Notes
Photovoltaic finances: British Petroleum has followed through on their tghreat of a year ago. They gave the US factory that made thin film PV products one year to become profitable. The factory didn't. It got shut down and sold last month. On the other hand, their crystalline PV product sales continue to grow at about 25 percent per year and are profitable.

Snow shoveling: At least its a good aerobic workout. The 6-12 inches forecast was about right. It's hard to measure what with all the bushes, trees, etc. It was a good mix for shoveling. Dry, but just moist enough to hold together on the shovel.

Mozilla, Windowmaker, X windows bug: This is a tricky one. With the right combination of downloading, Mozilla behavior, on a WindowMaker system on X, I can get X to go off into a loop. It stops paying attention to anything. This is on 4.2.0, so I should probably download the 4.3.0 beta from CVS before wasting a lot of time trying to track this one down.

Notes
Tolkein: It looks like the translation and commentary of Beowolf that established Tolkeins academic reputation has been found and will be published. They are right that this should sell well. Heaney's translation sold amazingly well by virtue of some well timed reviews and public interest.

Snow: Enough already. Three storms since Christmas, and another week of storms forecast. Bah. Snow belongs in the mountains.

Work interference: Yep, more travel and more work. So back to being erratic.

Build a better battery: and change the world. I've been conditioning the battery on my new cell phone, writing up PHS issues (it should show up here at some point), and thinking about other battery realted issues. The next big improvement in batteries could really change the world and significantly affect the way we live and the environment.

Imagine for example the implications of having a big heavy box, about the size of a refrigerator, that is attached to the power mains of every house and small business. This box holds enough stored electricity to last a few days. It can radically change the electric utility business because with a little communications flow, there are no longer daily peaks. Power system stability is far superior. Recovery from natural events (like ice storms) is much easier. Power plants can be designed for efficiency without worrying about matching peak loads. Intermittent power supplies like wind become just as valuable as the dynamically controllable supplies like natural gas.

It also changes the entire relationships around things like net metering. The homeowner with some alternate power (wind or solar) no longer needs negotiations with utilities or special regulations. They store any excess and use it later. It increases the net value for alternate power sources.

All this can happen, but it needs a roughly ten-fold improvement in batteries. At present, flywheels are the leading candidate for this kind of storage. The technology is not yet ready. The latest uses that I've heard has been as short term storage in subway systems (New York has some experiments with this) so that they can recover and hold more power recovered from braking trains. I would have thought that they could use immediately to power other trains, but I guess that their power distribution network in the subways can't handle that task.

Spam Control
The overall structure of the Spam system should drive the efforts to keep spam under control. The discussions of spam sometimes dive immediately into details of some particular aspect of control and lose sight of the overall problem. The spammers are intelligent and will revise their behavior to bypass roadblocks. So it is best to attack in ways where that revised behavior is also acceptable.

It is also important to control the emotional outrage over how the spammers parasitize the system. Parasites can be a serious problem, but you do not want your efforts to kill the parasites to cost more or cause more damage than the original parasitic costs. Some of the spam control approaches are cures that are worse than the disease.



There are really three different sources for spam, each with its own characteristics:

1. Spammers who are may be opportunistic parasites or amoral grifters. They also include the better socialized participants like legitimate advertisers.
2. Ignoramuses who are simply ignorant and stupid. These include the people who think that the whole world needs to know about their pet political or social cause. It also includes the people who mis-configure the systems so that they are easily used by spammers.
3. Malicious software such as some of the viruses and worms that spew obnoxious mail.

The other participants are:

• The Internet transport system. This is sometimes suggested as a location where some form of spam control belongs.


• Agents that act for the recipient. In the context of spam I am only considering agents that attempt to detect and eliminate spam. Other mail agents are not relevant. These agents may operate on the recipients computer hardware, or the may be remote from the recipient. Examples of remote agents are the spam elimination services of some ISPs and the RBL services. A proper agent attempts to match the criteria of the recipient, with varying degrees of success. Some agents, especially RBLs, have been criticized for chosing their own political agendas and ignoring the recipients criteria.


• The recipient of the mail. This is a person. They are especially significant because they are the only participant in the entire system that can accurately determine whether any particular piece of mail is spam or not-spam.
  
  The spammers know that most recipients consider the email to be spam, but operate profitably because they find sufficient recipients who respond and purchase. Those few recipients do not consider the email to be spam. The ignoramuses incorrectly believe that their email to be non-spam. The malicious software writer knows that they are generating spam, but they are acting out of malice and do not care.

I'm running out of time, so the rest is unfinished and sketch

Agent technology is improving rapidly. Techniques like the Bayesian filtering tools are very effective at matching the recipient criteria while filtering at a low cost. High quality agents running on recipient hardware are a good choice for well connected users. They are only so-so for users that have high connection costs.

ISP agents can be very good technological solutions. They have two problems that are severe:

1. They have great difficulty matching the individual needs of each recipient. They usually are a partial mismatch because they must apply the same rules for all customers.
2. Some ISPs are highly unresponsive to recipient complaints regarding flaws in ISP agents, and dealing with those flaws may force the recipient to change ISPs.

Despite these problems, the ISP agent is very popular with two groups of customers. The customers with expensive connections need this pre connection filtering. The customers who are not interested in managing agent software prefer that it be handled by the "experts" at the ISP.

Source control by means of cost can be content neutral. A content neutral system avoids many legal and ethical concerns. It also does not need to match recipient criteria for spam. The present recipient pays system gives not incentives to the source for source control. Even a very small cost (e.g. a $0.001 per email tax) would change this. The impacts would be:

1. Spammer: Improve the targeting of the email so that there is at least a $0.001 per email profit. Even a small tax like this would drastically reduce spammer volume. If the targeting accuracy gets high enough, the recipients may start viewing a significant proportion of UCE as non-spam.
2. Ignoramus: Aside from invincible ignorance, the cost penalties for stupidity will at least slow down the ignoramus volume. They are already a much lower volume than the spammers.
3. Malicious software: The cost increase does not change the malicious software. But it does attach a cost to poor system management, and may inspire greater responsibility and care in the operation of computer systems.

Cost based controls do need a way to avoid taxing requested mail. If the tax rate is kept low enough you can tolerate a moderate amount of error. The biggest factor is devising a content neutral method of dealing with mailing lists. One approach is to focus on just behavior. A mailing list that uses request-confirm methods to ensure that requests are real is reasonable. Perhaps a content neutral registration method that has a neutral third party confirm proper behavior and maintain administrative contact invormation would suffice.

Corporations and others will not want to track all their relationships this way, hence my suggestion for a base amount of email that is tax free (e.g. 1000 emails/month). Many corporations would be willing to just pay the extra cost. It is much less than the cost of the mail that it replaces, most email is internal (and hence untaxed), and the reduced spam volume is compensation.

Legal approaches have problems. They cannot be content neutral, so the immediately run afoul of legal and ethical issues. They also only target the spammers. The ignoramus is not aware of these regulations. The malicious software does not care. The penalties for violations cannot be too high or they will be rejected as too draconian. The resulting penalties will be so low as to not be worth the legal effort of enforcement against ignoramuses and malicious software.

The spammers will fight every inch of the way. They may be amoral parasites, but they will know how to wrap themselves in the flag and argue their rights to free speech.

Neighbor's WiFi
One of my neighbors has a new access point. I never used to see other APs. Now there is one out there. It's still default name and no security. Tut-tut. I've left my beacon on. Maybe they will notice and turn on security. Or maybe they don't see any need.

While chatting at a bookstore I ran into someone who had just put in WiFi to deal with the Christmas return of a college age child. He was reminded to secure his network by noticing that his neighbor had already activated WEP.

The whole issue of whether to secure a network remains a matter of some debate. The bookstore also has WiFi and leaves it completely open by choice. It is there for the convenience of customers. They are also working on installing WiFi in the local library. This makes good sense to me. It lets people in the reading room and carrels utilize their laptops with minimum hassle. It also is going to be structured so that they will have access to the library databases, like the card catalog. He didn't know what kind of access control it would have. It may have something, but probably nothing too robust. My guess is a WEP network with a key that you are given along with your library card. Given the building and grounds layout they have no real need for access controls. The signals probably drop too far to be reliably useful before you reach the edge of the library grounds.

[Yes, I know how easy it is to break WEP. It provides only minimal defense if you are genuinely targetted. But it does stop those with only idle curiosity, and those who respect the implied "keep out" request.]

Algeria
This might not apply to you, but the sudden American awareness of Algeria inspires giggles and snarky remarks from Europeans, especially the French. From 1954 -1962 France and Algeria fought in a vicious war of independence that left over 300,000 dead. This was in a country that at the time had a total population of only 10 million. Since in 1992, another vicious civil war between a secular dictatorship and an Islamic guerilla force has been going on. So far there are over 100,000 dead. The French army has extensive covert involvement with the secular government. For a quick intro see Economist country briefing.

Now that the Algerians are viewed as a threat to the US, Algerians are suddenly an issue. I routinely deal with the snide comments from Europeans, but a response about the pathetic state of American education usually diverts things. Most Americans know nothing about history, so it is no surprise that minor countries like Algeria are a mystery. If you are lucky they might remember the introductory scenes from "Day of the Jackal (1973)".

Ignorance about the extensive French involvement in the current affair is less surprising. The French simply keep secrets and lie about their involvement. All detail is rumor and innuendo. Details are typically confirmed decades later. The American insistence on publicizing the torture and assassination of our enemies always amazes the French. The recent publication of memoirs detailing French Algerian activities in the 1950's was a surprise. This level of detail usually waits until the participants are safe from prosecution.

The past war for independence is a major reason that current activity is covert. Too visible a French involvement would bring up old hostilities. Of course ten years of covert French involvement in fighting Islamist guerillas does make them occasionally a bit testy when Americans complain that they are not doing anything. But that's just the price of maintaining secrecy.

On a language note, the generic term for the current guerilla enemy is "the Islamists". The term terrorist does not really apply to participants in a guerilla civil war. This war has involved small scale military actions that are far beyond mere terrorism. The phrase Islamist has been used to cover all parties, including non-participant supporters. The phrase "Islamist militant" is more specific and analogous to the phrase "Viet Cong" as used in Vietnam during the late 1950's.

Fireworks
Good sound transport last night. I heard the fireworks from about 20 miles away.

On business casual
Heard at a party: We went to a wide open business casual dress code. One day I forgot and wore my pajamas to work. Nobody noticed. It was so embarrassing.

Richard III
Ian McKellen has placed full screenplay for the movie adaptation of Richard III online. This is marvelous adaptation and the script plus commentary makes interesting reading.

Back on a temporary machine
The primary hard drive won't start properly (it makes continuous cycling noises) and the CDROM doesn't read properly. I don't know exactly what happened, but it was bad. Since both devices were on the same IDE, that may be part of a pattern. This wasn't lightning or accident, just some sort of failure. I was just working away when the disk started making noises and the machine was gone.

End of year is a tough time to get computers if you want anything other than the generic computer supermall home models. It will be next week before it is ready.

I just finished putting a substitute together out of parts and a damaged system. It has problems recovering from power fails and shutdowns. Sometimes a few tries are needed. But it will do the job while I wait for a proper replacement. And the laptop continues to work.

New Linux installs are pretty easy. This was another SuSE 8.1 install. Went very smoothly. All quite simple except for my unusual email setup for outgoing mail. I've not got that working yet. (It is a slightly complex ssh setup.) But at least the rest of the system and incoming mail is back to life.

Sun vs Microsoft, Java Injunction
The anti-Microsofties are reading too much into this injunction, and the pro-Microsofties are continuing their denial of legal reality. The situation facing the judge was fairly simple: should he issue a temporary injunction while the anti-trust trial between Sun and Microsoft is resolved. He faced four alternatives:

1. No injunction, and Microsoft wins. No harm done.
2. No injunction, and Sun wins. Major harm done.
3. Injunction, and Microsoft wins. Minor harm done.
4. Injunction, and Sun wins. No harm done.

Given those alternatives, it is not hard to see why he issued an injunction.

There is relatively little debate in the blogosphere or media regarding the harm issues. It is fairly clear that Sun will suffer major harm if Microsoft makes it difficult for the average user to utilize Sun compatible Java. Since Microsoft has been legally obligated to ship Sun compatible Java for the past 5 years and only recently reached the end of that obligation, it suffers little harm in being ordered to continue to ship Sun Java (with no license costs to Microsoft) while this case proceeds. Neither party claims that including Sun Java harms the end customer.

The Microsoft obligation is something of a surprise to most people, but that is because for many years Microsoft has violated its contractual obligations to Sun to support Sun Java. This was established in an earlier trial.

So this current order is merely deals with the uncertainty in the trial outcome. It minimizes the potential harm done to the parties and indicates that the judge feels that Sun has a reasonable likelihood of success at trial. That should hardly be a surprise since Microsoft was found guilty of antitrust violations in the Federal case, this guilty finding was upheld by a unanimous 9 to 0 ruling on appeal, and Microsoft was found to have violated previous contracts with Sun regarding Java support. A previous trial history like that helps Sun's argument that it has sufficient evidence to indicate antitrust violations.

Antitrust and "network effect"

There is extensive propagandizing by Microsoft that is echoed in the pro-Microsoftie postions. This falls into two categories:

1. Microsoft broke no laws.
2. The laws are wrong and should change.

On the first one, read the findings of fact from the trial. These detail Microsoft's behavior and no error was found on appeal. There was not even a minority dissent. Microsoft

• retaliated against companies that did business with Microsoft competitors
• tied purchases of unrelated products together

The pro-Microsofties argue that since the monopoly power is due to "network effect" that Microsoft is somehow immunized. The law is almost exactly the reverse. The antitrust law that was applied to Microsoft deals with behavior, not size. These behaviors are illegal whenever you have monopoly power, regardless of how you acquired that monopoly power. The laws were written and have evolved over the past century and quite clearly give no exemption for monopolies that are due to network effects. In fact, they exist to prevent the abuse of power by those who benefit from the network effect. You can be a monopoly due to network effect; but, you must then avoid these outlawed behaviors.

The argument that the law should be different has more merit. There is substantial room to adjust the legal basis for deciding the two key issues of "market size" and "tieing". It is much harder to justify removing the law against third party retaliation.

It would immensely help the pro-Microsoft credibility if they would use the Bell System, or TPC (The Phone Company - see The President's Analyst), as their nominal defendent when arguing changes in the laws. The Bell System is a much more explicit and direct example of monopoly power due to network effect.

Consider the major antitrust cases against TPC:

TPC vs MCI: For a decade TPC refused to permit connections to MCI circuits. MCI stayed in business selling purely internal corporate tielines that could not be used for outside calls. Eventually the courts ruled that TPC's technology concerns could be handled by providing technology rules for connecting tie lines to outside capable switchboards, and that TPC must not cut off customers who followed those rules. This is tieing, not retaliation, because TPC never retaliated in any way against MCI customers. They merely would not permit connection of tie lines to the outside.

The pro-Microsoft case would argue that TPC was legally justified, and that all outside lines should connect only to TPC provide tielines.

TPC vs Modem makers: Similarly, for many years you could only attach a TPC provided modem to a TPC line. Third party modems could not be attached to TPC lines. The eventual court ruling was the same as in the MCI case.

The pro-Microsoft case would argue that all modems should be made and provided by TPC. Third party modems should be prohibited.

Bell System breakup: This was a big one that really changed the world. The antitrust argument was that value-added communications (e.g. Internet, ISP), long distance voice, and local voice should not be tied. These should be separate services that could be sold separately by different companies. TPC argued that this was a massive and destructive change technologically and would have highly negative business effects. After much argument the Bell System breakup resulted. As with Microsoft, there are those that continue to argue more harm was done than good.

The pro-Microsoft case would argue that ISP, Internet, long distance, cellular, and local telephone service should all be provided by TPC. There should be no alternative vendors or competition in any of these markets.

Hypothetical: The Bell System was accustomed to extensive regulation and was very careful in its business practices. It did engage in tieing, but only in cases where there was a reasonable argument that this tieing was necessary for technical or business reasons. The court records all indicate that these were cases where reasonable people could disagree. It was not accused of retaliating against customers that did business with TPC competitors.

Hypothetically, TPC could have used their power to go further afield into operating systems. TPC could have retaliated against anyone who did not utilize the TPC invented UNIX operating system. If they had retaliated in the manner done by Microsoft, users of other operating systems would have suffered substantial retaliation in terms of high cost and poor telecommunications service. There would be no alternative telecommunications vendors, so the effect would have been a powerful UNIX dominance.

The pro-Microsoft case would argue that this should be legal, and that all computers should now be running the UNIX operating system.

I wonder how many of the pro-Microsofties really want to argue these positions.

I can understand arguments regarding error in market definition and tieing necessity in the Microsoft case. I do not see any excuse for Microsoft's illegal retaliatory behavior. So while I might adjust the findings to change the tieing arguments in some cases, I would still find the retaliatory behavior illegal and would still find Microsoft guilty of antitrust violations. I would also choose a very different remedy than the first or second trial court.

Horrors, I mostly agree with the court rulings.

Notes
Shoveling Snow: While coffee brews I shoveled the walk and some of the driveway. The mess around the cars can wait and the snow wall at the roadway can wait. There is at least one more run by the plows coming. After all the fuss and bother, this storm dropped about six inches. But it had to get cleared quickly.

There was a little period of rain and the bottom bit was wet and ice. I have to get the snow off of it so that it gets a full day of sun. Ever notice how well the sun melts off the cleared bits after a good snow storm? It has a bright clear sky and cold dry air. If the sun has a dark surface to work with it will clear off the thin layer of ice. This ice layer is worse than usual, so I want it to get maximum sun today.

I did the numbers (but I had to look up the latent heats) and at this time of year solar heat can melt up to 12cc per square meter of ice each minute (noon peak). You don't get that full rate because some heat is lost to the air and ground. You also lose due to sun angle in morning and afternoon. But it can clear a mm or two of ice in a sunny day.

Artemis redux: The Artemis satellite is close to full recovery. It has been slowly spiraling up to geosynchronous orbit. There are less than six weeks to go. It now has some tricky orbital maneuvers to get slotted properly. You have to time the mix of chemical and ion propulsion so that it reaches proper orbital velocity at the right location above the Earth. If you miss the timing, the satellite needs to be drifted over to the proper slot, which can also take weeks. This was first discussed in August.

US Office of Research Integrity (ORI): The bureaucrats are at it again. The ORI survey questionaire on scientific misconduct `is significantly at odds with the traditional definitions of misconduct. The fuss is ongoing in letters between scientific societies and the ORI. See Nature, 19/26 December 2002.

It will be interesting to see how the ORI reconciles its position that "refusal to grant access to research materials" is misconduct with the DMCA and patent restrictions that are encouraged by other branches of the government.

Shades of Vonnegut: Remember ice-nine? In the non-fictional world they are up to eighteen. There are 13 crystalline forms and now five amorphous forms.

Notes
Big snow storm: So far this storm is oversold. It's a decent northeaster. Windy, cold, snowy. About 6 inches of snow. But enough for us to reschedule Christmas activities to the weekend.

As part of prep I found the the National Center for Environmental Prediction, (which used to be called the National Weather Prediction Center before everything went all PC) has some very nice weather model results available on the web. They even have a regularly updated current status [needs frames] for the production status. And for people who like to drool over mega computer power, there is the description of their operational computer power.

Aviation changes: Boeing has officially deferred their Sonic Cruiser. The air travel market doesn't need a new plane that is faster at carrying the same number of people for the same cost. Air travel wants to carry the same or fewer people for less cost. Now Boeing will rework the 777 and 767 planes to cut operating costs.

Remember the B-52: There is an innovative passenger aircraft design emerging from some independents. It derives many ideas from the B-52 as cost savers. By using a rotating caster landing gear it avoids takeoff rotation and gets an interesting variation on landing techniques. These casters also permit diagonal approaches to the terminal, instead of the straight in. That makes terminal operations more flexible. It would have the same high internal body, so that a full length two level cabin becomes easy.

The integral body bat-wind aircraft are more impressive in terms of potential improvements, but this is a straightforward extension of well understood ideas. So this might shift into production much more quickly. Will Boeing take this kind of chance? Airbus seems to be taking another path.

Instability showers: Very pretty instability showers a couple days ago. But the digital camera couldn't get them properly. The mix of blue sky, white clouds, deep dark cloud, and falling rain in the sunlight calls for more capture of grey detail than the camera can manage.

Hybrid cars: WSJ reports GM and Ford have announced their intention to offer hybrid models of their pickup trucks. They will not make very many. They do not want to end up with unsold inventory. These will have poor acceleration and perhaps other problems. They will get much better gas mileage for a few thousand extra in cost. Some people will buy but not very many. Pickup truck buyers are not into being green, and the gas mileage vs purchase cost is questionable.

It will keep some of the enviros quiet for a while, and it lets research, development, and manufacturing get some more operational experience.

Railroad Locomotives: WSJ also reports a new model locomotive from GM. It claims 50 percent reduction in pollution and a couple percent better mileage. It is an adaptation of an existing diesel engine with new electionics, fuel system, and cooling system. The usual pattern is for several railroads to buy a few and run them for a couple years. Locomotive maker and railroads use this time to decide whether the engines are acceptable or not.