News Common PC Linux Mac CUCUG
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
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
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
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."
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
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>
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
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>
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>
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
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:
ToCAt 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."
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:
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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&pageID=452>
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
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/>
Paul Thurrott
URL: <http://www.wininformant.com/>
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.
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.
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.
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]."
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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<