Comcast-NBCU union likely to face big regulatory challenge

Federal regulatory approval of the vast Comcast-NBC Universal joint venture announced today could be intense and could last longer than the full year that top officials at the two media companies suggest. Those concerns include that the new entity could stifle competition from small Internet video-streaming companies and pose threats to consumer privacy through data collected with new interactive cable technology. A variety of consumer interest and net neutrality proponents, as well small broadcasters raised concerns about the deal today.

Already, U.S. Rep. It is "imperative" that the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department "rigorously assess whether this transaction is in the public interest," Waxman said. Henry Waxman, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has raised red flags about the deal and has promised to hold hearings on it. The FCC said through a spokeswoman that the agency is committed to a "thorough, fair and fact-based ... review" of the merger. The joint venture, valued at $37 billion , would control 82% of cable programming channels, according to Comcast officials.

Waxman said he is concerned not only about competition issues, but also the future of the production and distribution of video content across broadcasting, cable, online and mobile platforms. Regulators will be concerned whether Comcast, operating in certain cities where it dominates cable TV access, could limit access to its video content by other cable providers. In addition, Comcast's future video content might somehow be restricted from other sources of television traffic, such as rival Verizon DSL, he added. The agency will also be watching whether Comcast could limit access to its content to emerging video providers that use wired or wireless networks, said two antitrust experts. "It's hard to tell whether there are serious antitrust claims to be made, but claims and assertions have been made that, once merged, Comcast might have incentives to favor its own media content versus other content distributed through its cable distribution network," said Keith Hylton, a professor at Boston University School of Law, in an interview. Antitrust attorney Brian Weinberger, at the firm of Buchalter Nemer in Los Angeles, said in an interview that he expects "serious scrutiny" of the merger by various regulatory agencies that could last 18 months, because so many third parties will want to weigh in with comments.

The FCC will probably review city-by-city the amount of cable and Internet distribution that Comcast currently has, and will likely stipulate how it distributes content in each location, Weinberger said. "Ultimately, I'd say the government approves the deal with stipulations," he said. Weinberger said industry groups representing sports programmers, among others, might object to the merger, noting NBC's strong coverage of sporting events, including the Olympics. "They could well lobby for some restriction on NBC's access rights," he said. For companies delivering video over IP (sometimes called "over the top video"), using wired and wireless networks, the merger could prove fairly dire, said Andrew Schwartzman, president of the nonprofit Media Access Project. "All these over-the-top video companies depend on a broad access to programming," Schwartzman said in an interview. "The new Comcast could make programming deals that don't make the programming available to other providers." Schwartzman said he believes companies like Hulu Ltd. , one of the over-the-top video providers that is minority-owned NBCU, could have its plug pulled, although Comcast and NBCU officials gave no indications today that would happen. On another front, the Center for Digital Democracy , a privacy rights advocacy group based in Washington, raised concerns about consumer privacy with the merger, noting that Comcast is arranging interactive polling technology through its cable operations and advertising company Canoe Ventures. Vuze Inc. , a company that uses the BitTorrent P2P protocol to distribute Web-based video, and Boxee Inc., an online media provider, are also in peril, he said. Such polling is being tested with 10,000 cable subscribers using cable set-top devices starting next year, Comcast officials said today, to provide real-time decision-making for providing targeted advertising to consumers.

The concerns raised by public interest groups were dismissed by the Free State Foundation , a conservative think tank. What bothers the center is that the information gleaned from interactive polling will be stored in a database that needs to be safeguarded. Foundation president Randolph May said in a statement that the merger should receive "close scrutiny," but that it will be too risky for Comcast to favor its own content over the content of other providers. Hylton, the BU professor, also said there is a potential benefit to consumers with the deal, since the merger primarily vertically integrates a content creating company (NBCU) and a content distribution company (Comcast). "If you have a single owner of the whole stream [of media], theoretically it will set the best price for both access to distribution and content, so in that sense it's good for consumers." IDG News Service Staff Writer Grant Gross contributed to this story.

Google Launches Dictionary and Translated Web Search

Amid all the hubbub over Google DNS on Thursday, the search giant also released two more helpful tools to help you get a richer search experience and improve your language skills. Dictionary Google dictionary puts a full-service resource right at your fingertips that can be accessed through Google's Dictionary page or through a regular Web search. Google launched its dictionary project, offering a feature-rich resource that goes beyond simple definitions of words; and its new translated Web search makes it easier to find Web pages written in more than 40 languages.

To access words through regular search, click on the "definitions" link on the top right of your results page next to where it says how many results Google has returned for your query (click to enlarge the screen cap). Google dictionary isn't just for English. Notable languages currently missing from the project include Japanese and Persian. The project contains 27 other languages, including the major Western European languages, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, and many more. Google Dictionary also has an English-to-foreign language component, allowing you to translate single words from English into a foreign language or vice versa. Rich Definitions Page Google's word definitions page is full of useful information including an International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciation guide, synonyms, standard definitions, and usage examples. This is similar to what you can do in Google Translate.

You can also find external links to Princeton University, Wikipedia, and elsewhere to see to further definitions and usages of the word in question; however, it should be noted this collection of aggregated links on Google's dictionary page has been around for some time, according to The Los Angeles Times. Try searching in English for words such as schadenfreude or Zoroastrianism to see this in action. If the word you're searching for is found in another language, Google provides a link to that dictionary as well, and particularly difficult or unusual words include an audio file to let you hear how the word is pronounced. Some words may also trigger image results; search for winceyette to see an example of this. From what I can tell, Google's dictionary project has not been merged with the spell check on Google Docs.

You can also bookmark particular words for easier access at another time. TIP: Google's dictionary is very comprehensive, so for all you juveniles out there: Yes, you can find your favorite dirty words and their definitions in Google Dictionary. Translated Search Google has added a feature to its search options panel that allows you to search in English across Web sites in other languages. And no, these words don't have pronunciation sound files. Google has had a similar feature for some time that allows you to automatically translate foreign language Web sites appearing in Google's regular search results.

To activate the feature, choose a search term like "Beethoven" and then click on "Show Options" on the top left of the results page. But this newest feature searches only foreign language Web sites. Then click on "Translated Search" at the bottom of the options panel on the left side. (Click on the screen cap for a closer look.) Once you've got your translated search, a box at the top of the results page tells you what language the results are being translated into and what language the results are being translated from. TIP: If you installed the javascript uncovered by Gizmodo that gives you the rumored visual revamp of Google, you won't be able to access translated search or Google Dictionary from the search results page. You have the option to add other languages to expand your search; Google supports 42 choices.

To get this functionality you either have to delete your Google cookie or use another Web browser. Connect with Ian on Twitter (@ianpaul).

NASA, Microsoft want you to be a Martian

NASA and Microsoft today said they have built a Web site that lets would-be Martians virtually explore the red planet. Unofficially the site promotes human space travel, something NASA would like promoted in a positive light and of course software development for Microsoft. The official goal of the Be A Martian site is to inspire digital-age workforce development and life-long learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

NetworkWorld Extra: 10 NASA space technologies that may never see the cosmos The site, unveiled at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, also wants software developers to compete for and win prizes for creating tools that provide access to and analysis of hundreds of thousands of Mars images for online, classroom and Mars mission team use, NASA stated. There are "tourist regions" of the planet not to be missed on the virtual map of the red planet. Visitors to the site will be able to set up a Martian user name, and account to virtually explore the planet, call up images of the huge in Mars Valles Mariner and potentially collaborate with thousands of other users to assist scientists in exploring Martian surface changes. The site will also feature a virtual town hall forum where users can expand their knowledge by proposing Mars questions and voting on which are the most interesting to the community. By contributing, Web site users will win game points assigned to a robotic animal avatar they select. "With so much data coming back from Mars missions that are accessible by all, exploring Mars has become a shared human endeavor.

Online talks by Mars experts will address some of the submitted questions. People worldwide can expand the specialized efforts of a few hundred Mars mission team members and make authentic contributions of their own," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington in a release. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) last week said they are aiming to cooperate on all manner of robotic orbiters, landers and exploration devices for a future trip to Mars. Mars in fact has been getting a lot of attention recently. Specifically, NASA and ESA recently agreed to consider the establishment of a new joint initiative to define and implement their scientific, programmatic, and technological goals for the exploration of Mars. Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the Martian surface.

The program would focus on several launch opportunities with landers and orbiters conducting astrobiological, geological, geophysical, climatological, and other high-priority investigations and aiming at returning samples from Mars in the mid-2020s. And the ESA recently said it wants volunteers to take a simulated 520-day trip to Mars. The 'mission' is part of the Mars500 program being conducted by ESA and Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) to study human psychological, medical and physical capabilities and limitations in space through fundamental and operational research. Spirit has been stuck in a place NASA calls "Troy" since April 23 when the rover's wheels broke through a crust on the surface that was covering a bright-toned, slippery sand underneath. And on the real planet, NASA said last week it was beginning the long process of extricating its Mars rover Spirit from a sand trap. After a few drive attempts to get Spirit out in the subsequent days, it began sinking deeper in the sand trap.

Driving was suspended to allow time for tests and reviews of possible escape strategies, NASA stated.

Indian provider launches Twitter by SMS

Twitter has tied up with India's largest mobile services provider, Bharti Airtel, to allow its subscribers to send and receive Twitter messages using SMS (short message service), the micro-blogging service said Wednesday on its blog. Twitter so far has activated full SMS service in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and the U.K., the company said. The partnership means that a huge population can now send Twitter messages at standard rates and receive them for free, Twitter said.

Bharti Airtel said on its Web site that the tie-up with Twitter would be exclusive for only four weeks, suggesting that after that period, the service may also be offered by other service providers in India. Twitter did not reply to an e-mail asking if it planned ties with other service providers. Bharti Airtel wants to take advantage of the exclusivity period to ensure that Twitter is associated with its brand by consumers, Bharti Airtel said. SMS access to Twitter is likely to be more popular in India than mobile services that require Internet access, because a very small percentage of mobile phones in India are Internet enabled. There are over one billion people with Internet access on the planet but there are more than four billion people with mobile phones, and Twitter can work on all of them because even the simplest of these devices feature SMS, Twitter said. Twitter launched a service in India last year that allowed subscribers to use the service without paying international SMS charges, but it discontinued the offering, citing costs, according to some reports.

India has a number of high-profile Twitter users, including the country's Minister of State for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor. Cows are considered sacred in Indian society. The minister landed himself in controversy recently when he referred to "holy cows" in jest in one of his posts on Twitter. India added 15 million mobile subscribers in August, taking the total number of subscribers to 457 million, according to the country's telecommunications regulator. The country added 14.4 million subscribers in July.

Engineers fix the shortcomings of the traditional firewall

Sometimes, the problems we experience with computers are a result of a legacy design. As a result, the product in use today isn't as effective as it could be because of aging or obsolete design. Hardware or software might have been architected 10 or 20 years ago when the world of computing was vastly different from the way it is today. Such is the case of the traditional firewall, whose design dates back two decades to the late 1980s. Early firewalls consisted of packet filtering software that inspected all traffic coming into and going out of a network.

Later generations of firewalls were engineered to approve specific applications or to look for Internet traffic using specific ports. If a packet of data met specific rules, its transmission was simply dropped. These legacy firewalls were built on the assumption that an application would respect its protocol which would respect the port. Or, Port 25 must mean SMTP and that must mean e-mail. For example, Port 80 must mean HTTP and that must mean Web browsing. Podcast: Better security for your applications That's not so true today.

Skype and BitTorrent, for example, hop around and use multiple ports like Port 80 or 443. A traditional firewall isn't expecting this kind of traffic there. Many modern applications are built to be flexible, meaning they change ports as needed to deliver their content. Unfortunately, the old assumptions about port mapping applications are out the window today. These applications are meant to catch the problems that legacy firewalls sometimes miss. This has created a cottage industry for other "bolt-on" security applications like intrusion detection/prevention systems and antivirus/antimalware scanning. The result can be a patchwork of security applications that scan traffic multiple times and add to the complexity of your infrastructure.

These engineers took their expertise from working at places such as Check Point Software Technologies, Juniper Networks and NetScreen Technologies and started Palo Alto Networks.   They set out to design a single firewall appliance to address three business problems: 1. Identify and control applications, including enabling applications that can be productive to the business. 2. Prevent threats from harming the network. 3. Simplify the security infrastructure. Seeing an opportunity to "fix the firewall," a group of security engineers started a company in 2005 to redesign the firewall architecture from the ground up. The Palo Alto firewall uses a unique single-pass process for traffic classification, user/group mapping and content scanning. It integrates with your Active Directory to harvest relevant user information such as role and group assignments. * Content-ID provides content scanning that prevents threats within permitted traffic, and provides granular control of Web surfing activities as well as file and data filtering. Three technologies embedded into one appliance eliminate the need for bolt-on products: * App-ID is traffic classification technology that determines the exact identity of nearly 900 applications flowing across the network, irrespective of port, protocol, SSL encryption or evasive tactics. * User-ID links IP addresses to specific user identities, enabling visibility and control of network activity on a per-user basis.

As a result, the firewall allows you to have a fine grain policy that covers a user or group, an application and specific content all at once. Or perhaps you want to allow the marketing department to access social media applications like Facebook, but no one else. For example, you could enable just the sales department to use WebEx but not the desktop sharing feature of the application. You would think that asking a single device to do all this inspection and classification at once would create latency. They built this firewall with function-specific hardware that enables parallel processing. But remember, the engineers "fixed" the firewall by rethinking the architecture.

Instead of packets doing multiple passes through various functions, the data streams are processed in an essentially linear model. As for using the Palo Alto firewall to simplify your infrastructure, it's possible to replace multiple devices with just this one. This helps to optimize performance, even in the face of massive volumes of traffic. That's what John Kovacevich, systems analyst at Texas A&M University at Galveston has done. The university also uses the Palo Alto device to protect its network against viruses and other threats.

After deploying his Palo Alto Networks box, he retired his old traffic shaper and now uses his new firewall to manage traffic bandwidth. "We can't stop students from using peer-to-peer applications, but we can shape it so that it gets a lower priority and less bandwidth than our e-learning applications," according to Kovacevich. Because of the integration with Active Directory, Kovacevich is able to identify the specific student whose machine seems to be infected. Now I can do it by name," Kovacevich says. He can call the student and schedule a cleanup of the PC. "I don't have to track down someone by the port anymore. He likes that he now has just one device to manage for multiple functions. "I had multiple products before and now they are just sitting on a shelf," Kovacevich says. "Palo Alto offers a product with a lot of features in one box at a very competitive price." Those words are music to the ears of the product engineers who took a chance on designing a new kind of firewall using best practices for the modern era of Internet applications.