Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer

Generally I've used either Netscape Navigator or Mozilla Firefox as my preferred browser. Both are free downloads; Navigator comes with a suite of other applications that have occasional usefulness, as, for example, Composer (HTML editor). Firefox is similar, but includes a number of interface improvements I hold in high esteem.

The Mozilla Foundation is an organization that promotes open-source software. Oddly, the non-profit organization owns the for-profit* corporation, Mozilla Corporation (since Aug '05), that actually develops the browser Firefox and the e-mail client Thunderbird. Firefox was released Nov '04 and has been downloaded 90 million times. Like Netscape's Communicator Suite, Mozilla's Suite includes an HTML editor. The source code for the editor, browser, email client, and news reader are all taken from Netscape's products, although Mozilla has substantially improved it. In fact, "Mozilla" was the original code name for Navigator, and was a contraction of "Mosaic Killer" (i.e., the original NCSA browser). The Mozilla staff are essentially the old crew of Netscape, which has been dissolved. Mozilla sourcecode is not only used in Firefox, but also Camino (for Macintosh).

Internet Explorer has stopped releasing new versions for some time; the main reason people like me have decided to abandon IE is its "Open X" component, which automatically installs programs when prompted by the webpage one happens to be visiting. Naturally, this exposes one to both obsolescence and viruses. Avant Force offers Avant, an interface layer on top of IE, which does stuff like support tabs; it is not a true browser. In addition, there are browsers based on the KDE Project's KHTML (Apple Safari) and on ODA (Opera Software Opera). Opera is designed to accommodate small screens, such as those on PDAs.

I was motivated to research these programs as a result of "Mozilla suffers growing pains" and "Firefox loses momentum" (The Register). The latter article has a totally misleading headline, IMO. It declares that Mozilla is running out of MS-IE "haters," but the text of the article explains that most of the competition is coming from Opera. The reason, in turn, that Opera is so successful is that Opera 8.0 (released April '05) was (a) targetted at the W-CDMA combatible cell phones being adopted en masse in the EU and NE Asia, this really requires the Opera browser. Moreover, beginning 20 Sep '05, Opera was availabe free without ads.

---

*Actually, Mozilla Corp. is not for-profit, but taxable. This article at the American Bar Association's website is pretty helpful in explaining the distinction. Basically, the difference is that a non-profit may have certain revenue-generating activities that it will farm out to a conventional corporation. The conventional corporation, being wholly owned by the non-profit, cannot be characterized as a "for-profit" since it necessarily shares the non-profit's mission. But it is taxable.

What Really Matters: Batteries

While it's the new capabilities that make headlines,...

(BCWS Consulting/3G Newsroom) Despite the hype about mobile data services and internet access on the go, what users really want is longer life for their mobile batteries. At least that is what market research firm TNS found in their recent study of almost 7,000 mobile users in 15 countries. The vast majority (75%) of respondents replied that better battery life is the main feature they want from a future converged device.

If we have a future in the USA that doesn't look like that of Argentina, then that future probably involves the production and global export of massively more sophisticated, powerful energy delivery systems AT THE CORE of our economy. This will require development of a lot of stuff that doesn't even have conceptual competition.

An Exposition of the Problem of Technology

One of the reasons why philosophy is a useful topic of research is that it allows one to learn how to compare ideas on dissimilar subjects and see if any important innovation has been made. Another thing it allows is for people to analyze what the solution to a particular problem is, partly by creating an abstract system of rendering a quandary as a set of statements, then allowing one to deduce what the resolution to that quandary is as another set of statements. For an illustration of this, I recommend this extremely handy exposition of logical fallacies (link goes directly to an example of precisely what I mean). Notice the example illustrates how one can examine a statement to see if it supports another idea.

Because of the abstract nature of philosophy, it's possible to examine a broad range of ideas to see if they have any originality. Likewise, it's possible to establish if something suggested as an example of a future dilemma is, or is not, just a play on words. So, for example, a reccurring question in political science is the comparative merits of a multi-party system: is it worthwhile for voters or political activists to seek political system that allows multiple parties to flourish, or are such systems unstable and unproductive? Since a political system is a technology of organization, what are the frontiers of that technology, i.e., what are some advances on this technology that we can look forward to? And since most improvements in the technology of human activity comes from cross-pollenation with the technologies of other human activities, what are some things we can expect will influence our "technology" of economic organization?

In future posts I'll be looking at the efforts of various people to "cross-pollenate" technologies from the realm of telecommunications and information technology (TCIT) into the reddress of social problems. For now, this post has been very abstract, because we're in the phase of outlining the method I'll use:

1. Outline the nature of the social problem


2. Express this as a philosophical proposition


3. Deduce the "resolution" "symbolically"


4. Discuss the tangible forms this might take

In the process, I'll be referring to Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971) and Mathematical Optimization and Economic Theory, by Michael Intriligator (1971). These might seem odd choices, but I'll explain why in a bit.

A Farewell

When I first set up this weblog I included in the links another weblog called "Slowbiz" because it included articles that actually reflected on the philosophical significance of new technologies. Here's an extract from one of them:

I was overjoyed to discover (thanks to Elsie Maio) that someone has extended the Slow concept to money; and to the concept of capital, no less. Woody Tasch's piece on Slow Money argues that the venture capital space needs a more appropriate way to think about the potential returns of investments in sustainable and renewable industries.

Equally interesting is the Investor's Circle, of which Tasch is CEO, which is a venture capital fund which puts the "slow money" where its mouth is.

Since 1992, Investor's Circle has been providing start-up capital to ventures in the fields of renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, organic food businesses and other "green"-oriented businesses.

While Tasch has specifically presented the idea of slow money in the context of funding food businesses which do not fit the "fast" returns of traditional venture capital investment, it is easy to extend his argument that investment needs to be context sensitive to the notion that both captital and profit need to be conceived more broadly.

We need a notion that ties together investment capital, human capital, intellectual capital and social capital, not as separate goods, but as interwoven strands of a stronger conception of "return on investment". Slow Money seems like great a place to start.

I was interested in this especially since the author is an entrepreneur, and his views on the normative future of capitalism is worth some respect.

I'd like to address the topic of this essay in a wee bit. However, since this blog was last updated in May, I'm removing it from the sidebar.

ICHIM (Part 2)

Another item at ICHIM I thought was especially interesting was Me-Ror v.2 (Vadim Bernard). Here, the user sits in a booth and evidently moves a hand about: This installation gives an account of a research on a prospective setting for the video image. By combining an infra-red camera and an infra-red source placed in the same axis, it is possible, by filtering the visible light, to obtain an image in levels of gray where the light intensity of the image is a function of the depth of the scene. The closer the filmed object is, the more it is lighted up. In addition one films the same scene, but this time in color. By combining the two images captured in a single flowing video, one obtains a new format of video to four layers : three layers for color (RVB) and a layer for the depth (3D). This technology was, IIRC, used by the USAF back in the early 1980's to analyze stationary images for depth.

This was an idea I had had long ago, of future interfaces in which a user moves a hand through a hologram, such as a Munsell Color Space, and the computer reads the motion of hand and eye. There are many implications of this sort of interface, one of which is the inversion of space; instead of the future PDA user being spacially confined to the tiny device she is using, the device uses (say, holographic technology to) project object and response-observation into whatever space the user needs.

What is IPTV?

Email alert from In-Stat:

IPTV in China will experience only moderate adoption before it takes off in 2008, reports In-Stat. With the emergence of salient applications and a maturing technology, the market is expected to get a boost from the 2008 Olympics hosted by Beijing, the high-tech market research firm says. This is expected to result in 4.5 million subscribers and US$231.3 million in set top box (STB) revenue in 2008.

Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) is television whose content is delivered using internet protocols, regardless of the actual transmission medium. At this point in history, a very large share of internet users get online access via a coaxial cable, just like cable TV. Often I watch segments of the Daily Show online; it's via a TV cable that I use exclusively for transmitting digital signals, not the analog signals used on conventional TV broadcasting (or transmission of cable TV). The difference between the two is that IPTV employs a different format.

Television delivered through the internet is not necessarily IPTV, however. Internet television relies entirely on internet protocols (i.e., a conventional modem) to transmit programs. IPTV requires a set top box to handle the higher throughput of realtime transmission.

Technically, what the box does is run the signal through a set of microprocessors to obtain a more refined interpretation of the signal. One way of using a coaxial cable , or Ethernet, to transmit the far larger volumes of data required in real-time TV broadcasting is to have a computer subject the signal to far greater "scrutiny" (my word), allowing the service provider to embed more data into it.

The main provider of IPTV in Asia is presently now TV, based in Hong Kong.

Massive Losses to Identity Fraud

From the Register:

Reported ID theft losses represent only the tip of an iceburg, dwarfed by fraudulent losses run up by crooks assuming completely fictitious identities, according to analysts Gartner.

It reckons ID theft will claim 10m US in 2005 resulting in losses of around $15bn from 50m accounts. By comparison "victimless" fraud - bad debt run up in the name of non-entities - will hit $50bn this year. [...] US banks are so keen to recruit new customers they will open up accounts on the basis of identification from only a pay-as-you-go mobile phone bill (a type of account that is even easier to open) without checks on the validity of supplied social security numbers. Once a bank account is open crooks will pay bills religiously, eventually earning enough trust to obtain credit cards with higher and higher limits.

A lot of populist readers out there may be tempted to run out and try this. It strikes me as an example of the moral hazard that I feared might arise in the latest bankruptcy bill. For those of you unfamiliar with recent US congressional activity, in March our Congress passed a bill that made our bankruptcy laws much tougher on debtors, but also facilitated the formation of unsecured liabilities on the part of banks. Any honest economist (as opposed to the prostitutes employed by the financial sector) would advise against this, on the grounds that it stimulates banks and other financial intermediaries to make it easier for unworthy borrowers to borrow, since the lenders know they will have an easier time of it collecting—on the government's dime, of course.

In order for an economy to function, it is necessary for borrowers to be financially responsible. But under the new legislation, all of the onus was placed on the borrower, while lenders send out almost 2000 pieces of mail for each new account. That this would lead to endemic fraud, seems like a reasonable thing to expect most economists to anticipate. Didn't happen.

About the iPod

By now, I presume nearly all readers have heard of the iPod. Here's a page at Apple illustrating the device.

This is essentially an MP3 storage device that stores up to 10,000 songs (assuming a Pop music format; I suppose for classical fans like me, that doesn't translate to 10,000 symphonies). The iPod was released in 2001 and made an impact partly through its immense popularity as a musical playback medium, partly through its popularization of MP3's as a medium for propagating music (in essence, allowing hobbyist-bands to enter the market with free samples of their songs; also, a revival of the political ballad, recorded to influence opinions rather than make money for the artist), and partly through its groundbreaking commercials.

However, the iPod was also more expensive than existing alternatives; while it also allowed one to carry one's entire music collection everywhere, it also required one to digitize that collection from an existing collection. Since then, the iPod's price has declined, and Apple has introduced a mini-iPod, the iPod Nano (Daniel's News Space).


Unlike the iPod and the iPod mini it replaces, the iPod Nano employs flash memory rather than the tiny hard disk drives developed as PC cards for laptops. The Nano will store only 1,000 songs, reflecting the discovery from practice that a thousand is the mode for users. I've been a little startled at the strong emphasis on reduced size; it seems to me that there will perhaps be joint efforts between Apple and digital camera producers to incorporate the iPod into cameras, or perhaps other PDA devices. At this point, I'd think it's handier to have a single device that does many things, than to have half a dozen gizmos, all quite small, with different features.

Besides, cross-marketing could get a lot of marginal users to become accustomed to using "the other half," i.e., if you get an iPod-Olympus digital camera, and you normally don't listen to music so much, having the iPod there all the time might get you habituated to using it.

This is Me 2 Years Ago

In regards to my previous post, this writer expresses some extremely idealistic views about the internet and its power to challenge bureaucracies. One difference is, the linked author has better writing skills, but I presume that's obvious.

This partisan practice of waging malicious and unprincipled disinformation campaigns is so far beyond bad journalism that it resembles mental illness more than it resembles rational political discourse. Although we must exercise extreme caution before characterizing the behavior of any political group as pathological, there are situations in which such a characterization is sadly accurate. In this particular instance, there is a well-documented pathology, complete with classic psychological manifestations like the idealization of self, the demonization of others, the gross distortion and outright denial of factual realities, and the projection of one's own unacknowledged motives and behaviors onto others.

Me c. 2003 says, right on! But the blogger network has proven more a bureaucratic intranet (i.e., a tool for transmitting memos and corporate mission statements, or career assignments) than a tool for dissent.

Technology and Bureaucracy (Part 3)

(Part 1)

In his excellent book, The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder remarks that the computer is a "status quo" technology because it facillitates the running of bureaucracies; additional uses, such as matching the power of bureaucracies to do mass mailings or archive research data, are relatively unthreatening to the bureaucracy they are used against. Kidder, unfortunately, doesn't dwell on this point; the review I linked to, while generally favorable, correctly objects that it is by and large a heroic portrait of the people who introduce new technology products. The point, though, about technologies helping either bureaucracies or their opponents, has been a fascinating one to me for decades.

While the stand-alone minicomputer that Kidder wrote about was obviously suited mainly to making bureaucracy more efficient, it's a little harder to see how the internet, let alone, 3G and PDAs, would do so. For the last three years I've tended to harbor a furtive hope that blogs would strike a mighty blow against bureaucracy's steady encroachment on all forms of reality. At night, as I lay in bed waiting to fall asleep, I wondered what utter defeat would look like: a cyberspace in which useful websites used technology that required costly developement tools to implement, shutting out people who did not make money from their sites; or else, internet service that furnished users with "smartbrowsers," browsers with search-engines that confined the user/subscriber to selected sites.

I have to say that I think the PDA, so far, looks like it is turning into this. The cost of implementing new 3G technology has been so great, and PCS providers have sunk so much into market entry, that suspect those providers are the devils in a faustian bargain with governments that sold them wireless channels. They're going to recoup that money through commericals, not user subscriptions. That, and consumerist quietism, are strangling us.

Technology and Bureaucracy (Part 2)

(Part 1)

Blogs, independent news gathering, and the connected PDA are all challenges to bureaucratic power. Bureaucracies, whether belonging to firms, NGOs, or governments, are essential tools for the services those organizations render, but they have to be accountable. If not, they become a complete menace to human freedom and safety.

This is so obvious I feel embarrassed having to say it. Put abstractly, it is non-threatening enough, even vapid. Applied to specific situations, like the military conduct at Guantanamo Bay, one is likely to be called a traitor by high ranking government officials. Likewise, libertarians don't win my respect when they essentially reason that firms that ruthlessly suppress independent information about themselves, are somehow entitled to because "they're private." In other words, libertarians seem anxious to establish that, in the power struggle between the corporation, state, and individual, if the corporation wins absolute control, then it's absolutely OK. No matter how the corporation uses that power. Such prima facie defenses, in my opinion, prove immutably that the people who propound them are fanatics, as dangerous to freedom as fascists are.

And the fact is that this is one of the reasons why "intimate computing" has failed to pose a significant challenge to bureaucracy. Bureaucracies seem to have recruited robotic defenders, not merely of them, which should be understandable, but of their worst excesses. The tiny minority of blogs or independent media sources that actually do show genuine signs of intellectual curiosity, are bogged down by human "bots" that rabidly attack them and slime them. The affair of "Rathergate" is quite illustrative; while companies like Clearchannel can set up AM radio stations to broadcast the "movement conservative" message everywhere in the country, they require a steady stream of petty scandals to demonize their enemies. I occasionally monitor AM radio stations, and I've noticed that they don't actually promote a positivist or normative message at all—not anymore. Nowadays, it's all hate all the time—hatred not merely of "leftists," "feminazis," "the homosexual agenda," or the "liberal elites," but also of conservatives who depart, however briefly, from the "movement." In order to personally slime even the most impeccably credentialed conservatives, "movement conservatives" require a machine that digs up dirt or circulates slander that isn't even true. In this respect, the power of the internet to hunt down minions and duplicate talking points, seems an insuperable weapon of bureaucrats to protect themselves.

(Part 3)

Technology and Bureaucracy (Part 1)

Bureaucracies, whether belonging to corporations or governments (or to NGOs), are far more similar that most ideologues imagine them to be. One of the objections to anarcho-capitalism (usually referred to by its adherents as "libertarianism") is that it regards only government power as insidious; corporate power, enhanced as it often is by a weak state, is regarded as harmless or "natural," and therefore, legitimate. Self-identified "libertarians" are likely to claim relations with a corporation are voluntary, whereas those with a state are not. But employers in a labor market nearly always have identical employment policies, and the ability of frustrated employees to "seek employment elsewhere" is usually not even academic. It's certainly easier for a determined millionaire to evade taxes on all but a token share of his income, than it is for most wage employees to do anything whatsoever to countervail the power of their employer over their lives.


This is not a leftist rant (for one thing, I'm not a "leftist" and I suspect this asymmetry of power is simply inevitable). However, I do want to alert readers to the fact that we live in times when the mere observation of facts is presumed to expose one to the allegation of thought-crime. It's disturbing to me, even now, that about two thirds or so of all blogs with any interest in public matters, display precisely zero intellectual curiosity. Rather than serve as a journal of the personal explorations of the writer, they serve as billboards for entirely Manichean world views. This is so even for bloggers who are professors or college students; the blogs don't express a point of view, so much as a body of beliefs that the reader must "take or leave." Facts that, however superficially, deviate from this belief system are accepted as evidence that whoever presented them is actually a "troll" or a stooge of "the other side." I'll be referring to this point in my next post.