Internet commentary

Citation

Andrew, A.M. (2003), "Internet commentary", Kybernetes, Vol. 32 No. 9/10. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2003.06732iag.001

Internet commentary

Keywords: Spyware, Child safety, Slashdot Web site, Open office software, Open office community, Cyberinfrastructure, Atkins report, Biotechnology, Protein Data Bank, Information technology industry, Longhorn operating system

Abstract In this paper, spyware, or software able to transmit information externally without the user's knowledge, and means of combating it are presented. Child safety on the Internet, as well as a new source of information on Internet developments is discussed. A major development in freely available software and the community supporting it is also described. The Atkins report on cyberinfrastructure is reviewed, with reference to an earlier report focussing on biotechnology. A discussion in the future of information technology from a commercial viewpoint is also briefly reviewed, and a rather specific use of the Google search facility is mentioned.

Spyware

In the Internet Tourbus (http://www.tourbus.com) dated 10 August 2002, Patrick Crispen complains that it is no longer possible to classify files downloaded from the Internet as good (i.e. virus-free) or bad (i.e. infected). There is now a Spyware available, which can be a sound piece of software serving a useful purpose, but at the same time gathering information to be transmitted to the outside party responsible for initiating the scheme, referred to as “calling home” to the “mothership”. There does not appear to be any information at present that this has been used to steal vital information such as credit card numbers, but data can be amassed and used for advertising and marketing purposes.

Spyware can be combated in either of two ways. One is to check the name of any new piece of software against a list of those known to have the property. The Tourbus gives a reference to such a registry at <http://www.spychecker.com>. The other method is to use an anti-spyware to check other softwares in much the same way as is done for virus protection. The Tourbus also makes a recommendation here, with details on downloading free software with the name Ad-Aware. The Spychecker site makes the claim that: “We currently index almost a thousand software titles, providing the most complete online database of this kind.” There is also background information and discussion including the observation that the practice is not illegal.

Protection against spyware has received attention more recently in the Langalist (http://www.langa.com) and a number of different options for protective software are described in the issues for 23 September and 3 and 20 October 2002. Like anti-virus software, giving protection against spyware needs to be updated regularly to be useful, and it seems that for a time the providers of Ad-Aware were negligent in this respect. However, the issue of Langalist for 20 October gives the news that this is being solved.

The issue of the Langalist for 19 September has a cautionary tale of an item of software purported to give protection against spyware, and offered free of charge for limited-time use. During the “trial” period some spyware was apparently detected, but the end of the free trial was indicated before the remedial action could be taken, leaving the customer with a strong incentive to purchase the software. It seems this ploy has been used by one vendor to make sales on the strength of bogus “discoveries” of spyware.

Child safety

A number of unfortunate occurrences have led to renewed attention to ways of ensuring child safety on the Internet. There would seem to be little danger when the Internet is used as a research tool, especially where there is adult participation. However, the cloaking of identity that is readily allowed by the use of e-mail and chat rooms has been exploited and presents real danger.

The National Children's Homes (NCH) has produced a set of NetSmart Rules, covering online bullying and other dangers, to be found at: <http://www.nch.org.uk/itok>. Attention is given to the problem of unsolicited objectionable material, as a component of “spam”. A piece of advice given here and elsewhere is never to reply to such material to request its termination, as such a response is likely to encourage the spammer by confirming that the material is reaching a target. The prevalence of spam seems to vary between service providers and my own experience, using a provider that is not one of the “big names”, is that it is not nearly so much of a problem as many people seem to find it.

Slashdot

In the Tourbus for 14 January 2003, yet another source of information on the Internet is recommended, as the Web site with address: <http://www.slashdot.org>. It provides a forum for discussion at a technical level, which makes much of it accessible only to specialists. One sampling of contents in January 2003 showed that the problem of spam was receiving much attention, with an apparent consensus that more could be done to combat it by Internet Service Providers. Another sampling on a later date showed a number of comments on current technical and commercial developments, including the news that one distributor of free Linux software has gone bankrupt, and that Sony have decided to stop making CRT computer displays and to go over entirely to the flat screen LCD type. There was also a highly technical discussion of proposals related to the XML Extensible Markup Language.

Open office

A remarkable amount of software can be downloaded free of charge, ethically and legally. One example is a complete suite of “office” software comparable to Microsoft Office and available from: <http://www.openoffice.org>. It is described enthusiastically in the Langalist for 23 May 2002. The files produced and accepted by the software are said to be compatible with Microsoft Office. This seems to acknowledge the technical pre-eminence of Microsoft even though the provision of alternative software challenges its near-monopoly.

The “Open Office” suite is likely to be attractive to users who do not have Microsoft Office. My own home computer was supplied with Lotus SmartSuite, which works very well, and includes Lotus WordPro for word processing. This will accept and produce documents in any of a number of formats including several versions of Word, but not the latest versions. Its database facility using Lotus Approach does not allow ready exchange with the corresponding facility of Microsoft Office. A package allowing greater compatibility is, therefore, attractive even though the Lotus package has a number of useful features including its own scripting language.

Downloading Open Office presented no difficulty, except that it is very large at just over 50 MB and needed about 5 h to download through a 56 K modem. At the time of writing, the package has been unzipped and installed though not yet fully tested, but there seems no reason to doubt that it does what is claimed.

Some of the background of the Open Office facility is given in the Langalist issue. Sun Microsystems is involved. The software is provided by an Open Office Community with a declared commitment to free availability. People who avail themselves of it are invited to register with the organisation and may be asked to help in various ways, in accordance with a true community spirit. Members who have appropriate programming skills can be asked to help with new developments, and others may be employed in testing or in writing manuals or publicity material.

The general idea of such a collaboration is attractive, though it is easy to imagine major problems of coordination. It is clear that there is a substantial organisation behind the scheme, with downloads available from different mirror sites depending on the geographical location of the recipient and with a querying arrangement allowing for a vast number of countries and several languages. The mirror site to which I was connected for a download within Britain was associated with the University of Lancaster.

Experience of the use of Open Office software, and of interactions with the Open Office Community, will be reported in future Commentaries.

Future of IT

An extremely significant event in late January 2003 was the publication of a report by a US government committee under the chairmanship of Professor Daniel E. Atkins of the University of Michigan, with the title: Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure: Report of the National Science Foundation Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure. It was immediately brought to the attention of members of the CYBCOM list in a message from Stuart Umpleby who described it as long-awaited. The full report is available at: <http://www.cise.nsf.gov/evnt/reports/atkins_annc_020303.htm> .

The report is in PDF format and the main body is not less than 3.2 MB, with appendices totaling 6.54 MB. They can be accessed piecemeal as the report is in seven sections and there are five appendices. Even so, I found that the size of most of the PDF files was such that their downloading was beyond the capacity of my installation of Internet Explorer and Acrobat Reader 4.0, but a valuable six-page Executive Summary of just 119 kB as well as a Press Release were easily accessible. Also, the final section of the report, headed “References” is only three pages long and is easily accessed. It gives a total of 53 references, all but two of them as URLs, and is effectively an index to the world's most ambitious computing projects.

The headings of the seven sections of the report are as follows.

1. 1.

   Introduction

2. 2.

   Vision for an Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Program

3. 3.

   Trends and Issues

4. 4.

   Achieving the Vision: Organizational Issues

5. 5.

   Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure: Past and Future Roles

6. 6.

   Budgetary Recommendations

7. 7.

   References

The report recommends that the National Science Foundation (NSF) should set up an Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Program (ACP) to “create, deploy, and apply cyberinfrastructure in ways that radically empower all scientific and engineering research and allied education”. It is estimated that sustained new NSF funding of $1 billion per year is needed “to achieve critical mass and to leverage the coordinated investment from other federal agencies, universities, industry, and international sources necessary to empower a revolution”. It is argued that the current situation is such that a failure to act quickly, or to act with insufficient vigour to achieve “critical mass”, could be costly in terms of missed opportunities. The cost would be felt in increased fragmentation of the research effort, associated with the emergence of incompatible data formats in different communities, and failure to archive data in universally accessible repositories. The new initiative, however, is not seen as merely a means of expanding existing facilities. It must necessarily be flexible and innovative.

Some fields for which cyberinfrastructure is particularly vital are indicated as “understanding global climate changes, protecting our natural environment, applying genomics-proteomics to human health, maintaining national security, mastering the world of nanotechnology, and predicting and protecting against natural and human disasters, as well as to address some of our most fundamental intellectual questions such as the formation of the universe and the fundamental character of matter”.

Other sources

A paper by Professor Atkins is available at: http://cip.umd.edu/atkinspaper.pdf, with the title: “Information Technology and the Transformation of Scientific and Engineering Research”. It was delivered at a conference on “Transforming Enterprise” being the First International Conference on the Economic and Social Implications of Information Technology, held during 27-28 January 2003 in the main auditorium of the US Department of Commerce. In the paper, the history of electronic computing and developments such as the Internet and its forerunners is reviewed in some detail and a strong case is made for the initiative advocated in the NSF report.

Not surprisingly, a great many references to the NSF report can be found in an Internet search. Some of these are papers or conference reports concerned with the implications for particular fields of study. Biotechnology is one area that has come to depend heavily on information technology, especially in connection with recent developments in genetics. A summary of the findings of a committee concerned with the implications of cyberinfrastructure for biotechnology can be found at: <http://nbcr.sdsc.edu/Collaboratories/CollaboratoryFinal2.doc>. It is the report of a meeting of a panel of experts, sponsored by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, with the title: “Data and Collaboratories in the Biomedical Community” and held during September 2002. This is prior to the publication of the Atkins report but reference is made to an earlier draft.

A number of initiatives in the biomedical field are described, including a Protein Data Bank in which the data consists of three-dimensional macromolecular structures elicited by either cystallographic techniques or by NMR. It currently contains 12,000 structures and its Web site generates between 60,000 and 100,000 visits per day. It is claimed that network-based virtual laboratories are coming into being. A number of projects involving telemanipulation are referred to.

2003 and beyond

Another attempt to look into the future, but from a very different viewpoint, is made in a paper reviewed in the Internet Tourbus for 9 March 2003 called “2003 and Beyond – Technology trends that will affect your business and how you do business” by Andrew Grygus. The lengthy paper is available at: <http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit029.html>. It is a rather jaundiced review of the current state of the information technology industry, with much criticism of the business practices of Microsoft. A worrying development that is said to be planned is the introduction of a completely new system called Longhorn, to supersede Windows, and making all present hardware and software obsolete. Other moves are described that would mean that Microsoft would have control of the use of software and even of the data generated by it.

Obviously such allegations should only be accepted with caution, but the paper appears to be well researched and an impressive number of references are quoted.

Google and PDF

One of the many valuable features of the Google search engine is that it usually makes the contents of a Web site available in HTML format, where they were originally in some other format such as PDF. The web crawlers employed by the Google facility perform the translation when the site is added to the database, and the HTML version is offered as an alternative to the original. It means that, where there is a problem in accessing an item in a particular format, as with large files in PDF, it can be useful to arrive at the Web site from a Google search rather than directly, even when the address is known.

Unfortunately, this did not allow opening of the longer sections of the Atkins report, though it may in the future when the report becomes historical item. It can happen that some details of pictures or tables are lost in the translation to HTML, but plain text is unaffected.

Alex M. AndrewInternet Editor