Supreme Court Protects Violence - - - In Video Games

The Supreme Court has struck down a California law that barred the sale of violent video games to minors as an unconstitutional infringement on free speech. Justice Scalia writing for the majority said: 

“Like the protected books, plays and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas — and even social messages — through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player’s interaction with the virtual world) . . . That suffices to confer First Amendment protection.”

Grand Theft Auto appears was compared (and protected) under the same principles that shield the gory elements of stories like Hansel and Gretel in Grimm's Fairy Tales. See more complete coverage by going to this LINK at The New York Times.

Mini-Byte: Cyber-Afterlife?

Professor Gerry Beyer posted an interesting item this morning about a cyber-afterlife on his blog, Wills, Trusts & Estate Prof Blog.  It involved a Twitter user who posted the following:

 If I die, I want you to use this password to get into my account and tweet “So this is what it’s like being a ghost”.

To see Prof. Beyer's full post and the link to the original story at use this LINK.

On and Off the Cloud

On the heels of my last column about cloud computing, there is plenty of confirmation that the cloud is here and that some clouds may be dark and stormy.

Platform Wars
A couple of days ago, Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google discussed the "Platform Wars" at D9, the annual All Things Digital conference.  Schmidt referred to four dominant players who have used their distinctive platforms to dominant the web:  Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon.  What about Microsoft?  Forget about Microsoft, says Schmidt; it isn't a player on this field.

Store It In My Cloud
This comes close on the heels of Amazon's move to get us to upload our music and other files (with encouragement to buy more from Amazon) onto its "Cloud Drive".  Apple responded with its own cloud storage initiative, named (who would have guessed) iCloud, which debuted on June 6 at the Apple's World-Wide Developers Conference.  It is clear that the platform players are jockeying to get you on their cloud (and tied to content that they sell or make money through advertising).  So the Cloud Wars are heating up too.

It's Security, Stupid!
Now for the dark side.  As discussed in my last column, the "cloud" is really using someone else's computer.  Instead of computing or storing things on your desktop, or your laptop, or your smartphone, you using computers and servers on the Internet and storing information, documents, financial records, music, videos and other data on someone else's computer.  When you use Facebook, you are piling up personal comments, pictures and information on Facebook's servers.  If you play on XBox Live or some other online gaming platform, you are leaving information with the servers for those gaming platforms, whether it is gaming preferences and history or financial information to pay for the service.  Think about the computing that you do on the "cloud" and what you leave behind.  Think about it again when you are prompted by an app on Facebook that requests permission to access your Facebook personal information, friends and other data that you have left behind.  What do you think those apps are doing with that information?  Building you a better cow in Farmville?

It turns out that other people's servers may be no more secure than your own.  Servers for major platforms on the Internet may be even bigger targets than your computer for security breaches.  As the story goes, when bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, said he did it because banks "where the money is".  In cloud computing, big computer servers are where the information is.

Recently we have seen hackers breach Nintendo's servers.  Now comes a more frightening wave.  Computers at major defense contractors have been breached.  Big time defense contractors: Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and L3 Communications.  The report just linked is even grimmer in that it says that prevention of such breaches by serious hackers (who may include foreign governments) is very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.  One weakness:  People.  Servers are attached to networks and networks connect people, and people are the weakest link.  People can be convinced to "leave the door unlocked" and let the bad guys in.

So, cloud computing is here to stay, but be careful, because you may be the weakest link.

Where Are We Going? (Part II): Clouds

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall.
I really don't know clouds at all.
                          Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now

In Part I of this series, I explored the idea that the desktop computer (whether PC or Mac) is becoming less important as we increasing are turning to other devices, such as smartphones, netbooks, tablet computers, and other digital devices to do what we used to use desktop computers to do.  This evolution has given us greater freedom.

What are the components that make this new freedom possible and are their dangers or weaknesses in this new step?  One component is new hardware.  Whether a smartphone or a netbook  or a tablet computer, devices have gotten smaller and more functional.  More importantly, a wider range of these smaller devices that will connect us to the Internet.  We can take them with us and use them in more and more places.

Size is not the only thing that matters, however.  Another critical component is the compartmentalizing of tasks.  Desktop computers are viewed  as a revolutionary shift in the history of technology from the massive mainframe computers of the past.  They offered full-scale computing power in a smaller package.  The desktop still functions that way today.  We load our desktop computers at work or at home with a whole host of full-scale programs to do word processing, bookkeeping, gaming, media functions and many other tasks.  We will continue to use desktops for those functions.  We increasingly have discovered, however, that the desktop computer encourages us to put more and more programs on it.  Those programs get larger and larger as developers try to offer newer, more powerful versions of old software or new software products.

We are enticed by each new version of Word or Quicken, but do we actually need everything in these increasingly blotted versions of a program or operating system?  Some, because of very specialized needs, would answer affirmatively.  Those involved in publishing or graphic design or other fields will continue to want a computer that can run robust programs needed to produce their work.  For most of us, however, particularly for our personal needs, we do not need more and more computing power on a single computer.  We have a series of various, discrete tasks that we want to do and that can be accomplished very well with smaller devices.

So, the new evolution in technology leverages off this interest in more discrete computing.  In place of massive desktop programs, we now have "Apps," short for applications.  These are little programs that operate on the new range of smaller devices that go anywhere.  They specialize in doing one thing well.  Apps also have opened up avenues for developers to offer increasingly eclectic software for selected audiences.  Because apps are less complicated software, they can be developed at much lower cost and tailored to very specific needs and interests.

The age of the "App" is here.  Oprah is giving iPads to her staff.  Oprah uses an iPad and Apps while she exercises, accessing CNN, ABC News, Scrabble while she is on the treadmill.  Oprah even has her own App coming out. America and the world will surely follow.

The final component is "cloud computing".  This refers to the use of the Internet as part of the computing experience.  Software on mobile devices can be more minimal because some the the functionality is provided by programing features resident on the Internet.  Let's take this blog as an example.  Instead of writing this column on a full word processing program on my computer, I write this text using Google Blogger.  I connect to Google's website, open this blog and create or edit posts.  The word processing software is resident on Google's site, as is the finished product.  I do not have to have software on my computer or iPhone or hard drive memory to store the text from this columns.  The Google software has spell-checking, formatting and other functions for creating a blog.

There certainly are more robust programs for creating blogs, but Google's Blogger is more than adequate.  More importantly, it frees me to work on this column at work, at home, and on the road.  I wrote some of this blog at an ACTEC meeting in Pennsylvania.  I am also free to work on this blog on all kinds of devices, from my desktop computer at work or at home, my laptop on the road, or even my iPod Touch  or iPhone (although typing significant text on the iPod or iPhone itself is somewhat difficult).  The simple fact is that this column "lives" in the cloud.  It is available first on the Internet.  You can read it there as it is finished by going to http://technobytesmd.blogspot.com/ (or CLICK LINK HERE).  You can find prior posts.  You can find links to material cited in the blog posts.  Why wait months to get a stripped down, printed version?

Cloud computing thus has opened up a wide variety of activities.  The Internet's social media juggernaut, Facebook, is almost complete an activity in the cloud.  While you can upload pictures or graphics or some other items to your Facebook page, almost everything else is created on Facebook's servers on the Internet.  You can create short status updates or longer notes and use a significant number of apps that function within Facebook.

The Internet is increasingly become the primary resource for information.  We have seen the disappearance of encyclopedias as Google and Wikipedia have risen.  Venerable print publications are disappearing into the Internet.  The Oxford English Dictionary is discontinuing its printed edition and will be available only on the web.  The telephone white pages are going too, with customers being give an option to request a printed telephone directory.

Is there a dark side to cloud computing?  First, when functionality is dependent on the Internet, you need to be able to connect to the Internet.  People with iPhones and other smartphones now are required to have data service plans from their cellular network, so they have access to the web.  If they are out of range of a cell tower or a WiFi hotspot, however, they may not connect.  A more major problem, however, is whether the cellular networks will be able to keep pace with the demand to connect to the Internet.

Until recently, one of the major disincentives to buying an iPhone was that it was only available from ATT and ATT,s network proved unsatisfactory in meeting the rising demand for Internet connections.  Apple finally end this exclusive arrangement this year by making the iPhone available on the much stronger Verizon's network.  Eventually,Verizon too may struggle to provide bandwidth to a legion of new customers.

Broadband usage has been steadily increasing.  Exponential growth is expected in coming years.  Reports from the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2010 highlight this issue.

Given this trend, vendors at MWC outdid each other in predicting traffic growth over the next five years: Cisco claimed that global data traffic will increase by a factor of 39 between 2009 and 2014, while Ericsson predicted fiftyfold growth by 2015. NSN plumped for forecasting an equally round, but rather more ambitious, hundredfold rise. Analysys Mason is currently working on its own forecast of global traffic, which will be published in April. The consensus within the industry is that there will be substantial growth in demand for wireless traffic over the next five years.

The message from MWC 2010: indoor coverage and subscriber management are the keys to dealing with exponential growth in wireless traffic

Matt Hatton, Research Director
Terry Norman, Principal Analyst

4 March 2010

Meeting this growth is going to require further technological development. Bandwidth is going to have to be sacrificed from other parts of the spectrum.  "Subcriber management" points in the direction of getting folks to pay for the bandwidth being used for data transmission.  Right now, I can use my laptop or my iPhone without a wireless plan from my cellphone carrier, but I have to depend on finding a WiFi connection.  I have one at home through the modem for our Internet service, so I am paying for that service, but there is no price structure base on data usage (yet).  I use as much or as little as I want, moderated only by the speed of the connection (and whether my son is also on the computer; more users on the same connection slows the speed).

On the road, I must depend on hotel WiFi networks, which can range from excellent (at the Bedford Springs Resort where I typed part of this piece) to non-existence, or other free WiFi connections.  Of course, this wireless isn't "free".  The establishment providing it is paying for it, and is passing along the cost in the price of the goods and services they sell (room rates or the cup of coffee at Starbuck or food at McDonalds).  As broadband demand increases, the issue of net neutrality will be hotly debated.  The danger is that some of us will be able to afford the direct or indirect cost of access and faster connections and others will be shut out.

There are other concerns with cloud computing.  One of the critical elements in the use of smaller computing devices is the use of programs and storage on the Internet.  Your iPhone or iPad does not have to be load with all kinds of programs, just apps, many of which function as a simple interface for programs that are on the Internet, not your device.  Similarly, your work or results is often stored on the Internet, not on your device.

Let's return to the example of Facebook.  You type your updates on the web.  You up load pictures on the web.  You share material already on the web with others through Facebook.  You type and store notes on the Facebook site.  None of this is on your computer unless you choose to save it in some way on your own on your computer.


Of course, there is the big question of who has the legal right to all this stuff that you put up on the Internet.  Are all of the personal things you share on Facebook still yours, or does Facebook have rights to keep them and use them for its purposes.  Facebook implicitly "shares" what you post, but use what you do online to market products to you or promote other activity on the web.  Ingeniously (or insidiously), we are Facebook's "product"  We generate the content that drives more and more users and activity to Facebook.  Facebook, in turn, sells "us" to advertisers and marketers.

Increasingly,  we are turning to the cloud to store information.  We are backing up our computers.  We are storing the work product from programs that we use.  Amazon recently announced a new service to combine music that you purchase at Amazon and storage of the that music on its servers (Cloud Drive).  It is even selling a music player that you can use on the web or on one of your devices (Android devices only right now).  This is a blast of competition of Apple, who also wants you to buy music from the iTunes Store, but has no integration yet for storage.

Another example is a cloud based service called Evernote, available for your full computers and for mobile devices like smartphones.  It is really a clipping and copying service for the Internet.  You see an article or posting that you like or want to retain.  Evernote lets you copy and save or cut and paste this items and saves it on its server.  You also can create your own notes -- shopping lists, books to read, pictures, etc.  It is intended to cut down on paper and to work across platforms.  You synchronize whatever device that you are using to the Evernote servers online.  You can then access your notes from another device, including a mobile device.  I use it for reservations, confirmations, notes, articles of interest, directions, and many more things.  It is free and can be upgrade to a premium service.  Its attraction, however, is its accessibility through the cloud.


What happens if Amazon or Facebook or one of new storage services goes out of business?  What happens to your "stuff"?  If you actually store large amounts of information in the "cloud", there are also issues about security and privacy of that information.  Whatever information you are storing or creating on the Internet in fact is stored somewhere on someone's server.  So you have to be careful about the security of those servers.  If hackers can get to the information on those servers, you may be in big trouble.  Recently, Sony admitted that hackers had breached its servers twice within a short period of time and made off with significant information, including credit card numbers, stored on those servers as a result of Sony's online PlayStation gaming network.

There is also increasing concern about the security of the Internet itself.  I have reported here before about cyber-warfare between nations.  Recently, there were news reports about a new Internet "18 minute gap".  For approximately 18 minutes in April of 2010 15% of the world's Internet traffic  was mysteriously routed through servers in China.  According to ComputerWorld, just as puzzling was that the intercept:

affected U.S. government and military networks, including those belonging to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Commerce, NASA and the U.S. Senate.

Now The Wall Street Journal reports that we are embroiled in a rash of "hackactivism" in the wake of WikiLeak's release of classified diplomatic cables. Having released the classified cables, WikiLeaks suffered a back lash.  Hackers attacked and shut down or slowed the WikiLeaks servers to try to slow or stop the disclosure.  Amazon, which had been providing WikiLeaks with server space, turned them out.  Credit card companies announced that they would stop transferring money to WikiLeaks.  Hackers supporting WikiLeaks have struck back.  So we had a WikiLeaks cyber-war.  What is ominous here, however, is that individual hackers, not governments, appear to be launching this attacks and causing chaos, at least briefly, on parts of the Internet.

Finally, some think that this new "freedom" is nothing of the sort.  If we are constantly connected, we may find that our work follows us 24/7, that we no long have purely leisure time to ourselves.  This, of course, depends on how the user uses and manages technology, not something that technology imposes on the user.  You can always turn off the device, leave at home, or simply choose to use it or not.  One way to separate your work and personal life is to be clear where the line is, when you are available for work activities and when you are not.  This applies when you in the office and do not want to be disturbed.  You forward your telephone to voice-mail or have your calls answered; you stop reading email.  This type of focus should apply beyond the physical confines of the office.  Some people have to be "on-call", but there should be a clear understanding for all of us as to when we are not on-call.

These changes are rapidly occurring.  They are changing our lives.  There are significant issues to consider, but I doubt that any of these issues will halt the growth of the cloud and the rise of the Internet as the primary arena for the technology now and in the future.

The New York Times Wants You To Pay (Sort Of)

If you read articles from The New York Times online, you may have established an account with the Times in order to get greater access to the material posted online.  Until now, The New York Times online has been more or less free.  If you have established an account, you should have received a copy of the following email in March from the NYT, letting you know that this is about to change:

Dear New York Times Reader, Today marks a significant transition for The New York Times as we introduce digital subscriptions. It’s an important step that we hope you will see as an investment in The Times, one that will strengthen our ability to provide high-quality journalism to readers around the world and on any platform. The change will primarily affect those who are heavy consumers of the content on our Web site and on mobile applications. This change comes in two stages. Today, we are rolling out digital subscriptions to our readers in Canada, which will enable us to fine-tune the customer experience before our global launch. On March 28, we will begin offering digital subscriptions in the U.S. and the rest of the world. If you are a home delivery subscriber of The New York Times, you will continue to have full and free access to our news, information, opinion and the rest of our rich offerings on your computer, smartphone and tablet. International Herald Tribune subscribers will also receive free access to NYTimes.com. If you are not a home delivery subscriber, you will have free access up to a defined reading limit. If you exceed that limit, you will be asked to become a digital subscriber. This is how it will work, and what it means for you: On NYTimes.com, you can view 20 articles each month at no charge (including slide shows, videos and other features). After 20 articles, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber, with full access to our site. On our smartphone and tablet apps, the Top News section will remain free of charge. For access to all other sections within the apps, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber. The Times is offering three digital subscription packages that allow you to choose from a variety of devices (computer, smartphone, tablet). More information about these plans is available at nytimes.com/access. Again, all New York Times home delivery subscribers will receive free access to NYTimes.com and to all content on our apps. If you are a home delivery subscriber, go to homedelivery.nytimes.com to sign up for free access. Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit. For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles. The home page at NYTimes.com and all section fronts will remain free to browse for all users at all times. For more information, go to nytimes.com/digitalfaq. Thank you for reading The New York Times, in all its forms. Sincerely, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Publisher, The New York Times Chairman, The New York Times Company

Like many American newspapers, The New York Times has grappled with the age of the Internet, where the overwhelming amount of "free" content has often pushed aside established journalism, whether print or broadcast.  The internet has spawned whole new methods for people to get the news:  the "blogasphere", social networking sites like Facebook, media sites like YouTube, and global instant messaging via Twitter.  Of course, these new media have weaknesses.  The Internet voraciously demands to be fed 24/7 with the news, latest, most interesting stories.  Fact checking and analysis sometimes get left behind.  Stories run like wildfire before they are fully investigated and often end up misrepresenting what actually happened.  In the end, however, once a version of something has spread around the world on the Internet it is difficult to convince people that there is a more nuanced, more difficult truth to be told.  The Internet provides us with the illusion that we know everything there is to know with a few clicks or touches.

The Canadian trial run went well, so in the NYT has rolled out this program in the U.S.  After encountering some announcements online, in early May I received the following e-mail offer:

Dear NYTimes.com reader,

As a valued NYTimes.com reader, you are invited to enjoy unlimited access to NYTimes.com and our NYTimes apps at a special introductory rate. Subscribe today and save 50% for 26 weeks.*

Unrivaled coverage. Unlimited access.
Visitors to our site get 20 free articles a month, but that’s fewer than 1% of all the published articles on NYTimes.com each month. Subscribe now at our introductory rate and enjoy unlimited access to all the breaking news updates, video, audio, multimedia and more. The finest reporters in their field keep you informed 24 hours a day on your computer, smartphone and tablet.

Exclusive offer — save 50% for 26 weeks.
This limited-time offer is available only to select NYTimes.com readers like you. Subscribe today and choose from packages that include unlimited access to NYTimes.com, plus our smartphone and tablet apps. And enjoy access to the world’s finest journalism — any way you want.

Clicking on the link, I got the following pricing summary:

NYTIMES.COM + Smartphone App

Unlimited access to NYTimes.com and the NYTimes smartphone app.
See details $1.88 / WEEK for 26 weeks

NYTIMES.COM + tablet app

Unlimited access to NYTimes.com and the NYTimes tablet app.
See details $2.50 / WEEKfor 26 weeks

All digital access

Unlimited access to NYTimes.com and the NYTimes tablet and smartphone app.
See details 4.38 / WEEK for 26 weeks

Doing a little math, the unlimited package costs you $277.60 for 52 weeks (one year).  A year of home delivery of the actual paper costs $384.80 and it also gets you unlimited access to NYTimes.com.

The New York Times is not the only premium publisher trying to figure out how to price itself in the digital age.  Try accessing content online at The Wall Street Journal.  You will get some pieces without any sale pitch.  Increasingly, however, you will find messages that direct you to subscribe to get the full article that you are looking for.  The New Yorker recently announced that it is selling subscriptions on the iPad.  Other premium publishers are in the this market.  As we all move increasingly to the use of iPhones and other smartphones and iPads or other tablets, we are abandoning the traditional paper publishing products.

I have a regular subscription to The New Yorker.  I have cherished this magazine since discovering it somewhere in my youth.  I know that people get it in the mail (before it hits the newsstands) and devote a evening to reading it.  I have never been able to do that.  I think many others have reached that point.  We subscribe to support a distinctive and distinguished publication to keep it alive, as we would a worthy charitable cause.

On the evening of May 1 President Obama announced the U.S. forces finally had located and killed Osama Bin Ladin.  In the ensuing days, the media was filled with details, analysis and commentary.  (The Internet also was full of scams trying to capitalize on the enormous interest in this story.) The New Yorker was no exception.  Online by way of my iPhone, I was able to read insightful reporting and commentary from The New Yorker and other publications, coverage that would have taken hours, days or weeks to reach me in print.  In fact, the online publications and the print publications are becoming very different things.  The Internet requires that the best online content must be timely and incisive.

So The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York, Wired and many more print publications, all of which still hold to some central principles of traditional journalism, have struggled to preserve their distinctive brands.  Economically, they cannot continue to give everything away for free on the Internet.  The advertising revenue that fueled print journalism for years just isn't there on the Internet.  Most of these publications have to offer something for free to draw an audience to their online sites, but they have to draw a line somewhere and try to collect some revenue for "premium" content.  Let's hope for the sake of the internet as a medium that informs and educates us that these publications and others like them find a way in the new technological world.  We desperately need analysis and intelligent discourse on the Internet, to counter-balance the error-filled flood of spectacle and scandal and sensationalism that too easily can prevail.

Update: Microsoft and iPhones

Dead Money

Readers in the MSBA Estate & Trust Law Section Newsletter just saw it in print a month or so ago, but in October I wrote a column in the online blog version of Realtity Bytes entitled Where Are We Going? (Part I): The PC is Dead! (Or Is It?)  [Click Online Link Here].  In part, the article took Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to task for lack of vision and lackluster leadership in Microsoft's battle to compete with Apple and Google.  One of my favorite tech commentators (and all around curmudgeon) John Dvorak has come to much the same conclusion in his Second Opinion column on The Wall Street Journal's Marketwatch website.  Entitled Microsoft is Dead Money for Investors. Dvorak notes a string of "failures to launch", such as:

• Microsoft's indecisiveness over smart-phone operating systems (late to enter the field, then letting the Windows Phone 7 wither (even though it appears to be a strong product) (a deja vu of The Zune).
• Microsoft's dismal efforts in the tablet computer wars (despite the fact that Microsoft was a pioneer in tablet computing long before was an iPad).

Dvorak adds another example of stumbling indecisiveness:

Somewhere along the line, Redmond has gotten gun-shy.  . . .The most telling example of this was the short-lived Kin phone, which Microsoft released then killed just about six weeks later, before it could even attempt to get traction. 

Dvorak concludes that Microsoft is so worried about failure that it is paralyzed and investors should take note, because an investment in Microsoft is "dead money".  Read his full comments at this Online Link.

iPhones

While rest of the world was swooning this week over Steve Jobs' re-appearance from another medical leave of absence to announce the second generation iPad, I was celebrating the third week of my very own iPhone. As you probably know by now, Apple finally struck a deal with Verizon and has released a version of the iPhone on America's largest cellular network.  As our family has a Verizon wireless plan, this was the perfect opportunity to replace my aged, but trusty Palm Treo.  (A nice follow up to the Microsoft comments above would be to note that Palm's Treo appeared to have been the leading rival to RIM's Blackberry smart-phone at one point, and Palm failed badly in bring out succeeding generations that could compete.)

I was aided in my acquisition of an iPhone by my daughter's boyfriend, who wanted to surprise her with one for Valentine's Day.  So he stayed up into the earlier hours of the morning when the iPhone first became available to Verizon customers and placed an order for two iPhones.  After about a week of gingerly getting to know the iPhone, I was ready to try to duplicate what I had on the Treo.  On my Treo, I could synchronize by calender, contacts and other information from the Palm Desktop program on my office computer.  I did this for years with a cable wired to the the computer.  I could only do it when I was in the office.

After about an hour or so on the telephone with our firm's IT support, I am please to say that I can synchronize that information from TimeMatters, where most of it is stored, to Mircosoft Outlook.  This is still a manual sync, but once completed, I can access Outlook remotely from my iPhone by going through Microsoft Exchange.  Whatever I change in Exchange, synchronizes into TimeMatters the next time I manually synchronize the programs.  I also get my office email through Exchange, as Outlook is our office email program.  (Until now, I have not used Outlook much, but I now see its true potential and must say that it works rather well as a integrated email, contacts, and calendaring program.  It also works well with the iPhone.  So Microsoft can still make good products.  Outlook demonstrates what it can do in the changing technological environment.  Microsoft has the money and the talent to compete in this new environment; it just needs better leadership before its too late.)

I am quite pleased now this remote access  pretty much everywhere there is Verizon service.  And, that is a lot of places.  Verizon has a much better network than ATT, the iPhone's exclusive home network until now.  The Verizon network seems to be holding up to the influx of new iPhone users.  Partly that may be because Verizon has not been overwhelmed yet by a tidal wave of new iPhone customers.  New iPhone customers may come more gradually to the Verizon, but I suspect they will come eventually.

The best part of having an iPhone is that it is a mini iPad.  So now I am ready to start checking out the new generation of iPads.

There's No App for Confession

In case you were wondering, The Catholic Church does not sanction an new app for confession.  On February 9, 2001,The New York Times' Laurie Goodstein reported in App Can't Replace Confession, Vatican Says  that:  the Vatican has turn thumbs down on "Confession: a Roman Catholic App."

Goodstein further reports that the application is being sold on iTunes and

was developed by American entrepreneurs with the help of two priests and the blessing of a bishop. It features a questionnaire of sins, and is promoted as a tool both to revive interest in confession and to help Catholics prepare for the sacrament.

Touted "as a 'virtual priest' for Catholics who do not have time for church," a Vatican spokesman responded, “One cannot speak in any way of ‘confession by iP

Publish Post

hone.' "

The iPhones are Coming, The iPhones are Coming (to Verizon)!!

This is old "news" even to the online readers of this column, but the deal is done.  Apple and Verizon have come to terms and the iPhone will be available on the Verizon network, starting February 10.  See David Pogue's piece in the New York Times yesterday, which highlights two immediate differences in the operation of the iPhone on Verizon vs. ATT (no surfing the internet while calling and no usage abroad), and one significant advantage that Verizon has:  far better coverage on its more extensive network here at home.

Pogue cautions, however, that the influx of new iPhone users and the spike in data demand  may sap Verizon's network.  It is too early to tell. Marketplace Tech Report had a report on whether Verizon's network is up to the challenge.

The Wall Street Journal's Smart Money reports that you can expect some marketing changes at Verizon that are designed "encourage" existing customers to move to the iPhone.  Verizon will be discontinues its popular upgrade program.  Meanwhile, ATT and other businesses in the smart-phone wars are bracing for the effects.

I will have to look at details of the service contract, but this Verizon customer is ready to end his long wait to get an iPhone.

Mini-Byte: The Social Science Research Network

For those interested in finding academic papers on estate planning topics (or a wide variety of other topics), a fine resource is the Social Science Research Network ("SSRN").

Here is a year-end post that I received from Gregg Gordon, the President of SSRN, which gives you some background:

SSRN's 16th year was "sweet". The eLibrary (http://ssrn.com/search) has delivered over 41.3 million downloads to date and grown to over 314,000 documents from 149,000 authors. Our CiteReader technology, developed with ITX Corp, has captured 6.4 million references and 6.5 million footnotes. The technology has been expanded to extract references from within footnotes and those references will be displayed on the abstract pages in early 2011. Scholars are finding the links in the References and Citations tabs, on the abstract page, excellent ways to access both the past and future literature in a discipline.

In the near future, we will release Search Within functionality that finds specific information in an existing search result or taxonomy classification. We will also release simplified access to all of the SSRN Rankings of papers, authors and organizations. Over the next few months, we will create subject area networks in Innovation, Religious Studies, and Music and Composition; continuing our interdisciplinary growth in the social sciences and humanities.

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Sixth Circuit on Warrantless Searches of Email

The federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that emails are protected under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution from warrantless searches.  The case is U.S. v. Steven Warshak.  Here is a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Mini-Byte: Another Pogue Crusade?

As recently reported here , New York Times Technology writer David Pogue was part of a successul crusade against Verizon for predatory billing practices.  Verizon was billing customers for accidental connections that did not involve any air time.  That campaign ultimately resulted in Verizon paying $92 million in refunds.

A reader has given Pogue a suggestion for another campaign:  roll-over megabytes. AT&T has roll-over minutes, which allow a customer to carry forward minutes that the customer paid for, but did not use.  Pogue and his reader are suggesting the same concept for megabytes of data that go unused.  Read Pogue's comments here and join the crusade.

Mini-Byte: Favorite Tech Reports

I have mentioned in other columns additional, probably better sources for information about technology.  I thought that I would you a short list of these sources, as there has been at least one change of name recently,  The many of the names below are hyperlinks in the online version of this column, so you can click on them and go to the websites:

Marketplace Tech Report -  This is a five minute podcast each day on technology issues.  It was formerly called Future Tense and hosted by Jon Gordon.  It has changed its name to become part of American Public Media's series of financial and business reports.  It is now hosted by John Moe and provides excellent coverage of a wide range of technology topics.  (American Public Media also distributes Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer's Almanac.

John Dvorak's Second Opinion - Distributed by The Wall Street Journal's Digital Network, this column features sharp criticism and iconoclastic views of John Dvorak, who is tech journalism's equivalent of Andy Rooney.  For another side of Mr. Dvorak, see his blog, aptly named Dvorak Uncensored.


All Things Digital - Also distributed by The Wall Street Journal's Digital Network, this website includes a wide variety of contributors, including the Journal's excellent Personal Technology columnist, Walt Mossberg and Boom Town's Kara Swisher.

TWIT - TWIT (This Week in Tech) is a website for commentary on technology assembled by Leo Laporte.  One of its primary features is a weekly podcast of roughly an hour in length, TWIT (podcast).

Pogue's Posts - a central site for accessing the columns of David Pogue, technology columnist of The New York Times.

TechnoLawyer Blog -  A site for those who want technology commentary specifically for the legal profession. Sign up for the e-newsletters.

Building Better Passwords

One of the weakest links in computer security may be the passwords that we use.  We all struggle with how to keep track of the various passwords and PINs that we need to navigate in the computer age.  I am as guilty as many, many others.  So, let's all take a moment and try to learn something from Mozilla, the non-profit that make the FireFox browser, which has page entitled "Choosing More Secure Passwords."

Where Are We Going? (Part I): The PC is Dead! (Or Is It?)

All Things Digital ("ATD") is a rather good website for commentary on technology and the business of technology.  It features two Wall Street Journal standouts, Walt Mossberg, who authors the WSJ Personal Technology column/blog, and Kara Swisher, who does the same for BoomTown. A few years back, ATD decided to host a conference about, well ... all things digital.  In early June, this year's conference, D8 rolled around and the opening night featured an expansive Mossberg/Swisher interview of a modern day Lazarus of sorts, Steve Jobs.

In case you have been out of touch, Steve Jobs is legend.  Having co-founded Apple somewhere around the dawn of the personal computer age, Jobs helped steer the company to be one of the only true alternatives to the hegemony of Bill Gates' Microsoft. He left Apple for a while, and then returned when Apple seemed to be foundering.  During this return engagement, Jobs has reshaped Apple and the world of computing yet again, revitalizing Apple's core line of computers, both desktops and laptops, and revolutionizing a somewhat definition-less space loosely called personal computing devices.  A few years back, personal computing devices amounted to not much more than a few smart-phones that were struggling to become smarter and more integrated through wireless connection to the Internet.

Jobs did a flanking maneuver with a personal music player called the iPod.  He built an online store called iTunes and started selling music to fill iPods.  The industry took this as a noble little gesture befitting of Apple's technology wizardry:  a sleek little device to entertain us, but hardly a big threat.  Still, people seemed to like this idea and started buying iPods, filling them with their own music and downloading songs from iTunes.  Soon other things came along, like a new thing called a "podcast" and videos.  Othe companies brought out generic MP3 players.  Microsoft thought that it could compete in this market and launched a player of its own, Zune.

The first iPods were relatively primitive.  (I know, because I still have a second generation Mini, which but for the lack of any battery life, still works.)  By the time that Zune arrived, however, Apple had newer versions of the iPod that were better and fancier and started to do more things, like play video that could be downloaded from iTunes.  The first generation Zune never had a chance. Nowadays, I am told that there is an outstanding new generation Zune that outperforms the iPod in a number of areas.  Unfortunately, not many people care.  Apple's iPod dominates.

This pattern bears watching, because Apple repeats it.  Jobs admits that Apple needed to make much more strategic choices.  Apple is a hardware company that does particularly innovative things with the software it develops for that hardware.  Its computers remain a much smaller part to the market compared to the legion of computers that run Microsoft's Windows operating system.  What Apple does is look for openings in the market where it can excel and innovate.  It has succeeded and, in doing so, has moved the market toward Apple.

Apple brought out the iPhone to take on other smart-phones that were having trouble figuring out how to integrate their functionally with the Internet.  Several generations of iPhones down the line, Apple dominates the creative side of this space, with the rest of the industry still trying to keep up.  It has made this market interesting enough to draw Google into the operating system competition.  Microsoft recently released a new version of its mobile phone operating system, again trying to catch up in this competition.

Apple also brought out an iPod called the "Touch" or "iTouch" that connected to the Internet via WiFi.  Built with many features in common with the iPhone, the iTouch started to capture the attention of younger users who wanted mobile access to the Internet for emailing and social networking, but did not necessarily want to get an iPhone (just yet).

Finally, Jobs unveiled the iPad this year.  The iPad is a tablet computer that appears to be redefining the non-desktop computer sector.  Of course, we still have laptop computers, which thanks to Apple's leadership again, are getting small and lighter, but are capable of providing full-function computing on a par with a desktop computer.  We also have "netbooks", devices that are smaller than a laptop, which connect to the Internet and provide some computing capability, but lack the memory and other features of laptops.  Finally, we have e-readers for electronic books, such as Kindle, Nook, etc.

Building off the iPod, the iPad is a uniquely different computing device.  Through it, Apple definitely has designs on furthering its emergence as a media company.   Apple is making a play for the market held by e-readers like the Kindle.  The iPad also is designed to build on the iTouch and provide more utility as an access point to the web.  The competition has followed Apple's lead by announcing its own tablet computers.

Through all this, Microsoft largely has been missing in action.  It failed to mount any meaningful competition to the iPod.  It has meandered around in the cell-phone operating systems wars without much distinction.  Google's Droid operating system is a more formidable challenge to the iPhone.

Apple recently surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization.  And, Jobs dodged the grim reaper in his bout with liver disease.  So, getting him to sit down and talk on opening night of D8 was huge.

There are significant problems in the forgoing success story, some of which are attributable to Jobs' insistence on doing things the "right" way (his way?).  First, the iPhone has only been available on the ATT network, which, for all its technical synergy with the iPhone, is universally viewed as a lousy network.  Apple will now be selling a lot more iPhones, as the rumors that the iPhone will be available on Verizon next year appear to be confirmed.

Second, and more problematic, Jobs could not get satisfaction out of Adobe over weaknesses in its Flash Player, so neither the iTouch, iPhone or the iPad run Flash Player.  As Flash Player is integral to the operation of many website audio/visual clips, particularly on Google's YouTube, Apple has wonderful devices to reach the Internet, but spotty content once you get there.  No word at this writing on how this standoff will end, but Jobs is asked about it in the interview.

Finally, the newest iPhone model, iPhone4 received bruising criticism for reception problems related to the device itself (not ATT's network).  The New York Times reported that Consumer Reports would not recommending the iPhone4 because of a flaw with its antenna.  The furor dragged down Apple's stock price for a while, but seem to have blown over.

With apologies for the long lead above if you already knew all this stuff, what I want to discuss are comments by Jobs at D8 on the future of the computer and a response from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the last morning of D8.  Let's clarify terminology first.  The term "PC"seems to be a bit of a sore spot between Jobs and Ballmer.  My take on these interviews is that Jobs uses the term to refer to full size desktop computers generally and to some extent fully functional laptops (with hard drive memory and CD/DVD capabilities).  At one point he says as much to Walt Mossberg, describing himself and Walt "as people from the PC world" and saying that "PCs have taken people like us a long way".  Ballmer seems to respond as if he interpreted the remarks to apply strictly "PCs", i.e. -- computers running Microsoft Windows (or the next OS from Microsoft, which may not be called Windows anything).

Remember that Apple is a hardware manufacturer.  Microsoft is a software company.  Except for the Xbox game system, Microsoft has not really succeeded in developing any significant hardware business; it makes its money on operating systems that are installed in the vast majority of full scale desktop and laptop computers.  So, Ballmer may simply be defensive about Microsoft losing market share, but he comes off sounding like the PC half of those famous Apple Mac-PC ads.  (Ballmer is certainly defensive about a lot of things these days;  listen to his comments about Google and Android and Chrome.  Here is a mash-up putting the Jobs and Ballmer comments side by side in a point-counter point debate.)

Jobs essentially made an analogy that the full scale desktop computer is like a truck:  it has great utility and will continue to have great utility to accomplish the jobs for which we need a full scale computer.  (And, like trucks, there will be some people "driving" a full scale computer when they do not really need one.)  Jobs thinks, however, that we have already entered an era where typical computing needs can be handled by small devices, that there is a paradigm shift under way.

Ballmer made some jokes about "Mac trucks" and offered some backward-looking platitudes about Windows PCs being "mass popularizers", but ultimately conceded that there will be smaller devices that serve different functions.  Jobs, of course, does not say that the iPad is going make the PC obsolete (at least not any time soon), but that new order is coming.

Microsoft is really besieged on several sides by the forces of change.  Google (which Ballmer called a "behemoth", as if Microsoft is somehow the new David to Google's Goliath) is focused on more and more functionally occurring online, with the need for resident operating systems and programs in our personal computers becoming less important.

My take on this is that Ballmer's smugness hides an unease about Microsoft's ability to adapt.  With the desktop computers beginning to wane and Microsoft missing in action on most other fronts, Microsoft faces the prospect of watching is its operating system business for PCs slowly (or rapidly) disappear.

One can only hope the Ballmer and others at Microsoft can read their own corporate history and understand its implication for the future.  After all, what Jobs said embodies and extends the vision that Bill Gates had many years ago when he foresaw the personal computer becoming a part of every day life, empowering people and moving us out of the era of mainframe computer.


Ballmer seems to lack a vision of the future.  His comments are reminiscent of a backward looking discussion last year by Mircosoft's chief strategist, Craig Mundie.  Jobs is not clairvoyant.  He is just a keen observer of what has happened with computer technology and where the future lies.  Historically, as Gates foresaw, computers and computing devices have gotten smaller, more affordable, and have empowered more and more people and have rapidly broken down definitional lines in the process.  The Internet has driven this process even faster by allowing people to do many things online that they used to need a desktop (or mainframe computer) to do.

Interestingly, in September, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano declared the PC business dead in an interview with The Wall Street Journal's Viewpoints.  Remember that IBM invented the PC.  IBM sold its PC business several years ago for a reasonable price. Palmisano went so far as to say that he "could not give [the PC business] away today."

I think that there is little doubt that we will see a growing use of smaller computing "devices", more use of the Internet in place of the desktop and more freedom and power to use this technology in the hands of more and more people.  The desktop will still be around.  Netbooks may or may not survive the advances represented by the iPad.  Our cellphones will get smarter.  We yet may see widespread availability of connectivity through WiFi.  (Google is certainly pushing in this direction.  The major wireless carriers better take notice because their monopolistic pricing structure will be vulnerable to competition for access that is more fairly and properly priced.)  Microsoft's challenge seems to be finding its place in this future.  Jobs is at the crest of the next hill telling us what he sees beyond. Ballmer is still huffing and puffing his way up to get a peak.

Look at the people around you, at work, at home, at leisure.  Increasingly, people are doing many things without a desktop computer (PC or Mac).  Laptops have become more common place, even within offices.  Whether they are using a netbook, a iPhone, a Droid phone, an iPad, an iPod Touch, other similar devices, people are connecting  and computing through the Internet from home or office or places in between.  The Wall Street Journal ran a story recently on the surging sales of portable communication devices, including the iPad, at big box retailer Best Buys.  The article also noted that the iPad was drawing customers away from laptops.
Whether at work, on vacation or at the gym, people are reading email, listening to music, going to websites, linking to their workplace network, making dinner reservations, checking out local movie listings.  I typed part of this column on a laptop at an ACTEC meeting in Pennsylvania.  It is fairly clear that a new paradigm has emerged.  The next part of this series of columns will discuss some of the reasons why the desktop computer and even the traditional laptop computer, while still important, are increasingly secondary in the modern world.


(Disclosure:  The author holds stock in Microsoft, Apple and Google.)

David Beats A Goliath

New York Times Technology writer David Pogue has written for some time about the abuses of  the giant telecommunications companies.  I have mentioned this in a prior Reality Byte's post.  Now comes  "Verizon Comes Clean", in which David reports on Verizon's admission that it has been collecting millions of dollars from $1.99 charges it assessed on users who inadvertently connected to the Internet on their flip phones. Verizon will be paying out a $90 million refund. Read David's full report by clicking on the link above.

Xmarks Shuts Down

A quick post to let you know that Xmarks, a popular browser bookmark synchronization application that I have recommend here in the past, is going dark.  Full details on how a successful program is going out of existence can be found at Xmarks online blog.  The official announcement and alternatives can be found online at as well.

Stay Out of the Cookie Jar

The Wall Street Journal has an interactive report on line about tracking cookies.  Visits to the 50 top websites will result in an average of 64 trackers being installed on your computer.  These trackers, commonly called "cookies", are little spies that send personal information about your computer activity back to the websites that embedded them in your computer.  This personal information is then used by the owners of the website for a number of things.  It can be used for things that you might like, such as providing you with more useful or related information associated with your visit to the website.

Spinning that "good" example at bit, such personal information can also be used to target advertising based on your interests.  For example, when you buy things on Amazon.com, Amazon obviously has a sales record of those purchases and uses it to provide recommendations to users with accounts at Amazon.com.  What if you do not establish an account with Amazon?  Well, Amazon still has a sales record of what is purchased with a particular credit card or delivered to a specific address, but that is not helpful in selling you something on when you are browsing around its website.  In the Wall Street Journal's report, Amazon is listed as possibly embedding up to 38 cookies on your computer when you visit.  One thing that Amazon can do through these cookies is identify the computer that you are using and associate that with your prior purchase and viewing records.  When that computer logs into Amazon.com again, Amazon can target items to recommend or advertise, based on past activity.

So "cookies" have a commercial purpose.  That can be good or bad, depending on your perspective.  More disturbing is the possible "misuse" of this information.  When we browse on the web, we may go to many different sites and look at a wide range of information.  By receiving back information on where we go and what we view, that information can be processed and patterns revealed.  Gradually, over time, this can evolve into a "profile" of the user of the computer.

In some ways, this may be anonymous, if the cookies are only reporting the activity on a particular computer, without a way to tie that information to a particular person.  Many of us use the same computer (or computers)  repeatedly and perhaps exclusively, and a little bit of personal information provided along the way may establish a personal identity to the data being mined.

Think about your computer usage, particularly the way that it reveals your interests, thoughts and possible personal, social and political views.  It may be one thing to share all of this on a social network, like Facebook, where the overt purpose is to enable such sharing.  (Then again, there has a been a firestorm of criticism and warning over what Facebook does with the information you post, so you may want to think twice about what you are doing on Facebook.)  When your personal likes and interests are being mined by a large number of websites, however, you have to be concerned about the ultimate use of such information.

It would be wise to read the WSJ report and take steps to curtail such mining of personal information.

One thing that you can do is make changes in your Internet settings for your browser and have it refuse cookies.  This may cause some difficulties with accessing many websites or features of those websites.  Cookies are often used to identify a repeat users of, and preferences for, a website, so that certain features launch automatically rather than making the user open them each time they visit.  Blocking cookies could frustrate such features.

Another or additional way to deal with this problem is to install one or more programs that search your computer and identify tracking cookies and other spyware and malware and remove them.  One such program is Lavasoft's free program Ad-Aware.  I use three computers now (one at home, one at work and a laptop) and all of them run Ad-Adware.  (Lavasoft has an upgraded version Ad-Aware pro for $30.  Be careful that you get a product from Lavasoft, which may be downloaded from a third-party site, because there are similarly named products out there by other companies.)  There are other programs, such as Spybot.  It is often recommended that you use at least two different spyware programs for more complete coverage.

Post-Mortem Internet Privacy

Gerry Beyer reports today in his Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog blog:

Internet Privacy: Something Else to Worry About Post-Mortem

Christos Catsouras was not allowed to see his 18-year-old daughter’s body after she swerved his Porsche to her death on Halloween 2006. Three weeks later, pictures that the California Highway Patrol took at the accident site were posted on hundreds of websites.

When confronted, CHP officials said there was nothing that they could do. Catsouras sued CHP, and California’s 4th District Court established that surviving family members have standing to sue for invasion of privacy in cases such as this one.

Go to http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/trusts_estates_prof/2010/05/internet-privacy-something-else-to-worry-about-postmortem.html to read the rest of Gerry's post and a link to Christopher Goffard original article in the Los Angeles Times, Gruesome Death Photos are at the Forefront of an Internet Privacy Battle.

Downloading a $18,000 VerizonWireless Bill

The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog reported today on the shock bestowed on Bob St. Germain, who recently discovered that renewing his wireless phone service contract with Verizon set him up for a $18,000 bill.

Unbeknownst to St. Germain, the two-year promotional period allowing free downloads had expired, and Verizon was now charging for downloaded kilobytes.
But St. Germain’s son, Bryan, a student at Framingham State College, didn’t realize this, and started downloading a lot of stuff to his phone. The August 2006 bill was for $12,233. When St. Germain called to complain, Verizon told him that since that last bill, he’d run up an additional $5,000 in downloading fees.

St. Germain complained to Verizon, which eventually offered to cut the bill in half, but St. Germain turned them down and Verizon sent the matter to a collection agency.

The WSJ Law Blog poses an interesting and unanswered question:

 It also seems fair to wonder how much it cost Verizon to provide the 816,000 kilobytes of stuff to Bryan Germain’s phone, though telecom companies often argue that demand on their networks, and the costs to expand networks to allow for it, can add up.

So the next time you re-up your service contract to get that "free" or subsidized low price new cellphone, think about Mr. Germain, how kind and friendly the folks at your telecom company really are, and read the fine print and ask how much everything will cost after you agree.  At a minimum, it seems that there should be some kind of requirement to give consumers a plainly worded summary of what their service plan will cost, with real examples, i.e. --- how much would it cost to upload ten photographs from your cellphone or download a five page document or how much it costs when your friends send you text messages or photographs that are not covered in your service plan.

 

Where Do You Practice Law?

Stuart Levine reports in his Maryland Business Law Developments blog on a noteworthy new decision by the U.S. District Court for Maryland Court  In the Matter of the Application of Cedar P. Carlton for Renewal of Membership in the Bar that involves telecommuting in the practice of law.  The case involved the application of Local Rule 701.1(a):

in order for an attorney to be qualified for admission to the bar of this district, the attorney must be, and continuously remain, a member in good standing of the highest court of any state (or the District of Columbia) in which the attorney maintains his or her principal law office, or the Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Carlton lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but was employed by a firm in the District of Columbia.  Carlton's practice was conducted exclusively by remote connection to the firm's computer system in the District of Columbia.  She did not engage in the practice of law in Massachusetts and met with clients exclusively in her firm's office in DC.  Similarly, telephone communication with Carlton was handled through the DC office.

In reaching its decision, the Court analyzed six (6) non-exclusive factors and held that Carlton satisfied the requirements of Local Rule 701.1(a).  Here is an excerpt from the opinion that appears in Stuart's blog:

In recent years, the concept of a “principal law office” has evolved somewhat as a result of significant advances in technology which provide an attorney with the flexibility to carry out a variety of activities at different locations and under varying circumstances. The term does not necessarily mean continuous physical presence but, at a minimum, it requires some physical presence sufficient to assure accountability of the attorney to clients and the court. Under the circumstances described by Ms. Carlton, there can be no question that for purposes of malpractice insurance coverage, tax obligations and client security trust fund obligations, her office is the office of her employer. In addition, the address utilized in pleadings, correspondence with clients, letterhead and other matters is also the address of her employer, which maintains a substantial physical presence in Washington, D.C. When meetings with clients are required, Ms. Carlton does meet with them in Washington, D.C. Her client files, accounting records and other business records, library and communication facilities such as telephone and fax service are all located in Washington, D.C. although, by virtue of advances in technology, she is able to access them remotely from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For further discussion of the case, see Stuart's blog.