Well the dot-com’s are back. This time though, there’s only one dot-com, and this time the company has developed a solid business model through years of being a private corporation before turning to public investment dollars. Of course I’m talking about Google which made it’s initial IPO August of last year at $85 dollars a share. Since then it has almost quintupled in value at $400 dollars a share and the stock keeps going up. My question now is how high can they go? Will Google’s bubble burst? So far they have held true to their “do no evil” model by centering almost their entire revenue stream around advertising thereby allowing them to offer services for free. What has made them so popular and unique, however, is that not only are their services useful, they’re also bleeding edge, the best out there with features that people want. They have revolutionized webmail (the Gmail “conversation” feature is a simple concept but a true innovation); they have blown away all other mapping services; they have embraced and contributed to the Web 2.0 social revolution (although I would say the “Web 2.0″ is something that has evolved independently of Google); and of course they have redefined the concept of search and information finding.

Just recently, Yahoo released a beta of their new mapping service. One thing that is immediately apparent is that the rendering engine that they use looks oddly identical to Google’s. They’ve also replicated Google’s “draggable” interactive interface and included other features like traffic monitoring (not quite ready for primetime), and point-to-point driving directions (which is actually quite useful and something that Google does not have). In any case this raises the question, when will Google cease to be the best at everything? They’re trying to take on all of the giants including Microsoft (Google Desktop), Yahoo ([insert Google web service here]), and there have been rumblings of a service in the works (Google Base) which will pit them up against eBay. I’m waiting for them to come out with their own media distribution service and ruffle the feathers of iApple.

We’re seeing Yahoo react to Googlemania. We know that Microsoft will react (since that’s all they do). Can Google take on all of the giants of the tech world and still come out on top? I’m not so sure. Oh and as an aside, where are the highway exit numbers on these maps? Google? Yahoo? Mapquest has had them for years. Let’s try and keep up.

While it is usually not hard to judge what is and what isn’t suitable material to publicly publish, it is considerably simpler to just privatize everything. On the other hand, I am certain that nothing I have blogged about thus far would reveal any company secrets or proprietary information. Thus perhaps I need to rethink my blogging strategy. I am considering trying to implement a “multi-blogging” system where I can feed blog posts to owenkellett.info, my internal Sun blog, or both. Although, I am not particularly fond of the software used by Sun (Roller) as it is buggy and not as robust or feature rich as WordPress. In any case, it is for posts like this one that such a system would be useful as it is suitable for both of my blogs:

As I’ve been becoming more comfortable with my responsibilities at Sun, I’ve also been growing more accustomed to the tools that they make use of. In particular, I am growing increasingly fond of Perforce, the version control system that we use. Previously, my only exposure to version control has exclusively been CVS, which I have used in a number of projects in the past. For the unititiated, version control software is a tool that coordinates the concurrent modification of a source code by multiple developers. Thus for example, if Joe Programmer and Cathy Hacker are both working on different segments of the same source code file, the version control system helps to cleanly integrate these modifications and all modifications made by a number of users at once. The general mechanism used to do this is by keeping a centralized repository of the source tree on a server, and each user checks out their own individual copies of this tree. Users than make changes on their individual trees, and check them back into the central server when they are finished. The checkin process controls the merging of individual files to keep the source tree clean.

There is no doubt that CVS is very powerful, featureful, (and also very free). I am no expert of either CVS or Perforce, but I have noticed a couple things about Perforce that make it “safer” (probably the most suitable word to use):

• I seem to distinctly remember a situation using CVS when I made changes to a particular file, and then perhaps stupidly did a “cvs update” before a “cvs commit.” The result was the version of the file in the repository clobbering all of my changes. Perforce forces you to explicitly “p4 edit” every file that you want to modify. Therefore if you sync up from the repository before submitting your changes, it won’t overwrite all of your work.
• Perforce submissions are stateful. When committing changes to a CVS repository, if something screwy happens to your connection or the server mid-update, you could be left with a bunked repository. This can’t happen with Perforce as “p4 submit” operations are atomic.

On the other hand, Perforce costs money. I really need a lot more exposure to both systems to make any real assessments as to which one I prefer. However, these are just a couple quick things that I noticed that I thought were worth mentioning.

The European commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a meeting in Tunisia next month the internet will split apart. . . .Viviane Reding, European IT commissioner, says that if a multilateral approach cannot be agreed, countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and some Arab states could start operating their own versions of the internet and the ubiquity that has made it such a success will disappear.

Not only is this a silly threat, but it shows a complete lack of understanding of what “control” in this particular context actually means. The control that ICANN possesses is of purely technical context. When you type a domain name into your browser, ICANN is responsible for coordinating the process of resolving that domain name into an IP address and ensuring universal connectivity. It is a centralized body created to maintain consistency in the protocols and processes that make up this system and it has absolutely nothing to do with the content or systems that literally make up front-end, visible piece of what is “the internet.” It is true that this should be controlled by some international body, but with a stable and working system already in place, it makes no sense to try and uproot this stability when the “control” being restructured isn’t anything that most average citizens even care about.

Let’s say the EU does actually act on this undoubtedly empty threat. They would essentially restructure the internet so that residents residing within the nations of the European Union would only be able to access websites that are located within these same nations. The result would be isolating and angering their own constituents because of a minimally important power struggle. That sounds logical to me. In truth the obvious, and probably inevitable course of action will be to gradually internationalize the responsibilities currently held by ICANN.

In any case, even though I’m still very much a newbie, I’m starting to get slightly more involved at work. One of the tasks that is currently on my plate right now is setting up a system to completely automate the process of installing a number of different potential Linux distributions (i.e. Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE, etc.) from a remote server. The reason for doing this is to streamline the testing process for a new server system. Essentially, the design goal for this system is that it ultimately needs to officially support not only Solaris, but also several different versions of Linux as well as Windows. In order to automate the test process, we need to be able to sequentially roll out an installation of some OS, test that OS, and then move onto the next supported OS. All of this needs to be completely hands-off so that the actual testing process can be done any time (e.g. overnight) and without any user intervention.

A typical system that would be used to accomplish this task is a PXE server which meshes DHCP services for dynamic network discovery and configuration with TFTP services for hosting OS images for automatic download and installation. Now from my own personal research, the concept does not seem terribly difficult. One caveat, though, is that PXE is not often used for completely hands-off installations (i.e. users often must select menu options, etc.) and of course things that seem conceptually simple are always more complicated to implement. Additionally:

• Before a few days ago I had never heard of PXE.
• My boss does not have any experience setting up PXE services either. (Of course that’s why it’s my job to research and carry out an action plan)
• None of the people in the Automation group that I work have experience setting up PXE servers.

Now all of these facts simply make it a challenging task and force me to be resourceful. I have already met with one person from the IT department that has some experience with PXE servers and actually has one set up that we might be able to leverage for our ultimate goal. Of course working with him could prove to be a problem. Because he’s an “IT person,” that means he’s never in his office, has too many things to do, and is needed by 40 other people all at the same time. In any case, we shall see how it goes.

A California senator [Sen. Dianne Feinstein] has suggested that because file-sharing networks continue to house illegal files, they should be shut down. … Pointing to what she called a “rise in peer to peers” since the Grokster decision, Feinstein said current law is not effective enough to deter illegal file swapping and the government must enact stronger enforcement measures. “If we don’t stop it,” she said, “it’s going to destroy these intellectual property industries.”

It seems outrageous to me that legislators, lawyers, and RIAA suits can continue to quibble about an issue that most of them completely do not understand. There is undeniable truth to the assessment that the music industry has a legitimate gripe about consumers illegally acquiring music through file swapping services. However, what they don’t seem to realize is that throwing laws and lawsuits at the problem does nothing to help their cause. Consider the following points:

• Imagine that a retail store has caught a 13 year old child attempting to steal hundreds of dollars worth of goods. A typical response might be to call the police, re-acquire the stolen property, and enforce proper disciplinary action on the offending child. Nobody would suggest that the store sue the child for monetary damages thousands of times greater than the actual value of the stolen goods. Yet this is essentially what the RIAA is doing. It doesn’t seem to me like very good publicity or an effective way to establish a mutually beneficial relationship with its customers.
• Contrary to what the RIAA bigwigs and many of the legislators and lawyers seem to be saying, file swapping services have very legitimate and wholly legal uses. The fact that they are used for illegal activity is unfortunate, but certainly not a valid reason to shut them down. I’m pretty certain that many other legitimate internet services have been used for illegal activities. I’m purely speculating here, but perhaps instant message services or email services have been used for terrorist communications? or maybe child pornography has been spread through online photo publishing services? or how about viruses being spread through the very infrastructure that defines the internet? I haven’t heard any cries to shut these services down yet.
• Perhaps even more ignorant of the RIAA is that the legitimate legal uses of these file swapping services can and do directly benefit the music industry. Many, many, many independent and lesser-known artists embrace file sharing services as a means to spread their music and freely distribute and advertise their content. Does the RIAA even realize this? or do they just not care about these artists because they are not a significant contribution to their bottom line?

The music industry has a potentially very profitable music distribution paradigm sitting right in front of them. They have already made a step in the right direction unveiling services such as Napster 2.0 and Apple’s iTunes. However, I am sure that they can exploit this model further to make file-swapping services a true benefit to their business. Rather than wasting money on lawsuits, lawyers, and legislation that ultimately stifles innovation, they should be investing this money directly into research efforts to encourage innovation in this area. You can’t eradicate the pirates and the copyright infringers; they will always find a way to live on. Instead, give people a reason to want to buy music through legitimate means.

Well I have just come across the MapIt! extension for Firefox that makes this task considerably easier. Once the plugin is installed, simply highlight an address on any website and you can get instant access to a map of this address from one of several supported online mapping services via the right click menu. Additionally, you can configure the extension so that it automatically saves your home address (or any address), so that you can get easy access to driving directions to or from the selected address. And of course an almost necessary feature allows you to configure the requested map to be opened in a new browser tab or window.

This is certainly an extension that will prove very useful for me and I would imagine that many others would benefit from it as well.

Researchers at UC Berkeley claim they can just listen to keyboard taps and piece together a 96% accurate reconstruction of English words typed — and 90% of all randomly generated five-character passwords within 20 tries. The techniques used are “relatively easy” using a $10 PC microphone, open source spelling and grammar correction tools, and some custom code written by the researchers which will almost certainly end up on a torrent soon.

It is not necessarily an alarming revelation that this type of a technique can be successfully used to steal passwords or eavesdrop on whatever a person is typing. However, it is further evidence of the notion that the greatest vulnerabilities in any system are not the buffer overflows or the hidden backdoors or anything along those lines that only those with a background in Computer Science really have an understanding of. Instead, the greatest threat to any secure system is typically the password as well as the conscious care with which people choose, treat, store, and use these passwords.