Gary Robinson's Rants

IE vs. tabbed browsing

I'm a Mac user so I only know by hearsay that IE still doesn't have tabbed browsing.

It's literally been years since I would even consider using a browser without tabbed browsing. When you commonly have as many Web sites open at once as I do, it makes a huge difference. (Especially OmniWeb's implementation.)

I can't imagine why Micrsoft wouldn't add this simple, useful feature to their browser. If a user doesn't like it, they don't have to use it. No harm is done by its presence. Even if it is argued that not everyone like the tabbed browsing, that's no excuse for not providing it as something that may optionally be switched on in the Preferences pane.

I don't think Microsoft can argue that they don't have the engineering budget, given that every other real browser, built by volunteers or by companies large or small, has the feature.

The thing that is really stunning to me is that Microsoft appears to be betting that Longhorn will have enough highly user-friendly features that it will motivate people not to switch to Linux. But if a company with the budget similar to that spent to get us to the moon can't avoid being the very last one to implement tabbed browsing, one really has to wonder.

Munich and other cities pick Linux over Windows

I follow this kind of news item because I think that it is only logical for non-U.S. governments to try to avoid IT dependence on the foremost example of a U.S. corporate monopoly. Particularly one that habitually violates the spirit and letter of antitrust laws. So the movement towards Linux in foreign countries is something I expect, and I like to check whether my expectations are being borne out.

Munich, the city whose switch to Linux was seen as so significant it attracted a personal visit from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, has announced that its yearlong trial is a success and that it will stick with open source for its PCs. ... Earlier this week, Norway's second-largest city, Bergen, announced it would be following in Munich's footsteps and opting to run Linux.>[News.com, thanks to MacInTouch]

June 19, 2004 in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

In case you're wondering why I'm not posting as much

I'm busy coding.

Napster gives away razors

From the Dept. of Giving Away The Razors And Selling The Blades (thanks to MacInTouch):

In an interesting contrast to Apple's iTunes business model, Napster is now giving away music players with a subscription to its services, as Reuters reports:

On its Web site, Napster said it would give consumers a Rio Chiba Sport portable music device, valued at about $130, if they sign up for the subscription, which is valued at $119.40. The device features 128 megabytes of storage capacity and includes a stopwatch, sports headphones and an armband. Napster's Web site also said consumers can upgrade to a larger capacity Rio Nitrus by paying an additional $80.

That's something Apple is unlikely to match, since they plan on making their money on hardware more than music sales, and since there is no subscription concept in the iTunes Music Store.

The absolute best Venus transit photo

Thanks to Astronomy Picture of the Day. Be sure to click on it to get the full version.

Calculating the largest known prime number

Since I did a year-long Senior Project in college about Gaussian primes, and am also a contented user of the Python language, I may perhaps be forgiven for posting the following. It's from Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links [leave a comment if you want subscription info]:

When you are switching from, say, Java you will probably be surprised that in Python p = 2**24036583 - 1 is all it takes to calculate the largest known prime number to date. Printing p will also work out of the box, but may take a bit long. Tim Peters sketches the algorithm Python uses to generate the decimal representation of an integer and provides code that can handle very large numbers efficiently. See two usenet threads.

On my machine, it takes a couple seconds to do the p = 2**24036583 - 1 assignment.

Thread on Alexis de Tocqueville Institution

Quite a discussion thread has arisen from a post I made about the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. I don't personally have time to research this issue further now, but if you want to read some comments containing a lot of information about their history, that thread would be a good place to look.

Update: a Groklaw article today has a lot of information about the AdTI. Doesn't look good for their reputation.

Will Rogers, the French, the Titanic, and bunnies

Will Rogers reportedly said in the 1930's: "The French couldn't hate us more unless we helped them win another war."

The Titanic in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies.

No connection.

Microsoft patents task lists?

Better not get too fancy with your grocery list, now that Microsoft has patented a glorified form of the to-do list.

U.S. Patent No. 6,748,582, granted and assigned Tuesday to Microsoft, covers use of a "task list" in a software development environment. [CNN]

I haven't looked at it yet -- too busy with Goombah. Hopefully, like last week's spam patent fears, the reality will not be nearly as bad as first appearances might seem to indicate.

A movie of part of the transit of venus

Nice.

Ask him again later.

Jobs was reportedly pressed hard about supporting the WMA format. He said that Apple has no plans to support the format unless Microsoft reaches 50% market share, at which point Jobs welcomed Microsoft to ask him again. [Steve Jobs, at the "D" conference, reported in MacInTouch via AppleInsider]

He's hoping he can keep iTunes/iPod powerful enough that Microsoft will have as little chance of reaching 50% with WMA as Apple has today with Macintosh.

I'd be very surprised if that turns out to happen, but perhaps it's worth a shot from Apple's perspective. Jobs obviously thinks so. Products like Airport Express will definitely help. They're going for it.

A new and excellent product from Apple

I've been waiting for quite some time to buy hardware to enable me to wirelessly play music stored on my laptop on my home stereo. Solutions have been offered by a couple of vendors, but I've been betting that a) Apple was secretively working on a solution, and b) it would be better-integrated with Macintoshes than existing solutions.

Apple has hit a home run. Not only does it handle the home stereo application even more smoothly than I was anticipating, it also lets one effortlessly extend one's wireless network all over the house by buying one for each area. It is shaped about like an Apple power supply, a little white unit with the wall plug built in. It costs $129 ($39 for Monster Cables for the stereo connection). And it works with Windows too.

Update: I forgot to mention that it also has a USB port for shared wireless printing! This is a seriously cool product.

Reagan and Bush and Iraq

Reagan was extremely good at boiling complicated ideas down to simple, compelling memes. I wasn't a particular "believer" at the time, but there's no doubt he was the Great Communicator. Look how he explained in a few simple sentences (in his personal hand-written notes for a radio broadcast) why free markets beat communism:

"Our system freed the individual genius of man. Released him to fly as high & as far as his own talent & energy would take him. We allocate resources not by govt. decision but by the mil's. of decisions customers make when they go into the mkt. place to buy. If something seems too high-priced we buy something else. Thus resources are steered toward those things the people want most at the price they are willing to pay. It may not be a perfect system but it's better than any other that's ever been tried." (Reagan quote taken from the Andrew Sullivan piece mentioned below.)

A part of what makes those words compelling is their recognition of the simple fact that free markets may not be IDEAL, they're merely the best we've tested to date.

It's the truth, or at least close enough. A meme isn't compelling if it doesn't seem true. Actually being true is the most direct path to seeming true and thus forming the basis for a compelling meme. Now, of course truth alone isn't enough -- it also has to be exciting and perhaps even inspirational.

Ultimately I think the Iraq war's main purpose is to create the meme in the Arab world that it's more attractive to live freely in democracy, and work in that context to better yourself and your situation, than it is to nurse your bitterness about not having as much as the western democracies do. (That bitterness leads to certain negative affects we have seen). Such a meme can only propogate effectively if it's perceived to be true. If a free Iraq succeeds, it will provide strong evidence to other Arabs that it is in fact true, and we'll all be a lot better off for it, and history will remember Bush even more kindly than Reagan. If not, the Iraq war will be regarded as very, very great blunder.

As was Reagan, Bush is guided by a deep faith that freedom is better than the alternatives, and that freedom is what people will insist upon for themselves once they truly understand it. But, if you and your friends have no experience of it, it is probably impossible to truly understand. So it has to be injected. Then the meme can have the opportunity to spread.

Not all Arabs are resistant to the freedom-meme, of course; many are obviously very excited about freedom. But many are not. Critical mass is not reached, and without our doing something about it, it might never be. The main problem is that there is a competitive pull in the opposite direction from fundamentalist Islam. Thoughts of hate and visions of martyrdom can be very powerful. They need to be combated with the experience of seeing other Arabs experiencing the benefits of freedom, because that will be very powerful too. A lot more powerful than seeing some strange-looking Westerners experience it on TV, while being constantly told by other Arabs that Westerners are evil.

Bush hopes that the injection of the freedom-meme into Iraq will enable it to take hold in the Arab world. Whether it does or not remains to be seen. Bush is betting that it will; it is a humungous gamble. I can't even think of a precedent. Personally, I give it more than a 50% chance of succeeding. But not a 90% chance.

Andrew Sullivan on Ronald Reagan

People, if you have any interest in the Conservative point of view on the phenomenon that was Ronald Reagan, you must read this essay Sullivan wrote in 2002 on the occasion of Reagan's 90th birthday. Nothing else I've seen comes close.

If you're a liberal, read it anyway, because you'll get more insight into Conservative thinking in 10 minutes than in 10 hours of reading most sources.

I don't know where to begin quoting it. Taking two paragraphs almost at random:

And if he was right about taxation and the role of government, he was also right about the other great question of his day: the Soviet Union. "Detente," he remarked in a 1975 speech. "Isn't that what a farmer has with a turkey until Thanksgiving?" I will never forget the moment I heard his "evil empire" speech. It was broadcast on Radio Four in snippets, festooned with sceptical British commentary about this inflammatory and dangerous new president, this cowboy who knew nothing about geo-politics or the complexities of late-Communism. But for all the criticism, what came through to my teenage brain was an actual truth. Yes, the Soviet Union was evil. Who now doubts that? But who in a position of power said so when it mattered? Barely no-one but Reagan. He alone saw that communism was destined to be put on the "ash-heap of history," as he told the House of Commons. And he helped put it there. His achievement in this respect was so monumental that a whole generation of former peaceniks now take it for granted. Think of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. In the 1980s, they were nuclear freeze supporters. And yet both now thoughtlessly enjoy the soft and easy fruits of a greater man's courage.

The critics harp on the enormous deficits of the Reagan era, and see them as an indictment of all he stood for. But the truth is, federal revenues boomed on Reagan's watch. Tax cuts didn't destroy public finances they helped them. What created the deficits was an unprecedented increase in defence spending the bargaining chip that eventually forced the Soviets to surrender. And you could easily argue that this was a price worth paying for an early end to an extremely expensive conflict. Thanks to the peace dividend of the post-Cold War world, and the free market expansion that Ronald Reagan initiated, America is now enjoying record surpluses. Even the straggling defenders of perestroika now concede that Reagan's intransigence and skill speeded the collapse of the Soviet empire. The deficits, from the standpoint of history, were therefore a fiscal bargain. In the long run, they paid for themselves.

I obviously can't vouch for the ultimate correctness of these points, but I've never seen them stated so well.

Google, Yahoo face off in suit

Patent attorneys who have reviewed the suit said Overture's patent claims can't be easily dismissed.

``I think there is merit based on the breadth of the claims,'' said Dave Ashby, a patent attorney with the IP Strategy Group in Cupertino. ``I took a look at it and said, `Yep, Google does that. Yep, Google does that.' ''
...
In its suit, filed in April 2002, Overture says Google is ``willfully'' and ``directly infringing'' on its patent. The company is seeking triple damages. [SiliconValley.com]

The ability to ask for triple damages would be a consequence of a finding of "willful infringement."

Winer-bashing

Dive Winer said yesterday:

I finally got a chance to read the WSJ article about RSS. They gave me authorship credit for the format, appropriately. I know how long they worked on the story, so it's much appreciated. The Guardian, in a deeply flawed article, said something very different about the origins of RSS. One wonders how they would react if I claimed to write an article of theirs that made a big difference in the world. You launch so many ideas, when one succeeds, it's nice to get credit for it. [Scripting News]

However, it seems to be accepted by a very large number of people that the real facts are these:

RSS 0.91
The version documented in this section is based on the Userland document of April 2000 (currently found at http://backend.userland.com/rss091). Its author, Dave Winer, did not invent any new practices with this specification, but he did codify RSS in a far more precise way than the Netscape original (at http://my.netscape.com/ publish/formats/rss-spec-0.91.html), based on common practice at the time. Primarily, the new codification imposed limits on the number of characters allowed within each element. The only major difference between the Userland spec and the original Netscape write-up is that the Userland version lacks a document type definition (DTD) declaration. [PerfectXML]

Since the docs are all public, it's hard to see how that analysis could be too far off. Or as Mark Pilgrim puts it:

In June of 2000, Userland took Netscape’s RSS specification, removed Netscape’s copyright statement, made several incompatible changes, added a Userland copyright statement, called it RSS 0.91, and claimed that it was compatible with Netscape’s RSS 0.91. [Dive Into Mark]

I just thought these quotes were an interesting juxtaposition.

Update: Dave left a comment pointing to this page. If you're interested in this chain of events, it's worth a look. It points out that Dave contributed to Netscape's spec, which seems to make Mark's comments a bit unfair. On the other hand, it seems like a stretch for Dave to claim "authorship" on his blog. According to the link Dave supplies, the .91 spec was, in effect, a collaboration with some folks at Netscape. It says that the original .91 spec was in fact written by Dan Libby of Netscape, and included suggestions from Dave. This is the document Mark is referring to, and which was followed by a modified version from Userland bearing Userland's copyright. Given the facts spelled out above, I wonder where the WSJ reporter got the idea to say "The RSS format was developed in 1999 by David Winer, a software entrepreneur who is currently a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School?"

Giving Dave the benefit of the doubt, it sounds like he may feel he's the spiritual author of RSS, and if so, perhaps sees no need to give anyone else credit when he talks informally about it. If in fact he is the spiritual author, then I think he has a point. But in that case he needs to explain his case more clearly so that it doesn't sound so often like he's simply laying claim to something that isn't really his, as Mark seems to be assuming he is doing.

It would be helpful for the ultimate sources of each of the ideas in the RSS .91 spec copyrighted by Userland to be spelled out in more detail, so that the community has a clear way of knowing whether Dave or those who would put the credit elsewhere are more correct. One could certainly say "who cares?" But IMHO it would be worth the effort, because there is so much enmity in the RSS-Atom universe now. Anything that helps put a more positive light on the history could help dispel that enmity and perhaps make it easier for the various parties to work together, which could have a positive impact on the industry.

"Don't be an asshole, vote Democratic"

I continue to think that there is a very good chance that future generations will see the Iraq invasion as one of the wisest moves ever made in world affairs. There are deep reasons it was done, although very few on the left give any sign of having the slightest clue what they are. And the jury is still out about whether the war will bear the fruits it was hoped it would bear -- it will take years, perhaps decades, to find out. Overall I think there are more good signs than bad ones in that regard.

On the other hand, there have been so many mistakes in the execution of the aftermath, that I am by no means a "true believer" in Bush and his policies.

Whatever. This is really funny. "Don't be an asshole, vote Democratic."

Oregon's Death with Dignity

In the June 1, 2004 NY Times article "In Oregon, Choosing Death Over Suffering," Dr. Kenneth Stevens says of those who choose to die by their own hand when they have a terminal illness: "The 'P' word is not 'pain.' The 'P' word is 'pride'... Rather than being death with dignity, it's death with vanity."

I think it would be instructive to step back and examine that statement by considering who really has more vanity: he who believes he knows best how a terminally ill patient should die, and would seek to control that choice by law, or the terminally ill patient who wishes to decide only for himself.

Spamometer

The earliest spam filter work I've heard of.

New Spam Filtering patent

There's a new spam filtering patent, number 6,732,157, awarded to Network Associates.

"To me this looks like a pretty broad patent," said Rob Tosti, partner in the Patent and Intellectual Property Practice Group of Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault, LLP in Boston. [Infoworld]

But lawyers usually aren't spam filter writers or experts in antispam mathematics. So let's take a closer look at the patent ourselves.

Every independent claim has something close to:

paragraph hashing including hashing a plurality of paragraph and utilizing a database of hashes of paragraphs, wherein the paragraph hashing excludes a least one of a first paragraph and a last paragraph of content of the electronic mail messages, wherein aplurality of hashes each has a level associated therewith, and the hashes having a higher level associated therewith are applied to the electronic mail messages prior to the hashes having a lower level associated therewith

Here's some text from the specification that elucidates what they mean
in the above claim limitation:

With attention now to the paragraph hashing module 806, various
paragraphs of content of the electronic mail messages may be hashed
in order to identify content previously found in known spam. In
particular, the electronic mail messages may be filtered as being
unwanted upon results of the paragraph hashing matching that of known
unwanted electronic mail messages. This may be accomplished utilizing
a database of hashes of paragraphs known to exist in previously
filtered/identified spam.

As an option, the paragraph hashing may utilize an MD5 algorithm. MD5
is an algorithm that is used to verify data integrity through the
creation of a 128-bit message digest from data input (which may be a
message of any length) that is claimed to be as unique to that
specific data as a fingerprint is to a specific individual.

To facilitate this process, content of the electronic mail messages
may be normalized prior to utilizing the paragraph hashing. Such
normalizing may include removing punctuation of the content,
normalizing a font of the content, and/or normalizing a case of the
content.

As a further option, the paragraph hashing may exclude a first and
last paragraph of content of the electronic mail messages, as
spammers often alter such paragraphs to avoid filtering by paragraph
hashing.

Thus filters that don't do that, shouldn't infringe. That doesn't seem very broad to me. Most spam filters I have had any involvement with don't seem to care about paragraphs at all, and certainly don't seem to have something that "excludes at least one of a first paragraph and a last paragraph of content of the electronic mail messages"

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think this going to be the big deal that the media is already building it up to be.

Additionally the independent claims all have something like

utilizing Bayes rules to filter the electronic mail message as being unwanted based on the user-defined Bayes rule threshold;

Certainly filters based on the chi technique don't do that; the theshold has nothing to do with Bayes' rule, it's based on non-Bayesian statistics. I assume that's probably the case for many or most other kinds of filters. (Most chi implementations do use Bayes in handling Paul Graham's word probabilities, but the patent specifically talks about the endpoint classification of messages using a "Bayes rule threshold". That's different.)

A lot of people who haven't had cause to study patents much tend to assume that they are very liberally interpreted by the courts, but they are not. In fact they are very rigidly interpreted according to rules that are getting narrower all the time. In particular a number of rulings in recent years have made it harder to apply the "doctrine of equivalents." The DoE essentially says that two things are the considered to be the same if they "perform substantially the same function in substantially the same way to achieve substantially same result". (That's the "Graver Tank Tripartite Test"). It's already pretty restrictive, but often not even that can be applied due to recent rulings.

So I don't think most people in the antispam community should get too worried about this patent, unless they specifically know that their filter carries out the claim limitations mentioned above.

Update: for prior art dating from 1997 that will have an impact on any any attempt to a get broad patent, see Spamometer.

Further update: Micheal Tsai, esteemed author of SpamSieve, agrees.

Per-Citizen pricing from Sun

Now here's an ambitious pricing strategy:

Sun is also launching per-citizen pricing for its Java Enterprise System server software. While the company had committed to the idea earlier, it now has begun selling it according to population and how the United Nations ranks countries as more, less or least developed. Countries with larger populations and lower development pay less per citizen.

"Governments--when delivering driver's licenses, health care or fishing permits--tend to serve massive marketplaces," Schwartz said.

Under Sun's pricing, Mexico, a less-developed country with a population of 100 million, would get to use as much Java Enterprise System software as it wants for a charge of 81 cents per citizen per year. Nations classified as "least developed" pay between 33 cents and 75 cents per citizen, while "less developed" nations pay between 33 cents and $1.95 per citizen, spokesman Russ Castronovo said. [News.com]