Anil's Doublespeak

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Bill Lowe – ‘Father of the PC’

William Lowe was the person who convinced IBM to produce personal computers that targeted individuals rather than businesses as IBM traditionally did. As laboratory director of IBM’s Entry Level Systems, he was able to convince the IBM top brass to give him free rein to do so, and even though Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had created the Apple computer, Lowe created the IBM PC using the Intel 8088 processor which went on to become the standard for PCs. (Interestingly, they didn’t use the more advanced 8086 processor since they thought it would be too powerful and compete with their high end business products.) It is the small decisions that change the course of history forever – To get an operating system, the story goes, the IBM team went to Digital Research (on Bill Gates’ suggestion) to ask them to port their CP/M operating system to the 8088. Apparently the founder Gary Kildall was out flying his plane (or something like that) and his wife would not sign the non-disclosure agreement. The team then went to Seattle to talk to Microsoft about obtaining, not an operating system, but just a version of BASIC. Gates talked to them about an operating system too, and seizing the opportunity, Gates bought an 8086 operating system from Tim Patterson at Seattle Computer Products, reworked it, and sold it to IBM as PC-DOS. (The rest, to use a cliche, is history).

Interestingly, Tim Patterson created the operating system (known as QDOS – Quick and Dirty Operating System) in six weeks by reading the CP/M manual. He sold it to Microsoft for $50,000, never knew about Microsoft’s deal with IBM and eventually went to work for Microsoft in 1981. IBM let Microsoft retain rights to the OS so that it could sell the OS separately from the computer. The computing world was never the same again, and so was Microsoft. This would probably be one greatest business deals ever!

Bill Lowe was at Phoenix to give the inaugral keynote presentation at the Insight Technology Expo where he described his IBM story. A webcast of the presentation is available here.

Posted by Anil on August 25th, 2004 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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Jill Yadav’s love story

Jill Lowe came to India 14 years ago, leaving behind a broken marriage and five grown-up children in England. She was the granddaughter of a baronet, but her husband had lost all her money and inheritance. Lal Singh Yadav, a rustic Haryana driver and a widower was assigned to drive ‘Jill Madam’. Love can happen in the unlikeliest of places, and so three years later, they were married. Lal Yadav was her junior by 13 years and spoke only a handful of English words, but they were happy together, until Jill died of cancer last week.

Jill recounted her love story in a book “Yadav: A roadside love story“. She was writing a second book about her experience, but she didn’t live long enough to finish it. Here’s to love! *clinking glass*

Posted by Anil on August 24th, 2004 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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Finding Arnold.. the geek way!

Come summer, geeks of all shades descend on Las Vegas for the Woodstock of hackers – The DEFCON. Of course, where geeks go, the Feds follow and reading about Defcon is just as interesting as any espionage book. One of the more interesting contests is the Running Man contest where a person (known as the Running Man) holds a wireless PDA whose transmitting power has been intentionally weakened. The objective is for the teams to find that person using their wireless equipment. As an added bonus, the Running Man’s PDA broadcasts a webpage with an encrypted message which has to be decoded. (It also broadcasts a poster of Arnold’s snarling face from the Running Man movie)The minute-by-minute account of this race gives a very colorful description of the contestants, their home-brewed gadgetry and the actual Running Man.

[psst..new pics anyone?]

Posted by Anil on August 24th, 2004 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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As soon as I get a chance (and the enthusiasm) I’ll create a nice li’l photoblog. Meanwhile, it’s been raining in tempe. (A drizzle is called a downpour in this parched valley, and a drizzle that comes with a breeze can often be mistaken for a thunderstorm.) Here are some pics from today.

Posted by Anil on August 14th, 2004 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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Copyright and the interesting state of copy protection laws

The MPAA, RIAA and all the other solemn protectors of art, artists and freedom in America want to make sure that movies, television shows and music cannot be copied or redistributed in any form. The idea is to put DRM (Digital Rights Management) mechanisms in your media players so that you cannot copy any show off the air. Long long ago in 1976 when Sony introduced the Betamax video tape recorder (a precursor of the VCR), major studios such as Universal and Disney took it to court to prevent the sale of any VCR in the United States since people could copy television shows. Thankfully, a sane judgement was received and in the landmark 1979 judgement, the Court ruled that it was perfectly fair use to copy a show for private use. If the studios had won in 1979, the precedent would probably have ensured that there would be no VCRs then, and no TiVos today.

DVDs have a weird form of DRM on them which tries to ensure that a DVD bought in the US can only be played on players in the US and so on for each of the 10 ‘DVD regions’ in the world. (DVD players are hackable though, and enterprising hackers can rip any DVD.. DRM be damned). When Jon Johansen, a young geek in Norway wanted to play DVDs on his linux machine, he could find no player to do that, so he wrote a brilliant (and elegently small) piece of code which would simlpy remove the CSS (Content Scrambling Scheme) from the DVD and allow him to play it. Of course, the studios sued him on criminal charges. (Jon was acquited, but the studios managed to get him tried again, and he was acquited once more) Now of course, it is a trivial matter to play/rip the DVDs you buy. Which brings up the question – why should you not be able to play the DVD you buy in any way you want? Why is it illegal to break the encryption or copy protection on a DVD since you already own it? The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), 2000 makes it illegal to break any copy protection scheme, even if you own the media. (As an analogy, imagine buying a car and being put in jail for trying to reverse engineer the car’s on-board computer so that you can install your own electronics on it!). It’s insane, but that’s the state of laws since it allows the media creators (do not confuse it with the artists) who can keep profiting.

Disney is one of the studios which wants copyright to be valid forever. Copyright used to be valid throughout the lifetime of the artist, plus 50 years, or 75 years in case of a corporate ownership. When Mickey Mouse was about to come into the public domain, Disney got the government to approve the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, (also known as the Mickey Mouse act) which extends copyright to 95 years. Now it wants copyright to last forever. (If this were always the case, someone would be paying Shakespeare’s family, if there was one, to use any of his stories!)

Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah (yes, the same person who once wanted technology to be developed which would destroy the computers of anyone who tried to download music illegally) is pushing an act called the INDUCE act which would make illegal, ‘any device that could “induce” or encourage buyers to make illegal copies of songs, movies or computer programs‘. The obvious target is peer-to-peer networks which have been the bane of studios for a long time. But think of the implications! Technology which could have many useful applications would become illegal just because it is possible to copy songs or programs too! Companies which want to develop innovative technology would need the approval of these studios to make sure that they are not infringing any of these laws. Talk about styming innovation!

[P.S. New pics again :-) ]

Posted by Anil on August 7th, 2004 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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Have you seen the JibJab flash movie making fun of Bush and Kerry? It’s a hilarious piece of satire which riducules them equally without taking sides. The song is based on a Woody Guthrie classic “This Land is Your Land”, and the publisher is not amused – They have threatened to sue the Spiridellis brothers for ‘corrupting’ the classic. It’s ironic when the copyright holders are not the original artists themselves and they want to retain complete control over the work, beyond what the artist himself/herself intended. Guess what Guthrie had to say about his work:

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”

Oh yes, there are new pictures :-)

Posted by Anil on August 1st, 2004 :: Filed under Uncategorized