The Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group

The Status Register - December, 2004


This newsletter will never appear on CUCUG.ORG before the monthly CUCUG meeting it is intended to announce. This is in deference to actual CUCUG members. They get each edition hot off the presses. If you'd like to join our group, you can get the pertinent facts by looking in the "Information About CUCUG" page. If you'd care to look at prior editions of the newsletter, they may be found via the Status Register Newsletter page.
News     Common     PC     Linux     Mac     CUCUG

December 2004


To move quickly to an article of your choice, use the search feature of your reader or the hypertext directory above. Enjoy.

December News:

The December Meeting

The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, December 16th, at 7:00 pm, at the First Baptist Church of Champaign in Savoy. Directions to the FBC-CS are at the end of this newsletter.

The December 16 gathering will be our "Annual" meeting in which club officers will be elected. We will also have an open forum and a swap meet for those who'd like to sell or exchange hardware and software in line with the usual ground rules. This is a social event and should be a lot of fun. Hope to see you there.

ToC

Welcome New and Renewing Members

We'd like to welcome the newest members of our group, joining us in the last month: Joe "Kelly" Leininger (Windows PC desktop and laptop, Linux Desktop), Chris Zahn (Windows PC desktop), and Jim Zinzow (Macintosh Dual G4 Desktop).

We'd also like to thank renewing members Elaine Avner, Michael Habermann, Norris Hansell, George F. Krumins, Ed Serbe, William J. Strutz, and Mark Zinzow.

Lastly, we'd like to express our appreciation to our Lifetime members Kevin Hisel and Richard Rollins.

We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Run across an interesting item or tidbit on the net? Just send the link to the editor. Have an article or review you'd like to submit? Send it in. Have a comment? Email any officer you like. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to the group.

ToC

CUCUG Membership Renewal

It's that time of year again to renew your membership in CUCUG. We rely on our members and their talents for our strength and vitality. You can renew at the December meeting with Treasurer Richard Hall or through the mail at our P.O. Box address. We sincerely hope to have you with us in the new year.

ToC

Current Slate of Candidates

These are the gentlemen who have been officially nominated for re-election.

President:
Richard Rollins
()
Vice-President:
Emil Cobb
(e-cobb@uiuc.edu)
Secretary:
Kevin Hopkins
(kh2@uiuc.edu)
Treasurer:
Richard Hall
(rjhall1@uiuc.edu)
Corporate Agent: Kevin Hisel  


ToC

Week in review: Big Blue bids adieu to PCs

By Steven Musil
http://news.com.com/Week+in+review+Big+Blue+bids+adieu+to+PCs/2009-1083_3-5486652.html
Story last modified Fri Dec 10 10:27:00 PST 2004

IBM, the company that helped usher in the age of the personal computer nearly 25 years ago, stunned the tech world with the announcement that it would largely be bowing out of the business.

Big Blue plans to sell its PC division to China-based Lenovo Group and take a minority stake in the former rival in a deal valued at $1.75 billion. The two companies plan to form a complex joint venture that will make Lenovo the third-largest PC maker in the world, behind Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

Lenovo will be the preferred supplier of PCs to IBM and will be allowed to use the IBM brand for five years under an agreement that includes the "Think" brand. Big Blue has promised to support the PC maker with marketing and its IBM corporate sales force.

Sam Palmisano, chief executive of IBM, says he felt the company had simply grown apart from the PC industry. In a memo distributed to IBM employees and reviewed by CNET News.com, Palmisano explained that Big Blue's strategy to concentrate on so-called on-demand computing had become incompatible with running a PC business.

"IBM is an innovation company," he wrote. "It's why we have invested billions of dollars in recent years to strengthen our capabilities in hardware, software, services and core technologies focused on transforming the enterprise."

Stephen Ward, general manager of IBM's Personal Systems Group, has been anointed future CEO of China's Lenovo. Ward took some time out to discuss the early aims of the "new Lenovo" and its role in the PC market in the United States, China and parts in-between.

Open season at OpenWorld

Michael Dell, whose namesake company is the top-ranking PC maker, is not a big fan of the acquisition. During a question-and-answer session at Oracle's OpenWorld conference, the Dell chairman said a deal between Lenovo and IBM would likely follow a pattern seen in many mergers where two very different organizations fail to mesh.

"We're not big fans of the idea of taking companies and smashing them together," Dell said. "When was the last time you saw a successful acquisition or merger in the computer industry? It hasn't happened in a long, long time...I don't see this one as being all that different."

Some of Dell's top executives also disparaged the "big iron" approach of building large, powerful servers--a dig at rivals IBM, Sun Microsystems and HP. Those competitors see expensive, refrigerator-size servers with dozens of processors as a good way to tackle high-end corporate computing tasks.

Dell prefers clusters of lower-end systems linked over a high-speed network. A crucial component in making server clusters useful is a database that can spread across them--a database such as Oracle 10g, which Dell touted during a keynote speech.

Dell's partnership with Oracle is aimed at luring customers away from Sun servers running the Unix operating system.

Indeed, few companies were off-limits to Dell, as the executive who oversees the partnership with Red Hat said the Linux seller needs to lower its prices, or risk losing customers to free versions of the open-source operating system.

"We believe Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, for the small and medium-size business market, was out of the price range of these customers," said Judy Chavis, director of business development for Dell's enterprise product group.

Dell has the marketing muscle to make its opinions clear. Indeed, Red Hat's pricing was instrumental in Dell's decision to sign its October pact to sell Novell's SuSE Linux.

With so many things on his mind these days, coming up with fresh material for a keynote speech didn't appear to be on Oracle boss Larry Ellison's list of priorities. Ellison virtually recycled his speech from last year's conference, warning thousands of tech professionals gathered to hear him speak about the dangers of "data fragmentation."

He also promised that if the takeover attempt is successful, Oracle will finish building new versions of programs that PeopleSoft is now developing and eventually merge those products with Oracle's own.

"We're going to invest more in the product than either company could have done independently," Ellison said. "And we're going to give SAP a good run for their money in this business."

Oracle and HP also announced a partnership to try to reach more small and medium-size businesses. The companies will cooperate to unify their relationships with the resellers that reach smaller customers, to jointly develop and certify Oracle's software with HP's ProLiant servers, and to expand programs for reseller training, sales and marketing.

The wild, wild Web

McNealy showed a photo during an OpenWorld speech to illustrate how rapidly technology improves--but instead illustrated another computing phenomenon: how easy it is to fall for an Internet hoax.

During his keynote address, McNealy displayed a picture supposedly from the magazine Popular Mechanics showing how people in 1954 envisioned the home computer. His point was to show how far computing has advanced beyond what was expected. Alas, in reality, the photo he used is a doctored picture of a nuclear submarine control room mock-up, according to the myth-debunking site Snopes.com.

But he may not be alone. A function built into all major browsers could be co-opted by attackers to fool Web site visitors into surrendering sensitive information.

The issue, which security firm Secunia labeled a flaw, could allow a malicious Web site to refer visitors to a legitimate site--such as a bank's Web site--and then control the content displayed in a pop-up windows. The issue affects Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the Mozilla Foundation's Mozilla and Firefox browsers, Opera's browser, the open-source Konqueror browser and Apple Computer's Safari, the firm stated in advisories on its site.

Meanwhile, the number of phishing attacks launched each month has increased nearly 10-fold this year. Tech security company MessageLabs, which has intercepted almost 20 million phishing e-mails throughout 2004, said in its annual report that the number of phishing attacks has soared from 337,050 in January to 4.5 million in November. The rate rose most sharply between June and July--from 264,254 to 2.5 million--which could be due to the widespread use of zombie networks.

DVD division

In an effort to ease the transition to higher-capacity disc technology, Toshiba and Memory-Tech have developed a dual-layer disc that supports DVD and HD DVD formats. The disc will be single-sided, with the upper layer storing up to 4.7GB of data in the DVD format and the lower layer holding 15GB of HD DVD data.

On the other side of the DVD fight, Disney said it will release movies on the Blu-ray format in North America and Japan when the discs become available. Manufacturers and disc makers said players and discs should start hitting the market in late 2005 or early 2006. On Friday, Thomson said its Technicolor business will manufacture both the HD DVD and Blu-ray discs.

The Disney announcement means consumers will be able to get movies from Buena Vista Home Entertainment on the Blu-ray Discs. Also part of the library of films are those from Walt Disney Home Entertainment, Hollywood Pictures Home Video, Touchstone Home Entertainment, Miramax Home Entertainment, Dimension Home Video and Disney DVD.

Meanwhile, a Hollywood-backed technology group is suing a high-end home theater system company, contending that its home DVD jukebox technology is illegal. The DVD Copy Control Association, the group that owns the copy-protection technology contained on DVDs, said a company called Kaleidescape is offering products that illegally make copies of DVDs.

Kaleidescape creates expensive consumer electronics networks that upload the full contents of as many as 500 DVDs to a home server and allow the owner to browse through the movies without later using the DVDs themselves. That's exactly what the copy-protection technology on DVDs, called Content Scramble System, was meant to prevent, the Hollywood-backed group said.

Special report: Japan's sun rises again

The Japanese economy is undergoing historic changes to realize a long-awaited recovery led by technology and other industries. As a result, stakes are particularly high this holiday shopping season as consumer electronics plays an important role in the turnaround effort.

A three-part CNET News.com special report examines the challenges faced by tech companies, the changing face of the corporate culture, and the culture clash between techno-pop and ancient traditions.

http://news.com.com/Japans+sun+rises+again/2009-1041_3-5470344.html?tag=nl

Also of note

U.S. Supreme Court justices questioned whether states discriminate in favor of local wine suppliers by banning direct sales to consumers from out-of-state wineries in a pair of cases that could affect wine prices and choices...Microsoft is battling the vulnerability of weak passwords by adopting a new security measure for its internal networks: smart cards for every employee...Intel once said desktop buyers wouldn't really need 64-bit capabilities until later in the decade, but the company will make such capabilities a feature across its desktop lines next year...Companies that use free software downloads to target Web surfers with annoying ads are turning on each other to keep customers--and the cash they generate--for themselves.

ToC

NOW YOU SEE IT ....

Screensaver tackles spam websites

BBC NEWS, 2004/11/29 12:14:35 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/4051553.stm

Net users are getting the chance to fight back against spam websites

Internet portal Lycos has made a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail.

Lycos hopes it will make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers soar by keeping their servers running flat out.

The net firm estimates that if enough people sign up and download the tool, spammers could end up paying to send out terabytes of data.

Cost curve

"We've never really solved the big problem of spam which is that its so damn cheap and easy to do," said Malte Pollmann, spokesman for Lycos Europe.

"In the past we have built up the spam filtering systems for our users," he said, "but now we are going to go one step further."

"We've found a way to make it much higher cost for spammers by putting a load on their servers."

By getting thousands of people to download and use the screensaver, Lycos hopes to get spamming websites constantly running at almost full capacity.

Mr Pollmann said there was no intention to stop the spam websites working by subjecting them with too much data to cope with.

He said the screensaver had been carefully written to ensure that the amount of traffic it generated from each user did not overload the web.

"Every single user will contribute three to four megabytes per day," he said, "about one MP3 file."

But, he said, if enough people sign up spamming websites could be force to pay for gigabytes of traffic every single day.

Lycos did not want to use e-mail to fight back, said Mr Pollmann.

"That would be fighting one bad thing with another bad thing," he said.

Slow down

The sites being targeted are those mentioned in spam e-mail messages and which sell the goods and services on offer.

Typically these sites are different to those that used to send out spam e-mail and they typically only get a few thousand visitors per day.

The list of sites that the screensaver will target is taken from real-time blacklists generated by organisations such as Spamcop. To limit the chance of mistakes being made, Lycos is using people to ensure that the sites are selling spam goods.

As these sites rarely use advertising to offset hosting costs, the burden of high-bandwidth bills could make spam too expensive, said Mr Pollmann.

Sites will also slow down under the weight of data requests. Early results show that response times of some sites have deteriorated by up to 85%.

Users do not have to be registered users of Lycos to download and use the screensaver.

While working, the screensaver shows the websites that are being bothered with requests for data.

The screensaver is due to be launched across Europe on 1 December and before now has only been trialled in Sweden.

Despite the soft launch, Mr Pollmann said that the screensaver had been downloaded more than 20,000 times in the last four days.

"There's a huge user demand to not only filter spam day-by-day but to do something more," he said "Before now users have never had the chance to be a bit more offensive."

ToC

NOW YOU DON"T.

Lycos pulls antispam screen saver from site

It was under fire from security experts and spammers

News Story by Scarlet Pruitt
http://www.computerworld.com/newsletter/0,4902,98039,00.html

DECEMBER 03, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Lycos Europe NV appeared to have pulled a controversial antispam screen-saver program from its site today, after coming under fire from both security experts and the spammers themselves.

The Web site previously distributing the "Make Love Not Spam" screen saver -- which offers to turn the tables on spammers by overwhelming their Web sites with requests -- no longer offers the program and now carries the message "Stay Tuned."

Lycos Europe also removed prominent advertisements for the screen saver from its home page.

Not all Internet users can access the "Stay Tuned" message, however, as some Internet service providers blocked the http://www.makelovenotspam.com site, said Paul Mutton, Internet services developer at Internet hosting services company Netcraft Ltd. Users on parts of the Internet backbone served by these ISPs get an error message when trying to reach the site.

Lycos Europe drew criticism from some members of the security community over the screen saver, saying that the company is engaging in vigilantism and crossing the line by launching what are essentially distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks on spammers' sites. The Web portal responded that it doesn't intend to bring the sites down but simply to cripple them. The screen saver was released on Wednesday (see story).

But some ISPs blocked access to the Make Love Not Spam site, supposedly because the screen saver generates a lot of unnecessary traffic on their networks, or violates their rules on DDOS attacks, Mutton said.

Some spammers also reportedly took action against Lycos Europe by redirecting traffic from the screen saver back to the site that distributes the program.

Lycos Europe representatives weren't immediately available to comment.

ToC

Supreme Court to hear P2P case

By John Borland
http://news.com.com/Supreme+Court+to+hear+P2P+case/2100-1027_3-5487491.html
Story last modified Fri Dec 10 15:34:00 PST 2004


The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday said it would hear a controversial case on whether file-sharing software companies could be held legally responsible for copyright infringement on their networks.

The court's action is good news for big record labels and Hollywood studios, which have lost successive rulings on the issue in lower courts. They want software companies like Morpheus parent StreamCast Networks and Grokster to be held legally responsible when copyrighted material is swapped using their software.

"There are seminal issues before the court--the future of the creative industries and legitimate Internet commerce," Mitch Bainwol, chief executive officer of the Recording Industry Association of America, said in a statement. "These are questions not about a particular technology, but the abuse of that technology by practitioners of a parasitical business model."

The court's decision could also be a sobering sign for technology companies well outside the world of file-swapping. At the core of the case is an interpretation of a 20-year-old decision that made VCRs legal despite their ability to copy TV shows and movies, which ultimately helped pave the way for a host of technologies ranging from CD burners to Apple Computer's iPod.

That case, known as the Sony-Betamax decision, set out rough guidelines under which technology used to make illegal copies of copyrighted material could be distributed without the manufacturer being responsible for the resulting piracy, as long as the product was also capable of "substantial noninfringing uses."

That's been enormously influential for computer and consumer electronics makers over the past few years, particularly as music and movies have been turned into easily copied digital formats. Indeed, all MP3 player makers, including Apple, owe their recent history to a 1999 decision in which a judge said MP3 players were capable of playing legally purchased music, and were therefore legal.

"I don't think anybody had a clue how significant that decision was when it came out," said Jim Brelsford, an attorney at Jones Day. "So many things turned out to be built on that."

Some in Silicon Valley fear that a Supreme Court ruling aimed at reining in file-swapping could have unintended impacts on future product development.

"There's a lot more at stake here for the technology industry than for the copyright industry," said Fred von Lohmann, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney who has represented StreamCast Networks on the issue. "This case will not be determinant of the future of peer to peer around the world, but it will be determinant of the future of a whole host of future digital products."

The case itself focuses on Morpheus and Grokster, each of which are popular file-swapping applications that are widely used to trade movies, music and software.

Studios and labels sued the companies in 2001, following successful legal campaigns against peer-to-peer trailblazer Napster. Attorneys for the entertainment conglomerates said the newer file-swapping services were, like Napster, building businesses based on copyright infringement.

But Grokster and StreamCast were built around a different technology than Napster. Their services involved a highly decentralized network of individual computers trading files among themselves, rather than a network controlled from a central location.

Lower court judges ultimately said that the companies did not directly control what happens on their networks, and that their software could be used for legal purposes. That shields the companies themselves from legal responsibility for the actions of their users, the lower courts said.

"Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends," federal court Judge Stephen Wilson wrote in the original opinion, released in April 2003. "Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights."

With six months or more likely to pass before arguments and a ruling in the case, the court's decision will throw new uncertainty into the file-trading industry, where some companies have been hoping to gain permission to sell authorized copies of music through their networks.

The court issues no comment when it decides to take a case, so there is no indication as to what specific issues might have caught the justices' attention, or which way they might be leaning on the issue. Oral arguments in the case will likely be held in March, and a decision is expected by June of next year.

Outside attorneys said it's rarely possible to guess the justices' intentions before they rule, although the oral arguments could provide some hints.

"It's completely unpredictable," said Morrison & Foerster attorney Jonathan Band. "It could well be that the entertainment industry will rue the day when they went to the Supreme Court."

ToC

Common Ground:

E-voting faces new scrutiny

By Evan Hansen
http://news.com.com/E-voting+faces+new+scrutiny/2100-1028_3-5465309.html
Story last modified Wed Nov 24 04:00:00 PST 2004

What's new:

The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, agreed to look into anomalies in the November election.

Bottom line:

Experts do not expect an inquiry to result in a dramatic challenge of the November election results, but it could lead to important changes in ongoing reforms of the election process.


A newly announced federal investigation of the November election will bring fresh scrutiny on the performance of e-voting machines, but election experts said they believe any impact will be limited to future political contests.

On Tuesday, five Democratic representatives said the Government Accountability Office agreed to their request to review complaints that election machine technology and procedural issues had prevented some votes from being counted in the recently completed presidential election.

More stories on e-voting

Though most observers have concluded that election technology performed reasonably well Nov. 2, a variety of anomalies have cropped up, fueling calls for a deeper review of complaints from voters and election watchdog groups over possible mistakes.

"On its own authority, the GAO will examine the security and accuracy of voting technologies, the distribution and allocation of voting machines, and the counting of provisional ballots," the five members of the House of Representatives said in statement Tuesday. "We are hopeful that GAO's nonpartisan and expert analysis will get to the bottom of the flaws uncovered in the 2004 election."

The pending GAO inquiry offers the latest sign that the postelection healing called for by politicians has yet to emerge for critics of e-voting machines.

Experts said they do not expect an investigation to result in a dramatic challenge of the November election results. But it could lead to important changes in ongoing reforms of the election process sparked by the famous "hanging chad" ballot problems in Florida during 2000's closely fought presidential race.

Congress in 2002 passed the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, to help states fund an overhaul of antiquated voting systems with new e-voting machines. But those attempts have themselves sparked heated criticism over often poorly planned changes that some believe offer citizens less secure and reliable voting procedures than they had before.

Calls for reforms

Criticism has focused on the lack of national voting machine standards and the failure of some voting districts to require that e-voting machines produce a paper ballot receipt that could be used in the case of an audit.

"The $64,000 question is whether or not the GAO finds enough problems in the 2004 election results to spur Congress to help the Help America Vote Act," said Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan voting-information site. "Election reform is driven by either consensus or crisis, and in the absence of either, reform will move slowly, if at all, in the next Congress...There is some concern that if there are only a number of smaller problems, they might just slip under Congress' radar."

One problem voters faced in the November elections was that after choosing one presidential candidate, they were presented with confirmations that they had voted for the opposing candidate, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and VerifiedVoting.org said in a release earlier this month. The Verified Voting Foundation is an e-voting critic that has called for independent technical experts to monitor and test voting machines and results, among other things. The groups added that another common error was that machines crashed and rebooted without evidence of whether the votes were counted.

The groups sent letters to voting officials in eight counties with the worst problems urging them to allow for independent machine tests. The counties included Broward and Palm Beach in Florida, Mahoning and Franklin in Ohio, Mercer and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, Harris in Texas, and Bernalillo in New Mexico.

Calls for increased scrutiny of e-voting systems are heating up as the technology is rapidly taking root in election districts across the country. Some 50 million voters used electronic ballot machines in November, up from 32 million in 2002 and 20 million in 2000. In October, the U.S. Senate voted to increase from $500 million to $1.5 billion the budget for grants to states for election reform improvements mandated under HAVA.

Despite some critics' predictions of widespread and major problems, electronic voting machines made a respectable showing in the U.S. elections. Though issues cropped up in almost every state that used e-voting machines, all were relatively minor, and most could be attributed to poorly trained poll workers, problems caused by voters or other circumstances, according to poll observers.

Known glitches include a transmission error in the battleground state of Ohio that gave President Bush almost 4,000 phantom votes in the preliminary results posted online, the secretary of state's office in Ohio acknowledged. Meanwhile, data from Florida has raised eyebrows and led to at least one analysis that claimed the result of voting there is statistically implausible.

Analysis of voter behavior

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley published on Friday a statistical analysis of irregularities in Florida voter behavior that contends voting patterns favored Bush to the tune of 130,000 to 260,000 votes.

The report analyzed the statistical relationships between Florida's Nov. 2 results and a variety of factors, including historical trends in Florida, racial factors and county size. According to the analysis, people using e-voting machines tended to favor Bush in proportion to the number of registered Democrats in each county.

The group stressed that results were not proof of any errors in counting the vote but merely suggested that some link existed between the type of machine used to tally votes and the margin by which Bush won.

"Without a paper trail, statistical comparisons of jurisdictions that used e-voting are the only tool available to diagnose problems with the new technology," the researchers said in the report.

Paperless e-voting machines accounted for 29 percent of the Nov. 2 vote tally, according to VerifiedVoting.org.

"There were widespread malfunctions and errors, and we're pleased that the GAO will apparently be investigating these incidents, and hopefully it will lead to improvement in regulation and technology," said Will Doherty executive director of the Verified Voting Foundation.

A representative for e-voting machine maker Hart InterCivic, which provided some 25,000 machines used in the November election, said the company welcomes the findings of the GAO.

"A lot of different studies have said a lot of different things, so if someone from the government wants to look at the results and get to the facts, then I think that's good," said Michelle Shafer, director of communications at Hart InterCivic. Shafer added that testing already occurs in many of the counties that use e-voting machines.

Representatives lobby for probe

Shortly after the election, five Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives began lobbying the GAO to conduct an independent investigation. In two letters, sent Nov. 5 and Nov. 8, Reps. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and Robert Wexler, D-Fla., asked the GAO to investigate various complaints about election machine technology and procedural issues preventing some votes from being counted. Two other members of the House of Representatives, Robert Scott, D-Va., and Rush Holt, D-N.J., signed the Nov. 8 letter.

The lawmakers provided the GAO with some 57,000 incident reports that had been received by the House Judiciary Committee.

The representatives asked the GAO to move quickly while there was still evidence from the election to analyze.

"There is substantial concern that much of the primary evidence needed to evaluate these allegations will not be preserved without immediate action," they argued in the Nov. 8 letter.

Eight other members of the House of Representatives gave their support to the GAO request as well, the representatives said in their statement.

"The GAO is a fair and honest nonpartisan body, and we are hopeful that it will look at all the issues and problems that came up and will seriously consider recommending changes," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had previously called on the GAO recommendations to conduct independent testing of results from e-voting machines.

But she added that the GAO's recommendations would likely apply only to future elections. "Our expectation is that the GAO's study won't be completed in time to affect current results," she said.

ToC

Google offers a suggestion

By Margaret Kane - Staff Writer, CNET News.com
http://news.com.com/Google+offers+a+suggestion/2100-1024_3-5487090.html
Published: December 10, 2004, 5:51 AM PST

Google has launched a new feature that tries to guess what people are looking for as they type queries into a search box.

Google Suggest ( http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en ) quietly debuted this week on the company's Labs site ( http://labs.google.com/ ), which showcases Google features that "aren't quite ready for prime time," according to a message on the site. When someone starts typing a request into the search box, a drop-down menu appears with suggestions as to what that person could be looking for.

For instance, typing in "Mi" generates a list starting with "Microsoft" and continuing with "miniclip," "Michael Moore" and "miserable failure," among other suggestions.

Google uses "a wide range of information" to predict queries, according to an FAQ, including data about the overall popularity of various searches. The company does not use individual search histories to help generate the prompts, it says.

Google regularly launches new features in its Labs section, using it as a test bed before formally releasing them. The company recently launched a specialized search function that can scan for scholarly literature, and a desktop search feature allows users to scan their PCs using Google technology.

Google's competitors haven't stayed silent. Yahoo said Thursday that it plans to start testing a downloadable desktop search application in early January, and Microsoft has plans to launch a similar feature by the end of the year.

ToC

DS gives gamers another window on their world

By J.D. Biersdorfer

http://news.com.com/DS+gives+gamers+another+window+on+their+world/2100-1043_3-5486194.html
Story last modified Sat Dec 11 06:30:00 PST 2004

The newest piece of hardware in the video game wars, the Nintendo DS, arrived in stores last month out to prove that two is better than one--in more ways than one.

The popular handheld console has two display screens ready for duty when a player flips open the clamshell case, and two microprocessors to handle the color game graphics and the machine's many other functions. True to its dual nature, the device has slots for two kinds of game cartridges: its own Nintendo DS games, as well as any of the hundreds of cartridges designed for the older Game Boy Advance machines.

"We wanted people with a big game library to feel comfortable moving forward," said George Harrison, senior vice president for marketing and communications at Nintendo of America.

The DS includes the standard navigation and action buttons typically found on handheld consoles and controllers, but it also has a touch screen and a thumb pad that give players different ways to play. Even the microphone can be used to control the action. "We had to provide software developers with new ways to allow customers to interact with our games," Harrison said.

The $150 DS, measuring less than 6 inches long by 3.5 inches wide by 1.1 inches thick when closed, packs a lot of technical punch for a portable game machine. The dual screens have a resolution of 256 by 192 pixels and are capable of displaying 260,000 colors, and the unit's ARM9 and ARM7 processors are powerful enough for 3D graphics. With two screens, a player can see different perspectives within the same game, like an overall map of the terrain within the game on one screen and a first-person point of view on the other.

Far from the monochrome green screen and tiny floating Tetris blocks that made the original Game Boy a hit back in 1989 (the beginning of a franchise that has sold 178 million units worldwide), the Nintendo DS is a sophisticated handheld with wireless networking capabilities (up to about 100 feet, the company says), stereo speakers and a headphone jack that provides virtual surround sound.

In addition to voice commands, elements in some Nintendo DS games can be directly controlled through the power of the pen--or stylus, as the case may be. The lower of the two 3-inch backlit color displays acts much like the screen on a handheld organizer--tapping or dragging the stylus can execute a command or activate a game feature.

For times when stylus-wielding is too clumsy to keep up with a game, the thumb pad can come into play. This is a plastic pad, connected to the unit's wrist strap for easy access, that slips over the player's thumb. It can be used for frantically drumming the screen to fire weapons and control other aspects of some games.

Although basic networking could be accomplished in the past by stringing two Game Boy Advance units together with a cable for multiplayer contests, the Nintendo DS can accommodate multiple players. The wireless networking function allows up to 16 DS-toting warriors with the same game card to play together. "Taking the Game Boy from a singular to a shared experience took us into an accelerated mode that we wanted to extend to the Nintendo DS," Harrison said.

If everyone on the DS network doesn't have the same game card, group play is still possible with certain games intended for "single-card download" play. In this setup, a host DS machine with the game card lets other players download data over the network.

The wireless-networking feature also allows DS users to communicate, using the touch-screen and embedded software called PictoChat. Users can write messages by tapping on an on-screen keyboard or by drawing letters and simple designs directly on the message area. Messages can be sent to up to 15 users, provided they are all within range.

The success of gaming hardware is usually tied to the inventiveness of its software. While just a half-dozen games were available when the Nintendo DS was released in the United States last month, the device's potential seems to have snagged the interest of a few people already. Nintendo reports that it sold half a million units in the first week of release.

ToC

NVIDIA to Power PS3

Terren Tong - Tuesday, December 7th, 2004 | 9:47AM (PST)
http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/4133

NVIDIA to provide graphics component of PS3

Well this is certainly a bombshell. It looked like NVIDIA might have exited the console realm with the Xbox 2 contract going to ATI but today they have announced that they will be powering the Playstation 3.

"TOKYO and SANTA CLARA, CA-DECEMBER 7, 2004-Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) and NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) today announced that the companies have been collaborating on bringing advanced graphics technology and computer entertainment technology to SCEI's highly anticipated next-generation computer entertainment system. Both companies are jointly developing a custom graphics processing unit (GPU) incorporating NVIDIA's next-generation GeForce and SCEI's system solutions for next-generation computer entertainment systems featuring the Cell* processor.

This collaboration is made under a broad, multi-year, royalty-bearing agreement. The powerful custom GPU will be the graphics and image processing foundation for a broad range of applications from computer entertainment to broadband applications. The agreement will encompass future Sony digital consumer electronics products."

This certainly changes the console landscape. It also ties up a couple loose ends including analyst speculation that NVIDIA has been after the PS3 contract for some time and more importantly, the rumor that OpenGL would be the PS3 API. This makes a lot more sense as NVIDIA has the best OpenGL drivers in the industry. The next generation console race should have the ATI Xbox2 coming in 2005 and the NVIDIA PS3 coming in 2006.

Here's the link to the Press Release - http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_17342.html

ToC

UI Building A Better Transistor

Laser-emitting device could be tech blockbuster

By Greg Kline (kline@news-gazette.com)
News-Gazette Staff Writer
Saturday, November 13, 2004

The fellows who brought you the light-emitting transistor, not to mention the light-emitting diode and the world's fastest transistor, have gone one better.

The laser-emitting transistor, to be highlighted Monday in the journal Applied Physics Letters, might end up at the center of integrated circuits - computer chips - for the next 50 years, said University of Illinois Professor Milton Feng, one of its inventors.

Feng's colleague UI Professor Nick Holonyak was a little more cautious.

"You can't tell what the implications are," said Holonyak, a UI electrical and computer engineering and physics professor. "We're at the front end of things. These are still fairly primitive."

Still, Holonyak thinks the technology, which the UI is patenting, could eventually be a blockbuster and almost certainly is a first.

"To my knowledge, no one has ever run a transistor as a laser before this," he said.

What's the significance of that? Well, getting a transistor, the linchpin of the electronic age, to emit light is one thing. UI researchers announced that they had done so in January.

Getting one to emit laser light is another thing entirely. Laser light is "coherent." It's hundreds of times more powerful than the spontaneous, scattered light emissions the researchers first recorded. It can be stimulated as needed, finely focused, controlled and used in signaling, as in fiber-optic communications, one potential place for the device created by Feng and Holonyak.

"Coherent light can be guided," Holonyak said.

Feng, also a UI electrical and computer engineering professor, thinks laser transistors could be used in signaling between tiny components of integrated circuits as well.

Transistors today are "two-port" devices. A charge goes in and an electrical signal comes out.

The laser-emitting transistor, on the other hand, is a three-port device, a charge goes in and two signals come out, electrical and light, Feng said.

The addition of the light signal, and Feng's work on faster transistors in general, is what holds out the promise of increasingly powerful "super chips," capable of moving more data faster, for a long time to come.

Moreover, Holonyak said the idea has an advantage over other possibilities, such as carbon nanotubes, for overcoming the limitations chip makers are facing with current technology. That's because it can be more easily integrated into existing processes for manufacturing and employing integrated circuits.

It also could offer a more compact , single package for some uses, like fiber optics, where both transistors and a light emitter are required.

The laser transistor was produced in the UI's Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory. Post-doctoral researcher Gabriel Walter and graduate student Richard Chan collaborated on the project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Feng's lab produced the world's fastest transistor, 509 gigahertz, last year, beating its own record.

He and Holonyak are in the habit of meeting mornings for coffee, and shop talk and it was there that they started discussing the possibility of using the light-emitting qualities, initially a throwaway byproduct, of Feng's fast transistors.

Holonyak developed the first practical light-emitting diode, a device which lights up the displays of electronic devices everywhere.

He's adding to his long list of honors next month when he receives the Von Hippel Award, the highest honor by the Materials Research Society, for contributions including the first semiconductor laser in the visible spectrum, a device that's central to CD and DVD players, among other things.

ToC

New transistor laser could lead to faster signal processing

James E. Kloeppel, Physical Sciences Editor
217-244-1073; (kloeppel@uiuc.edu)
11/15/04
URL: http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/04/1115transistor.html



[photo caption: Milton Feng, left, and Nick Holonyak have demonstrated the laser operation of a heterojunction bipolar light-emitting transistor.]


CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have demonstrated the laser operation of a heterojunction bipolar light-emitting transistor. The scientists describe the fabrication and operation of their transistor laser in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters.

"By incorporating quantum wells into the active region of a light-emitting transistor, we have enhanced the electrical and optical properties, making possible stimulated emission and transistor laser operation," said Nick Holonyak Jr., a John Bardeen Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at Illinois.

The same principle making possible the transistor - negative and positive charge annihilation in the active region (the source of one of the transistor's three currents) - has been extended and employed to make a transistor laser, he said. Holonyak invented the first practical light-emitting diode and the first semiconductor laser to operate in the visible spectrum.



[photo caption: The transistor laser light beam with a infrared wavelength labeled "hv" at the top is captured by CCD camera. The contact probes (dark shadow) on the Emitter, Base and Collector.]



Unlike a light-emitting diode, which sends out broadband, incoherent light, the transistor laser emits a narrow, coherent beam. Modulated at transistor speeds, the laser beam could be sent through an optical fiber as a high-speed signal.

"This is a true, three-terminal laser, with an electrical input, electrical output and an optical output, not to mention a coherent optical output," said Milton Feng, the Holonyak Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Illinois. "It is a device that operates simultaneously as a laser and as a transistor." Feng is credited with creating the world's fastest bipolar transistor, a device that operates at a frequency of 509 gigahertz.

At laser threshold - where the light changes from spontaneous emission to stimulated emission - the transistor gain decreases sharply, but still supports three-port operation, Feng said. "The electrical signal goes down, but the optical signal goes up."

Earlier this year, Feng and Holonyak reported their discovery of a three-port, light-emitting transistor. Building upon that work, the researchers fabricated the transistor laser in the university's Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory. Unlike traditional transistors, which are built from silicon and germanium, the transistor laser is made from indium gallium phosphide, gallium arsenide and indium gallium arsenide, but can employ other materials in this family (the so-called III-V compounds).

"This work is still very much in its infancy," Holonyak said. "There is much more to be learned, including how to separate and optimize the transistor laser output between electrical signals and light signals."

Down the road, ultra-fast transistor lasers could extend the modulation bandwidth of a semiconductor light source from 20 gigahertz to more than 100 gigahertz. Used as optoelectronic interconnects, transistor lasers could facilitate faster signal processing, higher speed devices and large-capacity seamless communications, as well as a new generation of higher performance electrical and optical integrated circuits.

Co-authors of the paper with Feng and Holonyak are postdoctoral research associate Gabriel Walter and graduate research assistant Richard Chan. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funded the work.


News Bureau, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 807 South Wright Street, Suite 520 East, Champaign, Illinois 61820-6219 Telephone 217 333-1085, Fax 217 244-0161

ToC

NPR of Note

In case you didn't catch it, National Public Radio did some interesting stories on internet access. Champaign-Urbana even gets a mention. You can hear the stories at:

Digital Generations: Rural High-Speed Web access -

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4190131

Verizon Attempts to Block City's Move to Provide Internet Access -

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4191108

Rural Telecom Subsidies Jeopardized -

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4186191

There's also some very interesting Internet related news in the Media Minutes segment here:

Media Minutes: December 10, 2004 -

http://freepress.net/mediaminutes/archive/mm121004.mp3

"The Supreme Court agrees to hear a case that could determine the future of the Internet. Congress creates a copyright czar. And a Fast Fact: spending on political TV advertising in 2004 smashes all records."

ToC

Phishing and not being caught!

From Gary Bernstein, Director of Computer Information & Access Krannert Center for the Performing Arts Wed, 8 Dec 2004 12:25:41 -0600

It has recently come to our attention that the number of "phishing" exploits out there are increasing at a dramatic rate. Since it is very easy to fall victim to these "scams", we thought I should send out some more information about them. Please see the links below for more information.

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/tips/ST04-014.html

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/phishingalrt.htm

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/business/10356059.htm

In short, the sorry state of affairs that we are currently in requires that you question the validity of all messages that you receive via e-mail and all websites. The scammers are out in full force and they are getting craftier by the minute. They fool the recipient into giving them personal and confidential information such as mother's maiden name, social security numbers, credit card information, bank account information, etc. They then use this information to purchase items for themselves or to steal your identity to commit crimes in your name or to destroy your credit rating.

If you ever have questions about the validity of something, please contact the company that supposedly sent the message by phone (for example call Citibank or E-Bay or Amazon). As the person who receives e-mail addressed to several well-known addresses (webmaster@kcpa, postmaster@kcpa, etc) I see a lot of these scams first hand.

ToC

Survey: Some iPod fans dump PCs for Macs

By Jo Best
http://news.com.com/Survey+Some+iPod+fans+dump+PCs+for+Macs/2100-1042_3-5465935.html
Story last modified Wed Nov 24 07:28:00 PST 2004

The popularity of the iPod could be boosting Apple Computer's financials in unexpected ways.

According to a survey of iPod users by financial analysis firm Piper Jaffray, Macs are basking in the reflected glory of the iPod, with some who own the music player saying they have already or are intending to ditch their PCs for Macs.

The research found that 6 percent of iPod users have made the switch. An additional 7 percent said they are planning to dump their old PC for an Apple machine, according to the survey.

Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray senior research analyst, said the iPod halo effect will make a difference to Apple for a while to come.

"We're in the very early innings of a multiyear trend," he said.

Among the factors influencing the PC-dumping crowd are ease of use, a focus on entertainment and the perception of better security.

The switchers, according to Munster, tend to be people who aren't necessarily techie types.

"A lot of people, with all due respect, don't understand the technology...They're people with money, not tech people," he said.

While Apple might see a healthy period ahead, to turn the advantage into long-term gain the company has to keep setting the design trends, according to the analysts.

"They've got to keep that 'cool factor' going," Munster said. "If they don't, they're in trouble."

Jo Best of Silicon.com reported from London.

ToC

The PC Section:

WinInfo Short Takes

Paul Thurrott
http://www.wininformant.com/

Windows Server 2003 R2 Beta Begins

Microsoft has launched the beta program for Windows Server 2003 Release 2 (R2), its interim follow-up to Windows 2003 that's scheduled to ship in October 2005. R2, which was first publicly revealed on the SuperSite for Windows in January, will be built on Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and will add previously shipped add-ons such as Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM), Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), and Automated Deployment Services (ADS), as well as a host of new features, many of which are still in flux. If you're interested in testing Windows 2003 R2, the initial beta will be a limited, closed beta, but a future beta release that's due in the first half of 2005 will be publicly available.

Heads-Up: Microsoft to Release Patches for 5 Noncritical Flaws Next Week

In keeping with its new policy of warning customers about upcoming security patches the week before releasing them to the public, Microsoft revealed last night that next week's regularly scheduled monthly security patch release will include patches for five flaws, all noncritical. The fixes will ship December 14, Microsoft says. However, Microsoft recently released an out-of-band security fix for IE that patches a critical flaw. That fix finally closes a hole that could let malicious Web site owners remotely control users' PCs and launch malware.

Xbox Live Traffic Quadruples in Wake of Halo 2

Sandive, a broadband traffic outfit, reported this week that traffic on Microsoft's Xbox Live online game network quadrupled in the wake of the release of Halo 2, the company's blockbuster new Xbox game. Sandive says that Xbox Live network traffic has continued, unabated, since Microsoft first released Halo 2 on November 9. "The jump [in traffic] raises quality-of-service concerns for service providers who are eager to keep high-value customers like gamers from churning away to competitors with a better reputation for optimized broadband experience," a Sandive report noted. Meanwhile, I've come around to the joy of the networked Halo 2 multiplayer experience, after years of being a PC gamer snob. Carting around an Xbox and a flat-panel screen isn't exactly easy, but I've participated in a few Xbox LAN-based deathmatches with several friends recently, and it's good stuff.

Intel Pledges to Increase PC Performance 10 Times by 2008

Intel might have been late to the 64-bit x86 (now called x64) party, but the company intends to keep the fire to the feet of market innovator AMD by releasing an amazing array of new 64-bit chips next year, then rapidly upping performance over the next several years. Intel says that by 2008 it will increase the performance of its microprocessors by 10 times, thanks to advances in multicore processors, which essentially fuse multiple processors' "brains" into a single chip. First, however, Intel will release a family of 64-bit consumer-oriented chips that will start shipping in 2005 and will target Longhorn, the next-generation version of Windows that's due in mid-2006. Intel is looking to the technical and marketing successes of its Centrino mobile brand for inspiration about the direction to take with desktop-oriented chipsets. The company's 2005-era 64-bit chips will likely borrow liberally from the Centrino design, which currently graces most of the notebook computers sold today.

Microsoft Ships Windows x64 RCs

Yesterday, Microsoft issued release candidate (RC1) builds for the x64 versions of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP, both of which are scheduled for release in the first half of 2005. Microsoft declared build 1289 of Windows 2003 x64 Edition and XP Professional x64 Edition as RC1 on Monday.

In recent briefings with Microsoft, executives from the software giant have been effusive in their praise of the x64 platform, which provides 64-bit capabilities, better performance, and complete compatibility with the 32-bit x86 platform that today's PCs use. One of the highlights of the x64 platform, they've said, is that, unlike the Itanium, x64 provides full 32-bit application compatibility and performance, giving customers the best of both worlds.

"Whenever we do performance testing, we run [various] industry-standard tests on the previous operating system on the same piece of hardware [as the x64 OS]," Iain McDonald, a Microsoft group program manager told me recently. "Our goal was that customers could move to x64 without seeing a penalty in 32-bit application performance. We wanted to eliminate any sort of adoption barrier. We believe we've actually nailed it. The key is that there are some architectural benefits to x64 ... so 32-bit applications run at parity, or better, on x64 [platforms] than they do on x86."

One of the other huge advantages of x64 is that it finally shatters the 4GB memory model that 32-bit systems use, letting native 64-bit applications access stunning amounts of RAM. However, even 32-bit applications benefit from this situation when running on x64. McDonald told me that each 32-bit application gets a full 4GB of virtual address space when executing on x64 platforms, up from 2GB on 32-bit systems.

Unlike the recently released 32-bit version of Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1), the beta releases of Windows 2003 x64 Edition and XP Professional x64 Edition are currently available only to beta testers. However, Microsoft tells me that it will ship the build to MSDN customers and others within the month. Both products are functionally similar to the latest 32-bit versions of each product. So, for example, the x64 version of XP will be almost identical to 32- bit XP SP2, whereas the x64 versions of Windows 2003 will include the feature set from Windows 2003 SP1.

Lenovo, IBM to Announce Plans for New US-Based PC Company

Although the details are still shrouded in mystery, sources close to the negotiations between computer giant IBM and the China-based PC maker Lenovo Group say that the companies will announce plans tonight for IBM to sell its PC business for as much as $2 billion. Under the terms of the deal, IBM and Lenovo will create a new US-based PC maker, the majority of which will be owned by Lenovo, although IBM will retain a small stake. Although the companies were originally mute about the topic, IBM and Lenovo early this week confirmed that IBM's PC business is on the block.

The new company will be the third largest PC maker in the world and will likely continue to use the IBM name, as well as key IBM brands such as ThinkPad, for at least a few years. It will also have access to IBM's corporate accounts, which is considered key to the new company's success.

Lenovo, which was previously known as Legend, is China's largest PC maker and is partially owned by the Chinese government. However, the company has recently started investigating acquisitions and mergers that would let it better compete with Dell and HP worldwide. Although the new deal with IBM won't technically see all of IBM's PC operations come under the Lenovo umbrella, it will give the Chinese company direct access to the lucrative US PC market. In that market, IBM is in a distant third place behind Dell and HP, and its PC business is said to be only marginally profitable. Shares of Lenovo were halted on the Hong Kong stock exchange in anticipation of the blockbuster deal.

Microsoft Files 7 Spam Lawsuits

Microsoft filed seven lawsuits yesterday against spammers who violated the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 antispam law's "brown paper wrapper" provision by sending offensive email messages to unsuspecting recipients. The provision requires that emailers include a label indicating that the message contains explicit material in both the subject line and the initially viewable area of an email message.

McAfee: Microsoft to Enter Antivirus Market in Mid-2005

Antivirus vendor McAfee expects Microsoft to enter the antivirus market in mid- 2005, leading credence to rumors that the software giant will offer its antivirus wares earlier than the previously announced Longhorn time frame. McAfee says that although it has a deal with Microsoft to give MSN 9 customers antivirus solutions, Microsoft has yet to contact McAfee about extending the contract to include the upcoming MSN 10. For this reason, McAfee expects Microsoft to first offer its own antivirus solution through MSN, not generally to all XP users. I'm interested to see what happens. I have yet to hear anything personally from Microsoft about any pre-Longhorn antivirus plans.

ToC

The Windows Feedback Panel

From Microsoft

We are committed to making the Windows experience better for you. A lot of our efforts focus on engaging with customers in focus groups, surveys, usability studies, and visits to customers' homes and workplaces. Even with all these activities, we believe we have an opportunity to do more. For that reason, we created the Windows Feedback Panel Program. It's an exciting new way for us to get feedback from you so we can produce software based on your needs. With this program, we are getting our customers even more actively involved in helping to create the world's best software.

http://wfp.microsoft.com/

ToC

Thunderbird 1.0 Takes Aim At Microsoft's Outlook Express

By John Foley, Information Week
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=54800665
December 7, 2004

Following the launch of its Firefox browser, Mozilla delivers an E-mail client. A calendaring application may be next.

On the heels of the success of its open-source Firefox browser, the Mozilla Foundation on Tuesday will release an E-mail client intended to be an alternative to Microsoft's Outlook Express.

Thunderbird 1.0, available as a free download at http://www.mozilla.org, is designed to work with Firefox 1.0, the browser released in November that's cutting into the market share of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Mozilla developers are working on a related calendaring application for release in 2005.

Thunderbird runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac computers. Lead engineer Scott MacGregor says Thunderbird come with built-in defenses for two of the most common E-mail problems: spam and viruses. Other features includes an RSS viewer for reading and managing Weblog postings, a Saved Search function that makes it possible to save searches within a folder, and the ability to group E-mails by day or week.

Thunderbird 1.0 is aimed at consumers, but MacGregor expects it to appeal to business users, too. Already, one company has deployed 40,000 copies of Thunderbird, MacGregor says, though he declined to name the company. A tool called Mission Control Desktop allows system administrators to centrally manage Thunderbird functions such as user settings.

ToC

The Linux Section:

Linux/BSD News

from Tom Purl (tompurl2000@yahoo.com)

Venezuela's Government Shifts to Open Source Software

My favorite quote from this article is one that you'll probably hear from a lot of companies and other governments soon:

"Open source whenever possible, proprietary software only when necessary."

Here's a link to the story:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-08-30-011-26-NW-LL-PB

Knoppix 3.7 Is Released

A new version of everyone's favorite bootable Linux distribution has been released. For more information, please see the following link:

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/10/1356241&tid=90

NetBSD 2.0 Released

The latest and greatest version of the most versatile BSD has been released. For more information, please take a look at the following link:

http://www.netbsd.org/Releases/formal-2.0/NetBSD-2.0.html

ToC

Intel more active in desktop Linux

By Stephen Shankland
http://news.com.com/Intel+more+active+in+desktop+Linux/2100-7344_3-5465225.html
Story last modified Tue Nov 23 16:40:00 PST 2004

Intel has begun an effort to make it easier for sales partners in China and India to sell desktop computers running Linux, starting a more active phase in the company's help with the open-source operating system.

Intel has made substantial efforts to boost Linux, which most often runs on computers using the company's processors, but those efforts have been largely confined to powerful networked computers called servers. The chipmaker warmed up to desktop PC makers when partners in the Asian countries started requesting more help with desktop Linux, company spokesman Scott McLaughlin said.

Now when Intel ships the components out of which companies assemble PCs--often called "white box" systems because they're from companies with little-known brand names--it will include a kit of software and instructions to ease Linux installation. It's a strategy Intel has used for years with Windows.

The kit includes driver software, which enables use of specific hardware features; scripts to quickly install software that has been validated to work with various versions of Linux; and a program called the Application Version Compliance Tool that checks to make sure programs are compatible with those Linux versions and Intel electronics.

The kit supports three versions of Linux--Red Hat Desktop, Novell Linux Desktop 9 and Red Flag Desktop 4.1--and will support Linux from the China Standard Software later, Intel said. Sun Microsystems inked a deal in 2003 under which the China Standard Software will sell Sun's Linux desktop software, but Intel couldn't say if this was the version of Linux it would support.

On desktop computers, where Microsoft is dominant, Linux faces much higher barriers than in the server market, where Linux's similarity to well-established Unix makes it a natural fit. But particularly in Asia, Linux is catching on, and Microsoft has lowered prices in several emerging markets.

Linux has at times been something of an afterthought for Intel. For example, when it released Centrino components, which mated wireless networking with an Intel processor, the technology came with full support for Windows. Linux support for Centrino did show up a year later, though Intel released prototype software that only now has begun arriving in test versions of Linux.

Intel also said it will open four Linux development centers to help software companies build PC applications for Linux computers. The Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, established by the Beijing municipal government, will help run a center in that city; the Guangdong Linux Technology Service Center will help run one in Guangdong, China; the Indian Institute of Technology will help run one in Mumbai; and Stefanini Consultoria will help run one in Brazil.

In addition, Intel and the city of Xi'an in China signed a preliminary agreement in September to adopt computers using Linux and Intel components. Intel plans to help with testing, validation and management.

ToC

TCO study: Linux wins again

By Sam Varghese
December 13, 2004
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Breaking/TCO-study-Linux-wins-again/2004/12/13/1102786990788.html

An updated Linux vs Windows TCO study has found that a 250-seat company can end up saving 36 percent if it were to equip its users with the open source operating system and applications that run on it.

The study, by Melbourne-based open source firm Cybersource, found that even use of a commercial Linux distribution such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, would result in 27 percent lower costs.

The study was first issued in April 2002. "We have now updated this report to accommodate the changes in both platforms. We have also extended the model to increase its relevance and accuracy," said Con Zymaris, chief executive officer of Cybersource.

The study covers the average requirements over a period of three years. Zymaris said the timeframe was chosen because the costs of upgrading had to be borne repeatedly in the case of Windows.

He said given the fact that the company deals in open source products, four aspects had been factored in to tip the scales towards Microsoft:

"The costing models include expenses such as workstations, servers, networking, IT staff, consultancy fees, internet service charges, file, mail and print servers, e-commerce servers, SQL and network infrastructure servers, internet and intranet servers, line-of-business software, desktop productivity applications, external training, printers as well as miscellaneous systems costs," Zymaris said.

ToC

Ballmer: Linux May Violate 228 Patents

By Nate Mook, BetaNews
November 18, 2004, 5:06 PM
http://www.betanews.com/article/Ballmer_Linux_May_Violate_228_Patents/1100815603

At Microsoft's Asian Government Leaders Forum in Singapore, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told attendees that Linux violates over 228 patents, and "somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property," according to Reuters. Company representatives later toned down the statement to Microsoft Watch, but not before uproar from the open source community claimed Microsoft is using scare tactics to sell its products. Microsoft says Ballmer was simply citing a recent Open Source Risk Management report.

[Editor's Note: Gee, I wonder why he would say that? See above.]

ToC

The Macintosh Section:

GarageBand.com Inks Deal with MSN Music

by Geoff Duncan <geoff@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#756/22-Nov-04

In an interesting move, GarageBand.com has inked a deal with Microsoft's MSN Music whereby top-rated GarageBand artists will be featured on MSN Music services, and (eventually) artists will be able to distribute or sell their music via MSN Music. The deal marks the first time one of the major online digital music services (okay, a potentially major service; right now nothing compares to the iTunes Music Store) has dipped into the vast pool of independent and unsigned musical talent available via the Internet. It also marks the first time a (potentially) major music distribution channel has created an option whereby featured artists are primarily selected by music listeners, rather than by record labels, producers, advertisers, and marketing machines.

<http://www.garageband.com/news/msn_music.html>
<http://www.music.msn.com/garageband/>

The basic idea is that featured artists are selected from GarageBand.com's top-rated artists in a variety of genres; those ratings are derived from GarageBand's listener review process, in which anyone can participate. The listener ratings act as a filter to highlight the strongest (and/or marketable) artists in each genre. MSN Music will launch a new "GarageBand Radio" channel on MSN Music which will stream tracks from GarageBand.com top-ranked artists; MSN Music will also enable GarageBand.com artists to submit music for distribution either for free or as paid downloads - the first time a (potentially) major online music store has opened up a direct channel to independent artists. MSN Music will also apparently carry "hundreds of thousands" of GarageBand.com songs as free downloads; some of these tracks will at least in part be comprised of participants in the original MP3.com's TruSonic program, which GarageBand has acquired and is working to restore.

<http://www.garageband.com/bbs/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=announcements&Number=156321&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5

This move - for the time being - makes MSN Music the only major player in the online music scene making any direct effort to connect with independent, unsigned, and emerging artists. Something of an irony, considering the source!

ToC

AirPort 4.1 Fixes Encryption Irritation, Enables Remote Control

by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#756/22-Nov-04

Apple last week released AirPort 4.1 software for Mac OS X 10.3, adding a feature that's been in great need: the capability to use more modern and secure WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) encryption when you're also linking base stations wirelessly through WDS (Wireless Distribution System). This is common if you have an AirPort Express linked wirelessly to an AirPort Express or AirPort Extreme that's connected to the Internet. WPA is highly recommended, as the weaker WEP encryption has been broken for some time.

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airport41formacosx.html>

The update also includes necessary support for the new Keyspan Express Remote, which can plug into the AirPort Express's USB port to enable remote control of iTunes.

<http://www.keyspan.com/products/usb/urm17a/>

The update also enables you to rename a printer connected via USB to a base station. This solved a problem with the printer that my wife and I share at home; I could print wirelessly, but she had to remain connected via USB cable. After changing the name - its Rendezvous name, really - in the AirPort Admin Utility, my wife can now print to that printer. I suspect there's a funky entry for that printer deep in some Rendezvous .plist file on her machine that, if deleted, would have made it work, too, but this approach was easier.

The update also includes AirPort Express 6.1 and AirPort Extreme Base Station 5.5 firmware updates. AirPort 4.1 requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later, and is available through Software Update, or as a 12.4 MB download. An AirPort 4.1 update is also available for Windows; the firmware updates are also available as separate downloads.

ToC

Eudora 6.2 Alternates Between Silly and Serious

by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#756/22-Nov-04

I've been a Eudora user for a long time, and despite the improvement in other email clients over the years, I've never been tempted to switch away from Eudora. That's in part because I grok the program at a deep level; in the parlance of a certain group of die-hard Eudora users, I can "think like Steve." Steve, in this case, is not Steve Jobs (who has expressed disdain for Eudora in the past), but Eudora creator Steve Dorner (who has his own disdain for Apple technologies - for years, typing "Appearance Manager" in a Eudora email message would cause Eudora's invective identifier MoodWatch to rate the message as likely to cause offense). Steve Dorner is an email purist, and although he's come around to various modern features, he's still the guy who allowed users of Eudora 3.0 to toggle a preference called "Waste cycles drawing trendy 3D junk."

<http://www.eudora.com/>

That's why, when I first saw the emoticons feature in the just- released Eudora 6.2, I almost called Steve to make sure he hadn't been secretly drugged and brainwashed into adding a feature that makes the "trendy 3D junk" of 1996 seem downright subdued. Eudora 6.2's emoticons feature replaces (only in the local display) 24 standard smiley character combinations (like :-)) with iconic representations. Needless to say, many long-time Eudora users who, even if they didn't mind the trendy 3D junk way back when, will react with justifiable horror to this wildly misplaced feature. Let's face it, people who are still using Eudora despite the free and bundled competition from Apple and Microsoft probably like the program's utilitarian interface and power user features and are uninterested in such silliness. I left the emoticon display on for a while to determine that I really did hate it as much as I thought I would, then I shut it off (in the Font & Display settings panel) and let my mail return to its 9-point Monaco goodness. Maybe I've been conditioned to think like Steve for too many years, but little icons littering my mail don't make it any more fun to read, and they certainly don't make dealing with the mail any faster. Graphical emoticons don't bother me as much on the Web, where graphics and text are commonly mixed together, but I don't want them in my email.

<http://www.eudora.com/email/features/emoticons.html>

Luckily, as counter to the core philosophy of Eudora as emoticons are, the other new features in Eudora 6.2 are more along the lines of what I know and love about the program. Most important for less-savvy users is ScamWatch, which helps you identify where a link embedded in an HTML-formatted message points by displaying a little yellow tooltip box that shows the real URL. If the real URL looks suspicious to Eudora, either because it points at a numerical IP address or because it doesn't match the visible URL showing in the message, Eudora notes that fact in the tooltip, and if you click a suspicious URL, Eudora pops up a warning dialog to ensure you realize that the link is deceptive. This feature is subtle but brilliant. Far too many people are being fooled by "phishing" messages that purport to be from PayPal, Citibank, or eBay, and this feature should provide a welcome protection that could prevent the dire consequences of giving a scammer your passwords or personal financial information. In my real world use, since I'm alert to phishing messages, ScamWatch has mostly caught the links in Macworld's weekly newsletter, since the domain in their visible URLs doesn't match what I presume is a click- counting service domain that then redirects clicks back to the main Macworld site.

<http://www.eudora.com/email/features/scamwatch.html>

For those of us who have been forced to revamp our mail reading strategies of late, Eudora 6.2 offers another key improvement: Live Search. Many people don't realize that you can set up and run a search in Eudora, and then choose File > Save to save it in a Saved Searches folder. Once a search is saved, you can invoke it instantly by choosing it from the hierarchical Special > Find menu (and of course, anything you can choose from a menu, you can attach to a toolbar button). With Eudora 6.2, searches are now live, so if you receive new messages while a search results window that would find those messages is open, Eudora automatically adds the new messages to the search results window. I'll explain how I've altered my approach to reading email in another article; suffice to say for now that I'm using a saved search to collect mail from multiple mailboxes into a single window for easy access.

I'm not an IMAP user, so I can't comment on the effectiveness of Eudora 6.2's new IMAP capabilities, but they sound good. You can now transfer messages from IMAP mailboxes to local mailboxes even when you're offline; deleted messages in IMAP mailboxes are immediately removed from view (although you can toggle an option to show them if you wish); and you can now turn on an auto-expunge feature to remove deleted messages from IMAP mailboxes immediately or when the space used by deleted message exceeds some percentage. You can also stick with manual expunging if you prefer.

Lastly, there are a few minor new features that may interest some users. Eudora can now show the number of unread messages on its Dock icon; such a feature is meaningless to me, since I always have tons of unread messages. (However, a nice touch is that the number applies to the frontmost mailbox window; so if you have no unread messages in the In box, but new messages are automatically routed to other folders - such as Junk - you can see immediately if Eudora's new mail alert sound heralds important mail without bringing the application forward.) Eudora's SSL handling has improved, and if a new SSL certificate is chained to a trusted root certificate, Eudora will automatically trust the new certificate. For those who spend time in Eudora's Address Book (not me; I rely almost entirely on nickname auto-completion), there's now an iChat button with every entry that, when clicked, starts a new chat with the selected person.

Eudora 6.2 is a 6.5 MB download, and it remains available in three modes. Light mode provides a reduced feature set but is free; Sponsored mode offers all of Eudora's features except SpamWatch (its Bayesian spam filter) for free but displays a small ad window; and Paid mode gives you all of Eudora's features, technical support, and free upgrades for 12 months. If you paid for Eudora within the last 12 months, Eudora 6.2 is free; if you last paid between 13 and 24 months ago, upgrading costs $40. New copies, or upgrades from versions paid for more than 24 months ago, cost $50.

<http://www.eudora.com/download/>

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Security Update 2004-12-02 Released

TidBITS#757/06-NDec-04

Apple continues to release security updates, with Security Update 2004-12-02 rolling in fixes for numerous potential exploits. The improvements update the Apache Web server, the Cyrus IMAP server, Kerberos, the Postfix mail server, QuickTime Streaming Server, Safari, and Terminal, along with several low-level frameworks. Although none of the vulnerabilities seem particularly serious, it's always worth staying up-to-date on security patches to help prevent problems. Security Update 2004-12-02 is available via Software Update (sizes range between 12 MB and 24 MB depending on operating system version), and it's available as separate downloads as well for the client and server versions of Mac OS 10.2.8 and Mac OS X 10.3.6.

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/>

It's worth noting in passing that Apple also recently released a minor update to iCal to plug a security hole surrounding alarms that open programs or send email. iCal 1.5.4 is also available via Software Update and as a standalone download; it's 8.2 MB. [ACE]

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/ical.html>

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USPS Click-N-Ship Now Mac-Compatible

TidBITS#757/06-NDec-04

Thanks to Rob Faludi for passing on the information that the U.S. Postal Service Click-N-Ship program now works on the Mac. Click-N-Ship is useful because it lets you avoid trips to your local post office to mail packages, at least if you're using Priority Mail or Express Mail (including Global Express Guaranteed and Global Express Mail). In brief, you weigh your package, enter the weight, destination, and insurance amount (if any) in a Web form, and then pay for the postage via a standard Web shopping cart. A Java-based Web application helps you print the necessary shipping label on a normal sheet of paper (you can also buy special label stock). Your postal carrier then picks up the package the next day just as though it were an outgoing letter. We've only had the chance to use Click-N-Ship a few times so far, but it worked fine in Safari and OmniWeb, and should help us eliminate all those extra errands to the post office. The USPS doesn't claim Macintosh compatibility yet, but it's entirely possible that improvements in the Java VM for Mac OS X brought the necessary changes to make it all work. We still need to buy a good digital scale to take over from our analog kitchen scale, but once that's done, mailing packages will become less annoying than it has been. [ACE]

<https://sss-web.usps.com/ds/jsps/ds_landing.jsp>

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Digital Photography: Correction & Follow-up

TidBITS#757/06-NDec-04

I would like to point out a mistake in my article "Sense & Sensors in Digital Photography" in TidBITS-751 (reprinted in the October 2004 issue of The Status Register). I stated that smaller sensors are more sensitive to camera movement than larger sensors, but when the field of view is comparable, they are not. This vitiates one paragraph but has no effect on any conclusions or advice. Also, an editing gaffe at the end of the same article sowed some confusion over the role of green in Bayer sensors. The second link below points to a clarification of this and also to an extensive set of FAQs that have come out of the series. [Charles Maurer]

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07860>
<http://psych.mcmaster.ca/maurerlab/Publications/TidbitsErrata.html>

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The CUCUG Section:

November General Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

The November 18 meeting began with the traditional introduction of officers. Treasurer Richard Hall was absent this evening. President Rollins then talked about Computer Deli a little bit. He showed off some of his recent purchases: a retractable headphone set, a retractable mouse, etc. - space saving device he's able to carry around with him more conveniently. Others noted Computer Deli is far better on price for cables than either Best Buy or Staple.

There was a discussion of Obsolete Technology Recycling for the disposing of old computer equipment, especially monitors.

Richard then asked about Mac News and Emil Cobb brought up the new U2 endorsed iPod from Apple. Emil then mentioned that Edwin Hadley would be showing some burning software called Dragon Burn in the Mac SIG this evening.

There was some talk about the new IBM chip foundry being constructed for $1 billion.

Norris Hansell talked about WABC from New York and also WMAL (www.wmal.com). He was concerned about a virus risk from listening to online radio. The consensus was that there is none.

Mark Zinzow showed some karabiners with a light in them he had for sale for $1. He was also interested in getting together with anyone who'd like to go in on an order for combo (USB/Firewire) drive enclosures.

Kevin Hisel showed the C64 DTV commercial from off the web.

A member asked about getting prints of panoramic digital images. Gyclee Printing was suggested. In town, it can be done for $12 a square foot at Dixon Graphics on the corner of John and Neil. Googling Archive Angel was also suggested.

When asked about Linux News, Tom Purl offered a whole list of recent software releases.

Jerry Feltner offered more of his great printing paper for anyone who wanted it.

President Rollins then introduced our new members and visitors for the evening.

As presiding Election Judge, Kevin Hisel opened the floor for nominations for club officers. Mike Latinovich nominated the current officers for another term. Norris Hansell seconded those nominations. As there were no other nominations, Kevin then closed the nominations for the evening.

We then went to break.

The PC SIG: Richard Rollins assembles an external drive

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

The demonstration this evening was performed by Richard Rollins. Richard showed how to put a Liteon 16x DVD burner drive ($84) into a PPA Inc. external drive enclosure ($39) which he acquired at bonusbargains.net . This process was really quite simple once you are shown how to do it. It is really reassuring to the uninitiated to see something like this first hand and realize you, too, could actually do something like this for yourself.

The was also some discussion about access points. Kevin Hisel spoke about purchasing a router and a G card from Amazon for $90 with a $50 rebate. It pays to have your ear to the ground like this.

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November Board Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

The November meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, November 23, 2004, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to attend - which is encouraged, by the way - the address and phone number are both in the book). Present at the meeting were: Richard Rollins, Emil Cobb, Kevin Hopkins, Kevin Hisel, Rich Hall, and Mike Latinovich.

Richard Rollins: Richard began the meeting with a bit of friendly advice, stating that if you have Windows ME, don't sign up with Earthlink and use their provided disk of software. It's an Windows XP disk and it wrecks ME upon installation. It trashes Internet Explorer and if you remember the court case a few years ago where Microsoft said it would be difficult to extricate IE from the Windows system, it's true. Everything runs through it and trashing it creates a right mess. Richard said he is currently rebuilding a system hammered by the Earthlink software.

Rich Hall: Rich reported that we had 8 new and renewing members at the last meeting. He also stated that he had paid the room rent for the next year.

Mike Latinovich: Marking his triumphant return Board meetings, Mike said, "The doughnuts were lacking" at the last meeting, but, he noted, everybody seems to have laptops now and the meeting site has a "honkin' connection." Impressive. Mike then turned to the serious business connected with his appearance at the meeting: he let it be known that he no longer wants to host the discussions groups. He said he just doesn't have the interest anymore. This came as a real shock to the other Board members and there was serious discussion about what would be needed as far as hosting resources, someone to take over the duties, and the other logistics involved in transferring this valuable club service to a new home. Mike said all you need is a site with PHP and MySQL. He also said this transition didn't have to happen immediately, in the next eight months would be fine. Kevin Hisel, as our former BBS sysop, seemed determined to shoulder the challenge.

Kevin Hopkins: Kevin wanted top check on the web version of the newsletter. Kevin Hisel did so. Kevin then delivered the memberships that came in the mail to Treasurer Hall.

Kevin Hisel: Kevin reported that the CUCUG site is now hosted by Rackspace in San Antonio, Texas. He said he is extremely pleased with the service and the site is rock sold now.

Emil Cobb: Emil reported that there were 12 members at the Linux SIG, rising to 22 at the general meeting.

Emil said he would have virus protection software for OS X at the next Mac SIG. He then discussed the presentation Ed Hadley had given at the last meeting.

Richard Rollins: Richard noted that election of club officers will occur next month. He also restated his desire to have a swap meet in December along with an open forum. Regarding the last meeting, Richard said he really enjoyed demonstrating how to put a drive into an external case.

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The Back Page:

The CUCUG is a not-for-profit corporation, originally organized in 1983 to support and advance the knowledge of area Commodore computer users. We've grown since then, now supporting PC, Macintosh and Linux platforms.

Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. at the First Baptist Church of Champaign in Savoy. The FBC-CS is located at 1602 N. Prospect Avenue in Savoy, on the NE corner of Burwash and Prospect. To get to the the First Baptist Church from Champaign or Urbana, take Prospect Avenue south. Setting the trip meter in your car to zero at the corner of Kirby/Florida and Prospect in Champaign (Marathon station on the SW corner), you only go 1.6 miles south. Windsor will be at the one mile mark. The Savoy village sign (on the right) will be at the 1.4 mile mark. Burwash is at the 1.6 mile mark. The Windsor of Savoy retirement community is just to the south; Burwash Park is to the east. Turn east (left) on Burwash. The FBC-CS parking lot entrance is on the north (left) side of Burwash. Enter by the double doors at the eastern end of the building's south side. A map can be found on the CUCUG website at http://www.cucug.org/meeting.html. The First Baptist Church of Champaign is also on the web at http://www.fbc-cs.org .

Membership dues for individuals are $20 annually; prorated to $10 at mid year.

Our monthly newsletter, the Status Register, is delivered by email. All recent editions are available on our WWW site. To initiate a user group exchange, just send us your newsletter or contact our editor via email. As a matter of CUCUG policy, an exchange partner will be dropped after three months of no contact.

For further information, please attend the next meeting as our guest, or contact one of our officers (all at area code 217):

   President/WinSIG:   Richard Rollins      469-2616
   Vice-Pres/MacSIG:   Emil Cobb            398-0149               e-cobb@uiuc.edu
   Secretary/Editor:   Kevin Hopkins        356-5026                  kh2@uiuc.edu
   Treasurer:          Richard Hall         344-8687              rjhall1@uiuc.edu
   Corp.Agent/Web:     Kevin Hisel          406-948-1999
   Linux SIG:          Tom Purl             390-6078         tompurl2000@yahoo.com

Email us at http://www.cucug.org/ contact/index.html, visit our web site at http://www.cucug.org/, or join in our online forums at http://www.cucug.org/starship/index.php .

CUCUG
912 Stratford Dr.
Champaign, IL
61821

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