Researchers Feeling Conflicted Over AOL Data

Computers

from the in-two-minds dept

The leak of a ton of search data at AOL has been nothing short of a mess, culminating Monday in the termination of some employees at the company. The privacy concerns overshadowed how interesting the data was, and AOL’s mistake in not stripping out personally identifiable information undid their original good intention: to give researchers a look at a large amount of search data, something that’s often difficult for them to get their hands on. Though AOL pulled the data, it was downloaded by plenty of people before it got yanked, and many search researchers have been examining it. However, feeling some ethical pangs, some can’t bring themselves to look at it. It’s nice to see these people have some ethical concerns, but as long as they’re using the information responsibly, it doesn’t seem like they have much to be worried about. However, as some researchers point out, the ongoing effect of the AOL gaffe will be to make search companies think twice about releasing any kind of data, even if they have anonymized it. That’s really not an ideal solution, as it limits the ability of people outside search companies to research and refine search technology. The answer is to release the data responsibly, taking users’ privacy into consideration. In the meantime, these researchers should probably just carry on with the data, since it’s last they’re likely to see for a while — just try to avoid fingering individual users with their search habits.

After All The Fuss, Will People Bother With Dell's Battery Recall?

Computers

from the fully-charged-and-ready-to-blow dept

Dell last week announced a recall of more than 4 million laptop batteries after several high-profile incidents in which they caught fire. Despite the danger of the batteries being pretty vividly illustrated, some are now wondering how many people will actually bother to send their batteries back. Deals like mail-in rebates are often used by retailers because of their relatively low redemption rate, and one analyst says that asking people to drop a battery in the mail, as opposed to just a form and a receipt, could result in one even lower. But what could have a bigger impact is businesses’ attitude towards the recall: some, with thousands of Dell laptops, may not want to spend the time dealing with identifying which machines are included in it, or delegate the responsibility to employees, who may or may not bother to check. One thing is clear, though — patience with Dell is wearing thin, not just from disgruntled customers, but also from institutional investors unhappy with the company’s management.

Lenovo Suddenly Decides That Maybe It Should Pay Attention To Customers

Computers

from the oh,-look,-we-have-customers dept

It’s no secret that some companies aren’t particularly responsive to customer concerns and requests, but, still, most companies at least try to position themselves as having an overall “customer-centric” focus. Apparently that’s not true of Lenovo, the Chinese computer maker, who is most associated with their purchase last year of IBM’s Thinkpad line of computers. While Thinkpads generally have a good reputation, especially concerning customer service, it appears that Lenovo has suddenly decided to start a new division “to focus on consumers.” This, of course, should probably make you wonder just what the company was focused on before. Customer focus isn’t the sort of thing that you should set up a separate division for. It should be a part of the entire corporate culture. And, if you need any more reason to be worried, it appears this new division has been set up by someone the company recently recruited from Dell — a company that once decided the best way to work with customers was to remove its toll-free support number from its website to make it more difficult for customers to call for help.

Where's The Checkbox For 'New FBI Computer System Is So Bad I Plan To Go On A Crime Spree'?

Computers

from the nice-work dept

Back in 2004, we wrote about how hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent over the previous four years on a new computer system for the FBI that apparently didn’t actually work and was useless at finding terrorists. After that was announced, it still took the FBI another seven months before announcing they were getting rid of the system. After that, it still took another year for them to agree to spend hundreds of millions on a new system that won’t be ready until 2009 at the earliest. Is it any wonder that FBI employees who are working on the computer system already feel the need to hack the system just to get some work done?

If you’re wondering how this all came to be, the Washington Post has now done an in-depth report on just how screwed up the process was for building the FBI’s computer system. Basically, the FBI handed the project over to the government’s favorite secretive tech supplier, SAIC. Rather than actively manage the process, they more or less let SAIC define what it should do. There’s some disagreement over who made this decision, but it included having SAIC build a system from scratch — rather than modify available off-the-shelf offerings (something the FBI insists it won’t do this time). So, you have a government contractor given a multi-million computer project, little oversight and loosely defined objectives. SAIC did pretty much what you’d expect. They took a lot of money from the government (or, if you’d like, from the taxpayers), wrote lots of code, but didn’t bother much to make sure it did what the FBI needed it to do. The best part of the article is the quote from a computer science professor who reviewed the system and noted the pure stupidity of trying to launch an entirely new computer system at once with no backup plan, rather than phase it in gradually: “A bunch of us were planning on committing a crime spree the day they switched over. If the new system didn’t work, it would have just put the FBI out of business.” Comforting, huh?

Steve Jobs' Magical Keynotes Go Missing

Computers

from the one-less-thing dept

Steve Jobs’ keynotes have taken on something of a mythical status, as the master showman takes full advantage of the spotlight to give Apple’s latest product a huge introduction. However, many observers were left disappointed after his keynote at a company conference earlier this month, in which he didn’t introduce anything they found too exciting, preferring instead to give a preview of the forthcoming update to Mac OS X. Some people even wondered if Jobs had been hit with a recurrence of the pancreatic cancer he’d had a few years ago, leading Apple to say Steve’s feeling fine. Now comes word that Jobs won’t speak at Apple Expo in Paris in September, a stage he’s used several times before to show off Apple’s new products for the holiday season. Is Apple’s hit factory starting to sputter, or are the unremarkable and un-happening keynotes just a factor of Apple’s development cycle. Investors sent shares down after the last keynote and its dearth of exciting new products, and the lack of any announcements in the near future could hold things down as well. Such reactions illustrate the value of Jobs as a marketing tool to Apple, reiterating the challenge the company will face whenever he decides to move on. Of course, maybe his hands are a little full right now to be bothering with product announcements, what with getting that iTunes movie store set up, or dealing with that little options backdating mess.

Despite Blog, Dell Still Forced To Recall Exploding Batteries

Computers

from the boom-boom-boom dept

Dell has announced it is recalling 4.1 million laptop batteries following a spate of well-publicized incidents of its computers catching fire. The battery problem, which had been kicking around for a while, was but one facet of consumers’ growing frustration with Dell’s customer service — a frustration the company noted was hurting sales and which it intended to rectify. The most high-profile aspect of this was the launch of a corporate blog, a move partly intended to try to fix some of the damage Dell had taken from pissed-off bloggers. While perhaps the launch of the blog had some symbolic meaning of Dell “joining the conversation”, it can’t, on its own, solve the company’s customer-service woes, or indeed, its deeper problems. While the blog may prove a valuable tool to humanize the company and with which to communicate with customers, as long as faulty products like exploding batteries and many other aspects of the company’s service remain a problem, Dell’s woes are going to continue. It’s doubtful Dell ever assumed blogging would solve all its problems, though the comments of some bloggers would make you think otherwise. But even a blog can’t solve the most fundamental problems that are turning people away from the company, something Dell continues to try to fix.

India Says No Thanks To The $100 Laptop

Computers

from the priorities dept

One of the most common retorts to the often-tried idea of creating ultracheap laptops for the world’s poor is that they have more pressing needs than the ability to surf the internet. The Indian government apparently believes this, as it has decided not to participate in Nicolas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child initiative, which wanted to sell $100 PCs to governments around the world for them to distribute. According to India’s education secretary, the need for more teachers and classrooms outstrips the need for students to have laptops. This is the sort of ideological stumbling block that programs like Negroponte’s will have to overcome if they’re to ever succeed, but they also reflect the rather poor job these projects have done at clearly elucidating their benefits. It’s unclear yet what the fallout of India’s decision will be, as it was hoped to be a major customer of OLPC, which won’t begin manufacturing until it’s received orders and payment for five million to ten million machines, but in better news, Nigeria has said it will order a million. It looks like in the short term, though, at least some of the countries projects like OLPC are supposed to help are having a hard time justifying their costs to their benefits.

Soon, You'll Be Taking Orders From Your PC

Computers

from the Life-Emulating-Dilbert dept

It seems that as long as computers have been able to perform human tasks, there have been debates about what jobs will never be done by computers, because they rely on human judgment and intuition. But as computers advance, they have been able to take on an increasing number of roles. Now a researcher claims that much of middle management could be done by a computer, as algorithms perform better at budgeting, purchasing and personnel decisions. It’s the consistency and lack of emotions displayed by the machines that cause them to be superior. Embedding knowledge into a computer is also advantageous, in that the knowledge can’t just walk away when a top manager takes an offer from an opposing firm. Of course, there are those who dispute all this with their own research that shows the opposite, that human intelligence and intuition is extremely important in the business setting. In reality, it shouldn’t be an either/or debate. Automation frees up humans to do things that computers can’t begin to tackle. When computers start to do those things, it will create a new set of challenges and opportunities for humans, in an ongoing, beneficial cycle.

FBI Gets Back Veterans Data Laptop; Claims No One Accessed It

Computers

from the all-clear? dept

After all of the coverage concerning the laptop and hard drive stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee’s home, the FBI is now claiming that it has recovered the system, and based on their checks, it appears that the data was never accessed. All along, many people figured this was the work of a random burglar who had no clue what was on the laptop — and this recovery suggests that may have been correct. However, the FBI admits that no one is in custody, after an anonymous person they don’t believe was involved turned in the machine. Of course, rather than taking the FBI’s word for it, I’d imagine most people whose data is in the database would feel better with some credit monitoring.

Microsoft's Plan For The Bottom Of The Pyramid: Rent To Own

Computers

from the pay-as-you-go dept

It appears that both Microsoft and Intel are a little freaked out by Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 computer concept. Either that, or they just can’t stop reading C. K. Prahalad’s The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. A while back, Intel bashed the idea, which (aha!) included AMD chips, while Microsoft suggested a better idea would just be to use mobile phones (running Windows Mobile, of course) for the same purpose. Apparently that idea wasn’t catching on enough, so Microsoft has cooked up a new plan: pay-as-you-go PCs. They’re basing it on the success of prepaid mobile phone plans in emerging markets, and figuring they can do the same for PCs. In this case, you get the PC, but in order to use it, you need to keep “topping up” a prepaid card, or the PC defaults back to a very limited version. If you use it enough (read: pay enough), then the PC becomes yours. Of course, all this takes to destroy this plan is for a few smart hacker kids to figure out how to get around the limited version, and people will never need to pay again. Either that, or why not just wipe out the operating system and install Linux? That’s what happened the last time (bubble era) someone came up with a plan to give away free PCs supported by forced advertising.