COMPUTERS and IT

[Associated Press, January 8, 2007]

For more than a decade, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and others in the tech industry have touted a vision of a connected lifestyle, in which digital content can move across devices throughout the home and be taken on the go.

It's been a slow march. But as Gates kicked off the International Consumer Electronics Show today, the industry has come further than ever in delivering on that concept. "Every year represents a lot of progress," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The improvements have taken many forms: building the underlying networks; developing the technologies to get devices to communicate; creating the hardware that can handle the digital data; returning to the drawing board when there were flops; and finally, getting the backing of entertainment sources to embrace this new era of media consumption. But more work remains, Gates said.

"There's still a lot to be done there, especially when you get into rights-oriented content and how simple that can be made so the creative people are happy with it and yet the flexibility (for consumers) is there," he said.

In his 11th annual speech headlining the world's largest tech convention, Gates highlighted how Microsoft's latest creations and partnerships aim to make it easier for people to navigate, consume, share and manage different kinds of content, whether they are games, movies, family photos, sports or work.

The keynote came as the software titan heads into one of its most significant periods of attracting consumers to its widening portfolio of computing, gaming and entertainment products. Its software has pervaded not only computers, but also cell phones, portable media players, home media centres and even cars.

The consumer launch of Windows Vista later this month is the company's first major overhaul of its operating system since Windows XP was launched in 2001.

Gates discussed some additional features not yet disclosed. Among them is a new "sports lounge" area so users tapped into Microsoft's MSN Soapbox online site can simultaneously view additional sports information, up-to-date fantasy sports data and the latest sports videos.

Microsoft has also teamed with the Nickelodeon and Showtime television networks and Starz Entertainment's Vongo subscription movie service so their web-based content will be directly available through Vista. Movies downloaded from Vongo can also be played on the TV using Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console.

Sharing the stage with Gates was Robbie Bach, head of the company's entertainment and Xbox division, to highlight how the machine is becoming a home entertainment hub that does more than just play games. More than 10.4 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold since the system launched in November 2005. The Xbox Live online marketplace now sells downloadable movies and features more than 1,000 hours of TV and movie content.

During the keynote, Gates also unveiled how Microsoft's computer-making partners have designed new PCs to take advantage of Vista's software advances.

Hewlett-Packard is set to have a new all-in-one computer and touch-screen display designed to fit into a kitchen nook or a family room, letting users scribble messages on the screen or watch a movie. Toshiba is debuting a high-end tablet notebook that has a secondary display on the front edge so users can read incoming e-mail or calendar alerts even while the laptop lid is closed.

Sony is planning a new Windows Vista media centre that is white and round, meant to look more like an entertainment electronics device than a computer.

Gates also announced Windows Home Server, a software platform that can serve as a beefy repository for a household's mushrooming collection of digital photos, videos, music and documents. The server also provides automatic data backups and allows family and friends to access some files remotely over the internet.

To some, however, the most interesting announcement by Gates might be the addition of Texas Hold 'Em in its preloaded selection of games in Vista. How appropriate in Vegas.

[Associated Press, February 15, 2006]

Lawmakers blasted four U.S. tech giants Wednesday, accusing them of willingly helping China suppress dissent in return for access to a booming internet market.

Representatives from Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco Systems. and Google defended themselves at a House International Relations subcommittee hearing, but a Google official acknowledged that figuring out China's internet market "has been a difficult exercise."

Lawmakers, however, were skeptical of what several saw as the companies' efforts to explain their business practices in China only after a recent crush of negative media and government attention. Rep. Tom Lantos, the full committee's top Democrat, told the company officials that they had amassed great wealth and influence "but apparently very little social responsibility. "Your abhorrent actions in China are a disgrace," Lantos said at the hearing. "I simply don't understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."

The companies, in prepared testimony, appealed for guidance on how to work in what they called a challenging marketplace. Google's Elliot Schrage said "the requirements of doing business in China include self-censorship — something that runs counter to Google's most basic values and commitments as a company." Still, he said, Google decided to enter China because it thought it "will make a meaningful, though imperfect, contribution to the overall expansion of access to information in China."

The companies also said the U.S. government should play a key role in encouraging internet freedom internationally. Google urged the State Department and the U.S. trade representative to press U.S. concerns on censorship during talks with foreign governments.

Yahoo's Michael Callahan testified that "these issues are larger than any one company, or any one industry. We appeal to the U.S. government to do all it can to help us provide beneficial services to Chinese citizens lawfully and in a way consistent with our shared values," he said.

James Keith, the State Department's senior adviser on East Asia, told lawmakers that China's efforts to manipulate the internet have increased in the last year, "sending a chilling message to internet users."

China's "effort to regulate the political and religious content of the internet is counter to our interest, to international standards and, we argue, to China's own long-term modernization goals," Keith said in prepared testimony.

U.S. tech companies eyeing China face a dilemma, analysts say: while keen to tap a market that could soon eclipse America's, they must also worry about the perception they're helping China harass dissidents."They are in an extremely dicey position," said John Palfrey, a Harvard Law School professor who studies the internet.

The potential for profit is great. China is estimated to have more than 110 million internet users. But to do business, U.S. companies must satisfy a government that fiercely polices internet content. Filters block objectionable foreign websites; regulations ban what the Chinese consider subversive and pornographic content and require service providers to enforce censorship.

A new survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists calls China's efforts to control its media "unique in the world's history. Never have so many lines of communication in the hands of so many people been met with such obsessive resistance from a central authority."

China says its aims are benign — to protect its citizens, and especially children, from "the immoral and harmful content" of the internet. Critics say the limits China imposes go further and are aided by U.S. companies. They point to a new Google search engine that censors some results. Yahoo, they say, helped police identify and convict a journalist who had criticized human rights abuses.

“The companies are "enabling dictatorship. Cooperation with tyranny should not be embraced for the sake of profits," said Smith, the Republican chairman of the House subcommittee on global human rights.

The businesses that have adopted Chinese internet standards say they must obey local laws. They lack the leverage, they say, to influence world governments.

SIXTY YEARS OF INNOVATION BY THE BIG BLUE

QUESTION

I recently read an article by a data storage expert who claimed that burned CD-Rs and CD-RWs can be expected to last only two to five years and not a whole lot more. I personally have commercially pressed CDs from the 1980s that still play fine, but I have begun to notice that some of my burned CD-Rs are beginning to skip, or not start (player shows "no disc"), or have a strange echo that was not on the original. This sounds serious! The expert suggests that for secure long-term storage, high -quality magnetic tape is the way to go. Are any of your readers beginning to notice this problem with their burned CDs, and are there other opinions about how to combat it? Are some burnable CDs of higher quality than others? What are the best storage methods for the discs that will make them last longest?

[Submitted by: Carl N. of Cottonwood, Arizona]

ANSWER

Factory-pressed CDs are totally different from recordable CDs. In a pressed CD, the data is literally "molded into" (actually pressed into) the media and will not disappear unless the CD is physically damaged. Recordable CDs use a dye that changes color or reflectivity when heated. There are different dye types commonly used in recordable CDs--phthalocyanine, azo, and cyanine, in particular--and they do not all have the same life expectancy and stability.

All of the studies that I have seen except one suggest that properly burned one-time media (-R media, but not -RW media; see below) has an expected life of decades to possibly even centuries. There was a study by NIST (a U.S. government agency, used to be the National Bureau of Standards) on the relative stability of different media here:

STABILITY STUDY

You can see some comparisons in the NIST study of the different dye types. But this study did not attempt to extrapolate the data to a life expectancy, although it did provide data about the relative stability of the different dyes and reflection layers behind them.

However, opinions still differ as to how long such media will last. The OSTA (Optical Storage Technology Association), in a report here:

OPTICAL STORAGE

suggests that optical recordable media will last 50 to 200 years. This observation is backed by quite a number of studies that I have seen done both by the media makers and others. However, some storage experts suggest numbers more in line with your question, for example the expert in this report suggests a life of only 2 to 5 years:

LIFE EXPECTANCY

The bottom line is that you are not going to get one single answer that everyone agrees on, although I personally am confident that properly recorded CD-R media can last decades if not a century or two. These 3 articles provide a good starting point for understanding some of the variables involved, which include:

*Dye type
*Physical construction of the media
*Storage conditions (temperature, humidity, light exposure, mechanical stress, chemical exposure and air quality)
*Manufacturing conditions (can vary from batch to batch in otherwise identical media of the same brand)

Now let’s mention some other things that are relevant and important:

1. The quality of the burner.
A borderline defective burner can “under expose” the media to the laser beam, producing a seemingly good recording (at the time of burning) that will “fade” over time (failing weeks, months, years or decades sooner than it should have had the laser beam intensity been correct)

2. Recording speed.
Fast burns (52X) are probably less stable than somewhat slower burns (say 16x to 32x), but you can burn media too slowly also. There is a very good analogy here to photographic film and exposure levels. The dyes on a given media have a certain range of acceptable “exposures” and outside of that range, you can either under or over expose the media to the laser beam. However, mechanical jitter and certain other variables (largely a function of the quality of the drive) generally will be unconditionally worse at faster speeds.

3. Your own handling and storage practices.
On a CD, the data “exists” in a dye layer on the label side of the media. This can be scratched from the back (from the label side), which will literally and directly destroy the data. The front side is clear plastic but can also be scratched. While front side damage may make the data less readable or completely unreadable, the data is still intact and undamaged on the label side, and the scratches on the front can normally be removed by polishing the plastic.

On recordable DVDs, the data is on a layer “inside” the media, but the media is a laminate of several layers and can delaminate, destroying the data. Flexing – even VERY minor flexing – is particularly bad at causing such damage. And, also, recordable DVDs tend to fail from the outside in, so you can increase your success rate and decrease the incidence of failures by not recording such media beyond 80% to 90% of capacity, leaving the outside edge, where the failure rate is greatest and failure occurs first, blank anyway.

4. Labeling:
The glues in adhesive labels, or the solvents in pen-type markers, both applied to the label side (the side containing the data) can SLOWLY penetrate the reflective backing and dye layers and destroy the data. Therefore, for archival media, the safest policy is to not label the CD or DVD itself at all. If you do label it, with either a label or a pen, you are, at best, taking a chance with your data (hint: it is safe to write on the clear inner hub (where there is no data at all) with a suitable pen that won’t rub off).

And, finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention one other factor which is really huge: Eraseable “RW” media is FAR less stable than one-time (“R”) media and should absolutely not be used for any permanent recordings of any kind whatsoever. There is no question that RW media can and does “fade”. Although I’ve never seen failure of “R” media that I could attribute with absolute certainty to dye instability, I routinely see “RW” recordings that are unreadable after periods of months to a year or two when there is really no other explanation for the failure.

I see this both on CD-RW and DVD+/-RW media, and I advise people in the strongest possible terms not to use “RW” media for anything that they want to consider permanent. Since RW media is also both more expensive (a lot more expensive) and slower, from my perspective the decision to never even buy RW media at all is an easy one from my perspective.

[Submitted by: Barry W. of North Canton, OH]