise price of $19.59 per share.

...

Stock options have long been a popular way of compensating employees in Silicon Valley, where many high-tech companies issue them to supplement cash salaries and to provide additional incentives.

During the bull market years of the late 1990s, many high-tech employees became rich on stock options. More recently, stock option grants have become less popular as critics push for stricter accounting rules that would require companies to record the options granted as an expense on income statements.

Although the accounting controversy has led a number of companies to cut back on options grants, however Cisco continues to use options to compensate employees.
'We do believe in broad-based options grants,' a Cisco spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
Cisco, like other heavyweights across the tech sector have strongly opposed looming action by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (News - Websites) rulemaking body, which would force companies to account for employee stock options as expenses.

Cisco said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that if it had expensed options in the third quarter ended on April 26, earnings would have been $291 million lower, at $696 million.

Applet Patent War Brewing for a Long Time

Microsoft should have seen this patent war coming. Note this August 28, 1995 (!) article in Business Week for another trip down memory lane:

Inter@ctive Week
August 28, 1995
Patent War Pending Over 'Applets'
By Paul Noglows

The price of winding through the Internet may be going up, if a small Chicago company succeeds in its attempt to extract licensing fees for inserting small computer programs into the software used to browse the World Wide Web.

Eolas Technologies Inc. announced last week that it has completed a licensing agreement with the University of California for the exclusive rights to a pending patent covering the use of embedded program objects, or "applets," within Web documents. Applets are poised to be the next big thing in Web browsers by making them truly interactive. Applets are tiny programs that will be downloaded automatically to a computer when a user wants to do something interactively with a browser, such as update a portfolio of stocks or hear a sound clip.

If the patent is granted -- an application from the University of California is under review by the U.S. Patent Office -- Eolas stands to become a big company quickly by deriving a licensing fee from any outfit that supplies or uses applets.

Most affected will be browser companies, such as Netscape Communications Corp., Spyglass Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Sun engineers, for instance, have been among the pioneers of the incorporation of applets into browsers, through Sun's Java programming language. Java is the basis for Hot Java, Sun's interactive browser, introduced earlier this year. Netscape also has said it will incorporate Java and its applet technology into the popular Navigator browser, which accounts for about three-fourths of all requests from Web servers.

Michael Doyle, chairman, chief executive and co-founder of Eolas and the former director of the UCSF Academic Computing Center in San Francisco, contends that his team of researchers invented the applets technology in 1993.

"Individuals involved at Netscape, Spyglass and Sun Microsystems saw our demonstrations in 1993," Doyle says. "Our technology has been widely discussed over the last year and we are not new players in this arena. There's a perception that Java was there first, but that's simply not the case." Doyle says Eolas has been in discussions for months with user companies regarding both the licensing of the underlying technology (which his company has trademarked as Weblets) and associated products.

While Eolas plans to provide royalty-free licenses to individual and academic users of applets, commercial users would be charged for each piece of software that uses the embedded applications. That charge could range from 50 cents per piece of software for heavy users (on the order of 1 million units) all the way up to $5 per unit for more limited usage.

Users of applets were reticent to discuss the University of California's patent application or Eolas' licensing plans. Spyglass spokesman Randy Pitzer says his company will wait to see if the patent is granted before commenting.

A Sun representative said the company is reviewing the patent application, and any comment now would be premature. Netscape spokeswoman Kristina Lessing says her company would like to review the patent but has not been in negotiations with Eolas.

Despite these companies' current public caution, some experts expect them to vehemently oppose any development that takes money out of their pockets. Whether a patent will be granted is anyone's guess. While Doyle says the University of California spent months researching the issue of whether the technology could be patented, the U.S. Patent Office has had a particularly difficult time in administering software patents. For instance, the Patent Office at one point issued Compton's New Media a patent for the concept of combining digital graphics, video, sound and text into "multimedia" presentations, only to rescind it later; Compton's is appealing that decision.

Eolas has not yet determined whether it will make its patent application public.

Doyle says applets could transform the Web into the preferred means for achieving interactive computing. That's because applets can run either on individuals' desktops or portable computers, or on more powerful computers in networks, known as servers. The user never knows whether the applet runs locally or remotely.

For that reason, Doyle says, the concept of an operating system can now be expanded beyond a program that runs on an individual machine to encompass large numbers of cooperative programs running on a web of computers all over the world.

"The World Wide Web becomes the operating system and the Internet becomes the computer," Doyle says.

Accordingly he adds, this Web operating system will eventually make irrelevant the issue of whether users are running Windows, Macintosh or Unix operating systems for their workstations.

David Bennahum, author of the upcoming book Coming Of Age In Cyberspace, says existing operating system vendors could be hurt. "Who's left out in the cold in this new era? Folks who invested heavily in the personal computer paradigm. No one invested more than Microsoft," says Bennahum.

The acronym Eolas stands for Embedded Objects Linked Across Systems and is also the Gaelic word for Knowledge.

Snappy Comebacks for T33Kid (a.k.a. Jeffrey Lee Parson)

Here's an interesting comeback to the alleged author of the Blaster worm. Note the comeback in bold and the group it was posted in.

rec.sport.pro-wrestling:

From: Herb Kunze (herbkunze@hotmail.com)
Subject: TeeKid WAS Dejong.
Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling
Date: 2003-08-30 04:48:09 PST

10-06-01 t33kid.com Staff 10-06-01
The t33kid.com staff have decided to take a new route with t33kid.com, we are going to focus on our unique programs that we make for internet protection and internet offense.

We will also be releasing the source code for all of our programs 2 months after they have been released.

We Really Hope You Like The New T33kid.com We Are Working Really Hard To Make It The best We Can. We Plan To Be Done Within A Few Weeks. So Look Back Frequently
10-06-01 t33kid.com Staff 10-06-01

John, we've told you before and we'll tell you again, one person DOES NOT make a 'staff'.

Herb Gump

Teenage Blaster Worm Suspect Arrested

One of the authors of the Blaster worm appears to be arrested. If it is true, I hope they throw the book at him. I hate virus writers. Teenage Blaster Worm Suspect Arested:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The FBI on Friday arrested a Minnesota teenager officials said admitted to making a copycat variant of the devastating Blaster Internet worm, even as experts combed over data to hunt down the virus's creator.

Jeffrey Lee Parson, 18, of Hopkins, Minnesota, a middle- class suburb west of Minneapolis, was arrested on one count of intentionally causing or attempting to cause damage to a computer, according to a St. Paul district court clerk.
The arrest was the result of a joint investigation by the U.S. Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Parson, who was described in the complaint as being 6-feet-4-inches tall and weighing 320 pounds is scheduled to appear before a magistrate judge in St. Paul later on Friday.

He admitted to creating a variant of the worm, according to a complaint filed in the Western District of Washington state, where Microsoft is based in the Seattle suburb of Redmond.

The U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington has scheduled a news conference together with the Secret Service and Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O in Seattle at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time (4:30 p.m. EDT/2030 GMT) on Friday.
Parson admitted modifying Blaster and creating a variant known by different names, including 'W32/Lovesan.worm.b' and admitted that he renamed the original code dubbed 'MSBlast.exe' 'teekids.exe,' after his online alias, the complaint said.
He also said he included a hidden Trojan horse program called 'Lithium' in the worm, leaving a back door so he could reconnect remotely to the infected computers later.

FBI agents interviewed Parson when they searched his home on Aug. 19 and seized seven computers.

Blaster and its variants are self-replicating Internet worms that bore into Windows machines through a security hole, harnessing them to launch concerted data attacks via the Internet on a Microsoft technical service Web site. Microsoft has been able to thwart the attacks by disconnecting the Web address from the Internet.

Versions of Blaster, whose original creator has not been found, cause infected computers to close down and restart frequently.

At least 7,000 "drone" computers tried to attack the Microsoft Web site, the complaint said.

The Internet addresses of infected computers were sent to the t33kid.com Web site. That site was traced back to Parson through Brian Davis, of Watauga, Texas, who leased Web hosting services to Parson, according to the complaint.

Davis told officials that he knew "teekid" had performed Internet attacks and written various Internet worms, the complaint said.

The t33kid.com site is registered to the younger Parson at an address in Hopkins, Minnesota. A phone number at that address is registered to R. Parson. A woman who answered the telephone at that house declined to comment and immediately hung up the telephone.

The alias also appears to have been used to deface the Web site of the Minnesota Government Finance Owners Association and there are messages from "Teekid" on message boards related to trojans, small programs that hackers plant on computers.

Blaster is believed to have infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide since it was released on Aug. 11.

Halloween IX: It Ain't Necessarily SCO

I commend the following document to you to show the kind of nonsense SCO is drudging up.

The amended SCO complaint against IBM filed on 16 June 2003 is, like its predecessor, a tissue of lies, deliberate distortions, and flimflam. Unlike its predecessor, this amended complaint has been brought to you by the generosity of Microsoft, who (on the evidence of SCO's 10-Q SEC filings) dropped at least six million dollars on SCO (plus a promise of five million more over the next three quarters) to help it make trouble for Linux.

SCO, having willingly made itself a sock puppet for the boys in Redmond, therefore becomes the first company other than Microsoft to have its utterances admitted to the gallery of infamy that is the Halloween Documents.

There follows the usual point-by-point takedown. Unlike SCO's claims, this analysis is based entirely on public information which third parties may verify by chasing links or through their local library.

Hackers cut off SCO Web site

Hackers cut off SCO Web site:

This weekend, a denial-of-service attack took down the Web site of The SCO Group, which is caught in an increasingly acrimonious row with the open-source community over the company's legal campaign against Linux.

Do not incur the wrath of Linux zealots.

A New Kind of Spaming

I'm back. The summer has been a busy time and my blogging went on hold. I did receive two comments from postal code and whois, a couple of "people" whose URLs were commercial web sites. It looks like there are some autocommenters of pages that are listed by -- I suspect -- Google. Just a warning to fellow members of the blogosphere to check their comments and expunge the spam. I left the comments but deleted the URLs. Given the topic, it was ironic that this post was spamed. :-)

Microsoft Announces Collaboration Server

Microsoft debuts their collaboration server. I wonder if it will really take off. There are a number of web sites that allow for collaboration that do not require expensive servers and can work outside of intranets. At my company we use "Placeware and Intercall. These provide collaboration not only across multiple sites but also, more importantly, between companies. All it takes is a phone, a web browser, and an e-mail giving access information. Do people really need this, or is this technical overkill? Add blog technology for web-based communication and I think Microsoft will be out in the cold on this one.

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday made available the long-awaited beta of its Greenwich real-time communication server along with a strategy designed to make Greenwich an emerging standard for embedding instant messaging and presence detection in other applications.

Text Messaging and the Lord's Prayer

BBC NEWS is reporting how SMS text messages are changing the English language. Here's the Lord's Prayer short enough to be sent over a cell phone. I think I will stick with the original low-tech version.

The winner, Matthew Campbell of York University, condensed it thus: "dad@hvn, ur spshl. we want wot u want &urth2b like hvn. giv us food & 4giv r sins lyk we 4giv uvaz. don't test us! save us! bcos we kno ur boss, ur tuf & ur cool 4 eva! ok?"

An Advertisement for my ISP

In ***Dave :: Spam, spam, spam, spam ... was the following complaint about spam:

Well, phooey.

This morning, 106 e-mails in my inbox, 1 e-mail automatically detected as spam and sent to the Junk folder.

Of the 106, 86 were actually spam.

Only 20 were expected/solicited/business e-mail.

If Front Range Internet is in your area, I would recommend it. It has a feature known as Mail Armory which totally clobbers your spam before your mail box. Even if you don't have it you can use it to block your domain e-mails. I am using this for blinne.org and it works like a champ. For more details go to either frii.com or mailarmory.com.

Disclaimer: I have no business relationship with FRII other than as a satisfied customer.