News Common PC Linux Mac CUCUG
The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, March 15th, 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 March 15 gathering will be one of our split SIG meetings. The PC SIG will have Jon Bjerke presenting the new Vista OS. Jon said he'll be showing the new Aero interface, which requires pretty hefty hardware. He'll also turn off Aero to show what your system will do if it only has a Vista Capable rating. He'll focus on the UAC, the differences in the network settings and the wireless protection. The Macintosh SIG is open for anything anyone wants to bring in.
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We'd like to thank renewing members Selena Kay Douglass and Jim Lewis for their continued support.
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.
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by Richard E. Rollins, President, CUCUG
This is a sad day for me. One of my best friends just passed away.
Jeff Stevenson was one of our founding members. He was the first treasurer and newsletter editor for our club. When after 4 or 5 years the club was almost out of money and could not have lasted out the year, Jeff along with others set up a raffle of an Amiga 500. Jeff did all the work on making tickets and handling the money. Because of that raffle we are still a club today. Even though he has not been with us for many of the last few years, the things he set in motion still are there. He was able to come back to the 20th year meeting and he really enjoyed seeing old friends.
Jeff has been a personal friend of mine since I met him here at a meeting of the club back in 1984. He was a former U.S. Air force fighter pilot, having flow over 100 missions in Vietnam in the 60's. He meet his wife Ellen on a blind date and they were married several weeks later. It seemed to stick as they were married for over 35 years.
He owned the Hobby shop just outside the base entrance in Rantoul. Later, when the base was closing, he went into business with another of our founding members, Steve Gast. They opened a hobby and pet store called Leisuretime Pet and Hobby now located on Mattis Avenue in Champaign. He retired from the store about two years ago and went into another of his passions, driving. He tried to rebuild a Mini and then traded it for a Mazda Miata. He joined the local Miata club and loved going on rally's and autocrosses.
Jeff passed away on Thursday March 8, 2007 at 5:15 pm. He died from complications from the chemotherapy for his treatment of Leukemia. He is survived by a wife, two daughters and six grandchildren. Personally, for me, he will be missed greatly.
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Written and produced by John Anderson (mediaminutes@freepress.net)
Audio: http://freepress.net/mediaminutes/archive/mm021607.mp3
Text: http://freepress.net/mediaminutes/transcripts/mm021607.pdf
The FCC fudges the numbers with regard to the availability of broadband Internet access in America. A newly-released report claims that broadband penetration grew some 54% from mid-2005 through June of last year. But the problem with the claim lies in how it's defined. For starters, the FCC defines broadband connectivity as any connection with a speed higher than 200 kilobits per second - hardly a quick figure, considering it's less than one-seventh the speed of today's DSL or cable modem lines. Secondly, the FCC uses zip codes to measure broadband penetration, and classifies an entire zip code area as wired if just one customer is connected there - even if that connection involves something like satellite-delivered broadband service.
But the most egregious distortion behind the claim is the FCC's counting of 11 million mobile broadband - aka cell phone - subscribers as evidence of increased service. Never mind that cell phone networks, with their proprietary and metered architecture, don't even come close to resembling a bona-fide broadband Internet experience. The real bottom line? It's 2007, and just under 60% of U.S. homes still do not have easy, affordable access to broadband.
With little fanfare, Sony has reached a settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission over an investigation into copy-protection software embedded in some Sony CDs. A year and a half ago, Sony got into hot water when it came to light that some of its music discs surreptitiously installed software onto Windows-based computers that increased their vulnerability to hacker attacks. Under the FTC settlement, Sony must disclose up-front what sort of copy-protection mechanisms reside on its content and give users, quote, "a reasonable and effective way" of uninstalling such software. Those who may have Sony media infected with the potentially dangerous rootkit software are still eligible for a company replacement program through June.
Just how good has merger-mania been to the new AT&T? The company closed out 2006 with a 17% rise in profits in the final quarter, a large part of the gain due to its full assimilation of the Cingular wireless phone network, which in its final quarterly report tripled its profits over the course of a year. Net income at AT&T in the last three months of last year nearly hit $2 billion. The financial impacts of the company's acquisition of BellSouth have yet to be felt. In the last 10 years AT&T has acquired 13 companies in its race to reassemble Ma Bell for the broadband era.
However, the company is facing problems with its self-proclaimed next-generation broadband service, dubbed "Project Lightspeed" or "U-Verse." The technology, which delivers phone, data, and TV over a combination of fiber optics and plain old telephone wires, has been slow to launch - technical glitches delayed its rollout to 11 markets last year, while the company's target was 20. And there are significant questions about whether twentieth-century twisted-copper phone lines can really provide the capacity to deliver the vaunted triple-play of services, especially with regard to high-definition television.
Related Links:
FCC Fudges Its Broadband Report - but finally Gets One Thing Right!
Consumers Must Be Able to Uninstall Copy Protection
Gains in Wireless Customers Help Lift AT&T's Earnings
Internet Technology Tests AT&T's Bid for TV Subscribers
Lightspeed's Slow Start
U.S. Broadband Market Still Coming Up Short
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by Kristen Sackley
Posted: 2/12/07
URL: http://media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2007/02/12/News/Ui.Alumni.Crucial.In.Creating.Transistors-2711636.shtml
Intel announced two major breakthroughs in computer processor technology on Jan. 27, with multiple University [of Illinois] alumni to thank for their contributions to the project.
Mark Bohr, a senior fellow at Intel and University alumnus, led the team of process engineers that created the new 45 nanometer transistor processor. Bohr said the new transistors will reduce leakage, meaning battery leakage, related to the length of battery life.
"(The transistors) provide for performance but in a much more energy efficient manner," Bohr said.
These 45 nanometer chips are the first to have the gate insulator and the gate electrode made without silicon, which had been used for the past 40 years.
Intel developed a new material with a "high-k" property for the gate insulator, and a combination of metals for the gate electrode. But the make-up of "high-k" and the precise combination of metals are being kept secret by Intel so they can have a leg up on the competition. Most of the details regarding the project have been kept secret until now.
From the changes made to the gate insulator, gate electrode and the elimination of silicon, Bohr said Intel's announcement was key in progressing transistor technology.
"Those three components remained unchanged in the past 40 years." Bohr said. "So our announcement in January was a big change where we converted the gate insulator from silicon to hafnium."
Not only is Intel's new transistor technology energy efficient, but it is also extremely small and solves the problem of Moore's Law, at least temporarily.
Gordon Moore, inventor of Moore's law and co-founder of Intel, said that the number of transistors should double on a processor every 18-24 months, eventually leading to a limit. This limit was approaching, Bohr said, but this new technology may have delayed the end of Moore's law.
"Over the last five, six years experts have admitted that we are running into fundamental limits." Bohr said. "We have made transistors as small as possible. If we make them smaller they won't have good performance."
According to Intel, with the new technology approximately 400 of Intel's 45 nanometer transistors could fit on the surface of a single human red blood cell.
Michael Hattendorf, University alumnus and process engineer who has worked on the new Intel chip, said that it was a great feeling when Intel made the announcement because he had been working on the project for so long.
Hattendorf said that the University got him interested in computer engineering, and he worked a lot with transistor technology as an undergraduate.
While at the University, Hattendorf said, "I had some opportunities to do some hands on work, making devices and doing measurements, learning about the way these kinds of devices work."
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Grant Gross, IDG News Service Wed Feb 28, 3:00 PM ET
URL:http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070228/tc_pcworld/129465
A new bill in the U.S. Congress aimed at protecting the fair use rights for consumers of copyright material would "legalize hacking," the Recording Industry Association of America said.
The Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship (FAIR USE) Act, introduced Tuesday by U.S. Representatives Rick Boucher (news, bio, voting record), a Virginia Democrat, and John Doolittle (news, bio, voting record), a California Republican, would allow customers to circumvent digital copy restrictions in six limited areas when copyright owners' business models are not threatened, Boucher said in a press release. So-called fair use doctrine allows customers of copyright works to make limited numbers of copies, particularly for reviews, news reporting, teaching and research.
The bill would allow exemptions to the anti-circumvention restrictions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed by Congress in 1998. The bill is revamped from similar bills introduced in the last two sessions of Congress, Boucher said.
"The fair use doctrine is threatened today as never before," Boucher said in a statement. "Historically, the nation's copyright laws have reflected a carefully calibrated balanced between the rights of copyright owners and the rights of the users of copyrighted material. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act dramatically tilted the copyright balance toward complete copyright protection at the expense of the public's right to fair use."
But the RIAA said the bill would effectively repeal the DMCA. The bill would "allow electronics companies to induce others to break the law for their own profit," it said in a statement. Advances such digital music sales, online games, on-demand movies and e-books can be traced to DMCA protects, the RIAA said.
"The difference between hacking done for non-infringing purposes and hacking done to steal is impossible to determine and enforce," the RIAA said in its statement.
The Boucher bill would limit the availability of statutory damages against individuals and firms who may be found to have engaged in contributory infringement, inducement of infringement, or other indirect infringement. The bill would allow libraries to circumvent digital locks or secure copies of works that have been damaged, lost or stolen.
The Consumer Electronics Association applauded the bill, saying it would give protections to consumers, educators and libraries. Without fair use protections, consumers couldn't use devices such as VCRs and digital TV recorders, the trade group said.
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Telecom Can Now Lure Broadband Customers Without Paying Others
By DIONNE SEARCEY, KEVIN J. DELANEY and DENNIS K. BERMAN
The Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2007
URL: http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/as-power-shifts-atandt-may-alter-yahoo/20070309071409990001
In November 2001, Yahoo Inc. and AT&T Inc.'s predecessor, SBC Communications Inc., announced a partnership they touted as a "landmark strategic alliance" that would link the telecom and Internet worlds. SBC showcased the relationship by painting field-crew vans with Yahoo's logo and brash purple color.
Under the deal, the companies successfully sold Internet access together to millions of U.S. consumers. The partnership offered a way for the stodgy phone company to tap into Yahoo's Internet aura. For Yahoo, it provided extra revenue and access to AT&T's big customer base.
But today, the arrangement is looking like a relic of an earlier Internet era. The companies are negotiating potentially sweeping changes that could scale back their partnership, which expires in April 2008, says a person familiar with the matter. AT&T has quietly painted over its colorful vans, expunging the Yahoo logo; the vans now sport AT&T's new blue insignia alone. The fraying of the alliance could be a blow to Yahoo, which gets roughly $200 million to $250 million of revenue annually from AT&T, according to two people familiar with the matter. It also shows how AT&T itself is much stronger, and less reliant on Yahoo, than during the early days of their alliance.
The potential unraveling illustrates how high-profile partnerships by Internet companies to reach consumers can quickly become fragile: Big alliances can rapidly fall apart as partners' interests diverge and the Internet evolves. The shift in the relationship of AT&T and Yahoo is partly a result of changes in the economic structure of the Internet industry. Most significantly, Yahoo's rival Google Inc. has begun offering rich payments -- approaching $1 billion in some cases -- to partners, causing players such as AT&T to question their existing deals.
At the same time, AT&T no longer needs Yahoo the way it did nearly six years ago, when it was struggling to coax consumers to sign up for high-speed Internet service. Today, with the huge popularity of downloading video and music and other services on the Web, broadband is in demand.
The partnership's troubles also underline the Web era's slowness to deliver on one of its big promises: that, by working together, companies like AT&T and Yahoo would be able to offer Internet services over a broader range of tech gadgets -- not just over PCs but also through cellphones and TV sets. After they announced their deal in 2001, both sides believed Yahoo could play a big role alongside the phone company's wireless unit, as well as the television service AT&T hoped to launch. But Yahoo's services for mobile phones, such as Web search and a photo offering, have since had only limited distribution on AT&T's cellular carrier.
AT&T now wants to overhaul its Yahoo deal, according to a person familiar with the issue. Instead of paying Yahoo a percent of the revenue from its broadband business, AT&T wants to offer Yahoo only a cut of revenue from the sale of products Yahoo provides, such as from its music and photo services, this person says.
One reason AT&T now believes it shouldn't have to share broadband subscription revenue is that the phone company has been approached by other Internet companies offering to pay to reach its broadband customers, says the person. Google over the past year has played a high-profile role in paying companies that help expand its online services and advertising. Those offers, bankrolled by Google's Internet ad success, have roiled the market for deals structured like Yahoo and AT&T's -- as Google pays partners rather than charges them.
In a written response to questions, AT&T and Yahoo said they collaborate frequently and have "the most successful partnership in the industry." The statement added, "That success is rooted in the open and ongoing dialogue we maintain." One person familiar with the matter says a renegotiated partnership could potentially involve increased cooperation in areas such as services or advertising for mobile phones.
When the two first struck their partnership, AT&T -- then the regional Southwest phone company named SBC -- hoped Yahoo's Internet luster would help it catch up with cable operators' broadband offerings and compete with Time Warner Inc.'s America Online unit. Before that, AT&T had faced problems with its broadband rollout including regulatory hurdles that so frustrated Chairman and Chief Executive Edward Whitacre he had said he was reluctant to spend the money to expand high-speed Internet service throughout the company's territory.
Now, in the wake of its December acquisition of BellSouth Corp., AT&T is the country's largest phone company with more than 12 million high-speed Internet subscribers and is outpacing some cable companies in signing up broadband customers. Yahoo, meantime, has lost some of its buzz as it operates in the shadow of Google and grapples with slowing revenue growth.
"It's fair to say that as the industry has evolved and as the company has grown and the broadband marketplace has grown, AT&T shouldn't be in the position of paying them for attracting [broadband] customers," says one person familiar with AT&T's thinking. "It comes down to money."
The roughly $200 million to $250 million in annual payments from AT&T is a small fraction of the $5 billion to $5.5 billion in revenue that Yahoo is forecasting for 2007, when certain payments to partners are factored out. But people familiar with the matter say the fees paid to Yahoo by AT&T have profit margins as good or better than the rest of Yahoo's business, because of the relatively minimal resources required of Yahoo under the deal. Losing the revenue from AT&T's broadband access could dent Yahoo's net income, which was $751 million in 2006.
The relationship currently directs millions of AT&T customers to Yahoo, and changes could potentially reduce their usage of Yahoo's sites. That could lower Yahoo's online ad revenue more broadly, including revenue related to Web searches the AT&T customers conduct. The Internet company shares some ecommerce and ad revenue with AT&T under their arrangement.
The roots of AT&T and Yahoo's partnership stretch back to a March 2001 state dinner for Mexican President Vicente Fox where AT&T's Mr. Whitacre and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang were seated next to each other. After the two companies announced an agreement in November 2001, Messrs. Whitacre and Yang took some of their executives on a trip to Hawaii to celebrate.
AT&T, then known as SBC, began selling high-speed Internet access coupled with Yahoo services such as email with extra storage. Subscribers to AT&T's broadband service got Yahoo's Web search engine and other services on their default AT&T Web site. The phone company back then bought a 3% stake in Yahoo for $300 million.
At first, the high-flying dot-com and the staid telephone company weren't an obvious fit. But the two teams warmed up to each other. AT&T staff began instant messaging with their Yahoo counterparts, and top AT&T executives began leaving their ties at home when they traveled to Yahoo meetings. The AT&T-Yahoo agreement quickly began helping AT&T make up for lost revenue from its traditional phone business. The partnership became so successful that the two sides explored numerous collaborations, including some never made public.
In 2004, Yahoo and AT&T plotted an acquisition of Walt Disney Co. after Comcast Corp. launched an unsolicited Disney takeover plan, said two people familiar with the matter. Microsoft Corp. was rumored to be entering the contest and Yahoo wanted to block it, said the people familiar with the discussions. Time Warner was also considering entering the fray, these people said. Yahoo and AT&T went as far as lining up bankers to prepare the joint bid. In the end Microsoft's move never materialized, AT&T and Yahoo backed away and the Comcast deal collapsed.
Yahoo and AT&T in the past have seriously discussed making joint bids for other major Internet assets, said another person familiar with the matter. By winter 2004, Yahoo and AT&T staffers were working together on new projects beyond the scope of their initial agreement. After several months of negotiating, top executives from Yahoo and AT&T agreed on the outlines of an expanded partnership agreement over lunch in a private suite at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas.
The two companies announced their expanded tie-up in November 2004. The new agreement gave Yahoo a central role in AT&T's plan to offer a range of new features that combined voice, video and Internet services. Customers were to be able to tap into a Yahoo portal via a cellphone, PC or TV to do things such as route phone calls, check email, order TV programming and set parental-content controls for the Internet or television. Yahoo also would provide software for AT&T's planned TV service, as well as for cellphones for AT&T's wireless unit.
But by early last year, many of the reasons AT&T and Yahoo came together in the first place had changed or disappeared. The phone giant had amassed roughly seven million broadband subscribers, and no longer faced intense competition for Internet customers from AOL, which had made much of its services freely available on the Web. Yahoo's popular email service was still a core attraction for AT&T subscribers. But Google had started to offer a competitive, free email service.
AT&T also saw that Google had started to pay companies, such as computer maker Dell Inc., hundreds of millions of dollars over several years to distribute Google software and set consumers' default settings to Google's search engine. Google subsequently signed a deal under which it promised a minimum of $900 million in advertising revenue to News Corp. sites including MySpace for using Google search technology and carrying ads brokered by Google. Among the companies getting checks for using Google's search service were other broadband providers, such as cable giant Comcast. Complicating matters, AT&T was getting offers from Internet companies to put their search services on AT&T's Web sites and share in the advertising revenue. Not only was AT&T paying Yahoo, under their exclusive deal, the phone company also was precluded from pursuing these offers, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Meanwhile, efforts by AT&T and Yahoo to jointly provide Internet-based services for devices such as TV sets and cellphones have been bumpy. Yahoo had hoped that AT&T's wireless unit would push Yahoo's "Go for Mobile" software, which links cellphone services such as photos and email with consumers' Yahoo accounts. But AT&T has only shipped the software with one device, which it no longer sells.
AT&T lets consumers access Yahoo's Web search on mobile phones, but it's listed alongside four other search providers. Some of the original features the two companies said they might offer to span devices have yet to materialize. Customers can't, for example, route phone calls or set parental controls for AT&T's TV service using the two companies' joint site.
Internet policy issues have pitted the two companies against each other. AT&T's Mr. Whitacre a year-and-a-half ago said he wanted to charge Internet companies to deliver content such as video clips to consumers at higher-than-usual speeds. He named Yahoo as one such company. Since then, Yahoo has attached its name to groups that lobby for so-called "net neutrality" laws to preempt such fees. Their positions on opposite sides of the issue were especially awkward last year when AT&T was trying to persuade regulators to approve its takeover of BellSouth and net neutrality emerged as a potential stumbling block to the deal.
People familiar with the matter say Mr. Whitacre has at least once raised the idea of AT&T and Yahoo merging when Yahoo's stock has swooned. Last summer, Mr. Whitacre pitched such a deal to executives at the Internet company, according to one person familiar with the approach. But Yahoo wasn't keen to do it, people say. Yahoo executives have subsequently expressed confidence that the company would remain an independent concern. "We and our board see tremendous opportunity for Yahoo as a public company," Chief Executive Terry Semel said in an interview in January, when asked about rumors that it could be acquired.
These days, AT&T's management is focusing more on other services, such as its wireless company, which is the biggest in the U.S. in terms of customers. And the company doesn't have trouble selling consumers on faster Internet connections anymore.
AT&T's Mr. Whitacre has made no secret that he's on the prowl for another acquisition. The company invested $500 million in EchoStar Communications Corp. in 2003. Some industry executives think AT&T eventually could try to acquire an international wireless carrier. AT&T had no comment on future merger and acquisition activity.
While a change in its relationship with AT&T would likely hurt Yahoo financially, the Internet company has been pursuing its own initiatives to expand beyond the computer to cellphones and TV sets. In January, the company unveiled a new version of its Yahoo Go software that it is marketing to consumers to install on mobile phones themselves, even if AT&T isn't doing that. Yahoo separately offers free software for PCs called "Go for TV" that consumers can use to access Yahoo services such as photos and music on their TV sets.
[Editor's Note: Article submitted by David L. Stevens.]
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I, Cringely - The Survival of the Nerdiest with Robert X. Cringely
The Pulpit, Weekly Column
January 19, 2007
URL: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_001510.html
I spoke recently with an old friend who is a bandwidth broker. He buys and sells bandwidth on fiber-optic networks around the world. And he told me something that I found not completely surprising, but I certainly hadn't known: Google controls more network fiber than any other organization. This is not to say that Google OWNS all that fiber, just that they control it through agreements with network operators. I find two very interesting aspects to this story: 1) that Google has acquired -- or even needs to acquire -- so much bandwidth, and; 2) that they don't own it, since probably the cheapest way to pick up that volume of fiber would be to simply buy out any number of backbone providers like Level 3 Communications.
Google loves secrecy. That they've been acquiring fiber assets hasn't been a secret, but the sheer volume of these acquisitions HAS been. Why? One thought is that it kept down the price since people didn't really know it was Google snatching up this stuff (they've done it under a number of different corporate names). But if price was the issue, then why hasn't Google just bought the companies that own the fiber? It made no sense until I scratched my head and thought a bit further, at which point it became obvious that Google wants to -- in its own way -- control the Internet. In fact, they probably control it already and we just haven't noticed.
There are two aspects to this control issue, but let's take the legal one first. If Google bought a bunch of Internet backbone providers, such a move would of course get the attention of regulators from the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the two federal agencies charged with looking at large corporate mergers for signs of anti-competitive activity. But simply acquiring legal control of those same assets through leases and other long-term contracts doesn't trigger such an examination, though perhaps it should. By renting instead of buying, Google was able to acquire its fiber assets primarily in secret. The game was over before most of us even knew there WAS a game.
The second aspect of this is the whole idea that the game is already over for control of the Internet. I touched on this concept back in 1998 when I wrote my first column about PayPal, which at the time had been offering its core service for less than a year and already had eight million members. I wrote then that PayPal had already won the Internet payments race, which time has since showed they had. PayPal's confidence was based on analysis of its own growth. Understanding the potential range of growth, looking at the rate of subscriber acceleration, and using second derivative analysis of these data, PayPal was pretty darned sure, even back in 1998, that its competitors at the time would never be able to catch up.
Topix.net founder Rich Skrenta recently took a similar approach to argue that Google, like PayPal, has already won the game and represents to most users the face of the Internet. Skrenta (in this week's links) argues that Google's dominance of search and advertising is so profound that most competitors -- especially Yahoo -- would probably be better off NOT even attempting to compete and simply let Google handle search and advertising while Yahoo provides content. He's probably correct. Skrenta argues that even if services come along that are superior to Google's, in order to become dominant they'll have to overcome Google's brand recognition with users, which is almost impossible to do. So just being better than Google isn't enough.
All this is prelude for understanding what Google intends to actually DO with all this technology, which I have only lately begun to figure out.
I live in South Carolina, a state that I can argue qualifies as a technology backwater despite being the shrimp and grits capital of the world. Why, then, are the local business pages filled with stories about Google preparing to build massive data centers here? Google is apparently negotiating to build data centers in Goose Creek, a town not far from Charleston, where I live, in Columbia, the state capital, and a third location across the border in Georgia. To read the papers, Google might choose one or another of these locations, but according to people I have spoken with who are fairly close to the action, Google actually seems intent on building in all three locations.
Why?
Why would Google need two data centers in a state with only four million residents? Why would they need to buy 520 acres in a Goose Creek industrial park when that's probably 100 times as much land as any conceivable data center would require?
Google is building a LOT of data centers. The company appears to be as attracted to cheap and reliable electric power as it is to population proximity. In Goose Creek they bought those 520 acres from the local state-owned electric utility, which probably answers the land question posed above. By buying out all the remaining building sites in an industrial park owned by an electric utility, Google guarantees itself a vast and uninterruptible supply of power, much as it has done in Oregon by building a data center next to a hydroelectric dam or back here again in Columbia by building near a nuclear power station.
Of course this doesn't answer the question why Google needs so much capacity in the first place, but I have a theory on that. I think Google is building for a future they see but most of the rest of us don't. I'll go further and guess that Google is planning to build similar data centers in many states and that the two centers they are apparently preparing to build here in South Carolina are probably intended mainly to SERVE South Carolina. That's perhaps 100,000 servers for four million potential users or 40 users per server. What computing service could possibly require such resources?
The answer is pretty simple. Google intends to take over most of the functions of existing fixed networks in our lives, notably telephone and cable television.
The Internet as we know it is a shell game, with ISPs building their profits primarily on how many users they can have practically share the same Internet connection. Based on the idea that most users aren't on the net at the same time and even when they are online they are mainly between keystrokes and doing little or nothing when viewed on a per-millisecond basis, ISPs typically leverage the Internet bandwidth they have purchased by a factor of at least 20X and sometimes as much as 100X, which means that DSL line or cable modem that you think is delivering multi-megabits per second is really only guaranteeing you as much bandwidth as you could get with most dial-up accounts.
This bandwidth leveraging hasn't been a problem to date, but it is about to become a huge problem as we all embrace Internet video. When we are all grabbing one to two hours of high-quality video per day off the net, there is no way the current network infrastructure will support that level of use. At that point we can accept that the Internet can't do what we are asking it to do OR we can find a way to make the Internet do what we are asking it to do. Enter Google and its many, many regional data centers to fill this gap.
Looking at this problem from another angle, right now somewhat more than half of all Internet bandwidth is being used for BitTorrent traffic, which is mainly video. Yet if you surveyed your neighbors you'd find that few of them are BitTorrent users. Less than 5 percent of all Internet users are presently consuming more than 50 percent of all bandwidth. Broadband ISPs hate these super users and would like to find ways to isolate or otherwise reject them. It's BitTorrent -- not Yahoo or Google -- that has been the target of the anti-net neutrality trash talk from telcos and cable companies. But the fact is that rather than being an anomaly, these are simply early adopters and we'll all soon follow in their footsteps. And when that happens, there won't be enough bandwidth to support what we want to do from any centralized perspective. A single data center, no matter how large, won't be enough. Google is just the first large player to recognize this fact as their building program proves.
It is becoming very obvious what will happen over the next two to three years. More and more of us will be downloading movies and television shows over the net and with that our usage patterns will change. Instead of using 1-3 gigabytes per month, as most broadband Internet users have in recent years, we'll go to 1-3 gigabytes per DAY -- a 30X increase that will place a huge backbone burden on ISPs. Those ISPs will be faced with the option of increasing their backbone connections by 30X, which would kill all profits, OR they could accept a peering arrangement with the local Google data center.
Seeing Google as their only alternative to bankruptcy, the ISPs will all sign on, and in doing so will transfer most of their subscriber value to Google, which will act as a huge proxy server for the Internet. We won't know if we're accessing the Internet or Google and for all practical purposes it won't matter. Google will become our phone company, our cable company, our stereo system and our digital video recorder. Soon we won't be able to live without Google, which will have marginalized the ISPs and assumed most of the market capitalization of all the service providers it has undermined -- about $1 trillion in all -- which places today's $500 Google share price about eight times too low.
It's a grand plan, but can Google pull it off? Yes they can.
[Editor's Note: My thanks to Odd Sandvik for pointing out this piece.]
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by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8868>
URL: TidBITS#867/19-Feb-07
Google has at last opened up its well-regarded Gmail email service to all comers, eliminating the need to receive an invitation from an existing user before signing up. It's been two years since the service launched, and it's still branded beta. The primarily Web-based Gmail remains free to use and currently offers over 2.5 GB of storage for each user, an amount that grows every day as Google brings more storage online.
<http://www.gmail.com/>
<http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about.html>
Gmail provides POP3 access for people who prefer using traditional email clients over the Gmail Web interface, but still lacks IMAP, a popular alternative to POP3. The service has good spam filtering that accepts reports from its users, attachment viewing within the Web interface, and support for mobile phone email - you can read and reply to messages. Google Talk, the company's instant messaging and voice chat program, can be used within the Web interface, too.
Gmail can also forward incoming mail to another email address, send messages and replies using another return address, and fetch mail from up to five other non-Gmail accounts via POP.
What sets Gmail apart from other email services and clients is how rapid-response searches sit at the core of message archiving and organizing. Instead of filing messages in a folder, you apply one or more labels to incoming messages that exist in a general archive. The labels are the search equivalent of folders, and show up in a list in the left navigation bar. It's very much like the Smart Mailboxes feature in Apple Mail, only faster. You can also search quickly through your entire message archive; Gmail provides a list of matches with search terms highlighted, and messages threaded across an entire set of conversations so you can easily follow what was said and by whom.
<http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/why_gmail.html>
Gmail funds itself through what text ads that are theoretically relevant to the content of the message you're reading - a behavior that can be a little disconcerting. The ads are never inserted into the body text of either incoming or outgoing mail, however, unlike free mail from other firms.
Since I run my own mail server, I have only dabbled with Gmail. But reports from friends and colleagues who rely entirely on the service are highly positive, with them experiencing minimal downtime and speedy access. The main reason I haven't looked more seriously at Gmail is that I already have 2.3 GB of stored email, and I don't want to lose access to that archive. Gmail does enable import of contacts to provide access to laboriously created address books.
(The only way to import mail into Gmail that I can see is to redirect to the Gmail account, which isn't practical with hundreds of thousands of messages. Although utilities like Mark Lyon's free Google GMail Loader and Cheah Chu Yeow's free gExodus exist to automate the process, date stamps are lost in the transfer, rendering them useless for an email archive that spans 15 years.)
<http://www.marklyon.org/gmail/>
<http://blog.codefront.net/archives/2004/06/21/gexodus-a-graphical-gmail-import-tool>
Because Gmail is an extremely interactive Web application, it works only in a subset of common Web browsers, including (all version numbers are the earliest supported version) Safari 1.2.1, Firefox 0.8, Mozilla 1.4, and Netscape 7.1. Web-based chat requires Firefox 1.0 or later. Gmail does offer a basic HTML view for other browsers, but, honestly, there's not much point in using Gmail if you can't take advantage of the full interactive interface.
If you've been looking for another email service, it's worth giving Gmail a try. You can even set up multiple addresses using your own domain using the Google Apps for Your Domain service. In particular, if you've been having trouble receiving TidBITS due to overactive spam filtering or other delivery problems, Gmail could be a good alternative. (Our new bounce processing code sends you warnings when your account has bounced too many messages, and you can manage your subscriptions and addresses with our new Manage Mailing List Subscriptions interface.)
<http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/overview.html>
<http://www.tidbits.com/list/>
URL: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/03/02/04
Cell phones allow you to run your world from the backyard or the back of a cab. But there are still simple things that you just can't do.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020802169.html>
Columbia law professor Tim Wu says that if wireless carriers wanted to, they could give customers much more. Industry rep Chris Guttman McCabe disagrees.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In the U.S. today there are two hundred million cell phone subscribers. The wireless industry has grown up in the last decade, so it's a good time to ask, how's it doing? Columbia law professor Tim Wu says, not so good. Yes, we have service at competitive prices, but we could have so much more.
We don't, says Wu, because the big wireless carriers, Verizon, Cingular, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile have a stranglehold on product design. In a paper he presented to the Federal Trade Commission, Wu details many of the improvements we could enjoy if the wireless carriers let us.
For example, we could more easily transfer photos or browse the Net, or even keep track of how much we talk. We can't, because the carriers are engaged in what Wu calls "feature crippling."
PROFESSOR WU: There's often cases where a phone is technologically capable of doing quite a bit, but carriers, because of their business model, a fear of losing revenue or potential fear of losing control, won't let the feature be on the telephone and will force the equipment manufacturers not to allow the telephone to do something. That's crippling.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And you give us a couple of examples in your paper. I have to say, when I was reading through it, I got angrier and angrier, so let's go through a couple.
The first, call timers on telephones--what are they, are why don't we have them?
PROFESSOR WU: Well, you know, some of the device manufacturers think it would be handy to have something that keeps track of how much time you've used per month, you know, per day. You can monitor your own usage.
Phone carriers have acted to prevent consumers from having their own records of how long they've been speaking on their telephones.
It's a little bit like, you know, when you're in a casino in Las Vegas, they don't really want you to know how long you've been there, and so there's been a lot of crippling, or disabling, of phone timers for the full capabilities they could have.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And why don't they want us to know?
PROFESSOR WU: Well, there's I guess the possibility you could generate an independent record of your billing, and you could compare that with he bill you're sent, and you could say that, you know, I actually didn't talk this much on my phone, and you know, why would a carrier want that?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: That's why I got so angry. And you also talked about access to WiFi and web browsers and GPS and Bluetooth technology.
PROFESSOR WU: Ah! Bluetooth was promised to make it easy for phones to communicate with other things, computers, printers. It's really hard, believe it or not, just to get your cell phone to talk to your computer, for something as simple as just backing up your address book, so if you lose your phone, you've got a backup.
Under a lot of carriers' constructions today, Bluetooth is almost completely crippled. You can't send music back and forth. It's very hard to send photos from your phone to your, all, again, because there's a fear of losing control and there's a fear of crippling some potential business model that revolves around charging you to do something with your phone.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I would assume that a lot of these technological advances are being hatched at the places where they make phones--Motorola, Nokia. Why aren't they putting some pressure on the carriers?
PROFESSOR WU: You know, they try, but they're sort of living in a state of fear, because they depend on being sold by the carriers. You know, the carriers have an almost complete grip on the retailing of phones in this country. They're responsible for over 90 per cent of the retailing of phones, and so, you know, people actually did talk to me secretly [LAUGHS].
I'll quote a developer. "The carriers have all the power in this area. What they say goes."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, you say that in the world of wired phones, the policies of these carriers would be, in some cases, not just outrageous but possibly illegal. So could you take us back to the era before the mobile phone, when a similar battle was being fought over land lines?
PROFESSOR WU: Sure. So in the 1950s, 1960s, the Bell Company would not allow you to hook up anything to their phone network. You know, you had to use a Bell phone and only a Bell phone. There was no such thing as consumers hooking up an answering machine, a Mickey Mouse telephone. This was not allowed.
There was a large revolution in the late '60s, along with other revolutions. [LAUGHS] The outcome of this consumer revolution was something called, technically, the Carter phone Rule, but more clearly, as a consumer's right to attach anything they want to their phone network, whether it's a strange phone, whether, more importantly, it's a modem, whether it's an answering machine.
And consumers don't have that right, in the wireless world. You don't have the same consumer right to attach. It may sound very technical [LAUGHS], but that consumer right to attach modems in the 1970s and '80s is what led to the birth of the entire Internet in the first place.
But I'm suggesting that if consumers have that right to use their mobile service for what they want to use it for, we will see a similar revolution and a similar blossoming that we saw in the Internet in the 1990s.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Even if you're not technically inclined, you can see the limitations of this lockdown. For instance, if you buy a phone that you really like and you change carriers, your phone is locked up. You have to buy a new phone. You can't take it with you, and you wrote in your paper that it would be very easy to unlock these phones. They're simply not permitted to.
And that leads to a question that I think a lot of consumers have had about Apple's much bally-hooed iPhone. You can't use it, unless you subscribe to Cingular, an AT&T service, right?
PROFESSOR WU: I think that's right, and I think it was a surprise to a lot of people. You know, you think Apple had this great new product and, you know, it turns out it's locked to Cingular's network.
Now that may change. I'm hoping the consumer pressure will lead to a world where you see your phone as something that you own [LAUGHS], not the carrier. You own. I mean, you pay for it, and then you can bring it and say, listen, I've got this great phone, or this great device, and I want to use it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, back before the Carter phone decision, AT&T was saying if you don't have a unified system, it just won't work. And that system is AT&T.
Now the carriers are saying, you don't need to be re-regulating us, you don't need to be telling us what to do. There's so much competition in the mobile phone market that this situation will correct itself. Well, isn't there? And won't it?
PROFESSOR WU: I think there's always a role for consumer rights, no matter how competitive an industry is, and the truth is, it's not a truly competitive industry in any case.
The spectrum that they depend upon is government property, which they lease. There's really only four major players who have the tens of billions of dollars required to be in this market in the first place.
We're not talking about the vodka market. We're not talking about blue jeans. We're talking about a government supervised spectrum-based oligopoly, which is doing things that are not good for consumers, and I think, you know, to say, well, we've got competition, forget about it, is just not an answer to the things we've identified in this study.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But you've also said that comprehensive legislation should only be used as a last resort, so what do you recommend in the short term?
PROFESSOR WU: The most important power is consumer pressure. The industry likes to say everything is competitive, everything's fine. You know, they love to keep things as they are. They like the current model.
The only thing that pushes them, besides government, is consumer knowledge, consumer pressure, and if people get more and want more out of their cell phones, they will eventually get more. That's the most powerful force out here, is the force of the educated consumer.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Tim, thanks so much.
PROFESSOR WU: It's always a pleasure.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School. We'll link to his paper, Wireless Net Neutrality, from our site onthemedia.org.
<http://www.timwu.org/log/archives/92>
So we just heard Tim say that phone developers have told him, off the record, that they're hamstrung by wireless carriers who shun certain kinds of upgrades. So I put it to Chris Guttman McCabe, the vice-president of regulatory affairs for CTIA, The Wireless Association.
CHRIS GUTTMAN McCABE: You know, I haven't seen any of those statements on the record. We haven't seen any complaints like that, but what I would say is that we have an industry where there are constantly new carriers entering the market. So in addition to the four large carriers, we just had three other carriers spend several billion dollars to enter a market that is competitive.
We just saw a new handset manufacturer, Apple, move into this space, so I would challenge, you know, you or your audience to find an industry that is more competitive, particularly in the telecommunications space, than what we have here in the wireless industry.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But why do we have to pay extra for text messages, or for sending photos? Why aren't our cell phones in fluid conversation with our computers, via Bluetooth?
CHRIS GUTTMAN McCABE: When it comes to things like text messaging and use of pictures, carriers charge different things and they are completely subject to the market.
If they are pricing outside of where the market is, then they're going to lose customers.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: If competition really were the solution, it would have brought forth the kind of services that people say they want every day.
CHRIS GUTTMAN McCABE: You know, in a perfect world, from a consumer's perspective, you would be able to get every product and service that you want at no cost. But the reality is, in a competitive environment, you let the market dictate.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Chris, if the Carter phone decision regarding land lines made sense--of course, we should be allowed to buy any phone and answering machine we like and plug them into a phone jack-why should any other standard be justified for mobile phones?
CHRIS GUTTMAN McCABE: I would start from the premise that there isn't a need for regulation unless there's a failure, a market failure. When you had the Carter phone decision, you had a vertically integrated monopoly, so you had one provider providing both the network and the service offerings, but also providing the technology that you use, the phones and the handsets.
In this case, you have multiple providers using multiple handset manufacturers, within and outside the United States. You have, for all intents and purposes, exactly what government wants. You have an ultra-competitive industry.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Why can't we have call timers?
CHRIS GUTTMAN McCABE: You know, if that is something that's wanted, then that will happen. Carriers didn't have cameras in their phones two or three years ago. Now almost every single phone has it.
So you know, our carriers absolutely listen to the customers. They do surveys. They reach out. And the reason they do is because it's in their best interest to serve their customers.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Customers want call timers, and despite the confusion among the various cost plans, they would be able to use their call timers to compare their usage with their bills. The carriers don't want them on the phones, and so the manufacturers don't provide them.
CHRIS GUTTMAN McCABE: And I would argue that, as I said, that in a competitive environment, if something is wanted by consumers, someone will provide it, either a niche service provider or one of the large providers.
T- Mobile's service offerings are different than Verizon's, which are different than Cingular's, which are different that, you know, Sprint Nextel's and Alltel's. And each of them try to identify where consumer wants and requests and needs are, and they try to fill it.
And if they're not, the consumer will move. They'll leave, and they'll go to another carrier.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Chris, thank you very much.
CHRIS GUTTMAN McCABE: Brooke, I appreciate it. Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Chris Guttman McCabe is the vice-president of regulatory affairs for CTIA, The Wireless Association.
[Editor's Note:
Tim Wu
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Wu>
Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School and a writer for Slate Magazine. He is best known for popularizing the concept of network neutrality. Professor Wu's specialty is copyright and telecommunications policy. He has a well-known series of articles on network neutrality, and is often credited with coining the term. For his work in this area, Professor Wu was named one of Scientific American's 50 people of the year in 2006.
Tim Wu's Home Page
<http://www.timwu.org/>
Why You Should Care About Network Neutrality: The future of the Internet depends on
it!
By Tim Wu
<http://www.slate.com/id/2140850/>
Chris Guttman McCabe
CTIA, About Us entry
<http://www.ctia.org/aboutCTIA/leadership_team/index.cfm/AID/10280>
Since joining CTIA in 2001, Chris Guttman-McCabe has worked on a wide range of issues involving spectrum, regulatory mandates, and homeland security. Guttman-McCabe became Vice President for Regulatory Affairs in September, 2005, and in that capacity coordinates the association's regulatory policy advocacy.
Paul Thurrott
URL: http://www.wininformant.com/
For the first time since September 2005, Microsoft will issue no patches on its regularly scheduled monthly patch day, set for March 13. This is interesting, since the software giant is currently investigating almost a dozen vulnerabilities in various products. Microsoft explains: "There are many factors that impact the length of time between the discovery of a vulnerability and the release of a security update, and every vulnerability presents its own unique challenges," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "Microsoft continues to investigate potential and existing vulnerabilities in an effort to help protect our customers. Creating security updates that effectively and comprehensively fix vulnerabilities is an extensive process involving a series of sequential steps. All updates need to meet testing standards in order to be released. This ensures that our customers can confidently install these updates in their environment." There you go.
Apple Ships iTunes 7.1 with Partial Vista CompatibilityApple this week shipped a slightly updated version of its iTunes digital music jukebox, version 7.1, that addresses some (but not all) of the compatibility issues the software has with Windows Vista. Apple iTunes 7.1 might be enough for Vista users who were frustrated that the software wasn't working properly before (especially with iPod synchronization), but there are still a few issues, including iPod ejecting from Windows Explorer, incorrectly displayed graphics and text, contacts syncing, and 64-bit support. Hey, at least they're trying. It's not like Vista has been out for months or anything.
Corel Treads Where Microsoft Dares NotMicrosoft has zealously resisted migrating its popular office productivity suite to the Web in recent years, but its competitors are showing a lot less resistance. Case in point: This week, WordPerfect owner Corel announced the public beta of WordPerfect Lightning, a free, downloadable office productivity suite that tightly integrates with online collaboration and storage services. WordPerfect Lightning is a hybrid suite with components that exist on both PCs and the Internet. (Microsoft Office, by comparison, is purely a traditional desktop PC suite.) WordPerfect Lightning isn't a full office productivity suite per se, but it's an interesting start. It's also something Microsoft should have done, oh, four years ago.
Tackling Some Stupidity About Vista's Success in the MarketThere's been a weird set of stories making the rounds this week noting that Windows Vista retails sales are off considerably when compared to XP sales in the same time period after each products' launch. Does this mean Vista is off to a bad start? Of course not: Vista is that all-important gift to the entire PC industry, a feat of marketing we haven't witnessed since Windows 95. Put another way, Vista is causing people to buy new PCs, so most people aren't upgrading, they're simply getting new hardware. Bill Gates, responding to these ridiculous sales claims this week said, "I don't know what you mean. Vista's had an incredible reception." Sounds about right to me.
ToC
Author: Kyle Pott
Posted: Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 10:00 am
URL: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/top-10-firefox-extensions-to-improve-your-productivity.html
Firefox is the browser of dreams for many people (myself included). One of the great perks of Firefox is that there are tons of extensions that enhance the functionality of the browser. With over 1500 extensions in existence, there are many that can be used to improve your productivity. The following is my take on the top 10 extensions that will keep you focused, reduce distractions, streamline your daily work flow, and improve your productivity.
1. Customize Google (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/743/)Customize Google is a very robust extension that lets you customize many features of the services provided by Google. Customize Google lets you block advertisements on pretty much any Google page (including Gmail). It remaps Google Images search results to point directly at the images (no longer will you need to click through the originating site). Customize Google lets you add links from other search engines directly into your search results. It can also block Google click tracking and allows you to connect to Google Calendar and Gmail securely (https). Give it a try, you wonât be sorry.
2. Gspace (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1593/)Gspace is a content management extension that lets you turn your Gmail account into an online mass storage device. Gspace integrates nicely into your browser and lets you drag and drop files into Gmail for backup or storage purposes without interrupting your work flow. If you use Gspace, I recommend adding a tag in Gmail to your files so they can be filtered and accessed quickly. The following is the description of Gspace from its homepage: "Gspace turns the 2GB of your Gmail account into free online storage. With Gspace you can manage unlimited Gmail accounts to store all type of files within its simple, user friendly interface. Listen to your favorite stored music directly from your Gspace, view your collections of pictures and manage your Gdrive files as well. Download Gspace now and transfer files between your computer and Gspace at anytime, from everywhere!"
3. Flashgot (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/220/) / DownThemAll (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/201/)The default download manager built into Firefox is very handy; however, there are many occasions that you'll find that you need more flexibility with your downloads. This is where Flashgot or DownThemAll comes in handy. The features of Flashgot and DownThemAll have their differences; however, they generally provide finer-grained control of your downloads. My personal preference is Flashgot. I recommend trying at least one of them.
4. Greasemonkey (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/748/) + Stylish (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2108/) + Ad blocking per Gozer (http://userstyles.org/style/show/629)Greasemonkey is an extension that lets you add scripts that alter the web pages you visit. Using Greasemonkey and Stylish and Ad blocking per Gozer together will block pretty much every advertisement from any Web site you visit.
5. Flashblock (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/433/)The Flashblock extension by default blocks flash from playing when a Web page is first opened. Most (distracting) advertisements are written using flash. Flashblock is particularly useful because it replaces the flash from a Web site with a "play" button so you can watch the flash if it something useful (like a video at Youtube) and leave it blocked if it is an advertisement.
6. Download Statusbar (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/26/)Download Statusbar manages your downloads in the status bar instead of the Firefox Download Manager. I find that the download manager that comes with Firefox to be very intrusive. Download manager tucks your download progress bars into the generally unused status bar of Firefox. This lets you download care-free without the Firefox Download Manager popping up and interrupting you.
7. URL Fixer (http://www.efinke.com/addons/url-fixer/)URL fixer will replace the common typos you enter when typing a Web site into the URL bar (i.e., http://www.lifehack.rog, htp://lifehack.org). The auto correct feature of URL fixer is very helpful. "[URL Fixer] will correct common misspellings of .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, and .mil, as well as the protocol (http:, https:). It will also correct errors in country code TLDS such as .com.XX, .net.XX, and .org.XX."
8. Tab Mix Plus (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1122/)Many of the features of Tab Mix Plus were incorporated into the release of Firefox 2. However, Tab Mix Plus allows you to add finer-grained control of your tabs. The following is a description of Tab Mix Plus: "Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows."
9. Scrapbook (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/427/)Scrapbook is extremely useful for researchers and students. Scrapbook saves blurbs from Web pages to your hard drive along with the URL of the originating Web site. It allows you to organize and categorize your blurbs in a format similar to your bookmarks so that when it comes to creating a bibliography or works cited, you won't waste any time.
10. IE Tab (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1419/)I find myself using this extension less and less as more Web developers code their Web sites following standards. However, occasionally you will find it necessary to open a Web site using Internet Explorer in order for it to render correctly. Rather than taking the time to launch a separate browser, just choose "View Page in IE tab" and an Internet Explorer tab opens in Firefox. This is very useful if you like to have multiple Gmail accounts open and active on one computer.
That's my take on the extensions that will improve your productivity. Like I previously mentioned, there are tons of Firefox extensions. What extension didnât I mention that you canât live without? Please tell us about your favorite productivity-enhancing Firefox extension in the comments.
ToC
Panda advises protection
By INQUIRER newsdesk: Thursday 08 March 2007, 17:55
URL: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38101
INSECURITY FIRM PandaLabs reported registering a 62 per cent annual increase in rootkit activity in 2006, and says the outlook for 2007 is bleak.
The firm reckons amount of malicious code using rootkit techniques is already up 25 per cent on last year and predicts an overall increase this year of around 40 per cent.
According to the Panda league of the most dangerous threats, February's malware includes three rootkit horrors: Bagle.HX, Abwiz.A and Nurech.A.
"Rootkits are becoming increasingly popular among malware creators, particularly for spyware and banker Trojans," said a spokesPanda.
Rootkits can evade detection by traditional antivirus and anti-spyware security systems, and are therefore right dodgy, he said.
Proactive protection is needed to block the threats based on the malicious code, he recommends. Like the stuff Panda makes.
ToC
Paul Thurrott
URL: http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/95367/windowspaulthurrott_95367.html
With Apple teetering towards bankruptcy in 1997 and in desperate need of financial aid and help from its partners, top executives at Microsoft reviewed an upcoming version of Mac Office (which eventually shipped as Mac Office 98) and made impassioned pleas for its release, despite Apple's declining market share and falling revenues in Microsoft's Mac Business Unit (MBU). These details came to light in recent court disclosures related to Microsoft's Iowa class action lawsuit. And they paint a decidedly unfamiliar portrait of a corporate super giant who is more infamous for stepping on competitors than aiding them.
Of course, that's not how the Mac community sees things. And it's time for this silliness to stop.
According to Computerworld, these documents have resulted in "yet more criticism of Microsoft's business practices" because they demonstrated that Microsoft "considered abandoning Office for Mac in order to cause 'a great deal of harm' to Apple." That sounds sensational, damning. Let's see what the documents really say.
In a June 1997 email exchange between then-Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and MBU chief Ben Waldman, Gates thanks Waldman for showing "the kind of passion about great products that has made Microsoft successful." "I admit we have neglected the Mac business," Gates wrote. "Although the Mac is declining if we move ahead on this product we should ask for the [subsidiaries] with localized product to make a real effort."
If you think Gates come off as a real jerk, consider what he was responding to. Waldman had told Gates previously that the pace of discussions with Apple had frustrated many at the MBU, who were eager to get the next Mac Office out the door. "The threat to cancel Mac Office 97 is certainly the strongest bargaining point we have, as doing so will do a great deal of harm to Apple immediately," Waldman said. "Regardless of the outcome of these discussions, though, I believe we should ship Mac Office [98]."
Waldman then describes why, in length, and it's obvious he's quite proud of what the MBU had accomplished with that release. Mac Office 98 was "a good product ... one [Microsoft] can feel good about, and that will be well received by customers, press, and analysts" Waldman explained. It included dramatically better performance, "FAR" simpler deployment and maintenance thanks to a drag-and-drop installer, good migration support for Mac Word 5.1 (then considered the last decent Mac version of Word), support for various Mac-specific technologies, integration with Microsoft's Mac-oriented Web browser and email products, and other features. It was, in other words, an exceptional Mac product.
"We are close to shipping," Waldman continued, and "the team is motivated." He noted that previous attempts to cancel Mac Office had had a terrible effect on the MBU, and that canceling it at the time of the email exchange would be "devastating." And while he admitted that a lack of plans for the future created a morale issue, "People are enthusiastic and believe in our vision of creating a great product and making a difference."
As you can see, Waldman, too, comes off as a real jerk. You know, the kind of guy that wants to stick it to the Mac community.
Wait, you didn't get that from the email exchange? Odd. Because every Mac-oriented publication on earth, from what I can tell, has cited this email exchange as an example of Microsoft's ongoing efforts to keep Apple down. Computerworld, for example, also reported that Microsoft was using Mac users as "guinea pigs" to test features that would later appear in Windows versions of Office, as if getting features first were somehow a bad thing. (Microsoft actually promotes these features as its "Mac-First" innovations.) Other publications and Mac news sites played up the threat to shut down Mac Office, which frankly would have made good business sense given that revenues from Mac Office fell from $200 million to $150 million between 1996 and 1997 as Apple teetered toward a bleak finish that, ultimately, never happened.
What did happened is that Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple about six weeks after this email exchange, announced its intention to develop an OS X-based version of Mac Office going forward, and pledged to keep making new Office versions for five more years. Today, Microsoft is working on yet another version of Mac Office that will ship late this year. (And Apple, of course, rebounded, partly because of help from Microsoft and others, partly because of the iMac, and, years later, thanks to the iPod.)
Now, Microsoft's actions on behalf of Apple were somewhat self-serving: As part of wide-ranging set of agreements with the struggling Apple that year, Apple agreed to bundle Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser with Mac OS. And I have little doubt that Microsoft was propping up its sole viable OS competitor during a time in which its antitrust troubles were heating up. But Microsoft is a publicly held company, not a charity: Obviously, it would bargain with other companies as effectively as possible. To not do so would be negligent. To suggest that their actions were anything less than prudent is, therefore, naive.
More important, we have that email record that everyone is so excited about. What it shows to me is a company dedicated to making great products and, yes, supporting then-struggling Apple with the best version of Office Microsoft had yet created. Don't believe me? You can read it yourself. My guess is you'll come away with a less dramatic version of history than the Mac fanatics are pushing.
ToC
[Editor's Note: My thanks to Kevin Hisel for the contributions to this section of the newsletter.]
ToC
By Anne Broache
Story last modified Mon Jan 29 06:51:48 PST 2007
URL: http://news.com.com/Did+Microsoft+want+to+whack+Dell+over+its+Linux+dealings/2100-1014_3-6153904.html
Barely a week after a U.S. judge approved a landmark antitrust agreement with Microsoft, company executives were swapping e-mails suggesting Dell deserved a beating for its growing interest in Linux, according to documents filed with a state court.
But Redmond representatives said Friday that the 2002 exchange, made public this week as part of an antitrust suit unfolding in Iowa state court, only tells part of the story. They said it omits evidence that Microsoft executives were simultaneously seeking legal advice on how to ensure they were responding to such competitive threats without shirking their antitrust responsibilities.
The e-mail thread (PDF), which occurred over three days in November 2002, showed up in the latest batch of court exhibits posted to a Web site maintained by attorneys representing a class of Iowa consumers embroiled in an ongoing antitrust suit against the Windows maker. It was reported earlier by Bloomberg News.
In the first e-mail, Bill Veghte, now a company vice president, described a panel discussion he had recently attended in which a Dell executive boasted that the company was the top distributor of the open-source operating system among equipment manufacturers and was "committed to seeing that position grow."
Veghte and others went on to express concern about the competitive threat potentially posed by Linux and Red Hat.
"We should whack them, we should make sure they understand our value," wrote Paul Flessner, a senior vice president in Microsoft's server applications unit.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, D.C., had approved most of the federal government's antitrust decree with Microsoft about a week before the exchange began.
Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans on Friday downplayed the messages.
"While this may sound provocative, what counts at the end of the day is what actually happened," he said. "Looking at subsequent portions of this e-mail thread, which the plaintiffs chose to exclude from their exhibits, it's evident that we didn't take any retaliatory action against Dell. In fact, we very clearly increased our investment with Dell."
Participants in the same e-mail thread also sought confidential legal advice about how to proceed in such situations where competitive threats existed, given the limits imposed by Microsoft's antitrust agreements, Evans added.
The Iowa suit, filed in February 2000 on behalf of a businessman in the state, is one of the last remaining state antitrust proceedings against Microsoft. The company has already reached settlements in 17 states and had class-action suits dismissed or decertified in 18 others.
The Iowa case is unique because it allows consumers, as opposed to just equipment manufacturers, to sue Microsoft directly. The class, which is made up of the so-called "indirect" purchasers of Microsoft's operating-system software and of its applications software including Word and Excel, seeks $330 million in damages. The trial, which began in December, is expected to last at least six months.
Microsoft has reportedly turned over 25 million pages of documents to Iowa prosecutors, and it has already had to do some explaining to the public about what they contain.
In December, the blogosphere took note of a 2004 memo (PDF) in which retiring Windows chief Jim Allchin professed, "I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft." (He later said he was being "purposefully dramatic.")
The plaintiffs have already uploaded thousands of pages for public consumption. A spokesman for the plaintiffs said more are likely to be on the way, as the court admits them as evidence.
[Editor's Note: My thanks to Tony Cooke for the contribution of this article to the newsletter.]
ToC
Could HP be approaching factory-loaded Linux desktops or notebooks? With several thousand custom orders coming in for such configurations and an obvious open community (as seen by Dell's public feedback forum), it's a definite possibility. Management at HP has commented on the situation, saying they are considering offering standard systems with a preloaded distro of Linux, which would be an industry first for desktops and notebooks. - TechSpot
<http://www.techspot.com/news/24571-hp-considering-factoryloaded-linux-desktops-and-notebooks.html>
ToC
Most believed Associate General Counsel Thomas Rubin's speech before a book conference -- as well as his opinion piece in the Financial Times -- had a lot more to do with Microsoft's vicious competition with Google than about solid legal arguments. - Law.com
<http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1173175410197>
ToC
Thursday, March 08 2007 @ 12:43 AM EST
A U.S. judge ruled that Google's 3D modelling software, which gives Web users an astronaut's view of the earth and allows them to zoom down to street level, does not infringe the patent of a rival.
Judge Douglas Woodlock of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Boston denied a complaint by Skyline Software Systems that the Google Earth mapping software of Google's Keyhole infringed Skyline patents. - Reuters
<http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKN0727910320070308>
ToC
Wednesday, March 07 2007 @ 02:14 PM EST
Bowen said he's in talks with the aviation safety agency's main hardware supplier, Dell Computer, to determine if it could deliver Linux-based computers capable of accessing Google Apps through a non-Microsoft browser once the FAA's XP-based computers pass their shelf life. - Paul McDougall, Information Week
<http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197800480>
ToC
Wednesday, March 07 2007 @ 02:14 AM EST
The songs will only be free through the first few downloads, and will start to rise after that. But even at full price, listeners are getting quality music, DRM-free. Let's hope other labels follow Nettwerk shortly. Market driven prices and no DRM = Music Nirvana. - Tech Crunch
<http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/05/barenaked-ladies-new-album-free-no-drm-now/>
ToC
Monday, March 05 2007 @ 07:47 AM EST
How would you like to study at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for free? It has been nearly six years since MIT first announced their MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) program. More recently, MIT announced that the OCW program, a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students, and self-learners around the world, is online and will be completed by 2008. The OCW provides open access to course materials for up to 1,550 MIT courses, representing 34 departments and all five MIT schools. The goal is to include materials from all MIT courses by next year.
MIT provides just one of the 10 open source educational success stories detailed below. Open source and open access resources have changed how colleges, organizations, instructors, and prospective students use software, operating systems and online documents for educational purposes. - Online Education Database
ToC
[Editor's Note: My thanks to Allen Byrne for the contributions to this section of the newsletter.]
ToC
by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#869/05-Mar-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8892>
We often wonder how many of us there are. While Apple occasionally shares the number of active Mac OS X users, it has been a while since the last update. Eight months ago in August 2006 at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, Steve Jobs said there were 19 million active Mac OS X users. Keith Bachman, an analyst at Bank of America Securities, now quotes a higher number in an AppleInsider article: 22 million users of all versions of Mac OS X. Bank of America Securities estimates an increase of 6 million Mac users since the release of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in June 2005. It's also highly likely that there are uncounted millions of users still using Mac OS 9 and earlier.
<http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/07/live-from-wwdc-2006-steve-jobs-keynote/>
<http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2541>
by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#868/26-Feb-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8877>
Apple and Cisco have reached an agreement on the use of the iPhone name. Cisco surprised the Mac world when their Linksys division released and rebranded a variety of Internet Protocol (IP) phones under the name iPhone in December 2006. Cisco had acquired the trademark via a company they purchased in 2000, and claimed to own the term in the realm of phones. The iPhone name was widely rumored for years to be attached to a project of Apple's devising.
Then, Apple likewise surprised everyone by announcing an iPhone at Macworld Expo in January 2007 (see "iPhone Seeks to Redefine the Mobile Phone," 2007-01-15). Almost immediately, Cisco filed a lawsuit, saying that it had been in negotiations over Apple's use of the name and asserting its rights. Apple called the lawsuit "silly."
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8810>
<http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2007/corp_011007.html>
Both parties entered into settlement talks quickly. The agreement announced on 21-Feb-07 states that both parties recognize trademark rights that have been granted, and both can use the iPhone trademark on their products worldwide. Both Apple and Cisco will dismiss all legal actions against each other, and will work on interoperability, without any specific agreements.
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/02/21iphone.html>
No mention of actual cash money was mentioned, and it's entirely possible none was involved. This is pure speculation, but Cisco may have used the opportunity to force a bit more light into Apple's crevices to achieve better compatibility for its wide array of consumer and corporate gear, which could benefit its customers and bottom line.
What this deal means is that Apple's iPhone gets to be the Apple iPhone, although, due to the vagaries of how trademarks work, we might see it more commonly called - at least by Apple - "the Apple iPhone cell phone, music player, and Internet communicator."
ToC
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#866/12-Feb-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8856>
In an unprecedented move, Apple last week posted on the company Web site an open letter from Steve Jobs entitled "Thoughts on Music." That Apple chose the open letter approach is interesting, but sensible, since there isn't really a conventional format for a company to express an opinion or take a position other than a press release, and the letter was aimed, as we'll see, at many audiences other than the press. I'm a bit surprised that Apple didn't choose to film Jobs talking instead (or at least in addition to posting the letter). Why not harness the Reality Distortion Field when your CEO controls it? Such a video would have become an instant hit via iTunes and YouTube, further spreading Apple's message.
<http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/>
Video or no video, you can and should read the full letter, which makes a number of interesting and relevant points about the current state of the music industry, digital rights management (DRM), and Apple's role in the world.
First, Apple was forced to create and use FairPlay DRM when selling music on the iTunes Store because that was the only way the big music companies would agree to license their music to Apple. However, perhaps due to the music companies not realizing the potential size of the online market, Apple was initially able to negotiate pretty good terms, which accounts for FairPlay-encrypted tracks working on up to five computers and unlimited iPods, enabling burning to audio CDs from the same playlist some number of times, and so on. (Also, iTunes ran only on Macs at the time, so Apple was able to convince the music companies that the platform's small market share ensured that if the experiment were a failure, they wouldn't have lost much.) Apple may have benefited early on from the way FairPlay locks iTunes Store users into using iPods, but Jobs claims that on average, only about 2 percent of music on iPods was purchased from the iTunes Store (of course, that's a weak argument for any individual who happens to have purchased a lot of music from the iTunes Store, but no one was forced to buy from Apple). Plus, remember that before the opening of the iTunes Store, Apple was running its "Rip, Mix, and Burn" commercials, which were widely seen as tweaking the recording industry.
Second, if FairPlay were breached, Apple would have to fix it in a very short time or risk losing its ability to sell music on the iTunes Store. There have been several breaches of FairPlay that Apple has resolved quickly - thanks to the company controlling all portions of the media-purchasing and playing process - but on the whole, FairPlay's protections have remained intact. That may be in part due to it having reasonable conditions, unlike many other DRM systems. But with 70 percent of the market, Apple certainly isn't escaping attention by being a small player, as is often stated as a reason for the paucity of exploits aimed at Mac OS X. That said, Jobs unfairly equates the desire to break FairPlay to the desire to steal music, conveniently ignoring how many people are both philosophically and practically offended by DRM and how it limits their fair use rights.
Third, were Apple to license FairPlay to other manufacturers, the likelihood of a license-endangering breach and the difficulty of implementing a quick fix goes up, as the number of people in different companies with access to code and encryption keys increases along with the number of devices available to crack. That worry is not unfounded; it was by hackers disassembling the object code of the Xing DVD player that the Content Scrambling System (CSS) protecting DVD movies was broken. And while Apple could in theory license other forms of DRM from Microsoft and others to enable iPods to be used with other online music stores, the general consensus among industry insiders is that it would be a cold day in hell before that would happen (though you can never count out global climate change affecting the netherworld; see the linked picture). Plus, unlike releasing iTunes and the iPod for Windows, it's unclear how licensing Microsoft DRM would benefit Apple, given that most of the online music stores have significant overlap in their catalogs. The primary benefit to users would involve being able to choose an online music store that offers a subscription plan, which Apple has steadfastly avoided with the iTunes Store. (Of course, subscription plans require DRM, because otherwise you could keep forever everything you heard once, so eliminating DRM would also destroy that entire business model.)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS>
<http://usdev01.esolutionnow.com/pub/jake/iTunes%20for%20Windows.gif>
Fourth, although Apple owns 70 percent of the online music market today, with companies like Microsoft and Sony entering the fray with similar proprietary music stores selling DRM-protected content that plays on only specific music players, Apple sees no problem with its dominant position (no surprise there). Jobs also points out that because only 2 percent of music on the average iPod has been purchased from the iTunes Store (the remainder being unprotected MP3s ripped from CDs or purchased online from unprotected sources), it's disingenuous to portray Apple as locking iPod users into using the iTunes Store. And something he doesn't say is that it's easy - if extra work - to remove FairPlay by burning protected tracks to an audio CD, after which they could be transferred to any other music player.
Fifth, and this is undoubtedly the most interesting point, Jobs states unequivocally that Apple would prefer that all music sold online was DRM-free, because it would be better for customers who want to use alternative music stores or alternative music players. What he doesn't say is that it would also be easier for Apple, which wouldn't have to maintain and update FairPlay constantly. It would also be better for competition, eliminating what little lock-in currently exists between a particular music store and its associated player. Given how Apple essentially created the portable music player market with the iPod (not the first, but so much better than its predecessors that it might as well have been) and the online music market (by integrating the iTunes Store into iTunes itself), I don't think Apple fears competition at all, and may even welcome it as an encouragement to innovation.
Sixth and lastly, Jobs points out that while fewer than 2 billion protected tracks were sold online in 2006, the music companies sold over 20 billion songs in completely unprotected form via conventional CDs. He uses this fact to point the finger of blame at the music companies themselves for furthering illegal music copying. This is in fact a tricky argument, because it can be used either to push for removing DRM restrictions on music sold online or for increasing restrictions on physical media. Efforts to use copy prevention technologies on CDs have failed, partially through technical ineptitude (they simply didn't work), and partially through utter stupidity, as in the case of the Sony BMG rootkit scandal, in which Sony intentionally installed spyware on Windows PCs when a protected CD was played.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Sony_BMG_CD_copy_protection_scandal>
Response among our sources has been interesting. Many don't feel that Apple is saying anything new, but I'm not sure I agree. Apple has never before come out against DRM in music so plainly. Also, even if these attitudes aren't completely new, Apple hasn't previously shown such aggressiveness in promoting them and assigning the blame for DRM to the music companies. It's possible that the letter is in part a PR effort to paint Apple as a friend of the consumer, in contrast with the big bad music companies, thus giving Apple the high moral ground with customers and establishing Apple's position in advance of any large-scale movement on the part of the music companies to offer unprotected tracks via other online services, as EMI has done with Yahoo.
<http://news.digitaltrends.com/article11874.html>
Interestingly, video is never mentioned in the letter. Jobs has always seemed to consider music and video differently, perhaps because of his association with Pixar, and it's also certainly true that Apple is by no means in the same powerful negotiating position with the movie studios as it is with the music companies. Plus, all commercial DVDs are nominally protected against copying by CSS, and bandwidth limitations have slowed large-scale sharing of video content.
But again, why now, and to whom is the letter targeted? It's almost certainly a response to the Consumer Council of Norway's complaint against Apple with regard to the End User License Agreement (EULA) with which iTunes customers must agree. Among the criticisms (many of which are legitimate) is the concern about interoperability - songs purchased on the iTunes Store cannot be played on other devices (the conversion step I outlined previously is never mentioned). In essence, Apple is saying to Norway and the other European countries, "Look, this DRM wasn't our idea, and without it, we couldn't maintain the licenses that enable us to be in business. But we'd happily drop the DRM if we could; go talk to the music companies about that." If push comes to shove, Apple will simply pull the iTunes Store out of Norway.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Music_Store#The_Consumer_Council_of_Norway_EULA_challenge>
Another possibility is that the letter is meant to tweak Microsoft over that company's embrace of DRM, including the Windows Media DRM, the Windows Media DRM-incompatible Zune (on the sales of which Microsoft pays royalties to the music companies; see "Of the Zune, DRM, and Universal Music," 2006-11-13), and the extensive DRM support that's built into Windows Vista. Peter Gutmann, a University of Auckland computer science researcher who works on the design and analysis of cryptographic security architectures, has posted an exhaustive discussion of the problems that are likely to result from Vista's low-level content protection code. Jobs's letter never mentions Vista, but it seems entirely within Jobs's character to set Apple as an alternative to Microsoft with respect to DRM.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8751>
<http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html>
It's also possible, though less likely, that the letter comes in part as a followup to a rather unflattering portrayal of Apple's attitudes about DRM in the New York Times. In that article, the head of the Nettwerk Music Group, Terry McBride, says that although Nettwerk's music is sold on the eMusic online service without DRM restrictions, Apple insists on adding FairPlay to the same tracks sold on the iTunes Store.
A challenge to Apple then: start selling unprotected tracks on the iTunes Store when the rights-holders request such an action. Apple currently makes many unprotected podcasts available for free in the iTunes Store, though I don't know if there are any unprotected podcasts or songs that are sold, or if Apple currently has back end limitations that require FairPlay on non-free tracks. And if Apple really wanted to put its money where Steve Jobs's mouth is, it could buy eMusic, which is the second-largest online music service, and which has about two million tracks from independent artists, none of which contain any DRM. (Of course, buying eMusic might draw unwanted attention from monopoly regulators.)
Coverage of the letter has been widespread, with a variety of responses. On Playlist, Jim Dalrymple has some interesting reactions from Real Networks and a wonderfully typical comment from the RIAA. Also on Playlist, Nancy Gohring of IDG News Service reports on the response from the Consumer Council of Norway, which admits that music companies have some responsibility but still claims that ultimate responsibility lies with Apple. The Economist concludes, "Mr Jobs's argument, in short, is transparently self-serving. It also happens to be right." Dan Moren of MacUser.com imagines a world without DRM, John Gruber of Daring Fireball reads between the lines of Jobs's letter, and as usual, John Moltz of Crazy Apple Rumors Site makes up the stuff you wish had been said.
<http://playlistmag.com/news/2007/02/07/drm/>
<http://playlistmag.com/news/2007/02/07/norway/>
<http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8660389>
<http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2007/02/drm/>
<http://daringfireball.net/2007/02/reading_between_the_lines>
<http://www.crazyapplerumors.com/?p=785>
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#867/19-Feb-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8860>
Apple has released Security Update 2007-002, the second security update of the year that addresses bugs identified by the Month of Apple Bugs (MoAB) project. None of the bugs offered any chance for user action other than standard Internet precautions, so it's good to see Apple solving these problems in the Finder, iChat, and the UserNotificationCenter process. It's a bit more important than it normally is to install this security update because of the MoAB's publication of the exploits before informing Apple. As always, the update is available via Software Update most easily, though stand-alone downloads are available for PowerPC- (3.8 MB download) and Intel-based Macs (6.6 MB download) running Mac OS X 10.4.8 (Client or Server) and for anyone running Mac OS X 10.3.9 (1.4 MB download). (For more thoughts on this situation, see Glenn Fleishman's "MoAB Is My Washpot" later in this issue.)
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305102>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2007002ppc.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2007002universal.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2007002panther.html>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8869>
by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#867/19-Feb-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8869>
Two hackers wanted to show the world that Apple's much-vaunted operating system wasn't as secure as it was cracked up to be. The Month of Apple Bugs (MoAB) ran from 01-Jan-07 to 31-Jan-07, with the final day promising a future serious bug. Instead, they may have turned the Mac smugness dial up a notch.
<http://projects.info-pull.com/moab/>
MoAB backers "lmh" (who does not reveal his or her real name) and Kevin Finisterre appeared to want to tweak Mac users, who often revel in the so-far absence of attacks on Mac OS X that are plausible, persistent (not quickly patched), and spreadable. In particular, the pair appear to take issue with the zealots and "fanboys" who, when presented with credible information that shows Apple or Mac OS X in a bad light, reject it out of hand. But lmh and Finisterre also seemed to have a chip on their shoulders before, during, and after MoAB.
The coincidence of the abbreviation MoAB and the biblical figure of the same name led me to Jeremiah 48:29-30: "We have heard of the pride of Moab, pride beyond bounds: His loftiness, his pride, his scorn, his insolence of heart. I know, says the Lord, his arrogance; liar in boast, liar in deed." (More famously, the poetry of Psalms disses the people of Moab by stating, "Moab is my washpot," Psalm 108:9, indicating a thing of low esteem, fit only for holding water that has cleaned one's feet - it's also the title of Stephen Fry's excellent autobiography.)
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1569472025/tidbitselectro00A/ref=nosim>
Now that seems a little harsh. The original Moab was a problem, no doubt, but this MoAB wanted to shake the Apple tree a bit, perhaps with too high an aim. I suspect the developers had a set of exploits up their sleeves, but hoped that other folks would come forward with goodies they'd been saving up, and no such luck emerged.
The zealots and fanboys that lmh and Finisterre railed against aren't strawmen. They exist. In fact, we at TidBITS occasionally get email from them, too. But it's clear that the vast majority of Mac users have better things to do than violently defend the platform and company against legitimate criticism. If anything, the average Mac user may have perhaps too great a belief that Mac OS X is completely secure, especially in contrast with Windows XP.
<http://www.crazyapplerumors.com/?p=664>
However, it seems that MoAB may have unintentionally given more ammunition to the extremists in the Mac faith, while making the larger community even more blase. None of the bugs released had any real potential of a vector - spreading from computer to computer as a worm through an Internet- or LAN-exploitable flaw - and as far as I have seen, no in-the-wild exploit was released for any of the bugs, despite the fact that MoAB refused to notify Apple or third-party developers before releasing the bug details to the public.
As of last week, Apple and the other developers who had exploits posted against their products had updated all but one matter. Timothy Luoma posted a rundown of his disappointment with the outcome of MoAB. The Macalope weighs in with his own, slightly surprised discomfiture at not seeing more serious attacks released. (The remaining Apple flaw relates to Software Update, which could be exploited by a local user or a malicious Web site visited via Safari with default download options checked.)
<http://tj.tntluoma.com/mac/moab>
<http://www.macalope.com/?p=158>
In fact, MoAB revealed one of the best aspects of the larger Mac developer community: generosity. Landon Fuller took it on himself to release patches to the vulnerabilities revealed at MoAB and ultimately received help from many others. While he couldn't fix every problem completely, nor do so on the same day the exploit was released, he and his colleagues had a remarkable track record.
<http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/code/macosx>
MoAB received the most criticism about its disclosure policy - the authors said that typically no notice was given to Apple or affected companies before they posted the details of their exploit. They wrote, "'Responsible disclosure' exists when the vendor doesn't deploy any harmful tactics against the source of the vulnerability reports, and requires confidence by all parties involved. At the moment, we don't trust Apple on these matters due to the track [sic] of incidents and unpleasant situations surrounding their policy on product vulnerability handling."
(Oddly, they offered to give only Fuller a heads-up each day in advance of the public; he declined, in a transcript the MoAB backers posted, to avoid the "appearance of collusion," since he enjoyed demonstrating that exploits could be fixed without any insider or advance knowledge about them.)
Apple has, at times, been criticized for its lackluster response to serious exploit reports, or its long delays in responding to known problems. But I haven't heard that criticism lately, with one exception. The MoAB project is clearly referring to how Apple allegedly treated David Maynor and Jon Ellch, two researchers who seem to have gotten stuck in a trap partly of their own devising. (We covered this in a series of articles we dubbed "To the Maynor Born: Cache and Crash" from August 2006 to January 2007.)
<http://db.tidbits.com/series/1268>
The short story is that Maynor and Ellch appeared to have said that they had a successful root exploit for Mac OS X, relying on a flaw in Wi-Fi handling that required a proximate user to launch the attack. Maynor and Ellch were apparently never allowed to release their proof directly, and Apple patched flaws similar to those described, but which Apple claimed were not based on any specific information provided by the two. In the security note accompanying the Wi-Fi fixes, Maynor and Ellch weren't acknowledged.
It's unclear whether the facts will ever be untangled in that case, and it appears that few people outside of Maynor, his employer, Apple, and Ellch have all the facts to make a judgment. Thus it's always frustrating to me to see unrelated parties make the assumption that Apple "deploy[ed] harmful tactics" when what happened is rather ambiguous.
In contrast to the Maynor/Ellch situation, even with no disclosure, Apple apparently decided lmh and Finisterre played by the rules, and MoAB and the two were credited in the several bugs that Apple has patched (see related story, "Security Update 2007-002 Squashes MoAB Bugs").
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8860>
What did the "pride of MoAB" lead to? Not much. I, for one, am fully aware that the possibility of a true, widespread, system remote exploit of Mac OS X remains. And almost all MoAB's exploits required either (or both) an attacker with local access or a computer owner who engaged in unusual behavior, such as downloading and opening an unknown file.
It's a testament to the Mac community as a whole that MoAB's irresponsible disclosure, coupled with childish taunts and tactics, was met with quick, civil responses by Apple and the other Macintosh developers. Generosity and cooperation will provide far more overall security than a bunch of ill-mannered hackers.
ToC
by Andrew Laurence <atlauren@uci.edu>
TidBITS#867/19-Feb-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8862>
Apple last week released a set of updates which reflect the changes in Daylight Saving Time that go into effect this year in the United States and elsewhere (for additional information, see my article "Daylight Saving Time May Bite the Out-of-Date," 2007-01-29). The very welcome update for Mac OS X 10.3.9, Daylight Saving Time Update (Panther), updates the time zone and ICU data files, such that the system now correctly handles the new Daylight Saving time rules for 2007. The update for Mac OS X 10.4.8, Daylight Saving Time Update (Tiger), likewise contains a complete set of time zone and ICU files; it adds several new cities and various world-wide changes to the time zone information included with the previous Mac OS X 10.4.5 and 10.4.6 updates.
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305056>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8832>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/daylightsavingtimeupdatepanther.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/daylightsavingtimeupdatetiger.html>
I'm pleased to see Apple do right by their customers who are running Panther. There was some discussion online of the "Y2K7" problem in late January, with Ian Ward Comfort's patch appearing on 28-Jan-07 at AFP548.com; a variety of other patches and methods have appeared in blogs and mailing lists. (I hope the authors of those patches will vet their solutions against Apple's updates, and indicate whether folks who have installed the former have any cause to worry from the latter.)
<http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=20070128143720897>
People still running Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar are out of luck in terms of an official Apple patch. However, a modified patch for those users is also available at the AFP548 Web site.
<http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=20070128143720897>
At the same time, Apple released Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 5, which updates J2SE 5.0 to version 1.5.0_07, and Java 1.4 to version 1.4.2_12. The update primarily fixes handling of Daylight Saving Time in Java, but also delivers improved reliability and compatibility. For Panther users, Java for Mac OS X 10.3 Update 5 brings Java 1.4.2 to version 1.4.2_12, includes Java Advanced Imaging and Java 3D support, and also fixes a problem where some Java applications wouldn't open after installing QuickTime 7.0.4 or later.
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304586>
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304585>
It's impossible to draw a causal relationship between my original article and the appearance of these updates, now two weeks later, but I'd like to think I played a small role in their appearance.
ToC
by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#869/05-Mar-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8899>
Apple has released an update to QuickTime for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and later, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. QuickTime 7.1.5 fixes numerous bugs, along with a flaw that could enable a maliciously crafted file to crash a program employing QuickTime or to allow arbitrary code execution - a phrase that often means there's a potential for an attacker to gain control of a computer or, at least, install malware.
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305149>
Affected file types are broad: 3GP videos, MIDI files, native QuickTime movies, images in the venerable PICT file format, and QTIF files. Apple's notes indicate that a user need only open a maliciously crafted file, which means that Web sites could be used to launch attacks by embedding QuickTime documents in the right format.
There have been no reports of this flaw being exploited in the wild. A previous QuickTime flaw related to handling of JavaScript was exploited, notably on MySpace. Apple claims to have provided a temporary fix to MySpace, but it's unclear if that fix has made it into QuickTime 7.1.5.
<http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/375>
<http://news.com.com/MySpace+to+Apple+Fix+that+worm/2100-7349_3-6141031.html>
by Joe Kissell <joe@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#869/05-Mar-07
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8891>
Parallels has now released the official update to the Parallels Desktop virtualization software that began public beta testing at the beginning of December 2006. Confusingly, the company doesn't use normal version numbers (like "2.0," which this would be in conventional terms), but the now-available Build 3186 is the first version since Build 3036 three months ago that the company considers a full, non-beta release. (Parallels advertises the build number on the download page.)
<http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/>
Parallels hasn't added any major new features since we last reported on the beta version (see "Parallels Desktop Ups the Ante," 2006-12-04), but the company has enhanced and debugged the features that were added then. One of the new features I'd mentioned as being problematic in December was support for running a copy of Windows installed on a Boot Camp partition directly
