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Cisco buys into corporate IM

New taxes on your monthly cell phone bill?

California bans texting by train operators

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A deadly train crash in California prompts the state’s railroad regulators to ban cell phone use by engine operators. Meanwhile, Congress is trying to limit the taxes that can be applied to consumers’ cell phone bills. Already state taxes on cell phone plans average 15.19 percent, according to one study, which is twice as much as the average sales tax.

Plus, Cisco buys Jabber, eBay may have put StumbleUpon on the auction block, and a new
Apple iPhone-related patent turns up. All this and more on Friday’s podcast.

Apple patent could improve iPhone alerts

Holiday sales: How low with HDTV prices go?

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Today’s stories:

Liquid fuel cells have the potential to give gadget users a longer run time than batteries and provide portable back-up power. But they do require the availability of fuel cartridges which should be recycled to be considered an environmentally friendly choice. Portable fuel cells also face the challenge of displacing rechargeable batteries.

The cartridges will go on sale in the middle of next year and will be sold for between $1 and $3. The fuel cell charger will cost about $200 at first, with the price expected to fall to $100 over time, according to the report. Lilliputian plans to supply the “generator chip” for chargers and reference designs for other storage companies to make chargers, the company said.

Lilliputian Systems, a company developing butane-fueled energy storage for consumer electronics, said on Thursday that it has raised $28 million in additional funding.

The technology behind the company is a solid oxide fuel cell and a method for manufacturing chips embedded in its storage units.

Fuel cell chargers for consumer electronics have been under development for years but there are still only a few products actually in use.

Since its founding seven years ago, Lilluptian Systems has been quiet about its product development but has revealed a few more details in the past few weeks. Its financial backers, which include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Atlas Ventures, and Rockport Capital, have put at least $88 million into the company.

PowerAir late last year released a gadget charger that uses a zinc solution. Meanwhile, consumer electronics giants including Toshiba and Sharp are working on fuel-cell charger products.

At a recent event on energy storage at MIT, the company’s vice president of business development Mouli Ramani said the butane will be sold in sealed cartridges that will have identification chips, according to a report at Technology Review. That makes the cartridges approved for airline travel, he said.

The company, which was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also announced that Analog Devices’ co-founder Ray Stata has joined its board and that it named Michael Umana chief financial officer.

The business plan is to make fuel cells and butane cartridges for running consumer electronics, like iPods, mobile phones, and laptops. The company claims that its system will able to pack five to ten times more energy than similarly sized batteries and be much lighter.

Chances are, the record labels and Apple are sitting in a room somewhere and each time Apple throws out a figure, the record labels double it. Yep, that sounds about right.

Sure, the idea of unlimited iTunes music downloads sounds great and it would probably ensure that Amazon and other services would die a slow and agonizing death, but common sense must prevail in this discussion and as far as I can tell, there’s no chance any such a deal can be struck between record labels and Apple.

And here’s why.

The problem here is not Apple; I truly believe the company wants what’s best for consumers as long as it can turn a profit. The real problem here is the record labels and they will continue to make our lives far more difficult than they should be because of their insatiable desire to limit our chances of getting what we want, how we want, when we want.

What a crock. If true, look for a mass upheaval from serious music lovers who look at that and say, “what if I want 51 songs?”

Suffice it to say, none of these plans are worthwhile and the chances of either of them happening are slim. But in the slight chance that one slips through the cracks, look for the service to be locked down to an untenable level and the record labels to be laughing all the way to the bank.

It’s a sad day for the music industry and it looks like things will only get worse.

Realizing this, why would any record label agree to a deal that would give Apple unlimited access to its library and receive only a set fee from the premium consumers pay for the devices?

Unfortunately, we are currently limping through an era where common sense is always a second thought and record labels will do anything they can to ensure consumers are kept under their thumbs.

More than likely, the result of these negotiations will have nothing to do with unlimited access to the iTunes store after paying a premium on hardware. If anything, Apple will probably strike a deal where consumers will be forced to pay a monthly subscription fee for unlimited downloads to be more competitive in the market.

That said, Apple is currently in talks with record labels over that as well. And according to those close to the proceedings, the record labels and Apple have only come to an agreement that customers can keep 40-50 tracks per year and would be willing to pay no more than $7-$8 per month for the subscription service.

Simply put, the record labels hate Apple. In fact, the companies hate Apple so much, they snubbed Steve Jobs in his attempt to get DRM-free music on iTunes and followed Amazon down the path first. Aside from that, they’ve consistently rebuffed his attempts to lower song prices to a more suitable level and they’ve done all they can to ensure that Apple’s power doesn’t allow it to control their every move.

In a report that has sent shock waves throughout the entire Apple community, the Financial Times is reporting that Steve Jobs and company may be trying to coax record labels into allowing the firm to sell an unlimited number of iTunes songs as long as consumers pay a premium on iPods and iPhones. And while that may sound great to some (myself included), it’ll never happen.

Of course, those close to the negotiations have said that Apple and the record labels can’t come to a deal because of the former’s worries over exactly how much it would be forced to pay for a library of songs. Gee, you think?

(Credit:
Declan McCullagh/CNET)

If a little-known but influential alliance of state politicians, large retailers, and tax collectors have their way, the days of tax-free Internet shopping may be nearly over.

A bill expected to be introduced in the U.S. Congress as early as Monday would rewrite the ground rules for mail order and Internet sales by eliminating what its supporters view as a “loophole” that, in many cases, allows Americans to shop over the Internet without paying sales taxes.

Currently, Americans who shop over the Internet from out-of-state vendors aren’t always required to pay sales taxes at the time of purchase. Californians buying books from Amazon.com or cameras from Manhattan’s B&H Photo, for example, won’t pay sales taxes at checkout time that they would if shopping at a local mall.

“We will have the bill ready for introduction by next Monday,” said Neal Osten of the National Conference of State Legislatures. “We finalized the language and now we’re working out the remaining issues and adding some new provisions at the request of various stakeholders.”

This is hardly a new debate: pro-tax officials and state governments have been pressing Congress to enact such a law for at least seven years. They argue that reduced sales tax revenue threatens budgets for schools and police, and say that, as a matter of fairness, online retailers should be forced to collect the same taxes that brick-and-mortar retailers do.

Even though those arguments have been unsuccessful so far, the National Conference of State Legislatures and its allies believe the recession has sliced into sales tax revenue so much that Congress will have to act. A report this week from the Rockefeller Institute says that sales taxes have declined by 6.1 percent, the largest decline in half a century.

“One of the big things the states have learned in the recession is they have declining revenues,” said Scott Peterson, executive director of the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, which counts state politicians and tax collectors on its governing board. “We’re very optimistic about Congress this year. We think we are within a day or two of finalizing the legislation.”

The final legislation is expected to be introduced by Sen. Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, and Rep. Bill Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, who have championed similar proposals in the past. Delahunt’s office on Wednesday confirmed he was interested; Enzi’s did not respond.

On the other side are the Direct Marketing Association, the Electronic Retailing Association, and companies including eBay, L.L. Bean, and Overstock.com. One of their biggest objections to the idea of collecting sales taxes on out-of-state shipments is the dizzying complexity of state laws.

Take candy, which would seem to be a straightforward item to tax. It isn’t. During a 2003 discussion of tax policy, a representative of Indiana, James Turner, noted that a proposed definition of candy would have taxed the Milky Way Midnight candy bar but not the original Milky Way bar.

But further investigation showed that Turner’s counter-proposal would have treated “certain flavors of Pop Tarts” and Cookies and Twix Crunchy Cookie Bars as candy–but not Cookies and Snickers Crunchy Cookie Bars. Peanut butter Girl Scout cookies would be candy, but Thin Mints or Caramel deLites would be classified as food.

Bizarre distinctions like this, coupled with the existence of more than 7,000 different tax agencies, are why the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that out-of-state retailers generally couldn’t be obligated to collect sales taxes unless Congress changes the law. The justices noted in a 1992 case called Quill v. North Dakota: “Congress is now free to decide whether, when, and to what extent the States may burden interstate mail order concerns with a duty to collect use taxes.”

One exception to that rule is a legal concept called “nexus,” which means a company can be forced to collect sales taxes if it has a sufficient business presence. If Amazon had an office in California, it already would be collecting sales tax for Golden State residents. (Another exception is the sale of cigarettes, which is covered by the Jenkins Act.)

In response to complexity concerns, the pro-tax forces have offered a proposal that they hope Congress can be persuaded to adopt. The concept is called the Streamlined Sales Tax Agreement, invented in 2002 by state tax officials hoping to straighten out some of sales tax laws’ most notorious convolutions.

Since 2003, more than 20 states have signed on, either wholly or partially, to the agreement, meaning they agree to simplify their tax codes and make them uniform. If enough states participate, proponents believe it will be easier to convince Congress to make sales collection mandatory for out-of-state retailers.

“You’ll see governors from states who are active participants pushing the Hill to move the issue forward–Kansas has been a long-standing leader. North Dakota, Iowa, Oklahoma, those are some with members on the governing board,” said David Quam, director of the office of federal regulations at the National Governors Association. “The states have done the heavy lifting of coming up with a voluntary system that makes sense. Now it’s Congress’ turn to grant states the authority to collect this.”

Representatives of the Streamlined Sales Tax Project are gathering in Washington, D.C. next month for a three-day governing board meeting, including a “lobbying day” that’s scheduled for May 13.

Under existing law, the caveat is that online purchases from sites like Amazon and eBay only seem to arrive tax-free. Legally, however, purchasers are required to pay their own state’s sales tax rate–the concept is called a “use tax”–and then voluntarily report the amount owed at tax time.

California residents, for instance, are now burdened with a sales and use tax of at least 8.25 percent. State law is strict: if Californians travel to a state with a 5 percent tax and shop there, the law requires them to cough up the 3.25 percent difference when they return. Online purchases are taxed as well.

But compliance is spotty at best. California’s Board of Equalization estimates the state lost $1.34 billion in 2003 because residents aren’t paying use taxes–and attributes $208 million of that to online purchases.

“There’s no member of NRF that does not support” the forthcoming legislation, said Maureen Riehl, vice president of government relations at the National Retail Federation. “The sooner we can get it done the better, as far as retailers are concerned.”

Online retailers tend to disagree. If the Streamlined Sales Tax Project (SSTP) were actually simple and easy for a shipper to work with, they might be more willing to compromise, but that may not be the case.

“The states are desperate for new revenue and I think they realize they’re straying far from the simplification they originally promised,” said Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice, which counts as members AOL, eBay, NewsCorp, Oracle, Verisign, and Yahoo. “That creates an urgency on their part–to get the federal mandate before it becomes clear they have no intention to simplify.”

“They have no real intention of simplifying or compensating sellers for the burdens of collecting,” DelBianco said. “It’s a shell game.”

Among his complaints: That states are unwilling to compensate sellers for the burden of sales tax collection; that small businesses with minimal sales should be exempt; that only one state (as opposed to all states) should be able to audit a business; that participating states are not paying attention to the idea of simplification and are actually making definitions more complex.

“There has to be some oversight,” DelBianco said. “These guys have demonstrated–the streamlined states have demonstrated — an inability to stick to the streamlined promise. Only the U.S. Congress is going to be able to protect sellers from unreasonable burdens.”

CNET’s Stephanie Condon contributed to this report.

To date, the majority of cloud offerings have lacked certain enterprise fundamentals–things like security models, licensing agreements, and so on that are requirements, not accessories. By aligning with hosting providers like Rackspace, VMware starts to offer show some of the enterprise type of attributes we’ll eventually see from companies like IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

But why has VMware taken so long to embrace the cloud? And what will happen to all of the providers who are VMware customers who now find themselves competing directly with the source?

Things should start to get interesting for Xen and XVM. I only have cursory knowledge of Red Hat’s Qumranet acquisition, but there is a clear opportunity for basically everyone who is not VMware to go after the providers that are currently locked in.

Oh, and don’t forget Microsoft, which has a massive network of value-added resellers and hosting providers locked in to Windows and who will undoubtedly adopt Hyper-V.

Overall this move is beneficial for the whole virtualization market, but it’s hard to see how VMware can maintain its dominant position if cloud providers see them as a threat instead of a partner or technology supplier.

To mark this historic moment–33 years in the making–we’ve been combing through our video archives to find some memorable stuff.

• Origin of PC clones
At a 2001 event celebrating the 20th anniversary of the personal computer, Gates and Compaq founder Rod Canion reflect on the creation of the modern PC business.

•  Control-alt-delete…gulp
At the same 2001 event, IBM engineer Dave Bradley talks about how the keystroke came to be, quipping that, though he invented it, Gates made it famous. The best part of this video is the look on Gates’ face after Bradley’s comment.

• Hits and misses
Nobody’s perfect, not even Gates.

• End of an era, ha ha ha
At CES 2008, Gates and friends debuted a comical look at what life would be like as his last day approaches. U2’s Bono, actor George Clooney, and director Steven Spielberg get some laughs at Gates’ expense.

• Shifting roles
Here’s a look back at Gates’ career, with highlights from recent speeches.

• On outflanking rivals
Gates talks at CES 2008 about how Microsoft can beat rivals as software moves to the phone, TV, other devices.

• The future of tech
In the coming years, the conference table, the whiteboard…everything will be a computer, Gates says in October 2007.

• Microsoft versus Apple
At CES 2007, Gates talks about how Microsoft would trump Apple in the digital living room.

• Gates going, but slowly
In June 2006, Microsoft’s co-founder was already planning for a different future for himself.

• Ballmer’s tearful good-bye
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave Gates a teary thank-you as the founder said farewell to company employees at a town hall meeting Friday in Redmond, Wash.

See also:
Special Report: For Bill Gates, the next phase begins

Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed this week that the FCC officially turn its four principles of network openness into regulation and suggested that the FCC add two more “principles” as part of these new rules. The existing principles can be summarized like this: network operators cannot prevent people from accessing lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice and cannot prohibit people from attaching nonharmful devices to a network.

The first new, proposed principle would prevent Internet access providers from discriminating against particular Internet content or applications, while allowing for reasonable network management. The second would ensure that Internet access providers are transparent about the network management practices they implement.

The nation’s two biggest phone companies, AT&T and Verizon Communications, have accepted the principles outlined by the FCC when it comes to their wired broadband networks. But the regulation that Genachowski is proposing will not apply to just wireline broadband networks, such as DSL and cable modem service. It will also apply to wireless services.

This is where the major phone companies will likely focus their opposition to the FCC’s plans for new regulation. Verizon and AT&T, which operate the nation’s largest and second-largest cell phone networks, respectively, say the rules should not apply to wireless Internet access. Among the arguments against the rules is that they would be difficult to implement because of capacity constraints on wireless networks.

• Video: Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra talks Net neutrality

More headlines

Courier tablet one of many Microsoft prototypes The dual-screen prototype is indeed legit, but is just one of many prototypes cooked up as part of a skunkworks project being headed by J. Allard, sources say.

•  Microsoft’s ‘Pink’ emerges from Danger’s shadow

Facebook confirms site instability Log-in and content-posting problems on the social-networking site have been confirmed by the company, but no explanation or cause has yet been provided.

•  Employers grappling with social network use

•  The software that points ‘gaydar’ at Facebook

California to set TV energy efficiency standards There are no national energy efficiency standards for power-hungry consumer electronics but California plans to set TV efficiency standards starting in 2011.

• FAQ: Can flat-screen TVs make the efficiency grade?

Another $100 million for Twitter? Private equity firm T. Rowe Price and VC group Insight Venture Partners are leading the round, which will value the company at around $1 billion, the WSJ reports.

•  Digsby unveils new Twitter features

•  Twitter phishing scam spreads via direct messages

USB group says iTunes can block Pre USB Implementers Forum cautions Palm against using an Apple hardware ID to let its Pre smartphone trick iTunes into granting access.

• Apple OKs first porn star apps for iPhone

• Future of mobile commerce, in a skinny vanilla latte?

• Official Gmail push comes to iPhone, Windows Mobile

• Short video messaging arrives on iPhone

• South Korea welcomes the iPhone

Photos: IDF’s super-slim laptops

Intel unveils system-on-a-chip for TVs The CE4100 is designed to bring Internet content and services to digital TVs, DVD players, and advanced set-top boxes.

•  Intel’s Maloney: Our business is do or die

•  Intel shows off Larrabee graphics chip for first time

•  Intel to introduce first mobile ‘Nehalem’ chip

•  Intel brings Nehalem to notebooks, makes light of cables

Google plug-in builds Chrome browser into IE Google Chrome Frame lets Microsoft’s IE display pages with Chrome technology. But haven’t most disgruntled Web surfers already installed a new browser?
•  Microsoft bashes Google’s Chrome-in-IE plan

Nintendo drops Wii price to $199 Nintendo officially announces that the game console is getting a $50 price cut as of Sunday.

•  Drug cops caught playing Wii during raid

AT&T takes the phone out of iPhone Unreliable
iPhone service prompts CNET’s Elinor Mills to make fewer and shorter calls, when she even has service–and apparently she isn’t alone.

•  AT&T-iPhone calling woes on redial

Also of note
•  MySpace, Hulu working on new video service

•  Microsoft to open Windows cafe in Paris

•  Whitman makes Calif. gubernatorial bid official

What do you do with 2,000,000 downloads and a 100% growth rate? With 240,000 members of your community and 900-plus developers (a number that doubled in 2007)?

You’d start Acquia, that’s what you’d do. Or, at least, that’s what North Bridge Venture Partners did, and the company looks to have a huge opportunity before it. I spent some time with Jeff Whatcott, vice president of Marketing at Acquia, to get more detail on the company and its launch of its products.

First off, however, I just had to know:

Does Acquia compete with Microsoft Sharepoint?

This is bigger than Sharepoint. Sharepoint is primarily behind-the-firewall collaboration. Drupal can be used for this, but Drupal’s real sweet spot today is outside-the-firewall social publishing, or collaboration.

Everyone is getting into social publishing. Web content management software, web application frameworks, and social media software are all converging into social publishing. You see all sorts of different content-related industries adding collaborative features. We don’t really spend much time worrying about competitors: we worry about how to help customers build collaborative content sites.

OK, so what, exactly, are you releasing?

(Credit:
Acquia)

Acquia is following closely on the model developed and embraced by Red Hat and other leading open-source companies:

Carbon - First commercially supported release of Drupal;
Spokes - Update notification service (First iteration of its Network offering);
Plus we’re offering a variety of subscription levels based on SLAs to complement Carbon and Spokes.

Drupal has a huge community of over 240,000 members. Acquia, if it plays its cards right, will benefit from this. What are the benefits and challenges of starting with a community first?

First and foremost, there is very little technical risk for prospective customers if there’s an existing community around the product. You know that there must be great technology behind it or no one would build a community around it. It also means we have a built-in community of potential customers, which makes the marketing job much easier.

On the challenges side, we can’t just show up and expect people to immediately respect what we’re doing. A community is about people and relationships. We have to earn credibility with the community.

(Credit:
Acquia)
We’ve stressed with people in the Drupal community that Acquia is not Drupal and Drupal is not Acquia. We are members of the Drupal community, and hope to be valuable members of that community.

As part of this, we have tried to bring people from the Drupal community into Acquia, starting with Dries, Drupal’s founder. This is good for us, but also good for Drupal as it allows these developers to work on Drupal full-time and improve it. We’re showing up to the community with code, not words.

What are the primary things prospective customers are asking for?

Support and accountability are the two primary requirements that prospective customers are asking Acquia to deliver. Today companies have to hire a Drupal expert to get accountability, which isn’t necessarily easy as such experts are in short supply and are located all over the planet.

The other thing that they want is someone to tell them what works. In Drupal there’s a core and there’s 1,800-plus independently developed modules, each with their own development cycle, their own maintainers, etc. Having someone sift through these modules and provide “editorial value-add,” in addition to testing and such, to the Drupal community is something for which enterprises will pay.

There’s a great opportunity for adding fit and finish to Drupal and its modules. There are a lot of modules developed for Drupal that aren’t well integrated with Drupal. For a Drupal expert, these aren’t difficult problems to solve. But most customers don’t want to be Drupal experts, per se. They just want a collaboration system that works. We can help with that.

Indeed. I wasn’t sure how big the Acquia opportunity would be when I first heard about it from Dries, but it looks like a great opportunity for the company and for the Drupal community. I wish them the best of luck.

Over the past year or so, IBM has been revamping its Systems and Technology Group (STG) organization in a major way.

We see those changes reflected in a major way with IBM’s Power systems announcement Wednesday at its COMMON User Group Conference in Nashville.

Two aspects of the STG reorg are of particular interest here.

The first is the customer aspect. This announcement reflects its venue; COMMON is IBM’s midrange user group–which at IBM historically more or less equated to System i (and its iSeries and AS/400 predecessors). However, this announcement pulls in multiple product threads–including blades. This reflects how the client-facing part of the new STG organization now breaks down by customer type, rather than technology base. STG’s Business Systems Group (BSG) is chartered with selling to the midmarket–across product groups. This is essentially a return to the older IBM sales model that was subsequently replaced by a more specialist-led approach.

The announcement also reflects changes to the product side of the reorganization. Looking back, System i and System p (to use the product line names in use prior to this announcement), sprang from wholly different roots. System i, long known as the AS/400 (although its lineage actually goes back further to the System/36 and System/38), was long an independent thread of IBM systems development based in Rochester, Minn.

Midwinter trips to AS/400 headquarters were not eagerly sought! It was a competitor to low-end and midrange minicomputers from the likes of Digital Equipment and Wang Labs.

System p, on the other hand, was long called the RS/6000 and had its home base in Austin, Texas. Its competition was other RISC-based servers running Unix such as those from Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems. Especially given that the “old IBM’s” product divisions could be best described (however uncharitably) as warring fiefdoms, there was little sharing of technology or anything else between them.

However, IBM has been steadily tearing down the wall between the two lines. Both i and p have used the same Power-family processor for several years now. Still, this week’s announcement represents the first time that the wall is truly gone. System i is System p and vice versa. They’re now both Power systems.

What this means is that there’s now one common set of system models that can run AIX, i, or Linux operating systems–or a combination thereof using the integrated server virtualization features that fall under the PowerVM umbrella. The specific server models covered in this announcement are:

IBM Power 520 Express is an entry-level server with up to four Power6 cores. The Power 520 Express is available in AIX, Linux, and i editions. IBM Power 550 Express is a midrange server with up to eight Power6 cores. The Power 550 is also available in AIX, Linux, and i editions.

There’s also an i Edition Express for BladeCenter S. This basically backfills i support to previously announced Power blades in the SMB-oriented version of its BladeCenter and also adds the JS12, a new single-socket blade.

This is both a major midrange product announcement and the final (or, at least, as final as such things ever are) coming together of a complex organizational and product integration task that’s been going on for years.

In a statement, Lofgren said that between January 2003 and July 2007, the taxation rate on wireless services increased four times faster than the rate for other taxable goods and services. As a result, consumers pay 15.19 percent in federal, state, and local taxes on their cell phone bill, compared with 7.07 percent in taxes for most other goods and services.

“The Cell Tax Fairness Act will help ensure that consumers make choices about communications technology based on the merits of that technology, rather than on the rate of taxation,” Lofgren said. The legislation “does not take away any existing revenue for state or local governments.”

The bill, which is similar to Senate legislation introduced last year, would not affect current taxes, nor does it call for a ban on any new federal taxes. Furthermore, the ban would not apply to fees meant to subsidize emergency 911 services nor the universal service charge, which funds telecommunications infrastructure for low-income and rural residents. The federal excise tax on phone services, which was originally created to support the Spanish-American War, was dropped by the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of the Treasury in August 2006.

The wireless industry’s lobbying arm, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA), is supporting the bill, calling it “a step in the right direction.” In its own statement, the association joined Lofgren in saying that a ban on new taxes would help encourage new innovation in the wireless sector. “We should do everything in our power to remove the roadblocks–such as excessive, discriminatory wireless taxes–that stand in the way of progress,” said
CTIA President and CEO Steve Largent.

Cell phones taxes and fees have been the target of a few bills in Congress since the Democrats regained control of the House, but lawmakers and the CTIA haven’t always seen eye to eye. Separate bills in both the Senate and the House propose eliminating early termination fees and handset locking. The latter issue has become particularly controversial following AT&T’s well-publicized lock on the iPhone, even though handset locking has been standard practice in the industry for years. Though the Senate bill won support from Senators in a hearing held in October, Largent and the CTIA have declined to support it, calling it “unnecessary.”