by Al Massey
“Redneck computer term: ETHERNET: A device for cachin’ the etherbunny”
Now that the Department of Justice has reverted to their “I feel good mode” concerning IE-4.0 and Microsoft, they discover this little item called Windows 98. It seems the Gates crowd did such a great job keeping the DoJ focused on Windows 95 that the go vernment agents neglected to realize the argument was all for naught. As soon as the door slammed shut on the IE-4 case one guv’ment guy realized that Microsoft was set to release Windows 98 in June. This poor fellow was said to exclaim “ well it seems t hey have gone and made the entire operating system a browser.”
Justice is set to pounce on Microsoft again, this time on Windows 98, but a source close to the investigation says they “can’t decide on whether the DoJ has enough evidence to launch a parallel antitrust case against Microsoft over Win 98.” This source g oes on to say they are going to have to act quickly because the Duke of Redmond is all set to begin shipping OEM versions to computer makers on May 15.
Oral arguments start April 21 in Microsoft’s appeal of the ruling to separate its Internet Explorer browser software from its Win 95 operating system in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
There is trouble brewing on another front for Microsoft. It seems that consumers are beginning to re-think their software buying habits. For the first time Microsoft’s brand reputation is slipping. Market research company Techtel has been surveying 900 c omputer users each quarter since 1992 in an effort to determine brand loyalty and said positive opinions about the software monolith by business customers slipped about 12 percent in 1997 — its first notable decline since the survey began. Among consumer s, positive opinion fell 5 percentage points in the October-through-December quarter of 1997.
“This shift is a sign,” said Michael Kelly, CEO of Techtel, in Emeryville, Calif. “We have found there is a relationship between brand and opinion and stock price and long-term profitability,” he said. Kelly said he expected to see some greater effect in software buying habits by now, but there hasn’t been any in the Microsoft case.
“Redneck computer term: HARD DRIVE: The 1,000 mile trip to Uncle Leroy’s house last summer.”
When advising young people on picking a career path, I am prone to scream “Become a Cyber-Lawyer.” The Internet is becoming fertile ground for the regulators, and the legal community is among it’s heaviest users. This is to be expected when you consider the two fastest growing segments of the ‘Net are Pornography and Gambling. We certainly would not see the growth in video and multimedia without these two industries.
Recently a company announced plans to put seven American Indian gambling operations online. The ‘Net gaming wars are heating up! Sandusky, Ohio-based Native American Interactive Gaming http://www.nativegaming.com was formed last year to put tribal casinos, which are legal as long as they are run on reservations, on the Net. The company has said it plans to open seven tribal betting sites over the next several months, some of which promise to offer casino-style g ames such as blackjack and poker.
This comes at a time when state and federal regulators are attempting to limit the spread of ‘Net gambling. Regulators in Wisconsin and elsewhere have already sued to one American Indian lottery site online, and federal law-enforcement officials recently completed a sting operation against offshore sports betting services advertising or taking bets on the Web.
“We are concerned about those types of attempts to expand gambling and violate state law,” said Jim Haney, a spokesman for Wisconsin state attorney general Jim Doyle. Unlike the regulated gambling that takes place on reservations, Haney said, “there is n o regulatory safeguard for consumers who choose to gamble on the Internet.”
Online gaming sites that let their citizens bet violate their state laws, no matter where the site’s servers are physically located, said Doyle and other attorneys general.
“Redneck computer term: MOTHERBOARD: What happened to Mother on the HARD DRIVE” .
This is a great time to be an observer and reporter on technology issues and the ONE issue giving me the most fun is the Year2000 problem.
A few days ago a reporter for one of the major newspapers called wanting a quote on this problem. He was particularly concerned about the FAA and aircraft safety.
He specifically asked what was going to happen when the clock turns 2000. Would the planes fall out of the sky?
I told him not to worry, at the rate the FAA was going, the planes wouldn’t even be able to take off, let alone fall out of the sky. This answer seemed to satisfy him and he went away.
Fearing that high-tech labor shortages will not be filled in time to fix year 2000 problems in the United States, high-tech industry leaders such as Microsoft, Netscape, and Intel are pushing for legislation that will increase the number of available imm igrant visas used to import computer programmers. Bring us your huddled masses, yearning to fix code.
That pesky year 2000 bug made headlines in Europe this week as British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced plans to train an extra 20,000 computer “bug busters” over the coming year to help U.K. businesses meet the millennium with their computer systems intact
If you thought the bug was only biting mainframe systems, think again. Desktop users who rely on programs such as Microsoft’s Excel or Access, Lotus 1-2-3, or Corel’s Quattro Pro need to do some fixin’ as well.
The law firm that brought us last month’s lawsuit against Symantec is at it again.
It filed a class-action suit against Macola Software, makers of the Progression Series accounting programs, that alleges breach of warranty and fraud since the software isn’t Y2K-compliant. The real bone of contention? Money. It seems users are miffed be cause Macola is charging customers to fix the glitch rather than offering free upgrades like other companies.
“Redneck computer term: REBOOT: To change shoes”
What’s a body to do? It seems like only yesterday that the Web only had a few thousand pages, today it represents over 320 million and is rapidly climbing. No one can keep up, let alone your favorite search engine.
The Web is simply outstripping the Search Engine’s ability to function properly.
Science Magazine recently conducted a study on this problem and concluded that even the most complete engine encompasses barely one-third of the total Web pages, writes Steve Lawrence and C. Lee Giles of the NEC Research Institute.
Their study, conducted last December, finds Wired Digital’s HotBot engine returned the highest number of relevant pages in a series of searches.
“We think we’ve got pretty accurate results,” Lawrence said, comparing the study’s methodology with other estimates of the Web’s scale. But even the NEC estimates could be low. The survey’s bias is going to be such that the real number is more than 320 m illion, Lawrence added
As part of their study, the pair took 575 search requests made by NEC scientists and fed them into six of the Web’s top search engines.
After checking the documents returned by each query for accuracy and broken links, they used the number of valid search results to extrapolate to their estimate of total Web pages.
Although HotBot returned the most pages and covered about 34 percent of the Web, the study also finds the Wired engine contained the most invalid links.
The Lycos engine, which the researchers estimated contains only about 3 percent of total Web documents, returned the lowest percentage of broken links.
Lycos officials contested the study’s results, saying they don’t come close to matching the company’s figures.
“There’s a 200 percent discrepancy between what they suggest and what we are,” said Rajive Mathur, Lycos senior product manager for search products.
Other than HotBot and Lycos, the study estimates that AltaVista covers 28 percent of pages, followed by Northern Lights at 20 percent, Excite at 14 percent, and Infoseek at 10 percent.
The number of Web pages is likely to grow by another 1000 percent over the next few years, Lawrence predicted, making it even more difficult for the engines to keep up.
Al Massey is a HAL-PC member who can be contacted at almas@hal-pc.org .
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