Climate 2006: Rhetoric up, action down

"The gap between what the science tells us is necessary and what the politics is delivering is still significant."

Not the words of an environmental campaigner or a frustrated climate scientist, but the plain assessment from Britain's Environment Secretary David Miliband as the 2006 round of United Nations climate negotiations whimpered to a close.

But environmental campaigners obviously agreed. Some groups even began direct action during the year, something which has traditionally been associated with a completely different power source, nuclear fission.

Coal-fired power stations in the UK, including Europe's biggest, Drax, were blockaded and attempts made to occupy them.

There's a long distance between saying you're committed and making changes in factories and power plants and automobiles Jonathan Lash, WRI

Tens, probably hundreds, of thousands marched on a co-ordinated day of action in November.

Musicians and actors joined the fray, as they did on poverty 20 years ago.

Climate change has started to become a popular cause.

Ups and downs

Their argument is simply that the world's political leaders are failing to take the scientific evidence seriously.

As represented most importantly by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the consensus suggests that global emissions of greenhouse gases need to fall by about 60% on a timescale of a few decades in order to be sure that the most graphic of climate consequences are averted.

Emission growth accelerates

Yet at the end of the year, the trend was pointing in the opposite direction.

The rate of emissions growth for carbon dioxide, the most important gas in the man-made greenhouse, is increasing; a decade ago emissions were climbing by less than 1% per year, now the rate is above 2% per year.

"The [greenhouse gas] concentrations in the atmosphere are going up, so it hasn't been a year of success in terms of having an impact on this process," observes Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think-tank based in Washington DC.

"We have world leaders who say they're committed; but there's a long distance between saying you're committed and making the actual changes in the factories and power plants and automobiles that create the emissions; and that process is still moving very slowly."

Off target

The UN talks in Nairobi ended with no deal on targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions when the current Kyoto Protocol quotas expire in 2012, and no firm timetable for agreeing such targets.

Slow progress at Nairobi talks

Whether the UN process can ever deliver further cuts is an open question. In order to get the juggernaut of Kyoto procedures pointing in a new direction by 2012, targets need to be tied up perhaps two years, perhaps three years, before that.

The European Union is publicly committed to a new round of targets.

But some member states are a world away from meeting their existing ones; and even as delegates were boarding the planes to Nairobi, many EU governments submitted plans for the second phase of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) which would have raised their emissions, not cut them, in the years running up to 2012.

What of the other processes which have sprung up in the last two years with the declared intention of turning the rising tide of emissions?

The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate brings together six countries whose emissions account for roughly half the global total - Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the US - in a pact which aims to reduce emissions by assisting the private sector to create clean technologies and transfer them to developing countries.

The people who run the private sector - they too have children, they too have grandchildren, and they would like things dealt with Samuel Bodman

It held its first ministerial meeting in Sydney in January. I have rarely seen a room-full of journalists as stunned as the group there were, as US energy secretary Samuel Bodman told us that private companies would solve climate change because the people in charge of them cared.

"I believe that the people who run the private sector, who run these companies - they too have children, they too have grandchildren, they too live and breathe in the world, and they would like things dealt with effectively; and that's what this is all about," he said.

The single word "Enron" traversed a hundred brains.

According to an Australian government report commissioned for the Sydney meeting, the Partnership does not in fact expect to cut global greenhouse gas emissions - it expects them to double over the next 50 years, even if all its projects come to fruition.

Business deal or bright idea?

There were already suspicions in the NGO community that the Partnership was really about trade, not climate. Since the Sydney meeting we have seen two major deals tied up between members which will result in the US exporting nuclear technology to India, and Australia exporting uranium to China.

Let us fast forward then to Monterrey in Mexico, and the second ministerial session of the Dialogue on Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development, which brings the G8 countries together with major developing nations including Brazil, China, and India.

The conclusions of this potentially very powerful group were that climate change was really serious, we needed to do something, but we were not making any firm commitments as yet.

That might have a familiar feel by now.

Costing the Earth

Two other initiatives burst on to the global stage during 2006; one, a movie from a former politician, the other a weighty report from a leading economist.

Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is a masterpiece of communication - wherever you stand on climate science, to make it engaging for an hour and a half is surely some feat. As a tool to change policies, however, its value must be doubtful, as it is largely the converted that will see it.

Stern: Wait now, pay later

Sir Nicholas Stern's review of climate change economics should hit a little harder. Certainly, Tony Blair thought so, commenting: "It proves tackling climate change is in fact a pro-growth strategy.

"It shows that if we fail to act, the cost of tackling the disruption to people and economies would cost at least 5%, on the worst case scenario as much as 20%, of the world's output. In contrast, the cost of action to halt and reverse climate change would cost just 1%."

As the year ended, Mr Blair's government was, by his own logic, deciding to risk growth by approving expansion plans for major airports.

Sir Nicholas took his review on a tour of world capitals. But even as he breakfasted with officials in Beijing and Delhi, a report from the Asian Development Bank warned that Asia's emissions would triple over the next 25 years.

Boxing clever

The single biggest obstacle to progress in negotiations has been the reluctance of the US to engage and to accept that the international community has any right to restrict its emissions.

But signs emerged that something was changing in Washington with the mid-term elections in November, which returned the Democrats to power in both houses of Congress.

Jonathan Lash believes this is already having an impact on how climate issues are debated.

Gore's dissection of disaster

"A year ago the chairman of the Senate committee that's in charge of environment, Mr Inhofe from Oklahoma, held a climate change hearing and his first witness was a science fiction writer, Michael Crichton, whose theory is that climate change is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the world," he recalls.

"Now, the chair will be Senator Boxer, who has already committed herself to very strong legislation making mandatory reductions. We'll see the same kind of shift in the House of Representatives; so we're going to see the leadership pushing ahead instead of setting up obstacles."

Below the federal level, states and cities are also pressing ahead with various initiatives, laws and measures on emissions caps, carbon trading, energy efficiency and carbon burial.

None of this is likely to change the US stance in international negotiations, though rumours persist in Washington that President Bush may announce some new measures during his next State of the Union address.

Heated debate

Of course, not everyone is convinced by the scientific arguments of the IPCC or the economic ones of Sir Nicholas Stern.

The diverse community of "climate sceptics" were visible and vocal during 2006, and registered at least one blow for an alternative way of explaining global warming when a Danish research group showed in a laboratory experiment that highly energetic particles could enhance the formation of water droplets in air.

The solar theory of global warming gained a little evidence

Their theory is that temperature changes result from variations in the intensity of cosmic rays coming from the Sun. Cosmic rays affect the formation of water droplets, which in turn form clouds, which in turn change global temperatures with no help from greenhouse gases.

A number of economists lined up to dispute the Stern Review's methods and conclusions. These voices will surely remain vocal as 2006 turns into 2007.

But shouting loudest of all next year will be the Fourth Assessment Report from the IPCC. It will have been five years in the making, and will present the current consensus on climate science, on impacts and costs, as determined by its committees of experts.

Its headline projections are expected to differ little from those contained in its last report, issued in 2001; rising temperatures, rising sea levels, and major specific impacts such as the irreversible drying out of the Amazon.

Once again we will hear demands from climatologists to keyboard players, from theoretical physicists to thespians, for more action.

Perhaps we will get it. But the omens are not promising.

Russia lashes out at Estonia over Soviet victory monument

Russia lashed out angrily at Estonia on Thursday over legislation allowing for the removal of a monument marking the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany from Estonia's capital, calling it part of a "blasphemous escapade" that could badly damage relations.

The Foreign Ministry summoned Estonia's ambassador to hear a strongly worded complaint about the law, which has further frayed strained ties by bringing vastly different views of the role of the Soviet Union and its military in the Baltic nation into sharp relief.

Signed by the Estonian president last week, the law permits the relocation of statues and monuments from sites deemed unsuitable and allows for the removal from Tallinn of a 1947 statue of a Soviet soldier. The bodies of several Soviet soldiers are buried underneath the monument.

The ambassador was told that "efforts to create a legislative basis for plans to exhume remains and dismantle monuments to Soviet warriors continue in Estonia," the ministry said, calling such moves "a blasphemous escapade and glaring show of contempt for the memory of warriors who freed the world from fascism."

It warned that the removal of any monuments or remains would have "serious consequences" for relations, but did not say what they would be. The Kremlin-loyal Russian parliament adopted a resolution Wednesday calling on President Vladimir Putin and the government to reconsider bilateral cooperation with Estonia.

The victory over Nazi Germany is a source of profound pride for millions of Russians, and Putin has repeatedly, publicly stressed the role of the Soviet army as a liberator of nations that came under Nazi control during World War II.

Many people in the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, however, see Soviet soldiers as culprits in an often abusive five-decade occupation of their countries, which gained independence in the 1991 Soviet collapse and have joined the European Union and NATO.

A symbol for both sides, the monument in Tallinn has deeply upset many Estonians but has been a rallying point for war veterans and supporters who meet annually to commemorate the victory — though the government banned meetings there after numerous clashes between ethnic Estonians and native Russian-speakers.

In a separate statement Thursday that also drove home the deeply divergent attitudes toward history, the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed that Moscow will reject any demands from the Baltic nations for compensation for wrongs or losses suffered under Soviet rule.

"Pronouncements about the 'occupation' of Lithuania by the Soviet Union and claims of any character linked with them ignore the legal, historical and political realities and ... are completely devoid of any basis," the ministry said.

New UK standards for offsetting carbon emissions

The UK launched a new set of standards for schemes that allow people and companies to offset their carbon emissions, on Thursday.

The move will link offsetting schemes to the UN Kyoto Protocol. It could more than double costs for people or companies wanting to be "carbon neutral" by paying others to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has also named four offset providers that meet its new standards: Pure, Global Cool, Equiclimate and Carbon Offsets.

Companies have been quick to jump on carbon offsetting as a way to flag their efforts to curb climate change. Individuals have also become more carbon aware, wanting to offset their car and plane journeys. But there have been fears that the offsetting industry boom could be fuelling schemes with dubious environmental credentials.

Providing certainty

Carbon offsetting involves paying others to cut emissions on your behalf, by planting trees or building wind farms for example, with the ultimate objective of offsetting all your emissions and going carbon neutral.

"People need to be sure that the way they offset is actually making a difference," said environment minister David Miliband. "The government's standard and code of practice, with a quality mark so people can check easily before they choose an offsetting product, will help to provide that certainty."

Miliband maintains that offsetting schemes are not the solution to climate change but that the new standards would "raise the bar". A code should be in place by autumn 2007, after a consultation.

Right to emit

Environmental group Friends of the Earth says the move was unhelpful if it encouraged people to think they could buy their way out of cutting their own contribution to climate change. "We urgently need to cut our emissions, but offsetting schemes encourage individuals, businesses and governments to avoid action and carry on polluting," says director Tony Juniper.

Under the voluntary UK standard, people will have to buy the same carbon credits that countries use when trying to meet Kyoto Protocol emissions targets. They will buy these credits in a market overseen by the UN.

An unregulated market currently supplies most offsets and is less expensive: the UK environment ministry estimates that the right to emit 1000 kilograms of carbon dioxide costs roughly £8 ($16) on an unregulated market, versus £17 per tonne of UN-type carbon credits.

UK officials say unregulated markets will not qualify for the new scheme because they cannot guarantee a standard. One concern about projects in the unregulated sector is that people may be paying for projects to make emissions cuts that would have happened anyway.

Journalist shot dead in Istanbul

A prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist who spoke out against the killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire early last century was shot to death Friday, according to CNN Turk.

Hrant Dink, 53, editor of the Armenian-Turkish language weekly Agos newspaper, was shot dead in front of the Istanbul publication as he was leaving.

Authorities are looking into a lead that he was shot four times by a young man who appeared to be 18 or 19 years old.

Described as a "well-known commentator on Armenian affairs," Dink has faced a number of cases in connection with "insulting" the Turkish state for his writings.

"Some of the trial hearings have been marred by violent scenes inside and outside the courtrooms, instigated by nationalist activists calling for Dink to be punished," said a profile on the Web site of Pen American Center -- the writers' group that promotes free expression.

Agos, an Armenian-Turkish language weekly, was established in 1996.

Pen's profile said that in 2005, Dink "had been charged for an article published in Agos in which he discussed the impact on present day Armenian diaspora of the killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by the Ottoman army in 1915-17."

This is a hot-button issue in the region, Pen notes.

Armenians and other countries regard the killings of Armenians in the early 20th century as a a genocide, a claim rejected by the Turkish government, which says Armenians and Turks were killed in civil warfare.

Dink was one of the most prominent voices of Turkey's shrinking Armenian community.

A Turkish citizen of Armenian descent, he had received threats from nationalists, who viewed him as a traitor.

In an earlier interview with The Associated Press, Dink had cried as he talked about some of his fellow countrymen's hatred for him, saying he could not stay in a country where he was unwanted.

Private NTV television said police were searching for the suspected murderer, believed to be a teenager wearing a white hat and a denim jacket, but the identity and motivation of the shooter were unknown, AP reported.

Dink's body could be seen covered with a white sheet in front of the newspaper's entrance. NTV said four empty shell casings were found on the ground and that he was killed by two bullets to the head.

Fehmi Koru, a columnist at the Yeni Safak newspaper, said the murder was aimed at destabilizing Turkey.

"His loss is the loss of Turkey," Koru said.

Kyoto, Heal Thyself

Visit the temples that grace the hills of Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital, and it's not hard to see why the city seems like the perfect birthplace for the global-warming pact that was named for it. At the end of my trip last November, I toured the grounds of Nanzenji, a Buddhist complex that sprawls through the wooded slopes to the east of the city, and watched red and gold leaves fall upon a rock garden, where they were swept up by monks. Kyoto's temples show how humans can live in nature and actually add to it, not just take from it.

Then I caught a cab back to the city center. The moment we left the temple, we struck gridlock on Kyoto's narrow streets. As we crawled toward the train station, I had ample time to look at the garish neon signs that seemed to sprout from every rooftop, transforming the scenery even as they spent energy. It was a reminder that while Kyoto embodies the aspirations of that famous protocol, it is still a modern city, with all the energy, cars and carbon that implies.

So it is with all of Japan. The world's second largest economy is undeniably its most efficient wealthy energy user, burning barely more than half as much oil per capita as the U.S. does and producing half as much carbon per person. What's more, it's not just energy hogs like the U.S. that Japan puts to shame; it even beats stridently green countries like Germany. But while Japan takes its Kyoto Protocol commitments seriously, it's still likely to fall far short of those goals.

Across the country, carbon emissions have actually grown more than 8% since 1990, a pattern reflected in Kyoto itself, where the number of cars increased from 1.3 million in 1990 to 2 million in 2002. The nation as a whole will need to slash emissions about 14% to achieve its targets. Which raises the obvious question: If ultra-efficient Japan can't wean itself from the carbon habit, what hope does the rest of the world have?

In an island country that has always had too many people on too little land, conservation has long been a part of life. The shoguns of the Edo era saved Japan's rapidly dwindling forests--and perhaps the country itself--through strict logging regulations. Although less likely than their samurai forebears to enforce conservation with decapitation, Japan's modern leaders do take a frugal approach to energy. Since 1973, Japan has nearly tripled its industrial output while holding energy consumption in the manufacturing sector roughly flat. Household appliances have increased in size while using less energy, thanks to a government program called Top Runner that constantly raises efficiency standards, making Japanese homes twice as efficient as their American counterparts.

Mindful of Kyoto, the government has lately shifted the focus to cutting greenhouse gases. That gave birth to the Cool Biz policy in 2005, under which offices save energy by keeping summer temperatures at a stifling 82.4°F (28°C). To beat the heat, salarymen are told to doff their black suits in favor of light colors and open collars. The result made the Prime Minister occasionally look as if he were addressing parliament from a beach in Waikiki, but at least Cool Biz had more style than a similar Japanese idea from the 1970s: the short-sleeved business suit. Sartorial concerns aside, Cool Biz saved about 79,000 tons of carbon dioxide in 2005.

The launch of Vista, did anyone notice?

The launch of a new version of Microsoft Windows, called Vista, is not quite the event it used to be. Has the software giant reached the pinnacle of its power?

AROUND the time of the release of Windows 95, Microsoft discreetly sold a small subsidiary that made its packaging. A decade ago that decision seemed to fit with the progression of computing and the nascent internet. Although people all over the world stood in long lines to be the first to buy boxed and shrink-wrapped copies of Microsoft's latest operating system, it was thought that such products would in future be delivered direct to their computers over high-speed networks.

On January 30th Microsoft releases to consumers the newest version of its operating system, called Windows Vista. Although the company said on January 17th that it would make Vista available for sale and download online, most people will buy the upgrade in old-fashioned boxes, just as they did back in 1995. But this time, despite plenty of razzmatazz, few customers will be queuing up to buy a copy.

This reflects the way in which Microsoft's dominance is slowly being eroded. Who produces the plumbing for a personal computer matters a lot less than it did in 1995. More PCs now talk to one another using open standards rather than proprietary ones. Many services and some programs are accessed online. People watch videos on YouTube, share photos on Flickr, check their e-mail and even work on files and spreadsheets, all using software that is based on the internet.

These changes are bad for Microsoft. Vista is being released with Office 2007, an update to its universally employed suite of word-processing, spreadsheet and other applications. Windows and Office are the backbone of the company. They represent nearly 60% of sales and 80-90% of its profits, estimates Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm. Close to 1 billion PCs are now in use and because Windows and Office sit on nearly all of them, the programs are the inescapable tithe on belonging to the information society.

The question for Microsoft is whether it can continue to collect these dues. Vista took five years and $6 billion to develop. Some 8,000 people worked on it. Yet it is two years late. A corporate version was released in November—just before the holidays when few firms would install it. This gave Microsoft the chance to complete small bits of ancillary code to make it run smoothly. Most users are expected not to bother upgrading (see article), but to acquire Vista only when they buy a new computer. With hindsight, the release of Vista may mark the moment when Microsoft's Windows and Office are seen as having reached the zenith of their supremacy.

Toppling the software Babel

Computing has changed radically since Microsoft rose to prominence 25 years ago with its operating system for IBM's personal computer. Microsoft unified standards, which made life easier for users and software writers. Both Windows and Office were employed by software developers as platforms for their own applications, nudging Microsoft further towards ubiquity. Now three trends are changing this.

First is the rise of open-source software. The code for this is written largely by volunteers rather than a single company. The programs are usually free to use and open to continual enhancements. Companies ranging from start-ups to giants like IBM commercialise open-source software by selling services that support it.

As a collaborative venture, open-source can speed up development, make it easier to add features and save users money. The most popular web-server software, Apache, is open-source. So too is the Linux operating system, which is also widely used on servers. Firefox was unknown a few years ago, but now more than one in ten people use it instead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The disadvantage of open-source is that some tedious bits of software development may not get much attention and programs end up a bit geeky. OpenOffice, an open-source version of Microsoft's Office, has been slow to catch on. Versions of Linux for PCs are still cumbersome. But, as Firefox shows, that could change.

The second trend confronting Microsoft comes from online applications and the rise of software as a service. The birth of the PC liberated users from their “dumb terminals” linked to giant mainframe computers. As a stand-alone device, the PC ran on its own software and networking was not important. Today the opposite is true.

More of the things that people want to do with computers now use the internet rather than a hard drive as a source of applications or to store data. So amorphous is the internet that many in the industry refer to it as “the cloud”. Beside e-mail, photograph archiving and music storage, Google and others offer free online word-processing and spreadsheet applications.

Clouds in the sky

For years Microsoft's Windows logo often appeared against a blue sky with cottony clouds. But the cloud has become one of the company's biggest threats. The operating system matters less when programs can be provided online. Moreover, online software can be delivered to customers more cheaply, there is immediate feedback from users and applications can continually be improved. Those are big advantages over software sold in a box, one version at a time.

In the past Microsoft tied its operating system and applications together by “commingling” the code (and ran afoul of antitrust authorities for doing so). The rise of online applications threatens the primacy of Windows because the network becomes the platform for the software. It does not mean PC operating systems are unnecessary, just that it is increasingly the cloud, and not the PC, that is the launch pad for computing.

This suggests new ways to sell software. Instead of charging for each shrink-wrapped box, firms can sell programs as a service, collecting monthly payments, or giving them away and earning money from advertisements.

The third difficulty facing Windows and Office is security. Much of the justification for Vista among Microsoft's managers was to improve security. Governments and large businesses had voiced concern about the omnipresence of Microsoft products and a rash of hacks and viruses that exploited holes in the firm's software.

But there was a big problem. In the past, each new version of Windows was written on top of earlier ones. The code became gangly. It resembled sedimentary rock with the occasional fossil of a long-lost feature or inadvertent vulnerability.

Vista was meant to clean up all this debris. Its code was written from scratch—a large part of the reason for its delay. Yet plans for ambitious new features, such as a powerful way of searching the computer and a new method of storing and retrieving files, called WinFS, were cancelled in 2004 when it became apparent the technology was too difficult. Already behind schedule, Microsoft decided to rush out a release. In December, within days of Vista's being made available to businesses, researchers identified security lapses—even though America's National Security Agency helped to harden it. Are there other vulnerabilities? Nobody will know until Vista is more widely used.

No matter how many resources Microsoft pours into making its software secure, some flaws are inevitable. But the company has also been trying to make security a source of revenue. It established a system ensuring that security updates go only to legitimate buyers rather than those with pirated copies. Yet any insecure PC can harm everyone, because all are vulnerable to one Typhoid Mary.

Microsoft initially planned to prevent other firms' security software from accessing the “kernel” of Vista, in effect the heart of the system. This could render rival products less effective. Although protecting the kernel from malicious code makes sense, some companies argued that it was yet another attempt by Microsoft to use its operating system as the ticket into another market, as it did with browsers and media players. After the European Union complained, Microsoft backed down and provided a form of access.

Although Microsoft is defending itself against some of the biggest trends in computing, it will not be unseated anytime soon. Indeed, the company has often said its biggest competitor is itself: previous versions of its products worked well enough, so many customers would not bother to upgrade to newer ones.

This time Microsoft has put aside any complacency. In the past 18 months the company has reorganised its divisions and put managers from a commercial background in charge instead of their technical colleagues. This counts as a big shift in what was always an engineering culture.

Bill Gates, who as chief software architect was in large part responsible for the earlier, failed vision of Vista, has given up his role. His successor is Ray Ozzie, a relative outsider who joined when Microsoft bought his company in 2005. Mr Ozzie is trying to “webify” Microsoft's products. Greater discipline is expected too. Steve Ballmer, the chief executive, vows that there will be no more long delays between new product introductions.

A little more open

Microsoft is trying to turn threats into advantages. It has responded to the rise of open-source software with both accommodation and demonisation. Last year it struck a deal with an open-source software firm, Novell, to make both companies' products work smoothly together. Microsoft lets big customers inspect its code, but the firm also raises questions about whether open-source programs infringe others' intellectual property.

The company is moving into services with things like Office Live, a set of additional services to help small businesses set up websites, and Windows Live, which provides online features. Microsoft's Hotmail, for example, has recently been rebranded as Windows Live Mail.

Company executives point to Windows Update, which sends updates over the internet, to suggest it has long been in the online-services business. The majority of large businesses buy Windows and Office as multi-year subscriptions with access to all upgrades and support. So Microsoft is at least taking steps in this direction. In the area of online computer games, its Xbox Live service has more than 5m subscribers, suggesting that the company is capable of supplying innovative services.

Chris Capossela, who manages Microsoft's business-products group, believes the firm's “unique” strength is that it straddles both the consumer and business markets at a time when innovations often start at home rather than in the office. Most of the company's competitors, be they Google or Apple on the consumer side, or IBM and Oracle in business, concentrate on only one market.

Microsoft has been written off before, but always remained on an upward trajectory. Its persistence has eventually paid off in some new markets, such as SQL database software and server software, where it started from behind. Its software for mobile devices is also starting to gain traction. Still, in recent years its share price has been steady while the market grew (see chart).

The diffident adolescent that tested the pride and patience of regulators is changing as another generation of employees contribute their ideas. Around 60% of Microsoft's 70,000 employees have been with the company for fewer than six years. For them the past is old history. They joined after the company was found guilty in 2000 of anti-competitive practices and ordered to be split. This was overturned on appeal and a settlement was later reached.

Yet as the importance of the PC operating system declines, it shifts the potential chokehold of computing to the software on the network servers. Here Microsoft is making big strides—and it is where European regulators are concentrating their attention to ensure the company discloses details of its code so that rival products can work alongside it.

Some observers suggest that Vista and Office 2007 will be the last monolithic software releases—a sort of hangover from the great age of PC computing. Vista should be easier to update online. Nevertheless, Microsoft plans to retain Big-Bang moments to help with its marketing. “We want to have signature events where we can rally the entire industry to what we are doing,” says Mr Capossela.

It is probably impossible to find a pair of products with franchises as lucrative as Windows and Office. Much of Microsoft's activities over the past decade can be seen in the context of trying to diversify away from them. The firm has extended its software into other devices, like television set-top boxes and mobile phones, created (and later sold) web businesses in travel and media, and moved into new areas. It even launched devices, including the Xbox and its Zune media player—which, despite trailing Apple's iPod, introduced innovations like sharing music wirelessly.

Windows and Office go together like salt and pepper. The question now is whether there will be a decoupling. That could happen if consumers buying a new computer take Windows Vista but decline to buy Office 2007, because they can get similar applications elsewhere, even free. The next step might be for computer-makers to start pushing PCs with Linux rather than Windows installed on them.

Some big companies do have the wealth and talent to remain competitive even as their industry lurches from one incarnation to the next—IBM has done it before, moving from hardware to services. Now its old partner probably has to do the same. The primacy of Windows and Office is waning, even if Microsoft's immediate power is not. “Icebergs melt”, as one Silicon Valley veteran notes. “But they melt extremely slowly.”

Student clashes in Greek capital

Greek riot police have clashed with angry students on the streets of the capital, Athens, during a protest over proposed education reforms.

Violence broke out during a march on parliament attended by some 3,000 people, mainly university students.

There were no reported injuries or arrests during the scuffles during which masked youths threw petrol bombs.

Students, backed by university and education unions, claim the reform would lower the quality of education.

Constitutional amendment

The demonstration is one of several taking place across Greece to protest against a proposed change to education policy, which would require a constitutional amendment.

The proposal would allow private universities to operate fully in Greece and for the degrees they award to be recognised by the state.

Students and members of the academic community say this will threaten the quality of education for all and divert much-needed funds away from state universities.

But the government says that the changes would give more access to a university education and improve the quality of teaching.

Northern Europe swept by storms

A violent storm lashing northern Europe has hit the Netherlands and Germany after passing over Britain and France.

At least 28 people have been killed, as the high winds have sent debris flying and brought down trees and power lines.

Ten people were killed in Britain as rain and gusts of wind up to 99mph (159km/h) swept much of the country.

In Germany, hurricane-force winds claimed at least seven lives. Other deaths were reported in France, Poland, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

The severe weather has thrown transport systems into chaos, with hundreds of flight, rail and ferry cancellations and roads and schools ordered closed.

Passengers stranded

Meteorologists at London's Meteorological Office said the winds reached "severe gale force" as they crossed Britain and were the highest recorded since January 1990.

As the storm moved east over the continent, people in the Netherlands and Germany were warned to stay indoors.

Meteorologists in Germany said the storm was the worst in five years, with winds gusting up to 190km/h (118mph).

The national rail company suspended all its services, leaving passengers stranded at stations.

Air traffic too has been badly affected with many flights cancelled.

Berlin's new central station was evacuated after the winds tore off a section of steel support.

Tens of thousands of emergency workers are on standby to deal with the widespread damage that is anticipated.

Two people in Germany were killed by doors blown off their hinges and in Riel, the Netherlands, an 11-year-old boy was killed when he was blown into a car, AFP reported.

Most of the other fatalities across Europe have been from traffic accidents and flying debris.

Tens of thousands of homes are without power.

The winds are only expected to weaken once they reach Russia and Ukraine.

Windows Vista vs who?

What if they released an operating system and nobody cared?

Five years after the release of Windows XP and costing a staggering $9 billion to create, Windows Vista has been released to manufacturing by Microsoft. The mighty marketing machine has swung into action. "Microsoft's most important product launch ever" blare the headlines in the trade press. Yet the silence from businesses and customers is deafening. No one cares. Contrast this with what most people would consider Microsoft's most successful Windows launch ever: Windows 95. People actually queued outside stores to be the first to buy this exciting new product, the launch itself was covered as news; real news, actually covered by the mainstream press as a real media event; not just in the computer trade press.

No matter how much spin is put on this launch, it's a disaster. There's simply no excitement about it. Most quotes from businesses are about how much of a chore it will be to upgrade, with warnings about how much old software will be incompatible and how people will have to buy new machines just to run it. No one actually wants this new system, except Microsoft and some of the hardware vendors who are desperately hoping Vista will revitalize moribund computer sales.

I think the day of the big-bang operating system release will die with Vista. This kind of upgrade has become obsolete. It might have made sense in the age of disconnected computers, where an upgrade involved a PC technician going to each desktop with a CD-ROM, but with the advent of Internet-connected PCs it's crazy. People want to simply keep patching their existing systems remotely and securely until eventually all of the original code has been replaced and you're running a new operating system. This at least is something we in the Open Source/Free Software community have become very good at, as it mirrors the very environment we need to create our software in the first place.

Where are the new features?
Why is Vista such a catastrophe and how does this affect the Open Source/Free Software community? Part of the problem, I think, is that Vista essentially does nothing new, and has no new features that are of interest to the general computer using public. The veteran IT journalist Nicholas Petreley (now editor of Linux Journal) created his first law of computer journalism, which is "No technology exists until Microsoft invents it". This held true while Microsoft systems were so primitive that every new release was a vast improvement on the previous one. The public "oohed" and "ahhed" over such exciting new features as multi-tasking, and overlapping windows; even as people in the industry tried to point out that every new feature was merely copied from other, more sophisticated systems. The problem for Microsoft is that most of this copying has already been done. Windows XP actually has most of the features of Linux and the Mac, though I'd complain they're implemented poorly in Windows. Even if Vista has improved on the implementation, what kind of a marketing message is "we now do things properly"?

The second problem is the Vista hardware requirements. Windows has always been notorious for being created to run well only the next generation of hardware, and Vista is certainly no exception. This might have worked back in the day when PC hardware was relatively young, and had not reached saturation point, at least in the Western world. But now every office already has at least one PC for every employee, and businesses resent having to spend more money on new hardware simply to satisfy a basic operating system upgrade. Most businesses have at least learned to live with Windows XP and see no need to completely replace existing working systems. Linux vendors have learned this to their cost; it's really hard to get businesses to throw out existing Windows desktops and replace them with Linux desktops even though the Windows desktops are painfully insecure and vulnerable to viruses and other malware. The pain of change is just too great.

The problem for Microsoft is that they need to make people upgrade in order to get the license fees that fuel the massive profit machine up in Redmond. You can't spend $9 billion on a new system only to tell your customers "we made a mistake, we'll just keep adding patches to Windows XP" even if most of their customers would rather they do just that. Microsoft needs to obsolete Windows XP and force people to upgrade to Vista, and as fast as possible. Microsoft's real competitor isn't Linux or Apple, it's the hundreds of millions of old Windows systems already out there that they have to replace -- or watch their income stagnate. This is going to get ugly.

It's a delicate balancing act. They have to replace these old systems and migrate customers onto a dependence on new features whilst still allowing interoperability with their old systems out there. But they can't allow too much interoperability, or people will chose to stay with their existing systems. And they can't allow too little, or people will look at alternatives such as Linux or the Mac if they feel they're going to have to replace everything anyway. This is the tipping point, and it's a time of great opportunity for Linux and Apple.

Get a refund
Over the next year or two, businesses will be looking long and hard at Vista. Consumers will use Vista, they'll have no choice. Microsoft's partnership with OEMs will ensure that. When you buy a new PC for home you'll get Vista – like it or not. My only advice to the home user is to do what my good friend Dave Mitchell in Sheffield, U.K. did and get yourself a refund for Windows from the vendor; Dell in Dave's case. It's hard work. Getting a refund is so rare that he's still coping with his 15 minutes of fame as media such as the BBC call him up for interviews.

Businesses have more options than consumers. The bigger ones do side agreements with Microsoft to allow them to have "obsolete" systems like Windows XP pre-installed on their new computers even though they're licensed for Vista and Microsoft hates allowing them to do that. Smaller businesses don't get that choice. But if they don't consider Linux or Mac systems, then I can guarantee that they'll end up wincing at the cost of implementing Vista. As I usually say in my talks "if you're not at least running a pilot Linux implementation you're paying too much for your Microsoft software."

What should the Open Source/Free Software community do about Vista? In my opinion, we need to just keep doing what we're doing. Various pundits have predicted doom and gloom if we don't compromise on our principles and adopt proprietary drivers, or license proprietary media codecs to allow Apple iPods to work with Linux. I don't agree. You don't change a winning strategy just as you're starting to succeed. Linux has become completely dominant in some areas such as high performance computing and outshines Windows in areas like Web serving. It's just in the workgroup server space, which is tied into the Windows desktop, that the Microsoft monopoly still holds. We need to keep improving our products and, most importantly, keep offering the one feature that only we have, the one that Microsoft can't copy without completely changing their businesses model. We need to keep offering our users software Freedom. If Microsoft wants to copy that, then I'd welcome it and welcome them to our community. But I think they have to go through the tipping point with Windows Vista first.

Skype eyeing domestic calling service in 24 countries

Internet phone firm Skype is introducing new domestic calling plans for 24 countries where users will pay a monthly subscription and a connection fee but no per-minute charges, an Associated Press report said.

The Associated Press report said the monthly fees for the new Skype Pro plans have not yet been finalized, but they were expected to be set at less than 5 euros ($6.50).

The per-call connection fee for Skype Pro calls within a given country to a regular phone or mobile device within that same country will be 3.9 euro cents ($0. 5) said Stefan Oberg, general manager for Skype Telecoms.

Skype calls are dialled over a high-speed Internet connection using either a personal computer, a cordless handset configured to communicate directly over a broadband modem, or certain cell phones with Wi-Fi capability, the report said.

The report also said the new options were being launched a month after Skype, a subsidiary of eBay, introduced a North American service offering unlimited calls within the US and Canada with no connection or per-minute fees for about $30 per year, or less than half as much as Skype Pro appears likely to cost.

The countries where Skype Pro is being offered are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the UK, the report said.

'Thinking different' no longer an Apple priority

Apple's latest line of commercials portrays itself as unique, youthful, and edgy in a world of stale, curmudgeonly conformists. But is this an accurate description?

As recently as 2000, buying an Apple computer was a powerful way of sending a message to the PC industry. By opting for a Macintosh, you could take a stand against attempts to corner the market by cramming everything but the kitchen sink into the bloated Windows operating system.

In effect, you could "think different" by supporting the underdog and refusing to conform, and the feeling of smug well-being that came with such a purchase was at least somewhat legitimate.

To this day, owning a Mac is the quickest, easiest way to gain indie cred with your peers. After all, every dollar that goes to a customer-friendly, counterculture company with an emphasis on the consumer experience is a dollar that doesn't go to supporting "the machine," so to speak. But does this truly describe Apple? Or are indie kids the world over simply products of an exceedingly elaborate marketing campaign?

Search for "1984" on www.YouTube.com and you'll find the "revolutionary" ad that started it all. Since then, Apple's marketing execs have only gotten smarter, presenting the company as truly concerned with individual users, diametrically opposed to the other, "faceless" alternatives. Elitism ahoy!

Consumers have bought this myth hook, line and sinker. Check the Wikipedia page - quickly, now, before someone edits it! - and you can see this kind of preening behavior firsthand, complete with references to Apple's "avant-garde" user base, their challenging of "traditional" business notions, and the infamous "think different" motto.

The problem is that this reputation is either deserved or warranted. Apple is a business first and foremost, and its behavior in the past few years makes this fact more and more obvious.

The first few iPod generations were shoddy, and their irreplaceable batteries had much shorter lifespans than advertised. Digital rights management technology used on iTunes, masquerading under the pretense of protecting artist rights, actually serves no purpose other than to further Apple's domination of the mp3 player market. And Apple recently unveiled their new "iPhone," even though that trademark has been owned by Cisco since 2000.

These are just the tip of the iceberg. Run a search for "Apple" on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website and cringe at the endless cascade of similar cases. The cold, hard truth is that Apple's business practices are anything but symptomatic of a desire to "think different." Behind the clean, white electronic exteriors and the friendly posturing beats the heart of a soulless business machine that wants your dollar just as badly as anyone else.

If this means infringing on someone else's trademark, they'll do it, as long as they can get away with it. If this means developing a near-monopoly on the mp3 player market, so be it. If this means releasing a sub-par product, that's not beneath them - though, to Apple's credit, iPods have generally improved in quality with each generation.

Of course, this isn't merely vitriol directed against Apple. Questionable practices are par for the course for successful businesses. Most importantly, Apple is still deserving of your money - but they should be judged by the same standards as everyone else.

If you favor the Mac interface to its Windows equivalent, buy a Mac. If you think iPods look nifty, snag one for yourself, and maybe get an iPhone to match. If you're yet another insane Apple loyalist, then buy their products because, in the end, having no reason at all is better than having a bad reason.

Supporting Apple solely for the sake of being nonconformist, or for the sake of upholding business ideals which aren't put into practice, is a bad reason. Apple deserves credit for revolutionizing marketing, but the evidence is there to suggest that they, too, have their eyes on the prize - your wallet - and not on their commitment to counterculture or individualism.

Don't make the mistake of jumping aboard the indie bandwagon (oh, the irony!). True nonconformity might require that you learn Linux, which actually requires a modicum of intelligence to use. In the meantime, know that, despite the propaganda, owning Apple products is not an indicator of your ability to "think different."

LG 'PRADA' - A direct competitor to Apple's iPhone

LG Electronics on Thursday announced the launch of its first completely touch-screen mobile phone, KE850, in association with PRADA, one of the world’s leading brands in the luxury goods industry. The South Korean company said it will start selling the new mobile phones that incorporates a buttonless touch-screen next month.

With a large touch-screen display and little else, the ‘LG Prada’ at first glance looks a lot like the Cupertino, California based Apple Inc.’s recently launched iPhone, combining three products-a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, searching and maps-into one small and lightweight hand-held device.

LG's Prada Phone, which is a unique, sophisticated and elegant mobile phone with the first complete advanced touch interface, which eliminates the conventional keypad making the overall usage experience a highly tactile one, is a real breakthrough in the industry, and can be proved as a direct competitor to the Apple iPhone.

The KE850 is actually smaller than the iPhone and features a user interface built on top of Adobe's Macromedia Flash technology. Its extra wide LCD screen maximizes visual impact, allowing the user to benefit from several key features of the phone. Like the iPhone, it also includes 2 megapixel camera featuring Schneider-Kreuznach lens, and video player and document viewer capacity.

This ultra thin (just 12 mm, merely 0.4 mm more than the iPhone), sleek and simplistic phone has tri-band (900/1800/1900) and EDGE capabilities and can playback music files in MP3, ACC, ACC+, WMA, RA as well as MPEG4 video files.

The KE850 supports Bluetooth 2.0 and USB 2.0 connectivity and includes a Micro SD memory slot, which allows user to increase memory capacity for images, music and film clips.

The PRADA phone by LG will go on sale in late February for $US780 at mobile phone dealers and Prada stores in Britain, France, Germany and Italy, and comes to Asian countries, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, in March.

The company has no plans for US release, said Judy Pae, a spokeswoman for the company in Seoul. However, the Korean version of the KE850 phone is scheduled to launch in the second quarter of 2007.

Apple's revolutionary iPhone is due for release in U.S. markets in June with a cost of $US599 for the high-end model with 8 gigabytes of internal memory.

LG, maker of the hugely popular Chocolate Phone and the Italian fashion brand Prada have showed their immense efforts on every aspect of the product, from handset development to marketing, to provide an uncompromising quality of Prada design with the trademark technological innovation of LG mobile.