Once considered the future of television, plasma TVs have lost their shine.
In the last several years, the display known for excellent picture quality has given ground to the exploding popularity of LCD (liquid crystal display) in the high-definition TV market. Though plasma TVs were first to reach consumers a decade ago, LCD TV manufacturers were able to bring the costs below their plasma counterparts with an efficient panel manufacturing process.
Now researchers are looking at ways to improve plasma's brightness levels, power consumption and cost, and developers hope that will help plasma regain some of the ground it's lost. Of course, LCD technology will also improve, but the closer pricing appears between the two, the more viable an alternative plasma becomes.
"Performance will be going up in both (plasma and LCD), but costs will be coming down faster in plasma," according to Ross Young, president of market research firm DisplaySearch.
That's good news for consumers. One of the biggest challenges in getting people to switch to high-definition TVs is the price. Predictably, as prices have fallen in the last year, more consumers are willing to buy into the idea of the HD experience. About 1 million plasma and 5.2 million LCD TV sets were sold in the U.S. last year, compared to about 750,000 plasma and 2.6 million LCD the year before that, according to retail tracking data collected by The NPD Group.
LCD is so far the undisputed champion of the HDTV popularity contest, and much of it has to do with price and manufacturers' ability to scale the technology to increasingly larger screen sizes. But plasma manufacturers have gradually found ways to produce their displays for less too. The average price of an LCD dropped from $989 last year to $932 this year, while plasma's average price fell from $2,480 to $1,664.
Besides lower price, one of the traditional benefits of LCD over plasma is the brightness of the picture in a well-lighted environment. And though all TVs can be energy hogs, plasma sets are notorious for their high power consumption.
Many believe the key to solving all three issues for plasma is something called luminous efficiency, or the ratio of the light output compared with the power input. Currently, the best plasma TVs are capable of 2 to 2.5 lumens per watt. For comparison's sake, the average fluorescent light bulb can output 80 lumens per watt.
Efficiency can be increased in several ways, including changing the concentration of the gas mixture within the plasma panel, altering the structure of the plasma cells, and using different phosphors. Companies like Panasonic, Hitachi and Pioneer have banded together to create a display capable of 5 lumens per watt, double what's currently available on the market. Simply doubling the current luminous efficiency results in twice the brightness at the existing power levels, or half the power necessary to produce the existing brightness levels.
One of plasma's most loyal proponents, plasma researcher and pioneer Larry Weber, says that if a fluorescent lamp can do 80 lumens per watt, there is "no reason a plasma display can't get anywhere close to that." Weber is currently tinkering with plasma display panels for this exact reason, although he cautions that 80 or even 40 lumens per watt could be far off. "If you ask someone today (how to double or triple the luminous efficiency) they'll say, 'I don't know how to do it right now,' but as time goes on, these things will become more likely."
Huge payoffs likely
Plasma manufacturers are trying to avoid being edged out of the HDTV market by LCD, so putting any money into research in this area will likely bring a huge payoff for them. For one, better luminous efficiency will mean fewer parts needed to put the TV together. The power supply in a 42-inch 720p plasma TV accounts for 9 percent of the manufacturing cost, for example. It's only 3 percent of the cost of a comparable LCD TV. By increasing a plasma's efficiency to 5 lumens per watt, the cost of producing the TV could become equivalent to LCD, Young argues, which will allow plasma manufacturers to simply focus on improving the panel technology. And every dollar counts in the TV market, where margins are razor thin.
The improvements are not just internal. Customers will likely notice the enhancements in picture quality as well. Right now, plasma TVs look better in dark, home-theater-like environments because of their great contrast ratio and ability to light individual pixels, but that doesn't necessarily translate well to the show floor of a big-box electronics store. Increasing the brightness will erase that difference between plasma and LCD, according to DisplaySearch's Young.
"Plasma panels will perform better in all environments, and at the same time, they'll get cheaper--that's a pretty nice advance for plasma," Young said. "Currently, people position LCD versus plasma (sales) based on where it's going to be: in a bright room with a lot of windows or a darker room or if you just watch TV at night. In the future, they both become great for all applications."
Monday, October 22, 2007
Skype co-founder says forecasts overshot
Niklas Zennström, co-founder of Internet telecommunications group Skype, said on Tuesday that the business, bought by eBay, had not performed as well as anticipated in the short term.
"We had to chart the trajectory of growth and how fast that would run, (but) we found out that was a bit front-loaded," Zennström said during the annual European Technology Roundtable Exhibition (ETRE) conference in Hungary.
"We overshot, in terms of monetization," he said.
eBay said last week that it would cut as much as $1.2 billion off the $4.3 billion potential price it agreed to pay for Web-based phone-calling service Skype two years ago.
The write-down on the value of the deal came as eBay said Skype co-founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis had resigned as executives, and it marked a tacit admission of lackluster returns from Skype since eBay acquired it two years ago.
eBay said it had paid $530 million to Skype shareholders, including Zennström.
Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
"We had to chart the trajectory of growth and how fast that would run, (but) we found out that was a bit front-loaded," Zennström said during the annual European Technology Roundtable Exhibition (ETRE) conference in Hungary.
"We overshot, in terms of monetization," he said.
eBay said last week that it would cut as much as $1.2 billion off the $4.3 billion potential price it agreed to pay for Web-based phone-calling service Skype two years ago.
The write-down on the value of the deal came as eBay said Skype co-founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis had resigned as executives, and it marked a tacit admission of lackluster returns from Skype since eBay acquired it two years ago.
eBay said it had paid $530 million to Skype shareholders, including Zennström.
Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Cisco denies wrongdoing in Brazil tax fraud case
U.S.-based technology and network company Cisco Systems, reacting to the arrest of company executives on tax fraud charges in Brazil, denied acting inappropriately.
"Analyzing the facts to which we have access, we do not believe that Cisco acted in an inappropriate manner," Cisco said in statement published on Friday in several Brazilian newspapers.
Authorities said Cisco's Brazilian unit had imported $500 million worth equipment over the last five years without paying import duties and is estimated to owe $826.4 million (1.5 billion reais) in taxes, fines, and interest.
The company said four of the 44 people arrested on Tuesday were Cisco employees. Police said they included Cisco executives.
"Our efforts are focused on these four detained employees and on support for their families as well as the well-being of the hundreds of Cisco professionals in Brazil and the many others that provide support to our clients," Cisco said.
Cisco did not import products directly into Brazil but through middlemen, it said.
Brazilian authorities also asked U.S. police to issue arrest warrants for five more suspects in the United States.
The investigation, which has been going on for two years, alleges that Cisco's Brazilian unit used companies based in tax havens like Panama, the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands to avoid paying import taxes in Brazil.
Authorities said Cisco, which has played a key role in the construction of the Internet in Brazil, also systematically understated the value of merchandise it imported to pay less in taxes and frequently issued falsified receipts and other documents.
Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
"Analyzing the facts to which we have access, we do not believe that Cisco acted in an inappropriate manner," Cisco said in statement published on Friday in several Brazilian newspapers.
Authorities said Cisco's Brazilian unit had imported $500 million worth equipment over the last five years without paying import duties and is estimated to owe $826.4 million (1.5 billion reais) in taxes, fines, and interest.
The company said four of the 44 people arrested on Tuesday were Cisco employees. Police said they included Cisco executives.
"Our efforts are focused on these four detained employees and on support for their families as well as the well-being of the hundreds of Cisco professionals in Brazil and the many others that provide support to our clients," Cisco said.
Cisco did not import products directly into Brazil but through middlemen, it said.
Brazilian authorities also asked U.S. police to issue arrest warrants for five more suspects in the United States.
The investigation, which has been going on for two years, alleges that Cisco's Brazilian unit used companies based in tax havens like Panama, the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands to avoid paying import taxes in Brazil.
Authorities said Cisco, which has played a key role in the construction of the Internet in Brazil, also systematically understated the value of merchandise it imported to pay less in taxes and frequently issued falsified receipts and other documents.
Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Schwartz: Sun to focus on storage business
Sun Microsystems plans to increase its focus on storage through a major internal reorganization, the company's chief executive has announced.
Writing on his blog on Monday, Jonathan Schwartz revealed the planned merger of Sun's server and storage teams into a converged systems team. The move, he wrote, would take advantage of Sun's existing "talent and assets" in its push into the ever-expanding storage market--a market set to be increasingly indistinguishable from the server world thanks to virtualization.
"The systems team will focus on the evolution and convergence of computing, storage and networking systems," Schwartz wrote. "Talk to any data-center administrator, and that's what they want to hear--they live in a world managing the (often idiosyncratic) interactions of that trinity (computing, storage and networking--and just wait until they're virtualized). We want to be in a position to innovate on their behalf, at the system level, beyond the boxes--across blades, racks, disk and tape."
Schwartz also reiterated Sun's enthusiasm for tape as a long-term storage medium: "In our view, the market for permanent data will only grow. Today, only tape can maintain the integrity of that data without electricity. And, for the data centers we serve, many are seeing the cost of electricity threatening to eclipse their hardware budgets (yes, I'm serious). For disk storage, over a decade, that's easy to see--just look at the power bill to run a SAN."
"Tape, with effective indexing and retrieval, represents the most economically responsible (that is, eco-responsible) archive platform for long-term storage. Broadly speaking, tape (and, in the future, other forms of removable media) are a core part of Sun's archive plans," Schwartz wrote.
Sun announced in August that it would lay off some of its workforce during the second half of this year. But it remains unclear how many job losses have already occurred and how many affect its server and storage teams.
David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.
Writing on his blog on Monday, Jonathan Schwartz revealed the planned merger of Sun's server and storage teams into a converged systems team. The move, he wrote, would take advantage of Sun's existing "talent and assets" in its push into the ever-expanding storage market--a market set to be increasingly indistinguishable from the server world thanks to virtualization.
"The systems team will focus on the evolution and convergence of computing, storage and networking systems," Schwartz wrote. "Talk to any data-center administrator, and that's what they want to hear--they live in a world managing the (often idiosyncratic) interactions of that trinity (computing, storage and networking--and just wait until they're virtualized). We want to be in a position to innovate on their behalf, at the system level, beyond the boxes--across blades, racks, disk and tape."
Schwartz also reiterated Sun's enthusiasm for tape as a long-term storage medium: "In our view, the market for permanent data will only grow. Today, only tape can maintain the integrity of that data without electricity. And, for the data centers we serve, many are seeing the cost of electricity threatening to eclipse their hardware budgets (yes, I'm serious). For disk storage, over a decade, that's easy to see--just look at the power bill to run a SAN."
"Tape, with effective indexing and retrieval, represents the most economically responsible (that is, eco-responsible) archive platform for long-term storage. Broadly speaking, tape (and, in the future, other forms of removable media) are a core part of Sun's archive plans," Schwartz wrote.
Sun announced in August that it would lay off some of its workforce during the second half of this year. But it remains unclear how many job losses have already occurred and how many affect its server and storage teams.
David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.
Gates still finding his voice
newsmaker SAN FRANCISCO--Bill Gates has been saying for years that one day soon we will use handwriting, voice and touch to control our computers.
He's still saying that. In an interview with CNET News.com, Gates talks about some of the ways that speech recognition has already made inroads and discusses some of the places it will eventually go.
Following the launch of Microsoft's new corporate telephony software, Gates discussed how come the business phone remained the same for so long and how much it can change once it is made part of the same network as the PC. Gates also talked about the possibilities of touch-screen computing, noting how popular the idea of multitouch has been, both on Microsoft's tabletop computer, Surface, and on the iPhone.
Although he plans to shift to part-time work at Microsoft next year, Gates has said he will keep a few key projects under his purview and suggested the natural language interface push is one he'll probably keep working on. Search and the future of Office are also on the short list.
Q: When did you really first see the possibilities of voice? Was there a real early demo you saw years ago that sort of--you saw it and could really see the possibilities?
Gates: Well, certainly the idea that computers should deal with voice has been around a long time. It's kind of a natural way to communicate. In the 1970s, DARPA was funding people, including people at Harvard, to do speech recognition. And so people kind of thought, hey, this should be easy to do. The dream of computers understanding voice goes way back. And the dream that the data network and the voice network would be one and the same goes way back as well.
The dream of computers understanding voice goes way back. And the dream that the data network and the voice network would be one and the same goes way back as well.
Microsoft early on took it that, hey, the magic of software would come to bear on both--not just data networks, but also voice networks and video networks, and we got very involved in that. The real surprise to us, frankly, was that because that world was essentially satisfactory, people were so unwilling to take a risk to move, particularly (moving) business phone calls over onto a new platform.
These PBXs (the private branch exchange systems businesses use to manage phone calls) that are really--they're just computers--have existed alongside the normal infrastructure. Their wiring has stayed there, their directory, their server piece. And so we've been patiently sort of investing in this. In fact, in 1999 we got our first large-scale voice, PBX-type work under way.
And so I assume at that point you thought it was going to happen sooner?
Gates: As we take the magic of software to new things, it's OK to be too early. We don't want to be in too late. And so we saw that the pieces were starting to come together. And so it made sense for us to invest. We wanted to be there, particularly as Exchange and Outlook and Office had gotten so strong, you know, people used us to do everything but the telephony piece. The idea that, OK, now we should encompass telephony and do that kind of sat there as a clear, big opportunity for us.
The thing that's happened over the last eight years is this willingness that we now have enough customers who have had very good experiences using Internet transport, bringing the PC into the picture.
With speech recognition, one of the ideas is that there are some applications where it can pay off, even if it is not getting 100 percent recognition. Is finding some of those areas one of the keys to speech recognition being mainstream?
Gates: That's right. Remember, the stuff we're doing with unified communications, speech recognition is not actually a very key element of what goes on. There are some aspects of it. For example, when you're doing audio conferencing in our world, we can tell you who's speaking. And that's very frustrating today in traditional audio conferencing that you don't know who's come and gone, and somebody can speak up and you don't know who that is.
Or with RoundTable (Microsoft's 360-degree video conferencing camera), we use video and audio clues to tell who's speaking and bringing the focus on that. And you always have the full room view at the bottom, but you have that zoomed-in view as well. And so, you know, if it gets it slightly wrong, you can look at the full-room view and see exactly what's going on. And just like if the cameraman was focusing on something different you were interested in, well, the wide view takes care of that.
When you want to search something (in a meeting) if a word sounds like one of three things, for the search case, you can just index all three. And the fact that you might get some false positives, that is, when you do a search, you might get some part of the speech where a similar sounding word was being used, it's not that big a deal. You'll just look at it, skip past it. And so not being perfect is not a huge problem.
And I imagine that's going to be a huge change in video search, for example. Today when we have video searches, you are basically searching keywords of the Internet page that surrounds the video, the description, that sort of thing. When we start using voice recognition to search within the videos, we'll have a much more powerful experience, right?
Gates: Yeah, that will help a lot. Microsoft Research has some amazing demos around that. In terms of broadcast videos, of course, there's the requirement that there be the text annotation. So if you have that, you actually have the speech-to-text that has been done for the deaf listener, anybody who wants the captioning-type capability. So there's a lot of video out there where if you ingest it in the right way, that's available. For the bottoms-up video, or just a meeting you have in the business, then you're relying on the speech recognition software to make it easy to navigate.
What are some of the areas where you see voice going that people aren't necessarily thinking about today?
Gates: To me, voice is in the broad realm of natural interface. And natural interface is (the notion of) screens everywhere--screen in your desk, screen in your tables, screen on your walls, no more white boards, touching, which is like Surface, where you can manipulate things. It's a pen so you can have ink wherever you want. You know, pull up an article, write a little note on it and get it sent off to a friend.
The speech recognition comes into it--all these things about natural interface are coming to the fore, and they are probably the thing that's most underestimated right now about the digital revolution. People kind of gasp when they see how touch works on Surface, when they touch their iPhone then, "Ooooh, wow," you know, that's just such a natural thing.
When voice recognition is used in the right way--let's say you're in the car and you want to pick somebody to call--that's improved very dramatically, or speech output, text to speech, these things have gotten very good.
You talked about different natural language interfaces. You know, with multitouch, it seems to have really captured people's imaginations, both with what you guys have shown with Surface, certainly with the iPhone. Voice seems to be a little slower in terms of speech recognition as a mainstream computer interface.
Gates: Well, that's fair. Voice recognition is a harder thing. There are certainly tons of people, and I mean millions, who for some reason, the keyboard's not attractive to them. Either they have repetitive stress injury, or they're in a work environment where they're doing something else with their hands, where they've taken the time to learn the software and adapt to the software and gone through the training process there. And they love it. They can't believe other people don't use it.
When you sell a product to hundreds of millions of users, there are features that millions of users love that you can call an obscure feature because, percentage wise, it's not very many.
For the rest of us, the keyboard has worked so well that we are even getting the keyboard into phones. I think voice search on the phone is one of those applications that would really drive it forward. I mean, why should I have to try and type something in? I've got a phone, I've got a talk button; so that's one of the areas we're betting on.
You guys built a pretty significant voice recognition engine into Vista. It hardly gets talked about. Are you surprised that some of the things you did in Vista aren't getting more attention?
Gates: Well, when you sell a product to hundreds of millions of users, there are features that millions of users love that you can call an obscure feature because, percentage wise, it's not very many. You know, Butler Lampson, one of our great researchers who has done great work going all the way back to his days at Xerox, was just sending me mail about how fantastic the improvements in the speech stuff are in Vista and, you know, we're hard at work on the next version of Windows. We're going to take this speech stuff even further.
What about in the developing world? I imagine natural language input, you know, particularly for people who've never used a computer, has some really interesting applications.
Gates: I wouldn't go too far on that because they're not used to what the dialogue should be like, and in most of those places, the cost of labor is low enough that, you (can) have another person on the other end of the connection or talking to them directly. But, yeah, it should work for different languages. It's particularly interesting for Japanese and Chinese where the keyboard is not as natural as it is for languages with modest-sized alphabets. And so we do see ink and voice catching on there.
There was a demo recently where there was a challenge about typists compared with voice recognition, and the voice recognition won out by quite a bit. And so there's a lot that can be done pioneering off of the demand that will come out of those markets.
You've talked a fair amount about taking on just a few projects when you step away from full-time work. Is natural language input and voice one of those areas you think you'll be spending time on?
Gates: Yeah. I'd say, broadly, the whole natural interface thing. Big screens, touch, ink, speech, that's something that I think, along with cloud computing, is the next big change in how we think about software and how it becomes more basic. And, you know, Ray Ozzie is driving our cloud computing stuff and--way ahead of me, very hands-on all that stuff. Some of the natural interface stuff, I think he and Steve will ask me to sort of keep the energy and vision alive there in a strong way. Some of that will be reading off the screen or the tablet, but the whole natural interface area probably will be one that they'll pick.
Any others that you think you will take on?
Gates: Well, it's hard to say. Search is such a fun area right now. They might pick that. There are some ideas about where the Office software should go--I'm really quite enthused about some things. So I'd say those are the three most likely. And it's only going to be three or four, so--they'll have to decide.
He's still saying that. In an interview with CNET News.com, Gates talks about some of the ways that speech recognition has already made inroads and discusses some of the places it will eventually go.
Following the launch of Microsoft's new corporate telephony software, Gates discussed how come the business phone remained the same for so long and how much it can change once it is made part of the same network as the PC. Gates also talked about the possibilities of touch-screen computing, noting how popular the idea of multitouch has been, both on Microsoft's tabletop computer, Surface, and on the iPhone.
Although he plans to shift to part-time work at Microsoft next year, Gates has said he will keep a few key projects under his purview and suggested the natural language interface push is one he'll probably keep working on. Search and the future of Office are also on the short list.
Q: When did you really first see the possibilities of voice? Was there a real early demo you saw years ago that sort of--you saw it and could really see the possibilities?
Gates: Well, certainly the idea that computers should deal with voice has been around a long time. It's kind of a natural way to communicate. In the 1970s, DARPA was funding people, including people at Harvard, to do speech recognition. And so people kind of thought, hey, this should be easy to do. The dream of computers understanding voice goes way back. And the dream that the data network and the voice network would be one and the same goes way back as well.
The dream of computers understanding voice goes way back. And the dream that the data network and the voice network would be one and the same goes way back as well.
Microsoft early on took it that, hey, the magic of software would come to bear on both--not just data networks, but also voice networks and video networks, and we got very involved in that. The real surprise to us, frankly, was that because that world was essentially satisfactory, people were so unwilling to take a risk to move, particularly (moving) business phone calls over onto a new platform.
These PBXs (the private branch exchange systems businesses use to manage phone calls) that are really--they're just computers--have existed alongside the normal infrastructure. Their wiring has stayed there, their directory, their server piece. And so we've been patiently sort of investing in this. In fact, in 1999 we got our first large-scale voice, PBX-type work under way.
And so I assume at that point you thought it was going to happen sooner?
Gates: As we take the magic of software to new things, it's OK to be too early. We don't want to be in too late. And so we saw that the pieces were starting to come together. And so it made sense for us to invest. We wanted to be there, particularly as Exchange and Outlook and Office had gotten so strong, you know, people used us to do everything but the telephony piece. The idea that, OK, now we should encompass telephony and do that kind of sat there as a clear, big opportunity for us.
The thing that's happened over the last eight years is this willingness that we now have enough customers who have had very good experiences using Internet transport, bringing the PC into the picture.
With speech recognition, one of the ideas is that there are some applications where it can pay off, even if it is not getting 100 percent recognition. Is finding some of those areas one of the keys to speech recognition being mainstream?
Gates: That's right. Remember, the stuff we're doing with unified communications, speech recognition is not actually a very key element of what goes on. There are some aspects of it. For example, when you're doing audio conferencing in our world, we can tell you who's speaking. And that's very frustrating today in traditional audio conferencing that you don't know who's come and gone, and somebody can speak up and you don't know who that is.
Or with RoundTable (Microsoft's 360-degree video conferencing camera), we use video and audio clues to tell who's speaking and bringing the focus on that. And you always have the full room view at the bottom, but you have that zoomed-in view as well. And so, you know, if it gets it slightly wrong, you can look at the full-room view and see exactly what's going on. And just like if the cameraman was focusing on something different you were interested in, well, the wide view takes care of that.
When you want to search something (in a meeting) if a word sounds like one of three things, for the search case, you can just index all three. And the fact that you might get some false positives, that is, when you do a search, you might get some part of the speech where a similar sounding word was being used, it's not that big a deal. You'll just look at it, skip past it. And so not being perfect is not a huge problem.
And I imagine that's going to be a huge change in video search, for example. Today when we have video searches, you are basically searching keywords of the Internet page that surrounds the video, the description, that sort of thing. When we start using voice recognition to search within the videos, we'll have a much more powerful experience, right?
Gates: Yeah, that will help a lot. Microsoft Research has some amazing demos around that. In terms of broadcast videos, of course, there's the requirement that there be the text annotation. So if you have that, you actually have the speech-to-text that has been done for the deaf listener, anybody who wants the captioning-type capability. So there's a lot of video out there where if you ingest it in the right way, that's available. For the bottoms-up video, or just a meeting you have in the business, then you're relying on the speech recognition software to make it easy to navigate.
What are some of the areas where you see voice going that people aren't necessarily thinking about today?
Gates: To me, voice is in the broad realm of natural interface. And natural interface is (the notion of) screens everywhere--screen in your desk, screen in your tables, screen on your walls, no more white boards, touching, which is like Surface, where you can manipulate things. It's a pen so you can have ink wherever you want. You know, pull up an article, write a little note on it and get it sent off to a friend.
The speech recognition comes into it--all these things about natural interface are coming to the fore, and they are probably the thing that's most underestimated right now about the digital revolution. People kind of gasp when they see how touch works on Surface, when they touch their iPhone then, "Ooooh, wow," you know, that's just such a natural thing.
When voice recognition is used in the right way--let's say you're in the car and you want to pick somebody to call--that's improved very dramatically, or speech output, text to speech, these things have gotten very good.
You talked about different natural language interfaces. You know, with multitouch, it seems to have really captured people's imaginations, both with what you guys have shown with Surface, certainly with the iPhone. Voice seems to be a little slower in terms of speech recognition as a mainstream computer interface.
Gates: Well, that's fair. Voice recognition is a harder thing. There are certainly tons of people, and I mean millions, who for some reason, the keyboard's not attractive to them. Either they have repetitive stress injury, or they're in a work environment where they're doing something else with their hands, where they've taken the time to learn the software and adapt to the software and gone through the training process there. And they love it. They can't believe other people don't use it.
When you sell a product to hundreds of millions of users, there are features that millions of users love that you can call an obscure feature because, percentage wise, it's not very many.
For the rest of us, the keyboard has worked so well that we are even getting the keyboard into phones. I think voice search on the phone is one of those applications that would really drive it forward. I mean, why should I have to try and type something in? I've got a phone, I've got a talk button; so that's one of the areas we're betting on.
You guys built a pretty significant voice recognition engine into Vista. It hardly gets talked about. Are you surprised that some of the things you did in Vista aren't getting more attention?
Gates: Well, when you sell a product to hundreds of millions of users, there are features that millions of users love that you can call an obscure feature because, percentage wise, it's not very many. You know, Butler Lampson, one of our great researchers who has done great work going all the way back to his days at Xerox, was just sending me mail about how fantastic the improvements in the speech stuff are in Vista and, you know, we're hard at work on the next version of Windows. We're going to take this speech stuff even further.
What about in the developing world? I imagine natural language input, you know, particularly for people who've never used a computer, has some really interesting applications.
Gates: I wouldn't go too far on that because they're not used to what the dialogue should be like, and in most of those places, the cost of labor is low enough that, you (can) have another person on the other end of the connection or talking to them directly. But, yeah, it should work for different languages. It's particularly interesting for Japanese and Chinese where the keyboard is not as natural as it is for languages with modest-sized alphabets. And so we do see ink and voice catching on there.
There was a demo recently where there was a challenge about typists compared with voice recognition, and the voice recognition won out by quite a bit. And so there's a lot that can be done pioneering off of the demand that will come out of those markets.
You've talked a fair amount about taking on just a few projects when you step away from full-time work. Is natural language input and voice one of those areas you think you'll be spending time on?
Gates: Yeah. I'd say, broadly, the whole natural interface thing. Big screens, touch, ink, speech, that's something that I think, along with cloud computing, is the next big change in how we think about software and how it becomes more basic. And, you know, Ray Ozzie is driving our cloud computing stuff and--way ahead of me, very hands-on all that stuff. Some of the natural interface stuff, I think he and Steve will ask me to sort of keep the energy and vision alive there in a strong way. Some of that will be reading off the screen or the tablet, but the whole natural interface area probably will be one that they'll pick.
Any others that you think you will take on?
Gates: Well, it's hard to say. Search is such a fun area right now. They might pick that. There are some ideas about where the Office software should go--I'm really quite enthused about some things. So I'd say those are the three most likely. And it's only going to be three or four, so--they'll have to decide.
Monday, October 08, 2007
London Internet whiz was vital militant link: FBI
A London student known online as "Irhabi 007" served as a vital communications link in three militant plots that had once appeared unrelated, FBI Director Robert Mueller said on Friday.
Mueller disclosed details of the student's role as a way, he said, of illustrating the importance of the Internet as a communications channel in modern terrorism and the challenges authorities face in tracking down militants.
"The threat exists not only in the mountains of Pakistan, but also in the shadows of the Internet," Mueller told the Council on Foreign Relations in a speech.
The Moroccan-born student's real name was Younes Tsouli and his nickname translates as "Terrorist 007." He was 22 years old when he was arrested in London in October 2005.
Said by prosecutors to have close ties to al Qaeda, Tsouli pleaded guilty in July to inciting terrorism on the Internet and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Tsouli's computer revealed he communicated extensively with two students from Atlanta accused of supporting terrorism by filming potential targets such as the U.S. Capitol and participating in "terrorist training" or "terrorism-related activities" in South Asia, Mueller said.
Tsouli also was in "steady communication" with accused plotters in a case involving a Swedish national and Danish man arrested in Bosnia on suspicion of preparing to bomb targets in Europe, Mueller said.
In addition, he said, Tsouli communicated with members of a suspected militant cell in Canada known as the "Toronto 17" who are accused of planning to attack targets in Canada.
"These individuals seemed to be unrelated, but as we came to find out, they were not," Mueller said.
He said Tsouli was at the "center of this web," facilitating communications and posting thousands of files including manuals for attacks and videotaped beheadings.
"He used his computer skills to build a global virtual network for terrorists and their supporters," Mueller said. Mueller's speech comes as the Bush administration is seeking to permanently expand legal authority to eavesdrop on the communications of foreign terrorism suspects. Many Democrats are seeking restrictions on the authority to protect the rights of innocent Americans.
Mueller said the Tsouli case showed the importance of adapting legislation to match technological change.
"Our capacity, both by way of the expense of keeping up with that curve, as well as the transformation of our laws, just has not kept pace," Mueller said.
"Growth in technology requires us to have a very swift debate and take measures that are necessary to ensure that we can continue to have the kind of investigative capability...that enables us to continue to gather information."
Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Mueller disclosed details of the student's role as a way, he said, of illustrating the importance of the Internet as a communications channel in modern terrorism and the challenges authorities face in tracking down militants.
"The threat exists not only in the mountains of Pakistan, but also in the shadows of the Internet," Mueller told the Council on Foreign Relations in a speech.
The Moroccan-born student's real name was Younes Tsouli and his nickname translates as "Terrorist 007." He was 22 years old when he was arrested in London in October 2005.
Said by prosecutors to have close ties to al Qaeda, Tsouli pleaded guilty in July to inciting terrorism on the Internet and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Tsouli's computer revealed he communicated extensively with two students from Atlanta accused of supporting terrorism by filming potential targets such as the U.S. Capitol and participating in "terrorist training" or "terrorism-related activities" in South Asia, Mueller said.
Tsouli also was in "steady communication" with accused plotters in a case involving a Swedish national and Danish man arrested in Bosnia on suspicion of preparing to bomb targets in Europe, Mueller said.
In addition, he said, Tsouli communicated with members of a suspected militant cell in Canada known as the "Toronto 17" who are accused of planning to attack targets in Canada.
"These individuals seemed to be unrelated, but as we came to find out, they were not," Mueller said.
He said Tsouli was at the "center of this web," facilitating communications and posting thousands of files including manuals for attacks and videotaped beheadings.
"He used his computer skills to build a global virtual network for terrorists and their supporters," Mueller said. Mueller's speech comes as the Bush administration is seeking to permanently expand legal authority to eavesdrop on the communications of foreign terrorism suspects. Many Democrats are seeking restrictions on the authority to protect the rights of innocent Americans.
Mueller said the Tsouli case showed the importance of adapting legislation to match technological change.
"Our capacity, both by way of the expense of keeping up with that curve, as well as the transformation of our laws, just has not kept pace," Mueller said.
"Growth in technology requires us to have a very swift debate and take measures that are necessary to ensure that we can continue to have the kind of investigative capability...that enables us to continue to gather information."
Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
F-Secure sees smaller botnets on the rise
Cybercriminals are downsizing their botnets to make it harder for software security companies to track and contain botnet operations, researchers say.
Computers infected with a virus unknowingly become "zombies" in a botnet--which is a network used to send out spam and to mount further attacks on other machines. The zombie army can be controlled remotely, with the botnet creators usually trying to build the largest possible botnet of compromised computers to rent out to gangs for as little as $100 for a couple of hours.
But researchers at antivirus company F-Secure have reported seeing these large networks being broken down into smaller groups of compromised computers because the creation of large botnets is not creating as much revenue for such cybercriminals.
Mika Stahlberg, program manager of the security response team at F-Secure, said the company is still seeing very big botnets around the world but coders are no longer trying to build as big a botnet as they can because that does not make any more money than a collection of smaller botnets.
The botnet bandits are also erring on the side of caution by steering away from larger botnets, because if the central server controlling such a network goes down, then the entire botnet is lost, according to F-Secure."These people don't want to put all their eggs in one basket and are, therefore, running smaller botnets," Stahlberg added.
Malicious-software writers are also getting lazy, according to F-Secure, and are no longer attempting to trick companies by using increasingly complex viruses.
Sean Sullivan, technical expert at F-Secure, said virus writers can no longer beat security companies with complex codes and are therefore trying to do it by creating "malware factories" that swamp the security companies.
"It used to be a big event when a virus came along," Sullivan said, "but now we get 10,000 (malicious-software samples) a day, most of which are variations on the same code."
F-Secure employs a 16-person response team at its Finnish headquarters to monitor and detect malicious-software activity using tools such as a Google Earth mashup and a mobile-phone bunker to test viruses.
Gemma Simpson of Silicon.com reported from London.
Computers infected with a virus unknowingly become "zombies" in a botnet--which is a network used to send out spam and to mount further attacks on other machines. The zombie army can be controlled remotely, with the botnet creators usually trying to build the largest possible botnet of compromised computers to rent out to gangs for as little as $100 for a couple of hours.
But researchers at antivirus company F-Secure have reported seeing these large networks being broken down into smaller groups of compromised computers because the creation of large botnets is not creating as much revenue for such cybercriminals.
Mika Stahlberg, program manager of the security response team at F-Secure, said the company is still seeing very big botnets around the world but coders are no longer trying to build as big a botnet as they can because that does not make any more money than a collection of smaller botnets.
The botnet bandits are also erring on the side of caution by steering away from larger botnets, because if the central server controlling such a network goes down, then the entire botnet is lost, according to F-Secure."These people don't want to put all their eggs in one basket and are, therefore, running smaller botnets," Stahlberg added.
Malicious-software writers are also getting lazy, according to F-Secure, and are no longer attempting to trick companies by using increasingly complex viruses.
Sean Sullivan, technical expert at F-Secure, said virus writers can no longer beat security companies with complex codes and are therefore trying to do it by creating "malware factories" that swamp the security companies.
"It used to be a big event when a virus came along," Sullivan said, "but now we get 10,000 (malicious-software samples) a day, most of which are variations on the same code."
F-Secure employs a 16-person response team at its Finnish headquarters to monitor and detect malicious-software activity using tools such as a Google Earth mashup and a mobile-phone bunker to test viruses.
Gemma Simpson of Silicon.com reported from London.
Spam-scam crackdown nets $2 billion in fake checks
An international crackdown on Internet financial scams this year has yielded more than $2.1 billion in seized fake checks and 77 arrests in the Netherlands, Nigeria and Canada, U.S. and other authorities said on Wednesday.
The scammers, often West African organized crime groups, use ploys such as "spam" e-mail offering to pay recipients "processing fees" for depositing checks, which later turn out to be phony, and sending the ostensible proceeds to the scammer, authorities said.
The ruses are aided by U.S. financial practices that quickly credit a bank customer for deposits even though it can take far longer to discover a fake check and reclaim the money from the customer. The victims find themselves out the money they forward when the checks prove to be fake.
"Most Americans don't realize they are financially liable when they fall for these scams," Susan Grant, vice president of the National Consumers League, said at a news conference to publicize the arrests and promote awareness of the frauds.
The crackdown netted 16 arrests in Nigeria, 60 in the Netherlands and one in Canada, said Greg Campbell, U.S. Postal Inspection Service inspector in charge of global security.
"We shut down Internet cafes, we arrested scammers, and significantly disrupted the flow of fake checks into the United States," Campbell said.
Law enforcement in England also took part. Nigeria is a recognized hotbed for the financial frauds and the other countries have significant West African populations that include fraud operators, authorities said.
Three suspects from the Netherlands and Nigeria were extradited to New York and are awaiting trial, said U.S. Assistant Attorney General Alice Fischer. The United States is seeking to extradite five others.
The United States is a major draw for the scammers. But other English-speaking countries are also targeted, in part because of the widespread use of English on the Internet and because of Nigeria's large English-speaking population, Campbell said.
Nigeria has brought to court 290 cases of suspected fraud, and the prosecutions have been successful in 115 of the cases so far, said Ibrahim Lamorde, head of that country's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
He said Nigeria is doing its best to stamp out the fake check operations. It has seized counterfeiting equipment and convened meetings of anti-fraud officials from across Africa. But he acknowledged Nigeria has an image problem. "The first country that comes to mind is Nigeria," Lamorde said.
Two-thirds of Americans said they received at least one potential scam contact per week, and 18 percent said they or a family member had fallen for one, in a survey conducted for an alliance of banks, consumer groups and the U.S. Postal Service.
Grant said complaints to her group about fake checks have risen 60 percent this year, and the average victim loses about $3,000 to $4,000.
Some U.S. banks have changed their practices, for example, by training tellers to better inform depositors about risks, Grant said. She called for regulations mandating that bank customers be given clearer information.
Offers can also come in direct mail. Fisher showed hand-written envelopes directed to her at a Justice Department address.
Inside were $850 checks with a Wal-Mart logo, with letters offering her a 10 percent cut if she would cash the checks and send the money back. "After you laugh and think how silly it is...this shows (the problem) is just completely rampant," she said.
Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
The scammers, often West African organized crime groups, use ploys such as "spam" e-mail offering to pay recipients "processing fees" for depositing checks, which later turn out to be phony, and sending the ostensible proceeds to the scammer, authorities said.
The ruses are aided by U.S. financial practices that quickly credit a bank customer for deposits even though it can take far longer to discover a fake check and reclaim the money from the customer. The victims find themselves out the money they forward when the checks prove to be fake.
"Most Americans don't realize they are financially liable when they fall for these scams," Susan Grant, vice president of the National Consumers League, said at a news conference to publicize the arrests and promote awareness of the frauds.
The crackdown netted 16 arrests in Nigeria, 60 in the Netherlands and one in Canada, said Greg Campbell, U.S. Postal Inspection Service inspector in charge of global security.
"We shut down Internet cafes, we arrested scammers, and significantly disrupted the flow of fake checks into the United States," Campbell said.
Law enforcement in England also took part. Nigeria is a recognized hotbed for the financial frauds and the other countries have significant West African populations that include fraud operators, authorities said.
Three suspects from the Netherlands and Nigeria were extradited to New York and are awaiting trial, said U.S. Assistant Attorney General Alice Fischer. The United States is seeking to extradite five others.
The United States is a major draw for the scammers. But other English-speaking countries are also targeted, in part because of the widespread use of English on the Internet and because of Nigeria's large English-speaking population, Campbell said.
Nigeria has brought to court 290 cases of suspected fraud, and the prosecutions have been successful in 115 of the cases so far, said Ibrahim Lamorde, head of that country's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
He said Nigeria is doing its best to stamp out the fake check operations. It has seized counterfeiting equipment and convened meetings of anti-fraud officials from across Africa. But he acknowledged Nigeria has an image problem. "The first country that comes to mind is Nigeria," Lamorde said.
Two-thirds of Americans said they received at least one potential scam contact per week, and 18 percent said they or a family member had fallen for one, in a survey conducted for an alliance of banks, consumer groups and the U.S. Postal Service.
Grant said complaints to her group about fake checks have risen 60 percent this year, and the average victim loses about $3,000 to $4,000.
Some U.S. banks have changed their practices, for example, by training tellers to better inform depositors about risks, Grant said. She called for regulations mandating that bank customers be given clearer information.
Offers can also come in direct mail. Fisher showed hand-written envelopes directed to her at a Justice Department address.
Inside were $850 checks with a Wal-Mart logo, with letters offering her a 10 percent cut if she would cash the checks and send the money back. "After you laugh and think how silly it is...this shows (the problem) is just completely rampant," she said.
Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Microsoft plans medical-record service
Microsoft is aiming to get consumers to store all of their health records online. It's a laudable goal, but one fraught with challenges.
On Thursday the company is outlining its vision, dubbed HealthVault, in which a person can view, from one place, their complete health records. Consumers will be able to view information from medical devices, myriad health care providers and insurance companies as well as share that information with health care providers of their choosing or search for information related to their health issues.
In conjunction with the health record effort, Microsoft is also launching HealthVault Search, a secure version of its health care search engine, drawn from its acquisition of Medstory.
It's a bold vision, but one that is probably years from reality. First of all, most consumers don't have electronic access to their health records today. As part of the new HealthVault service Microsoft is announcing, hospitals, insurance companies and others will be able to make such records available to consumers, though no major providers are committing to do so as part of HealthVault's initial launch.
"It's a long journey," said Peter Neupert, the former Drugstore.com chief who is now head of Microsoft's health care efforts. "We think it's an important stake to put in the ground."
As with any sort of health care records, there are all kinds of privacy and security questions, though Microsoft is hoping to assuage most concerns by putting the consumer in charge of who sees what, when it comes to their records.
"A lot of what I want to do with my vault is share with a care provider or interact with a care provider," Neupert said. "I don't think it's appropriate to try to get in between that relationship. I want to enable it."
Six years ago Microsoft launched an ill-fated effort, code-named Hailstorm, to manage consumers' information online. Concerns over data security and privacy, coupled with difficulty in striking partnership deals, eventually sank that project.
Similar concerns may apply to the company's health information efforts. Because the new service is free to consumers and partners, such as health care providers and medical-device makers, it's unclear how Microsoft will procure revenue from HealthVault.Neupert said the company's business model centers on advertising, particularly search-related advertising.
"When I am doing a health search I typically have a need," Neupert said. "The ad is a valuable piece of content.
Microsoft's consumer effort in health care parallels a push the company is making on the clinical side of things, following its July 2006 purchase of Azyxxi.
Microsoft is not expecting consumers to just rush out and sign up for HealthVault en masse. "I don't expect a million users to sign up in the next six months," Neupert said.
Even signing up partners is likely to be a long battle. The initial supporters are organizations like the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and the American Diabetes Association--not the kind of insurance companies and hospital chains that Microsoft needs to make HealthVault match its vision.
On Thursday the company is outlining its vision, dubbed HealthVault, in which a person can view, from one place, their complete health records. Consumers will be able to view information from medical devices, myriad health care providers and insurance companies as well as share that information with health care providers of their choosing or search for information related to their health issues.
In conjunction with the health record effort, Microsoft is also launching HealthVault Search, a secure version of its health care search engine, drawn from its acquisition of Medstory.
It's a bold vision, but one that is probably years from reality. First of all, most consumers don't have electronic access to their health records today. As part of the new HealthVault service Microsoft is announcing, hospitals, insurance companies and others will be able to make such records available to consumers, though no major providers are committing to do so as part of HealthVault's initial launch.
"It's a long journey," said Peter Neupert, the former Drugstore.com chief who is now head of Microsoft's health care efforts. "We think it's an important stake to put in the ground."
As with any sort of health care records, there are all kinds of privacy and security questions, though Microsoft is hoping to assuage most concerns by putting the consumer in charge of who sees what, when it comes to their records.
"A lot of what I want to do with my vault is share with a care provider or interact with a care provider," Neupert said. "I don't think it's appropriate to try to get in between that relationship. I want to enable it."
Six years ago Microsoft launched an ill-fated effort, code-named Hailstorm, to manage consumers' information online. Concerns over data security and privacy, coupled with difficulty in striking partnership deals, eventually sank that project.
Similar concerns may apply to the company's health information efforts. Because the new service is free to consumers and partners, such as health care providers and medical-device makers, it's unclear how Microsoft will procure revenue from HealthVault.Neupert said the company's business model centers on advertising, particularly search-related advertising.
"When I am doing a health search I typically have a need," Neupert said. "The ad is a valuable piece of content.
Microsoft's consumer effort in health care parallels a push the company is making on the clinical side of things, following its July 2006 purchase of Azyxxi.
Microsoft is not expecting consumers to just rush out and sign up for HealthVault en masse. "I don't expect a million users to sign up in the next six months," Neupert said.
Even signing up partners is likely to be a long battle. The initial supporters are organizations like the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and the American Diabetes Association--not the kind of insurance companies and hospital chains that Microsoft needs to make HealthVault match its vision.
Social networking helps drive server sales
Social networking is pushing up server sales despite the increasing adoption of server-efficient virtualization technology, according to Sun Microsystems.
Virtualization squeezes more computing muscle out of fewer physical servers, so as its use becomes more widespread, it should help slow server sales.
But Richard Green, executive vice president of software at Sun, said there is no shortage of demand for hardware because of data-heavy applications such as social-networking Web sites demanding more storage space, resulting in server counts "going through the roof."
Sun has been bringing virtualization into its business for the past few years to help it build revenue, after struggling in the post-dot-com crash period. But the marrying of virtual and physical tools is causing "real havoc" in data centers with ad hoc, internally developed management tools not doing the job effectively, according to Green.
"The whole idea of any innovation (such as virtualization) is to give you the tools to throw at a set of problems," he said. "But with that comes increasing complexity."
Sun said it will launch an open-source virtualization management tool this December, which will be able to run on any operating system.
Earlier this month Sun's chief executive, Jonathan Schwartz, announced the company would be merging its server and storage teams into a converged system team, with the aim of putting a stronger focus on virtualization.
Gemma Simpson of Silicon.com reported from London.
Virtualization squeezes more computing muscle out of fewer physical servers, so as its use becomes more widespread, it should help slow server sales.
But Richard Green, executive vice president of software at Sun, said there is no shortage of demand for hardware because of data-heavy applications such as social-networking Web sites demanding more storage space, resulting in server counts "going through the roof."
Sun has been bringing virtualization into its business for the past few years to help it build revenue, after struggling in the post-dot-com crash period. But the marrying of virtual and physical tools is causing "real havoc" in data centers with ad hoc, internally developed management tools not doing the job effectively, according to Green.
"The whole idea of any innovation (such as virtualization) is to give you the tools to throw at a set of problems," he said. "But with that comes increasing complexity."
Sun said it will launch an open-source virtualization management tool this December, which will be able to run on any operating system.
Earlier this month Sun's chief executive, Jonathan Schwartz, announced the company would be merging its server and storage teams into a converged system team, with the aim of putting a stronger focus on virtualization.
Gemma Simpson of Silicon.com reported from London.
Laptop with a mission widens its audience
In November, you'll be able to buy a new laptop that's spillproof, rainproof, dustproof and drop-proof. It's fanless, it's silent and it weighs 3.2 pounds. One battery charge will power six hours of heavy activity, or 24 hours of reading. The laptop has a built-in video camera, microphone, memory-card slot, graphics tablet, gamepad controllers and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration.
And this laptop will cost $200.
The computer, if you hadn't already guessed, is the fabled "$100 laptop" that's been igniting hype and controversy for three years. It's an effort by One Laptop Per Child to develop a very low-cost, high-potential, extremely rugged computer for the two billion educationally underserved children in poor countries.
The concept: if a machine is designed smartly enough, without the bloat of standard laptops, and sold in large enough quantities, the price can be brought way, way down. Maybe not down to $100, as OLPC originally hoped, but low enough for developing countries to afford millions of them--one per child.
The laptop is now called the XO, because if you turn the logo 90 degrees, it looks like a child.
OLPC slightly turned its strategy when it decided to offer the machine for sale to the public in the industrialized world--for a period of two weeks, in November. The program is called "Get 1, Give 1," and it works like this. You pay $400. One XO laptop (and a tax deduction) comes to you by Christmas, and a second is sent to a student in a poor country.
The group does worry that people might compare the XO with $1,000 Windows or Mac laptops. They might blog about their disappointment, thereby imperiling OLPC's continuing talks with third world governments.
It's easy to see how that might happen. There's no CD/DVD drive at all, no hard drive and only a 7.5-inch screen. The Linux operating system doesn't run Microsoft Office, Photoshop or any other standard Mac or Windows programs. The membrane-sealed, spillproof keyboard is too small for touch-typing by an adult.
And then there's the look of this thing. It's made of shiny green and white plastic, like a Fisher-Price toy, complete with a handle. With its two earlike antennas raised, it could be Shrek's little robot friend.
And sure enough, the bloggers and the ignorant have already begun to spit on the XO laptop. "Dude, for $400, I can buy a real Windows laptop," they say.
"Breakthrough after breakthrough"
Clearly, the XO's mission has sailed over these people's heads like a 747.
The truth is, the XO laptop, now in final testing, is absolutely amazing, and in my limited tests, a total kid magnet. Both the hardware and the software exhibit breakthrough after breakthrough--some of them not available on any other laptop, for $400 or $4,000.
In the places where the XO will be used, power is often scarce. So the laptop uses a new battery chemistry, called lithium ferro-phosphate. It runs at one-tenth the temperature of a standard laptop battery, costs $10 to replace, and is good for 2,000 charges--versus 500 on a regular laptop battery.
The laptop consumes an average of 2 watts, compared with 60 or more on a typical business laptop. That's one reason it gets such great battery life. A small yo-yo-like pull-cord charger is available (one minute of pulling provides 10 minutes of power); so is a $12 solar panel that, although only one foot square, provides enough power to recharge or power the machine.
Speaking of bright sunshine: the XO's color screen is bright and, at 200 dots an inch, razor sharp (1,200 by 900 pixels). But it has a secret identity: in bright sun, you can turn off the backlight altogether. The resulting display, black on light gray, is so clear and readable, it's almost like paper. Then, of course, the battery lasts even longer.
The XO offers both regular wireless Internet connections and something called mesh networking, which means that all the laptops see each other, instantly, without any setup--even when there's no Internet connection.
With one press of a button, you see a map. Individual XO logos--color-coded to differentiate them--represent other laptops in the area; you connect with one click. (You never double-click in the XO's visual, super-simple operating system. You either point with the mouse or click once.)
This feature has some astonishing utility. If only one laptop has an Internet connection, for example, the others can get online, too, thanks to the mesh network. And when OLPC releases software upgrades, one laptop can broadcast them to other nearby laptops.
Power users will snort at the specs of this machine. It has only one gigabyte of storage--all flash memory--with 20 percent of that occupied by the XO's system software. And the processor is feeble by conventional standards. Starting up takes two minutes, and switching between programs is poky.
Once in a program, though, the speed is fine; it turns out that a light processor is plenty if the software is written compactly and smartly. (OLPC points out that despite gigantic leaps in processing power, today's business laptops don't feel any faster than they did a few years ago. The operating systems and programs have added so much bloat that they absorb the speed gains.)
The built-in programs are equally clever. There's a word processor, Web browser, calculator, PDF textbook reader, some games (clones of Tetris and Connect 4), three music programs, a painting application, a chat program and so on. The camera module permits teachers, for the first time, to send messages home to illiterate parents.
There are also three programming environments of different degrees of sophistication. Incredibly, one keystroke reveals the underlying code of almost any XO program or any Web page. Students can not only study how their favorite programs have been written, but even experiment by making changes. (If they make a mess of things, they can restore the original.)
There's real brilliance in this emphasis on understanding the computer itself. Many nations in XO's market have few natural resources, and the global need for information workers grows with every passing day.
Share and share alike
Most of the XO's programs are shareable on the mesh network, which is another ingenious twist. Any time you're word processing, making music, taking pictures, playing games or reading an e-book, you can click a Share button. Your document shows up next to your icon on the mesh-network map, so that other people can see what you're doing, or work with you. Teachers can supervise your writing, buddies can collaborate on a document, friends can play you in Connect 4, or someone across the room can add a melody to your drum beat in the music program. You've never seen anything like it.
The pair of laptops I reviewed had incomplete power-management software, beta-stage software and occasional cosmetic glitches. But OLPC and its worldwide army of open-source (volunteer) programmers expect to polish things by the time the assembly line starts to roll in November. No, the biggest obstacle to the XO's success is not technology--it's already a wonder--but fear. Overseas ministers of education fear that changing the status quo might risk their jobs. Big-name computer makers fear that the XO will steal away an overlooked two-billion-person market. Critics fear that the poorest countries need food, malaria protection and clean water far more than computers.
(The founder, Nicholas Negroponte's, response: "Nobody I know would say, 'By the way, let's hold off on education.' Education happens to be a solution to all of those same problems.")
But the XO deserves to overcome those fears. Despite all the obstacles and doubters, OLPC has come up with a laptop that's tough and simple enough for hot, humid, dusty locales; cool enough to keep young minds engaged, both at school and at home; and open, flexible and collaborative enough to support a million different teaching and learning styles.
It's a technological breakthrough, for sure. Now let's just hope it breaks through the human barriers.
Entire contents, Copyright © 2007 The New York Times. All rights reserved.
And this laptop will cost $200.
The computer, if you hadn't already guessed, is the fabled "$100 laptop" that's been igniting hype and controversy for three years. It's an effort by One Laptop Per Child to develop a very low-cost, high-potential, extremely rugged computer for the two billion educationally underserved children in poor countries.
The concept: if a machine is designed smartly enough, without the bloat of standard laptops, and sold in large enough quantities, the price can be brought way, way down. Maybe not down to $100, as OLPC originally hoped, but low enough for developing countries to afford millions of them--one per child.
The laptop is now called the XO, because if you turn the logo 90 degrees, it looks like a child.
OLPC slightly turned its strategy when it decided to offer the machine for sale to the public in the industrialized world--for a period of two weeks, in November. The program is called "Get 1, Give 1," and it works like this. You pay $400. One XO laptop (and a tax deduction) comes to you by Christmas, and a second is sent to a student in a poor country.
The group does worry that people might compare the XO with $1,000 Windows or Mac laptops. They might blog about their disappointment, thereby imperiling OLPC's continuing talks with third world governments.
It's easy to see how that might happen. There's no CD/DVD drive at all, no hard drive and only a 7.5-inch screen. The Linux operating system doesn't run Microsoft Office, Photoshop or any other standard Mac or Windows programs. The membrane-sealed, spillproof keyboard is too small for touch-typing by an adult.
And then there's the look of this thing. It's made of shiny green and white plastic, like a Fisher-Price toy, complete with a handle. With its two earlike antennas raised, it could be Shrek's little robot friend.
And sure enough, the bloggers and the ignorant have already begun to spit on the XO laptop. "Dude, for $400, I can buy a real Windows laptop," they say.
"Breakthrough after breakthrough"
Clearly, the XO's mission has sailed over these people's heads like a 747.
The truth is, the XO laptop, now in final testing, is absolutely amazing, and in my limited tests, a total kid magnet. Both the hardware and the software exhibit breakthrough after breakthrough--some of them not available on any other laptop, for $400 or $4,000.
In the places where the XO will be used, power is often scarce. So the laptop uses a new battery chemistry, called lithium ferro-phosphate. It runs at one-tenth the temperature of a standard laptop battery, costs $10 to replace, and is good for 2,000 charges--versus 500 on a regular laptop battery.
The laptop consumes an average of 2 watts, compared with 60 or more on a typical business laptop. That's one reason it gets such great battery life. A small yo-yo-like pull-cord charger is available (one minute of pulling provides 10 minutes of power); so is a $12 solar panel that, although only one foot square, provides enough power to recharge or power the machine.
Speaking of bright sunshine: the XO's color screen is bright and, at 200 dots an inch, razor sharp (1,200 by 900 pixels). But it has a secret identity: in bright sun, you can turn off the backlight altogether. The resulting display, black on light gray, is so clear and readable, it's almost like paper. Then, of course, the battery lasts even longer.
The XO offers both regular wireless Internet connections and something called mesh networking, which means that all the laptops see each other, instantly, without any setup--even when there's no Internet connection.
With one press of a button, you see a map. Individual XO logos--color-coded to differentiate them--represent other laptops in the area; you connect with one click. (You never double-click in the XO's visual, super-simple operating system. You either point with the mouse or click once.)
This feature has some astonishing utility. If only one laptop has an Internet connection, for example, the others can get online, too, thanks to the mesh network. And when OLPC releases software upgrades, one laptop can broadcast them to other nearby laptops.
Power users will snort at the specs of this machine. It has only one gigabyte of storage--all flash memory--with 20 percent of that occupied by the XO's system software. And the processor is feeble by conventional standards. Starting up takes two minutes, and switching between programs is poky.
Once in a program, though, the speed is fine; it turns out that a light processor is plenty if the software is written compactly and smartly. (OLPC points out that despite gigantic leaps in processing power, today's business laptops don't feel any faster than they did a few years ago. The operating systems and programs have added so much bloat that they absorb the speed gains.)
The built-in programs are equally clever. There's a word processor, Web browser, calculator, PDF textbook reader, some games (clones of Tetris and Connect 4), three music programs, a painting application, a chat program and so on. The camera module permits teachers, for the first time, to send messages home to illiterate parents.
There are also three programming environments of different degrees of sophistication. Incredibly, one keystroke reveals the underlying code of almost any XO program or any Web page. Students can not only study how their favorite programs have been written, but even experiment by making changes. (If they make a mess of things, they can restore the original.)
There's real brilliance in this emphasis on understanding the computer itself. Many nations in XO's market have few natural resources, and the global need for information workers grows with every passing day.
Share and share alike
Most of the XO's programs are shareable on the mesh network, which is another ingenious twist. Any time you're word processing, making music, taking pictures, playing games or reading an e-book, you can click a Share button. Your document shows up next to your icon on the mesh-network map, so that other people can see what you're doing, or work with you. Teachers can supervise your writing, buddies can collaborate on a document, friends can play you in Connect 4, or someone across the room can add a melody to your drum beat in the music program. You've never seen anything like it.
The pair of laptops I reviewed had incomplete power-management software, beta-stage software and occasional cosmetic glitches. But OLPC and its worldwide army of open-source (volunteer) programmers expect to polish things by the time the assembly line starts to roll in November. No, the biggest obstacle to the XO's success is not technology--it's already a wonder--but fear. Overseas ministers of education fear that changing the status quo might risk their jobs. Big-name computer makers fear that the XO will steal away an overlooked two-billion-person market. Critics fear that the poorest countries need food, malaria protection and clean water far more than computers.
(The founder, Nicholas Negroponte's, response: "Nobody I know would say, 'By the way, let's hold off on education.' Education happens to be a solution to all of those same problems.")
But the XO deserves to overcome those fears. Despite all the obstacles and doubters, OLPC has come up with a laptop that's tough and simple enough for hot, humid, dusty locales; cool enough to keep young minds engaged, both at school and at home; and open, flexible and collaborative enough to support a million different teaching and learning styles.
It's a technological breakthrough, for sure. Now let's just hope it breaks through the human barriers.
Entire contents, Copyright © 2007 The New York Times. All rights reserved.
SAP plans to acquire Business Objects
SAP announced Sunday afternoon it plans to acquire Business Objects in a cash deal valued at slightly more than $6.8 billion.
The acquisition, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008, is SAP's largest acquisition ever. The deal is especially noteworthy for SAP, which has tended to favor developing its own technology, rather than acquiring it.
The acquisition of Business Objects, a leading player in business intelligence software, is designed to dovetail into SAP's previously announced strategic plans to double its addressable market by 2010, said Henning Kagermann, SAP chief executive, during a press conference Sunday afternoon.
Nearly a year ago, SAP noted the business intelligence market was growing at a rapid rate. And SAP's customers had been calling on the enterprise applications giant to add an end-to-end solution for structured and unstructured business analytics and embed them into SAP's business suite, Kagermann noted.
"This acquisition accelerates our growth potential," Kagermann said.
Forrester Research estimates that the business performance solutions market will grow by 11 percent through 2010.
Business Objects, based in San Jose, Calif., and Paris, will operate as a stand-alone business and be part of the SAP Group.
Roughly 40 percent of Business Objects' customers use SAP, said John Schwarz, Business Objects chief executive.
The companies said there is very little overlap and neither company expects significant restructuring as a result.
With the Business Objects acquisition, SAP will be further positioned to compete against its arch-rival Oracle. Last March, Oracle acquired business intelligence tool developer Hyperion Solutions in a $3.3 billion deal.
At the time of the Hyperion acquisition, Oracle touted that "thousands of SAP customers" relied on Hyperion for such things as financial analysis and reporting system of record. And that with its acquisition, SAP's customers would need to tie into Oracle's Hyperion software to view and analyze their underlying SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) data.
Business Objects' Schwarz, however, noted that his company is roughly three times the size of Hyperion.
The acquisition, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008, is SAP's largest acquisition ever. The deal is especially noteworthy for SAP, which has tended to favor developing its own technology, rather than acquiring it.
The acquisition of Business Objects, a leading player in business intelligence software, is designed to dovetail into SAP's previously announced strategic plans to double its addressable market by 2010, said Henning Kagermann, SAP chief executive, during a press conference Sunday afternoon.
Nearly a year ago, SAP noted the business intelligence market was growing at a rapid rate. And SAP's customers had been calling on the enterprise applications giant to add an end-to-end solution for structured and unstructured business analytics and embed them into SAP's business suite, Kagermann noted.
"This acquisition accelerates our growth potential," Kagermann said.
Forrester Research estimates that the business performance solutions market will grow by 11 percent through 2010.
Business Objects, based in San Jose, Calif., and Paris, will operate as a stand-alone business and be part of the SAP Group.
Roughly 40 percent of Business Objects' customers use SAP, said John Schwarz, Business Objects chief executive.
The companies said there is very little overlap and neither company expects significant restructuring as a result.
With the Business Objects acquisition, SAP will be further positioned to compete against its arch-rival Oracle. Last March, Oracle acquired business intelligence tool developer Hyperion Solutions in a $3.3 billion deal.
At the time of the Hyperion acquisition, Oracle touted that "thousands of SAP customers" relied on Hyperion for such things as financial analysis and reporting system of record. And that with its acquisition, SAP's customers would need to tie into Oracle's Hyperion software to view and analyze their underlying SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) data.
Business Objects' Schwarz, however, noted that his company is roughly three times the size of Hyperion.
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