|
|
April 29 2005
Another announcement at WinHEC was Metro, a way of using XML and other widely available technologies to describe the content and appearance of paginated documents. Essentially, Metro is a page description language intended to provide improved screen-to-print fidelity. The industry has spoken for a long time about WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), but as anyone who prints out regularly (particularly from Web sites) knows, the reality does often not meet the aspiration. Some commentators have equated this announcement with a 'PDF killer' - that is, it is intended to displace Adobe's document format. This looks like a mis-reading to me of what is being announced: essentially Metro updates the way the Windows subsystem handles printing. It's a new native print spool facility for the next release of Windows known as LongHorn. Printers equipped with Metro support will enable a much higher quality match of viewed with printed image. With the rise in significance of digital photography, one key benefit is clearly going to be for home users as they edit, preview and print their PC-based photo albums.
April 26 2005
The move to 64-bit computing is a major focus at WinHEC. This, along with other changes, represents a significant shift in the ecosystem of the IT industry - especially alongside the development of multi-core processors. The idea of many computers on a single chip has been around for some time, but with Intel and AMD now entering the market and introducing them in devices that will reach the consumer, this is likewise a major shift. This increased power can only help advance the more complex human and visual interactions with technology, such as providing enough processing power to help with the long-held desire for successful voice interactions with computers. It's not quite yet HAL from 2001 a Space Odyssey in terms of the sophistication of the human/computer interaction, but certainly a major step in that direction.
April 19 2005
Further proof of the shift in the industry towards enabling true interoperability between competitors comes with the announcement that Microsoft and Research in Motion have reached a deal to allow RIM's BlackBerry device to use instant messaging in conjunction with Microsoft's Live Communications Server.
This cross-industry seismic shift is one of the most interesting I have seen in IT. As standards-based interoperability becomes a reality, customers are finally going to be able to take real benefits from bringing together information from different platforms and applications. The WS-* set of standards have taken a while to develop and get cross-industry buy-in, but they're now at the point of beginning to show real value. As well as identity management interoperability, other key areas include reliable messaging and transactional handling between systems.
The main end-game that interests me here is the improved business intelligence and informed decision- and policy-making that becomes possible when information can be aggregated and used more intelligently than at present. This requires both true interoperability as well as tools that can help meaningfully analyse and abstract often complex datasets and turn them into information that makes sense to senior executives and others active in the planning and policy process. If we could couple such analytics in tools such as SQL Server with the type of visual modelling that next generation tools like Avalon make possible, I think we have a very compelling and revolutionary way of empowering users to handle information more smartly and intuitively than in the past.
April 15 2005
At a recent international meeting I found myself talking with colleagues about broadband and how various countries' deployments of broadband compare with each other. Japan and South Korea for example are apparently deploying what can only be termed true broadband: with minimum broadband speeds in the 30Mbps range - and designed to support at least 100Mbps. Their broadband is also offering synchronous throughput: that is, download and upload speeds both operate at the same rate. In the UK, upload speeds often operate at a fraction of the speed of the quoted download speed.
In the UK, our broadband adoption rates seem to paint a somewhat over-optimistic picture since bandwidth rates as low as 512Kbps (and even 128Kbps) have been labelled 'broadband'. We have also suffered from lower upload rates, which has impeded the growth in use of video conferencing, with all the benefits that would bring both socially and for business: let alone the positive impact that flexible working might have for other issues such as road congestion by cutting down on the number of journey-intensive meetings that currently take place.
BT and others are now upgrading the UK's 'broadband' infrastructure to 2Mbps download speeds ("where possible"). In theory, our current infrastructure will probably scale to something like 18Mbps (using the ADSL2+ standard). But ADSL2+ will push our infrastructure hard and those furthest from exchanges, where in many ways broadband might bring the most significant benefits, are unlikely to see anything like these speeds.
It is not only new generations of services - such as on-demand HDTV services and health informatics - that are doing to push our bandwidth requirements, but changes in the way we live and work. Witness how hard the music industry has found it to adapt to the new business models that the Internet has introduced. We need synchronous, high bandwidth capacities to support more flexible ways of working and living: as well as to provide a good foundation for the infrastructure that will underpin meaningful delivery of concepts such as the knowledge economy. I believe we also need to be concerned that other countries seem to have a more realistic definition of broadband - and that they are deploying more advanced infrastructures. This will not only give them greater versatility in the way they re-structure their social and business activities, but also enable them to incubate whole new hardware and software industries and services in their domestic markets: and then bring them to market elsewhere.
The definitions we have adopted in the UK for kick-starting a first generation of our digital infrastructure may have been the right tactical approach to take initially. But we now need to be thinking much more strategically about how we develop the technical infrastructure to support the UK's aspirations across areas ranging from education through to transport policy, and from local economic development to support for next generation HDTV on demand services. Properly designed, there are also other significant benefits from the smart application of IT: one of the most powerful being the environmental benefits to be taken from improvements in the way we live and work.
April 12 2005
The Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS) has been announced in Canada. Using a mixed consortium of technology and law enforcement organisations, CETS provides a powerful new tool to battle the borderless crime of online child exploitation.
“Prior to CETS, police services were manually sorting through files and photos, making it almost impossible to share information,” said Toronto Police Service Chief Designate, William Blair. “CETS is shifting the power of the Internet out of the hands of the predators and back to the police. In fact, we’ve already been successful in identifying one victim with CETS during the beta testing phase.”
This is a great demonstration of the benefits technology can bring - to counter the often negative uses to which various individuals and groups sometimes put the Internet. Of course, issues such as child exploitation over the Internet recognise no national borders: the next phase will be important in ensuring the concept and approach can be shared with other law enforcement agencies in other countries. A key part of countering the negative use of the Internet is global co-operation. There are some difficult technological issues to counter here too: some of the tools that are freely available on the Internet to ensure a user's anonymity while browsing web sites, etc can just as easily be used for illegitimate purposes to mask persons engaged in illegal activities, such as stalking chat rooms and IM interactions. I’m thinking about products/technologies such as Tor and Anonymizer (see http://tor.eff.org/index.html for an example).
These products are designed, quite reasonably, to protect the privacy of online users – but by making Web users anonymous they are equally ideal tools for less healthy purposes. Given that Tor is also open source, it could easily be further adapted and enhanced – and could provide a tool for completely covering tracks (at least in theory). To quote from the TOR web site:
Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and more. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity.
We know from experience that the morally-challenged are usually well ahead of the game. Quite how we balance individual liberties with the need for appropriate disclosure when the need arises remains one of the more complex issues facing both technologists and policy-makers.
April 11 2005
I've been in Johannesburg, South Africa for the last week meeting with colleagues and South African government officials and local businesses. South Africa is an interesting example of a mixed economy that has the potential to act as an economic and policy powerhouse for the entire African continent. But it faces huge challenges, not least of which is HIV/AIDS. What really brought home the scale of the problem was the fact that many companies are now training two people for each job because of the very real likelihood of AIDS claiming at least one of them. It seems as if a whole generation has already been lost, with enormous personal, social and economic consequences. This impact at the human level (there are large numbers of orphans surviving only on the goodwill of other families who take them in) and on the economy and development of South Africa and the wider African continent is almost beyond belief. None of this is helped by having a health service designed only to serve 5m whites - which is now having to cope with 47m South Africans.
This background put into sharp focus questions about the value and role of IT in helping with economic and social development. Some innovative developments are already well advanced, including the construction of centres of excellence aimed at encouraging collaboration at regional level and a degree of 'competition' between the regions. This is all underpinned by an innovation fund helping build an infrastructure for future growth engines such as biotechnology. We had some interesting discussions around intellectual property and how the way it is handled can impact on countries such as South Africa. South Africa is happy to pay for IP, but would potentially like the freedom to do so outside of the 'package'. Take drugs for example: it's currently all or nothing. Patented drugs are available only from the patent holder. But if the IP could be licensed separately from the physical manifestation, costs for developing nations could be brought down whilst still ensuring IP is respected and that the patent holder gets payment and a return on their original research and development. From the consumer point of view the potential benefit could also be that co-formulation and co-production would enable say 17 separate patented pills to be reduced to just 3 pills.
The South African software industry and use of IT is a textured landscape with both OSS and proprietary software in use in a mixed market model. The OSS models here appear to be more 'pure' than elsewhere - with systems that run on both Linux/Unix and the Windows platforms: indeed, there are systems running that mirror live applications between Linux and Windows servers. The big debate here is less about the pros and cons of OSS development models versus proprietary than it is about pricing: with a view that global pricing models are not sustainable. This becomes an issue of affordability, where global pricing models become enormously problematic since in one country products can appear relatively affordable (perhaps being the equivalent of one day's wages) whilst in others the pricing can be more than someone earns in several months.
The EU's FP7 programme was another interesting topic of discussion. Some of the way the current programmes are structured were seen as problematic for Africa - it's easier to fly to France than to Senegal for example from Johannesburg. And the requirement for proposals to embed two delivery countries with two engaged companies in each is seen as too high a bar. What the African countries are looking for are themes for bids where research has to happen in Africa. South Africa has some interesting and unique contributions in areas such as astronomy and Antarctic research for example. For astronomy, South Africa has one of the best locations in the world, combined with unique opportunities to develop related jobs in remote areas of the country. Some other spin-off benefits are also likely to accrue from such developments - such as bandwidth optimisation techniques (and patents). Remaining in the Antarctic research programme has also provided a regional differentiator. South African research indicates a global magnetic switch could be beginning to happen (the strength of the field has dropped significantly in recent years).
The visit was one of the most useful I have experienced. It is often only from firsthand opportunities like this to talk directly with officials, businesses and locals on the ground that it becomes possible to understand the way IT and local economic, social, business, policy and other issues can be brought productively together. I left with not only a much greater understanding of some of the specific issues and developments impacting Africa, but also with improved insight into some of the ways we can think about developing our own communities in rural and urban locations here in the UK. These are ideas and lessons I'll be looking to develop in the future.
April 7 2005
VNUNet reports that “Microsoft is preparing to use patents to launch an all-out war against Linux”, copyright expert Lawrence Lessig has apparently claimed at the Open Source Business Conference. I'm not sure what crystal ball Lessig uses, but protection of intellectual property is a fairly fundamental basic principle of a market economy. If the so-called “knowledge economy” means anything it’s about using the commercial advantage of innovation and associated intellectual property to beneficial effect. I find it difficult to credit that anyone would seek to argue their right to freely take another person’s ideas and use them to their own advantage without rewarding the originator.
An academic I was talking with recently commented on the fact that the University where he works had discovered some of its staff contributing to Open Source development projects. Whilst these staff had quite happily handed over their copyright to the projects concerned, the reality is that their work was not their copyright to contribute. The copyright actually vested with their employer - the University. So even though they had apparently – and probably quite genuinely – assured those Open Source projects that the copyright was now vested with the project, the University in fact retained all rights to those contributions. This started an interesting discussion about how much of the code now inside Open Source projects is actually still under copyright from its real owners. There remain some complexities here I'm not sure anyone fully yet understands.
I think I've made my position on Open Source fairly clear: but to reiterate, Open Source is nothing new and remains a legitimate software development model. I remember commissioning systems based on FreeBSD (now OpenBSD) when I worked as a customer. Software is a broad ecosystem and customers have choice. What I do find unfortunate is the often religious zealot nature of much of the Open Source debate – and some of the most vociferous advocates of Open Source do both themselves and the Open Source community no favours.
April 6 2005
e-week reports on a study that has found Windows Server 2003 to be more reliable and robust and executes various tasks more quickly than RedHat Advanced Server 3.0 running on the same hardware. This should help remove some of the unnecessarily heated emotions around Open Source and Linux and hopefully we can move into a period of greater light where people can objectively assess the various operating systems and applications on offer and choose the ones best suited for their needs.
April 5 2005
If anyone still needed evidence that security is an industry wide problem, the announcement that Firefox has a Javascript engine flaw should provide further proof. This moderately critical security flaw could put users at risk of information disclosure attacks. This is not the first and won’t be the last security flaw in Firefox. I know it’s a point I’ve made before, but I am still looking forward to the day when the debate about Open Source moves on. Security is an industry-wide problem: no-one has a magic bullet.
| (C) 2004/2005 J Fishenden
|
