April 16, 2006
In the 1980s and 1990s, Telephone Company executives made some monumental mistakes regarding broadband and technology. Rather than come into the right century and realize that consumers didn’t want their over-managed solutions, the Telcos invested heavily in circuit-switch technology which makes the entire network “smarter” than it should be. Since then, they have been crippled and unable to do much. Fat, dumb pipes should be offered, and the cable operators seized on it. This is why you have Vonage today.
Recently, an AT&T executive made the comment that people don’t need more than 1Mbps of Internet broadband in their homes (most cable operators now offer 3-15Mbps) because you can’t tell a difference for web surfing. While it may be true that this isn’t required for surfing, he discounts IP telephony, IPTV, streaming audio and video, online gaming, business transactions, and a host of other important services people purchase for use over their broadband Internet.
Consumers want big fat dumb pipes they can use to buy whatever services they want from whatever companies they want. Since the Telcos do no know how to make money in this business model, they attempt to do the same thing that has been going for years with them – they try to hold us all back.
This article demonstrates this point well. They want to manage every resource in your home from television to Internet to email. If you don’t use their service, they’ll refuse to support it or even block it. This seems extreme, but some recent goings-on (read my blog entry about Congress’ action last week) tell us that the Telcos would like to hurt people like Vonage. Own a Mac? Use Vonage? Want a third-party telephone or gaming provider? Forget it if the Telcos have their way! AT&T, Verizon and even some cable operators would love to force you to use their over-priced services and stamp out the competition (then, we’re headed back to court to break them all apart again!) Worse yet, only their gear would be supported. Mac and Linux users would be in the most trouble. I’ve heard (true) horror stories from friends where Bell technicians tried to cut into their iMacs, break apart their iBooks and even flat out tell them that PowerBook G4s and MacBook Pro’s don’t support DSL access (!!!)
The executive set at the Telcos do not understand this economy and should leave. New blood is required if they are going to continue making a profit in the 21st Century economy. This new economy requires a versatility to which men of such minds simply cannot adapt.
Even though Microsoft is still in court in Europe for anti-competitive business practices, they are still up to their same old (dirty) tricks.
According to this Slashdot article, Microsoft is using dirty computer tricks to bypass the hosts file.
For those of you who aren’t tech-savvy, here’s what the hosts file does: Every server on the Internet that hosts webpages such as Google, Microsoft and Apple all have Domain Name System (DNS) entries on servers across the Internet that point a worded URL such as www.google.com to the appropriate IP address, such as 64.233.167.99 . Your computer doesn’t think of websites in terms of www.google.com, but rather an IP address. Names are just to keep us all straight, since remembering all those digits would be a very inefficient way to run the Internet! The hosts file is a way for your local computer to bypass your ISP or company’s DNS server. So, if you want to block an X-rated site from your browser, you could go to your hosts file and enter a bogus IP address to prevent the page from displaying. You could also plug in a legitimate address if there is a security issue within your company that prevents DNS from functioning properly on a certain domain name. Those of us in the IT industry rely heavily on the hosts file. I should add, at this point, that you should never modify your hosts file. Your company’s IT department probably forbids it and in some cases it might get you fired. So, don’t do it unless your IT Manager is standing right over you.
Now, for the game Microsoft is playing. Microsoft is bypassing your local hosts file and allowing its pages to be displayed anyway. While this doesn’t create a problem for most people (we have no real reason to block the Microsoft website) it is an unfair business practice because it produces anti-spyware software and other companies compete with it. This means that if a piece of spyware prevents Ad-Aware (a popular anti-spyware program) from downloading updates, it will not be functional while Microsoft, utilizing its inside knowledge about the code of Windows XP and Vista, will function. Since this is a security problem, Microsoft should immediately release the necessary code for its competitors to also fix this potentially dangerous security flaw. At the very least, Microsoft should allow other security firms’ IP addresses to be allowed to pass over the hosts file.
The built-in security flaw is obviously a problem. If the user is running as Administrator, spyware can totally reconfigure the machine’s ability to get on the web (and find the necessary patches to be fixed). Microsoft should fix the real problem rather than crippling the user’s machine and taking control away from the user, who paid for the OS.
Yet another reason to ditch Microsoft……
April 7, 2006
According to a Newsmax article, recently released documents reveal that Saddam Hussein ordered terrorist attacks on Americans just six months before the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
If this stands up to scrutiny, it would make George Bush look brilliant and Ted Kennedy and George Soros look like traitors and idiots.