In a rule approved on Aug. 19, the U.S. government promises to reduce the number of automated recording telemarketing calls you receive. Those changes can’t come too soon.

Every day this week, my phone has rung with the same recording message: “Don’t be alarmed, but this is your final opportunity to get lower interest rates….” And there’s no way to stop ’em.

The new ruling from the Federal Trade Commission expressly bars telemarketing calls that deliver prerecorded messages, unless a consumer previously has agreed to accept such calls from the seller.

According to the FTC, the new rule — known as “16 CFR Part 310, Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR)” — “will not affect calls that deliver purely ‘informational’ prerecorded messages — notifying recipients, for example, that their flight has been canceled, that they have a service appointment, or similar messages. Such purely ‘informational’ calls are not covered by the TSR because they do not attempt to sell the called party any goods or services.”

You can read a clear summary of the new rules in a press release from the FTC. You can also download the entire 111-page ruling as a PDF.

When does all this happen? According to the FTC ruling,

The prerecorded call amendment has an effective date of December 1, 2008, for provisions requiring that all prerecorded telemarketing calls provide an automated interactive opt-out mechanism, and an effective date of September 1, 2009, for provisions requiring a written agreement from consumers to receive such calls.

The ruling also includes provisions for reducing the number of “abandoned calls.” That’s when a telemarketing company’s predictive dialing system calls you, you answer, but just hear a click and a dial tone. The call was disconnected because the telemarketer didn’t have a human representative ready to talk to you. According to the summary,

Inevitably, a call will sometimes connect when no sales representative is available. The TSR sets a limit on how often this can occur. It requires that at least 97 percent of a telemarketer’s calls that are answered in person — not by an answering machine — be connected to a salesperson within two seconds after a consumer answers. This is designed to minimize the number of “dead air” and “hang-up” calls that result when no salesperson is available to take the call.

I wish that percentage was 100%. If you don’t have anyone available, don’t dial. That would increase the telemarketer’s costs, or reduce their call volume, however, so the direct-marketing industry successfully lobbied the percentage down to 97%.

Watch BZ Media president Ted Bahr explain why our company is bullish about print publishing — even though we recently scaled back the launch of Systems Management News.

Earlier this week, Ted was interviewed on “From Print to Digital,” a Web-based television show from Scribe Media. This week’s episode focused on publishers bucking the Web-über-alles trend. We’re proud to be heading in the opposite direction from many of our competitors.

The description of the 34-minute show says,

What’s changed about launching a print magazine in a Web world? In the latest installment of ‘From Print to Digital,’ we pose the question to Mark Taussig, publisher of ecohome (35,000 circulation), which in February was introduced as Green Products and Technology, and Ted Bahr, publisher of Systems Management News (40,000 circulation), which rolled out in March.

Launching a print magazine even in good times is a gamble, but going to market with an ink-on-paper product amid an economic slowdown could be a real bear. For Bahr and Taussig, it hasn’t been easy; Bahr had to dial back the frequency of Systems Management News to monthly from biweekly and both publications debuted fairly late in the ‘08 budget season. However, they say they’re in it for the long haul and insist they have the data to justify the investments.

Still, the onus is on print products to now more than ever have rock-solid content (that differentiates itself from online content), high-quality photography and high-quality paper. As Taussig put it: “You have to maximize the experience that print can deliver.”

And while the younger crowd may be wedded to the Web, middle managers still appreciate (and rely) on print media, Taussig and Bahr say. The bottom line: as long as there is an audience that wants to receive a print product and advertisers want to support it, print products will continue to roll off the presses.

Watch and enjoy! I certainly did.

Blogger still thinks this is a spam blog — and the company forgot that it promised on Aug. 12 to have a human review the site. A warning page, appearing after my previous post, told me that I must request a review in order to have the site unclassified.

So, for a third time, I’ve requested a human review. Blogger now tells me that I first requested the review on Aug. 19.

I think Google needs a new algorithm.

See my previous posting, “Google insists that Z Trek is a ‘spam blog.’ “

This dialog in this two-minute Lego Star Wars parody video is a little hard to understand, but it’s wickedly funny. It’s probably funnier than the new movie, “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.”

Yes, it’s from 2006. Yes, I’m a little slow to find these things sometimes!

Multithreaded development in low-level language can be tricky, in large part due to race conditions, deadlocks, and the like. For example, say you have two threads. Perhaps the first thread is waiting on input from the second thread — while the second thread is waiting on input from the first thread. Oops.

There are a whole bunch of problems inherent in multithreaded development. They’re compounded when the application is on multiple cores or multiple processors.

How do you overcome those challenges? There are many coding techniques, such as thread pool and message passing, but they are hard to implement without having the programmer bogging down in multithreading details, and losing sight of the application logic. Different concurrency platforms can simplify that task, such as OpenMP, or parallel languages, like Carnegie Mellon’s NESL, or libraries, like Intel’s Threading Building Blocks, or language extensions, like MIT’s Cilk.

Cilk Arts, the company that’s created a commercial version of Cilk called Cilk++, has just finished a well-written eBook, “How to Survive the Multicore Revolution,” that introduces the challenges of multithreaded development on multicore systems. Only a small part of the eBook, written by Charles Leiserson and Ilya Mirman, is a commercial for Cilk++. (You can download the document without leaving your contact info, which is greatly appreciated.)

While you’re at it, read about my Threading Maturity Model (ThMM), proposed in January 2007. What the heck, eh?

I haven’t lost a cell phone yet.

In the 1990s, I left a brand-new Sony Discman, on its maiden cross-country flight, in a seat-back pocket. It was never to be seen again.

Also, in that decade, I dropped my Day-Timer datebook at O’Hare Airport, but the airport’s lost-and-found department mailed it back to me.

I’ve also lost one spare laptop battery (seatback pocket), several AC adapters (hotel rooms, mostly), books (hotel rooms, mostly), and at least two pair of prescription sunglasses (rental cars)

The loss of a piece of equipment can be costly (iPod, digital camera, noise-canceling headphones, GPS), devastating to business (USB key, PDA, laptop, ID card) and threatening to personal identity (wallet, laptop, PDA, cell phone).

In her blog post yesterday, my good friend Amy Wohl makes a good point: Electronic tools need tethers.

Have you lost any of those items? Did you ever get ’em back?

Within the past few days, Google has suffered short-term e-mail outages on its Gmail service.

The company acknowledges one outage, but there were several periods this week when Gmail wasn’t accessible via its Web interface or through POP3. (I alluded to this in yesterday’s posting, “Google insists that Z Trek is a ‘spam blog.’ “)

How do I know this? I support a non-profit that uses Google Apps, and it relies upon Gmail. Throughout the day on Monday and Tuesday, I received calls from the non-profit’s staff telling me that they couldn’t get into e-mail through the Web interface or through Outlook. As far as I can tell, no mail was lost.

Google acknowledged one Gmail outage in a message, “We feel your pain, and we’re sorry,” posted to the GmailBlog on Monday evening. Unlike other online services, like Apple’s MobileMe or Amazon’s Web Services, Google doesn’t have a service health dashboard. Or, if they do, I haven’t found it.

We feel your pain, and we’re sorry
Monday, August 11, 2008 6:05 PM
Posted by Todd Jackson, Gmail Product Manager

Many of you had trouble accessing Gmail for a couple of hours this afternoon, and we’re really sorry. The issue was caused by a temporary outage in our contacts system that was preventing Gmail from loading properly. Everything should be back to normal by the time you read this.

We heard loud and clear today how much people care about their Gmail accounts. We followed all the emails to our support team and user group, we fielded phone calls from Google Apps customers and friends, and we saw the many Twitter posts. (We also heard from plenty of Googlers, who use Gmail for company email.) We never take for granted the commitment we’ve made to running an email service that you can count on.

We’ve identified the source of this issue and fixed it. In addition, as with all issues that affect Gmail and our other services, we’re conducting a full review of what went wrong and moving quickly to update our internal systems and procedures accordingly. We don’t usually post about problems like this on our blog, but we wanted to make an exception in this case since so many people were impacted. In general, though, if you spot a problem with your Gmail account, please visit the Gmail Help Center and user group, where the Gmail Guides are your fastest source of updates.

Again, we’re sorry.

Google still calls Gmail a “beta” service — even though it’s a central part of their offerings. It’s also part of their paid Google Apps Premium Edition service, which costs $50 per user per year for commercial entities. It’s free for non-profits.

I am disappointed that Mr. Jackson wrote, “we don’t usually post about problems like this on our blog.” If Google wants customers to rely upon its services, it should be open and transparent about problems — publishing uptime reports, telling customers causes the inevitable problems, and what it’s doing about them. That builds trust.

Twice now, Blogger (owned by Google) has imposed limitations on my blog, claiming that it “has characteristics of a spam blog.”

Charming.

The first time came on at the end of July. An email from Blogger warned that my blog was locked, and would be deleted soon.

Hello,

Your blog at: http://ztrek.blogspot.com/ has been identified as a potential spam blog. To correct this, please request a review by filling out the form at {link}

Your blog will be deleted within 20 days if it isn’t reviewed, and you’ll be unable to publish posts during this time. After we receive your request, we’ll review your blog and unlock it within two business days. If this blog doesn’t belong to you, you don’t have to do anything, and any other blogs you may have won’t be affected.

We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog like yours is flagged incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for this error. By using this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage, bandwidth, and engineering resources to bloggers like you instead of to spammers. For more information, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577

Thank you for your understanding and for your help with our spam-fighting efforts.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team

I immediately clicked the link to request that human review. I also downloaded and backed up all of my blog posts, from September 2006 onwards, just in case.

For three days I heard nothing, and the blog remained locked. Suddenly, it was unlocked. I never heard a thing about it from Blogger — no email, no nothing.

Here’s what Blogger says about spam blogs:

As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

Spam blogs cause various problems, beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines, making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may scrape content from other sites on the web, using other people’s writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own. And if an automated system is creating spam posts at an extremely high rate, it can impact the speed and quality of the service for other, legitimate users.

Well, maybe my site is irrelevant or nonsensical, but I don’t think it’s all that repetitive repetitive repetitive…

I felt a lot better when on August 1, the company blogged that a mistake had been made in a post entitled “Spam Fridays“:

Spam Fridays

While we wish that every post on this blog could be about cool features or other Blogger news, sometimes we have to step in and admit a mistake.

We’ve noticed that a number of users have had their blogs mistakenly marked as spam, and wanted to sound off real quick to let you know that, despite it being Friday afternoon, we are working hard to sort this out. So to those folks who have received an email saying that your blog has been classified as spam and can’t post right now, we offer our sincere apologies for the trouble.

We hope to have this resolved shortly, and appreciate your patience as we work through the kinks.

They followed up with another posting on August 2, called “You Are Not Spam“:

You Are Not Spam

You knew that already, and now we do too. We have now restored all accounts that were mistakenly marked as spam yesterday. (See: Spam Fridays)

We want to offer our sincerest apologies to affected bloggers and their readers. We’ve tracked down the problem to a bug in our data processing code that locked blogs even when our algorithms concluded they were not spam. We are adding additional monitoring and process checks to ensure that bugs of this magnitude are caught before they can affect your data.

At Blogger, we strongly believe that you own and should control your posts and other data. We understand that you trust us to store and serve your blog, and incidents like this one are a betrayal of that trust. In the spirit of ensuring that you always have access to your data, we have been working on importing and exporting tools to make it easier to back up your posts. If you’d like a sneak peek at the Import / Export tool, you can try it out on Blogger in Draft.

Our restoration today was of all blogs that were mistakenly marked as spam due to Friday’s bug. Because spam fighting inherently runs the risk of false positives, your blog may have been mis-classified as spam for other reasons. If you are still unable to post to your blog today you can request a review by clicking Request Unlock Review on your Dashboard.

Great… but then, yesterday, my blog was flagged again! Now, whenever I go to post (including this one), I have to do captcha-based validation. Blogger says,

Blogger’s spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What’s a spam blog?) Since you’re an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

We received your unlock request on August 12, 2008. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.

How often am I going to have to go through this? At least I can post, but this is very annoying. When you couple this with the recent service outages on Gmail, you have to wonder if Google is overreaching.

Apple currently offers two keyboards for its desktop and notebook Macs.

• If you opt for the wired standard keyboard, you get a full-sized keyboard with full alphanumeric keys, function keys, 22-key numeric keypad and 16-key cursor keypad. The benefit of the aluminum full-sized keyboard is that it’s less expensive ($49.95), doesn’t require batteries, and has two USB 2.0 ports. It’s also 17 inches wide, and is tethered to your Mac by a standard USB cable.

• If you choose the wireless Bluetooth keyboard, you may be surprised to realize that the keyboard is tiny — it looks like a laptop keyboard. It only contains the alphanumeric keys with function keys. No separate numeric keypad, and only four cursor keys. It’s also more expensive ($79.95), requires batteries (3 AA cells) and doesn’t have any USB ports. The benefit is that you have a wireless keyboard that you can easily take with you, or hold in your lap, or even use from across the room. It’s only 11 inches wide, so you can stuff it into your briefcase or luggage.

This change occurred last year, when Apple introduced its aluminum iMacs and matching keyboards. Previously, when Apple sold its white plastic iMacs, you had white keyboards in a clear plastic housing. In that era, the wired keyboard and the wireless Bluetooth keyboard were identical, both offering a full complement of keys. (You can use these new keyboards with older Macs; you can also use older keyboards with new Macs.)

If you buy a new iMac or Mac Pro, you can specify whether you want the wired or wireless keyboard. If you have a MacBook, MacBook Pro or Mac Mini, you can buy a wired or wireless keyboard as an accessory.

What about typing? Both aluminum keyboards have small flat keys, like those in the MacBook. They take a while to get used to… but once you do, you’ll find them very quick and responsive. Note that some keys, like the caps lock, have to be held down for a moment for them to work; if you just tap them, they don’t function.

One of the places where it would be great to use the small wireless keyboard would be in a server room, when working with an Xserve. However, the Xserve doesn’t contain a Bluetooth transceiver, so you’ll have to use the standard wired keyboard to operate your server.

Can you use the Apple wireless Bluetooth keyboard with an iPhone or iPhone 3G? The answer is… no. It’s a software issue. Apple could enable that functionality by providing the appropriate Bluetooth device drivers on the iPhone through a firmware upgrade.

A malware spam began showing up last week, claiming to be from “email hidden; JavaScript is required,” and with the subject line “Internet Explorer 7.” It’s dangerous, so be careful.

I’ve received hundreds of these messages so far, all the same — but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t variations floating around. The message body contains:

Download the latest version!

About this mailing:

You are receiving this e-mail because you subscribed to MSN Featured Offers. Microsoft respects your privacy. If you do not wish to receive this MSN Featured Offers e-mail, please click the “Unsubscribe” link below. This will not unsubscribe you from e-mail communications from third-party advertisers that may appear in MSN Feature Offers. This shall not constitute an offer by MSN. MSN shall not be responsible or liable for the advertisers’ content nor any of the goods or service advertised. Prices and item availability subject to change without notice.

2008 Microsoft | Unsubscribe | More Newsletters | Privacy

Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052

Needless to say, these messages aren’t from Microsoft. The “download the latest version” link tries to install a file called “video.avi.exe” on your machine, which is a malicious Trojan that’s extremely hard to remove.

Don’t fall for this one.

Malware spam emails claiming to be from CNN started showing up on Monday, Aug. 4. They are dangerous.

With a subject line, “CNN Alerts: My Custom Alert” or “CNN.com Daily Top 10,” these legitimate-appearing emails had message bodies with messages like, “Coup demonstration in Mauritania” or “Detroit mayor ordered jailed after bond violation.”

Most of the links in the spam email go back to CNN… except for the one that says “FULL STORY.” That’s the baddie. If you click the link, it takes you to a real-looking Web page that pops up a box asking you to install the latest version of the a video player (see picture) in order to see the news report.

If you agree to install the file, congratulations, you’ve just installed some malware. If you decline, the pop-up comes back asking over and over again, until you either install the malware or force-quit your browser.

Since the initial appearance, I’ve received hundreds of these messages, with increasing sophistication. Be advised, don’t be fooled. Don’t click it, don’t install it.

CNN acknowledged this spam on its “Behind the Scenes” blog on Friday, Aug. 8. That’s good. However, the bland warning doesn’t go far enough by telling viewers that the email isn’t just annoying spam, but that the link tries to install malware. CNN also doesn’t tell you what to do if you’ve been suckered. Here’s the message:

Fraudulent spam about CNN

Earlier this week, a spam message purporting to be from CNN began circulating the Internet. We decided to blog about this to alert those of you who hadn’t yet received it to be on the lookout for it; and also to assure those of you who did receive it that the message was NOT, in fact, from CNN.

As you may know, spammers often disguise or forge the source of their e-mail to give recipients the impression that the message derived from another system, especially one tied to a recognizable brand. In this instance, the spammer chose to use the CNN brand.

The message, claiming to contain CNN’s Top 10 news stories and videos of the day, is fraudulent and did not originate from CNN. If you have received it, we suggest that you delete it from your mailbox. Further, we recommend you delete any e-mail message from your mailbox that you believe may be illegitimate.

Thanks to all of you out there who alerted us to the existence of this spam purporting to be from CNN.

Posted by: CNN Public Relations

Update 8/13: Now I’m seeing the same type of messages coming through labeled from MSNBC.

What happens when a precocious six-year-old teams up with a lovable toy CEO? It’s not Calvin and Hobbes, but Calvin and Jobs.

The parody apparently ran across two pages in Mad Magazine, but it’s all over the Internet. Here’s one place where you can find them, or you can just search for “Calvin and Jobs.”

Page 1 • Page 2

I received word this afternoon that Advanced Micro Devices canceled its biennial Global Vision Conference, which was set for this October in Dana Point, Calif.

The 2006 AMD Global Vision Conference, held in Los Angeles, was incredibly rewarding. It provided a too-rare opportunity to clear my head, meet new people, and think big-picture thoughts about the future of technology.

At the Sept. 2006 event, I talked to some outstanding people, including cycling legend Lance Armstrong, geneticist James Watson, and MIT Media Lab guru Nicholas Negroponte, and got to hang out with futurist (and fellow ham-radio operator) Paul Saffo.

The most inspirational talk was by Col. Geoffrey Ling, MD (pictured), who described new DARPA medical technologies for treating battlefield wounds and helping severely injured soldiers return to a normal life.

The 2008 conference has been highlighted on my calendar all year, and I was treating it as the focus of my own personal “think week.”

The program was packed with speakers like Craig Mundie, chief research officer at Microsoft, Rob Manning, the flight systems chief engineer for the Mars Pathfinder mission, and Neil Turok, the chair of mathematical physics at Cambridge University. I planned to swap notes with Jim Kelly, managing editor at Time Inc., and David Kirkpatrick, senior editor, Internet and Technology, at Fortune magazine.

Alas, it’s not to be. Here’s the bad news, sent by an AMD executive:

Dear Alan,

I regret to report that AMD has made the decision not to hold the AMD Global Vision Conference until further notice. Thank you for taking the time to make GVC work on your calendar. My colleagues and I appreciate your energy and enthusiasm around the conference. We are truly disappointed that we will not see you in Dana Point this October.

However, this is the right decision for AMD at this time. AMD management is focusing all resources and energy on a number of key initiatives critical to the company’s success. An event of this magnitude requires a tremendous amount of energy from our executives and partners. Consequently, we are going to reconsider holding GVC when AMD executives can give it the attention it demands.

On behalf of my colleagues at AMD, I thank you again for your support and understanding.

Big bummer.

Rockwell Automation wants you to go to their Automation Fair 2008, Nov. 18-20 in Nashville.

You may be familiar with the popular Rockwell Automation Retro Encabulator. The video’s been floating around the Internet for a long time; I blogged about in March 2007.

I didn’t realize that there really was a company called Rockwell Automation. I knew about Rockwell International, of course. My bad: Rockwell Automation is its spin-off in the industrial controls business. It’s a publicly traded, $5 billion company with 20,000 employees, based in Milwaukee. Whoops.

Here’s what you can do at the Rockwell Automation Fair, according to media info the company sent me today:

The Automation Fair event, hosted by Rockwell Automation, is regarded by customers, media and analysts as a premier industry event. The 2008 event is an exclusive opportunity to hear about the latest success stories and new manufacturing solutions from Rockwell Automation and its partners.

This three-day event is full of information you can use to develop the manufacturing and automation stories that are valuable for your readers. You’ll benefit from the countless opportunities to gather unique industry stories straight from some of the industry’s most experienced and knowledgeable professionals. Engage with leaders who are defining manufacturing’s best practices, and explore the latest technology and service offerings from Rockwell Automation.

Manufacturing Perspectives, a full-day media forum dedicated to convergence, will kick off the Automation Fair event on Tuesday, November 18, at the Gaylord Opryland Complex. As a member of the media, you’ll interact with the representatives of global companies that are implementing the future’s industry-leading innovations today.

The Automation Fair event exhibition, held on Wednesday, November 19 and Thursday, November 20 at Gaylord Opryland Complex, provides an opportunity to meet individually with Rockwell Automation professionals, partners and customers to learn more about the latest developments in advanced automation products, integrated control and information architecture, and value-add services and solutions.

I’m very excited to announce BZ Media’s newest event, SPTechCon: The SharePoint Technology Conference. It’ll be held here in the Bay Area next January. Here’s the official press release, which hits tomorrow. You’re reading it here first!

The Call for Speakers for SPTechCon is open through August 15.

Huntington, N.Y., August 8, 2008 — BZ Media LLC today announced SPTechCon™: The SharePoint Technology Conference, an exciting new event for IT professionals, business leaders and software developers whose organizations use Microsoft Office SharePoint Products and Technologies.

SPTechCon will be held January 27-29, 2009, at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport. The three-day conference will offer dozens of technical classes and workshops for IT professionals, systems administration managers, line-of-business managers, business analysts and software developers.

BZ Media is the publisher of Systems Management News, the authoritative source for IT professionals and systems administrators, and SD Times, the newspaper of record for software development managers. BZ Media also produces the Software Test & Performance Conference and FutureTest events.

The first day at SPTechCon is filled with intensive half-day workshops, while the next two days contain several keynote addresses and dozens of concurrent classes. All classes are focused on maximizing the benefits of using Office SharePoint Server 2007, which is a Microsoft technology that provides a single, integrated platform where employees can efficiently collaborate with team members, find organizational resources, search for experts and corporate information, manage content and workflow, and leverage business insight to make better-informed decisions.

Many classes at SPTechCon also cover complementary Microsoft technologies, including Microsoft Windows Server, the Microsoft Office System, and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. The conference, expected to attract more than 500 paid attendees, will have a trade-show floor where exhibitors and sponsors can demonstrate compelling third-party applications, add-ons, plug-ins, tools and services built for Office SharePoint Products and Technologies.

Ted Bahr, President of BZ Media, said, “SharePoint is the platform of the future. Increasingly, enterprises are finding that SharePoint goes beyond solving their internal collaborative challenges. Companies are expanding how they use SharePoint, integrating it into their public-facing Web sites, and their Service-Oriented Architecture. We’ve heard from the readers of Systems Management News and SD Times that they use SharePoint, and they need technical training on how to use it more effectively and extend it throughout their organizations. We’re proud to offer SPTechCon to serve this pressing educational need.”

Tom Rizzo, Director of SharePoint at Microsoft, said, “The phenomenal uptake of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is transforming organizations of all sizes, all industries and all geographies. Business leaders are envisioning new uses of SharePoint, and IT professionals and developers are gearing up to implement new applications as well as integrate SharePoint to other enterprise software. This is creating significant demand for training and education. We’re delighted BZ Media is introducing this new SharePoint technical conference.”