Back in 2006, TiVo filed a patent infringement lawsuit against DISH Network, claiming that DISH s DVR was a violation of a patent held by TiVo. The courts found that to be correct and recently denied DISH their appeal request. DISH is moving on to the Supreme Court with its appeal but in the meantime has filed a lawsuit against TiVo regarding DISH s new DVR software. TiVo has been making public statements that the new technology also infringes on a TiVo patent and DISH wants a judge to confirm that it does not. TiVo hasn t commented on the lawsuit.
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Comcast subcontractors are notorious for engaging in bad (often illegal) behavior that s included everything from falling asleep at customer s homes to murder. In keeping with that ongoing tradition, three contractors have been arrested for animal cruelty after they were caught torturing a kitten (see news video). The kitten was rescued after being spray painted and kicked nearly to death. As per usual, Comcast isn t happy to hear the news and insists that it s doing everything it can to quit working with people who are going to act this way.
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Consumers have come together in Canada in a class action lawsuit against Bell Canada for the company s practice of throttling traffic. There are two charges involved in the lawsuit. The first is for false advertising; the company had advertised the offer of a constant speed at all times which isn t true if throttling is going on. And the second is for violating users privacy through the use of deep packet inspection. Those filing the suit say that the ISP throttles about eighty percent of the time and they are therefore seeking a return of eighty percent of the customers monthly subscriptions along with additional fees for each of the two violations.
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The first applications for the Google Android phone platform are starting to get attention which moves Android one step further to becoming a reality in the market. The platform itself has also gained more attention after recent demos at the Google I/O conference revealed additional features for the phone and showed off a prototype that has high hopes for challenging the iPhone in the future market. In part to compete with the iPhone, it appears that there is an Android application store in the works where users could go to download any of the unique apps they want on their phones. If true, the store would make it easier for users to personalize their phones and easier for developers to spread the apps they ve created.
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Residents of Vermont got excited last year when the state s governor announced that there would be cell phone service and wireless Internet available to everyone in the state by 2010. However, they re starting to look at that prediction with a critical eye as little motion appears to have been made to keep that plan on track. One issue that s caused concern is that a group of 23 Central Vermont towns came together to form a community-based broadband network proposing a fiber optic solution for the state. The plan was rejected with the state saying that fiber may work in other states but it s too expensive to be reasonable given the $40 million budget available for getting the whole state wired. With the recent Fairpoint deal seeming to be more of a problem than a solution, the state doesn t seem clear on how it s going to proceed other than to set up wireless towers and try to meet their stated goals. One suggestion has been that the state needs to build its social capital in order to gain the trust of residents in executing this plan.
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Continuing to worry that many people don t understand the transition from analog to digital television, staff members of the FCC are going to be spending time in retail stores today to educate the public as to what it s all about. This education is going to be taking place in North Carolina, a state that s only one hundred days away from pre-transition testing. The staff members will be at stores like Best Buy and Radio Shack to do DTV demonstrations and to sign people up for converter box coupons.

People are hoping that there will be analog pass-through boxes on site but there s been no confirmation of this. These boxes are designed to allow analog signals to continue to be picked up without having to unplug the box, a feature that had been recommended by the Community Broadcasters Association (CBA) because it will allow people to receive signals from low-power stations. However, these boxes are in short supply and the CBA is now advising people to get any DTV converter box, not just one with an analog pass-through, as the latter may not be available before the transition.
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In the previous article, we looked at an easy way to cull metadata in MS Word documents. The same method could equally well be applied to MS Excel or Powerpoint. It does allow you to selectively remove just about all of the metadata from your document, but does not cover all of your bases.

The following method deals with reviewer metadata that is included in documents. There can be plenty of reasons why you don’t want your reviewers’ information to be visible. If you want to learn how to get rid of it, read on.

Recently I found myself in a position where a document reviewer had revealed a little personal information that a client did not really need to see. While it was no big deal, I thought that in the interests of privacy, it would be best to eliminate the information. The trouble was, there were some 80 comments accompanying the document explaining the various changes that had been tracked.

I wanted to keep the comments in my document but change or eliminate the name that accompanies them. It was a situation that I had not come across before and I scarcely knew where to begin. I figured I could rewrite them all manually, but as the situation is bound to pop up again sooner or later, I figured learning how to deal with it automatically would be the best solution. I scoured the Internet did a little trial and error and came up with the following method.

Step 1
Back up your file. A misstep here can literally wipe out all of the comments in your document in one fell swoop. It is very easy to do, you have been warned. In the picture below you see that the comments by the reviewer contain initials. If you mouse over the comments, they will actually reveal more information. There is a process that deals with this metadata, but it requires a little care.

Step 2
Click the Office Button and open the Prepare Document menu.

Step 3
Click Inspect Document, the Document Inspector will open. You can check all of the boxes as this step only looks for metadata, it does not actually change any of it. Just click Inspect in the bottom right corner of the Document Inspector screen.

Step 4

Click Remove All next to Document Properties and Personal Information. Do Not click Remove All next to Comments, Revisions, Versions and Annotations. If you do the latter, your comments will disappear.

Step 5

Save your document in order for the changes to take effect. You will now see that the initials have been replaced by an “A1…” series, as can be seen in the screen shot. Note that the changes will not be visible until you have saved.

The reviewer name has now been removed from the comments in your document. To remove any other metadata in the document, simply refer to the previous article.

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That Google was busted for taking a potshot at eBay’s trade practices was largely down to some lazy clerical work. The metadata that is contained in our documents goes unnoticed by many people, but there are some lines of work where it is important not to leave a trace. Not everyone wants a link between themselves and a document and the easiest way to eliminate that link is to clean up the metadata.

There are two ways that you can go about this. The simplest method involves opening the document properties by right clicking on the document and then selecting Properties. Next, click the Details tab.

As you can see from the image below, it is then possible to select Remove Properties and Personal Information.

Clicking the link will then allow you to selectively remove personal information from your document.

The result, as you can see below, is a clean Document Properties. The default selection up the top is to create a copy and remove personal data from the properties in the copied file. It is always good practice to do so, but if you have absolutely no need for it, you can go ahead and select the second option which will remove them from the primary file.

You can see the result below.

This method is good if you want to prepare a clean document, but what if you need some of that metadata or want to edit specific types of metadata that cannot be altered through the properties? If you want to look at how to remove reviewer names without removing your comments, check out part 2.

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eBay has been in legal hot water in Australia regarding a move to make their auctions PayPal and COD only. The move has been widely unpopular and billed by many as uncompetitive and unfair. The response was such that it drew the ire of the Australian public, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and so too it would seem, from a major potential player in the online transaction world.

eBay claims that the reason for the switch in payment options in Australia is to protect consumers from fraud and that the transaction security that PayPal offers is superior to other alternatives. Consumers argue that the security of Australian banks in online banking transactions is ample and that the real motivation of eBay is to draw extra fees. Up until now, eBay users had been able to accept credit card payments, direct debits, money orders and checks.

eBay took a number of steps to ensure that the transition to a PayPal / COD only eBay Australia went without a hitch, including applying for immunity from prosecution under the Trade Practices Act. In doing so, they were announcing their intentions to the Australian public and opening themselves to criticism from anyone who cared to make their objections known. The ACCC announced a call for submissions from interested parties regarding eBay’s move and amongst them was a highly critical anonymous 38-page document [2.5MB PDF].

Submissions to the ACCC become public domain, but people or businesses that make them can choose to remain anonymous, which is what the author of this document chose to do. It would be fair to say that the criticism contained in the document is shared by a great deal of Australian businesses that use eBay; especially those that have an international business model. In such cases they are forced into using PayPal and are hit with a slew of charges including cross-borders payment, a 3% rip from the exchange rate and the regular eBay charges which are not exactly cheap.

The document delved deeply into eBay’s motivations behind the plan and suggested that although COD will be acceptable, it is not a viable form of payment in most online transactions, a red herring if you will.

Increase in costs to eBay sellers and buyers

PayPal’s charges are higher than those of most other providers of online payment processing services and alternative offline payment methods. The Proposed Conduct will force all eBay sellers to purchase the services of PayPal[30], thereby causing an immediate increase in costs to those eBay sellers who currently use competing online payment processing services or an alternative offline payment method.

[30] While eBay suggests it will continue to permit eBay sellers to offer cash on delivery/pick up as an alternative payment method, cash on delivery/pick up is simply not an option for online buyers and/or online sellers in the vast majority of online transactions. Accordingly, the cash on delivery option is not likely to be a competitive constraint on PayPal in future.

As most of the documents that were submitted to the ACCC were written by regular consumers and small business owners, the 38-page monster stood out somewhat; which is perhaps what got David Bromage, who is described as” a disgruntled eBay user and model train enthusiast from Canberra” thinking. He checked the properties of the PDF and found to his surprise that it had been authored by none other than Google. It seems that some jackass had forgotten to strip the sensitive metadata from the Word Document before submission.

Why did Google decide to remain anonymous? Perhaps they were wary of appearing openly hostile towards eBay. They certainly have an interest in keeping eBay down, but whatever their motivations, their argument holds water. The ACCC has yet to make their final decision, but the wave of public dissent in the wake of eBay’s announcement could be a sign of ill portent for the auction company. [The Age]

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For some reason most people seem to give useless crap at weddings with the right intentions. Most people end up with multiple toasters or blenders and end up passing them on at the next wedding; and so the cycle continues. The Steampunk Clock that was given for Ehren’s wedding, however, comes dangerously close to being perfect. I mean, you can always use another clock and a clock with copper and brass on it, well that is just too cool for words.

It comes by way of Diversified Artistic Designs (D.A.D.) to whom, if I were wearing one, my hat would be off. Is this the perfect wedding gift or what?

Price: N/A [Steampunk Workshop]

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By Evan Ackerman

This week on BotJunkie, we saw some of the first exoplanetary images taken after the successful landing of the Phoenix robotic laboratory in the northern artic regions of Mars, found out that the perfect woman has been invented and can be yours as of June 11, tried hard to be impressed by a little robot who was able to climb the Grand Canyon on two AA batteries, watched an ABB robotic arm show off its spectacularly inhuman speed and accuracy, were introduced to a solar powered autonomous weed destroyer, saw some combat robots trying to tear each other to bits in super slow-mo, learned about some monkeys that have been trained to control a robot arm with their brain, were wowed by the latest and smartest incarnation of DEKA’s Luke robotic prosthetic arm, rejoiced that we can turn ourselves into cyborgs since the Berkeley Bionics HULC powered exoskeleton is now available for preorder, and ended the week on a fuzzy note with the squeezably soft and snuggably purrable Haptic Creature.

[ BotJunkie ]

It’s Friday, so take off your shoes, put up your feet, and empty your head into the comment section below. Here’s a recent ad for a FTTH carrier from across the Pacific that might amuse you (and perhaps inspire Verizon’s FiOS marketing department).

»www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOceE7j–Oc
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When Comcast was discovered using forged TCP packets to throttle upstream connections, it spawned a flood of new user diagnostic tools aimed at helping users detect whether their ISP was engaged in P2P tomfoolery.

First came the EFF’s Test Your ISP Project, which walks users through using Wireshark to detect packet forgery. Then came an Azureus plugin, though it could’t differentiate between intentional or circumstantial RST resets. Most recently came the Glasnost Project, a more sophisticated test that uses multiple criteria before accusing an ISP of interfering with BitTorrent traffic.

The latest tool comes courtesy of the “Network Neutrality Squad,” a group created last November to encourage dialog between both sides of the network neutrality debate. According to the project website, the NNSquad Network Measurement Agent (NNMA) is based on the open source “Buster” network management and security program. The new tool was designed to look for and flag a variety of ISP throttling efforts. Keep in mind it just entered beta.

“The idea is to *try* to highlight resets that seem out of place in terms of timing, which could be one indicator of an injected reset,” Network Neutrality Squad’s Lauren Weinstein tells me. “But none of this is 100% of course, there are lots of issues, and this is beta software to be pounded on in the field so we can learn more and build on the platform,” he says.

I can’t vouch for quality since I just installed it myself (I have concluded my Wii is getting unfettered access to the Interwebs!), but perhaps some of you can lend your tweaking and testing help to the project. It looks like they’re looking for help in porting the app to other platforms, such as Linux, BSD, Mac, or third-party firmware upgradeable routers (WRT54G, etc.).
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Given I still remember the carnage from DirecTV’s failed stints as both satellite broadband and DSL provider, I was surprised when the company (and new owner Liberty Media) started showing renewed interest in becoming a broadband provider. The company dipped their toes in the idea by signing a reseller agreement with Clearwire, and offering broadband via powerline (BPL) in a now defunct Texas deployment.

I had wondered if, with the formation of the new ultra-mega-uber-Clearwire, DirecTV would consider offering WiMax and satellite TV bundles. Apparently not. Judging from this Telecommunications Online piece, DirecTV’s reformed broadband ambitions will remain squarely in the “yeah well maybe, sorta, dunno” category.

Translated from PR speak: they (quite justly) aren’t sure if the new joint-venture will survive deployment hurdles and competition from Verizon and AT&T LTE networks, so they’re not participating just yet. Oddly though they were enthusiastic about BPL, and that was always a troubled technology that seems to be doing an epic, 2008 belly flop into the pool of telecom failure. Their sudden skepticism probably could have come in handy earlier.
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The Gotham Gazette has the best writeup I’ve seen of what Verizon’s new FiOS agreement with the NYC does, and doesn’t do. Hashed out in secret meetings between Mayor Bloomberg’s office and Verizon over a period of eighteen months, the agreement is 59 pages long with 74 appendices and multiple additional borough agreements. To suggest the NYC public understands what they’re getting into is a joke. Most are just excited to get fiber, but for those interested in the plan’s finer points, the writeup is worth a read. Their bottom line:

Other than two brief meetings, consumers have been allowed no substantive input on the deal. NYC hasn’t even posted the deal to their website. Media coverage hasn’t helped consumers either, most writers just jabbering on alongside politicians, blinded by Verizon’s promises of lower TV prices that, I’m sorry to say, aren’t coming. Still, those of you in neighborhoods Verizon deems worthy finally get FTTH, so that’s something, right?
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