News Humor Common PC Linux Mac Amiga CUCUG
The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, May 19th, at 7:00 pm, at the First Baptist Church of Champaign in Savoy. The Linux SIG convenes, of course, 45 minutes earlier, at 6:15 pm. Directions to the FBC-CS are at the end of this newsletter.
The May 19 gathering will be one of our split SIG meetings. In keeping with our strict policy of honestly, I have to report that the Linux, the Macintosh SIG and the PC SIGs are all still at a loss for anything definite for official programs, so if you have anything you'd like to talk about or bring in and show, I'm sure our SIG leaders would welcome it. Otherwise, our usual give and take of news, ideas, favorite web sites, questions and answers will be the order of the day.
ToC
We'd like to welcome the newest members of our group, joining us in the last month: Brian Rudnicke (Windows PC Desktop and Laptop) and Bryan Forbes (Mac PowerPC and Classic). I'd particularly like to thank Bryan for tipping me off about TextWrangler (formerly known as BBEdit Lite). I'm using it right now to prepare the newsletters. Sweet.
We'd also like to thank renewing members Mark A. Morenz and Jim Huls.
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
by Sascha Meinrath
URL: http://www.saschameinrath.com/node/149
For the past three years I've been coordinating a project to create a permanent home for our local Indymedia Center. The Urbana-Champaign IMC is fairly unique in the Indymedia Network -- being the only 501(c)(3) IMC and operating as the de-facto "global headquarters" for Indymedia. This effort finally came to fruition yesterday.
The downtown Urbana post office building is being transformed into a community media and arts center, with the post office services remaining at their current location. On Cinco de Mayo, the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (IMC) closed on the purchase of the post office building as its new home.
The IMC will be holding a press conference on Monday, May 9th at high noon on the steps of post office building at 202 S. Broadway in Urbana. COME CELEBRATE WITH US!
"After three years of work we crossed the finish line - just in time for Radio Free Urbana to go on the air," said Mike Lehman who served on the negotiating team. WRFU 104.5 FM is scheduled to go on the air in mid-June.
The new building will also house an all-ages performance venue, artist studios and gallery, audio and video production facilities, a resource library, and community meeting space. The IMC will provide public access Internet stations and free wireless connectivity in and around the building. The IMC is currently seeking tenants for its office and studio spaces.
The building boasts 30,000 square feet with a large 6,000 square foot space behind the post office lobby. "We invite the community to bring your vision, effort, and support to this new community owned and operated space," said Danielle Chynoweth, who was the chief negotiator for the purchase. "We will be holding open visioning sessions later this year to engage the community in plans for renovations." Chynoweth said the performance space may be open as early as this September.
The IMC will be listing this 91 year-old building on the Illinois Historic register. "This building is in great shape. We care about historic preservation and want the community to be able to enjoy this building for decades to come" said Chynoweth.
The IMC has raised $75,000 so far in private donations to purchase a building. "It's amazing. The community came forward to support us even before we found a building" said Sascha Meinrath, who heads the capital campaign. "Now that we have a beautiful downtown location, finishing our initial campaign should be easy." The IMC received no funds from the city and is 100% privately supported.
The Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center is a grassroots, 501(c)(3), non-profit organization committed to using media production and distribution as tools for promoting social and economic justice. The UC-IMC acts as the fiscal sponsor of the global Indymedia network of over 150 independent media centers across 6 continents. Independent Media Centers empower people to "become the media" by providing democratic access to new technologies and information. IMC reporters are everyday citizens, covering the stories and events that matter to them.
ToC
by Geoff Duncan <geoff@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#780/16-May-05
Last week, Internet behemoth Yahoo took the wraps off Yahoo Music Unlimited, its entry into the online music subscription market. For Mac users, Yahoo Music Unlimited is just another party to which we aren't invited, since it only supports recent versions of Windows and, in fact, doesn't even let music from its subscription service play on iPods. Yahoo Music Unlimited is more interesting for the pressure it puts on its primary competition - Rhapsody and the re-born Napster - and, less directly, on MSN Music and Apple's iTunes Music Store.
<http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/>
<http://www.rhapsody.com/>
<http://www.napster.com/>
A (Not So) New Hope
Yahoo Music Unlimited is an all-you-can eat subscription service which provides access to more than 1 million tracks. The service is largely built on Yahoo's acquisition of MusicMatch last year: users search for and manage music using the Yahoo Music Engine, an iTunes-like application based on MusicMatch Jukebox; users can then share songs and playlists amongst other subscribers using Yahoo Messenger. Subscribers can play music acquired through the service as long as they maintain an active subscription, and also transfer tracks to a selection of portable music players.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07819>
However, because Yahoo's new service relies on Microsoft's WMA digital rights technology, the list of supported players does not include Apple's iPod. iPods support only Apple's FairPlay DRM technology, and to date Apple has unmercifully squelched efforts to enable support for other DRM systems on the iPod. But you know what? Other online music subscription services don't work with iPods either, so Yahoo's offering is basically more of the same.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07756>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08013>
The Revenue Strikes Back
What's new about Yahoo Music Unlimited is its price - $6.99 a month, or annual subscriptions for $59.88 (which translates to $4.99 a month) - and the fact that it'll be a component of one of the world's most-trafficked Internet sites.
Yahoo's prices substantially undercut both RealNetworks' Rhapsody and Napster, which charge $14.95 a month. Yahoo isn't saying whether Yahoo Music Unlimited prices are an introductory offer or how long they might last. However, considering that both Napster and RealNetworks's music subscription businesses have been struggling at their current rates and many of the businesses' costs are similar (music and technology licensing, bandwidth, user support, staffing, etc.) Yahoo's initial pricing likely means Yahoo Music Unlimited is making little to no money - or even taking an upfront loss - on every subscriber.
The real question is the degree to which Yahoo cares. Yahoo has both deeper pockets and a substantially more diversified business model than either RealNetworks or Napster, and can probably afford to subsidize an online music venture longer than its immediate competition can stay out of a price war. If Yahoo can bring enough eyeballs - and mouse pointers - to its music service, it may be able to make up any loss on subscription fees via advertising. And as one of the most frequently visited sites on the Internet, Yahoo's high-margin online advertising business is a virtual juggernaut.
Return of the FUD-y
Right now, Yahoo Music Unlimited doesn't pose a direct threat to Apple's iTunes Music Store. For one thing, incompatibility with Apple's iPod makes iTMS the primary online music store for more than 15 million white earbud- wearin', head-boppin' iPod aficionados. (In comparison, Napster has yet to crack half a million subscribers.) For another thing, the iTMS model of purchasing downloaded music - rather than merely purchasing access to it for the duration of a subscription - still seems to hold mind-share: according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, right now only about 15 percent of online music consumers would prefer to rent music rather than own it outright.
<http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050512/ap_on_hi_te/online_music_war_13>
Nonetheless, both the online music and wider technology industries are still setting their sites on Apple and iTMS, if for no other reason than it's not yet worth the trouble of aiming at other market players. If Yahoo Music Unlimited succeeds, Apple may have to offer music subscription services in addition to its paid- download model. (It's worth noting that all the subscription services also let subscribers purchase music at prices comparable to iTMS; of course, those fees are on top of base subscription costs.) On the other hand, if Yahoo's music subscription service fizzles or turns in lackluster numbers, it may represent the last serious effort to redefine the online music space as a renters' market, rather than a buyers' market.
Perhaps the darker cloud on the horizon of Apple's music business is, ultimately, whether devices like the iPod or devices like mobile phones will be the primary means by which consumers purchase and listen to music. Sure, Apple has sold more than 15 million iPods, but that number is dwarfed by the estimated 500 million cell phones shipped in 2003 alone (75 million of those were camera phones with substantial on-board memory and processing capability). Last week in Frankfurt, Germany, Microsoft founder Bill Gates commented that he felt the current iPod business model was unsustainable, and he'd bet on mobile phones taking over the top spot for music listening. (He even drew a parallel between Apple's current iPod success and its early lead with graphical user interfaces.) Current mobile phone technologies and business models are certainly more supportive of a music subscription model than a purchase model.
<http://insidedsp.eetimes.com/features/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=21100222>
<http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050512/tc_nm/tech_microsoft_gates_dc>
Nonetheless, it's too early to start writing an epitaph for the iPod or iTMS. The online music market is still volatile, and in the last few years it has shown only two constant themes: 1) unexpected success and innovation from Apple, and 2) pundits and industry leaders claiming Apple can never succeed.
ToC
by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#780/16-May-05
It's all about the Gmail. Google continues to control the vertical and horizontal for nearly everything they touch, and Gmail's upgraded capacity of 2 GB of free email storage has set the target for other companies that want some of that sweet, sweet ad revenue from people who use webmail instead of their ISP's service. ISPs must be sweating a little, because unbundling email means that the pipe to the ISP is really just delivering water, not chicken soup, coffee, and bisque (to stretch a metaphor).
AOL is the latest entrant, and a surprising one. They purchased Mailblocks almost a year ago, a provider that offers challenge- response based email so that only recipients with human characteristics wind up in your In box. Mailblocks charges modest fees for its modest storage service, but AOL used their technology to build their free, 2 GB, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) connected webmail. An AIM account will link to a webmail account. AIM accounts are free and self-standing and can be used with iChat.
<http://www.aim.com/>
<http://www.mailblocks.com/>
Yahoo upped its mailbox to 1 GB a few months ago, and offers 2 GB for $20 per year. Apple's .Mac service includes just 250 MB of storage for $100 per year, with 1 GB total available for $50 extra per year. Hotmail includes 250 MB - with only 25 MB of that available in the first 30 days - with 2 GB costing $20 per year.
<http://mail.yahoo.com/>
<http://mac.com/>
<http://hotmail.com/>
Of course, Google is still tweaking their approach. When they lifted the limit on April Fool's Day from 1 GB to 2 GB, they said it was only the beginning. And it's true. My mailbox keeps getting slightly larger. I have about 535 MB of stored mail (it's an automatic CC'd backup for my main account) and every day the upper limit rises slightly.
ToC
SACRAMENTO, Calif., May 3, 2005
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/03/eveningnews/main692765.shtml?CMP=ILC-SearchStories
It was among the most frightening phone calls Don Bodiker ever received. A stranger calling from California was reading Bodiker's tax return.
"We had not even sent our taxes in yet," he says. "They had not even been mailed."
And worse, the stranger got the tax return online straight out of his computer, "where he could read every single line of everything that I had on my taxes," says Bodiker.
It was, he says, "a very scary moment for us."
CBS News found the mystery caller, who wants to be known only as "Jeff from Sacramento." So far, Jeff has called 120 people to warn them their financial documents are available because of file sharing.
It's all there, he says - tax files, checking account and routing number.
As CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports, file sharing today is the rage on the Internet, mostly because of users who want to share songs. But because file sharing literally opens your computer to outsiders it can also lead to snooping. All Jeff does is search for the word "tax."
Millions of Americans now share files, usually music, by downloading what's called peer-to-peer software. The problem is many users don't understand which files exactly are being made public.
While we watched, Jeff pulled the tax return of Zachary in New Mexico and called him
"You had your refund of $794 sent directly to your checking account," Jeff tells Zachary. "No sir I am not kidding."
Zachary, clearly shaken, agreed to speak with CBS News.
Asked to share his thoughts about it, Zachary says: "I'm deeply concerned, and I think something needs to be done now. "
After tracking down Zachary, it's learned that both he and Bodiker had installed a file share program called BearShare. They had no idea BearShare was giving away personal documents like their taxes.
Zachary says the software program didn't give him enough warning that he was giving away personal information.
"If I had known that I never would have downloaded the program," he says.
The makers of BearShare declined comment but an industry spokesman, Adam Eisgrau, says the privacy rules for Bear Share will be upgraded immediately.
"As I understand it, a new version will be coming out literally in a matter of days that will seek to close any possible vulnerabilities of this," says Eisgrau.
And there are plenty of vulnerabilities. Besides tax returns, CBS News also found private medical files, and private bank statements.
Jeff doesn't believe both Bodiker nor Zachary meant to share their tax returns.
Jeff says computer users need to be more responsible for what they allow on their computer and need to know what a program does or can do. Otherwise users in such a rush to take in music files, may well be giving away much, much more.
[Editor's Note: From their site at < http://bearshare.com/ > "BearShare - The World's Best Gnutella Client. BearShare is a free file sharing Gnutella client for Windows. You can search, download, and share all files, including MP3,OGG,WMA,WMF,WAV,MPG,MPEG,MOV,AVI ... "]
ToC
May 3, 2005
URL: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/03/eveningnews/main692778.shtml
"Jeff from Sacramento" advises people follow these tips to better protect themselves from file-sharing fraud.
TidBITS#780/16-May-05
Last week, the Detroit Free Press reported that Apple Computer and superstar Eminem have reached an undisclosed settlement in the rapper's year-old lawsuit against the computer company. The suit centered on a 2003 Apple iPod/iTunes Music Store advertisement which featured a 10-year-old boy singing Eminem's Oscar-winning song "Lose Yourself" from the film 8 Mile. The ad ran on MTV for three months during the summer of 2003 and appeared on Apple's Web site, despite the fact that neither Apple nor ad agency TBWA/Chiat/Day successfully obtained Eminem's permission to use the song in the campaign. Eminem's label claimed the use of the song would amount to an endorsement - for which the rapper would expect fees "possibly in excess of $10 million" - and that Apple's misuse of the material would entitle him to "exemplary damages." The lawsuit also named MTV parent company Viacom as a defendant. [GD]
<http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/sw115563_20050510.htm>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07559>
EFFector Vol. 18, No. 15 May 13, 2005
Donna Wentworth (donna@eff.org)
Ruling Is a Victory for Innovation, Fair Use
Washington, DC - In a landmark case, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit last week struck down the "Broadcast Flag," an FCC rule that would have crippled digital television receivers beginning on July 1st.
The Broadcast Flag rule would have required all digital TV receivers, including televisions, VCRs, and personal video recorders like TiVo, to be built to read signals embedded in over-the-air broadcast television shows that would place certain limitations on how those shows could be played, recorded, and saved. The sale of any hardware that was not able to "recognize and give effect to" the Broadcast Flag, including currently existing digital and high-definition television (HDTV) equipment and open source/free software tools, would have become illegal.
EFF joined Washington DC-based advocacy group Public Knowledge and a coalition of library and consumer groups in fighting the rule in the courts. The coalition argued that the rule would interfere with the legitimate activities of technology innovators, librarians, archivists, and academics, and that the FCC exceeded its regulatory authority by imposing technological restrictions on what consumers can do with television shows after they receive them.
The court agreed, ruling unanimously that the FCC overstepped its authority when it asserted control over the design of any device capable of receiving digital TV signals.
"This case is a great win for consumers and for technology innovation. It's about more than simply broadcasting. It is about how far the FCC can go in its regulations without permission from Congress," said Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn. "Had the flag been implemented, Hollywood, acting through the FCC, would have been able to dictate the pace of technology in consumer electronics. Now, thankfully, that won't happen. While we recognize that the content industries may ask Congress to overturn this ruling, we also recognize that Congress will have to think very hard before it puts restrictions on how constituents use their televisions."
Since the FCC announced the July 1st deadline, EFF had been encouraging consumers to beat the Broadcast Flag by purchasing HDTV receivers manufactured before the restriction, as well as teaching them how to use the hardware with free, open-source digital video recorder applications such as MythTV. Part of the education campaign was a daily countdown to the date when the Broadcast Flag was to take effect.
"The clock will now stop," said EFF Special Projects Coordinator Wendy Seltzer, who led the campaign and organized nationwide HDTV "build-ins." "Now we can use the build-ins to celebrate the freedom to use innovative technology, rather than racing to beat a deadline for shutting it down."
For this release:
<http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_05.php#003556>
Ruling:
<http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=466>
(PDF)
EFF campaign: "Join the Digital Television Liberation Front":
<http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/>
Be sure and cancel your credit cards before you die. This is just so priceless, and so easy to see happening, customer service being what it is today. A relative died this past January, and Citibank billed her for February and March for their annual service charges on her credit card, and then added late fees and interest on the monthly charge. The balance had been $0.00, now is was somewhere around $60.00.
I placed a call to Citibank:
Me: "I am calling to tell you that she died in January."
Citibank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply."
Me: "Maybe you should turn it over to collections."
Citibank: "Since it is 2 months past due, it already has been."
Me: So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?"
Citibank: "Either report her account to the frauds division or report her to the credit bureau, maybe both!"
Me: "Do you think God will be mad at her?"
Citibank: "Excuse me?"
Me: "Did you just get what I was telling you--The part about her being dead?"
Citibank: "Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor."
Supervisor gets on the phone - Me: "I'm calling to tell you, she died in January."
Citibank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply."
Me: "You mean you want to collect from her estate?"
Citibank: (Stammer). "Are you her lawyer?"
Me: "No, I'm her great nephew." (Lawyer info given)
Citibank: "Could you fax us a certificate of death?"
Me: "Sure." (Fax number is given)
After they get the fax - Citibank: "Our system just isn't setup for death. I don't know what more I can do to help."
Me: "Well, if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep billing her. I don't think she will care."
Citibank: "Well, the late fees and charges do still apply "
Me: "Would you like her new billing address?"
Citibank: "That might help."
Me: "OdessaMemorialCemetery, Hwy 129, plot number 69."
Citibank: "Sir, that's a cemetery!"
Me: "What do you do with dead people on your planet?"
ToC
ATTORNEY'S ADVICE -- NO CHARGE. Read this and make a copy for your files, in case you need to refer to it someday. Maybe we should all take some of his advice! A corporate attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company.
Unfortunately, I, an attorney, have firsthand knowledge because my wallet was stolen last month. Within a week, the thieve(s) ordered an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, had a credit line approved to buy a Gateway computer, received a PIN number from DMV to change my driving record information online, and more. But here's some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know:
But here's what is perhaps most important of all : (I never even thought to do this.)
By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves' purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away This weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks.
Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact about your wallet, etc., has been stolen:
We pass along jokes on the Internet; we pass along just about everything. But if you are willing to pass this information along, it could really help someone that you care about.
ToC
On The Media, May 6, 2005
URL: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_050605_broadband.html
ToCBROOKE GLADSTONE: When the future finally catches up with technology, we'll all carry devices that offer anytime-anywhere connections to the Internet - fast, cheap and reliable. And not just because it's fun, writes Thomas Bleha in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, but because high-speed Internet access is an economic necessity. Think of it this way: when Eisenhower established an interstate highway system 50 years ago, it wasn't for joy rides, but to move goods around the country faster. Bleha says America has blown its lead in the new economy. We have a broadband gap.
THOMAS BLEHA: We are somewhere between being on a gravel road, which would be dialup, [LAUGHTER] and an asphalt road, a newly-paved gravel road, which I call basic broadband. The basic broadband is about 25 times faster than the dialup, but in Japan and Korea and urban China, they are now on high-speed broadband, which I could liken to two-lane state highways, which are 15 times faster than what we are currently using, our asphalt road, and increasingly they have millions of people on ultra high-speed fiber highways, or our interstate highway system, which is four times faster still. And at that top speed, you can download a song in a few seconds, and you can download a full length movie in less than five minutes.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So why don't you tell me, first of all, what the e-Japan strategy has been, and then tell me what the Bush administration, as you've written, seems to have done wrong.
THOMAS BLEHA: In Japan, they were well behind at the end of 2000. They appointed a high profile commission headed by the Sony Chairman Idei that came up with a very bold proposal that Japan become the world's leading Internet nation in five years' time. They took the strategy into the prime minister's office. They laid out some very ambitious goals for broadband, and they have funded them, and they have followed through. In less than two years and a half, for example, they went ahead of us in the percentage of - with broadband access. Now, what did we do wrong? The top levels of the Bush administration are simply uninterested in this issue. The Federal Communications Commission produced somewhat unpredictable and difficult to interpret decisions, so basically we've had about four years of drift, and unless we have some more direction from the government, I would argue, we're going to drift for quite a while longer.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It sounds like the Japanese strategy was simply to combine the forces of business and government and to look ahead. What steps do you think the FCC or the cabinet should have taken during that time?
THOMAS BLEHA: They should have continued with the competition policy that was begun in the Clinton-Gore years by the FCC.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What does that mean?
THOMAS BLEHA: Well, the Clinton-Gore FCC basically permitted any qualified competitor to have access to the telephone lines that go into our homes. But the telephone companies resisted that mightily, in the courts and on the Hill, and after about three years of the Bush administration that competition policy has basically died. And we are now stuck with another approach which will pit the telephone companies' DSL against the cable companies, and they hope the power line companies will come in and wireless companies will also join the competition.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You know, Tom, you're probably aware that The Economist called you a "techno-alarmist." They say the situation isn't nearly as bad as you claim. For example, America, by virtue of its size, will naturally take more time to wire up than, say, Denmark or South Korea, but per capita, our broadband penetration is, in fact, above average, right?
THOMAS BLEHA: It is above average, but it's also the quality of the broadband. Our broadband is among the slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the advanced industrialized countries. That's why I likened it to an asphalt road. Other countries, for about half the price, have state highways, and for the price that we pay for our asphalt roads, they have interstate highways. And I believe, and The Economist disagrees, that at each of those stages, there will be new content possibilities, there will be new services. You're dealing with a qualitatively different kind of communication.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The Economist also disputes your assertion of the risk that America will incur if it doesn't catch up soon.
THOMAS BLEHA: Yeah, I think they're simply wrong in that. You know, the Clinton-Gore administration in its final economic report chalked up fully one third of the growth in the American economy between 1995 and 2000 to information technology. It's hard to know, but surely there is hundreds of billions of dollars at stake over the next several years, and there are hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And so, when people say you're the prophet of techno-doom, you just say--?
THOMAS BLEHA: On the contrary - I am trying to get our country moving. If we have to have an analogy, rather than a religious one, I would choose Paul Revere.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS] Tom, thank you very much.
THOMAS BLEHA: You're most welcome.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Tom Bleha, the recipient of an Ave Fellowship, is finishing his book on the race for Internet leadership. Its working title is "Down to the Wire."
On The Media, May 6, 2005
URL: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_050605_remote.html
ToCBOB GARFIELD: Ever since the Janet Jackson "boob incident," calls to rid TV of indecency have been getting more common, to the point that some lawmakers are even hinting at regulating cable. Programmers have rallied in response to the widening indecency crackdown. This week, a coalition of groups backed by NBC, Viacom and News Corp launched TV Watch, which opposes new content legislation. And the group has released a new poll suggesting that a vast majority of Americans favor personal responsibility over more government regulation. Adam Thierer is a member of TV Watch and director of the Center for Digital Media Freedom. Adam, welcome to the show.
ADAM THIERER: Thanks for having me.
BOB GARFIELD: I just want to begin by asking you to review the arguments for regulation, because they aren't necessarily un-compelling.
ADAM THIERER: The argument is that cable and satellite have essentially become more popular in our society, and because they are that popular, they are more pervasive, and once they become pervasive, it triggers a different type of constitutional analysis first found in the famous 1978 Pacifica case that governed broadcasting that said, because broadcasting was a uniquely pervasive influence in our lives, and uniquely accessible to children, that essentially the government could treat broadcasters differently than any other type of media outlet. And therefore, the argument would be, why not treat cable and satellite like that, in light of the fact that they are now just as popular, if not more popular than broadcast television, radio and the like.
BOB GARFIELD: You say there's a difference between popularity and pervasiveness. What do you mean?
ADAM THIERER: Well, the argument that popularity equals pervasiveness is a troubling one. In the specific case of cable and satellite, when 85 percent of American households decide to voluntarily bring these subscription-based services into the home, that should count for something. After all, these services aren't free. Once parents do that, they should bear a great deal of responsibility over what their children see or hear with that media, and that really is what this debate comes down to - a question of: is this pervasiveness rationale going to dominate, or is parental and personal responsibility going to dominate?
BOB GARFIELD: Everybody wants to protect children. Nobody can argue against that, but virtually all the well-meaning legislation passed to date to limit their exposure to smut on the Internet has been overturned by the courts, has it not?
ADAM THIERER: That's correct. And that's because the courts have said - look, with these new technologies, parents have all new sorts of controls that empower them to screen or filter things that they don't want their children to see. And it's even more the case when it comes to cable and satellite television. Parents have various types of set-top boxes with password protections in them. They have the ability to use the V-chip, and then of course you have these new technologies like TiVos or personal video recorders which give you the ability, as I do with my children, to create your own personal library of programming that you think is appropriate for your kids, and then only let them watch that. So, these are sort of redundant sets of controls now available to parents that the courts would look at and say this is a quote/unquote "less restrictive means" of filtering programs than the more clunky, ham-handed types of government censorship we've seen for broadcasting.
BOB GARFIELD: All right. Well, let's talk about that ham-handed kind of censorship. Why has broadcast been exempted from First Amendment protection?
ADAM THIERER: One argument is that - is because it's licensed - the spectrum is doled out by the federal government, and only so many people get to use it. A second argument is, is that it's scarce, and therefore, because only so many people can use it, different standards should apply. And then third argument is the pervasiveness argument - the notion that it's so utterly ubiquitous and accessible to all Americans, especially children, that it should be regulated differently.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, given the fact that cable does not take place over the government-owned and controlled broadcast spectrum, even if some legislation is passed in Congress, is there a chance in hell that it will survive even the first court challenge?
ADAM THIERER: I think there's a very slim chance that cable would be found to be under the government's control in terms of censorship or indecency regulations. The best argument in favor of regulating broadcast differently has always been that, quote/unquote, "it's an invader into the home," the idea that broadcast signals come right through the walls of your house, and are played right over your television or radio set. Well, you know, even that argument's been a little fuzzy, cause those radios and televisions just didn't have legs and magically walk into our homes or cars. We put them there or accepted the fact that they were there. But you apply that logic - the "invader in the home" logic - to cable and satellite or any other new media technology, and it completely breaks down. Moreover, there are all these new technological controls that enable us to privately censor or filter what we don't want our children to see or hear. And that, I think the courts will say, is the end of the story. But here's the really interesting question. Would the courts go one step further and say that this entire indecency regime or all of the old standards that have applied to broadcasting now are gone as well, precisely because we live in a world of media convergence where we can get the same types of programming increasingly over cable, over satellite, over a cell phone, and over broadcast television and radio. The courts might look at this and say - we need to think about media comprehensively as a playing field that's been leveled, and we need to therefore level the law accordingly and treat all media equally in the eyes of the First Amendment.
BOB GARFIELD: Adam, thanks so much for joining us.
ADAM THIERER: Thanks for having me.
BOB GARFIELD: Adam Thierer is senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation and director of its Center for Digital Media Freedom.
Posted by Ernest Miller
May 09, 2005
URL: http://www.corante.com/copyfight/archives/2005/05/09/hilary_rosen_laments_apples_drm_strategy.php
Hilary Rosen, formerly head of the RIAA, has a most hilarious column on the new Huffington Post. I double checked the date on the post, and it isn't April Fools. Miss Rosen is complaining that she can't buy music for her iPod that doesn't come from iTunes (Steve Jobs, Let My Music Go - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/2005/05/steve-jobs-let-.html):
"I spent 17 years in the music business the last several of which were all about pushing and prodding the painful development of legitimate on-line music. Now, the music fan is on the cusp of riches in their options - free of the viruses of the pirate sites. There are lots of places you can go for great music at good deals and with a deep catalog of songs from over the last 20 or 30 years. MSN.com, Rhapsody.com, aolmusic.com, even walmart.com. There are little players to make your favorite music even more portable than ever starting at as little as 29 bucks. Most every player device works at every one of these "stores" and it is pretty easy to keep all the songs, no matter where you got them, in a single folder or "jukebox" on your computer."
Hello? This was and is an obvious consequence of your DRM-ed world, Miss Rosen. Apple is simply doing what comes natural. Having insisted on the means for exclusion being legally protected (i.e. DMCA), Apple is using those means to exclude competitors. The only reason that the other companies mentioned aren't doing the same thing is because they are struggling to gain marketshare. Were they the dominant players in the market, they would be doing the same thing as Apple.
"The problem is that the iPod only works with either songs that you buy from the on-line Apple iTunes store or songs that you rip from your own CD's."
Well, only if you ignore the many smaller companies that sell unencumbered MP3s to their customers.
"But those other music sites have lots of music that you can't get at the iTunes store."
And they haven't licensed to Apple, why? Whose fault is that? Is it Apple's? Or is it the fault of your former clients?
"If you are really a geek, you can figure out how to strip the songs you might have bought from another on-line store of all identifying information so that they will go into the iPod. But then you have also degraded the sound quality. How cruel."
Cruel? Miss Rosen is one of the main people who insisted on creating the environment for this cruelty. In any case, if you know what you're doing, you don't have to lose much in the way of sound quality ... unless the systems are designed to make such stripping of information result in poor sound quality. Then, of course, you could always strip the DRM, but that would be a crime, thanks in part to Miss Rosen.
"But keeping the iTunes system a proprietary technology to prevent anyone from using multiple (read Microsoft) music systems is the most anti-consumer and user unfriendly thing any god can do. Is this the same Jobs that railed for years about the Microsoft monopoly? Is taking a page out of their playbook the only way to have a successful business? If he isn't careful Bill Gates might just Betamax him while the crowds cheer him on. Come on Steve - open it up."
Is it the only way to run a successful business? No, but it is a very good way to run one. Jobs isn't going to open up his system until it makes business sense. Unfortunately, Miss Rosen hasn't provided a single argument as to why it makes good business sense for him to do so. Is DRM anti-consumer and user unfriendly? Heck, yes. But that didn't stop Miss Rosen for lobbying on its behalf.
"Why am I complaining about this? Why isn't everyone?"
Many of us have been complaining for a long, long time. Of course, our voices may have been drowned out to a certain extent by all the propaganda emanating from the RIAA that music without the encumbrances of DRM is tantamount to piracy.
You can't have it both ways Miss Rosen. If you want DRM, someone is going to have to control that DRM. And if you don't think they won't use that control to their ultimate advantage, you obviously didn't learn anything from your association with the music industry.
ToC
EFFector Vol. 18, No. 15 May 13, 2005
Donna Wentworth (donna@eff.org)
MPAA targets TV download sites
By John Borland
URL: http://news.com.com/MPAA+targets+TV+download+sites/2100-1032_3-5705142.html
Story last modified Thu May 12 12:47:00 PDT 2005
Continuing its war on Internet file-swapping sites, the Motion Picture Association of America said Thursday that it has filed lawsuits against a half-dozen hubs for TV show trading.
The trade association said that piracy of TV programming is growing quickly online, and that shows are as important to protect as big-budget films. This is the first legal action from the group that has focused most heavily on TV content.
"Every television series depends on other markets (such as) syndication and international sales to earn back the enormous investment required to produce the comedies and dramas we all enjoy," MPAA Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman said in a statement. "Those markets are substantially hurt when that content is stolen."
The latest round of suits retains a focus on BitTorrent technology, which has been widely used online to distribute movies and films.
The suits are focused on the sites that serve as traffic directors for BitTorrent swaps, rather than on individual computer users uploading and downloading content. The MPAA also has sued individuals, but has not said how many people have been targeted.
The six sites sued Thursday include ShunTV, Zonatracker, Btefnet, Scifi-Classics, CDDVDHeaven and Bragginrights.
ToC
Close to 1,000 municipalities worldwide have plans under way
URL: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/05/04/life.wireless.reut/%20target=
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (Reuters) -- A number of U.S. cities are becoming giant wireless "hot spots," where Internet users will be able to log on from the beach or a bus stop, a trend that's triggering a fierce backlash from telecom and cable giants.
"We look at this as another utility, just like water, sewer, parks and recreation, that our communities should have," said St. Cloud, Florida, Mayor Glen Sangiovanni, who hopes to provide free wireless service to the entire city by the fall.
At a conference this week, officials from dozens of local governments compared notes, listened to pitches from vendors and discussed ways to counter the lobbying of telecommunications giants that have sought to block them at the state level.
Free or discounted wireless service can spur economic development, improve police patrols and other city services and encourage Internet use in poorer neighborhoods, they said.
Slightly more than 100 U.S. cities -- as big as Philadelphia and as small as Nantucket, Massachusetts -- are setting up wireless networks. Conference organizer Daniel Aghion said close to 1,000 local governments worldwide have plans in the works.
The trend has prompted an intense backlash from the large telecom and cable providers that sell most broadband access in the United States. At their request, 13 states have passed laws restricting cities setting up their own networks, and several others are considering such bans.
"With so many other issues challenging municipalities today, why on earth should cities waste millions of taxpayer dollars to compete with carriers already offering high-speed Internet service?" said Allison Remsen, spokeswoman for the U.S. Telecom Association, which represents incumbents like SBC Communications Inc. and Verizon Communications.
City officials said they don't want to compete head on with commercial providers but aren't going to be held hostage to their profit concerns.
Providers have shown no interest in setting up broadband wireless service or offering free or discounted rates, they said. Sometimes they refuse to provide any broadband service at all.
"We begged them to deliver the service -- we didn't want to be in this business," said Scottsburg, Indiana, Mayor Bill Graham, who said local businesses threatened to leave his town before it set up its own wireless network.
The legal battles seem to have only increased interest among city officials, especially after squabbles over a Pennsylvania state law made national headlines last year.
"It helped to bring to light what the telecommunications industry was attempting to do," said Philadelphia technology manager Dianah Neff.
Others said the threat of a ban at the state level has spurred them to action.
"We're acting pretty quickly for a municipality of our size, because we don't like to be pre-empted," said Lindy Fleming McGuire, a Chicago City Council staffer.
Smaller wireless startups are rushing to provide the equipment and expertise needed to run city networks.
"Munis don't want to own this at all; they just want the service," said Robert Ford, chief executive of NextPhase Wireless, a service provider.
Rio Rancho, New Mexico, brought in wireless provider OttawaWireless because incumbents didn't reach many areas, assistant city administrator Peggy McCarthy said. Now that the network is up and running, the incumbents' service has grown more competitive, she said.
"The lethargy and apathy with which we had been given DSL and cable have both changed," she said.
Some cities, including Spokane, Washington, found they could easily set up wireless service when they upgrade their emergency communications networks with a little help from the Homeland Security Department. The federal department awarded $925 million last year for communications upgrades.
ToC
During the "Opening Plenary: A Call to Action" portion of the 2005 National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis Missouri, Friday morning, May 13th.
URL: http://www.freepress.net/conference/audio05/fri-400-telecom.mp3
[Minutes 42:44 - 50:58]
Bob McChesney: Our next speaker is someone well known to those who work on media reform on a day to day basis. He is the Research Director for The Consumer Federation of America. He has been foundational in generating some of the most important research that has helped us win court cases on media ownership, win court cases on Internet access. He is a beacon of light for all of us working in Washington D.C. on media policy issues. And, please join me in welcoming Mark Cooper.
Mark Cooper: You can tell that I'm suppose to do the analysis part here and hopefully I won't have too much of a downer here 'cause I tend to bring things up, but I only had ten minutes and to find a way to tie together the intellectual part and a harsh part, so I figured I'd focus on four simple reasons why the momentum for the media reform movement will in fact reclaim the First Amendment for the people in the Twenty-first Century. Four little reasons: law, history, technology and economics.
The law is on our side. Now I want you to recall a movie entitled "Four Weddings and a Funeral" because, in fact, free speech in the Twenty-first Century is being decided by four court cases and a legislative donnybrook. The four court cases, you've heard, are Prometheus, which stopped the broadcasters from gutting the media ownership limits; the Brand X case, which turned back the efforts of the cable companies to close the telecommunications network and operate it as a private system; the Broadcast Flag case, just last week, which put the kibosh on the effort of the FCC and Hollywood to control TVs, PCs, and VCRs; and finally, the Grokster case, in which the court refused to shut down file sharing.
These four cases were celebrations of freedom of expression and fair use. And the reason the law is still on our side is history. Free speech and fair use are deeply embedded in American democracy. Try as the industry might, they have been unable to get it out because it is ingrained in our DNA.
The roads over which Paul Revere travelled to spread the word that the British were coming were available on a nondiscriminatory basis under British common law, like the community wireless networks we are building all across this country. The Committees of Correspondence that awaited his alarm were acts of civil disobedience against commercial monopolists that took place in the cellars and the forests of a continent the British could not control, like the blogs and the websites of cyberspace today.
Under our Constitution, ideas are born free, which was a radical concept, and the airwaves belong to the public. Try as they might, they have not been able to get rid of that.
Throughout the Nineteenth Century, as Bob McChesney has taught us, the penny press and postal subsidies spread information to the populous, And, at the end of the Nineteenth Century, when the railroads and the telephone companies tried to shut down the new means of commerce and communications, the American people rose up in rebellion in the populist and progressive movements and said "No", especially here, in the Middle West.
So, the digital revolution is unsettling the media landscape again. The techies and stock analysts call it convergence. But what is really happening here is dramatic democratization of the means of communication in our society. Computers, communication over the Internet, the declining cost of digital production have transformed consumers into producers, listeners into speakers. We are putting the mass in the mass media for the first time in our history. And that is a revolution that is just beginning and will not be turned back.
Perhaps the most clear example of that, and one that really shows us the power, is the growth of WiFi networks. You all use them all the time and they have given rise to our community Internet movement. Here we have the best demonstration that not only do the airwaves belong to the people, but they are best managed as a Commons, where people are allowed to use the space without being fettered by licenses or excluded by private property. This is our space and we are using it and we need to expand it.
Whenever powerful, entrenched interests lose their technological and economic edge, they turn to the use of force, and that is what is happening today. The desperation is evident in ten thousand lawsuits filed without due process against music file sharers, in the failure of the broadcasters to distribute video programming - digital programming, in the effort of the cable companies to close their networks, in the effort of the telephone companies to prevent cities from paving the streets of the Information Age by building community wireless networks. So, Hollywood, the record companies, the broadcasters, the cable companies, the telcos lost in court because of history and law.
They will go to Congress and they will have a vehicle. Ten years ago Congress gave the broadcasters more spectrum for free, but the networks couldn't figure out how to use it. Everybody wants the old stuff back. The Congress wants to sell it to buy more bombs and they're going to trying and push that legislation through. That is our legislative donnybrook.
So now why am I still confident, optimistic that we will prevail? You are the reason. You are the waiting celebration of democracy. You will not let them do that to us.
The stakes are very different. In 1996, it was the cable companies versus the broadcasters, the long distance companies versus the local companies, the wireless companies versus the wire lined companies. That is not the case today. Today the issue is free speech and fair use. Today they want to steal our digital future and we will not let them do that. There was no conference like this in 1995 while they were in their back rooms divvying up the media landscape. There were no technologies of democracy for organizing and funding a people's movement. No bloggers, no meet-ups. There was no sense of outrage about the manipulation of the media and the masses. There is today. The Communications Act of 2006 will not be written behind closed doors.
John F. Kennedy said it well, "The hottest corners of hell are reserved for those who remain neutral during times of moral crisis." Fewer and fewer Americans are willing to remain neutral. More and more Americans understand that this is a time of moral crisis, brought about in large measure by the failure of our media to provide their function in our society. Fewer and fewer Americans trust the media. That is why they are taking the job into their own hands.
You have the historical tradition. You have the technologies of democracy. You have an aroused people. This is a tough revolution, but we will win. We will win, not only in stopping the campaign to steal our digital future, but, in using the tools of expression, participation, involvement that we develop, to drive American democracy to a higher level. That is why I am optimistic that the movement is gaining momentum.
Thank you.
ToC
Paul Thurrott
URL: http://www.wininformant.com/
Everyone's favorite Internet Explorer (IE) alternative is under fire this week as well. Two new vulnerabilities in Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3 have emerged, and have been rated as "extremely critical," which, if I'm not mistaken is somewhere between "orange" and "wicked critical." The reason these vulnerabilities are rated so high is that there is already exploit code in the wild that can take advantage of the flaws. Not surprisingly, The Mozilla Foundation has already provided a new Firefox version, 1.0.4, which addresses these issues. My advice is to download it. (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/)
Microprocessor maker AMD picked up a bit of market share from industry leader Intel in the first quarter, grabbing 16.9 percent of the market, up from 15 percent in the same quarter a year ago. Intel fell to "just" 81.7 percent of the market, down from 83.5 percent. Other microprocessor makers, such as Transmeta and Via, account for less than 2 percent of the market. AMD's strong showing comes thanks to the success of its 64-bit x64 chips, the Opteron and Athlon-64. However, Intel has now shipped a wide range of x64 chips of its own, so the battle moves forward to dual-core chips for the rest of 2005. For power- hungry PC fans, it's a good time to be in the market.
As part of its regularly scheduled monthly security patch release, Microsoft has posted just one security patch for May, far fewer than the 18 patches the company shipped in April. This month's patch is rated important and applies to the Windows Explorer Web View feature in Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (SP4) and SP3. Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP systems are unaffected. Important is Microsoft's second-highest security rating, behind critical. Users interested in downloading the patch can visit Windows Update or the Microsoft security Web site.
Thanks to Allen H. and Jim W. for this item: Microsoft New Zealand has officially released the Windows XP Royale theme, which Microsoft originally designed solely for Windows XP Media Center Edition (XP MCE) 2005 but later also ported to XP Tablet PC Edition 2005. Now all XP users can download this sharp-looking theme, which features the new Microsoft Energy style and a few new backgrounds. Find out more about the theme at the Microsoft New Zealand Web site. (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=15373c73-d5f6-4af0-b583-d633cb021612&DisplayLang=en)
Microsoft quietly updated Windows XP Service Pack 2's (SP2's) wireless networking features this week when the company shipped to Windows Update an update for the Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) wireless networking security feature. Previously, XP only partially supported the WPA2 specification and a related technology called Wireless Provisioning Services Information Element (WPS IE), the latter of which caused many XP SP2 machines to sometimes have problems logging on to Wi-Fi hotspots.
ToC
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, unveiled on Thursday plans to launch a computer subscription service that would include anti-virus and security updates for personal computers.
The Redmond, Washington-based software giant said it will initially distribute the new service, called "Windows OneCare" among its employees this week and will offer a trial, or beta, service for PCs running Windows later this year. Users would pay a yearly fee for the subscription.
In addition to providing anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall protection, Windows OneCare will also include tools to keep PCs maintained for optimal performance and back up key data.
Microsoft did not say how much it expected to charge for the service, which had been expected for a while by the security software community.
Microsoft acquired anti-virus technology from GeCAD Software Srl., a Romanian software company, in 2003 to develop its own software. A major security-focused update to Windows XP, called Service Pack 2, was delivered last year.
Such efforts have hit the shares of major security software vendors. McAfee Inc.'s shares are down 13 percent so far this year while Symantec Corp.'s stock has declined 28 percent in the same period.
"We're designing the service so it will continually update and evolve over time," Ryan Hamlin, Microsoft's general manager of the Technology Care and Safety Group said in a statement.
Nearly all of the major anti-virus security programs are designed to be updated regularly over the Internet for a monthly or yearly fee, so that they can cope with new virus threats as they appear.
ToC
By Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: May 4, 2005, 4:42 AM PT
URL: http://msn.com.com/2100-1009_22-5694727.html?part=msn&subj=ns_22-5694727
Ben Edelman may be spyware's most dangerous enemy.
The 25-year-old researcher has spent years analyzing how spyware and adware programs work and disclosing his findings publicly. That often results in red faces and, occasionally, lawsuit threats from companies like WhenU and Claria, formerly known as Gator.
When testing spyware and adware, Edelman isn't about to sacrifice his own Windows XP computer. So he uses the VMware utility to create a virtual Windows box.
"I infect the hell out of it," he says. "It destroys the infected machine."
A law student at Harvard University, Edelman also is completing a doctoral degree in economics. CNET News.com caught up with him after he spoke at a conference in San Francisco sponsored by News.com's sister site, Download.com.
Q: What got you interested in spyware in the first place?
Edelman: I took a call from the plaintiffs in the Washington Post case against Gator. They thought what Gator was doing was absolutely destructive to the availability of free content on the Web. After all, if advertisers could buy ads from Gator to reach the Washington Post's audience, who would buy ads from the Washington Post?
I happened to think they were right. But the case settled out of court on the eve of trial so we didn't find out for sure whether Gator's business was legit.
Q: How much time have you spent since then on spyware-related topics?
Edelman: It's scary. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning right now, more so than classes, more so than my dissertation research. I probably spend 30 hours a week. It's been nonstop for the past 15 months. Before that, it was quite a bit less intense.
Q:What was the most interesting thing you've discovered?
Edelman: There's just a huge amount of money changing hands here. The biggest, richest American companies are buying advertising through spyware. The biggest, richest venture capital firms are investing in those who make this kind of unwanted software. That's names like American Express, Sprint PCS, Disney, Expedia, Guy Kawasaki's firm.
Q: You're using the word spyware. But you also mean the advertising-based networks with pop-up ads, right?
Edelman: Absolutely right. My claim is that each of the so-called adware networks has obtained installations and is still obtaining installations in ways that offer such poor notice and obtain such limited consent--sometimes none at all--that users can't fairly be said to have consented. If they didn't consent, and their activities are being monitored or transmitted, then that's spying.
Q: Have you ever been threatened by spyware makers or adware makers?
Edelman: Yes. Some vendors have challenged the permissibility of my methods, for example, Gator was awfully angry when I posted a Web service that let any Web site operator see how Gator was targeting their site with competitors' pop- ups. They sent a series of legal papers, complaints, threats to me and my then- bosses at Harvard's Berkman Center.
Q: I seem to remember that you had written some controversial software that tested what one adware program was doing--I think it was WhenU.
Edelman: I can't comment about that.
Q: Ask Jeeves seems to be an above-the-board company. What's your complaint with them?
Edelman: The core problem is Ask Jeeves' installation practices. Sometimes their software gets installed without any notice or consent at all through security hole exploits. When they do ask for permission, they don't always tell users everything they need to know to make an informed choice. For example, when installing a Web browser toolbar, they use euphemisms like "directly accessible from your Web browser" instead of the obvious and natural word "toolbar."
Q: You don't have any objection to pop-up applications like WhenU or Claria as long as the user knows what they're getting?
Edelman: I have no comment on any matter pertaining to WhenU. As to Claria, their core business seems to me to be troubling because it's so parasitic. They can only show ads thanks to users requesting other sites which get no share of the revenues from those ads.
Suppose a site spends a million dollars on a Super Bowl ad or $3 on a Google pay-per-click ad. Claria's pop-up then siphons away the resulting users. This undermines the incentives for sites to promote themselves through legitimate advertising.
Q: What's the latest in terms of threats to anti-adware companies who label certain software "spyware"?
Edelman: The background here is that historically users have been tricked into getting all manner of unwanted software into their computers. Their computers become slow, unreliable. Companies step in to help by offering detection programs.
From the perspective of the spyware makers these detection programs are bandits: they take the spyware off the users' computer after the spyware makers have gone to such lengths to infect the computers in the first place. So the spyware companies have been attempting intimidation tactics to force the removers to omit removal of particular advertising software.
Q: Name names. Who's been the most litigious?
Edelman: One of the few companies to file suit is Claria, which sued PC Pitstop in 2003 alleging unfair business practices when PC Pitstop told its users its view of Claria's software. And New.net took the novel approach of suing Lavasoft in federal court.
Mostly these threats don't lead to litigation. Either the spyware vendors give up or they succeed in their intimidation tactics without having to go to court. There have been at least half a dozen examples just in the past few months.
It's absolutely fascinating to watch Symantec and McAfee struggle with this. It's a very different problem from what they're used to. Virus writers don't fight back.
Q: You've been on the attack against Ask Jeeves recently. Why?
Edelman: They're getting installations from kids' sites. I've been trying to figure out how these programs have such a large installed base: Who in their right mind would agree to have their computer become a vehicle for pop-up ads? It turns out that many of these programs target kids. They advertise their software at kids sites. They bundle it with videogames. They use advertisement images like smiley faces.
Ask Jeeves has a search engine that nobody really wants to go to. To get users to come, they push these toolbars. But if the toolbars are installed without proper notice and consent, then the entire business collapses. They have no legitimate business source of any substantial traffic to their web site.
Q: Ask Jeeves just tries to get people to download their toolbar. Does that make it spyware or adware?
Edelman: It's not exactly spyware like the others. It doesn't show pop-up ads. As far as I know it doesn't track and transmit to its servers every Web site you visit. Yet it uses equally tricky installation tactics. (Editor's note: This week, CBS MarketWatch calculated that Ask Jeeves is valued at $1.8 billion and receives up to two-thirds of its search traffic from sources that also distribute adware.)
Q: How much money have you made by consulting for anti-adware companies so far?
Edelman: I've made enough to pay for law school.
Q: What next?
Edelman: I don't know. I might end up teaching. I can see myself practicing law, and potentially serving as some sort of a professional consultant.
ToC
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: May 10, 2005, 12:37 PM PDT
URL: http://news.com.com/A+Microsoft-Red+Hat+warming+trend/2100-7344_3-5701700.html
The chief executives of Microsoft and Red Hat held a private meeting in New York, CNET News.com has learned, an indication that relations between the rivals might be warming.
Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and Red Hat's Matthew Szulik met for more than an hour at a McCormick & Schmick's restaurant in New York in late March, sources familiar with the situation said. Microsoft initiated the meeting, one source indicated.
Red Hat declined to comment for this story. But Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, although not commenting on the Ballmer-Szulik get-together, said in an interview Monday that Microsoft is interested in meeting with open-source companies.
"There are some of those (open source) players that are looking at commercial-type revenues. We'll certainly spend time with those people to see what we have in common and what we can do for customers together," Gates said. However, he added, "I wouldn't say that there is some big, new development."
Microsoft generally favors proprietary software whose underlying source code is a closely controlled secret. Red Hat, on the other hand, supports open-source programming, in which source code may be freely seen, modified and redistributed by anyone. The company's chief product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, is arguably the most successful example of an open-source project being packaged for commercial sale.
Microsoft has shown no signs of losing its aggressive competitiveness, but it has been willing to work with rivals of late. One notable example was a detente with Sun Microsystems in April 2004 that settled Sun's antitrust suit and led to deals to share patents and make sure that the companies' products interoperate.
Microsoft also has settled antitrust matters with software maker Burst.com, Novell and Time Warner's America Online.
Open-source software efforts once were a fringe phenomenon, chiefly of interest to students and technical experts. Now, however, several open-source projects have become forces to be reckoned with, often having a corporation backing them. Projects that compete directly with Microsoft's products include not just server software such as Apache, MySQL and JBoss, but also include desktop software such as OpenOffice.org.
Meetings between competitors' high-level executives aren't unheard-of. But Microsoft and Red Hat aren't just competitors for selling operating systems--they also are opposed on the issue of software philosophy.
Even though Microsoft has embraced the ideas of having an active developer community, it has long criticized the General Public License that underlies Linux. In some cases, executives have called it "Pac-Man-like" and a "cancer." The license requires that software derived from a GPL program also be covered by the GPL, a provision Microsoft and others have termed "viral."
Despite some attacks on open-source programming, Microsoft has tried to take a more conciliatory stance in recent years. It has tried instead to argue that open-source software is inferior to its own products on the basis of cost, features and legal protections through its "Get the Facts" campaign.
Red Hat hasn't pulled any punches either.
In a 2001 speech, Red Hat's chief technology officer at the time, Michael Tiemann, disparaged Microsoft's shared-source initiative, which aims to emulate some of the principles of the open-source and free-software movements but that often doesn't give programmers as many rights to source code.
"It is not so much a license, I think, as it is a treaty crafted by executives trying to buy time while they quiet the internal rebellion that is Microsoft's own civil war," Tiemann said.
ToC
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#778/02-May-05
Well, it's done. Tiger is out, and all the speculation about its much-ballyhooed features can at long last be put to rest. To further that end, we're focusing on Tiger in several ways. For the rest of this issue, and undoubtedly a number of articles in future issues, we'll be writing about what's new, what it means, and how well it all works. This week, for instance, you'll find articles looking at the upgrade process, Dashboard, Automator, and Spotlight.
But there's no way in TidBITS that we can go into the kind of depth that readers want and that Tiger deserves. That's where our Take Control ebooks come in with over 350 pages of painstakingly researched and professionally edited advice about upgrading to Tiger, customizing Tiger, users and accounts in Tiger, and sharing files in Tiger (with Macs and other platforms). The ebooks are good, they're inexpensive, they aren't copy protected in any way, they come with free updates, and they're available now - weeks or months before most other books about Tiger will appear. Tonya and I, along with Joe Kissell, Matt Neuburg, Kirk McElhearn, and Glenn Fleishman, worked our tails off for the last few months to release all four ebooks simultaneously with Tiger (for overseas customers who pre-ordered, we even made the ebooks available at 6 PM on April 29th in local time zones around the world).
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/>
To kick off our coverage here in TidBITS, though, I'd like to reflect on a question that likely didn't even occur to the thousands of people who have bought the ebooks so far: Should you upgrade, and if so, when? If you're on the fence about when to upgrade, see if you fall into one of the following categories.
The Hobbyist
I suspect that most people who consider the Macintosh a hobby have already decided to upgrade, but if not, I'd recommend ordering a copy. A new version of the operating system means new toys, new features to explore, and a nearly infinite amount of raw material for discussing with friends. If you consider yourself a Macintosh hobbyist, then I'd recommend an upgrade fairly quickly, if only so you can continue to feel like one of the tribe.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/overview/>
The Filing-Challenged
If you're continually losing files on your Mac, Tiger's Spotlight technology will become your new best friend. For that matter, I'm betting that Spotlight will come to the aid of anyone who has trouble figuring out where to file documents, anyone for whom a rigid hierarchical filing system never made much sense and who just ended up storing everything on the Desktop. If you find yourself saying things like, "I put it on the thing next to that other thing," Spotlight sweeps away the artificial analogy of filing so you can think conceptually when searching: "To whom did I write that letter? When did I write it? What did it say?" My recommendation is to upgrade soon, so you can at last throw some light into the darkness of your hard disk organization.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/spotlight/>
The Scripter
Many people just use their Macs manually, but others understand that one of the great uses of a computer is to automate repetitive tasks. These people have long adopted macro utilities like QuicKeys, iKey, and Keyboard Maestro, and many of them have gone a step further in learning AppleScript. If you fall into this category, Automator may be the next arrow in your automation quiver, since it goes beyond scripting to give you a visual interface to automating tasks without having to make applications march about like marionettes. I suspect that the possibilities offered by Automator will encourage such people to upgrade in the relatively near future, even if the true promise of Automator takes a while to be realized fully by third-party developers.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/automator/>
Short Attention Span
Hang on, I need to check something quickly. Right, the weather report for the Albuquerque and Santa Fe areas for my trip this week is looking OK, so I can get back to writing. If, like me, you find yourself needing to check in on things or use small utilities - just a minute, I need to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius so I can explain the current weather to a friend in Australia - Dashboard and the plethora of Widgets it will give you are a good reason to upgrade. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the things that Dashboard Widgets can do in Tiger aren't also available in Panther thanks to Konfabulator, so you don't need to upgrade instantly just for Dashboard.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/dashboard/>
<http://www.konfabulator.com/>
Driven by Deadline
Most people in this category have their noses to the grindstone to finish projects, and honestly, it's a hard sell to say that they should upgrade any time soon. The reason is simple - they're so deep in Microsoft Word, or Adobe Photoshop, or the like, that the specifics of the operating system aren't likely to make that much difference in their day-to-day work, and taking time out to install Tiger and come up to speed on the new features isn't realistic. If you're one of these workaholics, I do recommend that you upgrade, but not until Apple has had a chance to release a few minor updates to eliminate any initial problems, and then not until you have a clear opportunity in which to install Tiger and spend some time gaining familiarity with the new features.
The Stick-in-the-Mud
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is your motto, and Panther ain't particularly broke. I won't say that you should upgrade, although in the next 12 to 18 months, I expect to see new applications that take advantage of Spotlight and Automator and Dashboard in interesting ways. If you find some of those promises attractive, an upgrade may be worthwhile at that point. Plus, if you buy a new Mac in the next year or so, you'll end up with Tiger pre-installed, so you could also just put off an upgrade until then.
Tiger Details
To recap the details from Apple's initial announcement, Tiger costs $130 for a single user license; the Mac OS X Tiger Family Pack offers a five-user license for $200; and the Mac OS Up-to-Date upgrade package costs $10 for those who bought a new Mac on or after 12-Apr-05 (this offer ends 22-Jul-05). Note that Take Control ebooks come with a coupon worth $5 off any order, including Tiger, at TidBITS sponsor Small Dog Electronics.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08068>
<http://www.smalldog.com/>
Tiger requires a minimum of 256 MB of RAM (but please install at least 512 MB) and will run on any Macintosh that has both a PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor and built-in FireWire.
Tiger ships only on DVD media; if your otherwise-compatible Mac has only a CD drive, you can either boot your Mac in FireWire Target Disk Mode and install to it from another DVD-equipped Mac, or you can pay Apple $10 (plus your local sales tax, which you must compute) for a set of Tiger CDs. To order the CD set, download the PDF form linked below, and package it up with your payment, your proof of purchase, and your original Tiger DVD. Apple says they will ship CDs within 24 hours of receipt if they're in stock, but only via the U.S. Postal Service. So, it might take two to three weeks from when you put your order in the mail to receive your discs if Apple has them in stock.
<http://images.apple.com/macosx/pdf/tigermediaexchange.pdf>
ToC
by Joe Kissell <jk@alt.cc>
TidBITS#778/02-May-05
The first time I installed a pre-release version of Tiger, I was worried. Unlike most people, who may be concerned about whether or not their machine will work properly afterward, I had an entirely different worry: who would need my ebook about upgrading if the process works this well? Apple clearly paid a great deal of attention to the installer, which is far better in Tiger than in any previous version of Mac OS X. As a user, I was ecstatic; as an author, not so much.
Now, some 43 installations later (and counting), both my enthusiasm and my anxiety have diminished somewhat. I've gotten to know the installer and its trusty sidekick, Setup Assistant, rather intimately. Although the Tiger installation process was full of pleasant surprises, I'm happy - I mean, sorry - to report that there are still plenty of interesting quirks and questions that may encourage you to spend $5 for some expert guidance in the form of my new ebook, "Take Control of Upgrading to Tiger."
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/tiger-upgrading.html>
Tiger Media
The first surprise is, as Adam noted in his article, that Tiger ships only on DVD. To obtain a CD-based installer, you must return your Tiger DVD to Apple, along with $10, and wait for another package in the mail. I like the simplicity of a single disc that includes the entire installer (and Xcode Tools); it makes the installation go much faster and reduces clutter and confusion. But if you have an otherwise Tiger-compatible machine without a DVD reader, you may not feel as happy about that decision.
Installation Methods
Assuming you're upgrading an existing installation of Mac OS X, the Installer, as usual, presents you with three installation methods: Upgrade, Archive and Install, and Erase and Install. I tried each of these methods numerous times and under a variety of conditions. Although the default choice, Upgrade, is generally reliable, you can achieve a much cleaner (and slimmer) system with one of the other methods. In the past, I've recommended Archive and Install for most people, as it provides a happy medium between the simplicity of Upgrade and the robustness of Erase and Install. I assumed I'd be reiterating the same advice this time (as numerous other Mac Web sites have done). Not so: much to my surprise, I found that Erase and Install - if used in just the right way - offers a significantly faster, more effective, and safer way to get your old stuff into your new system as long as you have good backups. I urge everyone to have at least one, if not two, backups before erasing your hard disk; if you're uncertain of the best ways to make reliable backups, see my "Take Control of Mac OS Backups" ebook.
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/backup-macosx.html>
The key to this new way of thinking is Migration Assistant (the same tool that Apple provides to facilitate moving files from an old Mac to a new one). You don't have to run this program separately; all its capabilities are integrated into Setup Assistant under the auspices of "File Transfer." After you perform an Erase and Install and restart, Setup Assistant offers to transfer your files and settings from another Mac or partition. As long as you have a bootable backup of your old system on another partition - or, preferably, a second internal or external hard disk - Migration Assistant does a brilliant job of integrating your old files into Tiger. It does not do a perfect job - some manual copying or reinstallations will still be necessary - but the amount of extra work you'll need to do is far smaller, and less scary, than what would be required after an Archive and Install. I cover all the details of restoring files (for both methods) in "Take Control of Upgrading to Tiger."
Optional Software
During installation, you can select or deselect several optional software packages. I found Apple's default choices rather odd. For example, language translations, which take up over 1 GB, are all enabled by default - yet relatively few people need to be able to use Mac OS X in more than one language, and almost no one needs to be able to use it in every available language. Overall, there are fewer options to choose among than under Panther. You cannot, for instance, deselect the BSD Subsystem, as you could in earlier versions of Mac OS X (a good thing, as many third-party applications rely on it).
After the Installation
After installation, Setup Assistant takes you through the usual process of selecting a user name and password (if necessary), configuring your .Mac account (if you have one), registering with Apple, and so on. This portion of the process seemed much clearer than in the past. On your next restart, however, you may discover that important startup items were disabled due to changes in file permission requirements. A more helpful approach would have been to fix these items' settings automatically, or at least indicate on the first launch of Tiger that they are unavailable and why they were disabled.
Minor Shortcomings
As much improved as the Tiger installer is, I could certainly wish for more-intelligent behavior. For example, both Upgrade and Erase and Install (if followed by File Transfer) leave all your login items (formerly known as startup items) enabled; some of these caused problems for me because they pointed to old applications that are incompatible with Tiger. A better tactic would be for the installer to disable those items - but provide an easy way to turn them back on, one by one. Similarly, File Transfer copies some applications and preference panes to your new system but not the kernel extensions they frequently rely on, leaving you with half- installed software that doesn't work, but no clues as to why it doesn't work. Although the installer helpfully warns you about some of these (Virex, for example), in most cases it does not. And I encountered some interface oddities, especially in the File Transfer portion of Setup Assistant. For instance, it's not clear that "partition" means "partition or external hard disk," and the screen where you choose individual components of your old system to transfer doesn't provide enough information to make informed decisions.
You Can Take Control
On the whole, the Tiger installer still gives me relatively warm and fuzzy feelings, these few gripes notwithstanding. Even at its best, though, it leaves plenty of questions: What steps should I take to prepare for an upgrade? Which upgrade method is best for me? Should I partition my hard drive first, and if so, how should I do it? What files do I need to copy after Archive and Install? How do I fix the things that don't seem to work afterward? You can find the answers to these and many other questions in "Take Control of Upgrading to Tiger" - an 87-page ebook that details everything you need to know about the upgrade process, with free updates as more information becomes available.
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/tiger-upgrading.html>
ToC
TidBITS#778/02-May-05
Last week, Apple released upgraded versions of the professional Power Mac G5 models, increasing CPU speeds, adding larger hard drives, providing a faster 16X SuperDrive with double-layer support, and installing 512 MB of RAM for each model. The single-processor 1.8 GHz Power Mac G5 remains available for $1,500, but the stock dual-processor models now ship at $2,000 (dual 2.0 GHz PowerPC G5, 160 GB hard disk, ATI Radeon 9600 video card, and 3 PCI slots), $2,500 (dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5, 250 GB hard drive, ATI Radeon 9600, 3 PCI-X slots), and $3,000 (dual 2.7 GHz PowerPC G5, 250 GB hard drive, ATI Radeon 9650 with 30-inch Cinema Display support, and 3 PCI-X slots). For comparison, the previous three steps were dual 1.8 GHz, dual 2.0 GHz, and dual 2.5 GHz. Also interesting is the new 16x SuperDrive with double-layer support that enables you to burn up to 8.5 GB on a single double-layer DVD. All the dual-processor systems ship with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.
<http://www.apple.com/powermac/>
The release date matches fairly well with the trends I identified in "Take Control of Buying a Mac," which indicate that Power Mac revisions tend to appear in the middle and end-of-year time frames. This one comes slightly earlier than previous releases but was undoubtedly affected by the Tiger release schedule. If Apple stays true to form, I'd predict another speed bump toward the end of this year, probably to 3 GHz, and a major upgrade in the middle of 2006 since the Power Mac line tends to go three years between significant changes. [ACE]
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/buying-mac.html>
ToC
Apple also reduced prices on its two smaller Apple Cinema Displays last week. The price of the entry-level 20-inch model drops $200, from $1,000 down to $800, and the 23-inch display drops $300, from $1,800 to $1,500. The massive 30-inch display remains priced at $3,000, but the new dual 2.7 GHz Power Mac G5 supports the 30-inch display in its stock configuration, eliminating the need for an additional video card. Adding support to another Power Mac G5 configuration will run you $350 for the necessary Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL video card as a build-to-order option; the standalone kit for existing machines costs $500 or $600, and adding such a card fills one of your PCI slots. Also providing built-in support for the 30-inch display is the 1.67 GHz 17-inch PowerBook. [ACE]
<http://www.apple.com/displays/>
ToC
by Jeff Carlson <jeffc@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#779/09-May-05
Shortly after releasing new Power Mac G5 models (see "Apple Speed Bumps Power Mac G5" in TidBITS-778_), Apple announced updates to two of its consumer desktop lines, the iMac G5 and the eMac.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08083>
iMac G5 Improved
Apple bumped up the processor, graphics card, and built-in memory of the flat-panel iMac G5. As before, it's available in two sizes and three standard configurations. The low-end 17-inch model, at $1,300, is outfitted with a 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5 processor (up from 1.6 GHz) with a 600 MHz frontside bus, 160 GB hard drive, and a slot-loading Combo Drive (DVD- ROM/CD-RW). The mid-range 17-inch model ($1,500) and the 20-inch model ($1,800) both include a 2.0 GHz processor (up from 1.8 GHz) with a 667 MHz frontside bus and an 8x dual-layer SuperDrive. The 17-inch configuration includes the 160 GB hard disk, while the 20-inch beastie is equipped with a 250 GB hard disk.
All three configurations now ship with 512 MB of RAM (with support for up to 2 GB), and an ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card with 128 MB of memory, as well as the original iMac G5's complement of ports: two FireWire 400, three USB 2.0, VGA output, and S-video output. All models also come with built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR wireless networking; previously, the Bluetooth was a build-to-order option. Each runs Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and includes iLife '05.
eMac Sees Boost
The CRT-screen-based eMac continues to be Apple's quiet inexpensive workhorse, and that's even more true thanks to last week's improvements to the all-in-one computer. The new eMac configuration includes a 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 512 MB of memory, a Radeon 9600 graphics card with 64 MB of memory, and an 8x dual-layer SuperDrive. The $800 low-end configuration now sports an 80 GB hard disk, while the $1,000 model has a 160 GB hard disk. They both ship with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and iLife '05.
ToC
Apple last week released Security Update 2005-004, a 1 MB download that replaces an iSync component that could be vulnerable to a buffer overflow. Also released was Java Update for Mac OS X 10.3.9, which solves a crashing problem with running Java applets that affected some users after they installed the Mac OS X 10.3.9 Update. The Java Update is a 1 MB download; both updates are also available via Software Update. [JLC]
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301326>
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301382>
TidBITS#779/09-May-05
Apple has released Security Update 2005-005 to address several online security issues with Mac OS X 10.3.9 and Mac OS X Server 10.3.9. Users can download the patch via Software Update or from Apple's Web site (about 6 MB, depending on version).
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301528>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/>
Security Update 2005-005 rolls in patches for a number of Mac OS X applications and technologies, as well as components of Mac OS X's underlying Unix implementation. Key fixes address buffer overflows and means by which attackers could potentially overwrite files, escalate privileges, or execute arbitrary code using the Finder, Help Viewer, the Foundation and AppKit application frameworks, Terminal, and AppleScript. Other fixes affect the Apache Web server, lukemftpd, sudo, Directory Services, VPN, and X11; in addition, Security Update 2005-005 disables Bluetooth file sharing by default, and prevents Bluetooth services from accessing files outside the default file exchange directory. As of this writing, a similar update has not been made available for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and it's not clear whether Tiger already addresses these security concerns. [GD]
ToC
TidBITS#779/09-May-05
Apple today released iTunes 4.8, a free download with minimal documentation. According to the ReadMe file, "iTunes 4.8 includes new Music Store features and support for transferring contacts and calendars from your computer to your iPod," noting that the latter feature requires Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Poking around a bit reveals that Apple is incorporating video into iTunes; you can drag a QuickTime movie to the Library, where it appears with a small gray video camera icon. Playing the movie displays it in the little Now Playing box (where album covers appear); clicking the movie opens it in a separate window, and clicking a new Show Video Full Screen button presents the movie full screen (although the full-screen option doesn't work for videos or movie trailers downloaded from the iTunes Music Store.) A new preference also controls the default window setting for video playback. As of this writing, the update was available only as a stand-alone download, but I'm guessing it will appear via Software Update soon. The iTunes 4.8 installer is an 11 MB download. [JLC]
<http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/itunes48.html>
ToC
TidBITS#780/16-May-05
Last week, Apple posted an update to one of its core video-editing components, Apple Intermediate Codec 1.0.1. If you use iMovie HD or Final Cut Express HD, work with HDV-formatted footage, and are using QuickTime 7, this update is highly recommended. Both applications are unable to edit HDV footage directly; when you import it from an HDV camcorder, iMovie or Final Cut Express convert the HDV video to the Apple Intermediate Codec. (The forthcoming Final Cut Pro 5 requires no conversion and can edit HDV natively.) This update improves performance during playback and when exporting footage, and is a 740K download from the Web or via Software Update. [JLC]
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/appleintermediatecodec101.html>
<http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/>
<http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/>
<http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/>
by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#777/25-Apr-05
It's taken 20 years, but the graphics application industry is down to two remaining companies from the early days. Adobe announced its plan to acquire Macromedia last week in an all-stock transaction valued at $3.4 billion. The deal, if approved by both boards and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, gives Macromedia stockholders about 18 percent of Adobe.
<http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html>
When the Macintosh was launched, four companies quickly took over the graphics program field: Adobe, Aldus, MacroMind, and Quark. Each had its strengths. Adobe was the typographic and vector giant. Aldus and Quark each had page-layout programs that boasted legions of adherents from practically the first opening of the boxes' shrinkwrap. And MacroMind had multimedia authoring tools.
Web Design Dominance
In 1992, MacroMind merged with Authorware to become Macromedia. In 1995, it bought Altsys, makers of Aldus FreeHand (more on that in a moment) and Altsys Fontographer. Macromedia introduced its Web page editing program Dreamweaver in 1998, and subsequently beefed it up with two acquisitions: in 1999, it purchased Andromedia, a Web traffic analysis firm, and in 2001 bought Allaire, the firm behind the Cold Fusion scripting language.
Macromedia's combination of scripting and interactivity led it to dominance in the Web-based player world. Shockwave and Flash have become de facto standards for vector-based interactive presentations. Despite many efforts, no other serious competitors have materialized.
Likewise, Macromedia's integration of Cold Fusion and ASP into Dreamweaver cemented its ownership of the graphical Web site market. The tied-in scripting and database support drove Dreamweaver's adoption over Adobe GoLive, formerly CyberStudio, which Adobe had bought from the German firm GoLive, Inc.
Print Design Turf Wars
During the time that MacroMind was taking over the interactive and Web authoring world, Aldus and Adobe became dominant in page layout, illustration, and image editing.
Aldus had built a large suite of products, starting with PageMaker, by adding FreeHand (produced by Altsys under license to Aldus), Persuasion (arguably the best presentation software of its day), SuperPaint, and IntelliDraw.
Adobe started with fonts and PostScript, and launched Illustrator for vector-based illustration, which was always in close feature competition with FreeHand. But Adobe's juggernaut was Photoshop, which came out in 1990. Photoshop emerged from work by two genius brothers, one at Industrial Light and Magic and the other at graduate school in Ann Arbor, MI. It was an immediate success, destroying its fine competitor Fractal Design ColorStudio.
With Photoshop, Illustrator, fonts, and PostScript licensing driving sales, Adobe became an ever-larger company, and finally made an offer to Aldus to merge in 1994. The merger required the spin-off of Aldus FreeHand with the rights reverting back to Altsys; Altsys resold those rights to Macromedia the following year.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04019>
Acrobat grew from being a footnote when Adobe first introduced it - with per-seat pricing for every user - to become the world's only real document interchange format that retains the look and feel of original documents. Even Microsoft has been unable to compete effectively with Acrobat, which is saying something.
Adobe later acquired Frame, the third remaining page-layout program developer, and introduced InDesign as the successor to PageMaker, which had grown long in the tooth and was being handily beat by QuarkXPress.
A New Competitive Landscape
Now we've reached the end of the path. Adobe's competitors now aren't Quark or Viewpoint (formerly MetaCreations, and other names before that), but rather Apple and Microsoft. While striving to release software that works on both Windows and the Mac OS, they're being battered at the top by Apple's professional video tools and at the bottom by Microsoft's and Apple's home layout and photo tools.
To achieve the scale to compete against operating system vendors, Adobe's purchase of Macromedia makes perfect sense and probably won't raise anti-trust flags. The two companies have almost as small an overlap as when Aldus and Adobe merged, which resulted in Adobe unloading FreeHand to Macromedia. Macromedia's Dreamweaver will certainly supplant GoLive, but it will take some time to integrate Dreamweaver fully into Creative Suite. With Creative Suite 2 just shipping, I expect Creative Suite 3 will see full Dreamweaver integration with interim plug-ins implementing some of the GoLive CS2 features.
FreeHand and Illustrator find themselves at odds once again, but it's again likely that FreeHand will be the loser in the battle. Although still supported, it has been a less and less important part of Macromedia's offerings, while Illustrator has stayed front and center for Adobe.
Overall, this could be a win for graphics professionals because it will mean more consistent pricing and more integration across tools they already use. Most Web designers already have to use Flash, Director and Shockwave, Illustrator or FreeHand, InDesign, and Dreamweaver. It's just a natural progression that one company offers these all in one place.
I said at the outset only two companies remain. Obviously, Adobe is one, with what will top $2 billion in revenue between it and the former Macromedia. The other is Quark, Inc., a company that started with its flagship QuarkXPress product two years after Aldus released PageMaker.
Quark has tried to release products other than those focused on page layout over the years, like Quark Immedia, an odd multimedia authoring application, or an image-editing program licensed from a Japanese firm that they could never quite push out the door. Quark is privately held and their financial state is unknown, although it's generally been perceived over the years as massively profitable.
The future is clearly about a very small number of graphics developers with integrated applications - integrated together like the iLife suite or the Creative Suite or Microsoft Office. With the purchase of Macromedia, Adobe has taken a large step towards trying to preserve its multi-platform role in setting the pace for the graphics world.
ToC
by Jeff Carlson <jeffc@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#777/25-Apr-05
Looking at the Mac mini's technical specifications alone, the computer sits firmly in the middle of Apple's computer offerings - it's essentially an eMac without the monitor, keyboard, or mouse. What's notable about the mini is its physical size, a diminutive rectangle only slightly larger than most external hard drives.
Interestingly, that small size has become a large canvas where people are projecting their imaginations about what the Mac mini could be. With its small footprint, the Mac mini is more welcome in the living room, passing the "spouse test" of being a discreet media device without looking like a, well, computer. It's also found a home in automobiles, where enthusiasts want access to music and video (for passengers, hopefully) without spending a fortune on dedicated components.
Oh, and then there's the price: the stock Mac mini costs $500, which is apparently wooing non-Mac users to the Mac OS X platform.
These factors have led to an unexpected surge of Web sites dedicated to the Mac mini. Obviously, some of what's at play is the phenomenon of catching something insanely popular at the ground level, but not since the original iMac has there been so much interest in an otherwise unremarkable computer.
I recently went looking for Mac mini-themed sites to see what was propelling so much activity and to answer the question: does an explosion of niche Web sites promise success for a product, or is it gold rush opportunism? Time will tell, of course, but in the meantime it makes for an interesting trip.
News and Information
The site that started my exploration, Modmini.com, was created by Robert Cassidy and frequent TidBITS contributor Andrew Laurence. Despite its name, the site so far isn't focused as much on mods (modifications) in the same sense that others are (for example, Mac minis embedded into old iMac or even Centris cases). Instead, it tackles practical considerations such as setting up the mini as a DVD jukebox (with movies stored on the hard drive) and adding AirPort and Bluetooth - both build- to-order items - after receiving the Mac mini.
If you're looking for more of a daily news and information site, 123Macmini.com and BYODKM.net (Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard, and Mouse ) provide ongoing doses of news (Mac mini-related product releases, as well as general Mac OS news) and reviews. They both also offer discussion forums where people can swap stories, tips, and ask the instantly age-old question: "Mac mini or [insert name of any computer here]???"
<http://www.123macmini.com/>
<http://www.byodkm.net/>
Home Theater
The Mac mini quickly became the low-cost, low-profile computer of choice to anchor the digital hub, and several sites have sprung up with information specific to building a media center. MacHTPC, HTmini.com, and Home Theater Mac provide news and reviews with a slant toward using the Mac mini as a home theater, plus general Mac news where applicable.
<http://www.machtpc.com/>
<http://htmini.com/>
<http://www.hometheatermac.com/>
Also noteworthy is the CenterStage project, which isn't necessarily tied to the Mac mini, but it was inspired by the tiny Mac. CenterStage is an open-source project for developing a home theater environment running on the Mac that can be run from a remote control (think TiVo with all the features you really want). Development is still in its early stages, but a 0.1 alpha version is available for download.
<http://www.centerstageproject.com/>
If you sometimes feel as if your car is your home, be sure to check out MacVroom, where you can "Mac your ride" with Mac mini car integration. MacVroom is all over the efforts to put Mac minis in cars, including information on working with small-size LCD screens, alternative power supplies, and more.
Mac mini Community
All of the sites mentioned above include discussion forums or weblog-style comment features, but two sites have been set up solely for the purpose of hosting online communities of Mac mini owners and enthusiasts. Macminiforums includes forums on using, troubleshooting, and modifying Mac minis, as well as classified ads. MacminiCenter is a community- contributed Mac mini wiki (which is just fun to say out loud three times) with information and links to specific hardware (such as LCD projectors), software, and other categories.
<http://macminiforums.com/forums/>
<http://www.macminicenter.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page>
Twenty years ago, almost to the day,
A new breed of computer was about to come our way,
Known as the A1000 it took us all by storm,
Using mouse and GUI, it soon became the norm.
At first it didn't do much, until we got it tamed,
Then all of a sudden, the graphics modes were famed,
HAM images of a little girl, (of which I have a file),
NTSC "Lores" and beat the competition by a mile.
There was stereophonic sound coming from the ports,
When listening from an amplifier, what must have been our thoughts,
This audio was a sample, or a generated sound,
Even speech was heard, and on no other machine could be found.
There was a 32 bit processor, known as the sixty eight K,
It ran at 7 mega-hertz, and we all went, oooh... weh heh,
Its memory range was small, but more than enough for us,
It could boot into a GUI from floppy without a fuss.
Custom chips were used in this machine, to do any difficult task,
Affectionate girly names were given, so what were they? you might ask,
Agnus, Paula and Denise were the three that did their best,
To give us hours of pleasure, be-it games, drawing and the rest.
Other chips were used also, to talk to the world outside,
Bi-directional parallel port and analogue games port to deride
All of the opposition which could barely look one way,
Outgoing or Incoming, not BOTH like those MIGGYs of the day.
Soon it became apparent just how powerful it was to be,
So out came the A500 with up to Workbench one point three,
Much smaller and much better and also had a proper ROM,
Was bought for "Johnny Whizzkid" for Christmas, from DAD and MOM.
Over the years this mighty tool, was overtaken by the foe,
Technology has gripped us and the MIGGY is in a state of woe,
The A500, the A600 and the A1200 have come along,
With Big Box AMIGAs also to join the happy throng.
To try and make a come back, the new AMIGA has taken on
More up to date PC hardware, and they have called it the A 1,
But I have written this on my A1200, in what's known as YAM,
And to me, it was the best "export" to come from Uncle SAM.
Although we're twenty years further on, from the first A1000 made,
The seeds of MULTIMEDIA and digital convergence had been laid,
All of the competition cannot say they were to invent this word,
It was the A1000, attached to which this word was heard.
To finish off this ode to the "grandfather" of them all,
MULTIMEDIA and digital convergence could have taken a major fall,
If it wasn't for the foresight of the original design crew,
OF THE AMIGA A1000 AND THE FANTASTIC THINGS IT COULD DO...
Barry Walker <wisecracker@tesco.net>
ToC
reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)
President Richard Rollins began the meeting with the traditional introduction of officers.
Kevin Hisel asked if anyone had seen or had a line on an online featurette called "Star Wars Revelations". he went on to describe it as home grown sequel to Star Wars in .mov format, about 40 minutes long. Doing a little research after the meeting, I found out the film has gotten written up in an article in USA Today on May 11, which said the movie was made by Shane Felux, a graphic designer, and his wife Dawn Cowings, a stay-at-home mom with a degree in creative writing. They made the film for about $20,000 and it "has become an Internet phenomenon. It has had nearly 1 million free downloads since it premiered la