TriNetre - Archive for September 16, 2003
(no longer updated)
Asok and IIT features in the Dilbert comic strip of September 15 and September 16. I wonder how this "sub-plot" will evolve :)
Got this news from Slashdot:
This is a very worrying development. This is going to make life hell for sys admins and spam fighters because this will break any spam filter that tries to verify the source MTA hostname claimed in the HELO request is resolvable.
The workaround are easy right now, like getting the ISP to send back a NXDOMAIN for anything that resolves to 64.94.110.11, but long long before VeriSign does something more advanced like adding more IPs etc? Will the ISPs be able to keep a watch out all the time?
The New York Times echoes my sentiments on fire sharing systems:
Some people may well be intimidated by the 261 lawsuits that the music industry has filed against Internet users it says are illegally sharing songs.
But hundreds of software developers are racing to create new systems, or modify existing ones, to let people continue to swap music -- hidden from the prying eyes of the Recording Industry Association of America, or from any other investigators.
The one truth about surviving is adaptation. The technology of P2P networks will adapt. The question is whether RIAA and others who lack the foresight into the possibilities of P2P and other file sharing system can do so.
When Napster was just beep in the radar, not many knew of it, but the amount of files available in the network was still enormous. It was an "underground" project. If the heat gets unbearable, the softwares will become just more harder to track and find and worst comes to worst, go underground again. The adaptive end users will not suffer. But RIAA and likes will. And worse, they will yet again lament about missed opportunities.
[Update] It is heartening to see that the musicians can think better than the RIAA.The McKinsey Quarterly on RFID (free reg. required):
Retailers and consumer products manufacturers, aware of Wal-Mart's interest in RFID, have also begun eyeing it as the next supply chain technology to invest in.
Not so fast. At present, RFID can provide positive returns on investment in certain circumstances. However, our analysis of the current benefits (and costs) of the technology indicates that, for most companies, making substantial investments in it now would be premature.
The main value of RFID is that it eliminates the need to handle items individually?by allowing, say, distribution centers to receive mixed pallets of goods automatically. But if the tags themselves are not robust, reliable, and tamperproof, the savings evaporate.
So the watchword, for both retailers and manufacturers of consumer products, is caution. For most retailers, long-term investments in RFID technology are still risky. They should be undertaken only by the small number of industry-dominating companies, such as Wal-Mart.
Unlike other technologies where there is a first mover advantage, there is no such thing in adopting RFID. Let the technology mature, let the customers get used to it, let the privacy concerns blow out and then slowly when the technology has proved itself, adopt it.
