The Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group

The Status Register - April, 2008


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

April 2008


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

April News:

The April Meeting

The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, April 17th, 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 April 17 gathering will be one of our split SIG meetings. Both the Macintosh and PC SIGs are open for any topic anyone wants to bring in.

ToC

Champaign County Computer and Electronics Recycling Event

For those of you with PERSONAL electronic devices that you are wanting to dispose of, the Champaign County Computer and Electronics Recycling Event will be held on Saturday, April 19th from 9a -3:30p (rain or shine).

For more information: <http://www.city.urbana.il.us/urbana/public_works/environmental_management/recycling/E-Cycling_Event_2008.pdf>

ToC

Bid for Yahoo gets murkier

Marketplace Morning Report
Thursday, April 10, 2008
URL: <http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/04/10/yahoo_microsoft/>

Renita Jablonski: Yahoo is it going to be? It all started when Microsoft made a $44 billion dollar bid for Yahoo at the end of January. Now, the battle for Yahoo has not one, but two, actually, three new twists, depending on how you look at it, because it seems everyone's looking at Yahoo. Marketplace's Lisa Napoli is here to fill us in. What is going on?

Lisa Napoli: Well, you've got lots of reports swirling in the press this morning, Ranita. You've got the major papers saying that Time-Warner, now, is in negotiations to sell America Online to Yahoo. Then you get the plot even thicker with Rupert Murdoch getting into the mix. Rupert Murdoch, a few weeks ago, bowed out from being a white knight in all of this. Now, apperently, he's in bed with Microsoft, talking about buying Yahoo and combining Yahoo, MSN, MySpace. What makes it even more confusing is that Microsoft owns a piece of MySpace's chief competitor, FaceBook, and how all those companies would stew together is anybody's guess.

Renita Jablonski: And to make things even more complicated, Yahoo made an announcement yesterday about this advertising alliance it's creating with Google for a couple weeks.

Lisa Napoli: Right, and supposedly that's to stave off Microsoft and to show us that Yahoo doesn't need them. Some people in the press are calling it Goohoo. Basically, what would happen, for the next couple of weeks, some of the ads you would see on Yahoo would be served up by Google, which has this spectacular platform for doing that.

Renita Jablonski: And you just mentioned this idea of a very complicated stew, could the complexity make Microsoft's original offer look more attractive in the end?

Lisa Napoli: You would think so. You would think that it would have looked attractive to begin with, right? $44 billion dollars. But from the very beginning, Yahoo insisted that the initial offer was undervalued, even as Steve Balmer and Microsoft threatened it over the weekend that it's going to go hostile and direct to the shareholders if they don't accept the proposal, which, by the way, keeps going down in value as Microsoft's stock does.

Renita Jablonski: It's funny, because on top of all of this dancing, there's always a line from the analysts that, "You know what? Microsoft will probably win in the end."

Lisa Napoli: That's what is really ridiculous about all of this, that this is a lot of complex manuevering. In the end, I don't see how Microsoft can't win out.

Renita Jablonski: Our tech guru, Lisa Napoli, trying to make sense of the latest. Thanks much, Lisa.

Lisa Napoli: Thank you, Ranita.

ToC

Comcast and BitTorrent agree to 'collaborate

Posted by Anne Broache
March 27, 2008 8:57 AM PDT
URL: <http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9904494-7.html>

Update 10:15 a.m. PDT: Comments from Rep. Edward Markey and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin added.

It's official: Comcast and BitTorrent are calling a truce.

Ever since the cable giant admitted to disrupting file-sharing traffic based on the BitTorrent protocol, a very public debate has erupted over what constitutes appropriate "network management" by Internet service providers, and with it, a resurgence of calls for Net neutrality rules that would prohibit such practices.

But as companies are wont to do when regulators are breathing down their necks (read: the Federal Communications Commission), the companies announced that they're going to become collaborators. Whether the deal is enough to satisfy policymakers scrutinizing Comcast's behavior, however, remains to be seen, as it's already drawing some measure of skepticism.

The "collaborative effort" doesn't mean that Comcast will give up on managing the way traffic flows through its network.

Rather, Comcast said it will work on reconfiguring its networks so that, by year's end, it manages data in a "protocol agnostic" way. Comcast has confessed to "delaying" uploads to the BitTorrent protocol at peak congestion times, but the new process would apparently involve managing traffic based on how much bandwidth consumers use, rather than what sort of applications they're running.

It's not clear what levels of bandwidth use would trigger such steps. As a Comcast vice president said during a recent FCC hearing about his company's network management practices, the cable operator tells its customers what broadband speeds they can expect, but it doesn't spell out how much bandwidth they're allotted. Instead, it says that subscribers are entitled to use the service in a way that doesn't degrade other subscribers' experiences. (In an interview with News.com's Declan McCullagh on Thursday morning, Comcast Vice President Joe Waz said no "bandwidth caps" are planned and offered some more details on the company's plans.)

BitTorrent Chief Technology Officer Eric Klinker said in a statement that the idea is to develop "techniques that the Internet community will find to be more transparent."

Comcast has been working on this "technique" for several months, said Tony Werner, the company's chief technology officer. It plans to publish the technique and refine it based on feedback and testing.

In turn, BitTorrent also plans to work with Internet service providers, other technology companies, and the Internet Engineering Task Force, a nonprofit standards body, to develop ways to optimize file swapping on networks like Comcast's. It also plans to publish its work in forums and Internet standards communities so that other application developers can get a glimpse of what's going on.

As News.com's Jon Skillings noted earlier Thursday, the makings of a Comcast-BitTorrent truce seems to have been in the works for a while, as evidenced by recent comments BitTorrent CEO Doug Walker made to News.com's Maggie Reardon.

And the idea of Internet service providers attempting to embrace peer-to-peer applications also isn't new. Verizon Communications has recently touted its participation in a working group that's trying to formulate a way to route peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic more "intelligently."

A strike against Net neutrality rules?

The companies' announcement may not do much to change the FCC's ongoing inquiry into what constitutes "reasonable" network management practices--and, specifically, whether it should find fault with Comcast's special treatment of file-sharing traffic.

Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has hinted that some action may need to be taken--specifically, requiring Comcast and others to be more transparent to their subscribers about their practices. He continued that refrain in a statement issued Thursday, saying he was concerned that "Comcast has not made clear when they will stop this discriminatory practice."

"While it may take time to implement its preferred new traffic management technique, it is not at all obvious why Comcast couldn't stop its current practice of arbitrarily blocking its broadband customers from using certain applications," he said. "Comcast should provide its broadband customers as well as the Commission with a commitment of a date certain by when it will stop this practice."

The commission plans to continue examining the issue during an April 17 hearing at Stanford University, Martin said, and to weigh "the important ability for network managers to block the distribution of illegal content, including pirated movies and music and child pornography."

Meanwhile, Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps said in a statement that the agreement never would have occurred without the FCC's playing a "proactive role" in the situation.

"I am confident that, through this process, the FCC can come up with clear rules of the road that will benefit American consumers and provide much-needed certainty to both network operators and Internet entrepreneurs," he said in a statement.

Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, for his part, issued a statement commending the deal, which he said "obviates the need for any further government intrusion into this matter."

In Congress, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said he continues to believe a Net neutrality bill he proposed earlier this year is necessary. That proposal, unlike his previous efforts, wouldn't prescribe particular regulations, but it does outline expectations that Internet service providers refrain from "unreasonable discriminatory favoritism."

Markey, who leads a House of Representatives telecommunications and Internet panel, said he was pleased to hear about the Comcast-BitTorrent agreement but plans to "monitor the ongoing discussions to see if they result in a material change in Comcast's controversial network management techniques and whether any future changes adequately protect innovation, openness, and consumer choice on the Internet."

Proponents of Net neutrality regulations, which would prohibit network operators from prioritizing Internet content, said the Comcast-BitTorrent collaboration does nothing to blunt the need for such rules. One such group, Public Knowledge, went so far as to call the agreement "irrelevant" to that debate.

"The FCC has the responsibility to protect the rights of consumers against discriminatory network management practices," said Public Knowledge's president, Gigi Sohn. "Any future agreements in the private sector do not change that reality, particularly if the companies involved reach agreements that work specifically with some technologies or network companies and not with others."

The cable industry called the deal a win for consumers.

"Government interference in the development of this market could easily foreclose or otherwise prevent the emergence of efforts such as this one," said Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, "and it could never anticipate the kinds of consumer-responsive approaches that further improve and enhance the user experience, including efforts to respect the rights of copyright owners and to fight piracy."

ToC

Comcast and BitTorrent: Once Enemies, Now Friends

Producer Ð Stevie Converse
Asst. Producer Ð Candace Clement
Media Minutes 4-4-2008
Text: <http://www.freepress.net/files/4-4-08 Transcript_0.doc>
Audio: <http://www.freepress.net/audio/download/38140/MM+4+4+08.mp3>

Comcast, the nation' s largest cable provider, is under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission for blocking popular peer-to-peer file-sharing services that allow users to quickly share large files, especially video.

Last month, the FCC held a hearing in Boston on Comcast's Internet blocking - which made national news when Comcast hired people to fill the seats and crowd out the public. Now the agency has scheduled a second hearing at Stanford University on April 17.

But in a surprising announcement last week, Comcast and BitTorrent -- the company named after the most popular file-sharing protocol -- announced plans to collaborate on ways to distribute large Web files over the cable company' s broadband network.

Free Press general counsel Marvin Ammori, who wrote the complaint that launched the FCC's investigation, says that Comcast' s willingness to collaborate with a tech company would have never happened without intense public pressure.

Marvin Ammori: Comcast had been denying that it was even blocking BitTorrent. And then when the AP and the Electronic Frontier Foundation discovered that Comcast was blocking BitTorrent, Comcast kept thumbing its nose at consumer groups, at BitTorrent, Inc., and at the FCC and Congress. It wasn' t until the public brought considerable pressure that Comcast saw the writing on the wall and realized it would have to negotiate.

In making friends with BitTorrent, Comcast may hope to be heading off FCC action. But Ammori points out that Comcast' s deal with BitTorrent is no substitute for rules to keep the Internet open to all companies - and consumers - equally.

Marvin Ammori: Software companies shouldn' t have to cut a special deal with Comcast and with Verizon to get carried on their networks. That is the old cable TV model, where if you wanted to be on the network and have people watch your TV programming, you' d cut a deal with Comcast. The Internet model is totally different. In the Internet world, every software maker, every content maker, every blog - from the largest news provider to the smallest speaker - should be allowed to reach anyone who has an Internet connection.

If Internet service providers are allowed to cut special deals with content providers or certain applications, the Internet experience will become more like cable TV, what Ammori calls Òbalkanized networks,Ó where the Internet content available on Comcast will differ from the content served up by Time Warner, Verizon or AT&T.

Marvin Ammori: It' ll be Time Warner and Comcast determining for the consumer what content the consumer should be accessing.

For more information about Net Neutrality and the upcoming FCC hearing, go to SavetheInternet.com

Related links:

Comcast-BitTorrent Talks No Substitute for Net Neutrality
- <http://freepress.net/node/37939>

Comcast + BitTorrent: Don't Believe the Hype

- <http://freepress.net/node/37987>

Comcast Continues to Blow Smoke
- <http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2008/04/01/comcast-continues-to-blow-smoke/>

Reflections on the Comcast-BitTorrent "Detente"
- <http://blog.vuze.com/index.php/2008/03/29/reflections-on-the-comcast-bittorrent-detente/>

Comcast and BitTorrent, or 'Honestly Charlie Brown, The Market Dictates I Let You Kick The Football THIS Time.'
- <http://www.wetmachine.com/totsf/item/1131>

ToC

ISPs Hog Rights in Fine Print

By PETER SVENSSON
AP Technology Writer
Apr 5, 12:29 AM EDT
URL: <http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/I/ISP_FUNNY_PRINT?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-04-05-00-29-33>

NEW YORK (AP) -- In their subscriber contracts, some Internet providers explicitly absolve themselves of obligations that, it seems, no one would imagine they had in the first place.

For instance, Verizon Communications Inc. makes broadband subscribers agree that the company assumes no responsibility for the accuracy of things they may read on the Internet, or receive in e-mails. So don't complain to the company if that Wikipedia entry on wombats misstates their gestational period.

"Sometimes people think that everything they see online comes from their ISP or is somehow vetted and endorsed by the ISP," said Verizon spokeswoman Bobbi Henson.

Until March 3, Verizon also made subscribers agree that it does not own, operate or manage the Internet. That provision has now been eliminated because it's "generally well understood by most people" that Verizon does not own the Internet, while that may not have been the case in the early days of broadband, Henson said.

Another thing Verizon doesn't do for you, according to the Terms of Service: back up your hard drive.

Other ISPs try to ban nefarious practices like spamming and fraud with clauses so broad that it applies to a lot of legitimate activities.

Charter Communications, a cable company, forbids customers from altering or removing information from e-mail message headers, which sounds like they don't want you to change the subject line of an e-mail before forwarding it. Charter spokeswoman Anita Lamont said the company does not consider the subject line to be part of the header, and the provision is there to prevent people from forging headers to make it appear as if a message is coming from someone else.

AT&T Inc. prohibits users from posting to forums messages that could be expected to provoke complaints. Given that forums can be very touchy places, many messages could fall under this provision.

Windstream Communications bans "Satan" from its network, which sounds weird until you realize that it's referring to hacker software: System Administration Tool for Analyzing Networks, or SATAN.

ToC

Big Telcos Win Big in Airwave Auction

Producer - Stevie Converse
Asst. Producer - Candace Clement
Media Minutes 3-28-2008
Text: <http://www.freepress.net/mediaminutes/transcripts/media_minutes_3-28-08_transcript.doc>
Audio: <http://www.freepress.net/mediaminutes/archive/MM_03_28_08.mp3>

The auction of prime blocks of wireless airwaves ended last week, bringing in $19.6 billion dollars. Congress and the FCC had hoped that the auction would bring competition to the wireless market and provide a new wireless competitor to the cable and phone companies.

But incumbents Verizon and AT&T were the big winners of the auction, virtually ensuring that there will be no meaningful competition in the wireless field for a long time to come.

Harold Feld, senior vice president of the Media Access Project, says that the auction was a success in some ways: It brought in a lot of revenue. And new rules for the portion of open access spectrum will allow consumers to use any legal phone or device on the network, proving that an open network is an attractive business model. But, Feld says, the auction failed to produce an alternative wireless broadband provider. He says auctions are clearly not the way to bring competition to telecommunications.

Harold Feld: If we' re going to have auctions, I think we had the best rules possible. But the plain fact is you can' t expect auctions to repeal the basic fact of capitalism. If we are going to say that those who value the thing the most - or can extract the most value from it - and who can spend the most money for it deserve to have it (which is how we do this by auction) , then we must resign ourselves that the same people are going to get it again and again.

Incumbents have a great advantage, Feld says, because they already have their networks and customers. Google, which was also bidding for the open access spectrum, estimated that it would take another $12 billion on top of the $4.6 billion winning bid to begin a new network.

Harold Feld: So really, the only way that you can use auctions to bring in new competition is if you make the current incumbents sit the auction out.

Feld says we' ll need to look at regulating the wireless operators in a way that will open the platform and control the worst anti-consumer practices.

Harold Feld: And that means getting rid of early termination fees, that means truth in billing. It means looking at some kind of open device condition for all wireless services, and just biting the bullet and saying, well we didn' t keep these guys out, so now we have to live in a world where we only have a couple of people who are offering service.

Related links:

Spectrum Auction a Mixed Bag
- <http://freepress.net/node/37737>

America' s Internet Future Looking Like Its Past
- <http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2008/03/21/americas-internet-future-looking-like-its-past/>

MAP Responds to 700 MHZ Auction Results
- <http://www.mediaaccess.org/press-room/map-responds-to-700-mhz-auction-results>

Airwave Auction Winners Named
- <http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jo4wgpBEmdBAEBBUfbGycMzWGw-AD8VHEUSG0>

ToC

MPAA's Claims of Piracy Only a Smoke Screen

Producer - Stevie Converse
Asst. Producer - Candace Clement
Media Minutes 3-21-08
Text: <http://www.freepress.net/mediaminutes/transcripts/media_minutes_3-21-08_transcript.doc>
Audio: <http://www.freepress.net/mediaminutes/archive/MM_03_21_08.mp3>

The Motion Picture Association of America, alongside large broadband service providers like Comcast and AT&T, has mounted a multi-million dollar campaign against Net Neutrality - the fundamental Internet principle that prevents discrimination against Web sites and services.

The MPAA claims that it needs to combat piracy, and that Net Neutrality makes it too easy for pirates to operate. They want the power to block file-sharing applications like BitTorrent on their networks.

But others in the entertainment industry disagree. Jonathan Rintels is president and executive director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media. His group of media makers -- writers, actors, producers and directors - is also very concerned about piracy. But, Rintels says, the MPAA's fight against piracy is just a smoke screen for what Big Media really wants.

Jon Rintels: It is a way for the large media companies, in alliance with the cable and telephone companies, to direct their customers to their approved media sites, and to degrade, shut down, anti-competitively harm other media sites that are favored by independent media artists that aren' t part of Big Media.

In fact, just after MPAA President Dan Glickman attacked Net Neutrality in a high-profile speech, the big movie studios launched their own video Web site, Hulu.com, to stream video.

Jon Rintels: Hulu.com is jointly owned by NBC Universal and News Corp. - Rupert Murdoch, Fox - and distributes, not only the video of those companies, but also Sony, Warners and other members of the MPAA.

Rintels says that the cable and phone companies want to make the Internet more like cable television, where they have control over what people see.

Jon Rintels: They sell that access to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder is Big Media.

Independent producers were largely squeezed out of broadcast and cable networks in the 1990s, when FCC rules changed to allow networks use more of their own programming.

Rintels says that broadband was the great dream for independent media makers who could work with low-cost methods of production and distribution to reach their audience.

Jon Rintels: As independent media artists, we have seen this movie, we know how it ends, and it' s not good for independent and diverse media. That' s why it' s so critical that we have a level playing field, an open Internet. And that requires Net Neutrality.

For more information go to creativevoices.us.

Related links:

Does Big Media' s One-Two Punch Knock Out the Internet?
- <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-rintels/does-big-medias-onetwo-_b_91777.html>

IFTA Blasts MPAA's Glickman
- <http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117982513.html?categoryid=1009&cs=1>

ToC

Military Considers Recruiting & Hiring Bloggers

URL: <http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/1/headlines#6>

In media news, new questions are being raised over the relationship between the Pentagon and bloggers. Wired.com has uncovered a 2006 study written for the US Special Operations Command that suggests the military should clandestinely recruit or hire prominent bloggers. The report stated, "Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering." The report also suggested the Pentagon hack blogs that promote messages that are antithetical to US interests. The report went on to say, "Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data - merely a few words or phrases - may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger' s credibility with the audience."

<http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/03/report-recruit.html>

ToC

Bush library loses web address to cybersquatter

URL: <http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/31/bush-library-web-address/>

The Dallas Morning News reports that while the Bush library has found a physical home at Southern Methodist University, it is having difficulty finding an online home. "Some of the very best addresses are gone - snapped up for a mere fistful of dollars by squatters who have no connection to the library yet hope to make fun of the president, protect him or simply cash in on his name." The Bush Foundation has itself to blame for losing one prominent url:

At one time, the Bush Library Foundation owned the easiest Web site to remember: www.GeorgeWBushLibrary.com.

But whether on purpose or because of an oversight - foundation spokesman Taylor Griffin wasn' t sure - it lost that domain name last year. Illuminati Karate, a Web company in Raleigh, N.C., picked it up for less than $10. [...]

"We' re just holding onto it for the time being," said lead Web developer George Huger. "To be honest, I couldn' t believe someone was letting it expire."

ToC

FBI probe: Lieberman campaign to blame for crashing own Web site

By Brian Lockhart
Staff Writer
Article Launched: 04/09/2008 01:00:00 AM EDT
URL: <http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/localnews/ci_8859029>

Lamont blameless in Lieberman case

When his campaign Web site crashed the day before Connecticut's 2006 Democratic Senatorial Primary, Lieberman supporters immediately blamed rival Ned Lamont. However, the FBI concluded that it was the fault of the Lieberman campaign in October of that same year, though that information was never revealed to the press.

A federal investigation has concluded that U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's 2006 re-election campaign was to blame for the crash of its Web site the day before Connecticut's heated Aug. 8 Democratic primary.

The FBI office in New Haven found no evidence supporting the Lieberman campaign's allegations that supporters of primary challenger Ned Lamont of Greenwich were to blame for the Web site crash.

Lieberman, who was fighting for his political life against the anti-Iraq war candidate Lamont, implied that joe2006.com was hacked by Lamont supporters.

"The server that hosted the joe2006.com Web site failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. There was no evidence of (an) attack," according to the e-mail.

A program that could have detected a legitimate attack was improperly configured, the e-mail states.

"New Haven will be administratively closing this investigation," it concluded.

The e-mail, dated Oct. 25, 2006, was included in a technical packet of information recently sent to The Advocate in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act filed in late 2006 with the offices of state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor.

The Advocate filed the requests after Blumenthal and O'Connor closed the case but declined to divulge details. They stated only that they found no evidence that Lamont supporters were to blame.

Visitors who tried to access Lieberman's site at the time received a message calling on Lamont to "make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately."

The Lieberman-Lamont race captured national and international attention.

Blumenthal denied The Advocate's FOI request on the grounds it was a federal matter, and it took more than a year for the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice to respond.

The Lieberman campaign alleged it was the target of a "denial of service attack," which can involve bombarding a Web site with external communications to slow it or render it useless.

"Our Web site consultant assured us in the strongest terms possible that we had been attacked," former Lieberman campaign spokesman Dan Gerstein said in December 2006.

According to the FBI memo, the site crashed because Lieberman officials continually exceeded a configured limit of 100 e-mails per hour the night before the primary.

"The system administrator misinterpreted the root cause," the memo stated. "The system administrator finally declared the server was being attacked and the Lieberman campaign accused the Ned Lamont campaign. The news reported this on Aug. 8, 2006, causing additional Web traffic to visit the site.

"The additional Web traffic then overwhelmed the Web server. . . . Web traffic pattern analysis reports and Web logging that was available did not demonstrate traffic that was indicative of a denial of service attack."

Related links:

Officials probe Lieberman site crash

By Pat Eaton-Robb
updated 7:08 p.m. CT, Thurs., Aug. 10, 2006
URL: <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14293606/>

... The Lieberman campaign denied speculation among liberal Web pundits that the centrist Democrat's Web site had simply crashed because it used a low-budget Web host unable to handle the volume.

Web hosting can cost anywhere from a few dollars a month for a personal Web site to thousands of dollars for large corporate sites.

The campaign spends about $100 to $150 a month on Web hosting services with MyHostCamp, said Dan Geary, who administers the site for the campaign. Geary said that MyHostCamp, which is owned by a friend of Geary's, gave the site more than enough bandwidth - 200 gigabytes a month - to handle a crush of visitors.

He said an analysis of the server suggested an attack that focused on specific components of the Web site such as internal files and e-mail.

But [Richard M. Smith, an Internet security consultant in Brookline, Mass.] said that even if there's enough capacity, as important is the amount of security it has to keep intruders out.

"There are measures that can be implemented to protect against this type of attack," Smith said. "I think they went a little cheap here. This kind of looked like a low-budget hosting service."

Geary insists security was adequate, saying MyHostCamp's servers are monitored by a larger company, Server Matrix, and administered by a major Web hosting company, The Planet.

ToC

Common Ground:

Nvidia CEO goes on Intel rant

Posted by Brooke Crothers
URL: <http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9916414-7.html?tag=nl.e703>

Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang let rip with a diatribe against Intel at Nvidia's financial analyst day on Thursday. Huang cited frustration with recent Intel comments stating that discrete graphics cards will become "unnecessary."

Because Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, includes integrated-graphics silicon in most of its chipsets, the company has become the world's largest supplier of graphics chips. Its upcoming Nehalem processors will move the graphics from the chipset onto the same piece of silicon as the main processor. A design that is expected to result in vastly better performance.

This image of Intel as an unstoppable graphics juggernaut is what Huang takes issue with. What set him off initially was a comment from an Intel graphics and gaming technologist who said that consumers "probably won't need" discrete cards in the future. Nvidia's primary business is designing and supplying graphics chips for discrete graphics cards that go into PCs.

"We don't typically like to do this. It's just that we've been taking it and taking it and taking it. Every single frickin' day. Are you allowed to say that word? Every day all over the world. Enough is enough."

Huang was especially upset about Intel's claims of boosting integrated graphics performance in the future, saying Intel's claims paled against what Nvidia will achieve by that time.

"Claim after claim after claim. They're just false. They cross the line of fair play," he said. "Here's another one. Nvidia's gonna be dead. Because we're (Intel) sticking the graphics in the CPU and (Nvidia) will have no place to stick it," he said.

Huang also attacked Intel's marketing machine. "Just because they have this enormous marketing budget. Just because they have platforms everywhere in the world. It doesn't make it right. To take on smaller companies. It's just not right."

Huang also mounted an aggressive defense of gaming on the PC--one of the main reasons many consumers opt for Nvidia graphics chips. He began by claiming that Intel graphics can't run games. "We're not the only ones saying this. This is Tim Sweeney. One of the most important game developers in the entire world. 'Intel is incapable of running modern games. Intel's integrated graphics just don't work. I don't think they will ever work.' This wasn't said in 1994. This was said on March 10, 2008," Huang said.

"(It's) one of the most important apps. I play games. A lot more people play games today than before. It's a big industry. We happen to think games are important. Game developers are important. Game players are important. Online games, important. Retail games, important. First person shooters, important. Simulation games, important. I'm a perfectly grown adult. I'm not ashamed of them."

Intel also has plans to bring out a graphics engine code-named Larrabee that uses "many cores" to take on high-end engineering and scientific applications. And presumably games too.

When asked to comment, Intel spokesman Dan Snyder said, "Are you surprised? Nvidia's CEO has been very vocal about their feelings for several months now, so I don't think any of this comes as a surprise."

ToC

Vista Woes Aired in Internal Microsoft Email

by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#919/17-Mar-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9495>

Early in my mother's email career at Cornell University, someone accidentally sent a rather embarrassing personal reply to a mailing list she was on. She was quite taken with the situation, and since then, whenever a story of misdirected email is told, she comes out with one of her favorite sayings: "Never put anything into email that you wouldn't want to appear on the front page of the New York Times."

It turns out that you don't even have to make an addressing mistake for this to be true, as is amusingly related in Randall Stross's New York Times article "They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know." Stross relates quotes from users unhappy because their new PCs, advertised as being "Windows Vista Capable" via Microsoft stickers, can't actually run all versions of Vista and have numerous other problems with the latest version of Windows. But the catch is, these complaints aren't random Internet users moaning into the ether of a public discussion forum. Instead, they're written by Microsoft executives and are internal email discussions that have been subpoenaed as part of a class-action lawsuit complaining that those "Windows Vista Capable" stickers were misleading.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09digi.html>

At least one of the Microsoft executives had an opportunity to learn from my mother's favorite saying. Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft's senior vice president responsible for Windows, was a student at Cornell in the 1980s. And how do I know this? He was Tonya's dorm resident adviser during her freshman year. Yes, it's a small world.

Ironically, my mother is now Cornell University Archivist, and I expect that contributions to the Cornell Archives will increasingly include email and other digital communications, just as they have for many years included personal letters. So consider the implications of what you write in email not only ending up in the New York Times, but also being preserved for posterity if the recipient donates his or her email to a digital archive.

ToC

Why Do Simple Updates Require Big Downloads?

by Michael Ash
TidBITS#920/24-Mar-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9519>

[TidBITS Editor's note: I was foolhardy enough to ask Michael Ash, a software engineer at Rogue Amoeba, why the company kept pushing me 10 MB updates of Airfoil for every micro-release. After reading my comment on the company's blog entry about an update to their products, Mike sent me an expanded explanation that slightly boggled me. He agreed to adapt it into this article, which explains why we download so much. Consider this a look inside the sausage factory of software development. -Glenn]

<http://www.rogueamoeba.com/company/staff/>
<http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/2008/03/19/security-update-2008-002-compatibility-fix/>

It would be nice to push out just tiny update packages to our customers when we make minor updates to our software, but it's not practical. Because we've built the Sparkle software updater into our system, we've traded a lot of ease-of-use for our users and ourselves for the extra overhead. It works out in the end. There are three approaches for integral software updaters that we could have taken, and we chose the last of them.

<http://sparkle.andymatuschak.org/>

At the very bottom of the options, you have true binary "diff" updates, where only the changed portions of the changed files are included. This can be done by preprocessing the differences between the new version and the previous version, but this approach is unreliable and tough to pull off well. On Leopard, adding an unsigned program to the firewall list will alter the binary, causing problems for any such delta or difference-based updater. The same is true for any other modification or inadvertent corruption to the program, as the updater is now trying to apply changes to a file which doesn't match. An alternative approach is to add more server-side smarts so that the updater computes the differences on the fly using checksums - a kind of shorthand that uniquely identifies a stream of data - like the Unix utility rsync does. This ensures that you always end up with what we have. But more server smarts means more server resources and maintenance. At this point, carrying out updating using plain HTTP stops working and you have to use fancier protocols, which means more points of failure and more cases in which users need help.

As an intermediate level, you have file-granular updates, where the updater downloads only changed files. I've personally written two such systems at other companies, and they work decently well. The server gives the application the capability to download each file individually, something which can be done with a regular Web server, and a list of files and checksums. The app compares the checksums against what it has stored locally, downloads anything that has changed, and you end up with an updated program. The problem with this approach is that the largest files in an application are also those which are virtually guaranteed to change with any new build: the actual program binaries themselves. This intermediate approach saves you from having to re-download any resources which haven't changed from one release to the next, but the savings aren't as big as you might hope.

And then at the end you have whole-app updaters such as Sparkle, which is what we use (for more on Sparkle, see "Sparkle Improves Application Update Experience," 2007-08-20). The Mac developer community seems to have more or less standardized around Sparkle these days. I'm amazed at how often I open an application and find that it's using Sparkle to keep itself up to date. Aside from the programs where I implemented it myself, I don't recall the last time I saw an application using a more granular updater. Even Apple seems to publish monster updates for their applications. Apple does use more granular packages for sequential updates to the operating system itself, but in some situations, these seem to cause problems that are fixed by reinstalling using the latest Mac OS X combo updaters.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9122>

ToC

The Internet Organizes Itself: Here Comes Everybody

by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#920/24-Mar-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9512>

I started using the Internet in one of its early forms in the late 1980s, and full time in 1993 just as it started to commercialize. It was clear from the earliest days of my use that putting tens of thousands of people together in a medium that didn't restrict the way in which we connected would lead to emergent behavior. That is, there would be no way to predict the forms of communication or the new kinds of interaction that people would engage in with an unfettered ability to exchange information, record that information, and build upon it.

Clay Shirky has been thinking about these issues for over a decade as a journalist, consultant, and professor, currently at New York University. His book "Here Comes Everybody" (The Penguin Press, 2008) explains his views on the power of individuals to organize into groups without companies, hierarchies, or outside efforts. Without borders, with few limits, and with almost no social approbation, the Internet is disruptive in ways that are just now being understood. It's not just about MySpace, ecommerce, and Google; rather, students protesting in Belarus, anorexics self-un-helping each other, and ex-Jehovah's Witness members meeting are all part of the new mix.

<http://www.shirky.com/bio.html>
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594201536/?tag=tidbitselectro00>

In his book, Clay recounts many anecdotes about how groups of people behave in new ways, and he expands upon these stories with statistics, research, and observation. For instance, he notes that when the TV network that aired Buffy the Vampire Slayer decided to shut down a long-running Buffy discussion board, the community raised their own funds to build a system to continue their existence. Shirky notes in the book that the group had one request: "no major changes." The group didn't want to disrupt the way in which they had learned to communicate, using simple but effective tools for discussion.

I sat down with Clay on 14-Mar-08 to talk about the book for a short article that appeared in the Seattle Times, focused on the business side of his book. However, the Seattle Times allowed me to publish a podcast of our roughly 40-minute conversation.

<http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004286876_btshirky17.html>
<http://www.tidbits.com/podcasts/Clay_Shirky_Interview.m4a>

Shirky and I were at Yale together, and we both majored in art, Clay four years ahead of me. We knew each other in passing then from working on a play (he lighting, me sound), and were amused to discover our mutual interest in this topic several years ago. I tend to write more about the how-to and underpinnings; Clay about the bigger picture.

ToC

Extra! Extra! We Still Want News

On The Media, March 28, 2008
URL: <http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/03/28/05>
Audio: http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm032808e.mp3

The Project for Excellence in Journalism released its annual State of the News Media report and the state of the news is strong. There is an audience! Of course, the business model could use some work.

<http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2008/>

BOB GARFIELD: The Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its fifth annual State of the News Media Report. And the good news is the state of the news is strong. There is an audience. People still want news, old school, mainstream, shoe leather news - you know, like you get in the - newspaper.

The catch is, we want to find the news where we already live - on our Facebook pages and through links sent by friends over email. So while the state of news audiences is strong, the state of news business - eh - not so much.

Still, news seems to be better positioned than entertainment media. According to Project director Tom Rosenstiel, entertainment is awash with competitors while the nation's great news outlets still own the field.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Google has not really gone into the news-gathering business nor has AOL, or even Yahoo, which has toyed with it a little bit. What they're offering is wire copy from the AP and aggregating The New York Times and The Washington Post. And so, blogging, posting comments and all kinds of other activities are now part of my news consumption, but that discussion still seems to begin with my reading the news of what happened yesterday.

BOB GARFIELD: One of the more interesting observations in the report is about how news consumers interact with the news versus the way they did in the mainstream media bad old days. Now when reading online, people start at a story and dig into a link and maybe from there to another link, layer after layer downward or maybe wholly away from the original website to begin with.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: The general thinking now about the designing of a webpage is that the interior page of a website that has a particular story on it should devote 50 percent of the space on that site to telling me where I can go for other information.

Another way that we're seeing this is that even a year ago, a lot of traditional websites only contained the information that their people had produced. It was what they called the "walled garden." Even now, today, a year later, that's no longer the case.

I can drill down and get to The Washington Post from The New York Times, even though they're direct competitors, because the expectation is that I'm hunting the Internet for things and your website should be a waystation, a place that can help me get to where I want to go. If it were a dead-end street, a cul-de-sac, it would be less useful to me.

BOB GARFIELD: All right. Let's get to the economics of the newsgathering business. Let's start with display advertising, those delicious full-page ads from department stores and supermarkets that used to fill the paper and line the pockets of publishers.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Yes. There is no equivalent of that full-page ad on the Internet. The idea that the ad was a kind of content that would draw you to the newspaper doesn't really translate online.

I can go directly to Best Buy's website or Circuit City's website at three in the morning. I don't have to wait for the Sunday paper and all those wonderful color supplements which I might have spent 10 or 20 minutes with all by themselves before I even looked at the newspaper itself. And that's only part of the problem that newspapers are having with advertising.

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] The other part of the problem is the big cash cow of newspapers since time immemorial, and that's the classified ads. But now Craigslist, which is free, has rendered the classified business, you know, almost irrelevant.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: It's true. Newspapers used to derive about 40 percent of their revenue from classifieds. Roughly about half of that classified has now gone away. And there's all kinds of sectors that potentially the news business could have kept - let's say real estate advertising - but the realtors have created their own online classifieds for real estate in a given community. You go to Realtor.com and you can look those things up.

So those things have decoupled themselves in some ways from news. And that's proving to be devastating.

BOB GARFIELD: Isn't an even larger problem consumer behavior itself? They don't click on the banner ads. Given the option to close a full-page display ad, they will. Is advertising going to be the means of financing news content in the, you know, even intermediate future?

TOM ROSENSTIEL: There's no question that advertising in totality will not be enough. So what else might there be? It could be drilling down and actually making your retail purchases right there in the ads, that an ad becomes not an ad so much as the beginning of a retail transaction.

BOB GARFIELD: And what about micro-payments, the idea of paying a penny or two or, you know, twelve, for a story that I've clicked on?

TOM ROSENSTIEL: I think that the signs are that that is not likely to happen any time soon and maybe not at all, at least not that way. I think there's more potential for something along the lines of the cable model. In cable, I pay a subscription fee to CNN and to Fox News and to the Golf Channel and to the Food Channel every month, but I'm not aware of it. It's embedded in my cable access fee that I pay to the cable company.

There is a vested interest in the Verizons and the Comcasts of the world having a robust news business because it's such a draw for traffic.

BOB GARFIELD: Newspapers have been forced into cost cutting, retrenchment, closing bureaus, buying out veteran reporters and editors and depriving themselves of the very resources [LAUGHS] they're going to need to maintain an audience to get from here to whatever that intermediate future is.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: That's the great dilemma. It's something of a race against time. The company that emerges, I think, is the one that's going to say, we can't be prudent, we have to take a gamble. We're going to not cut this company and we're not going to trim our news staff and we're not going to reduce this product down that much because that ultimately is going to kill the golden goose.

BOB GARFIELD: Tom, thank you so much, as always.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: My pleasure, Bob. Thanks.

BOB GARFIELD: Tom Rosenstiel is the director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It has just released its fifth annual State of the American News Media Report.

ToC

Crying Foul

On The Media, March 28, 2008
URL: <http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/03/28/06>
Audio: <http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm032808f.mp3>

ESPN has grown into the biggest force in sports broadcasting. But John Ourand, a reporter with the Sports Business Journal, says other networks, the various sports leagues, and even advertisers believe that ESPN, in fact, does more harm than good.

<http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/58375>

BOB GARFIELD: When ESPN launched in 1979, it offered a patchwork of programs like Australian Rules Football and tape-delayed college sports. Now, ESPN has billion-dollar contracts with major sports leagues to air their games. In fact, it's the 800-pound gorilla in sports media.

But, success breeds critics, and ESPN has quite a few, ranging from league executives to ad agencies, to competing TV networks. Now they've compiled their complaints in a PowerPoint presentation which has found its way all over the place, including the desk of John Ourand, a reporter at The Sports Business Journal.

Ourand says the big takeaway of the presentation is that when sporting events move from broadcast networks to ESPN, their ratings take a dive.

JOHN OURAND: So the PowerPoint presentation is really a note to the leagues saying, why are you going into bed with ESPN; you should be with us because we provide more viewers and we get better ratings.

ESPN's side of the coin is that that's a - you know, almost a 1990s way of looking at things. And in 2008, if you're really just taking a look at a health of a league or a health of a network through a three-hour window, you're missing the point because if you do a deal with ESPN, you also get coverage in ESPN.com, you get coverage in ESPN, the Magazine, you can get on ESPN Radio.

BOB GARFIELD: Not to mention feeds of highlights of your games on ESPN Mobile.

JOHN OURAND: Exactly. NFL is a good case study of this. ESPN got Monday Night Football, and the ratings for Monday Night Football have been dropping. However, if you add up all the viewers across all their platforms across all their hours that they devote to NFL coverage, ESPN says it would dwarf what anybody else brings.

BOB GARFIELD: One interesting complaint is the swirling conflicts of interest between ESPN, the partner with a sports league - let's just say the NFL - and ESPN the news network, which covers the sport, warts and all.

JOHN OURAND: This is where ESPN finds itself in a no-win situation. They get constantly criticized by the blogs, by viewers, for going too soft on certain leagues because they're partners with them. And meanwhile, on the other side, they get consistent complaints from the leagues that they are being too hard on them.

Internally, ESPN has a very distinct line between the newsgathering operation and the actual people that manage their relationships with the leagues. Outside of ESPN it's harder to tell.

For instance, at CBS, 60 Minutes can do a hard-hitting piece on the NFL, and the NFL, they might not like it, but they know to complain to CBS News and not CBS Sports.

At ESPN, it's all just ESPN. And to add to the problem, ESPN has spent the past year or so poaching some of the best reporters in the business from various newspapers and magazines, and those reporters oftentimes report stories that the leagues just really don't like.

BOB GARFIELD: I actually want to talk about not ESPN but the leagues themselves. Some sports are actively trying to dictate the terms of coverage. Can you give me some examples?

JOHN OURAND: Well, online, for example, the NFL only allows each website to use 45 seconds of coverage. Major league baseball, I think they went up to like a minute and a half. This is the big issue.

Baseball in January is getting ready to launch its own network where they're going to be news gathering, they're going to be doing games. The NFL has its NFL Network. And by launching their own networks and by launching their own websites, these sports leagues are becoming media companies in their own rights.

And by becoming media companies and owning the content, they're being much more judicious about who can use that content. And we're really seeing a sea change in terms of how the community newspaper or the local newspaper and the local radio station is able to get in and cover these sports and these teams.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, this brings us tidily back to ESPN, because as the NFL and major league baseball develop these networks of their own, don't they ultimately jeopardize the ESPN, the 800-pound gorilla, [LAUGHS] and potentially make him irrelevant?

JOHN OURAND: Yes and no. ESPN pays the NFL 1.1 billion dollars a year. The NFL doesn't want to let go of that revenue. If they were to take the games that are on ESPN and put them on the NFL Network, there's no way they would be able to bring in enough in terms of ad revenue or license fees from cable operators that would equate to that 1.1 billion dollars that ESPN pays.

On the other side of the coin, you do have something like the Baseball Channel. There's a ton of baseball games out there, many more than the NFL. And I believe that you're going to see increasing amounts of baseball games move to the Major League Baseball Channel.

But ESPN is trying to guard against that happening, and they're doing deals, such as a deal that they did with the Arena Football League. They own part of the Arena Football League so they have product, if all these major sports goes away, that they own and they own alone.

BOB GARFIELD: And if a star in the Arena Football League - if there is such a thing -

JOHN OURAND: [LAUGHS]

BOB GARFIELD: - should get caught committing a felony, how tough do you expect the coverage to be on SportsCenter that night?

JOHN OURAND: I have zero doubt that they would be very tough on them in SportsCenter. And I know that the news division of ESPN causes a lot of headaches for the other side, the corporate part of ESPN.

BOB GARFIELD: Okay, John. Thank you so much.

JOHN OURAND: Great. Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: John Ourand is a reporter for The Sports Business Journal.

ToC

The Last Shall Be First

On The Media, April 11, 2008
URL: <http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/04/11/04>
Audio: <http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm041108d.mp3>

Few of the ambitious plans, promised by dozens of U.S. cities, for municipal wireless internet service have materialized. That is, until Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle turned on lightning-fast, free internet this week to hundreds of residents of San Francisco's public housing projects. He explains why it's the shape of things to come.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Just a couple of years ago, municipal wireless Internet access burst onto the scene full of promises. Like plumbing, or electricity, we were told that Wi-Fi would soon be a 21st-century urban expectation for everyone, everywhere. Wirelessness would foster entrepreneurship, a more educated and connected populace, and, perhaps most important, a bridge across the divide between those who can afford to join the Internet revolution and those who can't.

Now, nearly all the plans for wireless cities have fizzled, including San Francisco's. But this week, at least a small part of that dream was salvaged - by Brewster Kahle, director of the nonprofit Internet Archive. Welcome back, Brewster.

BREWSTER KAHLE: Thank you very much.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What you did was you turned on Internet access Tuesday, last Tuesday, to approximately 260 apartments in the Valencia Gardens public housing project. Does this mean that they got access which they never had before?

BREWSTER KAHLE: Yes. The whole housing development got access to the Internet and everybody got it at fifty times the speed that a DSL or cable user would get. So it's the envy of San Francisco. The fastest residential Internet access is to the least-served individuals in San Francisco.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: They're getting this super-fast service how?

BREWSTER KAHLE: The enabling technology - there's a couple of them. One is by having a housing system that has wires to the rooms, which is great. But San Francisco's also put in a municipal fiber, so the actual - the city itself owns a fiber that runs around to the schools, libraries, public housing, all through the city. And by our lighting that up, anybody that connects to that fiber is suddenly on the Internet at super-high speeds.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How much faster is it than the next-fastest Internet access?

BREWSTER KAHLE: Well, a DSL is usually 1 megabit or 2 megabits per second and a cable modem - oh, I've never seen them go over 5 or 6 megabits. This starts twenty times faster than that, at 100 megabits, and goes up to 1 gigabit, which is ten times faster than that. This would even be the envy in Japan and Korea.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Are the residents of Valencia Gardens who don't have computers out of luck?

BREWSTER KAHLE: For people that don't have computers inside their units, there's a computer center that they can go down and use shared machines, and also training. So it's really part of a full outreach program. Ours is just one piece of a set of nonprofits. Let's think of it as the rise of the dot-orgs.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Have any of the companies that provide competing Internet access services, phone companies or cable companies, complained about what you were doing?

BREWSTER KAHLE: No. In general, everybody's looking at it fairly closely. They haven't found a model that works. What people tried to do, it seemed, is make it so that a Wi-Fi signal would make it into everybody's living room. And that's fantastically expensive. So we have to come up with a different idea.

And the way that we did this, and the reason why we think it's going to work this time, is we're only going to do part of it. We're just going to do the backbone. And we can get the backbone built very inexpensively by just having a half-dozen, a dozen sites around San Francisco that are well-located access points.

Then, if people can get to those with their own equipment, or with, you know, ISPs going and saying, hey, I'm going to get your apartment building online on this system as well, that would be perfectly fine with us. There's enough money if you go and cut it that way that I'm hoping that the commercial guys don't try to shut us down.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what you're hoping is that you can set the standard for the city, the commercial companies can come in after you and supply that last inch to the people who can afford to buy it, and they'll leave your housing projects alone.

BREWSTER KAHLE: Yes.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And they'll be enjoying better service than the San Franciscans who log in on Nob Hill. What does it mean that, in this case, the last shall be first?

BREWSTER KAHLE: Isn't it the best? We could have done this for the rest of San Francisco, but the structures around our telecom infrastructure and cable infrastructure just haven't been really providing what it is the Internet really could be doing, which is much, much higher speed, much more interesting services - for everybody.

And we needed someplace to go and demonstrate it, and I'm very glad that it's actually in low-income housing.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Once you start serving the rich, is the competition going to suddenly start complaining or wanting to step in?

BREWSTER KAHLE: Oh absolutely. I think that we're kind of given a free ride at this moment by the entrenched players because we're doing city services. So that allows us to get this fiber and not to have that gunned down. If we can go and cut this up right, then I think everybody's looking for a much bigger pie to share.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You run an organization called the Internet Archive, and its name explains it. You are trying to archive the entire Internet, preserve every page. Is there any connection between that project and this one?

BREWSTER KAHLE: Absolutely. Our motto is "Universal access to all knowledge," and so we're trying to work with all knowledge by going and gathering the Worldwide Web, digitizing thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of books. We have movies, music.

But how can we go and get all of these materials that are coming from libraries, the web pages, to everybody? And the idea of having gigabit networks throughout our cities, throughout our rural areas, are going to be crucial towards having the great library we're all building together be accessible at all.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Brewster, thank you very much.

BREWSTER KAHLE: Thank you very much.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Brewster Kahle is the director and co-founder of the Internet Archive.

ToC

Rural Vermont Votes for Fiber-to-the-Home

Producer - Stevie Converse
Asst. Producer - Candace Clement
Media Minutes 4-4-2008
Text: <http://www.freepress.net/files/4-4-08 Transcript_0.doc>
Audio: <http://www.freepress.net/audio/download/38140/MM+4+4+08.mp3>

Last month at Town Meeting Day in Vermont, 25 rural towns joined in a regional effort to bring high-speed fiber optic Internet access to their homes. The organizers of the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network point to the votes - many of them unanimous - as further evidence that when it comes to broadband, rural towns have been - in one resident' s words - "at the tail end of the dog for a long time."

Project Manager Tim Nulty - who also got the city of Burlington's fiber network off the ground - says that the East Central Vermont Fiber Network is actually a grassroots movement that started with activists from 15 towns.

Tim Nulty: As they started rollin' down the road, other towns said, "Hey! We want to be part of that, too." And it grew to 25. And then we kind of closed the door and said, "Look, this is gonna be, you know, this is gonna be a bear - how big can it be?"

The project will be a community-owned, public resource - like any other public utility. It will be universal - if you' re a citizen of the town, you get it. It will offer the "triple play" of TV, Internet and voice. But it will also be open access - other companies will be able to pay a wholesale rate and compete to offer those same services. Best of all perhaps, it won't rely on taxpayer money - it's being financed privately through municipal leases - and it will eventually pay for itself.

Nulty says it will be built to last.

Tim Nulty: The fiber will be good for a hundred years, and all of the ancillary electronics will be relatively easy to upgrade through time.

Nulty understands the telecom business. He was the chief economist for the Senate and House Commerce Committees in the 1970s and 1980s, before going to work for the World Bank. And the fiber project he built up in Burlington is already attracting thousands of subscribers and seeing positive cash flow.

Tim Nulty: It doesn' t make the kind of return that interests Wall St. investment bankers, let alone venture capitalists. But it' s a perfectly good, profitable public utility from a town perspective. You know, 10 percent rate of return, 8 percent rate of return on total investment is an interesting number.

For more information about the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network, go to ecfiber.net

Related links:

An Urgent Call: Give Us Broadband, Vermont Towns Say
- <http://freepress.net/news/31286>

Rural towns bundling a blueprint for broadband
- <http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080124/NEWS02/801240322/1007>

Vermont Fiber Network for Rural Areas
- <http://blandinonbroadband.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/vermont-fiber-network-for-rural-areas/>

East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network
- <http://www.ecfiber.net/>

Tim Nulty & Bill Shuttleworth on the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network
- <http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/79638/>

ECFiber Has Support of Selectboards in 24 Vermont Towns
- <http://www.ecfiber.net/index.php?sectionID=322&amp;pageID=452>

ToC

How to Fix Tech Policy

On The Media, April 11, 2008
URL: <http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/04/11/03>
Audio: http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm041108c.mp3

BOB GARFIELD: Come January, the next president of the United States will have a desk full of issues, including some of ours - that is, media issues. Tim Wu is a professor of law at Columbia University and co-author of the book "Who Controls the Internet?". He recently wrote a piece for Slate, laying out what should be the next president's technology priorities, including improving high-speed broadband Internet access, sorting out the FCC and using technology to reduce government secrecy.

<http://www.slate.com/id/2187740/pagenum/all/#page_start>

The candidates already are pondering some of these things. John McCain was quoted as saying, "When you control the pipe, you should be able to get profit from your investment." Not exactly what net neutrality activists want to hear.

On the issue of broadband, a Hillary Clinton campaign press release states that she will, quote, "provide tax incentives to encourage broadband development in underserved areas." That sounds promising. And Barack Obama, who, by the way, is being advised by Tim Wu, says he will, quote, "set a goal of ensuring that every American has broadband access no matter where you live, no matter how much money you have or don't have."

TIM WU: Right now, no one's fully in charge of anything. Congress kind of thinks it's a little bit to do with them, because it's a form of infrastructure. The White House is in charge of science policy. The FCC is in charge of communications.

But really, there's no single entity who's making sure that America leads in this area. And the broadband czar would just be the single person whose job it was to make America the top broadband country in the world.

BOB GARFIELD: What keeps it from being that right now?

TIM WU: There's a bunch of things. There's a mixture of the private industry not necessarily wanting to invest. There's no clear regulatory structure as to what happens once you invest. There's very little government funding for investments. We fund all kinds of infrastructure, like roads and swimming pools, but almost nothing for the Internet. And so it's kind of caught in some morass of Washington confusion.

BOB GARFIELD: According to a World Economic Forum Report that was just released on Wednesday, the U.S. ranks fourth in the world in Internet infrastructure. Are we really lagging so far behind?

TIM WU: Depending on what listings you believe, America is either, you know, fourth or seventeenth or twenty-something-th in the world. The point is, usually the United States has led the world in communications infrastructure, and right now everyone's complaint is that things just are not happening because there's a big knot in the world of broadband.

BOB GARFIELD: Why is broadband so important?

TIM WU: Broadband policy is becoming all of media policy and all of communications policy. In an age where almost every form of entertainment and news that we think about today is carried over a broadband connection-

BOB GARFIELD: Not to mention commerce and politics.

TIM WU: Right - commerce, politics - these are all becoming broadband policy. How the broadband Internet is regulated and what kind of capacity it has in the first place is now going to become the obsession of Hollywood, of Washington, New York, the whole country, as we discover what 21st century media policy looks like.

BOB GARFIELD: Concerning the FCC, you suggest completely rethinking how these commissioners are named. What is the problem, as you see it, with the FCC such as it's constituted now?

TIM WU: You know, America has the best tech industries in the world, and we sort of choose among a bunch of D.C. insiders as to who's going to be basically the coach of that team. I said in the piece it's a bit like choosing coaches for the Olympic team from Nike's lawyers.

BOB GARFIELD: Foxes guarding the henhouse?

TIM WU: You know, it is true that many people come in with industry loyalty. When you look at the breadth of talent in this country in technology and technology policy, we're picking from a very strange and small pool right now.

BOB GARFIELD: You suggest that the next administration should ensure greater governmental transparency using technology. Now, assuming the new president, you know, wants the government to be more transparent than the present one, what are the ways that technology can help advance that goal?

TIM WU: You know, this administration, when it came to opaqueness, was somewhere between Brezhnev and Dracula.

[BOB LAUGHS]

And, you know, when people talk about real transparency, every candidate talks about it. What that really means is information technology. It means being able to search for things - to, for example, find where and what Congressional hearing, who said what, in a way that doesn't require hundreds or thousands of dollars.

We have seen huge reductions in the price of getting information in a lot of areas, thanks to search engines and other technologies. And the question is how well can those technologies be used for government?

This administration has just had the policy that everything is secret, and, you know, it's created a giant wall. And I think the only thing that can break down that wall is better information technology.

BOB GARFIELD: Now, considering you wrote a book called Who Controls the Internet? - I'm kind of surprised you really didn't get into issues like net neutrality and privacy and security in your Slate piece. Do you have any recommendations for the next president on those issues?

TIM WU: The point of the Slate piece was to focus quickly on what the president can do to make things better as soon as possible. But over the long term, I think it's extremely important that the president and the FCC and Congress stay on top of net neutrality, reverse the horrendous infringements on American privacy that were the trademark of the last administration and just start to think seriously about what privacy means in this age.

BOB GARFIELD: Now, I know in the Slate piece you were advising whoever the next president might be, but you have a clear choice. You're an advisor to Barack Obama. Is there some politicking going on here?

TIM WU: I think these are big questions for everyone. And these are just what I think should be done, and they don't reflect the views of the Obama campaign.

BOB GARFIELD: Well Tim, once again, thank you so much for joining us.

TIM WU: It's always a pleasure.

BOB GARFIELD: Tim Wu is a professor of a law at Columbia University and co-author of Who Controls the Internet?

ToC

BroadbandCensus.com Helps Measure Broadband Availability, Speeds and Prices

Producer - Stevie Converse
Asst. Producer - Candace Clement
Media Minutes 4-11-2008
Text: <http://www.freepress.net/files/MM 4-11-2008 TRANSCRIPT.doc>
Audio: <http://www.freepress.net/audio/download/38337/MM+04+11+08.mp3>

Everybody wants faster, cheaper Internet. But the phone and cable companies that dominate 99 percent of residential Internet access often refuse to make public where they actually offer service or what speeds are really available.

That's why Drew Clark founded BroadbandCensus.com.

Drew Clark: When you go to BroadbandCensus.com and you type in your zip code, you' ll see a number about how many providers the FCC says reach your zip code. And, that' s not a complete list, because the FCC very much overcounts carriers.

Once you put in your information about your broadband provider, you can test your broadband speed.

Drew Clark: You can take our speed test and find out whether or not the carriers are living up to the promises they' re making in terms of speeds for the Internet that they claim to sell you.

A long-time journalist on the telecommunications beat, Clark has been interested in broadband for many years. He' s been trying to collect broadband, but the providers don' t want the public - and their competitors or federal regulators to know exactly where their customers are, or are not.

Drew Clark: I' ve been trying to get this data out of the Federal Communications Commission very actively, and I' ve filed Freedom of Information Act requests. And when those weren' t responded to, actually had to bring a lawsuit against the FCC. Even so, they still haven' t provided the data of the names of the providers. So this BroadbandCensus.com is an effort to go around them.

Clark says that there' s a lot of skepticism out there about the numbers and the statistics that the FCC has been collecting. The goal of the Broadband Census is to take what he calls a crowdsourcing approach to gathering broadband data that will help consumers choose broadband providers and pressure lawmakers for better broadband service.

Drew Clark: I sit down on the couch with my four-year-old daughter who loves Google Earth, and we look at different parts of the globe, we spin the Earth around - I mean this is what broadband enables. But I' m always being constrained by the capacity of my broadband provider. And I think that, while competition can get us part of the way there, we' re not able to have a market for competition if people - consumers like me and you - don' t have access to data about whether they' re providing what they claim they' re providing.

To take the Broadband Census and find out about your broadband speeds, go to broadbandcensus.com.

Related link:

Broadband Census
- <http://broadbandcensus.com/>

ToC

The PC Section:

WinInfo Short Takes

Paul Thurrott
URL: <http://www.wininformant.com/>

Microsoft Extends Life of XP Home for Ultra-Portable, Ultra-Low-Cost PCs

While Microsoft insists that this June's expiration date for retail versions of Windows XP is writ in stone, the company did announce this week that it will extend the shelf life of one XP version through at least mid-2010. The company will continue licensing Windows XP Home Edition only for use on a new category of PCs called ultra-low-cost PCs, or ULCPCs, which include such things as the Asus Eee PC and Intel Classmate, both of which sell for under $300. This availability will extend until either June 30, 2010, or one year after the next version of Windows (Windows 7) ships, which comes later. (I'm betting on the latter, and by a wide margin.) The reason is simple: ULCPCs run on ultra-low-performance processors that simply aren't suited for Windows Vista. But XP, whose design dates back almost a decade, is a perfect fit for these underpowered devices.

64-Bit Photoshop Coming, Adobe Says

Adobe this week revealed that it will soon a native 64-bit version of its flagship Photoshop software. But in a controversial if logical move, that 64-bit version of Photoshop will ship only on Windows, and not on Mac OS X. The reason? Apparently, Adobe can't get the technical help it needs from Apple, which I'd imagine is far too busy working on future iPod and iPhone products to worry about little things like helping one of the top Mac developers. Adobe says the 64-bit version of Photoshop will have access to far more memory and offer much better performance. You know, on Windows. Because they aren't doing it on the Mac.

Forrester: Office 2007 Demand Stronger than Expected

I guess there's life in desktop software yet. While Windows Vista is widely (if incorrectly) seen as not selling particularly well, it's Office stable mate, Office 2007, is selling much better than expected. Analysts at Forrester--and you know how much I love those guys--reported this week that corporate adoption of Office 2007 is "much healthier" than they had predicted. I guess that goes to show you: Anyone can make a prediction. But the truth is generally far more interesting.

Microsoft Better at Fixing Vulnerabilities than Apple

Apple's libelous "Switcher" commercials may finally be coming back to haunt the company: Contrary to Apple's assertions in the ads, Microsoft actually fixes security vulnerabilities much more quickly than does Apple, meaning that users of Windows are, in fact, better protected by their vendor than are Mac OS X users. Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology independently examined six years of data and found that 658 high- and medium-risk vulnerabilities affected Microsoft products during the time period, compared to 738 for Apple products. Then they looked at how well the companies did fixing these bugs. The conclusion? "The number of unpatched vulnerabilities are higher at Apple," a researcher involved in the study says. "Apple were just surprised or not as ready or not as attentive. It looks like Microsoft had good relationships earlier with the security community. Based on our findings, this is hurting [Apple]."

Microsoft Ships Public Beta of Microsoft Search 4.0

This one is sort of hard to categorize, but Microsoft this week also shipped a public beta of Microsoft Search 4.0, which is an updated beta version of the next version of Windows desktop search. It's basically an updated version of the Instant Search feature in Windows Vista, and indeed on that platform it doesn't look any different than what's in that OS by default, though there are some improvements under the hood. On other Windows versions (versions are available for Windows XP, Vista, 2003, 2008, and Home Server), the upgrade is more impressive, and more akin to what Microsoft used to ship as Windows Desktop Search (WDS), previously known as MSN Desktop Search. The big deal here is performance: Even on Vista, search performance is improved by 33 percent, Microsoft says. One final note: Contrary to other reports, Microsoft Search 4.0 was never codenamed "Casino." That's a separate if related research project; Microsoft Search 4.0 has much more modest goals. More info and the download are available on the Microsoft Web site.

<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940157>

Microsoft Buys Security Company

Microsoft this week announced that it would purchase a security company called Komoku, which is most famous for developing rootkit protection products. For the uninitiated, rootkits are hacker tools that malicious users use to gain access to and control other users' PCs. Thus a rootkit detection product maker might be seen as a decent investment, given the fact that Windows is hacked far more than any other platform. Microsoft says it will add Komoku's technology to its ForeFront and OneCare security products, which are aimed at the enterprise and consumer markets, respectively. Interestingly, Komoku's client list is pretty prestigious: they count the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) among those which have purchased its products.

ToC

Windows Vista SP1 Update

Posted by Chris Flores on Monday, April 07, 2008
URL: <http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/04/07/windows-vista-sp1-update.aspx>

I have a quick update for you about Windows Vista SP1. The Microsoft Update Blog contains some important information about updates to the SP1 prerequisite distribution plan. Starting tomorrow, we are resuming the automatic update and installation of the Servicing Stack Update.

In mid-April, we will begin distributing SP1 (in the first 5 languages) using the Automatic Update system. We have a lot of Windows users, so not everyone will get it on the same day. In fact, it will go to a small percentage of Windows Vista users each day. The exact timing of when you will receive it depends on when your PC is ready for Windows Vista SP1.

In addition to starting the automatic delivery of the first 5 languages, I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you that also we're on track for the initial release of SP1 in the remaining languages in mid-April.

ToC

Microsoft to add the Genuine Advantage "nag" to Office

Posted by Mary Jo Foley
URL: <http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1322>

Microsoft is set to begin a pilot of a new Genuine Advantage anti-piracy mechanism for Office that will add a "nag-like" feature, akin to what is now part of Windows Vista, to Office.

Office already currently includes an Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) validation mechanism (for Office XP and Office 2007), but Microsoft doesn't do a whole lot to "punish" those it deems to be running non-Genuine versions of Office. However, as part of a new OGA notifications pilot program -- which Microsoft is launching in Chile, Italy, Spain and Turkey, according to an April 8 announcement buried in a Q&A on Microsoft's Web site -- Microsoft is set to turn up the unpleasantness a notch.

I asked Microsoft to explain what will happen in the new pilot. According to Cori Hartje, Director Genuine Software Initiative:

"Today, in current OGA validation process, there is no visual & persistent representation within the experience of being a non-genuine Office user. The outcome for being non-genuine today is that the user does not gain access to Office templates and other downloads. In the pilot the non-genuine copy of Office will also have an icon on the toolbar or ribbon indicating that it is non-genuine.

"Specifically, users of non-genuine Office in the pilot areas will receive a pop-up dialog box alerting them their Microsoft Office software is not genuine. The customer will receive this dialog box the first time they open an Office application each day, and again two hours later for a period of 30 days. They will also receive information on how to learn more about the issue, and how to acquire genuine Microsoft Office. After receiving these dialog box notifications for 30 days, Office applications will be marked with a visual reminder that the copy of Office is not genuine. Both the dialog box and/or the visual reminder will disappear once the customer gets genuine Office and/or uninstalls the non-genuine Office products. None of the visual cues presented will impair a customer from accessing their data or preparing documents."

In other words, the new OGA nagging won't be like the old Windows kill switch. Instead it will be the kinder and gentler nagging which Microsoft adopted with Vista Service Pack (SP) 1.

There's no exact timeframe I can find for how long the pilot will last or when Microsoft will broaden it to other countries. Microsoft says it will be delivering the new OGA notification mechanism via a "voluntary Microsoft update." More fine print on the new OGA notification pilot:

"There will be no personal data collected or shared with Microsoft as customers implement the OGA notifications update. These notifications are designed to help alert customers who have acquired and are using non-genuine Office. Once notified, customers can take action to reduce the risk of running counterfeit software by getting genuine Office through the online purchase programs or by going to a local authorized Microsoft reseller."

Bottom line: Get ready for more nagging if you're either an Office pirate or deemed to be one by Microsoft.

ToC

Microsoft Fixes Vista SP1 Prerequisite

Paul Thurrott
URL: <http://windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/article/articleid/98810/microsoft-fixes-vista-sp1-prerequisite.html>

Microsoft today resumed the automatic distribution of a Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) prerequisite, called the Servicing Stack Update (SSU), after releasing a fix for the problem. The resumption of this download means that millions of additional Windows Vista owners will begin receiving Vista SP1 automatically via Windows Update in the days ahead.

"This update helps to ensure a smooth install of the SSU by working to prevent the system from rebooting during the SP1 SSU installation, an issue that a small number of customers experienced when they first issued the SSU in February," a Microsoft representative said.

After these customers complained of constant reboots while trying to install the SSU, Microsoft suspended automatic distribution of the file. Microsoft investigated the cause and then isolated and fixed the problem in a separate update. So the SSU and this separate update are now available via Windows Update.

Microsoft says that anyone who successfully downloaded and installed the SSU previously doesn't need a patch. The problem, it seems, was with the SSU installer code and not with the SSU itself. So as part of the prerequisite installation process it will now look for the fix first. (Think of the fix as a prerequisite for the prerequisite, I guess.)

"These two updates should now install seamlessly through Windows Update, in the proper order, so those of you with WU set to 'install updates automatically' who haven't already installed the SSU don't have to take any further action," a blog post from the Microsoft Update team reads. "For those using the standalone download of SP1, the issues we encountered do not affect that method of installing at all."

In a separate blog post, Microsoft director Chris Flores said the company was on track to begin initial release of SP1 in all supported languages by mid-April. This schedule was originally announced in February.

ToC

Customer Satisfaction with Vista

By James Senior, Microsoft
URL: <http://blogs.technet.com/james/archive/2008/04/02/customer-satisfaction-with-vista.aspx>

Every year we do customer satisfaction studies to see how the market feels about Microsoft and its products and services. One of the things we ask them about is Windows Vista and there are some interesting results to take note of.

When we asked IT Pros about their satisfaction with Vista, scores were low with those who were not using the product yet high with those who were using the product.

Interesting. There's no denying that Vista has had a difficult time in the press over the last year but I think much of this negative coverage has left a hangover with customer perception. Many of the reasons for the negative press, things like application compatibility and device driver coverage are things of the past. The research done in the survey supports this theory.

It also supports what I find talking to customers out there in the field - those who have a negative perception either tried Vista in the early days and had problems or haven't actually tried it and have based their upgrade policy based on what they hear or read in the press. To those people, I challenge them to have another look.

The ones who are actually using it are now having positive experiences! I presented to customers last week and asked them who was using Vista - all their hands went up. "Great", I thought. Then, the big question - "who's had a good experience with Vista so far" - some hands went down, but some remained up. To those who put their hands down I asked, "Are these recent bad experiences?" and people were shaking their heads.

So more hangovers from the first year of Vista there then.

One of the other things I often get questions about is performance. People often say to me that XP out performs Vista on their new machine. Well that should be no surprise really. Guess what, if you run Windows 2000 on that machine - it will be extremely quick! Quicker still will be Windows 95 and Windows 3.11 will be faster still. So would you install Windows 3.11 on your machine? No of course not, because although performance is great, you sacrifice security and functionality. Windows XP will continue to run faster on newer and faster hardware - it's no surprise - but so will Windows Vista.

After you get over this fact then you can have a discussion about what the security and functionality benefits of Vista are over XP. You want me to talk about them here? You should read my blog more often! :-)

ToC

NVIDIA Drivers Caused Lion's Share of Early Vista Crashes

By Shane McGlaun
URL: <http://www.dailytech.com/NVIDIA+Drivers+Caused+Lions+Share+of+Early+Vista+Crashes/article11261.htm>

When Windows Vista first hit market, some driver issues were to be expected as hardware manufacturers moved existing components to the new OS from Windows XP. As is natural for new items, the enthusiast community was among the first to embrace the new operating system.

The incompatibilities were part due to Vista incorporating Microsoft's DirectX 10 promising better graphics and physics in PC games. At the time, the high-end G80 graphics cards were some of the most popular graphics cards on the market including the NVIDIA 8800 GTS, GTX, and Ultra.

NVIDIA had driver problems with of Vista and DirectX 10 from the get go and delayed their first driver from a December 2006 release to a January 2007 release. Even once the driver hit market, there were wide spread reports of crashes because of NVIDIA drivers.

The problem with reports of buggy drivers is that no one can really tell if the drivers are actually at fault, or if the computer experiencing the driver crash has some other underlying problem contributing to the crash.

As part of the ongoing Vista Capable class action lawsuit, Microsoft released data on exactly what drivers caused the bulk of logged Windows Vista crashes. The number one culprit of Vista crashes related to driver failure was NVIDIA at 28.8%. Microsoft only broke logged crashes out for a few companies including NVIDIA, Intel (8.8%) and ATI (9.3%). Microsoft's data shows that it was responsible for 17.9% of logged crashes.

The main early adopters of Vista were PC enthusiasts; the hardware of choice for PC enthusiasts at the time was NVIDIA G80 GPUs so it would be natural that more crashes would be logged as caused by a NVIDIA driver. Ars Technica also points out that the Microsoft data doesn't specify if the crashes logged are from multiple machines or a group of particularly error prone computers experiencing multiple crashes.

DailyTech reported on the original suit being filed in April 2007. The suit alleged that Microsoft knowingly deceived customers with Windows Vista. The suit was given class action status in February 2008.

ToC

[Editor's Note: My thanks to Kevin Hisel for submitting all the articles above in this section of the newsletter.]

ToC

91 Utilities to Supercharge Windows

By Eric Griffith
Article Date: 03.07.08
URL: <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2279207,00.asp>

We're going back to the basics: Our 2008 collection of utility software is all about tweaking, manipulating, and totally dominating the looks and functionality of Windows XP and Vista. These 91 tools provide all the help you need to control Windows. All the products work with XP and Vista unless indicated.


Hall of Fame


Some programs make it into our utility extravaganza year after year. These are the top five.

IrfanView
<http://www.irfanview.com> | Free
This graphics viewer (pronounced ear-fan-view) lets you see any image file and most digital videos with just one right click. It's that simple. You can also use this power viewer to convert files to other formats and do some quick editing and annotation.

Norton PartitionMagic 8.0
<http://www.symantec.com> | $69.95
The gold standard in disk partitioning does it all in XP: moves partitions, combines them, creates them, converts their file systems, and deletes existing partitions. The BootMagic utility is there to help if you use multiple OSs on the partitions.

RoboForm Pro
<http://www.roboform.com> | $29.95
Perhaps nothing has filled out as many forms on the Web as RoboForm. Enter your information once and RoboForm fills in all the forms you encounter. It also generates and enters strong passwords on secure sites, so you don't even have to remember them.

SnagIt
<http://www.techsmith.com> | $39.95
We hope the average person doesn't take as many screen grabs as a computer magazine editor, but for those who do, there's really only one perfect tool. SnagIt can capture any item on screen, from icons on up, and then allows last-minute edits before saving.

Tweak UI
<http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx> | Free
Microsoft never officially supported its ultimate UI tweaker for XP, but the utility quickly became indispensable and created the trend of other tools offering multiple UI tweaks under a single interface.


File Organization


File Renamer
<http://www.filerenamer.net> | $19.95
Windows can handle some basic file renaming in batches, but not with the power and simplicity of this tool, which changes extensions and can undo renames. Use the preview function to see the new name before giving the okay.

xplorer^2
<http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm> | Free or $29.95 for Pro
Remember Norton Commander and its two-pane view? It seems that xplorer2 does, bringing that dual-pane paradigm back-with tabs-to replace Windows Explorer completely. You can even bookmark folders and later access them remotely via FTP.

DoubleKiller
<http://www.bigbangenterprises.de/en/doublekiller> | Free or $19.95 for Pro
As the name implies, this utility does one thing and does it well: It locates duplicate files on your computer and kills one, leaving you with just a single file.

PCMag Utility: File Utility Pack
<http://go.pcmag.com/fileutilitypack> | $7.97 alone or included in $19.97 annual subscription
This two-pack includes MultiRen for strong batch file-renaming in Windows Explorer and FileGrab to create lists of files in a folder that you can then paste into spreadsheets or other documents.

ExplorerXP
<http://www.explorerxp.com> | Free, XP only
Another replacement for Windows Explorer, with organizational tabs. This small program nicely displays the total size of folders, not just files.

Total Commander
<http://ghisler.com> | $34
This dual-pane tool mimics the look of a FTP client (it has FTP built in) while comparing files and folders?including archives.

FreeCommander
<http://www.freecommander.com> | Free
Put this utility on a USB key?even a floppy disk if you can find one?and take it with you to control files on any PC.


Appearance


WindowBlinds 6
<http://www.stardock.com> | $19.95
Putting new skins on Windows completely changes its looks?from the wallpaper to the menus?without changing how it works. WindowBlinds claims to improve performance over XP's and Vista's own UI, enhancing things like transparency of windows and menus. Artists, design your own customized skins.

QTTabBar
<http://qttabbar.wikidot.com> | Free
Want to stick with Windows Explorer? It's your choice, but you can still enjoy an advanced, tabbed interface. After installing this utility, go to Explorer, right-click the toolbar, and check "QTTabBar," then check the ButtonBar to get extra control over new tabs.

Taskbar Shuffle 2.2
<http://www.freeweb.com/nerdcave/taskbarshuffle.htm> | Free
Don't let the Windows taskbar control you. Move the buttons for open applications anywhere you want on the taskbar, or group open documents together. It works with Windows versions all the way back to Windows 95.

Vista Transformation Pack
<http://www.windowsxlive.net> | Free
Are you jealous of friends who get to compute all day in good-looking Vista while you toil in ancient XP? This pack does all it can to make sure the older OS gets the visual perks of the newer. From the boot screen to the smart icons, even the control panels are Vista-ized.

Pitaschio
<http://www.windowsxlive.net> | Free
Make Windows behave in ways that match your style of working. This background utility minimizes windows to the tray, snaps them together as you drag, and disables specific keys (like the Windows key). It even provides stats on how much you use your keyboard.

ResizeEnable
<http://www.digitallis.co.uk/pc/downloads.html> | Free
Simple and to the point: Sometimes windows pop up that can't be resized, but you want to resize them anyway. This tiny utility makes sure that all windows you encounter can be elongated as needed.

Cleandesk Organizer
<http://www.desktopminds.com> | $12
If you tend to place a lot of items on your desktop, this organizer can help clean up the digital mess. Create rules for how the organizer should treat different kinds of data ("Copy JPEG images to My Pictures," for example) and let it do the heavy lifting.


Compression/Encryption


TrueCrypt
<http://www.truecrypt.org> | Free
Want to encrypt an entire drive, even a thumb drive? TrueCrypt will do it in real time, even as you add files. A wizard assists in creation of a virtual encrypted volume, at the size of the file you want to encrypt or occupying a whole disk partition.

7-Zip
<http://7-zip.org> | Free
This open-source compression manager handles RAR and CAB files and promises better compression with ZIP archives than competitors offer. It even supports a new archive format called 7z, which is, as you'd expect, 7-Zip's default format.

SecureZIP for Desktop
<http://www.pkware.com> | $29.95
This /PC Magazine/ Editors' Choice is all about the ZIP format because it's from the people who created ZIP. It does everything an archive manager should, such as integrating with Outlook to make sending and receiving compressed files a snap.


File Transfer


TeraCopy
<http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php> | Free, $19.95 for Pro version
Copying or moving a file in Windows from one folder to another doesn't have to be sloooow. TeraCopy integrates directly into Windows Explorer and moves files asynchronously to speed things up. It can pause and resume transfers. If something goes wrong, TeraCopy doesn't crash, it keeps trying.

FileZilla
<http://filezilla-project.org> | Free
This no-cost FTP client from Mozilla (it's a sister to Firefox) looks like an old-school Windows FTP tool but works on multiple operating systems and languages. It supports FTP over SSL (FTPS) and SSH (SFTP).

RightLoad
<http://rightload.org> | Free
Don't use a complicated FTP client just to upload the occasional file. RightLoad lets you right-click files and send them to predetermined folders on your FTP site. After files upload, you'll get a list of links showing where to find the files. Great for bloggers who like to upload lots of images.

µTorrent
<http://www.utorrent.com> | Free
Whether you're a BitTorrent power user or just do the occasional download, µTorrent is a small and speedy assistant. It takes up only 220K, yet will download multiple, multigigabyte files, showing you the speeds on the fly, the number of download peers per file, and more.


Disk Utilities


Defraggler
<http://www.defraggler.com> | Free
This won't clear the Fraggles out of the rock, but it does defragment a hard disk?or, in a nice twist, individual files. If you're not sure what needs defragging, it'll provide a list of files that need it. The single EXE file can run from a thumb drive.

SystemRescueCD
<http://www.sysresccd.org> | Free
How does a full Linux system on a bootable CD-ROM help Windows users? By providing access to all sorts of systems and drives (even network drives) when your computer won't start. It may provide the best (and only) access you can get after a fatal disk catastrophe.

GParted-LiveCD
<http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org> | Free
Not just another Linux system for a bootable CD, the GParted-LiveCD tool is for setting up disk partitions as fast and painlessly as possible. It supports file systems from FAT32 to NTFS and will graphically reorganize the partitions on your drive as you desire.

PCMag Utility: Defrag-A-File 2
<http://go.pcmag.com/defragafile2> | $7.97 alone or included in $19.97 annual subscription
Defrag a drive or a file. Version 2 is faster than the original utility and has an interface for Windows Explorer, so you can analyze files individually before you make changes. You can also schedule it to defrag a drive while you're away.


Backup


SyncBackSE
<http://www.2brightsparks.com> | $30
Want a simple way to back up or synchronize files across drives? SyncBackSE is pretty traditional. Specify folders and create filters for exceptions, and with a single click (or even without a click, if you preschedule) all files are placed where you want. Versioning keeps multiple copies so you can roll back as needed.

BeInSync
<http://www.beinsync.com> | $59.95 annual subscription or $149.95 lifetime use
Make sure your files are available on every computer you use, at work, home, or anywhere, without having to move a muscle. BeInSync will also allow you remote access to files when you're not at your own computer, and back up your data using Amazon's S3 online storage.

DriverMax
<http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax> | Free
Use DriverMax to back up your hardware drivers. Then, after a fresh Windows install, DriverMax puts all the drivers back in less than 10 minutes. That's much better than reinstalling each printer, scanner, network adapter, and camera individually.

ShadowProtect Desktop 3.1
See our First Looks review.

PCMag Utility: InstaBack2
<http://go.pcmag.com/instaback2> | $7.97 alone or included in $19.97 annual subscription
One of the most popular PCMag.com downloads, InstaBack2 handles backup jobs as you specify: in real time on frequently used folders (comparing files so you back up only the latest), or as scheduled for others. Restoration of backed-up files is also a breeze.


System Monitors


WinDirStat
<http://windirstat.info> | Free
Short for Windows Directory Statistics, this program presents your hard drive's directory in multiple views, some resembling Windows Explorer and others looking like nothing you've ever seen?files represented by colorful 3D boxes, for example. You'll soon know what's taking up space.

Xinorbis
<http://freshney.org/xinorbis> | Free
Take a hard look at every file stored on your hard disk with Xinorbis. It provides a pie chart of what you've got, how big files are getting, even which files you access most. You can analyze one folder at a time or analyze a couple to compare their usage.

ProcessScanner
<http://www.processlibrary.com/processscan> | Free
By matching this Web-based system scanner with an ever-growing online database of processes running under Windows, Uniblue provides a massive amount of data about what's happening above and below the surface of Windows.

PCMag Utility: DiskAction 2
<http://go.pcmag.com/diskaction2> | $7.97 alone or included in $19.97 annual subscription
Want to know more about the processes running on your system? Disk-Action knows what files a process is accessing and how much data it's reading and writing. Use it to figure out why the hard drive starts spinning even when you're doing nothing.

PCMag Utility: TaskPower 3
<http://go.pcmag.com/taskpower3> | $7.97 alone or included in $19.97 annual subscription
Sometimes you need to know if a process poses a threat. This latest version of TaskPower teams with Bit9 to check a regularly updated database for malicious files. TaskPower is smart enough to break processes into applications and tasks running in the background. And of course, it provides the power to kill both as you see fit.

Runscanner
<http://www.runscanner.net> | Free
Whether you consider yourself a beginner or expert with Windows, this utility has you covered. It will scan a PC and generate a report about every program running (with your blessing or not), hardware drivers, and more. Compare it with previous scans to see what's different, or submit the data on select help forums to get expert advice.

System Information for Windows (SIW)
<http://www.gtopala.com> | Free
SIW's tagline of "everything you want to know about your PC" isn't wrong. This tool gathers and displays data on your software, hardware, network, even CPU and RAM usage. You don't even need to install SIW; it will run from a USB key. The data it collects can be used in various reports. It's a boon for IT managers.


Settings Tweakers


TweakVI
<http://www.totalidea.com> | Free, $34.99 Premium for one year with 8 plug-ins, or $49.99 Ultimate for one year with 15 plug-ins
This Vista-only collection of optimizations comes in a free version and two paid-subscription versions that accept plug-ins for even more customization. All will modify items such as your desktop, Start menu, and browsers (including Firefox), and provide virtual desktops. For our full review, see <http://go.pcmag.com/tweakvi> .

TweakVista
<http://www.stardock.com> | $19.95
Microsoft's own TweakUI (see "Hall of Fame," below) inspired products like this to change the behavior and performance of Windows Vista. TweakVista accesses features that would otherwise require Registry editing (or worse). It also provides system information so you tweak only what needs tweaking.

XdN Tweaker
<http://xenomorph.net> | Free
This tool handles settings for both XP and Vista. XdN's tweaks aren't mind-blowing but are nonetheless useful, and the price is certainly right.


Displays


MaxiVista
<http://www.maxivista.com> | $29.95 or $39.95 for Pro
If you've got a second PC with a screen?even a laptop?use it as a second monitor, controlling both computers from a single keyboard and mouse. You can use up to three displays per PC to get true "surround vision." The pro version includes remote control and synchronizes the clipboards on the two computers.

VirtuaWin
<http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net> | Free
Virtual desktops give you access to multiple workspace "screens" even if you have only one monitor. VirtuaWin adds up to nine such virtual desktops, accessible through an icon in the system tray. It's modular enough to accept plug-ins (such as an auto-switcher that cycles through desktops until you stop it) that won't interfere with VirtuaWin's core use.

UltraMon
<http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon> | $39.95
his utility will increase your productivity as you work with multiple monitors from a single computer. UltraMon offers a smart Windows taskbar that can cross multiple displays, advanced window management (like dragging maximized programs to different displays or short cuts that open programs on predetermined monitors), and individual wallpapers for each screen?up to ten.

DisplayFusion
<http://www.binaryfortress.com> | Free
Multiple monitors of different sizes on your computer may not always provide the best visual setup. DisplayFusion assists by placing different wallpapers on each screen, even a contiguous background across displays with different resolutions. It helps control windows, too, dragging them from screen to screen.


Remote Access/Networks


Leaf for Windows
<http://www.leafnetworks.net> | Free
Leaf Networks wants to make it easy to set up network file shares and streaming, even allowing Xbox game play over a network?or from your own network to a friend's, like a consumer-level VPN. Clients are in the works for Mac and Linux to create easy shares across platforms.

Avvenu Access 'n Share
<http://www.avvenu.com> | Free or $9.99/month for 10GB online storage
Stroll with Avvenu on a PC to pick files you want to share with others. Then go to a remote system (even a mobile device) and use the browser to access files on the original computer. The premium version even allows local access from a computer other than your own; the files are downloaded from backups on Avvenu's servers.

PCMag Utility: NetShare Manager
<http://go.pcmag.com/netsharemanager> | $7.97 alone or included in $19.97 annual subscription
You can connect to - or disconnect from - multiple network shares with a single click using this management tool. Set up multiple profiles, each with its own assigned shares, so you can have, say, one profile for work and another for home.

CrossLoop
<http://www.crossloop.com> | Free
This freebie will access the screen of a second PC and allow quick file transfer. The limited remote control/screen sharing comes from integrating the open-source TightVNC (www.tightvnc.com <http://www.tightvnc.com>) with CrossLoop's simple interface.

Network Magic
<http://www.networkmagic.com> | Free 7-day trial, or $29.99 for use on three PCs.
Get a complete look at your home network using the auto-generated network map in Network Magic. Run the software on multiple computers to get complete coverage, including warnings about which systems need updates and easier access to shared files and printers.

GoToMyPC
<http://www.gotomypc.com> | $19.95 per month for one PC
GoToMyPC is a terrific option if you don't want or need full-time VPN access to a PC (or multiple PCs). Just install the software through the Web site after you set up an account, give the PC a nickname (like "office") and a unique access code. At another computer, go to GoToMyPC.com and log in to get encrypted, remote access.

LogMeIn Free/Pro
<http://www.logmein.com> | Free; Pro version, $12.95 per month per PC
These remote access tools are just a couple in a long line of LogMeIn products. Create the account on the Web site, install the software on the target PC, and you can access it from any other PC with a Web browser. The Pro version features drag-and-drop support and remote printing.


Start-Up/Shutdown


NightWatchman 5.0
<http://www.1e.com> | Contact company for price
This PC power manager handles shutting down not just one computer but all the PCs on a network to save business owners some green (as much as $50 in electricity per PC per year) and limiting the amount of time a PC is open to attack. Shutdowns are scheduled from a central control panel.

WinPatrol 2007
<http://winpatrol.com> | Free or $29.95 for Plus version
Put Scotty the WinPatrol mascot to work keeping an eye on your system, with warnings about new programs that plan to run at start-up and detection of other system changes, trusted or not. Delay the start of programs to improve boot-up speed in any version. The Plus version provides full access to the knowledge base and does real-time infiltration detection.

PCMag Utility: Startup Cop Pro
<http://go.pcmag.com/startupcoppro3> | $7.97 alone or included in $19.97 annual subscription
Don't let programs do what they want at boot time. Startup Cop puts the brakes on some items and delays others that may otherwise slow things down. You'll get a notice if a new program wants to run at start, so you can determine if you want it to or not.

Auto Reboot Remover
<http://www.intelliadmin.com> | Free
Ever walked away from a computer and come back to find it rebooted after doing an auto-update? That's a potential way to lose some data. This utility prevents Windows XP from rebooting without explicit permission.

AMP WinOFF
<http://www.ampsoft.net> | Free
Sometimes, you forget to shut down. WinOFF won't. Use it on XP or older systems to power down based on a preset schedule or even after a certain amount of CPU idle time.


Installers/Uninstallers


InstallPad
<http://www.installpad.com> | Free
InstallPad may be the closest thing Windows has to the innovative package installers used in Linux. If what you want isn't on the default list, you have to do the work of providing URLs for each program you want to install. But after that, it takes over, handling batch installation of your favorite applications.

Revo Uninstaller
<http://www.revouninstaller.com> | Free
An uninstalled program in Windows is seldom completely gone. Revo aims to remove all traces. It handles the initial uninstall, then scans for the crud left behind. In addition, it can target programs running in the system tray, telling them to stop auto-starting with Windows.

Remove Empty Directories
<http://www.jonasjohn.de/lab/red.htm> | Free
Some of the more useless things that build up over the course of time on a Windows computer are directories with nothing inside. This utility provides a color-coded list of all empty folders you can trash. They're not all useless: Don't dump empty temp folders your applications require (this app doesn't know the difference).

Absolute Uninstaller
<http://www.glarysoft.com> | Free
Absolute Uninstaller replaces the default Add/Remove Programs control panel in Windows, checks for extra stuff to delete after an uninstall (such as Start menu entries and useless Registry keys), and, best of all, does batch removal of multiple programs at one time. If you like to experiment with multiple new programs, now you can delete them all at once. No more one-at-a-time uninstalls.

My Uninstaller
<http://www.nirsoft.net> | Free
This is program uninstallation at its most uncomplicated. My Uninstaller runs from a single EXE file (no install needed), checks your list of programs that can be uninstalled, and gives you a dashboard with which to accomplish it.


Recovery and Shredders


TestDisk
<http://www.cgsecurity.org> | Free
Got a drive or partition that just won't boot? As long as it's not a catastrophic physical problem, TestDisk may help. Its job is to recover lost partitions, fix partition tables, and recover boot sectors. It even works on Macs.

GoneIn60s
<http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Skrommel/index.html#GoneIn60s> | Free (donation preferred)
Recovering deleted files is nice, but how about recovery when your application crashes?or when you close it by accident without saving first? With this freeware, you have 60 seconds (by default) to reopen the app (which isn't really closed, only hidden) and the document to make sure you've got everything saved.

DeleteOnClick
<http://www.2brightsparks.com/products> | $30
Seems almost too easy to resurrect files from the dead, doesn't it? Make it harder with this digital shredder. Right-click a file and select "Securely Delete" and the software permanently obliterates the files using a Department of Defense standard. DeleteOnClick is part of a series of OnClick-branded utilities that find, undelete, or encrypt files with one click.

PCMag Utility: ExhumeIt
<http://go.pcmag.com/exhumeit> | $7.97 alone or -included in $19.97 annual subscription
If you've deleted a file accidentally, Exhume-It will do more than exhume it. The utility will breathe life back into your file, as long as no data has overwritten it. ExhumeIt analyzes a partition for all deleted files and shows you a list with the condition of the file. Good condition means a good chance of recovery.

Eraser
<http://www.heidi.ie/eraser> | Free
Never get rid of an old computer without making sure the hard drive is wiped clean. That doesn't mean just reformatting it, but actually obliterating all data by overwriting disk sectors multiple times. Open-source Eraser can fit on a floppy disk or a USB key and do the job.

Undelete Plus
<http://www.undelete-plus.com> | Free
This program tracks deletions as they happen (or scans for recently deleted files when asked) and offers a simple, one-click method to bring them back (preferably on a different disk, so you don't overwrite what you're trying to restore). It works on Windows 98 through Vista, and on formats from Fat12 up to NTFS.

Restoration
<http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html> | Free
No install is needed to use Restoration: It can run from a USB key to undelete files you didn't mean to dump. It will scan a drive?including flash memory?for all recoverable files at start-up. Just filter by extension or a search string to find what you want to restore.


Virtual PCS/Layers


VMware Workstation 6
<http://www.vmware.com> | $189
This perennial Editors' Choice runs multiple OSs as virtual machines, even Vista (though it can't duplicate Vista's fancy Aero graphics when running virtually). You can even make a virtual machine mobile, to take with you on a thumb drive, and use it with the free VMware Player.

Parallels Workstation 2.2
<http://www.parallels.com> | $49.99
A simple virtual machine that supports PC operating systems such as Windows (3.1 on up), Linux/Ubuntu, and even blasts from the past like OS/2.

Virtual Sandbox 2.0
<http://www.fortresgrand.com> | $49.95
Keep the grains of bad software from your hard drive with Virtual Sandbox. It isolates programs you don't completely trust. Programs run as if they're part of the Windows desktop but without the full access to files and services you'd give to a trusted program.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc> | Free
Redmond's entry in the virtual machine space is geared specifically toward running older versions of Windows. While it lacks some necessities (like USB device support), you can't argue with the price. And it may be the perfect solution for running a can't-live-without-it legacy program.

SandBoxie
<http://www.sandboxie.com> | Free
Normally, software installations are written to your hard drive. Using SandBoxie's "transient storage," an application is instead placed in a safe sandbox where the app can read from your hard drive but won't write to it. This keeps your system from potential evils, like viruses.


Search


Google Desktop 5
<http://desktop.google.com> | Free
This software does more than just search (see our sidebar on widgets, opposite page). Google Desktop indexes all of your data files?including e-mail and instant messages?so you can find it fast. The interface includes multiple search-box configurations and an advanced search option. You can search and find your own files along with your Web search results. It places the power of the Web's best search engine at a personal level.

Copernic Desktop Search 2.2
<http://www.copernic.com> | Free
Redesigned to give better-looking results (and direct access from a search on the taskbar), Copernic combs through all the files you'd expect, as well as e-mail within Thunderbird and Outlook, and metadata on MP3, MPEG, and JPG files. Indexing happens on the fly in XP or Vista as files change, so there's no need to spell out what files are made searchable.


Browser Boosters


Inline Search for IE
<http://www.ieforge.com> | Free
There's no doubt that the inline search for text on a Web page in Firefox is superior. You can get IE 5.5 or higher to mimic it using this freebie along with Ctrl-F. The input box appears near the status bar with options to "Highlight all" found text.

GSpace
<http://www.getgspace.com> | Free
Just about everyone has a Gmail account, but few use all its gigabytes. With GSpace, put that online storage to work for all types of files. Just upload or download via the FTP-like interface integrated with Firefox.

SurfSaver
<http://www.surfsaver.com> | $19.95
askSam Systems' online tool organizes Web pages you visit in Internet Explorer and saves them in a permanent archive you can consult at a later date.

FireFTP
<http://fireftp.mozdev.org> | Free
Graft a full-feature FTP client right into Firefox. It supports secure file transfers and can keep directories in sync as you surf. Just drag and drop from local to remote folders, and back again, as you desire.

Personas for Firefox
<http://labs.mozilla.com> | Free
There's got to be a better way to change the skin on Firefox than installing all those bloated themes, right? Personas is how Mozilla will address that issue going forward: Select a persona for your browser from a menu and get a new look instantly.

FireTorrent
<http://www.wyzo.com/firetorrent> | Free
Your BitTorrent downloader can be part and parcel of your browser. Though FireTorrent was originally developed for the Wyzo media browser, it took just a simple port to make it available to the larger Firefox user base.


Widgets: Tiny Utilities Flourish


Call them what you will, widgets or gadgets. These tiny apps, which run via a central software install?a widget engine?are easy to find, install, and use. And every widget engine offers multiple utility widgets to keep track of what your computer is up to. Best of all, they're always free. Despite sometimes offering similar functionality, desktop widgets for the operating system are not the same as Web widgets, which you could load into a Web page like a blog or a customizable home page such as iGoogle. You wouldn't track local disk use with a Web widget, but you could use either kind for reading RSS feeds. function for both desktop and Web, such as displaying RSS feeds.

Windows Sidebar
<http://gallery.live.com>
Apple built widgets into the Mac OS years ago, so Microsoft naturally followed suit with the Vista Sidebar. (Or you could say that Microsoft was first, with Windows 95's Active Desktop.) The Sidebar docks to the side of your screen, where you can run "gadgets" of all sorts, many of which ship with Vista. So far, Microsoft's Sidebar gallery has 1,810 gadgets for download.
BEST UTILITY GADGETS: ClipboardManager, Drag&Drop and Print, USS Monitor

Yahoo! Widgets
widgets.yahoo.com <http://widgets.yahoo.com> Yahoo! uses the now-venerable Konfabulator widget engine. Its mini-widgets reside anywhere you want to put them on the desktop screen?there's no sidebar for docking. The engine has been around a while?it debuted back in 2003?so Yahoo! offers more than 4,400 widgets, though many are out of date. Who needs a Superman Returns countdown widget anymore?
BEST UTILITY WIDGETS: Informer, Glow Ball (System Edition), Radar

Google Desktop Gadgets
desktop.google.com/plugins <http://desktop.google.com/plugins> Google's gadgets are usually meant for use in the Sidebar view of Google Desktop (see Search category), but you can undock them to reside anywhere, just as you can with Yahoo!'s widgets. Like the Microsoft Sidebar, Google Desktop docks to a side of your screen. These gadgets will work on Mac OS and Linux as well Windows.
BEST UTILITY GADGETS: Wireless signal meter, gdShredder, DiskView

ToC

[Editor's Note: My thanks to Jon Bjerke for submitting all the articles below in this section of the newsletter.]

ToC

Jon's Picks

[Editor's Note: Below are the many items of interest sent in by Jon Bjerke this month. A veritible feast of information. Thanks, Jon.]

VMware Fixes Vulnerabilities

Firefox Zoom

Comcast Cameras to Start Watching You?

10 Ways Microsoft Can Make Windows 7 Lucky

Microsoft Rolls Out Third Public XP SP3 Build

Gone in 2 Minutes: Mac Gets Hacked First in Contest

NVIDIA Drivers Caused Lion's Share of Early Vista Crashes

Laptop With Vista Attack Code Listed on eBay

[Jon's note: A little misleading. The flaw in in Flash, not Vista.]

Windows XP Gets Reprieve for Low-Cost Laptops

Psystar Sells a $399 Mac Clone

ToC

The Linux Section:

A year later, sales of Linux on Dell computers continue to grow

Sales figures not released, but program is thriving, Dell says

By Todd R. Weiss

April 14, 2008 (Computerworld) As Dell Inc. approaches its one-year anniversary of selling laptop and desktop computers preloaded with Ubuntu Linux, the company is continuing to expand the fledgling program to new computer models and markets.

In interviews at Dell's Parmer campus north of Austin last week, four Dell representatives said sales of the Linux-loaded machines are encouraging.

Though they declined to give sales figures for the Linux-equipped machines, the Dell officials were adamant in saying that the program wouldn't be continuing or adding new models if the sales figures were not adequate.

"A [sales] number is not going to validate it as much as our actions to date," which include adding new models and configurations, said company spokeswoman Anne Camden.

Dell first offered Linux on its machines in 1999, when it installed Red Hat Linux on a selection of Dell servers, said Matt Domsch, the company's Linux technology strategist in the CTO's office. A short time later, Dell tried selling consumer-focused laptops with Red Hat Linux, but the effort was not sustained due to inadequate demand.

Dell has continued to sell enterprise servers with Linux since that 1999 debut, Domsch said. The recent Linux-on-Dell program for laptops and desktop machines, however, has been gaining momentum, he said. "If the program wasn't successful, we wouldn't be able to continue it," Domsch said.

The machines can be configured and ordered at the company's Dell and Linux Web page. In January, Dell announced another Linux-loaded laptop machine, with a host of high-performance features.

The Linux-on-Dell idea emerged in February 2007, after CEO Michael Dell debuted a new company-hosted blog called IdeaStorm, where customer could offer ideas and input on prospective new products and services. More than 100,000 people posted comments about wanting to see the company sell computers straight from the factory with Linux preloaded.

Ten weeks later, in May last year, Dell announced that it would begin selling Linux-loaded machines to consumers and businesses.

So far, Dell hasn't advertised Linux on its machines in consumer advertising campaigns; rather, it's relying on open-source enthusiasts seeking out the machines on the Dell site. Those people are often the same ones who suggested the combination in the first place.

"Those who care, know" that Dell is selling the machines, said Russ Ray, a Dell product marketing representative. "If you know Linux, you're going to know we sell Dell products with Linux on them."

Consumer-focused ads featuring Linux on Dell could appear at some point, Ray said, but it's not critical to the company. "I think that will occur when there's a reason for that to occur," he said. "We would like to get to a place where to some degree, it really doesn't matter" to consumers which operating system is on the machines.

For business users, there has been a growing interest in the Linux-on-Dell program, Ray said. "We have had many inquiries" regarding cost savings, infrastructure needs, desired applications and compatibility with existing Unix systems, he said. "It's the stuff that you would assume."

John Hull, manager of Dell's Linux engineering department in its Global Solutions Engineering division, said that two years ago, he would never have expected such a program to get started.

The Linux-on-Dell program has made Dell machines more desirable for users who are seeking alternative operating systems to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows, Hull said. "People might have looked at other brands previously but are now looking at Dell because of Linux," he added. "We started in the big markets, where they were asking the loudest, and we went from there."

The company has employees who monitor a wide variety of blogs, looking for discussions involving consumers who are seeking information on Linux, laptops and desktops, Camden said. The employees identify themselves and post replies pointing people to Dell and its Linux offerings. "They evangelize it on that kind of level," she said.

ToC

The Macintosh Section:

Apple Ranked Top Brand Worldwide

by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#921/31-Mar-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9538>

Talk about riding high. First Fortune Magazine gives Apple the honors in its corporate survey (see "Apple Tops Fortune's Most Admired Companies List," 2008-03-05). Now Apple has captured most of the top spots in a brand opinion survey of nearly 2,000 marketing professionals published by the branding company Interbrand. Apple was ranked first in almost all the positive questions, including "What brand can you not live without?" and "What brand, if sent back 100 years, would have the biggest impact on the course of history?" One respondent said, "[Apple is] the only one I can think of that I truly couldn't replace - in work or in entertainment. With any other brand that I love, there's some other one I can turn to if it disappeared. But not Apple."

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9488>
<http://brandchannel.com/start1.asp?fa_id=415#t21>

Apple also captured the top spot in more personal questions, including "What brand would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party?" "Which brand inspires you the most?" and, most tellingly, "If you were to describe yourself as being a brand, what brand would you be?" We can't all be Apple, but many respondents like to think of themselves as being like Apple: "Because I like to come at things differently. I chose to 'think different.'"

Joining Apple as brands that ranked highly in the positive questions were Google, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Starbucks. Not all the questions were positive, however, and Apple took second place to Microsoft in "Which brand do you want to argue with?" Lots of Apple aficionados certainly have issues with some of Apple's actions, but such feelings are useful in that they show that people care. I'd be more worried if I were in Microsoft's marketing department, since the world's largest software company placed first in "If you could rebrand any brand, what brand would it be?" Ouch. The comments were blunt as well, running along the lines of "[Microsoft has] gone from innovative and bold to stodgy and a follower. But rebranding is only one step since it really needs a major shift in how it thinks."

<http://www.brandchannel.com/brandjunkie_results.asp#dinner>

(I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The place where Microsoft could experiment with rebranding in a useful and interesting way is with the Macintosh Business Unit, which would benefit from independence from the overall Microsoft Windows brand, given the way many Mac users see Windows as the competition.)

Somewhat distressingly, the top vote getter for "What brand do you think is truly (going) 'green'?" was overwhelmingly "None," with Toyota, BP, The Body Shop, and Honda taking the next four slots. Companies may be talking the talk, but they're not walking the walk sufficiently for environmental awareness to become associated with their brands.

For more on branding and its importance, particularly related to Apple, check out our three-part series "Branding Apple," written in 2002 by Simon Spence, then head of research and information technology at brand consultancy Alexander Dunlop Ltd. It's a bit dated in places, not surprisingly, but still offers a good overview of what branding means to Apple.

<http://db.tidbits.com/series/1224>

ToC

Safari 3.1 Enhances Performance and Web Standards Support

by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#920/24-Mar-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9510>

Boasting about blazing performance, Apple has released Safari 3.1, the latest version of the company's free Web browser for Mac OS X and Windows. In its press release, Apple claims that Safari 3.1 is 1.9 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2, at least on a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo-based iMac with 1 GB of RAM running Windows XP. What, you're not running Windows XP as the primary operating system on your iMac? Luckily, on the main Safari page, Apple presents other benchmarks run under Mac OS X 10.5.2 claiming that Safari loads pages up to 3 times faster than Firefox 2, and executes JavaScript up to 4.5 times faster than Firefox. JavaScript performance is an increasingly big deal as more and more sites provide interactivity in their interfaces by using JavaScript. Unfortunately, nowhere does Apple compare Safari 3.1's performance with that of Safari 3.0, so there's no telling how much of a speed boost current Safari users might see.

<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/03/18safari.html>
<http://www.apple.com/safari/>

Apple also made a big push to support cutting-edge Web standards, enhancing Safari 3.1 to support CSS Web fonts that let designers specify fonts that will be downloaded on the fly as needed, CSS animations, HTML 5 media, and HTML offline storage. Improved too is Safari's support for dynamic SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) images. (See the Safari Product Overview PDF for more details.) Along with those features, Safari 3.1 includes fixes for a number of security vulnerabilities. Of course, since lots of other browsers don't support these standards, Safari's support is merely a welcome paving stone on the road to future Web improvements.

<http://images.apple.com/safari/docs/Safari_Product_Overview.pdf>
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307563>

Of particular interest to us is HTML 5 offline storage support, which should help to enable Web applications like Google Docs or Zoho Writer to provide optional offline access to data, storing it in a local SQLite database. Google has started to address this problem with Google Gears, an open-source approach to offline storage that, on the Mac, works only in Firefox. The two are similar, but incompatible, though there may be ways of bringing them together.

<http://webkit.org/blog/126/webkit-does-html5-client-side-database-storage/>
<http://glazkov.com/blog/html5-gears-wrapper/>

Safari 3.1 is available via Software Update or as a 40 MB standalone download. Panther users need not bother clicking through, since Safari 3.1 requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later. Presumably due to the fixes in Safari's underlying WebCore and WebKit frameworks, which are used by a wide variety of programs, the update does require a restart.

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/safari31.html>

ToC

Adobe Ships Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac OS X

by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#920/24-Mar-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9522>

A major overhaul of Photoshop Elements for Mac OS X shipped today, Adobe Systems announced. Version 6 of the software reaches parity with the same-numbered Windows version, released last year. Photoshop Elements 6 offers an interface - almost identical across Mac OS X and Windows versions - which is simpler than Photoshop's and includes a number of useful new features for those who don't want to master Photoshop.

<http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelmac/>

Photomerge is a fascinating feature that I wouldn't have believed had I not seen fellow TidBITS editor Jeff Carlson working with it. It allows you to take two or more similarly composed images and mark the best parts of each. The software then creates a merged image that appears seamless. Jeff used it to create a composite photo of his nephew and niece who were too wiggly to sit still at the same time. Photoshop Elements 6 also improves a magic brush option for painting a selection by color, has better automated tools for adjusting exposure, and has a batch adjustment option.

(Jeff, by the way, recently completed "Photoshop Elements 6 for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide." Since the Mac OS X and Windows version are nearly identical in features and interface, have no fears about buying this book to get up to speed on the new Mac release. The most significant difference between the two platforms is in organizing photos: The Windows version uses a separate mode called the Organizer to manage and tag images; the Mac version uses Bridge CS3 to handle those tasks. The next biggest difference? The appearance of the document title bar!)

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321524632/?tag=tidbitselectro00>

Photoshop Elements 6 requires a Mac with a PowerPC G4 or G5 or Intel multi-core processor - that leaves out one model of Mac mini? - and Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later. It's available as a universal binary. It costs $89.99 retail, or $69.99 when upgrading from any version of Photoshop Elements (the last was version 4), Photoshop Album, Photoshop LE, or Adobe PhotoDeluxe.

<http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelmac/upgrade/>

ToC

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.1 Released

by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#921/31-Mar-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9524>

Bombich Software has released Carbon Copy Cloner 3.1 (CCC), a notable update to the popular disk cloning and backup software. CCC 3.1 implements rsync 3.0 for "greater fidelity" when backing up using CCC's Copy Selected Items backup method, improves the already solid interface wording that explains what CCC will do for each selected action, adds "bootability" checks to see if the backup volume will be bootable (this doesn't work with duplicates made over a network, alas), and more. A variety of bugs were also fixed, so backing up to a remote Mac using a path with a space in it uses the correct location, invisible flags are maintained in Leopard when using Copy Everything, scheduled tasks in Leopard now run reliably after a reboot, and it's now possible to install CCC's Authentication Credentials package from multiple source Macs onto a single target machine (previously, manual tweaking of the authorization credentials was necessary to make this setup work).

<http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html>
<http://www.bombich.com/software/docs/CCCHelp/content/history.html>

For those who haven't used Carbon Copy Cloner, it's a full-featured cloning, synchronization, and backup program with scheduling and archiving features. I've started experimenting with Carbon Copy Cloner to create bootable duplicates of my primary work machines over the network to disks installed inside my Power Mac G4 file server. (This is in addition to Time Machine backups of my Leopard Macs, and Retrospect home folder backups of Macs running Tiger or Panther, all to the same Power Mac G4.) The capability to create a bootable duplicate over a network is uncommon, shared only with EMC's Retrospect (the excellent SuperDuper can create a backup to a remote disk image over a network, but that's not bootable). Carbon Copy Cloner's network duplicates work much more quickly than those in the current version of Retrospect.

<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-03/Carbon-Copy-Cloner.png>

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.1 requires Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher and works well with Mac OS X 10.5.2. The program is uncrippled shareware, meaning that all features are available whether or not you've paid, and no registration is ever required, but Bombich Software appreciates donations once Carbon Copy Cloner has proven its worth to you. It's a 2.1 MB download.

ToC

Apple Releases Various Firmware Updates

by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#924/14-Apr-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9554>

Apple has released firmware updates for a number of Macintosh models, including the MacBook Air (2.3 MB), MacBook (1.8 MB), MacBook Pro (3.1 MB), and iMac (1.6 MB). In each case, all Apple will admit to is that the update "fixes several issues to improve the stability" of each Mac. Otherwise, I've seen one report that the update fixes problems with the MacBook Pro's closed lid mode. Late in the week, Apple also released the MacBook Air Bluetooth Firmware Update 1.0 (1.2 MB).

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macbookairefifirmwareupdate10.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macbookefifirmwareupdate12.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macbookproefifirmwareupdate15.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imacefifirmwareupdate13.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macbookairbluetoothfirmwareupdate10.html>

It doesn't appear as though these firmware updates apply to all models of the MacBook, MacBook Pro, and iMac; the updates don't appear in Software Update and refuse to install manually on at least my MacBook and Tonya's MacBook Pro - both early versions of those models. Apple says nothing online about which models need these updates, so I recommend relying on Software Update; if a firmware update appears in Software Update, install it, but if not, don't bother trying a manual installation.

To complete the firmware update process, follow the instructions in the updater application that launches automatically after the installer finishes. And, though this should be obvious, don't do anything that could interrupt the process. If you do, you'll need a Firmware Restoration CD to restore your Mac's firmware. Apple just released Firmware Restoration CD 1.6 (30 MB), which supports the Xserve (Early 2008), MacBook (13-inch Late 2007), iMac (20-inch Mid 2007), and the iMac (24-inch Mid 2007). Previous versions of Firmware Restoration CD support other models, although it's not clear if all models are supported.

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/firmwarerestorationcd16.html>

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Apple Releases 802.11n AirPort Express

by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#919/17-Mar-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9506>

The venerable AirPort Express now sports 802.11n, the fastest flavor of Wi-Fi, while weighing in at a light-on-the-pockets $99 in the United States. Apple released its revised compact base station today. The AirPort Express can also stream music from iTunes over a network through a built-in combo analog and digital optical audio port using AirTunes, a protocol that Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil extends to allow any streaming audio output from a Mac or Windows system (see "Airfoil Plays Home Audio Wirelessly," 2008-03-10).

<http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/>
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-03/airportexpress2.jpg>
<http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9492>

The AirPort Express was introduced in 2004 as a cheaper alternative - at $129 - to the then-pricey AirPort Extreme Base Station (introduced the previous year at $299), while adding the audio streaming option. When the 802.11n AirPort Extreme was released in February 2007 at the current $179, the AirPort Express remained in the catalog with no changes, except a drop in price to $99.

The 802.11n draft standard, currently certified by industry trade group The Wi-Fi Alliance, has reached enough equilibrium that you should be able to mix and match so-called "Draft N" devices with the certified label from different manufacturers. Increased range is a key advantage of 802.11n: multiple internal antennas can extend the distance by which you can get a useful signal by a factor of two to four (Apple is claiming just "up to...twice the range").

The AirPort Express is among the cheapest devices to handle both the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequency bands. The 5 GHz band is notably useful because of the relatively low usage by consumers; the 2.4 GHz band is in heavy use by Wi-Fi networks, shares its space with other purposes, and has less spectrum allotted to it than the 5 GHz band.

The new version of the AirPort Express still has the same limitations as the old: the built-in USB port handles just a single printer that you can share over a network. This 802.11n model can't share hard drives or multiple printers; for that, you still need the $179 AirPort Extreme or a $299 (500 GB) or $499 (1 TB) Time Capsule. Apple promises that up to 10 users can access the base station at the same time; 50 can ostensibly simultaneously use an AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule.

The AirPort Express also includes just 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, which will shave off the top possible speeds available with 802.11n. In my testing of the AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule with gigabit Ethernet, I found that using 100 Mbps Ethernet could shave as much as 50 percent off the the top rate and impose other internal speed limitations among Ethernet and Wi-Fi devices.

ToC

Apple Releases Updated AirPort Utility for Tiger, Leopard, Windows

by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#919/17-Mar-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9494>

AirPort Utility 5.3.1 is now available for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and Windows XP and Vista. This is the first time that Tiger and Windows users can simply download the utility and install it. Up to now, you had to use an installer CD from supported hardware to obtain AirPort Utility, or install Leopard. AirPort Utility can configure any AirPort Extreme Base Station, AirPort Express Base Station, or Time Capsule. (The update was unavailable for several hours after it was initially posted, reappearing by Wednesday morning.)

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airportutility531fortiger.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airportutility531forleopard.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airportutility531forwindows.html>

The software first appeared with the 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station model released in February 2007, and the AirPort Express retail packaging was updated by mid-2007 to include it as well. AirPort Utility shipped as part of Leopard and comes with Time Capsule as well. The software is more neatly designed than its predecessor, AirPort Admin Utility, and reveals more configuration options even on older models.

AirPort Utility can optionally install a software agent that runs in the background and monitors the network for the addition of USB drives connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station or Time Capsule and for problems with base stations on the local network. It can also check automatically for updates to itself and firmware updates. AirPort Utility makes it much simpler to roll back to earlier versions of base station firmware when you encounter troubles.

The most notable change starting with AirPort Utility 5.3 is the ability to set the Bonjour name of a base station separately from its descriptive name: choose the AirPort pane and in the Base Station or Time Capsule tab click Edit beneath the Name field. Formerly, you could set just one name that was used for both purposes. The descriptive name is used to identify the base station within AirPort Utility, but also to name its attached volumes.

The Bonjour name is used to advertise the base station across the network and could be changed to something short and sweet or long and more technical. Wide-area Bonjour configuration is now found in the same place that you modify the device's Bonjour name. Wide-area Bonjour is ironically not yet widely supported; it's a way of publishing local networking information to a DNS server.

I discuss AirPort Utility, wide-area Bonjour, and other AirPort-related subjects fairly extensively in my book, Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Extreme Network.

<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/airport-n.html>

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Time Machine via AirPort Disk Is Unsupported, Apple Says

by Glenn Fleishman <glenn@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#923/07-Apr-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9547>

Apple confirmed for me last week that a feature for using hard drives attached via USB to an AirPort Extreme Base Station is an unsupported feature. The company declined to provide further information. This feature was available in the betas of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, as has been widely reported, but was removed from the public Leopard feature list and from the shipping version of the operating system. Apple had been working on providing me a definitive statement since my review of Time Capsule for Macworld was published on 21-Mar-08.

<http://www.macworld.com/article/132627/2008/03/timecapsule.html>

What a "lack of support" means is that if you attempt to use an 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station for Time Machine backup, you won't get any help from Apple's technical support, something that readers have already told me. I've been receiving reports that USB-attached drives work erratically with an AirPort Extreme. TidBITS editor Joe Kissell and I have been discussing the strange array of scenarios in which you find an Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) volume that's shared by the AirPort Extreme server not appearing automatically for Time Machine. (See "MacVoices Podcast Covers Time Capsule Ins and Outs," 2008-04-03, for links to the podcasts. I also talked about Time Capsule and this problem in a podcast on 26-Mar-08 with Jason Snell, editorial director for Macworld.)

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9543>
<http://www.macworld.com/article/132703/2008/03/mwpodcast117.html>

This option to choose an AirPort Extreme-connected drive first appeared with the release of several related firmware, driver, and operating system updates on 19-Mar-08 (see "AirPort Update Extends Time Capsule, Adds AirDisk Support," 2008-03-19). I speculated at the time that this addition was an error on Apple's part, perhaps due to a debugging feature left turned on that wasn't properly turned off before the updates shipped. This was buttressed in part by the way in which Time Capsule drives - whether an internal drive or ones connected externally via USB - appear via Bonjour in a list of selectable volumes when setting up Time Machine, but AirPort Extreme disks do not.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9517>

For more background on this situation, see the original response I had in "Time Capsule and Its Associated Rage Factor, 2008-01-17" and details on Time Capsule's USB drive support in "Time Capsule Ships with Support for USB Drive Backups," 2008-02-29.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9407>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9479>

Somewhere along the line, Apple changed the name of this concept of sharing drives from USB over the network from "AirDisks" to "AirPort Disks."

<http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/features/harddrivesharing.html>

ToC

MacVoices Podcast Covers Time Capsule Ins and Outs

by Tonya Engst <tonya@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#923/07-Apr-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9543>

If you want to know more about Apple's new Time Capsule or about how using Time Capsule compares to making backups with the newly available option of using Time Machine with a drive attached to an AirPort Extreme Base Station, tune into a recent pair of MacVoices podcasts, which bring together the networking perspective offered by Glenn Fleishman and the backups expertise brought by Joe Kissell.

In MacVoices #873 they talk about the pros and cons of Time Capsule, plus how it works under the hood. In MacVoices #874 the pair continues the conversation, looking at who Time Capsule is well-suited to, how backing up to Time Capsule compares to backing up to a drive attached to a regular AirPort Extreme Base Station, unexpected differences between the two Time Capsule models, and recommendations for which of Apple's hardware-based backup solutions to use.

<http://www.macvoices.com/wordpress/macvoices-873-talking-time-capsule-and-more-with-glenn-fleishman-and-joe-kissell-part-1/>
<http://www.macvoices.com/wordpress/macvoices-874-talking-time-capsule-time-machine-and-more-with-glenn-fleishman-and-joe-kissell-part-2/>

ToC

SmartSleep Solves Safe Sleep Situation

by Joe Kissell <joe@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#919/17-Mar-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9502>

Several months ago I complained in "Stewing Over Safe Sleep" (2007-07-30) that my laptop took far too long to go to sleep, thanks to Apple's default Safe Sleep settings; I also shared a shell script that I used to disable Safe Sleep and return my computer to a more sane state. After quite a bit of reader feedback, I followed that up a month later with "Safe Sleep Revisited" (2007-08-20), in which I presented a more sophisticated script that turns Safe Sleep on or off dynamically based on your current battery level. But I still felt it was a shame that it required command-line fiddling to achieve the sort of behavior I wanted.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9090>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9115>

Now, thanks to a free preference pane by Patrick Stein called SmartSleep, those of us with Mac laptops that sleep in what we regard as the "wrong" way can tailor sleep settings to our liking with just a couple of clicks. SmartSleep lets you choose exactly what happens when you put your computer to sleep. The default behavior ("sleep & hibernate") is to save your computer's RAM to disk before sleeping - that's what I dislike because it takes too long, though it lets your Mac recover almost instantly from a complete loss of power. You can also choose "sleep" (the default on earlier Mac laptops) which sleeps immediately without copying RAM to disk; "hibernate," which saves the RAM and then powers down completely when the computer sleeps; and my favorite, "smart sleep," which dynamically turns "hibernate and sleep" mode on or off depending on your battery's current charge (the threshold is adjustable with a slider), and goes straight to "hibernate" only when your battery's charge is less than 5 percent. In other words, the "smart sleep" setting goes a step further than my script did, and with a lot less effort. There's even a button to delete your sleepimage file, if any.

<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-03/SmartSleep.png>
<http://www.jinx.de/SmartSleep.html>

One tip: if you double-click the preference pane file to install it, Mac OS X asks whether you want to install it for all users, or just the current user. You must select Install for All Users of This Computer, which puts the file in /Library/PreferencePanes - the only location in which it works properly.

ToC

64-bit Controversy Accompanies Lightroom 2 Beta

by Jeff Carlson <jeffc@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#923/07-Apr-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9550>

Adobe announced the availability of the Photoshop Lightroom 2 public beta last week, but a post on an Adobe blog generated almost as much attention. In addition to adding new features, the Lightroom beta is capable of taking full advantage of the 64-bit processors found in Mac Pro models. (64-bit support is also included with Lightroom 2 under Windows Vista.)

<http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/>

The rub is that Photoshop, Adobe's image editing powerhouse, won't gain 64-bit compatibility on the Mac for at least two revisions. In a blog post, Adobe's John Nack explained that the discrepancy between Photoshop and Lightroom is due to Photoshop's Carbon code base:

<http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/04/photoshop_lr_64.html>

"At the WWDC show last June [2007], however, Adobe & other developers learned that Apple had decided to stop their Carbon 64 efforts. This means that 64-bit Mac apps need to be written to use Cocoa (as Lightroom is) instead of Carbon. This means that we'll need to rewrite large parts of Photoshop and its plug-ins (potentially affecting over a million lines of code) to move it from Carbon to Cocoa."

As Nack elaborated, the lack of a 64-bit version of Photoshop isn't a crippling blow to the Mac. In fact, most of the blog post is devoted to heading off wild speculation about Adobe's or Apple's intentions (and pointing out that Final Cut Pro, iTunes, and the Mac OS X Finder are all built in Carbon). A 32-bit Photoshop CS4 will no doubt run just fine. It will just not have the capability to handle very large amounts of data (more than 4 GB) at once.

As for the actual software released last week, Lightroom 2 adds a number of new features such as multiple-monitor support, smart collections (the capability to group photos automatically according to metadata), and a clever method of suggesting related keywords as you tag your photos.

Lightroom 2 can also apply edits to select portions of an image instead of just to the entire image. (Aperture 2.1, released the previous week, added this capability through a new plug-in system; see "Aperture 2.1 Adds Plug-in Capability to Edit Photos," 2007-09-07.)

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9536>

Existing Lightroom owners can participate in the beta until version 2.0 is released by entering their serial numbers. They can also invite friends to try the beta for the entirety of the program. For everyone else, a 30-day evaluation period is available. The software is a 24.7 MB download. The Lightroom 2.0 beta is installed independently of earlier Lightroom versions, so photographers can evaluate it without putting existing libraries and workflows at risk.

<https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_lightroom_invite>
<https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs%5Flightroom2>

ToC

Adobe Adjusts Photoshop Express Terms of Service

by Jeff Carlson <jeffc@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#923/07-Apr-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9548>

Shortly after Adobe opened the public beta of its Photoshop Express online photo-editing service, several early users who actually read the site's terms of service noticed language that, in effect, gave Adobe almost free reign with images that people uploaded and publicly shared in galleries (see "Photoshop Express Offers Free Photo Editing on the Web," 2007-09-07). Adobe has now posted revised terms that clarify the company's usage.

<http://www.photoshop.com/express/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9526>

The new wording goes into effect on 10-Apr-08, and is marked in red on the Web page listing the terms. Section 8a now reads (additional language in italics here):

<https://www.photoshop.com/express/terms.html>

"Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, and unless otherwise specifically agreed in any Additional Terms that might accompany individual services (such as Photoshop.com/Express), you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed."

To my surprise, the offending language (everything after "... you grant Adobe...") remains. However, the new clause's pointer to the Additional Terms of Use document reveals limitations to Adobe's usage that were present at the beginning; Adobe has clarified the link between the two documents. None of this language is new:

<https://www.photoshop.com/express/pxterms.html>

"Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, we do need certain rights from you, with respect to Your Content, in order to operate the Service and in order to enable you to do all the things this Service affords you the ability to do. Therefore, with respect to Your Content, you grant Adobe a worldwide (because the internet is global), royalty-free (meaning we do not owe you any money), nonexclusive (meaning you are free to license Your Content to others) fully sublicensable (so that we can permit our affiliates, subcontractors and agents to deliver the Service on our behalf) license to use, reproduce and modify Your Content solely for the purposes of operating the Service and enabling your use of the Service. With respect to Your Shared Content, you additionally grant Adobe the rights to distribute, publicly perform and publicly display Your Shared Content (in whole or in part) for the sole purposes of operating the Service and enabling your use of the Service and to sublicense Your Shared Content to Other Users subject to the limitations of Section 7 below. These limited licenses do not grant Adobe the right to sell or otherwise license Your Content or Your Shared Content on a stand alone basis. Further, you may terminate Adobe's right to distribute, publicly perform and publicly display Your Shared Content by making it no longer shared. You may terminate the remainder of Adobe's rights by removing Your Content from the Service."

Adobe also clarified its stance on being able to claim revenue from ads and other initiatives that appear on the same page as a user's content, by editing section 10a:

"You agree that Adobe may derive revenue and or other remuneration from the Services including from portions of the Services that include Your Content. For example, Adobe may display Adobe and/or third party paid advertisements and other information adjacent to or included with the Services and adjacent to or in connection with Your Content, and you agree that you are not entitled to any compensation for any such advertisements. The manner, mode and extent of advertising or other revenue generating models by Adobe on or in conjunction with the Services are subject to change without specific notice to you."

The 10-Apr-08 implementation date is there to give any existing users time to review the new terms. Comments from people at Adobe indicate that the company wasn't attempting to grab rights it shouldn't have, and it's good to see that their lawyers clarified the language.

ToC

Automating Text-to-Speech Video Narration

by Jeff Carlson <jeffc@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#919/17-Mar-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9497>

In last week's article about the Aperture 2.0.1 update and its improved AppleScript support, I mentioned in passing that the narration used in some accompanying demonstration videos was artificial - the product of Mac OS X text-to-speech technology instead of a human voiceover (see "Aperture 2.0.1 Update Enhanced by AppleScript," 2007-09-07).

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9491>

However, I made one mistake, for which I must apologize to the women living inside my computer: the voice used in the video is not Victoria. I made a guess based on listening to the ladies in the Speech preference pane, but Sal Soghoian, product manager for automation technologies at Apple, set me straight. She's Lucy, the female British English voice from Acapela (and available in AssistiveWare's Infovox iVox; see "Macs Speak Clearly with Infovox iVox," 2007-09-07).

<http://www.acapela-group.com/english-uk-35-text-to-voice.html>
<http://www.assistiveware.com/infovox_ivox.php>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9155>

Soghoian noted that his training podcasts all employ non-human voices. To learn how he's making it work, check out the "Rendered Narrations" video at Automator.us.

<http://automator.us/leopard/video/>

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Important Updates Released for Office 2008 and 2004

by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#919/17-Mar-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9496>

Two months after the initial release of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit has pushed out the first update to the software suite, fixing a wide variety of bugs. Refreshingly, Microsoft described the changes in an entirely reasonable amount of detail. The Microsoft Office 2008 12.0.1 Update requires Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later, and you can get it from the Microsoft AutoUpdate utility or download it from Microsoft's Web site as a 114.1 MB download.

<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948057>
<http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8FE8C32A-6D7A-482B-97C6-42562F089EE4>

(Microsoft updated the Office 2008 Microsoft AutoUpdate utility itself to version 2.1.1 back in February 2008, and you must have that version to be able to download future updates, according to the Entourage Help Blog. The Office 2008 version of Microsoft AutoUpdate is located in /Library/Application Support/MAU2.0, and can either update itself, or can be updated if you choose Check for Updates in the Help menu of any Office application. Keep in mind that the Office 2004 version of Microsoft AutoUpdate, which you must keep if you want it to continue to update Office 2004 applications automatically, is located in the /Applications folder.)

<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2008/02/office_2008_autoupdate_mau_updated_to_211.html>

For Word 2008, Microsoft squashed the crash on first launch bug triggered when Word 2008 tried to import settings from previous versions of the program. Blank pages are no longer printed to certain printers, documents with Word 2007 for Windows equations open properly, citation deletion has been improved, and font substitution has been improved for people running on PowerPC-based Macs who are importing Word for Windows documents. And, in the "Mamma mia!" bug, Word 2008 no longer crashes when you try to check spelling and grammar when using an Italian keyboard.

<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948489/>

Excel 2008 sees overall stability improvements, better support for a second monitor positioned above the primary display, improved handling of ledger sheets, proper formatting of rotated text after deleting columns, a fix for the bug that caused the formatting of empty cells to change unexpectedly in .xls files, and increased reliability when copying and pasting linked data and charts. But most important for working stiffs who rely on Excel, the WORKDAY function now calculates correctly when used on a sheet that uses the Mac's default 1904 date system.

With PowerPoint 2008, Microsoft improved the launch time and fixed a bug that caused some characters to be spaced too close together. More critically, the update eliminates a problem that caused possible data loss under Mac OS X 10.5 when saving a PowerPoint file to a network volume using the SMB protocol. Competing for importance is another fix for a bug that could cause a .ppt PowerPoint file containing a link to a sound file such as an MP3 to become corrupted and unreadable.

Entourage 2008 features several enterprise-level improvements, including a fix for a problem that prevented Entourage from connecting to IBM Lotus Domino servers via IMAP, and improvements when synchronizing calendar events and contacts with Microsoft Exchange Server. All Entourage users will appreciate sounds working properly in Leopard, better import of rules and identities from Entourage 2004 (especially if you're Swedish!), improved stability when syncing via Sync Services, and better reliability in the Database Utility when rebuilding a large database.

On the security side, Office 12.0.1 includes fixes for security vulnerabilities that could have allowed remote code execution if the user opened a specially crafted Excel file. This problem affects Windows versions of Excel as well, and for those using Excel 2000 SP3 on Windows, Microsoft considers it of critical severity.

<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-014.mspx>

Lastly, the update fixes a problem in the Office Installer that caused Office 2008 program files to be improperly installed using User ID 502. Since the first user on a Mac is generally UID 501, this could have given the second user unwarranted permissions. Dan Frakes covered this issue well over at Macworld. Although Microsoft's otherwise-excellent release notes don't state this explicitly, the update does go through and change all the Office program files so they are owned by UID 0 rather than UID 502. (If this doesn't make much sense to you, either don't worry about it or read Brian Tanaka's "Take Control of Permissions in Leopard," which is what I did to figure out how to verify the change.)

<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948488/>
<http://www.macworld.com/article/131822/2008/01/office2008issues.html>
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/leopard-permissions.html>

The Microsoft Office 2004 11.4.1 Update fixes the Excel vulnerability along with another security vulnerability that could enable remote code execution if the user opened a malformed file. It too can be retrieved from Microsoft either via Microsoft AutoUpdate or as a 13.2 MB standalone download. Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later is required, as is a completely up-to-date version of Office 11.4.0, which is most easily acquired by running Microsoft AutoUpdate and installing updates repeatedly until you have the latest version.

<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-016.mspx>
<http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=95DCEB37-B35F-46DB-B280-DB0F3B298AA9>

ToC

TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates

by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#923/07-Apr-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9542>

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/quicktime745forleopard.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/quicktime745fortiger.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/quicktime745forpanther.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/quicktime745forwindows.html>

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/keynote403.html>

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airportadminutilityforgraphiteandsnow425.html>

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/itunes762.html>

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macproefifirmwareupdate13.html>

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/firmwarerestorationcd15.html>

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airportextremeupdate2008001fortiger.html>

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2008002v11leopard.html>

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/pluginmanager173.html>

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/ipodresetutility103formac.html>

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/digitalcamerarawcompatibilityupdate20.html>

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/timemachineandairportupdatesv10.html>

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307562>


<http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast/titanium/overview.html>

<http://www.belightsoft.com/disccover/>

<http://www.dejal.com/narrator/>

ToC

Switch Your Network to Gigabit Ethernet

by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#921/31-Mar-08
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9518>

I hate waiting for network tasks to complete, whether it's copying large files, saving a big Word document, or watching a backup take forever. The real problem is that being forced to watch a progress bar often causes me to jump off to another task, which in turn makes me lose track of where I am. I wouldn't go back to the System 6 days before MultiFinder for anything, but there are times when I think that Mac OS X's multitasking makes me less productive.

One way to reduce the number of times I hop between tasks is to cut down on the number of unnecessary waits. Last week, I focused on speeding up my Ethernet network's performance, an effort that proved both easy and inexpensive, and one that I'd encourage anyone who is frustrated by network speeds to try.

(One quick clarification - although we all talk about network "speed," that's a misleading term. Increasing the performance of a network is more like increasing the diameter of a water hose. If you're trying to fill a swimming pool, a fire hose will finish the job much more quickly than a thinner garden hose at the same distance from the water source. That's what we're doing when we move from a "slower" network to a "faster" network - we're making the network pipes bigger, so they can carry more data in the same amount of time. Ideally, we would always talk about increasing network "bandwidth" or "throughput" but those terms don't always resonate as well with normal users.)


Going to Gigabit

Apple has periodically increased the throughput of their networking support in Macs, starting with LocalTalk's 230.4 kilobits per second (Kbps). After that came 10 megabits per second (Mbps) Ethernet, followed by 100 Mbps Ethernet (sometimes called "fast Ethernet") and now 1000 Mbps Ethernet, which is commonly called "gigabit Ethernet." 10 Gbps Ethernet is used in some enterprise networks, and development is underway on 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps Ethernet; these faster flavors are used mostly to tie together gigabit Ethernet networks without hampering overall performance.

(Terminology abounds in this field. 10, 100, and 1000 Mbps Ethernet are also sometimes called 10Base-T, 100Base-T, and 1000Base-T, which refers to underlying cabling standards; the T stands for twisted pair, referring to the use of simple copper wiring, twisted at regular intervals to reduce signal interference. There are other forms of cabling, so 10Base-2 refers to 10 Mbps Ethernet running over coaxial cable and there are a number of 1000Base-X standards that carry gigabit Ethernet over fiber optic cables.)

Whenever Apple adopts the latest flavor of Ethernet, there's usually a lag time before most users follow along. Although Apple can source the Ethernet controllers sufficiently cheaply to include them in Macs, it takes a while before other equipment manufacturers can get the chips cheaply enough to build them into switches, routers, and other networking devices at prices that most people can afford. And of course, once someone has a perfectly functional 100 Mbps network, it takes a few years of buying new Macs and other networking hardware before enough of the devices on that network are capable of gigabit Ethernet. (To be painfully clear, you need at least two computers on a network capable of gigabit Ethernet before it's worth upgrading your switches!)

Back when we lived in Seattle, we used a 10Base-2 Ethernet network, with four locations connected by long runs of coaxial cable. This made sense at the time because 10Base-2 can be daisy-chained, with each computer connecting to the next; see "Creating a Simple Ethernet Network," 1998-09-14. In places where we needed to support 10Base-T as well, we added a hub to convert between the two wiring standards.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/5085>

When we moved to Ithaca, I wired our new house with twisted pair wiring and used 100 Mbps Ethernet switches from Linksys to connect the three different parts of the network (our server/laundry room, my office, and Tonya's office). That setup worked fine for a number of years, but of late I had been experiencing network problems that were most easily resolved by power cycling one or more of the three Ethernet switches. Plus, I realized that three of our four primary Macs supported gigabit Ethernet internally. It was time to go gigabit.

(Another brief aside. Hubs retransmit all incoming data to all ports, which is less efficient than switches, which create a dedicated path between any two ports, keeping unnecessary data off the rest of the network. When I first started creating Ethernet networks, switches cost much more than hubs; processor advances eliminated any cost advantage quite a few years ago. It's unclear if hubs even exist for modern flavors of Ethernet; if you run across one, keep running.)


Making the Switch

The first step was to purchase new gigabit Ethernet switches to replace the increasingly flaky 100 Mbps Linksys switches. I took the shortcut of shopping on Amazon.com, where I compared the user ratings and reviews of similarly priced switches from D-Link, Netgear, and other manufacturers. It's important to read such reviews carefully, paying close attention to those that make points that seem relevant to your intended use. In the end, I bought three identical 5-port gigabit Ethernet switches from D-Link, the DGS-2205. At the time they cost only $34.99, and came with $10 rebates.

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FIVDIA/?tag=tidbitselectro00>

(How large a switch should you get? It depends on the number of devices you plan to attach in any particular location. Five ports is probably enough for most home and small office networks, because you likely will have only a few machines close together. To connect multiple locations, you run a single Ethernet cable to the next switch. It's generally better to run only one cable between inexpensive switches in multiple locations than to run multiple cables across long distances to a single switch. For areas with many devices, you can buy switches with 8, 12, and 24 ports.)

As a slight bonus, given that they're powered on all the time, these particular D-Link switches advertised themselves as using less power by powering down inactive ports, budgeting power for different Ethernet cable lengths, and using more efficient power adapters. In my testing, each switch uses about 2.1 watts constantly, which costs me about 24 cents per month; that's about two-thirds of the power used by the older Linksys switches. Some older inexpensive gigabit switches ran very hot and even required cooling fans.

Installing the gigabit Ethernet switches was trivially easy, just a matter of swapping the Ethernet cables from the old Linksys switches and plugging in the power adapters. On two of the D-Link switches, the status lights glowed green to indicate that communications between my Power Mac G5 and MacBook, and with Tonya's MacBook Pro, were now taking place at gigabit speeds.

However, the lights on one of the D-Link switches weren't green, but amber, indicating that communications on those ports were running at only 100 Mbps. Two of those three didn't surprise me, since the Power Mac G4 acting as our internal server had an Intel Pro/100 Ethernet card that supported only 100Base-T (see "Adding Ethernet to a Power Mac," 2004-07-12), and our 802.11g-capable AirPort Extreme Base Station is also limited to 100Base-T.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/7737>

But the third amber light was concerning, since it was associated with the cable that connected to one of the other switches, and it should have been green to indicate a 1000Base-T connection. Initially, I was worried that the problem lay in the outdoor-rated Ethernet cable I'd laboriously researched and installed to extend my network from one side of the house to the other, but some quick cable swapping revealed the problem to be a single cheap patch cable that lacked sufficient wires to carry 1000Base-T. Exchanging it for a better cable turned that third light green.

(Time for another interruption. As you've just read, not all twisted pair Ethernet cables are created equal. Very old ones from the early 1990s may be Category 3, commonly known as Cat3, which is suitable only for 10Base-T. It was replaced by Cat5 cable, good for up to 100Base-T and possibly functional with gigabit Ethernet. However, for gigabit Ethernet, you really want to use either Cat5e, which replaced Cat5, or Cat6 cable, and networking people have told me that Cat6 is best for full performance over long cable runs. Hopefully, any cables you have lying around will be labeled on the cable itself; if you suspect problems, just get new Cat6 cables. All cable runs must be less than 100 meters, and preferably shorter. If you're remodeling your house or office, the best approach is to install conduit and string with which you can pull whatever future cable you want, along with another string. TidBITS editor Rich Mogull took that route - and then discovered later that some subcontractor had pulled the string out of half the runs! Chuck Goolsbee of Web hosting company digital.forest recommends fish tape for this exigency.)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_tape>

The next part of the project took some more research. I needed a PCI-based gigabit Ethernet card for the Power Mac G4 that would work with drivers already built into Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (whenever possible, try to avoid Ethernet cards that require their own drivers, which may not be updated in sync with Mac OS X). When I last had to buy an Ethernet card for the Power Mac G4 several years ago, the Accelerate Your Mac site offered a useful page with reader reports about PCI Ethernet cards. The page is still there, more useful than ever, and it turned me on to the TRENDnet TEG-PCITXR card, which works with Apple's built-in Ethernet drivers. Rather astonishingly, it was widely available for under $20; I bought it for $15.99 from Newegg.

<http://xlr8yourmac.com/OSX/os_x_network_cards.html>
<http://trendnet.com/products/proddetail.asp?prod=140_TEG-PCITXR&cat=14>

Once I installed the card in my Power Mac G4 and configured the Network preference pane to use it, the D-Link switch's associated light turned green to indicate that my server was now communicating at gigabit speeds.

That left only the AirPort Extreme Base Station, but all it does is distribute wireless connectivity in the house and connect to my cable modem for my main Internet connection, which maxes out at about 4 Mbps down and 750 Kbps up. So upgrading to a new 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base that also supports gigabit Ethernet, or a similarly capable Time Capsule, simply wouldn't make much, if any, difference.

(One last aside. There is a performance problem that can occur with gigabit Ethernet networks any time your base station uses NAT to connect traffic between the local area network (LAN) and wide area network (WAN). This situation doesn't arise in normal circumstances, because most people connect a relatively slow broadband Internet connection to the WAN port. But if the Internet connection is fast - say, 30 Mbps fiber, which is available in some locations - or if your base station isn't directly connected to your broadband cable or DSL modem, performance can suffer. That's because most base stations have relatively weak processors that can't keep up with NAT's need to examine and rewrite every packet that crosses between the LAN and the WAN. TidBITS editor Glenn Fleishman has found that a number of Wi-Fi base stations (including Apple's) with NAT enabled unintentionally throttle LAN/WAN traffic to as low as 30 to 70 Mbps, even on networks that can send traffic at 980 Mbps between LAN gigabit ports. The solution is to have only one device performing the role of a NAT gateway, preferably connected directly to the broadband modem. If you need better performance, you might need to use a computer with two Ethernet adapters and IPNetRouterX from Sustainable Softworks.)

<http://www.sustworks.com/site/prod_ipnrx_overview.html>


The Final Bits

To give you a sense of how much of a difference moving from 100 Mbps Ethernet to 1000 Mbps Ethernet makes, I did a few simple tests copying a 1.07 GB file back and forth across my different machines before and after the upgrade. I used basic file sharing in Mac OS X - Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) and hand-timed the copies with an iPod touch's stopwatch.

Across 100 Mbps Ethernet, it took between 106 seconds and 113 seconds to copy the 1.07 GB file, or about 81 to 87 Mbps. That's a pretty decent usage of the pipe, since there's always some network overhead that prevents you from getting the full bandwidth of the connection.

When I ran the same test over gigabit Ethernet, the copies took between 43 and 48 seconds, or 199 to 213 Mbps. That's a significant improvement in performance, but far from the 1000 Mbps that is theoretically available. Curious, I did a bit more testing.

The Link Rate test in Sustainable Softworks' IPNetMonitorX produced an estimate of over 800 Mbps, which is much closer to the theoretical limit, but achieved in a calculated fashion, rather than by actually transferring large quantities of data. Testing with FTP at the command line produced, at best, results similar to the AFP copies, showing the AFP wasn't being notably slower than Apple's built-in FTP server and client. Most interesting, though, was that simply duplicating the same file in the Finder took almost exactly the same time as transferring over the network on my Power Mac G5 (and about twice as long on the MacBook, which I can't explain), indicating that I may in fact have been bumping up against hard disk and filesystem performance limits as well.

<http://www.sustworks.com/site/prod_ipmx_overview.html>

To sum up then, for less than $125, I was able to increase the effective speed of my network for copying large files by almost 2.5 times. It would have been nice if I'd seen a 10-fold improvement, but it seems that such performance gains will require faster hard disks and network protocols as well.

Keep in mind that this network upgrade will almost certainly not affect my perception of Internet throughput at all, since that's constrained by my Internet connection and by the remote servers I'm connecting to. Increasing the local bandwidth simply won't make much difference, if any, to Internet performance.

But hey, I'm happy with halving the time it takes to shove large quantities of data around my network, since backups should move more quickly, copying big video files won't be so painful, screen sharing should be snappier, and working on hefty Word files on the server will be less sluggish. That's all good, and well worth the minimal expense.

ToC

Verifying Web Links in PDF Files

by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9500>

Our ebooks have tons of Web links in them, and for a long time, one of the most tedious production tasks was verifying that the links were still valid since the author added them in the manuscript. In an effort to simplify this task, I came up with the following process.

Unfortunately for those trying to replicate it, my process relies on an expensive plug-in, the $699 Aerialist Pro from ARTS PDF. I initially purchased Aerialist Pro because it can generate PDF links from page numbers to the associated pages in a PDF; I used it to link up all the page numbers in the index of the ebook version of iPhoto '08: Visual QuickStart Guide. That task would have taken many hours using the astonishingly bad linking tool in Acrobat Professional 8, so I was able to justify the price. On the Mac, Aerialist Pro runs only in Acrobat Professional 7, so I was glad I kept that version around, and copies still seem to be available via Amazon.com.

<http://www.artspdf.com/arts_pdf_aerialist_pro.asp>
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/iphoto7-vqs.html>
<http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/>
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00069E7IQ/?tag=tidbitselectro00>

Aerialist Pro has other useful features, including the capability to produce a report listing all external links, which gave me what I needed to develop the rest of my process. (Unhappily, another Aerialist Pro feature that I would love to use - the capability to set link properties like zoom level and appearance en masse - turns out to have a bug that causes problems with documents viewed in Continuous mode. ARTS PDF has confirmed the bug, and I hope they fix it, along with enabling Aerialist Pro to work inside Acrobat Professional 8.)

Aerialist Pro's external link report is itself a PDF, so my first step is to save the report from Acrobat as a plain text file, called Dependency Report.txt (the extension isn't optional). But in the end, I need a .html file, so I set up Noodlesoft's Hazel to look for a file called Dependency Report.txt in a specific folder, rename it uniquely and with a .html extension, and open it in BBEdit.

<http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php>
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-03/PDF-link-checking-Hazel.png>

Once I have the file in BBEdit, I run a text factory that takes the rather plain output from Aerialist Pro, strips out the cosmetic parts, and turns all of the links into proper HREFs. It's a lot of grep pattern matching, and while it wasn't trivial to create, it wasn't all that hard.

<http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/>
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-03/PDF-link-checking-BBEdit.png>

The next trick is to check all the links. After much searching and testing, I found a $25 utility called Braxton's Link Tester (BLT) that does a nice job of checking links and reporting back on which ones have problems. After running the BBEdit text factory and saving the file, I drag the file's proxy icon (the little icon in the title bar of every window; just click, hold, and drag to use it just as though you were dragging the file's Finder icon) to BLT's Dock icon. In BLT, I then click the Check Links button and go do something else for a few minutes while it visits all the links.

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

What I like about BLT is that it's easy to deselect the green checkmark tab that shows all the good links, since I don't care about those, and focus in on broken links (for the screenshot below, I left the good ones showing). BLT goes beyond a simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down display, identifying failed links, forbidden links, links that time out, links forbidden by robots.txt, server errors, email links that must be verified manually, and protocols that BLT doesn't recognize.

<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2008-03/PDF-link-checking-BLT.png>

Most of the time there are only a couple of broken links, if any, and then it's just a matter of going back into the original Word document and the working PDF file and either removing the links or replacing them with correct links.

I won't pretend this is the only way to automate link checking. It might be possible, for instance, to write an AppleScript that would identify and check the links, reporting back on which ones had troubles. But I do hope this will give you a sense of how you might be able to eliminate a manual step in producing PDF files that work as they should.

ToC

The CUCUG Section:

March General Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins <kh2@uiuc.edu>

March 20, 2008 -- The March meeting began with our traditional introduction of officers.

President Richard Rollins said that he would be showing three programs in the PC SIG after the break: Steady State, Truecrypt, and AVG 8, if he had time.

He then asked, "How many of you have been having trouble with Comcast?" Richard talked about difficulties several of his customers have been having with Firefox since the changeover to Comcast. He thinks he has traced the problem to the use of secure certificates, which Internet Explore uses in a particular way. He said there is no common denominator among the anomalies except Comcast. He also lamented that the changeover necessitated having to change every one of his email addresses, since being the new kid on the Comcast block, all of his "names" had already been taken. For those yet to go through the process, Richard proffered the two servers you need to know: mail.comcast.net and smtp.comcast.net .

Joe Dewalt asked about using bigfoot.com as a bounce off address as Richard does. Richard said he's had no problem with them in the years he's used them. He said they charge $9.95 a year (originally, it was free). Mail.com is another bounce off site that was mentioned.

Phil Wall asked about web hosting. He said he was thinking about using Top10webhosting.com which charges $8/month. Kevin Hisel suggested GoDaddy.com at $35/year which is who the club uses for the CUCUG web site. Kevin strongly advised that you watch when you register your domain to see if you actually own it or if whether the host owns it. You can use WHOIS to check and find out who really own the domain name. This can be very important later on. He noted that if you search for a domain at NSI, they'll immediately register it and THEN sell it to you, which is a really shady practice. This brought up memories of other domain squatters like Dennis Toeppen in our area who registered Panavision, among many others when the web was young. Needless to say money won ought and his claim to well known brand names didn't stand up in court.

Someone brought up the need to check your Comcast bill immediately. In it, Comcast has a section of their EULA committing you to binding arbitration over any dispute you might have with them unless you opt out. The address of the opt out page is <http://www.comcast.com/arbitrationoptout/default.ashx>. There is a thirty day window to take advantage and secure you right to sue either individually or as part of a class action suit.

Rich Hall had a question about Thunderbird. He has a DSL line with AT&T and has been unable to get POP to work with it. In investigating the problem, Rich believes that AT&T/Yahoo actual does not give you POP functionality unless you pay them an additional $20. Jon Bjerke confirmed this and recommended "ypops" which is free to get around this. Jon's only caveat is that "ypops" occasionally breaks when AT&T/Yahoo change something, but it usually gets fixed in a timely fashion.

<http://ypopsemail.com/>

Someone commented on Speed Burst advertised by Comcast and a discussion of speed on various providers ensued.

Another member mentioned that Mark Zinzow can't use VPN to tunnel in to his home server from Hawaii because of Comcast's DHCP changing his usually constant IP address. Jon Bjerke recommended NO-IP or DYNDNS.ORG.

<http://www.no-ip.com/>
<https://www.dyndns.com/>

Another Comcast limitation that was brought up is that you cannot send an email bigger than 11 MB through their SMTP. Large attachments are a No No.

Richard Rollins once again recommended that Firefox or Thunderbird users use Mozbackup to protect themselves. Kevin Hopkins dourly reminded him that MozBackup only works on Windows machines. Richard acknowledged that, but said they are supposedly working on a Mac version.

Firefox 3 Beta 4 was brought up and recommended, with desirable features like no pre-caching of web pages, and a smaller memory footprint. Some people have complained that doesn't use Vista Look & Feel. However, you can skin it.

Kevin Hisel mentioned that IE8 is in beta.

PageZoom Firefox got a recommendation as a great Firefox add-on.

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1499>

Ed Serbe recommended another add-on called "Better YouTube". He said it gives you better quality on YouTube videos.

<http://lifehacker.com/software/exclusive-lifehacker-download/better-youtube-firefox-extension-319925.php>

Jerry White said he was having a problem with Vista printer drivers. He has an ancient printer which does work, but he can find a driver for it. Someone recommended virtualbox.com and to install XP.

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

The consensus was that this was a little heavy handed. A counter proposal was to install its XP driver; some XP drivers do work. Jim Lewis recommended looking at PCL/2 for the Laserjet IIP in question.

<http://www.visual.co.uk/visualpcl2.asp>

A network printer might work. Perhaps an XP server. As the discussion continued it was noted that multifunction printers are the worst for not working. Brands of printers also came up. Richard Rollins said, "There's a good reason one in three printers in the world are HPs." Epson and Lexmark did not fair as well with this crowd.

A members asked about the need for a replacement UPC batteries. He was told that APC has a trade up program. Someone else recommended BatteriesPlus on Kenyan Road in Urbana, but they're not cheap.

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

President Rollins asked Emil Cobb what the Mac SIG would be doing this evening. Emil said, "Brian Forbes will show a wagering program called Office Pool".

The PC SIG: Richard Rollins shows Steady State and TrueCrypt

reported by Kevin Hopkins <kh2@uiuc.edu>

The program for the PC SIG after the break this evening was conducted by Richard Rollins. He began by showing Steady State, a free program from Microsoft available for Server 2003, XP, and Vista. Steady State is used for a public access machines so that the administrator can keep them from being corrupted or sabotaged. Richard explained that you can completely configure what the user can do. You can lock down the drive.

Kevin Hisel asked if you can just lock down users. Richard said, "Yes, the users can be locked down, while the administrator is free to do whatever he wants. This thing has all kinds of settings."

Jim Lewis asked about booting in Safe Mode to get around its security. As to that, Richard wasn't sure. [It's always a rough crowd with Jim in the house.]

Richard noted various Windows restrictions. He explained how you can block programs, which lets you pick and choose the programs that will run. You can export your finished settings for use on multiple machines. Todd Anderson found this feature very interesting, having once had to administer several machines in a library. Todd said duplicating the setting would have streamlined the set up procedure greatly, rather than having to do each machine from scratch.

Richard said Steady State stores your session in a temporary area which goes away when you log out, leaving the machine cleansed and ready for the next user.

To get Steady State, Richard said simply Google "Microsoft Steady State".

<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/sharedaccess/default.mspx>

In the transition between Richard's next segment, someone mentioned the Vista Administrator Account Hack.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEwI2Sx03po>

Richard then began his discussion of security software. His subject was Truecrypt. There are other schemes, such as Ironkey, an encrypted USB device that will tolerate failed 10 attempts to access it before itself erases itself.

<https://www.ironkey.com/>

However, Richard likes and uses Truecrypt free open-source disk encryption software.

<http://www.truecrypt.org/>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueCrypt>

The version he showed, version 5, works on Windows, Linux and Mac. Richard explained that you actually have to have Truecrypt on your Linux or Mac machine, whereas it will self-boot on Windows.

Phil Wall asked about backwards compatibility. Richard said he believed that was the case.

Continuing, Richard said Truecrypt will now do whole drive encryption rather than setting up its own pseudo-device. He talked about the creation of an ISO which needs to be burned to a CD. You have to have it, like a key, if you have encrypted your drive. You still need your password and if you forget it, you are toast, because there is no way to get in or recover your data without it once encryption takes place.

As he put Truecrypt through its paces, Richard asked, "Why would anyone want to encrypt their drive?" He said Truecrypt is particularly for those who might lose their laptops or have them stolen and who don't want their information falling to anyone else's hands.

Showing how to exit Truecrypt, Richard demonstrated that you have to dismount the Truecrypt drive.

One difficulty Truecrypt had experienced in the past is that their boot loader code had been written to the hard drive loader area. It was found that some malicious software was also writing to that area and overwriting Truecrypt's code. They now write a second copy of their boot loader into the hard drive loader area as insurance that Truecrypt will work as intended.

ToC

March Board Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins <kh2@uiuc.edu>

The March meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, March 27, 2008, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to attend - which is encouraged, by the way - the address and phone number are both in the book). Present at the meeting were: Richard Rollins, Emil Cobb, Kevin Hopkins, Rich Hall and Kevin Hisel.

Kevin Hopkins: Kevin had no new business to bring up.

Emil Cobb: Emil reported that we had 24 members attending the March General meeting. He said former member Brian Forbes might do something for next month's Mac presentation.

Rich Hall: Rich had no new business for consideration.

Kevin Hisel: Kevin reported that he had removed two non-renewing members from the forum: Anthony Phillips and Tom Purl.

Richard Rollins: Richard stated that he had enjoyed doing the presentation on Truecrypt and SteadyState at the meeting. He then led a discussion on the topic of getting a new PC for the club.

ToC

The Back Page:

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

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

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

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

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

   President/WinSIG:   Richard Rollins      469-2616
   Vice-Pres/MacSIG:   Emil Cobb            398-0149
   Secretary/Editor:   Kevin Hopkins        356-5026
   Treasurer:          Richard Hall         344-8687
   Corp.Agent/Web:     Kevin Hisel          406-948-1999
   Linux SIG:          Allen Byrne          344-5311

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

CUCUG
912 Stratford Drive
Champaign, IL
61821-4137

ToC