Earlier today I mentioned AT&T’s DNA being faulty and it seems a four year study on DNA published in Nature has scientists challenging the notion that “junk” DNA is valueless.

In a departure from traditional thinking, the four-year study says that genes can no longer be considered the only active parts of DNA and that huge segments thought to be “junk” may play a significant role in such individual traits as susceptibility to diseases.

This makes me wonder about the true possibility of the whole Jurassic Park thing when here we are still learning new things about DNA. There are lots of ethical concerns over cloning and it disturbs me that we’re cloning when we are learning new things about what our greatest scientific minds believed to be junk. Sure, this is human DNA, not an animal, but if it was believe this DNA is junk then what else wouldn’t we know?

I’m sure someday full human being cloning will occur. It’s inevitable. Ever see the movie The 6th Day? Perhaps not one of Arnold’s best movies, but it makes you stop and think about the ethical challenges with human cloning. You could see some cases where people cannot let go of loved ones due to tragic loss, so they are compelled to have a clone made. The slippery slope starts with pets which isn’t as offensive a prospect as cloning humans. Rent the DVD if you haven’t seen it.

The blueprint of our DNA shows that there is a limited cycle and our time is short on Earth. If scientists find a way to stop the cell breakdown and growth we better have another planet to inhabit because overpopulation will become a very real problem.

One thing we can conclude: this is further proof that the human body still remains a huge mystery.

This morning I read Google employee Matt Cutts frustrated response to a report from Privacy International that gave Google two big thumbs down. Disclaimer: I own GOOGle stock.

The Privacy International report analyzed the privacy practices of 24 companies including the GYM search engine trio: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft. They also looked at two of Google’s properties: YouTube and Orkut. The actual report is in PDF only (grrr) and is in a colorized table with the legend indicating that green is “privacy friendly and privacy enhancing.”

None of the websites profiled received the best rating. The closest to the best rating are denoted in cyan as “generally privacy enhancing but in need of improvement” and include the BBC, eBay, last.fm and Wikipedia. YouTube and Orkut scored the third to worst rating: “serious lapses in privacy practices” and the only site to garner the worst rating, colorized black, is Google.

Let’s look at the specific comments in the report that lead Privacy International to these conclusions about Google:

- privacy policy not updated since 2005. True, Privacy policy last updated October 14, 2005.
- rejected access to U.S Justice department for research purposes. Correct me if wrong but isn’t this a good thing? As Matt Cutts aptly notes, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft all offered up search results where Google was the only one to say no. Yet all of them ranked higher in this report.
- IP addresses are not considered personal information. Considering IP addresses can be shared among a pool of users, I’d tend to agree.
- they do not believe that they collect sensitive information. I don’t believe search results are “sensitive” information either because taken by themselves what do they mean?
- Do sometimes track links clicked So …? MyBlogLog by Yahoo tracks your presence on somebody’s website (if registered and logged in).
- Data collection: Unclear, but has stated 18-24 months as eventual outcome. Log history is retained after this period. What is unclear? Google has said publically that they remove any personal identification after 18-24 months. I think it was a good move for Google to remove the 18-24 months, although I’m puzzled why they didn’t update their privacy policy when this change was made.
- Vague, incomplete and possibly deceptive privacy policy. Most documents written by lawyers fit this definition. Google’s policy doesn’t seem out of the ordinary in this respect. They also offer a more plain language Privacy Highlights page.
- [Privacy Policy] fails to explain detailed data processing elements or information flows. And Coca-Cola or KFC list their secret ingredients?
- Generally poor record of responding to consumer complaints. True, this is a fair concern although I’m not sure how it relates to privacy. Google is slow to respond to individual correspondences. It takes several days, sometimes a week or more to get a response. The flip side of that is once you actually get somebody at Google to respond to an issue the conversation flows better. I see this as a scale problem. They have more people contacting them than people with the ability and time to respond. Solution? Hire more customer service reps. Mitch Ratcliffe points out that Privacy International had problems getting Google to respond to their concerns before publishing the report. Google needs to fix this problem.
- Ambivalent attitude to privacy challenges. Denying the U.S justice department access to records doesn’t sound like an “ambivalent attitude” to me. They strongly felt at the time and wrote about on their official blog that they felt this was overstepping privacy for Google users.
- Privacy mandate is not embedded throughout the company. Maybe I misunderstand the goal of the study here but if they are separating out websites like YouTube and Orkut from Google then why are they making this a negative? Shouldn’t each site stand on its own?
- This might be my favorite of the lot: Techniques and technology rolled out without adequate public consultation (IE. street-view). So Google is supposed to run public beta tests through what? More private, closed beta testing first? Isn’t opening a beta product to the public an opportunity to get “adequate public consultation?” Absurd complaint.
- Google does not allow search history to be removed. You can delete recent search results from view anyway using Google Personalized search. I’m fairly certain this doesn’t delete the results from their database though, so this complaint seems justified.

And finally the justification for the worst grade:

- Track history of ignoring privacy concerns. False.
- Every corporate announcement involves some new practice involving surveillance. Come on, “every” new announcement? I didn’t check the last 10 corporate announcements but I sincerely doubt this is accurate. The whole use of the word “surveillance” conjures images of peeping toms.
- Privacy officer tries to reach out but no indication that this has any affect on product service design or delivery. I didn’t know Google had a Privacy officer, but if they do I’m guessing after reading this report he’s hanging from a ceiling fan somewhere.

Here’s what Matt Cutts said about the report:

I believe this report could corrode earnest efforts to improve privacy at companies around the internet. Why? Because the bottom-line takeaway message that I got from the report is that a company can work hard on privacy issues and still get dragged into the mud. Consider: in the last year or so, other companies gave users’ queries to the government, leaked millions of raw user queries, or even sold user queries and still came off better than Google did.

Don’t look now Matt, but the plot thickens. Privacy International director Simon Davies is claiming in an open letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt that Google is running a smear campaign:

I am writing to express my concern not just at this unfortunate result, but also at communications between Google Inc and members of the media during the period immediately prior to publication of our report. Two European journalists have independently told us that Google representatives have contacted them with the claim that “Privacy International has a conflict of interest regarding Microsoft”. I presume this was motivated because Microsoft scored an overall better result than Google in the rankings.

One of the people on the 70 person Advisory Board that made up the PI report is an employee of Microsoft. How did Microsoft score? Don’t get excited, it’s orange for “serious lapses in privacy practices.”

Hmm thoughts
As I looked closer and closer at this report it occured to me that none of the sites really did that well. I know the big story right now is Google doing the worst, but perhaps the bigger story is that nobody did very well. If none of these websites can get an excellent rating for privacy from an independent study that doesn’t speak well for how our privacy is being handled.

Does this worst rating matter from a financial perspective? Google stock hasn’t been significantly impacted yet, although it is down a few bucks to $513 as of publishing this post.

Generally speaking, I’m with Matt on this one, this report seems to have given Google a bad rap undeservedly. I’m not saying Google doesn’t have things they should work on concerning privacy, but their size and dominance in search appears to be working against them. This report proves Google has the biggest bullseye on their backs and rightfully so. They should be showing others the way which they aren’t doing by having a privacy policy that hasn’t been updated in 18 or so months. They need to update that ASAP.

Ironically the Privacy International site has a Google Page Rank of 7. Google’s algorithm considers this a pretty good source.

If you are concerned about privacy I wrote a post with 12 tips for protecting privacy that might be of interest. My personal take on privacy and search engines remains that I don’t care if they use my search results to make their search engine results better. I expect they will do that just like Amazon should use our purchase results to better suggest related products/services we might be interested in and TiVO (when we had it) should use what we’ve watched to record shows it thinks we might like.

Frankly I’m hoping these companies use this information to contribute back to making a better artificial intelligence. Google has been rightly criticized in the past for not giving enough back to open source and it’s good to see them doing things to improve this criticism. With that in mind, if I were ranking them on this legend I would have put them in the yellow “Generally aware of privacy rights but demonstrates some notable lapses.” With the difficulty of getting rid of some preinstalled AOL software I would have put them at the bottom of the pile, not Google.

I used to run cross country and track in high school and don’t understand at all why Arielle Newman, age 17, was using pain relieving cream like Bengay on her legs before and during running. Did the stinging sensation of the creme help her run faster or something? Bengay contains methyl salicylate — the ingredients of ultra strength Bengay show 30% — and can be toxic if absorbed in large quantities. Sadly, Ms. Newman’s usage led to tragic results.

The medical examiner’s spokeswoman, Ellen Borakove, said the teen used “topical medication to excess.” She said it was the first time that her office had reported a death from using a sports cream.

Recently my back and ribs on the right side were tweaked and I used ultra strength Bengay on it for a couple days. At the time it hurt to walk, much less run and after 4 or 5 applications over a few days the Bengay helped. Strange that the medical examiner’s spokeswoman cited “death from a sports cream” when nothing on the packaging of ultra strength Bengay says anything about being used — or promotes use by — athletes; it is described as “pain relieving cream” and in the instructions it says not to use with “arthritis-like conditions” and to stop using if the pain persists for more than 7 days. I think they’ll be safe from a lawsuit if the thought is crossing some attorney’s mind.

Didn’t her mother question why her daughter was using a pain relieving medication like a sports enhancer? Did they check with their family physician about the use of an over the counter drug for a purpose it wasn’t intended? I feel for the loss of her daughter, what a terrible situation, but I’m confused how or why a medication was being used for running competitions. Perhaps some athlete reader who uses pain relief cremes like this can educate me of the advantages?

Bengay isn’t a steroid.

Hmmcast #129 mp4

Tonight for those who purchased the Ozzy Osbourne Black Rain CD you can redeem your tickets at livenation.com/ozzfest. The rest can start redeeming on June 12th.

Forgive me for a rare Paris Hilton rant. In case you haven’t heard, Hilton got busted for reckless driving and then later driving with license suspended with her headlights off at night. Darn lucky she didn’t hurt anybody.

I was surprised to hear that she wasn’t getting the celebrity slap on the wrist, the judge sentenced her to 23 days in jail. Good judge. This morning my surprise turned to anger when I learned she’d been released to house arrest after only serving three days because of a “medical condition“:

“With extensive consultation with medical personnel it was decided this reassignment should be done,” Whitmore said at a news conference … [Hilton] will have to wear an electronic monitoring device on her ankle to ensure she does not go out for the next 40 days.

Look, I’m no doctor but what kind of medical condition generates a get out of jail free card after 3 days on a 23 day sentence? Ok, maybe not completely ‘free’ since she’s confined to house arrest for 40 days, but what are the odds she doesn’t stay there for all 40 days?

And then what? She gets 50 days in jail only to leave after 5 because she broke a nail? I don’t swear very often here, but it’s appropriate in this case for the millions of people incarcerated who don’t get out of jail so easily: bullshit.

People camped out for Bob Barker’s last day hosting The Price is Right game show taped Wednesday June 6, 2007. Barker hosted the show for 35 years. I watched the few times throughout the years and it was good as far as game shows go. Barker is a legendary game show host and if he’s not the longest running game show host ever, he’s got to be among them. He wasn’t as creepy as Gene Rayburn or kissing all the women like Richard Dawson on Family Feud. Classy, funny at the right times and amazingly patient with contestants.

Die-hard fans from across the country huddled in sleeping bags for days to say goodbye to Barker and be a part of his last show. CBS sends out more tickets than its 325-seat studio can accommodate, so fans who want a seat need to get in line early.

Watch Barker skillfully handle a contestant that is a little dense in the following classic scene:

In this video a woman comes down and her shirt comes off. The announcer says: “Bob, they have given their all for you!”

And then there is the stoner whose bids all contain the number 420:

Can’t forget the guy with the backflip reaction when he wins a patio set complete with Jimmy Kimmel commentary:

No replacement for Barker has been announced yet. They probably should just shut it down in Barker’s honor. It’s the game show equivalent of following Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Any readers watch game shows? Your favorite ever?

This morning one of the first things that jumped out at me on Google News was that this summer Sony is going to start offering a Blu-Ray player that costs a little less than the Playstation 3. Are they giving up on the PS3 being the most cost effective option for Blu-Ray playback?

The Sony BDP-S300, according to Trusted Reviews, will now cost $499. I checked Amazon and found the price still at $599 and didn’t see a direct link on Trusted Reviews to preorder the player. The official Sony Style website pictured right still shows the price at $599.

On the PC side on Saturday Engadget confirmed an earlier news piece they linked that Pioneer will be offering (next month) a combo PC read/write Blu-Ray drive for $300: Pioneer BDC-2202. Amazon? No link yet.

If readers find any working buy links to either of these two products at the lower prices along with actual release dates please share in the comments below. The standalone Sony BDP-S300 player for $499 (or less) price or the Pioneer BDC-2202 Blu-Ray drive for the PC. I didn’t do any extensive searching, but some cursory searches revealed no links for either at those prices.

The only stand-alone Blu-Ray player I’ve seen in local retail stores cost $999 which made buying versus a PS3 which can play Blu Ray movies a completely unwise buy. The Sony Style lists that model at $799 with a $200 price drop, so hopefully the local retailers have adjusted the price by now.

Personally, I think at $499 or even $300 it’s still too much. An add-on HD-DVD drive — the competing format — for the Xbox 360 costs $199, which still hasn’t made people go out and buy HD-DVD players in large numbers.

Until and/or if Blu-Ray players go for under $250, I don’t see any significant adoption rate. Though I don’t know for certain, that’s when I remember DVD players start to take off. The problem with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray remains that people still need to buy an HDTV to truly experience the next generation video so it’s not only the player to be concerned about. More and more people are getting HDTVs but I still believe neither HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will replace DVD.

My money is on something with no moving parts like holographic storage or perhaps protein-based storage. What about you? Do you think Blu-Ray or HD-DVD will have any legs? I can see hardcore home movie enthusiasts buying them and sure, those who get the PS3 will probably buy a few Blu-Ray movies, but will people not in these niche groups buy in large numbers?

Linda Carlson was looking for some female to female e-harmony at the dating site you’ve probably heard advertised on the radio called, yes, eHarmony. Problem is eHarmony doesn’t offer matchmaking options for gays, lesbians or bisexuals. So what does a person in this day using common sense do? Find a different website that does allow women to search for women. No, Not Ms. Carlson, these days you sue! And then the attorneys ask for class action status.

The lawsuit claims that by only offering to find a compatible match for men seeking women or women seeking men, the company was violating state law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Crazy. Take a look at the screenshot at the top of this page which as of this writing is the home page when you visit eharmony.com. It clearly shows the options available at the site. You’re either a man seeking a woman or a woman seeking a man. There isn’t any other option. This woman becoming so upset that eHarmony didn’t offer a lesbian option that she went running to the lawyers is bizarre and wrong.

Note to people thinking of lawsuits: make that a last resort. Suing someone or a company should be the last option on the table. In this circumstance and I didn’t try searching, but am certain there are dozens (hundreds?) of other dating sites (and please do not use the comments below to link to them) that cater to gay, lesbians and bisexual people. These alternative sites are just a Google search away.

There is no discrimination happening at eHarmony, there was a business choice made to focus on a niche market that did not include people with certain sexual orientation. Heck there are niche sites like Asian Friend Finder that focus on people of a specific nationality (and curiously they offer the same options as eHarmony). You don’t see people running out class action lawsuits against them. Or maybe that’s next?

Nothing against people who are gay, lesbian or bisexual, but I do discriminate against frivolous lawsuits.

I’m watching the excellent video at All Things Digital from the D5 conference with Steve Jobs from Apple and Microsoft’s Bill Gates on stage together for the first time in years. Geeks will love this interview. After the first part, what plays? A Google ad! Priceless.

Some other noteworthy moments (sorry, no Google permalinks capability)
- Jobs cuts off Gates and audience laughs (part 1)
- a funny quote remembered by Jobs coming from former Apple CEO Gil Amelio: “Apple … is like a ship with a hole in the bottom leaking water. And my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction.” (end of part 1)
- Bill Gates explaining how the Xbox 360 was using a processor path that Apple was going away from and why both decisions made sense. Watch the look on Steve Jobs face. He looks like he is going to jump out of his jeans and Gates quip: “Steve is so known for his restraint.” Jobs smiles widely (part 2, 6:05)
- Jobs says he has regrets for Apple but he doesn’t want to look back, he wants to look forward. “Let’s go invent tomorrow.” (part 3, 1:45)
- more five year predictions from Gates, remember he doesn’t have a stellar prediction record, but he thinks we’ll have more than one device we’re carrying around. Ouch, I would like to have one device that does what I need. When will we solve that? (part 3, 11:00)
- of interest to Steve Jobs happening now include how to navigate to life more easily (part 4, 4:20) and he believes we’ll see more productivity enhancements going forward
- “We’re not great at search so we try to partner with people who are great at search.” - Steve Jobs (part 4, 7:10). Jobs indicates that Apple isn’t trying to be the best at everything. Gates says they are “niche areas” where Microsoft doesn’t want to enter. Jobs closes the part 4 video with: “It’s really hard for one company to do everything.”
- Walt Mossberg: “Bill discusses all his secret plans, you [Steve Jobs] discuss none of them” which prompts Jobs to reply: “I know, it’s not fair.” (part 5, 9:30)
- Steve Jobs joking of relationship with Bill Gates: “We’ve kept our relationship secret for 10 years now.” (part 6, :40)
- well deserved standing ovation from the crowd in part 6, 3:36. It’s clear from this video that the public “battle” is really more media hype than reality. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs genuinely like each other and they’ve worked together on more things than apart over the years.

Part 7 - audience questions
I strongly encourage readers to watch the entire interview, perhaps over lunch, it’s one of the best tech interview videos I’ve ever seen. Good questions from the hosts, great answers from Gates and Jobs. While I could have included every video in this post for convenience, I’m going to embed part 7 which made up the audience questions. There are some really good ones in there and I think this is the era we are in now with blogging, social networks and the like: audience participation.

Seeing a complete interview like this at a conference the day after it aired is something that would not have happened 10, maybe not even 5 years ago.

Think I’m going to miss Bill Gates being the day to day guy at Microsoft when he retires. I’m sure he’ll go on to do great things in his role as philanthropist. I’m sure Microsoft isn’t going to fall apart with Gates in a lesser role, definitely not with the billions they have in the bank and the commanding OEM market penetration with Windows, but their other bread and butter: Office, is taking on water.

Google has laser focused on an area where Microsoft and Apple haven’t concentrated on enough. This could usher GoogleOS into being the true third option for consumers. I don’t think the path will lead through the modern day browser (perhaps a next generation browser?), but that appears to be at least the starting point. Don’t say Linux because Linux despite being great for servers (98% of the websites our company operates are on Linux server) just doesn’t have the sexiness of a Mac or the widespread adoption of Windows. Maybe some version of Linux will overcome this and break through and lord knows there are plenty of very good Linux GUIs. I guess the Mac is already essentially that stylistic front end and look how much market share it’s captured.

As for Jobs and Apple? I’m still not convinced the iPhone is going to be anywhere close to the success of the iPod and I don’t need to see one in the stores to predict that. It’s possible that Apple will continue to develop on the concept like Microsoft is promising to do with the Zune and in a few more iterations we’ll see the iPhone be a more compelling option for consumers.

And finally, the Mac. I’ve been a Mac user now since 2004. In my own experience the Mac brings something good to the table but hasn’t done enough to drag me away from Windows yet. In October it will be three years and I’m still doing most of my day to day work on Windows machines. It hasn’t been for a lack of trying, that’s for sure. I do understand better why Mac users are so passionate. It’s a great machine for creative people. I’m a creative person and yet I can’t seem to shake my Windows fix for using the Mac regularly. I’m still trying, believe me.

Here’s what we do know about five years from now: Bill Gates will be in a different role than he is in now and Steve Jobs? Don’t know. The Google honeymoon will be over. It’s already over really, and they are trying to extend the tentacles (Google Gears, deals to get their software packaged into new computers by default, etc) beyond search. If they lose sight of the ball (search) and spend too much time trying to eat competitor lunches, that will expose them to smaller, more nimble companies like they once were.

This video in a way feels like the end of an era for computing and the dawn of a new era. I’m really excited to see where things go over the next 30 years, health willing.

Nice 3D view of Safeco Field, Microsoft.

Today Microsoft released a 3D versions of New York City and other locations while Google released a new street side map view.

Beyond tourists, virtual travelers and developer creations (count on those in the coming days), this won’t be as useful until detailed maps are available in every major city. Would also like to see this not be so US-centric. What about other places in the world? Seems like Microsoft has more cities than Google pimped out but who knows how long that will remain. Whomever gets the most street-level 3D maps of the entire world and makes them available for mashups in other applications first is going to be at least the short term victor.

Google has extensive street side views in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, Denver and New York. Want to walk the Las Vegas strip tonight without getting tired feet or spending a penny, try this:

Google’s implementation is better than what Microsoft’s street side views back in February 2006 and the A9 street view from Amazon. None of this has done much to increase Microsoft’s search penetration over Google, so take the eye candy part of my title literally.

Microsoft’s version also requires downloading an add-on in Firefox (see below) whereas Google’s does not (correction: Google Maps does require newer version of Adobe Flash player).

In the Google street view demo video their street side guy or whatever he’s called has some resemblance to the Channel 9 guy, check it out:

Odd that they wouldn’t use a Google guy type character with different colors. Strange coincidence?

Phillip from Google Blogoscoped points out Google is also releasing something called mapplets, via the mapplets developer documentation:

“Mapplets are mini-webpages that are served inside an IFrame within the Google Maps site. You can put anything inside this mini-webpage that you can put into a normal webpage, including HTML, Javascript, and Flash. Google provides a Javascript API that gives the Mapplet access to services such as manipulating the map, fetching remote content, and storing user preferences.”

You can try out some mapplets in the mapplets directory.

Microsoft and Google have had a showdown at the map corral before. Virtual Earth vs. Google Maps was the first time.