Ruperts Weekly Roundup (28/02/2000)
Published: 14 Mar 2000 16:33 GMT
MONDAY
Through the closed Window...
As Microsoft and the US Department of Justice continue grinding towards a settlement over the antitrust case - does anyone else get visions of a wounded elephant circled by wary, bloodthirsty hyenas? - the latest gossip is that Microsoft will publish the source code behind Windows.
This is the most intriguing option available. It would help the antitrust problems by making it impossible for Microsoft to add functions to Windows that nobody could duplicate, thus invigorating the market. It would help competitors properly analyse the products and produce alternatives guaranteed to be compatible. It wouldn't stop Microsoft from developing the products further, but the company is understandably very reluctant to make its hard-written code public. The billion dollars spent on Windows 2000 would be, as they say in Hollywood, all up there on the screen. No secrets - and can any company survive when all its commercial secrets are public?
Of course it could. Microsoft should look at the positive side of open source - problems get found and fixed. Confidence in open source software is high, especially in areas such as performance, compatibility and security, and these are areas where Windows is rightly perceived as less than stellar. And lots of people are making lots of money from the utterly public Linux: if the steel-trap like business minds at Microsoft can't emulate that, then they should go off and learn to grow apples.
Just a thought. Take me there...
PlayStation unplugged
I don't know how Sony does it. I once had a healthy appetite for videogames, but encroaching age - and years spent reviewing the damned things - has made me turn puce whenever I see yet another cute ickle deathdroid bouncing off a platform after yet another over-endowed hero. I might be persuaded to pick up a controller to pilot Pacman around the maze, but that's just nostalgia.
So how come I want a PlayStation II so badly? It's got a DVD. It looks darned cool. It will do interactivity like a puppy on E. On paper, and from the first reports wafting in from the Land of the Falling Yen, it seems it cuts the mustard as no mustard has been cut before. Mostly, I suspect, it's those four little letters on the front.
At least I'm not alone. The Sony website set up to take advance orders collapsed under its very own denial of service attack just moment after going live - but this time, there wasn't a hacker in site. Those tidal waves of packets flooding in came from eager punters with their very own credit cards to hand. Sony took the site down, sorted the problems and put it back again, but the storm still didn't abate.
Which all looks most promising. Sign me up, Sony. Take me there...
Waiting for the scam
An odd little story, this. Biotech company says on its website that a merger is happening. Financial results on the same web site show blue skies and sunshine. Eager sharedealers spot the facts, and buy in to the company as fast as possible to beat the rush. Shares go up. Everyone happy.
Only it wasn't quite like that. No such merger is happening, and the results aren't as sunny as they seem. The company tells the authorities that the web site was hacked and the whole thing is a mystery. Share trading suspended. Much scratching of heads. It looks like it was a cute bit of naughtiness by some shareholder out there on the Net.
But what's to stop someone within a company from doing this deliberately? With so many outfits now trying to keep their staff by giving them substantial share options, the temptation for a systems bod to set up a scam like this can't be overlooked - and if you're good, you'll already have seen how to make it look as if the whole schmeer was nothing to do with you. And some of those options out there are juicy enough to return seven-figure rewards: if you can crack the problem of offloading your options at just the right time without the smoking gun pointing your way, you're set up for life.
Prediction: there'll be at least one very big e-fraud of this type this year, organised by insiders at a company. Take me there...
Getting our answers off Pat
Want to know what's behind the current BT/Treasury/DTI/Oftel money for logins kerfuffle? Jane Wakefield's been up in Leicester grilling DTI e-commerce minister Patricia Hewitt until she turned a light golden-brown, with quite possibly a sprinking of some grated Double Gloucester on top.
Full details later today, but meanwhile you'll be reassured to know that we're heading towards having 'the richest broadband environment in the world'. I do hope those riches aren't all stored in the bank accounts of the telcos, though. Take me there...
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