0514nsm.com

But if nothing else, this counterculture speaks to something that many in this business simply don’t want to mention–readers and Web surfers simply aren’t trusted and need to be lured into more and more pages so they will stay at the site. Simply put, the average Internet user isn’t trusted and never has been. And yet, when they finally are trusted, good things happen to the company who trusts them.

Google is on to something with its counterculture and should be followed by more companies than just search engines. The Internet has changed and no site is safe from the perils of stickiness.

The company does that with its search, does it with Gmail, does it with Reader, does it with Picasa, does it with Docs, and the list goes on. In fact, Google is probably the largest online firm in the world that does as much as it can to get you off its pages. Doesn’t that seem at all counterintuitive?

Maybe because the old idea of keeping people on the site isn’t necessarily the best way to go. Perhaps users want to use a service that acts as a means to an end instead of a vehicle of infinite knowledge. Maybe users are sick and tired of sticky services and want nothing more than to bounce around the Web in search of the very best content no matter where it is.

In essence, this is a company that has the guts to let you do what you want and hope that you will come back because the service is much better than anything else available.

And it’s this idea of speed and the length of time you can get in and get out that makes this counterculture so interesting. Although certain services attempt to do the same thing as Google, the speed with which you can find or do exactly what you want and be on to the next thing is easily what sets Sergey and Larry’s company apart.

In the world of online services and editorial content, a term known as “stickiness” becomes the rallying cry of Webmasters and marketers alike. In essence, these people are fearful that if they lose visitors on the site, they’ll never get them back. But for some reason, Google doesn’t feel that way. In fact, it’s more than happy to send you out in the wild.

And while it’s plain to see Google (and, obviously, other search engines) employing this “push” mentality to search, it may not be so easy to see on its other services. For example, I’m not too sure how that push mentality relates to Gmail at face value. But when you consider the fact that you can set up a Gmail account and use it on any other service, it quickly bears fruit. What about Picasa? Sure, you keep coming back to use the service, but it’s for a reason–you want a better-looking picture and get out of there as quickly as possible.

Have consumer interests changed or is Google just a search engine and, thus, a place where the inherent task of the service is to move people along? According to one Google representative, the counterculture was bred out of the company’s drive to get people out of the way on search.

Why is that? Why has Google always been a company that has single-handedly taken the tried and true mentality of Web site owners for years and turned it upside down. On top of that, why has the company been able to succeed if conventional wisdom suggests that should never happen?

But if nothing else, Google has shown that trust can go a long way and it shouldn’t be abandoned because the Old Guard subscribed to a faulty belief that users need to be kept on a site for as long as possible. Everything on the Internet is a means to an end and never the end itself. Every single person reads editorial content, searches Google, modifies pictures, and listens to music for a reason. And to think that a particular site is that reason is both misguided and dumb.

But perhaps most fascinating is the inherent risk that piggybacks on the counterculture mentality Google is so quick to mention. After all, if just about every Web site on the Net says users should be kept on those pages for fear of losing them to something better, what does it say about Google when it wants users to go out and find something?

NEW YORK–Kevin Mitnick knows that the weakest link in any security system is the person holding the information.

Mitnick and HOPE organizer Emmanuel Goldstein swap stories about using social engineering to get IDs and directories out of workers at telephone central offices.

“Everything happened more than five years ago” and the statute of limitations has passed, he said. “I never said I didn’t deserve to be punished, but it really went overboard putting me in solitary confinement” for eight months.

(Credit:
Elinor Mills)

Dubbed the “most dangerous hacker in the world,” Mitnick was put in solitary confinement and prevented from using a phone after law enforcement officials convinced a judge that he had the ability to start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone, he said.

Kevin Mitnick takes the stage at the Last HOPE conference.

Goldstein does a live phone prank on a Starbucks employee offering aid for laid off employees from the fictional “Last HOPE Foundation” during a social-engineering panel at Last HOPE.

Mitnick didn’t do any whistling on Saturday, but in his keynote following the panel he talked about how he listened in on FBI phone calls during the three years he evaded the FBI, left them doughnuts when he narrowly escaped raids and was chased down by a helicopter. He also demonstrated how to be able to see the phone numbers of callers on caller ID even when they have their number set to be blocked.

(Credit:
Elinor Mills) –>

As a young fugitive hacker, he went to jail for breaking into computer networks, mostly by using his cunning and persuasion than his tech skills. He was an early master of the science of social engineering–manipulating people into doing what you want, such as giving out passwords and other information that unlocks sensitive information on networks.

Mitnick tells attendees at the Last HOPE conference about how he used social engineering on workers at a Hollywood telephone company central office in the middle of the night.

Mitnick, who was released in 2001 after serving five years in jail, announced that he has a contract to write his life story and showed a preview for a reality-based TV series in development in which he would test corporate networks by trying to break into them. As part of his plea agreement, he was banned from writing a tell-all until 2007. He also runs a security consulting firm and lectures.

Below are some videos taken during the panel:

Mitnick regales fellow hackers with stories of his exploits that landed him in jail for five years.

Mitnick and a panel of other hackers discussed their social engineering pranks and gave live demonstrations at the Live HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference late on Saturday.

One of the really cool features of Yahoo Live is its multi-camera viewing panel. In addition to the video feed you tune in to, four other video channels–of other people watching the same stream you are–appear below the main video. You can jump to those channels quickly, and change the lineup of the secondary video channels by selecting names from the main video’s chat window.

Unfortunately, Yahoo Live launched with a serious capacity deficit. I had the service go from functional to “our servers are smoking” several times when the user count broke about 800. Hey, Yahoo: This is why the private beta was invented. If you don’t want to put Yahoo-sized capacity into a new product, don’t pretend that it’s ready for a public viewing.

Talk to the hand. Not all streaming video channels are fun to watch.

See also: Justin.TV, Kyte, Qik, Flixwagon, Comvu, Mogulus, and Operator11. Care to lay odds on which, if any, can survive independently, or which will get acquired by Google, Facebook, or MySpace?

Track Yahoo Live’s progress on the site’s blog.

Yahoo dropped on Thursday night a new service on the world: Yahoo Live. Conceptually it’s very much like uStream and other live video-streaming products. Anyone can set up a video channel and embed the player (though, oddly, not the text chat that goes with it) on their own page.

Yahoo is launching the service with an API, allowing people to mash up their own streaming video services. That’s very cool, and unusually forthcoming. Most services don’t go public with APIs, if ever, until the site has been live for a little while.

No word yet on how Google/YouTube will react, or whether a mobile version will appear.

Hulu is still in private beta but there are 2,000 new Hulu invites waiting for Webware readers. The Superbowl archive won’t go live until after the game, but you can nab your invite now.

Surely a high point in Superbowl advertising history: GoDaddy's 2005 commercial.

I am man enough to admit that I am not a big football fan. Superbowl? Sure, I Tivo it. For the ads. This year, I’ll be checking out Hulu’s Superbowl site after the game. The site promises that all the ads will be up right after the game ends, in high-quality streams.

I like Hulu. When I travel, I tune in to it on my laptop instead of a hotel’s TV. The service always has something dumb to watch, thanks to its relationships with network TV providers.

(Credit:
Finis)

Proposing another of its swimmer-friendly design is Finis, founded by Olympic gold medal swimmer Pablo Morales in 1993. The company has developed products such as snorkels, swimwear, and a series of waterproof MP3 players.

The small Aqua Pulse clips onto the goggle strap and has an integrated infrared sensor that detects the heart rate by measuring light pulses due to capillary blood flow in the skin. An internal computer calculates the heart rate and communicates it audibly at preset intervals (from 20 seconds up to 5 minutes) talking through the bone.

(Credit:
Finis)

Finally, gadget-seeking swimmers are getting equal treatment to sportsmen who enjoy dry, electronic-friendly conditions. California-based Finis is out with the Aqua Pulse, a waterproof heart monitor that relies on bone conduction technology to communicate high-fidelity sound via the temple bone to the inner ear.

Humans normally hear through air conduction, but because there’s no air underneath the water, bone conduction provides the clearest sound quality possible, Finis says.

The idea is that by having this information as they move, swimmers can train in their proper “heart-rate zone” more accurately.

Monitoring your heart rate is supposed to be the most effective way to train, as you can measure intensity and exertion levels and avoid over-training and under-training. But so far, heart rate monitors have generally been made for wearing on the wrist, connected to a skin sensor normally attached around the chest–a setup that’s not really ideal for swimmers.

The Aqua Pulse will sell for $139.99 through the Finis Web site in May.

If the report is true, however, Microsoft could be making an important move. According to many industry observers, the magic price point in video game machines is $200. Go below that, the theory goes, and you potentially open up your machine to the truly mass market.

If the Ars Technica report is true, then, Microsoft could be the first to break the magic $200 barrier and such a move could go a very long way to helping the company reach its declared commitment to winning the console wars.

Microsoft said it does not comment on rumors.

If I hear from Microsoft with comment about this, dear readers, so will you.

Update (Monday, 2:43 PM): This story has been modified to reflect correspondence from Microsoft this morning.

Right now, the lowest-priced of the next-generation consoles is Nintendo’s
Wii, which runs $249. Sony’s
PlayStation 3 can be had for $399 for a model with a 40GB hard drive, and this fall it plans to introduce an 80GB model for that same $399 price.

According to Kuchera, Microsoft may well be readying a new round of price cuts for the Xbox 360.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

If you can see past the extremely odd prose style of this Ars Technica piece Friday by Ben Kuchera, there’s actually some potentially very interesting news there: Microsoft may be ready to truly reach out to the mass market with its
Xbox 360.

Now, writes Kuchera, courtesy of his source, “the mole,” Microsoft is planning to roll out new pricing on the entire line of Xboxes. For a console with no hard drive, the price could be $199; for one with a 60GB hard drive, it could be $299; and the high-end model, known as the Elite, with a 160GB hard drive, could go for $399.

Remember, just prior to E3, Microsoft lowered the price of the 20GB Xbox 360 from $349 to $299.

Google was equally exuberant. “It’s important to have up-to-date market data,” said group product manager Katie Jacobs Stanton on a Google Finance blog posting on Monday. “Prices will update automatically, once per second, to reflect current market conditions.”

Previously, the Nasdaq data had been available only with a 15-minute lag on the sites.

Yahoo, whose Yahoo Finance site long predates Google’s rival, announced a partnership last week with BATS Trading to offer free real-time quotes on its quote summary page. The quotes, which Yahoo said cover the full market, will be expanded to portfolio and other finance pages in coming weeks, Yahoo said.

Update 1:15 p.m. PT: I added information about the addition of real-time quotes on Yahoo Finance.

“With universal access to the Internet and the real-time nature of the Web, investors need real-time data, and now they don’t have to pay for it,” said Adena Friedman, executive vice president of the Nasdaq OMX group.

Google doesn’t show New York Stock Exchange quotes in real time, however. “Currently, we are only able to provide real-time data that represents trades executed on the Nasdaq exchange,” spokeswoman Anne Espiritu said in a statement.

Real-time stock trading data aren’t easy to come by on the Internet, but Google, CNBC, and The Wall Street Journal now can show real-time Nasdaq stock prices on their Web sites, the companies announced Monday.

One technology often cited as the antidote to dirty power sources is carbon capture and sequestration, where carbon dioxide gas is pumped underground and removed from the atmosphere.

“This is an extraordinary turnaround here in the space of one year. The overriding reason for this shift has been mounting concern about climate change,” Lester said. The other reason is because of soaring construction costs, which have gone up 76 percent in the last three years.

“Carbon sequestration has been something that the coal industry has leaned on to avoid facing the full force of climate concern. My sense is that it will never be a viable option,” he said.

In addition to grassroots opposition, Lester said that state governments have been increasingly bold in pushing back on coal-fired power plants. In Florida, for example, the state government turned down a project because its backers did not do an analysis comparing new plant construction to energy efficiency measures.

Last week, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley announced the Carbon Principles, a set of guidelines for investors in power producers to weigh risks and business opportunities associated with climate change.

Update: The president of the Edison Electrical Institute, Thomas R. Kuhn, on Wednesday addressed Wall Street financiers, the Wall Street Journal notes.

If the U.S. converted to compact fluorescent bulbs, it could decommission 80 coal plants operating at 500 megawatts, he said.

The uncertainly around the cost attached to carbon dioxide emissions is also making it difficult for Wall Street investors to finance projects.

Brown said that one year ago, there were 151 proposed or planned coal-fired power plants. About two-thirds of those proposals have been challenged legally or canceled.

In a conference call and paper, Lester, president of the Earth Policy Institute, compiled a number of setbacks for coal projects in the past year from governments, local opposition, and financiers.

Brown noted that Wall Street investors are staying clear of carbon sequestration projects because the costs are so high. Building pipelines for CO2, for example, requires huge infrastructure investments.

The most recent investment barrier came from Bank of America, whose CEO on Tuesday said the company has decided to figure in the cost of carbon dioxide emissions when it evaluates new power plant construction projects, even in the absence of carbon-restricting regulations.

The U.S. Department of Energy-funded FutureGen demonstration project was scrapped because of rising costs late last month in favor of a new project which would go online in 2015.

A cheap but dirty power source, coal supplies about half of the electricity in the United States and is growing rapidly in China, India, and other developing countries.

Prominent environmental author Lester Brown predicted on Thursday that coal-fired power plants will be banned in the United States because of climate change concerns and the financial liabilities of greenhouse gas emissions.

Even without a federal ban or moratorium on new coal plant construction, he forecast that a de facto ban could take place at the state level, as it has in other countries.

Kuhn said that the power generation industry is adjusting to climate change, but at the same time “we continue to have a business to run.” He argued that some climate legislation proposals are too stringent and would unnecessarily impact consumers and business competitiveness.

“I would encourage you to keep an open mind to the variety of solutions and the use of all fuel sources–including coal–as you make decisions to finance new facilities. All options must be on the table if we are to make the transition to a low carbon future without major disruptions in the economy and our quality of life,” Kuhn said in his speech.

It’s partly of concern because it’s only a matter of time before the power is expanded to monitor all domestic networks. After all (and as the article points out), much of the most dangerous Internet activity would be against private enterprises. Bringing down or stealing data from Visa, American Express, and other such companies could do much more damage than launching a denial of service attack against the Environmental Protection Agency.

That’s a bit worrisome.

commentary

Why does this matter? Consider:

Earlier this month President Bush signed a directive that gives the National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence agencies to monitor Internet traffic to protect all government computer systems. As the Washington Post reports, this is causing particular concern because the NSA’s focus has traditionally been on overseas activity, not domestic.

I’m not paranoid but I’m with Nick Carr on this one: we’ll never know just what is being monitored, or how, or why.

Allowing a spy agency to monitor domestic networks is worrisome, said James X. Dempsey, policy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “We’re concerned that the NSA is claiming such a large role over the security of unclassified systems,” he said. “They are a spy agency as well as a communications security agency. They operate in total secrecy. That’s not necessary and not the most effective way to protect unclassified systems.”

All we have right now is the fact that the authority has yet to be granted to monitor such networks. Again, I’m not a privacy freak but I’m a wee bit concerned once the government starts to spend an inordinate amount of time looking inward rather than outward.

First some background: On Tuesday, AMD announced that IBM had successfully produced a working test chip using next-generation Extreme Ultra-Violet (EUV) lithography for the critical first layer of metal connections across an entire chip. Previous projects utilizing EUV produced working chip components on only a very small portion of the chip.

AMD is leaning increasingly on IBM as it battles with Intel for next-generation microprocessor manufacturing leadership. And the payout to IBM is significant.

Intel has other ideas on how to get to 32nm and beyond using more conventional lithography and “clever design tricks,” according to Scansen. And Intel is already moving forward aggressively with 32nm. The company will switch to immersion lithography at 32nm on a “couple of critical layers,” according to a statement made in December of last year by Brian Krzanich, vice president and general manager of manufacturing and operations at Intel. The more traditional dry lithography will still be used on less critical layers.

AMD and IBM said Tuesday that the next step in proving viability of the EUV lithography for production will be to apply it not only to metal interconnects but to all critical layers to show that an entire working microprocessor can be made utilizing EUV lithography.

This development follows a series of joint disclosures over the past six years that highlight the crucial expertise that IBM provides to AMD. The two companies began cooperating on advanced chip manufacturing in 2002, when AMD was having trouble with silicon-on-insulator technology, or SOI. AMD got SOI to work with help from IBM and they have been renewing agreements periodically since then. First, in September 2004, to include development of technologies through 2008 for 32nm manufacturing and then again, in November 2005, the agreement was extended through 2011 for the 22nm process. In other areas, AMD is now cooperating with IBM on “high-k/metal gate” transistor technology for next-generation 32nm chips–a technology that Intel is employing in its current 45nm chips.

All this collaboration between IBM and AMD means of course that future manufacturing hurdles are high–for everybody. Including Intel, which has delayed procurement of an R&D EUV lithography tool from Nikon, according to a report in EE Times, casting doubt on the viability of EUV at Intel.

According to the Tuesday announcement, IBM and its partners patterned the first layer of metal interconnects (between the transistors), then, after other processes, the EUV device structures underwent electrical testing at AMD, with transistors showing characteristics consistent with those of test chips built using more standard techniques, the two companies said.

From this perspective, the IBM-AMD EUV statement could be seen as promising for AMD. “AMD’s ability to get a full chip done with an EUV tool is pretty significant,” Scansen said. Some have even been speculating that EUV would not be ready for 22nm, he said. “(But) this announcement might suggest that development is quickening.”

AMD fab

“IBM is a critical part of AMD’s Asset Smart manufacturing (and) R&D strategy,” an AMD spokesperson said. “By sharing the R&D cost for semiconductor process technology across the membership of the IBM Alliance, each of the parties, including AMD, get access to leading-edge manufacturing technology.”

Even with the substantial payout of $400 million, AMD goes on to say in the 10K that a termination of the agreement “could significantly increase our research and development costs, and we could experience delays or other setbacks in the development of new process technologies, any of which would materially adversely affect us.”

This kind of know-how is not cheap. AMD’s 2007 10K form says the following about the agreement that extends to December 31, 2011: “We anticipate that, under this agreement, we will pay fees to IBM of approximately $400 million in connection with joint development projects between 2008 and 2011.”

(Credit:
AMD)

Here’s the challenge for AMD. Intel’s R&D budget dwarfs AMD’s. Intel spends about $6 billion per year on R&D, AMD about one-sixth of this. On the manufacturing front, it’s even more of a mismatch. For the 45nm generation of chips alone, Intel plans to eventually have four plants making 45nm processors, which Intel is currently manufacturing commercially. AMD doesn’t even have 45nm out the door yet (commercially) and needs a chip manufacturing heavyweight like IBM to stay in the running.

IBM has a state-of-the-art manufacturing line in East Fishkill, N.Y.–about 90 miles away from Albany–among other locations.

On its Web site, AMD lists transistors, chip connection, packing, and lithography as areas of collaboration. Much of the collaboration takes place at the Albany Nanotech Center. Not coincidentally, Albany is the same spot where AMD has plans to build a chip plant. The chipmaker said recently that if it decides to go forward with the $3.2 billion fabrication plant, construction would start next January, according to a recent report at Timesunion.com.

Why EUV? The size of transistors and the metal lines that connect them is directly related to the wavelength of light that is used to project a chip design onto a wafer. EUV lithography uses a wavelength of 13.5 nanometers (nm), significantly shorter than today’s 193nm lithography techniques, allowing the march toward smaller and smaller chip features to continue (though EUV has its own set of problems discussed below). EUV is currently targeted at the 22nm generation of chips, due in three to five years. Intel, a few years back, was targeting EUV for the 45nm generation of chips but abandoned it.

As with any collaboration, part of the impetus is to reduce costs. AMD’s work with contract manufacturer Chartered Semiconductor is another cost-saving measure. And AMD is by no means the first company to go outside for help and farm out development and manufacturing, said Don Scansen, a semiconductor technology analyst at Semiconductor Insights. But AMD may do more of this as it continues “to get hammered by analysts and the stock market,” said Scansen. “IBM is shouldering most of the process development work out of the Common Platform partners–including AMD.”